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The Entire Universe posted:There once was a time when people rented bell-owned telephones and men were free... My father still on occasion gripes about having to buy phones as opposed to paying minimal rent on the cast-iron rotary monstrosities the phone company used to give you (and one of which I swear he still has hooked up in the basement). As to the "concern trolling that it'll destroy innovation in the wireless industry (with legitimate and illegitimate points)" that Thwomp mentioned, NPR had a brief clip of one of their industry reps doing just that, in almost those exact words ("destroy innovation," to be precise).
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Jan 15, 2014 00:23
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Rust Martialis posted:I am always amazed how US teachers don't have strong unions. The Ontario Teachers' Pension Fund is massive. New teachers make $45,709 to $55,404, rising to between $76,021 and $94,707 for a teacher with 10+ years service. They've been under siege for decades because FREEDOM and lazy teachers get the whoooooole summer off don't you know and this one time I heard this one kid got a bad grade when he didn't deserve it and the lousy union kept the teacher from being fired can you believe it?!
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Jan 22, 2014 19:57
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mobby_6kl posted:So my conclusion from this is that SCOTUS judges should be dogs, right? I think that could definitely work! There's nothing in the Constitution that says a dog can't
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Sep 7, 2022 23:45
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Kurzon posted:Thank you. So some conservatives do propose this, though it doesn't seem like a major talking point. Race is hugely evident as those proposing these laws and championing the anti- position are largely, though not exclusively, also white/Christian nationalists who want more little white/Christian soldiers out there to stop the Great Replacement and/or fight the coming race war.
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Oct 4, 2022 21:55
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BonoMan posted:Yeah I always hear, even from his detractors, that he has a level of genius but... where? They largely succeed despite Elon, not because of anything he brings to the table. Hell, a lot of why Tesla has such a deserved reputation for lousy QA is his meddling in production procedures and pushing unrealistic requirements on manufacturing, and I recall reading that everyone he worked with at Paypal regretted the experience. He's a rich dumbass who lucked into success due to superficial nerd enthusiasm for Science of the FutureTM! Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Oct 7, 2022 |
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Oct 7, 2022 17:45
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Crosby B. Alfred posted:Simple question, Technically Supreme Court Justices can be impeached as they hold their seats only "during good behavior," but as Slaan and haveblue mention above doing so is prohibitively difficult. A grand total of one (Samuel Chase) has ever even been impeached, which was way back in 1790 when the functioning of the government was still a lot squishier and hadn't ossified like long since has these days, and he ended up winning acquittal.
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Nov 20, 2022 01:14
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DeadlyMuffin posted:There's a big difference between using an "upcoming" election as an excuse to keep an opening vacant, and holding that opening through a president's entire turn. Both are possible, but I don't think "There is no reason to assume McConnell wouldn't have left those seats vacant the entire time" is reasonable. What possible consequence would McConnell potentially have suffered for having extended his SC embargo that he didn't risk with instituting it in the first place, and why wouldn't he have kept it in place, considering he suffered no significant penalties for doing it in the first place?
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Nov 28, 2022 00:48
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haveblue posted:As I understand it rail workers are already handsomely paid, that’s not the problem. The problem is the railways insist on controlling your time, in exacting detail, and they’re running out of people willing to submit to that Yeah this was the biggest complaint from the strike, that workers got penalized for using vacation/sick time if not scheduled months in advance, despite which the company could call them in even if they were scheduled to be off if they needed them. Like, to the point where workers were getting dinged for being hospitalized for heart attacks and the like because the cocaine-addled bosses had whittled the workforce down so lean they couldn't cover such unexpected absences.
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Jun 6, 2023 18:38
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FlamingLiberal posted:Sometimes I feel like the most insufferable thing about these people is that even when they win they can't be happy. They're not happy when they win, they're happy when everyone else loses.
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Jun 21, 2023 04:28
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Oracle posted:These classes are important for a functioning citizenry who are expected to make informed choices in their leadership, such as those living in a democracy. Its not just a 'nice to have but it wastes time and money that could be better spent making another million for shareholders.' You don't know what a swastika is you might think that guy running for office calling himself a National Socialist and promising all that free health care has some good ideas. You might listen to some anti-vaxxer telling you about how dangerous they are and cause autism. You might think statements like 'kids can't catch covid' sounds perfectly reasonable and is a valid justification for sending them back into schools with poor ventilation. If you've never heard of a Potemkin village you're going to clueless when someone makes reference to one in a political debate. Someone promises you their 7/7/7 plan will cut your taxes while raising money and you're not familiar with how percentages work you're going to think that idea has merit and sounds good. And on and on and on. This. A million goddamn times this. Higher education is not job training. Its primary role is not to land you a career, that everyone's been sold on the lie that it is results from decades of capital doing one of the things it does best ie: transferring private businesses' costs onto someone else's shoulders, in this case employee training. Will getting a degree help? Sure, but that's not what it's there for. The point it to become more capable of being a fully realized person and citizen who can engage critically with your society and government, not to be a better-equipped drone who believed the boss when he tells you you're not allowed to discuss compensation packages with your coworkers or that overtime doesn't apply to your position.
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Jul 5, 2023 00:05
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Dameius posted:Every political office from sheriff up to president and every officer in the Confederate military and every appointed position in the Confederate government should have been tried and sentenced for treason with any and all wealth they had confiscated, but alas the north lacked the will to actually address the rot and we're still paying for it. Also and in one of the more damning elements of his life, Grant intervened (out of a staggeringly misplaced sense of gentlemanly good sportsmanship, best I can tell) to short circuit early attempts to put Lee specifically on trial in the aftermath of Lincoln's assassination, at which time temperatures in the North were high enough that had it happened it well could have generated momentum to at least try more of the bastards. Captain_Maclaine fucked around with this message at 21:06 on Mar 7, 2024 |
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Mar 7, 2024 21:03
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Dameius posted:Real big, "'no way to prevent this!' says only country where this happens," energy. Pyotr Chaadayev once said that Russia was one of those nations that don't exist as a regular part of the world but rather to serve as a terrible warning to everyone else. Sauce for the gander, I guess.
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Mar 8, 2024 00:44
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Proust Malone posted:This and also even the sympathetic white carpetbagger types were racist as gently caress. There was lots of sentiment against giving land to freedmen because it was felt said freedmen wouldn’t appreciate having things just given to them. Additionally, a lot of people in the Freedmen's Bureau got the idea that they could at least pay the costs of Reconstruction if not profit from revived cotton cultivation on the old plantations, whereas left to their own devices the former slaves quite reasonably wanted to essentially convert to smallholding agriculture raising primarily food crops, both for practical reasons and also as cotton was so symbolic of their former bondage. This was of course seen by white officialdom as a sign that they were too stupid to manage their own affairs and needed to be pushed into signing labor contracts with their former owners more often than not.
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Mar 8, 2024 01:40
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FlamingLiberal posted:Benjamin Butler (who later commanded troops as a Union General in the war) was asked to be Lincoln’s running mate in 1864 but he declined. Compared to Johnson he was far, far more committed to the Union and would not have spent his time as President undermining federal Reconstruction efforts Butler also was an early abolitionist among the first Union commanders to actively work to liberate slaves, under the concept of them being "contraband of war." Later on, when he was in Congress after the war, he corresponded with Susan B. Anthony and supported the suffragist cause generally. Less admirably but hilariously, before the war he got the nickname "Spoons" for allegedly pocketing the silverware from a dinner he got invited to.
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Mar 8, 2024 19:36
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