Interesting News, Articles & Stuff

[bellona0544]

Please don't lump all the fortune 500 companies together. How did you determine that the executives were having $500 business lunches every day? Hyperbole? I didn't say I was immune to to these companies. I said I could choose. For example I do not own any Apple products. At least they provide items that we desire. What products (aside from services) does the government offer the public.

Not much of a hunter. I'd starve in no time!! Tried the string and can when I young. It didn't go to the well, but it was fun trying.

I'd love for you to show me ten Fortune 500 companies where the CEO-lowest paid worker pay disparity is less than 30x, and that is carbon negative, and that hasn't had a massive governance scandal in the past 10 years. I would argue that any company that doesn't do at least those basic things in today's day and age is wildly unethical and pretty definitive proof that a company can't rise to that level without one of a few things:

1. Massive pay disparities indicating worker exploitation (because you'll notice that their profits rarely decrease that much with new CEOs and certainly they don't decrease more than when the workers at large strike, indicating to me that the majority of profit comes from the masses of the labor and the CEO can add a few percentage points but literally is incapable of running a company without poorly-paid bodies) is unethical, since the people creating the bulk of the value are receiving comparatively low pay against the executive suite.
2. Poor corporate citizenship as they accelerate the climate crisis that is a literal mass extinction-level event. Anyone who has the level of power to change a huge organization's carbon output and then DOESN'T do it for any reason in 2025 is explicitly contributing to huge, almost unprecedented losses in biodiversity, and we are at a point of knowledge with greenhouse gases that there is no one who can pretend they "didn't know better". Any organization that exacerbates the greatest threat humans have ever faced is consciously choosing harm, and that is a succinct way to define evil. (And when I say the greatest threat humans have faced, I really mean the greatest threat our entire taxonomic family has faced, since the last extinction event was before hominidae evolved).
3. Any corporation that has been rocked by any corporate governance scandals in ten years has shown that they've had poor executive decision-making in the past decade, and that means that several of the executive and middle-management folks who precipitated the scandal are necessarily still there. Attrition after corporate scandals at the highest levels can sometimes be high but typically is fairly low, with a handful of powerful individuals targeted and removed with no change to the underlying corporate structures. I have yet to see, say, Wells Fargo have a scandal that involves their entire executive leadership stepping down and a massive restructuring of corporate policy and culture, and more often than not, a company that has one scandal will have another within a few years.

If you can show me that 10 out of the Fortune 500 companies don't meet any of those criteria, I will congratulate you for demonstrating that at least 2% of the most powerful organizations on the planet have some standards and seek to minimize their harm even if it hurts their profit margin. I will even concede that there are ways to become an extremely powerful organization without being as blatantly evil as possible.

Good luck.

 

[Bazinga]

I'm glad you finally stopped sucking China's authoritarian dick. They're a more pragmatic kind of evil than America, but they are ultimately still a capitalist nation that is just going through their golden age like Americans did in the mid-20th century. The quality of life for average Chinese folks has gone up in some ways, but economic development has also seen a massive increase in inequality in their nation and they will inevitably have to do some restructuring when their people get to a point of revolt as ours are quickly getting to. That is what happens in literally every hierarchical power structure that allows resources to be distributed according to something other than need.


See, the fact that you even went to the place of implying he *could* be a radical Islamist is racist. A dude who just won the primary for one of the two major parties in this country and you're saying "As long as he isn't a radical Islamist, I'll give him a chance". That's racism right there. Blatant, obvious, plain and simple.

I, on the other hand, don't fuck with most white men in real life unless I meet them at protests or food distributions or through social justice work. So many of them are radical Christian Nationalist extremists who want me dead. I have to hide the fact that I'm trans when I go to multi-denominational church conferences because there are several people who would refuse to speak with me outright because they genuinely believe trans people are mistakes against God, and that God doesn't make mistakes, so I must be the mistake. I've been hate crimed a few times for being queer, and it has always been by cis men. Punched in the face and separately assaulted at a hotel bar. Both cis men.

You can take that any way you want. If you want to call me sexist for recognizing that I am WAY more likely to be killed by a cis man who invokes the trans panic defense than I am to be killed by literally any other group in America, that's fine by me. You're even welcome to come to my house and see how queer, poor people live, and if you still think we're all dangerous radical Islamists, well, fine. And if you did what I expect a man like you to do at my house and insulted me and the people around me for living our lives differently, and then I kicked you out, I'd imagine you'd say I was "walking away from lively debate" because to you, peoples' rights and lives are matters of debate.

I'll say one more time: you are a racist who is too caught up in your own smugness to understand that you might not have all the answers. You believe your book-learning entitles you to a version of reality that is somehow more true than everyone else's, and it is clear as day that you have done very little reading on recent anthropology or queer theory or liberation theory or any of the topics you are attempting to discuss. Your racist rhetoric is blindingly bright to everyone else in this thread, and we all need to stop coddling someone who literally can't look at a brown person without asking if they are a radical Islamist.

You called me a racist. Your true colors have been exposed. Your unsubstantiated claims of what I believe in is quite entertaining and far from the truth. You are extremely disrespectful and unworthy of legitimate debate. Furthermore I stand by my comment stating that I don't want a radical Islamist in power. This a broad statement as I have not accused Momdami of being Islamist or a radical one at that. I am very sorry that you had to experience the horrifying actions by those miserable people. Don't take it out on me. I would be happy to defend your rights and lifestyle in any way I could. After your compelling story I do understand why you are so nasty and prone to name calling. Reread your post and my posts and show me who appears to be smug. Lastly, how do you know I'm not gay? It's been said that when a individual engages in name calling while introducing disinformation (I won't say lies) they have lost the argument. I have not argued with anywhere here, including you!! I thought we were having debate/discussions sharing ideas and learning from others. BTW don't knock book learning. You had the same opportunity to enhance your education. Peace be with you and please be safe !!

 

[Bazinga]

I'd love for you to show me ten Fortune 500 companies where the CEO-lowest paid worker pay disparity is less than 30x, and that is carbon negative, and that hasn't had a massive governance scandal in the past 10 years. I would argue that any company that doesn't do at least those basic things in today's day and age is wildly unethical and pretty definitive proof that a company can't rise to that level without one of a few things:

1. Massive pay disparities indicating worker exploitation (because you'll notice that their profits rarely decrease that much with new CEOs and certainly they don't decrease more than when the workers at large strike, indicating to me that the majority of profit comes from the masses of the labor and the CEO can add a few percentage points but literally is incapable of running a company without poorly-paid bodies) is unethical, since the people creating the bulk of the value are receiving comparatively low pay against the executive suite.
2. Poor corporate citizenship as they accelerate the climate crisis that is a literal mass extinction-level event. Anyone who has the level of power to change a huge organization's carbon output and then DOESN'T do it for any reason in 2025 is explicitly contributing to huge, almost unprecedented losses in biodiversity, and we are at a point of knowledge with greenhouse gases that there is no one who can pretend they "didn't know better". Any organization that exacerbates the greatest threat humans have ever faced is consciously choosing harm, and that is a succinct way to define evil. (And when I say the greatest threat humans have faced, I really mean the greatest threat our entire taxonomic family has faced, since the last extinction event was before hominidae evolved).
3. Any corporation that has been rocked by any corporate governance scandals in ten years has shown that they've had poor executive decision-making in the past decade, and that means that several of the executive and middle-management folks who precipitated the scandal are necessarily still there. Attrition after corporate scandals at the highest levels can sometimes be high but typically is fairly low, with a handful of powerful individuals targeted and removed with no change to the underlying corporate structures. I have yet to see, say, Wells Fargo have a scandal that involves their entire executive leadership stepping down and a massive restructuring of corporate policy and culture, and more often than not, a company that has one scandal will have another within a few years.

If you can show me that 10 out of the Fortune 500 companies don't meet any of those criteria, I will congratulate you for demonstrating that at least 2% of the most powerful organizations on the planet have some standards and seek to minimize their harm even if it hurts their profit margin. I will even concede that there are ways to become an extremely powerful organization without being as blatantly evil as possible.

Good luck.

Great post. Can't argue with most of what you stated . I dont have the desire or time to research your challenge and not convinced it would be fruiful. I'm curious as to how you think non-executives should be paid. I don't have the answer but I do have some thoughts. Also, been trying to figure out how to reasonably compensate the athletes that are being paid outrageous sums.

We'll see! Today... I'm very bullish on Democratic Socialism! But if there's too much ratfucking of Zohran's agenda, this will be my new car:

"Extremist" policies:

Aren't Right Wingers always crying about young people not having enough kids?

I was considering buying the same vehicle. But after due consideration I say no tanks

Yes.

"I'm OK with the new Black mayor as long as he isn't a stealing thug."
"I'm OK with the new Jewish mayor as long as he isn't a greedy banker."
"I'm OK with the new Latino mayor as long as he isn't a dirty illegal."

The only reason to bring up any of those points is if you believe that people of that persuasion are the thing you're accusing them of. To see a brown person and immediately imply that he even MIGHT be a "Radical Islamist" means that you believe the majority (or at least an outsized minority) of Muslims in America are "Radical Islamists".

I am not denying that there is radical Islam in this country. I was speaking with a minister contemporary about Detroit and some of its suburbs, and she was talking about how the Christian Nationalists there have started using the Muslim population to push their anti-queer agenda. And once they have outlawed everything they want, they'll start removing the pesky brown people, too, as Christian legislators have done since this country was founded.

I also spoke with a few Muslim ministers and one imam this past week at a conference. I had no concern that any of them would deny my existence. They love a God of love, and I find that people who are consistent in their religious kindness and generosity are infinitely better people than atheists who claim moral superiority on the basis of intellectual superiority. That applies across faiths, and my atheism has never hindered my ability to do good work with people around me who have vastly different beliefs but still ultimately find value in every human.

Dogma can exist *anywhere*, and atheists do themselves a massive intellectual disservice in pretending that they are somehow above dogma. I've yet to meet a single "militant" atheist who has a working understanding of epistemology, and so I've yet to meet any who genuinely are open to new ideas and information the way they claim to be. Richard Dawkins, for instance, is working on 150-year-old biological axioms to deny that trans people exist even though modern biology has no qualms about acknowledging both indeterminate sex characteristics and the difference between sex and gender. I've known a whole hell of a lot of atheists who are kind and believe they don't need a universal reality to want to be kind, and I've known a whole lot of theists who do have a universal reality for themselves that inspires them to or aligns them with kindness, and in all cases, the difference is dogma. If you believe that your version of reality is the "true" one (which, like, fuckin prove it lol), it becomes very easy to dehumanize people who don't accept your reality, and then you get Jewish and Arab ethnostates and Christian Nationalists and atheist TERFS/islamaphobes. The idea that atheism somehow precludes one from being dogmatic to the point of dehumanization is objectively hilarious and relies on a universality of experience that simply has never existed.

I'm okay with a new black mayor as long as he isn't a stealing thug.
I'm okay with a new white mayor as long as he isn't a stealing thug.
I'm okay with a new Muslim mayor as long as he isn't a stealing thug.
I'm okay with a new gay or trans mayor as long as they aren't stealing thugs.
I'm okay with a new woman mayor as long as she isn't a stealing thug.
I'm okay with a new Jewish mayor as long as he or she isn't a stealing thug.
The list goes on and on.

Somehow you probably will call this this a racist post. Good luck with that.

 

[florduh]

BREAKING

 

[Rodney]

Tesla’s Sales in Europe Plummet as Musk Backlash Rages On

The EV manufacturer is battling both stiffer competition from China and CEO Elon Musk’s toxic reputation.

www.thedailybeast.com

Just for anyone buying one and intending on selling it later on

Man takes Tesla for WeBuyAnyCar valuation after one year - and price is brutal

Harley Perkins, who shares advice on cars and vans, was left stunned after taking his pride and joy for a valuation - and the price was a lot lower than he was expecting

www.mirror.co.uk

He paid £52,000 used it for less than 15,000 miles over a year and it is in perfect condition and he gets offered £27,132 for it.

A few people I know have electric cars but not Tesla and they love them but.

ALSO most of the taxi around here are dual diesel/electric and cost 1/3 of the cost of a normal diesel/petrol vehicle.

 

[Bazinga]

Just for anyone buying one and intending on selling it later on

Man takes Tesla for WeBuyAnyCar valuation after one year - and price is brutal

Harley Perkins, who shares advice on cars and vans, was left stunned after taking his pride and joy for a valuation - and the price was a lot lower than he was expecting

www.mirror.co.uk

He paid £52,000 used it for less than 15,000 miles over a year and it is in perfect condition and he gets offered £27,132 for it.

A few people I know have electric cars but not Tesla and they love them but.

ALSO most of the taxi around here are dual diesel/electric and cost 1/3 of the cost of a normal diesel/petrol vehicle.

We have 2 EVs (neither are Teslas) and 2 gasoline powered vehicles. The EVs are amazing. I hope the charging network continues to grow.

 

[florduh]

The primary was a blowout. It's Joever. It's gonna be Mayor Mamdani

Also a nice look at how our government is for sale to rich people:

While I've been enjoying the insane crashout from Conservatives and the nastiest Liberals, I'm not Muslim. It must be really awful for Muslim Americans to see how normalized Islamophobia is in this country. You can be 1920's style KKK racist live on CNN in 2025. As long as you're doing it to Muslims.

MAGA spirals into ugly Islamophobia after Mamdani’s win, warns of ‘9/11 2.0’

‘24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11,’ Charlie Kirk tweeted on Tuesday night. ‘Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City’

www.the-independent.com

Charlie Kirk is human garbage. "Muslims" didn't do 9/11. Saudi, former CIA assets did. And every time Charlie's best friend Trump sees the Saudi King or Crown Prince, he immediately tickles his tonsils with their cocks.

Also, after 9/11 we killed like a million Muslims that had nothing to do with it. Can't you let bygones be bygones at this point? New Yorkers just did.

 

[Flotsam]

Ironically just week I completed (as a patient participant) a research study at John's Hopkins Hospital. The study was conducted to help folks with heart disease. The researchers are worried that they lose the funding. This would be awful.

I've met both Palestinians and Israelis. I am unable to see (physical appearance) any difference. I wish they would find peace !!

I am familiar with the JH hospital, it is a fine hospital if it is the one downtown I am thinking of.

I think you older guys need to understand the Cold War was a very long time ago and no one's buying your Red Scare bullshit anymore

Also everyone crying about how inefficient the gubernemnt is has never worked for a Fortune 100 company before. In the private sector, "waste, fraud, and abuse" is simply known as "profit" or "executive perks". Also, look at the overhead on Medicare vs every private insurance company.

Zohran Mamdani Just Remade American Politics​

The Red Scare bullshit didn't work. Neither did the spurious and racist accusations of antisemitism in the most Jewish city on Earth! $30 million dollars in ads and the entire Democratic Party Deep State tried to slime Zohran as a dangerous Muslim Terrorist Communist. And they failed!!!!!

2 questions:
How do you think Eric Adams will effect race? Trump endorsed the MAGA candidate so you know he will lose in NYC

Second i don't pay much mind when it comes to these labels. The reality is most Republicans don't know the difference between Communism or Socialism or anything else. These also don't know what Fascism is either and now that it is established in this country it will be hard to get rid of. The sight of unmarked ICE agents swooping in on

 

[florduh]

How do you think Eric Adams will effect race?

I think if $30 million didn't work for the most famous political dynasty in NY, 4 more months of screaming "terrorist, communist, antisemite, sharia law" isn't going to move the needle for Eric Adams

the difference between Communism or Socialism or anything else

The thing is, Zohran's policy platform is pretty moderate. The fact "somewhat improve the lives of most of the people living in a city" is seen as too extreme is a pretty sad statement about America.

Also, the only reason you don't have to pay some corpo a fee every time you take a poop is because socialists briefly took over the Milwaukee government in the early 20th century. They set a precedent that some services, like sewage, should be publicly owned and operated.

Socialism in the American Heartland

Since the 1800s, from Eugene Debs to the Milwaukee “sewer socialists,” the US socialist movement has been especially vibrant in the Midwest — and continues to shape American heartland politics today.

jacobin.com

 

[Flotsam]

I think if $30 million didn't work for the most famous political dynasty in NY, 4 more months of screaming "terrorist, communist, antisemite, sharia law" isn't going to move the needle for Eric Adams



The thing is, Zohran's policy platform is pretty moderate. The fact "somewhat improve the lives of most of the people living in a city" is seen as too extreme is a pretty sad statement about America.

Also, the only reason you don't have to pay some corpo a fee every time you take a poop is because socialists briefly took over the Milwaukee government in the early 20th century. They set a precedent that some services, like sewage, should be publicly owned and operated.

Socialism in the American Heartland

Since the 1800s, from Eugene Debs to the Milwaukee “sewer socialists,” the US socialist movement has been especially vibrant in the Midwest — and continues to shape American heartland politics today.

jacobin.com

i was up in NYC the night of that debate so i did catch some of it. What struck me is what a smug prick Cuomo is I have no tolerance for Rapists & people that. The same reason i despise Trump so much.

I am as a mentioned a Republican but they disgust me even more . what a bunch of Fake Christians Cucks like when they showed up at Trump's trial in NY

 

[florduh]

Andrew Cuomo is a first rate scumbag. So is his goomba brother. But he sounded genuinely impressed with how hard Zohran slapped his ass cheeks.

Also the daughter on the left ranked Mamdani. I don't know it for a fact, but I'd put money on it, lol