I was gassing up my little car the other day -- a painful operation, especially here in deep blue New York, when I noticed a couple of things at the pump.
I'm not 100% sure that the removed sticker on the price line was one of those "I Did That" Joe Biden stickers that have been irritating the president, but I'm almost 100% sure that the one to the left of the window is.
This isn't the first time I've seen them in New York, either. Now, I will note that geographically, most of New York State is pretty red, including a fair bit of Orange County, where I live. Across the river is Westchester, where rich people who couldn't care less if gas hit $10 a gallon live, but the OC is a little closer to the bone. That's why they had to gerrymander our Congressional district a while back to link us up with part of Westchester; we kept sending the wrong people to Washington.
People have said if you cut off everything north and west of Albany you'd have a really conservative state, so much so that Buffalo would be a blue outlier. I am inclined to think it could be true, especially as of this year.
Here's another sticker I saw at the pump, one that was also new but courtesy of the management:
Hmm.
At first I thought this warning was for people trying to get gas out of the pump without paying, although I am not sure how this would be done. I think you have to pay in advance if you're using cash at this station. And if you don't, how would they know you're unauthorized before you try to skip out?
A little digging tells me that this may be a notice to warn off people who plant credit card skimmers. Because it's not hard enough to pay for a tank of gas that would have doubled the value of my first car; now I have to give my credit card up to thieves. So I'm glad the station is being proactive -- but are they, really? This isn't much of a warning. "You try anything and... we'll make it not work" isn't much of a disincentive to thievery. "You plant a skimmer on this machine and we deliver 5,000 volts through you" would be.
Alas! That much juice would probably be dangerous around all that gasoline. It's not a perfect world, is it? And so many attempts to push it that way result in more problems.
3 comments:
That much juice would probably be dangerous around all that gasoline.
True, but deserved.
Could we also extend it to other things (like id.me logons for federal sites)?
Or any "two factor" authentication that requires me to be near my phone or cellpohe (which I pretty much use only as a radio).
How about we just get a chip on our driver's license so we can use it like a common access card (with pin) for web sites? Get rid of all the stupid login/password/phone call silliness.
Those dinosaurs gave their all being destroyed by the asteroid that eventually turned them into petroleum products. I feel obligated to do the green thing and dispose of the vast reservoirs of their liquified remains. What could be greener than getting all those nasty hydrocarbons out of the ground where they may poison aquifers and our precious drinking water? Those of us who burn auto gas should be subsidized for doing our part to save the Earth!
California may have more conservatives than any other state but we are still outnumbered. Thank you red states for sending us all your misfits ;-)
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