So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[tonyb]

Fees banks charge for cashing checks drawn on those very banks from non-customers.

This hasn’t been a matter directly affecting me in a few decades. These days I deposit checks in my accounts by taking photos of them on the banks’ apps. But the people waiting on line at the bank to turn that slip of paper into something they can actually spend are often in urgent need of those funds. They are often low-wage laborers and the like and don’t have bank accounts. For those people, the upwards of 10 bucks the banks charge those non-customers is a significant imposition.

Poverty doesn’t pay.

 

[Turnip]

That’s almost a point for the „getting old“ thread at this end of the pond.
Last time I saw a paycheck is at least 25 years ago, working for a staffing company, and eurocheques you could pay with in shops have been phased out here over 20 years ago.

 

[tonyb]

The last two auto repair shops I’ve patronized have signs reading “NO CHECKS.”

I can’t blame them one bit. “Checking” accounts these days all but always come with debit cards. If there’s sufficient funds in the account, the card transaction will clear. And if not, it won’t.

In years past I and others I knew responded, when being asked if we’d accept a check, “no thanks, I still have a drawer full left over from last year.”

 

[Turnip]

Folks driving „large“ cars, in a European scale, who think their vehicles are five meters longer than they actually are. Standing in front of an on-demand-traffic-light, about five meters away from the stop line and wondering why they don’t get green light, standing also about two meters away from the contact loop that triggers green light that way.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our local drivers all know me from the theatre, and will often stop me if they see me on the street to give me my packages on the spot. Which is great, unless it's something that weighs 70 pounds.

 

[BobHufford]

Our local drivers all know me from the theatre, and will often stop me if they see me on the street to give me my packages

I was expecting a UPS delivery to our rural PO Box yesterday (which is about four miles away from our house). The drivers know to leave it at the house where the three mail boxes are. I guess one of the UPS drivers didn't want to drive the 10 highway miles and 5 dirt road miles to deliver my hat, so left it with the "lady of the house" at the insurance office in town where she works. "Since this was the only thing I had to take out there and it was going to end up at your house anyway ... do you mind?" Seems like she should have got a cut of the shipping charges.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

I was expecting a UPS delivery to our rural PO Box yesterday (which is about four miles away from our house). The drivers know to leave it at the house where the three mail boxes are. I guess one of the UPS drivers didn't want to drive the 10 highway miles and 5 dirt road miles to deliver my hat, so left it with the "lady of the house" at the insurance office in town where she works. "Since this was the only thing I had to take out there and it was going to end up at your house anyway ... do you mind?" Seems like she should have got a cut of the shipping charges.

Give that driver a medal for reducing his carbon footprint and forward the story to the jet-setting environmental advocates using private jets to cross the Atlantic to talk with others of the ilk about the dangers of carbon dioxide pollution!

 

[Edward]

Folks driving „large“ cars, in a European scale, who think their vehicles are five meters longer than they actually are. Standing in front of an on-demand-traffic-light, about five meters away from the stop line and wondering why they don’t get green light, standing also about two meters away from the contact loop that triggers green light that way.

Here in London, we get the opposite effect - plenty of drivers are idiots who drive right up into the area for cyclists, or sit right over the pedestrian crossing in a traffic queue. Lacking the patience to wait their turn, they try and force their way round at crossroads, ending up trapped in the middle, then they hold back the cars who should have the green light, repeat this pattern all round the crossroads and red lights rarely mean any stop to traffic now. And don't even et me started on the "£$%ing smug cyclists running red lights, cycling up footpaths, and all the rest of it. As I often say to the wife, "This is why I'm not allowed to carry a gun, because I'd use it."

 

[Trenchfriend]

Our smalltown's garden and remnants store will close on 31.12..
Like I mentioned here before, it was the only store to get SINGLE button cells as the often needed AG(1 to 13) cells for wrist watches.
I stocked myself with AG1/AG4/AG6 cells, today and luckily, this will last for a longer time.

They personally say, the energy costs are too high to run the store further.

Foxtrott Uniform Charlie Kilo

 

[Trenchfriend]

It's surely one reason, if mechanical watches and other things will have a comeback.

 

[Who?]

My wife (definitely a Yankee) occasionally uses “y’all”. We’ve Often wondered where she got it from. Never suspected that the internet might be to blame. Yes, come to think of it, I have seen people use it in their text messages.

Since English lacks a distinction between second person singular and second person plural, I think y'all is a perfectly good grammatical construct.

It was declared "non-standard" by grammarians who were guilty of some degree of snobbery.

(yust my opinion)

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

Since English lacks a distinction between second person singular and second person plural, I think y'all is a perfectly good grammatical construct.

If was declared "non-standard" by grammarians who were guilty of some degree of snobbery.

(yust my opinion)

Once we had distinct versions and somehow the singular version disappeared. We English speakers have been stubbornly reintroducing new words for the plural on a regional basis ever since.

 

[Who?]

Coal miner rushes straight from work to take his kid to the big game. This photo struck me as a Norman Rockwell painting waiting to happen. Old school.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/us/k...-john-calipari-coal-miner-son-game/index.html


View attachment 460354

There must be something wrong with me, because the whole point of this eludes me.

Why do we care, and why is it relevant that he is a coal miner?

There must be a gazillion dads who go from work to take their kid to a “big game”.

What am I missing?

 

[Who?]

Sometimes it seems idiots have taken over the operation of everything on this planet, and nothing goes as it should.

Bingo, and amen to this.

No task is so simple that some nitwit can’t bugger it up.

 

[Zombie_61]

Folks driving „large“ cars, in a European scale, who think their vehicles are five meters longer than they actually are. Standing in front of an on-demand-traffic-light, about five meters away from the stop line and wondering why they don’t get green light, standing also about two meters away from the contact loop that triggers green light that way.

I noticed younger drivers here in the U.S. doing this starting about ten, or maybe fifteen, years ago. Someone told me they're teaching new drivers to do this, because "That way, if there's an accident in the intersection it will lessen the chances of your car getting hit by one of the cars in the accident." Apparently that five meters of empty space has magical density that will surely stop any vehicle from striking your own, as long as you play along. It's just further evidence that people are not only sheep willing to follow along with anything they're told, but they aren't particularly bright sheep if they believe this load of sheep dip.

 

[GHT]

It's just further evidence that people are not only sheep willing to follow along with anything they're told, but they aren't particularly bright sheep if they believe this load of sheep dip.

Not particularly bright drivers either.

 

[Edward]

Since English lacks a distinction between second person singular and second person plural, I think y'all is a perfectly good grammatical construct.

It was declared "non-standard" by grammarians who were guilty of some degree of snobbery.

(yust my opinion)

In Northern Ireland in my experience, we had "ye" and "yiz" in the Belfast suburbs, and towards the Larne end it was more "you" and "youse". I have a feeling it probably echoed Gaelic grammar, as much spoken English in that part of the world does.

 

[LizzieMaine]

In Northern Ireland in my experience, we had "ye" and "yiz" in the Belfast suburbs, and towards the Larne end it was more "you" and "youse". I have a feeling it probably echoed Gaelic grammar, as much spoken English in that part of the world does.

I've always preferred "yez" "yuz," "yiz," or "youse" to "y'all" from anyone who isn't an actual Southerner. All of those Irish-sourced variants were once common in the Northeast US before the great homogenization of dialects in the second half of the 20th Century. The adoption of "y'all" by the internet generation as the universal option for second person plural rankles my Northeastern soul beyond measure.

 

[Edward]

I've always preferred "yez" "yuz," "yiz," or "youse" to "y'all" from anyone who isn't an actual Southerner. All of those Irish-sourced variants were once common in the Northeast US before the great homogenization of dialects in the second half of the 20th Century. The adoption of "y'all" by the internet generation as the universal option for second person plural rankles my Northeastern soul beyond measure.

There's got to be a great book to be written on the homoginsation of dialects in the English-speaking world as a result of the web. I've noticed an increasing commonality of popular cultures since the middle 90s, and language is definitely part of that, all in the influence of the web. It's particularly interesting seeing it happening retrospectively - the kids in their twenties now here in England who are nostalgic for the eighties are very often looking back via pop-culture like Stranger Things to an eighties that never existed here, at least not off-screen. That said, this sort of historical dissonance isn't exactly new; the fifties revival scene here in the UK has long been through a distinct Americana lens in a way that earlier-focused revival scenes don't tend to be. (The forties scene, such as it is, here is rarely anything other than exclusively WW2 fixated.)

 

[Turnip]

A wise, Austrian musician once said:

„Anyone who can remember the eighties has not experienced them.“