flipht

Especially when you take into account that he’s currently dealing with accusations of fixing his books for preferential bank and insurance treatment.

They know. That’s why they hate theatre.

Why do people tap their breaks in the left lane when passing someone slower on the right?

Please stop. Tap your breaks if you’re signaling something going on in front, or if you need to slow down faster than just taking your foot off the gas will slow you.

Very unlikely. There’s a statement at the bottom that explains what the fee is. There’s a QR code at the top for more information, which OP cut off.

I doubt they went through the effort of updating their POS system, providing links to info on the receipt, and chose not to post a sign or put a note on the menu. Everywhere I have been with a service fee like this posts it, which would negate any legal issue.

Caveat emptor.

It’s literally what’s happening.

Texas used the same concept to empower private people to sue abortion providers and receivers under civil law since they couldn’t do it criminally.

The country as a whole has done it for a long time with cellphone data, the five eyes alliance, etc.

They have access to information they’re barred from getting directly themselves, and they get it from private companies. Spying by proxy.

I used quotes around that because I do not believe it.

But a bunch of idiots do, and politicians have to have some backing from those idiots, so even though everyone knows these people are shills and grifters, they have to pay lip service to the idea that they’ll do the reasonable thing, and hope that eventually cultists start dropping out and realizing they’ve been duped.

You can lead a horse to water and all that.

100%. Most business is just advanced sophistry at this point. Marketing and advertising serves a useful purpose for new products, when the market isn’t aware that it exists.

But by quantity and cost, most advertising is just social manipulation and is effectively an extra drain on the economy.

There’s a thought experiment about babies in a river. Do you save each baby as it floats down the river, or do you go upriver to stop them from throwing babies in?

If you choose to stay, are you enabling the baby throwers?

If you go, are you consigning all the babies that are thrown to death while you search?

It’s not black and white. There’s no good solution when bad actors are doing bad things. A coordinated response would be great, but at the same time, this is a constant problem. It’s not like Democrats haven’t been trying to get “reasonable republicans” to handle their own shit for decades. It’s not like republicans won’t have another mole pop up after this one gets whacked back into his hole.

I saw one program that Rick rolled Bluetooth device lists.

Then again, maybe if he keeps going he will unite everyone behind the banner of “Not Gym Jordan,” which is a great service he’s able to provide us.

Take a listen to her newer stuff. Her lyrics are tight, topical, and she’s got catchy melodies.

Journalists trying to convince each other that they can convince the world to stop bad actors.

But most of us are just trying to keep our heads down to survive, and a large minority is actively engaged in supporting authoritarianism. So it’s all very performative.

It’s food, so you can use a regular fork instead of a pitch.

Oh my God he is going to finally get his ratings.

I cannot wait to hear the reaction when he realizes no one tuned in to watch him get crowned but a ton of people wanted to watch him get bracelets.

We can’t even trust employers to not steal wages, sexually harass, or be decent humans to adult workers. There’s no way a literal child should be expected to hold their own in an employee/employer relationship.

I’m finding out that I’m codependent. I avoided this term for a long time because of connotations I had of it with “co-addiction” but really, it is a situation like what you describe - I provide help all the time, and I never ask for or feel like I can accept it. I have so many instances in my past of help coming with strings, or being massively let down, or just being slammed with other people’s incompetence that it makes me physically uncomfortable. All of this stems from and reinforces the idea that I have to be responsible because everyone else around me is being messy and useless.

Long story short - ask for help anyway. Even when it feels like shit, you have to get used to it. Like others have said, be specific and direct, and accept the idea that they may say no, and it probably isn’t personal. “I need help with…” doesn’t work unless it includes, “Can you help me with this?”

If you want to have a meaningful conversation that might result in this changing, you will have to do that in each of the groups you subscribe to. Posting in mildlyinfuriating isn’t going to stop memes elsewhere.

It also drives home the point to anyone in a position of authority and responsibility: you will be asked to make compromises. You will be asked to make sacrifices. You must be willing to accept your own responsibility in that decision making, because you put yourself in position to do so.

Sometimes, when faced with only negative choices, you have to be willing to accept the stain of the least evil of them.

Kind of like every American president is an unindicted war criminal. We can imagine that most, if not all, of them didn’t go into it to commit evil acts, but they had to be ready to do so if the other options were worse based on whatever calculus they were able to do at the time.

Not exactly. The fairness would include allowing the other side it’s refutation on the facts.

News companies have never been required to report falsehoods just because someone famous said them. They’ve chosen to do that since the fairness doctrine was upended, because it aligns with their corporate interests.

There used to be. It was called the fairness doctrine. It was introduced in 1949 and was abolished in 1987. It required news broadcasters to present controversial issues to fairly reflect differing viewpoints - in other words, you can’t have overt, blatant, “This will cause liberals to eat your babies” propaganda.

There are some issues with it, but it’s clearly better than what we’re allowing now. The crux, though, is that it only matters for FCC-aligned issues, so actual broadcasting. Cable and internet sources would still be able to lie with impunity, and they make up a huge portion of our disinformation compared to what existed even in the early 2000s.