• Donald Trump

Price fixing omits the consumer from the table. It is a way to strip the consumer of the power of choice with their dollar, to avoid competition in the market AND price gouge at the same time, and done so in secret to boot.

Union negotiating includes company representation/owners. They are part of the conversation and agreement. They are a way to more evenly share power with their employers and have a say that they are otherwise not given.

I know people like to think that a consumer spending their dollars is the same as them agreeing to the price. But when the things that they are spending their dollars on are food, Healthcare, housing, education, fuel, utilities and other basic necessities that consumers do not easily get to abstain from… that is not consent, that it coercion.

My favorite one to dunk on is Mido, you rude self-important ass.

Saria is probably the one I like most as a person though.

One is forward/play, the other is rewind. DON’T push rewind.

I moved out to go to college at 18 and back in with my mom as 21 after dropping out due to financial issues. I had trouble finding work there, nothing stable that paid well. I was a pretty lonely depressed guy, a virgin into my 20s, with nothing significant in my life and nothing to offer anyone else. It was a pretty shit time for me. I ended up moving in briefly with my dad 2 states away and was able to find a decent paying factory job shortly thereafter and got my own apartment. Then I found an even better paying factory job a year or two later, and got promoted to management within the year. I lost a bunch of weight, was able to save money, lost my virginity finally and I bought a house. I met the woman who would become my wife. Sold my house moved in with her. Went back to school, got my degree, got a much higher paying job, bought a much nicer house and we just had our first kid.

I don’t want to tell you how to live and I am not under the impression that everyone can just do what I did. Everyone is different. Circumstances are different. I know. But nothing in my life started to improve from my lowest point in my adulthood until I stopped the complacency, moves out and worked to improve myself and my life. I would be shocked if your 50+ year old uncles who live with you grandmother and have never had a girlfriend are truly happy with their situation. I would encourage you to seek to change your situation if you can. I’m only a year older than you. At one time I was tens of thousands in debt, out of shape, had teeth falling out, living with my mom, no social life, no girlfriends, sexless, penniless, and had no hope or outlook in life. I have had my own share of failures, yet I am in a good place now. I got my teeth fixed, got a degree, i have a nice job, a nice house, a wife and beautiful daughter, and we’re comfortable. I hope you can get there too.

Exactly. RIP, George.

The idea of “the power of prayer” is stupid on the face of it. First, you’re presupposing a omnipotent diety that can and does directly effect the universe, changing the outcomes of events based on it’s desires, whims, plans, whatever. And you think THAT diety is taking requests? When “God answered my prayers”, you think that had you not requested it, it wouldn’t have happened. You think that God answers to your puny human concerns? That shit is arrogant as hell.

But furthermore, it also flies in the face of two other common beliefs about God, at least in Christianity. “God gave man Free Will” and “It’s All Part of God’s Plan™” (don’t get me started on how those are already two mutually exclusive ideas and hundreds of millions of believers just ignore that cognitive dissonance). Many of the things that one prays for, like “getting that job”, “winning that award”, “ending the war”, etc. directly involve altering the decisions and actions of others, which means that God would be stripping them of free will. Also, the most classic call to prayer is to heal the sick, or preserve one’s life. But surely if God has a plan for everyone’s life, at minimum everyone’s birth and death must also be planned. How can he answer your prayer to save your life if it’s his plan for you to die, yet still have an plan he’s always been following? The irony is that people like to pull the “all part of God’s plan” platitude particularly when someone has died before their time.

The one that really makes me annoyed, or even angry, is when something terrible happens, people are hurt or killed, and someone who was supposed to or had almost been there says something like “God was watching out for me”. It’s so self-centered and arrogant to attribute your simple dumb luck to God’s will in that situation. Because, not only does it assume you are God’s most special little guy that he’s constantly paying attention to and protecting, but also that God willfully condemned those others who did fall to this terrible fate that he supposedly saved you from. It’s all arrogance. I can’t stand it.

It is. But also still, in a way, worse. He’s not creating or molding a show to fit the far-right viewpoint of the current Russian administration. It’s pretty indicative of the negative merit, substance, and viewpoint expressed on his current show that airs on American television if the Russian government under Putin is taking it, as is, and putting it onto their citizen’s tv’s.

I agree with this. Correcting one’s grammatical error is fine. However, additionally, correcting one’s grammatical error as a means to disregard the content of the comment in an argument and/or deem their opinion or perspective false because of said error? Not fine and asinine.

Mostly we’re more aware of the shittiness. On the whole, most things that were problems decades, generations, or centuries ago are objectively, measurably better now. However, there are specific things that are recurring problems or newer problems that have never existed before. Some of those are very serious problems that we are currently trying to, don’t yet know how to, or have failed to deal with. Things like climate change, mass misinformation in the information age, nuclear threats, gun violence, political corruption, war, and threats reproductive rights, LGBT human rights, and religious rights. So… bit of column A, bit of column B.

I do it as well. If I’m not actively speaking and the person speaking isn’t presenting something that I need to look at, I usually end up bouncing back and forth between the speaker and my image.

I don’t want to necessarily apply logic to it because I don’t think it’s a conscious, logic decision I’m making. But if I had to try, I’d say that the reasons are A) I cannot “look them in the eye” as I would in person without looking directly at my camera, which is both weird and means I’m literally looking away from them. That is the paradox of video calling. B) Looking at them, versus looking literally anywhere else on your screen makes no tangible difference to anyone else looking at your video feed. C) I want to make sure I am not looking ridiculous while blasting my image to a dozen people. No double chin, no resting bitch face, no glazed look, no boogers, etc. D) Staring at anyone else would feel weird, invasive, and distracting to me, including the speaker, if they are not actively speaking to me. It feels like I’m eavesdropping when I’m not actively being addressed. E) Gotta take advantage of having eyes on the back of your head. Never turn your back on your enemy. Stay vigilant. The cat will not pounce me and claw my back mid-meeting again.

If we’re talking deities, as in supernatural creator beings, the answer would be yes when they want to be made of atoms and no when they don’t want to be. If they have the power of creation and form reality itself, their nature, both physical and spiritual, would be whatever they choose, right?

If we’re talking non-infinite mind creating a simulated universe that we live in, then it’s more likely that they are made of something, though it may not be atoms or matter as we understand it. They would presumably occupy some sort of physical universe with laws and something like matter to give it physical properties, but there is no reason to assume that the nature of the universe would resemble our own or follow the same laws. Atoms and other forms of matter that we have in our universe may be a construct of our simulation, rather than a constant truth in all universes. And honestly, their universe may not even be physical at all in the sense that we all understand it. The answer is that we don’t know, have no way to know, and may not even have the capacity to understand even if we were given the answer.

Whatcha gnawwing on in the shower, bro? That a three ring binder there, dude?

You’ve been in the shower too long with the water too hot. You’ve steam cooked your brain.

Way to not answer the question

Here’s a Midwestern trick for you. Find a lull in the conversation, then use the word “Welp!” and then press your lips together into that flat emoji face 😐. Generally that’s all you need to say to indicate, “regretfully, I need to move on from this interaction now”, and both parties can give their requisite goodbyes before dispersing. If that didn’t get the hint across, throw in a “Alright, well, I’m gonna let you get back to it”, which obviously sounds nicer than “you need to release me from the conversation chokehold you’ve got me in and let me get back to it”, but means the same thing. If they keep talking after that, then they’re the asshole and you can now directly shut down the conversation without the stigma. But don’t forget to apologize for needing to do something other than entertain them and ask their permission to do otherwise, and then thank them when they grant your reprieve. Something like, “Sorry, if it’s alright, I really need to buckle down on this. Can we chat later? Thank you!”

This submissive, conflict-avoidance, time-management solution technique is brought to you courtesy of generations of the painfully polite and non-confrontational interacting with the overly friendly and chatty that defines the culture and the history of the Midwest. In Indiana, that’s as much a daily fixture of our way of life as riding past corn fields stretched to the horizon, the joy of confirming from their license plate that the shitty driver is indeed a Buckeye, and a general obsession with basketball that borders on psychosis.

You can eat the results of your chemistry class, too, if you’re punk rock.

Body shaming

Lord of Flybys

Two Satans? Double the speed?