For the record, while the Supreme Court justices have refused to hold themselves to the same standards as lower court judges, a U.S. District Court judge like Cannon is indeed bound by the Code of Conduct for United States Judges and the policies of the Judicial Conference, which do require disclosure of such gifts and trips.

Thanks for the rec! I also love that you presume that there will be a next time, cuz, uh, that’s accurate. These little boxes are powerhouses, I probably want one for a TV set-top box now that all the TV boxes (Roku, Amazon Fire, even Android TV and soon Apple TV) are riddled with ads.

Hardly. The arguments against race-conscious admissions or affirmative action are generally based (unironically) in the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Beelink and Minisforum are legit

I wish I knew a lot of this when I first started shopping for a mini PC. I ended up with a Beelink model that I’m quite happy with, but it seems almost luck that I didn’t pick another one, and I would have liked a “reputable brand” search function.

Aldi employees do a lot (stocking, cleaning, cashiering, etc.) but are paid relatively well and get solid hours. The stores I have visited seem to retain their workers for long periods, too.

And I have been very critical of Nashville DA Glenn Funk, including for his malfeasance in using person connections to get fake work to boost his own pension, but the formation of the Conviction Review Unit—once it was actually used, after an initially inactive period—deserves recognition and praise.

In case you’re wondering, the answer is “Definitely not.”

Who’s Yellen now? (This song was actually commissioned by APM’s Marketplace when Janet Yellen became Secretary of the Treasury, but feels appropriate now.)

then you see how easy it is to open up a car with a traditional lock using one of those shims

True. As far as I can tell, most competent thieves can get in most cars, and it’s trivially easy to break the window out anyway with small tools. I’m not even sure of car alarms deter thieves anymore. The real deterrence is the interlock that prevents them from taking anymore than your stereo or loose change, and the interlock/transponder doesn’t require a fob.

Another thing that sucks are the fobs…

I really don’t like those either. I guess it’s okay to give people the option, I know that it’s handy to unlock the car from a distance if you’re loading kids or pets in the car. But give me a simple key/transponder if I just want to have a key on a keychain.

Also, I keep seeing more reports about those wireless unlock and remote start fobs being relatively easy to spoof, and the whole system seems comically insecure and fragile.

If you look at Kroger’s acquisition of Fred Meyer or Harris Teeter grocery stores, they massively consolidated market power in big swaths of North America, and the stores that Kroger was forced to spin off by regulators soon failed, and the profitable ones were gobbled up by Kroger anyway.

. . . this time.

Phil Williams, the investigative reporter in this article, is an absolute treasure in Tennessee. This dude has broken open more corruption, fraud, conspiracies, government waste, etc. in his career than I can even list. As an elected official or business owner, the sight of Phil Williams with his microphone and camera crew is the thing you fear the most, but he’s very measured and patient.

TL;dr: support your local journalism!

¿Porque no los dos?

How much of the increased price of fast food is because restaurants have to pay workers more than $7.25/hour now? It seems like the entire business model of cheap fast food was premised on low-quality food and labor costs so low that most fast-food workers qualified for public assistance. Leaving aside the low-quality oligarchical food product industry and just looking at the labor side, it’s still a failure. And a business model that relies on food stamps and welfare for its employees really isn’t a business model.