I don’t know that it’s even conditional. I think we owe society something just anyway. If my neighbor’s house is on fire, I should help how I can: contribute to putting out the fire (actually fighting the fire, calling someone who can), and I should help my neighbor deal with the aftermath (clothes and food and shelter and maybe assistance with paperwork, rebuilding, etc.).

So it’s not transactional, but an underlying permanent obligation to other humans to at least do a baseline amount of good.

Legally, no. Morally? Probably. I try to take care of my parents, and make their lives easier where I can, when I can, to try to at least somewhat alleviate how I’ve made their lives harder at earlier stages in life.

I don’t really bother with the middle of the restaurant industry (and it’s not just me, as chains like Chili’s and Applebee’s have complained about the trends hollowing out the middle). It’s just not enough of an improvement over fast food or fast casual to be worth the higher cost, slower service, etc.

If I’m hungry and don’t want to cook/clean, I’ll grab fast food.

If I want to sit down at a full service restaurant, it’ll probably be an expensive trendy place with recognition from James Beard or Michelin.

In an early episode where they’re taking money from the till, and George Michael says his dad checks the banana inventory to make sure the money matches up, it’s $1 per banana. Pretty cheap price in that context, but that’s the in-universe price.

I think banana production is also significantly less labor intensive than most other fresh fruits.

The trees grow in season-less climates where they can be planted and harvested at any time of year, so the steady work requirements can use a fixed number of workers rotating fields (contrast to seasonal harvests where a surge of workers need to be brought in for a few critical weeks, and not paid the rest of the year, so that the unavailability of year round work for the workers can turn exploitative, especially in employer-provided transportation and housing).

The actual characteristics of the plant grows a lot of fruit in bunches, where a single worker can cut off a single bunch containing 25-65 kg of fruit, and where the bunch can be subdivided easily into crates for shipping. So on a per-kilogram or per-fruit basis, the human labor tends to be much more efficient than other plants where each fruit might be picked by hand individually.

The fruit itself can ripen off the plant, and naturally comes in a tough protective exterior, which means they can be processed and shipped with minimal protections against rough handling or bruising, and don’t need much in the way of washing or waxing or things like that.

And that’s why advocates for fair wages in the banana industry correctly argue that increasing labor costs wouldn’t make bananas all that much more expensive, either. Labor is just too small a proportion of the overall cost, because the workers are so productive.

Yes, so if you look closer, the y axis is a logarithmic scale, indicating that straight lines are actually exponential growth.

From a Tumblr post that has been reposted a few times (in fact, my link is to the earliest repost I could find, as I think the original is long gone):

The sun is probably the closest thing we’ll ever have to a true Eldritch Abomination. Hear me out here-

• Older than recorded history; was here longer than any of us and will be here long after we leave. Has a finite beginning and end but is still incomprehensibly ancient
• Burns itself into your vision instantly and can blind you if you look for too long
• Further prolonged exposure can cause cancerous growths
• Non-humanoid shape floating through space; colossal flaming tentacles angrily lash out on occasion
• Sort of just appeared one day and is now surrounded by the corpses of its stillborn children
• People used to sacrifice other people to appease it
• Pretty sure it screams at us sometimes