Quote:(CNN)Instead of shutting down a teen's hot dog stand after a complaint, the city helped him start a business.
Thirteen-year-old Jaequan Faulkner had been cooking hot dogs outside his home in North Minneapolis to raise money for new clothes, his family said. It's something he started doing in 2016, but this summer, he got more attention. When someone noticed the stand wasn't city sanctioned, he was forced to shut down.

In an age where black kids are being reported for selling water bottles or mowing the lawn, Jaequan was able to flip the trend of the dreaded "Permit Patty." When the city received the complaint a few weeks ago, the Minneapolis Department of Health started making calls to help him.
"When I realized what it was, I said, 'No, we're not going to just go and shut him down' like we would an unlicensed vendor," Minneapolis Environmental Health Director Dan Huff said. "We can help him get the permit. Let's make this a positive thing and help him become a business owner."

(07-18-2018, 04:08 PM)CaptainHenreh Wrote: oh you mean a so-called public servant DIDN'T send men with guns to shut down someone freely engaging in contracts with other human beings without the state's permission?

Good for them, I guess.

(07-18-2018, 04:08 PM)CaptainHenreh Wrote: oh you mean a so-called public servant DIDN'T send men with guns to shut down someone freely engaging in contracts with other human beings without the state's permission?

Good for them, I guess.

Quote:Walter Carr of Birmingham, Alabama, found himself in quite the predicament last week.

His car broke down the night before he was supposed to start a job as a mover, and his first gig was nearly 20 miles from his home...He decided he would wake up at midnight and walk eight hours to work on Friday morning.
Luke Marklin, the CEO of the company Carr works for, Bellhops, caught wind of what his new employee did.


Marklin drove from his home in Tennessee to Alabama to meet with Carr, telling him that he wanted to buy him a cup of coffee and thank him. At the end of their meeting, Marklin surprised Carr with the keys to his barely driven 2014 Ford Escape.

(07-18-2018, 04:49 PM)Apoc Wrote:

(07-18-2018, 04:08 PM)CaptainHenreh Wrote: oh you mean a so-called public servant DIDN'T send men with guns to shut down someone freely engaging in contracts with other human beings without the state's permission?

Good for them, I guess.

"This improvement isn't good because the way it's been has been bad."

P Diddy, is that you??

https://variety.com/2018/film/news/diddy-black-panther-cruel-experiment-1202870736/

(07-19-2018, 09:32 AM)JPolen01 Wrote: CEO Gives Own Car To Young Employee Who Set Out On Foot For Job 20 Miles Away

Quote:Walter Carr of Birmingham, Alabama, found himself in quite the predicament last week.

His car broke down the night before he was supposed to start a job as a mover, and his first gig was nearly 20 miles from his home...He decided he would wake up at midnight and walk eight hours to work on Friday morning.
Luke Marklin, the CEO of the company Carr works for, Bellhops, caught wind of what his new employee did.


Marklin drove from his home in Tennessee to Alabama to meet with Carr, telling him that he wanted to buy him a cup of coffee and thank him. At the end of their meeting, Marklin surprised Carr with the keys to his barely driven 2014 Ford Escape.

Quote:Inspired by fellow AP biology teacher Vanessa Seghers, who has made snacks for her students in the past, Johnston bought the ingredients for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and handmade them for any student who wanted one before the taxing test. “Students are usually absolutely exhausted for the rest of the day after these exams,” Johnston said. “They have to go in with something in their oven.”

He went with the classic PB&J, because it was affordable and fast — and he knew could make them on the spot. Plus, who doesn’t like peanut butter and jelly? A self-proclaimed health nut, Johnston brought in several types of whole grain bread with natural JIF peanut butter and grape jelly, which he thought would help them last through the test. In total, Johnston estimates he made about 50 sandwiches for the kids who took the test.

(07-20-2018, 12:25 PM)WRXtranceformed Wrote: She visited him every week for 6 years until finally after 22 years he was freed when found wrongly imprisoned.  

Quote:Rodney Smith is a man on a mission. The Bermuda native is in the midst of a trip that will take him to every state in the nation, mowing lawns for the elderly, disabled, single moms and veterans free of charge. Again.

Quote:...Phil had applied for a job at the McDonald's next door. He told the officer he just needed to be clean-shaven to get hired...The man, whose name the officer said is Phil, didn’t have a mirror and was having trouble with the razor. So, Carlson stopped to help him. He tightened a screw on the razor, and shaved Phil's thick beard for him...“If he’s wanting to help himself, I need to be more than helpful and try to help him out the best I can," Carlson said.
...As long as his background check comes back clean and he provides an ID, the job will be held for him, a McDonald's spokeswoman told the Tallahassee Democrat Monday afternoon.
"I got to get my ID and Social Security card, which Thursday they do at the homeless shelter," Phil told radio show host Greg Tish in a video posted to Tish's Twitter account. He talked about the position being a janitorial one — "And I'm going to do it," he said with a nod.

Quote:If you get a gold-colored envelope in the mail from a place called “RIP Medical Debt,” don’t throw it away. It’s not junk mail, it’s good news: A group of Kansas City-area doctors has paid your medical bills.

The Midwest Direct Primary Care Alliance announced Monday that it donated about $11,000 to buy $1.47 million worth of medical debt on behalf of 784 patients in Kansas and Missouri.

Quote:The video, filmed by a local resident, shows the man shouting as he is trapped under the rear axle and bumper of the council waste van at around 7.30am today.

A group of people then gathered around and decide to lift the truck, with more than 15 people eventually needed to free him before an ambulance arrived.

(07-27-2018, 03:50 PM)ViPER1313 Wrote: From Jalopnik today (Raphael Orlove
7/27/18 12:15pm)

“I do admit I’ve told this story more than once, but I don’t think it would hurt to tell it one more time.

...

Why do I love my car?

Part of it probably has to do with how much I hated the one before it.

Being what it is, it certainly has enough merit of its own to warrant being loved.

But most of it has to do with the story....

The first car we bought as a married couple (to replace my expensive, gas-hungry Silverado) was a 1989 Mazda MX-6 Turbo (yeah, with the oscillating fans - priceless!). It lost its timing belt at 80mph after 144k miles. I learned to never assume a previous owner has done scheduled maintenance - even if that maintenance would have been LONG overdue when you bought the car.

I went without for a while, my wife and I taking turns riding our bikes and driving her car while I waited to buy a pickup, when our Camry died at 4:00 am one morning on the way to the airport for my first business trip. It was also a timing belt (though the Camry has clearance, so it was fixable - just a new timing belt). I called a cab, got to the airport, and by the time I hit my first layover in Denver, my wife’s dad had coincidentally called and told her about a cheap, low-mileage car he’d stumbled across. I don’t think she even knew what it was - it was just a car and it was available, and she said yes.

I drove that Nissan Stanza for 8 years, and I hated it every day. It needed new CV joints (thank you, salty winter Detroit!), but that’s the only thing I ever did besides oil changes. It was crazy reliable. So I didn’t have even a hint of an excuse to get rid of it. We were poor and in school, and it was impossible to justify selling it. My father-in-law would remark years later that he never expected me to keep that car half as long as I did.

I graduated with my MBA and got a killer job - working at GM in 2007. The work and inside scoop on everything was great, but the uncertainty of the company’s future was enough to keep us from buying a house - or blowing money on a new car (I could afford it finally, but it would have been stupid given the uncertainty). My uncle had an almost ten-year-old M3 I thought he’d sell me, and I had to do it BEFORE I started at GM or risk some major repercussions.

After talking it over with my wife I couldn’t justify it - even though I thought about it every day. That wisdom paid off, too - I was let go just before GM filed bankruptcy and never even made my 2-year anniversary there.

Six months later I was somewhat employed again, and the Nissan was seriously showing its age. Knowing what I know now, it probably needed new shocks, suspension bushings, ball joints, control arms, etc. - but I was more ignorant back then and it just felt like it was slowly dissolving. Almost dangerous to drive. But I really wasn’t all the way back on solid financial footing, so something new (to me) was not really in the cards.

Around the same time, I went to visit my parents in Idaho and happened to mention to my uncle how much I still liked the M3. He’d originally bought it for my cousin, but it was so bad in the snow he’d traded him for an X3 and was now only driving the M3 in the summer, keeping it in his hangar for the winter. Of course I made the “if you ever want to sell it...” comment, but unfortunately he immediately told me he’d already been trying to sell it.

I was crushed. There was no way I could talk my wife into it. I couldn’t even try. But my uncle was still talking. He’d had it up for sale for a while now, and had only had a few joyriders try to take it out. Well, there was this one guy who had offered to pay what he was asking, but he was a jerk, and he didn’t want that guy to have it.

So no takers. And then he dropped the bombshell (and I’ll preface this by noting some things I’ve already described about him - he bought my cousin a second BMW to replace the M3 without trading or selling the M3 first, and the hangar, which wasn’t just a big garage, but a real hangar used for what hangars are used for).

He said he knew I wasn’t working full-time again yet, but said he would give it to me for about half of book value. So I had something I could at least pitch to my wife. I WAS working - just not full time, and we did have savings, so paying for it wasn’t really the problem either. But if things didn’t work out with my current job, I’d need to agree to sell it before things got tight.

It sounded like a decent pitch to me, too. But I also knew it was somewhat risky - my wife is fairly risk averse, and was even more so at the time. And from a financial perspective, this was flat-out stupid. Well, maybe not stupid, but certainly not conservative. At best an unsecured investment, at worst, a complete loss.

I knew what she’d say before I even asked. I knew the arguments she’d use, and I didn’t blame her - I knew it too, but I had to ask. She should have been more put out about it (you know, the never ending obsession). But she was great (well, is great). She knew the Nissan was falling apart, and was sympathetic, but it just wasn’t in the cards right then.

So I called my uncle and told him I couldn’t under my current circumstances. He said he might just sit on it for a while and try again in the spring, which was at least some consolation.

Three weeks later I walked out of a restaurant for my birthday dinner, and our Camry had been stolen. I’d parked in the front row, and there was no question- it was gone.

I looked again at the spot where our car had been, and realized I’d missed something very important.

There couldn’t be more than a couple black M3 sedans within 500 miles, and I’m not a complete moron - it WAS my birthday. But still, I couldn’t start to think this was a birthday surprise - too painful if it was some kind of cruel coincidence. So I stood there in a state of confusion addled disbelief.

It must have been funny to watch me stand there, looking around the parking lot and then back at the M3. Around the parking lot, and then back at the M3.

Something made me finally look back at everyone else.

Cameras out. Smiling. Laughing, even. Not a cruel coincidence.

Birthday surprise. Best birthday surprise. Best birthday ever.

Best wife ever.

I mean, it’s one thing to buy a car. But it was a huge gamble, a giant act of faith that I’d find something, that work things would work out, that WE would work out.

Especially after the strain of losing my job and some of the challenges we went through because of it, THIS was - impossibly - more than just the car I’d been dreaming about for years.

It was a heartfelt token of commitment at a time when we didn’t have much left.

How long am I going to keep this car?

Barring a tragedy of some kind, as long as I keep my wife around.

Forever?

Sounds good to me.”

Quote:The visitor, who was identified only by his surname, Liu, said he was making his first visit to the city and had been confused by the layout of the payment app.
“These systems like WeChat Pay and Alipay are all new to me,” he said.
“I don’t really know how to use them. In the US when I pay, there’s usually a space for decimal points, so I thought I had to do the same here and ended up accidentally paying so much more.”
As a reward, Liu told Zhang to give him back just 6,300 yuan, but the ethical driver was having none it, and insisted he return the full amount, less the real fare, the report said.

Liu instead thanked Zhang with a glowing testimonial on WeChat, China’s most popular messaging service.
“I can’t believe it,” he wrote in Chinese. “For some people, money is their only goal, and 6,500 yuan is a lot of money. I felt so excited yesterday because you returned it. I really appreciate it.”