Ownership class needs to extract as much value as they can out of their workers. They think that if you don’t entangle healthcare with employment, then no one’s going to work anymore. I think it is all projection; the wealthy already don’t work nearly as hard as the people they exploit.

Agreed. The amount of down votes you’re receiving shows that, even on lemmy, >25% of users have an immediate and ingrained distaste to others sharing the thought that religion can be dangerous. The religious hold their own religion in such high regards, not realizing that, for the most part, they were never given a choice of which religion, let alone the choice to not be religious at all.

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion” - Steven Weinberg

“Born in the USA” by Bruce Springsteen is widely regarded as a patriotic anthem. It’s played at so many sporting events and political rallies that most people think it celebrates American pride. But the song itself is about a small-town kid who gets drafted, sent to war, and then comes home to find himself unemployed, homeless, and abandoned by the system that sent him there.

The irony is that media and propagandists grabbed the punchy chorus and stripped it from the rest of the song. An anti-establishment story about neglect and disillusionment that got balefully repurposed as an advertising jingle to drive military recruitment.

I hope that I am wrong about this, but I am not optimistic about Talarico.

He said all the right things to position himself as not just a progressive candidate, but as a christian candidate. White, male, middle aged, handsome, well spoken, seemingly levelheaded, and gives off strong Mr. Rogers vibes. Those things make him comparatively more palatable than most other democratic candidates, especially in Texas.

However, the democrats have had more than a handful of bad actors and turncoats in recent years. Candidates that talk the blue talk and walk the blue walk, but once they take office they quickly turn face. Sinema, Fetterman, Gillibrand, Robin Webb; not an exhaustive list of democrats that turned their backs to the rhetoric and policies that got them elected, but their the ones that spring to my mind first. Schumer, Jeffries, Pelosi, and a host of others could be rightly accused of actively aiding the republican-led undermining of the rule of law (and civil rights) while in office.

The Streisand effect has a long history of backfiring on public officials, so much so that it’s not too far of a stretch to wonder if the administration banked on the FCC debacle to elevate Talarico. To be clear, I’m not entirely pessimistic about Talarico; I want to believe that there are still good people who want to get into public service for the right reasons. I’m just not optimistic because he’s almost too good. Running a sleeper candidate against one of the stronger progressive voices in congress (who frequently and loudly called out the GOP’s bullshit) is exactly the kind of thing that the far-right think tanks would do.

Some American grocery stores already tested the waters by posting armed guards in its stores. This article is a few years old, but the precedent stands.
https://retailwire.com/discussion/hy-vee-creates-its-own-armed-security-squad-to-deter-crime/

Hy-Vee last week announced the introduction of an in-house armed security team to manage theft and in-store disturbances.

The Midwest grocery chain said in a statement that it has long worked with third-party contractors or off-duty law enforcement that work in a security capacity. The goal of bringing it in-house is “to create a consistent look for the security team and consistent approach to customer service and security across all [its] stores.”

There once was a poster online
who stacked strawmen neatly in line
on a slope slick with spin
they kept sliding right in
declaring each fall a design

Darklands - a cRPG released in 1992 by Microprose. It’s set in medieval Germany; you are a party of fledgling adventurers looking to build fame and money, and somehow you get pulled into a battle against the forces of the apocalypse. Instead of magic, you invoke saints and use alchemy to craft potions. I loved it when I was younger, and I still, somehow, enjoy it today.

If you hate the following things, then I highly recommend checking it out!

• great graphics
• good music and sound design
• easy to understand game mechanics
• stable, bug-free game play
• yourself

We’ve had one, yes. But what about second telescope?

My guess is some sort of SEO to correlate those terms to this post.

There are also a lot of people out there that will intentionally swerve to hit an animal. Mark Rober made a video a long time ago where 6% of drivers went out of their way to hit animals that were just chilling on the shoulder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-Fp7flAWMA

I feel this. There was one time where I was playing metal over my speakers, but I was the only one in the office and I was not playing it loudly. After a while a security guard was doing rounds and asked me “what the hell” I was listening to. “Cattle Decapitation,” I said, and they wrinkled their nose like someone shat in the trashcan and went on about how they can’t how anyone would like “that stuff” – I shrugged and said me neither and got back to my work.

I get the Tesla hate, I’m also not a fan of Musk and his antics, but can you share a source that says Tesla are inherently worse in crashes than other vehicles? The NHTSA gives overall 5-star safety ratings to Teslas, the highest score possible; the leader of the NHTSA is notoriously anti-Tesla (because of Musk’s antics), and is on record saying that she wants to reign him and the company in (and rightfully so).

From this article: https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/18/business/why-do-people-keep-crashing-teslas/index.html

The Highway Loss Data Institute, a US-based organization funded by the insurance industry, has not found higher crash rates for Tesla vehicles or other EVs more broadly based on overall insurance claims. Teslas do tend to have higher claim costs, though, according to the HLDI.

The article goes on to say that research indicates that the likely cause of a higher rate of EV crashes is drivers 1) not being accustomed to the differences between EV and ICE vehicle handling, and 2) EVs overall having more speed and power than ICE vehicles.

there is a long-established connection between horsepower and the frequency and amount of insurance claims. Fast cars hit things more often and they hit them harder, leading to more – and more severe – crashes. Added to this, EVs lack the usual engine sounds that go along with rapid acceleration and high speeds, so it’s conceivable drivers are less aware of how fast they’re going.

I’m interested in learning more about how EV crashes seem to be worse.

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If only; that would be some tasty irony for a theology degree-holding judge

It’s a meme where someone issues a threat against someone else, then veils it against moderation & reporting by appending “in Minecraft.” e.g. a user responds to your post with “I’m gonna burn your house down”, which can be construed as a real-world douchebaggery. But if they say “I’m gonna burn your house down in Minecraft”, there’s plausible deniability because it’s infers online douchebaggery where real physical harm is unlikely.