Canada is a bit of a mess too, although different. We never really use miles, but we do use feet and inches and pounds pretty regularly. The construction industry is a real mess in particular because so many things are measured in either imperial or metric units

Especially early on in the Iraq war it was considered anti-American to be critical of it. Of course, that doesn’t have the kind of baggage that anti-Semitism has, but I do think it’s being used in exactly the same way, and it’s just conveniently more effective because of the very real history (and present) of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish violence. Where as (settler) America isn’t exactly an oppressed people

The typical English name for that is Canaan. There’s a lot of history surrounding that name in the Bible (OT, so shared by Jews, Christians, and somewhat accepted by Muslims too) and a lot of it not positive. I don’t think a lot of people would appreciate that association even though it’s likely based on myth.

Personally I don’t really see that Palestine is a bad name as it’s really just a name for the region and the only baggage it has is quite modern; Zionist Jews might prefer some acknowledgement of the land as Israel and so it would be tough to get them to accept something that doesn’t include that IMO

It’s still something you can argue should be done even if it’s not currently politically feasible. Things don’t always stay politically unfeasible, but they usually don’t get pushed in that direction by people not making that argument in public.

My utopian take would be that Israel should become fundamentally secular, remove references to being a ‘Jewish state’, grant all Palestineans citizenship and full rights, and perhaps change the name - a lot of people would say that should just be called Palestine, but frankly I think a compromise of Israel-Palestine or some other completely new name would be fine too. End the colonialism & apartheid, everyone who’s there lives in peace, people who had to flee during previous wars get to come back.

I don’t know that we’ll ever see that, but it probably is much more unlikely if we don’t try to convince people that it’s a good idea.

And ironically screwing it up by still supporting European settler colonialism?

There are absolutely very important reasons to still vote for Biden, but you can’t rely on millions of people to all do the right thing just because it’s logical. The person who’s running for office ultimately has the responsibility to ensure people want to vote for them. It’s just not really useful to blame millions of people when you know that there are statistically for sure going to be disaffected people out of those who need to be motivated. It doesn’t even matter whether most voters who would vote for Biden turn out to vote for him - they almost certainly will - because this fight is at the margins, and to win, you have to capture the irresponsible and unreliable people too.

I always wonder how this works. Do we have free will, or does everything we do follow God’s plan? If it’s the former, then God is clearly either not all-powerful or not entirely benevolent, since there are many ways we make things worse for our fellow humans and other life on this planet. If it’s the latter, then God is directly responsible for everything bad that happens as well as the good, nothing else really matters.

They’re active in comments, but they’re also a small minority

Do you not consider socialism a path to communism, as a stateless, classless society?

I don’t at all see how changing it to “socialist” would be any kind of erasure of communists, one leads to another. You’d have to think that “communism” is something else entirely.

What do you think about the argument that it keeps costs down when things are generally getting more expensive? In effect, you might actually still be benefiting from lower prices without ever knowing it.

I don’t know that I always buy this, but I can see the logic of it and I think it may be true sometimes, especially if things are competitive enough that being able to keep your prices down is more beneficial to business than putting the savings straight into profits.

Otherwise I think probably rather than customers seeing direct benefits from lower prices, an attempt to capture more of the excess profits of automation with taxation is needed.

Well, extrajudicial would imply not legal. What you’re really pointing to is that when white supremacists are involved, somehow the government suddenly cares about due process and civil rights.

The only place I’ve ever seen this in Canada is at some private liquor stores. They have a tip prompt. I guess in theory someone could help you to decide what you want and make recommendations, but in practice how much does that happen and how much is it really worth? I think it feels like just shaming your customers for not paying your own employees’ wages, tbh.

If you’re actually in Tokyo - tbh this isn’t anything new most other places, I’ve been using self-checkouts for like 15 years, and I don’t really see much of a reason to have someone do a job that isn’t really necessary and just makes me feel awkward, standing there while someone basically does a robot job. But honestly in Japan it makes a ton of sense to try to introduce self checkouts. Part-time staff are incredibly overworked, there’s much fewer part-time workers available compared to demand, and most people who have worked a part-time job in Japan can attest that it’s incredibly easy to find a job that doesn’t pay very much and isn’t very fulfilling. It’s quite a different situation from full-time jobs, which are incredibly hard to find and still overwork you doing meaningless work.

Is it just that as a paying customer, you don’t feel that you should any of your own effort to that service? Because if so, that’s practically impossible, and maybe not even desirable. The best kind of working environment is one in which workers, customers, and employers all empathize with each other and do their best to make things easier. And as an example of something that customers are sometimes expected to do, there are a lot of cheap self-service restaurants in Japan like soba shops and such where you bring the tray to your table on your own and then clean up after yourself and bring it back to the tray return area. This isn’t common in all parts of the world, and someone who isn’t used to it might protest and say that they’re paying the wages of the people who work there, so why should they have to serve themselves? But it’s just part of the system there and it cuts down on the workload - you would be rude to not respect that.

If you think businesses are just pocketing the difference and it’s leading to greater profits, the only real way to address that is to either encourage greater competition and for example break up monopolies, or implement price controls. But it doesn’t make sense to employ people to do something when labour can be used more efficiently on something else.

Damn, where? There’s one chain of grocery stores in my area where you have to join their rewards program to get their sales, but it’s just an information grab - no credit card or anything, it’s free, but the points are pretty much garbage. Also, you really want to get the sale prices, because half the store is on sale at any given time and the regular prices are awful.