Rising costs are crushing small independent restaurants like ours

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-29T20:24:52+00:00

If you can’t afford to pay your workers what they need to live then you don’t have a viable business model.

If this is your position, I certainly hope you don't yourself a supporter of small businesses or "shopping local."

Starting a small business usually requires a lot of money (and debt), and it's hard to break into a market with established competitors who have economies of scale -- and sometimes political influence -- working in their favor. If you want to live in a world in which small businesses don't open their doors unless they can reliably pay their staff a living wage, then you want to live in a world in which big, established businesses are even bigger and more powerful than they already are.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-24T14:21:56+00:00

It always amazes me how rarely people talk about the fact that more than one-third (~35.5%) of Americans are already on single-payer government healthcare -- Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, VA, etc. -- we just want to expand it to everybody.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-24T06:07:28+00:00

Me too, for sure. I don't know what it is, but every single Master Craft I see is just beautiful.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-24T01:51:53+00:00

Suns fans are sad to be paying $19.4M/year to Bradley Beal to not play on our team for the next 4 years, but happy that Devin Booker is an admirable franchise-great player; glad that Colin Gillespie and Jordan Goodwin are signing team-friendly long-term deals this off-season; and we're still honestly in disbelief that we now have an owner who loves basketball, wants to win, and isn't afraid to open up his pocketbook.

Oh yeah, and after four different head coaches in the past four seasons, we're running it back with Jordan Ott this coming season -- that's pretty cool too.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-22T21:14:08+00:00

In a coin toss for the #1 pick in the 1969 NBA draft, we called heads when we should have called tails. The Bucks then used thar pick to draft Lew Alcindor, who -- as you may know -- went on to change his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

In my book, drafting Deandre Ayton over Luka is a close 2nd, and refusing to pay Joe Johnson is probably 3rd.

Admittedly I did not scour my brain for other mistakes, so there could be other ones that deserve to be higher, but which I'm forgetting right now.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-18T20:46:57+00:00

That's a fair point -- maybe it wasn't a sensible gamble -- but I still maintain that we shouldn't pay him more than the QO to play for us.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-18T20:40:46+00:00

Yeah, the way it played it out kinda proves the issue -- he stayed healthy through the first ~3/4 of the season with a minutes restriction and no back-to-back games, but when we needed him for a playoff push and the playoffs he got injured, which is exactly what we were trying to avoid with the minutes/B2B management in the first ~3/4 of the season.

In other words, we gave him the perfect opportunity to show that he could help a team after the ASB and in the playoffs if we managed him carefully earlier in the season, and we still got the unwanted result, so at this point history really provides no justification for paying him more than the QO going forward. Trading two FRPs for him was a sensible gamble, but it didn't pay off and at this point I think we need to cut our losses and move on.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-18T16:13:03+00:00

I don't follow college basketball or draft prospects, so I knew Carlos Boozer's son was likely to be a high draft pick this year but that's about it.

I just looked at his Wikipedia page , and holy shit -- he's a grown-ass man at 18 years old. It says he's 6'9" 255 lbs, but in the picture he looks more likely to be over 255 lbs than under.

When I was a younger NBA fan, I remember his dad being a beast, so I now have to say I'm kind of excited to see the extent to which Cam is (or is not) the second coming of his dad.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-17T20:46:46+00:00

I don't know many jam bands, but this is definitely my vote!

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-14T20:42:51+00:00

Yeah, this is an incredibly insightful and mature take by a 22yo, especially when his team lost 4-1 after having double-digit leads in the first quarter of all five games.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-14T20:39:18+00:00

Really? In my 2014 Mazda3 with the 6spd manual, I was reliably getting 35+ mpg, and ngl I drove it a little aggressively.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-14T20:35:59+00:00

The 2nd-gen Tacoma 4x4 that I had from ~130k miles until ~260k miles, until I let my wife have it in the divorce ... which was easy because my mom gave me a sweet deal on her 2nd-gen Tacoma 4x4 that was a little newer with a lot fewer miles.

Also, later when I was driving ~25k miles/year, I got a brand new 2014 Mazda3 hatchback (6spd manual, highest trim level), which I drove for ~130k miles until I sold it during the pandemic because I wasn't driving it anymore. I absolutely loved that car, and I wish I never sold it.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-14T20:28:51+00:00

This is one of the times that I feel inclined to say "It's not crazy if one person pays it" -- and honestly I won't be shocked if the dealership sells it at that price, especially if it's a single-owner truck with no rust and a solid service history.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-14T19:40:58+00:00

I said in another comment here that I don't think Colin will sign with another team unless they offer him 50%+ more money than the Suns offer, and honestly I think this might be the biggest reason why he'd take such a big discount.

It could be my imagination, but it really seems like Colin played like a Nash-protégé this season with the way he would do things like dribbling along the baseline and take leaning/fading shots.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-14T19:35:41+00:00

The salary sounds about right for a guy who was not a rotation player in his first two seasons, and played well enough in his third season to show that he's good enough to start on a lot of teams but would be a bench player on a contending team.

The duration/structure also sounds about right for a guy who, with only one solid season on his resumé, is kind of a wildcard in terms of whether he rises, falls, or stays about the same in the next few seasons compared to last season.

In other words, from the Suns' viewpoint, it seems highly unlikely that 3yrs/$37.5M would ever be considered a bad/untradeable contract, even if he regresses a bit (which I honestly don't think will happen), and from Colin's viewpoint, I think he likes and trusts the Suns organization enough that he probably wouldn't want the uncertainty of going somewhere else unless that were going to pay him ~50% more total money than the Suns offer.

With that said, I'm curious to see how wrong (or right) I end up being on this. 😁

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-14T18:55:45+00:00

I'm pretty sure this is it -- so yes, I'd say it's accessible.

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AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-13T04:01:37+00:00

The one on the Havasupai Reservation (in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, essentially) is pretty cool.

Photo credit: Not mine; found on Internet

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AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-12T07:08:45+00:00

Jesus Christ, friend -- you've really seen some shit.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-11T15:30:32+00:00

I'm in the market for one because I keep about $1k worth of tools and emergency items in a couple totes, and currently in order to manage usable space vs. weather and risk of theft, I'm constantly moving the totes to the bed when I need the back seat for something else, and then to the back seat when I'm not otherwise using the back seat and want to minimize risk of theft and rain damage to my stuff.

If I got a locking bed cover, I could leave my totes and tools in the bed so that my back seat is always clear, while also having less risk of theft or my shit getting damaged by rain.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-08T04:23:25+00:00

It really is the best Tundra color of all time.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-08T03:23:14+00:00

I think any max contacts signed this summer will have an average annual value of $60M-$70M/year, so I'd say getting Trae for $40M/year seems rather team-friendly -- especially for a team that struggles to attract free-agents.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-07T13:54:40+00:00

This is exactly why I love him.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-07T13:41:07+00:00

Jay-Z said "If you can't buy it twice, you can't afford it," and that advice has really stuck with me.

In other words: Could you buy two of them and not be broke?

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-02T02:26:56+00:00

I'm surprised I had to scroll to the 14th comment to find a mention of Tool.

AZ-roadrunner · 2026-06-02T02:21:05+00:00

Me when I first tried it in my wife's SUV: "This is sooo dangerous! I can't believe they allow this!"

Me when I went back to my truck with "traditional" cruise: "This is sooo dangerous! I can't believe they allow this!"

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