At least where I am in the southern US self-checkout ends up being slower.

Ten years ago my experience was likely similar to yours, pretty quick to just scan your own groceries, not much of a line to speak of as some people are opting for a cashier. Go for the self checkout every time.

The trouble now is that there aren’t enough cashiers so almost everyone has to go through self checkout. Longer line but you would think it wouldn’t make that much of a difference.

But they only have one attendant watching all the self checkouts. So if three people are buying beer at once you have only one to go around checking their IDs. If an item (usually a fruit or vegetable) doesn’t have a proper entry in the kiosk’s database and no barcode to scan then the attendant has to go by and manually enter a code scan the item to unlock the machine. For example when buying habaneros my grocery store only had an entry for “green habaneros”, if you selected them the machine would call a cashier over because you picked an item they don’t actually have. Don’t even get me started on their touchy anti theft measures erroneously triggering because you moved your hand weird when setting down a bag.

Again, none of this was really a problem back then, but now at my grocery store it’s one attendant handling 8 self checkouts at once where any number could have these problems to resolve.

This part may be more in my head, but I also frequently feel like I’m stuck behind people who have never used a touchscreen before, or been in a grocery store, or exchanged currency for goods. Someone always needs help with some part of the process and if you add that to the problems I listed above, it can really slow things down.

In 2016 I used self checkout if I wanted to get through quickly.

In 2026 I look for a cashier.

They’re a rape apologist and trolling to try to prove a point about Cornell. Look at the comment history.

I just hit them with the “Oh wow that’s crazy yeah I don’t really know much about all of that tbh”.

I’ve worked with people who read Capital annually and I can’t get them to show up to an action on time or to get through it without calling a mentally ill unhoused person a reactionary.

I’ve worked with people who haven’t skimmed the manifesto but work every week getting food for their communities.

The latter are much better to work with.

Ideal conditions would mean organizers are all super politically literate and active, but I agree with you that you can’t expect every member of a movement to read stuff like this as a prerequisite to organizing. Cadre members? Of course they should read. But the fascists aren’t making general members read hefty political tomes.

There’s people who won’t like me saying this, but I put a pin in the revolution talk to work on what’s immediate.

Like you, I’ve tried local groups and found they tend to have small, disconnected local chapters and actions sometimes have questionable efficacy.

I think some of this comes from being so focused on “the revolution”. I get it, groups like PSL don’t want to get bogged down becoming a band-aid organization. They want to get rid of the broken system, not be a food bank in a system designed to make people hungry. I’ve done the reading so I understand where they’re coming from here.

But then I attend meetings with groups that have about 10 regular attendees who mostly seem to tell each other to read more theory and paint a lot of banners. They get frustrated that the revolution didn’t come after the latest sit-in, call each other every political science term in the book, and break off to form an even smaller, less effective group.

What I’m trying now are advocacy groups for specific causes I care about. They more often seem to include members of impacted communities and have a better idea of their needs.

It’s actually amazing how quickly it killed my usage of the site. I deleted my account years ago but still lurked every now and then. Now I literally can’t go back, I won’t download the app and the new site layout is pretty much unusable for me.

It is an essential aspect of being Linux users that we claim our preferred distro is the absolute best and others are garbage not worth using. It’s in the terms I’m pretty sure.

My cat does this when I’m drinking tea and his response is some mix of disgust and concern.

Weak to slop and they don’t seem to have an internal “okay that’s enough I should put my phone down” voice.

Even young people I know who are on their phones a lot have some concept that it’s time to look up and forward, but endless content seems irresistible to the brains of boomers.

I learned a trade before I realized college was a better fit for me and I do think there’s a bit a “grass is always greener” phenomenon when it comes to people thinking about the trades.

There are plenty of hardworking, skilled welders who have pretty unpleasant, low-paying jobs and originally intended to get a lucrative oil rig job but couldn’t seem to get an offer. Ironically the ones I knew talked about how they were learning python on the side.

The trades have their own problems.

No graphite on the roof.