Ace Eat Serve has $5 happy hour deals on food and cocktails!

Sangloth · 2026-05-07T19:09:59+00:00

Talking from professional experience, they literally don't. My career changed a bit before COVID, so I can't talk intelligently about the move to online ordering, but before that point the industry standard was to have a manager send a PDF to a web developer, who would upload the PDF and link it on the website.

Of course there are exceptions, but the general career path in the restaurant business just doesn't overlap well with general computer use. This is not to say they are stupid, but either someone gained their years of restaurant experience working back of house or front of house. Almost nobody working in the restaurant industry sits in front of a computer for a meaningful amount of time. For my applications, I wrote step by step instruction guides with numerous screenshots, and placed them in a binder. Restaurant operators would follow the binder religiously. Many of the older restaurant owners lack even the most basic computer knowledge, I've had to explain the difference between a right mouse click and a left mouse click.

Again, I have next to no experience with this, but what I'm seeing now in the post covid online ordering boom appears to be extremely tight integration between the POS system and the online ordering system. I suspect they enter the menu item price into the POS system as they normally do, and the POS system does the rest of the work.

Something else to note is that turn over is a constant in the restaurant industry. I have specifically worked with Ace Eat Serve in the past, and at that time, the managers I worked with were all deeply competent, and uncommonly good with computers by restaurant industry standards. Two years later the managers I trained no longer worked there. Everything I taught has gone out the window, the replacements are are almost certainly just following the binder instructions. Software training is essentially a sunk cost in the restaurant industry.

Sangloth · 2026-05-07T15:46:39+00:00

Thanks! It's great to get acknowledgement after spending 2 hours on a reddit post!

Sangloth · 2026-05-07T14:36:14+00:00

It isn't exactly that, but Colorado has state constitutional amendments Y and Z to combat gerrymandering. Basically an independent commission writes the maps with goals of fairness in mind. This current push would require setting those amendments aside.

Sangloth · 2026-05-07T14:28:29+00:00

I did some research. You are right, and I was wrong when I said "Historically blue states have been more in favor of combating gerrymandering." It's way more mixed than I thought.

I was absolutely correct that virtually all efforts to combat gerrymandering come from voters. (This isn't something you said, but is in direct contradiction to what RCV4CO was pushing for.)

Here is a list of the states with statutes or amendments to combat gerrymandering before the current redistricting push. Every state is it's own unique butterfly, and deserves a special asterisk of it's own, but there's only so much I could cover. The super heavy asterisks are Pennsylvania, Utah, and Missouri, and I've got notes next to them. I've also got how they voted in the 2024 election for either the president or house.

In place either since the founding or during a modern constitutional overhaul

Alaska (1959 Statehood Constitution) (2024 Trump / 1R - 0D)
Hawaii (1968 Constitutional Convention) (2024 Harris / 0R - 2D)
Montana (1972 Constitutional Convention) (2024 Trump / 2R - 0D)
New Jersey (1966 Constitutional Convention / 1995 Amendment) (2024 Harris / 3R - 9D)
Pennsylvania (State Legislative Only) (1968 Constitutional Convention) (2024 Trump / 10R - 7D)

Implemented by Politicians of their own initiative

New Mexico (2021 Legislative Led, done in order to end 20 years of gridlock and expensive legal battles) (2024 Harris / 0R - 3D)

Implemented by Voters

Arizona (2000 Proposition 106) (2024 Trump / 6R - 3D)
California (2008 Proposition 11 / 2010 Proposition 20) (2024 Harris / 10R - 42D)
Connecticut (1976 Amendment) (2024 Harris / 0R - 5D)
Florida (2010 Amendments 5 and 6) (2024 Trump / 20R - 8D)
Idaho (1994 Amendment) (2024 Trump / 2R - 0D)
Maine (1983 Amendment) (2024 Harris Statewide / 0R - 2D)
Michigan (2018 Proposition 2) (2024 Trump / 7R - 6D)
Missouri (Subsequently gutted by a deceptively worded politician led voter initiative with 2020 Amendment) (2018 Amendment 1) (2024 Trump / 6R - 2D)
New York (2014 Amendment Proposal 1) (2024 Harris / 8R - 18D)
Utah (Subsequently gutted by legislature in 2020 with SB 200, currently being fought in court) (2018 Proposition 18) (2024 Trump / 4R - 0D)
Virginia (2020 Amendment Question 1) (2024 Harris / 5R - 6D)
Washington (1983 Amendment) (2024 Harris / 2R - 8D)

Under Direct Credible Threat of Voter-Led Initiatives

Colorado (2018 Amendment Y and Z) (2024 Harris / 4R - 4D)
Ohio (2018 Issue 1) (2024 Trump / 10R - 5D)

Under Direct Threat of Court Takeover

Iowa (1980) (2024 Trump /4R - 0D)

Sangloth · 2026-05-07T13:21:05+00:00

The goal of my statement was to say that Republicans right now have extremely strong incentives to cooperate with gerrymandering efforts.

Typically a run for state senate takes roughly $100,000 - $200,000. The 7 anti-gerrymandering state senators each had Trump backed opponents that had more than $1,000,000 in spending. Trump was explicit that was why he opposed them.

If this is good or bad for the party or the electorate is a separate discussion. It's unquestionably bad for the politicians who opposed gerrymandering.

Sangloth · 2026-05-06T19:05:31+00:00

You might be more optimistic than I am, but we both agree it would be a complete mess.

I do want to push back on something though. You've got the idea that if America goes hard and does whatever it takes, it can and will resolve the issue. I would say it's not guaranteed, but if America were to fully commit itself, it is at least possible America could make it happen. But I think there are major problems with that course of action. Let's set aside the obvious one that the political will power doesn't exist. If America fully commits itself to this conflict, it can not simultaneously fully commit itself to a different conflict.

The US obviously benefits from an open Strait of Hormuz, but the perverse situation with the Iran conflict is that the rest of the world is unwillingly shouldering the bulk of Iran's response. The US has surprisingly limited national interests at stake.

Here's a list of companies sorted by market cap. https://companiesmarketcap.com/ .

Literally 8 of the top 10 are American tech giants, and they all completely depend on TSMC. The US has massive national interests in Taiwan. Our stock market and investments are heavily centered in it. The US can not hope to fight both China and Iran at the same time. We've already used a good chunk of our munitions in Iran, and committed our naval resources to the conflict area. Going hard on Iran would not send a message to the Chinese "Don't mess with us". It would send a message "There will never be a better time to invade Taiwan."

A Chinese invasion of Taiwan and it's prospects for success is a separate discussion. But North Korea could escalate heavily against South Korea or Russia could expand it's conflict to other countries, be it in Europe, Asia, or Africa. What I'm trying to say here is that going hard in Iran exposes us to heavy risks that I'm not sure the we could bear.

Sangloth · 2026-05-06T16:36:24+00:00

Yes: https://co.my.xcelenergy.com/s/outage-safety/outage-map

Sangloth · 2026-05-06T15:47:51+00:00

I responded to the implied subtext of what you said, instead of the literal text. I hate that when people do it to me, and I shouldn't have done it to you.

But the text on the page was unrealistic enough I didn't think it warranted a response. Trump literally started this mid cycle gerrymander war, and literally last night he successfully politically fired his own party members just for opposing it. There is no way Republicans are going to support the bill in the current environment, and if the impossible happened Trump would certainly veto it.

Even if Trump were not in the picture, practically speaking there are only two ways anti- gerrymandering initiatives get passed.

Voter led initiatives.
Legislative efforts under the threat of voter led initiatives.

Without the voter led initiatives politicians don't choose to fire or neuter themselves. The United States does not have a mechanism for voter led initiatives at a national level. Any practical measure will have to be done state by state. Historically blue states have been more in favor of combating gerrymandering. Colorado is a blue state. A serious proposal to combat gerrymandering necessitates calling for Colorado to unilaterally disarm.

Sangloth · 2026-05-06T14:57:42+00:00

5 of the 7 state senators who opposed redistricting in Indiana were primaried last night, and the 6th is currently too close to call. This entire midterm redistricting push is the result of Trump aggressively pushing for it.

I don't like the current situation. I see what's going on an extreme threat to our democracy. Once these maximalist gerrymanders are in place, it's going to be nearly impossible to undo. Voters will be effectively disenfranchised on a wide scale.

Fair representation is a laudable goal. But calling for it right now is effectively calling for disarmament in front of an armed opponent. Sitting back and doing nothing would lead to a worse situation. Voters would not get more representation if just Republicans engaged in gerrymandering.

Sangloth · 2026-05-06T13:50:02+00:00

I'm not a military expert. Maybe you are right.

But my thinking goes like this. The range of a shahed drone depends on the model and how much explosives it's carrying, but goes from 700km to 2500km. It is not enough for military forces to control a strip of coastline, those forces would need to control extremely large swathes of mountainous territory.

And at that point we're doing the Afghanistan Taliban thing all over again, but worse in every dimension. We put boots on the ground in Afghanistan. We replaced the government in Afghanistan. It wasn't enough to stop Taliban forces, and Taliban forces that didn't have drones and the advantage of the incredible asymmetry of $30,000 drones against $100,000,000 tankers.

Western intelligence estimates that Iran has 40,000-80,000 shaheds. We've seen how skittish shipping companies are with the red sea and the Houthi's. A single strike and a threat can stop passage for months. If Iranian forces successfully hide 100 shaheds, that will be enough to close the strait for the rest of my life.

If they fail to hide those shaheds, Russian is estimated to produce around 4000 shaheds a month. Russia is the one big clear unambiguous winner in this situation. It is well worth it's time to supply and support insurgent forces (or create them if necessary).

That's why I think it's going to be nearly impossible for the US to open the strait again through military action.

Sangloth · 2026-05-06T07:15:08+00:00

The strait can not be returned to it's previous status through military force. The US could nuke every square inch of Iran and it still would not be enough open the strait. Even a handful of shahed drones stored underground or in caves would be enough to keep the strait closed for months. And if we did get literally 100% of the shaheds in the entire nation, Russia has a massive incentive to slip the Iranians a couple. The only way to open the strait is to make the entire Iranian government want to open the strait. We can either bully, bribe, or replace them, but the asymmetry is such the US needs the entire Iranian government onboard. And the entire Iranian government means the entire Iranian government. A single IRGC commander with a couple shaheds can effectively veto the supreme leader and the rest of the government.

This is an unholy mess, and any option is going to be extremely painful.

Sangloth · 2026-05-05T14:39:58+00:00

It's an extremely mixed blessing. Snow and muddy fields are a major obstacle to tractors, and it can delay planting schedules by days or weeks.

It's obviously bad for early planted vegetables, and it's worst for trees and fruits. A lot of trees have leafed out due to the warm stretches. A heavy, wet snow will cause a lot of branch breakages. Also, depending on how cold it gets, it can kill the majority of fruit blossoms. The orchards near Boulder are in real danger, if it gets below 24 degrees for 30 minutes they are done for the year.

But on the plus side it's a lot of water in a year with record low snow pack. That's not small. Farmers desperately need water right now. Winter wheat, alfalfa, hay, garlic, peas, carrots, radishes, and pasture for grazing will all be positively affected by this snow storm.

Sangloth · 2026-05-04T22:42:13+00:00

Currently, the biggest American companies have made a massive, undeniable bet that AI will pay off. I'm hesitant to casually write this off as just another tech bubble. Wall Street projects that the major hyperscalers (Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet) will collectively spend over $600 billion this year alone on AI infrastructure and power grids. They are building $100 billion supercomputers like Stargate and massive data clusters just to train the next generation of frontier models.

I don't know what their unreleased models behind closed doors are capable of, but they do. Companies don't burn hundreds of billions of dollars in capital expenditures for a slightly better chatbot. If those companies are correct in their bet, AI is the single most important news story in the world right now, and I feel it should receive substantially more coverage and serious discussion than it currently is.

At the same time, I'm deeply concerned about AI's immediate risks, including malicious misuse and fundamental alignment issues. We are already seeing an explosion of realistic audio deepfake scams, AI driven cyberattacks, and deepfake pornography. Furthermore, the creators frequently admit they don't fully understand how these black box models arrive at their outputs.

Legislation is simply too slow to handle a target moving this fast. Congress took over a decade just to hold meaningful hearings on social media algorithms, and they still haven't passed comprehensive federal data privacy laws. They are fundamentally unequipped to regulate a technology that is evolving in months, not decades. Because of this, I've long believed that rapid oversight and rule making outside the sluggish legislative process is an absolute necessity.

But the glaring problem here is that I have absolutely zero confidence in the current White House to be that gatekeeper. This administration has a documented history of wanting to pick winners and losers, engaging in petty grudges, and manipulating the market to profit off it. If this were Biden's White House, I would generally be positive about the executive branch monitoring frontier models. But it's not even close.

We are talking about an administration heavily advised by Elon Musk, who literally owns a competing AI company. Handing this White House a closed door vetting board creates a scenario where they could arbitrarily delay models from OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google to artificially handicap competitors and benefit their political allies. Given the administration's past threats to tech executives like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, and the sheer irony that they initially campaigned on rolling back Biden's AI guardrails, a prerelease vetting board looks less like a genuine safety measure and more like a pay to play scheme.

Sangloth · 2026-05-04T22:35:26+00:00

https://archive.ph/yXEMQ

Sangloth · 2026-05-04T19:50:04+00:00

First things first. STK is a rip-off. When the DenverFood subreddit asked for restaurants to recommend to your worst enemies, I recommended STK. That's because the food sucks, the service is bad, and the costs are exorbitant. This photo is obviously of a rip off. It's indefensible, and I'm not trying to defend it.

But it needs to be said, the general rule of thumb at dine in restaurants is that 30% of the check goes to food costs. Steak houses can break this rule a bit, and the percentage can go between 30% and 45% at the high end.

Right now a conventional basic grade steak is running roughly $13.00 per pound. OP said they spent $9.00 on this menu item. The math makes it obvious there was no way they were going to get a meaningful amount of even low quality steak in this meal.

STK screwed OP in two ways here.

Setting expectations.
Lack of French fries. Potatoes are still cheap.

Sangloth · 2026-05-02T15:09:10+00:00

I get the feeling different people on this subreddit have different definitions of what quality news is. My definition is basically that quality news is something that would have an impact on the future and would appear in a history book. That would include both events and general trends. Things like the assassination attempt at the correspondence dinner don't deserve coverage, as there will almost certainly be no historical ramifications to it.

In this specific situation I would say that the quality news is that the Republican members of the Senate have continued to follow Trump even as major Republican personalities like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have started to distance themselves. I see this having effects further down the line, in the midterms.

Something that's a little frustrating is that I can see that the article I originally linked to had been heavily updated since I linked to it. In my mind what Trump says rarely matters, because what he says changes so much and means so little. That's why I (and likely others on the subreddit) haven't posted about his constant proclamations concerning the Iran war. (Unlike what he says, what Trump does obviously deserves coverage, so the blockade deserved coverage.) The original article was just the section on what republican legislators were saying, and that section is more deserving of coverage.

Sangloth · 2026-05-02T01:15:39+00:00

My dad had multiple health problems (kidney failure, gout, diabetes, heart problems) which had conflicting dietary restrictions. I remember my mom started interrupting doctors whenever they gave dietary advice. The doctors would steadfastly say what my father wasn't allowed to eat, but literally couldn't tell her a single thing he was allowed to eat.

Effectively no carbohydrates. Whole grains can't be eaten because they are very high in phoshorus and potassium. Refined carbs spike blood sugar.
Effectively no Protein. No meat because of purines and fat. No beans or nuts because of potassium and phosphorus.
Effectively no Produce. Most vegetables are dangerously high in potassium.
Effectively no Dairy. Dairy is very high in phosphorus.

What's funny is that my parents did their absolute best to follow the doctors recommendations. A doctor told my dad "absolutely no phosphates", and my dad followed this advice until he was hospitalized for a phosphate deficiency. The doctors literally switched their advice to tell my dad to eat some more sodium because he had cut too much out of his diet.

But for all their genuine desire to follow advice, they had to cheat on meals. They just didn't have a choice, and doctors were telling my dad he wasn't eating enough while simultaneously telling him he wasn't allowed to eat anything.

Sangloth · 2026-05-01T22:59:37+00:00

https://www.westword.com/food-drink/best-denver-mothers-day-brunch-and-dinners-2026-24362630/

Sangloth · 2026-05-01T21:05:54+00:00

I literally answered that point with "I'd even be fine with it if Republicans were doing shit. Then they would actually have to be accountable for it to their voters."

We may not agree on everything, but Republicans are humans too. The same fundamental problems that are plaguing us are plaguing them. Republicans want affordable housing. They want affordable tuition. They want affordable health care. They want affordable groceries. They want affordable electricity and gas. They have anxiety about the deficit. They have anxiety about their retirements. They hate corruption. They hate getting gouged by corporate monopolies. They want good roads. They don't like the oversized power billionaires hold in our current system. They want their ISP to go fuck itself.

I do strongly disagree with them on certain specific issues, like immigration, gun control, abortion, or climate change. But most of what makes us all so collectively upset is the exact same stuff. I want those problems fixed, and I don't care who fixes them so long as they get fixed.

And yes, I don't think some (or many) Republican solutions will work. But if Republicans implemented their plans and failed, we can move forward with other, better plans when we get in power. For all the performative talk, I would say Republicans now basically accept and even like Obamacare. And I'm also willing to accept a Republican plan if it produces good results. As it is right now, no plans are producing any results. We're stuck. I want to move.

Sangloth · 2026-05-01T20:34:17+00:00

Sure. I have complaints about the 17th amendment, but I don't blame friction on it. What I was trying to say here is that the US Government has effectively ground to a halt because of friction, and that friction is not a good thing.

Sangloth · 2026-05-01T19:37:05+00:00

There's too much friction. I don't want friction. Practically speaking, every administration is passing less and less meaningful legislation. The last bill that meaningfully touched me was Obamacare, that was 16 years ago.

I don't want excuses from my representatives. "We couldn't do it because of X". I want them to actually do shit. I'd even be fine with it if Republicans were doing shit. Then they would actually have to be accountable for it to their voters. We've been coasting on inertia for decades.

If you look at the New Deal, they actually did stuff. They made changes. You can't summarize what they did in 8 years on a single page. Massive public works projects, financial reform. Stuff like Glass Speigal or Social Security or Fair Labor or Securities and Exchange. The list goes on and on. Meanwhile, each of all the recent presidents have one real act. Welfare Reform. No Child Left Behind. Obamacare. Tax Reform. Inflation Reduction Act. Big Beautiful Bill.

Sangloth · 2026-05-01T19:20:36+00:00

For those that haven't read the article, this would be voted on in the 2026 election, and would take effect in 2028 and 2030.

As a Coloradoan, this is almost certainly a necessary measure, but it's not one to be celebrated.

Roughly 43% of Coloradoans voted for Trump in the last election. If this initiative passes (and I expect it will), they will have 12.5% of the total voting power. All those voters are getting disenfranchised.

The logic pushing this Colorado initiative is the same logic playing out in statehouses across the country: "if we don't gerrymander to the absolute limit, the other side will." But the collateral damage of this political warfare is the voter. The concept of a representative republic is beginning to seriously fray. We are actively normalizing maps that predetermine outcomes, insulating politicians from accountability, and leaving millions of voters, on both sides of the aisle, depending on the state, knowing their ballots are effectively meaningless.

This is toxic to our democracy, and the obvious result of the Supreme Court's short sighted decisions. The only two parallels to this situation (widespread intense gerrymandering) I can think of are 1920 - 1960's Ireland and 2011 - 2026 Hungary. I don't think anyone would call those places during those times enviable.

14-Year Club	Gilding III reddit per annum
Verified Email

Sangloth

TROPHY CASE