On my corner I watch folks wheel "borrowed" carts full of their purchases. Most residents of the half a dozen apartments are without cars. One day I saw a guy slowly pushing a dozen empty carts back TOWARD the stores. "I collect these from the ravine behind the apartments and return them." He did this because he's a good guy. The Target store manager started periodically giving him store gift cards.
This isn’t the most significant thing, but our rescue pit bull , 7 at the time, was said to have taken care of an autistic kid and a caregiver and because the caregiver died , was sentenced to the pound for 6 months until we rescued him, and he us. Anyway, for a fierce looking dog given the situation, he jumped into our car and our bed, and showed that he could open paddle handle doors, after he got out a couple of times, (getting corralled easily by our 70 yo neighbor.) He also walks like a cat, doesn’t tip wine glasses that might be being used on a low coffee table. Super doggie.
Aldi makes people use a quarter to release a cart. If you don't have a quarter, you can go inside and request breaking a dollar. In several cases, they have just handed over a quarter. If they do, the protocol is to pay it forward by not relocking that one cart and giving it to the next shopper or one can lock it and return the quarter to the cashier.
Uh, no, Jeff, they didn't. 😁They use a different currency in Belgium. The first year, I lived there, I inserted a Belgian coin worth 20 francs. Then the euro came along, and I inserted a 1 euro coin. My point was this is a good system, and some places figured it out before Aldis. Actually,this was the Delhaize grocery store in Antwerp, which is the Food Lion in the USA.
Weirdly, I've shopped at that Delhaize! I always thought that was a good system, once known so you have the coin ready. But point made, for some folks even a buck is worth the shopping cart.
I have given up on past tenses of certain words. So I have went crazy about it, as you can see! AND-Just for further teaching purposes---people lie down and you lay articles down. What have they been teaching in 7th. grade English since 1965?
Any rules out there about "bring" and "take?" I think I have just made one up that makes sense to me. Oh, I must stop NOW!
Re: shopping carts: My wife and I live in an apartment building about a block away from a grocery store. The couple who lives directly across the hallway from us regularly brings their groceries home in a shopping cart, which they then leave in the hallway right in front of our door until such time as they feel like returning it. Presumably they leave it there instead of inside their own apartment because they find the cart to be both unsightly to look at and moderately difficult to have to negotiate around, which in a remarkable coincidence are the precise reasons why I do not want it in front of my door.
My wife doesn't want me to confront them about this, because they are a nice couple and she generally seeks to avoid confrontation, so I guess my hope is that they are Gene Pool readers and this comment generates enough shame for them to change their behavior.
I've been to stores that had bollards preventing carts from leaving the area outside the store. You can drive up and get your stuff; sometimes there are even people to help you put it in the car.
Giant USED to (before being sold Royal A-hole) not allow carts into the parking lot. You would drive up to the entry to the store and they also had people stationed outside to unload the cart into your car! For free! They would advertise NOT to tip these people because they were union employees and well paid. NEVER had a shortage of carts back then. Now, they' mostly sit out in the carousels getting wet, snow covered or just plan hot.
About those eye-watering "suggested" charges you received from MedStar Georgetown. Easily explained: (1) it is a profitable not-for-profit (tax exempt) hospital and (2) following the Jesuit principle of cura personalis --- caring for the entire person --- you were charged accordingly --- whatever the specific body parts actually involved or suspected in your care. Didn't realize you were treated for a hangnail while you were under, did you ? Then there was that spiritual infusion. No à la carte medicine here. Don't be surprised (although the "No Surprises Act" may make them less of a shock) if you receive separate radiology and anesthesia bills. While we hope there is no "next time," if you do happen to be in for your 100,000 mile check-up, remember to bring your own room air. That way, you'll only be charged a "filtration" fee --- similar to the "corkage" fee many restaurants charge if you bring your own wine. And no --- the US healthcare system is not just dysfunctional --- it is broken, with insurance, one way or another, playing an outsized role in the breakage (among a bunch of other largely intractable factors).
Scene of accident. No cell phone or house visible nearby. Think victim is dead but could be simply comatose. Try to stop any bleeding and carefully load into car to take to nearest phone or medical facility known to the driver. It's never as simple as your poll question.
I'm much less concerned with cart theft than I am with those mini-carts for kids. They're supposedly helpful in teaching life lessons --- like self-reliance and what happens when you repeatedly ram a shopping cart into the back of people's legs and then giggle uncontrollably. Something many of their adult escorts either never learned or forgot soon after being made aware of the fact that there are usually more than just themselves shopping at any given time. No doubt the same individuals who would share space in a Venn diagram with those who believe parking lot cart corrals are for wimps. They prefer to have their discarded carts eventually find their way into the side of your vehicle as a final resting place.
The stock owners of Safeway do not shop in the stores they own. In order to get someone who has the power to fix the problem, you need to find out where they live and drop some old, ugly, worthless carts in their yard. Leave their poor helpless employees alone!!!!
I think I've seen stores that have shopping carts with very high poles attached, perhaps seven foot from the floor to the top, with 6-foot-6 inch height bars across all doors. Carts can't leave the store.
The Aldi method does do one thing well, it keeps the carts together rather than spread all over the parking lot. Saves having to have an employee gather them up several times during the day.
Here in Sacramento, virtually every supermarket has the “locking wheels” devises to prevent them going beyond a yellow line in the parking lot (I assume there is a buried cable there like the fenceless dog control some people have). Does help keep the carts nearby; however, twice I have had the wheels lock up on me, once in the store (as I was at the exit, so it was blocking the door) and once in the parking lot. Major inconvenience. The in-store one wasn’t too bad, as I only had a couple bags and I could pick them up and carry them out, scooting the cart to the side until an employee might come by. But the parking lot one was filled, there were no employees around, so I had to leave the cart, get my car, and thankfully the groceries were still there when I got back to the cart.
RF barcodes can scan a cart on its way out. Get a scan of the ID to let a person in and put their cart number in the system and charge them for what they leave with. Amazon is working on the software to do this and will make another pot of money selling the software.
If you regularly listen to audiobooks, you may be interested in one of the more intriguing (IMO) applications of AI. The estimable open book repository, Project Gutenberg, partnered with Microsoft and MIT to turn 5,000 public domain ebooks into free audiobooks, using neural text-to-speech technology* --- generating very close matches to emotive human readings. The books are available (again, at no charge) on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Internet Archive (see link below) and can be downloaded to a device of your choice. I've sampled several and I have to say they are well done. Not yet quite at the human voice level, but surprisingly good and certainly far better than the computerized speech you usually get with free audiobooks. The plan is to eventually convert some 60,000 Project Gutenberg ebooks. And yes, this too raises the double edge nature of AI, especially with intellectual property or creative work and the human role in the scheme of things. Here, the books would never have otherwise been converted to audiobooks, so the technology and technique hold out the promise of making thousands of similar books accessible in the format and quite possibly new books as well, which might not make financial sense for a publisher to convert using traditional means.
* If you're not familiar with the term neural in this context, it's a type of computer architecture loosely modeled on how the human brain processes data and makes decisions. Unlike traditional computing or text-to-speech, there are no preset rules per se. The system comes up with its own rules based on training data, in other words, it's machine-learning. Btw --- this first batch of books was selected more on format and for other technical reasons, rather than merit or author notability alone.
Which of these audiobooks do you recommend? You said you "sampled" them; does that mean you never listened to the actual book? I listen to a lot of audiobooks and would go nuts if the words came out wrong or the "voice" emphasized the wrong words, etc. It's challenging enough for a professional narrator, I've found.
Pat --- I sampled a bunch (none all the way through yet ) to get an idea of the general quality. Suggest you scroll through the books to find authors you may like. The voice is the same for all of the books I sampled. You can select a platform from the link in my comment. You need not be a subscriber to access this project.
On my corner I watch folks wheel "borrowed" carts full of their purchases. Most residents of the half a dozen apartments are without cars. One day I saw a guy slowly pushing a dozen empty carts back TOWARD the stores. "I collect these from the ravine behind the apartments and return them." He did this because he's a good guy. The Target store manager started periodically giving him store gift cards.
This isn’t the most significant thing, but our rescue pit bull , 7 at the time, was said to have taken care of an autistic kid and a caregiver and because the caregiver died , was sentenced to the pound for 6 months until we rescued him, and he us. Anyway, for a fierce looking dog given the situation, he jumped into our car and our bed, and showed that he could open paddle handle doors, after he got out a couple of times, (getting corralled easily by our 70 yo neighbor.) He also walks like a cat, doesn’t tip wine glasses that might be being used on a low coffee table. Super doggie.
He is 80 pounds.
Aldi makes people use a quarter to release a cart. If you don't have a quarter, you can go inside and request breaking a dollar. In several cases, they have just handed over a quarter. If they do, the protocol is to pay it forward by not relocking that one cart and giving it to the next shopper or one can lock it and return the quarter to the cashier.
This is a great system. I have used it, at Aldi. I'm not sure it would work at my Safeway. The thieves would happily pay a quarter for a $120 cart.
Had that in Belgium when I lived there 20 years ago.
They had quarters in Belgium?
Uh, no, Jeff, they didn't. 😁They use a different currency in Belgium. The first year, I lived there, I inserted a Belgian coin worth 20 francs. Then the euro came along, and I inserted a 1 euro coin. My point was this is a good system, and some places figured it out before Aldis. Actually,this was the Delhaize grocery store in Antwerp, which is the Food Lion in the USA.
Weirdly, I've shopped at that Delhaize! I always thought that was a good system, once known so you have the coin ready. But point made, for some folks even a buck is worth the shopping cart.
Anent the lady who was 165 weeks pregnant, her correct use of the past participle lain moved me to tears of joy.
I have given up on past tenses of certain words. So I have went crazy about it, as you can see! AND-Just for further teaching purposes---people lie down and you lay articles down. What have they been teaching in 7th. grade English since 1965?
Any rules out there about "bring" and "take?" I think I have just made one up that makes sense to me. Oh, I must stop NOW!
Have you noticed that shone and throve have apparently been disappeared? And you're right about bring and take. Almost no one says take anymore.
What does one use instead of take and bring? I will bring you a cake. Let me take your hat.
Re: shopping carts: My wife and I live in an apartment building about a block away from a grocery store. The couple who lives directly across the hallway from us regularly brings their groceries home in a shopping cart, which they then leave in the hallway right in front of our door until such time as they feel like returning it. Presumably they leave it there instead of inside their own apartment because they find the cart to be both unsightly to look at and moderately difficult to have to negotiate around, which in a remarkable coincidence are the precise reasons why I do not want it in front of my door.
My wife doesn't want me to confront them about this, because they are a nice couple and she generally seeks to avoid confrontation, so I guess my hope is that they are Gene Pool readers and this comment generates enough shame for them to change their behavior.
GIFT THEM A SUBSCRIPTION!!!
Here's your new marketing angle, Gene. "Give people subscriptions to the Gene Pool, and then passive-aggressively call them out in the comments!"
Precisely.
I've been to stores that had bollards preventing carts from leaving the area outside the store. You can drive up and get your stuff; sometimes there are even people to help you put it in the car.
Giant USED to (before being sold Royal A-hole) not allow carts into the parking lot. You would drive up to the entry to the store and they also had people stationed outside to unload the cart into your car! For free! They would advertise NOT to tip these people because they were union employees and well paid. NEVER had a shortage of carts back then. Now, they' mostly sit out in the carousels getting wet, snow covered or just plan hot.
About those eye-watering "suggested" charges you received from MedStar Georgetown. Easily explained: (1) it is a profitable not-for-profit (tax exempt) hospital and (2) following the Jesuit principle of cura personalis --- caring for the entire person --- you were charged accordingly --- whatever the specific body parts actually involved or suspected in your care. Didn't realize you were treated for a hangnail while you were under, did you ? Then there was that spiritual infusion. No à la carte medicine here. Don't be surprised (although the "No Surprises Act" may make them less of a shock) if you receive separate radiology and anesthesia bills. While we hope there is no "next time," if you do happen to be in for your 100,000 mile check-up, remember to bring your own room air. That way, you'll only be charged a "filtration" fee --- similar to the "corkage" fee many restaurants charge if you bring your own wine. And no --- the US healthcare system is not just dysfunctional --- it is broken, with insurance, one way or another, playing an outsized role in the breakage (among a bunch of other largely intractable factors).
Scene of accident. No cell phone or house visible nearby. Think victim is dead but could be simply comatose. Try to stop any bleeding and carefully load into car to take to nearest phone or medical facility known to the driver. It's never as simple as your poll question.
I'm much less concerned with cart theft than I am with those mini-carts for kids. They're supposedly helpful in teaching life lessons --- like self-reliance and what happens when you repeatedly ram a shopping cart into the back of people's legs and then giggle uncontrollably. Something many of their adult escorts either never learned or forgot soon after being made aware of the fact that there are usually more than just themselves shopping at any given time. No doubt the same individuals who would share space in a Venn diagram with those who believe parking lot cart corrals are for wimps. They prefer to have their discarded carts eventually find their way into the side of your vehicle as a final resting place.
The stock owners of Safeway do not shop in the stores they own. In order to get someone who has the power to fix the problem, you need to find out where they live and drop some old, ugly, worthless carts in their yard. Leave their poor helpless employees alone!!!!
I think I've seen stores that have shopping carts with very high poles attached, perhaps seven foot from the floor to the top, with 6-foot-6 inch height bars across all doors. Carts can't leave the store.
Does someone help you take the stuff to your car, if you have a car?
The Aldi method does do one thing well, it keeps the carts together rather than spread all over the parking lot. Saves having to have an employee gather them up several times during the day.
Here in Sacramento, virtually every supermarket has the “locking wheels” devises to prevent them going beyond a yellow line in the parking lot (I assume there is a buried cable there like the fenceless dog control some people have). Does help keep the carts nearby; however, twice I have had the wheels lock up on me, once in the store (as I was at the exit, so it was blocking the door) and once in the parking lot. Major inconvenience. The in-store one wasn’t too bad, as I only had a couple bags and I could pick them up and carry them out, scooting the cart to the side until an employee might come by. But the parking lot one was filled, there were no employees around, so I had to leave the cart, get my car, and thankfully the groceries were still there when I got back to the cart.
RF barcodes can scan a cart on its way out. Get a scan of the ID to let a person in and put their cart number in the system and charge them for what they leave with. Amazon is working on the software to do this and will make another pot of money selling the software.
If you regularly listen to audiobooks, you may be interested in one of the more intriguing (IMO) applications of AI. The estimable open book repository, Project Gutenberg, partnered with Microsoft and MIT to turn 5,000 public domain ebooks into free audiobooks, using neural text-to-speech technology* --- generating very close matches to emotive human readings. The books are available (again, at no charge) on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Internet Archive (see link below) and can be downloaded to a device of your choice. I've sampled several and I have to say they are well done. Not yet quite at the human voice level, but surprisingly good and certainly far better than the computerized speech you usually get with free audiobooks. The plan is to eventually convert some 60,000 Project Gutenberg ebooks. And yes, this too raises the double edge nature of AI, especially with intellectual property or creative work and the human role in the scheme of things. Here, the books would never have otherwise been converted to audiobooks, so the technology and technique hold out the promise of making thousands of similar books accessible in the format and quite possibly new books as well, which might not make financial sense for a publisher to convert using traditional means.
https://marhamilresearch4.blob.core.windows.net/gutenberg-public/Website/index.html
* If you're not familiar with the term neural in this context, it's a type of computer architecture loosely modeled on how the human brain processes data and makes decisions. Unlike traditional computing or text-to-speech, there are no preset rules per se. The system comes up with its own rules based on training data, in other words, it's machine-learning. Btw --- this first batch of books was selected more on format and for other technical reasons, rather than merit or author notability alone.
Which of these audiobooks do you recommend? You said you "sampled" them; does that mean you never listened to the actual book? I listen to a lot of audiobooks and would go nuts if the words came out wrong or the "voice" emphasized the wrong words, etc. It's challenging enough for a professional narrator, I've found.
Pat --- I sampled a bunch (none all the way through yet ) to get an idea of the general quality. Suggest you scroll through the books to find authors you may like. The voice is the same for all of the books I sampled. You can select a platform from the link in my comment. You need not be a subscriber to access this project.