I’m curious how they implemented this. The air completely has to be replaced with nitrogen, no breathing in a mix of nitrogen and outside air, no oxygen at all. People that enter confined spaces with no oxygen pretty much just drop and are dead quickly, so this doesn’t sound like they did it right.
They used a mask rather than the more appropriate method which would be to use a sealed chamber that was forcefully evacuated of oxygen and replaced by nitrogen the way the suicide pods are supposed to function.
The problem with a mask is it can’t be a perfectly sealed system. The issue with the execution from a logistical standpoint was the redneck engineering they employed and not the actual science behind nitrogen hypoxia.
Please don’t come at me, I’m not making a value judgment about the use of the death penalty, I’m just explaining the issue with their shoddy ass methodology.
Edit: accidentally a word.
Edit #2 (YouTube Link): Here is some additional information about why a gas mask is an ineffective and dangerous way to conduct an execution via nitrogen hypoxia from Dr. Philip Nitschke, a leading advocate of the right to die movement and an expert in the field of voluntary euthanasia. He personally examined the execution method being used in Alabama, and told them he felt it would be ineffective for many of the same reasons stated above.
FTR I’m generally against the death penalty, so same, don’t give me grief. I’m of the opinion that if it’s gonna be done, don’t fuck it up.
Ok. So regarding the implementation it sounds like they fucked it up. As you said (and I previously implied) it sounds like they didn’t properly exclude oxygen/remove waste CO2. Kinda hard to believe they fucked up something so simple considering the ton of evidence on hypoxic accidents.
Precisely. They apparently either felt it was fine to cut corners, do not fully understand how nitrogen hypoxia actually works, or a little bit of suffering was intentionally part of the process because it still is Alabama after all…
The big, really big issue, and I hate to say it. Is that, depending on the jurisdiction and laws in place, executions cannot be done by professionals. Most of the people who would know how to do it properly, medics, nurses, engineers, are ethically banned from participating or facilitating executions. Not that this stops them all from participating, and in some contexts some do, but on the general, executions on the USA are performed by completely incompetent individuals.
The more reason to just not fucking do them in the first place. How did they botched it using a mask when almost every single expert on medically assisted death recommends at least a sealed hood.
little bit of suffering was intentionally part of the process
Of course it was. They also didn’t want to use nitrogen, as there is no awareness at all if done correctly. The drugs they use with lethal injection likely induce panic and pain because they do not induce unconsciousness before it.
Executions have never been intended to be humane. They are punishment, vindication for the wronged. A childish obsession with a horrible misunderstanding of justice.
The exit bag uses nitrogen suffocation as a suicide method. It’s a bag that encloses the person’s head. If they felt a mask could have been used, they would have
I’m willing to bet my left testicle they thought in their lead-addled brain that it would work like a diver’s mask. Pumping in gas pushes out the water, so it must also push out the air, I tell you hwat! I don’t consider myself to be a very bright person, but even I know that water and air work differently.
Hot take, they don’t care because they are killing someone. The humanity part of it is completely removed. They care that they did the deed and it didn’t work. It should have been immediate. Someone should be losing their job. An Internet search could have prevented this.
I think the bigger issue is that he was aware of when the nitrogen started, so tried holding his breath for as long as possible.
If he had the mask on and it was pumping breathable air, and then at some point switched to pure nitrogen without any warning that would be more humane because he wouldn’t know what was happening or when.
He held his breath for 22min? No they fucked up the procedure. Even if he had held his breath at first he should have been unconsious the first time he took one. I’ve nearly been knocked out by nitrogen hypoxia before. It takes one lungfull of non oxygenated air to make you start to black out. He must have still been getting some oxygen somehow. It sounds like they were trying to use a mask (which is a dumb way to do it) so they probably didn’t use a high enough flow rate for the nitrogen and he was breathing in air from around the mask. They probably would have been better off forgetting about the mask entirely and just blowing nitrogen at his face at a much higher flow rate (that’s what almost did it for me).
They often don’t. There are moderate risks with lethal injections, and even if you seem unconscious, it’s still disputed whether you would really be unaware or not. As for the gas, suffocate in any manner is very painful and unpleasant.
You are not being “suffocated” in the sense that you aren’t allowed to breathe. I suggest you do some looking around and check out events where people have entered spaces that can have no/limited oxygen such as mines or anchor chain lockers on ships. They often simply drop unconscious and are dead fairly quickly. The victim isn’t re-breathing CO2, which is what gives us that panicked lack of air feeling, or someone holding something over your face making it difficult to breathe.
If you’ve ever had a medical procedure that puts you under, I can assure you there’s nothing remembered to be aware of.
The Air Force does training on it, since it can happen if the aircraft loses pressure and pilots need to know how to notice and handle it. As you can see in the above video, the pilot is not suffering even though the oxygen level has been cut quite drastically.
So don't announce "alright, now!" to the victim. Wait until they're breathing normally and then silently switch over to nitrogen, he'll be unconscious before he realizes it.
And after a couple minutes at most you will reflexively take a breath or pass out and start breathing. In an inert atmosphere that first breath will knock you out almost immediately. After that you won’t feel anything. After the individual is unconsious you just need to keep them in an inert gas for a few more minutes for them to actually die.
Because clearly they fucked something up. He was still getting oxygen somehow. I’m guessing they didn’t have the nitrogen flow high enough so he was still getting some oxygen.
It could have also just been agonal gasping which can last over an hour even after the person is already dead. It’s fairly common for people to see that and say the person is still breathing even though that person has already been dead for a while. It also happens with heart attacks and it frequently leads to ems having to explain to family members why there is no hope of resuscitation even though to them it looks like the person is still “breathing”.
Never blamed anyone for leaving but use to advocate a lot to push for change in red states like mine but at this point its obvious they are trying to make living in those states untenable for those with a conscious or not completely crushed & apathetic.
Are you sure its not just Gerrymandering and laws that make it harder for votes to actually matter?
From what I’ve heard is that there’s a large majority stuck in Texas who disagree with the decisions of their government but are too poor to leave the state.
Ashton Kutcher wants to prevent and stop human trafficking so much so he mostly retired from acting to make a bigger impact against it. Yet he is okay with a rapist cause it’s his “friend”. Talk about a fuckin hypocrite. More proof that the famous and wealthy live by a different standard. No matter how good they seem.
More proof that the famous and wealthy live by a different standard. No matter how good they seem.
You don’t need to be famous or wealthy to overlook or cover up the crimes of someone you know. It happens every day among people of every socioeconomic status, between friends and within families and businesses. In this case he isn’t even trying to cover for him, just wrote a letter supporting him at his trial based on what he knows of the guy. I don’t think it was in good taste, but also don’t think it’s worth shunning Ashton Kutcher over
This is my take. Ashton takes his job very seriously, but if he wanted to remain neutral on this he should have just shut the fuck up and accepted the court rulings like the rest of us.
Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis were two of more than 50 people who wrote to the judge in the Danny Masterson sexual assault trial to support the convicted actor ahead of his sentencing, per court documents obtained by Variety.
I had to look it up because the dates weren’t in the article, but he was convicted in May, and these letters were dated between July and August. He wasn’t sentenced until just a few days ago.
I dunno. Seems like an incredibly fucked up thing to do when it comes to the severity of the crimes. At some point, you turn your back on someone and don’t support them because what they did is beyond the pale. It’s all about context. Being a rapist doesn’t have any context in which I could support you.
Stealing from a store? I got your back. You killed the person that murdered your family? I’ll help you bury the body. You raped women? Get fucked, dickhead. You’re not who I thought you were and you don’t deserve me by your side.
Thank you I know someone who raped some women. We shuned that fucking rapist and turn on back on him.
What he did writing a letter in support of his friend takes away all the good he was doing. Fuck Ashton. He should’ve have turn his back and stay quite.
I mean, if a friend was credibly accused of the stuff he did, I wouldn’t be writing any letters of support. There’s a limit to what you’d do for someone in the name of friendship.
You understand that false allegations happen all the time? This wasn’t, obviously, because he got convicted. But if you drop your friends on an arrest warrant, I wouldn’t want to be your friend.
I mean my comment explicitly mentions becoming aware that my best friend was a rapist, not was accused of it
I suppose I could have said “if one of my friends was credibly accused of rape and it was proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed it, I would no longer be their friend,” but that doesn’t quite have the same kick, the same pizazzy oomph
My point was, it’s beyond unacceptable for these two to defend a rapist in any way. It’s not defensible just because they were friends. They’re horrible people, end of.
No, that person said that IF they found out their friend was a rapist because of an arrest.
An arrest is upon suspicion, and in rape cases, many times an allegation. That doesn’t mean the person is guilty, that is not how our justice system works. False rape allegations unfortunately hace happened all too often and mostly end up in the victims life being utterly destroyed. The victim here not being the lying rape claimer, but the person who reiceived the false allegation.
It’s also a really shitty situation for people around. Imagine being a mother and your son gets a rape allegation.
The problem is that rape is very hard to prove. If it happenend a few hours ago, no condom, okay then you have some evidence. But was it rape or consensual sex? If it happened years ago it becomes even harder to prove and a lot of times it’s a he said-she said game and unless there is more actual concrete evidence, a judge isn’t going to send a person to jail on a single allegation.
In this case ther were multiple independent testimonies, that helps
But when your friend is accused of rape thrn I guess it up to you, who do you believe? O hoor my friends would know me and trust and believe me.
Then again, maybe that is what Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher did. Trust and believe their friend, and now they “Support” a rapist
2-10%, that’s about right. Do you want I ben part of that statistic, or so you prefer the “innocent until proven guilty” which is the basis of our entire justice system
Western justice systems are not principally designed to send that guilty to jail, their designed to keep the innocent out.
Didn’t Kutcher kick Masterson off his show, “The Ranch”, when he found out about the allegations?
I don’t know what’s going though any of their minds and I don’t know much about the case, but writing letters for your former friend that’s a piece of shit is common. 30 years is a very long time. Longer than Cosby got. So it couldn’t be good. But I wonder what the details are before I immediately jump to “most of the cast are assholes by association”. Also, did no one know about this during the show? Mila even had to stage kiss and hug the guy when their characters were dating.
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I guess Americans will never get cheap electric cars. Make no mistake. US automakers aren’t going to use this tariff to buy time to make competitive cheap electric cars. They’re just going to rest on their laurels and continue to sell large overpriced trucks, SUV and their EV counterparts.
That’s what pisses me off here, I just want something affordable to get from a-b work commute, I’m not spending $80k on an electric suv that I only have because I’m forced into work.
It’s gonna end up with me buying a moped or small motorcycle to get to work at reasonable cost
It’s gonna end up with me buying a moped or small motorcycle to get to work at reasonable cost
Actually glad to hear that. That’s one positive outcome from this aggressive nationalist bullshit decision from Biden. Electric cars (even cheaper, smaller ones from China) aren’t an appropriate way to address climate change. Converting car drivers to two wheelers is way more of a positive move and will also have major benefits to traffic and pedestrian safety. Way better than buying a big fucking American electric pickup truck or SUV.
You’re kinda skipping over a few things as well as something the previous comment mentioned.
Weather. I live in a pretty big metro area that has freezing cold winters and sweltering hot summers (with high humidity).
Cargo space is definitely something to think about. There are a lot of families that have to drive to a store for a family’s amount of food for the week
Long distances to get to anything in the suburbs amplifies issues 1 and 2 (including usually no pubic transportation to help)
The previous commenter mentioned they don’t want a giant SUV and just want an affordable electric car.
All these things are a reason cars are a huge necessity in most of the US. Yes, getting to an area where we can all mostly use 2 wheels would be great, but we should recognize that doing better is a great step forward instead of shooting it down because it’s not perfect.
I say all this as a person who works from home so I don’t have to worry about a commute, has a small car for necessary trips, and does my best avoid unnecessary driving and makes sure to carpool at every opportunity.
I’m thinking of getting a smart car for city driving since I often have to haul gear from one borough to another, but REALLY don’t want a traditional car, much less an SUV. They seem so much easier to find parking for
If you’re talking about the smart brand car i wouldn’t, they’ve been discontinued in the US so maintenance on them is going to be difficult and expensive.
If you’re American that is, assuming you’re a New Yorker based on usage of borough lol
Are there any other cars that small? The only reason I’m considering in the first place is because of its size. I really fucking hate traditional cars otherwise. I also see them all over the city.
Not that are sold in the US and import/conversion prices are insane. Unfortunately most of our countrymen love massive vehicles so that’s what is sold here, plus the car companies lobbied to have emissions testing be more lenient for massive vehicles
I said that US automakers don’t want any Americans buying cheap EVs. They’ll happily sell you an EV just be ready to pay mid-high five to low six figures for it. No way in hell do they want to make 20k EVs.
Real wages are up for three straight years; they were unmoved or negative for nearly four decades before that. Your feelings about the economy don’t matter when the data all goes in the other direction
People are (sometimes willfully) confusing "the current status quo is fucked" with "there is no improvement resulting from the measures taken by the administration". The former is true - the latter is not.
That entire political propaganda point is based on grabbing a nominal salary growth in 2023 that is trying to catch up to the inflation of 2021/22 (and the salary growth is already starting to tailing off) and adjusting to make a “real” salary growth using present day inflation which is half as much the one in 2021/2022.
It’s all based on a mathematical artifact that salary growth reflects inflation with a delay of about 2 years and just so happens last quarter of 2023 and first of 2024 are a sweet spot were 2y delayed inflation minus present day inflation yields the maximum value.
Extend those maths back 3 or 4 years and the picture is much worse but that can be “safelly” argued away by propagandists as being due to Trump. Well if that is due to Trump then so is the recent spike in salary growth since it’s pretty much a perfect match to the inflation of 2 years ago that was supposedly due to Trump.
It’s funny because the two charts I’ve linked, from the Fed, one for median wages and the other for inflation, together add up to quite a different image, leaving us with 3 possible explanations:
that chart your provided is bullshit
it’s the Fed’s own data that’s bullshit and your chart is right
they’re both right, and yours being average and the Fed’s being median, neatly proves the point I’ve been making that average wage figures are unrepresentative of the experience of most people because slary growth for top wage earners pulls the average up even whilst most people don’t see any of that wage “growth”
Curiously the comment on your chart about the values around the Covid period reinforce my 3rd point: the chart got a massive jump then because low earners lost their jobs much more than high earners, not because salaries actually went up.
Median wage reflects the wage of one person who’s exactly in the middle. The average of the middle quantile also adds ten million people on the left and right side
It’s actually not very different from the median real wages
Current status quo is the economy that’s better than ever
Every time I challenge this nonsense, that people are pushing that the economy is better than ever, they never back it up with anything. I don’t expect this to be any different. We’re kind of in uncharted territory and there is plenty of mixed emotion about the outlook for the economy.
Puts a graph of just the middle quintile, since 2019, and a quote from god knows when, of the super majority of people saying their finances are good or better…to prove that people are claiming the economy is better than ever.
Lol I can see why you provided just pictures rather than links because this seems blatantly deceptive.
Your twitter link is a picture of two people saying opposing things, one that it’s getting tight and another pointing out that the data doesn’t really support their claim. Neither is saying the economy is the best it’s ever been, and if we are reading into both of them, then it’s showing the “status quo” is a mixed bag.
From your axios link (which you took a picture of, conveniently leaving out the context) (bolding is mine):
By the numbers: 63% of Americans rate their current financial situation as being “good,” including 19% of us who say it’s “very good.”
Neither number is particularly low: They’re both entirely in line with the average result the past 20 times Harris Poll has asked this question.
Literally outright saying that this is an average result. And you posted it as proof that they are saying the economy “is better than it’s ever been.” lol
Your final twitter link links to an economist article for the data, which is about how gen z is doing better than earlier generations at the same time in their life. It doesn’t say anything about the economy as a whole, however, it does note that people complain because the numbers do not account for the exploding cost of college and housing. After all, global house prices are close to all-time highs, and graduates have more debt than before."
It seems to me that you’re equating not being 100% pessimistic and point out anything positive as a claim that the economy is “better than ever.”
I appreciate you trying, but just like every time in the past I’ve seen this claim, you’ve not provided anything. Although “there’s plenty more” which probably means some more gish gallop coming.
You legit have no idea why rural Americans are so damn upset, do you?
Sure, fascism. But why fascism?
Breaks my heart to think of how Dems and Reps have completely abandoned so many of our fellow Americans, despite how deplorable and insufferable some/many may be
If you consider the conditions that led to fascism in Germany before the 2nd world war, you learn that there were significant economic worries that affected the average German.
When you look at what is leading to fascism in middle/rural America, you will find very similar, significant economic concerns.
Filmmaker Michael Moore was criticized for saying Trump had a very good chance of winning in rural areas because of how angry and desperate the average American living in those areas is, and yet he was right about Trump’s chances of winning and about the reasons why.
Fascism doesn’t spring out of nowhere. There are conditions that make it more likely to spread. Those conditions are greatly affected by domestic policy.
Lastly, it’s worth knowing that famous quote by JFK saying his family didn’t experienced any significant struggle during the great depression, which is infamous for being absolutely devastating for many Americans. That disconnect is likely happening again, except this time our leaders are either gaslighting us or are actively unaware of the problem. I’m not sure which is worse, or if it makes a difference.
People’s feelings affect how they act. Those actions, collectively, can have an impact on the economy (recession spending can cause a recession), politics (especially with elections in 6 months), and society in general. As they say, “perception creates reality.”
The entire stock market is based off investor’s feelings so why shouldn’t that also apply to the rest of the economy when market performance is a primary data point when measuring how the economy is doing?
No you didn’t ask that, you asked why they would expect a bigger raise when inflation is around 3%. The answer is because they obviously think their job isn’t that terrible.
Judging by the increase in prices reported by many as well as shrinkflation, Official Inflation Figures in the US might be very understated, which would make that “real” part of real wage rise be complete total bollocks, since a wage adjusted to a smaller inflation index value than reality is not in fact “real”. Considering that understating Official Inflation not only helps in political propaganda like the “real wages” one but also mathematically feeds to a higher GDP Growth figure (in simple terms: the unaccounted for inflation appear as “growth”) which is also heavilly featured in political propaganda, it’s pretty naive to think that there isn’t political pressure to “adjust” that figure down, especially in an election year.
Independently of that, it’s perfectly possible for the average real wage (which is what’s reported) to be going up whilst the median real wage (which is more representative of most people’s experience and is not what’s reported) to be stagnant or even falling: all it takes is for the top earners to be getting significant raises to pull the average up enough that it disguises everybody else not getting such raises.
PS: To add to my second point, here’s an interesting chart. Even though it’s an overall unweighted nominal (so, not real) value and it’s a 3 month moving average (so the effects are shown delayed) you can see a spike and subsequent fall towards the trend in 2023. Now look at this inflation chart and you can see that the median salary growth is delayed from inflation and never actually managed to be as high as the actual inflation. This actually brings up a 3rd point I hadn’t considered:
The salary growth is delayed from inflation, so what we saw in 2023 (and which is now slowing down as per the first chart) is salaries trying to catch up with the high inflation of 2021/22 (and failing) but the inflation by then was already much lower. Obviously if one completelly ignores the last 5 years (which is a common technique in political propaganda) and just calculates “real” wage growth from present day wages and present day inflation, the result will be positive, simply because salaries are still trying to catch up to the inflation of 2-3 years before. However if one adds up the median real wage growth of the last 4 years, the picture is significantly worse.
Wage growth now is outpacing inflation, meaning we’re going in the right direction. But if you compare over a few years, many people have fallen behind and have a lot of catching up to do.
Come Oklahoma asshole better yet look up jobs here and see what they pay. It isn’t shit. Not outliner go look at fucking jobs and what they pay. All the data you need is right there.
NO ONE IS PAYING A FUCKING LIVING WAGE. Homeless is going up everything is but fucking pay. So full of shit. Show your data and not from propaganda machine that is mainstream media.
Tell me about it. It seems like no one looks at job postings to see what companies are actually hiring at.
If they do it’s selective to their profession, or across highly educated professions. Then they can argue “well, git gud scrub.” Completely ignoring how a gigantic portion of the population is stuck working those shit paying jobs.
I’m sorry that some states are shitholes, with shitty people trying to make them shittier. I live in one too.
Low taxes, but low benefits to its citizens, so people don’t really want to live there. Poor healthcare, poor education, fewer opportunities for the arts and the things that make life worth livin’. It’s a cycle of poverty and despair, and it’s awful.
When I get money, I’m moving out. But I may never have enough money.
But I think you can understand why three years of improvement after four decades of stagnation might not dramatically move peoples’ perception of the economy. Plus, are real wages up for everyone? Is it average real wages? Median? There’s a big difference. It’s entirely possible some people are experiencing much more real wage growth than others.
Edit: apparently a lot of you are confused. You seem to think that if wages are up for some, they must be up for all. That’s not how it works. Not everyone got a raise over the last three years. Some people did, others didn’t. Some people saw their income increase dramatically, some saw their income stay about the same, and some saw their income go down. And that’s true whether the incomes in question are measured in “real” (inflation adjusted) terms or are nominal figures.
Ok, I looked it up. Here’s what I found from investopedia:
Real income is how much money an individual or entity makes after accounting for inflation and is sometimes called real wage when referring to an individual’s income. Individuals often closely track their nominal vs. real income to have the best understanding of their purchasing power.
Now that I have an exact definition, explain how anything I wrote was a “dumbass question.” Frankly, I don’t think I’m the dumbass here…
That’s the crux of their question, not what real wages means.
If it’s defined by an individual then how is it calculated across the entire working class for you to say it’s increasing. Median, average? Are we all sharing in that growth or only the top?
Your feelings about the economy don’t matter when the data all goes in the other direction
Except its not “all the data”. Its “the data we’ve always used to measure this up to now”.
The disconnect is that classic measurements of national economic health used to reflect the earning and spending power of average Americans. So using the same basket of measures and things that can affect those was a valid approach. In recent years those measurements don’t reflect average Americans anymore. Inflation has eaten away at the value of savings impacting older Americans. High interest rates are now acting as a double whammy for young Americans that need borrow for higher education as well as first time home buyers, but the costs of both have risen sharply in the last 20 years. So while the high cost has been a problem, the now high interest rates are a force multiplier stepping on the necks of young Americans.
I don’t disagree that Biden’s actions have improved classic measurements. Those are still valid and useful for where they apply. I disagree that those measurements still reflect the experience of regular Americans. Thats a problem that extra economic measures should be included when looking at the experience of regular Americans.
I hear you saying an apples-to-apples comparison to show a point is … somehow bad.
You’re gonna have to grow out of just thinking there are only two outcomes: “good” and “bad”. The world is more complicated than that. The classic indicators don’t reflect the modern average American experience anymore. They were chosen in a different time under different circumstances. They were chosen when a college education cost a couple of thousand dollars a year, a average blue color worker could buy a brand new car every two years, and a small house was easily affordable for a single income earner with the other staying at home raising kids. Clearly you can see how this is now out-of-date with modern American life.
They’re fine as a useful apples-to-apples comparison to national economic health, but today fail to show what average Americans experience.
Sometimes I just don’t know what people want.
Introduce some nuance into your worldview and that may help you understand.
There are plenty of problems with CPI, one of which is the very issue of “feelings”. Owners equivalent rent is absolutely irrelevant to actual rent costs. It’s just how much a homeowner says they would charge if they were to rent out their place. These are not the people renting out units…they’re just someone who happened to have enough money to buy a house. WTF do they know.
This. Buying power of the average American has decreased drastically. If you worked for the last five years and your pay has changed you’ve technically made less money every year as the power of the dollar has diminished. If you’re on a fixed income it feels even worse.
This is all about the disconnect between feelings and actual data. The question is how to get them back in sync. Some of that is time, but people will feel negatively as long as their media keeps telling them they are worse off.
For me it’s time. I know that be all objective measures I’m better off. It’s not just the overall stats but I got decent raises two years in a row. I still get hit with how bad inflation is. But a big part is that I stopped buying stuff for a couple of years. I cut back to really only make necessary purchases. Now that I have a little more available resources, and can make a few discretionary purchases, I’m hit by the last 4-5 years of inflation since I even looked. My comparison point is pre-COVID
He has no incentive to do better. It’s him or Trump and he knows most democrats have bought into fear politics. He has the vote no matter what. I’m personally voting for neither. And please save your time trying to convince me otherwise.
Good for you for having a reasonable mind in defiance of the system and the countless, unfortunately brainwashed thralls that continue to support it.
A no-vote is a vote against a tyrannous and oppressive system. Every 4 years is a new “emergency, vote for the lesser of two evils!!!” And every 4 years, we descend more rapidly into authoritarianism.
Do not participate in this system created by slavers. Put your energy elsewhere. Can’t we do better today? Put your energy into better.
Attention is currency. Around the world, we need to stop giving these tyrants attention. Corporations have record profits yet the prices of food keep increasing, wages stay stagnant, mass layoffs are occurring, and the global temperature keeps increasing. They do not care, because they have hoarded all your attention and power, and they use it to make a nee world for them.
Their “governments” that they make you think are actually yours, serve that machine of their safety. You are in the meat grinder, and they consume the meat.
The grinder is perfectly balanced. Every vote for the side you think is benevolent gets balanced by a vote against it. You will NEVER have an impact on change within the system. The best thing any individual can do is STOP. Opt out of the system. Live closer to nature and form new, self-sufficient communities.
A no-vote is just the beginning of opting out. The PEOPLE have the power, not a slaver-created mechanism they call a “government”.
You aren’t voting. Go stand in line to cast a paper ballot that you can’t verify is even counted for one of two hand-selected-by-the-elite, who don’t give two schlicks about you or your community, and keep pretending you’re “voting” for something.
After 40 years of a happy life you find out your whole life has been some sort of twisted Truman show. After 20 years of being on the show you’ve forgotten all about the big red button you push every night before you go to sleep. It has become a habit. The big red button sits next to a green button that says “Venusaur is the best Pokemon”. Each night you must choose one and the big red button gases you and makes you forget the last 30 minutes right before you go to sleep.
On the first day of the 41st year you get a knock on the door. It’s a woman in her 30’s wearing a tight fitting Venusaur t-shirt. She tells you it was her little brother’s and you finally find out after 40 years of a happy life that each time you press the red button you cause the brutal death of a child.
You are devastated, run upstairs and press the green button. Venusaur appears and you disappear from a Solar Beam. The most powerful attack in the history of the franchise.
You should absolutely be pedantic about a paid, published article having writing like that. It’s not some random internet comment from someone who may or may not have graduated high school, this was approved by multiple people who allegedly went to college for the writing related jobs they have. It should at least pass the “does this make sense if you think about it at all for more than 5 seconds” test.
And yeah I know reporters and writers facing the same overwork/underpay squeeze as everyone else. This is more about the corporations that run these papers and magazines being responsible for things deteriorating to this point.
It highlights the age gap between her and Trump by using her father’s age as a reference point. People are joking about how it sounds like they’re saying the age gap between her father and Trump has changed over time as if they age at different rates.
I dunno, the person I replied to originally seems to be losing their mind over this even though it makes sense even if a bit clunky and if everyone knows what they’re trying to say then is it really that bad? Conveying meaning is the entire point of language and it seems to have done the job.
Thank you, that’s very sweet of you. While my statement was a bit tongue-in-cheek, if I live to see my 60th birthday, I’ll officially be older than my father ever was.
Maybe it’s one of those “at the time, Trump was older than my father ever was” kind of statements
Maybe they meant “already older then than her father’s current age?” They probably didn’t, and I’m too lazy to fact check that, but agreed, what a weird comment to add to the article
Trump is trying to get thrown in jail. His court appearance donation bumps are slowing, and he can’t campaign or fundraise properly. His only chance to avoid prosecution is to win the election. Throwing Trump in jail for tweeting will energize his base.
Meanwhile, letting him rant on “Failing” Truth Social every night then get fined $1,000 by the judge every morning makes him look petty.
Someone else here on Lemmy suggested community service instead of jail time. It sure would be funny to see Trump in a high-vis vest picking up trash along some road. Maybe one day per gag order violation?
It can’t happen though. Community service is an act that requires cooperation. He would need to buy in, which he won’t. He’d wear the orange jumpsuit and continue to campaign from the side of the highway. He’d never pick up a single bit of trash, he’d smile for cameras.
You were being a bummer for no reason, to a real person who was just having a nice thought. This is to explain that mistake. Now I’m explaining the explanation and confirming it. Why does this conversation feel like packet handling protocol?
Ok, so there was a post suggesting that community service for mr trump was legitimately a good idea. I was rebutting that idea. If that makes me the asshole, I truly don’t understand why. In retrospect, it wasn’t your post that first suggested the idea, so I suppose I shouldn’t have responded to that particular post.
I’m sorry reality is a “bummer” though, I don’t disagree really. But I wasn’t doing it deliberately to piss you off.
Cool, so then he’s never actually going to complete it and would have to be out there every day doing nothing and looking (more) like a criminal.
I’d still pay to see him forced to degrade himself and be cajoled by DoC thugs to pick up trash. Even if he never did, the damage to his ego would be worth the wasted time.
He’d be looking more like a martyr every day. He’d get constant attention from his supporters and more opportunities to address the public than he currently has now. As much as it could hurt him, It really has as much chance to backfire and help him.
I’m not sure that it’s true, there are a lot of people who are undecided who have said they will not vote for him if convicted, no matter how energized he makes his base
I can’t even begin to imagine the life experience and mental gymnastics it would take to still be undecided at this point.
His base supporters, I get. They want a dictator. They don’t care how we get there. No amount of criminal convictions are going to change their mind.
But for the rest of the people, how is it even possible to still be undecided. The wannabe dictator has made it crystal clear his intentions to become a dictator.
You’re probably right about that, but he’s so blatantly crossing the line in ways that would result in a regular Joe getting thrown in jail…
Can we survive as a society of he continues to make a mockery of the rule of law? Isn’t it important to show that the wealthy are not above the law? Every day he breathes free air is evidence that the justice system is broken beyond repair and it gives fuel to those who want a violent revolution to burn the system down.
When they didn’t avoid the situation that allowed turtleman to obstruct Obama’s nomination for almost a year by not beinging it before the Senate in a blatant abuse of power.
Then they didn’t keep another Republican nominee from being rammed through in the last few months before Biden took office.
Since then they have not addressed the underlying issue of whether congress is obligated to consider nominees. They also won’t get rid of the filibuster, which would take a simple majority to remove.
When they didn’t avoid the situation that allowed turtleman to obstruct Obama’s nomination for almost a year by not beinging it before the Senate in a blatant abuse of power.
Avoid it how? What specifically would you have liked them to do?
2016, when Scalia died? The Republicans were like, “you can’t fill a supreme court position in an election year” and the Democrats said “oh, okay” and let Trump get it. Then they let Trump fill another seat in an election year(!) and the Democrats just said, “oh, okay” again.
There really wasnt much that Democrats could do. Mitch controlled the agenda in the Senate at the time (and his friend Lindsey controlled the agenda in the Judiciary Committee). Every prior nominee, even the ones who were controversial, still got hearings and a vote, even if that vote failed. (The one exception might have been the absolute moron that GWB nominated, who was so clueless she failed the written questions* that the committee gave her, but I think she backed out after that so it never got a chance to progress).
The problem with Garland is that he was the compromise candidate. If Mitch let his nomination go to a vote, it would have passed. So he simply ignored it. The only person who might have been able to get around it was Graham, if he had progressed the nomination out of committee, but he didn’t.
The Senate doesn’t have any avenues to force a vote if the Leadership doesn’t want that vote to happen.
In mid-October, the Senate Judiciary Committee requested Miers resubmit her judicial questionnaire after members complained her answers were “inadequate,” “insufficient,” and “insulting.”
The problem with Garland is that he was the compromise candidate.
And for getting fucked over by the Republicans, the Democrats decided to make this Republican the most ineffectual AG in fucking history, so desperate to avoid looking like he’s making decisions for political reasons that he’s practically blasting it from the rooftops that he was avoiding prosecuting Trump for political reasons.
This is literally proof in the pudding that Democrats are fucking weak willed pussies who keep giving into the same psycho fascist fucks who keep ostensibly fucking over the Democrats. The inability of the Democrats to choose their own fucking AG and not give Garland this fucking consolation prize is part and parcel to why our Democracy is falling apart and Trump has a chance to be elected again.
Garland waited TWO YEARS before starting an investigation into Trump.
There was, they just chose not to use an anti-democratic loophole to do it. They took the high road by not using a recess appointment. Sure, that appointment would have only been temporary but it would have allowed some votes to get passed the 4/4 split at the time. It also would have been less of a campaign talking point for Trump to be able to appoint someone immediately (the temporary appointment would have been until 2018 I think??).
I don’t know if they could have filibustered the vote on Trump’s final pick during the election year. I’m not completely caught up on those rules.
You need a recess in order to make a recess appointment, and both houses of Congress often keep a few legislators around the Capitol just to pound the gavel so the Senate never actually goes into recess.
And in regards to judicial appointments, Harry Reid killed its use for judicial appointments when the Republicans in the minority during Obama’s time in office filibustered everything. Reid kept it in place for SC justices, though. Mitch removed it for SC justices, too, when Democrats started making noise about filibustering Gorsuch.
And that’s the weird thing about the Fillibuster. It institutes a 60 vote threshold to get most things done, but it was always just a Senate rule and Senate rules are set by a simple majority. It can go away tomorrow if 51 Senators agree to get rid of it.
The democrats currently control the senate which was not the case when Obama’s pick was tabled by McConnell. There’s plenty of legitimate stuff to criticize democrats for, but don’t blame them for republican fuckery.
I hear this opinion a lot, and I always ask what specifically would you have them do? They don’t control the house, so if they can’t get Republicans to go along they can’t pass any legislation. That’s just reality.
I’m sorry, but the Republicans would have fucking just steamrolled the parliamentarian, and the fact that the Democrats wouldn’t shows their milquetoast, waffling, ineffectual cowardice.
This is just one of many examples where they are unwilling to fight when and where it matters.
We could also talk about the recent immigration bill, a bill that hands Republicans exactly what they want in respect to immigration, a bill that basically says “Fuck them DREAMers” that the Democrats leaned on so hard in the last few election cycles. I get that the immigration bill was paired with Ukraine aid as a “poison pill” to get it passed, but there’s the rub: is passing bad legislation because Republicans want it and we think it’s the only way to get “good legislation” passed really the best solution if it leaves us with bad legislation as law?
I think it’s pretty straightforwardly fuckin clear that it is not in our best interests to hand them whatever they want when it comes to their LIES about the border and immigration. But what do I know, I guess I must just be talking out of my ass or something. Give me a break.
There was also the unwillingness to prosecute Bush & Cheney for war crimes. “We need to look forward, not backward.” Why do you think they are so hesitant to prosecute Trump? They didn’t want to prosecute war crimes when it came to Bush & Cheney.
I could keep going…
Democrats have literally spent my entire adult life PRETENDING that Republicans are operating in good faith when every available piece of evidence screams bloody murder that the Republicans are not acting in good faith.
Why do we keep praising Democrats for trying to shake hands with people who keep kicking them in the balls?
I’m sorry, but the Republicans would have fucking just steamrolled the parliamentarian, and the fact that the Democrats wouldn’t shows their milquetoast, waffling, ineffectual cowardice.
So they should have violated the rules of the Senate? They have a razor thin majority, 48 Dems and 3 independents. You would need all of them to be willing to violate the Senate rules to pass immigration as a reconciliation bill.
We could also talk about the recent immigration bill
So you go from being upset that they didn’t try to pass an immigration bill to upset that they did. The Democrats negotiated with Republicans to achieve one of two outcomes, either the Republicans go along with it and it removes the issue from the election or the Republicans torpedo it and they go into the election season having been given everything they wanted and refused it. It’s gamesmanship.
There was also the unwillingness to prosecute Bush & Cheney for war crimes.
And what court exactly would have allowed the destruction of presidential immunity for official presidential acts? The correct answer is none.
Democrats have literally spent my entire adult life PRETENDING that Republicans are operating in good faith when every available piece of evidence screams bloody murder that the Republicans are not acting in good faith.
Who has claimed this? The Republicans have become a party of obstructionism. They do not care if the government functions. That means they aren’t willing to compromise and they will use every lever of government to sabotage any work done.
If the Republicans control either chamber of the legislature, nothing can get done. If there is a republican president, nothing will get done. Your solutions are ill conceived and don’t address reality. If you just want to be angry, go ahead. Throw in a “both sides are the same” while you’re at it. I prefer pragmatism and reality.
I don’t know, I’m not a lifelong politician or law expert. But c’mon, they are! Do some fucking politicking! I find it beyond reason that there was nothing they could do, but also nothing they could do to stop Trump. As far as I care, Obama just gave it away for absolutely nothing. They didn’t fight it because they thought Hilary would win and now we’re just legally fucked for decades.
Hillary literally had a strategy to elevate Donald Trump in the primaries because she thought he would be easier to beat than Geb Bush, who is who she (incorrectly) assumed she would be up against.
I think people really underestimate how pissed people were that we were about to have another Bush v. Clinton match up and didn’t want political dynasties.
Of course, the people most angry about it seemingly voted in a man who wants nothing but to create his own endless political dynasty of the Dictatorship variety.
So you are completely ignorant as to how Congress functions, but you’re also somehow positive they could have done something? That’s such confused thinking. Perhaps figure out what could have been done before complaining that it wasn’t done.
They could have “convinced” Mitch McConnell not to block the nomination by any thousands of legal, illegal, and extra-legal means. All I’m saying is, when corporate America is in trouble, it truly seems like anything is possible. When actual American lives are at stake, they just shrug and bemoan the rules they’re in charge of making and enforcing.
They could have “convinced” Mitch McConnell not to block the nomination by any thousands of legal, illegal, and extra-legal means.
No, they couldn’t.
All I’m saying is, when corporate America is in trouble, it truly seems like anything is possible.
Yes, because Democrats want to help people, and Republicans only care about ultra wealthy people and corporations. Corporate America is the overlap in this particular Venn diagram.
When actual American lives are at stake, they just shrug and bemoan the rules they’re in charge of making and enforcing.
Republicans do that and block help. See Republicans with the recent bridge collapse all the way back to super storm Sandy.
The Democrats had the chance to bypass the Senate to get their SC pick in. There was a procedural loophole they could have used to install their pick without a full vote while the Senate was in recess. Obama specifically addressed this option and said he didn’t like using anti-democratic loopholes to get around the issue. If he had said, “OK, the Republicans are refusing to even vote on this so we are going to force it without a vote” then we wouldn’t have had the drunken rapist on the SC. He took the high road and allowed the people who took the low road to make lives for everyone worse. If Sandra Day O’Connor had retired earlier, when she was repeatedly asked to retire while under Obama, we wouldn’t have had Handmaid’s Tale put in the SC.
EDIT: Wrong person. I meant RBG. I swear I’m not sexist and lump all women together, I’m just a moron who is bad with names regardless of their gender.
Pretty much this. Obama sat on his hands with regard to the whole “you can’t appoint justices in an election year” thing, despite having options. I get not wanting to give your opposition reasons to beat the “they’re ALL TYRANTS” drum, but he really should’ve seen that was going to happen regardless.
Can’t happen this time because Mitch isn’t running the Senate…
BUT…
Here’s a scenario…
Thomas drops dead.
Sinema or Manchin change party to Republican.
Senate flips to Republican leadership and Mitch is back in charge because he doesn’t step down from the leadership role until the term ends.
Mitch blocks the nominee just like he did with Merrick Garland.
Trump wins and gets a 4th Supreme Court pick… which doesn’t change the balance, since Thomas is right wing, but it locks in the 6-3 majority for decades.
No, those 3 Independents caucus with Democrats and vote with Democrats for the purposes of organizing the Senate. So it is effectively 51-49 for the purpose of establishing the Senate Leadership. One flip makes it 50-50, and then Harris spends a lot more time in the Senate.
A dem speaker would absolutely bring this to a vote and Biden wouldn’t bring forward a candidate that he couldn’t get past the pains in the asses like Manchin.
All of these judicial candidates have been pre-vetted to high hell.
When I first began learning HTML (way before CSS and the modern web), my most engaged moments were when things broke. Way more satisfying learning how to fix them than having it work right away. What a great observation / comment.
“A lot of it is bred from misunderstanding and how the word is smeared,”
The same could be said about “communism” and “socialism”. The words have been turned dirty, such that people shy away from what is objectively a good thing when done honestly and to the letter of the principle.
It was already established. It’s just a theoretical framework in various social studies. It was deliberately bastardized by the right as they were seeking something to hate. It wasn’t even in the public consciousness, just something academics used and that get taught in some higher ed classes. It’s a very useful framework but it’s not something that you’d actually teach a kid.
It was an academic term for a relatively short period, it was never established in common language - not in the same way that socialism and communism were.
I bought the actual book because it was on sale and because I thought it would be hilarious to put out on my coffee table for when my conservative dad came to visit my house. I also figured I’d try to read it, because I should be informed about what it is so that I can argue for it, right?
Holy shit, it’s a lot of dense legal theory. I knew it was graduate material, but the book is a collection some of the most complex ideas, studies, and legal theory that I’ve ever read. I’m not going to lie that I won’t even make it a third of the way through it.
Anyone who argues that CRT is being taught in elementary schools and is being used to brainwash children hasn’t seen how high-level the material actually is and has no idea what they’re talking about.
In reality, the material is not that controversial. What I have read of it has been quite unbiased.
I know very little about CRT beyond some very general idea so idk if there’s a point to call it that specifically, but the naming choice is so bad that the first time I read it I assumed it’s some nazi thing and had 0 doubt about it.
I mean you could also say that Capitalism is a dirty word in some circles. And yet, it addresses many of the aspects of trade, which are needed through all societal systems.
give it 50 years and the arms race of language will have its own sub arms race
you’ll coin a politically charged term, someone will coin an antonym, the original will shift to change the subject, the antonym will change to match the new, someone will point out the process and both sides will deny its happening
Communism is a very decent idea. It’s the transition to it that always tends to be spoiled by incumbant powers. Writers of Communist theory recognised this somewhat, and their solution was to have a violent revolution that would hopefully come end with the new system they devised. Now, however, the word is basically lost - there are/have been too many “Communist” countries that don’t really operate in that manner, with too many people that have suffered under that name.
Socialism doesn’t have quite the same level of stigma, but still a good deal. However, when you think about it, a significant portion of any government is “Socialist” - we pay taxes, our taxes fund roads, schools and various other social services. Socialism, or more specifically socialist policy, is that which benefits society as a whole rather than any specific group. When you see it like that, it’s hard to paint it as a bad thing, not without being completely selfish that you or your group aren’t getting an exclusive benefit.
People refuse to look at things with their core and correct definitions. They always bring their baggage along. Or, they twist it into their own framing for their own point of view.
My remedy to the poisoning of those words is to refer to then as “economic democracy,” and just state communist/socialist policy without the buzz words.
Those who aren’t ignorant about actual socialist policies that can feasibly and easily be implemented in a modern society and yet still loathe them truly bewilder me. And I’m not talking about rich folks or power brokers, just normal, working class people. The indoctrination over the last century has been quite effective.
To be fair, the term “feminist” was highjacked by the radical feminist movement. They very much do not believe in equality, their motto is “kill all men”
I think it’s easy to see why that would turn people away. Hence why I describe myself as an equalizer, not a feminist.
Edit: my statement was very reasonable and I’m willing to engage in discussion about what I have witnessed. If you think I’m pushing an agenda or trying to convince others of anything, feel free to check my post history. However, if you accuse me of pushing an agenda or lying or anything else, you are engaging in false faith and will be blocked. I have a long history of supporting women’s rights, as evidenced by several posts I have made. But I will not stand for being accused of being a right winger.
I think again that was one that was actually hijacked by the right wing. There is far more fearmongering about hardcore feminists than there are hardcore feminists.
While your second statement is true, there are still far too many extremists. I find it very difficult to believe that all the hatred I viewed from feminists on Tumblr and r/FemaleDatingStrategy and many other sources(like my ex who fell into that stuff) were right wingers. Just like one incel is too many(and you don’t hear people claiming incels don’t exist), one person calling for the death or enslavement of half the planet is too many.
Fwiw, I haven’t met a single real person who espouses the viewpoint you described. I’m not saying they don’t exist. I’m saying that until evidence is presented otherwise I doubt there are as many as you think there are.
Assuming you are male, it makes sense that you wouldn’t have met many, as they presumably take steps to avoid interacting with men. The only person like that I’ve talked to IRL would be one of my exes, and her friend group. She went off the rails after we broke up.
Fuckin lmao, you are so full of shit. You know damn well you’ve seen so many Tumblr posts, tshirts, and other bullshit that says the same things. “Kill all men” “All men are evil” “Low value men”
I guarantee you’ve seen all of that, it’s not at all uncommon. You choose to ignore it because you don’t like it. But that’s not how the world works. Other people, surprise surprise, don’t want to be associated with a movement calling for their death.
Enjoy your narrative, but welcome to the real world
do you think it makes sense to distinguish between the kind of radical feminism you’re talking about, and the dry academic stuff that’s also called radical feminism by the people who are engaged in it at least?
it’s tricky, i can’t deny there aren’t spaces which are predominantly women where a bunch of unfair or negative stuff about men is said.
thing is, radical, which in math is another term for getting the ‘root’ of something, like a square root, and also means like ‘fundamental’ does have more than one meaning. when you use it, that’s one use of the word which makes sense, another which is the one i first learned and the places i go to use to describe themselves is rather dry academic, philosophical, and artsy (artsy in the way which is confusing as heck to me) and they are also radical.
so often i am confused because it’s not as though when you use the word you’re making anything up. other commenters will likely treat you like you invented that use of the word, people always police language. it’d be way nicer if we could understand each other better i really think you and i and the commenters which probably gave you a downvote all have way more in common than not.
no i don’t think they were “the original”, where i see it now, they are in academic institutions (like the philosophy dept at my school, a few in women’s studies) and publications (here’s one from radical philosophy, she wrote for the london review of books which i really like and i thought the title was interesting, i thought it was a good piece that i’ll have to revisit at some point.
you’ll note there isn’t really any provocative language. you mentioned female dating strategy, that’s not a pleasant place to be. i browsed it a bit then noped out when all the acronyms started to come out, i checked the sidebar and thought yeah this is not a place which wants me…
Communism kind-of smeared itself. Everywhere where communism has been tried on a national scale, it has become authoritarianism.
Maybe it would be a good thing if done to the letter of the principle, but just like Libertarianism or Anarchism, it seems to be incompatible with human nature, at least so far.
But, socialism isn’t even a foreign idea. A lot of US institutions are socialist. The mail delivery is done by an arm of the government. Streets are paved by the government. Firefighters are government employees. The water delivered to your house is almost certainly by a government-run entity. People retiring without having saved enough are taken care of by the government. There’s medicare and medicaid.
A full capitalist system would have nothing done by the government that could be done by a business. No FDA, Pinkertons instead of Police, most army functions handed over to private contractors, every road privately owned and maintained, etc.
I agree with just about everything you’ve said. Communism has had too many failures that have affected too many people, the word is tainted.
To grossly oversimplify it, capitalism is the way of business and trade, while socialism is the way of society and governance. The two things are separate, but the issue we have is that businesses are dictating policy to governments in their exclusive interest, rather than the other way around with governments focusing on the overall good of society.
This is what transphobia has to offer. Transphobia and TERFS are inherently misogynistic because they start to attack every single woman that doesn’t fit into the worldview of a few people.
Yeah, there are reasons to be anti-religion and even potentially anti-immigrant, those issues have actual logically and morally consistent reasons. Whereas racism and the others are entirely emotional and based on nothing. Religion is belief literally founded on nothing.
Hmm Yeah ok I probably should have used more words there :o) I’m an atheist. I don’t like what religion does to people, in general. What I meant to say - but clearly didn’t express well - is that hating people for their religion is bullshit (also, their lack of religion). The general point was that hating people for their group membership is just evil.
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