wild_turkey

I'm not trying to bust your balls or single you out, but I have honest questions about the logic here. The suggestion by the bolded part is that you feel they deserve a tip because they are underpaid for the job they are doing. How do you make the determination that they are underpaid, and do you also extend that same financial gratuity to other people in life who are potentially underpaid? Suppose you walk into Torchy's and your meal comes out to $20, the iPad suggests you tip 20%, 22%, or 25%, you pick the middle number for simplicity and give them $4.40 because they don't make a lot of money. How do you know what their hourly wage is and whether or not that's a fair wage for the work they do? Are they making less than other people with similar qualifications in similar jobs? Suppose they are making $15/hr. Is that a fair wage for ringing up food orders? If you knew they made $20/hr would you be less inclined to tip? If you think back to 10 years ago before iPads prompted you for a tip on every transaction, would you have still tipped that same employee? It's not like Torchy's employees in 2013 were making a lot of money, so what made them less deserving of a tip then, or more deserving of a tip now? How you apply that to every other industry you interact with? Do you tip employees in a retail clothing store? the guys that pick up your trash? Your mail person? The Amazon delivery guy? Your kids' teachers? The school lunch ladies or janitors? Flight attendants? The receptionist at your doctor or dentist office? Do you tip the person at Target or HEB that guides you to the next available self-check kiosk? The people who carry out groceries if you do drive-up? Many of those people also don't make a lot of money, yet they aren't getting tips. Is it simply because they work in a situation where it isn't customary to stick an iPad in your face and have the audacity to ask for more money? Should we be rewarding fast food establishments for crossing that line? Is the person at Torchy's more deserving of a tip than the guy on the trash truck in 108F heat? All honest questions, not trying to be obtuse, but it seems like tipping has expanded arbitrarily and it doesn't seem entirely rational to me.

5 years ago, it seems lots of places that didn’t normally receive tips had started adding a tip line to the credit card receipt. It annoyed me, but I realized it cost them nothing to add that line and it might pressure 5-10% of customers into tipping. In the past 2-3 years, that’s mostly changed to the POS tablets which also allows the business to add a tip option at no cost to them. The difference is that leaving a tip is now the default option at many places, and often times the 3 preselected options are fairly high percentages. I personally think it’s ridiculous for counter service places. It’s nothing more than the business owner passing on their labor costs to the customer. I realize margins are thin in the restaurant industry, but if a place like Torchy’s or Chipotle can’t pay their employees a fair wage without incorporating tips, then maybe they should raise menu prices. I get guilted into occasionally leaving a tip in these situations, but typically more at local businesses that I feel a stronger need to support. I hardly ever leave the default 20% or more. I typically lower it to $2-3 unless I feel the counter employee is busting their ass or doing something beyond the ordinary expectations. On the barber tangent, I tip my girl $8-10 for my haircut every 3-4 weeks. It’s a $40 haircut, takes her ~25 minutes, and she has 3 kids. I give a little more around the holidays. I also tip my mail lady at the holidays.

I’m in the camp that thinks it’s statistically likely that intelligent life exists other places in the universe. Perhaps thousand (millions, I don’t even know how to quantify it?) of unique and separate civilizations exist or have existed in the history of the universe. I think the likelihood that an alien life form has physically visited Earth is pretty low, but I think there’s at least a 50% chance that an alien species has sent unmanned drones to scout Earth, or perhaps some other surveying/monitoring technology that’s different from anything we use. Thinking about it from a human perspective, it seems entirely possible that over the next 50-100 years we will begin sending large amounts of drones into the Milky Way galaxy, as our own technology advances. We will likely have pressure to explore in hopes of finding alternate habitable planets due to deteriorating conditions on Earth - climate change, disease, nuclear war, etc. By extension, other alien species may face a similar existential threat on their own planets (part of the Fermi paradox), prompting them to explore the universe by whatever means possible. It seems logical to me that sending massive amounts of drones into the nearby universe is an effective means of exploration, much easier than manned space flight to unknown planets, and possibly some of those drones have reached Earth. I sort of doubt there’s any imminent threat to humanity in all of this, because I suspect one of the following scenarios: 1. They have observed Earth and didn’t think our planet is useful to them and not worth their effort to actually come here. 2. They have observed Earth and decided visiting Earth is too risky due to them not fully understanding our capabilities, concern for our diseases, fear of our technology which is foreign to them. 3. Their ability to engage in manned interstellar travel lags hundreds or thousands of years behind their ability to perform unmanned surveillance.

The finale of Succession was the last show I watched on HBO, which was almost 2 months ago. This is a pretty long drought for them to not have a good weekly series, and I don’t think they can blame it on the writers’ strike yet. Winning Time season 2 comes out August 6. Beyond that, I’m not optimistic.

I got a 1/2 lb cheeseburger at the original location. Maybe it was the cheese. But your original point stands that $17 at M+O seems a little bit high for a burger, fries, and a drink. That price point seems more in line with Rodeo Goat, Hopdoddy, etc.

We went to Musume last night. It’s the second location of a Dallas based Japanese restaurant, located in the Sandman hotel that took over the XTO building. Our table wasn’t ready when we arrived, so we had a drink in the lobby bar which was nice. The restaurant is in the basement and the seating layout was a little odd, which is my only complaint since our table was in this small area that felt a little claustrophobic. We are mainly sushi and it was good but nothing spectacular. It was priced similar to other sushi restaurants. I would go back if friends picked it, but not sure I would pick it on my own. Hatsuyuki remains my go-to sushi spot, just wish they took reservations.

Fwiw, I had Kincaid’s this week and it was $13.31 for a burger, fries, and a drink.

Saw it last night and loved it. That’s how you make an action movie, and Tom Cruise does it as well as anyone. We rewatched the other MI movies leading up to this and I was happy I did, but definitely not necessary and Dead Reckoning can stand on its own. I loved the Venice scenes, especially the fight on the bridge. The entire train sequence was fantastic as well. Lots of gorgeous women in this movie and they each played their roles very well. Looking forward to seeing more of Atwell, but also bummed about…you know. For being 2h43m, it never dragged for me. I didn’t want it to end.

We’ve only been to 61 Osteria once and were fairly underwhelmed, especially for the price. Had the Prosciutto di Parma and Rosemary Focaccia to start, which were both great. I had the tagliatelle bolognese which was basically average but I definitely make a better bolognese at home on a bad day. Wife had the carbonara which was below average. With 2 cocktails and a bottle of wine, plus tax and tip, it was $259. We are picky about Italian food and pasta. There’s lots of mediocre and bad pasta out there, but there’s no excuse for it at that price point. I think the best Italian in town is probably Piatello despite being in a weird location. They’ve been consistently good for us after ~5 visits.

Grace is good but my personal go-to is Ellerbe.

I’ve been assuming the white gas is poison, because like you said, why would they need to decontaminate someone who is about to go outside? What other purpose would the gas serve? And if that’s true, then Juliet’s superior heat tape protected her from the poison gas. I guess it’s possible the outside air quality was killing previous cleaners, and if that’s the case, her heat tape could also be the difference maker in her survival. The mayor seemed confident she would die before reaching the ridge, as if he knew she had been poisoned, but perhaps his comments were simply from his past experience of watching every other person die. I guess we’ll eventually find out.

I sort of liked the ending but it created more questions than answers. Will be interested in season 2, but I get a little bit of a LOST vibe where it’s easier to create the mysteries than it will be to eventually deliver a satisfying conclusion. It seems the people in charge of the silo (the mayor, etc) are poisoning the people who go outside to clean, and Juliette escaped this by having better heat tape. If the outside world is still unlivable, why would it be necessary to poison people? Do they want them to die within view of the camera to help convince the silo residents that it isn’t safe outside? Was the previous mayor also involved in this? She didn’t seem like the type to actively poison people. Like others have asked, where are the bodies of everyone else who has gone outside in the previous 130 years? Even though the outside world looks bleak, is it actually uninhabitable? Her suit won’t do anything to protect against radiation, so that’s probably not it unless we are going to watch her die early in the next season, which seems unlikely. It would also seem she is stuck outside for at least a little while because they aren’t going to suddenly open the door to let her back in. She’ll need food and water so I presume we’ll get some answers on this pretty quickly. I suspect there will be other escapees from her silo or other silos who will take her in.

Not sure how you feel about Tesla or an EV in general, but my wife has a Model Y and loves it. I think it checks a lot of your boxes.

I would’ve been a little more protective if I had known there was a sexual predator nearby.

We don’t watch much reality TV, but I always thought Below Deck would be up our alley if we did watch reality TV. We like boats, beaches, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean. Last year we went to Corsica. This year we have an upcoming trip to Sardinia. Some friends informed us that this season of BDSY is set in Sardinia, so we decided to give it a shot. We spent the weekend binging it and we are officially Below Deck junkies. Interestingly enough, there was an episode in which they took their charter guests to Bonifacio, Corsica for a night for a Vive la France party. And much to our surprise, upon reviewing our own pics from our time in Bonifacio, they were there at the exact time as us. Well, we were there for 4 nights, but one of those was the night they came into port. It’s a beautiful town, fairly small but with a lot of visitors. In all the time we were in Corsica, we met no Americans and very few native English speakers. We loved that. We definitely did not see Daisy and Gary arguing in the street or a film crew, but based on the time of day, we probably missed them by less than an hour. My wife says she remembers some English speaking people partying on a yacht. I feel like people partying on yachts is pretty commonplace and unmemorable, but also I drank plenty of the Corsican wine, so I’m an unreliable witness. Nonetheless, I do have a random pic of her standing behind their boat. Here’s that wanker Gary next to the Parsifal III. Notice the Utopia next to it. And here’s my wife walking by, same boats, even the 3rd boat over matches up. Really weird and amusing coincidence. Too bad I can’t see Chase’s goofy ass up on the deck. And because that wasn’t the most flattering pic of my better half, here’s a bonus beach pic from earlier that same day. Ready for the finale and then I think it’s time to watch the Croatia season since we recently spent time there.

It’s cute that you fly commercial and think you are not part of the “unwashed” because you have a credit card.

Watched the first episode. Started the second episode and then turned it off. We’re HBO junkies so sex and nudity don’t bother us. They also aren’t enough to keep us watching an otherwise boring show. The plot was terrible. Lily Depp felt lifeless and totally unsympathetic. They did nothing to make us want to root for her character. The Weeknd was a total sleezeball creeper. Hard pass.

Didn’t particularly love this season. I thought Joan is Awful and Beyond the Sea were both decent and the most like previous Black Mirror seasons. I like the episodes that are based on some element of technology or near-future society gone awry. The other three episodes each felt like mini horror films. Lock Henry was good in that regard but didn’t feel like a Black Mirror episode. Demon 79 was okay, Mazey Day was awful. I didn’t feel any of them were unique stories.

The outside world seems fine, or at least much better than the Silo residents are led to believe. No surprise there. There’s a small group of people (Mayor Holland, Sims, their henchmen) within the Silo who are actively maintaining the lie, and presumably this has been going for ~130 years, getting handed down over generations. So the big question becomes, why would anyone living in the Silo cover up the truth about the outside world, thereby maintaining their own lifelong captivity? Is it possible that Holland and others actually have access to the outside world? Or maybe they don’t fully understand the situation either, and they are maintaining the lie for some unknown reason they falsely believe to be true? I’m doubtful we will get any of the answers this season.

The reveal in this episode was something most viewers hopefully suspected from the very beginning, which makes it feel like not much of a reveal. Beyond that, nothing much happened. Is there one episode left in the season? Im not expecting much to happen. Maybe Juliet goes to find the door.

So wait, you started a thread to ask how much force can be used to remove someone from your property, but now you’re telling us how much force can be used? And regardless of whether or not it’s legal, it’s insane to me that on multiple occasions you have had to physically push someone off your property. Normal people go their whole lives without ever doing that. Do you have an antagonistic personality that escalates social interactions with solicitors?

What is going on in your life or where you live that you are having the physically push people off your property? The thought of ever having to do that even a single time is insane to me.

Was the 96 hours based on 5 people alive for the entire time? I suppose there’s that tiny chance 1-2 people could kill the other 3-4 people and buy themselves more time. Even if that did happen, it’s highly unlikely that more time, even double the time, would amount to being rescued. Plus, they would become murderers in the final hours of their lives.

Was the 96 hours based on 5 people alive for the entire time? I suppose there’s that tiny chance 1-2 people could kill the other 3-4 people and buy themselves more time. Even if that did happen, it’s highly unlikely that more time, even double the time, would amount to being rescued. Plus, they would become murderers in the final hours of their lives.

This whole thing feels like the flat earth rocket man, Elizabeth Holmes, and the Fyre Festival team got together to plan an underwater business venture.