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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • That’s the thing though, what’s amazing about planes really depends on your knowledge base or what experience is specifically being enjoyed. If you don’t understand how planes work then the difference is moot because whether seeing or doing the entire thing is magical. If you do understand how planes work you might know that the crazy thing isn’t flight, we knew how to do that since approximately 1800 when the first gliders were built, the crazy part was generating enough power to make powered flight possible. If you understand how flight works and are still enjoying the experience of flight is where wonder still exists.

    You know the wonder of flight still exists because some number of kids and adults would pick flight as a super power if given the choice.


  • The argument being made is a rather poor one. In the example given, the waiter walked 10 feet to you, I would agree that you shouldn’t have to tip.

    I’m ambivalent on tipping culture, if we can institute a fair minimum wage then I’m fine with getting rid of it, if not then shut up and tip. All that said, the things we tip for has gotten way out of hand. Tipping used to be 15% for good service while some people were giving 20% because prices had remained low. Now with food prices increased businesses and wait staff are encouraging 20-25% and tipping options are being added everywhere.

    My rule of thumb now is 20% for standard wait service (taking my order, bringing my meal, refilling beverages, and cleaning the table afterwards). If any of those elements isn’t being fulfilled then I do not give a percentage, though if someone is going around filling drinks I’ll probably leave a dollar or two. I also don’t give a percentage tip for drinks that don’t come with free refills, instead I will calculate the 20% tip without those beverages (typically alcohol) and then leave $1 per drink.


  • I’d like to add that in the US people rarely think of it as extra either. In most places in the US we also don’t include taxes on the menu listed prices, but you know they will be on the final bill going in. The semantics of whether there should be tipping or not is hardly the line people should be arguing. What should be argued when discussing tipping is management abuses around tipping (like paying out others, stealing tips, or forced tip sharing), mandated minimum tipping, what items should be tipped and how much.

    There is a ton of room to debate tipping culture in the US, but complaining about doing so isn’t the right place.



  • Hey, I appreciate your response! I totally understand that people want to have their feelings confirmed in such a space, but that’s also why I am critical in it. In this sort of environment the discussion is almost as much emotion and feeling as it is the words actually used. A sort of slang can develop where we can understand what each other means without the words we use being truly accurate. The problem with that is that this environment is also an echo chamber, we put meaning onto things that we want it to mean because it also confirms our beliefs.

    This leads to situations where it’s impossible to differentiate between radical statements and reasonable statements. A good example is the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” When both extremists and normies use the saying it becomes hard to differentiate them. Another example is the Gadsden flag, on it’s own there is nothing wrong with the flag with a deep historical heritage, but when the far right started using it as a symbol any rational centrist or leftist immediately stopped using it for fear of association. Back in school I had a friend who had the flag hanging on their wall, but around 2012 they specifically stated that they had taken it down because it had been co-opted by the far right.


  • I don’t really like the use of the word colonizer in this context, it just doesn’t fit right with me. The definition technically fits, but colonization to me is more like an invasive species moving in and slowly overwhelming the native population. This is more akin to what we were seeing with settlers moving into the West Bank.

    What’s going on in Gaza is more akin to straight up scorched earth takeover and land theft. Hell, calling it an invasion and genocide feels more accurate.

    I never said I was ok with what Israel is doing, my argument was on the meaning of words. Leftists in general are really terrible about saying what they mean, because they don’t seem to know the meaning of the words they use.

    The cycle seems to go like this:

    • make a statement
    • realize the statement doesn’t mean what they wanted to say
    • double down and try to change the meaning of the words they used

  • I know I said we need to be clear in our language, but since we were talking about a “regime” from the beginning I didn’t think I had to continuously spell it out throughout the discussion. Yes, we’re talking about whatever regime is being referenced, but again the last guy said it wasn’t Israel.

    Regime Noun

    a particular government or a system or method of government:

    Your comparison between China and Israel is really terrible. If we’re being super duper clear on what a regime is, it’s the system of government. Israel is a parliamentary democracy, all citizens over the age of 18 can vote. Since the regime is democratically elected it’s kinda hard to differentiate the Israeli people from their Regime. China on the other hand is a unitary one-party state, if you’re not in the party and at the right level of the party then you don’t have any voice. It’s a lot easier to separate the people of China from their government.


  • Well that can’t be what he thinks, I listed that as an option in my original response

    Except this guy specifically said he hopes the current Israel is dismantled. At best they could be hoping that Israel changes into a better government, but I don’t think that’s their meaning.

    But he clearly said

    No where does that say dismantling Israel.

    So what entity which has colonized Palestine for 76 years, but isn’t the current Israel does he mean?

    EDIT: Words have meaning, if the words you use don’t mean what you mean, then admit that you used the wrong words and be more clear or else people must assume you mean what you say. Coming in after the OP and attributing meaning that they didn’t give doesn’t suddenly change what they said. A reminder, the original post was;

    Hopefully this is a step toward dismantling the brutal apartheid regime that has colonised Palestine for 76 years."




  • Eh, a quick Google search said that Tesla wasn’t profitable for 17 years and survived due to government subsidies and investor funding. After that they’ve been making ~$15 billion per year and sold around 1.3 million cars worldwide per year.

    In contrast Toyota sold 10.3 million vehicles and made $61 billion in profit.

    As with their 17 years of unprofitable business they are currently more proportionally profitable, but a big portion of that is Musk fanboys and limited supply. If they actually started selling more cars they probably wouldn’t be as proportionally profitable.

    Additionally, Tesla is supposedly becoming less profitable due to several factors including not making a new model in 10 years, reports that they fraudulently marketed features (being sneaky with how range is calculated so that the true range is way less than advertised), and Elon’s antics hurting sales. Elon’s antics are a big deal, some people who wanted Teslas before don’t want them anymore because they don’t want to be associated with him (like flying a Gadsden Flag in the mid 2000s vs now).

    Elon’s antics don’t stop there, he’s also hurt the investor’s opinion as well. A big reason Tesla’s stock was so high is because people were buying them and not selling them. This caused their price to stay super high, but when Elon bought Twitter he sold a ton of stock. The price was at an all time high over $400 per share, his selling cratered it to ~$115, and is currently around $165. Investors don’t like it when the owner of a company single handedly tanks their investment so the owner can make a bad investment, even more so when the writing on the wall says he’ll sell even more of the stock to fund the bad investment.









  • Barak replied “It’s already been known for many years that they have a bunker that originally was built by Israeli constructors underneath Shifa,” which was used as a “command post” for Hamas and as a “junction of several tunnels”

    “I don’t know to say to what extent it is a ‘major.’ It’s probably not the only…command post. Several others are under hospitals or in other sensitive places.”

    Barak, who was Israel’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001, responded, “decades ago, we were running the place, so we helped them.” The Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas since 2007.

    “It was many decades ago…that we helped them build these bunkers in order to enable more space for the operation of the hospital within the very limited size of these compounds.”