Lurker > ElatedVenusaur

As some one who works there, I can say Whole Foods is pretty gross, but I think that describes ~100% of corporations.
Fun fact: the original name for the store was Safer Way, and John Mackey has written two different books about how capitalism is fantastic as long as the capitalists are enlightened and beneficent like John Mackey.

gamer167 posted...

Once Biden falls out of the picture and Kamala takes the reigns its going to be funny seeing how people react when she undershoots everyones expectations and just does her own thing lol.

Kamala was not the Leftist yall where looking for.

I don't think anyone ever believed she was a leftist though?

F*** this moralistic trash. There's nothing inherently wrong with porn or the people who make it.

Sun and Moon were good, but not as good as ORAS, let alone the golden age that (IMO) ran from Platinum through Black&White 2.

Shadowplay posted...

Appreciate the explanation!

Oh, I forgot the best part: they picked up the moniker "Factory of Sadness" for their unparalleled ability to disappoint their fans.
https://existentialcomics.com/comic/273
Also the jersey with crossed out names is based on a real fan's jersey, because the Browns have gone through a dizzying array of mostly terrible QBs. Baker Mayfield seems pretty good though.

Shadowplay posted...

I don't follow football. Do the Browns have a really bad reputation or something?

The Cleveland Browns have been around since 1946, and last won an NFL championship in 1964, though they generally weren't terrible. In 1995, the team was abruptly and unceremoniously moved to Baltimore and became the Ravens, and the outcry was sufficiently great that the NFL took the unprecedented step of stripping the team of its history and promising Cleveland that the Browns would be restored.
They came back as an expansion team in 1999, and have since gone 101-234-1. They last made the playoffs in 2002. They lost to the hated rival Steelers in the first round. The Browns endured an 0-16 season and have been generally uncompetitive. Their best season(record-wise, before this one) was 2006, when they went 10-6, but nonetheless missed the playoffs. Since 1999, the Browns have neither won their division nor won a playoff game.

Smashingpmkns posted...

I don't get the logic behind a split at this point.

Yeah, Trump gave them a death grip on the judiciary, more tax cuts, messed with the census and drove Republican turnout into the stratosphere. What is there for Republicans to revolt against?
And theyre going to take back the House and Senate in 2022.

The Football Team certainly seems to have this under control.

We have to reach across the aisle and work with Chip Roy.

InhumaneRaider posted...

Lmfao, no the fuck we won't.

Yeah, Manchin steals the spotlight, but the Senate is full of Democrats who had their brains cryogenically frozen in 1982 one of them is president-elect LOL.

The NFL basically decided not to care very much and is very obviously winging it on rules and protocols while rejecting the idea of bubbles out-of-hand.

Elibian Nights is pretty good, and Order of the Crimson Arms feel quite a bit like a GBA FE.
Wrath of the Sun God is decent, but its trying to be a modern FE in the GBA engine and that isnt always easy to parse. Also there are So. Many. Characters.
And Thracia-like capturing(which youre expected to get most of your weapons from) and fatigue.

Yeah, it's totally AOC's fault the DSCC's hand-picked candidates blew extremely winnable races in Maine and North Carolina and got murdered in most other places.
At least they lined the pockets of all the right consultants, think tanks, and vendors though.

Fair, next.

KaZooo posted...

No what he's saying is we should be trying to figure out a constructive way to restore productivity so both people can be employed and companies can survive. Stimulus/relief was handled like garbage, but big picture never the solution.

Of course, a bunch of dumbasses who couldn't comply with the lighter guidelines ruined it for the rest of us, but realistically there's a stagnation that's unsustainable for everyone to live with. Only reason for it to drag on is if there's some master plan to drive society to shit.

Re-opening(and many places never really "shutdown" in any meaningful capacity and nowhere is "shutdown" now) leads to mass death and depressed economic activity(tons of people are sick or dying, tons of people have lost their jobs, those who haven't are spending a lot less, etc.). Shutting down leads to less death(how much depends on how complete and sustained a shutdown is, and how feasible it is) but further depresses economic activity. The way other countries responded to this problem was some combination of subsidizing payrolls, generous, continuous cash payments to citizens, and/or generous unemployment benefit expansions. It should also be noted that health care and unemployment benefits are generally much more accessible in other developed countries(compared to here, where many states intentionally design their aid systems to be as unavailable, dysfunctional and humiliating as possible).
The way we responded to the pandemic was to mismanage it badly while pumping Wall Street full of cash. We briefly had fairly generous unemployment benefits*, but state governments and small businesses are hurting bad and Congress has yet to do much to aid them, and the overall level of aid given to individuals in this country was always and has continued to be monstrously inadequate.
*Assuming, of course, you were able to access them.

Basically, American society is unusually full of pain and suffering and remarkably unbothered by/ignorant of/accepting of it.

Mass Effect.

Walk slowly forward.

Remember: their constituents in the Military Industrial Complex are infinitely more important to them than their constituents. They wont inconvenience them for any reason.

They were just being bi-partisan. That's what we voted for, remember?

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1344386015939727361
Your daily reminder that Bernie Sanders owns.

https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1344005218141417496
The Strasserite is getting on the train. Please don't feed him.

Hexenherz posted...

Because you can reasonably get most work done in less time than that, plus they mandate you take like half an hour (at best) to an hour (at worst) unpaid lunch break that just extends the amount of time you're at the office.

That wouldn't even be so bad if they acknowledged you don't *actually* have 8 hours of work to do(in most jobs) and allowed you to do whatever with the understanding that you would drop it and get down to business when something came up.

ImAMarvel posted...

I really feel like we're in the very, very early stages of true interstellar colonization, like how humans first left Africa. But again, very, very in the early stages.

In sci-fi, you often have precursor species who were around hundreds of thousands of years before any other intelligent species sprung up. If we don't find anyone else, that could very well be us.

We're definitely not organized in a way to actual do anything though. Even just mining on the Moon would take decades to return a profit(if, indeed, it proved very profitable at all), and why wait decades to make a profit if you can make one right here, right now? please ignore the legion of negative externalities, shareholders, because those are things we don't have to pay for!
One of the reasons fusion is coming along slowly is probably because there's not a lot of funding for a technology with the power to completely destroy our economic status quo.

Bio1590 posted...

The only reason they're doing this is because they're pretty sure they won't lose control of the Senate right?

Given Georgia's previous and current antics something fishy is gonna happen there.

I think its more fundamental than that: Mitch doesnt like the idea of government helping non-wealthy people and is afraid of creating the expectation in the public that government can and will should help them.

It's thoroughly mediocre, and proved to be better than Batman vs. Superman and Justice League.

Really, we could sit here and rehash this topic for the umpteenth time, but my opinion is that there *is* the germ of a really great film and a good character arc, but Snyder was/is too hamfisted and edgy a director to deliver on his own premise, at least in this case.

Boombam99 posted...

Bunch of Kentucky citizens sitting at home struggling to make ends meet during a pandemic are THRILLED to death about this. Never stop voting against your own interests Republicans.

I mean, the alternative was Amy McGrath, who promised to be a better partner for Trump than Mitch.
No, really: https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2019/07/09/amy-mcgrath-seeks-makeover-pro-trump-democrat/1680960001/
I'm not making that up or being hyperbolic, I dearly wish I was!

Honestly, they should probably just go along with repealing Section 230 if it comes to that, the Internet is a dumpster fire as-is anyway.

AzureAnihilator posted...

Ah yes, Bernie. Two-time failure and do-nothing Twitter politician. Surely he'll have a large impact.

This is especially funny given Bernie has done more than literally anyone else to secure money for average Americans.

Not if the market is allowed to continue as is, barring some event that would cause property values to crash.

https://twitter.com/EdMarkey/status/1343722252525858816
We've got another king.

Steffenfield posted...

The cockroach and the Milk Duds.

Don't seem to remember too many of those episodes, but I did enjoy the TV series.

That episode is fantastic. Always love it when shows poke fun at themselves and nail it like that.

Funkydog posted...

"A dictatorship has it worse" will always be the worst fucking reasoning you can ever use to justify the current work system in much of the west.

A great question to ask is: if you could build your ideal society, would it look anything like this one?
Because mine sure wouldn't. There's no good reason we should all be chained to working 40+ hours a week with obscenely overpriced healthcare(if you're lucky enough to have health insurance at all/can afford to utilize it) and minimal to no paid leave(of any kind).

I'm especially hot over this subject because I'm almost done with reading B****** Jobs:The Rise of Pointless Work and What to Do About It by David Graeber.

More Gospel of Wealth nonsense.

BuckVanHammer posted...

I appreciate the horribleness of rick. its cool to see a straight up villain be front in center. the bite sized sci fi cramed in a dysfunctional family drama is also pretty unique too.

venture bros kinda do that to a lesser extent with rusty being a piece of shit on the reg...I like it quite a bit more tho.

Well, Rusty is quite a bit more sympathetic than Rick and nowhere near as much of a monster.

I really enjoy the show, myself, and thought Season 4 was very strong and the Phoenix Person fight in the finale was lit. But I think the show has a problem brewing: we all know Rick is a psychopathic, self-hating, lazy ass god who cannot stand to be challenged or called out on what he does or how he feels about it it's low-key pathetic that Rick is so terrified of facing his emotions that he rigged Dr. Wong's office with multiple possible emergency exits but that's been true since season 1.When is Rick going to get his comeuppance, or at least, actually admit to himself(or even Morty!) how he really feels there's some glimmer of hope on that front: he straight-up admits to himself that he's a terrible father in the Season 4 finale.

Bio1590 posted...

Slaves didn't build the pyramids

Yeah, they were native workers who were well housed and well fed. IIRC, there's even an account of construction workers striking over late payment of wages during the reign of Ramses III.
They not only got their back pay, they also got increased wages(the incident was likely recorded to demonstrate that Ramses III was a fair and generous ruler). Construction was very serious business in ancient Egypt, and not even Pharaohs were eager to cross the skilled artisans responsible for Egypt's vast public works projects.

Cleo_II posted...

Yes they are. Coptics make about 10% of Egypts demographics. And when Egypt was invaded in the 7th century, many Copts converted or were taken as slaves. So we do share ancient Egyptian ancestors. And to answer the OP, yes its racist and offensive when I hear shit like that.

Yeah, its ridiculous to assert that modern Egyptians are somehow completely different from Ancient Egyptians. Egypt had tons of people relative to the number of Persians, Greeks, Celts, Romans, Arabs, Kurds, Circassians, and Turks who wound up settling there. Its just sheer erasure of the genetic and cultural diversity of the Muslim world.

Fam_Fam posted...

so the tip goes to all the people who do the work now instead of just some of them...?

Not exactly: it allows managers to pay the wages of cooks and other non-tipped staff with tips, rather than it having to be "on top" of their wages.
So it basically lets them cover their labor expenses by taking money out of their workers' pockets. In addition to enabling management to force people who're supposed to be making money from tips to do more non-tipped labor at the ridiculously low tipped minimum wage.

BobLoblaw_ posted...

Because the stock market has no bearing on the actual economy

This. But also because they get all the "relief" they could ever want on demand.

DarkRoast posted...

I paid off $150,000 in student loans and I'm for student loan reform.

That said, the bigger issue is what should be done AFTER debt is either reformed/cancelled. Is this just going to be a one-time debt cancellation at the expense of students down the road who will still need to pay theirs?

If it's done via executive order, there's not much that can be done about that: it would require a bill, the sort of bill that's unlikely to materialize under Biden.

I mean, no one should be surprised that Biden is limiting himself.

It's an artifact of our aristocratic forebears, much like an executive who can trivially override the will of the legislature.

Kim Petras is "cheating", in a way; she only went through one puberty: the right one.


Which is good, given she's a pop singer and might not be if her voice was a source of dysphoria.

It sucks, but at least my work crush gave me a hug today. She slung her arm over my shoulder, which required her to get on her tippy-toes. It was cute.

But yeah, not going to even going to consider asking her out until we're both vaccinated.

3PiesAndAFork posted...

Do you honestly believe the voters will be smart enough to vote out perdue and loeffler even if Mitch doesn't pass the 2k cheque?

It's an argument that can be made, that is both sound factually and appealing ("Vote for me, and I'll literally give you money!"). It may not make a huge difference, but then both elections are expected to be pretty close.

I don't think it's wise to ascribe complex motives to Trump: he's profoundly simple. He's always wanted at least $1,200 checks, but he was too lazy/unfocused to ever really push for them, which enabled Mitch to stonewall Democratic efforts to secure further stimulus in peace.

Now that the election has happened, I think there are likely two reasons Trump has suddenly seized on the $2,000 checks: the first being that, to the extent that he understands that he lost, he likely believes sending out more checks could have saved(or could save him, lol), something that's probably actually accidentally correct(in the first case). The second is that he's angry at Mitch and the Republican leadership for only half-heartedly backing his attempt to steal the election and he sees this as a way to get back at them(because they don't want to do this).

Whatever his reasons, Pelosi actually did a great job of seizing upon the statement to push for them to actually happen, which allows them either actually happen, or forces the Republicans to publicly kill the proposal, allowing Ossof and Warnock down in Georgia to make the point that electing them will net you a cool $2,000 (at least) over re-electing Perdue and Loeffler, the people who DON'T want you to have $2,000!

shockthemonkey posted...

I was hoping hed have a role in the Biden administration honestly, I still dont think hes experienced enough to be NYC mayor.

I mean, could he really do worse than the usual people?
Would have to see who else is running first.

No, but a few of my coworkers have.