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]

Six figures alone for the US rights. For a debut. Why? Why are the big houses intent on a small number of huge deals rather than giving 10 separate writers a fucking chance?

[The Bookseller @thebookseller]

Doubleday has won a seven-publisher auction for Is Anyone Not Ready, the debut novel by Nina Potischman. The novel will be published in hardback in summer 2028 in the UK 👇 https://t.co/EbYmXbhEMk

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

@andrewcareaga I don’t think it bothers me. Much of the time, after seeing the insanity of the coasts I think, “Great, keep flying.”

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

@goldengoatguild @coldhardsats Worked for several friends of mine. I think it’s more successful when your level of allergy is lower, but still, worth a shot.

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

@KupcakeProse Hell yeah!

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

I haven’t see a Jensen “Wang” joke yet. I mean, it seems so obvious. Is it because Wang is also a Chinese name so the penis pun would get lost in the mix?

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

@tylercdempsey Someone about to roll a J with no papers is going to be like, “Fuck yeah.”

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

@jrostopovich Absolutely. And they get angry when you try to, even gently, burst their bubble. It creates so much unnecessary and even dangerous hostility in people. They think half the people walking their city are their enemy.

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

The internet has made it too easy to stovepipe oneself among people who think similarly. False narratives metastasize. The story of the world one thinks is the world itself becomes absurd. We need to be among people who will tell us the thing we just said is dumb.

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

@bradkelly Such a great film.

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

@JoshPhillipsPhD This guy rocks more juice than Jamba.

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

@judysquirrels Tim Roth was insanely good in Rob Roy.

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

@WhatHoARat @plasticbagger @diremerlin Yeah. Disgusting. I mean, no maple syrup? What gives?

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

@tylercdempsey Love the irony of posing a book called, “Denali Alaska” in front of southwestern backdrops.

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

@AnaKrivolapova The Play it as it Lays cover isn’t terrible. You’re right, it doesn’t capture the era or tone very well. But they could have done worse.

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

@J0hnADouglas That guy is so frail!

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

@flummery5 @jbillinson Power move would be to show up in leather pants, too.

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

@juscarts He redlined Weezer. Also Leon Bridges. And of the redlined, I know at least 5 others. (American Football is awesome and has been around for over 25 years).

[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.