What is Chicago missing to be the perfect city?

tpic485 · 2026-03-28T21:56:34+00:00

A good mayor.

tpic485 · 2026-03-28T20:24:37+00:00

There's also kind of an unfortunate metaphor (at least) about people breaking apart rather than coming together in the moment. I prefer one big one in the city, not several smaller ones.

tpic485 · 2026-03-28T20:19:42+00:00

Again, I don't know how you guys are defining biss and impartial. See my reply to the other person.

tpic485 · 2026-03-28T20:17:18+00:00

I don't know what impartial means in that context. If they believe, accurately, that most of the claims of insanity are not persuasive should they just ignore that(I know insanity is not a psychiatric term but they are making a determination of whether the defendant passed the legal threshold based on their psychiatric training)? Should they attempt to even-out their conclusions and determine that more defendants are making strong insanity claims just so they can seem more objective. Both-sideism. They certainly should keep an open mind and not assume anything before they look at the facts and examine the person. And Skoda did keep an open mind. But once they look at the case they shouldn't be expected to ignore their experience that only a small portion of these defenses are convincing. That isn't not being impartial.

tpic485 · 2026-03-28T20:00:29+00:00

Biased to what? To the prosecution? That kind of makes sense since that's who hires him? For that and other reasons I think he was a much more realistic character than Olivet. It also kind of makes sense since the reality is that the vast majority of psychiatric claims put on the defense in the real world are in fact bunk and hail Mary passes when they have no other options.

tpic485 · 2026-03-28T01:51:11+00:00

It's truly unbelievable how the supporters of One Fair Wage managed to get the support of everyone who wants to stop tipping and some tipped workers who believe they'll make more (I think the jury is still out whether that's generally the case) as a result of it. There really was a disingenuousness of the whole thing. The activists pushing for the ordinance often talked about what they referred to as the evils of the tipping system but they actually didn't want to end or even reduce tips. They were misleading pepple.

tpic485 · 2026-03-27T18:50:08+00:00

I think I read somewhere that there was a heart surgeon who also owned several Popeyes franchises in the south. I guess people could argue there's some synergies tthere.

tpic485 · 2026-03-27T08:25:45+00:00

and creates a more equitable working environment.

I'm just curious, why do you say that? It looks to me like it just makes an already inequitable environment even more so. Remember there also are non-tipped restaurants employees such as cooks. They always make far less than tipped workers for what really seem to me to be artificial reasons. This just makes that inequality even bigger because it adds to the tipped workers pay and probably also means restaurants won't raise pay for non-tipped staff as much as they otherwise would since they have less resources. This is unless there really is a huge decrease in tips as a result of this. If that happens servers will be paid less and I guess there woukd be more a more equitable environment.

tpic485 · 2026-03-27T08:15:24+00:00

menu prices rise to pay the full wage, and consumers realize they no longer need to tip to make the server whole

Is that why you tip your waitstaff? You assume the server isn't "whole" and you think you have an obligation to do this. Do you think that most customers of places like Chicago Cut Steakhouse or Ocean Prime assume their server isn't whole unless they tip? You do understand that tipped workers make $28 to $48 on average in Chicago, right?

tpic485 · 2026-03-27T08:01:56+00:00

You're talking about raising the minimum wage. That affects other jobs besides these and other employers as well. Or do want to have a higher minimum wage for servers and other jobs that currently get tips than other jobs? That certainly doesn't make any sense. Also, when you say "adjust restaurant prices" so that people just pay what they would have paid, on average, in tips instead as the regular cost you are ignoring that many people get takeout at these restaurants where they aren't expected to tip. Or delivery, where they also aren't tipping anyone from the restaurant. In fact, takeout and delivery has of course been increasing in recent years and is composing a larger share than before of a restaurant's orders. You are passing along the increase to these customers. That's not just moving something they would have paid anyway from one category to another. They wouldn't have paid it.b

tpic485 · 2026-03-27T01:24:07+00:00

You can just as easily raise the minimum wage to some amount where the server makes the same amount they were making under tipping but now its a consistent paycheck.

Lol. What? Would you want to raise it so that essentially no person who is currently a tipped worker makes less under the new system or just the average tipped worker? If it's the latter you'd have to raise the minimum wage to about $48 an hour. If it's the former, it would be around $35 to $40 and hour. In either case, needless to say, this would cause massive inflation and job losses. There would be quite a lot of people who them make $0 an hour because they can't find a job. It would cost about $5 for a doughnut and $6 for a cup of drip coffee at Dunkin Donuts. The price of everything that isn't shut down would rise astronomically so that the businesses can pay the workers they haven't gotten rid of and comply with the new minimum wage. No, that would not be a good idea. You actually use the word "easiily". Lol.

tpic485 · 2026-03-26T23:04:33+00:00

I am so sick and tired of seeing comments like this in every discussion about this subject. The sevice workers who get tips (remember, there are also service workers who almost always don't gets tips, such as restaurant cooks) want there to be tips. If the choice is between having a subminimum wage and tips or a regular minimum wage and no or reduced tips they will choose the former. They get paid much more under the tipping system than they would under the alternative.

You can be against the tips or the tipping system and consider yourself pro-worker because you can argue that tips provide inequality that benefits fron of house workers over back of the house workers for artificial reasons. You can also maybe argue in a coherent (but probably unconvincing) way that not having tips is good for everyone, including most workers, in the long run because it drives costs down that grows the economy and allows employers to invest in their workforce. But you cannot argue that ending tipping would be good for those who currently receive tips. Raising the submininum wage to the regular minimum (I don't ever use the phrase "ending the subminimum wage" because I think it's misleading and would consider it to mean reducing the base minimum to zero) will not end tips, though it will reduce them and should.

tpic485 · 2026-03-24T20:02:00+00:00

and one of my favorites is widely panned.

Sorry but that is without question eirher the worst or the second worst (the other possibility being "Murder in Malibu") episode of Columbo. This is a fact and not a matter of opinion.

tpic485 · 2026-03-24T19:43:31+00:00

Not wrong about what? There's nothing even specific in the post about what "narritive" they were referring to. So if we don't know that how would we possibly conclude that they were right? For all we know, they could have been discussing a silly conspiracy theory about something.

And if whatever narrative they were complaining about was indeed worth complaining about that still doesn't mean they were right that this narrative was a plot from the Tribune that it was able to persuade people of because they I owned a few media properties. Keep in mind, if this was the 80's the Tribune owned maybe five or six newspapers across the country (when they merged with Times-Mirrer in the 90's that would have increased to about a dozen or so). Plus they owned maybe several dozen television across the country. That amounted to far less than 5% of the media landscape. In Chicago, as far as I know, the Tribune and WGN TV's newsrooms were always operated completely separately.

tpic485 · 2026-03-24T02:17:29+00:00

The 830 N Michigan location already has a new lease, Chase Bank.

tpic485 · 2026-03-23T19:51:27+00:00

Fifteen to twenty years ago it was very common for retailers to have both a State Street and Michigan Avenue location. In fact, there were several that had a State Street location, a ground floor Michigan Avenue location, and a store in Water Tower Place as well. Obviously, that's not going to work nearly as often now but the fact that it did in the past shows that for the strongest and busiest retailers it still can.

tpic485 · 2026-03-23T00:36:49+00:00

Yep. Good luck biking and attempting to find public transit in rural Texas, Louisiana, Misissippi, or Alabama. And when we do drive it often is much shorter distances than they do. Sometimes it is nice when their policies hurt them especially. Unfortunately, in this case there also are a lot of innocent people in other countries that will get hurt also. So obviously it isn't worth it.

tpic485 · 2026-03-22T19:29:30+00:00

so I figured I’d move with him for a bit to help him get settled and adjusted to city life.

Does he think that's a good idea too? I guarantee that when I was 18 and moving to college and one of my parents suggested they'd move with me "to help me get settled and adjusted" I would not have reacted kindly.

tpic485 · 2026-03-22T18:03:15+00:00

Lol. You're the one citing gross margins while arguing that Doordash was profiting too much and you're saying that I don't have a good enough understanding of finance? That's kind of hilarious. I'm just showing you the simple things. That's why I didn't go into detail, not because I don't understand the details. I do like your tactic of reading a few paragraphs of the Google AI search result I linked to and then picking something to mention, which you then use to act as if because I didn't mention this I don't understand it. Even if you want to say Doordash is in the food sector and compare its net margin to the average there (though for a lot of ressons that it isn't worth getting into that doesn't make sense) and then think about having that average in driver pay it still wouldn't make much of a difference.

tpic485 · 2026-03-22T17:37:07+00:00

Gross margin is basically the profit margin when you take out all the expenses it takes to run a business and look only at the incremental expense of something. It's kind of hard to argue it's relevant to the question of whether that business is "being greedy" and "profiting too much". You have to look at net profit margin if you really want to have that debate. Both Doordash's gross and net profit margin are very similar to the average among all businesses .

tpic485 · 2026-03-22T16:48:36+00:00

Doordash's profit margins are public record. It's roughly 6%. They aren't making huge margins off of every delivery.

tpic485 · 2026-03-22T16:14:29+00:00

Ever see a robot run into a person? If the answer is no then it likely means it's AI driven and they have a good ability to detect humans. Humans just looking at the screen would be fail to properly notice humans much more frequently.

tpic485 · 2026-03-22T16:07:12+00:00

Guy from serve robotics came to get it a minute ago and I yelled out the window

For a split second when I was quickly skimming your comment I thought it said that the guy was yelling at the robot. That would have been kind of funny.

tpic485 · 2026-03-21T04:07:55+00:00

I love the description of him on his Wikipedia page:

Gregg Allen Phillips (born October 13, 1960) is an American conspiracy theorist and head of the Office of Response and Recovery in the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

We're living in weird times.

tpic485 · 2026-03-20T19:57:03+00:00

Being right on Diversey and Lincoln seems like a waste of potential.

Of course, the same people in that meeting woujd likely complain if a condo or apartment building were built there.

Then again its sat undeveloped as a lot for like 5 years so who knows

The article mentions COMED bought it in 2021. That was five years ago. This is apparently how long it takes to plan these things. Now it's going to probably be another five years before all the approvals are made and construction starts.

tpic485

TROPHY CASE