Tuesday: long walk

I walked with M.

Full day for both kids. T. came home and thought it was Monday and was going to go swimming. I was like, no, it is Tuesday. Then I said something about text me and he said I can’t and I was like, what do you mean the swipe does not work on your phone? Did rebooting it fix it? He didn’t know how and was like, the sitter is waiting. I was like, I don’t care, go tell the sitter we are going to get this figured out and she can come in if she wants to — you don’t have anywhere you have to be it is Tuesday. His second plan was Altitude in Marlborough.

I looked up how to reboot it when the screen is non-responsive, did it twice, took the screen protector and case off and everything, nothing working. So I made a Genius Bar (Same Day! In Marlborough! Where They Were Planning On Going Anyway!) appointment for a little before 5 — the only appointment available, so likely a recent cancel — and sent them on their way. It was the standard $279 screen replacement and touch sensor replacement charge, but apparently that fixed it and by 6:30 they had it. He did not get to go to Altitude after all, but they ran an errand for the sitter and got dinner so it all worked out without either R. or I having to make a trip to an Apple Store.

I got a long walk by myself. That was really nice. I talked to R. (Priestess), which I have not done except at Fancy Friday for a week or so.

I did a zoom listen on the UBS AMZN call. Nothing particularly amazing, and not tempted to ask any questions, but I did recognize the voice asking a question about facility-distance-to-percent-population Walmart vs. Amazon, and that generated an answer along the lines of Amazon might some day buy another retailer as they bought Whole Foods but in the mean time they are just building out distribution centers. This is not a particularly interesting question or answer, except embedded in the answer was an assessment of Macy’s and similar as overblown / overgrown (was not sure what word was actually said because zoom) distribution centers. _That_ was funny.

I like to use the evolving meaning of the word “diaper” as an example of how linguistic defaults change in response to the consuming public’s habits changing. Once Upon a Time (look I don’t want to hear about the etymology of diaper, I already did a deep dive on it years ago, and I’m leaving out the pre-20th century usage on purpose), a diaper was made of cloth and it was reused. A lot. Then, new-fangled diapers that were meant to be thrown away instead of washed were introduced, and they were referred to as “paper diapers” by the consuming public. There was the usual angst-ing about which was better for the baby, the environment, the family, and the usual pissing and moaning and back and forthing, but over time, people started first to refer not to “diapers” but to either “paper diapers” or “cloth diapers”, and very soon after that unstable point of transition, it became “diapers” meaning the product formerly referred to as “paper diapers” and if you meant the Old Skool washable ones, you had to specifically say “cloth diapers”. (Baby showers during the unstable transition were hilarious, because you could legit have a new mother receiving both a diaper genie AND a number of months prepaid with a diaper cleaning service. I did check, and both options do exist, so for all I know, this is still a Thing.)

“Store” is a pretty fun word, altho the time frame on it is longer, so it is less obvious. Rather than try to explain how the use of the word “Store” has evolved (and how that has happened _again_ here, based on the analyst description of retailers like Macy’s being overgrown / overblown DCs, and how it is a perfect example of the pendulum swing between store as a thing someone puts stuff into vs. a thing you get stuff out of, while stores obviously always have to be both or they are not useful, but we are talking about language reflecting the _consuming_ _public_ not the operators of the “store”), I’m going to focus on a tighter time frame. Once Upon a Time, All of the Analysis, All of the Time about AMZN was about how sooner or later they would Have to Open Bricks and Mortar Stores, and how bricks and mortar had an advantage because people could return things and so forth. This was all hilariously wrong, because (a) you don’t want returns, and if you have a lot of returns, things are bad and the whole point of Amazon was to try to make it so that people were a lot less needing to return without just inconveniencing them into not returning and …. Not returning as a result. Also (b) in person retail was famously bad at having what you wanted to buy AND at being able to order it for you AND at handling returns, Nordstrom’s example to the contrary being exceptional and thus NOT a representative counter-example, but rather an example of how their reputation being built on these most basic components of operating a “good store” means that everyone else’s rep in this area was shit.

_Now_, of course, in person retailers are all being assessed on their ability to operate like a DC.

I do love a moving default. It may be _slow_ to respond to feedback, but at least it eventually responds to feedback.