Also, the plastic straw thing was a PR move. Corporations don’t give any shits unless it will make money or lose them money.
I’m sure there was a nontrivial number of customers who either boycotted or threatened to boycott companies that didn’t switch. When their bottom line gets threatened like that, they take action to prevent revenue loss.
Nothing more. There’s way more problems with everything than plastic straws. My favorite PR move is how they convinced everyone that their cars are causing the majority of CO2 emissions from transit… Between that and airplanes, everyone is up in arms about the electrification of everything… Yet, the most major transport offenders are freight, and they have no plans or intention of changing their ways. I heard somewhere that if you were to have zero carbon emissions for your entire life, you would save the approximate amount that freight liners emit in a year, at most. I think a year is too long. I forget the exact figure.
They emit more CO2 than all the cars, and all the planes and everything else you could point to… Yet, I have yet to hear anyone tell me about it, either personally, or on the news or anything. Everyone seems oblivious to the facts. They latch on to these “issues” like straws and personal vehicle CO2 emissions which are trivial…
Makes me wonder what people are paying for bread, Kraft cheese (or a knockoff of the same) and butter/margarine.
Seriously, a single grilled cheese shouldn’t be more than $1, it should be much less… At least in materials… The cost of grilling it and cleaning up and whatnot should still be really cheap. Even if you wrap the sandwiches in wax/parchment paper or whatever and serve it, you should still be able to make a profit per sandwich. Whether you would be better off doing this rather than getting a job at McDonald’s or whatever… That will depend on how popular the food truck is…
I feel as though there was a “good old days” of the internet. Don’t get me wrong, it was a complete shit show, but it was anonymous, anyone could say anything that they wanted, and there would be few if any consequences. There were ads, but they were generally garbage animated GIFs at worst.
It wasn’t perfect, but we were free to do what we wanted on the internet, with little to no bearing on our daily lives.
Now, it’s almost expected that your online activity will be tied to you specifically. In most cases, your legal name is attached to it for everyone to see. If you try to go around without your legal name on everything, then generally you are either severely limited, or outright removed from the platform. Sigh
I’m mainly referring to all the people who feel the need to start wars and such. I understand that the conflict when seen remotely is difficult to get any accurate information about, since the content is heavily filtered/edited by media outlets. I don’t think what they’re saying is necessarily false, but I don’t believe it’s the full story, and I never will.
This is why, as someone who doesn’t live there, has never visited there, and very likely will never find myself there, I’m going to abstain from placing any blame on anyone. I don’t know who is right or wrong or whatever, and to be blunt, I don’t have any stake in this, so my opinion doesn’t matter. The only message I want to convey here is that, killing other people, regardless of who they are, shouldn’t be something that anyone should feel the need to do. Defending yourself from an attack is understandable, but I don’t know enough, and can’t get enough information to know who escalated to violence first. Being able to talk and come to a compromise, and agree to that compromise in the interest of preserving human life and preventing violence, should always be the primary option, but even when that happens, some leaders seem so unreasonable that a violent conflict is inevitable. They refuse to communicate effectively and work with other people in a reasonable way.
For this conflict, I have no idea who sits on what side of that discussion or why the conflict has become violent, and I won’t pretend to know. My thoughts are with those who have been injured or killed in the conflict and their families; regardless of who they are.
Then stuff like Google Play music came along and I stopped because I can actually pay for basically any song I want to listen to, all at my fingertips and that is still true. It makes me happy to support the artists and their music though I know they don’t get very much of the cut.
The MPAA was much of the same story.
Then Netflix happened and I was all set for the same thing to happen, but it didn’t. Now streaming is almost as fractured as cable TV packages, and I went right back to piracy.
Screw it. I don’t feel bad about it because they haven’t shown any regard for the people they continually exploit, namely their customers. They don’t give any shits if I financially sink while trying to afford to enjoy the things that they make, so I won’t give any shits about their financial situation while I enjoy it anyways. Fuck them.
IDK man, I’m just anti-war and anti-warmongering. Anyone who desires war or actively engages in it is kind of a bad person.
Nothing against soldiers, most of them are just trying to do their duty, usually oblivious to the real reasons behind their orders. They’re just the fodder for someone’s desire for conquest and power.
With all the amazing communication technology we have, so many still have so much difficulty actually communicating with others in a reasonable way. We’re all humans, and the vast majority just want to live their lives. The minority want everyone different to become like them.
That’s fair. I don’t want to immigrate to North Korea either. I’m more socialist leaning, but there has to be some significant checks and balances to make sure the system doesn’t get biased towards those in power.
The rich/powerful already have the majority of the money and an easy life as far as I’m concerned. The communism I’m in favor of is stuff like universal healthcare and UBI and such. Giving people the tools and resources to live a respectable life, regardless of their station. I don’t believe that McDonald’s workers should be given the same as doctors or anything, but both should be able to afford rent/food, and have all their basic needs met. They should be able to get the medical care that they may require, whenever they need it would being in debt for the rest of their lives.
I believe that a system that allows for this, can exist, and should exist. The thing I’m most against is any system of authoritarianism. If one person or a small, like-minded group can decide the actions and restrictions of the population, that’s not good. It can be argued that even in a capitalist and democratic country like the USA, this situation is already in place, as nobody but the people who are already rich seem to be able or willing to run for any government position, and they make laws that benefit them and what they want. It’s near absolute control by a small group of similar people (at the very least), which also isn’t good.
I don’t know what the right answer is, and I won’t pretend to. I just know that this isn’t it.
As a disclaimer, I understand the logic in most cases, it shouldn’t imply that I agree with it.
In an ideal communism, everyone would have their basic needs taken care of, regardless of who they are, what they do, how “valuable” they are, or what they know is, etc.
In reality, almost all attempts at communism are authoritarian at their core, and whomever is in a position of authority, due to them being human and inherently selfish, they value their own comfort and contribution more than they value the contribution of others. This will almost always devolve into a mass exploitation of the populous to serve those who are in control.
The ideals of communism, in and of themselves are not bad or evil. The practical result of the authority that arises from a communist country or society will very often result in human suffering on a massive scale.
So to put it simply, people generally romanticize the ideals of communism; at a high level, speaking very ideally, they’re not wrong. Communism has some ideas that should be taken into very serious consideration. When applied on a large scale in communist countries like China (as an easy example) it’s very easy for the majority to be living well below what most would consider “the poverty line” with little to no consideration from the governing authority regarding that situation.
Thus, while the communist ideal of a solution to this problem is preferable to the homeless and destitute results of capitalism, there isn’t any country in the world that lives up to providing a good living situation to those who are in need. Sure, in a communist country, you may get a roof over your head, given to you by the government, but you may or may not get adequate amounts of food on the table to not starve, or required medical care, or any of a plethora of other things that are beneficial to your continued existence. You just get to die in a bed, in an apartment, via starvation or treatable medical ailments, rather than dying from exposure with enough food in your stomach, and in otherwise okay physical health, because you had no place warm to sleep.
All options are equal levels of terrible.
IMO, the point of these kinds of posts isn’t to say that we would be better off with communism, but rather, that the typical capitalist “solutions” to problems are less desirable, and we, as a society, should consider other options and solutions in order to help our countrymen, rather than punish them for being poor.
Most of the other things killed by Google follow this trend. Stadia is a glowing example of this self fulfilling prophecy.
Though, in the case of stadia, IMO, they should have probably worked harder to let people know that as long as you have a Google login and something to play with, you could have tried it without buying anything. There were a number of trials on the platform that were free to play. Since people didn’t generally know that, a lot were relying on reviewers to form an opinion, and most of the reviews were early access and wrought with issues that were quickly fixed.
I suppose it mostly depends on by how much. If it’s an unreasonable amount, I’m sure that many will have something to say about it. Of course that raises the question of what would be considered to be a reasonable amount. 30 years ago, an increase of a few dollars for an average cut of beef would have people up in arms, but now, a $3 increase of the same would hardly be noticed.
To my understanding (someone please correct me if I’m wrong) transmissions of prions disease is primarily through two methods, eating of brain matter, something most never do, even eating animals brain matter, or undercooked flesh (and/or bodily fluids - like blood, which ties into undercooked flesh).
So it should be safe in theory, as long as we properly cook the meat and don’t eat the brain. Since we do the same for all of the meat we ingest, it should be fine…
Not that I’m going to go advocating for anyone eating human meat. I’m just saying, to my understanding, if we follow standard handling and cooking, we shouldn’t really have any risk factors for prions disease. Personally, I’ll stick to beef, chicken, turkey, lamb and pork. If it’s all the same to everyone else… And obviously some delicious veggies and fruits.
Related: prions disease can result from other sources, such as genetics or “sporadically”… According to the wiki article on it, but I’m strictly speaking about transmission of the disease.