Ghost of LL

On the upside, it'll never happen since it has to be voted on next May.

I did go for free. My mother wanted all of her kids/grandkids on a vacation. I still wouldn't do it again. But I'll tell you--I'd definitely do a SilverSea cruise or a Crystal cruise. Crystal was just bought by the guy who started SilverSea. They're both extravagantly expensive. But they're both very nice if you have any interest in being on a ship.

And what I'm telling you is that in Central Kyoto, there aren't a lot of places that don't take reservations, irrespective of level of fanciness. Note: by "Central Kyoto," I'm talking about the Gion and the Pontocho areas.

We did that cruise in early July, and God was it horrible. The food was bad; the service was worse. And mind you, I was in a goddamned suite. So things should've been pretty nice. The cherry on that particular shit sundae was the captain's parting 1MC address the morning of disembarkation, which concluded "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." That pretty much gives you the tone of the entire voyage. One nice thing is that I actually lost weight on the cruise. The food was really shitty, so there wasn't much inducement to overeating. But going down to the buffet in the morning and seeing the fats load their plates with waffles and bacon works as a good appetite suppressant. Morning after morning, I went down, checked out that show, and concluded that I'd just stick with coffee.

What about an auto-grat? Can you expense that? Or what if it's phrased as a "service charge?" My point being, can't you conspire a bit with the waiter to have him key it into the POS as an auto-grat or a service charge so as to allow you to expense it?

I always assumed that was a dutch oven on the mascot's head. Because who doesn't want a bowl of delicious chili served out of a dutch oven that has been sitting on a steer's head for some reason?

Thank you for finally understanding the zeitgeist of this board.

My Brother in Christ--they're all that type.

Yeah, but it's the system we have. And the guy's an asshole if he goes out to a restaurant in the system that we have and then doesn't tip because, "oh, oops--now I don't have enough money to cover both the appetizers I ordered and the tip." I agree with your underlying point. I was just in Japan this past Spring, and it was great to go to a bar, get a drink, and not worry about tipping. Or in a taxi or the bellman or a waiter or anywhere. You just don't fucking do it anywhere. And it's actually really nice not to have the mental strain of having to ask yourself "do I need to tip in this situation".

You keep using other service jobs, and you clearly don't know how restaurants work. In most restaurants, the servers have to tip out the bartenders, barbacks, bussers, food runners, and hostesses. And you tip out regardless of what your actual tip is. On a $100 tab, the server probably had to tip out the bartenders $5 and the bussers/food runners/hostesses another buck or two. Point being--at a lot of restaurants, if you don't leave a tip, you're actually costing your server money. And that's pretty fucking dickish. I'm sorry--is the hundred-dollar restaurant the only place in town? You act like the only choices are go to a restaurant and order enough food to run up a $100 tab or stay at home. How about just not order the fucking appetizers? Or go over to the fucking Applebee's? I can't afford to go to the Taylor Swift concert. Why are you telling me to stay at home as though I don't deserve to go out and wat? Get the fuck outta here with that shit.

It's a damned good thing Chris Christie isn't going to get the nomination, because putting Joe Biden up against him in a debate would be a nightmare. I'm not sure debates really mean much in this third decade of the 21st Century. But Christie says enough reasonable stuff that he would attract a lot of independent voters and convince a lot of Democrats that it wouldn't be a crisis if he were elected. And given Biden's approval ratings, that would probably be enough to get Christie elected. BUUUUT, that'll never happen because Christie has approximately a 0.00000% chance of getting the nomination.

I'm 6'1" and have been losing weight over the past six months. I've gone down from 280 to 225, so I have a pretty decent idea what different weights look like. Assuming he's not wildly lying about his height, he's at least 290. If he doesn't take off his shoes/suit for weigh-in, I'm going to say he clocks in at 296.

They're in Belarus in pretty large numbers. And Belarus doesn't really have a military to prevent Wagner from moving toward Russia. But the real trouble is that I don't think Wagner took any of their heavy weaponry to Belarus. At least the videos I saw showed them moving into Belarus in convoys of trucks, not tanks and IFVs.

I don't think you ought to hold up DART as a particularly successful rail model.

Honest question--who the fuck is paying $100K for dinner with Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani? If you have that kind of scratch, you buy your access through other (more effective) means. And anyway--who with access to that kind of money wants access to Trump right now given where he is politically and legally? The last thing you want to do is be known as a donor to this shitfest. You might as well ask for a subpoena. And at a time when Trump is pretty damned unlikely to win the presidency, there appears to be very little benefit.

In downtown Kyoto, there were no long lines. If you didn't have a reservation somewhere, you were going to have a hard time getting into any decent place. Perhaps that's something unique to Kyoto and not something you'd see in a larger city like Osaka. But it was definitely the case in Kyoto. As to @McCroskey's query--I'm happy to answer any questions based on my experience this Spring. I don't know anything about Osaka or Nagoya, though.

I was at a place for lunch the other day, and had this based on the pre-tax amount. I always tip based on the post-tax amount because (1) I only look at the bottom line, and I'm too lazy to track down the pre-tax amount, and (2) who honestly gives a rat's ass--we're talking about 20% of 8.25%, which by my math is around 1.5%. But I had already checked the "20%" box before figuring out that it was on the pre-tax amount. If I had realized that earlier, I would have checked the 22% box. So oops--the waiter lost out on $0.50.

Can you imagine what Collins' trip back to Earth would've been like? From a purely technical standpoint, it would've been difficult because the lunar module was designed to be flown by three men. But from a more human standpoint, I can't imagine the mental strain of the grief of just losing your shipmates coupled with the strain of not knowing what kind of reception you could expect when you got back on Earth. And what kind of reception would he get? He'd be the corporeal reminder of the mission failure for the rest of his life. NASA probably wouldn't have sent him back to the Moon; he'd probably be out of the space program. So what, you get a job at Eastern Airlines? Yeah--I'm sure every captain would be thrilled to fly to Miami with Michael Collins.

That's not what I'm saying. In Chicago, you don't go outside between December 1 and March 1. Kids don't go out and ride bikes or play outside. If they socialize, they do so the same way they do here in the summer--they go over to a friend's house or they talk on the phone/internet. And they've been doing that in Chicago for a very long time. So I think your concerns about child socialization are misplaced.

You've never lived in a place like Chicago or Minneapolis, have you?

And it's kinda risky for the employer to do that. I have some recollection that the DOL issued some guidance a few years ago that an "auto-grat" could be considered to be a service charge, and not a "tip." And in that case, a lot of "tipped employees" turn into employees who are essentially paid on a commission. And those employees need to be paid minimum wage, not the $2.13/hour tipped-employee rate. Oh, and by the way, you don't want to fuck with the Wage and Hour Division.

So it appears that they're not petitioning for mandamus. It's just an appeal of the sanctions order. I'm not exactly sure how that is jurisdictional under Section 1291, which limits appellate jurisdiction to "final orders" of the district court. But I think it's a separate appeal from their appeal of the judgment under the collateral-order doctrine. In any event, expect some real strategic action on the part of the Fifth Circuit judges on this. They don't want this going to SCOTUS, because it's liable to make some real bad law for the Christian Nationalists. It's going to be real interesting to see how they handle this. As I said above, I'm mildly surprised they're appealing. And as I said further above, the general corporate feel on this would be just to have the lawyers go do their day of religious indoctrination, because we're in the business of flying airplanes, not fighting culture wars. But I'll also say that Southwest is a bit different from the standard corporate culture. And the Southwest GC Department has traditionally been part of that. They take very seriously the idea that "we stand up for our people." We're not going to allow a nutbar flight attendant cyberbully her coworkers, even if Jesus told her to do so. And we're not going to let a federal judge impose a plainly unconstitutional and illegal sanction on our in-house lawyers. And yeah--it costs some money to stick up for your people. But if you're loyal to your people, then they'll reciprocate. You have their back--and they know you have their back--and they'll have yours. But if you don't, then they won't. And so yeah--it costs some money. But it's an investment. And I think it's an investment that's important to make and that usually pays off.

Southwest is petitioning for mandamus on the sanctions order. And they're definitely gearing up to fight on the judgment. My knowledge of the Southwest General Counsel's office is a little out of date. I still know a handful of the lawyers who are there. But regardless--my impression is that they don't take shit lying down. At least historically, they have a culture of litigating pretty aggressively. So I'm only mildly surprised that they're petitioning for mandamus on the sanctions order. But I'm not at all surprised to see them getting ready to take that judgment to SCOTUS.

I mean, that's cool once. But next time, I'm going to a different beer man even if that requires me to walk an extra section down.

Just back from Disney World, and I had this same experience. It's not that they were completely absent. But it is that they were a much smaller percentage than my previous experience. But that may be because of a specific circumstance this past weekend. I don't know what was going on, but the number of Brits there was noticeable. Couple that with the beginning of school, and the percentage of Americans at Disney World was low compared by my previous experience. There were a ton of Brits, a fair number of Australians, and a decent number of Japanese. Oh, and by the way, the "Virtual Queue" is completely incomprehensible. The slots are taken within seconds. We just ended up doing the Individual Lightning Lane for Tron and Guardians of the Galaxy because we could never get a Virtual Queue spot.