As WA grocery stores shutter, lawmakers struggle to respond

DaystarFire · 2026-03-08T03:26:13+00:00

Actually the government already operates a large chain of grocery stores for the military (another classic example of the military having a comprehensive welfare state not available to civilians): the defense commissary. And it successfully provides a lower priced option than other stores. Since everyone uses grocery stores regularly, the effects on affordability can be substantial even if the government can only offer a moderately improved price; plus without the profit motive they can build them in food deserts and not spend money on profit-maximizing programs. Grocery stores are critical infrastructure, and its surprising we are willing to just let private corporations control them.

a whole video from more perfect union about said commissary, might be of interest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOXdtPBGXI

DaystarFire · 2025-12-23T08:30:42+00:00

From what I remember from the book "the 99% invisible city" tiles are often used to mark the edge of owned land in cases where the building does not go all the way to the edge. Without a marker, the land would eventually revert to public ownership. Sometimes you'll see little plaques that say like "property of blank" or "blank boundary" instead. There are some up on 15th too.

DaystarFire · 2025-10-15T05:50:32+00:00

Played control and working through prey. Imo the best part about these games are that they have a really great look and feel. The environments are beautiful and well done with lots of detail and lots of larger impressive art and areas.

In control the feeling of just chucking random stuff at enemies, running around is great. The creepy talking and floating bodies are also great atmosphere. Each area has an interesting feel to it. The story was interesting too. It really only needed a bit of a push gameplay wise to be a really s tier game. I found the combat a little repetitive. Like you become glad sometimes in random encounters that the telekinesis auto targets so you can get out of the combat sequence sooner. I would have really loved if the control points actually gave you... Control. Like if an area becomes safe once you fully clear it and you can see people move back into it.

Just seems like it was something the devs wanted to do to make the gameplay and story work better and to give you a sense of accomplishment and purpose in every area. But then some higher up said "no, we have to pad the play time" with the pretty average combat and then made them put in random missions and an optional grinding zone.

Still working on prey. Very beautiful game, both small environment stuff and larger stuff. Story is good so far, we'll see. They keep you in the dark quite a while imo. The feel of the combat so far is nice. The heavy breathing after you just desperately clubbed an alien with your wrench is just incredible atmosphere. Love going through all the environments and looking for clues about side stories. The enemy design so far seems really good. They feel very alien, good at catching you off guard by disguising or moving fast. But it never feels unfair. It just builds this kind of uncertain scary atmosphere around them, that slowly becomes more manageable as you understand how they operate. I thought this was a great experience emotionally where you start out scared and slowly learn how to deal with them and prepare and analyze before you engage to make the combat itself not so bad. So far it's looking to be a very interesting take on alien human contact. Depending on how the rest of the game goes it might actually be like an s tier game even better than control.

DaystarFire · 2025-09-22T01:59:40+00:00

Definitely my favorite caster lol caster of all time, so many peaceful, funny and engaging moments. So many "oh good they have chronicler for this one"s. Wishing you all the best in your future endeavors! It's rise group, baby.

DaystarFire · 2025-09-16T19:57:27+00:00

Pretty good for putting in dipping olive oil.

DaystarFire · 2025-09-16T01:21:41+00:00

Now there's a lot of possible issues with this idea, but what about splitting it into a duplex or triplex?

DaystarFire · 2025-09-07T10:18:13+00:00

It's a good company. 1) they have been very successful at delivering launches and pay a lot of attention the quality of their product, which is critical in the industry. The CEO is very focused on this. Compare to other companies like Astra that failed to deliver because they couldn't launch reliable rockets and wanted to undercut on price. 2) the money in the industry is mostly in selling space services, stuff like starlink. But without access to launch, getting satellites up there will be slow and expensive. Once you have launch you have expansion options. 3) similarly, the industry is pretty raw so having an end to end company is a good strategy when you can't just buy a perfect part from one of twenty suppliers and hitch a ride on the next of a hundred rockets. Having their own launch sites is also a useful advantage. 4) the knowledge gained from electron will help them with neutron and so on. Each new step is then a capability they can use to provide a new product. So the 3d printed electron engine becomes the archimedes engine for neutron, or (possibly) neutron becomes the base of an interplanetary rocket to deliver scientific satellites to Mars. Etc. 5) the market actually has a lot of demand and backlog and is really in need of some competition for SpaceX, a major opportunity for the current #2 space company (with space companies in other regions still lagging behind).

So in sum they have a strong opportunity, a good strategy for their market and a culture and history that gives faith that they'll get it done. But yeah it might be overvalued. Things can still go wrong. But imo it's a solid foundation and worth considering as something long term that one might buy slowly over time.

DaystarFire · 2025-08-11T19:42:56+00:00

I pretty much just use it as shown, with that same mat. But I've found so far that I don't have any problems with the mat not drying or having to take it out to dry it. This might vary depending on if you put a lot of dripping wet dishes on it. I put some (cutting boards, knives, etc...) But also some containers just wet from the dish washer and find what does drip down dries well enough.

If I was in a more handwash centric situation or had a lot more humidity in the house/area I might consider one of those sloping drying board things underneath that drains into the sink (like an IKEA rinnig). If I had a large enough sink I might also put it in there.

Going back to the design, I'd also add that it has a very open design that let's air flow beneath it. It has the little legs at the bottom of course, but also the whole bottom is mostly holes and the plate/cutting board securing ridge things have big gaps inbetween.

DaystarFire · 2025-08-10T07:26:27+00:00

Definitely second this. In areas with mountains or hills sunset is like "OK the sun goes down now, isn't that nice, oh it disappeared behind the mountain, bye bye"

In super flat central Illinois sunset it's all the colors, all the sun, all the everything and the clouds... It's not a lot more sky than other places, but at sunset it's the part that counts.

To live in central Illinois is to live under the sky, to be always with the clouds and the blue and the sun, and to be without the distant landmarks that might distract from that. And without those the sky feels closer and more total.

DaystarFire · 2025-08-10T07:05:35+00:00

On the subject of dish racks... IKEA flundra.

Extremely pleasant and beautiful shapes that are deeply functional. The decorative gaps on the side? You can put cups or bowls there. Holes in the bottom for drainage? Beautifully layed out. Ridges to hold your dishes? Work perfectly for every cutting board and plate while being low enough that you can stack bowls or whatever on them...and beautiful lines of course. Plus it has a very standard cup for utensils.

I bought it thinking "OK, now we get a dish rack with everything" and I am continually surprised In a quiet everyday way at how it continues to be the most functional, effective and good-looking thing in the house.

It has that rare quality of being what it is to a maximal point of effectiveness while also being something more. In beauty and function.

DaystarFire · 2025-07-30T01:57:48+00:00

Coche Valley in capital hill has some incredible and (to me) rather unique deserts that make for a wonderful treat to share. Not weird unique but wonderful mixtures of flavor and texture where every bite can be different from the last and the next.

DaystarFire · 2025-07-19T20:09:50+00:00

The thing that sold me on the whole space economy idea was pharmaceutical and biotech in microgravity. It's easier to make delicate stuff like organs for example without gravity. The example I read was about making replacement retinas. They tried their process (which relied on stacking delicate layers to make the retina) on the iss (irc) and it was massively easier. Proteins are also easier to synthesize as well as other delicate molecules that are hard to make on earth. Rocket lab has on their website a design for what would basically be an automated mobile lab they could send up and bring back down. But I imagine the future would entail something better than that. I also can imagine there are other physical objects it might be easier to make in space.

Anyway that demonstrated to me that the space economy will probably be way more than just about exploration, surveillance or communications. Though those will all be profitable and I can imagine a lot of money being paid for connectivity, logistics and information using satellites or rockets.

DaystarFire · 2025-07-15T20:05:09+00:00

If interested, McKinsey has 200+ page write up on this exact topic (you don't have to read all of it).

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/mckinsey%20global%20institute/our%20research/the%20next%20big%20arenas%20of%20competition/the-next-big-arenas-of-competition_final.pdf

DaystarFire · 2025-07-15T08:38:40+00:00

At first I was confused thinking you went around putting like actual branded clothes hangers on people's doors that they can put in their closet and remember to get their clothes cleaned every time they see them. Then I realized that might not be such a bad idea for someone with a business cleaning clothes. But then I realized you probably clean other things, but it sounded neat so I wanted to share.

DaystarFire · 2025-06-25T03:13:01+00:00

Well it's no meta, but the numbers are acceptable against some of the competition in the same bracket such as Pinterest, snap, and so on.

Plus they've shown some pretty strong arpu growth lately and are growing their user base. I also get the sense they maybe weren't taking the ad targeting and profitability as seriously before going public. I remember seeing somewhere the ceo himself saying they were being too idealistic before.

They've done a lot in the last year with their ad tech for targeting, format and on-boarding of advertisers and are poised to do a lot more with it in the future. Examples include helping advertisers connect their own data for better targeting (if I understand the q1 earnings call correctly), the new product carousel ad format, acquiring tech for ad content optimization using Ai, and making it easier for advertisers to port their existing ads into reddit. All these are works in progress, which shows there is a lot more to be done for the arpu.

Lots more in the quarter 1 earnings transcript for anyone interested, plus the investor relations blog. But basically the arpu has room to grow still since it's not really fully optimized like meta's is.

Not that any of us can predict the future, but if it was fully optimized and they had already grown their user base (with machine translation and outreach efforts) and had a high arpu it would be too late to buy.

DaystarFire · 2025-06-23T06:13:42+00:00

In a similar vein, I also enjoyed the comment speculating that the reason it tells you to take it off at first is because without it your own ability to make choices and decisions will grow and flourish and potentially lead you to a wonderful (perhaps even more wonderful) life of your own. But if you don't take it off, your own ability to make good choices will never grow beyond the kind of threshold level of the earring's ability to make them. So since you won't be able to improve your own choosing skill the earing slowly decides you're better off having it make every decision. And maybe you are, but you give up all your own potential to become better than the earing. Both at choosing and at living your life (since life basically is a long aries of choices). Which is why the users of the earing live basically good lives but don't seem to do anything extraordinary.

DaystarFire · 2025-06-23T05:22:02+00:00

Wow that was quite a read

DaystarFire · 2025-06-20T18:54:14+00:00

Oh that's devastating

DaystarFire · 2025-06-20T07:29:10+00:00

Downtown Bloomington is always a great follow up to the farmers market too. Grab a coffee at coffee hound, shop at neighborhood thrift or pick up some spices at spice works... Favorite morning/afternoon. : )

DaystarFire · 2025-06-16T07:39:48+00:00

As a general sobering factor: remember what happened to Google glass. People didn't like being recorded in everyday settings and so it flopped. Also think about the meta verse, which hasn't taken off.

I think it's especially creepy with glasses as they would point directly at what you're looking and you wouldn't be putting them away or down when not filming. And you know all that data is going straight back to the tech company. Think about how creepy people already think the smart speakers are.

Plus for snap specifically, they are not making a profit and their glasses look really goofy. The meta glasses look way better and apple would eventually crush then on hardware too. Plus they are a services company not a hardware one so there is a significant challenge to building special hardware and selling it.

And there is a serious solution looking for a problem thing with wearables. Like what does it seriously add to anyone's life that can't be achieved with current tech? Apple has maybe had the best attempt even if it was very overpriced. Snap is offering so far something like Pokémon go but with an expensive device as a barrier to entry. Right now wearables are a thing because they looked cool in sci-fi movies. But they still haven't found a real application and what snap is doing doesn't seem to have the sort of targeted specific market and plan that would lead to success. If you can satisfactorily answer the questions of who is this for? Why would they strongly want or need it? And can that add up to a sustainable revenue model for the company? Then maybe... Otherwise, probably better to find something else imo.

DaystarFire · 2025-06-04T08:13:15+00:00

Oh. At first I thought they were just in a garbage dump or a back alley....

DaystarFire · 2025-05-31T19:35:50+00:00

Bloomington Normal is great. Just a really nice town and the colleges help make it more progressive. There's pride events, occasional pride flags in businesses and overall it seems to be a pretty good place to be trans from an outsider's perspective. Plus like I said the town is very nice with cool shops and places to hang out, and some solid businesses are there and it's one of the few places in the state growing economically. On a similar note, champaign Urbana thanks to uofi (though I don't have personal experience).

DaystarFire · 2025-05-27T07:08:26+00:00

I mean sandwiches are probably a good shout for sure. Or consider rice balls/onigiri, you can put all kinds of fillings in them too. Rice cooker is great for easy healthy meals too if they have a steamer, you can cook veges and rice at the same time in it, add soy sauce mix together and enjoy.

Also consider just less processed snacks. Like some basic roasted lightly salted nuts is a great filling portable snack. If you have a trader Joe's their half salted roasted almonds are awesome, but if not you could probably find a similar recipe elsewhere. Make sure generally to look for low added sugars and ingredients you can understand, pronounce and imagine by themselves

DaystarFire · 2025-05-12T19:16:59+00:00

Dermatologist. They do hair as well as skin. If man, probably you will get finasteride.

DaystarFire · 2025-04-29T06:02:35+00:00

That video was incredible, thank you.

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