Category: Uncategorized

America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People

nbtomcatcultureis:

thepeacockangel:

karadin:

reagan-was-a-horrible-president:

This is a good article.

We have entered a phase of regression,and one of the easiest ways to see it is in our infrastructure: our roads and bridges look more like those in Thailand or Venezuela than the Netherlands or Japan. But it goes far deeper than that, which is why Temin uses a famous economic model created to understand developing nations to describe how far inequality has progressed in the United States. The model is the work of West Indian economist W. Arthur Lewis, the only person of African descent to win a Nobel Prize in economics. 

In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check. 

The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses. Check. 

Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector. Mass incarceration – check. 

The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. Check. 

Social and economic mobility is low. Check.

Temin says that today in the U.S., the ticket out is education, which is difficult for two reasons: you have to spend money over a long period of time, and the FTE sector is making those expenditures more and more costly by defunding public schools and making policies that increase student debt burdens.  

Even with a diploma, you will likely find that high-paying jobs come from networks of peers and relatives. Social capital, as well as economic capital, is critical, but because of America’s long history of racism and the obstacles it has created for accumulating both kinds of capital, black graduates often can only find jobs in education, social work, and government instead of higher-paying professional jobs like technology or finance— something most white people are not really aware of. Women are also held back by a long history of sexism and the burdens — made increasingly heavy — of making greater contributions to the unpaid care economy and lack of access to crucial healthcare.

How did we get this way?

What happened to America’s middle class, which rose triumphantly in the post-World War II years, buoyed by the GI bill, the victories of labor unions, and programs that gave the great mass of workers and their families health and pension benefits that provided security?

Around 1970, the productivity of workers began to get divided from their wages. Corporate attorney and later Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell galvanized the business community to lobby vigorously for its interests. Johnson’s War on Poverty was replaced by Nixon’s War on Drugs, which sectioned off many members of the low-wage sector, disproportionately black, into prisons. Politicians increasingly influenced by the FTE sector turned from public-spirited universalism to free-market individualism. As money-driven politics accelerated (a phenomenon explained by the Investment Theory of Politics, as Temin explains), leaders of the FTE sector became increasingly emboldened to ignore the needs of members of the low-wage sector, or even to actively work against them.

 Temin notes that “the desire to preserve the inferior status of blacks has motivated policies against all members of the low-wage sector.”

What can we do?

We’ve been digging ourselves into a hole for over forty years, but Temin says that we know how to stop digging.

If we spent more on domestic rather than military activities, then the middle class would not vanish as quickly. 

The effects of technological change and globalization could be altered by political actions. 

We could restore and expand education, shifting resources from policies like mass incarceration to improving the human and social capital of all Americans. 

We could upgrade infrastructure, forgive mortgage and educational debt in the low-wage sector,

 reject the notion that private entities should replace democratic government in directing society, and

 focus on embracing an integrated American population. 

We could tax not only the income of the rich, but also their capital.


 We have a structure that predetermines winners and losers. We are not getting the benefits of all the people who could contribute to the growth of the economy, to advances in medicine or science which could improve the quality of life for everyone — including some of the rich people.”

Along with Thomas Piketty, whose Capital in the Twenty-First Century examines historical and modern inequality, Temin’s book has provided a giant red flag, illustrating a trajectory that will continue to accelerate as long as the 20 percent in the FTE sector are permitted to operate a country within America’s borders solely for themselves at the expense of the majority. 

Without a robust middle class, America is not only reverting to developing-country status, it is increasingly ripe for serious social turmoil that has not been seen in generations.

In Other Words Revolution

Capitalism’s bad

I really hope i don’t see any fellow white Americans on this post talking about how we don’t deserve this because we’re “the greatest country in the world” or how “this shouldn’t be happening in America of all places”. It shouldn’t be happening ANYWHERE, it doesn’t need to be happening anymore, and the fact that it was already happening in predominantly nonwhite countries is largely the fault of white supremacy

America is Regressing into a Developing Nation for Most People

have you guys ever noticed how pretty the bi flag is???

hallo-i-am-a-potato:

portmanteau-bot:

jamaicanblackcastoroil:

socialistexan:

ssansy:

jonlovett:

formerfundie:

how-late-am-i:

Like, look at it

It looks like a sunset

just

#the sky is bi confirmed

You wanna get people to hate you? Just claim the whole fucking sky belongs to your favorite kink.

the sky belongs to bisexuals now sorry str8s

I have legal rights on the sky purely because you called my sexuality a “kink” you piece of shit. You’re legally not allowed to look at the sky any more. Fuck you.

When you reject religion but keep all the shitty politics associated with it.

“Racial realist”

racial + realist = racist.

Beep-boop. Portmanteau^bot^1

At the end of the human world, you will be baked. And then there will be cake. | PayPal | Patreon

AFSHEBENRM

animation-is-my-life:

virtualgirlfriendsan:

moreinfinite:

welcometotheravenclawcommonroom:

tosety:

space-is-a-disease:

tathrin:

crimsonclad:

kedreeva:

palpablenotion:

speedforcesensitive:

satanstruemistress:

vinato71:

dustypumpkin:

rossmallo:

thehornedwitch:

thesocialjusticecourier:

thehornedwitch:

somejane:

namesnotfred:

gimmeacoldbeer:

kijikun:

striderwolf:

crazyqueerclassicist:

north-american-weesnaw:

friso1990:

catsteaks:

gorreality:

“I can’t be vegan, I love cheese”

Dairy industry is as evil as meat. No less harm for animals. Does it look natural that calf can’t drink milk so you can taste your piece of cheese? 

GO VEGAN. 

WRONG

That calf is wearing a nose tag. Nose tags are put on calves so that they are able to stay with their mothers longer, but are unable to nurse. They don’t NEED to nurse as they get older, they just get greedier and pushier and will bash up the cow’s udder and bruise it with their noses.

This nose-tag is so that calves can stay with their mothers, their mothers can remain pain-free and healthy, and nobody is stressed.

Educate yourselves you ignorant fucking tarts.

…really? You don’t think it might have anything to do with the milk being stolen for human consumption? At all? Not even a tiny bit?

Militant vegans can fuck right off

Based on fur texture and face shape, that calf is at least six months old, probably older.  Calves can survive without actual cow milk even at three months, though older is better (calves weaned that early are usually fed a sort of formula for another couple months).

Also, nose tags like that one don’t go through the cow’s septum.  They basically work like those fake septum rings for humans.

In addition to weaning the calves, another use for nose tags is protecting non-lactating cows.  Sometimes weanlings or even adult cows will suck on themselves or other non-lactating cows; this can cause internal teat scarring bad enough to prevent that teat or teats from ever working.  I’ve seen this happen, and it’s ugly, probably at least somewhat painful, and, if bad enough, would lead to the cow being slaughtered at a very young age because she can’t produce milk, has chronic mastitis, and/or can’t be milked with automatic milking equipment.  So, nose tags actually prevent animal cruelty.

Also, calves will suck on anything remotely oblong (and attempt to eat literally anything), even if they are being adequately fed or overfed.  Often they will suck on other calves’ ears, and, since ears are longer than teats and cows have upper as well as lower teeth in the back of their mouths, many calves get bites on their ears, which often become severely infected.  I’m not sure if nose tags would work there, because physics—a non-toxic but bad-tasting ear paint would be better—but yeah, letting a calf put anything it wants in its mouth is not always a good idea.

reblogging for educational purposes.

reblogging for people being schooled

This was the funniest argument about false cruelty I have read.. Thank you. 

I love this for 2 reasons: Most people don’t realize that in farming areas agriculture/horticulture/animal husbandry is part of public school education from as early on as 7th grade. (Though I remember dissecting cow eyes in 4th grade science sooo) I assure you fifteen year old farm kids know more about what constitutes animal cruelty in farms than thirty year old vegans with, or without an agenda. 

Also that if you really want good quality beef/pork/eggs/milk/etc you don’t abuse your animals. Ever. That’s not the point and if you want to make any kind of money off your career choice, you are going to treat those creatures better than you treat yourself. You’ll call a vet five times for an infection in your herd before you visit the hospital for a missing foot on your own leg. 

So. Yeah. Watch out, because we’re getting internet access these days. We’re on tumblr too. 

P.S. The immigrant workers farming your supermarket produce have no health care or legal protection, and the Bolivians farming your 365 Organic Quinoa can’t afford to eat it. But PLEASE won’t someone think of the poor baby cows who won’t get off the tit?!

Also this is a LOT nicer than what mother cows do to calves that won’t be weaned. You know what mother cows do to calves that won’t wean? kick them in the head. Now I don’t know about vegans, but I’d rather have a nose tag that discouraged me from injuring my mother (because calves that don’t wean tend to chew on udders and make mother cows bleed) rather than being kicked in the head.
Source: I grew up on a fucking cattle ranch. I have seen chickens skeletonize a mouse I KNOW SHIT.

“I have seen chickens skeletonize a mouse I KNOW SHIT.”

I’m sorry, what? What??? WHAT??? you can’t just leave it there please explain @thehornedwitch

Happy to explain!
See, chickens are omnivorous. They eat bugs, plants, and meatstuffs. Y’know how crows and ravens and things eat meat? Well, chickens too. Ours had a particular fondness for ham when someone accidentally put it into the bucket of good scraps we set aside for the chickens. A bucket we tried to keep as meat-free as possible, because few things are more terrifying than a chicken looking you in the eyes as it scarfs down ham.
Anyway, back to the mouse.
One day i was doing Chicken Chores, like gathering eggs, putting out grain, emptying the bucket of greens, etc, when a mouse runs across the pen.
All at once, eight or so chickens stop dead, look at it, and SWARM.
Now I’m six at this point in time and developing a healthy fear of chickens, and so do nothing.
By the time the chickens are done, all that is left of the mouse is its bones. I left the chicken pen very, very quickly.
Chickens crave meat. They were dinosaurs. They did not forget that they were dinosaurs.
They will also cannibalize each other with reckless abandon. Sometimes we just had to remove one chicken to its own private pen away from the others because no matter what we did, that specific one always tried to eat the other chickens. We had one that really liked other chicken’s eyes. Bear in mind, our pens ensured each chicken had about five to six square feet all its own if you managed to space every chicken out evenly, we never locked them in teensy pen things, and fed them LOTS. These chickens just really, really wanted to maim.
Chickens that are not Buff Orpingtons are the devil. Buff Orpingtons are sweethearts. If you must have chickens, have that kind. And never get Guineas. Guineas are SATAN INCARNATE. THEY SMELL FEAR.

Holy shit, I dont think I’ll ever use chicken as an insult again. 

Holy Shit, same here that is terrifying

Will I’m using it as a compliment

I love farm animals.

“Chickens crave meat. They were dinosaurs. They did not forget that they were dinosaurs.”

If you’ve ever looked a chicken in the eye you know that they don’t just remember; they’re patiently awaiting the day they become dinosaurs again. 

@kedreeva

I have reblogged this before because watching farmers school vegans is always hilarious, but now we’re into birds, specifically fowl, and I have got stories.

I had to give my turkey an antibiotic injection once upon a time, and she turned the needle puncture into a six inch by three inch hole in her back overnight as she attempted to eat herself because apparently turkeys find themselves to be delicious. She had to spend 3 months duct taped into a tea towel (the bandages underneath cleaned and replaced daily, mind you) until it healed because she would not stop ripping the bandages off to continue consuming herself.

Your chickens strip a mouse to the bone? Mine draw and quarter them and run around with the parts shrieking. My peacocks grab mice, beat them to death on the ground with this insanely fast back and forth head twisting motion, and then swallow them whole. You would not think an entire adult mouse would fit in their face, and you would be wrong.

I knew a guy that used to regularly post photos of the 5-6′ long Copperhead snakes his peafowl would destroy. And I don’t mean kill, I mean destroy. These venomous snakes would get into the pens and the peas would just peck them into oblivion like nbd.

Fowl didn’t just used to be dinosaurs. They are still dinosaurs.

Thankfully they are small dinosaurs

and we can just tape them into tea towels if we have to

BEGGING for a Jurassic Park reboot where farmers run the place instead of brogrammer scientists, and the raptors frequently get scolded and taped into tea towels

Okay so honesty time I may be a vegetarian but it’s not because I give two shits about cows to be honest but THAT STUFF ABOUT THE BIRDS IS INCREDIBLE! Please folks if you started to scroll past this like I did STOP AND SCROLL BACK UP TO READ ABOUT THE MURDERBIRDS.

Even our little animals are terrifying and dangerous…

We live on a death world, and that is probably why aliens are afraid to make contact.

I didn’t even grow up on a farm, although I do have a fair amount of experience with animals.  I have been riding horses since I was nine years old and have one of my own, and I also helped take care of my neighbours chickens before she saw all the scars I was getting on my legs and decided the fresh eggs weren’t worth the disfigurement of her favourite adopted neice.  Anyway, I had to go into this pen with a fucking RAKE and wave it at them so I could reach the food and water bowls to fill them.  The rooster would ‘spur’ me (slice me open with a claw) whenever he had the chance.  And even though I WOULD BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THIS TINY MONSTER DINO-FOWL EVERY TIME, HE WOULD DO IT AGAIN WHENEVER HE GOT THE CHANCE!  I have some pretty boss scars on my legs and behind one knee from that bastard.  I will eat chicken out of spite now even if I’m not craving it, thinking of that monster the whole time.

As someone who grew up on a farm, this post is absolutely everything.

Reblogging for insane stories and the line, “I eat chicken out of spite now.”

My mom grew up on a small farm and when she was like 2 they had this chicken. I have heard about this chicken my entire life.

This chicken thought it was a guard dog. It would sit on the front porch of the house and watch for potential threats. It apparently thought the 2 year old toddler who would become my mom was a threat and apparently regularly would chase her around the yard until and adult came along to help or my mom would run back into the house.

We eat chicken a lot now out of my mom’s sheer spite of the entire chicken population.

Talking with writers online

insomination:

alwaysboth:

elexuscal:

Their stories: Amazing grammar, soaring vocabulary, beautiful imagery and prose which flows like a river.

In chats: no capitalisation or punctuation, swears like a sailor, misspellings everywhere, acronyms and abbreviations every five words, idek

#listen #listen do u know how much braining it takes to make the words go? #it is a lot #it’s like wearing fancy clothes all day #and then when you’re at home and comfy #u just put on ur pj’s ( @feynites)

I have never related to a statement more than “do you know how much braining it takes to make words go?”

mikkeneko:

wrangletangle:

the-books-we-travel:

fuzzykittengladiator:

borderlineanders:

mikkeneko:

bramblepatch:

sourwolf-loki-destiel-221b:

iridescentoracle:

animate-mush:

malibujojo:

pippin4242:

lulasseth:

imsorryimovedtoaidanturnerspants:

hash-tag-whatever:

Merry: confused awe

Frodo: confused awe

Sam: confused awe

Pippin: finally i’m getting the respect i deserve from these peasants 

so accurate i am choking on my carrot. this is making me giggle harder than it should. I love Pippin so much.

I don’t think there will come time when I’m not reblogging this. Sorry guys. 

no no no you guys don’t understand, Pippin is someone really important in the Shire! The books don’t talk about it a lot, and the movies won’t touch that stuff with a bargepole, but Pippin will be inheriting land rights to about a quarter of the Shire. He’s second in line to becoming military leader of all Hobbits. His dad is currently in charge of that stuff, but he’s completely aware of it, and educated for it, and that’s why he’s such an over privileged little shit in the books.

I thought it was a shame the movies didn’t talk about class differences in the Shire. Also puts M&P stealing food in an uglier light.

To be fair, at the time of the Party, Pippin would have been 12, which puts it back into a more acceptable light.  And they’re stealing food from Bilbo, a wealthy and eccentric family member, which again makes things a bit different.

But yes, when they call Pippin Ernil i Perrianath – Prince of the Halflings – they are actually completely spot on.

And when Pippin tells Bergil “my father farms the land around Tuckborough” he’s deliberately downplaying his class so that he can greet the boy as an equal rather than a superior.  It’s Pippin’s most adult moment in the series.  Bergil is engaging in a status contest which Pippin can totally win – but instead chooses not to compete.  Pippin is a gilded and spoiled lordling in the Shire, but he becomes a Man of Gondor.

Yeah, to add a bit of unnecessary trivia/level of preciseness, Frodo is the oldest of the four; he was born in 2968, was (obviously) 33 at the time of the Party, and so he’s 51 here. Sam’s second-oldest; born in 2980, he was 21 when Bilbo left and is 39 at this point. Merry’s two years younger than Sam, making him 18 or 19 in 3001, when the Party took place, and Pippin was born in 2990, so he was actually 10 or 11 during the Party, and during this scene they’re ~37 and ~29, respectively.

So yeah, Pippin’s the youngest by a lot. Plus, taking hobbit aging into account, he really is still in the equivalent of his teens; remember the Party was half to celebrate Frodo’s coming-of-age at 33, and Pippin’s around twenty years younger than Frodo. 

This fucked me up. I didn’t read the books and in the movie it was shown like Frodo took off with the ring like 2 days after Bilbo’s gone away, but it was 17 years after that. OMFG.

Also worth noting that “Merry and Pippin stealing food” isn’t in the book – raiding Farmer Maggot’s fields, specifically the mushrooms, is something Frodo used to do when he was a kid, before his parents died and he moved to Hobbiton to live with Bilbo. Frodo’s still afraid of Maggot’s guard dogs, but the farmer himself is sympathetic and helpful when he finds Frodo & Co. cutting through his field.

And this is specifically invoked in the books at the Council of Elrond, where Elrond argues against Pippin in particular going, because  he is so young. He’s okay with Merry going but wants to keep Pippin in Rivendell. Elrond has serious misgivings against sending an early-teenager off to face the Shadow, and given what happens to Pippin in The Two Towers, he was not wrong.

@cyrefinns

@the-books-we-travel

This is just so great. I just–I can’t.

Merry is also a prince of sorts – his father is Master of Buckland, which is the semi-autonomous boundary community between the Brandywine river and the Old Forest (never, alas, discussed in the movies). Merry and Pippin are friends in the books in part because they’re of relatively equal status and in part because they’re cousins (like all nobs, Shire nobs mostly marry each other).

However, the books also clearly make Merry the Responsible One, even though he’s only been a full adult for four years. (Think early 20s in human terms.) Merry buys and prepares the house at Crickhollow. Merry figures out the secret of the ring before Bilbo even gives it to Frodo, but Merry keeps Bilbo’s secret. Merry convinces Sam to spy on Frodo. Merry explains that they’re all joining Frodo on the Quest, whether Frodo wants them to or not. Merry cautions about the Old Forest and doesn’t go down to drink in the taproom at the Prancing Pony.

So in the books, Merry isn’t Pippin’s partner in pranks – instead, Merry and Pippin spend all their time together on the Quest because Merry’s looking after his younger cousin. Can you imagine what his mother would say if he came home without Pippin? Merry can, and that’s why he takes some pretty absurd personal risks during the books to make sure that doesn’t happen. Like, he literally rides into battle on the back of someone else’s horse, in disguise, because Pippin is probably somewhere in that battle.

Merry is 99%* common sense unless Pippin is involved, and then he is 100% save/rescue/protect/support Pippin. The character growth and maturation we see in Merry in the movies isn’t in the books; instead he has almost the exact opposite arc of becoming an extreme risk-taker, driven by his protective instincts.

(*The other 1% stabbed a ringwraith in the calf that one time, but we can argue that this was due to a natural expansion of Merry’s protective instincts toward Eowyn, with whom he’d bonded quite a lot recently, and toward Theoden, who he deeply respected as being kind of like his dad.)

bonus kleenex moment:

when pippin finds merry stumbling half-blind and sick through the streets of Minas Tirith after killing the Ringwraith, he tells Merry “Poor old fellow! I’ll look after you,” half-carries him to the healing halls, and is worried sick about him until he can finally get Aragorn in to give him medicine.

It’s the first time in the story that Pippin  has looked after Merry, instead of the other way around.

It shows that Pippin has grown up, that he can protect the people who always protected him.

xenoqueer:

blogging-phelddagrif:

commandtower-solring-go:

The problem with the idea of 8 hours of work, 8 hours of sleep and 8 hours of recreation as a structure for a day is that it simply can’t work that way. If I’m expected to be at work at 9, then my work day must begin at 7. Allowing myself a rushed experience to wake up and get to work. And I live close to work. So either my recreation or my sleep needs to take a hit, but for some people it could be more. 8 hours a day, 5 days a week as a basis for full time work is honestly unreasonable at that point. Because it isn’t actually 40 hours a week, it’s 50 hours a week lost to a job, of which 10 is unpaid.

some of my coworkers have 2h of transit to get to work, which takes 4-5h off their free time. working full time is a bad idea and shouldve never been a thing

This is, it’s worth noting, by design.  

It’s perfectly well known that people can only really “work” (in that they can only consistently and effectively perform tasks and create products) 3-6 hours a day, for 1 hour to 2 hours at a time. Generally speaking, the broad consensus among actual researchers is to aim for about 4 hours a day.

The rest of these work hours, and the associated sunken time necessary to get to and from these work hours, serves one purpose:

It exhausts people.

People who don’t have leisure time are stressed. People who are stressed need conveniences. People who need conveniences will pay for them.

People who are stressed also don’t have the energy to fight for their rights, having expended all that energy in just staying alive.

And let’s not forget that maintaining a clean home and providing food for yourself takes over 20 hours a week (appx 20 hours in-house, and varying hours spent running outside errands) if you are completely abled.

snakebitcat:

2ndplacewins:

In class we were talking about how cats teach themselves to hunt around their collar bells, and this dude followed that up with “well you know how Santa has those reindeer covered in those bells, right?” 

and what he going for was “the bells on cat collars are the same that reindeer are pictured wearing”

But what *I* heard was “Santa’s Reindeer are predator animals that are covered in bells for our protection” and let me tell you I did not appreciate that.

Just hear those slay bells jingling.