The quote you’re using is from the 2010-2011 peace talks. The reason those broke down is as follows:

Direct talks broke down in late September 2010 when an Israeli partial moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank expired and Netanyahu refused to extend the freeze unless the Palestinian Authority recognized Israel as a Jewish State, while the Palestinian leadership refused to continue negotiating unless Israel extended the moratorium.[3] The proposal was rejected by the Palestinian leadership, that stressed that the topic on the Jewishness of the state has nothing to do with the building freeze. The decision of Netanyahu on the freeze was criticized by European countries and the United States.

In regards to Oslo and the 2014 peace talks:

2014:

A deadline was set for establishing a broad outline for an agreement by 29 April 2014. On the expiry of the deadline, negotiations collapsed, with the US Special Envoy Indyk reportedly assigning blame mainly to Israel, while the US State Department insisting no one side was to blame but that "both sides did things that were incredibly unhelpful."

Oslo: Both Oslo accords were signed, however,

the interim process put in place under Oslo had fulfilled neither Israeli nor Palestinian expectations.

This led to the Camp David Accords where the main issues and points seemed to be the following:

the refusal of the Palestinians and Arafat to give up the right of return

Judged from the perspective of Palestinians' and Israelis' respective rights under international law, all the concessions at Camp David came from the Palestinian side, none from the Israeli side.

the Palestinians starting position was at the 1967 borders, but they were ready to give up Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and parts of the West Bank with Israeli settlements. Further, the Palestinians were willing to implement Right of Return in a way that guaranteed Israel's demographic interests.

The proposals were, for the most part, verbal. As no agreement was reached and there is no official written record of the proposals, some ambiguity remains over details of the positions of the parties on specific issues.

The talks ultimately failed to reach agreement on the final status issues: Territory, Territorial contiguity, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, Refugees and Palestinian right of return, Security arrangements, Settlements

To summarize the 2010-11 peace talks broke down due to Israel not abiding by the terms of the negotiation. The 2014 talks are debated with more blame seeming to be placed on Israel. The Oslo accords were signed but left unresolved and unfollowed by Israel leading to the camp David accords where the main issue seems to be the right of return for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were displaced. However, who actually ended the talks is still debated.

World ending weapon in the form of a child? Never seen that before

It seems like the gaming division of Microsoft was doing just fine over that same period of time.

If the Xbox One was a complete failure then why would Microsoft make the series X/S?

Have you ever thought about why black people are often criminalized or why so many kids grow up without dads? It’s due to centuries of systemic injustices.

Redlining is probably the biggest example. Redlining practices pushed black communities into areas given barely any resources. These places today have rough living conditions and rarely see revitalization efforts that actually uplift the people living there. This continued the years of generational poverty that came after slavery and the repeated destruction of any attempts for black people to get any crumb of prosperity. With little support from the government, combined with poverty, forces some into crime just to put food on the table. Now, with these areas being over-policed, you've got a recipe for high arrest rates.

1: Black men are more often caught in this web. It's not just about being targeted by the police. It's about the dire living conditions, the lack of support, and then the heavy policing. All this means more black men end up behind bars, leaving families without fathers. The kids from these broken homes? They're set up for a hard life from the start and some fall into the same cycle.

2: Pulling your kids from public schools and opting for homeschooling restricts their exposure to diverse viewpoints and backgrounds. This is why many who've spent time in cities or universities tend to have less conservative views. It’s not about them being molded by others; it's genuine exposure to diverse experiences and stories. This broadens understanding and breaks down barriers while leading less people to view different races negatively. I'm sharing this not to change your mind, but hoping you'll see a different perspective, even if you don't fully agree. Just as you believe in spreading your viewpoint, I believe in the value of diverse exposure. It's how we learn and grow.

Unfortunately, Valve would also have to build a CPU translation layer (Like Rosetta 2) since games run on x86 architectures and snapdragon uses an ARM architecture. The steam deck uses a Zen 2 CPU architecture which is already x86 so there would be little motivation on their part to do this. Currently proton uses wine to convert windows api calls into linux calls. The big thing Proton does is allowing games that use DirectX to run on Vulkan which is natively supported in Linux. So unless Valve makes the Steam Deck 2 with ARM or another company decides to make an x86 to ARM translation layer, then I don't see something like Proton coming to android any time soon.

1: "Guess what happens when there are fewer workers willing to work in a role...?" You're responding to a hypothetical I'm not making which doesn't address my argument. I'm advocating fair pay so workers aren't reliant on inconsistent tips, not banning tipping outright. In my proposal, fair wages means decreased tips wouldn't deter workers. Your hypothetical keeps pay low with no tips, unlike my proposal. When discussing the potential for restaurants to seize more control over revenue, it's important to highlight the power of unions and collective bargaining. Unions exist to represent the interests of their members, and in this case, the workers. They provide a structured, legal avenue through which workers can negotiate better pay, benefits, and working conditions. When a union negotiates with a restaurant or a chain, they're establishing legally binding agreements that outline worker compensation and rights. This ensures that even if prices increase, there is a legal obligation to ensure workers benefit. It's a mechanism that places a check on the natural inclination of businesses to maximize profits, ensuring workers aren't shortchanged in the process. Additionally, unions have strike funds and other resources to support workers who are fired or face retaliation for union organizing, as we are seeing with the recent strikes in Hollywood.

2: The notion that tips place power solely in the hands of the workers is a bit misleading. In fact, tips are at the mercy of customers, and, to some extent, the establishment. Factors like ambiance, quality of food, and even factors beyond a server's control can influence tips. The current reliance on tips effectively offloads the responsibility of ensuring a living wage from the employer to the customer. This shouldn't be the case. Workers should be guaranteed a livable wage, with tips serving as a bonus for exceptional service. As for the profit margins, it's an oversimplification to say that restaurants operate strictly on slim margins and can't afford wage hikes. If that were the case, how do we account for thriving chain restaurants and franchises? There are restaurants that are extremely profitable, and while there may be challenges in the industry, there is certainly room for wage adjustments.

3: Citing the earnings of top-tier restaurant servers as a standard is cherry-picking. The vast majority of servers don't earn anywhere near that amount. Additionally, the variability and unpredictability of tips don't disappear simply because some servers in upscale restaurants earn well. And if every server is supposed to find the highest-tipping establishments, then who fills the roles at the lower-tipping places? The logic doesn't pan out.

4: The claim that high-earning servers wouldn't want to unionize misses the bigger picture. The vast majority of restaurant workers are not top-tier servers at upscale establishments. They are workers struggling with low wages and unreliable tips. These workers have every reason to come together and unionize to demand better pay and working conditions from restaurant owners. Historically, the groups most affected by an unjust system are often the ones to lead the charge for change. The claim that restaurants would lead this charge contradicts established trends. Restaurants, as profit-driven entities, are unlikely to spearhead efforts that might cut into their profits unless compelled by external pressures – like a strong union.

Tipping isn't driven by customers, but an unfair system offloading fair pay onto them. Workers shouldn't have to rely on tips just to get by. The solution is empowering workers to demand fair wages so tipping returns to being a bonus, not a business model.

I am on the Artemis app for Kbin which hasn’t been updated to allow quoting yet so excuse the strange formatting. Each of the following paragraphs will address each point in order.

1: Wages will certainly not adjust if tipping went away, there would just be less workers willing to take those roles. It’s not the workers keeping wages artificially low, it’s the restaurants owners who do. Having workers successfully demand higher wages on an industry wide scale just isn’t feasible without unionization. Sure there may be individual situations where workers actually get a raise but I don’t see this being the norm. Employers do not have to capitulate to raising wages, especially if workers have no other options available to them.

2: Workers can get tipped and be paid fairly. It’s not a zero-sum game. Paying workers a livable wage so they don’t rely on tips is what I consider to be the “winning situation”. Customers can tip if they want to which means more money for the worker and if they don’t receive tips then it’s not big deal since their wages are enough to cover their expenses. This is in contrast to what we have now where tips are used to supplement wages. So with increased wages and with people still deciding to tip on occasion, the average worker would actually make more money, not less. In terms of revenue for the restaurant owner or chain exec, I could care less.

3: You are ignoring a variety of important factors in the assertion. Not everybody lives in an area or can easily move to one where they can make that much in tips. Not everybody can easily switch jobs and take a gap in pay. Not everyone is in an area flush with jobs where they can get paid properly. Sometimes surprise expenses come up and mess up your budget when you are living paycheck to paycheck. Basically, not everyone has the means to actually do what you are suggesting. If people could easily find a new job to make up for any budget shortfalls then we wouldn’t see bankruptcy and homelessness run rampant.

4: People don’t care about the actual concept of tipping at all. Who needs to drive this is restaurant workers getting together and collectivizing to have bargaining power over restaurant owners. I doubt workers care about tipping over getting paid a livable wage with the added bonus of some people still tipping. If workers withhold their labor then restaurant owners will have to give in. This will lead to actual material change for these workers. I know it’s a long shot but it is a viable way to achieve these goals without involving consumers and their tipping habits. All of this is achievable (unless restaurant owners do what hospitals do when they try to unionize and bring in outside labor at a higher cost (which ironically would increase wages for those people, just not for those who got fired for trying to bargain) within our current legal framework.

Although I would love to see it, as long as DirectX is the de facto graphics API, I don’t see Microsoft fading into irrelevance when it comes to the PC gaming market.

A lot of consumer’s buying habits for products with inelastic demand is driven by cost. If companies weren’t driven by ever increasing profits then there might be more of an incentive to offer a wider variety of crops to consumers. Certain crops are already subsidized by the government to make it profitable for farmers. If other crops were subsidized then perhaps farmers would be more encouraged to grow them and if people see these at normal prices they might also be more interested in buying them. Of course, this would rely on multiple parts of farming being overhauled. For example, there’s a lot of cost sinks, one I can think of is the locked down maintenance of farming equipment (once again driven by the need for increasing profits via fiduciary duty). Eliminating these and other overheads would not only lead to more cost efficient farming, but also cheaper crops and increased variety offered to consumers.

I’m fine with toll roads, however, I would like to avoid express lanes (usually two lanes of a toll road with extra tolls so it’s less congested) and there doesn’t seem to be a toggle for that. I will admit that for some cities Apple Maps is on par or better than Google maps and for others it’s the opposite. For my city Apple Maps just doesn’t get the job done.

Fortunately…or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, the United States would use Japan as a base of operations to attack China and the Philippines is basically considered a giant aircraft carrier by the military. So they would want to keep them around while Taiwan gets sacrificed…though the Philippines would be next. Sad state of affairs all around.