BubbleMonkey

I babysat my cousin’s 3 kids under 5 for the year I lived in their basement (free rent trade)

And above all the noise and hassle and all, the day I knew kids definitely weren’t for me… was the day the parents went out for one of their “be home tomorrow, probably” nights, knowing full well at least one of the kids had the flu.

It ended up being all three of them. All I did all night was give baths, sooth crying, change bedding, and clean up vomit.

I managed to keep them alive and relatively comfortable, but I don’t ever want to do anything even close to that ever again.

I want science to win so that’s a good option anyway.

What I don’t get is how anyone can sleep with anything other than blackout curtains. Even the ambient light from street lights and stuff is too bright for me.

I mean I know people do it, I just don’t understand how.

I got a full set of silverware for backpacking that collapses down to about the size of those folding reader glasses (plus a little hard storage case just like the glasses). It’s a spoon, fork, knife, and chopsticks. I think I paid $6 for the set. Not super high quality, since the focus was on weight and utility, but definitely does the job.

I don’t use it much anymore, but it was great for lunch at work, and is good when traveling (staying at hotels and getting takeout - no plastic trash!). I mostly keep it in my overnight backpack so it’s available whenever I’m not home and I can’t forget it.

I never said it wasn’t low. It’s low, but 14 million people is still a lot of actual people, people just like you, under a different circumstance.

14 million people looking for work means there are a lot of potential scabs, because our social safety nets are fucking laughable. They don’t even exist for a lot of people, such as those with no work history yet (can’t get unemployment if you’ve never been employed, for example, and if you only have a couple years employment history, unemployment in a lot of places doesn’t cover shit).

Having been one of the underemployed, you often take what you can get because you don’t have the luxury of finding the “right job”.

Or you and your family become homeless.

Those are basically the options these days and I’m not willing to say that’s not the case just because unemployment (which does not include underemployment, nor those who left the job market) is low by some economists standards, because it absolutely is for millions of people.

So sure, many of those people might be looking for “the right job”, but in the interim, they find and take “the right now” job. And that might be scabby.

All good friend; we do agree and it really sucks that it’s so difficult to get people to support their own best interest if it costs them in a tangible way (even if the benefits are exponentially more impactful).

This is an education thing and we are fighting a lot of anti-union propaganda, here and everywhere. We see people lose their jobs over joining.

Who can blame them not wanting to sign up?

Union leaders need to fight fire with -water-. They need an unyielding stream of information to fight the fanned flames of disinformation and anti-union propaganda going out to perspective members, and that’s… unfortunately just not generally practical.

I don’t really have a solution, I’m sorry, but I am absolutely behind yours and every other union. I will support you all with every breath in my body, for whatever that’s worth.

Ahh, I wish it were that easy, but 4.1% of 350 million is like 14 million people (I’m willing to accept that my math is wrong but I double checked it 4 times including using the internet… and idk if I mathed it wrong or if that’s just an accurate number… I really kinda hope I’m wrong…)

That’s a lot of people either way… and you can’t fault them for looking out for themselves or their family.

I’m really sorry to hear that. Genuinely. We all need better.

I am a firm believer in unions and collective action, despite never having the opportunity to be part of a union myself. And like they don’t have a lot of power here… they got most of it removed by law years and years ago.

But it doesn’t stop us trying at least, I suppose. And the general vibe is to support the unions. I’m sure there are tons of scabs here, but… they aren’t winning social favor being scabs at least.

Even if they are largely toothless, it’s better to be toothless together; A pack of starving wolves with one tooth each is enough to do a lot of damage if they attack together often enough.

The real problem is getting them to be part of the pack. I mean each wolf is toothless anyway, so getting them to join the pack is super important for their survival too.

You certainly aren’t wrong, but… at least in my area (and this is with state-level laws that fucking decimated union power), unions are relatively well respected by the population at large, because most of us have some experience with them (big trades area), and they are growing, rather than shrinking, despite having their legs cut off at the knee.

Despite being a super conservative and heavily gerrymandered area, our major trade unions (pipefitters, construction, metalworkers, electricians, etc.) never went away, much as the state (for the past 15 or so years) would have liked otherwise. And it’s making a big resurgence; there are tons of manufacturing plants near me and a lot of them are part of or bound by the unions (not just their workplace, but like regional unions)

I hope the trend continues! We need more collective action in our society. We need unions for non-tradespeople, and we don’t have any of those… but at least the trade unions are unshakeable, and that’s a good gateway for the rest of us.

Only scabs cross the line.

I come from a union family and walked way further than I thought it would be to see sanders speak at a union hall. Worth it.

The strike that happened a week or so before the event would have had me staying home, had it extended, though. Even tho I only ever saw one single person on the picket line. Only scabs cross the line.

I tracked down the house I lived in until I was 5-6. I have lots of pictures of it in its glory and I remember it fondly.

It was an old 1800s school building that my parents converted into a house. Very cool building, lots of old-school charm (hehe).

Finding it was a huge mistake. The present owners don’t even live in it, they built a house just to the side of it and use the old structure as support for solar panels, and probably storage for the junk sprawling over the property. Which… I’m down with solar but it’s so sad to see something with so much history, charm, and character… absolutely ruined in under 30 years.

So they don’t have ranked voting, then?

Well, good for them for working together to hopefully sidestep the worst of it. I hope it works.

I’m a bit unclear here; how does withdrawing from the next set of runoffs help prevent the problem? This article really doesn’t say.

I know nothing about their system, but wouldn’t that mean the people still running won by default? Or is this more to only give people two options instead of 3+ which dilutes the vote maybe? Does France not have some sort of ranked voting?

I find this wholly unsurprising.

All ai projects should be forced to show the entirety of their training data. I don’t give a flying fuck if they want to call it proprietary, they don’t own most of the data in the first place. Even if they bought it, it doesn’t belong to them, just like we don’t own digital movies we buy.

And if even a single piece of that training data doesn’t have proper licensing for that specific use for that specific model, or they are ever found to have withheld any of the data, the model as a whole should be immediately scrapped, along with everything even tangentially derived from it, and the company should be fined fully double whatever amount of money that model generated or one years revenue for the company as a whole, whichever is more (no I don’t care if this leads to bankruptcy, should have thought about that before you stole data), and like use if for affordable housing programs or public schools or something, whatever.

They can try again with clean data, also subject to review. One time. Second time they do the same shady shit, permanently banned from the entire sector.

But regardless, we need to stop rewarding them for this behavior. And we need the consequences to actually hurt or we can expect it to get worse, not better.

It depends when it launches and goes… viral (sorry…). If there’s a dem in office, it’s a real pandemic and we aren’t doing nearly enough and 10,000 people are dying every second, you lib monsters!! If it’s a repub in office it’s fake news poopvirus and why are you trampling on my poopeating freedums??

It’s often both because funneling! Yay!

I saw him speak the other day and he was totally with it. Like that super old person who lives to be 120 and is sharp as fuck right until their body gives up, but until then they are firy and physically fit.

Honestly same on both counts.

Doesn’t look like it, but thanks for the suggestion! :)

I’ve never heard of it, looks like the closest one is like 5 hours from me :(

But thanks for the option all the same!