I am surrounded by dog owners, and most of them are terminally stupid dog owners, and that is why they "own" pets rather than having children, because CPS would probably take away humans in a heartbeat.
My human neighbors cannot be trusted to scoop up the poop properly, nor keep their mutts on a leash properly, nor stick to the approved areas for walking them (and we really do have a walking/jogging path).
There are generally two categories of furbabies here: toy-sized dogs which will yap and bark at anything, literally anything that they perceive, and do it all night. And the other category is a dog that is at least partly some aggressive species, and obviously being kept as a guard/defense dog for the vulnerable owner, and the owner barely has any control or authority over that dog. If such a dog gets off-leash I would fear for my safety.
In peacetime and without civil unrest visiting my community, this is all a non-issue for us, and dog attacks do not really seem to happen around here. But it would only take a little bit of hostility for these idiot neighbors to unleash their dogs and bid them attack any innocent bystanders, and I would fear for my safety.
I am fully vaccinated, but the blood & trauma of a vicious dog bite is no trifle for me. And it would be impossible to hold an "owner" accountable for any "accidental" attacks.
Supermarkets are abundant near me, and vary wildly in their experiences.
I could shop at a Wal-Mart or a Target for groceries, and thus be subject to all the same big-box shopping pitfalls.
I could shop at a farmers market style grocery store, and the major one near me has some great products and great foods, but mixed in with 90% ultra-processed foods, sugar bombs, and all sorts of unhealthy stuff, masquerading as organic or natural food. Also this "farmers market" has an extensive section with wine and beer, and personal health/hygiene products that are quite expensive.
At Trader Joe's I usually have no problem shopping for exactly what I need, and again, sticking to my spreadsheet with inventory and shopping needs. I usually pick up some fresh flowers here, because they're a bargain, and the coolest thing about Trader Joe's is that I can trust basically any product they've put on their shelves, and the limited selection, and restriction to food products only, helps narrow my shopping focus.
It is even possible to shop for groceries at the dollar stores nearby, which stock a lot of frozen foods, snack foods, beverages, etc. These bargain prices are generally justified by a lower bar of quality, or rapid expiration dates.
Another "grocery shopping" option is pharmacies or convenience stores. There is a major chain pharmacy nearby that really has a lot of good groceries, and is starting to stock some organic and natural brands as well. Its aisles are impeccable and the shopping experience is first-rate. Of course, as soon as I step in the door, the scent and sounds and feels assault me and begin to work on my consumer brain. Got to adhere firmly to that spreadsheet in my pocket!
Whenever I go shopping for a single, most trivial item, I really need to psyche myself up. Those critical moments just upon entering the store are the key.
Because immediately upon walking in the door, you are immersed in a "shopping environment". Everything you smell, hear, see, touch is geared to making you spend more and purchase more and grab more useless stuff off the shelves.
Even in a Goodwill or similar thrift store you are subjected to these merchandising tricks.
I have found that keeping a very good household inventory on a spreadsheet is critical. If I have this spreadsheet on my phone and I refer to it, before venturing into aisles, then I know exactly what I need to purchase, and where to go to find it. Sticking to the shopping list, I can avoid the needless purchase temptations.
At Costco when I'd go with my parents, it was the custom of the cashiers to ask, "did you find everything alright?" and my father would always joke, that if enough people answered in the affirmative, that was their cue to rearrange the store and shuffle everything around, so that shoppers would get lost, and not being able to find what they want, would discover more useless stuff that they would pull off the shelves on impulse.
It also doesn't hurt to follow the advice of "never shop while hungry"!
I can relate. For a brief, shining month, I worked at Tower Records, and one of the duties when we closed was to get on the PA (through the phone system) and make the announcements about the store closing.
Now these announcements were supposed to be brief and structured, but when they permitted me to make them, I couldn't resist cracking up and laughing for some reason, in the middle of recitation, and so never mastered the art of making the announcements for the store. Pretty sad.
But I do recall those days, when movie theaters had all their showtimes on tape. I know that the movie theater is a place that we would never expect to reach a human on the phone. Because that announcement would play, for as long as it needed at a multiplex, and then repeat or cut off. And you were supposed to figure out the showtimes by picking through the linear verbal announcement and choosing your favorite film. I can only imagine the teenage staff who are mostly paid in concessions, how they would get to recording that stuff!
Growing up, in popular media and my school textbooks, we learned certain foundational myths about the United States, the Founding Fathers, and other key figures around Colonial times and the American Revolution.
Come to find out that so many of these myths were not actually true: that they were legends built through the centuries to fluff up the importance and gravity of the United States in the eyes of naïve schoolchildren.
It was with some sadness that these myths were dispelled for me, but no less a sense of wonder to learn what had actually happened in this relatively recent history. There is still plenty of room for myth and legend in the popular imagination.
But all of these are indeed historical. Y’all moderns have simply redefined the term to not include these types of history. That’s extremely problematic.
For a long time, but not anymore, Consumer Cellular had this fantastic “Lyft Concierge” service, where you could call a human who could 100% arrange a Lyft ride for you, even with a feature phone.
Of course it was designed for the elderly and disabled, but I loved it. There may still be third parties offering this type of service.
“Boko” is actually a loanword from “book” so it literally means they want to forbid “book-learning”.
It is also instructive to understand that the Quran calls Jews and Christians “People of the Book”, in other words, people who read and believe the Bible.
The Gaudí models themselves were actually destroyed during the Franco years, and so what we see today exists thanks to the successor architects doing reconstructive work on Gaudí’s lost mockups.
In an age where cabinet video games and arcades were passé and a dying breed, Terminator 2 introduced an absolutely epic pinball game that started a renaissance of these machines all over again.
Robert J. Sawyer wrote a series of sf books called The Neanderthal Parallax which proposes that human sentience (and Neanderthal sentience) originated, and ended, with changes in the Earth's magnetic field. It explored some very interesting social and anthropological ideas.
I personally think that the conquest of Jericho depicts, allegorically, a conquest of the Moon itself. That there is more than one OT story that describes journeys to outer space (the highest heavens, of course). That the Promised Land really was an unfathomable location in outer space that was only reached by the most faithful and holiest of warriors.
But I like to start with Jericho because there's a lot of evidence that the actual city-state of Jericho was dedicated to a Moon god, and the Moon god was worshipped there. But if you think about how Jericho and its conquest is described...
There is a gigantic business called "NEMT" "Non-Emergency Medical Transport" that has been filled by taxis and rideshares for decades. I first discovered this service when I broke my leg in 2006, and Medicaid was paying for taxi vouchers so that I could travel to far-flung orthopedic appointments over the span of 9 months. Otherwise I'd be on the bus, on crutches: ouch!
So NEMT can cover a lot of use cases where people are stable and just going to PCP or specialist visits. Or even behavioral health appointments. There are now dedicated NEMT providers, like Veyo out of San Diego.
In fact, when I broke my leg, there was talk of calling an ambulance. But I was only about 3 miles from the destination hospital, and there were many wise people nearby, so several of them suggested I just call a cab and take the cab to the E.D. instead, because that was far more efficient. So that's what we did, because really, I didn't need any life support, or blood transfusion, or rescuscitation on the way there.
Since the billing SNAFU last Thanksgiving I also learned about the difference between BLS and ALS. For some reason the ambulance provider billed for ALS even though none of that was necessary. Of course, ALS costs more and bills more and probably profits them more. I should have contested this stupid account trick, but whatever. They haven't even billed me for the "co-pay" yet, so we still need to wait and see how this shakes out.
My human neighbors cannot be trusted to scoop up the poop properly, nor keep their mutts on a leash properly, nor stick to the approved areas for walking them (and we really do have a walking/jogging path).
There are generally two categories of furbabies here: toy-sized dogs which will yap and bark at anything, literally anything that they perceive, and do it all night. And the other category is a dog that is at least partly some aggressive species, and obviously being kept as a guard/defense dog for the vulnerable owner, and the owner barely has any control or authority over that dog. If such a dog gets off-leash I would fear for my safety.
In peacetime and without civil unrest visiting my community, this is all a non-issue for us, and dog attacks do not really seem to happen around here. But it would only take a little bit of hostility for these idiot neighbors to unleash their dogs and bid them attack any innocent bystanders, and I would fear for my safety.
I am fully vaccinated, but the blood & trauma of a vicious dog bite is no trifle for me. And it would be impossible to hold an "owner" accountable for any "accidental" attacks.