Doesn't Black Friday just ruin the togetherness-ness of thanksgiving? Kinda like what I imagine would happen if stores opened on Christmas day.

It hasn't been picked up here, so it's just a day of ridiculous online sales for me. I didn't actually buy anything though, although a week of so ago I imported a new bike helmet from the USA. Industry, yeah! Take that, China.

I read an article today about how in many places in the States, new strip malls have the size of their parking lots determined by estimates of how many people are likely to turn up on Black Friday, supposedly the biggest shopping day of the year. Except those estimates are really poor, and the article I was reading was about this thing on Twitter. People had tweeted pictures of the parking malls on Black Friday showing that they were still only like half full, so all this "pro-business" minimum parking policy is doing is forcing strip malls to buy more land than is optimal for them or for society, cover it in tarmac and force people to drive to the store. Kinda weird; the idea that it should never be hard to find a parking space. But interesting. #transportnerd