I was at a Safeway last month, and I asked the overseer guy what the lamps meant on top of the self-check machines, and he said he honestly didn’t know.
where I live, they light up when the self check-out needs a member of staff to do an age verification or spot check. Or I suppose when there's an error, but that's not as common.
Interestingly, a recent news story on several buildings in Northwest Texas that incorporated swastikas in their design, interviewed some experts who explained that it was specifically the "tilted cross" design that was used in Nazi symbolism, and the non-tilted versions are more likely to be benign, Native American or Asian usages.
And of course this app gets it wrong, and avoids the benign uses, because it is quite impossible to render a "tilted swastika" image on a QR code! Absurd!
As a contractor, I was paid hourly all the time. At some points I needed to fill out an actual time sheet each week, that I would submit to my own company, and they used these time sheets to bill the clients.
So yes, "big tech companies" often paid hourly, even if that pay was indirect, to contractors and job shoppers and people who were not direct hires.
For centuries, Roman Catholics belonged to territorial parishes. That is, wherever they lived determined which parish they attended, and they also had obligations to support the material needs of this home parish, and their home pastor had a significant influence on whether these folks could marry or pursue a vocation to the priesthood or religious life. Of course, any family with children would send them to the parochial school where they belonged (there were often regulations that prevented the kids from going anywhere else.)
However, the popularity of cars, highways, and general mobility all over the place, has caused many bishops, particularly in the United States, to sort of supersede these territorial rules. Now in my diocese, a Catholic can go attend any parish they want to, and register in that parish, and for all legal purposes they are an official member of that parish, as if they lived within the territory. There have always been parishes like this, called "personal parishes" but they were often defined by certain ethnolinguistic qualities, like everyone from Poland, or Vietnam or something.
So now this leads to some crazy situations. For example, my friend was received into the Church from Lutheranism, and when this happened, he lived in a particular place. But he's moved away--far, far away--twice, and yet he still "commutes" to that parish where he became attached and still loves, and still has commitments and responsibilities there, which he upholds.
There are also people who, for liturgical or doctrinal reasons, will drive for hours on Sundays just to reach a church that agrees with their personal beliefs and preferences.
I am not sure this is sustainable or realistic. If eventually you have Catholics driving all over creation, literally, to get to their preferred parish, then some parishes are going to languish, if they cannot attract or retain people who are willing to volunteer there, support their material needs, and send their kids to the parochial school. That means schools are going to close. There are also independent schools popping up, that are not parochial, but approved, and Catholics send their kids there. Failing that, they get homeschooled.
I think this extreme mobility thing is absurd. I can't keep up, obviously, having no vehicle. It was actually easier for me to commute to a parish I didn't "territorially" belong to because of the way public transit works, but eventually I decided to stop commuting, and be honest, and live up to responsibilities of the parish where I belong, territorially, even if that is now a de jure thing of the past.
It is only logical that prospective mates use LinkedIn as an informal "background check" because, 9 times out of 10, if you're in front of a real person who is a professional, they'll be on LinkedIn, and moreover, motivated to tell the truth about their career history and current activities. I myself have often used LinkedIn to find out information about people, especially those I've interacted with in their professional capacities.
That being said, would I, as a single guy, reach out to a woman on LinkedIn and try to date her? No way... and I've already seen complaints about this. Professional women probably get messages like this all the time, and it creeps them out, and they want it to stop. Nobody brings out their social lives to LI and nobody wants to mingle their dating/romance/sex lives and any drama into their professional life here. LI is a thriving networking resource, and anyone who values their career is going to keep it that way. And yeah, I've had "female" profiles reach out to me with vague motives, and I always block them, because they're 100% catfish, or scams, or foreigners of some kind.
So no, I don't envision LinkedIn becoming a viable "dating app", or replacing any social media for hooking up or meeting mates. If two professionals choose to use it that way, it's going to be quite discreet, and probably entirely via private messaging that they carry on at all. And yes, this blurring of the professional life with pleasure and after-hours is playing with fire.
Yet LinkedIn endures as a possibly reliable way to do your "background checks" on someone you hardly know. It's not a miraculous oracle, or the final word, but it's a good tool to carry in your toolbox.
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