One thing the headlines aren’t mentioning is that the families actually even helped fund a portion of the Onion’s bid.
In order to make the bid work, a lawyer representing the families told CNN that the families “agreed to forgo a portion of their recovery to increase the overall value of the Onion’s bid, enabling its success”.
Man, where does everyone in the comments live that it still works like this? Where I’m at, they basically have attempted to replace like 90% of cashier jobs with these machines. There is often either no cashier at all, or one single cashier with like 5 people in their line, each with shopping carts filled to the brim.
The self checkout lines routinely reach lines of 10+ people with many old people who struggle using the machines forced to use them and gumming up the operations more. I avoid going to the grocery store like the plague during any kind of higher traffic time because I don’t want to wait in line for 15 mins.
Other issue with self checkout machines is that some places (Kroger, looking at you) weigh the bag every time you scan an item before you can scan the next, which makes things go soooooo slow.
It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we’re complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn’t this what we were laughing at 20 years ago?
It’s easy to forget because of how quickly the cultural zeitgeist shifted when it finally did, but the early 2000s was still very homophobic. Watching pretty much any comedy from that era reminds you of just how common the punchline to jokes was just, “teehee they’re gay.”
It was being auctioned for the victims but there was also the real risk that a supporter would win who would let him he continue on business as usual. So definitely money well spent.