Not to be that guy, but we have been under-paying for coffee for many years now. The price of beans kept going up, but customers were locked into what a cup of coffee should be and extremely price sensitive about addressing the reality.

A catch-up is underway all over the world.

Note. Not a cafe owner and I don’t have anything to do with coffee except drink it.

Stop giving me reasons to never go to the US. I already don’t want to go.

That’s very true, for now.

At this moment Reddit is existing on its former reputation. There are a host of like internet megalithic platforms that are now not even distant memories. Once they outlive their former utility they fade pretty quickly. Think of MySpace, Friendster and Yahoo Groups. Even Facebook is circling the plughole, but it may take a while before disappearing due to its former dominant position.

Is Reddit still a thing? I wasn’t aware?

I thought that it had evolved into a bot parliament.

There is no flipping way I’d purchase a car that does this shit. And if introduced after purchase, I’d torch it.

We have to start adopting more accurate terminology for demographics. Most boomers are in their 70s and 80s. The ‘boomer’ shortcut has outlived it’s usefulness. I’m a ‘young’ boomer at 68.

I saw a lot of these so-called boomers at J6. Except that they were in their 30s and 40s. Boomers ain’t scaling walls no more.

You can’t open a damn thing without getting bombarded by ads. Corporations own the internet now.

“We value your privacy and security, but please provide every tiny piece of personal data, including when you had your last shit”.

Yep, my account was 14 years old and I got banned for the most innocuous post that I thought that it was a joke. Don’t miss Reddit at all. It’s like getting kicked out of a fire.

I wonder? Just before I was banned, I used a third party app to scrap 14 years of my data and delete it all. Not long after that I was banned for some truly innocuous post.

I don’t get how they hate violence when I was last there it was full of drone videos blowing bits of Russians I to the air.

If only we knew the cause of it?

Oh well…

I’m not in disagreement with your general thesis. However I stand by my statement that your occupy the epicenter of the capitalist monster.

We have a saying that what happens politically in the US will happen here in 15 years time. That’s not totally true. You guys have borne witness to stuff we have never seen. Mass lynching, repeated political assassinations, gun violence, extreme gerrymandering, and the like. This isn’t a critique ( you do you) it’s a simple observation. But neither is it a prediction of what will necessarily happen here. You have fairly unique circumstances. One is the belief in American exceptionalism. Only Americans share that belief.

Europe tends to be pragmatic in the modern era. We will wait out this insanity and reroute circuits around the damage. As I said in my first response. I would look inwards for a solution right now, if I were you. We are actively doing the same, which will become apparent to Wall Street in about half a decade from now.

I do understand that the capitalist system is broke. We see it too in our own countries, but you are certainly downplaying the US role in this catastrophe. You really need to stop telling us to put out that cigarette when America is the primary culprit in spraying gasoline over everyone.

In our countries we can reasonably dump a bad leader, and we do on the regular. But you guys?? Plus, even our evil pricks understand that the elections are fair so they have at least play a level of persuasion. That is the tricky bit - on a level playing ground it is quite difficult to go the full fascist. Ask Italy and France who are always just about to elect someone like Trump, but never quite manage to.

I do appreciate the “we’re all in this together guys”, vibe, but you and us are still leagues apart. It’s for this reason nobody is buying that argument. I needn’t tell you that Europe and most of Asia are crab walking away. If you think that makes me happy think again. You are making all this a gift to China who looks serious, reasonable and sensible by comparison.

First of all, I am not referring to you personally. Nor Americans like you. Unfortunately, by having the system you guys have, it makes no fundamental difference. The States are doing untold damage, and if you get lumped into the mix against your will, it is still being done in your name regardless.

The rest of the world are not plugging our ears - we are being held hostage. I just filled up my car today and paid an eye-watering amount. I didn’t vote for that, neither did several hundred million of us.

I’m sorry, but while I am intensely interested in how you guys are going to put this right, I’m less interested in American views on international issues.

By the way, not saying that we don’t have our own problems, we certainly do, but we are dealing with them behind the scenes quietly, such as dropping as much US software and hardware as possible. Trump has been a boon for national infrastructure development.

Oh, take Australia, for example. They have supported US foreign policy for over 80 years. They have supported every US war since WW2. That stopped dead this year. The public announcements from the government have been neutral, but the actions speak for themselves.

Anyway, I’m at pains for wishing you guys the best, especially the good people such as yourself. I hope that you can figure it out somehow.

Look, what the guy said might have been crude, but he’s not wrong. It doesn’t matter to the rest of the world whether one American, or another, is resisting US fascism. It makes no fundamental difference to the globe.

You really need to step outside of your perspective.

The ICC was set up to hold war criminals accountable. The US fought against it since the beginning and is still fighting against it now. Trump wasn’t president when it was set up. The US just wants to go rogue in international affairs. That’s where we come in. The international bit.

To the rest of the world, we just want the US to just shut the fudge up and leave us alone. We don’t need American advice, and don’t want it. It’s like a neighbour offering advice about our fire regulations when their own house is burning to the actual ground. Pull out of NATO, hit us with tariffs, start stupid and unnecessary wars and all the other dangerous crap. Just leave us out of it. Like the guy said, your country took yourselves out of the global community. Fine. Keep your advice about how to fix Europe to yourself until you learn how to provide healthcare and basic services to your own citizens. It wasn’t for nothing that your ridiculous tipping culture was a shock to Europeans during the world cup. In Europe service staff are paid a living wage. To them, tipping is the cream, not the cake.

I apologise for the slightly hostile tone, and don’t mean it towards you personally. I also know that 50% of Americans don’t want this, but the other 50% come across as pretty toxic.

The minute you declare that you are only interested in American values and that you are not accountable to the world then you lose the right for the rest of us to pay you any regard. Your system produced Trump twice. Twice! We know that you can pull that trick at any election, and the chaos returns. Europe and other countries are now building guardrails. We have to, but it’s not what we want. It’s too exhausting.

But can you get books to read on it? I suspect that these gadgets will get locked out of the market by the thugs.

“Statement”.

Mitch isn’t even showing up for his own funeral.

I’m not an American, but in any other first world country hiding a brain dead politician for electoral advantage would be absolutely impossible.

If you guys allow this - if it is happening - how do you justify the claim that you are a democratic country?

That would be some serious Putin or North Korea level bullshit??

I heard that he was at 54%? If so, that’s flippable in the current climate.