Had a book assigned for history class that totally and forever changed my understanding of Genghis Khan. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World I think it’s called.

Dude and his empire basically singlehandedly spread the written word, religious freedom, and lots of other ideas we generally consider good today. Not saying he didn’t kill a lot, because he did, but his historical impact is much more complex than “barbarian invader kills a bunch of people”

Tipping culture in the U.S. is fucked. Who does it benefit most? The employers who are able to underpay their workers. (Even minimum wage these days is horrifically low.)

The companies are able to externalize the wages they should be paying to their customers, who really pay huge portions of the employees’ “wage”. (E.g. I’m a gig worker doing deliveries, and more than HALF my pay comes from tips.)

If you don’t tip or tip very low, you’re using the employer’s negligence as an excuse not to pay the service workers a living wage. For this reason, when considering engaging with the service industry, you should assume you will pay a healthy tip, unless the service worker truly and massively drops the ball. If you can’t afford a healthy (20%) tip, then you can’t actually afford the service.

surprised i had to scroll down so far to find Old Man’s War. definitely worth a read.

Look into housing co-ops! They’re basically this and there are already (kind of) a ton of them around!

I’ve been in one for a couple years now and it’s going pretty well.

me, a person who’s recently begun to suspect i might be autistic:

óoooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

yep.

Even when you CAN do this, it’s usually because the employees are either kind enough or inattentive enough to let you do this. And if you are clearly unhoused or poor, your chances of being able to do this are much, much lower than if you can fit in in a middle class white area. (Restaurants with predominantly poor clientele or many homeless people nearby tend to be much stricter about this.)

I guess the one argument for “public restrooms” is rest areas along major highways and restrooms in public (usually national or state, not little municipal) parks.

So we do have public restrooms…they’re just nowhere near 99% of the population most of the time.

There are 1.9 BILLION Muslims globally.

You think the vast majority of them are fundamentalists?

To clarify for others:

Hanks makes many belts that are not specifically gun belts. The one I have came with a 99 year warranty (I think they all might?) and after several years of daily wear, sometimes in rough work conditions, I pretty much believe it’ll last that long.

For interesting, well-written, and in-depth articles I recommend:

The New Yorker Harper’s (not Harper’s Bazaar) The Atlantic New York Times Magazine

I’ve been using Notally for a while and I think it checks all your boxes.

I don’t get why you’d think it would be censored? If anything the movie skewers US capitalism, so the CCP would probably be happy for folks to see it.

I’m a gig worker who delivers food to people.

I almost went into CS and consider myself fairly well-educated, so I think although I’m not in tech I share a slightly similar background and sensibilities with Lemmy folks. I just got on here a couple days ago and it kinda reminds me of reddit back when I joined (hopefully minus the racism and spez’s favorite subreddit)