🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦

Whereas from this end, this insistence upon having the “right” to be a vicious boor disgusts me.

And it turns out I’m far more normal in this regard than the opposing stance is, given that social media sites, et al are bleeding users over it.

What a mystery. Abuse upsets people, and upset people leave businesses where they get upset. And those businesses ban the abusers?

What. A. Shock.

Let’s pretend this isn’t online space and is, instead, say, the local deli. People go there to get food and see that a fellow customer likes to abuse people. The staff of the deli do nothing about it. So now people stop going to that deli and go somewhere else. (Note: not just the people being abused, but people who witness the abuse going unchallenged by the owner.)

So let’s go over the decision-making process:

1. Say “meh” and let the abuser drive off multiple customers. (Lost customers: >> 1)
2. Ban the abuser from the premises. (Lost customers: 1)

Which is the approach that doesn’t kill the business?

Now jack up the paint job, insert an online space, lower the paint job. Do you think the calculus is any different?

And in case you think people don’t leave because of this kind of abuse, I dropped Twitter (loooooooooooooooong before Apartheid Manchild was its owner!) despite only rarely being the recipient of abuse. It was the culture of abuse that was everywhere, in practically every thread, that made me decide Twitter was a festering shitpile. (Again, even before the Manchild took it over.) Sure the abusers were a minority, but they were basically in any thread that was in any way public. And that just wasn’t the vibe I was interested in.

I made a little table showing the highest marginal tax rate from 1913 to 2022 coded in blue for Democrat presidents and red for Republican:

source1

source2

• The first Democrat run saw a stunning rise of 66% in the highest marginal tax rate due to the insane expense of WWI.

• The first Republican run saw a drop of 48% as the nation moved away from the war economy and into the post-war economy.

• The second Democrat run saw a sharp rise of 38% at the beginning and a further rise of 28% by the end of their run because of the Great Depression and WWII in that order.

• The second Republican run kept the ultra-high (91%!) highest marginal tax rate during the post-war boom with no change.

• The third Democrat run saw the rate fall by 21% over its span.

• The third Republican run kept the rate as-is over its span.

• The fourth Democrat run (single-term) kept the rate as-is over its span.

• The fourth Republican run dropped the rate by 39%

• The fifth Democrat run saw an increase of almost 9% over its span.

• The fifth Republican run saw a drop of almost 5% over its span.

• The sixth Democrat run saw an increase of almost 5% over its span.

• The sixth Republican run saw a drop of almost 3% over its span.

• The final Democrat run (and the last data I have) saw no change.

If we factor out the war years (up to the end of the second Democrat run) we don’t see a huge pattern of differences in tax rates, given that those are the highest marginal tax rates and people in that bracket tend to have many ways to evade taxes. (Apartheid Manchild recently complain/bragged that he paid an amount of taxes that turned out to be 3-4% of his income where the vast majority of people pay well over 11% of their incomes, for example.)

So I doubt it’s money. It’s something else.

Other interesting notes that pop out at me:

• the Great Depression happened in 1929 under Republicans (~3.5 years)
• the recession of 1937 was under Democrats (~1 year)
• the recession of 1949 was under Democrats (~1 year)
• the recession of 1953 was under Republicans (~¾ years)
• the recession of 1958 was under Republicans (~¾ years)
• the recession of 1960 was under Democrats (~¾ years)
• the recession of 1969 was under Republicans (~1 year)
• the recession of 1973 was under Republicans (~1¼ years)
• the recession of 1980 was under Republicans (~½ years)
• the recession of 1981 was under Republicans (~1¼ years)
• the recession of 1990 was under Republicans (~¾ years)
• the recession of 2001 was under Republicans (~¾ years)
• the Great Recession happened in 2007 under Republicans (extending into Democrats) (~1.5 years)

Here I see a distinct pattern that should alarm anybody running a business since lost sales account far more for lost wealth than alterations in the highest marginal tax rate.

I’d add “start working out”. Depression is helped by a weak body. Walk, yes, but maybe elevate that to running after a while. Or cycling. Or lifting. (Hell, when you go for your walk, carrying something heavy in a bag with one arm. Start with your weak arm and walk as far as you can before that arm tires out. Then switch to your strong arm and walk back home.)

Depression isn’t a mental state. It’s a physical condition that shows itself through your mental state. And it can be fought.

Because Vivian Jenna Wilson transitioned.

It really is that simple.

Before that event Apartheid Manchild was a dick, but mostly of the poorly-socialized technonerd variety. Still a dick, but not perceived by most as being a threatening dick.

After that event, where he coined (to my knowledge) the phrase “the woke mind virus”, he jumped deep into the MAGA swill.

Before that event he was kinda/sorta hailed as a “real world Tony Stark” but never really particularly accepted. People liked his products (well, let’s be honest: product) and otherwise didn’t give much of a shit about him.

After he went Full Metal MAGAt he became the object of worship and adoration of fellow MAGAts on Twitter (before he bought it, even), getting the uncritical acceptance he’d always craved and never really got.

And it turns out he wants to feel like he “belongs” more than he wants to sell shit.

I do think games can help you learn to think strategically, but without a lot of real-life training on top of that (and I mean a lot) your days playing chess aren’t going to help in a shooting war, or the like.

There’s nothing concerted about it. I point and laugh at anybody wearing a four-wheeled prosthetic penis.

Maybe something like have something akin to “GoFundMe” where accounts are owned by local towns/villages/suburbs instead of individuals and have the towns do the approval process before adding them to the list, I don’t know.

Oh, honey, you’re so close to seeing the actual solution it hurts to watch!

Wait, there’s people who think games should be used to train our brains/hone skills/do whatever else late stage capitalism demands of us?!

If they’re selling frozen anything it’s going to be crap. (You know frozen egg rolls exist, right?)

Any restaurant making from frozen, especially pre-packaged frozen, is going to be shit whether it’s an “authentic” egg roll or a spring roll. Stop buying from shit restaurants entirely.