The meta level idea of having AC adapters you can use while waiting on a food order is a cool design pattern, but I hope we're not going to keep doing this thing where the cool design pattern is paired with a national brand[0] alongside some stupid proprietary standard / technology when most civilized societies are moving towards standardized charging interfaces[1], and then that dumb charging standard is fed by some shitty PR agency to some third tier top level domain news site that will probably be 404d and unwaybacked if someone actually ends up citing this article and then I circle back a decade plus later.

I've seen the above dark pattern play out a few times. I avoided even articulating it because I almost always saw it used by trauma survivors to push really rude shit off the front page of their name searches, but some weekends I feel like getting back in touch with the same zeitgeist as back when I used to spend the weekend joking I'm a member of ISIS and setting things on fire next to a lake.[2]

Yearrrrrs after that fire setting, I'd hear someone make a joke on a podcast about the SSID I had in college. (My roommate was lazy and I didn't appreciate being forced into being an uncompensated sysadmin, so I named the SSID "FLESHLIGHT" and joked that every goddamn package coming to the roommate who'd play video games all day was... a fleshlight.

Obviously, it would be ILLEGAL for me to open that package... but we all knew what that pervert was ordering, or at least, that was what I was gonna keep telling people until they learned to stop abusing the wifi. (Another guy kept playing illegal poker, the guy who kept getting the fleshlights was incredibly racist, and at one point we had a guy living in the basement who among other gems, pulled up the grossest goddamn Japanese anime porn as I had my first date in ages coming over.

Anyways, in closing, instead of proprietary charging stations in Taco Bells, what we need to do is educate the youth on what voltage and amperage are, probably around the same time we take them into the sporting goods store next to the DL center to buy them their first can of mace, knife, and smartphone paid for in cash, so they can buy a small but high amperage battery pack and carry it around with them to avoid having their computer abused by the North Koreans because they made the mistake of trusting a female usb port on a bus or yacht or whatever.

(I keep meeting Californians who express a desire for gun control, paired with hands shaking and eyes going wide when I smile and say I prefer not to own one myself and reach into my pocket to show them my multi tool -- if English is a second language, it should be noted that unlike a Swiss Army Knife, a multi tool has pliers.)

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[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XHsDJ-9EDs
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/06/07/1103493025/european-union-to-...
[2] They might have hacked my phone again, so just so we're clear -- I assumed that woman who made a joke about "ASCII girls" was literally from the KGB and a complete picture of my internet browsing history... and my response was "Oh, those are stupid, you can get better pornography on other websites -- I was in the section on how to make bombs in case they ever stop having elections". (Also, the feds still don't pay enough.)