I’m just dreading the inevitable monetization. These spaces are fun in their alpha state. But it’s just a matter of time before there’s a “Let AI help you spam Shrimp Jesus to your friends” button and a “Pay $5 to override the Block function” feature.
This is a very 2002 take.
Modern Conservatives just scream the N-word at the top of their lungs
Funneling migrants into the desert to die isn’t a bug, it’s a feature
Both.
The Wilson/Coolidge Era was nightmarish for immigrants, with a host of laws targeting East Asian migrants and displacing uncountable numbers of industrial workers particularly along the West Coast.
Eisenhower’s Operation Wetback set off a wave of police terror along the Gulf Coast, crippled the agricultural economy, and killed hundreds of migrants forced into transit.
The current border policy funnels hundreds of thousands of migrants through an inhospitality Texas/Arizona desert region that’s killed around 10k-50k people in the last decade.
None of it actually curbs immigration. It all just becomes a black market affair, affording employers a tool to depress wages and cartels an opportunity to press-gang border residents into cattle slavery.
the life expectancy of a 60 year old man is still another 20 years.
Also, importantly, Americans (born in 1980 as a reference) have a 95% chance of living to see age 60.
Even in relatively poor and disadvantaged states (W. Virginia or Mississippi) you’re looking at 92-94% odds.
We’ve solved for a lot of the early mortality threats common to prior generations - childhood diseases most prominently. We’ve also seen a general improvement in public health with respect to smoking and drinking. And workplace safety has improved dramatically as we shifted from Ag Labor to Industrial work to Office jobs.
And yes you can live healthier to have better odds of getting higher on that chart.
Living healthier means keeping your stress low, saving time for exercise, and limiting your intake of fast food.
But these are luxuries primarily reserved for the already wealthy. Luxuries afforded through cheap service sector labor.
Like so much else in this country, good health is paid for with a labor tax on the poor.
I fail to recall anyone else being as spectaculary unpredictable and insane
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory
The madman theory is a political theory commonly associated with the foreign policy of U.S. President Richard Nixon and his administration, who tried to make the leaders of hostile Communist Bloc nations think Nixon was irrational and volatile so that they would avoid provoking the U.S. in fear of an unpredictable response
Literally Nixonian foreign policy to behave unpredictable and insane.
Well, they quite literally could have prevented Hitler’s rise to power
By all voting for Hindeburg, the guy who ordered the police to assassinate Rosa Luxembourg?
Stalin decided it was more beneficial to the USSR for the Communists to support the Nazis
Hindenburg thought it was more beneficial for the Conservatives to support the Nazis.
Stalin was the Boogeyman Hindenburg used to justify a fascist government. Purging the Nazis in 1933 was as important to him as it was in 1919.
Twice, Hindenburg sided with fascists to demolish any kind of civil socialist reform in his country. Twice “evil Russians” got the blame for a domestic slaughter.
Honestly, no. It was exactly this bad in the early '00s
It would require a woman who wasn’t convinced she’d be stalked for the next six months.
If reading is the only driver to voting preference
Reading is a powerful tool because writing/publishing has a very low barrier to entry.
By contrast, audio and video tend to carry incrementally higher cost for production/distribution.
But you do still need peer groups with good politics to send you in the right direction. You can’t expect good politics to emerge ex nihilio across an entire population.
I mean, you think this is happening exclusively in red states?
DC is bright blue and they’ve got some of the worst schools in the country. And if you want to know why…
Michelle Rhee’s Reign of Error
Privatization, downsizing, teaching to the test… Twenty years of NCLB has taken its toll.
Even then, there is something of a silver lining
The advent of modern text communications has created significant social incentives for improving literacy at younger ages.
But in business you’re supposed to read emails to know what you’re supposed to do.
So often I get a set of instructions that’s missing information, out of date, or deliberately misleading.
I’m often on the line with support walking through the steps and saying “How did you get from D to E?” and then finding out there’s a second secret set of instructions only tech support has - possibly even a different website or application - that they don’t want to tell you about unless you’re talking to an agent for some reason.
Menus have the descriptions of what you want to eat but no one reads them
Sometimes. Often they do not. They also regularly use shorthand or code.
My favorite is a series of red chili peppers next to a menu item. If I order the 1 pepper meal, am I going to be shitting blood for a weak? If I order the 5 pepper meal, are you going to White Guy Spicy it for the table because not everyone looks like they can handle it? It’s anyone’s guess. If I don’t explicitly see the words “peanut” or “shellfish”, am I confident it won’t have allergens?
Why even have a waiter if you’re not allowed to ask these questions, anyway? Just make everything a vending machine.
Also a big fan of
if you see a price list/menu/price tag or similar and you accidentally read it, better double check the price by asking “does this item cost what it says here”
Because it happens when management has three different prices and five confusing “discount” offers scattered in line of sight. Is this 50% off or does that happen at the register or does it no longer apply? And you’ve got the same thing on the menu as a side and a meal, which one am I ordering, again?
And
“employees only” actually means “for adventurous customers”
Oh, bathroom for employees only? At every location inside three city blocks? I guess I should just take a crap on the floor.
$100B for generically engineered babies.
Not one penny on education or health care.
And you know none of these kids are getting vaccinated.
The man with the perfect dick size, but he ejaculates in ten seconds and immediately lapses into a coma.
That’s why you can have a Democrat running around hand in hand with Liz Cheney while the corporate media cheers.
Hitler is easy to fixate on as a bad guy because he’s an evil dead foreigner. Cheney is harder
His presidency was more like these prior administrations as well.
Trump is not a unique aberration in American politics. He’s a continuation of a historical trend.
We still need some of us to be willing to clean up the shit to preserve the truth.
People like this exist and you can find them. You just won’t have them advertised to you. Real journalism exists, but its speaks floating in a sea of disinformation.
I can only be so upset a people for failing to find it. There but for the grace of God go I.
I’m not sure I understand how your last sentiment relates
A great deal of informed opinion and intelligently dissenting views have been actively suppressed at the educational, political, and industry levels.
Whether you’re Cori Bush or Norm Finkelstein, you’re fighting and uphill battle just to be recognized.
Begging the question of what you think constitutes the political “center”, given how fash everything has become.