The real mystery is how did they get Kevin Sorbo to play Hercules, I mean surely a religious fanatic like him is horrified knowing that he played a pagan God
Because christians never really stopped worshipping that golden calf. They all went along with Moses because he got super pissed, but behind his back they were all “that golden calf though…”
Indeed, I’m not a Christian but I have a close Catholic friend of mine, and although I no longer believe in supernatural, I wish I did but can only Chase rainbows so long until you realize there’s no gold, but one thing we definitely see eye to eye on is that we want to kick anyone who preaches Prosperity Gospel in the goddamn teeth, and then the dick, and then the teeth again, and then kick their ass until their head falls off then kick the head and then kick the ass again because I don’t think it’s learned it’s lesson
And the same is likely true with virtually every other large denomination and probably a lot of small ones too, because those who preach morality the loudest are often the most hypocritical.
The point of any church is to centralize wealth and power. Otherwise why bother with the bureaucracy, the buildings, and the mandatory meetings?
The problem with centralizing wealth and power is that it attracts people who prioritize wealth and power. The problem compounds itself by making it ridiculously easy for basically any man (men, usually and specifically) to become leaders with basically no qualifications necessary other than claims of faith and a little bit of charisma.
People who wish to abuse power (e.g. for personal sexual satisfaction) will seek institutions that already have power that readily and easily allow it to be abused. Churches have always been their perfect home, always ready and willing to accept new abusers into their flock.
Religion and piety are the easiest things to lie about. No qualifications necessary! In fact, you can work your way all the way to the top of any religion and count on it to protect your abuse at every step of the way because publicly acknowledging that abuse happens is really bad for any religion or religious institution.
Once you get higher into the organization you’ll learn about other bad things the church and its people have done and be able to use that knowledge to blackmail others and maybe even hold the entire institution hostage! It’s how big, rich church leaders are made!
I don’t know what the solution is but I can say that so far the best defense against sexual abuse in general is to avoid church and religious institutions.
Although framed as if religion (and a certain one in particular) were a central part of this case, the perpetrator abused his own daughter. Being at one point a bishop in the Church offered no additional power or opportunities that being a parent didn't already afford him. The problem is the state of Idaho has a clergy-penitent privilege law. If that law didn't exist, there would have been no problem with a Latter-day Saint bishop testifying against the abuser.
Go ride supply side Jesus a little harder, and evaporate your critical thinking skills in favor of authoritarian fairtales. Talk about being an idiot, as if those same religious institutions did not lobby for the privilege to not disclose, but sure this isn’t because of religions being able to lobby for laws and buy politicians, sure bud.
The problem is the state of Idaho has a clergy-penitent privilege law.
…Which Mormon leadership strongly pushes to keep. Mormons represent a significant bloc of power in Utah (duh), Idaho, and Arizona. State lawmakers haven’t exempted sexual abuse from priest-penitent privilege in part because the Mormon profphiet has such a strong interest in keep it. They know that the church as a whole would be liable if the privilege didn’t exist, because the policy is to generally cover up sexual crimes because knowledge of those crimes hurts the reputation of the Mormon church. It’s all a PR move; they want to keep the image clean, and that means covering up all the dirty, nasty bits instead of exposing them.
These laws exist in nearly every state. Even California has a similar law, and you could hardly say that the Church has a significant influence on politics there.
Most states have religious interests that have lobbied hard to prevent their clergy from having to report sexual abuse to cops, yes. Most state legislatures bow to those interests, rather than really trying to protect people from sexual abuse.
These laws are mostly from the early 19th century. It wasn't necessary for religious interests to lobby back then because religion was ubiquitous at the time. And even if the laws were more recent, there is nothing inherently immoral or unethical about lobbying for legislation.
There everything immoral and unethical in lobbying for legislation that protects abusers or shields them from consequences. Churches should stay the fuck out of lawmaking.
With that logic, we would have to have a "guilty until proven innocent" judicial system with vigilante justice against people accused of child abuse because our whole system is designed to be (relatively) fair to people accused of committing crimes.
Based on your other comments in this thread, it’s mighty bold of you to be using the word ‘logic’. Why do you insist on putting words in people’s mouths - I’m definitely not advocating for vigilante justice, or ‘guilty until proven innocent’. I just want to reduce the protections offered to people who rape children. I can’t imagine why anyine would be against that, like you clearly are. You’re a bad-faith troll, or a child rapist yourself.
The problem is these protections are designed to protect all of us, no matter what crimes we are accused of committing. They include the right to no incriminate yourself (5th Amendment), the right to due process of law (5th and 14th Amendments), and protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Calling me a bad-faith troll and accusing me of raping children doesn't advance your argument, champ.
“It’s also created the paradox that under Iowa law, a 16-year-old student is old enough to consent to sex but not old enough to read about it in school,” Novack said.
I’ll be interested in finding out how Iowa’s lawyers try to pretzel themselves out of that one.
“Everybody has health insurance” is not universal health care. I have health insurance and thousands of dollars of medical debt. And it’s good insurance.
I’m sorry to hear about your situation. This article focuses more on efforts to reduce the number of uninsured people and is aware of what you’re saying about costs:
…many of the people who technically have health insurance still find it difficult to cover their share of their medical bills. Nevertheless, more people enjoy some financial protection against health care expenses than in any previous period in US history.
That’s great and I’m glad to hear it. It still isn’t universal healthcare by any means. Universal healthcare means removing profit motive from the system.
Yeah the article seems to draw the definition from this:
The United States is the only wealthy industrialized nation without universal health coverage, a crucial component to ensuring quality health care for all without financial burden that causes delay or avoidance of necessary medical care.
You are wrong. “Universal health care” has nothing to do with removing profit motive. It just means everyone has access to health care, be that through public or private (ie profit-driven) insurance.
I think you’re meaning to say “single payer” health care, which is where the government spends a portion of tax revenue to pay for health care for everyone.
There were gossips about some top branches’ kids living in EU being not exactly straight. I don’t think direct attacks would ensue, but charging each others’ children as a form of a racket? I can see it happening.
Unfortunately, I think some are more equal. Those laws are not to be applied to an acting member of elites. When they do something to fall out of favor or just seen as not important anymore, that’s when they will get accused of anything.
Not really, but kinda. Antifa is an ideology that explicitly rejects leadership, but lgbt is just a thing some people are. Some people are black, and when society treats them like shit over it sometimes they organize. Same goes for lgbt. We organize but we exist when disorganized. The mattachine society and daughters of bilitus were examples of early LGBT organization in my country.
Banning us from organizing is a way to say that if we acknowledge our existence or if anyone acknowledges that our oppression is oppression it will be punished and treated as extremist opposition to the regime.
Formal/persistent organization and people trying to be leaders are generally frowned upon in antifascist scenes. It’s partly due to the anarchist current in them, but it’s also because antifa is something you do not something you join or something you are. Someone may lead an event or something but it will reject someone becoming “a leader” instead preferring those who would be leaders be seen as people having more experience
In short your local lgbt community may have a group with a president, that’s normal. Your local antifascist community almost certainly won’t.
Well, when defined as a collective noun it does make sense, it’s largely just “a group of people that support the same thing”
an organized body of people with a particular purpose, especially a business, society, association, etc.
But I see what you’re getting at: there isn’t a head honcho for that organization (AFAIK). It’s like trying to charge the head of the hacking collective Anonymous.
I’m all for people having rights and support and stuff, but some of them love to shove it in your face and put it everywhere (like Pink during Breast Cancer Awareness Month,“slap that shit on everything!) and it gets annoying after a while, like Pride flags in video games (Skyrim, Fallout and Starfield to name a few) or having the weapons be the colors of their flag (just saw these mods for Skyrim). Yes, I don’t have to download them, but NexusMods is already a cesspool of shit quality mods that like 5 people out of the million or so that just the site will actually download.
Maybe I just get triggered when I see this stuff because I grew up in Southern New Jersey (a largely white farming town for the most part, Blacks make up a good portion as well) and my high school (about 2500 kids total) was half Puerto Rican. They would constantly chant/sing “PUERTO RICO!” through the halls, in the gym and other places. They’d also wear big, gaudy jewelry with the PR flag, paint the PR flag on their car, and then tie a small PR flag to the antenna. If you love it so much, why don’t you go back there?
I’m partially German, but you didn’t see me running though the halls screaming “Deutschland! Ich liebe dich!”, carrying around German flag necklaces, and draping my Benz in the German flag. I don’t think I’ve ever seen *any nationality do it like they do, anywhere”.
Umm no? I’m not “scared” of them, I have nothing against them. I was hanging out with a gay guy last night and one of my friends from college is trans. Neither of them make being gay/trans their entire identity though.
People love to downvote when you say anything against a marginalized group. No one is allowed to have their own opinions anymore.
Oh yeah, totally 🙄 That’s why I’m friends with people from multiple different races and cultures. Anytime you say you find something annoying there’s cries of “homophobe!”, “xenophobe!”, or “racist!”.
Also, you dumb fuck,Puerto Rican isn’t a race, it’s an ethnicity.
This weird feeling when another group is around and shining is an underlying cause of xenophobia. It’s natural for some people to strive to belong to a group, and it’s natural to be cautious of a group you don’t belong to because the animal part of your brain can take the group as a threat, and rightfully so in some cases.
In other cases, when there’s nothing threatening about a group, that animal part should be kept at bay by conscious effort, by understanding both the group and its pain and the origin of your feelings. Many people don’t know how to do this, and this is the biggest problem. Especially when instead of teaching how to build bridges, instead of learning new things about the other, people just go into defense mode. I’m so devastated to observe this everywhere now.
That said, LGBTQ people still have to fight for their rights, because lots of people still get murdered even in the US and that’s unacceptable. ‘Shoving it in your face’? I personally would love to stop it once people finally get accustomed to the idea being different doesn’t mean being a threat and we stop being bullied and harassed and murdered every frickin day.
I just feel that it’s a bit much. Outside of Puerto Ricans, I don’t think I’ve ever seen another group (aside from the crackpot Republicans, but that’s not your average American) that has so much pride for their heritage that they need to deck themselves out in it and plaster it on everything they own. I just moved to Miami and there’s a massive Cuban population down here, I don’t see anyone decked out in the Cuban flag or anything close to that.
As for the “alt groups” (the acronym just keeps getting longer) there’s a difference between fighting for your rights and just plastering your flag everywhere and essentially shouting “respect me because I’m different!” to everyone. As an example, do people love the guy or girl that makes Marijuana legalization their identity? The ones that wear “legalize it!” Tshirts, wear socks and hats with pot leaves on it, and it’s all they ever talk about? No, most people (including myself, a heavy smoker for about 2 decades) find them annoying as fuck.
You can fight for something and promote it without making it your entire identity.
I’m foreign, so I googled Puerto Ricans and man do those guys have a rich history and culture. Man they have so much to offer the world, and queer folks too, they all have so many things to tell if you just ask, so many out-of-the-box things I bet you’ve never thought about. You clearly don’t want to ask though, so okay.
The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing had a 2022-2023 budget of $672 million dollars. This does not include EMT and police services. It's just what they earmark for homelessness.
That's roughly $86,000 per person they spend on getting them housing, and still failing at it. The average rent for an apartment in SF is $3500 a month, or $42,000 per year. They're spending twice as much as they would if they just got apartments for people.
Housing is just one aspect. Food, medicine, paying for employees (social workers, security, medical staff) etc. But even if say 75% of that was for housing it’s not easy to just say rent them apartments; first off not enough apartment buildings are willing to take them in. It’s difficult to even find cheap motels that will work with cities to temporarily house the homeless even though it’s guaranteed money. Cities are looking at building shelters but then it’s NIMBY time. Without dedicated facilities with mental health, addiction, etc treatment which the US doesn’t have homelessness will be a forever problem.
Two recommendations from me: Podcast limited series According to Need, which is about homelessness in the Bay Area. Book The End of Policing, has a great chapter on homelessness and costs (though I endorse the whole book).
Most long-term homeless people can’t just be given free apartments - they have serious, often untreatable problems that would make such a solution unsustainable.
A quick google shows that most homelessness advocacy groups can cite numerous studies that show housing-first solutions are not only more effective, but also cheaper.
Look up the groups behind projects like these and you’re sure to find documentation for their effectiveness. I’d much rather fund these than shelters where nobody feels safe.
Shut the fuck up, there are so many empty, insured buildings rotting away or even sitting in great condition but if we had to build new ones that CAN be done cheaply. No matter how bad they are, their problems would undoubtedly be VASTLY improved by the roof over their heads, and it could be sustained easily by the government taxing the rich even obscenely slightly. But no, instead we pass that burden onto the middle class so they get brainwashed into hating the poor too. Or stigmatizing, looking down on them, writing them all off as lesser beings who don’t deserve a shred of hope. But realistically? Even if you have a million dollars today you could end up like them tomorrow. I remember somebody new starting at pizza hut who had just lost his house and was selling his Ferrari- it can happen to you. So many people are right around the corner from being homeless themselves and don’t know it. Don’t ever let anybody downplay that reality.
I have multiple layers of safety nets between me and long-term homelessness. These include my own personal resources, my family and friends, and access to government assistance. (My family has been on government assistance in the past; we struggled but we were housed and fed.) I can only see myself exhausting (or failing to utilize) all these safety nets if I develop severe addiction or mental illness, and in fact most long-term homeless people do have addictions or mental illnesses.
What do you think happens when someone with out-of-control addiction or mental illness is given a place to live? In the absence of strictly enforced rules (and such rules are one reason many long-term homeless people don’t want to be in shelters) that place will soon be a wrecked crime scene. No matter how many empty buildings there are, almost no one would want that happening to a building he owns, or to a building near where he lives. This is why San Francisco (and many other cities) spend so much per homeless person without success - if simply giving them a place to live worked, cities would have more money and fewer homeless people.
You make it sound like homeless people or drug addicts are animals- learn some fucking empathy, please. Also none of this would be a issue if we had universal healthcare, too. They don’t do either of these things or provide meaningful support to the lower class at all, really because then the police would be even more redundant and people would have additional opportunities to organize. It’s that simple.
Ok putting all this aside for a moment. If you just give someone a place to live you solve many immediate problems. The social worker knows where they are, the food stamps can be delivered right there, you get them out of the elements, any type of medication and you know where it is supposed to go, sanitation is also taken care of if nothing else they can shower.
So right it isn’t an end all be all solution. You can easily have a whole bunch of underlying issues my point is you already got them housed you rid them of a whole mess of problems at once.
Just a fyi. I had a month from hell once and ended up homeless. It was amazing how fast I lost everything. Ended up living in my car until I could I could rebuild. The thing I wanted the most was a clean shower and a change of clothing.
What a fucking lie. They still need housing regardless of their problems so you need to learn to accept them as they are and let them have a roof over their head. Give them a small house and isolate them from others that way if they’re such a problem.
This comment is insane. You realize that a home / apartment needs to be maintained right? It’s not a magical cave that functions on its own. There’s plumbing, there’s electrical, sewage, a person suffering from mental issues cannot be safely just put into a building and left to their own devices.
I’m all for helping the homeless but just saying give them a free apartment is bonkers and completely misses the point why a lot of people are homeless.
It’s also why things will never change. You have the right who say fuck em, let them pull themselves up by the bootstraps and then you have lefties calling for free apartments… Both solutions are insane and basically assure we’ll never come to an agreement and people will continue to suffer.
It would be insane to your classist bigoted NIMBY ass, but that’s the reason why no one on the left listens to worthless Karens like you anymore.
Being a drug addict or severely mentally ill doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t have a house. Actually, the opposite: people like that need to just be given housing more than a normal person because they can’t take care of themselves, and that means even if they destroy the house, they should have it.
Drug addicts and mentally ill people have rights.
They have rights, and there’s nothing you can do to change that fact. Nothing.
And that means they have the right to housing just like the rest of us do.
You’ll have to live among them whether you want to or not, and you best get over it.
Why is “give people houses” insane? Other countries have done it and virtually eradicated homelessness, Cities and organizations here in the US have tried it. In most cases, even the ones with “serious mental illnesses” are able to seek treatment and manage their illnesses FAR better when they have a stable platform to build upon - meaning a house and food, which eliminates the rather more pressing needs of “I need to figure out where to pitch a tent so the police don’t drag me in” and “I need to eat some time this week or I’ll starve to death” and allows you to start saying “I really want to talk to someone about this PTSD and the drug addiction I developed because of it” or “that social worker was right, I should see about getting on medication for my schizophrenia”. Contrary to what people love to believe, most people with severe mental illnesses DO have touch with reality, and a lot of them simply don’t have the framework necessary to start building a long-term care plan because their meds are expensive, or the meds they’re on have terrible side effects, or they simply don’t have health insurance to be diagnosed and treated properly in the first place.
As pretty much any political minority will tell you, the country constantly uses us like ping pong balls and cat toys to win elections or internal battles.
I am sick of my rights, welfare, sense of safety, and hope for the future being dangled in front of me and ripped away over and over again so billionaires and career politicians can be greedy.
So, yeah. Not interested in serving. If my country wants me to fight for it, then it should fight for me as well.
I have two sons in their early 20s and I’m scared to death one of these fascist chucklefucks decides to get us into some conflict we don’t need to be in just because he wants to prove he has BDE and reinstates the draft.
I was in the Air Force in the late 70s. Twenty years ago (roughly) I pushed both my boys into the military, because they were being fuck-ups and I didn’t know any other way at the time.
I’m thankful as all hell that they had the good sense to tell the military to get fucked when in Basic and got out.
Some people can thrive in the military for sure. I have a stepson that’s one of the hardest workers I know. He has issues with basic life skills (anxiety and stress) and taking care of things on his own but thrives in an environment with lots of discipline and order. He’s too old know but had he gotten into the military I’m sure his life would have been much better now.
But given some of the things they send the military to do recently (cough cough …Afghanistan) it seems like a waste of human life and resources. I’m glad your boys were smart enough to understand it wasn’t a good fit for them at the time and had the courage to make that decision. Hopefully it’s worked out for them.
it’s just so anachronistic that it’s still illegal anywhere. nobody deserves criminal prosecution for any drug, let alone marijuana. it should be trivial paper shuffling to fix it too, it’s not like it needs funding or infrastructure. just hit the fucking button!
I think it actually requires passing a federal bill, but I'm not honestly sure. Either way I'm with you, it should never have been made illegal and it certainly didn't still be federally illegal today...
AFAIK the DEA and drug scheduling is under the executive branch so someone like Biden should be able to have it rescheduled, but so far all we’ve gotten from him is a committee to study whether marijuana is dangerous or not as roughly half the country have already fully legalized it and probably 2/3 have it legal for medicinal purposes.
The President can’t just order DEA to unschedule it because it would very likely be a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act (the same thing that the Supreme Court said Trump violated when he tried to end DACA). Just ending the scheduling altogether with no strings attached would really need an act of Congress to be safe from being overturned by the SCOTUS.
A few months ago, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services submitted a formal recommendation to the DEA to reschedule cannabis to Schedule III. It’s now in the DEA’s hands. Schedule III means if you have a prescription, you can no longer get fired for it if you test positive and it’s recognized as having real medical value with moderate to low physical dependence. Not ideal, but complete unscheduling is something the DEA would never go along with. Rescheduling or an act of Congress are the best bets, and Biden has formally requested the DEA to do the former.
I think weed is an issue where Biden's personal life experience and age show more than just about anywhere else. He's an old devout Catholic boomer that doesn't even drink and has a son that's had a very public struggle with drug addiction. I don't think he's ever going to exactly be a champion of legalization.
It's definitely something that can be criticized, but in the grand scheme of things, given that federal prosecution of marijuana "crimes" are basically non-existent nowadays anyway, it's a pretty small matter for me. You are right though that he has taken a step towards potentially rescheduling it, which is definitely a step in the right direction.
While people aren’t really being federally prosecuted, the ban still does have far reaching effects like not being able to cross a state border while in possession, get a federal job, or open a bank account as a dispensary (except in some circumstances). Our state department of revenue had to spend millions of dollars to build a giant vault in order to collect millions of dollars in cash from the tax revenue.
I just find it frustrating since I think there’s plenty of political will to just end this draconian prohibition nationwide relatively easily, but nobody seems willing to step up to the plate regardless of party.
nobody seems willing to step up to the plate regardless of party.
I mean, this is the exact thing I'm talking about. Things are actually happening, but it's the federal government and glaciers are speedy in comparison. The Department of Health and Human Services is, right now, doing work to fully explore rescheduling marijuana. A bill was passed recently that makes it substantially easier for researchers to study marijuana for medical purposes by reducing legal barriers.
Progress is slow, and I completely understand and agree that it's frustrating, but that doesn't mean that nothing is happening.
I think it’s more than that, because he flipped on Abortion (which led to that infamous public refusal for Communion by a crazy Southern Priest)
I think it’s a “political capital” thing. Even if it’s not a high cost, it’s just not a priority for him to spend time, effort, and favors to push it across the finish line Federally when it’s bound to happen on its own eventually.
He pardoned (almost?) everyone in jail for simple possession and ordered the DEA and DOJ not to pursue or prosecute possession. He basically “cheaper method” decriminalized it. And it kinda makes sense. What’s the next president going to do? Waste all their political capital re-igniting a drug-war that nobody wants? They’re gonna do what he did with the SALT changes. Let it ride despite the fact some people are pissed because nobody will be THAT pissed at “let it ride”. And for the same reason - they won’t really care.
Germany is finally trying to legalize it, but I have no hope that it’s gonna last past this term. “Drugs are bad mkay” seems to be what media is trying to propagate into people’s minds.
They get it all wrong. In an increasingly online society, this is a nice way to keep the parent-teacher conferences interesting.
But seriously, I don’t get the problem with sex work. It’s not like that’s in any way shape or form relevant for her teaching capabilities. Sex does not become immoral just because you point a camera at it and all these people had to have sex to have children in the first place. Where’s the outrage about children living with their parents? These monsters have sex with each other! Some even while the children are at home!
Well I personally think the real issue here is teachers graduating with too much debt and the fact that most teachers are forced to have some kind of second job in order to pay their debt, bills, & rent \ mortgage.
Stop trying to address the root cause of thie actual issue and humanizing these people. You need to act performativly OUTRAGED and have a moral panic fueled by your repressed sexuality!!1!
(/s)
Meanwhile, business continues as normal in religious schools where hundreds of thousands of American children learn under actual pedophiles. That, however, is ok because getting fondled or raped by a priest has an association with the magic sky guy.
I agree with you and teachers have been long underpaid, but also I think this is symptomatic of the middle-class squeeze that has been in play for a long time. The wealth consolidation, out of control costs for higher education, and inflation is strangling the middle class and the poor, IMO starting to strangle the economy, and stories like this are the blood squeezing out around the fingers as the grip continues to tighten.
The teaching community (as an institution)has some pretty specific thoughts on how to maintain the parent/student relationship and it involves maintaining some kind of curated image to their students.
One time, when I was maybe 25, I saw a gaggle of good looking women at a pub about the same age as me, and then they came over and asked how I had liked the conference. “conference?”
There had been a teacher conference and a large group went for drinks later and assumed I was also a teacher. I lied and joined the group.
We ended up going to a nightclub later, and one teacher saw that a few of their students had managed to get into the club, and they LOST IT. Not upset at the kids, but they were captured by abstract horror at the thought of their student seeing THEM at the club.
I pushed on it a little bit, like “shouldn’t they be the ones worried about seeing you?”
And like, the whole group thought I had lost my mind. If COURSE the students couldn’t see us there, how would they ever respect us if they understood us as humans with our own lives? The teacher/student relationship would evaporate. Anarchy. The response to my question was immediate and unanimous.
So… I gotta say… I don’t really get it… But there is a culture and mindset within the teaching community that is extremely foreign to me. And, based on my personal experience, I suspect that suspending OF teachers is probably the popular response within the greater teaching community as a whole. I’d be REALLY curious if there is any data that disproves my hypothesis.
I think the idea is that a lot of teachers feel they cannot maintain a proper teacher-student relationship unless the student see them as some sort of ultimate authority on something, and seeing them as humans might put cracks in that. I don’t agree with them since most of the teachers I loved the most in school were the ones I could empathize with, but it was certainly the way a lot of my teachers seemed to believe when I was in school.
I agree. I got the impression it was something they all were taught while getting their education degrees. It reeks of policy developed on ancient and flawed pseudo-psychology
That being said, I know dealing with kids is hard. I can well remember how I thought every parent was stupid and that parenting was easy before I had kids.
I can’t say I have a better way, just that I’m suspicious ofthe current mentality.
The mindset gets embedded into teachers pretty early in their careers. I met my partner in college and was with her while she was a middle school teacher for years so I got the to see this develop in realtime. Education students need to have absolutely flawless records in order to even be eligible for hire. If they have so much as a drunk and disorderly charge on their record then they are essentially barred from teaching because the background checks are so stringent.
It largely depends on the age of students that’s in question, but you also have to remember that teachers are always at the mercy of the parents. They need to deal with a diverse range of religious, political, and educational backgrounds and try to maintain neutrality. Administration will almost always bend to a parent complaint - it’s largely just the way our education system is structured in the US.
So my wife teaches at a college / trade school, and has worked there for about 5 years. Previously she was a field engineer with a lot of experience working with the trades. She prefers to be “one of the boys” but can also play the professional role.
So at first she figured “well we are all adults here” and treated everyone as peers who were there to learn. It didn’t take long for her to be frustrated and burned out. She told me it’s too hard emotionally to think of the students as people, much like how livestock cannot be pets (we have a farm, lol).
There’s an endless stream of them and some are good, some are bad, some don’t try and some give it their best but don’t have what it takes. Some ask her if she’s on Tinder or have an Onlyfans… Ick. You can’t get them all through the course and you can’t develop relationships with them or their stress and emotions will rub off on you.
So she started putting up this firm barrier where she is the teacher and they are the students. Changed her style of dress from business casual to “unapproachable career woman”, puts on that teacher attitude, and is enjoying her life a lot more.
However it results in that odd behaviour mentioned above. If we go out to a casual pub to eat pub food and drink beer, when one of her students walks in the door she’s practically hiding under the table. “They can’t see me like this! I don’t have my makeup on, I’m wearing jeans, I’m drinking beer from a can! They have to think of me as a teacher, not an ordinary person!”
I had a science teacher in highschool that I happened to bump into at a Magadog show. Turns out he was friends with the band. I smoked a joint with him that night and nothing was different on Monday morning.
We ended up going to a nightclub later, and one teacher saw that a few of their students had managed to get into the club, and they LOST IT. Not upset at the kids, but they were captured by abstract horror at the thought of their student seeing THEM at the club.
In highschool, I worked at Sam’s Club as a cashier (one of those bulk-sales places with memberships, like Costco.)
Just before school started, I had teachers come through stocking up on candy. 2-3 of them. They started acting squarely because how dare teachers shop for school supplies.
It was pretty funny, though. They had a giant flatbed filled with candy, among some other things.
The only way I can see this becoming a problem is if the kids can’t focus in her classes because they know she has an OnlyFans account. But kids have imagined fucking their teachers since I am sure teachers have existed, so it would just be an extension of that and she probably would have strategies to deal with it.
It should be legal, but should not be glamorized. If you don’t understand the latter half, it’s because you don’t know sex workers and probably base your idea of the profession around a few popular outliers.
The vast majority of sex workers hate their jobs and encourage everyone to steer clear of the profession.
I think you misunderstood. There certainly are problems with sex work. Woman being forced into it and living under terrible conditions for example is a big problem with the industry. But this post is about the outrage of other people. What I certainly don’t get is the problem people see in others doing sex work voluntarily. There is nothing morally wrong with having an OnlyFans account or doing any other type of sex work if you chose too. It is just as valid a choice as any other type of work. We should just make sure the conditions aren’t abusive.
Damn who could've predicted that the price of even basic groceries skyrocketing up while wages stay stagnant (again) would discourage people from buying more things. It's almost like they don't have the money ...
My point being those who haven't seen an inflation matching salary increases, which applies to a lot of people, are going to be hit hard by the large average increases in grocery prices regardless of if some happen to go down.
We’re talking about what is happening now. Pointing out something that always happens in an argument thats trying to explain current issues doesn’t make much sense.
And I'm arguing this is what's happening right now, even if it's been happening before.
Wages have risen, but that's not even close to being for everyone, whereas almost everyone has felt the increase in grocery costs (even if some stuff fell this year)
There's a reason food bank use is still continuing to increase, because more and more people are struggling to even afford groceries.
There’s a reason food bank use is still continuing to increase, because more and more people are struggling to even afford groceries.
True, there is a reason for this. But that doesn’t mean anything that can explain it is the truth.
And the claim that it is because wages are stagnant and prices are rising is not the explanation, because wages are now out pacing inflation, and it’s just starting to ramp up now, so it’s more complicated.
For people in the lower income bands that buy at Target it’s Food inflation that counts, not the general inflation figure that’s calculated using a basket of goods and services with many things which are beyond the purchasing power of such people.
The personal inflation for such people is almost certainly higher than their wage growth.
But food inflation is at around the same level as overall inflation, so I imagine it’s close if not the same. Do you have the numbers to back this claim up or is it just gut?
You are correct that Food Inflation is at the same level as the broad Inflation right now.
However last year when inflation peaked, Food inflation was 10.4% Y-on-Y (source, see 3rd chart) whilst broad inflation was 6.5% (source).
Meanwhile wage growth was at around the 6% mark (source) so below even broad inflation.
Looking at the graphs in all 3 sources, the higher than inflation average wage increase at the moment (even if it was evenly distributed across all income ranges, which in the present day US it is almost never the case) isn’t enough to compensate the already baked-in higher food prices due to the food inflation last year and the first quartile of this year.
Given that when people get overextended they will first draw down on any savings they have and cut down on non-essentials, and the problems that Target now pointed out didn’t just start today, it makes some sense that what they’re seeing is the reflection of an accumulation the effects from above wage growth inflation from April 2021 to early this year which was worse for Food during most of that period, significantly so at its peak.
Yes but we are just seeing people cut back now, when wage growth is now outpacing inflation. The top level comment made the claim that wages are stagnant. I corrected that by pointing out the facts and that it’s more complicated…and then you went on yo explain how it’s significantly more complicated.
And why put in all of this effort to cite your other sources, and then just claim that the poor are being screwed by wage growth, when low wage workers saw the largest wage increases coming out the pandemic? I can’t find the stats for right now which groups are seeing most robust growth.
He proved me correct by showing that wage growth is now beating out inflation, and that it’s more complicated than the top level comment alluded to with their false claims that wages are stagnant. I’m not sure what you think about my point is wrong.
It also likely reveals that for many of these managers, their role as micromanagers is completely unnecessary. So they have an identity crisis, unable to justify their position.
My department has transitioned to WFH and it’s been wonderful. Every single employee much prefers it and my boss notes that productivity has increased while “issues” have subsided. That’s what you want to see.
Now that I’m doing WFH, I will forever seek a job that enables me to do this at least 75% of the time.
I mean, I don’t disagree with the principle (haven’t read it to see if it’s actually feasible though).
Either a homeless person suffering from addiction and mental health issues seeks help, and gets better, or they can’t get better and go to prison where they are sheltered and fed and kept off the streets where they probably would die in a few years anyways, or commit a crime that may harm someone and go to prison anyways?
It depends if the state is willing to pay for that help, because if not it’s just a law to shuttle everyone into prison.
Federal courts have already ruled that you can’t throw people in jail for being homeless, so I don’t see that happening. The headline mentions treatment which doesn’t have to be in-patient necessarily.
I’m definitely on the fence here as I’m no fan of authoritarianism, but on the other hand I’m no fan of homeless meth addicts living in a clapped out RV on the side of the road, stealing catalytic converters by night and standing in the road shouting at cars by day. Something has to give here as people like this have been taking advantage of this messy situation.
Honestly disgusting how the media overlooks this. No idea what these children have ever done. Irrespective of what side you support this is genocide and this should not be tolerated.
Children didn’t vote for the Nazis in the 1930s either but they still died when we bombed German cities. Children die in wars, it’s an unfortunate fact, and Hamas just declared war on their neighbours.
There’s a huge difference between an official declaration of war and warning civilians and sneaking in in early morning and killing them in their beds isn’t there?
I’m sorry you’re too dumb to understand the connection between advertising and the downfall of journalism. It’s pretty well reported but probably not in the playground circles you’re used to.
It used to be that newsrooms operated at a loss because news was seen as a valuable service for the people. Now they have to turn a profit. That means lower budgets, not pissing off advertisers, and peddling sensationalist bullshit designed to rile people up so they engage more.
I’ve linked a decline in the overall quality of news, especially in the US over the last few decades, to capitalism. As for the rest of your post, you’ve shown a few times now that you lack maturity. If you’re not an edge lord teen then I feel bad for you.
Who consumes “overall news”? I use the national news service of my capitalist home country for real investigative stuff and ad-paid for-profit shitnews for the more entertaining ones.
Of course you are not. It must hurt when your emotional investment into an intrinsically violent ideology is logically questioned. Time helps my friend.
Newsrooms were not operated at a loss. Newsrooms and the business side rarely interacted so as to keep up the appearance of journalistic integrity. That is what degraded in the 80s/90s when media companies became focused on profit rather than the service they provide
This was the top story on NPR’s up first podcast today. They didn’t exactly blame Isreal directly, but they also didnt defend Israel and suggest this is somehow justified. They stuck pretty close to here is what is happening on the ground, here’s voices of those affected, this is a humanitarian tragedy and will only get worse. They mentioned a woman in Gaza rationing milk for her baby due to the food shortage, that stuck with me. So I guess #notallmedia.
The coverage on the NYT The Daily podcast was spot on what I would expect from the outlet that cheared us into invading Iraq. Trash podcast, I don’t know why I’m still subscribed. Should have dumped it after they spent a whole episode making a martyr out of the praying football coach.
NPR’s coverage has been very good so far. They are trying their best to remain impartial in a difficult situation where there is a humanitarian crisis. I think it’s the right thing to do. The media doesn’t need to point fingers at Israel when they can just report the facts and people can see where the blame lies.
I’ll second this. Every time they mention the Israeli casualty toll, they mention the Palestinian right at the same time.
While interviewing someone about Israeli response, they took the time to raise the question about plans for Palestinian civilians (unfortunately the answer was “we must destroy Hamas”, clearly indicating the civilians dying is perfectly fine by him).
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