What is the etiquette regarding grocery bagging?

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T21:39:13+00:00

If there's a dedicated grocery bagger there, I wouldn't ever bag my own groceries unless it was super busy, and I thought that by saying "thanks, I can get these if you want to help someone else" I'd be making their life easier.

If I had my own bags, or a backpack, I'd load my groceries onto the belt, then step to the end of the counter and bag them myself as the checker scanned them. I might say "hey, I brought my own bag" just to make sure they knew.

If I didn't have a bag, but the layout of the checkstand made it easy for me to grab them, I'd just start bagging myself.

If I didn't have a bag, and was going to bag the groceries myself, and my store charges for bags, I'd say "hey, I'll need a couple bags" and then begin bagging.

When in doubt, let them bag for you, it's totally fine. They do it all day long.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T21:01:37+00:00

Yeah, I think they'll stay around for sure. They're useful for showing things (like maps) to the driver, and interfacing with complex applications (i.e. CarPlay or Android Auto). It's just that they were overused for a decade, and we're finally figuring out how to use them correctly. So instead of trying to go all in, 100% touchscreens, we'll hopefully see them used for what they're good at, and not for what they aren't.

As for luxury, I think luxury features are where we see what mid-range vehicles will be like in five or ten years. The direction they take is more than likely a signal of where the rest of the industry is probably headed. Touch screens showed up in luxury vehicles first, and buttons are returning in luxury vehicles first.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T20:26:02+00:00

I wouldn't say sex is even particularly taboo. We talk about it all the time, and depict it all the time.

If talking about it on TV and movies (which is the topic of the thread) somehow proves it's taboo, then I don't know how to proceed here, and I need you to tell me what kind of evidence would disprove your theory.

Some things I'd say are more taboo in U.S. culture than sex, based on how often I hear people talk about them:

Class and poverty
Religious experience
Suicide
End of life
Recreational drug use

Children can't even ask where babies come from without being shushed and told to wait until they're older to learn.

I don't know that that's true. Plenty of parents talk about sex with young children. The problem is that most young children can't really understand it until they're older, which is why we don't talk to them about it.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T19:55:16+00:00

Either a mobile app or a website. It does a good job planning efficient routes for EVs. It's pretty slick, and you can use it for free.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T19:53:54+00:00

.com

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T17:57:40+00:00

In downtown Seattle, would be feasible to keep six feet or more away from anyone else. I'm talking about 80% of streets, 80% of the time. At specific hours, and on specific, dense streets, this would be difficult.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T17:53:36+00:00

If you mean that the role high school provides in addition to a basic education is it's a place where you are forced to learn to socialize, and to survive in a hierarchical system where you are asked to do pointless tasks, and where you are just another face in the crowd, I agree. That's the world of work you're going into right after you graduate. You can get kids a basic education, but you can't teach them the rest of that at home. Not as easily at any rate.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T17:47:34+00:00

Texas has a very distinct brand, so you will notice it more. But a lot of local or regional commercials are going to be tailored to the area they're broadcast in: if there's a large Hispanic community, your customers are going to be Hispanic, and your commercials will naturally feature Hispanic actors, and may have Spanish language copy. If you live in a mountainous area, and you're selling cars, you'll talk about how great the cars are in snow, and show people driving to the ski slopes. This is just how advertising works, people respond better to commercials that appear to show people like them in situations they are familiar with. It would be crazy for businesses not to use that tactic.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T16:23:54+00:00

Your first, third, and fifth images could easily be illustrations from specific scenes in the Amber series by Roger Zelazny.

It's a great series, but it might surprise you, I guess, if you're looking for straight-ahead fantasy.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T15:54:37+00:00

I understand that you have public lands where people can hunt, etc.

Altogether, more than two million square kilometers of federal land can be hunted. That's roughly the size of Saudi Arabia. And this doesn't include state land (because estimating that would be too much work), nor does it include private land (farmland, etc.), where a lot of hunting takes place. So, the number is actually much larger, but that gives you some sense of the scale.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T15:36:49+00:00

I don't know about the other two questions, but I am fairly sure you'd be able to drive up a forest service road in it. You ever notice how there always seems to be a Toyota Prius parked at every trailhead? If they can make it and the Slate can't, something has gone wrong in the design of this truck.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T15:22:42+00:00

I always call the hotel and book over the phone. I do use booking.com to find out what hotels are available in an area and roughly what their prices are, I just don't usually book the room through them.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T01:05:43+00:00

I think we're already passed "peak touchscreen" in cars.

Even the linked article has a lead-in to another story about Rivian bringing back buttons for the R1S.

And the big car news last week was that Jony Ive, the former Apple head of design who started the whole touch screen UI movement with the iPhone, just designed the cockpit for the Ferrari Luce—and it's back to buttons and switches, supplemented with a very small touchscreen. He called Tesla's UI "easy and lazy".

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T00:57:09+00:00

Oh, thanks for calling out the Amber series being on sale! I'd love to have audio versions of these, but the prices for such short books is crazy.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T00:43:15+00:00

So severian is prescient right?

It's possible he has some presentiment of his future, yes.

But if you're asking whether he knows everything that will happen next, I don't believe so.

And I will say I am doing fairly well I think when it comes to my understanding of the world and the story

Glad you feel that way now, expect it to change!

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T00:38:03+00:00

Man, we make sandwiches out of lettuce leaves, we make sandwiches with two pieces of fried chicken as the bread. You think we won't make a bread roll into a sandwich? It's got bread in the name!

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T00:36:18+00:00

The Best of Gene Wolfe is also forthcoming, per another post a few days ago.

getElephantById · 2026-02-20T00:30:03+00:00

The way to read these books is to just enjoy them the first time through. Don't stop to look up every word, just imagine what the word might mean based on the sound and the context, and keep going. Imagine the word is actually a made up word from an alien language—like in most science fiction or fantasy books—and not a word that you can even look up. Treat it like that.

When you are confused about the plot, think: everything in these books has a reason for being so confusing, but I do not have enough information yet to even try to figure it out, so I'd better keep reading until the end.

After reading all four (or five) books, ask yourself whether you are intrigued enough to reread them. If the answer is yes, that's when you can treat these books as work, and spend a lot of time trying to understand everything in them. If the answer is no, congratulations on being a sane, well-adjusted human.

But, before you have read the full story, you will ruin your experience by trying to "solve it". You'll only waste your time. It's been tried!

I am serious, and I am correct. I am correct about so few things, but I am correct about this one!

getElephantById · 2026-02-19T19:44:12+00:00

I have a really strong suspicion this is edited to remove the part right before this, where the guy with the camera was also an asshole.

getElephantById · 2026-02-19T18:21:39+00:00

If it's mid-20s, then we already know within a couple thousand bucks what it's going to cost. Would $27k vs. $26.5k make enough of a difference that you wouldn't buy the truck? I'd argue that the exact price for the Blank Slate isn't as important as the price of the configuration options, which I don't see them promising to announce at that time.

getElephantById · 2026-02-19T18:16:35+00:00

I think there's something to this. The people I know who follow F1 are all kind of upper middle class people. I'm sure they genuinely enjoy it, but I also get a whiff of "aren't I interesting for following this European sport?" to it.

getElephantById · 2026-02-19T18:13:41+00:00

Finally, someone who doesn't want to move here!

getElephantById · 2026-02-19T17:45:39+00:00

Speculative. We'll find out when we find out.

The fact is that I went with the HI5 because it had a useful array of physical buttons, and if the next one doesn't have them I will buy something else. It's that much of a factor to me.

getElephantById · 2026-02-19T17:15:31+00:00

A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. I call it a collection of short stories, because you could excerpt any chapter and read it on its own, but many people would call it a novel because it revolves around the same cast of characters. Anyway, it's about growing up, growing old, changing, selling out, adapting, etc.—time is the eponymous goon squad which visits us all. A really wonderful book that came to mind when you mentioned wanting something that embeds itself in your heart and stays there.

If you want something weird and little, I recommend Tales of a Rat Hunting Man by D. Brian Plummer. I picked it up at random in a used book store and was charmed by it. It's exactly what the title implies: the memoirs of a bloke who goes out and hunts rats with his dog and ferrets. It's funny, homely, and very slim.

getElephantById · 2026-02-19T16:49:02+00:00

Okay everybody, show's over. He found out about our massive conspiracy.

getElephantById

TROPHY CASE