Nah, gotta got vinyl because cassettes deteriorate just sitting in their cases while vinyl stays pristine … until you actually play it, anyway – but if you want to store an audio recording for longevity, press a gold version of a vinyl album.
Not the OP, but I imagine “vendor harassment” means people hawking gutters, phone services, and other 3rd party people/items inside Costco.
I, too, have considered not renewing because I feel like the quality of products has gone way, way down. For me the issue is mostly heat-and-eat food but I’ve also been dissatisfied with some household items – plastic laundry baskets that broke too quickly, for example. For food stuffs, I posted a while back on bake-at-home pre-made pizzas with bad crusts and bad toppings. I miss the old mesquite chicken wings that were replaced with garlic wings that have the mildly chemical flavor of jarred pre-chopped garlic. At the food court, I understood them getting rid of fresh onions for hot dogs during covid, but I didn’t understand why they got rid of the sauerkraut. I stopped buying anything from the food court once that happened.
Also, they keep removing my core purchases; particularly cheeses. They used to stock a triple creme brie-like round that I loved. It is gone. I miss it. The remaining soft cheeses do not compare. That was a bit of a luxury, so I didn’t NEED that, whereas my biggest problem was the removal of 2lb bricks of cheddar cheese. I’m not talking about the fancy cheddar like kerrygold (which doesn’t melt well), but the generic ‘commodity’ cheddar that had been stocked in the main cold cases near bacon, hot dogs, and bags of shredded cheeses. I don’t want shredded cheese. I want a big block I can slice or shred myself as needed. They also used to carry a locally made cheese/horseradish spread I liked buying with local pretzel sticks but both of those are gone, too. There were other similar items but you get the idea.
As for produce, I live near farm country so I can usually find plain produce in season for a better price than Costco if it is local. Produce from other countries can be cheaper at Costco some of the time, but very often our local bulk-produce outlets can beat Costco on price at the cost of a reduction in freshness. Where you have the choice of 5 celery sticks for x or 40 celery sticks for 2x, my choices are: 1 head of celery for x (regular grocer), 3 heads of ‘ugly’ celery for 2x (bulk produce outlet), 3 trimmed heads of celery ‘hearts’ for 2x+ (Costco). I get the ugly celery and put the leaves in whatever celery-using soups/stews I make in the next few weeks. I find those leaves add a pleasing flavor in such dishes, so I feel ripped off if I only receive ‘hearts’.
When I was in high school, I was very anti-authority and swore all the time to be “against the man”. When I started working in day care I had to cut out all swearing all the time because it was too automatic to ONLY stop in front of kids. When I got a real job, I continued my no-swearing bend as a general rule because – at least until you get to know the people around you – people will treat you with more respect if you don’t sound like a foul mouthed low life.
Swearing all the time for no reason is a very low-rent affect. Letting out a rare swear will add considerable emphasis when your peers know it is not your normal behavior. Always swear when you hurt yourself. It helps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_herbs_with_known_adverse_effects
The list itself says it is incomplete and I immediately thought of a couple items not listed that have known toxicity issues:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perilla_frutescens#Traditional_medicine,_phytochemicals,_and_toxicity
I think Germany is known for serious police. In fact, I half remember a joke about that… something about the perfection of a British Cop, a German car, and an French Chef – compared to the misery of a German Cop, a French car, and a British Chef.
Obviously not funny in the mangling, but the joke wasn’t that German cops were bad, just not the generally pleasant ‘fair cop’ stereotype of Brits.
Personally,. the stereotypes that have stuck in my head are: that low-level officials in India (including cops) can be bribed to look the other way for minor things, Nordic cops are well trained in de-escalation and restraint techniques where no one gets injured, Brit cops might be fair or might be racist, but the laws give better protection to citizens, and that German cops are stern, and will rigidly follow and enforce all laws and rules… generally. Not sure if it is true or not, but I’ve also heard that German cops will fuck you up if you give them reason, but you’d really have to give them reason.
When I hear ‘government bloat’, I think $500 hammers and fat cat contracts where big companies get huge contracts that mostly go in the pockets of a handful of rich owners while little goes to the actual project.
I do NOT think it means randomly removing workers. Salaries cost little and are the support structure of the government. I might not want to buy a ‘bridge to nowhere’ but I certainly don’t want to take out 10% of the supports on each bridge.
Everything DOGE has done seems destructive and none of it seems to reduce government waste. In fact, the opposite. p.s. I know there’s more to the hammer story, but – like transgendered instead of transgenic mice – the public mostly only heard the price tag.