REI changed about 25 years ago and it took a while for people to notice/the changes to filter through enough. Was talking recently about similar changes with MEC in Canada with a family friend who joined MEC as member 200-250. He had a chance to be in the first ~25 members but wasn't sure they'd still exist in a year.
I think there still is value in a retail coop model but I think REI strayed from the area where it could work well. They may not have been able to run forever without changing but the way it has changed is a bit sad to see. I suspect there has to be a strong mission statement and way to hold to it for a retail coop to thrive long term. Or maybe just to keep the size small enough to avoid some of the harder questions.
I remember in 2018 there were only 18 Kokanee counted spawning from Lake Sammamish.
"A striking ebb in the number of Kokanee salmon in Lake Sammamish, just east of Seattle, has officials worried that extinction is around the corner.
Five years ago, more than 18,000 of the unique freshwater species of sockeye returned to spawn in Lake Sammamish tributaries. This past year, only 19 were counted.
While a number of possible factors are likely to blame for the dramatic drop in the population, King County environmental affairs officer David St. John said warm lake temperatures in the summer from 2014-16 was likely the largest driver.
Lake Sammamish kokanee life cycles are measured in roughly three-year cycles. Kokanee migrate from Lake Sammamish to tributary streams where they spawn. The resulting offspring, juveniles known as fry, then move to the main lake where they remain for just under three years before returning to the streams to spawn, continuing the cycle."
Did you see this last year about the origins of potatoes?
I'd like to get into grafting fruit trees, my uncle was a major fruit eater and filled the yard with many varieties of apples and pears. The apple tree where I live was a mess and I've jsut started the pruning to get it under control.
Depending on how far back you want to look at electric cars you can find them for pretty cheap. Sub $5k versions from 10 years ago were tempting recently when my partner needed a repair on the current (ICE) car. It looked like sub $15k there were many options. For use around the city it would be a good fit, but I ditched the ideas since we're in the process of dealing with partial house rewiring. That might be an update for later.
Yeah I occasionally will buy a ticket or two. Not often, but sometimes on a whim I get them. I figure it is probably a slightly healthier version of buying the king size kitkat or snickers in the checkout line. The cost is the same, the satisfaction is just as transient, and I'm not jamming a bunch of sugar in my face.
I've been in an online community where some users do a group buy for certain lottos when the prize is big enough. Sending $2 by paypal/venmo is easier and lower friction that going to one of the stores near me where I can but a ticket myself. I still think it's kinda dumb, but I do plenty of dumb things and I buy one infrequently enough to be ok with it.
I think maybe you aren't the target market. Just like I don't understand my friends who somehow sink hours and hours into pay to win games.
There are fake games, and even leagues, made specifically for people to bet on. To me there is no appeal, but I'd expect to someone gamblign there must be some appeal. See this article, there have been cases in cricket, but I know less about that game. https://josimarfootball.com/2024/10/21/childs-play/
I tend to agree with the parent that friction is useful for many 'sin activities' I might extend this to most drive through restaurants. For gambling having to go to a casino, a racetrack, or a bookkeeper who isn't legal all act as points where users drop out of the process. Having it on your phone is always available and the path of a user can be modified to get them to spend/bet more.
I've been doing some cal/QC functions recently after years not touching it. Since I last did it I've forgotten some of the knowledge that is just assumed. The answers to my questions are documented, but not in a places that is accessible from the production side and has lived as community knowledge in production. I've been making a list and updating the documents to fill in some gaps.
Unfortunately some of the production people aren't comfortable enough pushing for changes in the documentation so some of my job now is to ask what they've noted and get it added.
I've seen this in Europe since I was pretty young as well. Usually they were little entries on the edge of the placemats that looked like classifieds. Advertising hotels, museums, and maybe shops? I can't fully picture them but I'm pretty sure I've seen something like this in french, italian, english, dutch, and maybe danish or german? It might have something to do with where we stayed or ate but in general my travel has been business focused and we have been in smaller towns.
I know someone who started an elder care business with explicitly this purpose. He stopped working in the more conventional medical system because he saw an opportunity. Unsure how it is going at this point, I haven't checked in recently.
Elder care is hard, and expensive. Friends have worked in various levels of it at various times, from food services on up. There is clearly some good for people to be around a community and there are real needs that require constant attention for some. But there is a drive to do more with less which almost always seems to end up with stories of people not being attended to as quickly as you might hope.
Memory care is particularly difficult, on the family and on the businesses. It is just so all consuming and from the outside it can be hard to know if adequate care is being taken. Of course I do know someone who's mom put her dad into memory care, then moved and basically started a new life with a boyfriend while still married so she had access to the money.
My parent's solution is to day they don't want to draw things out. But I think that is easy to say from a position of health and barring any significant diagnosis there is more of a slow slide to infirmity than a clear juncture to make such a choice. We'll see, my family is close and I expect we will provide care in person. But also life is complicated and that is a ways off.
Are there any places in the US where you could get the stock as easily? Ignoring the cost differences for now, I'm more thinking about where you might want to be if you wanted to build machines like this as a small business in the US. Of course, maybe the right idea is not to do it in the US.
Maybe you can volunteer to send a sample to the Living Snow Project next year! It looks like they have samples from California, I've missed my opportunity in the last few years due to family stuff.
It seems unlikely that we can grow enough coffee in Puerto Rico and Hawaii to make up for the difference. It might be good for those producers though.
Do you mean the lion's share of food imports or imports in general? Lots of seafood is processed elsewhere and imported the US. Strangely it appears ground beef is imported to the US even though we are a net exporter of beef.
Coffee and chocolate are not domestically produced, nor are bananas which are like the potatoes of the fruit world in terms of how productive they are.
There are lots of nondiscretionary products that take a while to flow through to the point you notice them. The parts to repair the machines that make things for example. Or at a low level, the inserts used in mills to make things out of metal. There are other inserts available, but they aren't as good so they need replacement more often.
Interesting, I may need to try this out. I tend to have a similar approach but it sometimes results in keeping tabs open for along time, or dealing with a restore previous session everytime I start up.
I keep bookmarks for specific things, sometimes ephemerally and sometimes to keep the link for reasearch, etc. Every so often I make a pass through a bunch of bookmarks and delete the ones that have rotted. Or try to point to an archive mirror if available. That process does a decent job getting rid of the junk. I do need to work on isolating my personal from my work reading when at home. I use different windows but I should be using different profiles or something.
270Trillion kWh is about 1.5 × the total energy from the sun that hits the earth in one hour. I'm not sure if that helps, and the trillion-kilo is kinda gross.
Lots of fruit trees need an accumulated number of cold hours every year. I've seen warnings about some plantings already having issues with not producing enough fruit.
I think there still is value in a retail coop model but I think REI strayed from the area where it could work well. They may not have been able to run forever without changing but the way it has changed is a bit sad to see. I suspect there has to be a strong mission statement and way to hold to it for a retail coop to thrive long term. Or maybe just to keep the size small enough to avoid some of the harder questions.