Realizing Santa wasn’t real at 4 years old was the beginning of my radicalization. After that I believed nothing without looking it up first, which of course led me to communism. Idk how all these other contrarian fucks ended up libs

The Bentonville, Ark., chain founded by billionaire Sam Walton got its start 28 years ago by opening stores in rural towns like the 5,600-population Hearne. The 1,485-store, 32-state chain is the fastest growing retailer in the USA. K mart is its chief rival.

But it also has a reputation for hurting small-town businesses that can’t match the lower prices the chain can offer due to volume buying.

The Wal-Mart effect has been so huge it’s spawned the formation of consulting firms that specialize in advising small-town businesses on handling the arrival of a Wal-Mart.

—Julie Morris, “Store shuts doors on Texas town,” USA Today, October 11, 1990

https://wordspy.com/words/wal-mart-effect/

This story seems to play out a lot with the US govt. Likely due to the lack of any real long-term planning.

1. Oh no China is taking some of our control over X
2. Do nothing for a while
3. Scramble to stop China from completely taking over X
4. Waste billions on propaganda, cost everyone money via tariffs, sanctions, bans, etc
5. Realize it was never going to work and give up
6. Do nothing for a while
7. Start at step 1 again

6am in an airport chili’s

I looked it up before making the comment and the first result said it was drowning while on duty and car wrecks off duty

I work on an app that’s pretty complex and requires a lot of back and forth between devs, customers, and the people who do all the training/sales. I’ve had A LOT of success using numbered bullet points instead of writing normal sentences and paragraphs.

Something about the numbers makes them want to read it in order instead of skimming and it being broken down and labeled lets me respond with things like, “great, what about the 3rd bullet point?” Instead of having to repeat things. Plus most of my coworkers are in Texas so they love bullets.

And in some places they won’t allow you to have your phone out at all, so you can’t even look it up on the fly or keep a note on your phone. Even in states that require in person voting, sample ballots with explanations should be sent out weeks ahead

Yes! Sometimes I wonder what would pass if it were written more plainly. Oregon voted down a measure that would only increase taxes on companies making a lot of money and then distribute that money to citizens. Like wtf how could that not pass?

Then they DID vote for a measure that allows the state legislature to impeach members. Literally giving up our power to vote for who we want and letting the politicians kick people out when they feel like it is ridiculous. I bet the first time someone gets impeached it will be a leftist/progressive and not some fucking piece of shit from east Oregon who is literally trying to become Idaho

Worked for a major insurance company in rural Alabama. Had customers who couldn’t even write their own name, all of them were black people living in an incredibly poor area. None of them seemed particularly dumb or something, they just didn’t have access to education because of segregation. This wasn’t that long ago (2010ish), but a 70 year old today was school aged before desegregation in Alabama. Especially in rural areas that didn’t enforce it for a while.

I think a lot of people ignore the effect this has on stats like this.

I think the “6th grade” bit is made up to help translate the results of these studies into something even 6th graders can understand, but the feds do these massive studies every now and then

https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/2023/national_results.asp

DHMO asphyxiation is the leading cause of death amongst sailors in the US Navy. Support our troops and write to your senators to ban DHMO today!

My secret is living in the woods, working from home, and finally making enough money to at least not worry about basic survival. I have a lot of sensory issues I wasn’t entirely aware of until recently, so living in a city was horrible for me. Sometimes I miss it being easy to go to a store (30+ miles away now), but being able to walk outside and see a forest, wildlife, and not have to hear my neighbors fucking or fighting is worth it.

However, this existence is almost impossible under normal circumstances. We got an incredible deal on rent because the landlady is kinda okay and we live in an old detached garage that’s been converted into a cabin, so it’s not exactly up to code. But our rent now is the same as it was in a smallish west coast city for a cheap 1br apartment, except we get access to 50+ acres of forest, a creek, etc.

I still exist in a constant state of depression because I know what the world is like outside of this bubble my partner and I have managed to create for ourselves.

Without looking into it at all, I can almost promise you it’s “the jews”

it’s not just transphobia, it’s also misogyny

I find this to generally be true. Most transphobia seems rooted in two ideas: “a man would want to be a woman?!” or “how dare a woman want to be a man!” The transphobia is itself an extension of misogyny.

They’re probably worried about people trying to help Luigi

Seems like it would be way more useful and accurate to just have a bunch of participants interact with a blog or something as a “focus group” and have trigger warnings that let them skip an article if they want to. Ask them to view a certain number and explain skipping is fine. Then after, ask some questions about their triggers and see what lines up. Did people who report certain triggers skip those articles? Seems like an easy way to set this study up and actually test if trigger warnings are useful. Would be even better if you could include people in the study who have documented triggers, but that’s a lot harder to manage

I kinda feel bad for people like that AOC stan. They are genuinely close to the right answers, but can’t overcome the mountains of propaganda. It’s not an easy thing to do and almost all of us were once in a similar position. Very few people in capitalist countries become communists, even fewer get there without being a turbo lib or some kind of libertarian first.

I replied in that chain somewhere to let that person know they’d be a communist in 5 years or they’re gonna be a fascist. They’ll go down the anti communist rabbit hole or they’ll read an actual book written by a communist. Part of me thinks we should stop doing this sort of thing completely and focus entirely on good faith engagement with anyone to the left of Hillary Clinton and just ban everyone else. Should we be encouraging outright bullying of someone who genuinely seems to be an anticapitalist? Probably not. Not even just because of the danger to neurodiverse people, but also it seems like a bad strategy to dogpile.

Idk as a communist or even just a leftist in general it seems like I’m obligated to help people get a better understanding of…reality? At least the realities of capitalism, imperialism, propaganda, etc. I don’t really care if someone wants to be a communist or not as long as we can agree on reality. What is CIA propaganda? What is just something I’ve heard all my life for no reason other than to make me hate communism? Etc. Anyway, what I mean is that I think we should be more focused on getting people to agree that capitalism is bad and communism is good than we should on just being mean to random libs and baby anarchists or whatever the hell that AOC stan is

Sorry, I feel like I’m really off topic. I’m just going to post this because I’ll delete it if I think too much longer

I lived in a country that did the two hands thing and it was almost impossible to stop when I moved back to the US. It’s been decades now and I still do it sometimes.

This would actually make for a really funny movie. Someone get Boots Riley