u/Livid-Director-8090

I’m genuinely curious. If you used to be against tipping but now tip regularly, what changed?

Was it having more disposable income? Working in the service industry? Did someone make an argument that finally clicked? If so, what was it?

Do you feel good about tipping now? Has it changed how you view people who don’t tip?

Do you think non-tippers are selfish? Should they feel guilty? Do you ever feel morally superior to them, even though you used to be one yourself?

Or do you still understand and sympathize with their position?

I’m particularly interested in whether your financial circumstances changed or whether you experienced an actual shift in your values.

What made you go from believing one thing to believing another?

Not tipping reminds me of a grown man catching a foul ball at a baseball game while a little kid stands next to him crying because he wanted that ball.

Now, let's get something straight. You caught the ball. You did the work. It's your fucking baseball. Nobody can make you give it to that kid.

But you're standing there watching this little kid cry, clutching your baseball, making your little boohoo faces at him, and refusing to give it up.

And then you go home, get on Reddit, and proudly tell everybody how you kept that baseball because you didn't owe that kid a goddamn thing.

And you know what? You're absolutely right.

You didn't owe that kid a fucking thing.

You're still a shitty person.

That's what some of you sound like when you come on here bragging about how you don't tip.

You keep arguing about what you're obligated to do, as though that's the same thing as what a decent human being ought to do.

It isn't.

Morality isn't measured by how little you can get away with giving other people.

Here’s something Greensboro voters might find interesting.

Rep. Pricey Harrison (D–District 61), who represents part of Greensboro, is up for reelection on November 3, 2026.
And she’s running completely unopposed. No Republican challenger. No independent challenger. Just her name on the ballot.

Now here’s what caught my attention.

On Wednesday, the NC House voted 111–1 to temporarily suspend North Carolina’s 41-cent-per-gallon gas tax through November 30.

The single NO vote? Pricey Harrison.

The Senate subsequently passed the bill 41–0, meaning she was the only legislator in either chamber to vote against it.

Democratic Governor Josh Stein signed the bill into law today.

Harrison explained her opposition to WXII, saying the measure wasn’t going to solve the problem and appeared politically motivated. She also argued that legislative leaders should have addressed broader affordability issues.

To be fair, there are reasonable questions about the legislation. It’s temporary, comes just weeks before an election, and requires roughly $362 million in reserve funding to replace lost transportation revenue. There’s also uncertainty about how much of the savings will actually reach consumers.

But here’s what I’m curious about:

If the objection is that the legislation doesn’t go far enough, does that justify voting against the relief it does provide?

And more broadly, how should constituents evaluate a representative’s voting record when that representative faces no opposition on the ballot?

I’d genuinely like to hear what other Greensboro residents think, especially anyone who can provide more context for Harrison’s vote.

Sources:
Guilford County’s official 2026 candidate list
NC General Assembly — HB 3 and voting record
WXII — Harrison explains her opposition
Governor Stein signs HB 3

There. I said it.

I hate festival season on SiriusXM. I hate it almost as much as I hate the random studio sessions where they interrupt the regularly scheduled programming so we can listen to an artist talk for fifteen minutes when I turned on the fucking MUSIC station to hear music.

And they do this shit every year.

They send everybody down to these giant festivals and suddenly half the station becomes, “Hey! We’re here at Austin City Limits! Let’s pull this artist aside and have a conversation!”

Cool. Awesome. Glad you guys are having fun.

Meanwhile, it basically feels like SiriusXM rubbing it in our faces: “Haha, you couldn’t go to the festival, so instead we’re going to interrupt the station you already pay for and tell you all about how much fun we’re having.”

And tonight is a perfect example.

Alt Tub Time Machine would normally be on RIGHT NOW as I’m typing this. I actually look forward to that show.
Guess what’s not fucking on?

Yep. Instead I got served up some bullshit-ass festival segment I could not possibly care less about.

If people want festival coverage, cool. Give it its own channel. Put the interviews somewhere on demand. Make a dedicated festival show. Whatever.

Just stop hijacking the regular programming for it.

Fuck the festival shit.

Play our fucking music.

You cannot convince me these guys don’t keep making variations of the same fucking song. 😂

Every time a new almost monday track comes on, I’m sitting there waiting for it. Where’s the bouncy bassline? Where’s the bright guitar? Where’s that ridiculously sunny groove that sounds like somebody bottled Southern California and turned it into an indie-pop song?

And there it is.

Every. Fucking. Time.

I’m not even saying this as an insult anymore. Because apparently the problem with calling a band a one-trick pony is that eventually you have to admit the trick is really fucking good.

Does anybody else hear this with almost monday? Like you can identify these dudes within about 10 seconds without even knowing the song?

A while back I shared my Flow State Driving playlist here, and a surprising number of you added it. Whether you actually liked the damn thing, I have no idea 😂, but enough of you saved it that I figured I’d share what I’ve been working on next.

This is Soft Shoulder.

It actually started with songs I liked that didn’t quite belong on Flow State Driving. They were alternative, emotional, sometimes raw, sometimes dreamy, but they didn’t have that same constant forward momentum.
Eventually I realized there was a whole playlist hiding in that pile.

The problem was that Alt Nation alone didn’t give me enough material for what I was trying to do. So I started wandering around SiriusXM. I pulled from SiriusXMU, The Spectrum, Life with John Mayer, and elsewhere, while keeping Alt Nation as a big part of the foundation.

What came out of that is about 14 hours of the softer side of alternative although “soft” doesn’t necessarily mean slow or quiet. It drifts, grooves, gets spacey, occasionally gets loud, but I’ve tried to keep the whole thing feeling unhurried.

There’s plenty of Phoebe Bridgers, Holly Humberstone, Death Cab for Cutie, Beach House, Clairo, Noah Kahan, Modest Mouse, The Lumineers, and other familiar stuff, but there are also a bunch of songs and artists I found by digging outside my normal Alt Nation orbit.

It’s a little wistful, a little hopeful, and very much a windows-down, nice-afternoon kind of playlist. Basically, songs that sneak up on you and get better the longer you live with them.

One thing I did intentionally was program the first 10 songs as an opening salvo. That stretch pretty much tells you what Soft Shoulder is, it moves through intimate, dreamy, guitar-driven, spacey, and hopeful without getting stuck in any one sound. If you make it through those first 10 and think, “Yeah, I like where this is going,” you’ll probably like the rest of the playlist.

Anyway, if you liked Flow State Driving, this is sort of its less caffeinated sibling.

**Soft Shoulder: Link Below ⬇**️

Obviously, use common sense. If you’re not somewhere safe to unload, don’t end the ride with somebody still in your car.

But if you’re safely stopped at the address/pin they entered and suddenly you hear:

“Wait, this isn’t it.”
“I think I put in the wrong address.”
“Hold on, let me change it.”

END. THE. TRIP.

I learned this lesson the expensive way.

If you leave the trip open, the passenger can update the destination and suddenly the ride you agreed to is being extended for whatever garbage marginal adjustment the app decides to give you.

Nope.

I took you to the destination displayed in the app. That transaction is complete.

If you accidentally entered the wrong destination, that’s fine. Request another ride to the correct one. If it comes to me and the upfront fare makes sense, I’ll happily take you.

I literally had this happen. We arrived, the passenger started trying to figure out whether she had entered the wrong place, and I ended the trip.

She asked, “Wait, did you end the trip?”

Yep. We’re at the destination the app told me to take you to.

Drivers worry so much about accommodating passengers that sometimes they leave themselves exposed to scope creep after they’ve already completed the job they accepted.

Get them somewhere safe. Complete the trip you agreed to. Close the transaction.

Then anything else is a new transaction with a new upfront fare.

Stop donating miles.

I made a post earlier about Folk Fest pickups and basically told people: if you’re downtown wondering why drivers keep canceling or you’re having trouble getting picked up, walk a few blocks away from the festival area.

Downtown is a pain in the ass for drivers to get into right now, and even a little distance can make your pickup much easier.

Well, somebody actually listened. 😂

I picked up a group tonight at the Starbucks off Eugene, and they mentioned that they’d heard they should walk away from downtown to get an easier pickup.

I asked, “Wait, did you see that on Reddit?”

Yep.

“That was my post.” 😂

And these people really committed to it. I would’ve been perfectly happy picking them up around Greene Street.
That’s not quite as easy-breezy, but it’s absolutely doable. They walked all the way down to Starbucks and made the pickup ridiculously easy.

So seriously, thank you. You guys went the extra mile, almost literally. 😂

It genuinely made me happy seeing somebody get something useful out of that post. You got an easy pickup, I got an easy pickup, nobody had to fight through Folk Fest traffic, and everybody won.

To the people who actually read local advice on Reddit and use it: you guys are awesome.

I keep seeing this happen and I’m genuinely curious what passengers are seeing on their end.

I’ll be completing a ride when Lyft assigns me my next passenger. Usually my current drop-off puts me pretty damn close to their pickup, sometimes less than a mile away.

Then I reach my drop-off, stop to let my passenger out, and THAT is when the next passenger cancels.

It happens often enough that I’ve noticed the pattern.

So can the next passenger see that I’ve reached my current rider’s drop-off? Because from my end it looks like they’re watching the trip and waiting until the last possible moment to cancel while I’m still technically on another ride.

And I’m curious about the mindset.

Is it, “I’m not ready, so I’ll cancel while it’s still free”?
Or is it, “This driver is taking too long, I’ll cancel and get someone closer”?

Because if it’s the second one, that’s hilarious. Lyft already matched you with the driver who’s about to finish less than a mile away. You cancel, I lose my queued ride, and you’re gambling that the algorithm will somehow find you somebody faster.

Maybe it’s coincidence. But I see the drop-off and immediate cancellation sequence way too fucking often not to wonder what’s happening on the passenger’s screen.

I should be able to tap on one of these little cars and send that driver a message.

“Yo bro, what the fuck are you doing over there? You’ve been sitting in the same spot for an hour.”

“Is it popping over there or are you just wasting your life?”

“Hey man, get the fuck out of Lindley Park, I’m working that sector.”

Give us proximity chat. Let the drivers coordinate, talk shit, send reconnaissance reports, whatever.

You can’t give me a goddamn real-time map of the entire Lyft battalion and then not let me communicate with the troops. 😂

And honestlyy, the conversation is fine. They’re cool. You’re talking the entire ride, bouncing back and forth, having a perfectly good conversation.

Then you arrive at the drop-off.

And they just… keep talking.

My brother in Christ, the ride is over.

We are parked. We have arrived. You are no longer a passenger. At this point you are just a person sitting in my car.

And I’m sitting there smiling and nodding while internally screaming:

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY CAR.”

Two minutes later they’re still going. Now we’re apparently doing a podcast. Maybe a therapy session. Maybe this is a social mixer. I don’t fucking know.

Eventually I have to hit them with:

“Welp, looks like they already gave me another ride.”

There is no ride.
There was never a ride.
I just need you to leave. 😂

Please tell me other drivers have had this happen.

I swear Noah Kahan might be the most polarizing artist in the SiriusXMn universe right now. Every time he comes up, people are either absolutely glazing the guy or acting like hearing one more song is going to push them over the edge.

So I have a solution.

SiriusXM needs to launch Stomp-Clap Radio.

You want acoustic guitars? You want gang vocals? You want people yelling “HEY!” and “HO!” over a kick drum like it’s 2012 forever? Perfect. There is now an entire station for you. Go nuts.

Mumford. Lumineers. Noah Kahan. Every dude who sounds like he recorded an album inside a Vermont barn. Put all of it there.

And then leave Alt Nation the hell alone.

That sound had its moment. It was gigantic. Cool. But I do not understand why we’re still pretending stomp-clap folk-pop is some essential pillar of modern alternative music.

Alternative has moved on. There is an enormous amount of interesting indie, electronic, punk, post-punk, alt-pop, rock, and weird shit being made right now that could be getting those spins instead.

I am officially calling for a peaceful separation.

The stomp-clap people get their station. Alt Nation gets to be alternative again.

No more “HEY!”

No more “HO!”

The treaty can be signed immediately.

I saw a lot of people praising Regan while he was filling in for basically everybody last week, and I agreed with most of it. The dude was spinning some great shit. His curation was noticeably good.

But it made me wonder: how much of that is Regan simply being a better DJ, and how much is Regan having more freedom?

He’s the program director. He does Advanced Placement. And when he randomly takes over somebody else’s shift, I have to imagine he has considerably more latitude to dig into the library, throw in deeper cuts, and generally say, “Fuck it, I’m playing this.”

Meanwhile, I’m assuming the regular DJs are operating inside a much tighter programming structure. You can hear differences between how they curate their shows, obviously, but they’re still working within whatever Alt Nation’s normal rotation and programming constraints are.

And Madison is actually a great example of why I’m asking.

This is NOT a “do you like Madison?” discussion. I know everybody has opinions about her voice and personality. Put all that shit aside for a second.

Listen to her curation on Alt Tub Time Machine, where she actually gets room to curate. It’s top tier. When you give her a format where she can dig through years of alternative music and build something herself, you get to hear what she can actually do.

So maybe the takeaway from Regan’s takeover week isn’t necessarily, “Damn, Regan is a better DJ than everybody else.”

Maybe it’s: “Damn, this is what happens when you take the leash off.”

And if that’s true, maybe we’re not really hearing the full curation ability of ANY of these DJs during their normal shifts.

I’d genuinely love Alt Nation to experiment with this. Give every DJ one shift where the normal programming constraints disappear. Same DJ, same time slot, but tell them: curate the fucking thing yourself. Go into the library and show us what YOU think Alt Nation should sound like.

I have a feeling we’d hear some wildly different shows.
And we might discover that some of these DJs are a hell of a lot better at this than the normal format allows them to demonstrate.

That album came out in 2024 and had Soup, Cinderella, Toro, Wave, Alone in Miami… I mean, come on. That record had Alt Nation written all over it.

I know Cinderella got some play, so I’m not saying they literally never touched the album. But how the hell did songs like Soup not become Alt Nation staples? That whole album feels like something the channel should’ve been all over.

Then Remi disappears for two years, comes back with Twiggy, and Alt Nation is like, “Yep, we’ll take that one.”
And I LIKE Twiggy. It’s good. I’m glad they picked it up.
But it almost makes it weirder. You guys knew Remi Wolf existed. So what the fuck happened with Big Ideas?

I pull up tonight and stop directly at the pickup pin.
Passenger is maybe 100 feet away, waving at me like, “Come over here.”

Nah.

I’m at the pin. Car is in park. I’m watching TikTok. You know where the car is. I know where you are. We have successfully located each other. You can walk the 100 feet.

Every few seconds I look up.

She’s still waving.

Back to TikTok.

Apparently she finally decides she’s going to teach me a lesson and cancels the ride.

Ma’am.

You made me wait approximately one minute and then paid me $3 to not drive you anywhere.

I didn’t even have to wait out the timer.

I appreciate you, actually.

Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.

Apparently this now qualifies as distracted driving.

Passenger comment:

“he had his music on so loud and singing along, this has been happening alot with different drivers…”

That last part is what really gets me.

So this has been happening with a lot of different drivers? At some point, maybe the problem isn’t that every driver is doing rideshare wrong. Maybe you just don’t like the fact that the human being driving you around has their own music playing in their own fucking car.

Sorry, but the driver base as a whole apparently could give a shit whether you personally approve of our playlists.

I’m working for hours at a time. I’m going to listen to music. Sometimes I’m going to sing along. I’m going to enjoy myself instead of sitting there in dead silence pretending to be an NPC transportation robot.

Obviously there’s a difference between music being genuinely deafening or someone actually being distracted and a driver simply having music on and enjoying it.

But if your complaint is essentially, “This keeps happening with different drivers! They keep listening to their own music!”

Then… yeah. Fuck off. 😂

The good news is Waymo is coming to a city near you eventually. Then you can have exactly what you want: no driver, no singing, no personality, no opinions, just a silent computer taking you from Point A to Point B.

Probably not coming to Greensboro anytime soon because we’re a midsize market.

But you can hope.

So now you can’t get status if Lyft thinks you accelerate too hard, brake too harshly, or take corners too fast.

And sure, maybe sometimes it’s right.

But it could also be dead-ass wrong about how you drive.

It doesn’t know your city. It doesn’t know that sometimes merging into traffic requires a little get-up-and-go. It doesn’t know why you had to brake harder than usual. It just sees the telemetry and spits out a score.

Personally, I don’t give a shit about status, so this doesn’t really affect me.

But the message from Lyft is pretty clear now: if you want the rewards, status, and whatever other little perks they attach to it, you have to play the Smooth Cruiser game. And I am more than willing to simply not play their little fucking game.

I’ve learned this lesson enough times that I just don’t do it anymore.

I pick somebody up. Ride goes fine. They tip right after the ride. Cool. Appreciate you.

Then, somehow, I get matched with the exact same person again shortly afterward.

You know what happens on ride number two?

No tip.
Every. Fucking. Time.

Okay, maybe not literally every time, but I’d put it at about a ninety-nine percent success rate for the “I already tipped this guy once today” mentality.

And I genuinely don’t understand the logic. You didn’t buy a day pass to tipping me. 😂

That was a different ride. This is a new ride. I drove to you again. I picked you up again. I took you somewhere again. Lyft charged you for another ride because, believe it or not, it’s another ride.

If you normally tip your drivers and you tip me the first time but not the second because you already tipped me once today, this is me publicly shaming you:

Knock that shit off.

Anyway, that’s why if I recognize the name and realize I already drove you today, somebody else can come get you. 😂

Please understand something:

I already have the vibe set.

I’m driving around for anywhere from five to twelve hours depending on the day. I’ve got my music playing. I’m listening to it. I picked the playlist. The vibe is established.

Then you get into my car.

You can clearly hear that music is already playing.

Now, if you pull your phone out and start watching something with the volume up, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt at first.

Maybe somebody sent you a video.
Maybe you’re checking something real quick.
Whatever.

I’m not immediately going to assume you’re an asshole.
I’ll give it a minute.

Then that song ends.
And another song starts.
Oh.
This isn’t some random video somebody sent you.
This is a playlist.
Okay.

So I turn my music up a little.
That’s the hint.

That’s me politely communicating, without even having to say anything, “Hey man, I’m already listening to music up here.”

And somehow, instead of taking the hint, some of y’all TURN YOUR SHIT UP TOO.

Ohhhhhhh.
Okay.
So we’re competing now?
My brother in Christ.
You are holding an iPhone.

I am sitting inside a Toyota Camry with an entire sound system.

You are not winning this fucking arms race.

I promise you.
I’ll turn mine up.
You turn yours up.
I turn mine up again.
You turn yours up again.
Fine.

Eventually we can sit here inside a goddamn nightclub listening to two completely different songs at the same time because apparently that’s the experience you wanted.

But just understand something:

If I turn my music up after you start blasting yours, and your response is to TURN YOURS UP EVEN MORE, you’re not establishing dominance.

You’re just making absolutely certain I remember to rate you when the ride ends.

And the funniest part about this particular ride?

THIS DUDE DIDN’T EVEN ORDER THE FUCKING RIDE.

Somebody else ordered it for him.

So this man got into a ride his friend booked, started a speaker war in somebody else’s car, ignored the increasingly obvious hints, and kept escalating.

Congratulations.

You didn’t even get yourself a one-star rating.
You got your FRIEND a one-star rating.

Imagine opening Lyft tomorrow like:

“Damn, why did my rating go down?”
Because your boy wanted to challenge a Toyota Camry to a fucking speaker battle.

And lost.

⭐