What would Keanu Reeves do? Try that. Science. Math. History. Literature. Film and stage. Happy in any environment where people are reasonable and compassionate. Merciless to those who punch downward. Working on being a better person (eventually)
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Well, I do try hard to accept new (quality) data that refutes old data. But I hold it to the highest standard of proof since I tend to trust experts who are devoted to serving humanity, and I can’t afford to take anything at face value. Anything else (with exceptions) is usually snake oil.
We’re on a mission from God.
To be clear, I’m not talking about ordinary germs that are pervasive. We do have innate immunity which most of us are born with. I’m referring to things our immune systems have not seen in millions of years. A new virus. A new bug.
That’s a person who has had her reason eroded by abusers. Rationality is not a state of confidence or knowledge. It all depends on which data you’re using. Rational people recognize their feelings as a decision factor. The opposite of emotional is “unfeeling” or “detached.”
You can be entirely rational and not have the “feeling” of being right about anything. The smartest people are often ones who have the highest self-doubt. The reverse is also true. Look up Dunning Krueger syndrome.
This is a false equivalence. Rationality is a state of awareness of facts. Facts are true no matter how you or someone else feels about them. “I am afraid to fly” can be a rational statement as much as “I am hungry.” Avoiding flight altogether because of a general fear of crashing is irrational.
Luxury relative to what and to whom? The 1%? Or my grandparents? Just because I have toilets and they had outhouses doesn’t mean I live in “luxury.” Do you believe all have proportionately benefited from innovation in that period? We spent 25% of our income on health in ‘22. Not luxury.
Sure. If one graph actually contained all the facts of modern history and productivity in three lines.
Price gouging also drives inflation. Lots of big companies began gouging during COVID restrictions and this directly drove inflation.
Inflation has many contributing factors besides wage rises. Perhaps it would be wiser to ask, over the past 45 years, what are the most likely ones? Could these be related to unethical comp practices? Monopolies? Paid-for legislation? “Right-to-fire” states? Probably not labor and unions.
You are a data point of one. This is not enough to even begin to hypothesize why you seem to get sick all the time. Holding up vaccines as a “false panacea” is suspect. Do you work with the public? Do you wash your hands? Do you dine out often? Are you diabetic? Are you allergic? Do you vape? Etc.
LOL you’re gaslighting and changing scope. Vaccine efficacy is supported by empirical evidence. I’m not going to bother digging up the many studies by different private and public institutions that confirm them. This is why it takes multiple studies to prove and few credible studies to disprove.
Is it really a binary choice between blind faith and absolute denial?
Fair enough. Many people assume that the pharmacy companies are capable of perpetrating mass hoaxes with the willing assistance of millions of scientists and healthcare professionals around the world, people who have dedicated their lives to serving others. This makes no sense.
This was because young, healthy people generated an excess of fluid in their bodies. They drowned in those fluids. Meanwhile, elderly people, sick people, and babies weathered it more easily. Their immune systems were on overdrive. Sometimes going from 100% fine to dead in days.
OK. It’s clear you don’t understand how the immune system works. No one is immune to a pathogen the first time they encounter it. Corona was a NOVEL pathogen for everyone in the world. The Flu of 1918 killed those with STRONG immune systems. My 43-yr-old great grandfather being one.
Sure. Myself. Satisfied? While different vaccines do have different efficacy, the evidence that COVID vaccines work is widespread. You’re asking everyone to prove the sky is blue while refusing to look out the window. You’ve got a narrative we don’t fit.
P.S. of all the mass vaccines, I think the flu shot is the hardest one to accurately set up every year. Sometimes the health authorities choose a strain that ends up not being the dominant one. But the other ones on the list behave more predictably.
Great question. Vaccines do not necessarily PREVENT infection. They in fact first make you “ill” to train your immune response. At worst, they lessen the severity of an illness. How healthy are you? Perhaps every vaccine you’ve taken has lessened the symptoms you would have otherwise had.
I didn’t know it but now I need a baby donkey 😂💗
If ICE or any other Gravy Seals dare to show up to attempt to intimidate voters at the polling place, I am taking the day off to stand three feet in front of them and stare them down. Non violent protest.
This
There is no insurrection or massive wave of crime in Chicago. Sending federal troops into a city simply to spite a political opponent and threaten an opposing demographic is grounds for impeachment. This is a high crime against the people. We need to hang on for this next round. Then impeach.
Many apes, strong. I don’t know why people don’t get this. For most employees, it’s an illusory choice: “keep this lousy job/two jobs” or “live in your car.” Collective bargaining has empirically improved everyone’s lives.
I think would have responded to the first: Dude, you’re sixteen and you weigh 185. And captained the second one: Fear of a Pumpernickel Planet
I have an even simpler take. Corporations, institutions, religions, the military all exist to serve people. Not the opposite.
Great idea! I have a good friend whose parents are from Kerala. He goes every couple of years.
Sure. You either are in excellent health and don’t need costly meds or you have an excellent health insurance plan. Let me know how you feel when one pill costs your mom $400 after insurance.
What kind of lip balm do you use to heal after your “dates” with pharma execs?
I’ll say it. Mark Cuban is exempt for life. You do one huge good thing, all is forgiven. In our shitty dystopian peak capitalism gigabyte Panem-cum-Gilead, Cost Plus has saved lives.
We are NOT powerless. Proud of these Dem governors right now. Speaking out loudly, en masse, non violently, draws attention and it works. It worked for Gandhi. It worked for King. It worked for Vietnam. Boycotts also work. Use your wallet to hit them where it hurts most.
I don’t think it has hit him yet. I too would be inconsolable.
I AM SICK. This was a couple blocks away from a friend’s home. This keeps happening because we allow it. Because certain interests want to keep selling guns at any cost. We are not powerless to protect our children and other loved ones.
Yep. Half. Economy of scale and scope. Trash haulers can delegate admin to the city and be profitable. Or carve up the city into zones and let the haulers bid on them for max profit and service quality.
Here’s a more interesting take. Whom would I trust the most with rebuilding NO today - Ye, W, or Convict 47 and Badlands Barbie?
Baltimore could use more advocates.
I paid less than half of my current private waste mgmt bill to a muni bill several years ago. I have raised this issue to our city council. Crickets.
No. This is America. And we’re insane.
Sadly we have the same exact boneheaded sentiment in my city. Six or seven providers. Six times the truck traffic. Six times the wear and tear on streets and pollution. Higher prices than any muni contract would ever be. Six times dumber.
You gave the answer and then asked the question
OP isn’t criticizing Starbucks employees. Nice fat red herring you threw in there. I’ve never worked for someone whose “bit tougher” job netted him 6,000x my salary.
Many people don’t really know or give a damn how well paid are the people who serve them. They care about price and convenience, conspicuous consumption for good measure. Also why we have a “tipped wage.” Make the non-wealthy folks feel magnanimous.
19/ Then let’s hold the authoritarians accountable. We cannot pull any punches. No pardon. No amnesty. They need to feel full consequences and not be given compromises that keep us stuck in the dark ages of Jim Crow and “supply-side economics.” I will $$ support candidates who commit to this.
18/ Gavin Newsom seems to have arrived at this conclusion: The slave states need us more than we need them. We all need to wake up to this fact. Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Wyoming, etc. would flounder without excess federal monies being gifted to them. Let’s hold out for fair elections.
17/ And every person living on our soil deserves due process. Those in authority who defy this principle need to be tried and imprisoned according to the severity of their crimes. The Executive is no exception.
16/ We - pragmatic liberals - need to once and for all meet the implied force and threat of violence of the authoritarians with the threat of violent retaliation and real consequences. I have little hope that the Democrats will do this. But maybe someone will learn from history. Land doesn’t vote.
15/ So while people are not legally enslaved today, they’re still at the bottom of our society. And the zero-sum game authoritarian sect believes that it’s necessary to keep them there. And they happen to still be largely Black, indigenous, and other minorities. Not to mention females.
14/ The truth is likely that they are not capable of earning more due to age, disability, lack of investment in infrastructure, common resources & private industry, lack of education, and lack of social mobility. But the state sure “seems like it’s doing a favor” by having low or no income taxes.
13/ They’re still ultimately not regarded as worthwhile citizens. Mitt Romney said the quiet fact out loud while campaigning against Obama. “47% of Americans pay no federal taxes.” He said this unironically without asking WHY. The authoritarian narrative is that they all choose not to work.
12/ The 3/5 compromise lingers. Today the “economic south” has a higher proportion of citizens below the poverty line working their tails off to cover the bills. They are more dependent on social welfare. They are more likely to be disenfranchised through anti- registration tactics.
11/ In this century though, it’s primarily rich versus poor. Wealthier, blue states consistently generate more economic output and pay more federal tax. They have higher standards of living, better education, and easier access to healthcare. The red states are the opposite.
10/ But the humanists, sipping tea like aristocrats, hold their own accountable to purity tests and hold the majority of their party in check. All while struggling to understand why they lack the appeal of the authoritarians. As with the north/south conflict, our red/blue conflict is over people.
9/ The humanists, desperate to match their principles to their actions, allow the authoritarians to still hold disproportionate power in the legislature. Slavery has evolved to encompass poverty, poor access to education and healthcare, and institutional denial of voting rights.
8/ Fast forward to today. We have a party that worships wealth and a party that worships humanist principles. The authoritarians stand their ground and will stretch every possible definition of the law, even willfully ignoring the law and daring the humanists to push back.
7/ Northern banks financed plantations and shipping. Northern factories routinely purchased cotton and other products of slave labor. Then sold finished goods back to the slave states. In short almost everyone was complicit in slavery. Because we chose economic expediency over human rights.
6/ And while the “North” had many free states, by 1850 they were forced to recognize the property rights of slavers. Fugitive escaped enslaved people could be hunted down. And of course, non-slave states willingly did business with the others. They did not “boycott” products of slave labor.
5/ What does this mean? Not only did this inflate the slave states’ power, it effectively rewarded them for enslaving people. Yes. The Constitution indirectly incentivized these states to ENSLAVE MORE PEOPLE. Slavery became entrenched in American society as a long term consequence.
4/ That means that a slave states with, say, 100,000 enslaved people who had few or no rights was entitled to count 60,000 more “citizens” when allocating Representatives amongst the states.
3/ So not only did small states get the gift of extra representation via a bicameral legislature, but the slave states could commit horrible crimes against enslaved people with impunity, but they were awarded more representatives in the people’s house based on the 3/5 rule.
The slave owning states needed buyers. But the large landowners were thoroughly dependent upon slave labor to achieve profitability and maintain their lifestyle. So the north caved and let the authoritarian slave owning states have their cake and eat it too.
1/There’s historical precedent for liberals allowing so-called conservatives - in reality, authoritarians - to walk all over them and force a deal with the devil. In 1787 the framers of the current Constitution were wrestling with a weak union. The northern states generally needed raw materials.
Paranoia strikes deep Into your life it will creep It starts when you’re always afraid You step out of line, the men come and take you away I think it’s time we stop, children What’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down
Civic involvement is something that my educators emphasized often. You just shouldn’t graduate high school without understanding how elections work, how bills become law, the balance of power, the rule of law, etc. Otherwise, hateful damaged assholes like Miller and Hegseth can take over.
We could just build a wall around New England and let the overwhelming majority actually have timely, impactful primaries where a Buttigieg, a Pritzker, hell Jon Stewart, or (gasp) an outsized ego like Newsom could be popularly nominated… just saying.
I’m here all week folks. Tip your servers, they get to hear this every night. Try the veal.
Such fake indignation. You’re not disgusted by lies. Don’t even pretend. You support the biggest liar in modern history.
4b/ (Took ~15 years from the first “smart phone” to a really usable device for most consumers.)
Hits nail on head. Also: reminder when bootlickers said “don’t raise the minimum wage or they’ll automate all the low wage jobs?” We still have a $7.25 minimum wage. They automate anyway. Quarterly earnings before people. Listen to the people with the hammers and the nails, not the megaphones.
“High tech is such bullshit” says the person commenting on a new global social media platform via a device that did not exist 20 years ago, all of which are dependent upon massive server farms and new communication infrastructure in its 5th generation, for less than the 1980 cost of a land phone.
7/ We can’t ever accept that there might be a better way. Instead, we wait until the shit hits the fan, then scramble to rescue the “helpless victims” caught in the virtual path of innovation. This is how all significantly disruptive tech goes. If it were smooth sailing, it wouldn’t be disruptive.
6/ But what’s not rare is a society that loves to rag on any new thing as an excuse not to adapt, explore potential, critically examine full moral and social implications, prepare itself for multiple possible future paths, and re-orient an economy proactively.
5/ So claims about how GenAI is: evil, taking jobs away from creatives, the shame of high tech, the bane of education, healthcare, etc., are greatly exaggerated themselves. It’s akin to imbuing an infant with (anti)Christ-like powers. It’s bullshit. Truly apt use cases are still rare.
4/ WWW: a more efficient way for CERN to distribute knowledge among its scientists. Smart phone: integrate the personal digital assistant with a cellular device for wealthier users of both technologies. (I know: the early ones sucked!) The niche use cases always serve as rigorous field tests.
3/ Every significantly disruptive innovation gets overhyped, while also being poorly understood and mis-applied. Like the personal computer, the WWW, the smart phone, and today generative AI, high ROI use cases begin in esoteric niches. DARPA/Internet: coordinate military research.
2/ CEOs are often the last individuals who really know what’s going on within their own organizations on an R&D level. They’re great with spreadsheets, lousy when it comes to understanding internal and external user requirements. And management habitually resists change. Hence the “J curve.”
1/ The last two paragraphs of the article belie the popular “AI is shit” sentiment. GenAI isn’t ready for broad application for all industries and anyone selling that message is full of shit. GenAI is just the latest flavor of AI, of which there are less advanced iterations we depend upon daily.
I loathe “identify politics” because it takes so much focus away from rule of law and the economy, but I throw my financial support to the young progressives. This is the generation that has to take things over. I don’t want my grandkids to have to wrestle with godlike corporate interests.
We I’m tolerated wage suppression for decades. We have to overturn this bullshit supply side mentality entirely. That means taxing cap gains at double the rate of wages. Indexing the minimum wage to the CPI after raising it to $20. Ending the tipped wage exemption. Passing the ERA. And more.
Trump himself is just the festering boil atop the putrid swamp of the MAGA dominated GOP. If they as a group don’t want elections, kowtowing to the festering boil or popping it won’t matter. He and his klan have installed loyalists at so many levels.
There are better ways to raise revenue than wealth tax. Tsxn tax on every stock market trade. Raise cap gains tax, make it progressive. Earned money should pay more taxes than earned wages. Remove cap on SS contribution. Index minimum wage to CPI. End Citizens United with a law.
Cut footage: donut, coffee, and Call of Duty team deathmatch round at the end of the rigorous Meal Team 6 “obstacle course”
Thanks Mark. Companies exist to serve society. Not the reverse. When they forget this we need to always remind them they are not above the people they serve. Never.
Here are some facts that dispute your angry rhetoric. www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampa... Ad hominem attacks are for feckless losers. You might want to get help.
Rosa Parks would like a word with you. Either stop trolling - you’re not fooling anyone on Bluesky today - or pick up a history book. Boycotts are among the few ways we can effectively hit wealthy interests where they live.
Board and senior management responding to the loudest complaints without doing any market research into actual paying customer bases. C-suite afraid of the Trump administration levying huge tariffs, complying in advance. They forgot their Minnesota roots. Live and let live, embrace differences.
People do not exist for the purpose of serving companies. Companies exist for the purpose of serving people. When companies fail to deliver value, the free market dictates they should go away or be replaced. Any local market that supports a Target has alternative stores that need employees.
Just subscribed. Neato.
Committing a felony with impunity. They’re literally impersonating FBI agents and they know it’s a crime. The second that douchebag refused to identify, this is a 911 call to local police. There’s a person claiming to be a federal officer but they don’t have any ID trying to enter my property.
MAGA: Build the wall Average IQ people: Have you heard of ladders? Tunnels? MAGA: Paint the wall Average IQ people: Again, ladders? Drive right up, throw up the hooks, start climbing? MAGA: Electrify the wall Average IQ people: Blankets. Oh Jesus, do you think these people are dumb as cattle?
Cleanse the zone with fire. MAGA and Fox Noise too stupid to realize they’re being co-opted masterfully.
A state of permanent mourning.
We’re living in Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch’s wet dream where people believe whatever lies get the most impressions
American: I did something incredibly stupid and somehow, miraculously survived. Here’s my screenplay. Thank Jesus! Rest of world: This smooth brained tourist stumbled into a totally preventable situation but we bailed him out at significant cost to our taxpayers. That is by design, not a miracle.
Cretins. Luddites don’t shit where they eat and then complain about the food
A strong orderly, a high dose, and a padded room.
History done correctly is an opportunity for learning, not to masturbate our sense of jingoism and exceptionalism. It is not supposed to make you FEEL GOOD, you festering sack of intestinal blockages. But you wouldn’t know that because you paid other children to do your homework and take your tests.
Yes. Trump is really willing to waste real people’s lives to distract the public from the evidence of his child rapes.
Let me guess: 0
Well done. No notes. Describes my high school years to a T.
This will backfire. The Convict might get some red states to drink the orange koolaid and disenfranchise their own voters at the risk of lawsuits. But no blue state will recognize this as law. The result will be either a wash or a net loss of elderly, disabled & blue collar votes in red states.