This is exactly what I thought when I read that. What kind of “recalibrating” do they think they’re going to get to do with a christian fascist lording over the country?

I can’t help but have conspiracy theory thoughts, like this is some kind of conservative campaign. It’s hard to rule anything out anymore, and the idea of muslims voting for trump is just that fucking stupid.

They’re also still young with less life experience.

When the guy didn’t move after he “nudged” him with his cart (I would bet money that it was harder than a nudge but whatever) he really couldn’t just go around onto the street? No, he would have rather filmed himself fighting with someone than just be a normal person.

No, you shouldn’t block a sidewalk. No, you shouldn’t have to walk in the street with your dogs. Fine. But what you can do is pick your fucking battles and be the bigger person.

There’s no sane reason to condone murdering another human being instead of taking a step to the right.

Or the cart, apparently. Who jogs with two dogs and a cart?

1. Education

I really hope my student loan debt gets the memo that it was supposed to make me wealthy.

Education was the best decision I’ve ever made for myself (because there’s so much more value to education than just a career/future paycheck), but I went into it knowing that the trade off would be decades of financial sacrifice and probably hardship. The hope is that it would get me a middle to upper middle class salary, but I’m not sure anyone anticipates higher education to be even one of many keys to real financial success.

I think my wife and I did well because we teamed up early. Had we tried solo I think we would have failed.

It really sucks that marriage is now a financial necessity in the US. Some of us are ace/aro and will never get married or live with a partner. But even for those who aren’t, if someone wants to be single or just not move in with their partner, then they should be able to have that choice. I have no idea how I will ever live alone. The thought of living with roommates for the rest of my life turns my stomach. Introverts and neurodivergents should also be able to live in a situation that works for us. One of the worst parts of the housing crisis is compromising what makes a house a home - security, comfort, having your own space. It should be more than just paying to be indoors and having to live in uncomfortable, shady situations just to make that happen.

Need: Hunger is s great motivator. It also gives you this every present fear that if you take your foot off the gas, you’ll be hungry again.

I hope this is a joke. What a sad way to look at life if not.

There should be regulation of the private sector. There has to be some accountability for these corporations. The onus can’t be on the consumer one hundred percent of the time. It really shouldn’t be at all. Buyers should only be responsible for deciding which products would be best for them and their budget, not for having to predict which corporation will utterly fuck them over the least out of the only three corporations they have to choose from when they’re all trying to scam them out of their money.

I’m so sick of being scammed every single time I buy something. The government needs to step in and do their job instead of just handing out a few fines here and there.

God, this entire comment section is nothing but

“I’m not victim blaming, but…”

“personal responsibility”

“parents should be doing blah blah blah…no, I don’t have kids.”

The best parents in the world still can’t control what their kids are doing every second of every day. Kids will always find ways around every single thing that’s meant to restrict what they can do, see, or hear. I’m sure you never did stuff you weren’t supposed to when you were a kid…right?

I don’t know how delusional you need to be to assume it could EVER be possible that somehow every business would just refuse to serve a population because of X characteristic

But they just said it: the Jim Crow south. This isn’t some crazy delusional scenario. It’s literally already happened, and it was not even a hundred years ago. When schools were integrated there were mobs of white housewives yelling racial slurs at little children because they were black. This is real shit that’s gone on for more of America’s history than not.

Don’t skip history class, everybody. But I guess if conservative judges get their way we’ll probably lose that too.

If the photograph isn’t at ease with that, I’d argue they should be allowed to ensure not to be in a situation where they can’t render the proper service

But where does that stop? At what point are racists who are uncomfortable with interracial marriage allowed to deny services to people because of their race

I wonder why none of us paid subscriptions to access websites in the 90s and early 2000s? We all used MySpace, FB, LiveJournal, Make Out Club, Hot or Not, Geocities, Angelfire, NeoPets, MSN messenger, AOL messenger, the millions of chat rooms. Etc etc. We paid for time on the internet itself (like we still do) but at least then you could find one of those AOL CD ROMs with free minutes just about anywhere. You couldn’t escape them.

There also weren’t that many ads, just some banners at the top. There were web rings and stuff to advertise each other’s sites. But it seems like once pop-up ads started, you couldn’t get rid of them ever again. There weren’t browser extensions or anything, pretty much just anti virus software you had to go to Frys to buy.

In torrent client, set up Mullvad proxy.

I guess this is the kind of shit people are talking about. Wtf does this even mean.

I definitely care enough, but I can’t figure it out to save my life. All the online communities just act like everyone’s supposed to automatically already know what they’re talking about.

Yeah, it was me too. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labeling_theory

You don’t think that maybe the suit is against the school or the district

but let’s just say that there is a reason why Walmart has started to turn the corner post-pandemic, and Target is still struggling.

Because walmart is cheaper. I feel like it’s not that deep.

Yes, I have the same experience there. It’s ridiculous. I rarely go there anymore because of that, and everything being expensive.

I hate everything being locked up. I am sick of being treated like a criminal when I’m just going to the fucking store.

I’m on camera at the self checkout. There’s staff breathing down my neck as I’m scanning shit. I get followed by Target staff especially when looking at clothes, as though they haven’t put alarm things on literally every single item, even if it’s 5.99. I get my receipt checked at walmart before I can leave. At Burlington they took my cart before I left the store because they said it would lock up if it got to the parking lot. Good thing I didn’t buy anything heavy?

I hate amazon, but at least I don’t have to deal with all that shit. And it’s not like I can escape giving my money to giant, evil corporations anyway. It’s not like I can afford to shop at small businesses. But that’s exactly why they do it. They know they can’t drive people away from shopping at these stores, because we have nowhere else to shop. “Capitalism fosters competition” my ass.

So right after I signed up at the beginning of this year, they switched from HBOMax to “Max.” I paid for a year in advance, and of course when I signed up there was nothing about them switching to a new brand. All of a sudden it was full of trash reality shows and ID Discovery true crime. I have no idea what possessed them to do that.

Then once it switched over I stopped being able to stream any new HBO shows on mobile and customer service won’t refund me any amount. Not that I can even communicate with them effectively. It’s all “chat” with AI or people who have no idea what I’m saying. Half the shows still won’t play on mobile for me.

TL;DR I paid for a year of HBO. They changed their selection a few months in. I lost mobile access to a bunch of their shows. And now I’m losing even more features before the year is up. That’s quite literally not what I paid for.

How exactly is any of that legal? Genuine question. What about the Federal Trade Commission? Isn’t there fucking anybody regulating these corporations in the US?

I honestly think it’s better than Netflix (most streaming services are) and Hulu and definitely better than Prime.

It’s just that once they switched to Max they started focusing on reality shows and true crime and other such garbage.

Exactly. The problem is that it can never just stop there. If we could all just “live and let live,” then of course everyone should have the right to worship how, when, and where they want to. But humans are all judgemental, narcissistic dicks who insist on forcing beliefs onto everyone and everything because they’re right and everyone else is wrong.

In the US, it’s never just a matter of “religious freedom.” It’s a matter of people having bodily autonomy, of freedom from persecution for loving who you love, of freedom from diseases that proliferate due to the rejection of modern medicine. There are even homeless shelters/soup kitchens that won’t allow people to eat or stay the night until they’ve sat through an entire church service. And that’s considered pretty normal in terms of charities that target homelessness and addiction.

It may be a cliche way to put it, but it really does act like a societal cancer.