A Soviet Russia joke: A Russian man was accosted by KGB goons and had his expensive watch stolen by them. After the KGB had left, the unfortunate man then cried out loudly, “The Swiss stole my Russian watch!”. A bystander heard this and retorted, “You meant the Russians stole your Swiss watch”. The man then replied, “Yes, but you said it!”
The Muscovites are not stupid. They are merely beaten down so hard and so long that they know to feign ignorance.
we know they are all cowards and they have a great historical excuse that makes funny jokes.. their army rapes babies to death.. they are going to learn a lesson in their quiet little apartments about shrugging their shoulders..
Yeah I’m not a huge fan of lumping everyone in the same bucket just because they all happened to have been born within the same lines on a map.
I’m sure there are some goose stepping citizens, some who hate the leadership with a passion and those who just want to get on with their lives and pay their bills.
Sadly armed resistance isn’t an easy thing to effectively get off the ground, especially in an authoritarian nation today. So the fact that there isn’t some wildly ambitious revolution ongoing, isn’t an indication that every resident is in agreement with the decisions their self appointed leaders are making.
Yeah I’m not a huge fan of lumping everyone in the same bucket just because they all happened to have been born within the same lines on a map.
I’m sure there are some goose stepping citizens, some who hate the leadership with a passion and those who just want to get on with their lives and pay their bills.
Sadly armed resistance isn’t an easy thing to effectively get off the ground, especially in an authoritarian nation today. So the fact that there isn’t some wildly ambitious revolution ongoing, isn’t an indication that every resident is in agreement with the decisions their self appointed leaders are making.
As with China or really any country including my own, I wish the best for the citizenry of Russia but am appalled by what their leaders are doing to the world. It’s not going to end well, is it?
I dunno, if they were just afraid of speaking out, why even talk to the media? Though I can certainly imagine that many of the smarter people knew better than to talk, leaving only those with chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome to get interviewed.
The idiots probably believe the propaganda. Hell, we’ve scene over the last few years how prepared people are to believe someone who is charismatic even if they’re full of crap. Or just very loud.
Someone has to pay. Whether that is distributed to many or a few, a lot of people lose a little or a few people lose a lot. Someone has to lose something for someone else to gain it in this scenario.
Ok, how about people with more money they could possibly spend multiple lifetimes??? How about we tax billionaires so everyday citizens can have a decent education without being indebted for the rest of their god damn lives!?
You need better sources before arriving at a conclusion on this one. This is a topic that has been discussed at great lengths by people from nonprofits and activist organizations on many podcasts. I’m sure their info exists in written form if you look for it.
The money came from banks and went to the colleges via the students. If you take the money from the colleges, they will be "hurt." They will lose something they had before. If you take it from the banks, the same. If you pay it from government coffers, then the government has less to spend elsewhere. If you raise taxes, then the money is reaped from whomever has their taxes raised. If you print the money, then everyone pays a little through inflation.
Someone gets hurt. I already said the hurt could be distributed. It could also be levied on people with vast resources who would notice it the least.
Can you summarize the podcasts and writings that suggest no one loses money when a loan is forgiven?
Separately, why is a clear statement of fact controversial? You don't have to believe that loan forgiveness hurts no one to think it's a good policy to put in place. So why the weird reaction?
I understand your point but there are many other things that factors at play besides where the loans originated. For example interest rates are appalling on many of these loans. These are arbitrary factors that don’t hurt the lenders. They can still make a profit.
If you pay it from government coffers, then the government has less to spend elsewhere.
Not true in the US (and a few other countries). The US has economic sovereignty. This means that the federal government primarily owes it’s debt to itself, and only a very small percentage is owed to other countries. The fed also relies on a fiat currency, meaning that money has value because the federal government says it does. These 2 facts mean that the only limit to US spending is the amount of labor and resources available to the government at any given moment (please note that this is not true for state/local government). Haven’t you ever wondered why we have unlimited funds for the military but it’s austerity for everything else? It’s because conservatives in government want to hide these facts to continue pushing their agenda.
No one is suggesting the colleges lose the money. They already got it. So what does their gouging have to do with it? Even if they had to pay off the loans, it would hurt them. Maybe they deserve to be hurt, but giving back money you thought was yours still hurts anyway.
Everything. The point you seem to be missing is that college doesn’t actually cost as much as U.S. institutions are charging. They’re robbing people blind, and that needs to stop.
Because Reagan opened the flood gates on raising the cost of higher education. Then the boomer generation, well known for pulling the ladder up behind themselves, saw this and ran with it. Also they aren’t the ones going to school anymore. Combine that with the general hatred for education and science republicans have and we have super expensive schools.
My last two years of college had over 10% tuition increases to pay for a new stadium…
Actually, no: it’s an investment that pays off in term of expansion of the whole economy. Literally everyone is wealthier at the end than they would’ve been for not doing it, so in net terms nobody had to pay anything.
The lengths people will go through to stop something that hurts nobody, but helps many always astounds me.
I have to credit some rando Redditor for the insight that helped me understand why these people do this. I’ll paraphrase because I can’t remember the exact prose.
Nearly all actions of Conservatives can be explained by their two implied core principles:
All policies are zero sum. For you to gain something means I am losing something.
There is a naturally occurring societal class-based hierarchy system, and you are required to stay at your level, never rising.
So the reason conservatives oppose student loan relief applies to both rules.
If student loan borrowers are having debts forgiven (they are getting something) that MUST mean the conservative is losing something.
If they had to take loans for school because they couldn’t afford to pay for it outright, then they should stay in their economic station. Forgiving these loans may allow them to advance beyond their current class, which cannot be allowed.
Which number 2 blows my mind as they constantly vote for things which benefit those well “above their station” because they think they’ll be there someday.
Or they think that the people above their station deserve those benefits–they genuinely think and support the rich getting richer is a good thing, regardless of whether they’ll see any benefit themselves. It’s the mirror image of the progressive mindset of voting to raise their own taxes to help the needy.
I don’t think it’s even that anymore. I think it’s just genuine fawning sycophancy towards their “betters.” They think privileged people deserve even more privilege by virtue of having “won,” even at their own expense. It’s sick and psychotic and completely foreign to my way of thinking, but I don’t think I’m wrong.
You are wrong though. The reason we can’t understand it is they are being manipulated. Christians in particular have made themselves vulnerable, purposefully. Just go back to your Sunday school days and if you didn’t have them listen to the TV preachers in earnest. They are the sheep, they are being led. I’m not trying to be offense it’s just the facts. Even the trumpers who are church adverse fall for similar structures. Usually satellites of the church at large. Biggest facet I can think of is the gun nuts. It’s basically religion. In the 2A they trust. The overlap of the church gives them the same structure. Making them vulnerable to manipulation.
You and me too though. We just kinda sweep it under the rug. We let our phones run our lives. We feed on dopamine hits all day everyday.
Sadly, I think its even worse than you’re describing. They think they are at that higher station now and its rule #1 that is preventing them from actualizing it. As in “I’m not experiencing a luxurious lifestyle because Group X is taking my share”.
Not really as much as I feel we think. Having read more about Authoritarian mindsets, which includes the rank and file authoritarians, not just the leadership, they’re actually happy to be reinforcing the hierarchy regardless of their position in it. They’re happy to know their place and to ensure the ranks are kept in place. It brings comfort to many people to know that their position, regardless of how awful it is, is being maintained properly.
This means that they’re entirely okay with a dictator and/or an oligarchy as long as the people on the top are “supposed” to be there.
I don’t believe conservatives are trying to argue they need to change their class. They just assume they are already the highest, and its some other group’s fault that the conservative is poor.
My friend ran into a mutual acquaintance; dude’s now a majorly homophobic, anti trans, anti lgbtq, far right, freedumb convoy supporting redneck. You know the type. He’s ranting about how social programs need to be defunded and all the gays do is take and don’t contribute. My buddy then goes “so anyway, how’ve you been?” Dude says “oh I’m great! I got laid off so now I’m on employment insurance.”
I had a coworker like that too. Would argue any Democrat proposal was communism and absolutely terrible. Then he took paid family leave for 2 months when he had a kid, came back, and said “man that was great, I went snowboarding for 2 months while wifey stayed home with the baby. See? That’s why this is bad!”
Fun fact, in the 1920s a high caste Indian man sued the US for the right to naturalize arguing that he was white. Arguing that he was verifiably genetically pure because of his caste and descendant from the Aryans.
The Supreme Court, 9 old white dudes, decided that he didn’t look white enough to be white. And so he wasn’t white, and denied him the right to naturalize.
As Voltaire said: “The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.”
The idea broadly underpins modern capitalism, and it sums up why liberal politicians (whether left or right wing) do nearly everything they do. Democratic liberals want to keep the lower classes at least somewhat happy by throwing them scraps from time to time, while Republican liberals will only ever do just enough to keep the lower classes pacified.
Almost all the quality of life in the US is at the expense of the real global poor. Even our american minimum wage workers going into debt, living paycheck to paycheck actually live a life of privilege compared to billions despite the perceived suffering.
I don’t know about the second one, that one sounds like left fan fiction, but #1 is absolutely true.
As #2 I’d put “If something bad happened to you, IE student debt, it’s your fault so you should be punished. If something bad happens to me, it’s bad luck or societies fault, therefore I need help.”
For some reason this made me way more irrationally angry than just killing Palestinians. It’s killing Palestinians and running cover for the people who killed Anne Frank and Spiegelman’s brother, and doing it all at the exact same time with no sense of shame or embarrassment but, I’m sure, a smug sense of superiority like everyone else is the monster in this
This guy better really hope that there isn’t a hell
In-Israel Israel advocacy, and American Judaism, are absolutely chock full of people who are disgusted with Netanyahu’s government and his “war,” in part because of how much he is doing to destroy Israel on the world stage and get Israelis killed for more or less no purpose, as well as the unfolding horror of the apartheid state and genocide he’s enacting in their name.
Zionist advocates and Israel advocates and Jewish advocates and human rights advocates are four sometimes overlapping but distinct categories.
I sense the morass of an ever widening pointless argument opening up beneath me.
I'll say my feeling on it and be done, and you're free to disagree: No one should be hated for where they were born, or for wanting a home or a safe place to be. Not a Palestinian, or a Russian, or an Israeli citizen, or someone who was born and grew up in Nazi Germany. If you got born in Israel and managed to penetrate through a significant haze of propaganda and groupthink to realize that what your country is doing on the world stage is a monstrous crime, what should you do?
Advocate for the destruction of your home?
Move away, never to return, renounce your citizenship and want nothing to do with your evil of a country? Yeah, maybe.
But I can also see someone who sees it as their duty to resist Netanyahu's government, tries to set their country back on the right course, advocates for the ICC, and turns out for protests against the government and gets brutalized and arrested for it. That stuff happens too. "Pro Israel" isn't really the right word for those people, no. I actually don't fully disagree with what you're saying, that in the modern world if you are "pro Israel" you're probably a piece of shit (or just totally propagandized / misinformed about what's actually going on, which there's a lot of also). So maybe I shouldn't have phrased it in those terms. But definitely, I think there is a type of Israeli person who is trying to support their home, the only place they've ever known to live, by resisting the Netanyahu government, and is ashamed of Israel but not like "against" them in the sense of, I hate my home and all the people here. You can love the town you grew up in, you can have friends and allies (hopefully, ones who are also horrified by the death and destruction in Gaza) there. You can be "pro" that part of it while still hoping that Netanyahu somehow gets what's coming for him, soon, and all of the killing that's being done in your name stops.
Like I say, I don't think anyone should be hated for where they were born.
(Oh, and also the far ends of the scale have 0 overlap, yes. You cannot be a Zionist and a human rights advocate, if my way of saying it made it sound like I thought you could.)
Yes they are. It's the same groups that have been campaigning to end the occupation since before October 7th. It's not a majority or even close to - two-thirds of Israelis support the continuation of the war. But saying "no one" is an absolute falsehood. And, I think propaganda and misunderstanding of the situation on the ground is also a large part (in addition to, yes, some large amount of pure racism and violent vindictiveness that says it's okay if Palestinians are dying because they are bad.)
The wheel you're currently cranking on, is the same wheel that was turning right at the beginning of Israel, and managed to turn its way from "all the Nazis are wrong and evil" around to "the Jews are always the victims about everything" and has now arrived itself at "Israel can do anything it decides to and will still be the victim" and now, on the other side, "all the Israelis are always wrong and evil" is emerging into view coming in the other direction. I am telling you that no matter how hard you crank that wheel, on whichever side, your activity will never crank you around to arrive at a world that is peaceful or just.
(I know I said I'd stop after saying my bit; I just wanted to say a little more on it and shoot down the absolutely false idea that no one in Israel opposes the war on humanitarian grounds.)
That whole article talks more about protestors pushing for returning hostages and other dislikes of Netanyahu far more than it does generic ‘anti-war’ protestors.
So thanks for that really, just further solidifies my point.
Likewise life is not a fucking wheel, it doesn’t travel in some predetermined path you’ve created. Let me tell you something, no matter how hard you centrist “don’t do anything at all” approach it, you will never arrive at a world that is peaceful or just.
Rabin was closer than anyone to ending it, and Netanyahu’s stochastic terrorism led directly to his death. And he’s been propping up Hamas ever since, to give Israel an enemy to hate and prevent peace from ever coming to the region.
If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it’s…
A swan! It claims to be a swan, therefore it is a swan! Swans are beautiful, therefore if you’re against swans you’re a bad person! You see ducks everywhere and accuse everyone being a duck! The word “duck” lost its meaning. In fact, we defeated the ducks in 1945, therefore any “ducks” we might have today are just edgy teens cosplaying as such.
EDIT: If you ask me, I think conservatives are just “good cops” to the fascists “bad cops” (this gave me an idea for a potential video essay).
It’s only wild if you believe their fable that their nation represents all Jews.
If however you see them as just another bunch of ethno-Fascists, it actually makes sense that many of the victims of the other large ethno-Fascist group in the last century wouldn’t get along with them simply because they recognize many of the same signs.
I didn’t think that would happen in Armenia, but since it does - the way some Armenians act towards refugees from Artsakh is similar, I think.
It’s easier for Israelis (especially when being fascists) to think that they themselves are strong, and those survivors are not like them, they are weak. It’s as they wanted to identify with Nazis more.
With such Armenians too - it’s the worse part of them thinking they can be just like Turks if they suck up to Turks, and also because Artsakhtsis lost their homeland for being weak, and they are not weak.
A bit like ignorant and cowardly people abandon relatives with chronic diseases, when there’s no evidence of those diseases being transferable.
It’s just cowardice. Humans do it under pressure or when presented with dark events for their interpretation and self-identification. While good upbringing may reduce the risk of someone growing up a coward, it’s very human.
You’ve probably read that in the early days of the State there was a lot of resentment towards Holocaust survivors. They were counter to the national narrative of the “New Jew” who was strong, hard-working, and living off the land. Shoah survivors represented Jews as victims, who did not fight back against the Nazis, instead going like “lambs to the slaughter.”
This all changed after the Eichmann trial (1961), which is when most of the world first came to understand the true nature of how the Nazis operated. Many people did fight back, and many couldn’t.
Holocaust survivors are revered and honored in Israel, although the country suffers from poor social services with a lot of gaps. Shoah survivors often fall through those gaps, along with other elders.
It’s not really surprising - historically, the creation Israel state was helped massively by antisemitists, who wanted to get rid of jews in their own country and having them a place to immigrate to would be the easiest option (the phenomena is often referred to as Zionist antisemitism).
So yeah, it does make sense - they can hate the jews, but also support Israel at the same time.
Lets not. I thought for awhile “hehe lets see how dumb we can go before people stop and realize how dumb they are”. But they’re not stopping. Everyday they surprise me with how incredibly fucking dumb the average person is.
Stupid people have no context to understand how dumb they are. They literally cannot imagine someone more intelligent than themselves due to their own lack of cognitive ability.
There is no floor to stupid, it’s a bottomless pit of ignorance and fiction.
Are they sure that’s the direction of causation? Because eating undercooked bear is the sort of behavior I’d expect from people who were already infected with brain worms.
It’s the same thing you get eatting undercooked pork. Only recently did the pork industry manage to get it mostly out of their herds so now the “recommended temp” to cook pork is dropping.
But it’s still very common in bears so you have to treat it like pork and cooked it to 165*
which sucks, I’d love to try a juicy rare black bear steak.
Same, that’s one of my favourite ways to eat it, basically if it’s a big enough whole muscle it gets ham-a-fied, the rest goes into grind for summer sausage and meatballs.
Don’t you love how a cop who drunkenly threatened his girlfriend with his pistol and has multiple discipline actions on record for excessive violence is still allowed to be a cop?
please stop with the “Just Leave.” we can’t all just leave and i tire of hearing it. what limitations and obligations keep you where you are?
and if you genuinely can Just Leave wherever you are, reflect for awhile on your privilege, then try to recognize how many people do not have that option for any number of reasons.
sometimes i think this sentiment is only a little less tone-deaf than “just have a baby.”
Leave, though. If enough people leave, only then will they realize how stupid they are. Your ancestors left the old countries on ships to the New World with only the clothes on their backs. Time for you Americans to emigrate elsewhere.
If it was easy enough for a significant amount of people to leave, the Republicans would love it because they could force out almost everyone that wouldn’t vote for them
I searched quickly, but I couldn’t find anything. If there was like a Patreon or something where I could give $50/mo to help people get the fuck out of shitty states or situations, I’d do it. Know any?
I don’t know any. If you want to help, ask them where to send the money. Alls I’m saying is, don’t just advise someone to “just leave” without offering any resources to help them leave
There are plenty of organizations helping refugees all over the world. UNHCR is probably the most established, being affiliated with the UN. They would probably help out if you need to flee from your government. www.unrefugees.org
No, the Puritans were well-funded twats. Also, Texas isn’t America, I suppose everyone refers to France as Europe?
What will happen is the few that can’t afford to leave Texas will remain in an oppressive state run by psychopaths with no chance to free themselves. Those that can stay and fight, probably should, but it’s also a huge ask to have people just trying to survive day-to-day also have to fight their shitty government back into the hell-hole from whence it came. They also have to deal with their own Texas neighbors who are too dumb to understand how repressed they are and actually like the direction that state is heading, as their own rights and freedoms are stripped away from underneath them.
It turns out that moving costs money, the cost of living varies greatly in surrounding states, Texas is huge, and with more than 60% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, the incidental expenses that pop up from a move would be too great for more than 60% of Americans. That’s even if they could find a job on the receiving end.
You clearly don’t know the challenges of leaving a country and moving to e.g. the EU or Australia or something, or any other country for that matter. Countries are extremely selective of who they want in, they likely won’t accept someone unless they work in a specialization that the country is in a shortage of and is in demand. Most of the world has laws that you can’t accept someone for work in a country unless you can prove that they can’t find a citizen of the country to fill the position first, and afterwards they have to sponsor a work visa for you which is a lot of time, money, and paperwork for the company, so they often avoid it. It’s also a lot of time, money, and paperwork for you.
You can also work as a digital nomad provided you have enough money saved up and can sustain yourself on self-employment (you’re not allowed to work under an employer on these visas), but generally this requires moving between different countries a lot because this is not a path to permanent residency. Some countries have treaties with the US that have a similar, but more lenient, process, for example the DAFT for the Netherlands which basically allows self-employed entrepeneurs to reside in the Netherlands as long as you can sustain yourself the entire time without government aid, and have a spare ~€4500 in a Dutch bank account that you can’t withdraw from at all times.
The other option is trying to get residence or citizenship by descent if you have a parent within 1-4 generations and meet certain criteria depending on what the citizenship laws of the country are – I’m in the process of trying to do this with an adoptive Slovak/Hungarian great-grandparent and adoptive German great-grandparent right now, and I can verify myself that this is also an extremely expensive and time-consuming process that I’m not sure if I can even afford to continue in the future, and the worst part is I don’t even know if it will pay off because my situation is a little fuzzy and possibly doesn’t count. If that doesn’t work, I’m absolutely out of luck for moving out of the US; I’ve tracked down a majority of my biological ancestors in the past 3 centuries and none of them in the past 200 years are from outside of the US. My ancestry for basically until you get to around the 1500s or 1600s is entirely American, English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch, Belgian, and French, which I’m pretty sure qualifies me for the most white Anglo-Saxon American here.
There’s one other viable choice too – attending university at another country. The problem is there are a lot of criteria you have to meet to be elligible for this in the first place (for one you have to be very young, they usually won’t accept people who are past their 20s), often times American diplomas and 2-year degrees aren’t seen as qualifying you for college outside of the US (in Germany they have the “Abitur” as a requirement for university instead of a diploma, which is somewhat more rigorous than an Associate’s degree, and the only way they accept your high school education as enough is if you gained specific credits and pass a few AP tests while in high school, and they don’t count doing those credits in college it HAS to be while you’re in high school), it’s highly competitive, universities are required to only accept foreigners after they’ve accepted all applicants who are citizens; and it can be incredibly expensive unless you’re going to a country which has no tuition costs and cheap student housing, which less and less countries are doing (Norway recently closed off free tuition for new non-European applicants).
The last options available aren’t viable for a majority of people, but I’ll list them out anyway. For one, you can spend hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars on property in some countries in exchange for a residence visa, a la Spain, Portugal, Cyprus’ Golden Visa programs.
Otherwise, if you can’t afford that (most people trying to escape the US or poorer countries can’t), you can go through literal hell and join the French Foreign Legion at a chance to ask for citizenship of France after a few years – but this is a TERRIBLE decision for anyone to make, the FFL isn’t just a group of soldiers, their entire training is basically abusing you with the worst conditions they can in order to weed out those who aren’t extremely tough, and the soldiers are put in the most intense, mind-and-body breaking deployments imaginable. It is scary and most people aren’t built for it psychologically nor physically. Plus you’re not even guaranteed citizenship, even after serving the 3-year period a lot of people are denied it.
TL;DR, the ability to move out of a country/free-travel-area is relatively exclusive and inaccessible to most people, and only gets less realistic as time goes on due to both age and growing anti-immigrant sentiment in many countries. If you’re part of a group subject to a country’s systematic social & economic issues (i.e. not already in a privileged/well-off position where you can already afford to fund your education or have got the education to work in a highly wanted specialization), it’s practically impossible to migrate to one of the countries that you’ll have more opportunities in, even if you are part of the potential third of Americans who might qualify for citizenship by descent. It’s the reason so many people risk their lives and freedom to illegally cross the border into the US and Europe every year, in a place where the system is against you it’s unlikely most people have access to the means to legally move away.
If the reason you’re staying is family, then maybe you need to rethink your priorities. Never let blood keep you from doing what you want to do or being who you want to be. You can serve your family better when you succeed at reaching your goals.
This is akin to saying that you should abandon a dog or child when they’re bleeding immensely. If I can take care of myself, I can take care of people who need me, family or not.
Bus ticket is so fucking cheap, if you can’t leave, it’s not time to whine about others’ privilege, its time to look in the mirror. Or some water in a puddle, whatever.
So, like, surely you realize people need homes and jobs and stuff right? You can’t just hop on the next bus to freedom town and hope for the best, that’s a child’s view of emigration.
Actually, we usually kill ourselves. Why do you think America has skyrocketing suicide and overdose rates?
If you literally bought a bus ticket with nothing else to your name and somehow survived, you’re basically just a lottery winner. That’s not a sound financial strategy!
Lots of people end up homeless or in prison or or shacking up with whoever will take them in or doing the kind of work they never wanted in their life or dead. This is a shithole country, throwing away your life to go to Dreamsville is stupid af and, honestly, I don’t even believe you.
If I wanted that kind of freedom I’d just take out my 9mm retirement plan early, rather than my current plan of waiting until I’m too old to work.
I was more thinking of being forced to do degrading, humiliating, disgusting, or unsafe work. Or, y’know, illegal under-the-table shit. Whatever it takes to get by, no matter how hard it is or how unpredictable the hours are or how much the employerr screws you over.
At that point, what was the fuckin point of moving anyway? Out of the frying pan and into the fire 🙄
I did. I even moved 6000 miles away overnight. I shoulda done it twenty years sooner.
There is nothing keeping anyone anywhere. You arent as important to others as you think you are, and if you are they’ll be glad you did something positive for once.
And no, I am not wealthy. I didnt have shit either. I just know not to stay and die a miserable death in a fascist shithole.
Work for cash, try to be self-employed, find local support groups and make as many friends as you can. If you’re good and honest (and not naive) you’ll do fine…word of mouth and personal referrals beat credit scores.
I never said it was easy; neither is staying where you are and dying. It was fucking terrifying when I made that jump, and for three years minimum it was a steuggle; but I made friends quickly and was straight up with them about what my situation was and why I was here. I asked for housing referrals and cheaper rent. I made damn sure that I kept the place nice and fixed anything that needed fixing myself. Landlords want a trouble-free tenant with good vibes; if they don’t then they’re a bad landlord.
Now, I am not a woman so I am not qualified to advise their experience; however, there are two pieces of advice I adamantly insist on: 1- DO NOT GIVE ANY BOYFRIEND A KEY until you have been together long enough to know that he isnt some fucking asshole who punches holes in walls and dashborads and fucks things up for you. If he asks for money the answer is ALWAYS no. Dump him immediately; no dick is worth it.
2- NEVER EVER EVER trade work for rent. Ever. You work, you bill for it. The landlord gives you a check; when rent is due you give him a check. There is no situation in which a work trade does not result in devaluing the work or overvaluing the rent. WORK and RENT are always TWO UNRELATED TRANSACTIONS.
I hope your situation improves and you can get away from your problems.
Come on, don’t be disingenuous, you need more than a bus ticket if you don’t live close to the border of a state that allows abortions.
Your whole trip will most likely take three days or more (getting there, getting the procedure, coming back), so you need at least two days in a hotel/Airbnb. You will have to get off work for those days as well, that is cost as well.
That could be around 300$ together if you don’t have any vacation/sick days, on top of the cost of the procedure itself. And it’s not like you can save up that money over several weeks/months either, when you need an abortion every day counts. Contrary to some media, those affected don’t want to wait until the last possible day.
Some people really only have money for the bare necessities. And they are the ones who really should have access to an abortion because a baby wouldn’t improve their situation in the slightest.
Being poor isn’t a choice in most cases. Learned helplessness might play a role, but telling them “just get a bus ticket, lul” won’t change that.
Ain’t a “might” about learned helplessness. The amount of rationalization in this day and age about people failing so hard of their own accord that they don’t have 300 bucks is fucking pathetic. Like just fucking do something, anything, except continue doing the same thing. Sell some fucking drugs, why not, quick financial.boost and go.
Actually I agree, it’s far easier to simply let things continue the way they are than to take a leap of faith.
My dad had been talking about leaving the country since we were kids, he just said he wanted to wait for us to go off to college first. But nobody really believed him - he was an underpaid college professor with little to no life savings.
But when Covid hit he sold his house, sold his car, and grabbed a one way ticket to Ecuador. He went down without ever having been, not knowing where he’d end up living, and is now 2 years later living his best life. I visited him and it’s heaven, I’m honestly jealous.
Edit: For those of you downvoting, his “house” was a shitty condo in Jersey and his car was an old nearly broken Honda Fit. He didn’t get much from either.
I think my landlord would be pissed if I sold my apartment. But hey, since I’m going to Ecuador maybe I can find a sucker and be gone before he notices haha.
Bus ticket, abortion cost, food and lodging for the duration, lost wages for the time it has taken. Also what if this is a mother already? Childcare costs while you are gone.
I am sure I have missed a lot as well.
You need to drastically work on your empathy my friend.
Have you seen the state of gerrymandering in Texas? They know their positions are unpopular abominations against democracy, so they’ve worked furtively to dismantle democracy so they can get away with this shit.
Yes, for the love of humanity, VOTE. But never believe that’s all you can or must do. We outnumber them, and they need to be reminded of that in more ways than one.
Okay, and? That doesn’t change a thing braxy said. What if you’ve been aware for years of the pot getting hotter and hotter and have had every desire to leave but don’t have the ability to? Those that have left were in a position in which they had the means to do so. Those that want to but can’t for any number of reasons (finances, family, health, etc. etc.) don’t have much choice.
My take is that there’s nothing wrong in saying leave, or people leaving. But I also agreed that it’s not possible for everyone, or not all want to - until perhaps something is too late.
I don’t understand why the people who can’t/won’t/don’t want to take offense from it, when it’s a viable option for many.
And your take is at best tone deaf and at worst disingenuous.
People take offense because no one says, well, if you have the opportunity, and you don’t like it, leave.
People just say, if you don’t like it, leave. While ignoring that leaving is a privilege for most (how many is many anyway when most are living paycheck to paycheck).
So, I find your comment offensive. This one in particular. I don’t need to read the rest of the comment thread because this one hot take was plenty enough.
Are most people honestly living from paycheck to another? I find that quite difficult to believe. Then again I’m Finnish and not American, so that’s probably why I can’t see the big picture from a local pov. Just seems… baffling.
If you make 5k and spend 4k a month, while having 5k savings, that’s not pay check to pay check. Close though, but what the term implies is 0 surplus, all that you make goes before next pay.
I mean I hear you I was liberal with the definition when I looked up the savings figures.
It’s not enough to move states to avoid right wing oppression. Which was really the point I was making. That most people can’t simply leave if they don’t like the situation.
What about the child rape victims who have zero agency? What about the disabled who are completely reliant on others? What about people who have court orders barring them from leaving for whatever reason? What about those for whom leaving would mean abandoning their children to an abusive spouse who has custody?
I could name reasons that’s not feasible for many, many people, but the bottom line is that may work for privileged people, but our responsibility is to care for all of us, and saying ‘sucks to be you’ is not a solution any of us should accept.
Boing boing .net has been a reputable site for years. I think it started as a blog for author and journalist Cory Doctorow, but has become a news site of its own. The recent term enshittification was coined by Doctorow.
A pro-gun lawyer was shot by his own weapon while visiting a hospital when a powerful magnetic field from an MRI scanner set the pistol off.
Leandro Mathias de Novaes was taking his mother for a scan at the Laboratorio Cura in Sao Paulo in January and entered the facility with a concealed handgun.
Despite warnings from staff to remove jewellery and metal objects in the MRI room, Mr Mathias kept his weapon on his waistband.
The magnetic field from the machine was so strong that the weapon was pulled from his waist and fired off a round, which hit him in his stomach.
The 40-year-old Brazilian was treated in hospital for more than two weeks before he died from his wounds.
When you go into an MRI room you hear this weird but very distinct sound from the liquid helium pumps keeping the giant superconducting magnets near absolute zero.
Then when it runs, the vibrations from the current being pushed through the gradient coils is significant enough that you need hearing protection.
It’s serious business in there. But it lets us see inside our bodies without incisions or ionizing radiation, so it’s also awesome. But jeez some people and their guns.
I’ve had two and recall an eerie feeling but the only noise I remember was some clanking. Maybe my mind is just shot. Is the noise you are referring to just when they are first starting things up?
The pump sound is always there and never changes. However, maybe you don’t hear it in some facilities with different layouts. I’ve used a few facilities and always heard it.
For the loud noises from the vibration, that happens while they’re actually doing the scans. Different portions of the scan create distinct sounds, though I don’t know which sound goes to which measurements. There’s gotta be a YouTube video about it.
The sounds have a harsh buzz to their tone, like somebody is playing sound effects through a Tesla coil.
I’ve told people that getting an MRI, particularly one where you need to go head-first into the tube, can feel like an alien abduction!
Hmmm… Can you tell me how to use my paid leave? I like it when medical leave gets denied because I wasn’t sick enough. Beat me with those loopholes, daddy!
Looks like people think that’s what you said. Maybe you should consider clarifying instead of just saying “I didn’t say that” or “read it again”.
If the majority of people are “misunderstanding” you, maybe you should consider the possibility that the problem is with what you said, not with the people reading it.
If everyone is misunderstanding you, and you can’t figure out how to reword or explain your intention, that’s not a circle jerk. That’s just you expressing yourself incredibly poorly.
Reword it, delete it, or walk away. Insisting people “read it again” isn’t doing anything.
Gods yes. We can’t predict every sort of bad behavior in the market, only react. Bunch of arm-chair quarterbacks in here, “We should have seen this coming!” Watch 10 people tell me exactly how we could have.
And on this issue, it’s high time to react. Doubt it will happen. :(
Tbh whenever I see someone editing their comment to put “conditions” on people downvoting their trash opinion I automatically downvote. Whine or cry or try to put conditions on people downvoting you? Believe it or not, instant downvote.
There’s never a scenario on the internet where 99% of people agree with you…unless you’re just talking to yourself. Just let it go, not like you lose anything with downvotes.
What the fuck do you think regulations are for? If we didn’t have them companies would skip crucial steps because they are expensive. Take Tesla for example, removing radar/lidar because of expense and they are bulky. But are nessesarry, shit they’re putting mics outside the car to listen for sirens.a
well, that’s kind of exactly what we’re saying. we are stating what laissez faire capitalism is. i agree that it is antisocial, greedy, immoral and a bane of our existence…and really the major thing holding modern society back. i never said i support a free market (hint: i don’t)…just stating what it is. your reply might come off as antisocial (ie morons)
So the way to counteract that would be passing laws preventing it? The thing being proposed?
This is like me saying “my house is on fire! Put water on it!” And someone replying “you shouldn’t do that because the purpose of fire is to burn things” and thinking they’re clever. Nobody here is pro-fire.
Now are downvoting because: What they said isn’t true… Disagree with what was said… Missed that they are pointing out a free market does not give a fuck about you; unless you are profits…
uhmmm that is the point being expressed here…you all just want to fight. Bro describes the exactly what a free market is and people get up in arms here. That’s like if someone describes what a house on fire looks like and then is accused of being pro-house-on-fire. smh
uhmmm that is the point being expressed here…you all just want to fight. Bro describes the exactly what a free market is and people get up in arms here. That’s like if someone describes what a house on fire looks like and then is accused of being pro-house-on-fire. smh
The point being expressed here is the current system is bad and needs to be fixed.
It’s like if someone proposed putting out a house fire and bro came in saying you shouldn’t put out the fire because that’s how fires work. It’s neither profound nor helpful.
I was just saying that as I was about to send my 6-year old out to the corner store to go buy some cigarettes for me, since our free market hasn’t imposed any restrictions on that transaction.
Or if you look at the housing market specifically, in my area at least, I can’t buy a second home in the same area as an individual. I can buy investment properties that I’d need to rent out, but I’m forbidden from owning a second residence for myself.
State, Local, and Federal lawmakers are constantly proactively prohibiting bad scenarios. And in this case, it wouldn’t even be proactive, it’s literally something that’s going on right now that needs corrected.
It’s not a free market… that’s not an actual thing that can ever exist. It’s a state where the markets are in a perfect, frictionless state, where barriers of entry are non-existent and everyone has equal access to trade on the market… Ignoring petty things like needing to actually source things
It is, in fact, both reasonable and desirable for the government to proactively watch and interfere in the markets before they enter a failure scenario, that’s their job in the market.
It’s often willfully misunderstood, but what you’re describing is a half step from lasse faire capitalism. Which is the idea that a “free market” is a stable state, and we just need to let it settle long enough without interference. But that’s literally psuedoscience…
Or charged with a crime. All the protections of a person with none of the liability. Seriously it’s beyond stupid. If someone said that to you you would laugh awkwardly and get out of the convo asap and depending who it was talk to their family about possible treatment from psychiatric providers. Yet here we are, having to all pretend like the psycho is right because they bribed a politician into making it the law.
Just got engaged to my long term partner. We live with 2 other people and, with the way things are going, we will be married and still sharing accommodation because 2 full time jobs aren’t enough to cover rent AND food.
My bootstraps can’t be pulled any higher. I work 6 days a week and spend my Sunday working on my web design business to try make ends meet. Thank god I’m paying my landlords mortgage. I can’t imagine how they’re coping at the moment…
Depending on what your full time jobs are, have you looked at smaller cities? Sometimes housing is so much cheaper that it’s worth it even if your salary is lower…
Moving from the city I was in to where I’m at now I’ve lost nothing as far as services are concerned and the same house sells for half the price and has a bigger lot…
I underestimate nothing, I did it six months ago, do you think I don’t understand how stressful it can be? Either you take a risk or you are guaranteed to continue living the situation you hate, make a choice.
As long as you can buy all the ingredients to build an IED from the duty-free shop after the screening, you’ll know how much TSA’s “security” is worth.
What’s ironic here is that this isn’t a matter of incompetence, it’s a matter of efficiency. There isn’t much of a threat of hijacking airplanes, and there never has been. It’s just that after 9/11 the spectacle of that even has caused the average person to overestimate the threat of terrorism in airports by several orders of magnitude. Therefore, while we’re in no more danger than we were on 09/10/2001, people believe that there is a danger and if someone doesn’t perform security, they won’t fly. So, in order to appease these people who don’t actually understand the situation but have the power to affect it, we all have to go through a little dance that’s designed to look very much like security. Take your shoes off. Throw out your water bottle. Has anyone asked you to put anything in your bag for them? Put your shoes back on. Take your shoes back off. 95% of weapons in carry-on luggage make it through TSA screening and onto the plane. Put your shoes back on. Take your belt off.
To be fair, the number of incidents was much higher in the 60s and 70s. Usually in the high 60s low 70s oddly enough, per year. Not really relevant nowadays, but an interesting fact.
An internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration revealed security failures at dozens of the nation’s busiest airports, where undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials, ABC News has learned.
In one test an undercover agent was stopped after setting off an alarm at a magnetometer, but TSA screeners failed to detect a fake explosive device that was taped to his back during a follow-on pat down.
My bag is almost always flagged because almost every flight I am on is for work travel and I have my tools in it. I found stuff gets stolen less often if I put a checklist on the top. At least by America. The Canadian security stole a whole mess of cables as well as the checklist.
What cops dont want to talk about is this guy (and others) get victims by pretending to be cops.
Because even real cops don’t follow procedure and will kill people for not following nonsensical orders, it’s really easy for criminals to just yell “police” and victims know even if it’s legitimately a cop, they may be murdered for not doing everything the person claiming to be a cop orders them to do.
Even the rape after “arrest”, that’s something cops are legally allowed to do in a lot of states still. They can just claim it’s consensual even when the women is being detained and handcuffed, and then it’s the cops word against their victim.
When cops act like criminals, it’s impossible to know if someone is a cop and also a criminal, or just a criminal pretending to be a cop.
You’re correct and it’s only get worse. A lot if not most of our police force are made up of fascist.
They even recruiting that way. There is terrifying video of police recruiters teaching that civilians should be treated as enemy combats.
And with Atlanta building that “cop city” were police will be trained in urban combat and full on war against us civilians we are totally fucked as a society.
Also, sex work is real work. If the same people trying to keep it illegal are paying for it, there’s no excuse to continue leaving sex workers out to fend for themselves.
What they mean is, it is legal for police there to "have sexual relations" with people in police custody. For that reason it is very easy for them to overpower people/coerce them and rape them, and very difficult for victims to get justice for this.
Except the teacher has the legal right to force the student to go into a space the teacher controlls, force the student to get rid of all possessions including ones that could be used for recording, handcuff them, and then it is illegal for the student to fight back against the teacher in any way even while being raped. Also teachers may kill students during this with minimal repercussions
If a person is in custody, most states don’t say an on duty cop can’t have sex with them.
So the cop just starts doing it, the victim thinks saying no won’t help, or even does say no.
Later the cop claims it’s consensual and since they turned off the cameras, it’s their word against their victim’s.
And most won’t even report it, because it’s hard to believe other cops will do anything after they were just raped while in custody, either in a police car or even in a police station.
It’s not legal. What it comes down to is that some states wrote laws saying any sexual encounter where one person is in duty in a position of power, that encounter is automatically deemed non-consensual. In other states, it would follow the exact same laws as any other sexual assault. In these other states, if a rape were reported, during the ensuing investigation/court case (if there actually was one), the prosecutor would basically just say the same thing, that there was no consent because of the power dynamic. I don’t know whether or not those laws make a difference in the long run. It’s probably a good thing to have on the books, but not as sensational as people make it out to be.
To use the first weird analogy that came to mind, it’s like if one state had a law saying that you couldn’t poke whales with sticks, while another state just said you couldn’t mess with whales. Either state would prosecute you for poking a whale with a stick, just the one would have to say that poking is a form of messing with the whale.
There’s arguments for and against laws like that, cause on the one hand, you want laws to be as simple as possible to cover whatever use case, but on the other hand, you don’t want to give criminals/businesses/etc. to have any wiggle room to do things against the public interest because there isn’t a specific law against it
In many states, the law fails to recognize coercive power dynamics (like being arrested and detained) as inherently non-consensual, leaving "but she said yes!" as a viable defense for cops who "have sex with" a detained woman. It's disgusting and very real.
"After a woman accused two New York police officers of raping her while in their custody in 2017, the legality of police-detainee sexual conduct gained national attention.
While the Prison Rape Elimination Act protects inmates from sexual abuse by prison staff, the law does not apply to detainees who have not been convicted of a crime. Forced sexual conduct is illegal in every state in any context, but in states without a law mandating otherwise, police can argue a consent defense if detainees accuse them of rape."
To add context this isn’t a hypothetical situation. In New York Two cops Eddie Martins and Richard Hall raped an 18 year old woman they had arrested for marijuana possession. They detained a group of teens, and let all of them go except for the woman who they then handcuffed and raped in the back of their police van. They then dropped her off in another location. She went to a hospital where a rape kit found semen matching the DNA of detectives Eddie Martins and Richard Hall. Both officers claimed that they did have sex with her, but it was consensual. Because it wasn’t specifically illegal for police to have sex with someone they detained they were able to accept a plea deal for taking bribes and official misconduct where they got 5 years probation with no jail time. Because of this case New York unanimously passed a new law (SB S7708) making it so that a person “under arrest, detention or otherwise in actual custody” cannot consent to sex. In any other state that doesn’t have a similar law it is essentially legal (as in it is not specifically illegal) for police to rape someone they arrested.
That’s pretty horrifying. You have all the evidence you need but can’t do anything. Being police always puts you in a position of power, which makes it so much more likely for people to not resist for the fear of consequences.
Well it’s a good thing they did stock buybacks instead of investing in basic safety and inspection practices. Seems to have really worked out well in the long term.
Or investing in a plane design that was not lopsided due to being rushed out the door to compete with Airbus, necessitating the need for the MCAS system to begin with because they also didn’t want to invest in pilot retraining on how to fly a lopsided plane.
Oh shit, I’ve probably been making the discrete/discreet mistake for years. Discreet just looks like it’s spelled wrong, so I’ll probably keep making that mistake.
Literally made his money on exploitation and lies. SpaceX is amazing, but built on much smarter minds; he was just the wallet. And he bought Tesla and has been lying and overpromising since he did.
Then almost immediately bankrupted Tesla. Was their first near miss of going under.
Story has been retconned on their website to say Elon fixed the car. That the Roadster wasn’t even close to production ready. He did neither.
What really happened is he wanted to redo much of the looks of the car to put his stamp on it. They spent a small fortune tweaking the Elise body to make it look just slightly less like one. Ballooned their production costs and added a ton of delays. The original team was going to use the Elise chassis as it came from Lotus and people had already lined up to buy that.
Yup. The groundwork for privatized space travel had been in the works for a decade or two by that point. But musk wanted to buy an icbm and Russia said no. So he was convinced by much smarter people to become the money mark.
That’s what all “visionary entrepreneurs” do. They pretend like they made every single product they sell with their bare hands and all the engineers and scientists designing them and the factory workers fabricating them are just for decoration.
I’m also convinced that they’ve breathed enough of their own farts that they genuinely believe most of the things they say.
And don’t change their goals every 4-8 years. It is hard to accomplish a 10 year project if you can’t guarantee you’ll still be working on it in 10 years.
Wtf are you on about? We give SpaceX nowhere near the funds we give NASA.
We gave NASA $25 billion this year.
SpaceX was awarded a $2.9B contract to fund the entire “land starship on the moon” program (a non cost+ contact I might add) spanning multiple years. They launched two sets of crew to the iss this year, at an estimated cost of ~700m. They have had one cargo mission this year at a cost of about $150m.
Let’s give NASA that 2.9b for a new program then. That’s a 10% budget increase.
Hell give me $2.9b and I’ll find people to put us on the moon. Elon didn’t do shit except take tax money, and give it to smart people, while keeping a cut for himself.
Do it then. Nobody else in the industry seems able to.
When it comes to space programs and launch costs/waste, SpaceX is at the bottom of the list. Nobody puts stuff in space cheaper than they do. And not by a small margin.
For comparison, the cost for SLS to launch into earth orbit is $4.1B. TO LAUNCH. Development costs for that program have exceeded $27B. They have been working on it since 2011. It has launched exactly one time over a year ago.
The entire contract to SpaceX to fully develop and launch a moon lander is less than the cost of launching a single SLS rocket.
Doubtful, big administrations have big issues with productivity and meeting goals. Not that I think it is thanks to Musk, but startups/scaleups organizations are often much more efficient than traditional companies and administrations.
I think every engineer who has worked both at a big traditional company and a startup can confirm.
I’ve worked at both and cannot confirm. Startups are good at shipping new features, but that’s usually because we don’t spend as long planning, have less legacy code to work around, and most importantly, we cut a lot of corners. These behaviors are not good for space travel
I think SpaceX is demonstrating that a lot of IT startup methodology actually works for the space industry too. Most famously, accepting that making errors makes you learn faster, with their many rocket explosions, this is like short iterations in IT. This is opposed to the years long planning and studying to make sure everything is 100% perfect before launch of traditional space industry. They are out-competing every public and private space industries (such as ArianeGroup) with their methods, it seems to work pretty good.
Exploding rockets over populated areas and putting debris in the sky is bad. Wasting money in explosions is also bad. I don’t think startup mentality belongs anywhere outside of SaaS. If you disagree on this then we’re likely not going to reach common ground when talking about spaceX.
I also don’t agree that they’re out competing NASA, nor do I agree that that’s even a worthwhile measure here because something so dangerous shouldn’t be subject to the market. Getting exclusive contracts from the government is too political to truly say they’re better. The F-23 was better than the F-22 but the 22 won the contract anyway.
Yes, the ecological impact is bad. I was focused on organizational efficiency as it was the subject of the comment I replied to. Also here’s a study from Oxford University about it papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=41194…
We find that SpaceX’s platform strategy was 10X cheaper and 2X faster than NASA’s bespoke strategy
If ecology is to be the top priority then NASA budget could probably go into ecological transition research too instead of the new moon project.
Startups are the land of the MVP, and I don’t mean Most Valuable Player. You don’t want to be sending MVPs into space? Don’t use a private company. NASA has bureaucracy but it also has stability, accountability, and the ability to think long-term.
His real skill is getting people to work hard. And he brought the iterative design he learned in software development to the physical world. Pared with family money, hire the right people to do the work, and you get SpaceX.
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