Boxcars @boxcars@qoto.org

So a few weeks ago, a local mook missed his appointment with fate. A couple of dopes drove around the block, yanked out a tommy gun and made swiss cheese of his jalopy instead of his head. Maybe it was about a dame, or money, we'll never know. Shamus showed up, gumshoes too, and everyone gathered around and said it was nuts. And now it's a toot, a meme for your general pleasure. Well, at least it's something now.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/guns-auto-sears-automatic/2021/09/04/0be57914-0020-11ec-ba7e-2cf966e88e93_story.html

Trying to find analysis on independent voters in these primaries, or undeclared as they're called in NH, but can't find it in the discussion of SC. Registered voters are not turning out, and large numbers of independents are lurking, obscured by the reporting. I know we're lucky to see over 20% of all voters go to the polls but there's a big iceberg of independents floating out there in the dark. It was touched upon after the NH primary, because NH makes it easier to track. It's going to make a big hole in somebody's boat.

So there has been a breakthrough in my retail price adventure.
This windy winter morning, with small flakes of snow tumbling sideways, I went for more on-sale apples at the local grocer chain. Bagged, presented, and accompanied with several yes pleases, I gently offered on-sale apples to the checkout, positioned myself at the display, facing away from the human operator. Wrong price I said aloud, and knew I only had less than a minute. Off she stormed, to the produce area to check the displayed price. I ran to keep up, asking her how I could help her solve this problem. Anger had flooded her face, I only had a few more seconds, 'maybe I could talk to a manager and get this fixed for all of us?' Then she was gone. I was sure that I had failed.
I returned to the customer chute.

She returned, lips pursed, said a few words to her colleague in groceryspeak. Without looking anywhere her fingers slammed the sequence of commands to cancel and correct. Then it happened, the other checkout turned to me and said softly, the senior manager watches Yelp closely, if you post a poor review there then we have a chance. Ok, maybe she didnt say we. Hooboy, I couldn't believe it. Yes, yes, I had a Yelp account, passed down to me by my naive-webself from twenty years ago. This could work, we could have displayed prices that match register prices.

My checkout was now smiling at me. And the store manager was approaching, I did my best ten second elevator speech about proper charges using the glowing blank register screen as a prop, unfolded my arms to virtually embrace all the people around me harmed by this careless process of putting food on sale and charging full price. A customer was staring at me. The store manager had a sort of monotone response, mumbling yes, and, I see. And away he went, the store manager, disappearing around the aisle of
beers, each with colorful, pleasant missives upon them. Later I posted my message in a Yelp bottle and threw it into the Internet sea. This might work.

I'm still sparring store managers over published prices not matching the register price months later at two food retailers. One is a national chain, and the other is a local chain. I'm wondering what's going on. Answers are not forthcoming after the price correction, just some free shrugs.

At the big retailer, it could be a symptom of switching to online sales. My handheld soulmate whispers that 20% of all USA online sales is retail food, and is growing. Gargantuan retailers want to become behemoths in order to swallow the online market in one gulp. This is some new bad news for flavor, nutrition and quality, which are important to me for enjoying eating, moving and breathing.

Not sure what's up with the local chain, except maybe staff turnover messing with proper price updates. Cashier is already upset, angrily shouting in Spanish back at the fruit manager when I tell her the apples are actually a dollar less per pound, again. I just think the 'again' word.

Mind you, these are old price games from yesteryear that were squelched by government regulation prepandemic. But politcal times are tough. The mayor is tripping over criming, and a sport breakup, so I don't expect price gremlins to get attention.

So it's left to us. It's not too late to order a fruit tree and rustle up a massive container or two. Seriously, once you find a path to grow-ceries, you'll wonder why you bought retail food at these prices. This is my backstop, making small steps to food self-sufficiency in the concrete jungle.

I've already cut them out of fresh gingerroot and lemongrass. Indoor tomatoes are flowerng in now in January. All these plants got started with the food I bought from these retailers.

Plant the ginger root, the lemongrass, some seeds from the tomato. Try an avocado pit. You can root cabbage leaves. It's fantastic and wondrous. Try it.

Nice uppers on this Eddie Bauer made in China hiking shoe I got discounted at BJs. But once the sport shoe got wet the sole broke away and perhaps revealed the reason for the low price. Of many glues I've tried the E6000 glue is doing the job the original Chinese glue could not. That's some high end black silicone automobile gasket covering the seam, very pedestrian of me, I know. Caution: image shows repair of clothing.

Dearest #Costco, I'm seeing other food providers. I won't do a paper check by snailmail to a street address anymore. Carding me before checkout to see if it's really me breaks my heart. Shopping cart stop and frisk has lost its thrill. Maybe some decade you'll join any server on Mastodon and see this message, but I'm moving on. See you around, if you're on Discord. Sniff.

This is the current graph for my city's [#DCHealth] #CovidWastewater samples from #CDC's Website today.

Attend to the light colored line with zero data. or no data, or just stops, some time ago. That's our Nation's Capital Covid RNA sample data from the sewers.

Looks like a toddler got in there with a faded orange marker.

This is graphed in number of standard deviations, yea, not super self-explanatory. It's not even labeled on the axis on the site. The CDC site is needlessly wordy, except for graph axis.

I'm masking up again until we can gather data and publish it like a respectable space-faring race of beings.

What would the news story be here even if we had decent reporting?

Caveat emptor Tooters.

As retailers move inventory that didn't sell at the high price but got accustomed to its face: They gonna get whoops-sorry-sloppy with the low price signage.

Already got snagged today, on the second day of Rid-mas.

Yes, you always want an official paper receipt after sale. Watch for ring up at the right price like Tinkerbell. You ask 'Please Sir...' when the porridge price is occluded or mysteriously absent at the shelf.

Buyer beware, my little factorums. Make Ebeneezer proud.

Tooters, 'sheared ' pins have suddenly appeared at a bridge in Providence. The Gov is demanding to know where ahr the original pins, and why are these newly sheared pins wicked rusty. Also. Gov sez you can cross the river on the good side of the bridge, towards Boston.

So are y'all having the same problem getting info on neighborhood criming? Poor dude visiting my city from Quincy got killed and tossed from his stolen car and the best info I can find is he had lip balm in his pocket. I mean, it's Winter. That's some crackerjack reporting right there. Another poor dude got shot last night a block away and absolutely no info on that. Normally I hear the shots, go talk to the officers. I hate the idea that the only source of info is still the birdsite. WaPo is useless bandwith now. Do we even have news anymore? Got to be a way to fix this news problem. It's gotten to the point where I'm killing the lights on my bike so the murderteens can't get a bead on me when I'm crossing the city at night. We need to federate local news. Coders? Coders, do you copy?

Man, this Cop28 saladbar has just oil and vinegar. Why do we keep going to this UN restaurant for our annual planet-saving celebration?

https://www.france24.com/en/environment/20231203-smog-obscures-dubai-skyline-on-health-day-at-cop28-climate-summit

Dear Tooter, Not so many clickity clacks ago, I found myself surrounded by beige. This plain conveyance can't be the touted Acela train to Boston, I thought. It's the wrong train--nipped at my confidence. Beige ran up to me pawed at my flowery shirt, pulled on my bright white N95 mask. I yanked myself free, plucked a sleek red and yellow Fuji apple from my bag. But corporate 1980s wasn't done yet. A new seatmate was sent to the window seat. "Excuse me", the seatmate announced from behind. I rose to make way and as I turned, the blazing white N95 mask from 43years in the future sucked every last photon off the beige and sprayed them upon his eyes. He threw up his hands, exclaiming, "You're not sick are you?!" He was a tall lad, and a tad loud. "No, are you?!" I replied, even louder from a few inches below. And having fulfilled the 21st century's version of 'I'm OK, You're OK.' we settled back silently into the beige business of northeast train travel.

https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/storminfo/#16L If you're looking for clickbait weather stories with ads then don't go to www.tropicaltidbits.com. www.tropicaltidbits.com only has hard to find in one spot forecasts of serious storms and tells you nothing about better car insurance rates.

Tooters. It is time to create a new delivery business in NE USA. Here are the industry standards you will need to match in order to succeed. 1.workplace should look and operate like a maximum security jail. 2. create a tracking system that obfuscates delivery of product. 3.block customers from talking to employees about your service. 4.damage your service or product, and then deflect about the damage. And the most important, 5. Brand! Brand must trump mission! Such as, all employees must buy and wear brightly branded uniforms. Ok, start thinking, and roll the dice, Youngblood. Try to not lose your soul along the way to a bright new future.

Tooters, may we speak about the heating?

I want this marvelous tank, but in the USA if it's not dutifully expensed in a system then there's no discussing it. This is shameful and we can do better.

This tank used to be called a Rotex, is now called a Smartcube, because in 2023, round is square.

Sold Down Under, yet manufactured in Germany, this Swiss army knife of thermal storage is high tech from the 1970's. So we could make it on any continent, at an affordable price, and have our governing bodies rebate us. We just couldn't call it a smartcube. Let's call it a piggy tank.

You would put all your loose heat in there for a rainy day. I don't know if you've heard but rainy days are coming.

Let's get everyone a piggy tank, ok?

Tooters, and Tootees: May I tell you of https://tropicaltidbits.com for hurricane prognostications? NOAA's staid five-day outlook, and major media's regurgitated clickbait won't assist your plans of world domination, but the above PhD crafted site will.

Tooters, I lost my dice roll on keeping my compact ICE car. The computer failed after 217k miles and 15 years. When the computer fails then you are at the mercy of dealership labor cost. And there is no luck or mercy at the dealer. So I got 200bucks and a tow for it on the day registration expired.

Leaping from what once was, to what will be slices away a sliver of hope. Best to have cake ready.

$1k a year, it cost me, to run the ICE machine including feeding the maw of ezpass and making major repairs.

Today's vehicle market is a honeytrap. It must be countered with DIY innovation. That's where you come in. Learn to 3d print, silkscreen and code.

We should be able to 3d print plates, and silkscreen electrolyte to build our in-house fuel cell stack by now. Charge controllers need a hackable realtime processing unit.

Until I get there I'll be rolling the dice while pushing pedals.

Roll well, Tooters.

CDC sez "...enabling wastewater surveillance to capture presence of SARS-CoV-2 shed by people with and without symptoms. This allows wastewater surveillance to serve as an early warning that COVID-19 is spreading in a community."

But my hood is having trouble getting samples because of reasons.

3/4 of a year ago we had no equipment, little staff, and those staffz arms were too short to reach down with the testing cup.

https://dcist.com/story/22/09/22/dc-health-struggles-to-overcome-pandemic-delays-in-wastewater-surveillance-project/

Tooters, roll up your sleeves and email your elected ones, at-large and not at-large. This is an easy fix if we just badger, er, I mean, email them to get on it.

I dont see the data @ CDC waste monitoring or DC Health.

I tried calling them (DC Health) about local data not getting to CDC from the DC mosquito monitoring last year. West Nile, malaria managed to achieve newsworthiness recently. And local infections last year pricked up ears, but, you know... reasons. I couldn't get a response from elected ones, or phone answering ones either. Was told everything was ok. So, need help. More voices may break through and allow non-invasive, public testing already in the pipeline.

Here's where the wastewater monitoring story started in May '22, over a year ago, and still no data gets to CDC or us. https://dcist.com/story/22/05/13/dc-councilmembers-investigation-covid-data/

Finally here is Boston's wicked easy site for comparison: https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm.

[whispering] ...Tooooters! Gather around quietly. DC flagship store REI Coop has affordable bike innertubes. Please quietly spread the word to wrench and screwdriver owners so as to avoid the price-fixing eye of Sauron.

Phew. Tooters. I was working with two local old businesses and one international one. Their pretend social media face [Fbook, 'X'] and the exhausting, useless comms [Web, Phone, Email, brickmortar] with these companies has caused me to walk away. Because their every means of communication is flawed, they don't even know I've stopped doing business with them. You know who hasn't let me down? Mom and Pops on Ebay.