pdxfed

Kroger wants to buy Albertsons, a major competitor, who also owns Safeway, which Albertsons somehow was approved to buy 3-4 years ago. The attached is a good representation of what “choice” would look like if the merger were approved by the FTC for SE metro area of Portland; 6/10 larger grocers would be run by Kroger (WinCo, Costco, Grocery Outlet and New Seasons the only exception).

This is a big deal because:

• Kroger has already been price gouging like crazy since the pandemic as we all knew but has been recently confirmed by Kroger themselves (https://www.newsweek.com/kroger-executive-admits-company-gouged-prices-above-inflation-1945742)
• This would make bullet #1 above worse with that scale of market dominance
• Kroger was among the most appalling for worker and customer safety during the pandemic. They had sneeze guards up in their 172nd location in May of 2021, a full 1.5 years after the pandemic started, never enforced masking and refused to take any returns during the pandemic for any reason, but mainly to pad their bottom line.
• Kroger’s local workers are currently on strike for the crap wages and conditions they have endured. A larger corporate entity would only grow the awful employment and labor practices Kroger has.
• Pharmacy services are already under-served and with Rite-aid and Walgreens closing hundreds of locations nationwide, it would force more medically dependent customers to Kroger, who demonstrated its absolute indifference to worker and customer safety before, during and after the pandemic.

If you want to slow grocery price gouging, support better conditions for customers and employees, be able to choose other companies when one isn’t meeting your needs, I highly recommend sharing your thoughts with the FTC and boycotting Kroger/Safeway/Albertsons as much as you can.

Going into quick settings or full settings from search result menu, I disable AI in Search Results. It goes away.

Opening Firefox again and searching it turns back on.

How can this be disabled in Brave permanently? Not only do I want to not wait for AI, it's trash to begin with.

TIA

When the music, the creativity, the stars and a story are unforgettable.

Instead of posting, then having to tediously copy/paste to different instances with similar communities, it would be nice (although potentially crazy spammy) to allow x-posting from one post. This may be less of a Boost idea and more of a Lemmy discussion, but if it can be enabled in Boost I thought that would be a nice addition.

Full bill text: https://sos.oregon.gov/admin/Documents/irr/2024/017text.pdf

TLDR; Oregon corporate tax has a minimum rate of 1%. This ballot measure would raise it to 3% and give $750 to each Oregon resident (including children).

Get ready for an Uber/Lyft level of corporate ads and media spamming to try to sink this common sense bill.

Other than "dont' use Godaddy", what do I need to know? I've never owned a domain or had a website of my own before.

1. Domain registration/host recommendations?
2. Web hosting recommendations? Should I mix #1 and #2?
3. Website template creation suggestions? Have fairly simple needs like service offerings and contact forms but want something without rotating construction cones.
4. What else should I consider? Security? e-mail?
5. Am open to all-in-one for the above, just would like to understand tradeoffs, what to look for/avoid.

TIA

It’s a common misconception, but if you registered "Independent Party" you aren’t “independent” you are a member of your state’s Independent party, who has a platform and agenda you may or may not agree with. What you actually want is called an "unaffiliated" voter status. The good news is, all you have to do is...nothing!

LA Times had a good summary a few years back: https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-american-independent-party-california-registration-card-20180405-story.html

You don’t need to register with any party to show you don’t like R or D, do nothing or choose "unaffiliated if you want to be “little i independent”.

Examples:

• New York - http://ipny.org/platform.html

• Oregon - https://www.indparty.com/

• Illinois - https://www.iviipo.org/our-policies/economic-issues

• American Independent Party - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Independent_Party

#USA #politics----

Twice in the last week videos I have viewed have been saved in a boost photos folder. I didn't request to save or download them at any point. Is this based on the site, internal vs. external browser choice, caching or something else?

Obviously is prefer videos not be downloaded if I don't try to save/download them.

It would be nice, and I don't know if it's because the functionality doesn't already exist in Lemmy, but it would be nice to be able to limit one's search to one's own comments/saved/upvoted/downvoted easily--the profile menu where these are listed would make the most sense. The search functionality to search all of lemmy and limit to local/all, etc. is powerful to find content, a particular community, but if I'm looking historically for an article I commented on or saved, upvoted, etc. it would be convenient if this were easier.

Thank you

Price range for retail seems to be $100-250 for IKEA stuff that will fall apart in 3 years, or $1,000+ for something better. Is there nothing in between? Would prefer to buy new with risk of bed bugs or other contaminants but open to other options if I'm missing something.

Proposing general boycott of Trader Joes. They have joined an unholy trinity of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Starbucks, because they've lost so hard in the past few years against workers forming unions (to push back against awful wages and lack of safety and terrible working conditions pronounced by COVID) that since they can't win fair in union elections under law that has been around for 90 years, want to dismantle the entire apparatus of the NLRB.

If successful, their complaint and other arguments and conclusions that would follow, would lead to loss of labor power that would be strikingly similar to what happened when Trump was allowed to appoint 3 justices and upend the Supreme Court which quickly lead to Roe v. Wade being overturned.

40 hours a week then overtime? Probably deemed unfair to the profit rights of our poor megacorps. Discrimination protections at work? Struck down federally but states allowed to pass their own, for a while, then those would be overturned by SC when challenged. Those would be week 1.

It's sad to see Trader Joes, who espouses lots of human values on its website becoming a mouthpiece for unfettered capitalist abuse of hourly workers.

My boycott, as a 20-year shopper, starts today. I think there are lots of TJs shoppers who think of them as "not Kroger/Walmart/Safeway-Albertsons/etc." but honestly, but throwing in with the billionaires above they might as well be.

I feel like starting a picket at a store or two, then growing would build some shopper awareness, maybe earn some folks who want to get involved and build from there. Want to join?