I try to stay away from buying nestle stuff, but it’s nearly impossible… they have their mitts in everything, even cat food. (Purina) They have over 2000 brands ffs. www.nestle.com/brands
Without context, absolutely cute. However, since pets rely on their humans for food, them growing obese is a sign of abuse/neglect (even if not on purpose). Then it’s less cute.
If you think it’s hard in developed countries(im trying not to make an assumption about where you live but assume it’s considered a developed country) you should see the issue in other countries. Maggi is one of the most popular brands in a lot of South Easy Asia; you see their sauces in most restaurants and the instant noodles are considered the best.
And the whole Japanese Kit Kat thing. I’ve seen store in SEA that have tons of different Kit Kats forms Japan because they have tons of flavours. Obviously this is also popular.
Nestle has dug themselves an entrenched position in SEA and will not give it up.
I’m in Canada, and while there are some options they’re usually more expensive or harder to find. I live nearly 50 km (30 miles) from the nearest city and the few local stores here have extremely limited selections which means I have to drive 100km (60 miles) round trip just to avoid giving nestle any of my money.
Usually it means a once a month road trip to stock up on stuff, but we still have to break down and bite the bullet every now and then when we run out unexpectedly.
Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. archive.ph/9Z12u
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
From 1989-1998, Hungary was a failing democracy. Since 1998 it gradually became Viktor Orban’s private kingdom.
It doesn’t mean that communism is wrong (as you’ve provided multiple examples here that I haven’t checked), but in the case of Hungary I’d say it is complicated.
The trajectory Hungary took after transition to capitalism mirrors what happened in most post USSR states. This just further supports the point that the communist system was better.
What happened in countries like Hungary and Poland is a direct result of the transition to capitalism however. What’s more this transition happened under the best possible conditions. The transition happened largely democratically without any violent revolutions, and these countries got support from the west to soften economic impact of the transition. Yet, despite all that we see that majority of post Soviet countries end up going in a similar direction under capitalism. Again, Hungary isn’t an outlier here.
Ok, so it is not nostalgia, bad management, corruption, disillusionment “of how great capitalism is”… it is only that post Soviet nations had it better during the communist era and thus are better managed as Communist nations.
Whelp, I’ll just remain a skeptic.
I wish the post Soviet nations, completely unsarcastically, good luck in the next elections or revolution. I would be happy to see the communist ideology continue to thrive in the face of capitalist debt slavery, and the contemptuous bourgeoisie.
Thing is that bad management, corruption, and so on, have happened in every human society that has ever existed. A political system isn’t magically going to change that. What a political system can do however is create different selection pressures for behavior. Capitalist system selects for different kinds of behaviors than a communist one. As we see with the case of transition from communism to capitalism in eastern Europe, the selection pressures of capitalism result in far worse things happening than under communism.
Idealistically? Yes. I wholeheartedly agree. Capitalism will always encourage unfair competition, whereas socialism will strive to end it by its very definition.
I’m just still unconvinced that the post Soviet nations, as a whole, suffer the same “communism withdrawal symptom”. The systematic pressures might be so that switching to Communism now will simply fail again (and let’s not forget the dear old CIA… eh?).
Again, hope I’m wrong, but I don’t see the point you’re making as clearly as you do. I think it is a more complicated situation, but I sure do think that being more socialist wouldn’t hurt them.
And I can’t repeat this enough, remove Orban the dictator from power.
Unfortunately, I expect that things are going to get worse before they get better. I don’t think people who are in power now will simply let it go the way communists did.
Hard agree. Our government will wreck the economy just to die on two hills: social conservatism (EU funding says hi) and russian reliance. Russian gas, russian atom (x2) because they want to build Paks II. They also gerrymandered the everliving fuck out of electoral districts so they can win their precious supermajority. I hope they fail on at least one of the aforementioned hills so they can drop the ball like the now-opposition did in 2006. As for communism, well, the 72% seems very wrong. Sure we had dictatorship-lite, but 1956 happened beforehand, to which we lost many of our schools for example. Plenty of (grand+)parents’ tales paint communism like it was the worst thing that could possibly have happened. Also, if 72% of people preferred communism, then surely the dem. socialist party would Poll higher than 3%.
Reminder that fidesz (the govt party) was originally anti-communist. (I am Hungarian if it wasn’t obvious).
God how hard it will be for people to realise how fucking stupid making more russian reactors and signing more russian gas contracts are. Our electoral system is in shambles^1^. social issues are overwhelmingly conservative here. The bigger green party is anti-gLObaLisM. The neo-na**s have the same amount of seats as green party number 1.
^1^: 2022: Popular vote: 54,13% Fidesz-KDNP; 34,44% United Opposition; 5,88% Our Homeland (neo-na**s). cf district votes: Fidesz-KDNP 87, United Opposition 19.
Mixed system so parliament makeup (199 seats) is 135 seats - 67,84% for Fidesz-KDNP; 57 seats - 28,64% for United Opposition; 6 seats - 3,02% for Our Homeland; and 1 seat for German national representation thing.
I spent hours this weekend biking on some awesome bike trails. And camped at a lovely state park this summer. And walked sidewalks and trails for endless hours in my city.
How about libraries too? Playgrounds for the mind and spirit.
This gave me a sort of questionable idea, but it’d be sweet if at the start to some bike trails they had a little parks & rec office or something where folks that don’t have bikes (whether for financial or basic space reasons) could rent them/lend them out to ride along the trails. Maybe some more well-funded areas already have something like this?
I know some places will rent out bikes to folks, but I dunno how affordable that tends to be.
I can see the point for Airtags which work with most modern iPhones, or a hypothetical Google equivalent which could work with all Google Services-enabled Android devices. Is there enough Tile users around for it to make sense?
edit: also it seems Tiles now cost exactly the same as Airtags
Tile is the same concept as Airtag with the exception that you probably won’t recover what you have lost because it’s incredibly unlikely it will be pinged by a tile user.
I say that owning multiple tiles. I’m just saying these locators things are only as useful as their network. And the tile Network is mostly very weak.
What sucks is that Apple and Samsung are both restricting the use of their network. Nothing is interoperable as usual. And so the consumer is the one literally losing.
I think Apple opened its network to tiles and similar, but you need to buy a specific one made for the Apple network (which costs more, probably because of apple tax)
Iirc Google will be doing the same with its new network
A tale as old as mankind. Like 20 years ago I saw a movie. Some indie thing from France or Spain. The kind of shit that gets highly acclaimed at the Cannes film festival. In one scene there was a bricklayer reciting a poem (from the top of my head and loosely translated from German):
My grandfather was a bricklayer. My father was a bricklayer. I am a bricklayer, too. But, tell me, where is my house?
One of the harder moments in my adult life was facing the fact that I had nothing to offer at that time which was why only creepy much older gay men were interested in me as I looked like I was 15 at 25.
I don’t even understand why the bot exists? If you have newpipe or other yt apps installed, it automatically sends you there when clicking YouTube links. You can do the same within Firefox on PC.
Japanese companies, this isn’t a wish, it’s a fundamental truth of the universe. Like gravity. No matter the scale or importance of them. I promise you your car exists because of an Excel 2003 file on some underpaid engineer’s laptop that they periodically sync with an inventory system.
I once worked for a Japanese company where I had to make a presentation. In Excel, I shit you not. Then we had one of our “shadow” managers make a Japanese translation of the same thing. It took me two days to get the kerning and print layout right, especially with that weird english typeface that is Japanese standard, I hate to think how long the translator took to get their version right.
I used to make a monthly document that was in English and Japanese. I used either Meiryo or Meiryo UI. That looked ok in both scripts but there is another font where the en looks shit. Or maybe I’m thinking of full width characters.
Your point? Would you donate half of everything you own or all of it? Probably not. At least they're helping.
People complaining about rich people not donating more are hypocrites, cause I don't see any of you donating too or donating the percentage of what you earn/ have in the bank that you think they should be donating.
That's why it's good that people are donating to funds like these. Celebs donate big amounts. Even if it's less that 1% of their worth. Who cares? It's 10mil, that's a lot of money and can do a lot of good.
My point was, I notice the people who screech about celebs not donating enough either don't donate themselves or wouldn't even consider donating the percentage of their money that they feel these people should be donating. It's hypocritical.
The rock is a good person, he's worked to get where he is. He's entitled to his money just like every other Tom, dick and harry is.
As much as I dislike shitty rich people, looking at you Elon, it's still their money. And if we screech about how they should spend their money, it's only fair that we can then be told how to use ours too. Would it be nice if people like him used money for good, yes of course. But end of the day, it's their money to do with as they choose. And even a donation that isn't huge to them, is huge to others in need. So it shouldn't be complained about. It should be seen as good.
Please stop mocking the rock. for the love of Pete and everything that is holy, please leave the fact he makes more on a single movie than most of the small towns and villages of the area are worth. Oh please stop mocking the rich and super well off whoa are asking everyone to give money they could give themselves in, but only want to give so much.
How is rock going to be rich if he’s just helping useless assholes who can’t afford to help themselves?
you probably don’t even give when wal mart tells you to.
Does she need that much more than us, and why doesn’t she feel the need to give it all back to help people who are in that situation she started out in?
Is it their money though? They didn’t make it by themselves, they have whole teams they depend on and people that, in this case, watch them. The simplest answer is that they shouldn’t have to give because they should be paying enough taxes (i.e. more than they pay now) that they shouldn’t have to worry about aid programs not having enough money to help.
"Problem 1: Never trust a billionaire. Problem 2: When a billionaire starts a fund, DON’T GIVE THEM MONEY. Problem 3: How do you think a billionaire becomes a billionaire?
Thank you Sabby for exposing these rich frauds.
DON’T GIVE THESE PEOPLE ANYTHING"
@lawrencefine5020
If you don’t know how the wealthy class use non-profits and other “philanthropy” to funnel money, here is a clip below that explains.
I honestly dont care either. I get sick of people telling others how they should live and what they should do with their own money. Be happy they donated 10 mil. That can do a lot of good.
If people are willing to tell others how to spend their own money, they should also accept others telling them how to use their money too.
Its like the free speech bullshit. People think it's fine to police others speech just because they don't like what they're saying, but if someone tried to police their speech they get butthurt. Stop trying to police people and just be happy when someone does something good.
I think we need to differentiate between rich people who got rich through honest work, and rich people who got rich through deliberate exploitation. Most if not all billionaires are part of the second group, and they do not deserve the money they have. People who got rich like that are the whole reason others depend on charities and donations to get by in the first place.
Oprah is definitely an exploiter. She's exploited her audience for years, pushed crooks and frauds to the fore (Jenny McCarthy and her stupid anti autism shit, Dr Phil/Oz,), and (my personal least favorite) she promoted a faith healing rapist which likely got some of her fans raped.
I agree with this so much. It is becomming a standard response. Like, let’s see you donate that percentage of your net worth (and oftentimes these people donate to multiple causes over the years). I’m also not saying ‘those poor multimillionnaires’, there is enough wrong worh our system. But they are doing something while you only go full keyboard warrior.
Exactly. I'm not saying poor rich folk. I just saying it's nice they donated, and the amount can do a lot of good.
I can't afford to donate. So I'm thankful someone can. I swear these people would complain if a rich person just randomly gave them 10k, cause they could afford to give them more.
If I'm at a birthday party and we're only getting cake crumbs and someone comes by and offers me a slice, then yeah it's nice for me, but how can they afford to just be giving away cake at a crumb party? It's not just charity, it's inequality and people with more money want credit parting with the surplus they've accumulated.
I'm not even talking about millionaires. They're down here with the rest of us as far as I'm concerned. You can earn millions by directly working for it.
But anyway when I give money to the local animal rescue, it stings a bit, because that's money out of my pocket that I would have otherwise spent. And I'm well off compared to most.
A billionaire is so far beyond that you may as well not even call it "money" for them, because it's so different then what you or I associate with the term. Their lifestyle will never be at risk of having to change because they spent too much.
They have insane, unethical, embarrassing, pernicious, criminal amounts of available capital.
More like you give a homeless person food and they start telling you how evil you are for not buying them an apartment and financing the rent for 12 months.
Sure, you can be happy that they donated money to a cause. But billionaires are the reason donations and philanthropy are necessary in the first place. You don’t become a billionaire unless you’re doing unethical shit and/or exploiting a lot of people (there’s inheritance, but that’s another problematic topic altogether).
It’s just not the same. If Oprah donated 50% of her money, she’d be fine. If I donated 50% of mine, I’d be fucked, and have to spend over a year getting it back.
I’m not disagreeing on the notion that she would be fine. And for the record, I am not a fan of glamourizing billionnaires at all. But someone who is poorer than you are (just the fact that you have acess to the internet suggest that stayistically many people in the world are worse off than you are) could say you would also be ‘fine’ giving away half your posessions.
My point is don’t hate the player, hate the game. We need tax increases on wealth to invest heavily in education, infrastructure, health, social security. The current distribution of wealth is, in my view, ethically indifensible. But it sounds entitled to me when people just hate on these donators instead of the system that creates them or the rich assholes to donate to industry lobby instead of people in need
I don’t think my argument was a straw man fallacy, I was merely illustrating my point. But I do get that it is not the same, you and Oprah. Also, I didn’t see you criticising the system, just the one person. But I am fine to agree to disagree.
So we should... praise them for their donation even though they know they are materially contributing to wealth inequality in their country?
Yes the rest of us are also part of a system of exploitation (and that's bad and I hope you are all combating against it as best you can), but we're much more beholden to it, seeing as how our actual survival requires full lifelong participation in that system.
If there's anyone that could be considered "above capitalism" it's the billionaires. They actually have some individual power to shift the rules of the game they know is crooked. Or at least not take take take take and still want praise for giving away a micron of a rounding error of their wealth.
People keep bringing up "percentage" like it means anything at all. If I donated 10% of my net worth to Maui, I would have to skip groceries for a couple of months to get by. If Oprah were to donate 90% of her net worth, she would still have more money than I'll ever see in my lifetime. Percentages mean nothing to the lifestyles of billionaires.
I never thought I would be sort of ‘defending’ extremely rich people on here. I guess my point is, we shouldn’t get distracted and entitled about how people who earned their money relatively fairly (as far as I know) by current society standards in the normal system should spend it, instead we should focus on reforming the system to one where inequality is less of a problem
I agree, but don't forget that holding the overprivileged responsible to society for the wealth that society gave them is one of the necessary steps towards that reform. Without a culture of giving back, the change we want will never happen.
If they donate half of what they own they would have more money than they and their family and their ancestors could ever spend. If i donate half my money, i can't pay rent anymore.
I donate 10% of my income every month, which is as much as I can and also 33.3x more than 0.3%. Don't paint everyone with the same brush, especially not to defend the haves from the have-nots.
People complaining about rich people not donating more are hypocrites
This is the trap of marketing and communication. They donate for the image, to hide the image of the rich disconnected from the reality of the poorer.
I’m all for the rich to contribute to pay and help the people, but not through charity. The rich must be taxed, and these taxes serves to help with government jobs, so everyone has a word to say. With taxes, we help the poorer, we help in case of natural disasters, we found the researches, we give access to healthcare, we… With charity, we help the riches to keep an oppressive system of power over the poorest. It’s a system to keep the huge gap between rich and poor.
The rich are taxed. They pay way more than you do. They pay way more than the non rich people combined. The top 10 rich people pay more taxes than all the non rich people. So don't come at me about taxes. Your tax contribution is basically nothing. Whereas they pay insane amounts.
In my country. You pay 40% tax if you earn over 100k a year. Which isn't even rich, but you basically give up nearly half your wage you work fkn hard for. So don't try pull the tax bullshit.
Do you honestly think someone who earns 100k a year works twice as hard as someone who earns 50k a year?
And if the 50k earner only pays 20% and the 100k earner pays 40%, they are still earning 50% more than the low earner. Even theoretically it’s not particularly unfair.
The most shocking thing to me here is the tax rates. Everywhere I’ve lived, the lowest bracket of income tax rate is 20-30% rising to 50% for high earners. The fact that the highest earners in the US (literally multi-millionaires and billionaires) are only paying 25% is outrageous to me. The average income tax paid for the 1% bracket is $400k, meaning they are still going home with at least $1.2mil a year. Why are the bottom 50% even paying anything? It’s obscene.
That’s not the point of taxes. At least not in a civilised society. People who can’t afford to contribute should be getting most value out of it.
You think the more taxes you pay the more value you should get out of them? Real “I pay cops wages so they work for me” and “I got mine, pull the ladder up” vibes.
And FYI I would not be in the bottom 50% here, so it’s not some “freeloader trying to get myself a tax cut” opinion. I already pay a considerably higher percentage of income tax than your billionaires! I’m happy to pay taxes because they are for the good of the society I live in and because I have empathy for those in need, but that’s evidently not the prevailing sentiment over there.
To earn near or just over 100k a year you need to be a specialist surgeon for 10 years. That's not including the years it takes to become a surgeon anyway.
And so what? In this one hypothetical, the skilled experienced surgeon still gets more money to take home than the less skilled, less experienced worker.
Exactly this. Last year I paid so much in taxes that I almost had to cancel one of my ski trips to the Swiss alps and had to think really hard about whether to hold off on buying a new private jet (my old one is already several years old and it makes me feel embarrassed when my friends have a newer one than me).
Meanwhile, lazy poors walk around crying like I’m not paying enough when what do they pay? A few thousand dollars? Basically they pay the price of one dinner? Stop complaining, ingrates!
Pocket change to them, while they maintain the system that ensures that some people have to rely on charity in the first place while they hoard millions if not billions.
It creates a subordination to the rich. The poor will be dependant of the charity to live.
The charities should not exist at all. It’s neoliberal to privatize everything so the state is smaller and smaller and create a direct control of the masses by the rich. This system is even more perverse. The rich can make the own rules and own regulations to give even more control on the poorer.
The work done by the charity must be done by the state itself with it’s own employees. It finances these programs through the taxes and regulations. The state must be strong. You have your word here what’s not the case with charity.
The best thing is to remunerate the work at its fair value. The workers thus recover the majority of the money earned by the company. This also solves the problem of profits and dividends.They are used to pay workers properly, which is not the case today.
You can’t enter a discussion with somebody who’s just trying to bombard you into submission. OP is wildly ignorant or just somebody sad they’re being defederated on a different account.
You’re thinking of dividing by 0, if you divide 0 by any other number its 0 meaning your ka/d ratio in that situation is still 0. 1 kill and 0 deaths would be infinite kdr.
I think having a permanently moist cavity* is a tougher draw on average, but it really is truly horrifying when you self-adjust on a public toilet and Make Contact. “gklvjsdlfgjljgklwashrnblkiujsrthfkwhfernvjkshnjhkl” is the reaction, even in the hypothetical.
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