So how do you, folks, feel about the “no tipping and a fixed service charge added to the bill instead” system?

I’m opposed because I have no confidence that any part of that service charge will actually go to the servers. The point of the tipping system, as far as I understand, is to supplement the low wages of the servers. With the fixed service charge, all I know for sure is that I’m supplementing the income of the restorateur when neither the amount nor the quality of food has changed.

The Ukrainian city of Odessa now has the world’s first Darth Vader statue:

Not that the people of Odessa are such huge fans of Darth Vader, but the city wanted to get rid of its Lenin statue and a local sculptor suggested giving old grandpa Lenin a Darth Vader remake.

This is what the Lenin statue looked like before it was Darth Vaderized:

Odessa was always known for its goofy sense of humor.

Thanks to the invasion of Syria, Putin’s approval rating grew from 89,1% to 89,9%. This is not an enormous improvement but only because there isn’t much room left for the approval to grow.

So whenever you hear the next “Putin is acting from a position of weakness” and “the people of Russia are about to rebel because of the economic crisis”, remember: others are not a mirror image of you. They have a way of being that is all their own, and you will only be able to understand it after spending a lot of time learning about it.

I just realized something really weird. In the 17 years I spent on this continent, I never voted here. Ever. For somebody as interested in politics as I am, it’s pretty bizarre.

First, I didn’t have citizenship in Canada, so I couldn’t vote. Then I got citizenship but there was no election. Then I left and again wasn’t a citizen. Then I cane back but there was no election. Then I left and wasn’t a citizen.

The only elections I ever participated in were a couple of fake elections back in Ukraine in the 1990s. North American democracy, however, has slipped by me.

I now feel kind of deficient over this.

Not a single one of the many articles I glanced at in foreign and domestic media failed to mention that Justin Trudeau is pretty.

I wonder if those who keep arguing that only female politicians’ appearance is discussed are noticing.

The best comment on the subject of politicians’ looks was given by Bernie Sanders who was incensed by a brainless chirper’s query as to whether his hair should be discussed more than Hillary’s. Sanders demonstrated shock and outrage of somebody who is trying to discuss serious issues only to be interrupted with idiotic gossipy questions. I really admire him for refusing to play the journalist’s game of reducing everything to a reality TV show.

Good news for every romantic underachiever of the female sex! Now it will be very easy to justify one’s relational losership by claiming that nobody wants to date one because one is a genius:

In a hypothetical scenario (one in which the man will never meet the woman), men showed greater attraction toward a woman who was smarter than them, but when they are faced with actually meeting a more intelligent woman, they showed less attraction and desire to date her.

Of course, “showing attraction and desire to date” somebody you have never even seen is an intensely insane concept but who cares? Relational losers will lap this up because it is much more pleasing to believe that one is lonely because of one’s intense intelligence and not because one’s psychological problems and unhealthy sexuality are scaring people away.

There was a time in my life where I also did the whole “I’m alone because I’m so brilliant and beautiful that people are intimidated by all this perfection” thing but then I dropped this boring act and now I’m happy. There is always a choice between blaming the unfair and cruel universe or looking carefully at oneself and taking responsibility for one’s losership.

We all know I dislike Benjamin Netanyahu but not even in my most suspicious moments did I expect him to be a Holocaust denier and an apologist for Hitler:

 Benjamin Netanyahu sparked public uproar when on Wednesday he claimed that the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was the one who planted the idea of the extermination of European Jewry in Adolf Hitler’s mind. The Nazi ruler, Netanyahu said, had no intention of killing the Jews, but only to expel them.

The Arab hatred that is such a huge part of Netanyahu ‘ s propaganda machine has warped his mind to the point where he actually makes excuses for Hitler.

I didn’t think I’d live to see the day when a Jew would say that Hitler never really wanted to exterminate Jews. I’m floored.

So it sounds like Putin is now considering invading Afghanistan. And still the facile fools who stick to the “why should it be our problem?” narrative will refuse to see any connection between Russia’s invasions of Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan and will judge Putin’s actions not on his terms but on their own.

There is a lot of deeply annoying stuff in the linked article but the last paragraph is worth quoting:

There is something in this that reminds one of the financial crisis of 2008. Like a too-big-to-fail bank, Merkel has made a bet that will allow her to pocket the credit if she succeeds and spread the baleful consequences to others if she fails. It appears now that she is going to fail. Her defenders exult that she is showing a different face of Germany than the one the world knows from the last century of its history. It is premature to say so. Merkel is showing the face of a Germany that is acting unilaterally, claiming superior moral authority, and answering those who object by saying they’ll thank her for this someday. As such, she is dragging the whole European continent towards unrest. No German role is older.

If you are planning to read the whole thing, remember that I warned you: it has tons of very aggravating stuff.