Freedom became free-dumb in America

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From an article about New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (The New Leader of the Free World)

Americans don’t have decent healthcare, retirement, education, incomes, governance. Trust and happiness have plummeted, and suicide and hopelessness are skyrocketing. Freedom became free-dumb in America. But in places like New Zealand, it evolved. It became the idea that we are freer when we all have expansive public goods, like healthcare, education, retirement, and so on. […] Americans are regressing backwards in time at light-speed — fast becoming a nation of “low-wage service workers”, an economists’ euphemism for “servants.”

Coffee shops post-Covid

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“La Colombe, a Philadelphia-based coffee chain, is taking pages out of the airport and pharmacy handbooks in retrofitting 30 of its cafes in six cities for safety. Customers line up outside, where a greeter takes orders at the door “to keep fingers off of touchscreens.” Once inside, patrons, who must wear masks, move through a line. Rather than use the ribbon tape that creates a maze at an airport check-in, La Colombe has installed acrylic panels to frame the lines. Customers must wait six feet apart, and may add food from the grab-and-go case while waiting in line. Inside seating is still prohibited by law.”

Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer