Brinens and Things

Hello, folks! I'm going to be teaching a class on advanced grocery-shopping techniques for KW Rationality (currently planned for the evening of Thursday, February 27th March 6th). If you'll be in the Waterloo, Ontario area, I encourage you to come out and join us!

Below is the "textbook" for this class. The further away you are in space and time from late-2024 Kitchener/Waterloo, the less of it will apply to you (in particular, advanced grocery shopping looks very different in the United States), but you may still get useful tips out of it and/or find it anthropologically interesting.

This work distills many years of refinement to my techniques, and to this day I am still learning. If it seems overwhelming trying to take it all in at once, try picking up just some of the new tactics, and expand later. I have tried to put the most important aspects first, where feasible.

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Table of Contents

• Where to shop


• Before your shop


• Rotated stockpiles


• Price-matching


• Loyalty programs


• Coupons


• List-making


• Payment methods




• During your shop


• Clearance


• Error-catching

( Read more... )

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: food, (arguably) illness, (arguably) heights] I have officially survived my twenties

[cw: illness] Variolation, part 4: Secondhand [three comments, one of which is new]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by itsbenedict) A day in the life of a Tumblr user.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by oak23) The importance of ego-syntonic clothing.


[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by nenya_kanadka) How to make Wikia actually usable (and Dreamwidth even more usable).


[cw: illness, medical, (fairly mild) venting] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by cordeliaflyte) Fantasies about easy solutions to medical problems: not always pleasant.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by eightyonekilograms, though also kind of jv) Tumblr Backup Awareness Week, and a modernised version of tumblr-utils. (Though I ran into enough problems getting the python3 version of tumblr-utils working that I eventually gave up and went back to python2.)


[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by thedarlingone) More on the mobile-accessibility updates to Dreamwidth.


[cw: nsfw text] [Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden] (OP by porthole) The distinction between fetishes that can be done in real life and those that cannot (and the grey areas between).


[arguably cw: apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by ladiesloveduranduran) Which of these U.S. cities would you be most willing to live in?


[cw: illness, (arguably) poison] [Updated part of WordPress thread (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges; partly in respose to keynes-fetlife-mutual) Nipping colds in the bud (maybe) with zinc lozenges. [three comments, two of which are new]


[cw: illness, vomit, unsanitary] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by toasthaste; in response to robustcornhusk) Norovirus prevention tips.


[cw: sexism, embarrassment squick] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by RaxKingIsDead) Accidental street harassment.


[cw: corporate bullshit, (arguably) government bullshit] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by JoshGreenberg27) How to get government-funded U.S. tax preparation. (It's still not 100% clear, but it looks like probably *not* for non-residents. On the ""bright"" side, I'm below the income threshold to have to file at all for 2023, and there's no further stimulus checks to claim by doing it anyway.)


[Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by gummybugg; mostly in response to sacrificedtoatree) I have unlocked a fiction-writing skill tree! [two comments]


[arguably cw: guns] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by trailertrashin) "The Glass Eye - Adult Greeting Cards": a real store that really exists, somehow.


[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by whatcha-thinkin) Assuming you had access to perfect medical care at no additional cost, which of these fixes would you want most?

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Links:

[strong cw: illness] [Patreon; Wayback] (by Violet Blue; h/t siderea) A list of COVID-19 resources, consisting largely of people doing their best to navigate things on their own because God knows there are no trustworthy authorities left on this. I bought a $4 bottle of store-brand mouthwash (contains cetylpyridinium chloride) because of this post: I figure it's an extremely low-risk bet.

On a similar though shorter/narrower note, https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/805203.html

(Update from January: ...if someone who *doesn't* now have a history of COVID infection (or who can otherwise psychologically handle it) can pick through all the stuff in Violet's news roundups about Post-Acute Sequelae Even Worse Than Previously Believed to get at the actionable advice, I would appreciate it)


[cw: illness] [Absolutely Maybe; Wayback] (by Hilda Bastian) Researchers have not given up on creating a COVID vaccine with sterilising and/or durable immunity! Things may still improve.


[cw: corporate bullshit] [PCMag; Wayback] (by Chloe Albanesius; h/t Violet Blue) Obituaries for tech products and services that were shut down in 2023.


[Youtube; Invidious] (by Pope Kallisti; h/t blazingdarkness) A MIDI conversion of "Bring Me to Life".


[Live Science; Wayback] (by Victoria Atkinson) I told somebody in a nuclear-vs-solar argument a while back that I'd care less about solar if ordinary citizens could get household-scale nuclear batteries. There has been non-zero progress towards this.


Two laugh-rule entries:
[Beware The Shadows; Wayback] (by Brett J. Talley) The 56 best/worst analogies written by high school students (or, fairly likely, ""high school students""). (I've seen a lot of these before, but not all of them.)

My favourite is "Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph."


[brr; Wayback] (by Anonymous; h/t Jenn) Showering at the South Pole. (This whole blog is amazing, though usually more in a "wow, Antarctica is such a place" way than a "funny" way.)

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: (fairly strong) illness, venting, death] The one about Mom coming down with a fever

[cw: illness, medical, food] Status update, morning of 2023-08-01 [three comments]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by lakevida) The many meanings of a novelty hat.

[cw: nsfw text, (arguably) drugs, (arguably) apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by oligetcetera) Superstimuli and the oncoming future.

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Links:

[cw: (strong) illness, fire, apocalypse] There's a lot of chaff in plaguepoems@mastodon.social (...not that I can blame them, trying to write a poem on the same subject every weekday for years on end), but here's a selection of my favourites from the past couple months:

https://mastodon.social/@plaguepoems/110822170645699645:

In block letters at the top
of the hand sanitizer station
were the words
“protect yourself”
but the dispenser itself
was broken and empty
which I really must say
felt like some kind of metaphor.

https://mastodon.social/@plaguepoems/110623194611543597:

I saw a warning
from the department of health
urging residents “to take
appropriate precautions
as smoke
from Canadian wildfires”
is once more making the air
unhealthy to breathe
so if someone asks me
which airborne threat
my mask is for
I will simply say “all of them.”

https://mastodon.social/@plaguepoems/110571904159328242:

She tells me
that at this point
it would take a miracle
not to catch it again
and it’s not that I disagree
but that I believe
there are points in time
when if you are hoping
for a miracle
you have to make it yourself.

https://mastodon.social/@plaguepoems/110573627092710431:

I know a historian
who says
during the pandemic
and means by that
the past.

I know a doctor
who says
during the pandemic
and means by that
the present.

And
I know an epidemiologist
who says
during the pandemic
and means by that
the future.

[cw: illness] [CDC; Wayback] "Locally Acquired Malaria Cases Identified in the United States".

[cw: food] [NPR; Wayback] (by Allison Aubrey) Meanwhile, in good news, cell-cultured chicken has been approved for sale in America! It's at a fancy restaurant in San Francisco and costs if-you-have-to-ask-you-don't-want-to-know, but computers were once prohibitively expensive too.

[Sourcehut; Wayback] (by Ploum) Offpunk: an offline-first web browser.


Laugh-rule entries:
[Substack; Wayback] (by Moly)

[cw: drugs]

Yunnan: MUSHROOMS, people going to the ER because of MUSHROOMS, people getting out of the ER to continue eating MUSHROOMS, HALLUCINOGENIC MUSHROOMS. It’s the Colorado of China, if instead of marijuana, you had MUSHROOMS.

[Mastodon; Wayback] (by compositor@wayland.social)

Welcome to Wayland.social: the successor to X.com.

(I speak *just enough* Linux jargon to understand that this is funny.)

Comments on my own posts:

[N/A]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tototavros) Recommendations for podcasts (and, more importantly, transcripts) about American history. (Update: AFAICT only the *later* episodes of Presidencies of the United States have transcripts. The earliest episode transcript I could find was "3.28 - The Calming Seas". Still, in medias res is something.) [one or two comments, depending on how you count]

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moral-autism; partly in response to analytically) Why use Spotify as a music player when you can use Youtube? (Not to even mention Quod Libet or Odyssey.)

[cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Favourite masks.

[cw: medical, poverty] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by rustingbridges) The financial intricacies of dental insurance.

[Blogspot; Wayback] (OP by Michael James) A gentle correction of one of the most important omissions I encountered on my wiki-walk through Canadian personal-finance blogs, RRSP reporting edition.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Hypophantasia and dream accuracy.

[mild cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by TrinCyboid) From the people who brought you mystery melons, we also have 24 liveblogging. (Both are hilarious.) [one or two comments, depending on how you count]

[cw: food] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Egg-boiling techniques.

[cw: food, (arguably) poverty] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) More on egg-boiling techniques, now with energy conservation.

[cw: poverty] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by moonlit-tulip) Holidays and the value of routine-breaking (or, perhaps, routine-keeping on a higher level).

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by lunartulip) The wonders of "details" HTML tags.

[cw: poison, poverty] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by moral-autism; partly in response to humanfist) The importance of avoiding home radon exposure.

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Links:

[cw: corporate bullshit] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (by ponett) BreezeWiki: an adversarially interoperable Wikia frontend that is (unlike the official one) *actually usable*.

[strong cw: illness] [BBC; Wayback] (by Zaria Gorvett; h/t cvirtue) Measles: much worse than previously believed.

[Explain Shell] (by Idan Kamara; h/t Ilzolende) Command-line-to-English machine translation.

[Internet Archive] How to archive your tweets with the Wayback Machine. (The ingest-URLs-from-spreadsheet bit is intriguing regardless.)

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: discourse, (arguably) apocalypse] The one about AI artists [one comment, not counting the postscript]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Old kitchen appliances (and when to replace them); the wonders of mosquito nets. [two comments]

[fairly mild cw: food] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by mindstalk) Optimal potato baking.

[arguably cw: discourse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by Anonymous; partly in response to jadagul) The unrelatability of complaints about modernity (or at least these sub-genres of complaints).

(Update: writing that post inspired me to give warc2zim another try, and this time I successfully got it working! (The Linux port of Kiwix can't *directly* display warc2zim files, but it turns out there's a workaround: activate local-server mode and view the file through your web browser.) Mobile access, baby! (*And* it's even slightly more space-efficient!))

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by transgenderer) How to send and receive SMS messages from your laptop.

[fairly mild cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by camwyn) Dutch has some amazing profanity.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by camwyn) The wonders of mosquito nets, disability edition.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by doctorwhoisadhd; in response to itsbenedict) How to play Character Opinion Bingo.

[arguably cw: unreality] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by seat-safety-switch) Solar phone charging, the easy ways.

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Links:

[My Modern Met; Wayback] (by Larisa Crowder) The technology behind heated car seats, now wearable and reversible (that is to say, it can also do cooling). (Kind of expensive and hard to get, but I suppose new devices usually are.)

[cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by the United States Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate; h/t siderea) How to disinfect monkeypox fomites, and how not to.

[arguably cw: venting] [The Millions; Wayback] (by Rebecca Steinitz) A personal view of anosmia. (I came across this link buried in an old email, where I was recommending it to others. It's interesting to look back at it now, having developed a very different relationship with anosmia.)

[Mobile Syrup; Wayback] (by Jonathan Lamont) Payment-method optimisation is about to become *even more* complicated. My parents can't keep up as it is.

[Imgur; Wayback] (h/t Marri) Ordinary office worker in the streets...

Laugh rule:
[cw: illness] [Jenneral HQ; Wayback] (by Jenn)

Relatedly, as a #millennial, the whole #supportlocal lifestyle where I go to 4 specialty grocers for specific ingredients instead of one (1) Loblaw is very appealing to me.

(...I admit that this line is significantly less funny after I looked it up and discovered that the singular of Loblaws *is* sometimes "Loblaw", and not *always* also "Loblaws".)

I haven't had much energy to spare lately, but I eventually managed enough to put this together.

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Comments on my own posts:

History-wikiwalk blogging, part 2

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by mortuarybees) Being your own boss often isn't freeing.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by unpretty; partly in response to bending-sickle) Water softeners: highly recommended. (If you are in a relevant area.) [one or two comments, depending on how you count]

[cw: depression, anxiety, (mild) food, (mild) illness] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by fairycosmos) Grocery-store mood whiplash, now with more price-matching.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) I've finally found a moisturiser good enough to keep up with food-service work that *doesn't* cost $40 a bottle! [four comments, one of which is new]

[cw: poverty] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by librarychair) It's tax season! Time to take that official net-income figure and check it against your local income-tested programs! (Update: looks like we're eligible for subsidies on electricity but not bus fare. I'm still gathering up everyone's signatures, but I expect we'll be able to send in the electricity application tonight.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by wolffyluna) Shift-work tradeoffs.

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Links:

[JetPens; Wayback] (h/t Dynomight) I had not seen any of the apparent dozens of people recommending these. I'm not sure I'd find them useful, but--

Conversely, the ink can reappear when temperatures reach below -10°C/14°F.

--I'm charmed by the idea of invisible-ink signage that appears in winter.

[CTV News; Wayback] (by Alexandra Pinto and Jeff Pickel) The famed Ezra Avenue party (an illegal street party "thrown"† by University of Waterloo students each year on St. Patrick's Day, known for attracting crowds of up to thirty thousand people) was *not* collectively cancelled for the third year running. Police attempted to discourage it from returning by putting up barriers on Ezra: students simply partied on adjacent Marshall Street instead, which seems worse for everybody involved (in that normally, if you're contemplating living on Ezra you at least have a chance at making an informed decision). I feel very sorry for the Marshall residents.

†via decentralised common knowledge rather than any explicit organisation, as I understand it

[arguably cw: apocalypse] [Medium; Wayback] (by Thomas Smith) How to build an off-grid solar system on a three-digit budget (home-office scale). (for comparison: two-digit off-grid solar system (phone scale), five-digit off-grid solar system (house scale))

[arguably cw: apocalypse] [Bloomberg; Wayback (Firefox reader mode will show the full article)] (by Debby Wu; h/t Matt Levine) Salvaging semiconductors from washing machines.

[cw: apocalypse, food] [Unprepared; Wayback] (by Josh Centers) Food security in a time of fertilizer shortages.

(part 2)

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How did nobody ever tell me there was a long-distance text-based communication method temporally between the telegram and the fax machine?

Comments on my own posts:

[none suitable for this section]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Making your home's heating robust against electricity outages. (Despite what you might think, having a natural-gas furnace is actually pretty useless for this.) [three comments]

[cw: corporate bullshit] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by siderea) Tips on wresting control of your smartphone back from the corps.

[cw: poverty, (arguably) death] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by spacefroggity) Is the availability of cheap gemstones (thanks to lab-growing techniques) good? Depends on what jewellery is for.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by rustingbridges) Getting used to OpenStreetMaps.

[cw: poverty, homelessness, discourse (earlier in thread)] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by muchnerve; in response to togglessymposium) What would a world that outlawed long-term rental of living space look like?

[arguably cw: poverty] [Modern FImily; Wayback] (OP by Court and Adam) Self-knowledge is key to a fulfilling life.

(I mean also I kind of *do* feel deprived, but largely because I'm not saving *enough*, seeing as how it's not mathematically possible to save enough when you're only making like ten grand a year in the first place. But that's another matter, and not something I really wanted to get into there: I basically wrote that comment in character as probable-medium-term-future!me. And I *am* better off than in, like, 2017, so there's that.)

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Links:

[arguably cw: amnesia] [Medway Music; Wayback] (by Steve Cole) A guide on how to preserve your local music scene using the Internet Archive.



There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

( Read more... )

Comments on my own posts:

[none suitable for this section]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by tentacion1999: I suspect it was actually stolen from some non-Tumblrite, but I was unable to track down who) Shadows cast by the sun shining directly downward (not *necessarily* at the equator).

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by argumate) Matt Levine is in Hell and we are all just watching; recounting the story of my own brushes with cryptocurrency.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by transgenderer) Terra Ignota characters and the workings of Ada Palmer's mind.

[cw: food] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by feotakahari) Concerning and/or intriguing ideas for pizza toppings.

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Links:

[cw: bugs (with pictures)] [ScienceNews; Wayback] (by Betsy Mason) The sensorium of jumping spiders.

[Forbes; Wayback] (by Ethan Siegel) There are two subtly different kinds of shoelace knot, and one of them is much more prone to coming loose than the other. Turns out I have been using the wrong one: I'll have to try another practice hike now that I know, although I'm pretty sure *some* of my issues are in fact from the shoelaces getting old and stretched-out.



There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

( Read more... )

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: venting, (mild) kidnapping] The one about emergency alerts

[mild cw: injury, war] One man's modus ponens [no new comments from me unless you count the tags, but worth noting these comments from rustingbridges]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: food] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by YuckyTom; in response to jadagul) How to instantiate supposedly-nonexistent kitchen appliances.

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Links:

[arguably cw: unsanitary] [Region of Waterloo] A virtual tour of a landfill and recycling centre.

[fairly abstract cw: discourse, war] [Tumblr; Wayback] (by togglesbloggle) I'm not sure what I think about this post (about culture war and Twitter poisoning, with Go metaphors), but it's interesting.

Four laugh-rule entries:

[cw: what it says on the tin] [Anchor] (by Jess and Sam)

Jess: Mindless Matters is an 18+ podcast that features live inductions. Please, do not listen while you are driving. Do not listen while you are doing important things that [need necessary focus?], don't endanger yourself...you are *responsible* for ensuring your own safety.

Sam: It's called "not safe for work" for a reason!

[Rock Paper Shotgun; Wayback] (by Nate Crowley)

Enter Wartales, then, which maddens me with the urge to append "woo-hoo" to its name every time I type it.

[Incognito Money Scribe; Wayback] (by Jacob Schroeder)

In other words, the $1.50 hot dog is synonymous with the Costco brand. The money-losing frankfurter is a part of the company’s identity. It is a staple for customers to recharge after buying five pounds of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, 50 rolls of toilet paper and a coffin.

(Wait, do people actually eat at the Costco restaurant? ...I was gonna say "well, I guess of course people must or Costco would have shut it down", but, uh, it kind of sounds like they're running a food stand for the Aesthetic, so maybe they *wouldn't* have shut it down for mere lack of business.

Is the food any good?)

[strong cw: corporate bullshit] [Wall Street Journal (paywalled, but apparently my university alumni account still gets me Wall Street Journal access)] (by Jeff Horwitz; h/t Matt Levine)

Other flubbed enforcement actions were taken against the accounts of [...] Mr. Zuckerberg himself, whose live-streamed employee Q&A had been suppressed after an algorithm classified it as containing misinformation.

There is a blanket [cw: illness] on the rest of this post.

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