thegayteen:

Medicine should never have been privatized in the first place. The concept of profiting off of human desperation and the need for life-saving medicine is, philosophically, intrinsically, and morally wrong both as a fundamental concept and in practice. The fact that Martin Shkreli was ever able to buy an AIDS drug and increase its price 5000% is indicative of a problem even bigger than a truly evil, despicable, and selfish human being; it is indicative of the problem of the current system of for-profit pharmaceuticals with obviously inadequate price regulation.

(via goldnpoc)

The restaurants in Chinatown hid their best dishes away on Chinese-character menus that Westerners would never see. When I tried to order something more challenging than a boneless chicken stir-fry or crispy aromatic duck, the waiters would urge me to desist and point me in the direction of those dreary set menus that no Chinese person would ever order from.

Waitstaff across Chinatown would tell me how Westerners usually made trouble when they were given the kind of dishes Chinese people liked best. They would moan about bones and cartilage, send shell-on prawns back to the kitchen, be shocked by chicken that was a little pink along the bones, and accuse staff of trying to cheat them by serving cheap, fatty pork.

One veteran Chinatown waitress told me there was a recurrent problem of non-Chinese customers making spurious complaints after they’d finished their meals and refusing to pay for dishes they’d found unacceptable. I witnessed it once at the table next to me in one of my favorite Chinatown restaurants. A well-dressed young English couple had finished their dinner and were complaining that the food wasn’t worth the price on the menu. After arguing with their waiter, they flounced off, saying they’d left as much money as they thought the meal was worth. Later I chatted with their waiter, who was quietly overcome with hurt and rage: “They wouldn’t do this in a French restaurant, would they? Why here?”

Worn down by the boorish behavior of tyrants like these and usually struggling anyway with the English language, most waiters had given up trying to sell proper Chinese food to Westerners. Ordering a good Chinese meal requires experience and knowledge of the food; there’s an art to creating a harmony of dishes suited to the place, the season, and the company.