Most restaurants keep reservations in a $2.75 spiral notebook.

I doubt an online reservation calendar would be $10k for a single restaurant, but still…the only profit is marginal: the people who eat there who would have without the online calendar, and I doubt it would recoup the costs in a quarter or two. Especially considering that the wealth gap and tech gap mean that the number of people who want to schedule online is inversely related to the people who can afford to eat out a lot.

I’ve decided to believe that there was a grueling audition process and he ultimately had to go forward with his second choice.

why aren’t you guys screaming?

I screamed when Bush won a second term. I screamed when Trump won his first term. The American people can’t really let me down any further than they already have.

Do you mean rioting? The guy even won the popular vote, possibly fair and square. Are you under the impression that there is some action we can take at this point to improve the situation?

because people couldn’t get no injustice, they stayed home

That’s not a valid interpretation of the situation. Millions of people who voted for Biden did not come out for Kamala. There’ll be a lot of people trying to discern why and you probably won’t like my guess, but it’s too early to really have good information. Exit polls said only about 10 percent of people cared about Gaza at all. This idea of progressives not voting, sending the election to Trump doesn’t hold water at all. Dems first instinct is to punch left. I hope they learn a better lesson from this loss.

People who don’t vote aren’t hanging out on Lemmy talking about politics. All of the vitriol from Democrats is even more misplaced than usual. This outcome was pretty much what I thought would happen, but when I talk about how Dem decisions aren’t exciting voters, the response is to admonish me to vote, missing the point entirely.

it’s broken deliberately by one side to suit them,

Refusing to admit the part the Dems play is part of the problem as well. We can’t keep doing the same thing we’ve always done, and if we don’t learn from this we are truly doomed.

That’s fair and I respect your decision.

I was excited about Obama. For whatever reason I thought he’d be a lot more progressive than he ended up being.

I phone banked for Clinton. Was never a fan, but I agree that Trump was/is uniquely dangerous.

I voted for Biden. He was explicitly picked to be the conservative balance to the liberal firebrand, Obama (😬), but hey vote Blue no matter who, right?

The counterpoint to this thinking, for me: Where does this end? Do I stick it out until the next “unimportant” Presidential election? At what point am I just enabling the Dems to run rightward to pick up imaginary centrist Republicans while ignoring the left and the working class?

I doubt the DNC will learn their lesson from this election. I hoped they’d learn from a win, but I pray they take this loss to heart. The idea that Republicans somehow convinced people that they’re the party of unions and the working class is laughable, but if they could do that, that says Dems aren’t making the difference in people’s lives that they should be.

I voted for the Unity party largely to make this point. I live in Colorado. That’s “shooting myself in the head”?

I heard someone say “Well what if so many voters vote third party that they lose the state?” In this scenario…if Colorado is even close…it’s a fantasy to think they’d still have Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, or Texas. There is no path to 270 that doesn’t involve Colorado being firmly blue enough that vote won’t change anything.

I respect the right of people in swing states to vote their conscience as well, but that’s obviously a different consideration. But the vitriol a lot of Dems have without even asking where someone lives is just weird.

It’s not exactly legal, but a lot of places will charge the server for a done and dash.

I waited tables for years. (I was good at it, and even helped train everyone at a new restaurant.) Hourly pay would have definitely lowered my wage, but it’s still better than tipping. It’d be cool to get hourly wage, or even commission, so that your pay isn’t based on people’s whims.

servers who were bad at their jobs would get paid just as well as servers that offer good service.

(Note: I use the general “you” a lot. You’re just repeating what someone else said, I assume you don’t have any wait staff working for you personally.) You can fire people for being bad at their jobs. Why do you have bad staff working for you, tips or no? How about: Unattractive people will get paid just as well as traditionally attractive people. Minorities will get paid just as well as whites. Your salary doesn’t hinge on whether you can sneak extra stuff to your tables without your boss finding out or putting up with sexual harassment. Salary means that my paycheck comes from the restaurant and I don’t have to try to balance the interests of the people paying me against the restaurant.

This is just astoundingly out of touch. When I asked “why”, I was looking for evidence. What evidence do you have to support your supposition? Nothing.

To the contrary, polling says that only 10% of people cared about Gaza. The American people are largely tuned out of politics. Democrats’ first instinct is to always blame leftists, but the problem is that people don’t want to vote for more of the same.

This is meaningless though.

You said “a clear majority voted for Trump”. In fact: a majority of Americans didn’t vote for a fascist. That is a good thing.

Neither did a majority of Americans vote for a milquetoast centrist, but I don’t expect anyone to take a great deal of comfort or pain in that fact.

It is on the candidate to inspire people. Yeah, the left was lukewarm to a candidate that was trying her best to court Republicans. How else could you expect that to play out?

Only 10% of the electorate even cared about Gaza. You’re giving the American people entirely too much credit.

You really think the 15 million people who voted for Biden but not Kamala was “misplaced sense of moral superiority”? Why?

Imagine thinking that billions of dollars in campaign funds were overturned by a picture posted on Lemmy.

The Left is a group so insignificant that we don’t need to cater to their positions at all, but so massive that they’re completely responsible any time we lose.

That’s not an argument that being filmed at a polling place is dangerous.

I’m not sure a good argument can be made. Being at a polling place doesn’t say who you’re voting for. I don’t see the danger.

It is more difficult than a few years ago, especially if you don’t want to get sued or get a threatening letter from your ISP.

I would only torrent with a VPN and a private tracker. It’s certainly not difficult to learn, but absolutely requires some small amount of information to acquire.

I met someone with a “Man shall not lie with another man” tattoo.

1. That verse is literally the previous chapter to the “don’t get tattoos” verse. Why did he think one was important enough to get tattooed while ignoring the other?

2. He really chose to get that tattooed?!

There was no way a conversation with this guy would go well, so I’m going to be stuck with these questions forever.

Perhaps “nobody” is slight exaggeration. But I guarantee that more people would buy Girl Scout cookies for $5 than a mystery box for $200.

Nobody snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like a Democrat.

Nobody just gives away $200, and buying a “mystery box” from an anonymous stranger is the same thing.