How History Books Will Remember The Government Shut Down: A Masterpost
Bringing this back in light of another american govt shutdown
I hate my country sometimes :p
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ALTVia The Nutrition Tea on Facebook. Reminders from Shana Minei Spence.
So I had a hysterectomy today (hooray!) and I brought along my stuffed orca, Shamu, as a comfort object. And everyone i interacted with during my pre-op was like "Oh! Who's this?" so I was telling them all about him, how he's been with me since I was 9 and gone on every single vacation and road trip, and they were telling me about their own stuffed buddies (one lady said she still has hers after 40 years!) and all of this while I was signing consent forms and providing a list of the things I'd brought with me, you know, small talk.
So then a nurse comes over and goes "Okay, I've got some stickers I'll put on your things so we know they're yours" and I'm like "OK cool" so she puts a sticker on my coat and stickers on my bags of clothes and then she turns to Shamu and I'm like "oh I guess he gets a sticker too"
But no. She pulls out a hospital bracelet that's an exact copy of mine and slaps it on his tail, like so:
And i was delighted by this, so I took a picture to send to my friends, who were equally delighted, and were cracking me up with their reactions (like so:)
Anyway, they take me back and put me under, and when I awake groggily a few hours later it takes me a minute to get my bearings, so I don't notice Shamu at first. But then I realize he's tucked up next to me in the gurney, so I grab him, and my hand touches gauze.
And I'm like "huh?" so I look at him and I realize
They gave my fucking orca a hysterectomy
PHRASE ADDED!
CHARACTER ADDED!
One of the socialist things I’d like to see ALONG WITH UBI (not instead of) is a government option for all basic neccesities. I am aware that the government option would -suck- and as long as it’s survivably functional, I’m fine with that. When I was a kid, we got monthly commodity food boxes. They’d be filled with food that looked like this:
And in lean months, it would be that and whatever we could get from the garden, or forage/fish, or trade with friends and neighbors. My mom had this awesome recipe for peanut butter balls that utilized the powdered milk, shit-quality peanut butter, and maple-flavored corn syrup that we routinely got in our box and actually made it good.
I think that these things should be available for purchase at every supermarket, and that the prices should be fixed with relation to the minimum wage. All brands should have to compete with the government option - if SPAM is going to be more expensive than LUNCHEON MEAT in the silver can, then it needs to justify that cost by being better quality.
I want the same thing for housing. I want fucking Commie Blocks to be an option.
This would combat runaway inflation by putting a price cap on survival needs. It would guard against shrinkflation, because a consumers could compare the Government Standard portion to the brands. UBI ought to be such that it covers The Government Option for food, housing, clothing, transit etc. with generous wiggle room for emergency savings and little joys in life.
Everyone should get their own UBI account in their own name at birth, along with their social security number. It should follow the individual regardless of guardianship. Parents/guardians should have incrementally less and less control over said funds as the child gets older, and should have to provide itemized receipts of how money taken from a child’s account is spent (Similar to what you have to do if you’re in control of an elder’s social security money).
https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/text-repayee-ussi.htm
'Each year, we will ask certain representative payees to complete a Representative Payee Accounting Report showing how they spent and saved the money they received for you during the 12-month report period.'
These are steps that would could easily institute tomorrow be reallocating funding, and they’d have a huge impact on cost of living for everyone.
This rant brought to you by the fact that store brand canned luncheon meat in my local grocery held fast at a dollar for the better part of two decades but now costs $2.18.
Oh man I wonder how many food monopolies this would expose? After all, a lot of store brand food comes from name brand companies. If there's going to be a baseline government option and they can no longer mark up based on name alone, what sense would there be to hide their brand name behind the generic?
as long as there's enough variety in the government options so that disabled people (food allergies, wheelchair users, whatever) also get enough bang for their UBI buck to have as much wiggle room for emergency savings and little joys in life after covering all the essentials
same with people who keep kosher or other religious food restrictions that require attention at the manufacturing end
I would especially like to see this done for more than kosher and halal, both of which are incompatible with jhatka, which is the Sikh food code.
I would like to also, while we're on the subject of food, get more attention on the US's catastrophic Deer Problem. There's too many deer. Deer are delicious. There is no reason to raise cows for meat when there is a deer overpopulation. I don't see the "we shouldn't eat beef anymore" crowd ever talking about this so I wanted to mention it. Meat is here to stay, humans eat meat, you are simply never going to get the whole population to forgo meat ever. Some people are always going to want to eat it, just like some people are always going to decide they'd rather not. I am against factory farming and anything on that scale to be clear. I just think there's a solution where we get to eat venison and other meats native to this land. Not sure what it is though, other than Landback.
first of all, through the power of tape anything is possible, so jot that down
- Andre Geim
hang on I need to look something up
yeah that's funny
I was actually referring to this. I didn’t know about the Gecko thing, man really likes tape ig
The thing you have to understand about this, btw, is that people had been trying unsuccessfully to isolate monolayer graphene for 60 years before this, using just about every method you could imagine. Epitaxial growth, chemical exfoliation, interchalated synthesis, mechanical drawing—these were able to produce graphite sheets a few hundred atoms thick, or tiny monolayer flecks embedded in some other substrate, but the dream of a single, uniform, free-standing graphene monolayer always seemed just out of reach of current experimental techniques.
And then, in 2004, Andre and Konstantin come along with a roll of literal fucking Scotch tape-
A burger and fries should be five dollars <checks wallet> a burger and fries should be two dollars
Anonymous asked:
Why would you want to hear out creationists on any issue whatsoever
teaboot answered:
Not specific to young earth creationists, but I like to talk to people who are wrong about things because if I can understand what led them to their conclusions and how their misconceptions are maintained then I can deconstruct the process and find better ways of communicating with them.
I can also better understand where other people who hold the same beliefs are coming from when I encounter them later on.
This makes it easier to correct incorrect information without coming off as belligerent or condescending, helps me understand functions and behaviours of the society I’m living in, and bridges gaps between people of different views that wouldn’t otherwise interact.
I’ll read articles written by transphobes and racists and Holocaust deniers and climate change deniers and hardcore fundamentalists, too. Because I know they’re wrong and I’m interested in how they operate- in where they get their misconceptions, and where the weak points in their arguments are, and what their actual goals and desires point to.
What I’ve learned is that no matter how different from mine someone’s views are, no matter how repulsive or bizarre or provably wrong their beliefs are, we all essentially want the same things: a prosperous future for our children, a safe environment to live in, and an easy supply of food, shelter, and medical aid.
If you can understand what people want, you can find ways of bypassing their dangerous and harmful plans for getting there by appealing to their practicality regardless of morality. And if their idea of practicality is different from mine, I can plan around that to get them there anyways.
People often don’t change beliefs tied to strong emotions even when presented with new evidence. If you want them to change their beliefs, you need to find their information source, understand their thought pattern, and then meet them on their level in a way that they can see as respectful and noncombative.
And even if the goal isn’t to change their mind, on places like social media, conversations can educate the audience too.
Plus, it plants the seed in their head that not everyone who disagrees with them is dangerous, or inflammatory, or rude. Maybe that’s what they need to know to start feeling safe venturing outside their echo chamber and seeing how the rest of the world works. Maybe they’ll see it’s not all as nefarious and scary as they’ve been led to believe. And that’s the first step for all of us, really.
I’m not afraid of consuming media that is wrong or holds harmful messages because I know it’s not correct, and I am firm in my own sense of morality, and I want to know how people who produce those messages exist.
It can also help me find flaws in my own reasoning, correct my own misconceptions, analyze and improve who I am and what I believe.
Also. It’s just kind of fascinating. Sometimes fascinating like an old science textbook, sometimes fascinating like a train wreck, but still fascinating.
Everything has value, my guy. Sometimes you just have to put the legwork in.
