The thing that really kills me is that each of these donations is basically a raise that was denied, a health policy that was worsened, a law that was hollowed out. These are dollars made of the bones and cartilage that have been looted from our society. Democracy ™ brought to you by Acererak.
Paramedic here, this is still half of how it’s done for choking in small children and babies. Five back blows, flip, five chest thrusts.
Beautiful plant! Thanks for sharing!
My first thought is I wonder if you could layer a bunch of batteries together in sheets or weave a bunch of smaller batteries into a flexible structure of some kind.
I remember that the big remedy that free market evangelists propose to replace regulation is lawsuits. So people take them up on that, and suddenly it’s “NO, NOT LIKE THAT”. Go figure, who could’ve seen that coming, etc.
A video essay I watched pointed out that Harry Potter’s chief conflict is between old conservatism (the good guys ™) and new conservatism (the bad guys ™), and I will never ever unsee it.
To be fair, Hogwarts probably felt like a shit show for staff. Children are hard enough to deal with, I can’t imagine dealing with throngs of (largely wealthy and entitled) magic children. It’s pretty obvious that the only thing that kept Filch going was pure, unfiltered spite.
I think anon has it 100% correct. The instant Gabe is out of the picture, I expect to hear talk about how “you don’t understand, we have to fuck out users, won’t someone please think of the IPO?!”
Thanks, I’ll check these out later
Those tech bros are up to something
That’s interesting, can you share any evidence for that?
No problem. Can I ask why you’re interested?
I find that to be a pretty surprising take, given the theme of righteous poverty that runs through the gospel. Do you have any more evidence for that claim?
It was more than any one thing. There were a few big factors, though. One was that I spent a few years away from the US where I developed my very personal relationship with the gospel; when I came back to the US, it was very apparent to me that whatever churches were focused on in the US, it wasn’t the message of the gospel. Another was working as a paramedic for over a decade; something about confronting the multitude of human suffering and mortality that’s out there, just beneath the paint, led me to re-examine very fundamental beliefs for Christianity. I ended up recognizing that I no longer believed those things, and, in time, came to Buddhism. The last major factor was the community; it certainly feels as though Evangelical Christian Fascism has permeated nearly every church. As one example among many, I decided to give some churches a chance for a lark around the time that the SCOTUS made gay marriage legal, and one church that seemed to be pretty progressive opened with this really emotional video set to some Beatles music about civil rights, only to reveal at the end that it was about Christians and how Christians are being oppressed by gay people being allowed to marry, and followed that up by getting on stage and pleading with Jesus to end the world. For me, the will to leverage the government to force your religious convictions on others is both heretical and disgusting. But a lot of evangelicals will insist that their faith calls them to harass and oppress people (not in those terms ofc), and people who don’t share those views aren’t real Christians. I came to the conclusion that there was no place for my faith in a church like that.
Anyone who’s actually sat down and drank deeply from the New Testament (Paul can get rekt, all my homies know Paul co-opted Jesus’ message) knows that love, acceptance, and tolerance (except for the money changers) was how Jesus rolled. And he didn’t go around telling people how cool he was and asking for cash and political power; he rolled up and helped people, challenged social, religious, and legal power structures, and on multiple occasions told the people he helped to keep quiet about it. As a former Christian who was deeply fond of the gospel, there is nothing that I see in the American evangelicals movement that I would categorize as Christian in the sense of being Christ-like. It’s got all the flashy trappings, all the 100 foot tall steel girder crucifixes and fancy pastors, huge campuses and ad campaigns that cost vast amounts of money, and so on, but there’s no more of the spirit (not in a paranormal sense) of the gospel in those places than there is in a Wal-Mart super center parking lot.
The people going to Evangelical services don’t feel that way about them, but having been in those places while I was Christian, it is my belief that what they’re doing and following is really something else. And I don’t mean that it’s low-key devil worship or anything weird like that, I mean it’s McChristianity. Fast faith for people who like their thoughts pre-chewed and neutered of all danger.
I wonder if the investors are happy yet
All my homies hate Milton Friedman
So this is what’s called “personal pricing”, it’s a mythical vision of capitalism where instead of having to price your product against anonymous gross demand, you can price your product according to what you think you can get each specific individual to pay. Proponents (Chicago school MFs) argue that it would be “good for consumers” (massive sarcasm quotes there) because, hypothetically, you could safely offer your goods and services for much cheaper to people who are less able to afford them while making up the difference by charging more for people who can pay more. I very, very, very seriously doubt it will work that way in practice.
My problem with it is that we’re quickly arriving at a market where the amount of information held and utilized by the seller is maximized, and the amount of information held and used by the buyer is minimized. This is already causing and will continue to worsen exploitive disparities in the market. Without the consumer having ready access to accurate information and the ability to actually utilize it practically, consumers can’t make informed choices, and that has been and will continue to be leveraged to coerce economic choices from consumers that they never would have made otherwise. The tl;Dr is that implementing personal pricing in the fraud economy will never ever work for the consumer’s benefit.
Don’t think I’ve ever seen trolls ask to be ignored, but okay.
Tbf, the Europeans have some pretty fucked cryptid lore, it’s just that they’re more chaotic neutral and less chaotic vengeance than the American variety. My favorite american cryptid is an old one you don’t hear much of anymore, and was born from Pacific NorthWest loggers: the Hide Behind. Basically, this mf stalks your shit and will always duck behind a tree when you turn to look at it; it’s fast enough to never be seen clearly, but you can just catch glimpses of it if you’re fast/lucky. Eventually, it catches and eats unwitting loggers who let it sneak up on them.
Edit: I also like the deer stories. One of my all time favs was a free text about a deer stumbling up the street very clearly saying “BEEP BEEP BEEP” like a car being unlocked, followed by “Honey, I’m home!” over and over. That was the whole story, just a weird fucking deer stumbling up the street and talking to itself. 10/10 would gladly read again.