A catalog in america

[IdleRich]

People delivering food are definitely people to tip for me, for practicality and also for the sake of justice. I still find all that so bleak, it's the closest thing in the west to servants, these dudes banging about in the cold on these rickety workhorse ebike, the tech preventing any sense of a relationship, faceless and anonymous, all this food going to fancy buildings full of people paying 5k a month and getting food bought to them five times a week, the food getting dropped off to the doormen in the lobby.

This is why I'm surprised that Sus was su adamant that these guys were in the no section. Everything I've seen, every person I've read seems to be in favour of tipping these guys. They seem to pose a bit of a problem for Sus, I guess he's gotta say, sorry guys been giving it the big one, laying down the law in this and really you got me, I know less than nothing it was totally the bland leading the blind, forget all that shite I just squeezed out and do your own thing, you'll likely do better by random than following my advice. It's like one of those things were they go a monkey picked better stocks than that guy, here it's a monkey would likely outperform Sus on tipping etiquette.

Unless, he's gonna stick to hid guns, come out firing and explain how the whole world except him got this wrong

For taxis the tech has changed tipping from what I can tell, it's unavoidable in the yellow cabs, but the apps are made to let you get away without doing it, coz you're already out of there and in the street before it's time to pay, the interaction is over, the app designs away the shame of not doing it

This is interesting right, cos presumably they coulda made the tech to lean the other way, increase the shame. Who decided it went one way rather than the other... and why did the customers win? Everything else I've read about tipping seems to say that there is a vast invisible force pushing the tip wave ever forward, cheerled along by useful um people who feel that there is cultural cachet in being a tipping expert.

 

[shakahislop]

This is interesting right, cos presumably they coulda made the tech to lean the other way, increase the shame. Who decided it went one way rather than the other... and why did the customers win? Everything else I've read about tipping seems to say that there is a vast invisible force pushing the tip wave ever forward, cheerled along by useful um people who feel that there is cultural cachet in being a tipping expert.

my take on that is that like a lot of stuff on the internet, it's just coz of the coincidence that the internet came of age at a very laissz-faire time. it's not going to be like that forever i think. taxi app design is about making as much money as possible presumably. so of course the service wins over the drivers. there's not really any other consideration so far as i can tell. but it could be something totally different in the future as governments and popular disgust start to shape the internet more. which is what i think is slowly going to happen. there's a few examples out there. the nyc airbnb ban, which is actually enforced so far as i can tell, is the one that comes to mind right now.

 

[IdleRich]

It's interesting all this I think, just to understand how all those variables work. If you were a customer and there were two such app-company things. In one the app shamed you into leaving a tip, the other didn't and so of course, all things being equal your average customer will opt for the latter. But if there was only one such firm and the app was an aggressive tip pursuer, would it reduce the number of rides taken or nor? I suppose that if the whole tip goes to the driver then the company simply chooses not to find out as there is no upside for them in aggressively chasing tips... except you might make the same argument in bars, but there is an upside cos a guaranteed income stream from tipping means they can reduce the barman's wages... so why doesn't that argument hold in the can app thing?

Ah these things get so complicated and chase themselves round and round in smaller and smaller circles driving you mad...

 

[catalog]

What about taxis and people delivering you food? There was that article everywhere last year about some guy delivering food and the customer filled the tip amount was too low so he refused to deliver her dinner...

Actual sort of sensible question, how is tipping dealt with by economists etc? I'm thinking like in some countries they have a group of everyday items and they measure the inflation of that basket, but if there were intems on the list that mandate a tip, would that tip be included in the calculation? Or just in general, if they said tfe average price of a beer in NY is, I dunno, $8 is that the price with or without the tip? Cos I go somewhere I wanna know the pay - what use is it to know or how correct is it to say beers are 8 dollars on average if you can never ever get them at that price?

I know uber drivers expect one, but I got away with that one cos they are gone by the time you get asked on the app.

But my cousin in Houston said he got accosted by a taxu driver. Like he was out the cab, walking away, felt a finger tapping his shoulder and had to give him a 5 for a trip from airport.

 

[catalog]

Another good museum I went to was the Mexic-Arte one in Austin. Just sort of wandered in cos I was passing. I think a sort of community arts type place, bug a few very accomplished pieces.

Everything was the same size, like a sort of square canvas board. Which made it good cos you get a good sense of the creative differences with everyone working to the same size. Everything was for sale, usually around 150 dollars mark.

It was good to see so many trees and also interesting to see a lot of visual representations of corn.

I like this one and I think its accurate ie the root spread underground matches canopy spread above ground in size

Love this one, good colour choices and just so odd go see the corn depicted like that.

I had a go at drawing this one in my notebook, I love peaches and nectarines, amongst my fav fruits

My attempt:

Could have spent a while sketching but I didn't have the time sadly

Really like this one. There's a woman in the village who does this sort of thing, I'm gonna have a go I think. At one point I was painting onto bits of bark and other detritus.

This one so odd cos it's oil pastels which you rarely see anyone doing anything with

This reminded me of a render that @william_kent did for me, of my face but passed through the AI with instructions to make it look tree like

Kent's version, which I used in a promo zine I made for the trip (hope you don't mind bill):

Couple of really nice oil paintings

I've done something similar to this, can't find it now sadly, where I've superimposed a photo of me swimming in a river with the M62 as a sort of visual representation of my mantra "The M62 is my Ganges"

 

[luka]

those pictures are rubbish. they look like they were painted by children.

 

[catalog]

That is sort of why I like them

 

[catalog]

And I think a lot are actually by children / young people, cos it's a community museum, doing workshops and the like.

But still, some of the draughtsmanship eg on the mushrooms is very good

 

[shakahislop]

I know uber drivers expect one, but I got away with that one cos they are gone by the time you get asked on the app.

But my cousin in Houston said he got accosted by a taxu driver. Like he was out the cab, walking away, felt a finger tapping his shoulder and had to give him a 5 for a trip from airport.

literally the first thing that happened to me when i moved here was getting a yellow taxi from JFK with all my bags in the pissing pouring rain, and then getting into a minor argument with the taxi driver when i was getting out because although he had kindly noticed i was a foreigner and had explained to me that the minimum tip should be x amount ($15 or something), i thought he was doing the hard sell because the tip sounded ludicrously high and undertipped him, he let me know about that

 

[catalog]

I even used WiFi hot-spot off one uber driver, I think i did tip him 15% for that actually.

And when we were getting them in Baltimore, my cousin paid and I rememberf him saying as we got out, "ill get your tip on the app".

We had this great driver for one trip, Senegalese origin woman, she was listening to little Kim really loud, had a baseball bat in from seat, said we could smoke and drink in the cab no worries.

Had this gorgeous slow way of talking.

All thd music in cabs in America was brilliant. I got off at BWI and first tune, on the radio, in the uber was doves cry, which I took as good omen.

Elsewhere I heard no diggity. American radio pisses over UK.

 

[WashYourHands]

Traffic and weather on the 8’s

 

[sus]

This is why I'm surprised that Sus was su adamant that these guys were in the no section. Everything I've seen, every person I've read seems to be in favour of tipping these guys. They seem to pose a bit of a problem for Sus, I guess he's gotta say, sorry guys been giving it the big one, laying down the law in this and really you got me, I know less than nothing it was totally the bland leading the blind, forget all that shite I just squeezed out and do your own thing, you'll likely do better by random than following my advice.

App delivery bikers were excluded from my advice because I have self-respect and have therefore never ordered from a food delivery app

 

[sus]

But I appreciate you using my name! I won't hold your idle rich habits against you. I'm just a good protestant American who believes you cook your own dinner each night, and put away the savings for a rainy day

 

[IdleRich]

App delivery bikers were excluded from my advice because I have self-respect and have therefore never ordered from a food delivery app

Besides the point; you were giving tipping guidance to other people and so it's not about whether you use delivery apps, the question was, if they do use such an app, should they tip? And it seems that our self-proclaimed tipping guru got the answer totally one hundred percent, back to front, utterly and precisely as wrong as possible... you gave a kind of platonic ideal of wrongness, and, speaking for myself, I have to say I'm shaken. It feels as though it casts doubt on every single thing you've said ever. Every factual claim you've made I need to now verify with a third party, every argument or rationale I accepted trustingly I need to go over and check myself. My foundations are shaken, I've lost my north star and I'm rudderless... drifting.

Also, a relatively unimportant aside after the earth shattering developments above, but... I don't understand the other part of what you say either. You have too much self-respect to order food from an app? What does this mean?

And is it only wrong from an app or is all food delivery automatically wrong? What about if I pick it up myself or is it completely forbidden to eat outside of certain designated restaurant areas?

 

[catalog]

no he's right sus, you're sacked.

 

[sus]

I was going to microblog my experiences at the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid in Memphis today, but y'all don't deserve my content

 

[sus]

Memphis Pyramid - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[sus]

Also, a relatively unimportant aside after the earth shattering developments above, but... I don't understand the other part of what you say either. You have too much self-respect to order food from an app? What does this mean?

And is it only wrong from an app or is all food delivery automatically wrong? What about if I pick it up myself or is it completely forbidden to eat outside of certain designated restaurant areas?

I'm just poor Rich. I'm just poor. So I cook $2 spaghetti and marinara rather than pay $25 in tax and tips and delivery free for brioche pancakes

I don't think you have to starve to be an artist in this world, but it you don't have a trust fund and want to live in New York, you're gonna have to forego some creature comforts. My rent is $3200 rich

 

[sus]

I need to leave this hell city and move to rural Guatemala but unfortunately this would result in the end of a quasi marriage which seems bad. I'm between a rock and a hard place. Do I give up my dreams or my woman. Ok maybe I can at least give up on brioche pancakes shuttled across Manhattan by modern day Mayans

 

[catalog]

I think you should stay with the woman. Otherwise I predict yoh will go insane, especially if you go to Guatemala.