caucus99percent

free-range politics, organic community

The TV political ads are jamming the airwaves. Most obtrusive election season that I have ever experienced. It is profoundly depressing to absorb the noise -- as all the Democratic candidates are running against Trump while the sliver of GOP ads all inform the viewer that the candidate supports Trump and his wars against Iran and the Dumocrats.

So even here in Blue California, Trump is the focus.

The fools in DC are following the Israel playbook
by bombing during a 'ceasefire'. The military blew-up
2 fast boats in the Gulf of Oman, killing 4 Iranian sailors.
They didn't stop there. They sent missiles ashore into
coastal targets. These missions are being announced as
'defensive' in nature. Expect Iran to send retaliatory strikes
towards US ships with their recently acquired Chinese munitions.

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Towel_Day

Last night some Lee Harvey Nobody loaded up his shooing iron and took it to the White House. By a strange coincidence, this further proves the NEED for SECURITY at THE BALLROOM. Mister Nobody shot some number of rounds (nice gun geek vocabulary showing) and the Feds at the White House returned fire and smoked him.

Afternoon folks!

Here's a bunch of music than was better than the week. Starting off, check this fellow out, Bee Houston was Big Mama Thornton's guitar sideman for many years, he's played blues, jazz and r&b and this album is worth a listen. After that we've got albums from James Cotton, Screamin' Jay Hawkins and a long compilation from Johnny "Guitar" Watson. Then to finish off the set and mellow you out, we've got an album from Cat Stevens minus a couple of cuts that the publishers decided you shouldn't hear. Go figure.

Enjoy the tunes and have a great weekend!

Good morning, good people! I hope this Saturday finds you all in fine fettle!

I did some grocery pricing and shopping this week I thought worth passing along, since prices are going up on everything.

So, I read an article, no way I could find it now, that basically rated grocery store prices against the biggest grocery store chain in the country, which is Walmart. Using Walmart as the starting point, the article found 10 grocery stores that are actually cheaper than Walmart. Most were regional, but Costco, Aldis, and HEB stood out to me because they are accessible here.

We did sort of a test run on an HEB store this week, on the way home from the surgeon's office. The parking lot was almost full, but the store was so huge, you didn't notice shoppers, checked out with ease.

Vast inventory, not just cheap junk food. We got some sort of high end specialty products at a very reasonable price. We later shopped Walmart and noticed 2 things: The lowest priced products fill the shelves, while better products are gone. Just one example is Hunt's Ketchup. We don't consume it much, but we prefer the variety that contains no high fructose when we do. It is no longer available at our Walmart. Eat sugar or do without. Try to find a healthy breakfast cereal there. Go ahead. Try. All sugar coated.

But, the shock was noticing price tags are not paper and plastic. They are electronic. Our local Walmart was one of the last in the country to go to facial recognition pricing, but it is being installed there now. They haven't fully installed it, but they made a huge step forward from last Friday to Thursday of this week.

I think the following link is important and encourage you all to read it. This isn't our future. It is our present.

What is surveillance pricing and is it coming to a grocery store near you?

Surveillance pricing, or algorithmic personalized pricing, is a way of setting prices in which information about individual customers — from scraped social media activity to other identifying factors such as where they live or their spending habits — is used to generate prices. The concern about the practice is that it leads to different prices for different people, potentially exploiting their circumstances or need for a product.