It’s a technology that allows you to verifiably possess a definite quantity of “a thing.” That thing is just virtual.

Think of it this way: shares in companies are also virtual things. You can’t build a bridge out of em.

But a stock exchange is there to sell them to you and they will keep track that yes, you do actually own X shares of company Y.

Instead of issuing shares on a stock exchange to raise money, a new company could just sell shares of itself by creating a new crypto. There would be a finite number of “coins” representing ownership shares. The company could control whether more can be created. And it would be verifiable who owns what.

So that verifying and quantity-control are both features of the software itself. You could say it’s good for those things. As I illustrated above, this could be used to virtualize ownership of something, including the buying and selling of shares of it.

Just one point to add: there is no currency that is universally accepted. You probably cant buy a pizza with Kuwaiti dinar right now either. But that’s definitely a currency. So your part about “everyone agrees” is not really true of any currency. They work only for a subset of humanity who mutually agree it has value. And you can absolutely find people who will buy crypto from you using other currencies, or give you goods and services for it. Those people are rather randomly distributed around the world though instead of being grouped inside one geographic border. That’s the only difference.

Exactly. You are not in your element so even things that seem obvious might not be. It’s very easy to be wrong. And if you do the wrong thing, people will get made at you because “you could have just asked.” Do they really want customers in there all acting on their best guesses? I think that is a fool’s wish. I also don’t get the expectation that I will prioritize sparing the staff a small effort like speaking some info. I’m not taking a shit on the floor and making them clean it up. I’m asking a question. They’re literally paid to help. This is the job. It’s work. This is why they call it working.

Again. You think someone should be able to figure it out with the tiniest effort. But it really may not be so obvious to someone who doesn’t know what you know.

You are not alone here - all people struggle to truly visualize the mind of another person who doesn’t know what they themselves know. Sure you know whatever it is 1000 times over. But the customer does not, and they may have a totally different 1000 things on their mind.

People don’t want to take a guess when they can just ask. If you are in an area where customers can address you, you are there to help them. Why should they stop and guess to spare you effort? It is unreasonable to get pissed off by this.

He was an evil fuck who had it coming, among other reasons for preaching about the virtues of guns.

Wait why is it sinister and demoralizing? I find it a laugh. Also he’s been fucking canonized by the other side so cry me a damn river.

Yes. They work in the store and know all the things. Others do not. It’s literally not their job to know. It may seem dumb when someone doesn’t know something you have learned 100x over. You may even convince yourself that any normal person should figure some thing out easily. But everyone isn’t working in that store thinking about this stuff for 8 hours at a time and we are all busy living our lives. I don’t believe in being a dick to someone because you think their question is dumb. Frankly we are all smart at some things and dumb at others and the rule should be to have some grace with one another about it.

The water cups may indeed be right there dude but excuse the fuck out of me for not spotting them - I just walked into this restaurant and there are a million things to look at in here.

GenX here. I think it’s the name that’s given to a small collection of social mismatches between the generations’ expectations of one another and their social behaviors.

Gen Z in my view do not place much value on social graces as I define them. I define them as things like “greet someone before you ask for something,” and “say thank you before you leave.” I try to do these things at all times and I find GenZ do not always return them or give any sign they even saw them. When a cashier hands me my change and it’s time for me to go, I will say “thank you,” and imho it’s good social graces for them to say “thank you” as well or “you’re welcome” or even just “have a nice day.” But with GenZ cashiers, I say thank you, and then realize they had stopped paying any attention to my presence even before I said it. The second the change has been handed to me, it seems they consider the transaction over, period.

I also think that for this generation, being a retail worker is much more of a misery than it was when I was their age. Wages suck more now. People may be less polite now. And corporations have really tried to squeeze the most out of every employee. They have to do a bunch of different things. It seems they schedule the bare minimum number of people they can get away with. Maybe in my day kids enjoyed their job more because they could literally only stand at the register talking to customers when there were some, and in between horse around with their friends. I think a lot of that slack has been squeezed out of the system.

The bit about the Stare is not always true or even most of the time. But it’s something that happens often enough to notice as a pattern. Once you’ve heard the stereotype of the “GenZ stare” you can start to experience confirmation bias of it. And really you never know if the person you’re facing is GenZ or not.

So it’s not a thing one should over-think. But yes I think there is something real behind it. Like a lot of stereotypes, it’s not fair to apply to everyone, but it may have some origin in reality somehow.

As it happens, I am married to someone raised in a Chinese family so I hear you and am familiar with a lot of the dynamic. We just talk about it very openly as an unhealthy and even abusive way to grow up.

I remember I got promoted at work and one of the VPs above me sent me an email saying “we’re proud of you.” He happened to be Asian. And my wife was floored that he actually said this.

For fucks sake write an essay.

There is no right answer to great big stereotypes like this. Sure, raising someone with love and tenderness can keep them from growing up into a big violent asshole. I call that a good outcome. But in previous generations, this was somehow made into a bad thing. “The women made him soft!” That’s hardcore patriarchal bullshit and an excellent example of men oppressing men.

It sounds like you may be deep in the pocket of that oppression, if you think that “stoic as hell except for occasionally getting mad” is neutral. That is not neutral dude. That sucks. I’m sorry you dad never showed you love and kindness, to the point where you question your mother for doing so. Wake up from this for your own sake.

Could you be confusing the facts with your feelings? You thought the relationship issues were fixable but the partner did not. Were they just saying that as an excuse to abandon you? You could look at this differently. Everyone gets to decide if a relationship is where they want to invest their life. If you honor their right to do this, you could stop looking at it as if the entire enterprise was a great big abandonment of you. That really does sound like your take on it. We’ve all had relationships end. I’ve been on both ends of it. I didn’t see it through the lens of abandonment because I don’t have that upbringing.

But you seem to insist that the facts align with your feelings, therefore your feelings are pretty legitimate and so you don’t know what to do. It really sounds like your feelings are 100% in charge of you here. They don’t have to be.

The Houthis are a large group controlling a big area of Yemen, but not the official government of Yemen. So if the Houthis enter a conflict, that’s not the same as the government of Yemen doing so. But Israel is trying to equate the two. They’re basically saying “Yemeni government, we hold you responsible, we think the Houthis are your proxy.”

So this accusation is not so much about the mere act of entering the conflict, itself, and more about WHO has actually entered it.

A comparison might be if Hezbollah carries out an attack, that’s not necessarily the recognized Lebanese government doing it. But Israel will blame them anyway, if for not other reason than to accuse them of not doing enough to stop it. This comparison is quite apt because both Hezbollah and the Houthis are well aligned with and funded by Iran.

First of all they do it because they are stereotyping, which is lazy and dumb (and these people are lazy and dumb).

But why do they stereotype everyone to Mexico and not somewhere else? Easy. It’s the US’s largest Spanish speaking neighbor. It’s actually the largest Spanish speaking country anywhere, #10 by population in the world, with 150 million people. So if you had to guess, Mexico would generally be a higher probability guess.

I agree with you. This is such a narrow look at two very complex countries through one itty bitty lens. China has demographic and geographic strengths that Russia doesn’t. China also has comparable amounts of corruption or more, but it isn’t as visible to the west.

ROFLOL yeah it’s the Democrats fault we don’t have national healthcare. tHeY hAd foUR YeaRS WherE is It?? Smeared all over the soles of the Republicans shoes. That’s where it is.

By supporting Israel.

Instead of throwing up my hands waiting for someone else to ratify a framework, I personally give substantial direct financial support to an African American family, not because I feel personally responsible for what happened 200 years ago, but because I know that what happened 200 years ago didn’t end 200 years ago but continued on and eventually became Jim Crow and eventually became the War on Drugs and all the while has just simmered there as subconscious racism. It affects them all day every day every time someone looks at them, every time they board an elevator.And alltogether it has unfairly advantaged me and disadvantaged them. I can’t even imagine the mental stress of being a black American over the last several years. And the entire 200 years we’ve been abusing and short changing these people, they have paid us back in unique gifts of art, music, and literature (on top of their everyday contributions to science, industry and education like everyone else makes too). I pay because it’s the least I can fucking do to help and say “someone sees, someone cares.” I give because I can, and never had to face what they face. I give because it’s their money.

You do you.

How the fuck do they keep electing him! All I hear is how everyone hates him.

Thank you. I thought it might have somehow meant “leftists” or “communists.” “Red state” snaps right into place for me in a way “red team” did not.

So you’re saying that American conservatives have a longtime conspiracy theory about the family being under attack by gays whispering to Satan in a weed haze (this part I do understand).

But what’s actually going on is “corpos atomizing us.”

Are you saying that the corpo atomization is something that “red team” fears or is against?

I would think that the “nuclear family” is the conservative ideal and the corporate consumption powers that be are aligned with them because more, smaller families drive more of that individual consumption you mentioned.

So I was a little confused how “nuclear family” as a conservative conspiracy theory fits with corpo atomization in your view exactly.