A melon?

https://www.reimerseeds.com/ananas-melon-seeds

It is an old Soviet design. Many countries in the old Soviet block states have this. I just about did a one legger down them a couple times in Uzbekistan.

No that never happens /S

I used to work with a supplier that hired a former Monsanto executive as their CEO. When his first agenda came out I told their sales team he was an idiot and to have fun looking for a new job a few months.

The CEO bailed after 2 years to start his own “consulting business.”

1 year later the company lost 75% of their market share and was laying off people left and right. They are still afloat barely.

After a couple years “consulting”, the CEO went to another company in 2023. He didn’t bounce fast enough and got caught on this one. He was fired 2 weeks ago and the company shut their doors except for a handful of staff to facilitate the firesale of the companies assets.

For me, stopping, getting out, and getting some coffee wakes me up for 2-3 hours. I also listen to audiobooks as I drive to keep my brain working. A good engaging story is better than a nap for me.

The court’s decision also introduced the concept of systemic failure, which holds providers liable when they fail to adopt preventive measures or remove illegal content. Now, platforms will be expected to establish self-regulation policies, ensure transparency in their procedures, and adopt standardized practices.

Pretty sure this would cover Lemmy and most traditional forums as long as they have a written policy and standards that are consistently enforced.

We had a farmyard crossed dog that lived for almost 17 years I called him a car-puk-eh because of his lifelong affliction with motion sickness.

I work for myself now and late June early July is the slow season. I have 2 days of work to do in the next 6 weeks.

I have the very important task of getting my fishing boat out today.

Hmmmm… Maybe I should supplement my income with the pikeminnow bounty.

https://www.pikeminnow.org/

In 2025 it would be anything above 3.6 million. It’s a ton of money but here’s a list of a few people that hit it.

https://aflcio.org/paywatch/highest-paid-ceos

Now if they added in a progressive tax rate for corporate taxes as well… Say anything over 500 million in net profit is taxed at a 90+% rate. That would solve all sorts of issues. Suddenly investors of all these mega corps would be pushing hard to divide up the companies into smaller entities.

Wealth tax in the modern age could be an inheritance tax. Anything over the median life earnings of individuals could be taxed at 100%. So median earnings in my area is $65K * 45 years (20-65k) = $2.93 million.

Taxes can go either way. It depends on how they were written.

The tax code after the Great Depression allowed for massive expansion of public projects in the U.S. It was 63% for the top earners. During WW2 the top tax bracket was at 94%.

When the boomers were all born the tax bracket was above 70% for the top earners. This high tax bracket is what fueled the creation of a large middle class, public infrastructure, schools, research, space exploration, and the massive military buildup and wars. It also acted as an effective anti-minopoly/oligarchy system because the tax system discouraged it.

Then in the 80’s Reagan slashed the taxes for the top earners down to 28%. its never gotten above 40% since then. Most high earning companies have so many exeptions today that the real tax rate is often 0%.

Because of it the infrastructure built during the 50’s-70’s is degrading and falling apart. Public services are declining and the middle class is shrinking as people become more impoverished.

The last time I had a landline was 16 years ago when my wife briefly had a home office. Her employer required the landline as part of the home office setup (they paid for it).

We got spammed by robocallers every 5-10 minutes all day long and half the night. It was so bad that my wife never knew when a work call was coming in and had to let every call go to voicemail.

We didn’t unplug the phone just turned the answering machine to silent. We still got calls on a supposedly disconnected number.

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Barrels were reused until they could no longer be repaired or salvaged. Cooper’s had steady guaranteed work for their skills.

Consumption was mostly at the public houses/taverns for the lower/middle classes.

Well your going to wish you weren’t so curious with this one. Source of this information: several museum visits around 30 years ago after a pint or three, so the info might be warped.

Gin is a double-distilled 40% or higher spirit flavored with juniper + other flavors.

The source of the alcohol was any carbohydrate or starch source. Whatever was cheapest. It was mostly wheat and barley at the time but just about anything else cheap could be used like rye, turnips, etc. For the cheapest rotgut the ingredients was stuff considered unfit for animal feed (rodent feces, insect damage, molds, water damage, etc).

Since their ingredients were highly questionable, their input cost was minimal. Heating was from coal. They also started making larger batches which further reduced down the cost.

Logistics - Canals at this time period was the most important logistic. One donkey pulling a barge could move as much as 50 wagons. Tons of goods were transported cheaply and efficiently on the barges. The gin was shipped in casks/barrels like beer/ale. Bottles were very expensive and reserved for the elite.

Public sanitation consisted of a gutter on the side of the road. The entire city smelled like the open sewer it was.

The gin was not served in bottles. It was served like beer or ale into cups/mugs/communal tankards etc … mostly earthenware, leather or wood.

I had a idea of how to stop them but my wife wouldn’t let me.

Respond with a picture of a coyote, bobcat, mountain lion, great horned owl or other predator with the caption, “Thank you for dinner, it was delicious.”

The U.S. bulletproof model was proposed for school children. Sadly, Republicans successfully fought against it, because it “Would give the kids an unfair advantage over the school shooters.”

Have you run into a Teancum?

For those that are not up on your mormonisms, it’s pronounced:

Tea-an-cum

An it’s a boy’s name.

I used to spend several thousand every year buying books. Usually from small independent bookstore. I was also always in the library checking out books but the local libraries collection was very small and limited.

Next I got one of the early generation kindles keyboard when I was traveling all the time before I had a smart phone. I of course found all the free books and downloaded several thousand of those. Amazon made almost nothing off of me for that one. I still hit the library regularly for books I could not get for free or stuff for my kids.

Then my local library started offering digital books via Libby and Hoopla. I have pretty much completely stopped using kindle completely in favor of those two apps. I vote every chance I get for the library to get more funding as its back to being my go-to place. I physically have only gone to the library once in the past 5 years however.

Honestly, I would rather see a massive extension of library services than more private bookstores.

I had like $9.22 remaining credit from some international calls back in 2002 I was going to use…eventually.

I drove over 7K miles last month. I would much rather see traffic enforcement cameras than police cars sitting on the side of the road.

Traffic cameras attempt to document actual behavior with real evidence in an impartial manner.

Most cops are dumb, undertrained, and overpayed parasites on society who have violent and agressive behaviors. Then they sit on the side of the road being bored out of their minds all day. When an accident does occur they mostly stand around directing traffic while the paramedics, firefighters, and wreckers do all the work. Hell the most useful thing I have seen them do is remove debris from the road with a broom and dustpan.

City I lived in had a serious issue with people running red lights at a few intersections. Many fatal accidents and pedestrian injuries happened because of it. They put in a red light light cameras on the worst intersection. The first month it generated over $350K in fines at $125 each. Around 2,800 drivers ran that intersection. Within 3 months the number of tickets dropped to under 20 per month. The number of accidents dropped respectively as well.

Ehh… As somebody who is old enough to remember before the standardization and consolidation of software, I disagree with you.

A workforce that are trained in more software options makes them more valuable to the company. It pushes for constant innovation. It’s not efficient, but innovative processes almost never are. It also increases the difficulty to replacing experienced employees.

The widespread adoption of Photoshop as the standard has depressed wages and increased job insecurity. I also suspect that the trend of simplification in designs is the direct result of this. Mediocre talented designers are selling boring easy to create designs to artistically blind CEO’s.