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Clever Marketing of Banned Books

Hubby and I had occasion to visit San Diego last week. While there, we visited a shop called the Sea Hive. It was a combination of a maker’s market and antiques store, with the floor divided up among numerous sellers. One seller, whose area had a sign that said “Gentleman John,” was selling old books. Laying on a round table in Gentleman John’s space were numerous books wrapped in blue wrapping paper. By the blue…

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family ideas observations

Pushing for a 4-Day Work Week

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union is on strike. While listening to a report about the strike, I heard that one of the union’s demands was for a 4-day (32-hour) work week at the current level of pay for a 5-day work week. According to this Associated Press article on the strike, this demand has been dismissed by automakers, but, darn it, it shouldn’t be. Switching to a 4-day work week isn’t about laziness. It…

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ideas thought fodder

What I Don’t Understand About Retirement Plans

Please forgive me. This is going to be one of those blog posts that reproduces a bunch of screenshots from a Mastodon conversation, kinda like the articles that are a reproduction of Twitter screenshots, but I hope to use them as context for additional thoughts based on the conversation. It started with an article about Milton Friedman called “Ideas Lying Around,” written and posted by Cory Doctorow. [https://doctorow.medium.com/ideas-lying-around-33a28901a7ae] From which I quoted a paragraph about…

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family health history ideas process tips writing

Writing: Using Health Intake Forms for Character Development

Forms are on my mind recently, partially because I finished filing our taxes and partially due to a project at work. I have filled out a LOT of forms in my life. From tax forms to social services forms to grant applications to healthcare forms, all ask for some intensive and often highly personal information. After you’ve filled out the same information (name, address, phone, email … etc., etc., etc.) for the twelfth dozen time,…

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family ideas observations technology

Meep.

Meep. A tiny, made up word in the Warner family that does a lot of work for its size. Meep. It’s a word that mostly I use when communicating via text with two family members. Thus, it falls into the category of family language, wherein a family group uses language in special ways just among its members. Meep. I started using this word when Young Son entered the navy several years ago. After bootcamp, he…

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