Given all the videos I've seen on YouTube of bridge and building collapses in China, I think you're glossing over all their shortcomings. Maybe they do have a tight regulatory loop - I don't know - but their aggressive timelines and poor materials seem to have bitten them in the butt a number of times.
During Covid, my business slowed way down, and I took a part time job at a gas station convenience store (because selling cigarettes made be essential). The store was in a suburb of Portland with an average household income in the top 10 of Oregon, but there were also a lot of trade workers, undocumented immigrants, and generally a good mix of income levels.
Some relevant observations:
- Lower income customers used cash much more than higher income.
- Men used cash way more than women, with the exception of retirement-age women buying their smokes / wine / beer.
- Undocumented workers almost always used cash. Most were paid in $100 bills on Fridays, so they were probably paid under the table.
- Phone tap-to-pay was almost exclusively iPhone. In fact, I don't think I ever saw an Android user pay by phone tap.
- A surprising number of people didn't realized they could just tap to pay instead of running the chip.
- If the till ran out of pennies for change, no one gave a shit.
> didn't realized they could just tap to pay instead of running the chip
The tap zone is often not clearly marked. Some places (e.g., Walmart) it doesn't work at all (yes, even using a card instead of a phone). If you pull the card out anyway, I find that I end up having to use the chip about one time in ten. If that were, say, three times in ten, I'd just stick to inserting the card in the chip reader. Those rarely seem to fail.
I only brought it up to customers who had tap symbols on their cards. The surprising part wasn't that they didn't realize that they could tap, it's that they didn't even know that the technology existed.
You must have some old cards, then. I don’t think any I’ve been issued in the past five years have a chip but don’t have tap-to-pay. (Gift cards are usually swipe-only, for cost reasons.)
They didn't speak English, and I speak a little Spanish. I got to know a lot of these guys, so I asked them. My boss immigrated from Mexico, and he explained the under-the-table pay setup. Many landscapers and contractors in the area pay workers under the table because a lot of them under report income to the IRS. Plus, my stepmom was illegal before my dad and her got married, so it's no big deal to me.
All I want from Google Workspace is a single-user email account tied to my domain name. Instead, I have an overly complex system where I need to grant my own phone permission to watch YouTube videos. It would be nice if they had a more basic version.
It's a phrase coined by Shakespeare in his play Cymbeline. As far as I know, it never had a basis in science but was a common belief.
During the Cold War, with the possibility of fighting in the USSR, the US Army conducted experiments with soldiers doing extended bivouacs outside in cold weather to see whether there was increased likelihood of sickness. They couldn't find any evidence that it did.
Let's not over-complicate the issue. It's 98F today where I live, and I'm sitting comfortably in my room, without any AC, because I have a big tree outside blocking the sunlight. Shade works wonders.
I picked up a pair of these for £5 at Winchester dump about 20 years ago. Needed scrubbing with wire wool, rewaxing, a few mortises needing packing, and reupholstering, as they had evidently been in someone’s garden for some time.
Similar to the thread from yesterday - amazing what some people just throw away.
Seemed to have been - horsehair and shoddy stuffed and hessian webbing, oak, brass tacks, and very perished leather. I recognised them immediately as there were a few at the debating chamber at my university which had been gifted by some MP back in the day.
I’ve no idea if that dump is still the gold mine it once was - I ended up with several very nice club chairs, some Victorian wingback armchairs, and an absolutely enormous camelhair Persian rug - chairs all needed reupholstering (I became quite good at this quite quickly), and the rug just needed a damned good clean and lasted me a decade before it finally actually disintegrated. Oh, and a few 30’s valve radios which needed nothing other than new capacitors. I’d assume it was always the kids cleaning out dead mum’s place or what have you to refurnish with ikea.
> - Consider having some sort of overarching thing in your puzzle, so it’s not just five words on a specific topic to guess, but something more, like a hidden word across all five etc. This makes a delightful discovery moment and sometimes might work as a clue.
You've essentially described the Jumble puzzle, which appeared in daily newspapers. It's been around since 1954, but I'm not surprised to see it reinvented since few people get a daily newspaper anymore.
He had to close down his cooking school during Covid, so he started making YT videos. I watch a number of chefs on YT, and he's easily my favorite. He's a wonderful teacher, and I've learned more from him than any other because he always reinforces concepts without being repetitive and dull. It also helps that his meals are practical for home cooks, and, overall, he's just a charming guy.
