Incremental technological improvement 🙄

Big Tech: We’ve created NEW A.I. technology that can make it look like you are looking at the camera so that people will think you are looking at them instead of at the screen!

Me: PFT! We had that technology in the 1950s and it cost 10¢ or one cereal–box-top. Students were 70 years ahead of their time, and they didn’t just use it to make the teacher think they’re looking at the board instead of at something else, they used it to pretend they’re looking at the board instead of ASLEEP. 😒

1950s style glasses with open-eyes on the lenses
Who knew comics in the 1950s had futuristic technology available for so cheap? Why did an incremental improvement take 70 years?

Biden won the election because logic

Biden has increased his lead over Trump which means it’s pretty much over; Biden wins. Even if there are a lot of mail-in ballots to be counted, they’re only going to help Biden increase his lead because let’s face it, more people who voted by mail-in ballot voted for Biden than Trump, so as those get counted, it’s not going to help Trump. It’s not really a “nail-biter” at all, if anything, it’ll be at least a little bit of a landslide (which is just as well because it’s not enough for Trump to lose, he has to lose by a lot to deflate his ego because it’s gotten so big it actually has a gravitational pull).

Arbitrary taxation

I went to the dollar-store to get more of those 730g tins of Maxwell House coffee for $2.50 because it’s a great deal. Unfortunately, they were sold out and probably won’t be back (apparently the dollar-store gets one-time items for some reason 🤨). I knew it was too good to be true. 😕 Thankfully I got 10 tins while they had them, so hopefully I’ll be able to drink coffee with impunity for a while.

Anyway, while I was there, I figured I’d see about getting some other stuff. To my surprise, they had some relatively cheap (but brand-name) soap available, so I bought a bunch so that I don’t have to worry about running low (I swear soap melts faster than it used, probably on purpose so that you have to buy it more often 😒). Then I got tempted by the snack aisle. This is bad because I’m trying to do the Keto diet, and all that junk has carbs galore.

I figured I’d get a few things that were a decent value and just leave them in the basement as storage for the future (or hypothetical—read imaginary 🙄— guests).

The strangest part is that when I looked at the receipt, the items that were and weren’t taxed was baffling. The soap was taxed, which seems stupid since soap is hardly a luxury or an unnecessary item. 😒 Moreover, granola bars were also taxed even though they’re the “healthy” snack, but all the other junk foods were not taxed.

Who the heck decides what gets taxed or not? This seems pretty random. (I wish I could attribute it to Hanlon’s razor, but the jaded cynic in me has to assume they taxed the soap because it was more expensive. ¬_¬)

Receipt with seemingly random items taxed
How do they decide what items get taxed? 🤔
Another receipt with seemingly random items taxed
How do they decide what items get taxed? 🤔

McD on AIDS

I saw a McDonald’s cup on the ground today (damn litterers 😒) and had to do a double-take because the new design uses an all-lowercase sans-serif font and breaks the name McDonald’s across three lines and looks an awful lot like it says “mcd on aids”. 🤦 Who thought of that? How did they miss it? Did they get fired? 🤔

"md/on/alds" looks like "mcd on aids"
New McDonald’s design is very easy to misread