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By stuffisthings on How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chain Restaurants
I mean I don't want to seem like I'm reflexively defending "big business" on this thread, because I'm not. I'm just arguing against the idea that small and local is either a) inherently better (for employees, for the environment) than big and corporate or b) somehow intrinsically more likely to better. Thanks to a lot of outside pressure, many corporate chains have actually spent significant resources to think through the impact on the environment and community and to reduce it where it doesn't hurt their profits too much. They also generally face greater scrutiny when it comes to labor abuses. Non-union labor groups like the ones mentioned recently on this very blog have won millions of dollars in back wages by suing big restaurant chains, resulting in binding agreements that affect thousands of workers. Small restaurants with a handful of employees can engage in this kind of behavior with impunity. Plus I think there's a false dichotomy here between "big corporate chain" and "local artisanal organic co-op." What about all the mom-and-pop restaurants that don't make their own in-house ketchup? What about the hole-in-the-wall Chinese takeout place, with the unpaid family members as employees and the styrofoam takeout boxes? What about all the independent upscale restaurants with sexually harassing, tip stealing cokehead bosses? Or the bars where bartenders are always hanging around asking if their paycheck from six weeks ago has been cut yet?
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By stuffisthings on How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chain Restaurants
@josefinastrummer We've got a nuclear reactor running on locally-sourced uranium with artisanal fuel rods.
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By EM on Why the Swedes Move to Norway And Why I Tagged Along
I had stereotyped all Nordic countries as homogenously populated by tall, beautiful, stylish blondes, so learning about these petty rivalries ("whiter teeth, clearer skin, Abba, and Bjorn Borg") is weirdly satisfying.
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By ThatJenn on Who's the Idiot Now? In My Family, We Play the Lottery to Win
@ThatJenn Hell, it beats drinking alcohol for ROI, I gotta say, and I'm betting most people who would say the lotto is an idiot tax "waste" money on alcohol all the time.
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By eraserface on Things to Talk About Before Shacking Up
My thoughts....if you're going to live together, you should have a joint checking account. This cutting each other a check thing is very weird to me. Then again, I may be the unusual one...my husband and I only started living together when we were engaged. We have never cared too much about which money is in which account...we always knew all the accounts, no matter whose name is on it, are "ours."
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By Saralyn@twitter on Taking the Other Way Home
The thing with the Weight Watchers points system, though (if I remember correctly), is that it's not just about day to day. It's also about how many point you use in a week (or a month). So, like, you can't eat all of your week's worth of points at the beginning of the week - then you don't have any left for sustenance at the end! Same with money - buy whatever you want and then stop buying when you run out of money....as long as you still have what you need to survive until next payday. (That wasn't very eloquent, but it's been a very long Friday in my office)
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By Lily Rowan on Taking the Other Way Home
I am fascinated by people, because it doesn't even occur to me to worry about returning anything. "Changed my mind!" "Don't like it after all!" "Didn't fit right!" ....and that's if they even ask, which they don't necessarily.
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By ThatJenn on Living in Squalor for Artistic Freedom
I am all about lowering one's living expenses so one can earn less! It's something I'm working on myself (and is why I haven't moved somewhere better/cooler).
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By EM on We Need Young Blood
I read this amazing (sad/scary) essay on the weekend-- it's a few years old but still very relevant: "Americans haven’t come to grips with the new demography. We cling to the notion of retirement at sixty-five—a reasonable notion when those over sixty-five were a tiny percentage of the population, but completely untenable as they approach twenty per cent. People are putting aside less in savings for old age now than they have in any decade since the Great Depression. More than half of the very old now live without a spouse, and we have fewer children than ever before—yet we give virtually no thought to how we will live out our later years alone."
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By stuffisthings on How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Chain Restaurants
@cherrispryte All my fat is locally grown.