Tipped workers were a way for employers to avoid paying (mostly black) workers, effectively providing slavery-lite even after slavery had ended

It's not just about being cheap though. It reinforces the idea that the worker is of a lower social status than the customer. The customer may, at their own discretion, choose whether or not to pay the worker a fair wage for the work they have done. That's a very clear power imbalance.

Not the VR part, but what if you could construct a scenario where all the power seeking people end up in what they think is a bunker where they are controlling everything, but actually it's one of many prison cells where the scenario dictates you have to stay inside or lose your grip on power. You can only walk out if you decide you don't want to rule the world. A prison without locks or guards.

"we're dating ourselves"

She had me in the first half, until the magical energy kicked in. Really illustrates how much you can overlook when you're quite sure you know who the good guys are. I bet the Nazi party also had its fair share of magical energy back in the day.

It varies though. Here in northern Italy tipping is rare to the point where it's kind of a social blunder. Many restaurants take a pride in excellence, both in food and service. In any given place, what they offer is what they offer. Trying to pay extra for that might come off as crass and unnecessary, rather than a welcome gesture.

Apart from being simpler, this is more respectful to waiting staff as a profession. How they do their jobs and what they get paid is between them and their employer, they aren't obliged to kiss your ass in the hope that you throw them a few extra euros. It's a different power dynamic where customers and staff are interacting as social equals.

Also it's not uncommon that the person serving you is actually the restaurant owner, or a family member.

When I was a kid, sex ed was bush porn. In any patch of urban common land you'd find these little jazz mags under the bushes. I guess they just grew on the bushes, you could tell when they weren't ripe yet if some of the pages didn't open

jacuzzi jets + bubble bath = foam party!

Interesting ambiguity here. The transparent parents are clearly ghosts, but is the kid also a ghost? I think so, since the most safe you can be is if you already faced death and you're still smiling.

Just needs more fingers

My PC is 15 times faster than the one I had 10 years ago. It's the same old PC but I got rid of Windows.

After a nine month legal battle, Zurich has reversed its decision and told the BBC it was sorry for the stress caused.

Yeah, very sorry I'm sure. Oopsie, we accidentally fought a nine month legal battle to avoid paying out the exact thing the insurance is for

"Israel treats journalism as a crime" isn't a condemnation, it's a gross understatement. You don't drop bombs on criminals and then bomb Red Cross workers trying to get them out of the rubble and shoot up an ambulance taking them to hospital. It's hard to find words to describe how deeply evil the everyday actions of Israel are and people are constantly making it sound like some mild transgression.

If you can get arrested and jailed for wearing a shirt saying "from the river to the sea", that means your government is suppressing your free speech in service to the genocidal regime of a different country. Even if you don't care about the genocide, the subversion of your democracy and your civil rights by a foreign power is something that any responsible citizen should be fighting against.

My PC had been running like shit for a while and I was already weighing up options for replacing it, when I got the popup message from MS about Windows 10 expiring, and how my only option was to dump the PC. So I installed Linux out of pure spite. Runs like a dream now. Thanks Microsoft!

Call me old fashioned but I like a woman who doesn't cut off the penises of her partners and turn them into sausages

As a doctor, I can assure you there is never any buildup of eyelashes behind your eyeball. The spiders eat them all.

I was put here to add carbon to the air and convert food into shit!