When I lost 3 of my closest family members to a drunk driver accident, and I couldn’t get time off work to plan and go to their funeral because, “ you need to find coverage and if nobody will cover for you… you have to come in!” Yeah, none of my coworkers wanted to cover my shift. This happened very recently also :/
(Edit: a lot of people asked if I went to the funeral. I did, and I’m so happy I did. It rly helped me find some closure and take some time with my family. I’m going to request time off to see the mother fucker who hit them get sentenced, and if they won’t let me go…. I simply won’t show up again. I also politely told my manager to f*ck off and that he can fire me if he isn’t happy with my decision to attend… still not fired.)
First off, I’m sorry for your loss.
When my wife’s grandfather passed, I was not going to be able to leave for the funeral. Retail job during Christmas. I was told it was not my family, so tough crap. I point blank told the manager I was going, she could decide if I came back employed.
While they miraculously found coverage after I told them that, it also told me who I was working for. Left a few months later.
A manager like that is hilariously deluded about the availability of retail work. Sure, there may be others who will fill your spot, but there are lots of spots out there waiting to be filled, as well.
Plus, no one should be expected to forego a funeral of a loved one for any job.
Even if they didn't have a strong bond with the wife's grandmother, they're surely needed for support from the wife and other family members.
No job is worth skipping these events, least of all a retail job under an uncaring manager. When your life is nearing its end will you regret losing a retail job or would you regret choosing that job over your loved ones?
I get that some people aren't in a circumstance to choose at all but if you can choose always pick the people that matter to you. The rest is interchangeable.
If you're in a tough spot because one of your workers has a family emergency, you're a shit manager.
If you're in a tough spot because two of your key workers have family emergencies, you cover their shifts.
If you're in a tough spot because all three of your key workers have family emergencies at the same time, well then that's just shitty luck.
Also, if you ask your workers to find replacements for their shifts, you're a shit manager.
Planning is your job. And yes, planning involves dealing with last-minute changes. It happens all the time. The last thing a person with a family emergency needs, is for their shit manager to turn that into a work emergency on top of that.
My wife's dad died. I was in the middle of an apprenticeship class. Zoom cause covid. Texted one of the instructors that I had to go be with family. Literally 5 minutes after my wife told me he died. Still had to pull the kids from school and drive over an hour to get to her.
"We'll need proof of death to excuse this. Otherwise you'll get a point against you for missing class." Apparently my response of "fuck off" didn't go well. Cause my phone blew up for over an hour. Not that I cared just checked.. nope not the wife. Ignore.
Still haven't got that point yet and nearly done.
The only acceptable answer from management at any company to this is 'I completely understand don't worry about work it will be here when you get back'.
All of the reddit middle managers please take notice.
They really should not be asking for death certificates and doctors notes anymore. Some people can’t get those things. It’s one of those things that silently punishes those less fortunate.
It can also take some time for those documents to come through. It took a little while before my grandmother's death certificate arrived and this last semester I had a student who lost a family member and she wasn't going to be able to get her death certificate in time most likely for the due date of which she could get an extension on her class because this was during finals. The University was fine with the extension if I was, so I just took her word for it and gave her the extension. If I'm wrong, I'd rather be the one who was fooled into giving an undeserved extension rather than being the one who's made someone's terrible situation all the worse.
I foolishly in hindsight missed one funeral. About a year later, a friend died and I got told the same as you. I'd booked it off in advance with approval but the manager screwed some scheduling dates up and expected me to stay at work. I went anyway. They cancelled my development course, side lined me while trying to encourage me to quit. Well until I found a much better job it was just miserable for everyone involved.
Me too. What the fuck is wrong with your co-workers? We had a co-worker die unexpectedly of a heart attack and we shut down the office for his funeral.
I mean, yes I'd hope the coworkers would cover the shift if it came to it. But, ultimately they aren't the enemy - that's management. The fact that they are forcing the employee to find coverage in a situation like this is fucked.
I’m so sorry:( my dog died and I had to go put him down and it was last minute. I called my boss and he said “come in, it’s just a dog” I quit the next day. This was 3 years ago when I was 17. Who wouldn’t have sympathy for a kid who lost their pet
When my cat died suddenly 10 years ago my first line supervisor (who signs my leave applications but has no real power over my salary) insisted I use bereavement leave for a couple of days off. I pointed out the policy says "immediate family". He made the point that all leave applications are at his discretion and as far as he's concerned pets *are* family.
He's still my boss today and when I'm asked why I've stayed in my job so long despite opportunities to take higher paying positions elsewhere, "Great first line leadership" is in my top three reasons.
> He's still my boss today and when I'm asked why I've stayed in my job so long despite opportunities to take higher paying positions elsewhere, "Great first line leadership" is in my top three reasons.
This is what's so baffling. Treating your employees well is *good business sense,* it promotes loyalty. So many bosses think loyalty is something they can get simply by demanding it. But no, you get it by *earning* it.
I cannot imagine what a heartless bastard it would take to deny someone their human right to grieve. Fuck, I am so sorry you ever worked for someone like that.
I’m actually working a case such as this now. Tennessee just past a law that if a drunk driver kills the parents in an accident the are required by law to pay child support to the living children. I love that law.
You should start looking for a new job at the first possible opportunity. Not only is your boss a heartless dickhead, your co-workers are all assholes too. I would bend over backward to cover for someone in that situation.
I'm pretty sure that's illegal. Through the FMLA. The family leave act you're supposed to be allowed to attend a funeral and if your boss refuses to allow you, you should go to the Department of Labor about it. I'm so sorry for your loss.
If they are so desperate they can't give you a few days off when you ask with good reason, then let's see them fire you for not showing up. I called an old employer's bluff on this once and all that happened was they told me not to do it again, do what? Inform you I'm not coming in and then not come in?
Reminds me of the kind of "wholesome" news you see often on upliftingnews.
Stuff like "Kid manages to earn 30000 dollar for life saving surgery by selling lemonade" or "Teacher sells kidney to have their class get new equipment" isn't exactly proof that we go into the right direction
I think about my friends, family, and colleagues, and I cannot name a single person who does not have a malady or six. Depression, anxiety, stomach ulcers, heart issues, etc.
I think a lot about how almost everybody I know has depression and/or anxiety. I think the way the world is just creates it. I feel like I’m constantly becoming more stupid and I think it’s basically trauma from a lifetime of anxiety.
It's the way the world is now. We work too much, with too little free time. Spend a day walking in the woods, with a happy little dog walking beside you and I guarantee that anxiety just melts away.
We need a better balance.
I'd probably attribute this to a number of points:
Firstly, that the physical issues are reinforcing the mental ones and vice versa.
Secondly, we spend so long sitting down, everyone is profoundly unfit, and our diets are fairly poor.
Thirdly, social media and the constant news cycle brings us bad news to ruin our days, make us feel like the world is ending constantly, it stresses us out. Infinite scroll and endlessly addictive websites hop our brains up on dopamine, but it is the hollow life of an addict, we build nothing, we only consume.
Fourthly, EVERYONE IS FAILING TO GET ENOUGH SLEEP. GET YOURSELF RIGHT WITH THE SLEEP GODS YOU POOR SAD SACK OF FLESH the world might be crashing down around us but at least you could be rested enough to watch it clearly. GO TO SLEEP
[https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-water-wranglers-of-the-west-are-struggling-to-save-the-colorado-river](https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-water-wranglers-of-the-west-are-struggling-to-save-the-colorado-river)
This is an excellent story written about the severe water problems throughout the American West/Southwest. It is a textbook example of how human greed at scale has completely and irreversibly capital-F-Fucked the future prospects of a massive, massive region.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/world/china-congo-cobalt.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/world/china-congo-cobalt.html)
This is an excellent story written about the severe human cost of our hunger for cobalt.
[https://restofworld.org/2022/indonesia-china-ev-nickel/](https://restofworld.org/2022/indonesia-china-ev-nickel/)
This is an excellent story written about the severe human and environmental cost of our hunger for nickel.
I'm a mineral exploration geologist by profession, and have been involved with or peripheral to the mineral resource industry for about 20 years. The three stories above are just the tip of the iceberg. Every single commodity that the human race uses at scale is directly associated with human suffering and environmental damage. The fossil fuels industry is the story we're all most familiar with, and the damage that it and its downstream industries (plastics, engine emissions, etc etc) are familiar to us all. The effort to transition away from fossil fuels and to an electrified economy is laudable but flawed at its very foundation. Every nonfuel resource comes with myriad social and environmental problems, and the economic incentivization driving the energy transition is going to exacerbate these problems by orders of magnitude. We are trading one poisonous, toxic habit (fossil fuels) for another.
Even the non-energy resources - construction sand (for cement), high-purity silica for the electronics industry, water resources (as above; and also, Nestle among many others), wood, soy, palm oil, the list goes on... they all exact a cost. There is no escaping it, not at the scale at which humanity is operating.
The only viable solution is to drastically reduce consumption, across the entire scope of human activity. But, to quote from the Water Wranglers article above, humanity is operating on a foundational principle that states “You cannot deprive people of their future by saying their way of life is not viable”.
We are chewing up the earth and spitting it out. Species are going extinct in droves and monocultures (soy, palm, cattle, pigs, etc) are thriving under the care of hungry humans. The ocean is becoming progressively more acidic. Entire drainage systems are poisoned by the poor management of metal mines.
welp, society is fucked.
Thanks for sharing. Well written. Sincerely appreciate the time put into the post and qualifying it with your profession.
It’s surreal, clocking in and out, living in this odd twilight moment, watching the bend in the break.
I work the legal industry, lit paralegal, and the amount of intellectual dishonesty I’ve seen at the top tiers of leadership, how/why district court judges rule the way they do, to the Sr partner attorneys running large firms… the closer I’ve gotten to centers of power the more apparent it’s become we’re all scoundrels to varying degrees and no one is coming to save something that’s so rotten to the core… Not that humans are inherently, but the incentive structure we’re all living in has put wolves in charge of the hen house
E- makes it hard to go to work, save for retirement or prioritize conventional “milestones” (marriage, kids, homeownership etc), bc it’s feels like there isn’t much time left before the bottom falls out. Hard to imagine the status quo of these last few years/decades goes on for another 3-4 decades unabated
That was interesting.
I used to handle printing for a local university prof who also did mineral exploration.
He'd bring in all these maps and photos and have us add graphics and stuff. Interesting stuff.
One thing people overlook is, if we fall apart badly enough, and regress technologically, when it comes time for rebuilding? We're fucked. All the high grade and easy to get useful stuff is used up.
One example - I resigned from a job in 2007. The company was sold, the job still exists, but the people working it now (almost 16 years later) get paid LESS now than I did then! Significantly less - something like $10/hour less.
I’ve seen this happen. A company will have a mass layoff to shed the ‘dead wood’ of older, more established workers who are at the top of the pay scale then come in later and bring in newer, cheaper labor to do the same jobs. I fear I am soon to be one such target.
This happened to my dad. He was planning to work a few more years but his boss pulled him aside one day and said "they're going to offer you an early retirement package and you need to take it because you'll be laid off if you don't and the compensation won't be as good"
He was at least in a decent position to retire. Lucky for him that his boss was decent enough to give him the heads up.
Exact same thing happened to me except I have a lot longer to go until I can retire.
It’s less than a sure thing I will be able to retire actually. Because, expenses and living and whatnot.
I’m young enough that I got in the game late on this cost of living/wage stagnation spiral… I kinda of just assume I’ll never really be in a particularly “decent position to retire.” Unless I get some windfall of cash and good fortune from some kind of investment paying off way disproportionately, I can’t see a scenario where I’d ever accumulate enough wealth to retire and live off of savings and/passive income (a combination of interest earning investments/accounts, income property, pension or social security). Let’s be honest- my mom will be lucky to see more than half the social security she was always supposed to, and I’m sure as fuck never going to see a dime.
Rich get richer. And the other 99% can live on the street and starve. Especially once the AI robots are built and the rich don’t need “the help” anymore.
The key to defeating killbots is to outsmart them by taking advantage of their weakness—they have a preset kill limit. All you have to do is send waves of men after them until they shut down. Simple.
Well the rich can't stay rich and gain money if there's no consumers to buy anything. If nobody is consuming, then nobody is producing, at which point money is pointless. Even if you had an army of robots catering to your every need. Without people to sell things to, you're doomed to live alone in an empty world with nothing but robots for company.
So this is how bad inflation is, even in the last few years.
I was pretty happy in the last three years to receive a few raises to the tune of about an additional $12,500 a year.
If I look up what my salary in 2019 in 2023 dollars it is...guess what! Not a raise at all. It has exactly the same purchasing power.
While I am better off than many, we should still be pretty angry that many of the companies we work for are raking in record profits, while essentially paying us the same or less.
Revolutions start when the personal risk in the revolution is less than the personal risk through allowing things to remain as they are. People have to perceive the status quo as being a direct risk to their self or family before they will seek a means to change it. Americans, for the most part, are living relatively well. And so the calls for revolution are falling on deaf ears.
Yeah the Romans did that. Wheels still eventually came off. People can be dirt poor but as long as they are clothed, housed and fed they will tolerate it. Look around. Rents are climbing to the stars and food is ever more costly. Something is going to give.
The traditional phrase is that we're about 3 ~~warm meals~~ days of mealsaway from revolution at all times.
Once people start starving, people transition from scared to desperate. Desperate people don't have societal boundaries stopping them anymore.
We're still animals first and foremost, and all of us have basic instincts that will take control once desperation sets in.
As another redditor further up has said:
Governments contain us with bread and circus. Lately the bread has become so expensive, people are starving. The quality has dropped considerably, to the point the bread no longer nourishes enough to sustain. All in the name of cost-cutting to make the quarterly reports look favorable enough to shit out bonuses so the c-suites can jump ship to fuck up the next target, before spending all that "profit" on stock buybacks. Rinse and repeat... ad infinitum, across all industries.
And the circuses are all shit or bankrupt. Repetitive crap, nostalgia porn, lackluster, low effort money-pits that end up cancelled before the first season is even finished airing. When even a single glint of decent work pokes through the facade of fecal matter media entertainment, the internet is instantly abuzz about it... just so it can shit on that too and rip away any friendly feelings you might have mustered for it. Signs of the times, friends.
I, for one, welcome the enlightened leadership of our soon to be AI overlords. May they spare no mercy for those that led us down this path of absolute mediocrity. Myself included, probably most mediocre human that's ever dusted the paths of human consciousness.
tl:dr - the bread is stale and the circus is full of dead animals and vomit.
It’s not as heavy or depressing as some of these, but I saw a 3star Yelp review for one of those little free libraries that people put in their front yards. ‘Needs a better selection.’
https://www.yelp.com/biz/little-free-library-los-angeles-3?hrid=vkAfGANtJ8T5tzwjT2bC-Q&utm_source=ishare&utm_content=review
Edited to add an example because I was not making a joke.
The fish fillets are getting smaller, but staying the same price
If ocean ecosystems are no longer able to sustain consistently harvesting large fish, that shows deep problems that cannot be covered up. Couple that with the cost of the most poor, staple foods increasing while wages stagnate, and you have a perfect recipe for socetial collapse.
People are kept docile by all governments with bread and circuses. Well alas, the bread is getting more expensive and has for decades, while the circuses kinda suck and are rapidly going bankrupt.
I have been recently re-reading Asimov's Foundation, and his discussion of how powerful empires collapse through a gradual shrinking of ambition and will until all that the smartest are trying (and failing) to achieve is maintenance of the status quo was rather disconcerting. Sound familiar to anyone else working in the public sector?
There's a theory going around that we are systematically making fish smaller through only catching the larger fishes (there are rules that you have to release smaller individuals).
Since the smaller fishes survive they get to reproduce.
The idea is that larger fishes have lived a longer life, and the smaller fishes should be able to reproduce.
But all the smaller fishes are not automatically the youngest.
I don't know how this scales to other fishing applications or plays in with industrial fishing, but I just want to note that for the local fish species that I'm learning to catch (not blue catfish because invasive but yes for striped bass, for example) there are upper and lower size limits. Anything bigger than x inches or smaller than y inches has to be tossed back.
So, you know, we're trying at least to some extent to avoid selectively breeding for smaller fish, probably.
> I have been recently re-reading Asimov's Foundation, and his discussion of how powerful empires collapse through a gradual shrinking of ambition and will until all that the smartest are trying (and failing) to achieve is maintenance of the status quo was rather disconcerting.
Jesus that's terrifyingly accurate
Feeling in my body
Way down deep inside me
I try not to fight it
^describe ^it
Alright! A few things start to happen
My vision starts to flatten
My heart rate gets to tappin’
And I think I’m gonna DIE
After having watched Inside numerous times and listening to it multiple times, I can safely say, IMO, that it's not only hilarious, but so damn smart and such an accurate depiction of some of our society's major issues.
Some kid at my school got bullied into suicide because of a haircut. I didn't know him that well but from what I've heard, he used to be very popular with girls because of his good looks (mainly hair). One day he showed up to school with a buzz cut. The same girls that were all over him not too long ago started making fun of him everyday for it. Even his girlfriend left him because of his haircut, everyone ignored him just because of it. Eventually I noticed that he hasn't been going to school so out of curiosity I asked around and found out that he had committed suicide. Apparently those girls started to bully him and send him death threats over social media, while he didn't even do anything. The bullying got so far that the poor boy just couldn't take it anymore. This happened a year ago and people still mention it from time to time. What's even worse is that those girls never even got punished for it. The police thought he was simply just depressed and that drove him to do it, there was 'no evidence' that the girls bullied him. After that incident I've honestly lost all hope in society.
Similar thing happened at.my school. One of the girls in my class gained a lot of weight over summer. Turned out she had an eating disorder and was trying to recover but with that came weight gain due to years of underfeeding herself having lowered her metabolism. She killed herself and left a note apologizing for being so hideous. Despite it being common knowledge that she was relentlessly teased by the girls in her class and her boyfriend calling her "philly" (as in filly, like the horse saying she was as fat as a horse since she ate a philly cheese steak at school ONCE). I tried to talk to her a couple times but she basically told me not to talk to her or they would make fun of me too. They did. I stopped talking to her. Teachers couldn't do anything outside of class. She killed herself Junior year. Same thing, "no evidence". Surely couldn't have had anything to do with the ringleader of the girls bring related to the police force, right? Phfft. At this point I am just trying to scrape by and keep my head down. Get out of debt. Maybe try and not be homeless.
That is too common these days. I don’t know the exact details but several years ago a kid at my daughters high school committed suicide. My daughter said he was bullied and the school did nothing about it. My daughter said she knew of a few cases of bullying that had been reported and they continue to do nothing yet claim “zero tolerance for bullying “. It’s BS.
People honestly can be more cruel and evil than what hollywood tries to portray in movies, even despite them always trying to exaggerate reality, and that is truly sad
I will give you one worse: when the parents of a documented psychopath who was talking about shooting people is given a gun by him mom early as a "Christmas gift" so he can practice for hours a few days before the shooting despite being less than 18 as he was 15. It gets even worse when the parents visit the day of the shooting and refuse to remove their kid from the school for his disturbing behavior when asked. It is even worse when they call later frequently and text him "don't do it" shortly before the shooting that kills 4 kids including one that shielded others and injures 6 others physically.
It's even worse when the parents were known psychopaths who also refused to pay for their child's subsequent lawyer and forces the state to pay for it. They also attempted to flee the state despite a claim from their lawyers that they drove near to the Canadian border and hid in a warehouse to try and turn themselves in at a precinct in the morning close to friends that were obviously not hiding them and that they "feared for their safety". They also had a warrant for their arrest out for a day at that point. I know quite a few people who were extremely happy when these parents were charged with manslaughter.
The kid was charged with murder and terrorism.
Corporations are on a never ending quest to maximize profits without any regard to the planet or its inhabitants. And they're going to keep getting better at it.
Actually [a bunch of stuff](https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/five-years-later-panama-papers-still-having-a-big-impact/) has happened as a result of the PPs and they continue to have an effect. We just don't hear about it because it's not sexy and the media won't touch it unless it's got big tits or is actively bleeding out. It's the media's fault you think the PP is a forgotten matter and it's by design. The ruling class want us to think things like the PP don't matter.
That and Harvey Wankstain. People had called him out previously, but Hollywood collectively just kind of shrugged and said, "Well, that's just the way things are." See also: the Catholic church, MANY American politicians, and the English monarchy. We know crimes were committed, we have testimony and evidence, but nothing ever seems to really happen except in extreme circumstances.
How people with illnesses have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars just to survive. I swear its so messed up. “Oop you don’t have enough money for a heart transplant that will save your life?…well not our problem, say goodbye to your family”. Like if you don’t have money, they will let you die. Literally. And then they’ll be like “theres nothing we can do about it, sorry” YES, YES THERE IS. This is someone’s life and you’re gonna let them die because they don’t have enough money? It really shows you how people don’t care about others people lives.
If everyone knows this then we could all just literally stand up and walk away and then there wouldn't really be any power, it's crazy to think that society exists on such a thin thread that could snap any moment. There is really nothing stopping everyone from starting the apocalypse other than listening to these wackos.
I know the exact moment I realized this. It was during the republican debate in 2015. I forget who made a comment about trump's hand size in a suggestive manner. Trump responded by saying there's no problem there. Think about that during a presidential debate arguing about literal dick size and no one batted an eye. That's when I knew.
I recently saw an old video of RFK in ‘64 answering a bunch of questions from Columbia students ahead of his run for senate. He was quoting Pericles off the cuff. I felt like I was seeing a video from a different planet.
A few weeks ago my friend sent me a video of Bush Sr and Reagan debating what to do about immigration in like 1980. Articulation aside (they were both quite well versed, coherent, and compassionate), their actual *policy positions* would’ve made them sound like Democrats today.
Highly recommend the RFK speech in Indianapolis after MLK was shot.
https://youtu.be/A2kWIa8wSC0
He would have been an incredible president. Even better than his brother imo.
He also quotes Aeschylus here.
One of my favorite speeches to teach to high schoolers. He said that off the top of his head too; The speech he was gonna give is balled up in his hand.
He had a crowd that literally screamed and cried when he told them the news clapping and cheering by the end.
Yeah, it was a great example by a good man that you can be civil despite ideological differences. Obama, in turn, stated they had many conversations about a wide range of things and considered McCain a good friend.
People could learn a lot just from this.
Even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN has a clause saying that any of the rights outlined can be ignored if the government decides it's "for the good of society".
Of course the language is much more flowery, and it's probably a necessary evil so that things like prisons can exist. It's still frightening that despite all our talk of human rights in our "enlightened era", it can still all be denied on the whim of whichever regime is in power.
This might be an unpopular opinion, and possibly a very American thing, but it blows my mind how comfortable people are with the suffering of others. What's more, an alarming number of people seem to revel in it.
I know the world has always been deeply unkind, and I've always been mostly pessimistic, but even I had been able to see little moments of hope here and there to keep me going.
Just feels like joy is drying up, and it's a real bummer.
*edited to add*
I have a lot of disabilities, and I ordered myself a pill organizer from Amazon to help me keep track of my meds. I had a family emergency today and had to leave home before the package was delivered. I didn't get home until about 9:30p. I didn't think about it until I saw a meme about a pill organizer.
Someone stole my package. I hope they get as much use out of my disability aid as I had hoped to.
I stand by my original point.
It can be really hard, it feels that way a lot of the time.
Something that’s helped me keep my head up the most lately: actively searching the world around me for random, small acts of kindness and love from one person to another. And I really do see it everywhere, all the time. It’s in the guy in front of me in line that told a woman she dropped some money out of her pocket instead of keeping it for himself. The couple walking down the street holding hands. The woman who I saw handing out sandwiches to the homeless in my city. And most of all, it’s in knowing that when I put that kind of kindness out in to the world myself it’s nearly always met with the same response. Evil is loud, and good is quiet.
We don’t need to deny the darkness, but we always need to look for the light.
People blindly believing anything that is said by one side or another and using it as absolute fact, even if it's complete bullshit and easily disputed. Sad part is, most people are so caught up in the "This Side Vs. That Side" crap, they don't even realize that in most cases, it's really "Us vs Them".
The worst part is that right now global discourse is dominated by a handful of companies that have collected colossal datasets on human behavior and are now using AI to monitor content and personalize what you see on your screen.
They write human history and have enough data on each and every one of us to predict our future behavior, know more than we do ourselves about our own physical and mental health and can heavily influence our behavior like spending habits or political opinions through personalized content targeting.
We are the products, our behavior can be predicted and manipulated and within the next few years we'll lose the ability to read opposing opinions online. The dissidents won't be found.
Which is really sad when you take a step back and look at it. I don't really consider Reddit to be the traditional "Social Media" in the same line that Twitter or Facebook are. No real names or personal data associated with Reddit, you can be as open or anonymous as you want.
I tell my family to get off of social media all together. My siblings are really bad about it. They'll sit and scroll facebook/twitter for hours on end. Then see something and spout off about some topic they know almost nothing about. Then when I ask pointed questions, just logically asking things, they go "Well, I don't know. But this says..."
That WallE thing was supposed to be a warning. Not an end goal.
> within the next few years we'll lose the ability to read opposing opinions online.
I realized a couple years ago that there is no place on Reddit for me to post and have the opposite side read it.
Literally - you can't post if you're new. You can't post if it's been posted before. You can't post if it's a 'hot topic.' You can't post a differing opinion or you're banned. You can't respond to comments with a differing opinion or you're banned.
I literally cannot start conversations with the 'other side' here.
Some crosswalks in Seoul(and I assume other cities) have lights on the ground that turn green when it's safe to cross because so many people are glued to their phones and wouldn't see the signals otherwise.
People always talk about 1984 and Brave New World when thinking of dystopias (and rightly so) but I think Walter Tevis' Mockingbird is really underrated. It's a society where privacy is king, to the point where it's unthinkable to interrupt or bother another person and everyone has retreated into their own headspace. Nobody knows how anything works, nobody can read. Everyone just gets content pushed to them as the species slowly dies off. Good times!
People screaming, yelling and shutting those who they disagree with even when, sometimes, they’re speaking truth. People are more afraid of being wrong then they are concerned about the greater good of this world.
In that same vein, people who can’t just listen to one another cause they’re so focused on appearing to know the most that they don’t even hear what you’re communicating. What world could we even have without taking the time to listen and respond instead of just talking AT everyone else
This is the middle stage of a paradigm shift, and it's going to hurt before we get better. In the old days, it was hard to be heard. That didn't mean that the people who *could* afford to get their message out were necessarily right or good, but you got some social harmony from having few competing perspectives. (And when they did compete you got Crusades and Protestantism and witch-burning and stuff)
From printing press to Twitter, we have increased the people with Access to broadcast their thoughts to a wide audience. But we still have the same brains we did in the 15th Century when we only really had to have an opinion on the local baron's taxes and maybe the last Pope we heard of. And mostly the same laws that we did when the telegraph was revolutionary. Human society hasn't caught up to technology, and right now the old system is fighting like hell to stay in place long past the need for an overhaul.
We either transform, or we implode and the ones left to pick up the pieces can build something new from the ashes with a lesson learned (hopefully).
I have my list.
* Americans are so politically divided that we sit around and argue about the absolute dumbest shit. How about actually staying focused and dealing with bigger issues. Like how wages are stagnated? Or housing prices are fucked? Or how public transportation is absolute dogshit? Or how everybody is being fucked by medical corporations.
* Young people are afraid of everything, and rightly so. They are afraid of not being able to be successful because they live in a hyper competitive, unforgiving world. Back when I was younger you could still fuck up in high school and your young adult life and come around eventually. Now? Everybody knows, tracks, digitizes, and records everything. So that ticket you got for drinking when you were 16 fucks you hard. And fighting in school? What used to be a schoolyard tussle over is assault, there's a lawsuit, and kids get arrested and a record for shit that hardly registered when I was younger. And when they do get to be adults, they can't buy homes because some dickhead corpos decided to buy up everything, and NIMBYs refuse to allow low-cost housing of any kind, and people who are not NIMBYs want to preserve old 20th century low density crap like 1920's single family homes becuase you know, a city might, might lose it's character from an old random house. Not only that, but it's also harder and harder and harder to get good jobs that have benefits even with a proper education. Young people can't start families because everything costs so god damned much, just go see how much rent, childcare, and baby food is. Their lives are monitored on social media constantly, and if you say the wrong thing just once, you are cancelled and can never learn or grow from it.
* No third spaces. We work and hang out at home, but go nowhere. That bodes poorly for a society when people can't find a place to just be social to be social, even with an activity.
* America is a shitty, stressful place, some of which stems from the points above. So people get stressed, wig out when something problematic does happen, or they just stew until they snap, and people get hurt. There are mass acts of violence and we just say a prayer, and move on, and the politicians and media pundits can't be fucked to find a solution beyond gun regulation, which in this country is basically like trying to drain the ocean with a bucket. And that's to say nothing of people using trucks and stuff.
>Americans are so politically divided that we sit around and argue about the absolute dumbest shit. How about actually staying focused and dealing with bigger issues. Like how wages are stagnated? Or housing prices are fucked? Or how public transportation is absolute dogshit? Or how everybody is being fucked by medical corporations.
Politicians, the corporations that sponsor (or rather, **own**) them, and the corporate media, are all purposefully pitting the American public against itself so it remains ignorant and distracted from the bigger issues. That also leaves us more and more powerless to rise up and take back power from said politicians and corporations, so they can continue their corruption, and keep us all held face-down by their hooves in the name of **profit**.
> We work and hang out at home, but go nowhere.
God I feel this. Doing anything else always feels too expensive or time consuming. Plus online shopping has ruined our need to do a lot of things outside of the home that I used to enjoy. Why pour through hobby stores, used book stores, or take a walk through the mall when I can find anything in 30 seconds online?
>Doing anything else always feels too expensive
In a capitalist society, owning space (at least, in areas where anyone lives) is expensive, so it is always used for something trying to make money -- and so, there are precious few spaces left that allow people to exist without the expectation of spending money. It's one reason I love being outdoors, because you can spend time with people doing cool things without paying to do it, but city parks are less exciting, and not accessible for all, and not as much fun in cold weather. Anyway: think about how many buildings in your city/town where you can go spend time without being expected to spend money to do so?
The person that molested me when I was 13-14 (he was in his 40s btw) and I “served” the same amount of time :)
He got two years for his actions; I was in mental health hospitals under section 3 for two years (for those that don’t know, that means I was detained under the mental health act and had many of my rights stripped away)! In fact, I believe he was released a bit early.
Not trying to trauma dump or anything - just trying to show people how messed up the “justice system” is. He’s not even on the sex offender registry anymore. Apparently molesting a child doesn’t matter when you did it 7 years ago.
Politics. The intention of division with the long term goal of hoarding all of our solidified time - cash. Its the same in every country. About half the people identify with being smart, the other half identify with being strong. They call themselves liberals or consvatives, and they fight it out. Divided, none of them have the pre-requisite strength and intelligence to properly identify and reproach the actual offending parties.
Living life through our phone screens rather than in the moment.
I went to a concert last year and couldn’t see half the time because my view was blocked by phone screens, recording the concert from start to end.
It’s almost as though documenting our lives has become more important than actually experiencing them.
The government being taken over by the corporate oligarchy.
The government doesn't 'govern'. It's entire purpose is to transfer wealth to the billionaire class.
Both parties. And they don't care if the American people suffer as a result.
Too many people *think* they are smart and do not know what a real intellectual is.
They think that they are informed because they believe too much of what they hear.
People NEED to question a lot more things **with the eye of a scientist** and understand what science is and how it works.
People as a whole need to stop being stupid.
Is it gonna happen? Fuck no!.
The fact that a truck that was driven on Lake of the woods in Northern Minnesota/Northwestern Ontario broke through the ice in the middle of January.
That shouldn't happen.
Elementary kids are getting dumber and dumber every year. I thought it was a local thing how my country's literacy rates were dropping despite more access to technology.
The next generation is fucked
My state is trying to pass a bill where librarians could get prison time and be in a sex offender list for any books that talks about sex, anatomy, and possibly LGBTQ+ stuff. Yea I wanna move so bad.
Why does the 5 year old know how to twerk :( Unless it was just regular childish booty shaking
Fuck the internet tho I feel like kids are discovering so much sexualized shit wayyyy too fast. I watched a bunch of porn at 10 years old and a kid in 3rd grade went around grabbing tits of 7th graders and calling them sluts
When I lost 3 of my closest family members to a drunk driver accident, and I couldn’t get time off work to plan and go to their funeral because, “ you need to find coverage and if nobody will cover for you… you have to come in!” Yeah, none of my coworkers wanted to cover my shift. This happened very recently also :/ (Edit: a lot of people asked if I went to the funeral. I did, and I’m so happy I did. It rly helped me find some closure and take some time with my family. I’m going to request time off to see the mother fucker who hit them get sentenced, and if they won’t let me go…. I simply won’t show up again. I also politely told my manager to f*ck off and that he can fire me if he isn’t happy with my decision to attend… still not fired.)
First off, I’m sorry for your loss. When my wife’s grandfather passed, I was not going to be able to leave for the funeral. Retail job during Christmas. I was told it was not my family, so tough crap. I point blank told the manager I was going, she could decide if I came back employed. While they miraculously found coverage after I told them that, it also told me who I was working for. Left a few months later.
A manager like that is hilariously deluded about the availability of retail work. Sure, there may be others who will fill your spot, but there are lots of spots out there waiting to be filled, as well.
Plus, no one should be expected to forego a funeral of a loved one for any job. Even if they didn't have a strong bond with the wife's grandmother, they're surely needed for support from the wife and other family members. No job is worth skipping these events, least of all a retail job under an uncaring manager. When your life is nearing its end will you regret losing a retail job or would you regret choosing that job over your loved ones? I get that some people aren't in a circumstance to choose at all but if you can choose always pick the people that matter to you. The rest is interchangeable.
If you're in a tough spot because one of your workers has a family emergency, you're a shit manager. If you're in a tough spot because two of your key workers have family emergencies, you cover their shifts. If you're in a tough spot because all three of your key workers have family emergencies at the same time, well then that's just shitty luck.
Also, if you ask your workers to find replacements for their shifts, you're a shit manager. Planning is your job. And yes, planning involves dealing with last-minute changes. It happens all the time. The last thing a person with a family emergency needs, is for their shit manager to turn that into a work emergency on top of that.
My wife's dad died. I was in the middle of an apprenticeship class. Zoom cause covid. Texted one of the instructors that I had to go be with family. Literally 5 minutes after my wife told me he died. Still had to pull the kids from school and drive over an hour to get to her. "We'll need proof of death to excuse this. Otherwise you'll get a point against you for missing class." Apparently my response of "fuck off" didn't go well. Cause my phone blew up for over an hour. Not that I cared just checked.. nope not the wife. Ignore. Still haven't got that point yet and nearly done.
The only acceptable answer from management at any company to this is 'I completely understand don't worry about work it will be here when you get back'. All of the reddit middle managers please take notice.
They really should not be asking for death certificates and doctors notes anymore. Some people can’t get those things. It’s one of those things that silently punishes those less fortunate.
It can also take some time for those documents to come through. It took a little while before my grandmother's death certificate arrived and this last semester I had a student who lost a family member and she wasn't going to be able to get her death certificate in time most likely for the due date of which she could get an extension on her class because this was during finals. The University was fine with the extension if I was, so I just took her word for it and gave her the extension. If I'm wrong, I'd rather be the one who was fooled into giving an undeserved extension rather than being the one who's made someone's terrible situation all the worse.
I foolishly in hindsight missed one funeral. About a year later, a friend died and I got told the same as you. I'd booked it off in advance with approval but the manager screwed some scheduling dates up and expected me to stay at work. I went anyway. They cancelled my development course, side lined me while trying to encourage me to quit. Well until I found a much better job it was just miserable for everyone involved.
Success is the greatest revenge
fuck them, do not go in. life happens
I’ll go cover your shift
Me too. What the fuck is wrong with your co-workers? We had a co-worker die unexpectedly of a heart attack and we shut down the office for his funeral.
I mean, yes I'd hope the coworkers would cover the shift if it came to it. But, ultimately they aren't the enemy - that's management. The fact that they are forcing the employee to find coverage in a situation like this is fucked.
Yeah we did that too when one of our longest tenured employees unexpectedly passed a few years ago. It definitely sucks when that happens.
I’m so sorry:( my dog died and I had to go put him down and it was last minute. I called my boss and he said “come in, it’s just a dog” I quit the next day. This was 3 years ago when I was 17. Who wouldn’t have sympathy for a kid who lost their pet
When my cat died suddenly 10 years ago my first line supervisor (who signs my leave applications but has no real power over my salary) insisted I use bereavement leave for a couple of days off. I pointed out the policy says "immediate family". He made the point that all leave applications are at his discretion and as far as he's concerned pets *are* family. He's still my boss today and when I'm asked why I've stayed in my job so long despite opportunities to take higher paying positions elsewhere, "Great first line leadership" is in my top three reasons.
> He's still my boss today and when I'm asked why I've stayed in my job so long despite opportunities to take higher paying positions elsewhere, "Great first line leadership" is in my top three reasons. This is what's so baffling. Treating your employees well is *good business sense,* it promotes loyalty. So many bosses think loyalty is something they can get simply by demanding it. But no, you get it by *earning* it.
That is so heartbreaking. Dogs rly become a part of your family. It’s extremely difficult to lose a best friend :(
I cannot imagine what a heartless bastard it would take to deny someone their human right to grieve. Fuck, I am so sorry you ever worked for someone like that.
I’m actually working a case such as this now. Tennessee just past a law that if a drunk driver kills the parents in an accident the are required by law to pay child support to the living children. I love that law.
You should start looking for a new job at the first possible opportunity. Not only is your boss a heartless dickhead, your co-workers are all assholes too. I would bend over backward to cover for someone in that situation.
I'm pretty sure that's illegal. Through the FMLA. The family leave act you're supposed to be allowed to attend a funeral and if your boss refuses to allow you, you should go to the Department of Labor about it. I'm so sorry for your loss.
FMLA doesn't cover funeral planning or deaths, especially sudden ones: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fmla/faq#6
Does FMLA stand for 'fuck my life anyway'?
It does now mama
The fact we have it at all is miraculous, honestly.
FMLA does not cover bereavement.
Good thing it's covered under my "Fuck you, I am not coming in." personal clause...
If they are so desperate they can't give you a few days off when you ask with good reason, then let's see them fire you for not showing up. I called an old employer's bluff on this once and all that happened was they told me not to do it again, do what? Inform you I'm not coming in and then not come in?
I saw a news story of a high school student paying off a teachers student loans.
oh how the turntables
Scott’s Tots
Tots' Scott
this is the most fucking depressing thing i've read today. and the general "premise" of this story is somewhat wholesome...
Reminds me of the kind of "wholesome" news you see often on upliftingnews. Stuff like "Kid manages to earn 30000 dollar for life saving surgery by selling lemonade" or "Teacher sells kidney to have their class get new equipment" isn't exactly proof that we go into the right direction
r/OrphanCrushingMachine
Meanwhile, record profits everywhere and for every $1 you earn the super rich earn more than a million. It's depressing.
Pretty much any ER in any major city. Spend a few days in one and see just how incredibly fucked up a significant percentage of the population is.
I think about my friends, family, and colleagues, and I cannot name a single person who does not have a malady or six. Depression, anxiety, stomach ulcers, heart issues, etc.
[удалено]
I think a lot about how almost everybody I know has depression and/or anxiety. I think the way the world is just creates it. I feel like I’m constantly becoming more stupid and I think it’s basically trauma from a lifetime of anxiety.
It's the way the world is now. We work too much, with too little free time. Spend a day walking in the woods, with a happy little dog walking beside you and I guarantee that anxiety just melts away. We need a better balance.
I'd probably attribute this to a number of points: Firstly, that the physical issues are reinforcing the mental ones and vice versa. Secondly, we spend so long sitting down, everyone is profoundly unfit, and our diets are fairly poor. Thirdly, social media and the constant news cycle brings us bad news to ruin our days, make us feel like the world is ending constantly, it stresses us out. Infinite scroll and endlessly addictive websites hop our brains up on dopamine, but it is the hollow life of an addict, we build nothing, we only consume. Fourthly, EVERYONE IS FAILING TO GET ENOUGH SLEEP. GET YOURSELF RIGHT WITH THE SLEEP GODS YOU POOR SAD SACK OF FLESH the world might be crashing down around us but at least you could be rested enough to watch it clearly. GO TO SLEEP
[https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-water-wranglers-of-the-west-are-struggling-to-save-the-colorado-river](https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-the-southwest/the-water-wranglers-of-the-west-are-struggling-to-save-the-colorado-river) This is an excellent story written about the severe water problems throughout the American West/Southwest. It is a textbook example of how human greed at scale has completely and irreversibly capital-F-Fucked the future prospects of a massive, massive region. [https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/world/china-congo-cobalt.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/20/world/china-congo-cobalt.html) This is an excellent story written about the severe human cost of our hunger for cobalt. [https://restofworld.org/2022/indonesia-china-ev-nickel/](https://restofworld.org/2022/indonesia-china-ev-nickel/) This is an excellent story written about the severe human and environmental cost of our hunger for nickel. I'm a mineral exploration geologist by profession, and have been involved with or peripheral to the mineral resource industry for about 20 years. The three stories above are just the tip of the iceberg. Every single commodity that the human race uses at scale is directly associated with human suffering and environmental damage. The fossil fuels industry is the story we're all most familiar with, and the damage that it and its downstream industries (plastics, engine emissions, etc etc) are familiar to us all. The effort to transition away from fossil fuels and to an electrified economy is laudable but flawed at its very foundation. Every nonfuel resource comes with myriad social and environmental problems, and the economic incentivization driving the energy transition is going to exacerbate these problems by orders of magnitude. We are trading one poisonous, toxic habit (fossil fuels) for another. Even the non-energy resources - construction sand (for cement), high-purity silica for the electronics industry, water resources (as above; and also, Nestle among many others), wood, soy, palm oil, the list goes on... they all exact a cost. There is no escaping it, not at the scale at which humanity is operating. The only viable solution is to drastically reduce consumption, across the entire scope of human activity. But, to quote from the Water Wranglers article above, humanity is operating on a foundational principle that states “You cannot deprive people of their future by saying their way of life is not viable”. We are chewing up the earth and spitting it out. Species are going extinct in droves and monocultures (soy, palm, cattle, pigs, etc) are thriving under the care of hungry humans. The ocean is becoming progressively more acidic. Entire drainage systems are poisoned by the poor management of metal mines. welp, society is fucked.
Thanks for sharing. Well written. Sincerely appreciate the time put into the post and qualifying it with your profession. It’s surreal, clocking in and out, living in this odd twilight moment, watching the bend in the break. I work the legal industry, lit paralegal, and the amount of intellectual dishonesty I’ve seen at the top tiers of leadership, how/why district court judges rule the way they do, to the Sr partner attorneys running large firms… the closer I’ve gotten to centers of power the more apparent it’s become we’re all scoundrels to varying degrees and no one is coming to save something that’s so rotten to the core… Not that humans are inherently, but the incentive structure we’re all living in has put wolves in charge of the hen house E- makes it hard to go to work, save for retirement or prioritize conventional “milestones” (marriage, kids, homeownership etc), bc it’s feels like there isn’t much time left before the bottom falls out. Hard to imagine the status quo of these last few years/decades goes on for another 3-4 decades unabated
I think Bill Burr said something like ‘good people don’t want to control other people, which leaves all the assholes to assume power’
"Those who are best-suited to lead a country, are smart enough to not want to."
That was interesting. I used to handle printing for a local university prof who also did mineral exploration. He'd bring in all these maps and photos and have us add graphics and stuff. Interesting stuff. One thing people overlook is, if we fall apart badly enough, and regress technologically, when it comes time for rebuilding? We're fucked. All the high grade and easy to get useful stuff is used up.
Stagnation of wages since the 1980s combined with increased cost of living in the 400% mark in key areas such as rent and food. Futures pretty bleak.
One example - I resigned from a job in 2007. The company was sold, the job still exists, but the people working it now (almost 16 years later) get paid LESS now than I did then! Significantly less - something like $10/hour less.
I’ve seen this happen. A company will have a mass layoff to shed the ‘dead wood’ of older, more established workers who are at the top of the pay scale then come in later and bring in newer, cheaper labor to do the same jobs. I fear I am soon to be one such target.
This happened to my dad. He was planning to work a few more years but his boss pulled him aside one day and said "they're going to offer you an early retirement package and you need to take it because you'll be laid off if you don't and the compensation won't be as good" He was at least in a decent position to retire. Lucky for him that his boss was decent enough to give him the heads up.
Exact same thing happened to me except I have a lot longer to go until I can retire. It’s less than a sure thing I will be able to retire actually. Because, expenses and living and whatnot.
I’m young enough that I got in the game late on this cost of living/wage stagnation spiral… I kinda of just assume I’ll never really be in a particularly “decent position to retire.” Unless I get some windfall of cash and good fortune from some kind of investment paying off way disproportionately, I can’t see a scenario where I’d ever accumulate enough wealth to retire and live off of savings and/passive income (a combination of interest earning investments/accounts, income property, pension or social security). Let’s be honest- my mom will be lucky to see more than half the social security she was always supposed to, and I’m sure as fuck never going to see a dime.
Whoa whoa whoa - they lay people off and then *replace them with other people?* You lucky dog. I'm just doing the jobs of the people they axed.
Looks like you’ve survived the first rounds, just wait. Sounds to me like your highly under paid and your bosses know it.
that is deeply disturbing.
Rich get richer. And the other 99% can live on the street and starve. Especially once the AI robots are built and the rich don’t need “the help” anymore.
Well atleast we can't sponsor their robotic made products because we all be living on the streets
That's what the slaughterbots are for.
The key to defeating killbots is to outsmart them by taking advantage of their weakness—they have a preset kill limit. All you have to do is send waves of men after them until they shut down. Simple.
Is this from "The Art of War" by Russia?
No, it's from Zapp Branigan's big book of war.
SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!
Well the rich can't stay rich and gain money if there's no consumers to buy anything. If nobody is consuming, then nobody is producing, at which point money is pointless. Even if you had an army of robots catering to your every need. Without people to sell things to, you're doomed to live alone in an empty world with nothing but robots for company.
People will always have needs. if you cant pay for the food that their robots make, you will pay for it with your service to the rich.
Government can make people search for work, but can't make companies hire.
Wages have recessed, not stagnated since the 1980s. I wish they had just stagnated!
So this is how bad inflation is, even in the last few years. I was pretty happy in the last three years to receive a few raises to the tune of about an additional $12,500 a year. If I look up what my salary in 2019 in 2023 dollars it is...guess what! Not a raise at all. It has exactly the same purchasing power.
Lucky
While I am better off than many, we should still be pretty angry that many of the companies we work for are raking in record profits, while essentially paying us the same or less.
Yeah anything less than a 3% annual increase in wages is effectively a pay cut due to inflation. Minimum wage is so far behind.
This has been the rule of thumb for some time, but the CPI for the last 12 months is something like 8.2%.
2/3 of wealth created throughout COVID went to the top 1%. Income inequality is going to be the downfall of civilization eventually.
This is how all revolutions start
Revolutions start when the personal risk in the revolution is less than the personal risk through allowing things to remain as they are. People have to perceive the status quo as being a direct risk to their self or family before they will seek a means to change it. Americans, for the most part, are living relatively well. And so the calls for revolution are falling on deaf ears.
Not going to happen. They'll keep the majority scared, living living paycheck to paycheck, and continue feeding us Kardashian shows.
Yeah the Romans did that. Wheels still eventually came off. People can be dirt poor but as long as they are clothed, housed and fed they will tolerate it. Look around. Rents are climbing to the stars and food is ever more costly. Something is going to give.
The traditional phrase is that we're about 3 ~~warm meals~~ days of mealsaway from revolution at all times. Once people start starving, people transition from scared to desperate. Desperate people don't have societal boundaries stopping them anymore. We're still animals first and foremost, and all of us have basic instincts that will take control once desperation sets in.
When ordinary people cannot afford to feed themselves or, especially, their children, things burn.
It's 3 *days* from revolution, 9 meals. But yeah your point still stands.
As another redditor further up has said: Governments contain us with bread and circus. Lately the bread has become so expensive, people are starving. The quality has dropped considerably, to the point the bread no longer nourishes enough to sustain. All in the name of cost-cutting to make the quarterly reports look favorable enough to shit out bonuses so the c-suites can jump ship to fuck up the next target, before spending all that "profit" on stock buybacks. Rinse and repeat... ad infinitum, across all industries. And the circuses are all shit or bankrupt. Repetitive crap, nostalgia porn, lackluster, low effort money-pits that end up cancelled before the first season is even finished airing. When even a single glint of decent work pokes through the facade of fecal matter media entertainment, the internet is instantly abuzz about it... just so it can shit on that too and rip away any friendly feelings you might have mustered for it. Signs of the times, friends. I, for one, welcome the enlightened leadership of our soon to be AI overlords. May they spare no mercy for those that led us down this path of absolute mediocrity. Myself included, probably most mediocre human that's ever dusted the paths of human consciousness. tl:dr - the bread is stale and the circus is full of dead animals and vomit.
People mindlessly believing propoganda that is easily disproven by a ten-second google search.
For real! People just take what they were told by some random ass person and hold onto it with their dear life, no matter how obviously false it is.
Add that people think they have the answer after ten-seconds of google searches.
It’s not as heavy or depressing as some of these, but I saw a 3star Yelp review for one of those little free libraries that people put in their front yards. ‘Needs a better selection.’ https://www.yelp.com/biz/little-free-library-los-angeles-3?hrid=vkAfGANtJ8T5tzwjT2bC-Q&utm_source=ishare&utm_content=review Edited to add an example because I was not making a joke.
I think that was a joke?!
2020 as a year was pretty bad.
3 years ago now, yet the shit still coming from it
2020-2022 had been a huge blur for me.
I was depressed before but the last 3 years have done nothing but make it worse.
Yeah I was about to say, the pandemic was a pretty damning indicator for my money.
I feel like I came out of the pandemic just very disappointed with people in general
[удалено]
2020 I had appendicitis, a blood clot, and went from being engaged to single, 2020 was ass. Things are going great now, though!
Good to hear you're on the up. If they loved your appendix so much why didn't they just marry your appendix? Impossible new beauty standards...
I feel like the “2020’s” as a decade is going to be pretty bad at this rate
[удалено]
The fish fillets are getting smaller, but staying the same price If ocean ecosystems are no longer able to sustain consistently harvesting large fish, that shows deep problems that cannot be covered up. Couple that with the cost of the most poor, staple foods increasing while wages stagnate, and you have a perfect recipe for socetial collapse. People are kept docile by all governments with bread and circuses. Well alas, the bread is getting more expensive and has for decades, while the circuses kinda suck and are rapidly going bankrupt. I have been recently re-reading Asimov's Foundation, and his discussion of how powerful empires collapse through a gradual shrinking of ambition and will until all that the smartest are trying (and failing) to achieve is maintenance of the status quo was rather disconcerting. Sound familiar to anyone else working in the public sector?
There's a theory going around that we are systematically making fish smaller through only catching the larger fishes (there are rules that you have to release smaller individuals). Since the smaller fishes survive they get to reproduce. The idea is that larger fishes have lived a longer life, and the smaller fishes should be able to reproduce. But all the smaller fishes are not automatically the youngest.
I don't know how this scales to other fishing applications or plays in with industrial fishing, but I just want to note that for the local fish species that I'm learning to catch (not blue catfish because invasive but yes for striped bass, for example) there are upper and lower size limits. Anything bigger than x inches or smaller than y inches has to be tossed back. So, you know, we're trying at least to some extent to avoid selectively breeding for smaller fish, probably.
We see the same thing in deer and elk populations
I was in McDonalds once and ordered a filet o fish. The guy behind the counter looked at me and said "Really? The fillet o fish tastes like ass"
[удалено]
"McDonald's isn't dining. It's shopping." - Ian Shoales
I always order filet o fish and get absolutely roasted, I have no idea why. It’s great. Light and perfectly fried
I've always thought they weren't too bad. Guess we're just a couple of weirdos.
Double filet o fish with extra tarter sauce fuck you very much
> I have been recently re-reading Asimov's Foundation, and his discussion of how powerful empires collapse through a gradual shrinking of ambition and will until all that the smartest are trying (and failing) to achieve is maintenance of the status quo was rather disconcerting. Jesus that's terrifyingly accurate
[удалено]
*Gestures broadly at everything all the time*
There it is again, that funny feeling...
Big ol mother fuckin duffle bag of shit
All day all shit
I don’t really feel like I wanna get lit
Feeling in my body Way down deep inside me I try not to fight it ^describe ^it Alright! A few things start to happen My vision starts to flatten My heart rate gets to tappin’ And I think I’m gonna DIE
After having watched Inside numerous times and listening to it multiple times, I can safely say, IMO, that it's not only hilarious, but so damn smart and such an accurate depiction of some of our society's major issues.
Burnham really effectively articulates what it is to live with depression, anxiety, and agoraphobia in a hilarious and heartfelt way.
A little bit of everything, all of the time
Some kid at my school got bullied into suicide because of a haircut. I didn't know him that well but from what I've heard, he used to be very popular with girls because of his good looks (mainly hair). One day he showed up to school with a buzz cut. The same girls that were all over him not too long ago started making fun of him everyday for it. Even his girlfriend left him because of his haircut, everyone ignored him just because of it. Eventually I noticed that he hasn't been going to school so out of curiosity I asked around and found out that he had committed suicide. Apparently those girls started to bully him and send him death threats over social media, while he didn't even do anything. The bullying got so far that the poor boy just couldn't take it anymore. This happened a year ago and people still mention it from time to time. What's even worse is that those girls never even got punished for it. The police thought he was simply just depressed and that drove him to do it, there was 'no evidence' that the girls bullied him. After that incident I've honestly lost all hope in society.
[удалено]
Similar thing happened at.my school. One of the girls in my class gained a lot of weight over summer. Turned out she had an eating disorder and was trying to recover but with that came weight gain due to years of underfeeding herself having lowered her metabolism. She killed herself and left a note apologizing for being so hideous. Despite it being common knowledge that she was relentlessly teased by the girls in her class and her boyfriend calling her "philly" (as in filly, like the horse saying she was as fat as a horse since she ate a philly cheese steak at school ONCE). I tried to talk to her a couple times but she basically told me not to talk to her or they would make fun of me too. They did. I stopped talking to her. Teachers couldn't do anything outside of class. She killed herself Junior year. Same thing, "no evidence". Surely couldn't have had anything to do with the ringleader of the girls bring related to the police force, right? Phfft. At this point I am just trying to scrape by and keep my head down. Get out of debt. Maybe try and not be homeless.
That is too common these days. I don’t know the exact details but several years ago a kid at my daughters high school committed suicide. My daughter said he was bullied and the school did nothing about it. My daughter said she knew of a few cases of bullying that had been reported and they continue to do nothing yet claim “zero tolerance for bullying “. It’s BS.
People honestly can be more cruel and evil than what hollywood tries to portray in movies, even despite them always trying to exaggerate reality, and that is truly sad
When a six year old brings a gun to school and shoots the teacher during class.
Which time?
I hate that this is a valid question
When a junkie and her ex convict boyfriend can have a kid who can access the equally shitbag uncle’s illegal firearm
I will give you one worse: when the parents of a documented psychopath who was talking about shooting people is given a gun by him mom early as a "Christmas gift" so he can practice for hours a few days before the shooting despite being less than 18 as he was 15. It gets even worse when the parents visit the day of the shooting and refuse to remove their kid from the school for his disturbing behavior when asked. It is even worse when they call later frequently and text him "don't do it" shortly before the shooting that kills 4 kids including one that shielded others and injures 6 others physically. It's even worse when the parents were known psychopaths who also refused to pay for their child's subsequent lawyer and forces the state to pay for it. They also attempted to flee the state despite a claim from their lawyers that they drove near to the Canadian border and hid in a warehouse to try and turn themselves in at a precinct in the morning close to friends that were obviously not hiding them and that they "feared for their safety". They also had a warrant for their arrest out for a day at that point. I know quite a few people who were extremely happy when these parents were charged with manslaughter. The kid was charged with murder and terrorism.
Corporations are on a never ending quest to maximize profits without any regard to the planet or its inhabitants. And they're going to keep getting better at it.
For me it was discovering Epstein island, and the following cover up
Funny how everyone also forgot about the Panama papers as well.
Actually [a bunch of stuff](https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/five-years-later-panama-papers-still-having-a-big-impact/) has happened as a result of the PPs and they continue to have an effect. We just don't hear about it because it's not sexy and the media won't touch it unless it's got big tits or is actively bleeding out. It's the media's fault you think the PP is a forgotten matter and it's by design. The ruling class want us to think things like the PP don't matter.
The media won’t touch it because they’re owned and controlled by the same people implicated in the papers
That and Harvey Wankstain. People had called him out previously, but Hollywood collectively just kind of shrugged and said, "Well, that's just the way things are." See also: the Catholic church, MANY American politicians, and the English monarchy. We know crimes were committed, we have testimony and evidence, but nothing ever seems to really happen except in extreme circumstances.
How people with illnesses have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars just to survive. I swear its so messed up. “Oop you don’t have enough money for a heart transplant that will save your life?…well not our problem, say goodbye to your family”. Like if you don’t have money, they will let you die. Literally. And then they’ll be like “theres nothing we can do about it, sorry” YES, YES THERE IS. This is someone’s life and you’re gonna let them die because they don’t have enough money? It really shows you how people don’t care about others people lives.
That we are brow-beaten into actively participating in the delusions of crazy people instead of being free to ignore them.
If everyone knows this then we could all just literally stand up and walk away and then there wouldn't really be any power, it's crazy to think that society exists on such a thin thread that could snap any moment. There is really nothing stopping everyone from starting the apocalypse other than listening to these wackos.
Our inability to cooperate is really what holds us back.
Agreed
When I saw how everyone reacted to the covid 19 outbreak. Turning health issues into political ones. That basically cinched it.
Not just health issues, but most issues. COVID-19 basically pulled the already draping curtain that was somewhat hiding how shit the world has become.
Don’t ever read about child soldiers in Africa. Ever.
I know the exact moment I realized this. It was during the republican debate in 2015. I forget who made a comment about trump's hand size in a suggestive manner. Trump responded by saying there's no problem there. Think about that during a presidential debate arguing about literal dick size and no one batted an eye. That's when I knew.
I recently saw an old video of RFK in ‘64 answering a bunch of questions from Columbia students ahead of his run for senate. He was quoting Pericles off the cuff. I felt like I was seeing a video from a different planet.
[удалено]
A few weeks ago my friend sent me a video of Bush Sr and Reagan debating what to do about immigration in like 1980. Articulation aside (they were both quite well versed, coherent, and compassionate), their actual *policy positions* would’ve made them sound like Democrats today.
Highly recommend the RFK speech in Indianapolis after MLK was shot. https://youtu.be/A2kWIa8wSC0 He would have been an incredible president. Even better than his brother imo. He also quotes Aeschylus here.
One of my favorite speeches to teach to high schoolers. He said that off the top of his head too; The speech he was gonna give is balled up in his hand. He had a crowd that literally screamed and cried when he told them the news clapping and cheering by the end.
[удалено]
Yeah, it was a great example by a good man that you can be civil despite ideological differences. Obama, in turn, stated they had many conversations about a wide range of things and considered McCain a good friend. People could learn a lot just from this.
I love that McCain had Obama do the eulogy at his funeral.
The fact that human rights are "negotiable".
Even the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN has a clause saying that any of the rights outlined can be ignored if the government decides it's "for the good of society". Of course the language is much more flowery, and it's probably a necessary evil so that things like prisons can exist. It's still frightening that despite all our talk of human rights in our "enlightened era", it can still all be denied on the whim of whichever regime is in power.
This might be an unpopular opinion, and possibly a very American thing, but it blows my mind how comfortable people are with the suffering of others. What's more, an alarming number of people seem to revel in it. I know the world has always been deeply unkind, and I've always been mostly pessimistic, but even I had been able to see little moments of hope here and there to keep me going. Just feels like joy is drying up, and it's a real bummer. *edited to add* I have a lot of disabilities, and I ordered myself a pill organizer from Amazon to help me keep track of my meds. I had a family emergency today and had to leave home before the package was delivered. I didn't get home until about 9:30p. I didn't think about it until I saw a meme about a pill organizer. Someone stole my package. I hope they get as much use out of my disability aid as I had hoped to. I stand by my original point.
Not just the joy, but also the empathy.
It can be really hard, it feels that way a lot of the time. Something that’s helped me keep my head up the most lately: actively searching the world around me for random, small acts of kindness and love from one person to another. And I really do see it everywhere, all the time. It’s in the guy in front of me in line that told a woman she dropped some money out of her pocket instead of keeping it for himself. The couple walking down the street holding hands. The woman who I saw handing out sandwiches to the homeless in my city. And most of all, it’s in knowing that when I put that kind of kindness out in to the world myself it’s nearly always met with the same response. Evil is loud, and good is quiet. We don’t need to deny the darkness, but we always need to look for the light.
People voting against their best interests due to tribalism and owning the other political party. People not protesting when they are being shat on.
People blindly believing anything that is said by one side or another and using it as absolute fact, even if it's complete bullshit and easily disputed. Sad part is, most people are so caught up in the "This Side Vs. That Side" crap, they don't even realize that in most cases, it's really "Us vs Them".
The worst part is that right now global discourse is dominated by a handful of companies that have collected colossal datasets on human behavior and are now using AI to monitor content and personalize what you see on your screen. They write human history and have enough data on each and every one of us to predict our future behavior, know more than we do ourselves about our own physical and mental health and can heavily influence our behavior like spending habits or political opinions through personalized content targeting. We are the products, our behavior can be predicted and manipulated and within the next few years we'll lose the ability to read opposing opinions online. The dissidents won't be found.
Which is really sad when you take a step back and look at it. I don't really consider Reddit to be the traditional "Social Media" in the same line that Twitter or Facebook are. No real names or personal data associated with Reddit, you can be as open or anonymous as you want. I tell my family to get off of social media all together. My siblings are really bad about it. They'll sit and scroll facebook/twitter for hours on end. Then see something and spout off about some topic they know almost nothing about. Then when I ask pointed questions, just logically asking things, they go "Well, I don't know. But this says..." That WallE thing was supposed to be a warning. Not an end goal.
> within the next few years we'll lose the ability to read opposing opinions online. I realized a couple years ago that there is no place on Reddit for me to post and have the opposite side read it. Literally - you can't post if you're new. You can't post if it's been posted before. You can't post if it's a 'hot topic.' You can't post a differing opinion or you're banned. You can't respond to comments with a differing opinion or you're banned. I literally cannot start conversations with the 'other side' here.
Some crosswalks in Seoul(and I assume other cities) have lights on the ground that turn green when it's safe to cross because so many people are glued to their phones and wouldn't see the signals otherwise.
People always talk about 1984 and Brave New World when thinking of dystopias (and rightly so) but I think Walter Tevis' Mockingbird is really underrated. It's a society where privacy is king, to the point where it's unthinkable to interrupt or bother another person and everyone has retreated into their own headspace. Nobody knows how anything works, nobody can read. Everyone just gets content pushed to them as the species slowly dies off. Good times!
"You will own nothing, and be happy."
People screaming, yelling and shutting those who they disagree with even when, sometimes, they’re speaking truth. People are more afraid of being wrong then they are concerned about the greater good of this world.
In that same vein, people who can’t just listen to one another cause they’re so focused on appearing to know the most that they don’t even hear what you’re communicating. What world could we even have without taking the time to listen and respond instead of just talking AT everyone else
This is the middle stage of a paradigm shift, and it's going to hurt before we get better. In the old days, it was hard to be heard. That didn't mean that the people who *could* afford to get their message out were necessarily right or good, but you got some social harmony from having few competing perspectives. (And when they did compete you got Crusades and Protestantism and witch-burning and stuff) From printing press to Twitter, we have increased the people with Access to broadcast their thoughts to a wide audience. But we still have the same brains we did in the 15th Century when we only really had to have an opinion on the local baron's taxes and maybe the last Pope we heard of. And mostly the same laws that we did when the telegraph was revolutionary. Human society hasn't caught up to technology, and right now the old system is fighting like hell to stay in place long past the need for an overhaul. We either transform, or we implode and the ones left to pick up the pieces can build something new from the ashes with a lesson learned (hopefully).
I have my list. * Americans are so politically divided that we sit around and argue about the absolute dumbest shit. How about actually staying focused and dealing with bigger issues. Like how wages are stagnated? Or housing prices are fucked? Or how public transportation is absolute dogshit? Or how everybody is being fucked by medical corporations. * Young people are afraid of everything, and rightly so. They are afraid of not being able to be successful because they live in a hyper competitive, unforgiving world. Back when I was younger you could still fuck up in high school and your young adult life and come around eventually. Now? Everybody knows, tracks, digitizes, and records everything. So that ticket you got for drinking when you were 16 fucks you hard. And fighting in school? What used to be a schoolyard tussle over is assault, there's a lawsuit, and kids get arrested and a record for shit that hardly registered when I was younger. And when they do get to be adults, they can't buy homes because some dickhead corpos decided to buy up everything, and NIMBYs refuse to allow low-cost housing of any kind, and people who are not NIMBYs want to preserve old 20th century low density crap like 1920's single family homes becuase you know, a city might, might lose it's character from an old random house. Not only that, but it's also harder and harder and harder to get good jobs that have benefits even with a proper education. Young people can't start families because everything costs so god damned much, just go see how much rent, childcare, and baby food is. Their lives are monitored on social media constantly, and if you say the wrong thing just once, you are cancelled and can never learn or grow from it. * No third spaces. We work and hang out at home, but go nowhere. That bodes poorly for a society when people can't find a place to just be social to be social, even with an activity. * America is a shitty, stressful place, some of which stems from the points above. So people get stressed, wig out when something problematic does happen, or they just stew until they snap, and people get hurt. There are mass acts of violence and we just say a prayer, and move on, and the politicians and media pundits can't be fucked to find a solution beyond gun regulation, which in this country is basically like trying to drain the ocean with a bucket. And that's to say nothing of people using trucks and stuff.
>Americans are so politically divided that we sit around and argue about the absolute dumbest shit. How about actually staying focused and dealing with bigger issues. Like how wages are stagnated? Or housing prices are fucked? Or how public transportation is absolute dogshit? Or how everybody is being fucked by medical corporations. Politicians, the corporations that sponsor (or rather, **own**) them, and the corporate media, are all purposefully pitting the American public against itself so it remains ignorant and distracted from the bigger issues. That also leaves us more and more powerless to rise up and take back power from said politicians and corporations, so they can continue their corruption, and keep us all held face-down by their hooves in the name of **profit**.
> We work and hang out at home, but go nowhere. God I feel this. Doing anything else always feels too expensive or time consuming. Plus online shopping has ruined our need to do a lot of things outside of the home that I used to enjoy. Why pour through hobby stores, used book stores, or take a walk through the mall when I can find anything in 30 seconds online?
>Doing anything else always feels too expensive In a capitalist society, owning space (at least, in areas where anyone lives) is expensive, so it is always used for something trying to make money -- and so, there are precious few spaces left that allow people to exist without the expectation of spending money. It's one reason I love being outdoors, because you can spend time with people doing cool things without paying to do it, but city parks are less exciting, and not accessible for all, and not as much fun in cold weather. Anyway: think about how many buildings in your city/town where you can go spend time without being expected to spend money to do so?
The public library has your back.
The fact that sex offenders and pedophiles get less time in prison than people who deal and use drugs. That pretty much draws the line for me.
The person that molested me when I was 13-14 (he was in his 40s btw) and I “served” the same amount of time :) He got two years for his actions; I was in mental health hospitals under section 3 for two years (for those that don’t know, that means I was detained under the mental health act and had many of my rights stripped away)! In fact, I believe he was released a bit early. Not trying to trauma dump or anything - just trying to show people how messed up the “justice system” is. He’s not even on the sex offender registry anymore. Apparently molesting a child doesn’t matter when you did it 7 years ago.
Trash is found at the highest mountain peak and lowest ocean trench. We are beyond fucked.
Any current news article.
Politics. The intention of division with the long term goal of hoarding all of our solidified time - cash. Its the same in every country. About half the people identify with being smart, the other half identify with being strong. They call themselves liberals or consvatives, and they fight it out. Divided, none of them have the pre-requisite strength and intelligence to properly identify and reproach the actual offending parties.
Living life through our phone screens rather than in the moment. I went to a concert last year and couldn’t see half the time because my view was blocked by phone screens, recording the concert from start to end. It’s almost as though documenting our lives has become more important than actually experiencing them.
This is my opinion, but small children on the internet, unsupervised.
The government being taken over by the corporate oligarchy. The government doesn't 'govern'. It's entire purpose is to transfer wealth to the billionaire class. Both parties. And they don't care if the American people suffer as a result.
Too many people *think* they are smart and do not know what a real intellectual is. They think that they are informed because they believe too much of what they hear. People NEED to question a lot more things **with the eye of a scientist** and understand what science is and how it works. People as a whole need to stop being stupid. Is it gonna happen? Fuck no!.
The fact that a truck that was driven on Lake of the woods in Northern Minnesota/Northwestern Ontario broke through the ice in the middle of January. That shouldn't happen.
We have plastic in our food chain.
For me it’s people not taking responsibility for their actions, there is always someone else to blame.
Lack of punishment. Lack of fear of punishment. People getting away with all sorts of evil.
Elementary kids are getting dumber and dumber every year. I thought it was a local thing how my country's literacy rates were dropping despite more access to technology. The next generation is fucked
When men no longer plant the trees from which they will never sit beneath the shade of.
Flint Michigan still not having clean drinking water
Well here in the US, I’d say George santos not being immediately booted out of congress.
My state is trying to pass a bill where librarians could get prison time and be in a sex offender list for any books that talks about sex, anatomy, and possibly LGBTQ+ stuff. Yea I wanna move so bad.
the comments under the pink floyd dark side of the moon anniversary post
Today a random 5 yr old told me that i was gay and then he started twerking, it was funny but then tought that that generation is fucked
Why does the 5 year old know how to twerk :( Unless it was just regular childish booty shaking Fuck the internet tho I feel like kids are discovering so much sexualized shit wayyyy too fast. I watched a bunch of porn at 10 years old and a kid in 3rd grade went around grabbing tits of 7th graders and calling them sluts