Stovetop

Facebook/Instagram (Meta) is one I am not sure how to get a read on. They are branching out a lot, but I have no idea what they’re doing to remain profitable. It seems like they’re in “Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks” mode, hoping that they find a new niche before their sizable warchest from the 2010’s runs dry.

They severely downsized once this year already and I have a feeling that won’t be the end of the story. Wouldn’t surprise me if they sell off/shut down Oculus in the near future.

Tiktok, meanwhile…well it’s already undergoing enshittification (it is the subject of that original essay) and old people are starting to use it, so I feel like it’s only a matter of time before it’s no longer cool with kids and they lose a sizable chunk of their revenue stream and content.

A feature similar to RES, maybe one that pulls from your subscriptions, would be nice. Start typing the name of a community and it suggests some autofill options formatted in a way that folks from other instances can click on it easily.

Just to add onto this good answer, you are really only expected to tip for sit-down restaurants with service and bars.

For takeout, cafes, fast food, etc., you don’t need to tip. A lot of places these have payment machines that just ask if you want to tip by default. You can safely hit “No tip” on these if you don’t want to.

Ostensibly it’s just to replace the tip jar for those who don’t use cash, but the prompt appearing every time you pay by card has convinced a lot of people that tipping is what you’re supposed to do in those situations, when in reality you have no obligation to.

Probably close to 20 years ago at this point, when visiting the official forums for a game I loved, my computer was infected by malware delivered by a malicious ad. This was not some seedy part of the internet, but a website hosted by a major game publisher whose product I enjoyed.

Try as I might, I could not revert the damage caused by the virus, so the only recourse I had was to just blank slate wipe it clean and start over.

Today, I acknowledge that most websites more tightly control the ads they host, but the trust is forever broken. As soon as the option became available to me, I installed the best adblocker I could find and never looked back. No exceptions.

The truth is that every ad is malicious, to small degrees. They want to commodify your eyeballs and take up space in your mind. They’re trying to create a need where one does not exist, and will use whatever tactic they can to try to part you from your hard-earned money. They’re a barrier between you and the content you want to enjoy—in many cases content that you paid to enjoy.

Even if it’s in the name of supporting a website/service I enjoy, I can’t confidently turn off my ad blocker anymore. It only takes one malicious ad to sneak through the cracks to cause disaster.

There has got to be a better way of running an online business without having to completely fill the space with ads.

I’m assuming by that point, you wouldn’t have people driving anymore, it would all be automatic. Likely hooked into some sort of flight control system that would allow the vehicles to navigate around each other and avoid collisions.

Plus, look at it this way. Accidents are common now because roads restrict cars into shared paths of travel, requiring drivers to successfully avoid colliding with other people moving very close to them. If you are able to fly, you’d be able to beeline from point A to point B, distributing vehicles across a much broader area of travel. Plus, the added vertical axis means you won’t even necessarily collide if your vehicle can just move up or down around potential midair obstacles.

I think the point of these bots is that they try to make themselves appear not like bots in order to steer the direction of discussions. That and upvoting the agendas they want to push and downvoting perspectives they disagree with.

Still a lot of pasta, which predates the Columbian exchange. But probably a lot more focus on herbal seasonings, cheese/dairy, oils, etc. Carbonara probably still popular. A lot more pesto on average.

Pizza would be white pizza with toppings, maybe with a pesto base. Fish, meat dishes, and European vegetable dishes probably still mostly untouched.

You’re really just missing tomato sauces and gnocchi with the lack of the Columbian exchange, and tomato is essentially optional in many Italian dishes anyways. Surprisingly not as big a change as I would have thought.

I think maybe in North America we associate tomatoes more strongly with Italian food because it was more readily available for Italian-American immigrants than it was back in Italy.

That essay was honestly a work of art, and I have a feeling it’s going to remain relevant for a while. I’d love to probe Cory for additional perspectives.