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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • I love Bernie too! We have that in common.

    But you’re take is only part of the point he’s making though. The government is failing people in large part because such a small segment of the population has enormous sway over who gets to be in government.

    I had a much longer response that got deleted when the app force closed on me 😮‍💨

    I really did want to weigh in from your original post, though, how you argue that billionaires make jobs, make products, make the world better. Like, sure, some do, but the ones at the top? Big corporations? No, they don’t. Literally, Walmart workers have relied on government assistance programs due to poor pay for decades. Companies like Toys R Us get bought up by billionaires and liquidated for more money as employees lose their jobs. Or billionaires buy things that shouldn’t be profit driven–where is that return on investment going to come from? These are billionaires choices, not Congress or City Council or whatever, that directly shape society negatively. Sure, governments allow it–especially governments that billionaires have bought.

    I used to be against limits to billionaires (I still kind of am, I’d prefer minimum/maximum earning ratios), but actually watching them work and change in the world, I have seen that they have too much power with too few checks. I mean, hell, from a global warming perspective, it’s hard to find what I, as a little person, do matters at all. I could die tomorrow and produce no more carbon emissions (beyond my body’s offgassing), and it wouldn’t change anything. Meanwhile, some small percentage of people, just like in Bernie’s tweet, contribute much more each day than I will in my whole life. Fuck, man.





  • We went to one of the several trunk or treats in our town. I chose one of the less busy ones so my kid could understand what the massive downtown one would be like if she wanted to do that. We waited in line from trunk to trunk for a whole hour, got meh candy, got to get inside emergency vehicles (that was cool), got to see a lot of other people’s costumes (also really fun), but mostly it was waiting. Standing mostly still. And then the advertised time came for it to be over, even as people were still waiting in line, tables and cars all broke down and started leaving us in a sad, barren lot. We went trick or treating for the main event after all, and got excellent candy, saw all kinds of cool houses as we actively walked with a friend for as long as we wanted.




  • I listen to a podcast by a licensed therapist (Dr Laura Anderson, Sunday School Dropouts) who specializes in helping people recover from religious trauma, and honestly, she does argue that high control religion works a lot like the dynamics of abusive personal relationships. She also notes that when people are used to being shamed/coerced/guilted/etc for religious reasons, they’re more likely to accept abusive behaviors in personal relationships as well–it’s already normal stuff. And most of the arguments I’ve heard in favor of preserving child marriages comes from religious folks asking “what happens when a 15 year old gets pregnant, the baby needs both a father and a mother!” Instead of wanting to use investigation or nuance, child marriages are a quick fix to always complicated situations.






  • No, but I’ve watched Disneys Descendants. A bunch of villain’s kids get to go to school after being cut off from society all their lives due to their parents choices. The kids come in to school dedicated to evil, but the more they learn & get to know people, the more they all decide to be good people.

    I have no idea how that relates to anything in the real world in the past however many years.