“money can’t buy happiness” is such a baby boomer concept like…. I don’t want excessive wealth to buy a golf plated toilet seat Karen, I just wish I wasn’t crying because I can’t afford both spaghetti and rent after working 40 hours a week
Now see, I reaaaally want to use this post to bitch about not building enough housing units keeping the rents high where the jobs are in the first place.
Unironically I sort of want to boycott Nestlé because of all the generally horrible things they’ve done (use child labor, slave labor, said water isn’t a human right, asking for payment for Ethiopia after they provided them with famine relief, etc) but at the same that’s near impossible considering all the industries they have their hands in. As hypocritical as it sorta sounds, I can’t afford to buy 100% fair trade stuff with no Nestlé logo whatsoever even if morally I see it as the optimal thing to do. Am I being overly scrupulous?
Exactly. Even if we’re to forget my moral and ethical concerns, it’s just generally bad for consumers. Companies like Nestlé, Mars, Procter & Gamble, hold onto alot of industries in what’s effectively monopolies. It doesn’t seem pronounced but it leaves us with solely expensive alternatives or else any semblance of competition will just die or be bought out. These effects are even more exasperated in smaller and/or more impoverished communities.
it’s called an oligopoly and while it’s not “technically” a monopoly its almost as bad.
oligopoly, the new board game where you team up with your friends to control the apparently irrelevant dog food market
The trick is to just stop caring because none of this actually affects you in any way shape or form
from there the only thing you have to worry about is being jealous that you can’t get away that that sort of thing yourself
Look brah, I know you have that doesn’t-care-about-others-except-your-boyfriend thing (although that you do care about your boyfriend is quite humanizing - a nice touch), but 1) major shifts in consumption habits really have been occurring, and 2) if not enough people care it’s actually really difficult to maintain civilization and have nice things. (Though I will admit that I suppose if too many people care too much it could also destroy civilization, we’re just dealing with like a ten cent increase in the price of chocolate or something here.)
Boston-based multi-trillion asset manager State Street Global Advisors, the controversial company behind the now infamous feminist symbol (and selfie cameo) The Fearless Girl, is settling federal allegations that it discriminated against 305 women in senior positions by paying them less than their male counterparts.
The settlement, first reported by Bloomberg, also names fifteen black vice presidents paid less than their white counterparts, genders not specified.
Now remove the statue so that we can have our glorious bull, which was originally placed somewhat subversively but kept due to the adoration of the people, restored to its original context.
Anonymous asked:
argumate answered:
I just find it amusing that every self-described leftist who accuses me of being a fascist invariably gets torn to pieces by other self-described leftists a week later, who then get torn to pieces in turn, and so on ad infinitum, like a bizarre political karma system.
Anonymous asked:
There is no guarantee, and if you look like a sufficiently valuable target, you may be attacked regardless, however…
Being attractive and high-status is a major defense against many forms of social attack. People will like you and make excuses for you, when they won’t for equally-deserving others that are less handsome and less popular.
It can help even in environments that say they are against lookism and unfair benefits from popularity.
The best defense against this particular accusation, of course, is to be born cis female. (Of course, that’s still only a partial defense.)
we’ve circled all the way around to “you’re too unattractive to be falsely accused of rape”, the mind boggles.
Oh come on mysterious blogger Argumate is thinking of, surely the ugly, undesirable, and otherwise low-status are the best targets for a false accusation?
People already don’t like them and find the thought of them as sexual beings to be creepy and repulsive.
One of the things I think about a lot is imagine asking an individual politician what value they provide to society: they can list work they’ve done, initiatives they’ve sponsored, speeches they’ve given, constituent interests they’ve represented, and so on.
Now imagine asking an entire party what value they provide to society: they can do something similar and talk about the good stuff they’ve done and the bad stuff from those other guys they’ve opposed.
Now imagine asking the entire representative body what value they provide to society and suddenly it gets much trickier, because they are inherently working at cross purposes to each other and most of their “work” is simply inhibition.
“As a group we’ve had endless debate, passed a bill, wrangled for a while, repealed the bill, wrangled a little more, then passed a similar but worse bill.”
There really isn’t any way to justify the existence of representative bodies as a group without saying look we’ve had five thousand years of power struggles that involved stabbings and this is a small step up from that, count your blessings.
But to say, as Sarah Champion did, that “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls” is either saying that Pakistanis are more likely to rape and more likely to rape white girls, or that the rape of white girls is more of a problem than the rape of, for example, white boys or brown girls.
– Chi Onwurah
Worst take on Rotherham yet. Seriously.
Isn’t it… Literally true that British Pakistani immigrant men disproportionately rape white girls? Isn’t that a large part of the Rotherham scandal, that this is widespread and well above the base rate? So yeah, people are saying it is more likely. Because it literally is.
Now, if people are saying “therefore we should treat this subgroup with extra suspicion”, sure, you can object to that. Presumably a bunch of Rotherham-complainers are doing exactly that, and they shouldn’t.
But what makes the Rotherham scandal special is not that one subgroup committed a pile of crimes at a rate disproportionate to the population at large. The usual “treat people as individuals” liberal rhetoric is well-equipped to handle such cases and maintain social harmony while prosecuting offenders.
No, it’s that people didn’t treat them the same way. They literally discriminated, but the other way, letting minority groups get away with much more. It’s really hollow to try to dismiss the Rotherham scandal by saying “You can’t treat people differently based on their ethnicity/country of origin!” when the entire problem is that people did exactly that. If the relevant authorities had treated people the same regardless of ethnicity and national origin, Rotherham wouldn’t be nearly so big a scandal.
When I first heard about Rotherham, I was bracing for it to be yet another instance of conservatives claiming “PC culture means you can’t call out minorities who actually commit crimes!” without much basis. But then they had an actual example of just that, and a really grotesque one, too. Maybe all their other talking points and examples are shit, but this one isn’t. Haven’t seen anyone debunk it. People who support the culture that produced this trainwreck need to explain how this type of failure can be prevented under their frameworks. If parts of the progressive agenda are at fault for this, then we need to cut those parts out. I don’t believe that attacking racism has to involve letting rape gangs slide. If I thought that, I’d be a lot more conservative than I am.
And if I thought preventing these types of things required keeping out immigrants of certain nationalities, again, I would be a lot more conservative than I am. But as @mitigatedchaos says, you need the will to actually enforce your culture at times, if you want a liberal society that functions correctly. If there is a cultural cause of these rape gangs, then it must be stamped out. The left loves to fight the culture war; they should enjoy fighting this battle of it, too. “Respecting culture” has always been a lie; we have always judged and will always judge the merits of various cultural pieces, just as the left constantly attacks (often rightly!) the culture of conservative Christians. Feminists should be lining up to condemn the rape culture at work here. It seems in their wheelhouse.
Once more, if I believed that culture war tools were insufficient to fight this battle, I would be a lot more reactionary than I am. But I believe that we can change cultures, and yeah, you can call it “imposing our will on minorities” if you wanna make it sound ominous, but that’s kind of what society does. We can and should have broad, consensus standards for behavior. It doesn’t work if murder being okay is just a matter of opinion and cultural difference. If the “murder is okay” people are to coexist with me, they should be on the other side of the globe, in some other society where I don’t have to ever meet them.
Regarding the original quote: I wouldn’t put it as “Britain has a problem with British Pakistani men raping and exploiting white girls”. I would say: “Britain has a problem with British authorities too chickenshit to go after rape gangs because they happen to be a minority ethnicity, and they fear being called racist more than they fear child sex trafficking.” Or perhaps it wasn’t fear of being called racist; perhaps they simply didn’t have the resolve to wield the iron hand of the state in communities not culturally similar to them. But that is their responsibility, to intervene fairly and consistently. (A third option is that they dismissed the allegations as racist, and so didn’t act. That also condemns them, albeit in a slightly different way.)
Whatever the answer, something’s wrong.
Much though it pains me to say it, the conservatives have a point, and it has to be addressed.
In the end, I did become more right wing, not because I think it’s mechanically impossible for the modern left of center to use the tools, but rather because I don’t believe they will have the will to do so unless they are forced to.
To unlock that capability, that willpower to acknowledge that there is actually a problem, which is so unwoke (they’ll defend Islam and Muslims even over other “religions of color”), they ultimately must be threatened with cultural displacement and made to compete.
YES.
I once saw someone point out something I hadn’t really considered before- libraries are one of the only places that are warm and dry where you can stay for long periods of time if you have no money. If you’re someone with nowhere to go during the daytime, they provide a safe environment in which to keep a roof over your head for a while- and all while you can access information.
So yes. This.
It’s weird…libraries almost feel /wrong/ now. It’s like I walk in and think “This is great…where do I put my money?”
I used to work on a campus library and if you want someplace to put your money, so to speak, make sure you put books back in the designated areas. I know you think you’re being helpful by reshelving, but even if you pull something out to read a couple paragraphs just stick it in the basket for things you didn’t want. I don’t care if you know EXACTLY where you are. In academic libraries (at least in Texas) our funding was determined by how many books people looked at. So we got additional funding based on books not being reshelved. If there’s a designated shelf/basket for things you don’t want, stick things in it!
What @standbyyourmantis said about not reshelving is true for public libraries, too. Our funding is dictated largely by how ‘used’ we are, so we scan all the items that are laying about as In House Use. That, tied with Reference Count and Door Counter numbers (we have to manually put in the time we take for references) to prove we’re providing a needed service.
We also have to count the number of people who come for our programs, which not only helps funding but shows that the programming/services are needed, as well.
So, basically, if you want to feel like you’re making sure we’re getting paid and staying around, keep these in mind.
I didn’t know that’s why you’re not supposed to reshelf!
Wow! That’s astounding!
LIBRARIES!!!
I’ve lost how many times I get asked about how much it costs to get a library card. It’s free. Everything is free unless it’s late or you lose an item.
Free. Free. Free. Free.
Reblogging for the reshelving information
@mailadreapta liked your post
Don’t get too excited, bro.
A lot of my thinking on what counts as actually-degenerate now, vs what could count as that in the future, depends significantly on available medical and legal technology.
I’m not against a future of immortal cyborg mermaids polyamorously dating cyborg vampires while engaging in extreme Martian exosports per se, but I am against picking the policies that make sense for that future long before they make sense for our present moment.
