Lurker > SSj4Wingzero

I actually don't mind the practice of tipping for delivery (but then there really shouldn't be a "delivery fee", since that's just a way for the store to make extra money that doesn't go to the driver). IMO that's been a thing for quite some time, and I'm not sure why there's pushback against it now.

The stuff that's really obnoxious is:

-Self-serve food places asking for tips before your food has been given to you
-Asking for tips for take-out orders

You know where else you get food given to you for eat-in or take-out? A McDonald's. If you don't provide a level of service above a McDonald's...I don't see why a tip is warranted.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Not even close. The access to guns, gun culture, and piss-poor governmental oversight has no other comparison in the world. It's also not mental health, which is a red herring...it CAN be, but even in mass shootings, is often not the case.

Everything that is not a mass shooting is domestic violence, gang shootings, etc. (excluding suicides). Virtually all these people would pass a mental health background check easily.

It's the guns and the culture around them here. it's always the guns. The horrifically stupid notion that they are needed for "self-defense" (most countries require a reason to buy a gun, and self-defense is not a permissable reason).

Absolutely.

Guns play an absolutely massive role in the manner in which many Americans resolve conflicts with each other. We've created a culture in which a large number of people have become so desensitized to violence and don't see the taking of human life as something serious. Guns certainly play a role in that - the more we care about gun rights, the less we care about human lives, and the more violence happens. There are other elements of our culture that have made it apparent that we don't really care that much about human life (the cost of healthcare, for example), but guns can be fixed. It's simple. Actually require thorough background checks complete with suitability interviews, wellness checks, and references.

AbsolutelyNoOne posted...

Holy shit I hate America's ultra fucked up gun culture. Guns literally have more rights than some people do. Like, okay, God. Whatever. If you keep praying to him why isn't he stopping any damn shootings? Huh?

Because the people who keep sending out "thoughts and prayers" didn't read the parts of the Bible where it emphasizes that people who claim to believe in God have an actual responsibility to help people.

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Not just that - we also know that, at this moment, right now, some legislators and lobbyists are coming up with press releases and talking points about how to keep guns available to more people.

I'm going to go to KFC tomorrow to give it a try. Honestly their menu items aren't *bad* but they're just not as good as they are overseas. KFC overseas still innovates - they try new things such as new menu items, new deals, new promos...

But here in the US it seems like KFC just relies on the original recipe chicken and big value buckets. They've tried some new menu items *but* they kill them even though they're actually pretty popular. If they want to regain some market share...they'll have to do something other than "Hey we sell a ton of food for $20", and it probably starts with coming up with some better menu items and recipes.

One thing that I really like from them? They have this "KFC sauce" that you can dip your tenders in that is actually pretty good. But their tenders aren't well-seasoned enough. The KFC that I pass on the way back from work *did* recently get a big facelift - they remodeled the store and everything. It actually looks nice now...just need the food to match it.

Around the world, KFC actually innovates better. They actually try new menu items and do different things. But in the US it seems like KFC's strategy is really just to double down (no pun intended) on the big family meals, rather than creating actually decent menu items that you'd want to eat as an individual.

I have to say, I actually really liked the grilled chicken. If you ordered the grilled chicken with some sweet corn and a biscuit, it was a really good meal, and also relatively healthy.

KFC has kind of stagnated in terms of what they offer. They try a few new menu items here or there that do really well, and then they end up killing those new menu items.

A while back they had these "Georgia Gold" and "Nashville Hot" tenders and they were actually pretty good, but now they're gone. The delicious popcorn chicken? Gone. The grilled chicken, which was actually really good? Gone.

Now, when I went back recently, they had some sandwiches, the usual original recipe, the tenders, and some nuggets, but there wasn't as much variety in the flavors.

DarkBuster22904 posted...

The story I heard was that in the original script, it was "Sido-Dyas," a thinly veiled cover for "sideous." And that it was a typo that ended up making it Sifo Dyas, and Lucas ran with it.

This is what the Fandom page says:

In an early draft of Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones, the name of the Jedi who contacted the Kaminoans was "Sido-Dyas," a false identity for Darth Sidious. Obi-Wan Kenobi claimed to have never heard of him, and Mace Windu confirmed no Jedi of that name existed. In the draft, one instance of Sido-Dyas was misspelled as "Sifo-Dyas," to which the name was ultimately changed.
His backstory was originally promised by George Lucas to be revealed in Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. However, once Lucas refocused the film's story to center on Anakin, he was forced to cut several plot points related to Attack of the Clones, including Sifo-Dyas' backstory. It wasn't until "The Lost One," a sixth season episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, that the character was given a canonical background. He was voiced by Paul Nakauchi for his appearance as a hallucination in the episode "Sacrifice."

Yeah so he wasn't even originally supposed to be a character

I like self-checkouts, but what bothers me is when I go to a grocery store and...the self-checkout lane is *closed*? Not broken. Not under repair. Just "closed".

That said self-checkout really does have to improve. Sometimes, when you bring a bag of apples, the checkout scanner will accidentally scan the little sticker on the apple that it's not supposed to, and then they have to call someone over to fix it. It's a real pain. But it should be a fixable problem.

Other than that, I like it. It's especially nice if you're only buying a small number of things. Nowadays most stores near me will only have 2-3 people working registers at maximum so it's better to just do it yourself, lest you get stuck behind someone with a massive cart full of stuff

ai123 posted...

People keep their politics more to themselves in the UK.

Like, you're never going to see a load of trucks with Boris Johnson flags on them, or front lawns littered with Kier Starmer signs. Political bumper stickers are so rare, I can't remember seeing one. Same with party political t-shirts. Maybe a few students or party workers have them.

You might see a few small posters in windows just before a general election, but that's about it.

Yeah the US is kind of weird in that respect. We've basically turned political campaigning into a perpetual thing, whereas in most countries, the campaigning season starts a couple of months before the election. We're more than a year away from the 2024 Presidential election and we already have shitbags like DeSantis campaigning for President

Blue_Target posted...

Fair but how often do you hear about their families in a TMZ gossip way?

Back in 2004 when the current king of Spain was just a prince, he married a newscaster. 25 million people watched that wedding in Spain alone, and over a billion worldwide. In the US, we probably hear most about the British royal family because they're also an English-speaking country.

Blue_Target posted...

Every other European country has abandoned theirs but London still has Buckingham Palace, a castle that still being used.

That isn't true at all. For starters, Norway, Sweden, and Spain still have kings, and that's just the bigger countries.

London is probably more central to the economy and culture of the UK than any city in the US is relative to the US. The UK has a population of roughly 67 million people, and London metro area is home to around 15 million of them. That's a full 22% of the country's population. Compare that to the NY Metro Area, which, although it has roughly 20 million people, is only around 6% of the country's population (the US has 330 million people).

Full_Pokedex posted...

VPNs are probably next on the chopping block to be perfectly honest.

Damn near impossible to do, unless you want to somehow make connecting to an out-of-state website illegal, and that wouldn't even come close to be enforceable.

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It doesn't...they'll just post porn stuff but on non-porn sites.