1st, you've probably heard this before, but pay in cash when you can. Every time you swipe or tap it costs the store, eh, 2-4% of the total of the transaction. That may not sound like much but for small businesses 2-5% can be the difference between being nervous & comfortable, even open or closed...

What are the odds that these ICE folks who can’t risk unmasking now were complaining endlessly about having to wear a mask during the peak of COVID?

We're U.S. based, and unfortunately, overseas shipping is grotesquely expensive these days, yeah. :-(

Not a resource, but a request for one: is there any organized "white people to keep watch outside Latino churches during the holidays" thing people could look up to find opportunities near them? Given ICE raiding churches, it seems desperately needed, but I'm not sure where to start.

"Audience" works perfectly well there. Or "visitor." Both of those feel more apt and less abstracted than "consumer."

In the same vein, calling employees “human capital”, “human resources”, “resources”, or “capitalized labor”. It objectifies people and simplifies their contributions to the employer.

A million percent this. I remember when the BBC first started using the terms "talent" and "content creators". People used to get really ratty when one fought back.

My similar practice is avoiding "consume" to describe engaging with media. I read, I watch, I listen. None of that uses up anything the way consumption does.

My personal version of this is training myself to stop saying "talent" when I really mean "skill". I want to stop erasing the effort that goes into creative work.

I like that one, too!

Similarly, I'm going to avoid "consumer" when I mean "audience" or "reader" or "viewer." There's an overtone to that word, like a book is no different from pasta or a car, that I find invidious: we all just exist to be marketed to, not to experience things.

In my case that was 1989 -- my family were pretty early adopters!

For some reason my brain insists that poetry be drafted longhand.

For everything else, I began drafting on the computer at the age of nine and never looked back.