This is important. Our system is so fucked that the only votes that matter are a few thousand people in a few swing states.
Let that sink in for a minute. A few thousand people, in a country of 340 million, will decide if we have a boring, mildly effective hypocrite as president or a raging racist rapist bent on our collective destruction. Iām not telling people to stay home, every single person who is able, should vote for Biden. But 99% of our presidential votes are meaningless.
The electoral college has got to go. Reminder that the last republican to win the popular vote in a presidential election was George W. Bush in 2004, and that was almost certainly because of 9/11. Extreme right-wing ideas are not popular with the majority of Americans, but the system is set up so the crazies get to grab power anyway. Minority rule is the antithesis of what this place is supposed to be about.
āAnd so, after the Great Factory Atrocity committed against the workers by the Billionaire Grey Shirt Army, all Grey Shirts were forced to flee to their luxury orbitals. Thus the curse āmay he launch himself into orbit and never come backā entered the common vernacular, often accompanied by the ceremonial breaking of an orbital landing beacon, many of which had been found in a large cache of Grey Shirt supplies buried on Oahu.ā
From Chronicle of the Times Before the Great Bankruptcy Wars of 2055
I never thought much about why Thomas didnāt ask any questions for all that time, but that makes so much sense! Damn. Also helps explain his ridiculous corruption. He was never going to change his mind, plus his job isnāt bound by any ethical standards, oh and his job is for life. So he might as well milk it for all its worth, I guess because his feeling were hurt after nearly coming close to losing his nomination for being a sexual harasser? So pathetic.
If you havenāt already, I recommend everyone listen to the audio of some Supreme Court arguments. Sure theyāre usually dry and boring, but theyāre also a great way to hear for yourself what an absolute dick this guy is. He regularly parrots Fox News talking points, treats his colleagues and the solicitors with utter contempt, and asks disingenuous and misdirecting questions to hide his true intent.
Heās also wildly inconsistent from case to case, making arguments that he himself had argued against in other cases. Heās not a real judge, in the definitional sense, because he doesnāt apply the law consistently or impartially.
Heās a venal, spiteful, misogynistic, vengeful piece of shit who doesnāt respect the people he has such inordinate power over. Very few public figures make me as viscerally angry as Alito does.
Yup! I donāt understand the downvotes, because this absolutely happens. Especially when technology has progressed to enable us to answer certain questions that we couldnāt in the past. Old curmudgeonly academics can definitely be resistant to accepting that theyāve been wrong, even when confronted with proof. Sometimes the only way for old theories to die is for their proponents to die or retire. Itās a shame, but ego can be a massive problem in some disciplines.
Damn straight. Even my boomer home-owning parents called me up to tell me itās cheaper to rent than buy right now, and frankly, fuck that. Renting is still basically like cutting my paycheck in half and throwing it out my single-pane poorly-insulated window. Sure, I get a shitty roof over my head, but thatās it.
I took out one of my most egregious private student loans in the early 2000s for about $30,000. The interest rate is variable, so it goes up regularly. Iāve been paying the minimum (now $475, my largest bill after rent) on time every month since I graduated, and my balance is currently about $32,000. Oh and thatās just one of my many student loans.
There is literally no way out, Iām completely trapped.
Fortunately most of my other loans are federal, so theyāre slightly less shitty, though not by much. At least those will eventually be forgiven once Iām too old to care.
NO. Just no. Once this consistently works and is out in the world, it will be pretty much impossible to block, and WILL be abused. And then weāre all completely fucked. No one wants to know whatās going on in my head, just like I donāt want to know whatās going on in anyone elseās head. And donāt try the ābut if you have nothing to hideā crapā¦EVERYONE has things they want to keep to themselves.
I can see the allure for disabled folks, but I personally donāt think the benefits for a few outweigh the massive negatives for the many. Though Iād be curious to hear from some people who could benefit from this.
If this eventually becomes mainstream, Iām out. Total hermit life for me.
You got this! So many of us are with you and all the other shops thinking about organizing. Fuck their union-busting bullshit. Get paid what you deserve and force them to treat you with the respect youāve earned.
Leaving aside the fact that this is about the UK, Iāll take a crack at this. Many large colleges in the US have whatās called an endowment, which is essentially a massive pot of money that they canāt spend, but can invest. I think they typically can spend the interest that the endowment accrues, so they invest it so it grows. Many of the Ivy League schools have endowments worth multiple billions of dollars. Itās a very strange system.
I could be wrong on some of the finer points, so folks can feel free to correct me.
I thought we had laws to prevent companies from union-busting. Apparently Mercedes doesnāt give a shit and is happy to break the law to keep their workers poor and their profits ridiculous. This is infuriating.
āIt is a daily barrage of text messages, emails, and thereās an app we have for work for every kind of announcement you can think of and weāre getting two to three notifications daily. Every day before the shift, we have to sit in the team room and watch anti-union videos,ā said Webster. āItās just been a constant barrage. Everybody is just sick and tired of it.ā
