It’s not the only way. We’ve been relying on immigration to do this for us for a long time. American politics is struggling with the tension between racist idiots who don’t understand that immigrants are crucial to our economy, and those who do understand it. You can not be racist AND not understand it and that is fine too, no problem.

There are many good responses here already and I’m going to add a perspective I don’t see.

As a coworker: don’t do anything. Sometimes work is an opportunity for someone to escape the personal tragedy that has swept through their life. It’s a chance to think about something else for a while, something grounded and neutral. A time to feel normal.

That can be a very helpful support. Reminding them of the personal stuff may ruin that.

I know that you are a nice human and want to be good to them, but sometimes we need to realize that we are just co-workers to someone and not friends and family. Knowing your place can be an incredibly respectful and positive thing to do.

Add this to your other ideas about how to show sympathy. It’s just one angle. I’m not saying this is always right 100% for everyone and bar nothing.

I’m torn between “uh, what” and “no.”

The invention of phonographs, records, cd etc, didn’t mean that nobody appreciated live music anymore

I’ll argue with this one. The only live music anyone appreciates now is going to see world famous commercial artists made popular by their records, cds, etc. And half of those shows is preprogrammed.

Live music used to be: if you have some friends over and want to liven it up, one of them plays the piano, or a pub has a live set of musicians who can read the room and play what people want at the tempo they want depending on if they want to dance or not. Read Little House on the Prairie and pay close attention to the scenes where Pa gets out his fiddle. Pure magic.

You can say that people still appreciate live music because some of them still go out to Taylotlr Swift concerts, but the world of handmade music from before was absolutely killed off by radio, records, etc. That world is alive in tiny pockets at best.

These are people without talents who have to pay creatives for cool things. All they are thinking is that they’ll be able to get the creative assets themselves for free from now on, to run their businesses or whatever. That’s it. They don’t care about the cow when they believe they’re going to get the milk for free.

Hilarious that we forewent a more neutral public option over fears about “death panels.”

Yesterday I was watching Netflix on my phone and tried to switch to my iPad. Because my wife was also watching downstairs, I got the “you are already streaming on two devices” block screen. It even told me that one of them was my phone. So I went to my phone and quit the app. But nothing would convince Netflix that I was no longer streaming on my phone. It took about half an hour for this to naturally clear on its own. Being unable to switch devices is a major technical failing, and should be totally avoidable.

This is a great case of confirmation bias, too. The one time your ad happens to match a conversation you had earlier, you’ll be convinced forever, and tell everyone you know about it. The ten million other times you have a conversation that doesn’t appear in your ads will go unnoticed.

Huh??? We’ve been uncommunicative, miserable fucks for much longer than the internet has been around.

Asian food has been doing to-go for centuries, though. It packs well and keeps well for 30 minutes. In fact there is a to-go only Thai place near me which uses an industrial kitchen and literally a hole in the side of the building to take payments and hand over food. Other restaurants we know in our area stopped seating people during COVID and would just hand out to-go orders at the door. But I can only think of Asian restaurants that did this.

There’s nothing wrong necessarily with having a separate delivery service. Restaurants aren’t good at making menu apps or driving cars. It may be a little awkward fit for restaurants who rent retail space and offer dine-in tables, but the world is transitioning and I fully expect more Doordash-first restaurants operating out of less expensive kitchen space and just skipping the whole dine-in waiter thing.

I hate to hear that Doordash pays so poorly but we always tip 20% or more which, even if it is the only payment the driver receives, usually seems fair for 30 minutes of work. We are a family of four and our order is always over $50. So that’s $10 / 30 minutes or $20 / hour minimum (if everyone used it the way we do). That seems like an okay wage for a job with so much flexibility. Probably the real thing that kills it is gas and wear on the car being invisible costs. Just like with regular Uber drivers.

EDIT: hey /u/womble have you heard of this other American concept called “fuck you, Jack.”