That’s a solution I could get behind!

Purchase was the wrong word. Acquire?

Some punishments are simply too cruel

The best part of long-term solutions is that they’re actually solutions. The worst part about immediate satisfaction is that it’s only immediately satisfying. If someone has an immediate problem, it’s hard to get them to look at long-term solutions.

Sorry, I’ve been a major downer today…

Whew, I got on just in time! What’s gonna happen to everyone who didn’t join?

You’re right. But they would have literally starved or been mangled by a machine if they had done nothing. Back then, the greatest weapons the top 1% had were hired guns.

A century ago, your choices were to die today on strike, or die tomorrow from starvation or work conditions, even if you play by the rules. Now, the greatest weapon the 1% has is complacency. You can die today on strike or you can play by the rules and the corporate overlords will feed you just enough until you become too expensive to feed.

How do you ask someone to starve when they have a legitimate alternative? Complacency is a killer.

The middle class income ranges from $17k per person up to $90k per person. I hope you don’t think that I’m trying to belittle anyone. Someone making 90K can definitely afford to not be a bootlicker; a family of four averaging nearly $17K per family member is gonna have a much harder time.

The year that I lost my shit-paying job only to find an even worse-paying job with more hours was really fucking tough. If you’d offered me $60K legally when I was making $12K and scrambling for rent, I’d’ve had a really hard fucking time saying no to that. Back then, I was living alone and had very little to live for. Drop me into my current living arrangement and sub that situation: I’m saying yes to the money 80% of the time.

I wish I could say that I’m better than that, but struggling in a capitalist society makes you sick, scared, and desperate really fast. I’m not saying that people with lower income deserve lower expectations or should live by lower standards. I’m just saying to reserve your judgement before shitting on someone and labeling them a snitch before you know whether they could have afforded anything else.

For those of us who can afford class solidarity against the top 1%, we need to remember that the most vulnerable need to be helped up, not stepped on. Instinctually blaming this McDonald’s worker helps the billionaires class far more than many of us may realize.

Maybe I’m off-base, but ultimately, this act of betrayal is unlikely to have an effect on the momentum of this potential movement. Whoever killed Thompson is unlikely to act again, their message was unlikely to be heard while they were in hiding, and if they are the hero everyone believes they also likely would forgive someone who was trying to de-shittify their life a little bit.

If you want this to move forward, pull those below you up so they can join us, not attack them for being on a lower level. Class solidarity is for those who can afford it. It sounds like you and I can afford it, so help someone else be able to afford it. Don’t shun people who are too scared of starving to fight. Feed them.

I don’t blame the worker either. I don’t know their story, but if someone told me that I could either keep my mouth shut or feed and care for my family, I’d probably get chatty too. $60K isn’t enough to feed you for life, but it’s enough to get reliable transportation, clear a little debt, and buy a little time and cloth to interview for a job that pays better than McDonald’s.

What I’m saying is that it’s really hard to live by high standards when getting fired from your shitty-ass job could destroy, yet it doesn’t pay enough for you to escape. Once again, class solidarity is for those who can afford it.

Class solidarity is for those who can afford it

I assume they’re filing for bankruptcy. Is there any way we could purchase the servers and IP to keep this running with a much cheaper and less stupid backend than an LLM? Parents of autistic kids needing to tell them that their robot buddy will no longer be part of their daily routine isn’t doing anyone any favors.

We had some major construction done at our work recently. Our boss told us that if we wanted to work remote, do so and just keep it quiet; if we wanted to work in-office-they’d find us space. Everyone was expressly welcome to work remote, except “anyone with ‘director’ in their title.” That was kinda cool.

It feels kinda like an old vaudevillian joke… If a Russian battalion were to arrive at your doorstep and demand that you house them and that your compliance would be looked at favorably when Russia takes over—not only would you be constitutionally protected if you chose to shoot them, you’d likely be lauded as a hero.

But when a Russian asset takes over and compromises our country, well, good luck finding the legal loophole to justify shooting a president.

And here, laws mean everything. It’s why immigrants are illegal, shoplifting is bad, landlords are good, and more money=more free speech. Then again, a coup is supposed to be illegal, so once again, I direct you to my previous response: “we’re aggressively dumb.”

Wait isn’t that why your citizens are armed? To stop this exact thing…?

No, we’re armed to stop an invading army. We put that in the bill of rights while keeping one eye on France and the other on Britain. All of our laws and traditions regarding the government were written assuming that the people would only vote for someone who wanted to do a good job being president.

It turns out that when you design a country to favor rich men, then let those rich men amass unfathomable generational wealth and teach the populace that money and power=trustworthiness, you end up with a fetid cesspool. As you pointed out, the people certainly aren’t powerless in this situation, just too uninformed, misinformed, and afraid to do anything about it. You’re talking about a country where people say that corporations are evil but somehow empowering the people with unions is worse. We say that billionaires are manipulating the country and destroying politics, and then vote for a (alleged) billionaires. The leopards aren’t just eating our faces, we’re even making up excuses for the leopards between bloodcurdling screams and say that this is the only way to hurt other people, as if siccing leopards on your peers is actually a reasonable course of action.

We aren’t stupid, we’re aggressively stupid.

I’m gonna have to sue whoever said that to deal with the whiplash from my doubletake

lying piece of shit liar lies

I feel like you’re trying to imply something here…

Nuh-uh! Americans can’t be terrorists cuz Americans kill the terrorist, like Malcolm X and Jamal Khashoggi… Wait, are we the bad guys?

Stop it!

Okay, now do it some more…

Do it. I fucking dare you. It’ll be fun to watch a media powerhouse and a douche meth lab burn each other down.

What’s that in freedom units?

“What was Windows even doing for us?”

Providing minimal malware protection while being actual malware?