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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 27th, 2023

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  • Listen, Jim - how much do you realistically own in unrealized gains? It doesn’t even matter to be honest - since you’re shit posting on the Internet, I wouldn’t put your net worth much higher than $10-20 million - and that’s me being an absolute philanthropist, in terms of how much “benefit of the doubt” I’m willing to afford an Internet shit poster.

    Even if you were somehow blessed to have more than that - you still wouldn’t qualify as one who needs to pay this kind of wealth tax.

    Where’d you get the idea that it would “tax all unrealized gains”?




  • To be fair to people with legitimate celiac disease - many factories process multiple products and don’t have to disinfect and sterilize their equipment between products. They may run wheat one day and rice the next. If they don’t treat the equipment with a disinfectant certified to eliminate proteins, the rice may pick up gluten from the equipment.

    If they state they are gluten free, it (should) mean that they are taking necessary steps to isolate or clean their lines.




  • Socialism is NOT whatever the hell this “sovereign citizen” stuff is.

    Socialism is instead a democratization of the benefits of our collective labor.

    Rather than permit the kings and nobles, billionaires, athletes, movie stars, politicians, and pop idols to take the lion’s share - we use it to invest in our society, our collective well being.

    You work? I do too. And so do the clerks at the gas stations and grocery stores - the brick layers and the office workers - we’re all just working a job for a living.

    For the ones that can’t or don’t want to work - Setting aside the murky definition of “work” - I’d rather they be fed, clothes, housed and warm, because it means safer lives for everyone.


  • Education is anywhere from free to really cheap in Germany, and we still don’t get many people from poorer families into uni.

    I am not German myself, but I am familiar with the system. Please correct me if things have evolved, but…

    I thought the post-elementary education system in Germany was a tiered system. University admission requires completing the Abitur exams, but one can only feasibly do this if they’ve attended Gymnasium, or the “highest” tier of high school. It may be possible to do if one gets very high marks in Realschule (mid tier), along with Abitur preparation courses, but it’s virtually impossible if one attends Hauptschule (lowest tier). These schools are not intended to provide university preparation, but instead provide a general education to prepare students for trades/vocational careers.

    Whether a child attends Hauptschule, Realschule, or Gymnasium is decided at 9 or 10 years old, and is dependent on performance in elementary classes and teacher recommendations.

    And when one considers that a child’s educational performance is directly related to both familial socioeconomic status and parental educational attainment, it’s not surprising that poorer people are less likely to attend or complete university.

    Capitalists’ dominant position within the class hierarchy necessitates exploitation of the working class, and this is maintained by fomenting division. This tiered system is just one manifestation of how society can be stratefied and divided.


  • Are you glad because I’m not very inventive, or because my description demonstrates I’m disturbed?

    And I have so many additional questions.

    1. Do they feed this secretion to the live young?
    2. If yes, wouldn’t that technically make them mammals?
    3. Is the milk harvested before or after live birth?
    4. If before, where is egg/larva sack, anatomically?
    5. If in abdomen, how separate are these organs - in other words, are we talking like milk sack, reproductive sack - stick the needle filter too far one way and you’ve missed the milk and got larvae - or is it like a liquefied mess in there, and that’s why they need the filter?

    I can go on, but man this is weird…











  • …they put just enough oxygen in those helium canisters consumers can buy to stop people…

    I’m not so sure that’s true… At least, I know for certain it wasn’t true for at least one brand of consumer grade helium canisters sold in the US, around 12 or 13 years ago.

    In the early 2010s, I worked the day shift as an EMT for a small town ambulance company. One morning, right as I was clocking in for the 5am shift change, a call came in for an adult male unresponsive. My partner and I didn’t think much of it - it was a college town and we worked the Friday morning shift, so it wasn’t unusual to get early calls for drunk frat kids passed out in a yard from the Thirsty Thursday parties - don’t get me wrong, these were often serious situations, but run of the mill stuff for the job. So we told the overnight volunteers to go home, jumped in the rig and got on our way to the scene.

    I started to get a bad feeling on the way over though, because it was at the local fishing pier, which was in a park - kind of a scenic place, not really near the college - but my partner played it down, said rush week had just finished so it’s probably some pledge bullshit or something.

    We arrive at the park, pull into the parking lot, and see the police lights off to the right - the dock is off to the left, with a small beach to the right, with the parking lot overlooking the coast - the police officer has back against the trunk of a grey Nissan, thumbs in his vest, head hung low - looks up at the ambulance makes eye contact with me and shakes his head.

    We get out of the rig, ask him what’s going on, he tells us that we’ll need to pronounce, and it isn’t pretty.

    I walk around the driver side of the car and see a kid in the front seat. He couldn’t have been older than 20. There was a clear plastic bag over his head, the edges pulled taught to his neck with a length of string tied in a bow, the bag mostly inflated so it wasn’t touching his face. There was one end of a tube inside the bag, held in place with an extra knot from the string. The other end traced back to a tank sitting on the front passenger seat, still in its cardboard box with pictures of happy children playing with balloons on the side. There was a bottle of brown liquor in the cupholder.

    I’ll never forget the blank stare of his semi-open eyes, set in his young, handsomely featured, yet now lifeless face - his skin the ashen, mottled, and pale blue-grey color of the recently deceased.

    It was immediately obvious this young man had parked there for one last nice view of either a sunset or sunrise, drank up some courage, donned his gear, and drifted off to a final sleep.

    I stood there only for a moment, but it felt like an eternity passed as I absorbed the emotional intensity of what had transpired there. I regained my sense of composure with the crack of my partner shattering the driver-door’s window, saw him reach to check for a pulse, turning his head away after a moment while waiting for the full, painfully requisite 60 seconds, pronounced him dead, and we were back in the truck on our way back to the station.

    I’m still not right from that call.

    I really hope things have changed, and that manufacturers are required to add oxygen or bitter compounds or something that prevent this kind of thing from happening.

    If you’ve read down this far, I thank you. Writing this out was helpful for me to process - I took a few minor liberties in writing this story, mostly to obfuscate potential recognition, and for dramatic effect - but made no changes to what I felt and saw in my description of that scene.

    And lastly, if you’re struggling with your mental health or substances - you’re not alone. This world can be hard and cruel, terribly isolating and dark - but there is warmth and kindness too. If you feel like hurting yourself, please don’t. You are loved. You will be missed by the ones who love you. If you’re in crisis, and there’s someone you know and trust, call them and talk to them. If they cant talk or don’t pick up, or if there’s no one you feel you can trust, call a crisis prevention hotline any time, any day, and they will listen to you with the utmost respect, dignity, and empathy.

    [US and Canada] Call 988 for the suicide and crisis lifeline. Call 911 for life-threatening/imminent situations. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/suicide-prevention

    [Most other countries] Call your local emergency line, most often it’s 112 if you’re outside of North America - they will direct you to help if you’re in need.

    Additional information: https://www.cnet.com/health/suicide-hotlines-crisis-hotlines-to-call-when-you-need-help/