Dumbasses needed to see him do it live rather than google the existing data on how disastrous his last term was. Last time he was in office, they were listening to Baby Shark. “It happened 5 years ago so that’s ancient history. I’ve got better things to do, like doomscrolling Tiktok for 8 hours”

Every day I look at the news and the Don Cheadle version of Captain Planet looks more and more reasonable.

No conditioning required. The Bystander Effect has always been baked into human instincts.

I suppose first we should consider food. For that we look at what every human needs to consume (considering all necessary vitamins and minerals in addition to obvious calories) and then try to figure out what sources of those nutrients is currently the most efficient at producing them. Then there should be data somewhere on how much of that foodstuff is produced per year and how many people are employed in producing it. If not enough of that foodstuff is produced to meet the planet’s needs for that nutrient, then move on to the second-most efficient source and so on until the need is met. Then the same again for the next vital nutrient, hopefully with overlap on sources of previous nutrients. And so on until all nutrients are accounted for, and that should provide a number for how many people are directly involved in the production of the food. That would be the primary list. THEN we would need to consider secondary elements for food production: everyone involved in producing the tools/resources used in direct production (tractors, combine harvesters, fuel, fertilizer, etc), but ONLY calculating for JUST enough to meet the demand represented by the primary list. Surplus manufacturing to be ignored. Keep going that way until you have it all the way down to raw materials (steel, silicon, rubber, etc). Finally, you look at the distribution network necessary to actually get all of these things where they’re needed. This would, naturally, include workers employed at road maintenance, transport drivers (although billionaires seem fairly insistent that these jobs can be eliminated soon), etc. That would provide you with the BARE MINIMUM workers necessary for food production.

Then you perform a similar process for the production of:

• Housing

• Clothing

• Healthcare

• Education

Once you have the bare minimum, you can actually talk in concrete terms of just how much of humanity is employed in essential work and how much isn’t. Most likely, when evaluating clothing, the “most efficient source” was sweat shops, so once you know that humanity has enough non-essential workers, you can make a compelling case that laws need to be passed to guarantee that more workers are diverted to clothing production, with an aim of providing better working conditions for all.

We can’t really have intelligent conversations about whether capitalism is or isn’t a good way to allocate resources until we have the data on what the optiminal use would be. We all SAY that the world produces enough for everyone, but nobody really KNOWS.

I’d genuinely be interested to know how many human beings need to work a 40-hour week in order to produce and distribute enough food, medicine, clothing, shelter and education for all 8.2 billion humans, and how many of the rest of us are really just building follies purely just to keep everyone busy.

If tech billionaires insist on continuing to make jobs like “taxi driver” and “checkout operator” obsolete via automation while also refusing to share the proceeds of that automation with the humans whose expertise was used to train said AI and then got replaced, then the question of “exactly how pointless do the new jobs (I mean, ‘influencer’? Really?) need to be before we accept that money has ceased to make sense as the way we incentivize people to not have more kids than the global industrial output can sustain?”.

If you have opportunity to do good you have a moral obligation to seize it. Fear of getting it wrong is not an excuse to do nothing.

“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents*, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

–Matthew 25:14-30

• A talent was a monetary unit worth about twenty years’ wages for a laborer

What about him?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesusland_map

FBI Uncovers Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United States

He’ll take long-distance photos of the crowds so you can’t see the picket signs, and he’ll spin it as “look at how many people turned up for my parade!”

To be fair, there are two different kinds of immigration: legal and illegal. Some (not all, but some) immigrants who came via the proper legal channels resent those who didn’t, and of those who feel that way, some feel that way for selfish “screw you, I got mine” reasons and others feel that way for genuine reasons, such as the fact that supporting illegal immigration is, to a certain extent, supporting the human trafficking and drug trafficking that goes hand-in-hand with it. Borders do serve a purpose and believing that illegal immigration should be curtailed isn’t necessarily a hypocritical position for an immigrant.

HOWEVER, that isn’t to say that ICE is the answer.

Yep this is “Trump’s Great Leap Forward” and we should start referring to it as such.

And he always proudly points out that he himself has never been personally bankrupt. Somehow, the fact that he always manages to bankrupt his investors instead of himself was seen as a good reason why America should become his next big investor.

Page 21 of the ruling:

First, the Enforcement Guidance contravenes Title VII’s plain text by expanding the scope of “sex” beyond the biological binary: male and female. Although Title VII defines “sex” to also include “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions,” §2000e(k), the Enforcement Guidance concludes that “sex” under Title VII "includes ‘pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions’ and sexual orientation and gender identity." Enforcement Guidance, §I(A)(5) (emphasis added). Notably, the Guidance uses quotation marks around “pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions”—but not “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” Because neither the plain text of Title VII nor Supreme Court precedent defines Title VII “sex” this broadly. Thus, the Enforcement Guidance lacks statutory or jurisprudential authority to expand Title VII’s definition of “sex” to include these new categories.

Interestingly, this also seems to provide a legal basis to discriminate against straight people and cis people. It’ll be interesting to see how Republicans attempt to close that extra loophole without also closing the loophole for discrimination against LGBTQ people.

What about punching people you work with? When is that acceptable?

Can I ask - what’s this about the filming conditions for Terminator Salvation requiring specific timing and being dangerous? This is the first I’ve heard of that.

Discovering this series was really helpful as I don’t think I ever saw any indication in TotYP that the tomb was meant to be run quickly. In fact TotYP implies that you’re supposed to just allow the party to take their time. This worked fine with a new party (I in my infinite wisdom decided to run this as one of my first forays into DMing, and my players were just as green), but with a party of experienced players it’s quite tedious as they take ages to do ANYTHING. I might introduce a timer going forward.

Holy shit is there no middle path between “accept oligarchy” and “French Revolution”? It’s the mid-21st century; surely we have figured out better solutions than this by now? The entire reason why one might think “bloody uprising” is the only solution - the fact that the masses are too apathetic and inattentive to come together over a more complicated message - is the exact reason why it’s also a terrible idea, as it lends itself to subversion by ideologue and perverted towards nefarious ends. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”, etc, and in the meantime the bloodthirsty mob slaughters not just the rich but then the usual scapegoat minority groups too, with the purges that follow such revolutions frequently turning anti-intellectual too. When you cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war, you have no control over what happens next nor any way to stop it until it’s run its full course.

The best way to defeat the enemies of the common folk, IMO, is the “greatest insult an enemy can suffer: to be ignored”. We should simply build the new system in defiance of the old system, or (when possible) subverting the old system to the new system’s needs. For example: we need to start more Community Land Trusts, where renting is not simply paying somebody else’s mortgage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_land_trust