temporary custody
Why is it next to impossible for people to get approved to adopt, but any asshole can become a foster parent? I think you need more in-depth screenings to adopt from pet rescues. If the US is going to force pregnancy on people, then they really need to get a handle on the foster system. Because it's always about "protecting the children," right?
I fucking hate that they used the term "empty" land. The poll question posed to residents asked them if they would be more in favor if they knew it was "bad soil" that only contributed to 5% of CA agriculture, as though making money is all that land is good for.
Yes, Fairfield, CA is kind of a shit hole. But NorCal open land is absolutely beautiful, like all of California. Every single fucking time I go there, which is pretty frequently, there are new mcmansion housing developments and business parks and data centers that are starting to be built or have just finished. There are protected wetlands between Sacramento and the east bay (far east) where migratory birds come back every year. Just because they don't build on the fucking wetlands doesn't mean this constant building isn't going to affect what little nature is left. I'm so fucking sick of seeing my home paved over for profit and I feel so powerless to do anything. Because I am powerless.
As if that weren't enough, we all know this is going to be some walled-off rich-people city where they can escape from us proles, right? Sick shit.
If cops want the bakery to "own" their policy, they they should own their policy of racial profiling
Aside from the subject of the article, when are we going to just stop with the "torched!" and "slammed!" and "destroys!" titles?? I hate them so much. Especially when someone "slams!" someone else. Like who the fuck came up with saying that.
Of course the name of his show is "war room," jfc. All conservatives do is fantasize about violence.
So where are all of the conservative "if Biden actually wanted to cancel student loan debt he would just do it" people now
Does "low engagement" mean "objectively not doing the job you are paying them to do"? Or does it mean "not going 'above and beyond,' aka not working unpaid overtime or doing things outside their job description"? Because only one of these warrants letting someone go.
What happened to the supreme court cases that said it's ok to discriminate against protected classes as long as it just so happens to be "against your religion"
It's very obvious here that no one is saying "if you don't like a Barbie movie then you're sexist." The point is if you don't agree with equality, whether in a movie or irl, then that's the problem. But I feel like you probably already know this.
But yes, if people from certain religions and political parties would just stop with the racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia, maybe people wouldn't feel the need to express cultural values the oppression they're experiencing. Maybe consumers wouldn't identify so much with the message of films like this. Yet somehow it's always positive media like this that gets pushback, and meanwhile, laws keep getting passed in bumfuck states that are stripping human rights from people one by one. But sure, Barbie is the "exhausting" issue here.
In other words, maybe there wouldn't be media "pushing" for equality if we already had it.
And idk, I find Marvel/superhero bullshit to be exhausting and immature and just bad, so I don't watch any of it, I block everything about it on lemmy and reddit, and I don't comment on it. Then it's not exhausting anymore.
That image, carefully crafted to be as extremely negative as possible, is the only experience most people have with California.
That's the thing. No one I've ever heard who says this kind of shit has ever lived here for any length of time or knows anything about the state beyond what the "news" has told them to believe. There are issues here like there are issues everywhere. So people want to focus on homelessness. Of course we have more homeless people, we have more people. We have two of the largest and most well known metro areas in the nation with an up and coming third.
The bitching takes away (maybe intentionally) from the homeless issue that is rapidly increasing throughout the rest of the country. This is an issue of inflation and greed masquerading as inflation. Of corporate property owners buying up rentals and raising rents. Of workers not being paid a living wage. Of food and essentials becoming increasingly unaffordable by the month. Of course people are losing their homes and stealing from walmart. But this is a national problem. It gets worse all over the country for the same reasons and at the same time that it gets worse in California.
But what I will say is, we do have reproductive rights. Reasonable firearms regulations. More tenant regulations that most places, though still never enough. Some cities have social worker response teams instead of sending cops to kill people having mental health problems. We have homeless outreach and a statewide homeless census. Our schools and colleges still have diversity programs and sex ed. The state provides tuition waivers and grants for low income and marginalized students. We have drag shows and pride parades. And our libraries aren't being purged by fucking nazis. So there's that.
Doesn't make it ok.
It's just a lot like Kim Jong Un or Putin, where he seriously pictures himself looking like Vin diesel. And so do his followers. All those maga flags and political comics actually give him a six pack and make him 6'5. It's gross and kind of scary.
Anytime there's a conversation about trump, fascism, and white supremacists in America, there's always at least one of the "dEmOcrAtS sHoUld HaVE dOnE MoRe" crowd. It's so stupid, I can't help but think it's very intentional misdirection. Like it's some astroturfed bullshit from a conservative think tank.
America is shitty for the poor (there is no middle class anymore). So at this point, if voting for someone who is not a fucking fascist dictator is all we can do, then that's what we're going to do.
This 21 Year old has a 6 and 3 year old sons. I'll let you do the math on that. But it adds up to before some states had bans.
First of all, red states made it next to impossible to get abortions even when it was legal. Also, they cost money. Contrary to apparent popular belief, George Soros or the DNC don't just appear to fund every abortion. Or, sometimes people are Catholic, which is fucking stupid, but maybe there's some family shit you don't know about. Especially for a minor trying to get an abortion. Again, contrary to popular belief, they weren't just being handed out for free on every corner to every 16 year old who wanted one. There were still a million obstacles long before the Dobbs decision.
Second, "I'll let you do the math" is a judgey, self-righteous, and gross statement.
Like how Japanese internment in America wasn't justified, even if involvement in WW2 was.
Now there's something that sounds like an insane conspiracy theory but actually happened.
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/
By far, the biggest category of discretionary spending is spending on the Pentagon and military. In most years, this accounts for more than half of the discretionary budget. In 2020, because some discretionary spending passed through supplemental appropriations went to pandemic programs, the share of the discretionary budget that went to the military was smaller – even though the amount that went to the military was just as high as in previous years.
Most "welfare" falls under discretionary. Medicare, medicaid, and social security (also "welfare") fall under mandatory spending. Social security and medicare make up the largest categories. This organization explains how "welfare" spending increased in recent years due to pandemic spending on things like stimulus checks and increased unemployment.
The bottom line thoughis that people pay into it for years so that it's available when it's their turn to need it. If they never do, then great. It can help someone else, god forbid.
They definitely have it in other California cities too. And not just in restaurants.
A chain resale/consignment hipster shop in NorCal started adding a percentage service charge years ago with the same excuse, and you'd only find out about it if you looked at your receipt. The fucked up part is that they also raised their prices so high that I couldn't shop there anymore. It's one of those buy/sell/trade clothing stores, so the whole point was to pay less for decent clothes. But if they're already raising prices significantly, why the fuck do they need yet another charge to pay their workers.
I also think they really must believe it makes them seem "progressive" somehow. Like "oh look, we're on the workers' side!" and they hope no one eating/shopping there will think about it any more deeply than that.
Reddit is like a microcosm of American society
Same with every festival. So disappointing that I'll never have the chance to experience (or be able to afford, regardless) the way Coachella or Burning Man was when I was younger.
Here's a somewhat tangential counter, which I think some of the other replies are trying to touch on ... why, exactly, continue valuing our ability to do something a computer can so easily do for us (to some extent obviously)?
My theory prof said there would be paper exams next year. Because it's theory. You need to be able to read an academic paper and know what theoretical basis the authors had for their hypothesis. I'm in liberal arts/humanities. Yes we still exist, and we are the ones that AI can't replace. If the whole idea is that it pulls from information that's already available, and a researcher's job is to develop new theories and ideas and do survey or interview research, then we need humans for that. If I'm trying to become a professor/researcher, using AI to write my theory papers is not doing me or my future students any favors. Ststistical research on the other hand, they already use programs for that and use existing data, so idk. But even then, any AI statistical analysis should be testing a new hypothesis that humans came up with, or a new angle on an existing one.
So idk how this would affect engineering or tech majors. But for students trying to be psychologists, anthropologists, social workers, professors, then using it for written exams just isn't going to do them any favors.
Apparently the weather stations in the SoCal desert didn't see it coming at all. Not sure how that's possible, but that's what they said Friday. Tons of flooding in Palm Springs and Vegas too.
just increased the national debt by about 45 billion a year.
But helping student loan borrowers would have cost too much. For fuck's sake.
"bigoted and discriminatory"
What happened to those supreme court rulings they were so in favor of, that allowed poor little christians to blatantly discriminate against people they don't like
Most real women don't look like twenty year old thin white models.
When you work at a college you'd be amazed at how much time that takes up. Or kids just darting into the middle of a four way stop intersection on skateboards, or skating down the yellow line in the middle of the road. Or stepping out in front of a car without looking because they're heads are bent down looking at their phones (which also happens when they almost walk right into you on campus). Or the people who rev their engines and drive as fast as possible through parking garages to see how many car alarms they can set off. I saw that twice just last semester. Or every single day dodging the people who drive on the wrong side of the road in parking lots and garages because apparently they really need those lines to tell them what side to be on. Living in a major city is even worse. And it doesn't matter if the person deliberately runs out in front of you, it'll be your fault because you're the one in the car. At least in my state. Yeah, I'd say pedestrians are a great example.
It's crazy because the first amendment literally says that there should be no national religion, yet it's acceptable that "in god we trust" because it's not a specific religion. That's just such a bad faith interpretation of the law. Plus it's always the "constitutionalists" who are pushing this kind of shit, which I guess is the kind of hypocrisy we've all come to expect from them.
I think more than one party can be at fault at the same time, but it also depends on the situation.
For example. Google maps kept taking rideshare drivers to the wrong entrance of my apartment complex. When I say "wrong," I mean "nonexistent." So multiple uber drivers were literally pulling over on the side of a busy street near a freeway on ramp with no bike lane or shoulder. They'd hit their flashers and stop in the middle of the road, blocking the on ramp lane. I'm in the actual parking lot, not tracking them in the app, so I don't know they're around the corner. I had two drivers just leave. Did they let me know they were going to cancel and drive away? Fuck no. The actual parking lot and driveway is only a few yards away. If they don't pass right by it, they can at least see the driveway. I mean, come on. Use your brain.
After the first time this happened, I tried to move the pin in the app, but it just kept sending drivers to the same place. I started texting them after they accepted the ride, but not all would see it. I contacted google and the pickup spot did change - to a back entrance on the opposite side of the complex that has no parking lot or place to stop unless you have a gate opener. For fuck's sake.
Anyway, it's both of their faults.
Not voting democrat is a direct vote for fascism. Just because it's not ideal and not fair doesn't make it any less true.
Exactly. I never understood how everyone got on board with hating her so quickly and easily. She runs the wildlife rescue and had been fighting for a law like this for years. But everyone just believed the clown car of tiger king people when they would talk shit about her. Of course they hated her. She was trying to stop them from abusing animals for profit.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/articles/physicians-more-likely-to-doubt-black-patients
https://www.today.com/health/implicit-bias-medicine-how-it-hurts-black-women-t187866
The research is out there with a quick search. As a white woman though, I definitely don't need research to know it's true. Especially with gynecological issues, pain levels, and psychiatry. We're "hysterical," and though they don't use that word anymore, that judgement is alive and well.
Since when do most people in the US still work manual labor jobs? Have we not been in a service economy since around the 80s or did I miss something
As a Californian dealing with Feinstein, I am so sick of the "well you voted for them!" bs. We all know how fucked American elections are. We all know that we are not given any true choice of who gets in office. Why would state elections be any better? Even living in a state that's technically a direct democracy, it still comes down to whoever has the most money. Local elections tend to have more candidates, but less information available on them, and while anyone can propose a ballot initiative here, it again comes down to having enough money to do that.
The whole thing is a shit show that comes down to choosing democrats or fascists. And while democrats may not be the best choice, the "both sides" thing is also bs because there's an obvious right choice there.
Just learned about faculty housing going in at one of the CSU campuses. Of course the marketing has all been positive because housing is such a commodity near universities, and because colleges often pay their teachers shit, even with unions and decent benefits.
This is the benefit of an uneducated population. So that we all forget what things looked like before the labor organizing of the early 20th century.
Exactly. Plus it just further stigmatizes people with actual mental illnesses by constantly associating them with the absolute worst dregs of society. Why is it so hard for people to understand that there's a wealth of sadistic, selfish, and unfathomably stupid people out there in the world, and none of those things automatically equate to mental illness.
Isn't it insane how managers (and professors for that matter) tend to act like you're not a person with a whole life and personality outside your job
Ok, so it really is getting worse. Thought maybe it was just me getting easily annoyed.
You guys are getting 10 minutes?
The phrase "the police should have handled it better but..." should just be outlawed. I guess it does let everyone know to never have a conversation with whoever says it though, so I guess there's that.
And who can't rock a bikini at 30? WTF, where do you live?
Yeah, wtf are these comments saying "many people have been nursing back problems for years by their 30th birthday" lmfao. Like what world do they live in? Realistically though, they're probably 12 and think 30 is ancient.
Did the fascists not just come for student loan forgiveness on the bullshit claim that Biden didn't have the executive power to do something like that?
Fuck these traitorous pieces of shit. If this shit doesn't stop we're about to be living in the fucking Pinochet regime (which was the brainchild of American conservatives, because of course it fucking was) and academics and musicians and authors are going to start getting disappeared along with our LGBTQ family, friends and neighbors. What a fucking shit show. And apparently there's not much we can do about it, except vote. As though that's ever done a fucking thing with an absolute anachronism of an electoral system.
I can't help the nihilism sometimes, jfc.