It pulled water from the tap instead of a bottle and had a filter, plus it had hot and cold options. It was a nice water cooler, but I wouldn't have called it a luxury and never thought it could cost $75 a week.

Seeing this while I'm listening the "No Gods No Mayors" podcast is (chef's kiss) beautiful... I love it when a mayor is embattled.

My company just got rid of the water cooler... it was apparently a subscription service costing the business $75 USD a week.

Last year our company attempted a merger the CEO and shareholders wanted but was pretty derided by industry experts and would challenge nearly century old Federal anti-trust regulations. We were almost immediately sued to stop the merger and its now been paused for more than a year, costing the company interest payments on the loans we took out to pay for it.

So far this year they downsized a whole department eliminating seven jobs including a middle manager type role, told us in not so many words that we were entering a period of deferred maintenance, and that corporate would be reevaluating cost of living adjustments for next year... the board is still planning stock buy backs and shareholder dividend payouts.

Management told us we have to cut back on "little luxuries" to which someone asked how the fuck water was a luxury. The economy is doing great!

No, I dont think so, but I have been DM'd by one or two people who weren't participating in the discussion, they were reading or just following along; my (and other similarly minded folks in said discussion) arguments apparently got them to at least somewhat reconsider what they believed. It was only ever a handful of times over the years, but I think it still fits the premise of your question.

Now granted, this was mostly on like 2010's "Christian creationist verses basically all of science" rage-bate Facebook groups (as was the style at the time). I have no way of confirming these people were being genuine, but also no real reason to doubt them. Most of the messages I got were people learning for the first time that Evolutionary Theory wasn't "anti-Christian." That the vast majority of Christians and Christian denominations weren't actually Young Earth Creationist or necessarily against the concept of the theoretical foundations of academic biology. Heck, one or two of them didn't even know that the overwhelming majority of Chritstians are not biblical literalists. They had been taught that most of the fields of science were basically a (insert boogeyman here) plot to destroy Christianity or god or something.

Again, these weren't the people I was "debating" but rather just curious onlookers watching me, an insufferable 20-something edgy-atheist (again, as was the style at the time), dunk on people who had absolutely no intention of doing anything other than move the goal post to protect sky daddy.

JFC. Last week, my therapist asked me if I knew who Hasan Piker was... it was surrreal... like the internet broke containment and entered real life.

I'm in therapy for stress and anger management... sometimes politics comes up. My therapist is a middle aged wine mom from the suburbs who literally has one of those "Coexist" bump stickers on her Toyota Prius. I told her I disagreed with him on some stuff, but that I'm probably not his audience. She told me she was watching more of his clips on YouTube. I didn't know what to say to that.

Good

Yeah, I was gonna say, that's what happened after the 2008 financial crisis... they just asked the computer who do foreclose on and it spit out hundreds of thousands of names... some of whom should not have been foreclosed. The government just let the banks say "oops, sorry, nothing we can do."

It's possible and necessary to do both.

I recommended it to a buddy of mine because he's obsessed with spiders and facts about spiders.

The "Children of" trilogy is so good.

Was actually looking at these probe thermometers to give as Christmas presents this year... some brands actually advertise that they connect to nothing and need no phone or account to operate.

The protest was about five or six blocks away from my house... Proud Boys and other jackasses were "patrolling" the neighborhoods.