Category: Guest Contributors

Tom’s World – 23JUL2025 – The Next Generation

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, TomD ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

There is an INTENSE need for people who can think and have experience + a work ethic, goal driven. I’m a subset of one out of 300 million+ so I can’t exactly extrapolate but—

Like photog, I’m an engineer but at 76.8 years old, a supposedly retired one. To keep myself in touch and engaged, I have a part time consulting business out of my house. I do design and in addition, construction contract and managing, budgeting and walk dogs on occasion.

I have people coming out of the woodwork begging me to work for them. They tell me that the current system isn’t generating people like me at the needed replacement rate.

I have all the clients I want (2), I work all the hours a week that I want (15) and I have no intention of getting back in harness. I like the commute from my bedroom to my home office but I have problems keeping the cats off my plan table.

Before retirement, we spent a couple of years trying to hire and train my replacement. A number of recent grads but there seemed to be at least something wrong with every one. No motivation, no work ethic, can’t get out of bed, not interested, HUGE holes in their knowledge base, scatter brained. One of them could not generate a simple logical excel based budget to save his life.

I can’t do the typical retired thing, traveling, visiting grandkids, etc. My wife is well into Alzheimer’s but not quite yet a nursing home candidate. So I’m tied here. But if I’m not working on something interesting, I’m pretty sure I would rapidly dry up and blow away.

Tom’s World – 18JUL2025 – It’s the Real Thing

photog Guest Contributors, TomD , ,

Tom | Flickr

TomD

For the last decade or 4, I’ve not had more than 1-2 soft drinks per year and most times not even that. Don’t ask me about craft beers though I don’t even do that now.

When I can get some of the new, I’ll definitely try though. My boyhood memories of the 6 oz bottles with condensation running down on a hot summer day—. When we first got picked bottles, we’d bet a nickel to see who had the bottle that came from furthest away; the bottlers had their location cast into the glass.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 18JUL2025 – Reason 2,412; Make Coke Great Again

photog Chemist, Current Events, Guest Contributors, Trump

Reason 2,412: Coke is bringing cane sugar back to Coca Cola!

Not to hijack your thread, but this is HUGE!
https://nypost.com/2025/07/16/us-news/trump-says-coca-cola-agrees-to-use-real-cane-sugar-in-us-drinks-its-just-better/
Monsanto hardest hit.

The taste difference between high fructose corn syrup and cane sugar is significant.
Here in Texas, I can buy “Mexican Coke”. It comes in a glass bottle and has cane sugar.
I buy it as a treat, not as my regular beverage because it is expensive (Glass costs a lot to ship) and inconvenient. (Glass breaks.)
But a cane sugar Coke in a can! Man, I’m lovin’ it!

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 17JUL2025 – The People’s Food

photog Current Events, Guest Contributors, Tregonsee , , ,

Chemist said

“Finally, as with anything related to NYC, there will also be a ton of graft and outright theft.”

Indeed in a little city near where I live there was an excellent grocery store part of one of the larger New England Chains. It was brand new, had good prices, all sorts of products, including very high quality produce and types of produce (Jicama, Star Fruit, Mangoes, Plantain etc) rarely if ever seen in New England Grocery stores. After about 3-4 years of operation, the chain closed it. I happened to know a person who was a relative of one of the managers. Shrinkage (i.e. Theft) was the main issue. But it wasn’t shoplifting or at the front of the store as they say. It was the back of the store, cases of stuff (canned, produce, meat) would come in the back and go right back out often to be broken up and sold to small stores and restaurants. Now, picture NYC and that Mamdani will try to use these grocery stores as a way to employ the indigent and his pals (but I repeat myself) and picture the scenario I just spelled out. Ultimately the stores would just be another sink hole for NYC taxes; they’d be losing money hand over fist from the day they opened.

Guest Contributor – Chemist – 17JUL2025 – Grocery Wars

photog Chemist, Current Events, Guest Contributors , ,

So Mandani wants to have city run grocery stores.
Let’s say he gets his wish.
Grocery stores run about a 3% profit margin. This is for the big boys: Kroger, Safeway, HEB, etc.
The smaller chains have less buying power and can’t get the gross margins the big guys can so they run 1 to 2% profits. I don’t think NYC is going to get the same gross margin as Kroger.
Chain grocery stores employ a lot of younger, minimum wage people.
NYC stores will have to employ NYC city civil servants with all the benefits attached to being a city employee: Higher wages, gold plated health care, pensions, etc.
Pretty sure the 1% profit margin just left the building right there.
Then there is spoilage – because those folks living in the “Food deserts” aren’t going to be buying fresh stuff no matter how much the mayor says it is good for them.
Finally, as with anything related to NYC, there will also be a ton of graft and outright theft.
I predict the stores will run 20-30% in the red
This will be a HUGE debacle. But it might be fun to watch.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 17JUL2025 – The Workers’ Paradise

photog Current Events, Ed Brault, Guest Contributors , ,

Burlington, Vermont, experienced a mini-version of this when the increasingly socialist city government raised property taxes on businesses to the point that all the grocery stores moved out. In response to the “food-desert” crisis, the city tried to lure food stores back, but the restrictions and requirements for what products had to be stocked, how much had to be “organic”, etc, resulted in only one taker, a “Whole-Foods” type grocery, with prices way too expensive for the low-income neighborhoods it was supposed to service.
Reductions in the Police Dept have resulted in some areas of the city becoming no-go zones, and the once-prosperous Church Street shopping district has lost its major anchor stores, and is overrun with panhandlers and homeless.
(Thanks, Bernie!)

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 12JUL2025 – For We Were Young and Sure to Have Our Way

photog Ed Brault, Guest Contributors, Science Fiction / Fantasy , , ,
FSFAug1960
FSFAug1960

I started reading science fiction almost as soon as I learned to read. My folks belonged to the SF Book Club, and also subscribed to Analog and the magazine of fantasy and Science fiction. One of the first stories I remember was called “Callahan and the Wheelies. That got me started and I never stopped. I still read Analog, but in the online version. Been reading it since the early sixties.