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This really seems like exaggeration. Two hours? How many people are we talking about here?

Also, nothing you've mentioned really solves your issues. Even with DoorDash, you'll need to pick a restaurant. And DoorDash doesn't solve the problem of someone changing their mind as they are ordering.

And then you still have to wait for the food to be prepared and delivered. And there's no guarantee on when it will arrive. So it winds up being a wash.

Also, there's a reason places that don't do delivery don't do it. The cost doesn't justify it. Then there's the whole "meet me where I am" attitude. They're the ones with the service you want. You have some obligation to meet them yourself.

And if you don't want to, that's fine. We used to manage all of this well enough before


You've never herded cats? That time is wall clock time, so to be clear, It isn't 1:45 collectively sitting down and paying attention to that one specific task. (That would be too easy.) Just like how it'll take three days to write six hours of code because of all of the other work stuff going on during a busy week, in my experience it just takes roughly three hours of wall clock time from "start beginning the process of ordering food" to food in mouth. Most of that is spent not ordering food. Finishing up some work stuff or finishing the TV/movie someone put on or hey check out this one video on YouTube/Tiktok/etc and getting sucked down a rabbithole, or a quick game of whatever cards, or a discussion about how someone's life/work/relationship/whatever is going. Just normal distractible people things.

The cashier at the restaurant isn't going to, (nor should they!) wait on hold for that entire hour of mostly not ordering food. Ordering via phone app doesn't care how long it takes after we start, or that we got utterly distracted and came back to it 20 minutes later.

It starts to take too long when it's more than a dozen or two people, though there usually aren't that many. At some point though, it becomes more effective to get people's dietary restrictions and make decisions for everybody, but just ordering a bunch of pizzas is considered a (delicious) failure mode to be avoided.

Doordash's app mostly doesn't help in figuring out which restaurant to go with, though it does say what got ordered last time. and has a rating and $ signs. The process becomes asynchronous. each person gets the phone and figures out what they want, without the rest of the group just staring at that one person until they finish. No one needs to manage orders beyond passing the phone around and eventually pressing checkout. The person who changes their mind just gets the phone back before the checkout button is pressed and edits the order. Doing that verbally via the phone is terrible. It's also understood that there's no changing after checkout is pressed.

To be clear, restaurants don't have to meet me on Doordash, but they do have to meet me at least halfway, which is on the Internet, and that there are local restaurants who do. They have their own webpage, they take orders there, it isn't run by Doordash, and we just send someone(s) to go pick up the food. At least one of them is operated by Square, which also runs that place's PoS system. So I'm not holding restaurants to some impossibly high bar that none of them seem to be able to meet, just discussing the reality of operating a restaurant in the digital age.

Restaurants modernized and installed telephones and credit card machines and now, they also need a digital presence to compete. There are umpteen restaurants competing for my business and if it's too much friction to eat their food, chances are I'm just not gonna eat there and my business ends up at a competitors.

I mean, they don't actually have to. There are some spots that don't have a website and still only take cash and it's word of mouth, and I frequent them infrequently, but that's their business model, so good for them, so long as it's actually working for them.


But there is the cost of hosting, developers, drivers, etc.

And that's all cost that is not borne by the restaurant.

And there is a limit to how much people would pay to get something delivered. So they're probably pricing the delivery, etc less than they've actually paid.


We've seen this before and we'll see it again. There are lots of people who will pay for things below cost. Sometimes that cost comes down but a lot of the time it does not especially in relatively affluent countries. I don't have a personal driver or chef like I might have in some places. I do have some other house/yard services but very occasionally and I consider them luxuries.

Right? "I don't like what you stand for or your views on certain topics, but I do want to enjoy the product you make, so I feel justified in not compensating you for partaking in the services you provide."

Can I stiff my Uber driver if I don't agree with their politics? If I don't like their car? Can my boss not pay me for developing software if I didn't laugh enough at his jokes?

We find it easy to say "no" in those cases. But because media piracy is pretty easy to do and pretty difficult to punish, we simply stop caring.


> Can I stiff my Uber driver if I don't agree with their politics?

That would be an example of the opposite. Uber is pretty much a tracker (peer-to-peer platform) for unlicensed taxis.


Actually, at least in the UK, Ubers are licensed by local councils. They have all sorts of stupid restrictions like if they drive someone to another city they cannot pick up any passengers there so they have to drive back empty even if a customer could have booked the journey. This is Enforced, DRM style, by the app. The same rule exists for local private hire companies but they can ignore it when it makes sense to.

I agree with your core concept, but I don't think those analogies are fair.

TV and movies are part of pop culture and depending on your circle can be critical to have knowledge on for social reasons. If something is unavailable to you due to means outside of your control (licensing, internet speed, accessibility of UI, etc) then there's more justification to that than not paying your Uber driver based on politics.


>TV and movies are part of pop culture and depending on your circle can be critical to have knowledge on for social reasons. If something is unavailable to you due to means outside of your control (licensing, internet speed, accessibility of UI, etc) then there's more justification to that than not paying your Uber driver based on politics.

TV and movies are "critical" because... you want to partake in watercooler banter? I'm not sure how that's more convincing than uber being "critical" because you need it to get to work on time, or to get home safely after drinking.


Bandersnatch is one of the things they're keeping.

I am glad to hear this. I enjoyed Bandersnatch, but I do not think it was the right tone for a launch title for this kind of project, personally.

I get it.

Bandersnatch is neat. And I see that is staying. Which tracks because "Choose Your Own Adventure" is decently suited to a "TV Remote" experience.

However, my wife found this game "Storyteller" on the Switch. I also found it on iOS and noticed the Netflix intro would play when I opened it. Then I saw the promo for it on Netflix. Turns out, it's a Netflix game. And it's cute, but it's not a lot. You can complete the game and most of the bonus bits in a few hours. And once you're done, that's it. There's nothing to do. The little vignettes are very simple story wise. And there's no real through plot. Like, I don't need to play that ever again. It's not even like a game like Super Mario World, where the gameplay itself is enjoyable.

So between the interface issue and the type of games they pushed, this is probably for the best.


I also discovered Storyteller among the Netflix games and loved it: truly a gem. However, just like you said, when I finished it, I didn't have any reason to come back to it.

"Into the Breach", on the other hand, kept me coming back for a long time. It's definitely an iOS game though: completely unsuitable for most devices that use Netflix.


That's not entirely true. In 2020, a lot of states just cancelled their Republican primaries and pledged their delegates to Trump. Mainly because it's assumed that the incumbent will be the candidate.

And all-in-all, that's fair play. The GOP and DNC are private entities and they get to choose who they put forward as a candidate in the manner they choose. Voting in presidential primaries is fairly recent. The DNC picked Harris, as is their right.


It does not make sense. It never made sense. It is patently stupid and it should only take five minutes to realize why.

If I go to the store today and buy groceries, it’ll cost X. If I go tomorrow as well, it’ll cost Y. The two numbers are barely related to each other. And only because I don’t need the things I bought yesterday.

And yes, that’s day to day. What about year to year?

Last year, I did not need any repairs to my house. This year I do. A few years ago, I needed a new roof. Three different year, three radically different home repair budgets.

The entire exercise is a refusal to due diligence of any sort. If you say $X/yr, then you don’t have to ask why. You don’t have to scrutinize reasons. Then everything becomes about adjusting this number without ever asking what it is being used for.


You're looking at everything as one budget that you control.

Consider instead that you're part of a co-op and your responsibility is to buy the groceries always. Someone else does the home repairs. Someone else keeps all the cars fueled. Someone else pays the utility bill. There are fifty different people with responsibilities. Sometimes there will also be "You must spend $100 on supplies for an event on July 17th."

On January 1, you get all the money that you will get for the year to buy groceries. How much do you ask the co-op board for?

Government doesn't see it as one big account, but rather "this is how much we get, this is how much we allocate to the different accounts."

Home budgets work differently. There's one pool of money and if you have an expense you can skimp on another part of the budget. Had to get a plumber? Hold back on going to the movies for a few weeks. You can't do "we had a natural disaster so we're short on money and not going to pay the prison guards for a few weeks."


I don't disagree that it results in broken incentives and otherwise undesirable outcomes.

But to take the example of your roof - in a business scenario, you would amortize that expense over the number of years you expect the roof to last. 15 years means you'd take 1/15 (and probably multiply by the inflation rate to account for rising costs) and put that into your annual budget request.


> And yes, that’s day to day. What about year to year?

Actually year of year it makes more sense because anomalies are averaged out over time.

I also think you’re being unduly unfair about the system. Yes it’s a garbage system but a lot of what you described is wisdoms that’s learned in hindsight. However when you consider that most of budgets are relatively static (eg salaries, cost of goods at a smaller scale, etc) it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the costs of running a apartment could be relatively static year on year. In fact the idea of dynamic pricing is a relatively new concept.

This doesn’t mean that the idea of budgets being relative to spend is a good one. Just that it’s easy to see how it was once perceived as a viable methodology.


I don't have a background in accounting, but my understanding is that assets, and the depreciation of assets, should be included in the budget. So, the way to frame you examples would be that your costs are the food you consume from your fridge and pantry, not the transition of money to groceries; and the cost for your roof was its depreciation due to age over time, not the transfer of money to a new roof. (I'm not making a claim as to whether this is actually how budgeting is done, in practice).

That's fine for most budgeting. This isn't one of them. Why? Because the monies being spent are taxes.

There is a moral imperative to not waste a single cent of taxpayer monies, which means you as the guy writing the budget must ask what every single cent is being spent towards and must claw back (and subsequently refuse to budget) any pennies that are either unaccounted for or are unwarranted.

(Yes, tax dollars are wasted and deliberately so in reality. That is another subject of debate.)

Hence why the incentives are the way they are.


You’re thinking of it from the perspective of someone who cares about reality.

At the scale most governments work, reality is impossible to actually care about. It’s too much detail, and too confusing.

Instead, they allocate money, and then punish people when ‘the wrong things happen’.

Dealing with the reality is someone else’s problem, further down the hierarchy.

Also known as ‘shit rolls down hill’.


The Yakuza/Like a Dragon series doesn't even try to hide this. They lift entire locations straight from the country. Kamurocho is Kabukicho without the trademark infringement. Sotenbori and Ijincho both have their real life counterparts in Japan as well.

In various Yakuza communities, one of the more enduring posts are those of people taking pictures of the real life locations and comparing them against the in-game counterparts.

Basically, RGG studios are doing their best to make the single most Japanese game they can.


I really dislike this argument of "I'd rather enjoy the sun in the evening than in the morning" ignoring all of the other problems it causes.

Sunlight in the morning is useful. It's better for your sleep rhythms. It's safer for school children, etc.

And to be completely fair, I don't see that many more people "enjoying the sunlight" during the weekend when they have the entire day to do so. Like, what is the sun going down at 6 really preventing you from doing that you couldn't do otherwise?


  > I really dislike this argument of "I'd rather enjoy the sun in the evening than in the morning"
My argument is not "I'd rather enjoy the sun in the evening than in the morning", my argument is "From what I can observe, most people would prefer an hour of sunlight at the end of the day rather than in its beginning". This is not about what I think, it's about what most people think.

  > what is the sun going down at 6 really preventing you from doing
Again, my observation is that most people, given a choice of A. having sunlight between 5am and 6am; or B. having sunlight between 6pm and 7pm, would prefer option B, simply for the reason that more are awake during that time.


Did you take a poll, or do you just have the feeling that that is the case? Not to mention, it's a bit weaselly. It offsets the burden of defending the position to "most people".

And it doesn't even matter what "most people" think. "Most people" in this case, would be wrong. Even if it were "most people" and not "most people whose opinions you've happened to remember on the subject because they happen to align with yours".

And it's going to get darker earlier in winter. That's just what it does. People are really just lamenting the lack of daylight hours in general. Because during the winter, few places have sunlight during 6pm and 7pm even if we kept DST year round. What they say they want is sunlight between 5pm and 6pm. And after the clocks roll back, it'll start getting dark soon after 5.

And once again, I ask, for what? Having the sun rise just after 6am is better for everyone. School kids waiting for the bus are safer, kids walking to school way safer. Better driving when you're waking up. Everything is more in line with your circadian rhythms, etc.


   > And it's going to get darker earlier in winter.
It's summer we're talking about when we talk about DST. There's no DST in the winter.

   > School kids waiting for the bus are safer, kids walking to school way safer.
For several months in the summer, the schools are closed. Other months during DST, the schools start at 08h00 and the vast majority of the kids wake up about seven-ish, to leave their house at about 07h30. It is inconsequential for the kids whether the sun has risen at 06h30 or at 05h30 that day; when they wake up, there's light outside anyway.

For the rest, let me give you an analogy. For several months this coming summer, I am going to give out an hour of free internet[0] each day. This won't interfere with the (paid) one that people are having otherwise. I'm not going to ask the question "would you prefer this hour to be between 05h30 and 06h30, or between 18h30 and 19h30?" but I am going to ask this question instead: What would the majority prefer, in your opinion?

[0] - any useful utility can be substituted: free hour of water, free hour of electricity, etc.


All the schools around where I live start between 7 and 8, which means kids are waiting for busses and walking between 6 and 7.

Sunrise will be at 7:12 tomorrow. Sunrise would be around 8am at the latest if we kept DST year-round.

There is less sun during the winter. That is how it works. Just in general.

Also, whenever we try "year-round DST" we go back to "spring-forward"/"fall-back" because it sucks. Everyone says they want it until they get it. Whereas Arizona has gotten rid of DST and we don't hear anything about them. They got rid of it in the 60s.

The nation should follow suit.

And all of this is outside the fact that time zones in general are more political than practical. Which is another reason people think they want year-round DST. It's because they're probably in the wrong time zone.


I don't know if you follow my argument, which is:

   > DST actually makes most sense in 30-40 degrees of latitude.
I am not arguing for having "year-round DST", nor for not having any DST at all. All I'm saying is this: at 50th parallel, there's plenty of daylight in the summer, and so: people should just figure out what to do in the winter -- and stick with it all year round. At 25th parallel, there's not much variance between summer and winter, so again, people should just figure out what to do in the winter -- and stick with it all year round. It's in between -- or 30 to 40 -- that the summer daytime is both scarce and variable enough to make the twice-a-year change worthwhile.

Regarding your personal situation, I have no idea where you reside or what "the nation" is -- assuming US, I gather you have a "fall-back" change in three days, for a sunrise at 6:15am and up to 7am at the latest? If so, sounds like you've got it all figured out.


Summer daylight is not scarce. Between the 30th and 40th parallel is the bottom half of the United States.

DST exists so that the sun doesn't rise around 5am. And that seems to be what the argument boils down to: "I don't want it bright too early".

The sun is going down around 8pm during DST on the 30th.

If you're arguing to keep doing what we're doing, you've managed to have an even wronger opinion than getting rid of Standard Time.


   > DST exists so that the sun doesn't rise around 5am. 
No, DST exists so the sun doesn't set around 6pm.

   > And that seems to be what the argument boils down to: "I don't want it bright too early".
No, it's not "I", it's about "we the people", and "we the people" don't care as much about "bright too early", rather they care about "dark too early".

Here is a map of the offset between solar noon and civil noon[0]. The blue places have solar noon (sun in its highest position) before their local clocks show 12h00. The red places have solar noon after their clocks show that. The white places have it about the same time.

Several observations:

1. This is without DST. With DST, blue places turn red, and red places turn even more red.

2. The map is kinda outdated, the bluest most populous country -- Turkey -- moved an hour since, so now it's white at the east and red otherwise.

3. Greenland looks the size of Africa, which is a projection issue, in fact it's much smaller, and that's even before we talk about its minuscule population.

4. There are places like Recife in Brazil, where solar noon varies between 11h03 and 11h33, but they still have more than 12 hours of sunlight most of year, and never less than 11:45, so they hardly care.

5. The vast, vast majority of the world would rather have the solar noon after 12h00 -- meaning, more light in the evening than in the early morning. Santiago de Compostella has solar noon at 13h17 at the earliest and 14h40 at the latest, "relocating" around two hours.

6. The bluest city in the USA is probably Boston, and during standard time their solar noon is 11h30-11h59. During DST, it's 12h40-12h50.

[0] http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTimeV...


> It offsets the burden of defending the position to "most people".

Decisions where the only effect is to align something arbitrary with people's preferences can only be made through appeal to the majority.

> And it doesn't even matter what "most people" think.

Yes. Yes it does.


Yeah. DST really boils down to tricking people to wake up earlier. But you can get all that sunshine by waking up earlier yourself at 5am. No need to force an awkward schedule change on everyone.


Oddly enough, Mr. Mom is the first thing my mind brings up when Teri Garr is mentioned. Just a solid, 80s comedy set against the changing roles of men and women in the workplace and home.


My first thought was "Teri G-something... _Frazer_'s Roz??? But naah, that's Teri Gilpin. Or Terri. Something like that.


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