Notes for July 19, 2026

Andrew and Tristian Tate arrested via AP News

wtf is he wearing 😂

I wonder if it makes sense to try to implement standard.site in the context of rss.chat?

via Dave Winer / Scripting News

Not much to go on here, but it's cool to see the guy who invented RSS talking about standard.site! Full disclosure, I don't fully understand how rss.chat really works... I mean it's definitely a microblogging platform tailored to developers, but I think you have to run you own instance? Big Micro.blog vibes though — it's cool to see so many OGs of internet culture still tinkering and innovating.

Colin Domnauer: The Hallucinogen That Isn't There via Psychedelics.co.uk

This is the kind of shit I wish I could volunteer to get out of work for. You should be able to choose one thing a year: either jury duty or eating a bowl of mysterious mushrooms that are totally safe, aside from making you hallucinate tiny people for an unknown amount of time.

tipping culture is odd via lizzie's thoughts

i believe it really shouldn't be like this. instead of employees and customers shouting at each other, they should take it to business owners and managers who pay below minimum wage! why are they owning a place if they can't pay their staff properly? in my mind, employees deserve at least the minimum wage, some guarantee that the work they are doing is getting them something. and customers should get to pay the price that's on the menu without being shamed into paying the employees' salary- that's on the owners!

I hate tipping culture, but in my experience as someone who grew up dirt poor in some backwoods Ohio town, it's one of the few ways to actually make an allllmost livable wage without going to college. That, and working for commission but I'll leave that be for the sake of not writing an even longer wall of text.

My partner used to work at a dive bar that didn't pay an hourly wage at all, but on a good Friday or Saturday she would bring home $300 in cash. When she left and started a new job in retail, at the beginning she was only bringing home a little more than that per week.

I will say it drives me insane when I go somewhere like a vape shop and they ask for a 25% tip because they rang you up at the point of sales.

I've always lived here so it never dawned on me how fucked up tipping culture is until non-Americans started pointing it out. But I always tip my barber 50%, at least 25% on any sit-down meal, and no less than $10 for a DoorDash order, no matter how small, because I honestly wouldn't drive to a fast food place, wait in line for 20+ minutes and then hand-deliver someone's food — period, let alone for a $2.60 tip on a $26 order.

All of that being said, I totally agree with the author of this post. Especially the note they left at the bottom:

NOTE: i do apologise if i have made any obvious mistakes in what i'm saying. once again, i'm not american and my opinion is based on what i know about the tipping culture over there. i just believe that this system is wronging both the customers and the employees- and that the real enemy should be confronted.

Can't argue with that. It's a bad way to do business and things should work differently. It's just as shit as most other American "culture" but I don't think it'll ever change tbh.

I'll add my own closing note, er more of a question I guess:

Do service workers in countries without tipping culture make a decent wage? I feel like they do, but I've never been to a restaurant with servers who even make minimum wage.