Lefsetz on Costco

Jul 26, 2026 · 4:00 PM UTC ·8 min read · 0 reactions · 0 comments · 15 views

TL;DR · WeSearch summary

But it’s even worse, the machines are so theft-avoidant that you’ve got to follow a specific routine, not only scanning the item, but placing it on a platform to register its weight, grocery shopping is frustrating enough already. And every time I’m forced into using self-checkout there’s a snafu, and I have to wait for a clerk to come along to reset the machine and… It’s my own personal protest. And as a matter of fact, many retail stores are eliminating self-checkout because of the shrinkage problem.

Key facts

▪But it’s even worse, the machines are so theft-avoidant that you’ve got to follow a specific routine, not only scanning the item, but placing it on a platform to register its weight, grocery shopping is frustrating enough already.
▪And every time I’m forced into using self-checkout there’s a snafu, and I have to wait for a clerk to come along to reset the machine and… It’s my own personal protest.
▪And as a matter of fact, many retail stores are eliminating self-checkout because of the shrinkage problem.

About this source

The Big Picture (Ritholtz) files mainly under finance. We currently carry 15 of its stories.

All The Big Picture (Ritholtz) coverage →

Original article

The Big Picture

Read full at The Big Picture →

Story provenance

Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record

inspect →

Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.

Record

Original publisher	The Big Picture
Canonical URL	https://ritholtz.com/2026/07/more-costco/
Publication time	Sun, 26 Jul 2026 16:00:46 +0000
Retrieval time	2026-07-26T16:28:11.704Z
Last seen	2026-07-26T16:28:11.704Z
Headline source	Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite)
Excerpt source	publisher body
Excerpt method	First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited.
Summary	WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer)
Summary source text	contentText
Citation coverage	Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL.
Cluster	None
Cluster logic	Not yet clustered, or no peer story found in the clustering window.
Ranking reason	Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking.
Publisher visit	Yes — open original
Substitutes article?	No — link-out required for full text

Rights status (four layers)

Publisher-declared

No publisher-confirmed rights record for this source yet.

Machine-readable

No source-specific machine-readable restriction detected beyond the public feed.

WeSearch interpretation

WeSearch declared handling (basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed). This is WeSearch policy, not a legal grant on the publisher's behalf.

Unknown

Retrieval and training permissions are not asserted unless the publisher confirms them.

WeSearch handling by dimension

Indexing	May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)?	Allowed
Snippet	May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown?	Allowed
AI summary	May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article?	Limited
Retrieval / RAG	May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation?	Not asserted
Model training	May the content be used to train AI models?	Not asserted
Commercial reuse	May the content be reused commercially?	Not permitted

Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.

Open original publisher → Source rights JSON → Machine-readable provenance → Rights framework → WESEARCH-STORY-PROVENANCE-V1

Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand

Lefsetz on Costco July 26, 2026 12:00pm by Bob Lefsetz <img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="alignnone wp-image-359026" src="https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/COST-Int.png" alt="" width="600" height="400" srcset="https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/COST-Int.png 1800w, https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/COST-Int-300x200.png 300w, https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/COST-Int-1024x683.png 1024w, https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/COST-Int-768x512.png 768w, https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/COST-Int-250x167.png 250w, https://ritholtz.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/COST-Int-1536x1024.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /> I’m categorically against self-checkout.

…

Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at The Big Picture.

Anonymous · no account needed

Discussion

0 comments