I made this connection a month ago - that a couple of generations of humans grew up breathing exhaust from leaded gasoline and dust from lead paint and had a bit of an epiphany about the state of the world.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this written about so -

The reason these tipping prompts are so egregiously inescapable now is that those point of sales systems are handed out by Clover and the like when the business starts using them for POS and inventory and credit card processing.

For each CC transaction, the business pays something like 2-3% of the transaction and so the CC processor becomes incentivized to make that transaction amount higher. That’s how we got here. You’re being guilted into tipping a shitty tech company.

Carry cash. Pay cash whenever possible. That’s how you avoid that screen.

Separate dispensers like they said, but if you're paying the meal and you tell the kids to go get their drinks and they want lemonade you have to watch out they don't get the heart attack shit. Once you know you know, but I couldn't believe that's a thing that exists.

My kids went and filled their cups with this stuff before I noticed what it was and then had to be the bad guy, telling them to get the Minute Maid shite. Definitely lowered my opinion of Panera.

“They didn’t own the liberals. They owned the conservatives. They stole this money from their own constituency. And Bannon, having promised that he would not take any money, did the same thing.“

And that’s the reptilian genius of these guys. It’s much easier to fool someone than to convince someone they’ve been fooled. By taking fools’ money, the fools now have skin in the game. It will eventually turn around on them though, because it always does. I just hope it happens soon enough.

Boone is 3300 feet above sea level, in fact.

That’s this kid.

https://www.usatoday.com/gcdn/authoring/authoring-images/2024/06/04/USAT/73974168007-funny-faces-thumb-2-cspan-via-storyful.jpg?width=1320&height=744&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp

Easy to buy the dip if you can cause the dip.

Yes, these are the textbook symptoms of a textbook narcissist. Incapable of empathy. Basically an unfillable hole that will pull in and destroy anyone around them.

Because in my version of America we look out for each other, even the assholes who don't subscribe. Helping regardless sends exactly the right message.

https://www.etsy.com/...

Unfortunately they are not available in bulk.

I think “single for a reason” is what all that attachment theory shit is trying to help contextualize. It specifically sets the context as “single for a fixable reason” if you have the courage and humility to do the work.

Really, you don’t think the USSR invading Afghanistan before that plays any role?

Big corp loves regulation of its competition most of all.

I don’t know how you concluded that I was using “narcissist” as an insult, because I wasn’t.

From the linked article, written 7 years ago, only a handful of months into his presidency when there was still a swell of mental health professionals maintaining that they should remain impartial:

Trump is an undisputed poster boy for narcissism. He demonstrates in pure form every single symptom described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders(DSM) criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, which I wrote in 1978. But lots of successful people are extremely narcissistic without being mentally ill — think most celebrities, many politicians, and a fair percentage of writers, artists, lawyers, doctors, and professors. To qualify for narcissistic personality disorder, an individual’s selfish, unempathetic preening must be accompanied by significant distress or impairment. Trump certainly causes severe distress and impairment in others, but his narcissism doesn’t seem to affect him that way.

In the 7 years since this article was written we’ve had plenty of people testify under oath about his severe distress and impairment, if that’s the criteria that was unmet at that point in time.

Sorry to focus on this point but gas is subject to a fairly fluid global market. I've been driving a car since Clinton and have never noticed Republicans being better for gas prices or the price of anything, if anything it's the opposite.

Hey, I’m really sorry. That sounds really hard. Vent all you want if it helps.

Y'all must be too young for batboy.

I sought out and discovered this feature existed only last week right after I wondered if I could block all of hexbear.

Alice in Chains