That's what a "tip" means. It's an amount paid at the discretion of the consumer, meant to express appreciation for the service rendered.

If it is automatically applied, it is not a tip. If an establishment does not include it in the price of the goods or services, then it is an anti-consumer effort to mislead or deceive. A message or disclaimer saying "a X% service charge will be added on all prices/items" is inadequate disclosure. To understand why, simply make the advertised price 10% of the true price and make the service charge 1000%. If the consumer has to do mental math to get an accurate understanding of the true cost of the goods or services being advertised, that is inadequate. Moreover, the use of such tactics is itself evidence for its shadiness, since why do it at all if it does not confer some advantage to the seller?

A truly level playing field must have totally transparent pricing: the price that is advertised must be what you pay. If there is any tax or service charge, it must be mandated by law and it must be the same percentage for all establishments, so that the consumer has a reasonable expectation that if they take their business somewhere else, they are paying the same rate. But these bottom-of-the-menu disclosures (when they even happen at all, which at least in the US, they sometimes don't) are deceptive practices that business owners use to try to hide the true cost of doing business.

More insidiously, they are also used to capture some or all of the tip income that servers have traditionally received. Some establishments say that this is done in order to be fairer to staff that are not front-facing. But I argue that business owners can and should do this through appropriate setting of wages in the first place. Doing it by capturing tip income through service charges is, again, deceptive. The business owner has full control of the employee compensation structure and consumer-facing pricing structure. That they are so fond of playing games with both means that whatever excuses they make are not to be trusted.

You're absolutely right, and it sucks that I fell for that trap.

In regard to long-haul trucking, I think there's some merit to the idea of having swappable batteries, since presumably the capacities are larger than in consumer vehicles. But since truckers are already spending stretches of time at rest stops, the benefit is incremental, as you noted.

Along those lines, there might be applications for taxi fleets--short range personal transit where the vehicles are all uniformly the same and operated out of a central hub. But again, if the capacity is big enough that a car could just be charged every night, why build these complicated stations?

There are just so many problems with the component swapping model.

1. Age of components. As you pointed out, old components could be swapped for new, or vice versa. The way this would be addressed is to reconceptualize the battery hardware as being a consumable like gas, so that it does not comprise a significant portion of a car's value. But that's a difficult sell: it's like saying an ICE gas tank is consumable when it's the gasoline it holds that's consumed.

2. Compatibility of swapped components. How are the car manufacturers going to cooperate to standardize the battery hardware and connections for all the different kinds of cars that are produced? What about differences in capacity for each model? You wouldn't swap a light duty vehicle's battery into a truck, or vice versa. You'd either have to design the system to be modular (swap as many cells as is needed), or you'd have to keep a library of components for different classes of vehicle. All of that would increase system complexity.

3. Availability. The size and complexity of such swapping stations would preclude having them widely distributed. Where would they store all the batteries to facilitate servicing enough cars per hour to make it sufficiently convenient for drivers? And if they are not widely available, they become bottlenecks for adoption and use.

4. Liability. What happens if there is an error and the car is damaged or the driver is injured? Who bears the liability?

These are just a few of the problems I can see, and for what benefit? So that the downtime is cut by...how much? This idea has always smelled like a scam--a bad faith argument pushed by EV proponents to try to convince people to buy or invest in EVs now, because future technology will solve the range/refuel issue. And I say this as a strong proponent of EVs. The idea itself just never seemed to make sense. You'd need a level of coordination and cooperation among manufacturers, consumers, and regulators that simply does not exist and will never exist except in countries where choice and competition are restricted.

It's incredibly frustrating to see mainstream media so consistently phrase evolutionary phenomena in ways that suggest that organisms somehow have conscious control of their genetics. At best, it is a simple misunderstanding, but my suspicion is that it is a longstanding, intentional effort to undermine natural selection and foundational principles of evolutionary biology. This is why, even after its widespread verification and acceptance by the scientific community, the general public still remains ignorant or misinformed of even the most basic tenets of the theory.

A more honest title might be along the lines of "Genetic analysis reveals polar bears that are better able to tolerate a warming climate are being selected over those that cannot, and this adaptation is occurring faster than previously anticipated."

The problem with all of these platforms is not what what they're called or what they look like, or even how they function for the most part. The so-called "magic" is gone because these services are flooded with inauthentic content and behaviors. Everything is either an advertisement, propaganda, or influencer/AI slop. The signal-to-noise ratio is too low, which drives away genuine contributors and stops new people from joining and gaining critical mass.

The current state of social media is a reflection of the inability of its users to simultaneously discern what is inauthentic behavior and to free themselves of its effects. If you ask a reasonable person if they actively desire being lied to and manipulated for financial gain, they would say no; but when such deception is packaged in a tantalizing form, they find that not only can they not resist, they don't WANT to resist. Like an addict, they want and embrace the deception, to the point where they get angry at anyone who dares to pull back the curtain. The result is an abundance of weaponized and optimized inauthentic content that is being used to manipulate and monetize.

So no, bringing back the "Twitter" name and functionality is not going to do anything, because even before it was made into the hellscape that is called X, it was its own special cesspool.

Indeed, it's amazing how far the KMT has swayed to be CCP-friendly over the past 30+ years. I have the distinct impression that there are two causes: first, it has been infiltrated by spies and traitors, and second, it seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to oppose DPP positions. The more the ruling party supports the notion of a separate Taiwanese identity from the mainland, the more the KMT wants to cozy up to the CCP.

There is absolutely zero question that xiaohongshu is a vehicle for CCP-backed propaganda and disinformation. To look at how social media networks in general have so effectively shaped global political discourse through the dissemination of false narratives and bad faith arguments disguised as grassroots communication, and continue to think that these networks operate independently or neutrally, is profoundly naive. Twitter accidentally exposed numerous foreign accounts posing as American influencers. We already knew this to be the case, but to actually see confirmation demonstrates that this is not isolated behavior. It is ridiculous to think that governments around the world--including the largest, most monolithic, panoptic system as the CCP--are not leveraging xiaohongshu and other networks to their benefit.

The two are not mutually exclusive and it is not a zero-sum game. In fact, the two things--greater domestic wealth for the working class, and a strong foreign policy--historically have been demonstrably causally correlated. Again, as I have alluded to in my previous post, the postwar American economy was extremely prosperous. The pressure to maintain military superiority against the emergent superpower of the USSR resulted in an expansion of domestic infrastructure and technological research. The idea of American corporations outsourcing labor to foreign countries was anathema to this philosophy of American self-reliance that was born from fears of being infiltrated by Communists--remember the McCarthy era, the Cuban missile crisis, the space race, the Vietnam and Korean Wars? That strong military, that projection of power, and building of alliances, is what has made the United States the dominant economic superpower it has been for the last 80 years, and for about half of that time, that wealth was shared with the working class.

What changed was that in a world in which the specter of external threats being diminished--the fall of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, the rise of cheap foreign labor in US-friendly countries became irresistible to US companies seeking cheaper labor costs. Jobs were outsourced, manufacturing died, and the owners of capital paid off politicians to pass legislation to deregulate and accelerate this process. Skilled foreign workers were brought in under the pretense of a lack of equivalent domestic expertise, and these immigrants are effectively indentured to these companies, further distorting the value of domestic labor and increasing wealth inequality.

And now, the result of this decades-long dismantling of the American labor market, with the American public being increasingly poorly educated, addicted to social media propaganda, unaware and unwilling to learn about a history that has been concealed from them, you have people completely unable to undertstand what is going on with this current administration and those who have been pulling the strings all this time. Americans are being robbed blind by the very people that they are voting for with cultish fervor, while the rest of the democratic world is looking on in horror.

Correct. People have a very short memory, and viewing current affairs through such a limited lens makes one susceptible to disinformation.

The whole reason why Eastern European countries and former republics of the USSR have consistently turned toward the EU after the collapse of the Soviet Union is because the people could see how decades of Russian corruption left them with nothing. They were fed up with being satellite states without any right to self-determination, kept poor and servile while the Russian elite flourished.

That said, the EU is certainly not without its flaws. But as a model for shared governance and security, every member country (except for the UK) understands that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Prior to Trump's ascendancy, Brexit was the most successful disinformation campaign we have seen coming from Russia since the Cold War, and we continue to see the stoking of populist propaganda from nations that seek to break Western alliances, because it has worked so well and for such little investment.

You're not wrong, but the blame is perhaps misdirected, because domestic affairs are not necessarily downstream effects of foreign economic and military policy.

My personal opinion is that the US military industrial complex has less to do with the depressed economic conditions of rural America than the corporate oligarchs who have exploited outsourced cheap foreign labor to extract more profit.

In the aftermath of WWII, there were many industry towns that experienced massive economic growth because of government investment into technologies that sought to maintain a strategic advantage in a postwar, US-dominated global economy. To maintain energy security, places like West Virginia mined more coal and Texas pumped more oil. Domestic manufacturing experienced a boom. But in peactime, increasing globalization of the labor market drove the outsourcing of labor as described above, and killed these towns. A generation of Americans who believed they were entitled to good jobs with minimal education were left in the dust.

Even now, with renewable energy initiatives, these same people still want to risk their lives and health to mine coal. They are stuck in a past that no longer exists.

And when you compare against Europe, you can see that a lot of the grievances that so many Americans (very much rightfully) have--fair labor practices, less wealth inequality, more worker rights, a living wage--are policies that those same Americans have consistently voted against by electing representatives that are bought by corporations. That's not just a failure of accountability, it's a failure of education and resistance against propaganda.

That austerity is coming to Europe is actually more of a symptom of the worldwide cancer of the capitalist class that relentlessly continues to seek ways to extract profit from the working class. They see social programs--money that hardworking taxpayers have paid--as their next target to raid, and drunk off their success in the US, are seeking to do the same elsewhere.

What is not said enough about this post-WWII security arrangement in which the US plays a large role in transatlantic defense, is that this is not simply just a "cost" that the US absorbs. The US has profited ENORMOUSLY off of this arrangement, in multiple ways.

First of all, much of the defense spending goes back into the American economy. Second, the US gets to sell weapons to its allies around the world. Third, the US gets tremendous soft power and influence to shape foreign governments' policies in ways that are friendly to US interests. Those things, put together, are why the US has maintained its dominant role in global geopolitics and economy since WWII.

And Trump/MAGA are incapable of understanding this. They are only interested in the short term reward of extortion for their own personal gain and ego. They've already killed the goose that lays the golden egg.

America's economic and military allies have realized that the US is no longer a reliable partner. This is not just about Europe feeling resentful that they have to pay for their own defense. It is a grim understanding that US idiocracy has destroyed all trust. That loss of trust is NOT coming back--not for many generations. That's why there is so much diplomatic manuvering going on between Western non-US countries to strengthen existing ties. By then, the consequences of the myopically self-centered isolationist beliefs of US conservatives will have relegated the US to a bit player on the world stage, incapable of influencing global politics, as other countries (e.g. China) fill in the power vacuum.

The reason why the US has so willingly invested so much into NATO and into defense in general, is because they have, by far, reaped the greatest rewards.

It isn't a thing in the US, unfortunately.

New buildings might have it integrated into their HVAC systems, and older construction might have it retrofitted, but the vast, vast majority of buildings in the US do not have CO2 monitoring. We have CO (monoxide) detectors, but that's an entirely different issue.

Another consideration is that for assessment of infectious disease risk, measurement of CO2 in indoor communal spaces needs to be distributed throughout, as opposed to having a single point of measurement that might only reflect the average air quality for HVAC control purposes. It's the same principle with temperature; multi-room dwellings such as offices will typically have thermostats distributed throughout the building to control each zone. When employees gather in a conference room and close the door, the CO2 level can skyrocket, easily hitting 1800 ppm without ventilation. I believe that CO2 concentrations should be as easy to access as temperature, and that the public could be educated about its meaning.

Regarding VOC versus CO2 monitoring, they both have their use cases, and which one is a more suitable to measure depends on what we are really wanting to know. VOC sensors will detect a wide array of compounds, but not all of them are indicative of human occupancy, whereas CO2 concentration is the direct product of respiratory activity (unless non-biological sources of CO2 are present, such as dry ice). So if we are interested in transmissibility of airborne diseases, I would pick CO2, since you could measure high VOC levels in the air of an unoccupied storage shed or basement that otherwise has virtually no risk of infectious disease. But if we wanted to measure if the air is clean and fresh--i.e., relatively free of pollutants, I pick VOC monitoring over CO2. Both are important because they are meaningful proxies for health risks, but they are proxies for different types of risk.

If they think it's safe, then they should be the first to demonstrate it first hand, using their own bodies.

The issue with PFAS is not necessarily direct product-to-human exposure. The whole problem with this class of molecules is that they are extremely long-lived in the environment, due to their chemical structure. Their persistence is what causes bioaccumulation in ecosystems and food chains. Sure, the farmers might wash off the residue before delivering them to the market, but where does the effluent go? And if the EPA further relaxes the reporting standards, what is the most economically efficient path these agribusinesses will take with respect to these waste products?

So consider the industrial-scale usage of persistent pesticides without adequate reporting and oversight. It'll kill off insect populations (because that's exactly what they are designed to do), which then disrupts the ecosystem. Animals that feed off of these insects will accumulate these chemicals. Fish and amphibians will accumulate them because they're swimming in the polluted water. The whole food web gets tainted.

There is no escaping the conclusion that this decision is based in corruption and absolutely will pollute the environment and kill/injure people.

True, but measurement is the first step to understanding. Moreover, it is not a foregone conclusion that a building is poorly ventilated or requires costly modification. Quantification is evidence, and evidence is empowerment, and empowerment leads to change. This is how modern epidemiology came into existence, and modern architecture ought to consider CO2 measurement as an integral component of indoor air quality and occupant comfort.

In the past, we did not have a germ theory of disease. People lived amongst open sewers and walked through human and animal waste on the street. We did not have clean municipal water delivery systems. And at the time, the idea that these were problems that needed to be fixed was considered preposterous, heretical, foolish. But to our credit, we have mostly fixed these problems. The global COVID pandemic should have taught us that there is still more to be done with respect to protecting public health. I hope that in the near future, humans will look back on how we live today and think that our attitudes toward communicable diseases is as primitive, barbaric, and disgusting as how we look back on how people lived hundreds of years ago.

For ages, we have had thermostats to tell us the ambient room temperature, and to adjust HVAC settings accordingly. And more recently, they've gone smart--letting us see and control it automatically, or manually with a smartphone interface.

Why not also have this technology for measuring CO2? The sensors are not expensive, they don't need a lot of power, and they are low maintenance. CO2 is a reasonably good proxy for indoor air quality with respect to environments occupied by humans. And you don't need to modify the existing architecture or install ductwork.

While there's a lot of justified cynicism about antibiotic overuse and resistance, in the case of TB, the main driver of resistance isn't misuse, overuse, or noncompliance. It has to do with several factors: the nature of the infection; the transmissibility of disease; incomplete efficacy of gold standard treatments; and the disproportionate prevalence of disease in developing countries where public health and sanitation standards are lower. In other words, when it comes to TB, it's not because people are casually being prescribed and taking the newest antibiotics, or that farmers are using them prophylactically in livestock. Antibiotics for TB--specifically, the ones for drug-resistant TB--are not some walk in the park. A person does not simply get these handed to them like candy.