(Any/Comrade, Tankie for the unserious)
Marxist-Leninist with Meowist leanings (cat supremacy, but love all animals)
Labor organizer. USian.
Scientist, experience in vaccines/drug delivery/chemistry/analytics/biochemistry/protection of eggs dropped from tall structures
outdated hardware
I think they prefer the term "time-tested."
As a human being intrinsically tied to the fate of the Earth, you are legally required to mercilessly harass these friends for buying a new phone each year.
How the fuck can anyone justify this behavior?
They frequently didn't allow me to use copy/paste around 10-15 years ago and I never forgave them for robbing me of such a basic feature. I switched to Android as soon as my iPhone died.
Why not take it a step further and be fully serious?
I would like to see a new set of laws where if there are any employees at an organization who aren't earning a living wage with full benefits (not PTO or that 1 week vacation bullshit, paid sick leave and 5+ weeks of paid vacation per year, minimum), and if employees are regularly (more than 1 week out of a year) required to work more than 40 hours in a week, a timer starts.
They have 1 week to rectify the situation or the owners and entire executive team are given a prison sentence for 30 years and all of their assets are seized. No outside amenities or special privileges allowed in prison. Mandatory reeducation classes with public written and oral presentation assignments where the person must describe what they did that was wrong, why it was wrong, how their actions negatively affected others, and what actions they've taken to right their wrongs and learn to be better since their violation. When released, they are permanently barred from owning any portion of a private company or acting in a paid supervisory role for 20 years unless granted this right by unanimous vote by all of those they will supervise, subject to a new vote at the workers' discretion.
Supervisor pay is tacked to no more than 1.5x that of their lowest paid worker. Executives cannot receive stock options as any form of compensation. If a private company is found in violation, it and all of its assets are equally distributed, becoming the collective property of the employees unless they wave this right, in which case it becomes property of the state and can never be sold to a private party again. The law applies to all organizations where any participant is paid. In the case of the state, the rules for the executive team apply to the head of state and their cabinet.
Have fun fucking around with those laws, but I'm sure I could come up with more as they search for loopholes. For instance, those found to be subverting the system are subject to a 50 year sentence instead of 30.
I'd accept a socialist society as an alternative. I'm sure the workers could come up with laws they find appropriate in that case. My hope would be that mine would be oppressive enough toward the ruling class to make them desire the reprieve of socialism, the sadistic, parasitic fucks. This is more than they deserve.
This was bait to get you to mention the podcasts you are listening to so I could either say "me too!" or find something new to listen to.
What you said about propaganda was reminiscent of Amy Westervelt's research in "Rigged."
Umm, this is a science community, we say 6.5 x 10^6 decades here, buddy.
Paper my ass, that was a small book!
As a scientist, I'm disappointed there were no models with big, goofy lips, even if it was to show how unlikely and ridiculous it would be.
"A different damned drink."
I agree with the term enshitification for this thing normally, but this is just a "bait and switch" at this point.
And once they become professors, they forget how to keep their Eve Online alerts from interrupting class.
Australians.
Southern Australians.
I bet you listen to podcasts.
Fuuuuck, they cover the walls of our science buildings with those now. It's like, how much are you spending on this shit, but you can't fix the fucking HVAC in the building?
No u
Looks to me like she's done with his shit and about to use the nerve pinch to stop him.
This argument is hilarious with the intended implication that Republicans would somehow be different
Irrelevant hypothetical. The Democrats are complicit in an ongoing genocide.
Dems are still far better for the US though
Keep dreaming. They've been telling you this for decades, but there's functionally no difference at home (besides the crackdown on protests against the genocide, fascism much?). Roe v Wade was overturned under Democrats despite them using the abuser logic, "if you don't vote for us, our opponents will take away this right." Speaking of, the Democrats have had multiple opportunities to codify RvW over the last 50 years, times when they had super majorities, but they didn't. The Democrats decided to hold it over our heads as a threat instead. The Democrats decided to allow the Republicans to bully them into filling SCOTUS with right-wingers who would support their agenda. The Democrats have fulfilled none of their domestic policy promises to the people (only wealthy "investors," let's be honest, they aren't contributing to campaigns, they are investing in the ability to shape policy), they have taken no actions to address the frequent abuses of the filibuster made by Republicans, and they've by far been the more deadly of these two parties when it comes to foreign policy (sanctions) and military operations.
How much longer are you going to continue eating their shit and pretending it's chocolate? Do you really think you are so helpless as to have no option but to vote for one of these two parties? Do you think the only political action you can take is donating, campaigning for one of two shitty parties, and voting? Oops, my favored political party is doing shit I don't want (contributing to a genocide), but I'm not going to do shit and will still vote for them despite that.
Quit your shit and just own it. I'd say it's hilarious, but it just isn't anymore. You want to vote for fascists, you are pressuring others to vote for fascists, and it's either because you fucking want fascists in power or you don't want to oppose these fascists. You are supporting a genocide and it's sickening.
Just shut the fuck up with the fascist apologia and classic liberal moral grandstanding. No one buys the lie that the Democrats are the morally superior party anymore. The Democrats aren't progressive and never will be. Your support of them reflects on you and your values. You aren't progressive, you support these fucking ghouls despite claiming to have morals and values and desires that are opposite of the actions your chosen party is taking.
Get fucked.
Any chance you'd be willing to provide answers to any of my questions based on what you saw?
Good points. It's difficult to find a clear answer to how important lend-lease was to the Soviet war effort. During the war, the USSR and US obviously had good things to say about the program, but the start of the Cold War soured this discussion, leading to the US overstating and the USSR understating the impact. Here's an excerpt from a paper by a British scholar exploring the topic. Emphasis is the author's:
It is neither possible nor fruitful to try and put a precise measure on the material value of allied aid to the Soviet war economy, if only because of the unavailability of many Soviet production data. Whatever the value of western aid, the Soviet war effort was measured in human life and suffering incomparable with material aid from outside. Further, the Soviet economy became much more of a war economy than other combatant nations. Nonetheless, it seems that the contribution made by deliveries from the USA and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Canada, played an important part at crucial times and in crucial areas. First, and above all, was a vital margin of food supplies, second was the provision of specialist or deficit products such as aluminium and copper, specialized tools, high quality steels. In this respect lend-lease supplies overcame bottlenecks. However, it must be stressed that the major impact came after the Soviet counterattack and the beginning of German retreat. Such aid directly and indirectly helped defeat the German forces, and was in such a way a substitute for a second front, but it did little to defend the USSR from the initial onslaught. Third, some of the raw materials and more especially machinery and transport equipment was of positive value to the Soviet economy after the war. For this, the tyre plant is the best but not the only example.
It is nonsense to repeat the figure of four per cent of Soviet wartime production and disingenuous to disparage western aid - a feature evident in Soviet literature and one criticized even by Khrushchev. It is nonetheless true (and this is a point repeated in some Soviet works) that Britain and the Empire received far more than the USSR from the United States. Lend-lease, in this respect, may be seen as a temporary substitute for foreign trade. Britain was a major trading nation, highly dependent on imports, especially for food and raw materials. The USSR, on the other hand, was an economy with little trade dependence whose foreign trade turnover had fallen steadily during the 1930s...
The part left off at the end compares repayment of aid sent to the British vs the Soviets. A fairly short read that will give some more context to the conclusions I shared above.
One of the main points the author makes is that lend-lease was used by the US as a stand-in for entering the war and opening a new front in 1942 as the allies (and Stalin in particular) were requesting. In this context, lend-lease was a replacement for reopening the Western front in 1942, an action that could have been far more impactful. The US provided material aid in lieu of entering the war, shifting the human burden of the war onto the other Allied forces and particularly the USSR from 1942 to least at 1944 (note that lend-lease aid extended wider and was provided from 1941-1945).
Overall, the impression I've gotten from sifting through academic writings on the subject is that while lend-lease certainly helped take some of the pressure off of the USSR (mainly in the form of producing food, trucks, and raw materials), it's most likely that the result would have been the same. That said, wondering over historical what-ifs, while fun, should really be constrained to recreational musing and shouldn't be taken seriously.
For sure, I just like posting stupid things on memes.
I think your lab needs to get you a giant magnifying glass with a light so your squinting days can continue. They're super nice for things that can't go under a microscope. So far I've been lucky myself, but many of my colleagues my age experience the same problem. Some day I would like to get a macro camera so I can just show them pictures.
I will, but this is an 8 hour series.
I like to click on phishing links and send them messages in the password section. Hopfully they find it entertaining.