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[he/they] Queer, trans, disabled, disgruntled. Former librarian, future dust.
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I want to talk about one of the greatest ironies sitting right in the middle of the grocery aisle.
If I asked you who the largest supermarket operator in the United States is, you’d probably know the answer. By far, it’s Walmart.
But if I asked you which supermarket chain consistently scores the lowest in customer satisfaction across the U.S., you might be surprised to learn that it is also Walmart.
Here is the real paradox: According to an industry study widely reported in the grocery press, Walmart is also ranked as the single most trusted supermarket in the United States.
How on earth do you square that? Walmart is the largest seller of groceries, has the lowest customer satisfaction scores, and yet enjoys the highest trust scores.
The answer is simple: Price.
What motivates people right now? It’s keeping money in their pockets. We’ve been through a brutal cycle of inflation that, unfortunately, has heated back up and feels much uglier than it did a year or two ago. As everyday people struggle just to pay their bills, the price of groceries has come front and center.
Because of this pressure, market share is moving fast.
People are abandoning traditional grocers and flocking to stores that promise relief. Walmart is the obvious winner here, but they aren’t the only ones taking a massive bite out of the market. Costco Wholesale is right on the edge of becoming the nation’s second-largest supermarket chain. At the same time, hard-discounters like Aldi and Lidl are rapidly vacuuming up market share. It is all about price right now.
So where does that leave the historical, traditional supermarket chains?
Take a company like Kroger, which operates across the country under roughly two dozen different regional banners. Kroger has found itself at an enormous competitive disadvantage because it historically hasn’t been able to compete on price against these low-cost giants.
But they aren’t sitting still anymore. Kroger is officially bringing the battle back to the competition.
To stop losing customers, Kroger is slashing prices on thousands of items. And they are placing special emphasis exactly where Walmart, Aldi, Lidl, and Costco focus: private-label goods.
This is where the grocery fight is being won or lost right now. Americans are buying store brands in much larger numbers than they ever used to, bringing our shopping habits closer to the rest of the world.
When a massive player like Kroger decides to fight it out on price, it is incredibly good news for you and me. We have been so beaten up by food inflation. Having traditional supermarkets go toe-to-toe with alternative players like Costco, BJ’s Wholesale, and Walmart’s Sam’s Club means prices have to come down.
If you want to know how to absolutely throw your money away today, it’s simple: buy name brands.
Buying name brands in the supermarket is usually an emotional decision, not a financial one. We tell ourselves, “Well, my mom always bought this brand,” or “I only trust this specific detergent.”
Let me let you in on a secret: In my own home, we don’t have brand names almost at all. If you look inside my grocery buggy, you are going to see store brands across the board.
I will admit to one exception. Those of you who watch our show on YouTube know I love my soft drinks. I have never found a store-brand soda that I am actually happy with, so I willingly overpay for my favorite brand. But other than that single vice? It’s house brands all the way.
The real battleground for lowering your cost of living is in the grocery store aisle. I am glad to see Kroger jump into the ring, because when supermarkets fight for our business, our wallets win.
The post Grocery Prices Are Forcing a Major Change appeared first on Clark Howard.
I know absolutely nothing about the Minions; it was only recently that I learned to associate the word with those images of cylindrical yellow creatures I occasionally saw around the internet. However, for obvious reasons I was absorbed by Eva Jaber’s Guardian story about their language and its influence on the slang of Youth Today:
I was four years old when Despicable Me was released in cinemas and the banana-coloured, overall-clad Minions took the world by storm. By the time I was seven, my siblings and I were using The Official Minion Manual to teach ourselves Minionese.
Minionese is, of course, the made-up language spoken by Kevin, Stuart, Bob and company, which consists of a combination of melodic gibberish and variations on genuine vocabulary from a diverse array of world languages. When the Minions shout “kanpai” (“cheers” in Japanese) or “para tú!” (a variation on the Spanish “para ti”), it might remind you of how gen Alpha slang, which primarily consists of nonsensical words such as “cap” and “mogging”, also draws on world languages. Consider the Bulgarian scat origins of “skibidi”, for example.
In anticipation of the forthcoming Minions & Monsters movie, which for the very first time includes a 15-minute sequence spoken entirely in Minionese, join me in breaking down the parallels between Minionese and gen Alpha slang. Next time you hear a minion shout “bello” on the big screen, appreciate how what Illumination originally intended as an endearing comedic tool has grown to embody a trend of embedding sociolinguistic diversity in the youth vernacular.
Let’s start with some Minionese lines from cherished Minions moments, many of which have roots in Spanish, English, Italian, Tagalog, Russian, French and Indonesian. One of the most beloved moments in the Minions canon is Bob’s brief stint as king of England, which concludes with the queen giving Bob a tiny crown for his teddy bear, Tim. Bob repeatedly expresses gratitude by yelling “terima kasih”, which is “thank you” in Indonesian. Linguists classify these bits of real world languages in the midst of Minionese as “loanwords”.
My personal favourite moment from Despicable Me 2 is when Dave the Minion, looking dapper, celebrates Gru and Lucy’s wedding by singing a Minionese cover of All-4-One’s I Swear, which he begins by sighing “ah, lapo da”. This moment is a sneakier example of Spanish influence in Minionese, as the phrase is phonetically identical to “ah, la boda”, which means “the wedding” in Spanish. From verbatim loanwords to clever easter eggs, Minionese is surprisingly representative of world languages and ties a seemingly random consortium of vocabulary and gibberish together quite seamlessly.
Perhaps the most obvious bridge between Minionese and gen Alpha vernacular is the embrace of Italian as a language full of words that have proved uniquely fun to roll off the tongue. Take, for example, the Minions cover of YMCA that concludes Despicable Me 2 (which, I will shamelessly admit, I regularly play in my car on the way to work). This cover is full of onomatopoeic lyrics, with the occasional “bokka linguini banaki loto” and “li le carbonara” sprinkled in. The Italian dishes “linguini” and “carbonara” hidden in here are an odd addition, but they undeniably fit, and they make the song more fun to sing along to. […]
Now moving fully over to gen Alpha slang, you would be surprised by how much unfamiliar jargon tweens shout these days is, like Minionese, derived from a creative and cross-cultural manipulation of language. One popular gen Alpha term is “sussy baka”, a noun used to call someone out for acting comically strange or suspicious. At first glance, the term seems nonsensical – but it is in fact a combination of the English “suspicious” and Japanese “baka”, meaning fool. Gen Alpha slang has their own loanwords, too, like “wallahi”, which has become their version of gen Z’s “on God”. The word “wallahi” – which translates from Arabic as “I swear by God” – having made its way into the gen Alpha vernacular is yet another way the linguistic patterns of gen Alpha slang resemble those of Minionese.
Great stuff; thanks, Nick!
Reading the S-1 is like opening a box of unearthly eldritch abominations, all of which are very stupid and trying to pick your pocket.SpaceX IPO: Nice Try Though (Patrick Boyle, YouTube, 31m41s):
The document is also filled with phrases that I'm fairly confident have never appeared in an SEC filing before. Under the business strategy section, right alongside standard disclosures about lease agreements and accounting standards, management explains that their primary objective is to extend the light of consciousness to the stars. A phrase that appears 10 separate times in the filing, which suggests that it wasn't a typo.
Investors are also warned that we do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs, which is a fair point, I suppose. It's the kind of sentence that gets you excited about what the risk disclosure section will look like.
During the first heat wave of 2025, 55-year-old Shauna Thomas was found dead in her suburban St. Louis apartment after spending at least three days without air conditioning or water. Police said she had “several medical issues” that may have contributed.
Clinicians, community leaders, and public health workers often advise people with chronic diseases such as diabetes to use air conditioning or go to an air-conditioned building. But that advice presumes that cooling is actually affordable and available.
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