TIRM
1mo ago
I don't want bureaucrats spitefully revoking contracts because Musk tweets too much.
I also don't want my tax dollars given to StarLink. They are a large private for-profit venture and are not a fledgling industry that needs a financial boost. If they don't meet the criteria for this award, then don't give them this award. Similarly don't give hundreds of millions of my tax dollars to Iridium, Kuiper, Blue Ring or the other satellite companies. Make government contracts with them of course. Pay for services provided. But don't just 'award' only one of them with a money spigot regardless of their ability to deliver promised services.
In the Cyberpunk anime they show how shitty and exploitative the future is by a teenager trying to dry his clothes, but the dryer subscription service runs out so the dryer in his mom's apartment refuses to work. I'd better never have an always-online dryer or fridge looking for reasons to lock up because I haven't paid a service fee or installed updates.
TIRM
1mo ago
Your bank could freeze your assets for being politically unacceptable.
As the wrong sort of protesters learned in Canada.
TIRM
1mo ago
Black women already vote solidly Democrat
Black men overwhelmingly vote Democrat, but now around a quarter of them prefer Trump. This is trying to pander to them.
TIRM
1mo ago
Imperial Japanese imagined that Americans were weak and would not choose to fight. They didn't think they were signing up for WW2.
"The war will be over by Christmas" type sentiments are common historically. People imagining quick and easy victory in which the other side doesn't choose to fight back.
TIRM
1mo ago
"my opponent tricked the populace into voting for him, therefore I can disregard the will of the people manifest through the ballot"
And there were prominent calls for faithless electors in 2016. So this isn't even a hypothetical, it's practically the first thing some Democrats called for when faced with a Trump presidency.
I took anthropology classes in college. They loved using "more variation within racial groups than between them". They didn't cite sources for that claim. I'm rather hoping there is some sturdier basis than that 1972 paper. I would still suspect it is false, but they should at least cook up some rigorous-seeming papers to support it.
TIRM
1mo ago
Putin clearly wanted in, was cooperative post 9/11, asked to be considered for membership
Am I misremembering or was that a single sarcastic quip by Putin and not sincerely asking for NATO membership?
TIRM
1mo ago
The socially optimal amount of American tax dollars given to other countries is non-zero :V
Yes, and if we are to have any impact on the massively increasing slope of federal debt, then everything must give a bit. The correct amount is not zero, but in a period of wild profligacy, everything must give a bit to return to sanity.
TIRM
1mo ago
A difference in what?
Federal debt has exploded in recent years. That's not free.
TIRM
1mo ago
Somewhere around 1-2% of that was foreign aid
That's quite a lot. Like meme levels of spending. Stop spraying my tax dollars on other countries.
TIRM
1mo ago
That was peak cable news comedy.
Williams showed a screen-grab of the tweet during the broadcast that read: “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The US population is 327 million. He could have given each American $1 million and still have money left over. I feel like a $1 million check would be life-changing for most people. Yet he wasted it all on ads and STILL LOST.”
Speaking in disbelief, Williams said: “When I read it tonight on social media it kind of all became clear.”
Even more embarrasingly, in the middle of reading out, the tweet remarked: “Don’t tell us if you’re ahead of us on the math.”
NYT Editorial Board Member Mara Gay then agreed: “It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true. It’s disturbing. It does suggest what we’re talking about here which is there’s too much money in politics.”
TIRM
1mo ago
Tangentially, would you say that for a man to train in BJJ, or boxing, or firearms is empowering?
Yes. Also working out and becoming fit. A man's brain works better with these things.
TIRM
1mo ago
even though they have no sexual attraction to women at all
What is old is new again. Not quite political lesbianism. But close enough.
Poor actual lesbians who want actual sexual relationships with other women rather than performative anti-man statements.
TIRM
1mo ago
This is not just US Prohibition. Drug gang violence is a major problem. A review of murder statistics implies our high murder rates are drug gang activity. We are indeed not a nation of Japanese people and Japanese Americans are not typically imprisoned or killed over illegal drugs.
TIRM
1mo ago
The overdose death rate increased by 2,400% between 1980 and 2020.
That is not the time window over which hard drug decriminalization occurred for a small portion of the national population. In fact that time window is so much wider that I accept this as evidence that unrelated social trends are swamping the data.
"Deaths of despair" from opiates blow up in regions across the country. Mostly in areas that certainly didn't legalize recreational fentanyl. I'm blaming something other than Oregon state law.
TIRM
1mo ago
Dry counties have legal alcohol possession and use, they merely lack alcohol retailers.
TIRM
1mo ago
employers can fire workers if they want
I wish. But this will have 100% opposition from union advocates.
TIRM
1mo ago
They dealt with the Luddites eventually. By having soldiers and mercenaries shoot them and then hanging the survivors.
TIRM
1mo ago
I'd also support some manner in which HR drones and other fake email job types got replaced with LLMs or something.
Automate the ports and fire most school administrators. If I could somehow vote for that I would.
TIRM
1mo ago
therefore longshoremen and railroad workers are much more disposable giving them less bargaining power
And so they shouldn't be allowed to form a labor cartel gifting themselves multi-hundred-thousand dollar incomes if they are actually low skilled replaceable labor. That's just them screwing all of society for their enormous benefit.
Also he's probably actually a mobster.
A key witness in his trial was murdered and he was acquitted.
Edit: Listening to the radio right now. The host says they found that guy's body in the trunk of a car in New Jersey outside of a diner. Starting to sound like Tony Soprano may be a fictionalized version of Harold Daggett.
Might as well be a slave.
Pay by role Some Amazon warehouse worker roles and their hourly pay include:
Warehouse associate: $21.22 per hour
Packer: $17.92 per hour
Store shopper: $17.80 per hour
Order picker: $18.65 per hour
Handler: $16.88 per hour
Fulfillment associate: $20.28 per hour
Package handler: $17.46 per hour
So not quite slaves. I won't bother looking up gig worker pay, but similarly find the comparison to slaves (which the US famously had for real) to be silly.
TIRM
1mo ago
Housing unaffordability remains near all time highs.
unemployment has begun to rise (now 6.6%) but for 15-24 year olds its nearly 20%
Canada's total fertility rate data for 2023 came out last week and shows a big drop to 1.26
I'd say the cause and effect is clear here. If young people can't get homes or jobs, then they won't be in a position to start a family.
The responsible middle class couple has a high floor of material attainment before starting a family. Price these people out of it and they'll not start families.
And StarLink isn't performing as previously claimed, so they don't qualify for this award. I don't want awards based on mean tweeting. I am fine with denying awards for failure to deliver as promised. I hope that is the criteria being used here.
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