Ever since they introduced the facial recognition software I have opted out. I always approach the station at an angle if possible or with my passport between the camera and my face if not. Then when thy ask me to step in front of the camera a simple “No, thank you” has always worked. Polite yet firm and they hand me back my passport and away I go. It’s pretty much always faster.

Every so often you get a dickhead that makes a show of it taking longer to verifying it by their own eyeballs.

That being said, if you a flying internationally anymore, your picture at least will be taken when you enter.

They also went north to Canada in the Calgary region.

Many of the early Mormon leaders fled to Canada and Mexico during the early 1900’s to avoid being arrested for bigamy and rape.

My poor neighborhood coyote passed away (old age we think). Now I have cats roaming around my neighborhood again. I hope a new coyote moves in soon. The cats are annoying.

Have you been to Utah. They started out as a totalitarian state, were forced to integrate, but long to return to their roots.

Time + motivation + money can overcome a lot of obstacles. It also helps that template of what is needed already exists in Active Directory. This changes the project from “innovating something new” to “a slightly better copy” and is usually a lot faster and easier.

All copyright/patents are also void because of the sanctions at least in practice.

Ouch, “Candle on the wind by Elton John.” Remade for Princess Di.

Your parents were sad banging.

Well it could have been worse. The Teletubbies theme song was very popular earlier that year.

My first thought: “So your still in highschool.”

Looked up release date. “Fuck I am old.”

Mine was a Diana Ross Song I have never heard before.

Count 3 months forward and subtract a year :-).

That’s the kitchen. It’s a small under-the-counter washing machine commonly found in the kitchen in many parts of the world.

Please, small penises require an F350 at least. A F450 for a penis so small you need to tie a string to it to find it.

I need some of these 🖕🖕 with age spots apparently…

This sounds impressive, unless you know all the steps to making a successful hybridization in tomatoes.

Step 1: Tomatoes are mostly cleistogamous (self-pollinate before opening) and perfect flowers. So the anthers need to be removed 2 days before bloom. The exposed stigma is usually marked and covered to prevent cross pollination.

Step 2: Pollen is collected from flowers of the “male” parent by vibrating the shit out of them over a test tube about 3hours hours after opening (depending on humidity). The pollen remains viable for a few days after shedding in refrigeration (longer in liquid N).

Step 3: On the 2nd day the pollen is applied to the stigma from the test tube. The pollinated stigmas are marked again.

Step 4+: successful pollinations begin to swell. Plants are pruned/trellised carefully. This ensures they develop well off the ground with less pressure from diseases and pests.

This robot does the first part of step 3. It’s arguably the least time-consuming and easiest part of the entire process. Its sort of interesting but not a time saver.

Also hybrid tomato seed is a huge value market, but it’s not a huge volume in the grand scheme of things on the production side. The COGS is a negligible part of the process. Its a 97-99% gross margin crop last I saw the numbers. The seed companies can easily afford to pay more for the COGS. Higher pay + shorter hours = higher success rate by hand pollination. Paying double for the workers for 1/2 the day and then sending them home has a much higher success rate and is cheaper overall.

Most of the cost of developing new varieties is on the research side. With cost running as high as 30-40% of the annual sales to constantly develop new varieties or add in yet another resistance to a plague.

The old Toys R Us are too old and poorly maintained now if they are still empty. The Spirit Halloween is now at the old Rite-aide.

Perfumes are a very common trigger for migraines for people who get them. For me it’s the number one trigger. Strong expensive perfumes are some of the worst for me.

I have to avoid indoor crowds or eating out during times when people will be out with lots of scents on. I take drugs before a wedding etc and leave as soon as I can. The best ones are outdoors.

In business I have bypassed interviewees who wore perfurme/cologne to the interview in favor of less qualified canditates who didn’t. I have also dropped suppliers, vendors, dealers etc… because they showed up to a business meeting wearing a cologne/perfume.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10213061/

I am pretty sure it just counts as annoying, distracting, and fucking stupid.

A few days ago when I was converting an old windows desktop to Linux I hit Google on accident (Firefox default).

On the first page I got 2 traditional search results. They were links to AI slop sites. The entire rest of the page was full of useless crap.

DDG NoAI site seems to help.

A real punk fan would tell you “I’m Cool” but you need to “Fuck Youself”, “I Hate You”, and “Go Away”.

I’ve climbed the corporate ladder and traveled all over the world until I got near the top where the nepotism is thick. Said ‘fuck that’ and bailed out early.

New plan: “Work for myself.” Took me a decade to get here because of little things like health care and capital.

Been on my own for almost 2 years now and it is glorious.

It depends on the country you are in.

In the U.S. checks are still a very common way to pay bills for businesses. The reason: checks are cheaper. ACH fees are more expensive.

In other countries the reverse is true. Checks cost money while ACH is free. So everyone does ACH and checks are almost unheard of.

In the U.S. it’s faster and easier to reimburse myself from the my business account with a check to my personal account. Its truly ridiculous process. I print out a check from the business software and sign the check. I then remote deposit the check into my personal account (endorsing then back) with my phone. The check never leaves my desk.

It costs me under $0.03 (cost of the check) to do it this way. ACH fees are $5/transaction for essentially the same thing.