The only way this gig is ethically justifiable is if the support act is a guillotine.

Bauxite is the obvious one. Bringing bauxite to Australia. How could you forget about bauxite?

I was just having a discussion with my family about recent union wins in the US, and when something good is a sign of how bad things must be. I suggested that there must be a german word for it, and my sister suggested maybe a chinese saying.

If you like the category of ‘things that sound like german has a word for it’, look into the 4-character chinese sayings called chengyu. One of my favourites is ‘Melon Patch, Under Plum’, meaning something that is completely innocent but should be avoided because it looks really sketchy. Don’t tie your shoes in a melon patch or fix your hat under a plum tree.

I read an article years ago, maybe like a decade ago, of some game industry person saying it was a cycle:

Incredible new graphics come out and people will buy the shiny regardless of anything else, then slowly they have to start making actually good games with those graphics to sell, then incredible new graphics come out and you don’t need to bother with story for a while.

That headline really is a thing of beauty. It’s like finding out that your trash is piling up because the city retasked all the sanitation workers to lie in fields of filth and create a heavenly host of garbage angels.

I don’t know that ‘one of the main reasons’ is fair. For profit prisons are vile cruelty-factories and have pull with lawmakers, but they hold less than 10% of incarcerated individuals. It’s a reason, sure. But a main reason?

I think there are two obviously larger reasons:

1. There are more homeless people and homeowners see them. If you’re a local politician, you can get very far by promising voters that they won’t have to see homeless people. Here in “oregon, tolerant oregon” (to quote jello biafra) this is the most common sentiment to hear, and is reflected in policy.

2. Growing resource pressure leads to a rise in ‘punching down’. As climate crisis, imperial turmoil and the rich taking ever more resources fuel poverty and scarcity, the social pressure to distinguish yourself from those further down the social ladder increases. Hating the weak identifies you as strong, which grows in value as more and more insecurity plagues our society.

I can’t not read that in a garbled south african accent.

Oh, that’s great to know! I’d got the impression that 打 was being used as a verb in the sense of use/make/play with 火機 as the object. Thanks!

The way I was taught to ask for a light in chinese is literally translated as ‘Hit the fire machine?’ (打火機嗎)

Of course!

I don’t get much into doctrinal differences, but I feel like this is pretty core to a lot of anarchist thought. I vaguely recall a quote from engels, something about anarchists believing you need to abolish heirarchy in order to abolish injustice, vs socialists believing vice versa. I think neuroscience shows that power differentials will always create human misery.

It’s easier to believe that the evil want power and that is also true, but the science says that power makes you evil.

https://www.npr.org/2013/08/10/210686255/a-sense-of-power-can-do-a-number-on-your-brain

https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/how-power-erodes-empathy-and-steps-we-can-take-rebuild-it

https://hbr.org/2015/04/becoming-powerful-makes-you-less-empathetic

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-empathy/201909/power-blocks-empathy

https://www.livescience.com/1128-mere-thought-money-people-selfish.html

https://blog.ted.com/6-studies-of-money-and-the-mind/

Only way to make people the rich change their ways

Most people will stop doing something if you show them how it hurts others. Not so the wealthy and powerful.

Being rich actually causes neurological changes, reducing your capacity for empathy and making your brain look more like someone born with psychopathy. ‘Power Corrupts’ is a biological fact. To be powerful is to be more capable of evil.

Uber is a bad faith actor, their business model is entirely monopoly-seeking. If they’re trying to expand into bus routes, the goal will be to reduce the choices available to just Uber.

The only thing I’ve found that helps is feeling like I achieved something worthwhile in my day. So after 6+ hours of video games it’ll be like 1am, I’ll yawn and suddenly think, oh I should get in a couple hours of writing. Whereas if I had already cleaned the house and emailed my family then I’ll be in bed by 11.

It’s a problem where the solution is to not have the problem in the first place, which doesn’t help if you already have the problem.

Hey Ester, since miles has your bag, are you now Bag Hitch Ester?

You’re an adult, leaving wet and dirty garbage to rot and smell in your sink is kids stuff.

Why is there dopamine availability shaming going on in an ADHD community?

Jealous! My sister lived in that area and we went squirrel walking a few times on visits but I was never so lucky as to have one crawl over me.

That walking up to you and standing up behavior - I’ve started to see that at a cemetery here in Portland that we walk around, but so far all the squirrels have waited a short distance away for food to be thrown to them.

Squirrels are just the best. If anyone goes to visit Taiwan - which I certainly recommend as strongly as possible - there’s a park in the capital Taipei called 2/28 Memorial Peace Park (二二八和平紀念公園).

There are these gorgeous squirrels with red bellies that will eat nuts right out of your hand. They’ll come up to you, take a nut and then run off about midway up a tree. Using their back legs to hold onto the bark, they dangle head-down against the trunk, eating with their front paws. Then you look around and all the trees have these vertical furry tree-slug looking squirrels dangling against them. Just cuting it up cutefully.

Red-bellied plumpers is what my wife and I called them. They’re just the best.

the operation is highly organised, technically savvy

Of course an operation this sophisticated targets people looking to buying luxury brands for cheap, that sounds like an ideal mark.