I kinda think the commercialization of it isn’t great but it has gotten us a lot closer to decriminalization so that’s good. I think if the legal regime was more like how states handle liquor it’d be better.

It’s so crazy to me that everyone is deciding he’s bad now. I figured he SAd someone all the way back when his Reddit comments about it in the military came out because obviously a guy who’s complaining about being falsely accused of SA has done it. Then this stuff basically came out a month ago and everyone pretended it was fake for some reason? It took one of his victims coming forward and describing in explicit detail what happened for people to be like “oh that’s bad”.

Not to mention that however long the differentiation in human skin tones took, it took place in the context of small relatively isolated tribal groups that probably had significantly less genetic diversity and intermingling than the modern US. Therefore any distinctive mutations like noticable change in skin color would probably become prolific much quicker than they would in the modern US.

My partner and I are open to having kids (I think she really wants to) but it’s not financially viable right now and it won’t be for a while. This is not acceptable to much of my family who insist they want kids now. Maybe if the family chipped in a bit it would be more viable but if I mention that suddenly I’m greedy. Like sorry grandpa, I would have much preferred to be settled in with children at my age too but you ruined the housing market so now you’ll be lucky if you ever meet my children.

You need to go onto the website or call the managing company to see what funds you can invest in. Usually there’s a limited number of funds on offer and they are usually pretty conservative so i wouldn’t worry too much.

If you have options to shift to bond indices those might be safer but probably not much safer. If there’s a cash or money market fund those will be mostly safe but I don’t think they’re usually available.

I’ve dealt with some shitty gen-x/millennial customers too but boomers are the only ones that I’ve ever genuinely questioned the sanity of. Like a younger person might be rude, imposing, or upset but a boomer will do genuinely unhinged shit.

Retail is a really fascinating concept to me because it does produce value in the sense that the retailer is connecting the consumer with a product that they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. Retail is probably the oldest trade and has been essential to the development of civilization. It’s an incredibly fine line between that and rent seeking though. Ideally the surplus created by socialized production and industrialization should do away with retail and to a limited extent it has, but instead private ownership has flipped it totally on its head so the whole thing is marketing and rent seeking now.

He appears to have won about 70% of the votes in a race that was basically uncontested. I’m not sure if that signals a huge victory.

What should be even more embarrassing (and classic Mainer behavior) is that the Democratic gubernatorial primary was hotly contested. Nirav Shah, probably the furthest right wing candidate in the race who Platner didn’t even rank, has emerged with a plurality of votes. Ranked choice voting will come into play now but it’s possible Shah still comes out on top. If this is the case that means Maine Democrats will have elected both a “far left” populist candidate for the Senate race and a neoliberal rightist for the gubernatorial race.

Most large capitalists play both sides and most capitalists are dominated by financial capital which also plays both sides. Labor tends to vote Democrat and the smaller capitalists tend to vote Republican but make no mistake, there isn’t a real democracy around what the state should do or how production should be organized. The institutions of the state were made to work against democracy and have only entrenched themselves against it further in the last 60 years or so. They don’t even lie about it to us either. They’ve just conditioned us so well that we don’t question why institutions like the courts or the military are supposed to be “apolitical” or even how they can be.

When people say the article is a “hit-job” do they mean that it’s untrue or that it’s intended to make him look bad? Because I believe everything in the article even if the intent is obviously to make him look bad.

I feel bad for the animals that are going to suffer because of this but accidentally destroying the animal agriculture industry might have some positive effects

He had multiple Reddit comments defending soldiers taking “human trophies” in ww2 so I wouldn’t be too surprised if he also did it.

This is the one good thing about his campaign tbh. All these radlibs showing their true colors to defend him.

Anecdotally, a lot of older women who would normally swing Democratic up here do not like him so I’m sure this is really going to help his odds in November.

Because Americans are too clueless to understand what lasers can do to aircraft and instead we just shoot at them with rifles.

The quality of Eric Blanc’s writing varies wildly but this was one of the better ones.

I saw this when I was a grocery cashier too and it’s crazy how easy it was to make someone’s day by just giving them a dollar discount or something stupid like that. They treat you like a saint afterwards. I’d do it all the time and nobody ever said anything to me about it because the customers loved me.

I don’t think you’re wrong in the sense that this is (mostly) how the system works but treating health insurance like any other kind of insurance is exactly why it is so expensive and unwieldy.

I could maybe believe that number is accurate for a median dual income family with no major health concerns before the premium increases that hit this year but it’s also absurdly high to begin with. To be basically fine and still pay $4k a year (probably around 5% of gross income) just for basic preventative care is absurd.

Edit: or if he only means out of pocket expenses but then you’re probably doubling or tripling that number by adding healthcare premiums for the insurance that doesn’t even kick in until the family wipes their savings out every year.