sure. restaurants that forbid tipping and assure us they pay their servers adequately are great. like a civilized country. i just never know anymore, outside of full-service restaurants, whether to tip or not to tip. i find every point-of-sale a vexing, no win situation.

even if she didn’t rise in the face of adversity, i presume a server at a traditional full-service restaurant in the US would count among the deserving, no?

who deserves it?

it’s a bit pathetic that we watched RBG undo herself and the country because of career and ego and a misguided sense of unique capability. then we watched JRB do just the same. now we have to live in the country their failure, our failure, bequeathed to us. it’s not clear we’ve learned anything.

😢❤️🙏

the correct honorifics are God Emperor Musk and Assistant Principal Trump, right?

in cars we are traffic to one another—dangerous, frustrating—when if we were on foot, we would be liveliness, buzz.

a thing i find astonishing is the fate of the republic may have turned on a choice to indulge an office romance. perhaps the world’s most consequential kiss.

deceptive pricing as free speech: “The line of argument will be that mandating the display of all-in pricing information amounts to compelled speech by the government forced on private enterprise, violating the First Amendment.”

once we had david and goliath. now we have big pharma and little grifter.

so we’ve got to be at least like ten percent, fifteen percent, of the way through trump’s term, right? at least we’re making progress, working our way towards an end of this.

it’s not a shutdown it’s a muskdown.

it’s bigcos that used to have prompt, 24-hour telephone customer service that now have limit hour service behind extraordinarily frustrating information systems designed to discourage customers. bigcos should be able to afford now what they used to afford then, but just don’t.

labor is only more expensive now than then (is it in fact more expensive now than then, in inflation-adjusted terms) to the degree productivity has increased its opportunity cost. in other words, it would be absolutely more expensive, but still cheaper relative to the size of the economy.

a shutdown locked in place by a prolonged fight over the speakership that would have to be resolved before addressing the shutdown sounds, um, great.

so is this a feint, a prod that maybe gets something or another renegotiated, or are they really gonna scrooge the holidays with a shutdown?

📌

a problem is we have no clear consensus (even among left-liberals) of what constitutes “real free speech” in an age of concentrated ownership, network effects, unaccountable algorithmic amplification. we agree upon certain plain violations, but lack a coherent framework on what to uphold and defend

if we're so much richer now, why can't we afford someone to answer the phone when we call up a business?

you can't go wrong with "zillions".