Is the US a dystopia?

Americans must be really unhealthy if they don't walk. I suppose that's the way the empire might die.

Many Americans will do anything to avoid walking.

That said, part of this isn’t totally the fault of people, but the fault of the car industry and planning boards that have made many cities completely unwalkable.

I like to walk but might be considered an oddball because of that by...various people close to me

I used to think this talk was exaggerated until I went to Dallas and it seemed like you couldn't cross any non residential street on foot?

Americans must be really unhealthy if they don't walk. I suppose that's the way the empire might die.

as an obesity glorifier can we not blame fat people here, the problem with our declining life expectancy of late can be better attributed to the surge of fentanyl overdoses and COVID deaths. obesity is the symptom of unequal health care access, malnutrition/food deserts, and poverty/racism related stressors, among others.

(and our car-centric urban planning ofc)

no disagreement there, but when you live outside of a city in the US, everything is so spread out you basically have to drive. public transit being slowly strangled to death was part of this

I am definitely not going to go down the road to assign blame on fat ppl.

That video was kinda amazing. There were lots of parking spots, so you could surely park, go to the shop and get your coffee then go back to your car? I thought only British ppl liked queueing? xp

it’s all one queue is the thing. going inside confers no benefit

DON'T GO TO FUCKING STARBUCKS

Didn't this happen in 2021? Milo's article is from May 2021

i only went to Starbucks because my kids wanted “the pink drink” and they wouldn’t shut up about it

they serve pepto-bismol at starbucks?

Do you mean the unicorn drink? Are you sure those children aren’t changelings?

behold teh pink drink. sorry i mean Pink Drink Starbucks Refreshers®️ Beverage

https://i.imgur.com/g8uEHnb.png

Beverage-style drink.

beverage-adjacent colloidal refreshment (note: may not actually refresh)

I'm guessing this must have blown over since the letter was written in May 2021 and I can't find any recent news about it since.

I can definitely understand why customers might not have wanted to go inside in 2021, being the newness of the vaccines and the Alpha wave at the time

Iirc the actual resolution was asking Sbux to HIRE MORE WORKERS not nec to make the workers work faster/more.

Universities are partnering with sports betting companies to introduce students and fans to online gambling — and reaping millions of dollars in fees. https://t.co/DZ6WOCAfoe

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 20, 2022

I've been waiting for the wave of families-ruined-by-gambling stories since legal sports betting exploded. Just seems a matter of time.

Honestly horrifying.

Chris Holdren, a top executive at Caesars Sportsbook, said in an interview that the email was sent to underage students by mistake. “We were very disappointed that it happened, and we asked our partners at L.S.U. athletics to identify and solve the system breakdown,” he said.

I hate this so much. They're positioning the marketing of gambling to underage students as the point at which it crosses the line, when really the whole thing is gross whether the students are underage or not.

Also, using DEI initiatives as a shield, gross

I'm not a prude about gambling, mostly I think it should be legal, but also we know from like millennia of experience that mostly what it does is separate poor people from their money. I don't know what the right level of regulation should be, but not having it advertised everywhere all the time seems like a start.

Our society and economy is designed to suck money upward gambling is more honest about it.

I think gambling should be legal in all 50 states but no apps, no online betting (aside from poker, I guess) and cash only. You should have to get your ass down to a bookie shop to place a parlay and not do it from your couch tied to a 24.99% credit card.

Love Calz' betting shop memories

It seems unsavory to me, but then so does prohibition (which, as we have seen, just pushes the behavior into back alleys). I have no idea how to square that circle.

As a gambler that has lost thousands at times doing stupid shit over the years, i do think it should be legal, but some of the scummy things books do to entice bettors should not be (promising bonuses that require a certain number of bets, so you can lose back any winnings quickly).

I kind of like Milo's idea as that does strip away some of the impulse betting (though hardcore gamblers would scream about it).

There's a post about sports betting which people may not have seen on the Albert Brooks thread:

In view of all the disgusting "we care that you play responsibly" betting ads that are part of every baseball broadcast now--and not even just ads; the gambling industry is now incorporated right into the broadcasts themselves--Lost in America is looking weirdly prescient: "The Desert Inn has heart!"

(My dad had a gambling problem, so this is a real sore spot for me. We complain about lots of things on ILB, but baseball getting into bed with the gambling industry is far and away the game's most serious problem now--which I know it shares with every other sport.)

― clemenza, Friday, November 18, 2022 8:45 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Don't worry, we have safeguards in place, gambling definitely won't corrupt sports this time.

I hate how the NFL's partnership with DraftKings has sportscasters actually giving predictions on random things like over/under on how many yards specific players will have to drum up betting

There's an intriguing nexus between what Neanderthal mentions and hypersaberstatimetricization of baseball specifically and sports generally.

When I used to care about sporting events, I always used to giggle at broadcasters' weirdly specific stats. "Well, Bob, Gonzalez is oh for six when pitching on humid Mondays against bearded batters with at least one Scandinavian grandparent."

If that vast dataset has morphed in its use case from winning games to betting, it's a sad kind of Frankensteinian story.

A friend of mine works for a company that is now partnered with an online betting app, and during the FAQ presentation, he says management stressed that they should never refer to it as a gambling or betting. Instead, management gave some convoluted answer on how it was simply fantasy sports that turns game predictions into a game of its own. Heavy shades of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TLo4Z_LWu4

I once interviewed for one of those places that would send people out into downtown with a bunch of discounted Disney products and try to sell them to people at local businesses (to be fair, I had no idea what this place was before I interviewed) and I found it really strange that they would never use the words "sell" or "buy" and if you did they'd correct you to say "drop off" and "pick up" instead. it was weird and felt a bit like a cult.

fwiw I do enjoy sports betting but there's something uncouth about seeing it promoted during the broadcasts. it's like your parents telling you that you can have the Miller Lite in the fridge when you're 17. just feels weird

I just think colleges and universities seriously should not be in the business of taking a cut of their students' gambling losses. That is wild.

sports entertainment

To be fair, lots of colleges and universities already receive scholarship funds that come from state lotteries. So they’ve been in the business for a while. I agree it does seem grimier when it’s actual betting on student athletes.

I went to college during the online poker boom which introduced a lot of poor students to internet gambling and it definitely took a toll on some people and set them up to be lifelong degens

not me though, I was actually good at it :)

half the billboards I see along freeways in desolate parts of michigan are for weed stores and gambling which on paper I have no issue with but does feel sadly dystopian

It might depend on the details I guess, but isn't there a difference between "lottery-funded scholarships for students" and "colleges taking a cut of their students' gambling losses" ?

This bump has been interesting though. I suppose I'm not morally opposed to gambling in the abstract, but the gambling industry is indefensible (as are state lotteries tbrr)

The heart wants what it wants.

I mean, I am an Old, and I would love to tell you that back in the day, I was watching Masterpiece Theatre and reading Proust all the time.

But that would be false, because I was mostly watching Love Boat and eating Lucky Charms.

so you voted yes?

They’re magically delicious, iirc.

cultural appropriation though

Lucky Charms is Anti-Irish racism of the worst kind

maybe this makes me a prim do-gooder but i am opposed to gambling in both the abstract and the concrete. i think the ruin it causes in people’s lives outweighs any positives. i grew up around methodists who were so anti-gambling they wouldn’t even play go fish with a regular deck of cards though so i am probably an outlier!