John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press

Writer: "A Ballroom for Ghost Dancing" & "Where When It Rains."
Editor: Picket Fire Press.

BJJ Purple Belt. Sometimes Journo. Father.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

Debt succeeds in delivering a thought-provoking meditation on modern pressures. It taps into a very real anxiety about the cost of “success” and the quiet ways people justify their choices when faced with overwhelming expectations

https://t.co/AGzMGNpd0c

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@ScottLaudati Thanks man! Did you finish them both?

[Scott Laudati @ScottLaudati]

Two goodass books by @SmashedEars

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@HughBlanton5 Yeah, I don’t have a cell phone so I never carry a device into stores. Never use any online ordering or anything. Fortunately, I also have a great local co-op grocery store.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

$100 to the person who invents the app that hacks this shit so people can change the prices from their phones.

[Jaxon @jaxoncoder]

Walmart and Kroger are quietly rolling out an internal store technology across America that could either modernize retail or bankrupt the middle-class family budget.

Starting across thousands of locations heading into 2027, traditional paper price tags are being ripped off grocery shelves and replaced with cloud-connected digital screens. Raise the price of bottled water by 20 percent the second the afternoon temperature hits 90 degrees. Surge the cost of ground beef, milk, and sandwich bread between 5 PM and 6 PM when exhausted commuters are rushing home from work. Drop prices at 10 AM on a Tuesday, then hike them right back up the minute the after-school crowd walks through the sliding doors.

Every price change happens wirelessly in seconds from a central corporate dashboard. No store employee has to touch a single shelf.

Walmart has already signed a massive deployment deal with VusionGroup to wire 2,300 American supercenters with EdgeSense digital shelf rails by 2027. Kroger is expanding its own Microsoft-backed system called EDGE across hundreds of supermarkets. Over 60 million digital price tags are already blinking on US grocery aisles right now.

This is not supply chain inflation. This is Uber-style surge pricing built directly into the shelves where Americans buy baby formula, eggs, and medicine.

Last week I sat down for coffee with a former retail pricing director who spent 14 years building supermarket margin algorithms before leaving the industry. What he shared over the table completely changed how I look at a grocery aisle.

"Retailers just turned static shelves into live stock tickers. The question is not whether grocery chains will use instant price changes, because they already spent billions installing the hardware. The question is how much extra money a family of four will lose every week simply because both parents work until 5 PM and cannot shop during off-peak hours."

Here is how the digital grocery pricing system actually works, how it tracks you in the aisle, and the exact phone settings and checkout playbook you need to beat it.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@AmericanGwyn @CliftonDuncan A liberal arts education should prepare one to be a responsible member of a liberal society. Someone capable of voting or sitting on a jury intelligently. Someone capable of ethical business choices. And yes, this all requires studying the arts.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@LeProjetSerret I lived in Tempe and Scottsdale from like, ‘05 through ’08. Met my wife there, and her family is scattered all over the valley (and superior/globe) so we go back regularly. Where do you work?

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@robbskidmore Yeah, this writer thing is getting stale.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

Fine! I’ll be the next James Bond. Now quit bothering me about it.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@LeProjetSerret Dude, how did I not know this? I stay in Mesa every year for a month, usually February. Let’s grab a coffee next time I’m in town.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@WickedFreckledT Mine too.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@andrewcareaga My other grandfather was in the Navy in the Pacific. But this one, who served in the army, really suffered for it. Had to be done, but heavy is the toll.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

My father’s father, whose name I share, received a Bronze Star for Bravery when he came home from WW2. He never told anyone what he did to earn it. It was something that haunted him the rest of his life. He served in campaigns in N. Africa and Italy.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@ohwizenedtortle Why would the lions eat the sleeping lion? I don’t think lions are cannibalistic. Also, it’s only enough poison to make one lion sleep? Then even if the others ate the sleeping lion, they couldn’t all possibly get enough of the poison themselves to sleep. What’s even being asked?

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@HamiltonCain @AmericanGwyn Thanks.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

Just had a surgical drain pulled out of my ass. Felt like I’d been walking around with an arrow stuck in my ham for a week. The removal felt just like you’d imagine having an arrow yanked from your meat would feel.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@weiss_hadas You got the Hanks?

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@AmericanGwyn Me too. Having the drain out is great. Now the wound is just sore as hell. I’m on an exercise restriction that might last as long as 3 months. I’m a BJJ instructor, weight lifter, and all around pretty active guy so it’s humbling to say the least.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@Stevelfisher

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@amandafortini How did he get away with this?

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@ScottLaudati You can be Q.

[John F. Duffy - Picket Fire Press @SmashedEars]

@lalavin666 People will lose on purpose.