Is the US a dystopia?

option 3 ftw

US perfidy always comes back to tea

not really

hm sounds like you're either a "no" or "The Beatles" but afaict you can still secretly vote however you wish

it's going to take a lot of restraint not to shoehorn this in to thread connections

I figured it was what it was for.

least serious answer is the correct one

by that you mean "yes"?

oh misread "least" as "last" nevermind

This question is unhelpful and I have no idea why it is being asked.

Badly trimmed shrub = dystopiary

Dropped the clay - dyspottery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jeu3iH0R_GM

I mean, pulling up the forecast today and seeing tornado warnings for Chicago in mid-December doesn't make me not think it's a dystopia.

an imagined state or society in which there is great suffering or injustice, typically one that is totalitarian or post-apocalyptic.

not imagined, authoritarian rather than totalitarian and pre-apocalyptic instead of post IMO

so maybe it's not a dystopia but merely dystopic

dystopic? I dunno. but ilx is def dyspeptic today.

I did not remotely intend this thread to be serious, but there's an argument to be made that 1492 counts as the apocalypse

Can the apocalypse be local?

Americans rly struggle with not being the world and i think its quite telling tbh

let it beatles

Climate catastrophe is going to be pretty universal IIRC.

which is v little to do with the point about 1492 is it

you can get with dystopia, or you can get with datopia

just throwing this out there but maybe dystopia fans are blind to dystopias

I dunno I think most fans of the crust punk band Dystopia probably would agree that the USA is a dystopia fwiw

let me see, is the US a dystopia.

the republican party is trying to actively KILL a lot of people. let me just see how that plays in the polls

The approval rating among those who voted for [Biden] has dropped from 80% to 69% in the April survey. There have been notable declines among Americans 18-34 and suburban residents, both of whom, in dramatic swings, now register net negative views on the president.

As bad as Biden’s number may be, the polling data for Democrats in Congress is far worse.

Republicans now sport a historic 10-point advantage when Americans are asked which party they prefer to control Congress, holding a 44%-34% margin over Democrats. That’s up from a 2-point Republican advantage in the October survey.

In the past 20 years, CNBC and NBC surveys have never registered a double-digit Republican advantage on congressional preference, with the largest lead ever being 4 pints for the GOP.

“If the election were tomorrow, it would be an absolute unmitigated disaster for the Democrats,″ said Jay Campbell, partner at Hart Research Associates and the Democratic pollster for the survey.

yes it's a full blown dystopia

nah but rich people have never had it better tho

A 4 pint lead is difficult to overcome tbh. sorry

Can the apocalypse be local?

Americans rly struggle with not being the world and i think its quite telling tbh

― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Friday, December 10, 2021 8:10 PM (one hour ago)

I was addressing "the apocalypse" that it could be argued helps to confirm the US as a dystopia, the subject of this important poll. So I guess I do think it can be local, idk, why not? Anyway Columbus never even entered future-US territory, it's more of a symbolic hinge year for everything being terrible from then on

I'd figure most people using the term think in the sense of dystopian science fiction and I kinda think 2021 has quite a few elements that seem like out of such.

There's no utopia that's not someone's dystopia, and vice versa.

The notion of local dystopias is an interesting one. Could be that there was an egalitarian paradise unfolding just a continent or two over from Mad Max.

If the US ticks all the boxes- and there's a case- then clearly plenty of very nice places to live in exist besides so id say thats a clear yes

Have we ever not been? Slave state — apartheid state — Vietnam/Watergate — Corporate state — Fury Road (2016-present)

the people in the mayfield candle factory that collapsed worked 12-hour shifts that paid $8 an hour. 110 ppl were inside. 40 ppl are still unaccounted for. they haven’t recovered a survivor since 3 am. pic.twitter.com/CsIIfLw3Pc

— Tracy Moore (@iusedtobepoor) December 11, 2021

it’s legal in kentucky to fire someone for refusing to work mandatory overtime

— Tracy Moore (@iusedtobepoor) December 11, 2021

The notion of local dystopias is an interesting one. Could be that there was an egalitarian paradise unfolding just a continent or two over from Mad Max.

Zardoz is another one. Although The Eternals are mainly a bunch of insufferable bores and their egalitarian paradise is pretty lame, but you wouldn't complain about it if you were being held captive by Charlotte Rampling.

Slave state — apartheid state — Vietnam/Watergate — Corporate state — Fury Road (2016-present)

We didn't start the fire, etc.

Let's see what all we have...you got this one.

US combined laissez-faire capitalism on it's drug industry and combined with heroin blow-back from the 'war on terror' created the opioid epidemic for fun and profit killing over a million Americans since 1999.

Getting back to the topic at hand, Le Guin wrote a book about a moon. Also was there some Cold War global political framework in her gender-bender book? I don't recall.

Climate catastrophe is going to be pretty universal IIRC.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Saturday, December 11, 2021 1:14 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

which is v little to do with the point about 1492 is it

― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Saturday, December 11, 2021 1:17 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

It is though (unless I'm misreading). The USA is the biggest historical contributor to the climate crisis. An argument could be made that if 1492 never happened, there would be no global crisis. Same for much of global environmental destruction -- Amazon forest all gone? Thank Ronald McDonald.

Local teachers in South Dakota “Dash for Cash” to help their classrooms by fighting over $5,000 in $1 bills while the crowd hoots and hollers. pic.twitter.com/azwGJKhaKU

— Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) December 12, 2021

they're going to remove that rug at some point

and then charge them for it!

An argument could be made that if 1492 never happened, there would be no global crisis.

Are we talking a world where Europe never came into contact with the Americas?

I can’t live without potatoes

-LL McCooljay

It would have happened eventually.

I can’t live without potatoes

OTM

Lol, Neanderthal.

NEW: Drone startup BRINC, which just pulled a $25 million VC round, says it was inspired by the 2017 Vegas shooting to build non-violent robots. I obtained a video showing their original mission was a border patrol drone system designed to tase migrants https://t.co/TclkWOO3eM

— Sam Biddle (@samfbiddle) December 13, 2021

It would have happened eventually.

Right but I'm saying the timeline where America turns the Earth into a toilet wasn't necessarily predetermined.

Maybe ecocide is the dharma of the human race idk.

this is all god's fault. god put the oil in the ground, fully formed, 8000 years ago

it was all predetermined

idk these guys predicted it pretty early

https://i.ibb.co/f4P96K0/index.jpg

https://i.ibb.co/cFmrLPX/index.jpg

Yeah I never loved the band but those album titles stuck with me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CczFit6tGhs

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kentucky-tornado-factory-workers-threatened-firing-left-tornado-employ-rcna8581

personally idgi. fresh produce in american supermarkets is quite bad and expensive, every major city in the world has decent markets, etc. i guess it's better if it's brightly lit and you can listen to an instrumental soft jazz version of after the gold rush? https://t.co/g3b5LOgBcD

— joolsd (@joolsd) December 14, 2021

which Publix plays that?!? I'm happy if I get early '80 Boz Scaggs.

I regret starting a thread that functions as an invitation to post the most depressing news you can find, but more narrowly the degree to which the US seems to be embracing core elements of the most prominent fictional dystopias is pretty striking! Sadly not cyberpunk this time:

https://pen.org/scope-speed-educational-gag-orders-worsening-across-country/

And it’s getting worse. In the month since the report’s release, state lawmakers introduced 12 new bills, bringing the total to a staggering 66 educational gag orders for the year in 26 states, 12 of which have passed into law.

Here’s what’s happening:

The recent group of bills includes seven in Missouri and one each in New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.
All 12 of these bills target K–12 schools, four include provisions that would impact colleges and universities, and four include a focus on state agencies, other state-funded institutions, and “places of learning.”
Six of these bills specifically ban “critical race theory,” making a total of 20 state-level bills introduced this year with such explicit prohibitions.
Six of these bills contain explicit prohibitions against teaching or using curricular materials from “The 1619 Project,” bringing the total of these to 17 for the year.

xxp I remember back in the 80s, we hosted some soviet kids. When we took them to the supermarket, they lost their shit.

I think the original tweet is referencing that, not that Safeway is better than a local French produce market.

we do have abundant food (not everywhere, of course) of mostly mediocre quality. it's ok.

the critical race theory mess is one of the factors in favor of dystopia

to me

xxp I remember back in the 80s, we hosted some soviet kids. When we took them to the supermarket, they lost their shit.

I think the original tweet is referencing that, not that Safeway is better than a local French produce market.

So was communism.

I guess that’s the kind of joke that lands better with boomers.

And that's the kind of joke that lands better with people from 2017.

the tweet is responding to libertarians tweeting photos of american grocery stores to prove a point

american supermarkets are among the purest products of american capitalism and therefore accurately reflect all our most popular theories about health and happiness, from gluttony to asceticism, all packaged in convenient sizes for easy consumption. it's a design that's been copied all over the world, with appropriate modifications to suit local tastes and incomes. almost any praise or criticism you want to make about supermarkets can be justified using real world examples.

from gluttony to asceticism, all packaged in convenient sizes for easy consumption

cf. Randall Jarrell's A Sad Heart at the Supermarket (1960) and the companion poem "Next Day"

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All

You want to know dystopia? Sometimes I have to go to three different supermarkets to get everything I need.

I regret starting a thread that functions as an invitation to post the most depressing news you can find

You cannot design a thread that wouldnt fall prey to this within ten mins have you seen this site lately

no.

lol

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

whew I had doubts

"I can't answer without sharing my personal definition of dystopia"

5 voters just laying it all down

https://t.co/fFOE6vEXOc pic.twitter.com/PPoldWoOdT

— District Sentinel (@TheDCSentinel) December 15, 2021

we should maybe do a "worst living american" poll

impossible. polls are limited to only 50 choices

maybe a poll to make the poll

a poll of polls? better update the list of lists

don't visit ILB if you don't enjoy a poll of polls

glad we got this settled

got it sordid

Is ILX a dystopia?

just look around

As of today, 50% of women in federal prisons are Indigenous.

This is genocide.

— martha paynter (@MarthPaynter) December 17, 2021

Is the fact that's about Canada the point you're making or a mistake?

At first assumed US then saw the link below and posted because

Kyle Rittenhouse takes the stage at TPUSA’s AmericaFest to thousands of cheering fans chanting his name. He even gets his own Kyle Rittenhouse-themed song to come out to. pic.twitter.com/PD7nkjpQ81

— AZ Right Wing Watch (@az_rww) December 21, 2021

Kyle has merely fulfilled every child's dream of running away to join the circus. Taking two lives in the process.

Who could have seen THIS coming

a really well-written explanation by patrick blanchfield of the current disaster pileup of american culture in terms of freud's death drive. (i will fp anyone who points out that freud is now widely discredited or whatever.)

https://late-light.com/issues/issue-1/death-drive-nation

https://fair.org/home/a-for-profit-company-is-trying-to-privatize-as-many-public-libraries-as-they-can/

i think it was around the time that i learned about ALEC, and realized it was clear and in the open what was happening and how the GOP was operating, and absolutely no one gave a fuck -- that was around 2 years after i realized the usa was a dystopia

GRETA
Yes, dead. An apt choice of words. Considering the public is convinced that cigarettes are poisonous. If we can't insist that they're not, I believe my most recent surveys have provided a solution.
(re report)
We can still suggest that cigarettes are "part of American life," or “Too good to give up,” and most appealing "an assertion of independence".

DON
So basically if you love danger, you'll love smoking?

SALVATORE
We could put a skull and crossbones on the label! I love it!

GRETA
Before the war, when I studied with Adler in Vienna, we postulated that what Freud called "the Death Wish" is as powerful a drive as those for sexual reproduction and physical sustenance.

DON: Freud, you say-- which agency is he with?

There's another covid outbreak on my prison unit. DOC has plenty of N95 masks now, but prisoners will get a disciplinary infraction if they're caught with one. Why? Because N95s also protect us from their tear gas, which they still freely use during a respiratory pandemic.

— ChristopherBlackwell (@ChrisWBlackwell) December 28, 2021

'The government and your boss put you in harms way. We took away paid sick days and unemployment supplements. Better get vaccinated so you don't starve.'

I'm not a health comms person so I can't evaluate how effective this message is. pic.twitter.com/rHtsD4McYP

— Justin Feldman (@jfeldman_epi) December 29, 2021

For the sake of my own sanity and well-being, I'd rather not immerse myself in a poisonous sea of ill-feeling for no discernible larger benefit aside from self-promotion. The world doesn't need another smug, self-satisfied pundit trying to brand-build off political collapse.

— Patrick Wyman (@Patrick_Wyman) January 6, 2022

opened my fortune cookie and i have so few words pic.twitter.com/b5roOyRR1Z

— krista! (@madeup_artist) January 6, 2022

That seems like low pay for a hitman

but the 401k has a 5% company match

Reflecting on January 6, people are justifiably concerned about election subversion. But given the state of Biden’s presidency, the more likely scenario is a popularly elected, and therefore empowered, second Trump administration. https://t.co/ElodhslLPK

— Adam Serwer 🍝 (@AdamSerwer) January 6, 2022

long on doomsaying, short on what to do about it

I believe Nero was an incredible fiddler and some people sang along

little known fact - the friction from him fiddling too fast is what caused the fire

nero fiddling 'everlong'

the drum part to everlong - ziggidiggidiggidiggiziggidiggidiggidiggi - on the fiddle

long on doomsaying, short on what to do about it

I can’t believe this one guy doesn’t have a plan to fix the entire economic and political system!!!

fascists hate this one simple trick

Trump winning outright is both totally possible and also a better scenario than losing outright and being installed by Congress anyway. Of course the end result would probably be the same, no more fair elections ever.

xxpost I think the point is "we endured people saying 'Trump is totally getting re-elected' as some defeatist foregone conclusion, and that doesn't exactly inspire people to take action." and then it didn't happen. and I reject that the reason it didn't happen was scaremongering by tweeters/bloggers/journalists, it's because the people who took action knew it wasn't a foregone conclusion and ignored all of that noise.

You didn’t have to endure that sentiment you had to go looking for it. Trump was incredibly unpopular his entire term and had half a million people die in an election year, it was always the Democrats’ election to lose.

Now Biden is the not-quite-as-unpopular incumbent with people dying. It’s not scaremongering to suggest that unless things change bigly it will be Republicans’ election to lose.

Republican, maybe, but I'm doubtful that Trump could get it done: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

2.9 years is a long time when you’re an ancient speed freak, Trump being dead is about as likely as either being elected or defeated.

nice placement for that fortune cookie btw

Trump winning outright is both totally possible and also a better scenario than losing outright and being installed by Congress anyway. Of course the end result would probably be the same, no more fair elections ever.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Friday, January 7, 2022 5:55 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Republican, maybe, but I'm doubtful that Trump could get it done: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

― DJI, Friday, January 7, 2022 6:31 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

His ratings took a dive recently but seems like they average in the low/mid-40s. Considering their primary tactic is preventing black/poor people from voting, even low-40s approval rating overall could easily translate to a majority of likely voters in a few key swing states.

Long on doomsaying again yes. My best plan to address the issue would probably get me put on a list if I articulated it clearly, but suffice to say that if Manchin and Sinema were removed from the equation it would greatly improve the probability of preserving some semblance of American democracy.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvndja/amazon-paid-for-a-high-school-course-heres-what-they-teach

well fuck

Questions for an Amazon Pathways class called Business Management and Entrepreneurship asks students ... “What can Uber do to ensure its competitors are not chipping away at its dominant market share as a result of such bad press?”

62 percent of Amazon employees in the greater Los Angeles region rely on some sort of government assistance.

https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/02/national-butterfly-center-conspiracy-threats/

A South Texas butterfly sanctuary has closed after it was the target of conspiracy theories that escalated into credible threats.

The National Butterfly Center, along the U.S.-Mexico border in Mission, has long been the target of QAnon conspiracy theories falsely tying the organization to human trafficking.

The center is a 20-year-old nature conservatory for wild butterflies. There are no law enforcement investigations into the organization or its staff for human trafficking.

Meanwhile in Techtopia (motto: “Don’t be a dystopia”):

In a Jan. 27 memo, Woodside’s planning director wrote, "Given that Woodside – in its entirety – is habitat for a candidate species (to go on the endangered list), no parcel within Woodside is currently eligible for an SB 9 project."

The species in question is the mountain lion. Each year, Bay Area residents come face-to-face with the mercurial cats. Numerous pets have been attacked and killed in encounters.

Woodside leaders say duplexes can’t be built as long as mountain lions could go on the state’s endangered species list.

Good job, CEQA

rename thread "prove the US is a dystopia" now i guess

I think that's been settled already

This is still a question?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AmazonFC/comments/stu2g5/yo_wtf_is_this

hahahaaa

if you meet Jeff Bezos on the road, kill him

touching JB—or really any of our oligarchs—is virtually impossible.

but there’s a guy, or more likely a committee, who came up with the cry box. bet you could find them ;)

rob was probably less advocating murder and more naming a zen precept

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,pg_1,q_60,w_965/df1a3a33278a0788e5dae76e1f516387.png

'If they weren't mentally ill before, they sure are now!!'

that recruitment ad seems more fitting for internet ads that raise an eyebrow

Took me a sec to realize they didn't mean the guards

Leave it to the @WSJopinion to look for the “unintended consequences” of financially freeing millions. pic.twitter.com/uT7xWyllIv

— Hector Oseguera, Esq. (@Oseguera2020) April 14, 2022

time to introduce Service Guarantees Citizenship

american suburbs have always been dystopic

Slovakian sees a video about American suburbs and posts questions to Reddit. The level of bafflement is hilarious and appropriate. pic.twitter.com/f6X5CzeYuE

— Tristan Cleveland (@LUrbaniste) May 11, 2022

I’m bored and sick so I looked at accounts of the big mad responses you’re not going to believe this but they get straight racist in their most recent couple of tweets/ retweets, if not right in the bio.

I thought it was kind of funny how so many big mad replies ignored the existence of American cities

I live in an American suburb that has almost all of the things that people don't think exist in American suburbs

Like sidewalks, public transit, apartments, row houses, businesses and mixed-use new urban stuff, plus vegetable gardens

This just seems like a really limited thing where you pick the worst example of something and decide that all of that thing is like that

i don't know where you love ymp but most of the thing is like that tbf

yeah YMP, most US suburbs are utter shitholes with none of what you describe

my family lives in the suburbs. it has sidewalks, no public transit (not even st louis has minimally viable public transit), no apartments, no row houses, no businesses or any sort of zoning other than "single family unit", and almost of the yards are very large, fenced in, and either empty or with a swing set or bench or something on one side. i don't see anyone there, even though every single house (which, yes, they are all identical, for as far as you can see in any direction, down every culdesac) appears to be occupied and has cars parked in the garage and driveway. but there are zero people outside. there is a small town about 2 miles away but everyone drives there. everyone is ecstatic

i used to scoff at that form of the American Dream, but all of these boring people living in their boring houses and never going outside appear to be doing way, way better than i am, and i'm sure they look at my life and think "dude just kill yourself"

My parents live in an older suburb of Philadelphia, so there are some amenities like a bus that comes once an hour, little shops and the like. Nearby, there are more strictly commercial corridors that line up with the old railroad lines. In many ways, it doesn’t resemble what this Slovakian person describes at all. I grew up in the city and these same suburbs, and so it was a bit of a shock when I became an adult and realized that a lot of people choose to live in suburban development hells way outside of cities, what are essentially exurbs.

I like the idea of a tavern in the garage, and vegetables in the backyard. Perhaps I should be in Slovakia.

tbf you can prob grow vegetables in lots of suburban backyards; that's maybe the least good point, though I think the post is right that many Americans focus far more on their primarily ornamental lawns. My parents had a vegetable garden in the town I grew up in that wasn't really close enough to Chicago to count as a suburb (my dad commuted from where we lived to Niles). But then we moved to a hellish HOA-governed development in a small Georgia city that was more like a metastasized suburb with no urb to be sub of. In that neighborhood the number of paper bag lanterns you had to put on xmas eve was mandated, and no way could you do whatever you wanted with your yard. Anyway, I think it's that contradiction between individualist myth and conformist reality that must be weird to outsiders. And yeah obvs dude wasn't looking at pictures of Evanston, but it's an accurate picture of plenty of other suburbs I've been to

I grew up in Columbia, MD, which was at least envisioned as a suburb where everything came together like that - sidewalks, walkability, busses, mixed-income and mixed-race neighborhoods.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia,_Maryland

No taverns in the garage, as the HOA rules are super-strict. It's not perfect. Anyway, that's why I used to pipe up in defense of suburbs back when iatee would take them to task in the 'classy, icky, or dudes' thread. My experience was of a place that was at least intended to foster community, to an extent. And though we always made fun of it for being sterile and walled-off from real life, I don't think it's nearly as sterile and faceless as a lot of suburbs are.

There are shitty hellhole US suburbs. There are lovely US suburbs that are walkable, with shops and transit. There are US suburbs that fall somewhere in between. The USA spans an entire continent and throws in Alaska and Hawaii for good measure. Everyone's personal experience of the suburbs is completely true, but anecdotal evidence about a place this huge and diverse can only reflect a small slice of reality.

thanks for explaining that to us

yeah, "suburb" as a term is kind of completely meaningless. Evanston is very nice. it's completely the exact opposite of my family's suburb. i'm probably thinking of "dystopia" because it's in the thread title, but i really do think of their suburb as a kind hellish dystopia, very sunbaked and hot, heat on the asphalt, the only people outside are hired yard workers. people open their garages and close them and wear those funny reflective wraparound shades which are the equivalent of their tinted SUV windows. they hide inside the shades inside the car inside the garage inside the mcmansion inside the suburb. that's a suburb to me.

but if you live in a better suburb, one where people are supposed to talk to, you probably have no idea what a rural suburb is because no one does, because you absolutely never go there unless you're invited

maybe that's one indicator - there are suburbs where you're supposed to see people and it's encouraged, and there are suburbs where the entire reason you're there is to shelter yourself from other people

not to derail suburb talk, but feel the need to share this somewhere, the army goes adam curtis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA4e0NqyYMw

thanks for explaining that to us

I realize the more valuable contribution to the discussion would have been to explain to people the conclusions they have drawn from their experience of the suburbs are wrong, because it conflicts with my own experience of the suburbs, but I went with saying everyone was right instead. Sorry.

I have a friend who just moved to a suburb on a hill, he has a two car garage - the house is probably from the early 70s, and all you need is a morning shot of a paperboy on his bike to realize that you're about to be in Poltergeist 5: The Final Reckoning or something like that, it's some dystopian Spielberg shit

growing up as a weird art kid in a cookiecutter American suburb i was very tempted by the smug "look at these boring suburban drones in their endless sterile houses, how i pity them" mindset, until the day i realized that i myself was not an empty drone, therefore the other people around me must not all be like that either. i may not ever meet all of them, but it doesnt mean i should assume that behind every door is an soulless whitebread lame-o. ive gone on to live in big cities where i've met incredibly boring empty conformist nonpeople, and also lived in suburbs where my neighbors have been artists and musicians and very interesting people. obviously there are many brutal & valid critiques of the suburban concept as it currently exists in the USA, but on a human level doing the "people in suburbs are boring bc their houses & lawns all look the same" thing as an adult is a dud imo.

also LOL at a redditor asking "what do you actually do? are you always stuck inside"

the army goes adam curtis

i saw that and couldn't help but think that vid wasn't put together by active members of the psyops division of the army, but was the product of some high-priced talent earning 100x what the kids they're recruiting will get paid.

xpost Well, there might be some suburbs - thinking Phoenix or Las Vegas in August - where there's not much else you can do but hide inside

ime there's the 1950s-model suburb (like I grew up in in the '70s) that does tend to have sidewalks and - at least in the old days - kids on the street, and which can have a lively vibe, at least sporadically. Then there's today's-model suburb that is about exclusion, separation, and very concerned about "security." The fact that the middle class has been split up between people who can afford to buy a house and those who can't exacerbates the trend toward class separation.

In Intruder in the Dust, Faulkner uses the word "demiurban." It was the first time I saw that word and I think it is useful.

One could use demiurban for the dense / pedestrian-friendly / mass transit-served burb, and exurban for the spread-out / sprawly / car-dependent kind. But perhaps it doesn't matter and is a vanity exercise to begin with; probably none of it is defensible or sustainable. feel free to disregard it as (our old pal) narcissism of small differences

It may not be sustainable but I see no sign of it slowing down.. if anything, the exurbs are rapidly growing here in the Bay Area. If one wants a four bedroom/3 bath that looks like the Hotel California, it's probably going to be built in the furthest outer suburbs, i.e. Tracy, Modesto, Los Banos, even Fresno which is three hours away. And there's a whole bunch of people that do this commute every day, which is just soul-crushing to me, but it works for them

That, to me, is dystopia

Woah, wikipedia:

The first recorded usage of the term in English, was by John Wycliffe in 1380, when the form subarbis was used, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

In my condo unit in the middle of sunbaked Florida, and in the miles of subdivisions I walk through and past every morning, I do see kids shooting hoops and neighbors talking to each other and the occasional guy in a Moe's or Chipotle uniform smoking a joint in his car or on the stoop.

The problem is the car. Suburbs and exurbs depend on cars; they want you to drive them, everywhere.

So your answer to the thread question is YES

YES.

Having grown up in a variety of suburbs across the country and now living in the Chicago 'suburb' so oft referenced itt today, the latter is definitely the preferable option on every front. All the amenities, directly adjacent to the urb to which it is sub (like literally walking distance), no need for a car. I guess if you're way into having a big house and a big yard and shit like that it's maybe worth a three hour daily commute but that seems like a waking nightmare to me, idk.

Well, to be frank, many of the people making the specific 3-hour commute mentioned above didn’t choose it, but were forced into it by the retrograde NIMBYism of Bay Area development laws, foreign real estate speculation, and price gouging thanks to the influx of tech money into the area. I will be absolutely frank and say that the tech industry ruined the most beautiful metropolitan area of the US, and that there are many people who agree with me and won’t ever forgive the cultureless asshats who now stroll along Valencia Street.

Like I know several people who are teachers who commute to San Francisco from Tracy. Hell, my partner and I have joked about moving back and trying to find a place in Vacaville just to be close to the places and people that made us who we are.

That said, outside of that specific metro, I’d agree with you— it never made sense to me that someone woild want to live hours away from their job just to have a bigger house or more land, unless one was really into horses or farming or something, and that’s another exception to a general rule.

Calling Evanston a suburb is like calling Oakland a suburb. I don’t usually think of suburbs as places very well served by public transit, with actual downtowns.

I did used to work in SF with a guy who commuted daily from Sacramento. He was a Salvadorean Jehovahs Witness. We all went out to his place in Sacto for Thanksgiving one time, it was typical ranch-style sprawl there.

Given the Chicagoland angle this discussion has taken, I'll chime in. I live in Kenosha, WI, which is a city in its own right but also a suburb/bedroom community for both Chicago and Milwaukee. It has its own USian dystopic suburban hellscape sections, and the townships around it have even more of those due to lax or nonexistent zoning and planning regulations. Much of it is so depressing I can't believe anyone lives there. Central Kenosha is quite walkable, nice and affordable by comparison, although there is no full service grocery in the central area, that's about the only missing amenity.

Several members of this biker club, Guardians of the Children, just followed, blocked and surrounded me as I tried to approach the cemetery to meet a photographer. One member says they’re working with police: “They asked us to be here.”

Short post: https://t.co/OfZCAZbUZx pic.twitter.com/5d6wsLKQ0k

— Julian Gill (@JulianGi11) June 2, 2022

cops and biker gangs merging, bodes well imo

cops and the proud boys were allies for a long time, i'm sure they are now, although the form that takes varies by city.

rolling stones used to use biker gangs as security, worked out well for the 60s

oh yeah, nothing is ever entirely new, I just use this thread to sadlollingly note news that resembles familiar fictional dystopias

Is it even worth pointing out the irony of the Uvalde police belonging to/subcontracting with a biker gang called Guardians of the Children. Bowie's line about being insulted by these fascists has popped into my head too many times over the past 7 years

cops and have been the proud boys were allies for a long time

there's a bit of a revolving door, a little bit of oathkeepin

Can’t remember where I read it, I think it was a leftist response to Resistance Lib luxuriating in Handmaid’s Tale imagery, but somebody pointed out a key thing about the concept of dystopia is that no dystopia is dystopic for _everybody_, and a helpful bit was to figure out who actually made out well in that scenario

Listening to this parter and the host talks about how it’s entirely possible that we can have an apocalypse but will still have marketing and social media and the Oscars afterward, b/c not all people are affected by the apocalypse the same way. This last point I think is avoided by most literature and discourse about dystopic societies

https://www.againsttheinternet.com/post/50-varieties-of-scientific-revolution-pt-1

https://www.againsttheinternet.com/post/52-varieties-of-scientific-revolution-pt-2

"guardians of the children" gimme a fucking break

everyone thinks they're working in the children's best interest, even as kids are gunned down in their classroom while the police are picking their noses out in the hall

no you don't understand "children" is my name for the pigs

This is the most dystopian thing I've read in at least a few days.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/06/bus-denver-pendemic-violence/

Similar story from a few months ago out of Seattle.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/drugs-on-buses-have-become-an-everyday-hazard-seattle-area-transit-workers-say/

Ugh

That WaPo article cites the LA sheriff’s dept as an expert source on transportation issues ffs.

I’ve ridden busses in Denver recently and I know there are issues but it was better than the normal I’ve seen in SF in years past. In all of these cities — Denver, LA, SF — there is a crisis of unhoused folks which tbh seemed to explode right around the time marijuana was legalized. I’m all for legalization but it seems like there are some underlying issues that have been amplified by selected states legalizing in the midst of a national housing shortage and a recession, without pumping sufficient funds in social support networks.

some underlying issues

like what? I honestly can't even guess what you think the correlation is here

Ah yes, blaming marijuana legalization for capitalism's culture of scarcity and cruelty.

Quite literally one of the stupidest takes I've read on here in a while.

Can’t remember where I read it, I think it was a leftist response to Resistance Lib luxuriating in Handmaid’s Tale imagery, but somebody pointed out a key thing about the concept of dystopia is that no dystopia is dystopic for _everybody_, and a helpful bit was to figure out who actually made out well in that scenario

― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish)

this is kind of a challenge i have talking about my life with some people, there's this tendency for, look i don't want to call them out like this but liberals, to look at the last six years and talk about how they wish things were how they were back in the 1990s, and... i don't really remember the 1990s fondly?

it's a weird cognitive dissonance that i carry around in my head, knowing that the world i live in _is_ a hellish dystopia but at the same time life has literally never been better for me. (which complicates things because, uh, i don't generally get the sense that this dystopia was created for _my_ personal benefit.)

https://static.twentytwowords.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2014-05-09-at-9.47.38-AM.jpg

want a 2000-era This American Life rerun interviewing the Maine outlier who eats 16.4 pounds of margarine every year.

Your friends nostalgic to return to the 90s is probably just their unexamined nostalgia for when they personally felt their happiest. For many other people on this planet we all share, the 90s sucked. It was yet another decade of war and climate inaction!!!

Nostalgia is inherently myopic if not outright delusional.

some underlying issues

like what? I honestly can't even guess what you think the correlation is here

Like the housing crisis which imo has been significantly amplified by the role of AirBnb in this case. You DON’T think marijuana legalization created any excess housing demand from trustafarians in the Denver area? You don’t think some of those incoming trustafarians may have pushed some marginalized working class people there onto the streets?

As to the user who noted my superlative stupidity, did you rtfa? It makes some pretty specific connections between cannabis use and this crisis they’re describing, and again I will note it uses the fucking LA sheriffs department as an expert source here, of all the completely shitty hills for you to die on.

Christ those articles about the buses in Seattle & Denver are depressing. I rode the buses when I lived in Portland in the 80s and in LA some too, and it was true then too that some pretty intense characters could often be found on the bus, but not at that level of "it's just terrible all the time."

i cannot read washington post articles but i am not encouraged to hear that they used the LA sheriff's department as an expert source. an expert in what?

Sorry viborg, I'm still a little confused; did I miss a link? This is the only reference to the LA sheriff in the WaPo article that I saw:

"The sheriff of Los Angeles County had created a new transit unit to keep passengers from having to 'step over dead bodies or people injecting themselves.'"

I don't see any of the specific connections to cannabis use you mentioned, just lots of refs to fentanyl.

Anyway, I think I get that you're saying it's the piecemeal legalization of cannabis that's problematic. I don't know anything about the housing crisis in Denver specifically, so I can't argue with you on the details (though do you have to use the term "trustafarian"? Rastafarians don't deserve that imo).

But it still seems odd to me to focus on (the) cannabis (industry, even), given all the other dynamics mentioned by you and in the articles: Airbnb, the pandemic, fentanyl, etc. If nothing else, it sounds overwhelmingly like a housing issue not a cannabis issue to me, as the same dynamic would happen if lots of, e.g., tech money came to town.

Maybe more importantly, since the solution isn't to re-prohibit cannabis, identifying cannabis as the problem doesn't seem super helpful unless you're arguing for full, national legalization.

Not sure if you’re aware of the controversy involving allegations of systemic excessive force etc surrounding the LA sheriff’s department but they have no credibility as any kind of source for this story.

As for trustafarians, I maintain they are indefensible. I have nothing but respect and love for genuine Rasta culture, not so much for white guys who’ve never worked a real job in their lives and who imagine growing dreads and then blasting Legend on repeat while doing dabs ad nauseam makes them Rasta.

Overall seems like this is an issue you take somewhat personally. Sorry my intent was not to make this personal. But I think it’s naive to say legalization didn’t play a significant role in this case. Idk I didn’t live there, I was just visiting a friend who’s lived there for a few decades and who spent a lot of time on public transit. I could ask him for input, he’s quite a generous soul for the most part. (He seems to have a particular loathing for Ted Nugent tho.)

wait i think people thought you were saying the use of LASD as a source was making it more credible? i'm a little confused to be honest.

Please parse this statement for me.

"The sheriff of Los Angeles County had created a new transit unit to keep passengers from having to 'step over dead bodies or people injecting themselves.'"

The article mainly seems like a thesis in search of proof. I don’t see any particular analytical value in aside from confirmation of all our dystopian bias.

Drummer Chris, from Colorado.

“I'd say it's a mecca for homeless potheads from all across the country. There's shelters and free meals everywhere, I say Welcome! But public transit is full of homeless for sure. Many ride in the winter to get out of the cold.

Lots of homeless migrate, living in Colorado in summer, then head to warmer places for winter. It sounds interesting. Maybe the hobo life is for me!”

What

Okay if the drummer says so

will take 700000000 migratory homeless ppl over one NEllie Bowles

none of what you're saying makes sense, viborg

so the trustafarians fit into this how again? theyre taking legal-weed vacations and airbnb'ing in the working class housing stock that the homeless potheads would otherwise be renting during their summer migrations to denver? do i have to be high to follow all this?

it’s typical demonization of the homeless population and buying into conservative anti-weed hysteria at the same time.

30 year denver res says the overall volume of unhoused in the metro did increase in correlation to weed legalization in CO. what that means causally is more like “more than one thing can be true at a time. i mean it alsk correlates to the popularity of grav biking, but i’m pretty sure unrelated.

washpo story is so fucking dire. btw i don’t recommend the 0 bus much either, but eh bway is not cold facts ave.

Mitch McConnell calls on Democrats to pass Supreme Court security bill after man arrested outside Brett Kavanaugh's home

“House Democrats must pass this bill and they need to do it today. No more fiddling around with this, they need to pass it today …before the sun sets.” pic.twitter.com/pRDqnPPvK2

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) June 8, 2022

Not sure how this thread turned into talk about weed because it's pretty clear the actual drug problem contributing to and/or exacerbated by homelessness is opiates. I mean even anecdotally in my own mid-size city I've walked past multiple people shooting up on the sidewalk in broad daylight, which is something you absolutely never saw 10 years ago. (And weed remains illegal in my state fwiw, but we're seeing the same increases in homeless addicts as seemingly everywhere else.)

Or I guess I should say opioids, since fentanyl is a synthetic drug.

i mean it alsk correlates to the popularity of grav biking, but i’m pretty sure unrelated.

washpo story is so fucking dire. btw i don’t recommend the 0 bus much either, but eh bway is not cold facts ave

? Sorry Hunt3r, but I understood exactly none of this.

Sorry ymp, i was just agreeing that correlation of some trends to other issues can be like correlating margarine use to whatever that graph upthread showed and is often wrong.

and the second one was just a denverite comparing the RTD 0 route (Broadway) to the RTD 15 route (Colfax Ave).

Had the armed crazy guy been stalking Justice Sotomayor's home, McConnell would remind Dems of their solemn duty to uphold the 2nd Amendment, and the inalienable freedom of assembly within any liberal justice's shrubbery

Mitch McConnell will be Minority Leader in Hell.

i still have no idea what viborg is talking about

I and I don't either <tokes>

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2022-oracle-larry-ellison-lanai-hawaii-plans-tourism/

Everything's retro these days, even the dystopian elements of existence

i'm going with YES

otm

otm x 2

On way to the court pic.twitter.com/XrE9ExAzhm

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 24, 2022

There's no utopia that's not someone's dystopia, and vice versa.

― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Saturday, December 11, 2021 11:15 AM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Aaaand the Supreme Court tears down the legal precedents that had been keeping the US from becoming my idea of a dystopia.

NEW: Unhoused people in north LA County have faced a major police crackdown, banning them from camping + pushing them to live in the Mojave Desert, miles from running water, in severe heat. Data shows people are dying there.

🧵on folks I met in the deserthttps://t.co/7HbbnnWH7Y

— Sam Levin (@SamTLevin) July 18, 2022

The beef this has generated 👍

to be honest americans laughing at europe atop their 1.5-2x per capita gdp, multiple times higher carbon emissions, and genocide-cleared land as thousands die of heat exhaustion is fairly uncool imo

— joolsd (@joolsd) July 18, 2022

What "laughing" is that referring to?

P sure Europe has some genocide cleared land here and there as well fwiw.

love to compare genocides but it's really no contest

I've seen a post or two making fun of the air conditioning disparity. xp

If you include European colonial genocide I'm pretty sure Europe comes out ahead. And technically that includes any genocide in the Americas at least through the Revolutionary War.

the thing with (territorial) european genocides is that there were so many, overlapping the same bits of land, over so many centuries, that it’s kind of hard to keep track

looks like chancery… bold

this is a truly dismal debate, lads

xpost

If we’re really going to do the Oppression Olympics, on numbers alone the Holocaust would seem to be the record holder.

lol sorry wrong thread for my lame mac font joke

spiderman.jpg

europe and america are co-constitutive so the entire debate is moot there's plenty of blood to go around

iirc the Hitler picked up a lot of his tactics from the good ol USA, praising our racial conception of citizenship (not to mention the horrors meted out on native americans, etc). so yeah, seems like it’s been a fairly symbiotic exchange of ideas

anyway it’s real fucked up what’s happening in LA County!

left otm

re LA county — I wonder if there’s anything the president or the governor could do? like, that’s a genuine question. maybe LASD pulls rank? idk.

both are likely contenders to run in 2024. seems like a place to really show some leadership

this is the future though, unfortunately. all the people in charge seem to agree. speaking of genocide.

if it's poor people though it isn't genocide, it's their fault. much tidier.

love to compare genocides but it's really no contest

So this was just bait to stir up some drama, subject to goalpost shifting at a moment’s notice? More fool me.

u.s. settlers literally eradicated hundreds of distinct peoples.

1) i already said "left otm" so do keep up. 2) you've demonstrated that you aren't worth engaging with so this is definitely the last time.

I wonder if there’s anything the president or the governor could do

Newsom vetoed a bill decriminalizing jaywalking, whatever he could do he wouldn't.

“I wonder if there’s anything the president could do” is a gift to usilx, you don’t need to go looking for cute titles for the next 27 threads

I've seen a post or two making fun of the air conditioning disparity. xp

― peace, man, Wednesday, 20 July 2022 bookmarkflaglink

Massively weird posting.

Lol what a dick

Feel like Spain got a little too good at building trains and started going for some routes to places where nobody lives. pic.twitter.com/7RLP5idJ6f

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) August 2, 2022

That's what happens when your life is run by a spreadsheet.

interesting use of the concept of "nobody"

“When I saw a 6.6 year decline over two years, my jaw dropped. … I made my staff re-run the numbers to make sure.” https://t.co/JR4rXLRWc3 by @sheridan_kate pic.twitter.com/nqHbXrP398

— J Emory Parker 🏳️‍🌈 Subscribe to STAT+ (@jaspar) August 31, 2022

American Indian and Alaskan Native people have experienced a particularly precipitous drop in life expectancy since 2019, going from 71.8 to 65.2 years. This kind of loss is similar to the plunge seen for all Americans after the Spanish Flu, said Robert Anderson, the chief of the mortality statistics branch of the National Center for Health Statistics, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

...This year’s life expectancy figure is 0.9 years lower than last year’s. Covid-19 accounted for about half of the decline, and a category encompassing accidents and unintentional injuries is responsible for another 16%. That category includes overdoses; in fact, about half of the unintentional injury deaths in this analysis were due to overdoses.

“We think that the increase in drug overdoses during the pandemic is partly due to the pandemic, but probably not wholly due to the pandemic,” he said. “It'll be interesting to see [what happens] as the pandemic abates — assuming that it does, hopefully it will.”

Weird thing is pandemic didn't hit us until 2020, but there's a massive decline between 2019-2020. Maybe I'm misreading the graph?

drug overdose deaths were already having negative effects on life expectancy iirc

if it ain't one thing it's another

It'd be interesting to see the gender breakdown

Gen X men are particularly prone to booze, drugs, suicide... I'm enjoying some booze right now

It'd be interesting to see the gender breakdown

Gen X men are particularly prone to booze, drugs, suicide... I'm enjoying some booze right now

― Andy the Grasshopper

also completely coincidentally gen x is demographically the most transphobic age cohort, with the number of out trans people in gen x dwarfed by even the number of trans millennials, let alone trans zoomers.

see the gender breakdown? yeah, gen x is a good place to go to see the gender breakdown

I saw someone point out that any significant rise in infant mortality brings the figures way down because you throw a bunch of 0's into the math.

Police in Columbus, Ohio shot and killed an unarmed black man who was laying in bed today. They shot him within one second of opening the bedroom door. His name Donovan Lewis.

— Erick Bellomy 🏳️‍🌈 (@erickbellomy) August 31, 2022

yes yes it is a dystopia

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/13/us/pieper-lewis-sex-trafficking-iowa.html

On Tuesday, Judge David M. Porter, of the Polk County District Court, sentenced Ms. Lewis, now 17, to five years of probation without early release, and ordered her to be placed at the Fresh Start Women’s Center in Des Moines, a residential facility, where she will wear a GPS tracking device, which the judge said was done out of concern that she might fall “back into the lifestyle that you thus far left.”

Judge Porter also ordered her to pay $150,000 in restitution to the family of the man she killed, and required her to perform 200 hours of community service each year for three years.

fuckin hell

this looks legit - https://www.gofundme.com/f/vxgt7q

fyi from the gofundme, it sounds like the judge's ruling was close to as sympathetic and lenient as possible. the $150K is required by state law:

Today, my former student, Pieper Lewis bravely took the microphone during her sentencing hearing and told the courtroom that her voice mattered. I was incredibly proud of her. She was powerful, and she brought me to tears. The judge then studied all the evidence in Pieper Lewis’ case carefully and decided that she did not deserve to spend time in an adult prison. Instead, he gave her five years of probation. He decided that 834 days she spent in juvenile detention awaiting her sentencing was enough “punishment” for a then fifteen-year-old girl who had been kicked out of her home and found herself sleeping in the stairwell of one of the most dangerous apartment complexes in Des Moines; a girl that was ultimately preyed upon by men twice her age who traded her body for drugs. These men physically asualted, raped, and sex trafficked Pieper on multiple occasions. On June 1st, 2020, Pieper snapped and killed one of the men who exploited and raped her, stabbing him to death.

Today, the judge recognized that Pieper was a victim and a child. He, like almost everyone who knows the details of Pieper’s case, empathized with a girl with no violent history before or after this incident, who saw killing a man as the only way out of a truly horrific situation. He granted her probation and a deferred judgement—meaning if she meets the conditions of her parole, she will have the felony removed from her record. This is a compassionate outcome.

Yet, Pieper only found herself in this situation because she was initially charged as an adult with 1st degree murder. DMPD and the Polk County prosecutor’s office saw Pieper immediately as a grown, violent, adult, murderer, and they charged her as such. Only because a team of amazing people came to Pieper’s side, was her story truly heard and understood. However, with the risk of life in prison looming, Pieper pled guilty to charges of manslaughter and willful injury. This was to avoid a risky trial where her team feared an Iowa jury may implicitly struggle to see a young black girl as the victim of sex trafficking that she was.

Today, it appears that the decision to put Pieper’s fate in the hands of a judge, as opposed to a jury, was a good one. Pieper will avoid prison, and she will have access to some of the services she needs to continue healing. However, in Iowa, there is a law that states that anyone who is convicted of killing a person, regardless of circumstances, must pay that individual’s family 150,000 dollars. This law is intended to provide justice to families who lost their loved ones. However, in the case of Pieper, it will require her to pay 150,000 dollars to the family of a man who purchased Pieper’s fifteen-year-old body from a sex trafficker, gave her drugs and alcohol, and then raped her repeatedly.

Pieper does not owe that man’s family justice. Pieper does not deserve to be finically burdened for the rest of her life because the state of Iowa wrote a law that fails to give judges any discretion as to how it is applied. This law doesn’t make sense in many cases, but in this case, it’s morally unjustifiable. A child who was raped, under no circumstances, should owe the rapist’s family money.

Pieper has five years of probation ahead of her; five years that she will be required to be nearly perfect to avoid facing 20 years in prison. She will do hundreds of hours of community service each year. She will be subject to drug testing, required to take classes, and attend therapy. Pieper’s path to true freedom will not be easy, and she is still a teenager that has experienced a lot of trauma.

Pieper wants to go to college, she wants to create art, and she wants to advocate for other girls who find themselves in situations like she endured. She does not deserve a massive debt looming over her, holding her back from pursuing her ambitions.
Our system if broken. It will take decades of advocacy and electing people committed to rethinking and reimagining our criminal justice system, especially our juvenile one, to fix the system. In the meantime, Pieper needs us now. If you are able, please donate to help Pieper!

so... a little less dystopic? :/

sorry to be that guy, but if this is actually the best outcome given a tough situation, and this is the tough situation:

Yet, Pieper only found herself in this situation because she was initially charged as an adult with 1st degree murder. DMPD and the Polk County prosecutor’s office saw Pieper immediately as a grown, violent, adult, murderer, and they charged her as such. Only because a team of amazing people came to Pieper’s side, was her story truly heard and understood. However, with the risk of life in prison looming, Pieper pled guilty to charges of manslaughter and willful injury. This was to avoid a risky trial where her team feared an Iowa jury may implicitly struggle to see a young black girl as the victim of sex trafficking that she was.

then no, that's a little less dystopic, that is actually the heart of dystopia

the word "implicitly" is doing some fine dystopic work in that sentence.

This is the LAPD officer who shot and killed Daniel Hernandez. She not only still has a job but she also has handgun sponsorships. https://t.co/AtRBRmDagm

— Ashley Brim (@apb_710) September 14, 2022

jfc that “saint gates” embroidered patch

https://interactives.dallasnews.com/2022/social-sentinel/

THREAD: The biggest story of my life is finally out. 

Since 2019, I’ve been investigating a monitoring tool called Social Sentinel. They bill it as a way to help save students’ lives. 

I found it had another purpose — surveilling campus protests. https://t.co/I0okAqeRen

— Ari Sen (@ArijitDSen) September 20, 2022

New Investigation: Nonprofit hospitals avoid billions of dollars in taxes. But are they living up to their charitable missions? @jbsgreenberg and I have spent months investigating this question. Today, we're publishing the first two stories in our series. https://t.co/bG0mdCEDYv

— Katie Thomas (@katie_thomas) September 24, 2022

paywall evasion link
https://archive.ph/mwDQK

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FeAgfmSXoAY0HdF?format=jpg&name=medium

^ngl what usually happens is bodies end up used for plastic surgery practice so if you don't want to think about your dead dad being used for breast enhancement surgery don't do this

Don’t donate what you should be selling.

I'm kinda surprised selling cadavers is even legal?

Submitting to evidence for

A town in Connecticut voted on and approved a resolution asking their local Starbucks workers to work faster because people didn't like waiting in the drive thru line. We live in an irredeemably stupid and selfish country. pic.twitter.com/aclk3X47F0

— Microplastics Enjoyer (@EclecticHams) November 6, 2022

Interesting that this story was on this thread, as there was an update today: Pieper Lewis, who killed her rapist, has escaped custody.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/06/us/iowa-teen-killed-alleged-rapist-escape/index.html

xp https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Move-people-quicker-Trumbull-seeks-action-16149765.php

It's stupid but it's not quite as stupid as that Tiktok says, basically a letter asking Starbucks to hire more people.

“What I would like to recommend is that we write them a formal letter saying that we feel they are not adequately moving people through the line, and during peak hours they should develop a plan to allow people to put an order in and move head in the line to deliver to relieve the backup on White Plains Road and in the parking lot,” he said. “I think they could do that. It doesn’t have to be a redesign of the parking lot. I could be just having extra people, during peak hours, figuring out a way to move people quicker.”

Tony Silber, who was acting chairman at the meeting, was supportive of Chory’s idea.

“What I would like to recommend is that we write them a formal letter saying that we feel they are not adequately moving people through the line, and during peak hours they should develop a plan to allow people to put an order in and move head in the line to deliver to relieve the backup on White Plains Road and in the parking lot,” he said. “I think they could do that. It doesn’t have to be a redesign of the parking lot. I could be just having extra people, during peak hours, figuring out a way to move people quicker.”

Tony Silber, who was acting chairman at the meeting, was supportive of Chory’s idea.

“I think that’s a reasonable request to make of the owner. It really is,” Silber said. “And they don’t have the same level of interior service, walk-in service anymore, so they could redeploy people.”

starbucks, like mcdonalds, and everywhere else that eventually got huge, turned into a slow, sloppy, unpleasant experience many years ago. there's no going back.

I haven’t been in a McDonald’s in a few years but I thought they were as efficient as ever?

Doesn't a single person in that Starbucks line know that you can order ahead with your phone and all you have to do is walk in, get it, and go on your way? No waiting.

If the other places I go to that offer phone ordering (Wendy's, Dunkin' Donuts) are anything to go by, there's plenty of waiting involved. You're still dependent on human beings to get your order together and they don't bump phone orders ahead of people who are ordering in person. It's all one queue.

i went to a starbuck's near the knoxville airport one time, parked, went inside, and there was a fuckin HUM of activity, like six dudes, a blue of plastic cups and nozzles, cars picking things up, a bunch of stuff on the counter for the pay-ahead people, zero customers actually placing their orders in person, it was like i'd accidentally walked into the kitchen of a mcdonald's or something, except with vast stretches of empty couch, and i probably waiting like 5 or 6 minutes for somebody to have enough time to come over and ask me what i wanted. really disorienting if you have lived in a walking culture for awhile

a blue = a BLUR

god yes starbucks is a nightmare if you're a regular person used to ordering regular coffee at a regular coffee shop. the phone order thing is horrible it makes me ia.

Americans must be really unhealthy if they don't walk. I suppose that's the way the empire might die.

Many Americans will do anything to avoid walking.

That said, part of this isn’t totally the fault of people, but the fault of the car industry and planning boards that have made many cities completely unwalkable.

I like to walk but might be considered an oddball because of that by...various people close to me

I used to think this talk was exaggerated until I went to Dallas and it seemed like you couldn't cross any non residential street on foot?

Americans must be really unhealthy if they don't walk. I suppose that's the way the empire might die.

as an obesity glorifier can we not blame fat people here, the problem with our declining life expectancy of late can be better attributed to the surge of fentanyl overdoses and COVID deaths. obesity is the symptom of unequal health care access, malnutrition/food deserts, and poverty/racism related stressors, among others.

(and our car-centric urban planning ofc)

no disagreement there, but when you live outside of a city in the US, everything is so spread out you basically have to drive. public transit being slowly strangled to death was part of this

I am definitely not going to go down the road to assign blame on fat ppl.

That video was kinda amazing. There were lots of parking spots, so you could surely park, go to the shop and get your coffee then go back to your car? I thought only British ppl liked queueing? xp

it’s all one queue is the thing. going inside confers no benefit

DON'T GO TO FUCKING STARBUCKS

Didn't this happen in 2021? Milo's article is from May 2021

i only went to Starbucks because my kids wanted “the pink drink” and they wouldn’t shut up about it

they serve pepto-bismol at starbucks?

Do you mean the unicorn drink? Are you sure those children aren’t changelings?

behold teh pink drink. sorry i mean Pink Drink Starbucks Refreshers®️ Beverage

https://i.imgur.com/g8uEHnb.png

Beverage-style drink.

beverage-adjacent colloidal refreshment (note: may not actually refresh)

I'm guessing this must have blown over since the letter was written in May 2021 and I can't find any recent news about it since.

I can definitely understand why customers might not have wanted to go inside in 2021, being the newness of the vaccines and the Alpha wave at the time

Iirc the actual resolution was asking Sbux to HIRE MORE WORKERS not nec to make the workers work faster/more.

Universities are partnering with sports betting companies to introduce students and fans to online gambling — and reaping millions of dollars in fees. https://t.co/DZ6WOCAfoe

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 20, 2022

I've been waiting for the wave of families-ruined-by-gambling stories since legal sports betting exploded. Just seems a matter of time.

Honestly horrifying.

Chris Holdren, a top executive at Caesars Sportsbook, said in an interview that the email was sent to underage students by mistake. “We were very disappointed that it happened, and we asked our partners at L.S.U. athletics to identify and solve the system breakdown,” he said.

I hate this so much. They're positioning the marketing of gambling to underage students as the point at which it crosses the line, when really the whole thing is gross whether the students are underage or not.

Also, using DEI initiatives as a shield, gross

I'm not a prude about gambling, mostly I think it should be legal, but also we know from like millennia of experience that mostly what it does is separate poor people from their money. I don't know what the right level of regulation should be, but not having it advertised everywhere all the time seems like a start.

Our society and economy is designed to suck money upward gambling is more honest about it.

I think gambling should be legal in all 50 states but no apps, no online betting (aside from poker, I guess) and cash only. You should have to get your ass down to a bookie shop to place a parlay and not do it from your couch tied to a 24.99% credit card.

Love Calz' betting shop memories

It seems unsavory to me, but then so does prohibition (which, as we have seen, just pushes the behavior into back alleys). I have no idea how to square that circle.

As a gambler that has lost thousands at times doing stupid shit over the years, i do think it should be legal, but some of the scummy things books do to entice bettors should not be (promising bonuses that require a certain number of bets, so you can lose back any winnings quickly).

I kind of like Milo's idea as that does strip away some of the impulse betting (though hardcore gamblers would scream about it).

There's a post about sports betting which people may not have seen on the Albert Brooks thread:

In view of all the disgusting "we care that you play responsibly" betting ads that are part of every baseball broadcast now--and not even just ads; the gambling industry is now incorporated right into the broadcasts themselves--Lost in America is looking weirdly prescient: "The Desert Inn has heart!"

(My dad had a gambling problem, so this is a real sore spot for me. We complain about lots of things on ILB, but baseball getting into bed with the gambling industry is far and away the game's most serious problem now--which I know it shares with every other sport.)

― clemenza, Friday, November 18, 2022 8:45 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Don't worry, we have safeguards in place, gambling definitely won't corrupt sports this time.

I hate how the NFL's partnership with DraftKings has sportscasters actually giving predictions on random things like over/under on how many yards specific players will have to drum up betting

There's an intriguing nexus between what Neanderthal mentions and hypersaberstatimetricization of baseball specifically and sports generally.

When I used to care about sporting events, I always used to giggle at broadcasters' weirdly specific stats. "Well, Bob, Gonzalez is oh for six when pitching on humid Mondays against bearded batters with at least one Scandinavian grandparent."

If that vast dataset has morphed in its use case from winning games to betting, it's a sad kind of Frankensteinian story.

A friend of mine works for a company that is now partnered with an online betting app, and during the FAQ presentation, he says management stressed that they should never refer to it as a gambling or betting. Instead, management gave some convoluted answer on how it was simply fantasy sports that turns game predictions into a game of its own. Heavy shades of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TLo4Z_LWu4

I once interviewed for one of those places that would send people out into downtown with a bunch of discounted Disney products and try to sell them to people at local businesses (to be fair, I had no idea what this place was before I interviewed) and I found it really strange that they would never use the words "sell" or "buy" and if you did they'd correct you to say "drop off" and "pick up" instead. it was weird and felt a bit like a cult.

fwiw I do enjoy sports betting but there's something uncouth about seeing it promoted during the broadcasts. it's like your parents telling you that you can have the Miller Lite in the fridge when you're 17. just feels weird

I just think colleges and universities seriously should not be in the business of taking a cut of their students' gambling losses. That is wild.

sports entertainment

To be fair, lots of colleges and universities already receive scholarship funds that come from state lotteries. So they’ve been in the business for a while. I agree it does seem grimier when it’s actual betting on student athletes.

I went to college during the online poker boom which introduced a lot of poor students to internet gambling and it definitely took a toll on some people and set them up to be lifelong degens

not me though, I was actually good at it :)

half the billboards I see along freeways in desolate parts of michigan are for weed stores and gambling which on paper I have no issue with but does feel sadly dystopian

It might depend on the details I guess, but isn't there a difference between "lottery-funded scholarships for students" and "colleges taking a cut of their students' gambling losses" ?

This bump has been interesting though. I suppose I'm not morally opposed to gambling in the abstract, but the gambling industry is indefensible (as are state lotteries tbrr)

The heart wants what it wants.

I mean, I am an Old, and I would love to tell you that back in the day, I was watching Masterpiece Theatre and reading Proust all the time.

But that would be false, because I was mostly watching Love Boat and eating Lucky Charms.

so you voted yes?

They’re magically delicious, iirc.

cultural appropriation though

Lucky Charms is Anti-Irish racism of the worst kind

maybe this makes me a prim do-gooder but i am opposed to gambling in both the abstract and the concrete. i think the ruin it causes in people’s lives outweighs any positives. i grew up around methodists who were so anti-gambling they wouldn’t even play go fish with a regular deck of cards though so i am probably an outlier!

aside from my deep lack of interest in gambling, i think keeping it away from sport was one of the few mitigating factors in favor of any athletics scholarships at colleges.

burn all that shit down

Honestly, that is how I feel too Tracer, but in writing that post I realized I don't have a cogent moral argument against gambling at the micro level of like two friends betting each other $10 or w/e. Ultimately, I think I have a deep discomfort with people getting ripped off (i.e., paying money and receiving nothing), even if they claim to enjoy it. It is interesting that gambling seems to have nearly completely lost its immoral aura.

Lotteries should def be illegal too, I don't get that. Someone once very condescendingly described them to me as "a tax on people who don't understand probability," which is obvs gross but speaks to why I don't think governments, who also manage public education, should be running them.

I don’t have a strong stance against gambling; it seems like throwing money away, but I see the argument that just because some portion of the population struggles with it, doesn’t mean it showed be banned (i.e., what folks would way about alcohol, etc.) I do look askance at this marriage of apps and gambling, though, because it seems to designed to make it feel less like gambling and more like a consequence-free video game. Even if one isn’t a gambling addict, it makes it far easier to casually waste money then having to go to a casino or the track. And all these apps are gamified to encourage people to engage. It just seems like one more way society is encouraging large corporations (with an assist from the state, as illustrated by the articles in the New York Times today) to harvest money from people. Which isn’t great ever, but particularly during inflation.

while i agree with the sentiment that gambling is immoral, i'm not the type to go around trying to argue about that which i find moral or immoral. i try to argue in the "more or less damaging and to whom" area.

aligning huge amounts of industry and capital to gambling seems far worse than somebody's casual side-betting.

i've never focused much thought on lottery. i'm just not informed on ppl going broke or staying broke because lottery tix. "aligning gov't with immorality" seems to have so many much bigger targets, i don't focus on that either, maybe i should then.

i heard a decent piece somewhere on how gig-work like doordash and uber are gamified to their "contractors," and the overtones of gambling made super real were so depressing.

Not sure if you're responding to me specifically, but "aligning gov't with immorality" is not really my objection; it's aggressively marketing what amounts to a regressive taxation scheme as a delightful game that could improve your life forever. I might think differently about it if there was zero advertising or marketing for them.

point worth making rob, thx. yeah i think i was carelessly misinterpreting your post but it was all pretty free associative ilxing by me.

There's also the bread-and-circuses aspect of it — give the people gambling and weed and it'll keep them too distracted and poor to effectively organize against growing authoritarianism. (We've all seen The Running Man, right?) But like the left-libertarian I am, I favor regulation over prohibition. Definitely not comfortable with the mass scaling of it we're seeing now.

gambling to me is a lot like alcohol or casual sex, similar primordial appeal imo, sometimes it's worth doing something stupid and base to make yourself feel more alive. opposed to it being illegal, think it should probably be more tightly regulated. just glad i wasn't given the gambling "card" in my "hand" of addictive behaviors tbrr.

on the subject of gambling generally i would defer to gamblers who do it in moderation

I heard a woman interviewed on the radio once about her experience with gambling addiction, it was pretty revelatory to me because I don't think I'd ever thought too seriously about it. She took responsibility for her actions, which destroyed her marriage and bankrupted her, but also was clear-eyed about the predatory nature of the casinos she frequented, how they made it so easy for her to escalate from a casual tourist to a regular to a dopamine-chasing addict who was always sure the next win would make things OK.

(And no it was not Marge Simpson.)

as a recovering gambling addict (video poker) I do think it should be legal, fwiw, along w/drugs etc

comedy is tragedy plus animation xp

xp lol no problem Hunt3r, this is not meant to be a serious thread tbrr

tipsy's post reminded me that part of my objection stems from reading a big chunk of this book: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691160887/addiction-by-design

https://www.propublica.org/article/911-call-analysis-jessica-logan-evidence

Maybe more for the police abuse thread but every new fad in cop mind-reading magic feels a little bleaker.

but also was clear-eyed about the predatory nature of the casinos she frequented, how they made it so easy for her to escalate from a casual tourist to a regular to a dopamine-chasing addict who was always sure the next win would make things OK.

This is also why it’s absurd how much of the safeguarding is written off assigned to the companies themselves. The friend I mentioned was grimly amused when the presenter told her that customers could request a block for a certain amount of time, so they could bet responsibly if they felt it was getting out of hand—this information came after 20 minutes of slides about how app notifications, "double earning periods" and other gamified features were being implemented to "increase engagement". What company is truly going to be interested in preventing their customers from giving them more money?

my view of this is skewed since I've made a decent amount of money playing poker, in fact online poker was what got me through college. but yeah there is such a predatory nature to this stuff. I have a friend who's got a real problem and the local casino keeps finding ways to lure him back. $75 in free play! 80% off a hotel room! Free meals! You can leave any time you want! They know what's going on. god, I remember my first trip to Vegas, I was playing craps all night, and realized it was morning only when the cashier opened up to a line of people rushing to cash in their paychecks, after which I was hit with a rush of profound sadness, though it was blunted somewhat by the 13 Michelob Ultras I had drank. I'm cool with legalization, in fact I think it's real bullshit that all this is going on and online poker is still not really legal in the USA, but advertising it is definitely not a good thing

I think sports gambling is inoffensive to the extent that it consists of people betting against each other with honest (lol) brokers in the middle balancing the sides of the equation and taking a percentage. But I've got no doubt that the sports books are learning every psychological lesson from slot machines to get people just mashing a button over and over again and still have it count as "sports betting". Like those slot machines that have the smokescreen of "technically, you're laying pari-mutuel bets on historical horse races!"

also the advertising of sports gambling on sports broadcasts/teams is such a hilarious conflict of interest that it would actually be shocking if it somehow became illegal in America because there's clearly too much money in it

but the US is not a dystopia I get my coffee beans in the mail every two weeks

lol being on the winning side of the dystopia doesn't make it not a dystopia!

It's hilarious to have grown up watching baseball when the entire MLB freaked out about Pete Rose, but here we are when major league teams are literally building sports books right into the stadiums!

the usa is a dyspepsia it’s too much coffee what does that xp

I think sports gambling is inoffensive to the extent that it consists of people betting against each other with honest (lol) brokers in the middle balancing the sides of the equation and taking a percentage. But I've got no doubt that the sports books are learning every psychological lesson from slot machines to get people just mashing a button over and over again and still have it count as "sports betting". Like those slot machines that have the smokescreen of "technically, you're laying pari-mutuel bets on historical horse races!"

― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Monday, November 21, 2022 12:04 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

dunno if this is true or not but I remember there being a rumor that Monday Night Football was lobbied for heavily by Vegas as it would provide a way for the big losers of the week to "get all their money back" in one shot. there's also the prevalence of "live betting" which I think is designed to hit those same buttons however I think it's one of those things that's too clunky to really work

Casinos are intentionally disorienting and hard to leave.

Lots of ATMs and no clocks.

And it's difficult to find the exits.

Especially when you're drunk on free (bad) booze.

I've only had two casino experiences, one in Atlantic City and one in Reno. I thought both were equal parts fascinating, entertaining, and depressing.

I've been to one in Indiana and one outside Seattle. The latter was fine, played cheap slots for an hour and actually won enough to pay for a decent dinner. Indiana was for a bachelor party and was one of the most depressing experiences I can remember.

I've been to Vegas a couple of times for work-related events. The Strip is just horrible, it's drunk Disneyworld. It's almost impossible to escape being battered by very loud music and bright lights. And maybe it's just me, but I easily get lost in the casinos, and I don't drink.

In 51 years I have been into a casino maybe four times, and left each one without making a transaction of any kind. Just held zero appeal to me. I don't know whether it's because I'm smart or dumb or simply immune to their appeal.

NB, I do not wish to sound boastful; I do lots of stupid things. That just doesn't happen to be one of them.

Casinos are fun but they have to be a special occasion once-every-five-years thing or it’s just depressing. Like going to a strip club for a bachelor party vs. knowing which one has the best dinner buffet.

Never been to a casino; never been to a strip club. Hoping to go my whole life with those streaks unbroken.

My limited strip club experiences — 2 for bachelor parties and 2 for journalistic purposes — also broke down into the fascinating/entertaining/depressing mixed reactions. I found them simultaneously more normal and weirder than I expected, in the sense that the banality of them itself seemed strange. But that's probably a whole different thread.

Strip clubs probably less dystopian than the U.S. in general.

Well here’s where I become everyone’s least favorite moralist again, but I think all gambling is reprehensible and it should be banned.

that totally worked with alcohol iirc

I don’t really give a shit about arguments for it, tbh.

i don't think sleeve was advocating for it, but was just pointing out that banning it would likely channel it into the creation of an even more corrupt state than we currently enjoy. that's hard to imagine, I know, but historically speaking it has happened many, many times.

Hitting a strip club as a gay man sucks! I got the "Ohhh, you're gay, how cuuuute!" and suddenly I was out $20 because they massaged my shoulders and arms.

I found them simultaneously more normal and weirder than I expected, in the sense that the banality of them itself seemed strange. But that's probably a whole different thread.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, 21 November 2022 20:11 (two hours ago) link

Not strange. It’s someone’s place of work. And honestly the craving for human contact is quite banal. This is what strippers understand.

The industry as a whole is dystopian because strippers encounter men who are disgusting and enjoy degrading them. But this is a problem with men not stripping.

I don’t understand the appeal of gambling though.

lots of problems with men not stripping tbh

Yeah, it's like me and speeding. To see these dudes race down highways going 90 in trucks the size of AT-ATs is to wish for spontaneous combustion.

Not strange. It’s someone’s place of work.

Oh yeah, it's just when it's not something you experience a lot it's odd at first to be somewhere where people are taking off their clothes in public.

Oh yeah, it's just when it's not something you experience a lot it's odd at first to be somewhere where people are taking off their clothes in public.

As I said, I've never been to a strip club, but I was the editor of a porn magazine for five years in the early 2000s and sometimes porn actresses would come to the office, and the alacrity with which they would drop all their clothes and just walk around like that was astonishing to me.

taking yr clothes off is fun

especially while holding a Negroni

I wonder if naked people ever run around furry conventions claiming to be Sphynx cats

Oakland has a ban on strip clubs (of any kind), which is something I've never fully understood. There's a depressing card room on San Pablo Avenue, which I visit due to the hoffbrau. But I think that's technically Emeryville.

The Hustler Club in San Francisco has a buffet lunch that's supposed to be not half-bad

Eating at a strip club seems kinda weird to me, but I guess it's for businessmen here for conventions? I dunno

Legs & Eggs baby

Strips clubs with all-you-can-eat buffet shrimp guarantee that the U.S. is emphatically NOT a dystopia

Are strip clubs in sex positive countries like sweden and finland still depressing? And if they’re not depressing, are they still erotic? And how is the shrimp?

Well here’s where I become everyone’s least favorite moralist again, but I think all gambling is reprehensible and it should be banned.

― poppin' debussy (the table is the table), Monday, November 21, 2022 9:13 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

that totally worked with alcohol iirc

― sleeve, Monday, November 21, 2022 9:18 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

It would be great if we didn't live in a dystopia where despair and anhedonia and isolation didn't drive people toward self-destructive behaviors so we didn't have to legislate against them bc they just weren't very popular, maybe let's have that as the vision we structure things around?

Agreed

It would be great if we didn't live in a dystopia where despair and anhedonia and isolation didn't drive people toward self-destructive behaviors so we didn't have to legislate against them bc they just weren't very popular, maybe let's have that as the vision we structure things around?

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Tuesday, November 22, 2022 1:13 AM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

did this article ever get linked itt? i think about it a lot. i think there's something to it, that there's a general "baked in" reason for why we seem to love self-destructive behavior so much. ultimately i think we could really stand to balance things out in the direction that you're gesturing towards. i know that i could use a lot more love. but i also think that letting the death drive speak / having a place for it is wise and maybe even good for us. very vague i have to admit.

https://late-light.com/issues/issue-1/death-drive-nation

just have to say though that you speak the truth, and i always appreciate it when you contribute to these kinds of discussions here, which are usually male dominated.

otm

(in orbit, and map)

otmx2

i don't think despair and anhedonia and are always at the wheel, but it's pretty to think so.

also i am strongly in favor of a mission to eliminate those as controlling/dominating factors

I mean of course I’m for eliminating the conditions, and suggesting that I’m not is ludicrous.

But as someone who was not raised a gambler, doesn’t gamble, and has never understood the appeal of it— this despite many other problems with addiction— I think it’s easy for me to say “ban it,” because it literally has nothing to do with any part of anything in my life. My position isn’t nuanced or studied, I’ve just always found the idea of gambling distasteful or an obvious scam.

in orbit speaks wisdom

but sometimes (just a slight counterpoint) self-destructive behaviors can also be kinda exhilarating, like "look what I can do and still survive"

Well and also the things that can become self-destructive behaviors tend to start out as simple pleasure seeking. Gambling (if you enjoy it) is a little exciting, you get a buzz from it. Same with drugs, getting high is fun. And in both cases lots of people can indulge in a little thrill-seeking without doing much damage to themselves or their lives. It's when you overlay those short-term thrills on top of existing despair/anhedonia/trauma/etc that the thrill-seeking becomes destructive, a way to escape pain rather than sprinkle some dopamine on a more solid psychological foundation. I wouldn't call any of those impulses inherently self-destructive, they're situationally self-destructive. Which makes regulating them tricky, because it's so easy to say "Well, most people can handle it," without sufficiently accounting for the damage they can do.

Desmond Morris has a book adding a whole ev-bio cast to this discussion, which is probably discredited now and probably not helpful. Roughly, Tom Sawyer does stupid shit to get Becky Thatcher's attention.

Especially when you're drunk on free (bad) booze.

I've only had two casino experiences, one in Atlantic City and one in Reno. I thought both were equal parts fascinating, entertaining, and depressing.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, November 21, 2022 1:33 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This pretty nicely describes my one casino experience, in Ocean Pines, Maryland in 2014.

It was almost comical how manipulative the whole thing was. It’s easy to see how people get played.

I went in with $10, which was to be the extent of my money to wager on slot machines. Stuck to that, and ultimately left with the same about of money.

“About the same amount of money” - maybe it was low $9.57 or so.

My grammar is awful this week.

The best account I've read of professional gambling was an interview with a guy who was a longtime casino grinder. He had a simple system, he started out every day with $1,500. He knew the games he was best at or had the best odds, and he would play those until he either lost all his money or doubled it. Sometimes took all day, sometimes he'd be done in a half-hour, but either way he would walk away. At the time — I think this was like 20 years ago I read this — he said he grossed about $75k a year. Which seemed OK if you just really liked hanging around casino but struck me as not a lot of fun.

Anyway, to connect all this back to the thread title, I think one definition or at least symptom of a dystopian society is that it uses these short-term thrills — gambling, drugs, bread, circuses — in the way addicts do, to distract from or paper over abysses of need and hurt, rather than dealing with the underlying damages.

Absolutely and in orbit was otm earlier about motivations towards these behaviors on the individual level.

But the story milo first posted was about how even (some) public universities have become like private equity firms, treating the people they are supposed to be educating and caring for as a constantly replenishing population of marks, as a resource to be mined. And yeah student loans and other terrible things mean that isn't nec new—universities are on a long and steady neoliberal decline—but the gangster mentality of pushing gambling on students because the already disgustingly over-funded athletic program gets a cut is still a little shocking to me.

Y'all I literally smoke cigarettes, I understand death drives and exhilaration and have quite a lot of contempt for myself as evidenced by my poor life choices over the years. I'm just saying, on the whole, if we took care of people more they would kill themselves less, including by gambling away their futures for a thrill or possibly as the only prospect of escaping financial ruin by winning a fantasy amount of money. tipsy otm above.

Gambling indeed comes with a major endorphin rush when you win, and yet it's hard to walk away when you lose. That stupid cliche on TV/movies where someone just makes another bet to try to make back their first is pretty real - your confidence in winning the next bet shoots up after a loss, the need to "not lose" supercedes preservation. And it's how I lost thousands once.

I struggle with it - I broke down crying once after losing money I shouldn't have been betting , and angrily destroyed a laptop another time after another loss.

When you have a lot of disposable income, if you're not full-on addicted, you may be able to self-regulate enough to win a little money and not dent your savings. But the moment your situation changes financially (as mine did due to my changing life situation two years ago), all these habits are still ingrained in you, and your brain isn't necessarily going to let you pull back. Hence why I did some stupid shit last year that I'm still upset about.

I've dealt with it by now only allowing myself longshot bets (i.e. parlays, guessing scores) where you bet $20 and win $1000. Haven't hit yet but also have stopped big wagers.

The other thing = winning a small bet is an easy gateway to thinking "why don't I add another zero into the next one? I could solve my debt with one bet" type fantasy leaps

feeling you on all that. I have successfully quit video poker gambling for over 3 years now, but I still buy the occasional lottery ticket

Yeah, I also want to make clear that I have a lot of empathy for addicts of all sorts— I mean, I smoked a quarter pack of cigs on Saturday night, and I nearly died in 2019 of cancer. I don't usually smoke, but sometimes I just desire that deathly pleasure.

My main qualm is with the industry and culture of gambling, particularly as it is tied to sport, and when my kneejerk reaction is "ban it," I am mostly reacting against those elements, not against those who gamble (with problems or without).

going to the horsetrack is the only form of gambling i like, but i find that so different than the casino, very relaxing, horses are chill, you can really get through an afternoon just placing little bullshit $1-$5 bets and not lose much, plus with horses you'll probably get lucky once. i typically lose about $20 over the course of 10 races

that's the way to do it, really. makes the races a little more fun, but you're not disappointed if/when you don't win, you can have fun outdoors while doing it, and your pocket is no lighter than it was if you went to the bar.

I don’t understand the appeal of gambling though.

Er, you might win some money?

I had perhaps a three month stretch where I was going on a Casino Boat Cruise two-three times a week, because I would play the video blackjack machine. the upside to doing that over a table was the sheer volume of hands you could play in a short time, esp since sometimes the table was empty. using advanced blackjack strategies, I was routinely walking away with lots of money (including $500 once) and never losing, since if you know what you're doing, you win about 41% of the time, and if you increase your bets at the right time, boom.

and then one day, boom, $600 lost. since it's video blackjack, I would guess someone changed the algorithm to game how often players won, as someone (not me) probably took them for a lot. I wasn't the only person who tried that strategy.

moral of story is casinos always know how to put an end to the house losing.

xpost I mean, yeah, exactly. my biggest win was $850 once (betting against my Miami Dolphins), which I used to make the rest of my payment on a cruise. stuff like that's exciting, and it actually allowed me to quit for a while feeling "on top", but then you remember that moment months later and "hey what if I get lucky again".

the other thing is winnings aren't permanent, the $500 you won months ago and used on something fun then becomes a deficit if you don't stop betting and lose $500 or more months later.

I totally get how it can be addicting, chasing the rush. One reason I've never done it in any serious way. My gambling such as it is is limited to a friendly regular poker game with a $10 buy-in. Generally costs me less than a night out at a bar. A big night is being up $20-$30, a bad night is being down the same. (Also we haven't adjusted the buy-in in years, so it's gotten progressively cheaper with inflation.)

When the whole online betting thing took off, I had one friend who got really into it and kept trying to recruit a bunch of us — "You get $500 credit to start," etc. I told him nothing I've learned in my 50-plus years on the planet has made me think developing a gambling habit was a good idea.

I felt bad that I almost sucked my friend into the world at a time when Hard Rock Casino in Tampa, FL had an app (before the State of Florida made the app illegal)

I let her give me $20 to make a small bet because I'd told her I was doing one, and we both made the same bet and won. And days later she's like "oh look this book gives a $200 free play, we should do a bigger bet".

Awkward trying to talk her out of it while thinking simultaneously "lol pot kettle bruh". But she's the impulsive type who could have easily gotten into trouble.

Thankfully she lost interest after I said I didn't wanna place a big bet.

the State of Florida made the app illegal

to tables' earlier point, this is the kind of banning that I think is good, having it be legal as a general concept means you can control it more strictly (which mostly isn't happening due to other factors, hence why we are talking abt it in the dystopia thread)

Yeah, taking away the ease of betting is a big help. Nobody should make life destroying decisions in two seconds on their couch. You might give more pause if you have to make an effort to do it.

(Aka Milo's point up thread)

You underestimate my ability to make terrible decisions, bruh

Like, I am on a couch right now, and I can make a lot of REALLY bad decisions with no help from the sports book industry

Listen YMP. take Mr Bonamassa home. He said he won't press charges.

I like Circus Circus in Reno but that's because they have skee ball and dog shows under the big top

Also the $8.99 Prime Rib dinner at CalNeva is a great deal.. comes with all the fixings

Breaking News: New York City will hospitalize more mentally ill people involuntarily, in a push to remove them from streets and subways, Mayor Eric Adams said. https://t.co/XFDchWwKiW

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 29, 2022

Yeah, just heard that on the radio... Giuliani redux

cool enjoy getting sued you Nazi ghoul

(emphasizing that this is 61% of its $3.5 TRILLION in assets)

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3740921-defense-department-fails-another-audit-but-makes-progress/

The Defense Department has failed its fifth-ever audit, unable to account for more than half of its assets, but the effort is being viewed as a “teachable moment,” according to its chief financial officer.

After 1,600 auditors combed through DOD’s $3.5 trillion in assets and $3.7 trillion in liabilities, officials found that the department couldn’t account for about 61 percent of its assets, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord told reporters on Tuesday.

San Francisco supervisors approve SFPD plan to give robots 'deadly force option' @sfbos @SFPD #SanFrancisco https://t.co/DDIAhqCHP1

— KTVU (@KTVU) November 30, 2022

ED 209 finally goes to market

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle

You have 30 seconds to comply.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/05/how-hospice-became-a-for-profit-hustle🕸

Paywall avoidance version:
https://archive.ph/IuC4b

Thanks!

Sorry if yr paywalled out, but I’m only a few graphs into this and had to post it…

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/us/jrotc-schools-mandatory-automatic-enrollment.html

Kids being forced into JROTC programs, mainly in Black and poor areas of major cities.

That is disturbing. I'm surprised the word "draft" never appears in that piece

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLxi1kzpkQY

a quarter billion and they still hired the interior decorators from every airport hotel lobby

related:

https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-44/the-intellectual-situation/why-is-everything-so-ugly/

^makes its point, then restates it, makes it again, then churns out its point several more times, then...

much like your posts

A mom was kicked out of a Rockettes show because *facial recognition tech* at MSG identified her as working at a law firm involved in a suit dealing with the venue. https://t.co/5Z0Oa79Scc

— Hannah Recht (@hannah_recht) December 20, 2022

related to the above
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/realestate/luxury-high-rise-432-park.html

also fuck dolan forever

"A Fifth of American Adults Struggle to Read. Why Are We Failing to Teach Them?"
https://www.propublica.org/article/literacy-adult-education-united-states

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2022/fatal-police-shootings-unreported/

"As fatal police shootings increase, more go unreported."

"This morning I discovered something *extremely* alarming happening in the car market, specifically in auto lending," CarDealershipGuy, an anonymous account held by a CEO of a car dealer group whose identity is unknown, wrote on Twitter on Dec. 15.

Despite its mysterious owner, this account is highly followed in the industry because it is well informed.

"I'm now convinced that there is a massive wave of car repossessions coming in 2023," CarDealershipGuy continued.

The anonymous CEO explained that over the past two years, many people took out exorbitant loans on cars, at a time when car values were inflated. Because of the shortage of vehicles due to supply chain problems, these consumers had no choice but to buy cars that were overpriced.

But car valuations are now plummeting. The value of some cars has sharply declined, putting some buyers at risk. They owe banks more than what their cars are worth...

US life expectancy is at its lowest in 25 years

I sure hope they plummet enough that I can buy one

A life?

I definitely had thoughts of JG Ballard's 'Concrete Island' a couple weeks back when I noticed the big tent put up in an interstate 75 turn off.

Yeah, there's a whole city of tents/vans/cars under the freeway in west Oakland

Yeah, there's a whole city of tents/vans/cars under the freeway in west Oakland

― Andy the Grasshopper, Thursday, December 22, 2022 2:20 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I used to have some friends who lived far north on Wood Street, near the Target in EMeryville basically, next to the tracks. Back then, they called it "Trackside," and it was mostly veteran homeless folks, SSDI queens, and train kids with drinking or heroin problems. I couldn't believe pictures I saw of the Desert Yard this year— I used to walk my dog through there every morning. And in 2009, when I first moved to West O, the whole area was just...pampas grass and some young bums hanging out.

A Hooverville blown up.

yeah, and there's been like 200 fires there in the last year, some quite large/serious - I think CalTrans has started a cleanup, but the last time I walked down Wood St. by the tracks, there were *literally* hundreds of burned out, upside down, abandoned cars - some with residents, most without. The days of a few scruffy campfire trimmigrants with dogs on chains are over, it's like a whole thunderdome city down there, right beneath the commuters on their way to work

I hesitate to say anything about the demographics of people living there— I lived in a converted UHaul truck and worked fulltime for my last years in the Bay Area. Yeah, I was a punk and would occasionally hop a train or whatever, but most of the time, I went to work just like everyone else who could afford a fancy apartment.

Mr Beast Makes Iced Tea With $2000 Ice Cubes

The U.S. is a dystopia where old men yell at clouds.

Trump-supporting billionaire Home Depot founder says ‘nobody works anymore’ because of ‘socialism’ and the ‘woke people (who) have taken over the world’

https://fortune.com/2022/12/29/bernie-marcus-home-depot-woke-people-socialism-labor-shortage/

Gee, I'd sure love to go work at a place where the gazillionaire owner thinks the labor force is too lazy, too fat, and too stupid.

you guys fucked up by killing all the anarchist terrorists who came to your shores

why do people with seemingly limitless resources keep arriving at the same stale fucking ideas, I would be so embarrassed to put my naked self interest on display to the word like that

Listen, I work hard. I sit for at least five hours every day in a big office where people come to me constantly to make reports and lay out elaborate plans to increase our market share or profitability by fractions of percentage points.

The decisions I make before my personal chef serves me lunch will affect the accumulated wealth of a score of hedge funds, several national wealth funds, some ivy league endowment funds, and more than a dozen foreign billionaires. Believe me, it's getting harder all the time to wring another billion or two out of those tens of thousands of spoiled, lazy, selfish workers out there in my stores who kick and scream every time they're asked to work even harder or accept benefits cuts for the sake of the team. It's this crazy worthless socialism that's ruining us I tell you.

People don't want to be fungible assets of my shitty company because of socialism.

“We used to have free speech here. We don’t have it,” he said. “The woke people have taken over the world.”

Dude is 93 and this is how he's spending his time

I hope it's a good sign that they're so freaked out about socialism, for far too long they were content just to be smugly dismissive of it

does this mean that obama isn't the evil master behind everything? because i swear i was hearing for a while there that obama was behind some sort of big scheme

They've been exactly this freaked out about socialism forever - 1920, 1950, 1980, 2022 the song remains the same. The billionaire psychos were convinced Dwight Eisenhower was a commie stooge.

but sometimes they actually seem to mean socialism and sometimes they seem to mean basic liberal democratic rights for their employees

They seem to think the great unwashed are getting regular and generous checks from the gubmint.

They are, and I’m sure this is no surprise, morons who got lucky, and don’t understand anything about the world because their wealth has insulated themselves from the world the rest of us inhabit.

A YouTube ad for gofundme is bleak as hell.

Got an extra tenner? Find someone whose insurance doesn’t cover their insulin!

The Rust Belt is turning into Mississippi right under our noses, I am not sure that we will ever recover, not with these massive business owners utterly unconcerned about living and working conditions for their workers and for communities where their stores operate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/07/health/fentanyl-xylazine-drug.html

All that military spending and the US winds up losing an Opium War to itself

That article was awful and is being excoriated by the harm reduction community— porn for cop-lovers and those who want to criminalize drugs

any chemical relation to krokodil?

As we're seeing in Brasilia, dystopias are contagious.

Here we are now
Subjugate us

The Washington Post has its problems too but man the Times is such garbage.

I don’t think the Times is all bad, but about 80% of it is shit, yes. I simply don’t have the time to check the many other sources that might give me a more nuanced perspective, and it’s the devil I grew up reading every morning, so I know what to expect.

I also like to hate-read the Op-Ed section.

what personal knowledge of tranq situation in on the board? is this a fake “crisis” either due to infrequency or severity of effects?

“So called harm reduction” reasonably pisses the group off. the rest of article seemed hyper gross, but reality can be that way. is there a reliable non-tranq fentanyl avenue that’s not so dire for recovery or intervention?

fake crisis but a problem that could easily be solved with tested supply at safe injection sites and infrastructure for more active outreach of test strips.

but i’m a full legalization of all illicit substances guy, so my personal take on the issue is maybe biased.

ty i appreciate it for sure- i am def not in space i know.

I also live in Philadelphia and so the continued portrayal of the city as some opioid mecca doesn’t do anybody any favors except the outlets printing the portrayals and the police state.

Philly is a hard place, but KnA is legit one tiny strip of blocks in an enormous city that is, in many ways, kind of great.

Northeastern cities that aren’t New York or Boston are so underrated. I love Baltimore dearly and there’s so much cool stuff and cool people.

https://theappeal.org/angola-prison-children-death-row-louisiana/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7haUShzBsrc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpGumISBDrQ

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-investors-snapping-up-colorado-river-water-rights-betting-big-on-an-increasingly-scarce-resource

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/lights-massachusetts-school-year-no-one-can-turn-rcna65611

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=falApGAB8Rc

the video, the challenge, the ads, the presentation, the everything

they’re all kinda baked into th

... those bangs.

jealous of her mcr shirt

omg i loled at the poll where you could choose "you are god's little soldier" some other shit and "vanilla extract" and vanilla extract won

A good dystopia is packed with minor daily frustrations IMO.

So there's a great Thai restaurant in my neighborhood called Kiin. Yesterday, I searched for their website to order some takeout. Here's the Google result. pic.twitter.com/JFCyvXV9be

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralis✧✧✧@ma✧✧✧.f✧) (@doctorow) February 24, 2023

This “Climate-Friendly” Fuel Comes With an Astronomical Cancer Risk

The Environmental Protection Agency recently gave a Chevron refinery the green light to create fuel from discarded plastics as part of a “climate-friendly” initiative to boost alternatives to petroleum. But, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and The Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer.

Staff members said in interviews that Mr. Becerra continued to push for faster results, often asking why they could not discharge children with machine-like efficiency.

“If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would have never become famous and rich. This is not the way you do an assembly line,” Mr. Becerra said at a staff meeting last summer, according to a recording obtained by The Times.

This quote, from that article, is particularly thread-appropriate:

Underage workers in Grand Rapids said that spicy dust from immense batches of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos made their lungs sting

Ford is seeking a patent for a system that would enable its cars to annoy users with endless notifications and constant beeps and chimes or even lock owners out of the car entirely if they miss a payment, according to a patent application published last week.

i'm amazed it's taken this long. they'll put the repo men out of business, and then when they can't make their payments, take their cars too.

(I mean fuck the Repo industry ANYWAY, but this is way worse.)

really should just post the Youtubes to evry track from The Coup's Steal This Album itt

It goes on to say that it's probably intended for self-drivers, so the cars can just turn around and drive back to the dealership

I dunno, cars driving themselves back to the dealership sounds less dystopian than repo men stealing them back.

completely removes some of the tools people can do to keep their rides a little longer and prevent repossession though

like parking at other people's houses, etc.

frankly repossession of any type is bullshit, automated or not. if it's going to happen, it should have to go through court only, dragged out as long as possible

(I don't mean long extended court costs type thing that'll hurt the person impacted even more, but like rather that if the dealer/seller is trying to get the car back, it should be like eviction where you can't just throw someone on the street, you have to go to court, and it takes a while, so someone has more time to rectify it or at least be prepared for life without a car, not just walking outside and seeing no car like happened to my mom a decade ago).

the entire phenomenon of having to pay 'subscriptions' for things one 'owns' to fully work is indeed dystopian, but it's not really limited to the US

that's capitalism, baby

am i really "alive" this month? or am i actually just 1/840th alive for my life

I was kind of annoyed when that movie Repo Men came out cos they didn't go far enough with the concept, but like we're probably a year or two away from heart transplants being ripped out of you for failing to make a hospital bill payment.

schroedinger's infinitesimal z_tbd

oh, Wikipedia tells me that Repo! The Genetic Opera has a similar plot? huh. maybe i should finally watch after all.

in the alternate dvd-only ending of Repo Man, it ends with Estevez weeping "fuck!" to himself for way too long

lol I mean the shitty 2010 film with Jude Law. ain't even seen the 84 Estevez flick.

i do like that ending though

the 84 flick is a classic imo. it makes you root for the repo men, just a bit

harry dean stanton doing exactly what you want him to do

total classic

"Otto, we don't have much time, so I'm going to have to torture you"

Essential viewing

I dunno, cars driving themselves back to the dealership sounds less dystopian than repo men stealing them back.

To what extent do car dealerships care, though? They got the sale. Seems likelier to me that it's the banks/lending institutions who care. I'd be a little more worried about my car wanting to drive to Bank of America as opposed to Honda of Springfield or whatever.

Yeah, on the local news last night they said that if the car wasn't worth worth what was owed on it, it would drive itself to the junkyard & that does seem pretty fucked up.

Also Repo! The Genetic Opera movie is a super weird production. I fell asleep to it one night and my wife came to bed later and was like "what the hell were you watching?!" the next morning.

From Philip K. Dick's Ubik (1969):

“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”

meanwhile, down the hall, joe chip's neighbor was fucking the door

As mentioned above, it's crazy how much chat GPT (or more specifically the current iteration of GPT-powered bing) makes me think of Philip K Dick's dystopian view of artificial intelligence. A future where I am constantly arguing with various appliances in my house now seems totally plausible.

I don't remember which novel has some sort of suitcase designed to constantly start pointless arguments with you until you are driven insane enough to not be drafted by the military, but that kind of tech seems to have arrived.

In a remarkable live hit, this local reporter covering the horrific school shooting in Nashville shared her own experience of surviving a school shooting when she was in middle school. I didn't catch her name. pic.twitter.com/qFLu6uWQxl

— Reem Akkad (@reemakkad) March 27, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLMMxgtxQ1Y

It's AI generated... apparently the DNC reacted with absolute glee when they say how bad it is

you would think all the work silicon valley has put into teaching AIs to be racist would have paid off more

I posted that b/c it sucks, just to be clear

The "feels like the train is coming off the tracks" for the famously Amtrak-loving Biden is decent political-snark praxis tho

not as good as that 2020 ad with the trains and “electric avenue”

Thought the train reference also might be a dog whistle about the Palestine train derailment.

I don’t know where else to put these things

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/05/04/jordan-neely-nyc-subway-choking-death-sparks-outcry-investigation/70182957007/

pretty sure Eric Adams just wishes this story would go away

Fox News's advice for life in America: "Have a plan to kill everyone you meet" pic.twitter.com/MaOE6WfIyh

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 7, 2023

Ok

Run. Hide. Fight. (part one) #txlege pic.twitter.com/sJfQRoUyAs

— Michelle (@LivingBlueTX) May 7, 2023

Didn't see this one coming...

Consumers already contending with a squeeze on their bank accounts due to inflation are now facing more pressure as businesses introduce new tipping features at self-checkout machines.

Companies, including airports, bakeries, coffee shops and sports stadiums, have now introduced the self-serve tipping option, where customers can leave tips including the typical 20%, despite facing minimal to no interaction with any employee, according to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal.

On the one hand, I work next door to a unionized Starbucks and like to tip of only to show some solidarity. On the other hand, I can see companies encouraging the spread of tipping in order to avoid paying a fair wage.

“If only”

I don't mind tipping 20 or 25 or 30 %, because fuck capitalism and yay workers. If I couldn't afford reasnably generous tipping, I suspect I would stay home more and be more choosy about then and where to go out.

But here is my one weird quibble: I wish that suggested tips were calculated on pretax totals rather than post-tax totals. I don't know why this matters to me but at some point I decided that it did.

Fuck capitalism yay feudalism

Surely the question here is what guarantee do you have that tipping a self checkout machine will go to workers? Especially since these machines are there to stop there being workers?

So, what were vails, exactly? They would be paid to servants after visiting someone’s house for a meal or party or whatever event. The servants would line up at the door, and if a person failed to give them their vails, they could be harassed. (One story goes that a person asked their friend why they hadn’t come to any of their meal invitations, to which the friend replied that they couldn’t afford it.) Vails were usually 1 s. or 2 s. per servant, though they could be more, depending on how the giver felt. For many servants, vails made up the bulk of their income, with one footman claiming he could make over £100 a year in vails alone. Another claimed that he made £59 in nine years under one master, and received a further £28 in vails and perquisites.

i welcome more fodder for a good old fashioned tipping debate

The character Mr. Wilcox in Howard's End - played by Anthony Hopkins in a rather dreary movie - says to always tip the carver.

Just the idea that you live a life where you're regularly encountering someone whose entire job is to slice meat for rich people is weird enough.

But it does make me wonder: at present, tipping is seen as an American thing, but surely it must have been enough of a thing in Britain for Forster to notice and make it a point of characterization.

When did tipping decline in the UK, such that it is now seen as an American vulgarism?

in an absolutely classic example of cultural misunderstanding, 'tipping the carver' is ofc a british term for the most extreme and public acts of masturbation

Thanks, dmac. In the US we just call it "waxing the tadpole."

Reminds of a gross tip jar at a coffee place that had a sign that said "It's OK to just put the tip in" or something like that. I tipped, but did not want to.

When did tipping decline in the UK, such that it is now seen as an American vulgarism?

lol I wasn't here for any of the previous tipping epics so sure let's do this

I don't think tipping is viewed as "American" in and of itself - it's the idea of tipping as an obligatory thing that if you don't do it the worker won't make enough to survive that's American. I used to tip a fair bit in London and the only reason I don't as much anymore is almost every restaurant now charges a service charge, which I guess is in effect an obligatory tip. Other services I'd guess tipping has fallen out of fashion as living wages became better established and the old noblesse oblige attitude retreated somewhat. Which means it's probably coming back, considering the UK's current trajectory.

saw a tweet awhile back: "Whenever I see an iPad at the register, I know I'm going to be asked to tip for something I've tipped before"

there's a wine shop by my house like this... you buy a bottle of wine, cork intact, and they ask if you'd like to tip for, idk, the transaction?
No idea if it goes to the cashier, or just pads the bottle sale for the owner

(NEVER tipped before ^^^)

I remember reading an article or seeing some thing on twitter that for a lot of these businesses the tips just go up to corporate and don't go to the workers. Relatedly, a few times I've either seen a sign next to the console or even a message on the tip screen that clearly states that "All tips go to the employees" or something to that effect, which usually make me more likely to throw something on top. On the other hand, there was a lunch spot that was part of a small chain near me where they had a physical cash tip jar next to the console that had a sign saying "Please tip with cash as tips on the iPad don't go to the workers." At another place I go to regularly, the guy at the counter manually forwards past the tip screen on his end when I pay with a card for what I imagine are similar reasons.

it very much depends— two local businesses, family owned and operated, will often get a tip just for selling me beer or a bag of chips and dip or whatever. they also give me significant discounts since i’m a regular customer.

In my experience it's not so much that electronic tips don't go to workers - it's that they get taxed as reported income.

Like lots of folks I don't use cash as much as I used to, but one of the best arguments for having cash is that you can just fuckin' GIVE ot to people. And then boom, suddenly those people have some money. (Not enough, of course, but more than nothing.)

These days I pretty much use cash only for tips, handouts, and (oddly) haircuts.

Those are still reason enough for the cash infrastructure to exist.

Every once in a while I find myself with no cash at all, and that means I can't always help the people I want to help. A couple weeks ago I literally bought a beer for a guy outside 7-11 and just handed it to him.

On the occasions that I encounter cash-centric workers, I find myself making a special trip to an ATM and then a further special trip to go buy a candy bar or something so that I have useful denominations.

Sidenote: Given how cash is really used today (mostly for small transactions), I feel ATMs should be way better about dispensing 5s and 10s instead of only 20s. $20 is usually more than I want to give out to Mr. 7-11 Rando Guy.

If there were an easier way to have a pocket full of 1s and 5s I would totally go for that.

(Insert SNL "change bank" clip here)

Sidenote: Given how cash is really used today (mostly for small transactions), I feel ATMs should be way better about dispensing 5s and 10s instead of only 20s. $20 is usually more than I want to give out to Mr. 7-11 Rando Guy.

I used to live near a Chase lobby with ATMs that allowed me to select what denominations I wanted my withdrawal to consist (albeit none smaller than $5). I wish that would become the standard, hate having to buy some small cheap item just to break a $20.

Also wish more receipts had the tip numbers for 20% etc--I'm horrible even at simple math and always feel slightly embarrassed at having to use a tip calculator app at the counter.

Blatherskite, I also cannot math. I usually just put one finger over the rightmost three digits of the total, then double it. That is usually close to a 20% tip.

So, like, lets say the bill is $30.04. I put my thumb over the 0.04 and see a 3. Twice three is six. Boom. Done.

If I go to a fancy restaurant and the bill is $202.50, I do the same thing. I put my thumb over the the rightmost three digits. Twice twenty is forty. Boom. Done.

Sometimes I round up or ddownbeat that is pretty much my method.

* down but

i had an electrician, local and miraculously available, call around at short notice to do a job for me yesterday.

now, it was at behest of the builder and therefore technically hes gonna have been paid for his hour of whatever

but by not handing him a twenty "for a few pints and thanks" i have breached one of the great moral codes- the workingman should never leave the house without an optional offer of coffee and a mandatory imposition of some hard cash- and there is no doubt that i wont see a plumber, carpenter or any other such useful type of chap for years on the back of it

xp Cash, and you hand them the cash directly if you ever suspect that someone else might help themselves to the worker's tips, or if you suspect that the worker has been trafficked.

You also got to love the big corps that 'would you like to round up your bill for the *Blank*' and then they get to write off your donation as a corporate donation off their taxes.

it turns out that's kind of an urban legend and in most cases they do not get to write off those round-up donations as their own donations for tax benefits. it's mostly a PR move

an actual tax expert like sarahell can probably clarify

although there was a really funny one where Panera was asking you to round up for the "Panera Foundation" or something and it was a screw-up because there was not yet a registered Panera non-profit

I only ever heard about this from one guy tweeting about how he'd contacted their company for information and they quietly changed the wording to not reference a non-existent org

https://www.healthline.com/hlcmsresource/images/diabetesmine/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/strips.jpg

for a little while apparently you could donate your poop for money at some clinics

really said I missed out on that cos it was lucrative

I feel like my gut biome would be pretty rich - I grew up on a far with animals, unpasteurized milk, etc.

If you find the poop-buyers, let me know.. I think my scat would be in high demand

This is hilarious to me pic.twitter.com/jDHci6oj6A

— Ray (@lobotomyze) May 19, 2023

The trifecta - hilarious, bleak and cringe.

.

Okay, comments really bring out the black comedy of the whole thing.

Amazing beginning -- and lots of passages describing a kind of hell -- in the review of this book on Private Equity

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2023-06-02-days-of-plunder-morgenson-rosner-ballou-review/

https://nbc16.com/news/nation-world/arbys-employee-found-dead-inside-freezer-beat-her-hands-bloody-trying-to-escape-houston-texas-lawsuit-regional-manager-collapsed-freezing-restaurants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5weq6FNKcHI

Jesus christ, one of my biggest nightmares working in places w/ walk-in freezers. how awful

the Plunder review linked above, incredibly depressing, will not read that book

yeah I've been reading that review slowly since yesterday, incredibly grim, I can't imagine reading the books.

I also wasn't aware of Monowitz before reading that, I can't believe (I can def believe it) that's not a more widely known fact.

yah xyzzzz thank you for sharing that, it's horrifying & vital reading

my high school had an active shooting threat earlier. no one got hurt but students did find the shooters ig pic.twitter.com/3EkxBL2pjM

— tony🗣 (@ratatatvandal) June 8, 2023

This is truly depressing— gift read. Federal Policy on Homelessness Becomes New Target of the Right

Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, used two recent hearings to argue that Housing First ignores the root causes of homelessness.

What, capitalism?

Joe Lonsdale, the tech mogul behind the Cicero Institute, has called Housing First part of a “Marxist” attempt to blame homelessness on capitalism

Ah, OK then.

The Delaware House will vote today on a bill that would allow hundreds of LLCs to vote in local elections in the small town of Seaford.

In the town of 8,500, hundreds of businesses voting could be the deciding factor in every election.https://t.co/61zVbv0P7B

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) June 20, 2023