Funny events in anti-woke world

[Gergar12]

Bear in mind how Trump has used his charities/foundations/etc. You absolutely know that in Trump's mind that they have given him a 747.



Bollocks. The president of the USA is a fucking billionaire, and he's grabbing everything that isn't nailed down. There are undoubtedly some politicians who would be less inclined to corruption were they paid more, but there might not be that many of them, and you need to face facts that a ton of politicians, like the current president, will stuff their pockets no matter what you pay them.

You don't deal with corruption by buying the fucks off with massive salaries, you make it institutionally difficult. You enforce accountability and transparency, and you scrutinise the shit out of everyone with utmost vigilance. SCOTUS haven't been bothering, and that's why they're accepting kickbacks left, right and centre. The President is going wild because SCOTUS have declared his corruption none of their business and his party in Congress refuse to even acknowledge there might be a problem, never mind act on it. That's why you're corrupt as fuck. Your elites have decided that they aren't interested in policing themselves.

That's why I mentioned that we need to increase the cost of corruption too, but on the salary point. A state rep in many states makes minimum wage. So they need a day job vs doing their civic duty. A house rep in the US Congress doesn't make enough to have one home in DC case in point AOC, and many others who need to have apartments or live in their office, I don't know about you but I would rather have a house rep not sleep in a sleeping bag before voting on approving a low-level cabinet position that may be the voice of reason that stops the US from doing something dumb like invading Iran on Israel's and the neocon's orders. Or signs off on a bill that could be the new Jones Act that kills US commercial shipbuilding. Politicians aren't holy men they need to feed their families, many US presidents weren't billionaires. Case in point Grant, and Truman.

I also would like to mention that your recommendations rely on an engaged citizenry, which isn't a constant. Whereas once you put in say a minimum wage increase or a state rep pay increase it stays generally for a long time or will get increased. As for elites policing themselves, there is capital/'the rich' bribing people in EU and European capitals like the UK, Russia, Germany, and France they just occur more slowly but America's fate will one thing be Western Europe, Canada, NZ, and Australia's fate as well. As for Trump being a billionaire, he's an anomaly. Most US presidents aren't billionaires in the 21st century.

 

[Agema]

That's why I mentioned that we need to increase the cost of corruption too, but on the salary point. A state rep in many states makes minimum wage. So they need a day job vs doing their civic duty. A house rep in the US Congress doesn't make enough to have one home in DC case in point AOC, and many others who need to have apartments or live in their office, I don't know about you but I would rather have a house rep not sleep in a sleeping bag before voting on approving a low-level cabinet position that may be the voice of reason that stops the US from doing something dumb like invading Iran on Israel's and the neocon's orders.

Okay, but that's a slightly different issue.

The argument you seem to be getting at here is that a politician should be paid appropriately to their expertise and responsibility. So, roughly equivalent to others with a similar level job (although I'd draw a line in terms of the high end of corproate pay and full remuneration). So for instance you could readily make a case that a federal senator should be paid a senior management level salary: maybe around the $500k - $1 million range? Then presumably the president more than senators and federal representatives less.

Given the need for politicians to work both in their home state and the capital, I would assume they should have relevant expenses: travel and accommodation (for digs appropriate to their station - e.g. rent of a reasonable size apartment in a decent area of town).

 

[Schadrach]

But I mean, Joe Rogan said none of it mattered as long as you boofed enough ivermectin and creatine, or something.

I love some of the crazier ivermectin related conspiracy madness. My personal favorite is recently seeing someone claiming that homosexuality is caused by parasites, and that BIG PHARMA and the JEWISH MEDIA don't want you to know about ivermectin because it can kill those parasites and cure homosexuality. throw in a comparison to toxoplasma gondii effecting rat behavior as a justification for that belief.

Also seen DMSO making the rounds as the new secret cure-all BIG PHARMA is hiding from you. Looking forward to being able to tell who falls for that one at a distance since it tends to make you smell strongly of garlic.

Sen. Joni Ernst defends Medicaid cuts, says 'well, we all are going to die'

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst is facing backlash after saying that “we all are going to die” while talking about potential changes to Medicaid eligibility at a town hall in north-central Iowa.

apnews.com

Oh wow, thats a new perspective I never considered, wow thanks GOP.

 

[Casual Shinji]

I guess neglecful parents will have a good excuse now; 'It's not like I killed my child, I just didn't provide it any medical attention. I mean, everybody dies. Abortion, now that's murder.'

 

[Chimpzy]

 

[Agema]

I love some of the crazier ivermectin related conspiracy madness. My personal favorite is recently seeing someone claiming that homosexuality is caused by parasites, and that BIG PHARMA and the JEWISH MEDIA don't want you to know about ivermectin because it can kill those parasites and cure homosexuality. throw in a comparison to toxoplasma gondii effecting rat behavior as a justification for that belief.

If you ever needed to understand that ivermectin consumption was a cult, you need merely consider why anyone is still banging on about it years after it's even lost its Covid-19 relevance. It became religiously important to them, they can't let it go.

Also seen DMSO making the rounds as the new secret cure-all BIG PHARMA is hiding from you.

Oh dear lord. It's a solvent. If you're doing an experiment on a biological sample and your drug dissolves in water, great. If it's hydrophobic and not so good at dissolving in water, try ethanol. And if it won't dissolve in ethanol either, then use DMSO. Max end concentration usually recommended as 0.1%, although I know some say 1% is tolerable for a biological sample. On general principles, the less the better.

Fun fact, people have killed themselves with careless use of DMSO. The same properties that make it really good at dissolving hydrophobic compounds means it's also really good at being absorbed through your skin, and it'll take with it whatever stuff was dissolved in it.

 

[Schadrach]

Oh dear lord. It's a solvent. If you're doing an experiment on a biological sample and your drug dissolves in water, great. If it's hydrophobic and not so good at dissolving in water, try ethanol. And if it won't dissolve in ethanol either, then use DMSO. Max end concentration usually recommended as 0.1%, although I know some say 1% is tolerable for a biological sample. On general principles, the less the better.

Fun fact, people have killed themselves with careless use of DMSO. The same properties that make it really good at dissolving hydrophobic compounds means it's also really good at being absorbed through your skin, and it'll take with it whatever stuff was dissolved in it.

I'm well aware what DMSO is (hence the crack about smelling like garlic, a side effect of taking DMSO is you smell strongly of garlic as your body rids itself of the stuff). It's only really approved for human use for interstitial cystitis and in limited applications as a pain reliever. It's also pretty commonly used in dermal patches in veterinary applications because of what you mentioned about it being unusually good at pulling things dissolved in it into the body through the skin, much more so than other common solvents.

Which brings up an interesting question - I wonder why far-right quack medicine so often picks things with common veterinary applications as cure-alls concealed by BIG PHARMA and JEWISH MEDIA. Like, why not something obscure, as opposed to something you might be able to get off Amazon or from Tractor Supply? It seems like they'd be better able to corner a market on their miracle quack-all if they didn't have to undercut them for it, and it'd be a lot easier to claim it was being hidden by BIG PHARMA if you couldn't get it OTC for your animals at...anywhere that carries farm supplies, or even pretends to.

Which reminds me, I need to fill a prescription for one of my dogs this evening, she's almost out of what is essentially doggy Vioxx.

 

[Agema]

Which brings up an interesting question - I wonder why far-right quack medicine so often picks things with common veterinary applications as cure-alls concealed by BIG PHARMA and JEWISH MEDIA. Like, why not something obscure, as opposed to something you might be able to get off Amazon or from Tractor Supply? It seems like they'd be better able to corner a market on their miracle quack-all if they didn't have to undercut them for it, and it'd be a lot easier to claim it was being hidden by BIG PHARMA if you couldn't get it OTC for your animals at...anywhere that carries farm supplies, or even pretends to.

Perhaps the trick is not to undercut something easily obtainable, it's to take something easily obtainable and apply a massive mark-up to it. For instance, you can buy a good leather wallet that will last you 20 years for $30, or you can buy a good leather wallet that will last you 20 years for $600 dollars if it's got "Prada" stitched on it.

Or alternatively, maybe they're kind of trapped by what happens to go viral, because if the story is that Big Pharma is ripping them off because the human formulation costs five times the animal formulation, it's just going to have to be horse dewormer.

Which reminds me, I need to fill a prescription for one of my dogs this evening, she's almost out of what is essentially doggy Vioxx.

Yeah, that sounds right. People are a lot less worried about all cause mortality in animals compared to humans, and why not claim back some of those R&D costs for drugs that didn't quite make the grade for humans via the veterinary market? I was anaesthetising lab rats with halothane long after it was obsolete for humans, although I guess liver toxicity isn't such a big deal for something you're about to decapitate immediately after.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

I never said it wouldn't get backlash-- though if the backlash is solely focused on the actor's ethnicity when it doesn't even matter to the character, I'm going to care a lot less.

Is backlash a reason not to do something, then? Keaton shouldn't have been Batman?



Ah, so your defence of RFK rests on the assumption he can't influence his own department.



Hmm. Did it, though? I can find nothing about this except for Reddit, and the second shot appears to be quite poorly photoshopped. And you're extraordinarily gullible.

If a character I liked was changed, I'd be less likely to what to see that movie. The Keaton example was that they changed the character even less than they are now.

I don't worry about things that aren't possibly gonna happen regardless of what those things are.

Even if that image is photoshopped, that actually makes more sense than some of the stuff I know what happened like kids being forced to wear masks outside. Kids were wearing masks outside during Super Bowl 2022 (remember this is 2022!!!) when no one inside was following the mask mandate. Kids being forced out of a park when a parent is trying to teach them to ride a bike, that literally happened. A school in New York until at least 2023 (perhaps even still going on, who knows) made kids have silent lunches and mask outside. The playing of instruments with cut up masks is just more ridiculous looking, at least the kids are inside and not outside.

You mean other than literally every study and article about how airborne viruses propagate, since the discovery of how airborne viruses propagated. In the face of a novel SARS outbreak about which we knew nothing up to and including long-term effects on the body, the closest comparison to which was, you know, SARS. Which quite obviously, was an airborne virus.

But I mean, Joe Rogan said none of it mattered as long as you boofed enough ivermectin and creatine, or something.

I could give a shit less about Phoenix or what he said here. As long as I've forced him to look up what boofing is, I've achieved my mission.

You do realized they used the guise of masking being crucial as a way to get people back to work and everything, right? They knew no studies ever showed masking was effective against airborne viruses. When Fauci initially said that masks don't work, he was going off the actual science. Literally the one thing to have been learned from the covid pandemic isn't even implemented today, which is don't go to work when you're sick. I have a friend that is a CNA (working with old people, the vulnerable) and if she calls off 2 days in a row, she gets written up. We couldn't even learn the most basic fucking thing.

Bullshit it did.

Kids in California couldn't go to the science museum even though they were vaccinated, the SCIENCE museum required them to be boosted as well.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Like, why not something obscure, as opposed to something you might be able to get off Amazon or from Tractor Supply?

There's no "might" to it. For a brief period in 2021, veterinary-use ivermectin was one of Amazon's biggest selling products. Shit was everywhere in the warehouses. One of the only times I ever directly contacted corporate pursuant to Amazon's internal feedback policies was over it, because no listings for it in the virtual catalog had disclaimers or waivers the stuff was not intended for human consumption and was not a replacement for proper care as proscribed by a professional -- and some dipshit getting themselves hospitalized over it or dying, and them or their next-of-kin suing Amazon for selling it, would be exactly the kind of dipshit move you'd expect from these people.

Of course nothing was done about it, but I fulfilled my ethical obligation.

It seems like they'd be better able to corner a market on their miracle quack-all if they didn't have to undercut them for it, and it'd be a lot easier to claim it was being hidden by BIG PHARMA if you couldn't get it OTC for your animals at...anywhere that carries farm supplies, or even pretends to.

It's basically what Agema said -- find something that is incredibly cheap to produce, not under patent so that it can be made generically (or imported from economic southern countries with far fewer pharmaceutical regulations), and available OTC. Rebrand it, upsell it to the marks who absolutely won't pay attention to the small print. That is, when it's an actual pharmaceutical product at all, as opposed to whatever wild west bullshit comprises the dietary supplement market at any given time.

 

[Hades]

Kids in California couldn't go to the science museum even though they were vaccinated, the SCIENCE museum required them to be boosted as well.

I honestly find it amazing the far right is still trying to paddle the tale that the public was done a horrific disservice just for measures being put in place to prevent death during a pandemic. Even if we were to say some measures retroactively proved ineffective I'd still rather have government trying something and getting it wrong then the government just marching everyone to sickness and death.

Its not some crime against humanity for a government to fumble during a pandemic and getting some of the things wrong. Its also not some crime against humanity for them to take measures in general.

Tossing away pandemic preparations, convincing the public its just a harmless flue that will get away by spring, or expressing interest in the idea of injecting yourself with bleach(to put it generously) despite knowing you have an easily influenced cult are the actual crimes here.

I'd honestly have more respect if they just admitted they were fine with the bodies of plebs and old people piling up in the streets if that's what it took to get the economy rolling for the shareholders again.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I'd honestly have more respect if they just admitted they were fine with the bodies of plebs and old people piling up in the streets if that's what it took to get the economy rolling for the shareholders again.

Hell, that's just a side benefit. The real draw is getting to feel smugly superior to everyone who died.

 

[meiam]

Hell, that's just a side benefit. The real draw is getting to feel smugly superior to everyone who died.

Conservative have lost all shred of identity beyond "opposing what liberal like", if you go back early in pandemic, all side were in favor of restriction and vaccine. But once the conservative realize the liberal liked it, they had to oppose it. They've spent so much energy demonizing the left that if they admitted that some things the left do are good, then that open the door for the sheep to ask what else the left might be good on.

 

[BrawlMan]

Sen. Joni Ernst defends Medicaid cuts, says 'well, we all are going to die'

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst is facing backlash after saying that “we all are going to die” while talking about potential changes to Medicaid eligibility at a town hall in north-central Iowa.

apnews.com

Oh wow, thats a new perspective I never considered, wow thanks GOP.

​

 

[Gergar12]

Okay, but that's a slightly different issue.

The argument you seem to be getting at here is that a politician should be paid appropriately to their expertise and responsibility. So, roughly equivalent to others with a similar level job (although I'd draw a line in terms of the high end of corproate pay and full remuneration). So for instance you could readily make a case that a federal senator should be paid a senior management level salary: maybe around the $500k - $1 million range? Then presumably the president more than senators and federal representatives less.

Given the need for politicians to work both in their home state and the capital, I would assume they should have relevant expenses: travel and accommodation (for digs appropriate to their station - e.g. rent of a reasonable size apartment in a decent area of town).

We have house reps living in their offices, AOC had begged someone near DC to take her in for what I guess is a few weeks. Gerald R Ford had to make cereal commercials. So no they don't already have it, and yes they should. And even for the president why would you pay Tim Cook 22 million for making IOS products but give Obama, or Biden 400K? That's not logical. No wonder we are so corrupt, and even your state reps are dealing with the state funds for tens to hundreds of thousands of people. Let's pay them 12K a year.

 

[Silvanus]

If a character I liked was changed, I'd be less likely to what to see that movie. The Keaton example was that they changed the character even less than they are now.

K, but that's not an ethical or moral concern, that's just your preference. Whereas earlier you were decrying it as racism.

I don't worry about things that aren't possibly gonna happen regardless of what those things are.

Why do you think the Department of Health is commissioning studies if they will affect nothing? Do you think RFK was just put in charge of a toybox and told he has power, whereas actually he's secretary of health in name only?

Even if that image is photoshopped, that actually makes more sense than some of the stuff I know what happened like [...]

Or, you could take the message that you shouldn't be so easily suckered by outrage bate, and to be a little more sceptical.

 

[tstorm823]

Even if we were to say some measures retroactively proved ineffective I'd still rather have government trying something and getting it wrong then the government just marching everyone to sickness and death.

Ok, but what if all the things that were stupid were known to be stupid in advance? What if it was well-known that the virus would become endemic, and the guidance from the government was 15 days of reduced contact to slow the spread to help the hospitals manage it? What if we already knew that cloth masks were only potentially useful for short periods of time, and strapping one to your face for 8 hours a day was ineffective at best? What if the pandemic response book you worry was thrown out didn't list, in any circumstances, long term mass isolation as an answer? What if all the things you think were "trying something" were actually throwing away and spitting on existing best practices?

 

[Hades]

Funny event in anti woke world? Well if you recall the last government fell because the right wing VVD fabricated a migration crisis so they could abandon their partners for more right wing ones. This resulted in Wilders winning the election and the Netherlands having its most inept coalition since WW2.

Well now Karma came for the VVD because now Wilders repeated that trick. Now HE fabricated a migration crisis out of nowhere and brought down the coalition. Meaning Wilders is now officially out of power, and the VVD has egg on their face. Saint Omzight's party is also going to get decimated for condoning a far right government yet also wanting to blockade their most extreme ideas, therefore pleasing absolutely no one.

Its a shame Wilders anounced it in the morning. Way too early for champagne. Oh who am I kidding. Its never too early for a drink. Bottoms up!
Dutch far-right leader Wilders quits coalition, toppling government | Reuters

 

[Agema]

We have house reps living in their offices, AOC had begged someone near DC to take her in for what I guess is a few weeks. Gerald R Ford had to make cereal commercials. So no they don't already have it, and yes they should. And even for the president why would you pay Tim Cook 22 million for making IOS products but give Obama, or Biden 400K? That's not logical. No wonder we are so corrupt, and even your state reps are dealing with the state funds for tens to hundreds of thousands of people. Let's pay them 12K a year.

Whoa there, hold your horses.

You should think very carefully about who you may be attracting if you give a President $22 million a year. That sort of money makes the job much more attractive for unsavoury people whose primary interest is self-enrichment. In some ways, one of the nice things about modest salaries is a lot of extaordinarily greedy people will think they'll be much better off in a C-suite.

 

[Agema]

Its a shame Wilders anounced it in the morning. Way too early for champagne. Oh who am I kidding. Its never too early for a drink. Bottoms up!
Dutch far-right leader Wilders quits coalition, toppling government | Reuters

I note from the article:

Anti-Muslim populist Wilders won the most recent election in the Netherlands, but recent polls have shown he has lost support since joining government.

That's why he's done a runner. He's found out what many do: that being in government means being tarred with all the general dissatisfaction people have with the government. It's easy to drum up cheap wins criticising from the sidelines whilst never having to do the difficult stuff of enacting workable policy.

Despite having the plurality, he's been refused the top job due to the distaste of other parties. He might want to "do a Hitler", by which I mean repeatedly destabilise the government until eventually people drop their resistance and agree to let him be Prime Minister.