Oh shit! Reading comprehension is my passion.

Yeah, that’s much more based.

Sucks that “firing” is what we’re trying to get, when it should be “life changing legal consequences”.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas was this for me.

100 girlfriends

Publicly traded companies blow my mind a little bit.

It’s not enough to make steady, consistent profits. Give out reliable quarterly dividends and make it so your investors make their money back plus a little extra over time. Free money is not enough for the ownership class.

Growth isn’t enough either. Buying something for X and selling it for 1.1X so you make money even without a dividend isn’t enough for the investor class.

You have to grow infinitely. You have to grow faster than everyone else. You have to beat the projections. Make your product smaller and shittier & sell it for the same price. Lay off 10% of your workforce after record profits to cut costs. Force ads and subscriptions and data mining into every possible space. Undercut your smaller competitors until they fold, then jack up your prices. Break the law, fuck over your workers, buy out politicians, move your production lines to countries with no labor laws.

Being publicly traded actively rewards evil and anti-human behavior.

I wonder what kind of person calls themselves a “world class expert” in astrology.

The purpose of my jellybean thought exercise was to show that “I don’t know” and “I don’t believe” are not mutually exclusive. Basically:

I do not believe [x] != I believe [not x]

I don’t believe in String Theory. String Theory may be correct for all I know: I am not a physicist, and my understanding of String Theory is cursory at best.

Because I do not have enough evidence to warrant belief, I cannot say I believe in String Theory. But that same lack of understanding means I must also say I don’t believe that String Theory is false.

Say you have a jar full of jellybeans. We know that the number of whole jellybeans in the jar must be either even or odd.

If someone asks you if you believe the number of jellybeans in the jar is even, you can and should say “no” if you haven’t counted them or otherwise gathered any evidence to support that conclusion. To believe something is to say you feel it is more likely true than false, and you can’t say that about the given proposition.

Importantly, this does not mean you do believe the number of jellybeans is odd. The fact that one of those two things must be true does not mean you have to pick one to believe and one to disbelieve. It is perfectly rational to reserve belief either way until you have evidence one way or the other. You do not believe it’s even, nor do you believe it’s odd.

So, if we define “atheist” as “someone who does not believe in any gods”, I think you meet the definition of atheist. Just like the person in the above example does not believe the jellybeans are even & also does not believe they are odd, you don’t need to believe “there are no gods anywhere” to not believe “there is at least one god”.

The big divide in the US is not so much between Republicans and Democrats as between people who invest and people who don’t. For a man of his means who is running for America’s second-highest office, Tim Walz is on the wrong side.

God forbid a leadership position go to someone not in the ownership class!

In 2022, 58 per cent of Americans owned stock, either directly or indirectly through mutual funds. Based on his 2019 financial disclosures and his 2022 tax filings, the Democratic vice presidential nominee is not one of them.

So? The average American, who has maybe a 401k and some options thru their company, still has more shared class interests with someone who owns no stocks whatsoever than with someone who doesn’t have to work for a living.

The rest of the article fails to load, but looking at the author’s other pieces, we see she thinks price gouging is a myth and that another recession might actually be a good thing. She’s either so out of touch she may as well be from outer space, a soulless corporate sellout, or intentionally writing ragebait with an economic coat of paint.

I feel you in a big way, but to be totally fair: corporations becoming states has probably trended towards the better from a zoomed-out perspective, and political leaders lying all the time has probably only become more visible than ever.

The entities that were doing all the colonialism for the past several hundred years have been private companies, and they did huge amounts of slavery and genocide. Blackwater is bad, but the East India Company was worse. This is not to say that things are good now, only that they aren’t like worse than they’ve ever been.

And I think the present day has a greater expectation of political leaders being accountable to the people they govern than most of history. Back in the days of monarchs and oligarchs, there was no mass media to tell everyone they were lying and no likely consequences for the liars even if there were.

Again, I empathize a huge amount with what you’ve said & I am also disappointed that the world we’ve created isn’t better than it is. I just personally think that the above two are trending in a more optimistic direction, even if they’re still objectively pretty bad.

Fifty-three percent of respondents hold a “very or somewhat” unfavorable view of the system, while 40 percent hold a “very or somewhat” favorable view.

I swear to God, you could ask “Do you enjoy being hit in the face with a hammer?” in a poll and 30% - 50% of my countrymen would answer “yes”. At least one third of this country lives in a completely different reality.

Well yeah. Who gives a fuck about a 2% increase in the GDP? Prices are high and wages are low.

Have you talked to EWOC? They should have someone with organizing experience that can help guide you.

I spent all afternoon reading that comic, having to call it a night on chapter 93. Thanks for the link!

1. Rape does not always involve physically overpowering someone. Someone may coerce someone else into sex with blackmail, lies, threats, or abuse of a position of power.

2. Erections are controlled by a person’s autonomic nervous system. A man can get hard even when he is not turned on or consenting to what is happening.

3. Not all rape involves a penis. A woman who sticks an object into a man without his consent is committing rape. Rape is about power and control over another person, and the rapist need not be directly stimulated for rape to occur.

I’m glad I’m not the only one with that criticism. I enjoyed the first game so much more because of that.

Hear, hear! Bigger problems nowadays, but more control over my life to compensate.

There’s also something that’s really calming about having more life experience? Like back in 2013 I was mortified at the prospect of getting bad grades. Missing assignments was the #1 source of stress in my life, and it was all-consuming at the time.

Now? I know not only did that not matter, but that any given thing that stresses me out that badly has a good chance of ultimately not mattering in the same way.

Euros, as they’re currently worth a bit more.

The RPD pointed out that an attorney for the Abbouds had released home security footage of the raid online, which the police said made releasing the body camera footage redundant. At the same time, the RPD claimed that releasing the body camera footage might expose confidential information about search warrant execution or damage officers’ reputations.

You busted in a door and pointed an AR-15 at a baby. Your reputation should be fucking damaged.

Raleigh police “wrongfully executed a ‘Quick Knock’ warrant”—meaning they kicked in the door before the Abbouds had a chance to open it[…]

This is just a no-knock raid. Let’s not pretend knocking on a door a half second before pulling out the battering ram is some magical third category of warrant: no-knock raids should be banned, and whatever the fuck these cops did should be considered a no-knock.

I mean historically, when you see a busload of undocumented immigrants it’s a pretty safe bet a Republican is behind it.