In New Zealand, there's one nationwide sales tax — simple, transparent, on the menu. In the US, you have state, city, and county taxes all layered on top of each other. Darian Woods grew up expecting price transparency; America still hasn't delivered it.
Where this was said
At 6:00 · chapter starts 4:16
The fix to Bisaha's grievance comes in the form of handheld payment devices — the kind travelers to Europe or Australia have seen for years. Steven Bisaha introduces Miguel Aguilar, his server at a Jersey City restaurant, who describes life before and after. [1] — Miguel Aguilar "The minute we got these, we could take 4, 5, 6 tables outside, not worry about having to run in for every single order. And it nearly halve…" 05:09 Before: everything took forever, constant trips in and out. After: four, five, six outdoor tables managed without running inside, and service time nearly halved. Darian Woods notes he's seen these devices increasingly in Chicago and appreciates how easily they split checks. The devices come largely from a company called Toast, and Bisaha notes that restaurant inertia — plus a hardware cost of hundreds of dollars per device — slows adoption. [2] — Steven Bisaha "170,000+ US locations use Toast devices: As of March, more than 170,000 restaurant locations in the US were using Toast's handheld payment …" 06:40 But the momentum is real: Toast reported more than 170,000 US locations using their hardware as of March, and with competitors in the market, the pen-and-paper checkout may be heading for extinction.
Server Miguel Aguilar tried both systems. The old way: constant trips back and forth, everything taking forever. The new way: four to six tables at once, service time nearly cut in half. The change wasn't optional — it was transformational.
US restaurant menus don't show tax-inclusive prices — not out of malice, but because it's a collective action problem. Any single restaurant that adds tax to listed prices will look more expensive than competitors. Add overlapping state, city, and county taxes, and you start to understand why menus stay the way they are.
Sherry Kimes cited three reasons: tradition, competitive collective action risk, and the complexity of varying state, city, and county tax rates.
A Cornell professor explained that if one restaurant shows tax-inclusive prices but competitors don't, it will appear more expensive and lose customers — a classic collective action problem.
With handheld payment devices, server Miguel Aguilar said he could manage 4 to 6 tables outside without running back inside for every order.
Server Miguel Aguilar said the handheld payment devices nearly halved the time needed to serve each table compared to the old pen-and-paper system.
Social media feeds men and women the absolute worst caricatures of each other while stripping away the everyday, imperfect relationships that would calibrate their expectations. Combine that with smaller families and fewer cross-sex friendships, and you get a generation that talks about the opposite sex constantly but almost never to them.
The 'would you rather be alone with a man or a bear' debate went viral not because men are objectively more dangerous than ever, but because an entire fear industrial complex of influencers and safety products had already primed women to feel that way. Once the algorithm identifies you as worried about personal safety, the content and the scrunchie drink-covers never stop.
Women feel less safe not because danger has increased, but because trust in institutions — police, churches, schools — that used to enforce safety norms has collapsed. Young women are far less likely than older women to believe those institutions will handle sexual assault responsibly, leaving them with only individual self-protection as a fallback.
Even self-identified feminist women consistently told Daniel Cox in interviews and surveys that they want men to open doors, pay for dates, and show demonstrable care. The internet noise around 'benevolent sexism' drowns out this widespread, quietly held preference.
In focus groups in Philadelphia and Raleigh, every single hand went up when participants were asked if parents discussed financial stability and education. Zero hands went up for marriage or parenthood. Parents are shaping their children's ambitions with total silence on the experiences that matter most.
American families are smaller than ever, with roughly 1 in 5 children now growing up as only children. Without the daily friction of siblings — shared bedrooms, shared bathrooms, resolving disagreements — young people enter adult relationships without the negotiation muscles relationships require.
Online dating optimises for your existing preferences rather than expanding your horizons. People who meet online give bad first dates almost no second chances; people who meet through mutual friends are far more forgiving. The disembodied, checklist-driven nature of apps removes all the social cues that actually reveal character.
A split-sample survey found that men judge male and female cheating identically harshly, and women judge male cheating the same way men do. The outlier: young women are dramatically less likely to call female infidelity morally wrong, suggesting shared-fate thinking and personal experience of being cheated on are reshaping the moral calculus.
The monk mode trend encourages men to withdraw from social life to work on themselves — but this is precisely backwards. The research is clear: close friendships are the single most powerful predictor of whether a man dates, commits, and becomes his best self. Self-improvement without social reintegration is just sophisticated avoidance.
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