I’m trying to assume no 2nd Trump term for my mental health. Also I am, on the admitted basis of no special knowledge, worried that DJT stock is just a way for foreign money to get laundered and thus not subject to normal economics if he is reelected.
Every SPAC is a scam. I learned my lesson well before this trash, which is obviously a pump-and-dump scam even independently of involving a SPAC. I would rather burn my money than give it to Donald anyway.
Did he get quick cash? I read he’s not allowed to liquidate any of his shares until 6 months have passed, which at this rate is not looking good for him
Trump could sell billions in Truth Social stock early if a board consisting of his son and former colleagues agrees
I also seem to recall reading some discussion about whether he could borrow against it. I’m not sure how strong of an argument that latter route is, as borrowing against it is going to require finding someone who wants to lend against its future value.
EDIT: I haven’t really been paying much attention, but Forbes is pretty blunt about the prospects for shareholders.
EDIT2: I gotta say, if he burns a large chunk of the faithful during his presidential campaign, he might walk away with a bunch of their money, but I’d imagine that it wouldn’t be very good for his electoral prospects.
I mean, strictly-speaking, the SEC is kind of responsible for protecting investors against scams.
I don’t know whether Truth Social is actually breaking current SEC rules. But I also think that it’s fair to say that avoiding copycats in the future might be a good idea.
No more than three commissioners may belong to the same political party. And none of them are “controlled” by the president.
While the Democrats do have a 3 to 2 majority, I think it’s pretty safe to say that some of these people are corrupt as fuck.
Additionally, I don’t think either of these political parties are going to pass sweeping regulations that makes the rich honest. So while both political parties may be financially corrupt, there is really only one political party that wants the world to suffer, and that’s not the party that Joe Biden belongs to.
So while both political parties may be financially corrupt, there is really only one political part that wants the world to suffer, and that’s not the party that Joe Biden belongs to.
Damn I am fucking ignorant as fuck on WWII I had no idea. I really don’t remember them teaching it in school to even this extent.
And this is why they attack our schools and libraries and books. They want the voting public ignorant as possible so we are blind and easily manipulated. Those in power now (aka with wealth) won’t have their kids and grandkids impacted, and that’s about as far away from themselves they can care about.
If you’re into physics or chemistry at all, The Making of the Atomic Bomb has a ton of WW1 and WW2 history in it and a surprising amount of info on Hitler. It’s really long but it’s on Audible as well.
I don't consider a TV producer insulting a (obviously terrible) politician to be news, but I do enjoy this particular insult. It's nicely crafted. It's a pity he continues to use Twitter.
For sure, but insults are just (nicely crafted in this case) words, and unless the insulter is in a certain position, they ultimately don't affect much. It's not like Simon's statement is going to change Baltimore policy or shipping or things for the citizens, or Greene's actions. And it's not like Greene will be able to make funding decisions about Baltimore or declare war on the city.
Like, I enjoy some dramatic shit-slinging, but I wish "news" were more about objective things happening than someone expressing an opinion on social media that doesn't have any obvious real consequences for anyone.
I live not five minutes away from the Key bridge and the sound of this woke me up last night. My GF takes this bridge to work every day. Driving through the city now for her every morning is going to be fucking awful.
Yeah, IIRC it is the route for hazmat trucks. Gonna fuck with a lot of businesses down the line for a bit too.
As an aside, they used to have a rave down in the park under the west side of the bridge a decade or so ago, and it was always awesome being on the beach stage looking at that bridge at night and as the sun would come up.
Most people would take that as a given. He was just pointing out the effect on his own personal life.
It would be pretty annoying if everyone shared their own effect but had to precede it with a standard “I know it’s more awful for those with lives lost, but this affects me because…”
The other bond companies will not “accept hard assets such as real estate as collateral,” but “will only accept cash or cash equivalents (such as marketable securities),” the filing said.
AKA “we have no idea how much your property is actually worth because you’ve been lying about it for years, so we want things that have a value set by someone other than you.”
This is what I’m expecting, that or appraisals will end up finding out many of these places are worth way less or need condemning/major work to be sellable.
Anyone would be stoked to lend $500m if he could give them, say, $1b in clear property titles.
He can’t because other banks already have their mortgage registered on the titles, and those banks have obviously reached the limit of what they will offer.
We used to pay our rent in 15-20 installments, one every day or two. The office of the apartment building we lived in was on the way to our apartment, so it wasn’t any inconvenience for us to just drop a check in their drop box when we passed by, but I like to think it was mildly irritating for them to have to deal with the book-keeping. They asked us not to on multiple occasions but their only online option had a small “convenience charge” attached, so… No, thank you. I’d be happy to use it if they paid me a “convenience fee” for not making them process 20 checks every month.
That sounds like a nightmare for bookkeeping… I’m not sure if it’s genius, evil, or both.
How did you keep track of which checks were cashed, and which ones were pending???
Our bank had a really nice web interface for that. We could just go to the website and see all of the checks, the amounts, and the dates they were cashed, and we weren’t using checks for any other purpose, so there wasn’t anything else diluting the list. They could have made it a hassle for us by selectively “losing” some occasionally, I suppose, but they never did.
The real issue is that the apartment building is charged a fee by their payment processor to use electronic payments, and they didn’t want to pay it. It is a convenience fee for the bank customer (the building) because they have to do less work cashing checks.
It’s stupid to try to pass that to people living in the building. Most personal bank accounts allow you to pay automatically with a check that’s mailed for free. Paying by check is not inconvenient for individuals, it’s only inconvenient for the person cashing all the checks.
The issue is further up the chain but it’s an issue nonetheless. Banks want to go back to physical transactions about as much as people do, so in reality they should be charging for the physical to get people to move to digital.
It’s safer, faster, and encourages more spending, just like a credit card does.
But the fees for check processing were already baked into the system before credit cards even existed, so they’re not allowed to charge extra for a check, no matter how much they want to be rid of them.
It’s ridiculously cheap to process a check online. If they’re really trying to tell me it costs them 5 dollars to process a fucking check, they’re getting completely screwed. So it’s either lying and greed or unbelievable incompetence.
Right but it saves labor in the office, and the cost of dealing with bounced checks, and the accounting is much easier when payments are made online, so the landlord ought not put the gross cost into the rent. It’s cost and savings to the landlord, likely netting out to nothing, or a savings on the online accounts.
In a small restaurant, I understand cash discount. They are gonna have to count the drawer at the end of the night either way. In an apartment building, no. That’s charging people for saving you time and effort, it’s a junk fee.
Maybe you do know, but in case you don’t, the “convenience fee” is (usually) just the price the vendor has to pay to process a credit card transaction. Because in order to accept credit cards as payment in the first place, they have to pay the credit card network for the privilege.
Providing the exact same service to you is more expensive for them based entirely on the method you use to pay. You bet they’re going to pass that extra expense onto you. The alternative is raising their service charge to eat the cost and screwing over people who pay with check or cash. Which is what most retail stores tend to do.
Though, I agree, I’d rather they just do the fucking math and charge a rate that covers their operating expenses. It’s shouldn’t be my problem to pay their itemized expenses. Just know that if they did so, we’ll be charged the same total either way.
It’s a similar argument with tipping culture. “Oh, you have to tip, employees rely on it to make ends meet!” Sure, but why is that my problem? If the business can’t create a business model that properly pays for the expenses it needs to function, they should go out of business. Raise prices. I’ll pay the same as the tip, fine, just stop playing these frivilous smoke and mirror games with my bill.
We have a flat $5 convenience fee added on to our rent regardless of using credit card or bank transfer. Credit card gets and extra % fee on top of that.
I don’t care what the source is, if there’s a Gen [insert whatever] or Millennials might be to blame for [insert whatever] I’m already at a -10 on the trust meter right out the gate.
I didn’t try my first avocado toast until like a year ago and lemme tell ya. Seeing as how eating it somehow went back in time and made me unable to afford a house, I expected it to be a lot more magical.
Also how quickly they can invent ‘trends’ we should be fearful of simply because some middle-aged reporter watched a couple similar videos online. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go eat some tide pods before my scheduled game of knockout.
I can blame them for picking the one that is spyware for the world’s largest hostile dictatorship, you absolute concavebrain moron. Anybody who at this point doesn’t realize what TikToks intended purpose is are willfully ignorant.
150 Million Americans are giving the keys to the kingdom to a hostile militaristic dictatorship with the potential to do harm on a scale beyond anything you’ve ever seen
in return for vines but worse.
This is one of those issues where “GET MAD” is the correct response.
“GET MAD” at the proper institution/organizations/companies, not your fellow commenter, who is not even denying what you’re saying. I’m not saying you’re wrong, you’re just being a dick about it.
“Hostile militaristic dictatorship” is just the United States. There’s almost zero difference between the US and China in those regards. The only real difference is that Chinese citizens are actually being lifted out of poverty at a rate not seen at any point in history while the US is continuing to impoverish their citizens. Both of them spy on their citizens and have insanely racist cultures.
There’s no moral difference between using TikTok and Facebook.
Ji Xinping has no term limit and was unanimously reelected by the single party congress, completely unopposed. China does not select their leadership.
The USA criminalizes and punishes misconduct like massive data collection, such as the FCC fining FaceBook 5 Bn USD, but China created and operates an even more invasive and far reaching data collection scheme on their own with TikTok.
Face it, loyal dog, China is the same monster it has been for a century, just waiting to add millions more bodies to the pile.
Again, you need to take a step back. The USA has had much more aggressive and violent international policies than China. It being a democracy (which is itself arguable) does not matter.
And Snowden showed us that the USA are, again, not better than China in terms of mass surveillance.
China is a problem, but if you can’t see why the global south sees them as a balancing force rather than a threat, well, again, take a step back.
China is literally annexing it’s neighboring countries and killing multiple different ethnic minorities en masse. Not 60 years ago, not 10 years ago, right now. It’s happening right now.
Because they are a Dictatorship. They’re being ruled by an unaccountable class of people.
You know why Snowden was such a big deal? Because an arm of the US Government did something illegal by its own laws and he exposed it, leading to massive controversy and political action. Because in the USA the people have protections against that sort of thing.
The US is continuing to engage in genocide by acting as the world’s largest weapons supplier to supremacist nation-states (technically all nation-states as supremacist by definition) such as Israel. The US continues to impoverish it’s own people on top of that and murders tens of thousands of people every year through refusing to implement healthcare alone. All total, hundreds of thousands of people die every year due to poverty in the US, mostly minorities.
This is the same government that also knowingly puts poisons such as lead in our water, see any of the numerous small towns in Appalachia where water is undrinkable; Flint, MI; or Jackson, MS—the latter being a capital of a state.
Yes, the US is a dictatorship. Our elections are a farce. Any attempt at making things better through the electoral system is impossible because it was literally designed from the ground up to be a compromised system where the national oligarchy has the final say. It would take a revolution and the abolition of the US state to fix any of those long-standing problems which are built-in to the system.
As for the ethnic cleansing of minorities—Indian Reservations still exist and when measured are some of the poorest nations, states, and municipalities on the planet. They are literally designed to keep people down by keeping them poor and unhealthy. I’ve been to a lot of places, and few places are people more miserable. The neglect from the US government to fix these communities combined with the still continuing violation of treaties at the behest of US-based corporations are an ongoing genocide on a similar scale (if not distributed) as was is seen in China.
Let’s not pretend the US has any moral authority on the matter here.
I see it plenty without the media stoking it. Here on Lemmy, etc.
It’s the same dumb tribalism as always, often backed up by some real data or trends (that tend to get twisted)
No, not every “boomer” is spoiled and ruining America, and 75% of the people you call boomers aren’t even boomers. Not every Gen Z is lazy and entitled and scrolling phones all day. Etc.
Buddy I’m not here to convince you of anything. If you wanna believe not showing up to vote is just as bad as making a conscious decision and the effort to vote for these procorporate trash ghouls in the Senate that’s your choice. As for me: I choose to say Boomers are responsible for who they vote for and who they vote for is trash, so they are trash.
the way they alienate gen z as being “conditioned” to like social feedback on ticktok is really denigrating to me. As if every other generation was not conditioned to believe certain social taboos, mores and practices. Same old “young kids don’t know shit” rhetoric. Which viewers at home will just ingest w/o any sort of critical thought process.
I think you missed the time and taxpayer money that has already been spent on persecuting Dr. Caitlin Bernard for performing a legal abortion on a raped 10-year-old. Rokita has been doing witch hunts for a while now.
Hello fellow Hoosier, I emailed our school superintendent last year when the stupid book banning bill thing was proposed, and then passed. I wanted to know if there would be a way to tell if people requested books to be banned, so I could go out and buy them for my kid to read. (because obviously they must be read worthy)
I followed up with him recently since the bill had passed. He did, at least, inform me that no ban requests have been made. So at least in our school there wasn’t some crazy people waiting to start complaining and getting books removed. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way to search for banned books though which I would like to see as an option.
Well that’s definitely encouraging. I’m from a small town (my graduating class was less than 60 people), but I haven’t heard about any book bans here either.
I actually filled out their form, with my info but didn’t meme them. I wrote out a paragraph or so message about how disingenuous the GOP has been. That this Grandstanding and fear tactics are what has been “dividing” people and that his webpage/form, along with other bills they continue to introduce are the problem. I also reminded him that children aren’t racist, homophobic, (should have included religious) until adults teach them these things.
I’m sure my message will get lost in the memes but it made me feel better.
It can’t be that employee wages haven’t kept pace, that more Americans feel financially unstable than ever, all of this while companies across every vertical have posted record breaking profits and their c-suite bringing home eye watering multi million dollar compensation packages. It must be the line managers do not understand how to manage and keep our serfs engaged!
As a middle manager with a hybrid staff… it could be both. I’m basically trusting my team to get their shit done without me checking over their virtual shoulders, but is that the best way? No idea. I’m just flying by the seat of my pants. My team has very high engagement levels, so I think my approach is working; but I also have a very experienced team and don’t think my approach would be successful for managing fresh-outs virtually.
I imagine it is a one bad apple ruins the bunch scenario. So long as everyone it’s working then it’s good, but as soon as you eventually get a bad employee trying too get away with doing nothing it will kill morale if not addressed immediately
I’d also expect that one way to buy time is to acknowledge achievements. People like being acknowledged and it won’t stop demoralization from the lazy but it will make it so people understand that you at least see the difference between the two types. Industrial society alienates us from our labor. Few jobs allow us to bask in the pride in what we’ve done at the end of it, so it’s important to acknowledge that it is being done
Every person is “useless” when things go well or everyone else can fill in (which is most of the time). The point of a manager is handling the snags and keeping it out of others’ hair so they can focus on their tasks.
You only appreciate it when you actually know what good management looks like. It sucks how rare it is, though, I’ll give you that. About as rare as having parents that know how to parent and instruct without the authoritative cliches. (or hopefully that situation has improved by now but I dunno…)
I’m a solid manager. I started my current job about 5 months ago. I don’t think the staff I inherited had ever worked under anyone halfway decent. Three months in I was still reassuring my team that I wasn’t trying to replace them, I was only hiring people because we were grossly understaffed. Two months later we’re fully staffed, no one has been fired, and they finally trust me.
It’s fucking tragic how poorly most managers do their jobs.
Yeah, you don’t value management until you work a job that requires a lot of cooperation and management isn’t managing enough.
Good management holds your coworkers accountable so their fuck ups don’t become your problem. Good management coordinates efforts. Good management sets goals and expectations so you aren’t wasting half your time on something that only kinda matters until you need the important thing that takes a month immediately. Good management understands the workers and can emphasize their strengths to the task at hand and cover their weaknesses. Good management sends ideas up the chain when needed and can remove obstacles from your path.
And when you’re doing a multi year project that involves several departments, insufficient management is frustrating as fuck.
It’s good and fine for labor and management to conflict. But there’s a reason worker owned coops hire managers.
yeah it could be both but I would counter that without the other things no level of management will increase employee engagement, and manager while part of the engagement formula they are not the largest and can’t be effective in this area until the other layers are met. Call it a corporate Maslow’s hierarchy of needs where managers are near the top with like ping pong and pizza parties at the top.
I sort if see it the same those that complain about how employee loyalty no longer exists but have no problems laying off half their staff before they ask the CEO to take a pay cut, or barely keep pace with inflation for their highest performers.
In my case, I was fully remote for 2 years of COVID and have been hybrid ever since. We started at three days in when we returned to work and are now down to one day in a week.
If anything, my team has gotten more productive, not less.
Do I feel disengaged sometimes? Sure, but my employer treats me like gold and I have all the freedom I need as long as I do good work, respond quickly when needed, and honor my deadlines.
I was recently asked to mentor someone on another team, but being as though i haven’t had a raise in over 2 yrs and coworkers I relied on are laid off I declined that ‘opportunity’. I would mentor another teammate because it helps me individually, but ill be damned if i stick my neck out for the company who is making record profits quietly shedding good talent and hiring new cheaper replacements.
The middle men, so to speak. But not really the same, though in the same dodge the issue situation. The biggest difference being Reagan sent weapons illegally via a known declared enemy.
Honestly, Ted Cruz stood before a podium this week and give a speech against the insanity of adding more Razorwire, mentioning that is has done nothing to prevent growing immigration numbers since they started putting it up. Fuck that guy, for real, but on this particular issue he is on our side.
Saudi Arabia and the Arab world could ban the sale of oil and see biden prostrate, nobody gives a fuck about them because you can’t make money from them and being a religious minority (in the west at-least) is the icing on the cake, not to say they care about their religious brothers, it was never a reason for anything other than oppression of people they don’t like.
Saudi Arabia and the Arab world could ban the sale of oil and see biden prostrate
Like I said above, most Middle Eastern governments who aren't aligned with Iran have been tamed by the US using both carrots and sticks. Saudi Arabia wants their weapons, Egypt wants its aid, etc etc.
It's Western democracies that tamed Middle Eastern countries to make sure they're always on Israel's side, or at least effectively neutral. You can see it from Saudi Arabia's weapons and war in Yemen to Egypt's aid; the US spends a lot of money and political capital to buy the Middle East's cooperation in Israel's Apartheid/genocide project. And if that wasn't enough, they deployed strike carriers to make sure nobody intervenes militarily.
I'm thinking these days. The problem with democracy is that it can't be forced even if it were the correct thing to do in the pragmatic sense. If you force it, it's not democracy.
That was the salary back when he was complaining which it appears would have been sometime in or around 2000.
It’s $253,361 now.
As the excerpt from the article states, the 173,600 would be over $300,000 today. So, you should really feel bad for the Supreme Court justices. Their salary raises haven’t kept up with inflation.
Maybe if the dumb fucks worked towards supporting the majority of the populous and not just the ones making more than 30 million a year and we’d have affordable living situations.
That’s a good point, they should get more pay. You’d expect them to be among the highest paid government workers. Given that DC is a high cost of living city and software engineers at other high cost of living cities can make that and lawyers significantly more, I’d agree they are overdue for a significant raise.
That doesn’t excuse the corruption, and I doubt it would be enough to stop him crying poverty
I disagree that they should be paid a lot. They’re supposed to be public servants with the nation’s well-being at the forefront of their minds, not people who can get comfortable with living lavishly and exploit their positions to leverage money out of others. I think they and the legislature should be paid no more than the lowest salaried government employees. Let them lead by example.
Chief Justice is one of the highest offices in US government and can hugely affect the lives and future of all citizens. We need to find some way to encourage appointment on merit rather than political hacks, and paying more would mean it’s not as much a sacrifice for the appointee
On the one hand I found data showing $285k pay for an associate justice, which is significantly higher than posted here, but in the other hand I know a bunch of software engineers who earn that much without leading the country. It may come down to where you live. I live in a high cost of living area where this really doesn’t seem like all that much: high income sure but not national leadership high. Then it comes down to us expecting someone to serve this role for life, while being able to live a life commensurate with national leadership in the DC area. Yes we should pay more
However in this case everything I read about Clarence Thomas shows he wouldn’t be happy with anything short of true wealth. He’s not appropriate for the job no matter what we could pay, since he’d always be corruptible by money (and yes I’m annoyed that I have to go to bribery training and sign that I will lose my job if I accept more than $60 value yet this clown claims that there’s no reason he can’t accept hundreds of thousands of dollars? Did we make the mistake of assuming ethical behavior rather than writing it down again)
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