And the shut-downs were largely due to Covid's effect on workers and sales = people shopped online. The wife and I still do, easier than driving around. The UPS and FedEx drivers have our house memorized. The fast food and other restaurants also went to less human to human contact by going to electronic with kiosks and phone ahead, pickup at the door.
The kiosks couldn't catch Covid and when you drove up to pick up your app or phone order for a while the person who handed it out the window or came to your car in the pickup section of the parking lot looked like a CDC hazardous lab worker.

My hometown in Kentucky had US 60 going right through town and a Great Aunt and Uncle owned a restaurant right on US 60. They used to get a lot of out of state travelers and when hunting season started those people were always curious or shocked by the numbers of people going by with guns, esp kids of elementary school age with a rifle or shotgun tied to their bike handle bars headed out of town to hunt. Uncle Earl had a standard answer which went something like; "Oh, that is the Smith boy, don't worry, his family taught him to shoot safely. If he ever violates the safety rules he will be hunting with a slingshot." They retired just before girls started to get into traditional male things. Today if I went home for a visit I will bet anything that half those kids on bikes with guns or in the back of someone's pickup will be girls.

I worked part time, weekends and semester breaks 10 years for a friend who owned a Police Gear and Gun Shop. (he owned three, I only worked at the big one) When we started delivering Glocks to PDs going to autos I got qualified as a Glock Armorer and did transition training of officers from several PDs.

I taught my wife, the oldest son and daughter to shoot (younger son is special needs, mentally 5 yo-when my wife asked if I was going to teach him to shoot NO!.) All I taught Jon is, don't touch a gun, tell me, Mom, his older brother or his sister or some other adult there is a gun...

The wife did very well but isn't into guns. Our oldest son, well to him they are a tool. He did 6 yrs active army including Iraq as a Combat Engineer during the war and now approaching 20 years total with Army Reserve time, he volunteers for active duty when a chance to go see somewhere he has never been comes along. Next month he goes on 1 year active, in Germany??? I get the impression Germany will just be home base. He speaks some Turkish and some Arabic. His last two years active he retrained for Civil Affairs, took a lot of medic training and is not only airborne qualified, he is a jump master for his reserve company. Civil Affairs are part of Special Forces, they are the nice SF, they try to make friends, build schools etc. before they start shooting.

And Jasmine, our baby, the bigger the hole and the bigger the boom, the more she liked it. She is 5'3" and 124lbs, but she likes BIG BOOMS. Once she went shooting with her current boyfriend at the time and some others, I gave her a bolt action .223 with scope. She liked it, but the guys loved it and let her shoot up the .308 while they played with the .223. She is now a Pediatrician in a large LA County Hospital in an iffy area. I told her if we have riots etc. like they keep predicting she can have anything in my gun safe. She grinned and said "Even the .44 mag or one of the .45 autos?" I said yes and she grinned bigger.

On my RP today I found my focus point in the lower right corner = where my nose or cheek would touch the screen. i now have touch turned off. I didn't use it after playing with it to see how it worked on the first day anyway.

You forgot the 2nd and maybe more columns for the BANGs of the wife and older kids.
I was roaming the country side with a BB gun at 6 and a real gun at 9.
Once when a group of us were shooting at a moving target from 10-12 feet (milk bottle cap on a string blowing in the wind) without much luck and my Mother came out, took my Red Rider BB gun and proceeded to hit it three shots in a row. Handed it back and said I have milk and cookies when you boys are ready for a snack then went back in the house. Talk about a bunch of young male egos that looked like balloons with holes in them!!!
She did the same kind of things when we were playing baseball. She could bat and catch really well. Furthermore, she also had intimidation down to an art. She hit a grounder and the shortstop threw it to me at second base just as she was rounding 1st; "If you tag me out, No TV this weekend!" I tagged her out, no good shows on TV that weekend.

Those aren't lights, they are view ports and the interior is lite. Why so many view ports? Those are tourist cruise ships loaded with tourists (a lot take photos) come to see the strange creatures of the planet size, natural habitat zoo.

I might be interested in the future, depends on the lens. The 10-18 is tempting because if I go out with my R7 somewhere, I "might" want to do landscape etc. I would want the widest lens I could get just because of the nature of APS-c. I have an R7 APS-c and RP FF body and a selection of 8 lenses, so far all are FF so I can use them on both bodies. I also have the adapter so I can use all my EF lenses on the RF bodies. But I do have an RF 14 so the 10-18 is probably a 6/7 on a 1>10 "want" list for now.

For years now I have sent images from LrC (light room classic) to PS via a drop down menu. Up top 4th from the left is "Picture", on the new drop-down,7th from top is "Edit in". You get another drop down with a list of all editing apps or add-ons but the first one on the top is "Edit in Photo Shop 2024" (on my machine currently) and all the other editing apps you have are listed below that. Click on the one you want and it opens. When done, I click Save and it goes back to LrC.
Also I watermark (signature) in LrC. Top left click File, in the drop down #11 is "Export", in Export you can select where the image is going, give it a custom name (Dandelion in this case), then scroll down and 2nd from the bottom your find "Watermarking" where you can design a watermark or click on a list of saved water marks. When you create a new watermark you can choose size, font, color, transparency, position and others. The attached sample I used extra large, center, white.

This watermark/signature does not become part of the LrC file image avoiding the need to have a virtual copy in order to also have the unmarked image because in the future you might want a different watermark, different crop etc.

(Download)

Yes, I now have a Canon RP and R7, great images etc. but two problems for me, one major and one minor.

When looking in the viewfinder with my glasses on light gets in and washes out what I see (brighter the sun the worse the problem) making composition etc. difficult.

The minor one, I often use my camera and telephoto as a telescope to search for birds etc. and with mirrorless I have to turn the camera on and drain the battery faster.

That said, I really like both cameras. I need to talk to my optometrist about getting some soft contacts in my new Rx* and put an eye cup on the bodies, that will solve the wash-out problem. As to the battery drain, well I like cargo pants and shorts and those vests with about a dozen pockets so I need to just remember to drop a few extra batteries in one of those pockets.

*I have a couple pairs of the 30 day types from about 3 Rx ago, which are better than nothing but I really shouldn't drive (or ride my street legal mobility scooter) with that old Rx. If I got in a crash and it came out I wasn't wearing up to date lenses I could be in trouble.

You don't need 5 McDonalds', but if they are all surviving then all the people in the area must need them. We have 3 within a 2 mile drive and all have cars in line all the time.

I just looked it up to refresh my memory. In Athens citizens were males, born in Athens, who completed their military training successfully so they could be called up in case of war.
Over a few centuries this averaged from 10% to 20% of the total population. Athens also had slaves at the other end of the social scale. But treated them much better than most slaves in history. Even educating some and making them managers etc. in family businesses. The Spartans used to complain that they couldn't tell the difference between slaves and lower class citizens in Athens.

Yeah I saw that cut on the news.
Even though I am a conservative I feel sorry for Biden. He is at the stage of aging where sometimes he is OK and sometimes he isn't. I believe it is better to be all OK or all not OK. Then people know how to interact with you.

When I was a little kid there was a guy down the street from my Great Grandfather's place who was like that, and gradually got worse, he was only in his mid 30's when I got old enough to remember him and it was caused by a head wound in WW2. Most days he just sit in a rocking chair on the front porch in bib overalls and as we rode our bikes by on good days he would talk to us. On bad ones, I don't think he even noticed us ride by. The younger members of his family and their friends did their homework on the porch to keep him company and watch him. On his really good days he was almost a tutor to them.

My Great Grandfather on the other hand was OK until less than 2 years before he passed at almost 92. Kept a 2 acre garden with hand tools, raised a variety of strawberries that had people who made homemade jams and jelly driving from 50 miles away to buy. His eyes were getting bad so he switched from newspapers to TV & radio in his late 80s. And between 16 when he broke a bone and 65 when he had a checkup for Soc Security then to 89 when he developed a heart condition he never saw a doctor in his life.

It hurts poor people and singles most. Fast food is over all less expensive and of course already cooked than buying fresh, having all the cooking implements and cooking yourself. Unless you eat very simple, basic foods only.

It is also hurting the fast food and other restaurants that are exempt since their workers, esp the best ones, are bailing out for places the $20 minimum applies to.

In a couple of local places I have already noticed the lower quality service.

Well, 4 years ago I was 74 and the average male life span in the US is 76, I am now 78 and still going so I would say I am better off than at least 50% of men born in 1945. I am still kicking.

Actually, we don't have a Democracy and never have. In a (True)Democracy, every voter votes on everything. We have a Republic*/Representative Democracy in which all the voters elect representatives to a legislature to vote on things in their name.

And yes, I taught Government and the Constitution in addition to US & World History and Geography at grade levels from 7 to 12 in my 34 years teaching in Los Angeles Unified School District.

*Just after the Constitutional Convention at the start of the Ratification process "-Benjamin Franklin's response to Elizabeth Willing Powel's question: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" = “A republic, if you can keep it.”

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-september17.htm#:~:text=%2D%2DBenjamin%20Franklin's%20response%20to,a%20republic%20or%20a%20monarchy%3F%22