“Me hate shrinkflation! Me cookies are getting smaller,” the googly-eyed, furry blue muppet declared on X on Monday, tapping into an economic trend of the day. “Guess me going to have to eat double da cookies!”
And you’d think, with the democratization of fame, everyone would be famous, now. I mean, used to be if you wanted fame, you had to pack up and move from bumfuck nowhere and go to Hollywood, work as a waiter/waitress/whatever, and attend casting calls in your free time. Now, with the Internet and cameras that fit in our pockets we don’t even need to leave our houses.
I look at it like this:Two sides. One side is completely full of shit and they know it. They also know the other side knows. However, both sides have agreed to keep up the pretense of everything being okay, for whatever reason. I like to call it the “Slow Break-up”.
It’s like when your romantic partner stops showing up for date nights, then they get home late, then they start sleeping on the couch. And eventually you get around to asking, “Is something wrong?” And they’re all like, “No, everything is fine, work’s just been riding me so hard lately, and now I get home so late that I don’t want to wake you up.” Then one day they’re packing their shit to leave, and they look at you and go, “Look, we both saw this coming.”
It’s always “not happening” until it’s already happened. The moment is skipped over where they could acknowledge they misled you, try to make amends, maybe do something about the problem.
But, my overall point is this. A civil war would be like a fight between spouses. Like, a big serious fight. Where there is the possibility that someone’s going to yell “I want a divorce!”. So the divorce happens, but both parties move on, and try to heal. I am on the side that wants to have the fight, move on, and heal.
That’s how it was. Then the “infinite growth” mind virus infected all of the private sector. I think it’s because with the internet and global markets, the competition between firms isn’t about fighting for customers - the customer base is essentially infinite, or at least much bigger than the firms need, so the goal isn’t to serve your customers better so they come to you instead of your competitors. What’s scarce is investment capital - more and more of the equity markets are consolidated into fewer and fewer players, and since the modern share market is much more speculative (i.e. investors buy not on the expected value of the share of the profits they get as dividends, but on the ability to flip their shares to someone else at a higher price later, who in turn is only buying because they anticipate flipping the shares, there’s no regard to the fundamentals of the business), the goal is to compete with other firms by showing the capital investors that you can offer the best return on investment.
Under this mindset, you don’t have customers to serve, you have assets to monetise, you’ve gotta show the moneymen that you’re getting faster and faster growth with lots of new revenue streams - you don’t actually need for these to pan out, because noone cares about whether you’re actually making profits so much as whether you look like you’re growing so you can be flipped to another speculator. And in that mindset, customers are an obstacle - they’re preventing you from monetising your assets by standing between you and their money.
In the popular imagination of many Americans, particularly those on the left side of the political spectrum, the typical MAGA supporter is a rural resident who hates Black and Brown people, loathes liberals, loves gods and guns, believes in myriad conspiracy theories, has little faith in democracy, and is willing to use violence...
The media made them paranoid. No one is actually coming for them.
Truth. They also let people on sites like “Truth” and social media grifters tell them shit like “Public schools are turning your kids trans!” and they eat it up.
In the case of the school helping students socially transition without telling the parents, being a parent myself, I can understand how upset those parents might be, but the public school was probably told not to tell the parents for fear that the parents might not take it well. That’s a lot of parents. If my son came to me and said he did not feel right as a boy, I would respect his feelings, and support and help and empathize. Not many others would. At the school district in question, there would be so many kids pulled out of school and sent to Christian indoctrination centers to be forced to see themselves how their parents what them to see themselves.
And the last thing we should do is bunch ourselves up in one spot, or even in one State. That’s just doing their work for them. all they’d have to do if we moved to one State or one general area is to build walls around it. They’d follow Israel’s example and keep us all in one spot, genociding us through attrition. Cut us off from food and utilities, blockade our ports so supplies from other countries can’t get in, cut us off from communications so we can’t tell nobody what’s going on, and watch from the top of their walls as we die.
Here’s the thing: as long as poverty exists, poverty exists as a threat to get people to do things without their full consent. In some cases, like in the case of sex work, that can be actual sex, in which case, it cannot be faithfully said that all sex is fully consensual as long as it’s agreed to out of survival fears. In other cases, like for example minimum wage labor, people are accepting minimum wages out of fear of having nothing, and so they accept anything. This complete lack of bargaining power is behind low wages, dangerous conditions, terrible hours, poor treatment, etc.
For all that Biden has done and is doing wrong, he has still done more good for people here at home. People here choosing not to vote for Biden simply because of his support for Israel would damn this entire country, their country, to help people who don’t even know them terrify me.
No, what terrifies me is that people would deliver this country, the only home I have ever known, into the hands of an incompetent kleptocratic fascist, who will inevitably give us up to theocratic ideologues, for the sake of the Palestinians. Don’t get me wrong, I abhor Israel and the Israeli government for its genocide, and all who collaborate with them should be cast into the fires of Hell with them. But what is stopping that genocide worth to you? What price are you willing to pay? Is there no price too high, no expense too great? An entire nation, for a free Palestine? Why stop at just one nation? How about two? 20? 50? 100? The entire world? A small sacrifice, if it means a free Palestine, right?
I won’t argue that. My life to save innocent lives is a small sacrifice. But to OP’s point, choosing not to vote this November means we get another 4 years of Trump, who has said, with his whole chest, that he will be a dictator from Day 1. You know what that means, right? It means no woman in the USA will ever have an abortion ever the fuck again. No woman will ever have access to birth control, ever the fuck again. Trans people will be rounded up. Anyone who leans just slightly to the left of the Nazis will be rounded up. Workers rights will cease to functionally exist. Black people will be enslaved once more. Children will be sent to the mines and workhouses. NOTHING is off the table.
I get what you’re saying. “The Rules” can’t stop bad ideas. The only thing that stops a bad idea is a good idea and the spine to implement it. Republicans have gotten as far as they have because they believe in something, and govern in accordance with those beliefs, even if it’s a bunch of bigoted, fascist, bullshit. Democrats, and liberals in particular, say, “Forget your conscience and just Trust the Process”, because “The Process” is morality itself, and any ends achieved by going outside “The Process” is inherently immoral.
Like, if I were asked by extraterrestrials to provide them with examples of the human experience, I would give them biographies of Dolly Parton, Fred Rogers, Carl Sagan, Nicola Tesla, Stephen Hawking, Bob Ross, and many others who I feel are the best among us. Who best exemplify humanity. Granted not all of us have lived up to those examples, and not many will, but they are quite possibly the best humans.
Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker indicated on the show he was a proponent of the “Seven Mountains Mandate,” an explicitly theocratic doctrine at the heart of Christian nationalism....
And watch as being a shareholder confers no tangible benefits for owning stock in the website of which you are a user, or worse, you get benefits, but they are limited to how much stock you have.
I’ll need to do proper research, but to my understanding the embryo is an egg(ovum). I’m not sure at what point an ovum becomes an embryo, but I’m fairly certain it’s shortly after a sperm cell penetrates the outer layer and begins the mitosis.
It’s because they haven’t winnowed the State as Marx described. The problem is that once certain members of the Proletariat get their hands upon the levers of power, they find they rather like it and don’t want to let go.
Around 80% of Americans have been exposed to the plant pesticide chlormequat, which causes fertility and growth issues in animals, according to a new study published Thursday…
And the Judge was furious they couldn’t give him a harsher sentence. That five years was quite literally throwing the book at him. It’s a felony, though, so even after he gets out he’ll be stripped of his rights to vote or purchase a firearm. His job prospects will dwindle to the point of non-existence. And I think he’ll be prevented from owning a computer or accessing the Net, given the nature of his crime.
That’s nice of him to say. What’s he going to do about it? So sick of all these spineless, yellow-bellied wimps saying how bad Trump is, and doing precisely fuck all. GROW A FUCKING BACKBONE, ALREADY, YOU COWARDS!
A 15-year decline in Texas teen birth rates slid to a stop—and converted into a modest increase in 2022, the year after the state Legislature implemented what was the nation’s strongest ban on abortion, according to new report from the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality.
I find it hard to believe there’s no evidence, I mean, the Romans ruled half the world and were meticulous and methodical in their record keeping. I find it difficult to imagine they have no historical records of Iesus Nazaretum.
Cookie Monster complaint about "shrinkflation" sparks response from White House (www.cbsnews.com)
“Me hate shrinkflation! Me cookies are getting smaller,” the googly-eyed, furry blue muppet declared on X on Monday, tapping into an economic trend of the day. “Guess me going to have to eat double da cookies!”
*Permanently Deleted* (www.nytimes.com)
Nintendo Switch emulator, Yuzu, developers settling lawsuit from Nintendo with $2.4M payout, handing over its domains, and agreeing "Yuzu [is] primarily designed to circumvent [DRM]". (www.theverge.com)
This also includes ceasing development and destroying their copies of the code....
White Rural Trump Supporters Are a Threat to Democracy (www.thedailybeast.com)
In the popular imagination of many Americans, particularly those on the left side of the political spectrum, the typical MAGA supporter is a rural resident who hates Black and Brown people, loathes liberals, loves gods and guns, believes in myriad conspiracy theories, has little faith in democracy, and is willing to use violence...
Conservatives Plan to Ban Abortion and Cut LGBT Rights Starting Next January (newrepublic.com)
Project 2025’s 180-Day Playbook is a remarkably detailed guide to turning the United States into a fascist’s paradise.
"Labour Market" (lemmy.ml)
Something something Biden bad (lemmy.world)
Please start your comments with the following question answered at the top:...
Make Dolly Proud, Y'all (dubvee.org)
I wish DYSDPWBPU had a better ring to it....
Alabama Justice Who Ruled That Embryos Are ‘Children’ Appeared On QAnon Conspiracist's Show (www.huffpost.com)
Alabama Chief Justice Tom Parker indicated on the show he was a proponent of the “Seven Mountains Mandate,” an explicitly theocratic doctrine at the heart of Christian nationalism....
18+ Is it me, or is this hilarious and bizarre? (lemmy.world)
Reddit literally shilling their own stonks to users in direct message, reveals that CEO gets paid $193 million last year (lemmy.world)
Couples race to move frozen embryos out of Alabama after court defines them as children (www.telegraph.co.uk)
North Korean Workers in China Riot over Unpaid Wages; 2,000 Occupy Factory, Kill Plant Manager (japannews.yomiuri.co.jp)
Chemical Found In Cheerios, Quaker Oats May Cause Fertility Issues, Study Suggests: What To Know About Chlormequat (www.forbes.com)
Around 80% of Americans have been exposed to the plant pesticide chlormequat, which causes fertility and growth issues in animals, according to a new study published Thursday…
Amazon Joins Elon Musk's SpaceX In Mission to Destroy Federal Agency Protecting Workers, Claims The Labor Board Is Unconstitutional (www.vice.com)
AI companies are violating a basic social contract of the web and and ignoring robots.txt (www.theverge.com)
Source Who Revealed How Taxes Steal for the Rich Rewarded With Five Years in Prison (fair.org)
Nato chief says Donald Trump comments 'undermine all of our security' (www.bbc.co.uk)
After Abortion Ban, Texas Teen Birth Rate Rises (www.texasobserver.org)
A 15-year decline in Texas teen birth rates slid to a stop—and converted into a modest increase in 2022, the year after the state Legislature implemented what was the nation’s strongest ban on abortion, according to new report from the University of Houston’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender & Sexuality.