Knocked it out of the park with this comment.
Sincerely,
Someone originally from the same town as you, basically.
Knocked it out of the park with this comment.
Sincerely,
Someone originally from the same town as you, basically.
Wouldn't the combo of the first amendment and the supremacy clause pretty neatly dismantle the new Louisiana law?
Because they've also got the lie-a-beetus.
Hell, in the inter-war period, mainstream America was even generally pretty comfortable with...uh...if not actual fascism, at least things that looked and sounded a lot like fascism.
So you just don't work at all?
Are you from rural PA?
I mean...the moment any large corporation figures out a way to replace human workers that need things like bathroom breaks (and basic human rights, and paychecks) and do the same work with robots and AI... literally the next moment, they'll have the AI start generating layoff notices.
It's just less flashy when it happens that way because there's no need for that AI to look like a beautiful young person.
Because Trump, as weirdly as he may go about it, has made his way through life on his (inherited fortune from his from his crook of a father and) force of personality.
He gets people to do what he wants them to do by projecting an image, a brand, through the way he acts and speaks. Look at The Apprentice. He's playing this role that says (without saying out loud), "Look at me. I'm a straight shooting, no nonsense business leader and my personality and business sense have brought me success, money, fame, luxury, and power. You want that too? You want to be like me? Then do what I say."
Not saying it's authentic or that it should work, but Trump's entire existence is based on this tactic. He's constantly projecting an image, and it's that projection of that image that gets him his way. His force of personality is just as, if not more central to his power as his money (make no mistake, the money is necessary too).
This, in contrast with Musk, who's typically cultivated his following based on ideas and drive. He gets people to go along with him because he's seen as a modern day Edison (and to be fair, the comparison, in some ways, is apt... especially the less flattering ones), a groundbreaker, rules breaker...a visionary.
Simply put, among the people who follow these guys, people follow Musk for what he says (in terms of his big ideas), people follow Trump for the way he acts (in terms of the image he projects). It takes a strong set of blinders to ignore Musk's sharing of his worse ideas and Trump's less than impressive antics, but their respective cults have had plenty of practice in those mental gymnastics.
Thus you're left with the mind boggling (to the rest of us) situation where Musk's followers don't care how he acts, because they are laser focused on his ideas, while Trump supporters couldn't care less about the crazy or incoherent stuff he says, so long as he keeps projecting that macho, confident persona.
So that's how Musk gets away with being "Trump, but more childish": he's not depending on the personality like Trump, so he can act that way without turning his supporters off, because they don't care about that in the first place.
Musk's entire angle is "it's okay to be a humongous asshole if you achieve your goals.
Trump's is, "It's okay to be a humongous asshole, as long as you can sell it as arrogance bred from success."
Right?
"Nobody wants to work anymore!"
Like no shit man.
News Flash: nobody has wanted to work ever. They work because the compensation lets them live the lives they want outside of work. If nobody wants to work for you, it's because you either aren't willing to compensate them enough to do that, or your job makes them so miserable that it's not worth it for them to trade away that much happiness for the compensation.
Or both. In lots of cases it's both.
Everyone over the age of 20 thinks they're old now.
Everyone older than them responds with some variation of, "Just you wait!"
Always been this way.
And she's also wildly incompetent and biased, with this just being the latest in a long string of obvious moves to help him.
Yeah, all Google accomplished with this bullshit was finally getting me to switch from Chrome to Firefox as my main browser on desktop.
The more the old lies are proven as lies, the closer we get to the truth:
Just as important as "getting the job done" is the notion among many employers that they truly believe that with their payroll they are buying human lives and happiness. That if they are paying a worker for their time and labor that they are entitled to also dictate how that person feels about it...and if that worker is not sufficiently miserable, then they can be squeezed further.
I used to think that it was purely about money...that the idea was that if a worker ever got "all caught up" and had free time, then they should be generating more wealth for their employer in some other way...but then we had the pandemic.
The pandemic where lots and lots of workers had to suddenly do the whole work from home thing. And in that time, these employers were thrilled to go along with it, since it meant continuing to make money. And in that time, most office workers eventually turned out to be happier and even more productive.
...yet in the wake of the pandemic, many of these employers have chosen less productivity in exchange for bringing their employees back to offices. The only explanation for bringing employees back in who were happier and more productive from home is that these employers value the image of control and the ability to make their workers unhappy more than they value productivity and money.
Good.
I don't disagree...but the party-line Democrats have been telling progressives exactly that since the Clinton administration.
Again, to be clear: I'm happily voting Biden this November, but the Democratic party has become very good at doing just enough to keep their core loyal while also doing nowhere near enough to keep the country out of constant existential peril, effectively cultivating that crisis as a (pardon the pun) trump card that they then use to tell progressives "what you want is less important than the current crisis! Just go along with us in this election and we pinky swear to do more for your causes!".
They know if they move left they'll be displaced by a combination of progressive candidates and centrists, so they have basically adopted the strategy of keeping the right just dangerous enough to be credible while keeping their left flank secured with a drip feed of snail's pace "progress".
His life may be a lie but the poop is very real.
Narrator: "It wasn't."
And while he may not be as progressive as many progressives would like him to be, I feel he's been more progressive than most ever expected him to be...which is pleasantly surprising, since it's not a course he had to take for political reasons.
Even Star Wars has Luke drinking his blue milk early on.
"Have you tried eating less than a metric fuckton of junk at every meal, ya goddamn ham planet?!"
That'll work.
I'd say it's the business model.
Not defending the practices or arguing in defense of bigotry, just offering an explanation.
If it's a business model like a store where you come in and buy things with prices on them, that's open to everyone equally.
If it's a business where you sit down individually with each client and work out custom goods and services and pricing, then it's less "owner sells things" and more "clients contract owner for XYZ", and at that point, I'd tend to agree that it's a two way street, that both parties must agree to terms.
At that point, both sides have the option to simply not agree and not enter into a contract, for any reason. Just because one may disagree with one party's decision to not enter that agreement doesn't mean they shouldn't have that option.
What if it was a photographer who didn't want to be hired to photograph a Trump rally, a pro-life protest, or something else they felt strongly against like a (peaceful, lawful) far right event?
I don't think in those cases that a photographer should have no choice because the organizers are paying the money, so likewise, in this case, I don't feel like it's fair to force the photographer to cover an event they have a strong moral objection to, simply because that's their business.
Again, I'm not arguing that I agree with the photographer or that their position isn't bigoted, just offering a distinction.
"Be happy about your horrible situation because there are more horrible situations out there" is such a shitty take.
Basically you're saying "unless you're the single most unfortunate person on the planet, maybe even throughout all of human history, you should be happy", which is obviously nonsense.
Right?
I'm no fan of hers, but jeez McHenry... let's see, what's more important: try to get the House back on track, or engage in petty, vindictive partisan bullshit?
I'm glad the House passed that CR, though I'm not sure they'll have a new speaker before it runs out.
It's already like that here, friend.
Lemmy might be friendlier on the surface but has a much stronger hivemind-y aspect to it where you agree with it or else.
My office keeps claiming they want to maximize WFH while also enacting new policies to the contrary.
My favorite cherry on top is that the one top level exec spent the whole pandemic crowing about how she wanted everyone back in the office full time as soon as it was an option... then she takes a fucking sideways promotion that let her work fully remote for a position in a state over a thousand miles away without having to move, because it's remote.
Not yet.
I cannot wrap my brain around the mental path that leads any woman to support Donald Trump.
Like...why? What on earth does this candidate offer you?
YouTok has entered the chat.
Exactly.
The only reason he got shot is because he was physically imposing enough to skip the normal defensive responses that might have come his way (and/or he specifically (or intentionally) chose victims he knew would be physically threatened by him).
Lately with my workplace it's been:
Deliverables Team: "Well here's the deadline we set, so regardless of whatever happens, you need to have all of your work submitted by then."
Design Team: "Yeah, we'll get you our markups, but all in big clumps of work, most of it just says before the deadline, but a lot of it we aren't even going to try to get to you until after that deadline."
Me: "Okay well then you two need to discuss that because those two timelines are obviously incompatible."
Them: "Yeah, no. We're not going to work that out."
Deadline arrives...
Deliverables Team: "OMG! Why isn't this done?!"
Me: "Because I don't even have the design yet!"
Deliverables: "OMG you're going to make us miss the deadline! Why didn't you say anything before?!"
Me: First off, this is just a random internal deadline you set. There's zero real effect of not meeting it. Second, it's not me making us miss it; I can't model and draw what I haven't received the design for. Third, I did say something before, several times in fact."
Deliverables: "Well you need to talk to your design team and make them hurry."
Me: I can't and won't attempt to do that. But I'll let them know you're wound up over it.
Lets design team know that deliverables is bent out of shape over missing their made up deadline.
Half of Design Team: Yeah lol they'll get over it, and if they don't, they're only freaking out on you, so we don't care.
Other Half of Design Team: OMG you missed the deadline?! How could you?!
Me: Well it's because you guys haven't gotten me any designs yet.
Design Team: Yeah we're still working on it and we don't have a timeline on when we are going to get it to you...but when will you have it done?
It's the Republican MO: everyone needs to suffer from everything I've ever had to deal with at a bare minimum. More is fine, but anything less than every single issue I had to deal with (whether I really did, or just think I did, thanks to a healthy victim complex) is unacceptable.
In practice, it looks a lot like the socialism they claim to hate, but only for negativity. Hoard everything good, distribute everything bad.
I ain't even mad at her, I'm just jelly.
I am not a fan of the general trend of de-buttoning.
Like... isn't the entire point to make things consistent and intuitive? Make a clickable button visually distinct!
Musk's "free speech" is a lot like the Lost Cause's "states rights": a fig leaf that intentionally tries to distract from the fact that the only speech/right of concern was that of the most repugnant behavior.
O...Kay?
I mean, with Russia, it seems like it's just been constant: WW1, revolution, WW2, Stalin's reign, now this.
If anything, rather than WW2 and this being "in a row", that time frame includes probably the biggest gap in the past century without a grievous population loss.
For as much as we (Americans) regard Russia (as a state) with an adversarial eye, as far as Russians (the actual common people) are concerned, I kinda feel for them. Seems like their entire history is dominated by difficulty, hardship, and death.
Then again maybe that impression is precisely the impression that the American education system has very carefully cultivated...
I don't think it's either of those so much as intolerance to openly price gouging.
Higher prices reduce demand (or at least overall sales). That's basic economics and we have seen a lot of that over the past 3 years.
We've seen scarcity lead to increased prices (see eggs). This also led to reduced sales but not outrage, because most consumers understand how a chicken disease can lead to the loss of huge portions of egg laying chickens and how an event like that can lead to temporary price increases.
Even with Uber surge pricing, while it does indeed piss people off and reduce demand, even those who hate it can at least understand the principle that some of that increase is passed on to the drivers as an incentive to get more drivers to serve areas and times with high demand. You're still seeing the economic function of a price increase, but at least some of it is going toward a measure to mitigate the issue.
But in this case there's no factor that makes a burger at noon cost Wendy's any more than a burger at 3pm. I think that's where the outrage comes from. It's Wendy's basically saying, "We're increasing prices at this time because we like money."
Are they paying employees more at surge times? Is their food more expensive to buy and prepare at those times? Are they increasing staffing for a few hours to ensure that wait times don't increase?
Nah. It's still the same old thing on their end, they've just decided they want more money.
It's intolerance to blatant greed.
Why?
Because Biden is still the person with the best odds to defeat Trump in an election.
That's really all there is to it.
I don't necessarily disagree, but this brings up the next round of tough questions:
If your bodily autonomy is absolute, fine, but what happens when your choices and their impact start to spill beyond your own personal life?
If you want to go wild with hard drugs, okay fine, whatever. But when you need medical attention because of that decision, should insurance providers or the state be obligated to spend in order to treat you?
When your addiction costs you your job and support network, should the collective taxpayer have to subsidize your poor life choices?
I don't mind the notion that individuals should have final say over what happens to their bodies, but that sort of assumption of responsibility, at some point, cuts both ways...and the flip side of some of these decisions would suggest that the individual should bear all consequences of their decisions...which seems unlikely in practice. We're not going to see an addict rushed to an ER and the hospital toss them out into the street saying, "This was your decision! Sorry!"
And the mitigation measures seem equally unlikely to fly with the "strict bodily autonomy" crowd: increased insurance premiums or exception clauses in policies in order to keep expenses reined in for the rest of the policy holders/taxpayers who aren't using their strict autonomy in a way that adversely affects others.
While it's fine to conceptually discuss these decisions in a vacuum where it only affects the individual, in real life application, these decisions have impacts outside the individual in almost every case, which fundamentally shift the discussion.
Right.
Honestly for as much "woe is me" that they crammed into this piece, my takeaway was mostly just, "Hmmm...good."
Like...I love rural PA, I'm just not wild about a lot of the people who live there. They vote against my own interests (and theirs), disproportionately influence state government, and welcome corporations that proudly destroy the environment while taking a hostile stance toward anyone not like them.
This isn't down to every last person, of course, but broadly speaking, the ones who aren't fitting that template are also not the ones doing most of the dying.
So the piece is reading, to me, more as, "the people most responsible for keeping the shitty aspects of Pennsylvania shitty are dying faster than they're breeding"...which is good news for the more reasonable residents of the state.