Let us now praise stonesoupalley, the anti-Instagram IG feed.  The site,  like many of us, is fed by Tim Elliott, chef/co-owner of  Zabby & Elf's Stone Soup in downtown Burlington.

On the Instagram page he started last month, Elliott presents a clear-eyed view  of the restaurant world with a side-eyed glance of what stonesoupalley is not:  food porn.

"It's beautiful and the food is amazing," Elliott said of the constant blast of food images on social media.   "But I'm numb to it."

Updated, November 27, 2018: The post about the tip was removed from Monarch & the Milkweed's social media sites on Monday.

On Small Business Saturday, a small business owner in Burlington publicly defied the long-standing adage," the customer is always right," and posted on social media the restaurant receipt of a customer who left no tip.  On a bill for $48.94, in the line reserved for a tip, the patron wrote  0.00.

But it wasn’t the lack of tip that compelled Andrew LeStourgeon, owner of Monarch & the Milkweed, to post a photo of the receipt on Instagram and Facebook. It was the comment the customer left for the server that prompted his action, he  said.

In capital letters, the customer printed: “YOU LOOKED @ MY ID AND DID NOT SAY HAPPY B-DAY.”

A new four-minute online film featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is taking aim at a powerful pair of billionaire brothers who the senator claims are bankrolling think tanks and politicians to spread misinformation about Social Security.

In a fast-moving online film titled "Echo Chamber" (embedded below), in which Sanders is the narrator, the independent senator offers a litany of examples in which he claims David and Charles Koch have spent tens of millions of dollars to dupe the American people into believing that Social Security is going bankrupt and needs major changes to survive.

A group of think tanks have received more than $28.4 million in Koch funding and produced more than 300 position papers distorting the purpose and effectiveness of Social Security, according to filmmaker Brave New Foundation.

The film reveals a cottage industry comprised of Koch brothers’ spokespeople, front groups, think tanks, academics and elected officials, which have built a perpetual echo chamber that Sanders argues is transforming what were once "fringe" ideas into popular mainstream public policy arguments.

Those fringe ideas? That the retirement age for Social Security needs to be increased to 70; that Social Security is already bankrupt; and that Social Security, or portions of it, should be privatized and invested in the stock market.