Just have everyone use UTC!

I think all food packaging should be standardized and reusable, with a deposit system similar to reusable glass drink bottles (at least in Germany).

For instance: All the cereals should use the same returnable ‘cereal box’

The democrats tend to be less organized but way more friendly and accommodating, the republicans are very their way or the highway, but tend to have all their ducks in a row.

This is the most believable thing I’ve ever heard.

It’s been years since I had to deal with MATLAB licenses, since basically everything in scientific computing/data science uses Python these days!

Housing shouldn’t be an (in real-terms) appreciating asset. In the long run that just leads to feudalism.

Imagine if everything keeps appreciating for 200 years… now only cyborg Elon musk can afford to buy a house.

I mean, the coasts aren’t really that densely populated. If we build nicer cities there would be plenty of potential space.

Instead we build shitty suburbs and sprawl, which will always lead to awful, expensive cities

They may not have much money left over after downsizing, however. In markets like California the value is almost entirely from the land. The comparative value of the house (even a 5 bed) is comparatively negligible. So a 5 bed on a small plot would cost almost the same as a 1 bed on the same plot. In Silicon Valley it’s really common to just buy a house and knock it down and rebuild, since the cost of building a new house is much less than the cost of the land.

It’s a genuine issue that the liquidity of the real estate market is impacted by this.

Which has the downside that it locks people into their current home because moving would mean losing their favorable rates.

Rising prices are bad for everyone.

The best way to make money is to already have money invested. You take the proceeds from your earlier investments and invest in MORE assets.

In this case it’s real estate.

Yeah the reality is that Biden was 95% going to lose to Trump. Picking a new person is usially a huge risk, but in this case there wasn’t much to lose.

As things stand right now, Trumps chances of winning just went down a bit. Worst case, they pick someone terrible with similar (non-)chances to Biden. Best case, they pick someone who wins.

In most European countries governments are elected for 3-6 years (though they may end up happening more frequently since, most places, it’s possible to call early elections). The campaigning only really happens for 1-2 months before the election.

The fact that the US essentially spends 1.5-2 years campaigning for a 4 year position is insanity to me!

There was one place where i was living where you could get one for 2.90€ as recently as 2018. It wasn’t the best, but it was great value.

I moved around then, so I have no idea what it costs now.

And even then, it just meant that whatever solution they thought up worked first try.

With experience you get better at finding good, working solutions quicker, but there will always be times when things take a bit of iteration.

I’m not sure it would be possible to change the culture any other way, since it’s so entrenched.

The only restaurants I know of that were able to successfully transition to a less toxic business model for servers did so through a combination of paying servers a fair base wage ($20+ an hour) and banning tips.

Culture is tricky in that it’s ‘sticky’ and often takes a lot of effort to change. Having a policy like ‘tipping not required’ would still lead to the vast majority of customers feeling obligated to tip because not tipping carries with it such a strong implication of being greedy/stingy.

I should mention that this all mostly applies to the US and that there are plenty of countries with flourishing hospitality industries where tipping is virtually nonexistent (or even seen as insulting).

Of course they do, it’s the law. It’s crazy to me that servers are (seemingly randomly) excluded from this and have to rely on tips.

I’ve worked in a number of places as a chef (from low to high end) and that was never the case anywhere I worked. To be fair, it’s been almost a decade though, so maybe I’m out of date.

I mean, I’m saying that.

To me I’ve never understood why sit-down restaurants should be looked at any differently to any other business. Why can’t the actual price just be listed on the menu?

Like, if we’ve collectively decided that the actual price is 20% higher than what is listed, then let’s just treat this like every other profession and raise prices by 20%.

Why are people taking orders and carrying food special? Other customer-facing positions generally don’t get tips. Chefs (who make the food!) generally don’t get tips.

Just pay the waitstaff a fair wage and quit the tipping!