Juice
@Juice@midwest.social
- Comment on Take a gander at this 23 hours ago:
I see. Well, i hope we never meet in person cuz this is just the way I tell jokes, and I’m always half joking. Watching you get irritated would probably only encourage me to keep doing it too
- Comment on Take a gander at this 1 day ago:
Is this an actual question or are you being indignant? If you have actual questions can you please try to articulate them? If I try and answer you without knowing what questions you are asking, we are more likely to get frustrated.
Hopefully you aren’t just being indignant.
- Comment on Stay Mad 2 days ago:
They’re…from Europe.
- Comment on Take a gander at this 3 days ago:
Because Ive been conditioned never question laws and never learned to mentally deal with contradictions in society I’m mad at the pronouns now! Those darn pronouns!
- Comment on Elon Musk has another secret child with exec at his brain implant company 1 week ago:
What I have thanks to money, what i pay for, i.e, what money can buy, that is what I, the possessor of the money, am myself. My power is as great as the power of money. The properties of money are my- (its owner’s)- properties and faculties. Thus what I am and what I am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy myself the most beautiful women. Consequently, I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness, its power of repulsion, is annulled by money. As an individual I am lame, but money can create twenty four feet for me; so I am not lame; I am wicked, dishonest man without conscience or intellect, but money is honored and so also is its possessor. Money is the highest good and so its possessor is good. Money relieves me of the trouble of being dishonest, so I am presumed to be honest. I may have no intellect, but money is the true mind of all things and so how should its possessor have no intellect? Morever he can buy himself intellectuals, and is not the man who has power over intellectuals not more of [an] intellectual than they?
–Marx, 1844 Manuscripts
- Comment on Maybe those 20 seconds were because of the lack of getting raises? 1 month ago:
Electronics work better in the cold
- Comment on Hey Evolution! You know that flinch I do when I think of embarrassing things in my past, sometimes accompanied by a groan? 1 month ago:
Recalling my past is like watching a cringe comedy that turns briefly into a Yorgos Lanthimos film about various mental illnesses, then a quirky Wes Anderson film, and back into a cringe comedy.
I do be fuckin tho
- Comment on Remember... 1 month ago:
MMT is conceptually weak, its adherents believe that because it is correct, that it will change anything. They fail to acknowledge who the current system benefits and why. It fails to recognize that economics is political, and money is power. the system benefits certain people the way it is, that is why it is this way. It fails to recognize the incredible amount of global exploitation that makes up the financial system which is why money has this magic “made up” quality. It fails to acknowledge how imperialism operates as financial domination underwritten by state violence, administered by a nationalist ruling class. These are all the most basic and simple criticisms of capitalism which have existed for over 100 years.
At one time I was very interested in these kinds of critiques and through studying them and trying to understand them I came to realize the utter failure of our own academic disciplines to make sense of the system. Save yourself years of independent study and idealistic theorizing, of trying to understand and failing to explain using jargon that obscures rather than illuminates. Read Marx, he was the greatest economist of his time, and the most slandered and misrepresented intellectual of ours. If you want to really understand how finance functions, skip this documentary and read Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism by Lenin. If you can believe that the status quo lies about the nature of debt, how far down do their lies really penetrate into our culture and ideology?
Don’t fall for it. There are no shortcuts, we have to get organized in order to change the world and avert disaster.
- Comment on Remember... 1 month ago:
Social constructs do indeed exist. This is not deep, it is wrongheaded and illogical.
- Comment on *Naruto 1 month ago:
Your parents got married young because they wanted to fuck.
- Comment on After announcing increased prices, Spotify to Pay Songwriters About $150 Million Less Next Year 1 month ago:
Technology is so amazing. It is finally possible to pay artists in exposure
- Comment on There are songs we've gone our whole lives without hearing and our favorite song might still be out there. 1 month ago:
This is true, I’m 43 and just discovered Gang if Four Entertainment! and its like my favorite album now, and that album is at least as old as I am.
- Comment on [Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism? 1 month ago:
Yeah you’re right it’s okay to have differences and preferences, its the moralizing of them rather than accepting and trying to find commonalities across the divides.
- Comment on [Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism? 1 month ago:
Right, I agree, have empathy and respect, open mindedness. But without getting into it too deep, you know how do I empathize or respect others when often we don’t empathize or respect ourselves? It’s this involuntary and constant process of turning out and externalizing. Please don’t consider this a call out, just an illustration because I know you don’t mean it this way, but by the end of your thought process you are like out grouping some imagined person who is doing this thing, creating an in group between you and I, and others who still behave this way. And I can be as cognizant as I want about this, but I also commit to these groups, and I have recent examples of this toward ideological groups I encounter in my political organizing. People who I used to not have a problem with, I now am extremely suspect of, because this was done to me. Its like baked into our language, or the ways in which we derive meaning. And maybe to some extent its unavoidable, or at least will be until some severe cultural shift happens that changes our ontology and language.
But many people have noticed, from all walks of life, you will hear, “we have never been more divided.” And yeah sometimes you hear this from people who probably don’t have our best interests at heart. But this campism has only increased since, idk, Trump? COVID? The neoliberal turn of the late 70s early 80s? Who can say. But if that’s true, and this phenomenon has increased over time, then maybe it can decrease as well. I hope so. There’s a lot of changes that need to happen to society, and quickly, but without that respect and empathy you talk about, I worry about what might happen to people. This out grouping can quickly turn into dehumanization and worse if not checked. And I don’t know what to do there except at least try and model that behavior and try and discuss it when I can.
- Comment on [Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism? 1 month ago:
Thank you
- Comment on [Serious] Why do so many people seem to hate veganism? 1 month ago:
I’m an ex vegan (about 5 years) so I’ve been on both sides if it. Here’s my opinion.
When I was a vegan it was very much a part of my identity. It was something that I thought about 2-3 times (at least) per day when I ate, and any time I went to buy food. I remember being actually insufferable about it for a long time and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost friends over it, being annoying and preach to a friend’s husband and then eventually just not getting invited back for game night. So people are definitely feeling burned/rejected/otherized by vegans who, if not just coming right out and saying it, strongly infer that you are a “bad person” for consuming even small amounts of animal products, or at least let you know that you’re being judged for it. As an ex-vegan I’ve experienced this myself.
On the other hand, non-vegans are also insufferable about food. My friend in college didn’t like cheese. Hated how it tasted, hated the way it felt in his mouth. But he loved pizza. He would often buy pizzas for everyone, with cheese on, pick the cheese off himself, and eat it without. I swear that every time he did this someone would say something about it, “what? You don’t like cheese? Why?!” I personally had to endure a lot of weird questions and looks, and comments when after volunteering for a whole day at a baseball field for my son’s team, and they served pizza after which I just refused. I just quietly didn’t get myself any, and people had like 20 questions about it. I didn’t even bring up that I was a vegan, I just said I wasn’t hungry, which was odd and apparently unacceptable.
Vegans and vegetarians also get judged for their diets, there are plenty of non-v people who will become like preemptively defensive about it, and let you know they think you’re weak and unhealthy. You get otherized and judged, even if you dont care what people eat and you just patiently say that its a personal choice, for health or the environment or whatever. This actually deepens the in-group acceptance/out-group rejection of everyone involved. The next time a vegan has to hear about their choices they’ll be less patient with the person asking; the next time that person eats an egg around a vegan and gets lectured, they’ll be less patient and around and around it goes.
I have theories about why this is, some of which maybe are apparent from what I’ve read. I think people do construct identities around consumer behavior, and they feel rejected when someone doesn’t share those same consumptive habits which they take for granted. I’ll get into it if anyone gives a shit.
But I think theres a problem with public discourse that encourages this kind of ingroup/outgroup good/bad acceptance/rejection, so much that it is implied in all discourse whether a vegan or not. This is the thing that drove me away from veganism: I think that vegans are right about a lot of things, but they can’t actually see the world for what it is, they can mostly only see through this lens. This is basically the same problem with liberals, conservatives, religious, atheist, whatever. Its the cult of the individual having eroded any experience of interconnectedness, even though we are interconnected. As such, people can’t see the world for what it really is, we can only see it from behind the fences of our specific camp.
- Comment on USA: The Minimum Wage Should Be $24 per Hour Not $7.25 1 month ago:
new equilibrium in a devalued currency
No this has been thoroughly disproven. the total amount of dollars doesn’t change, it just moves from the wealthy back to the workers. Raising wages doesn’t cause inflation, corporations raising prices does, so raising the minimum wage is just one piece of it. The myth that raising wages causes inflation is argued that more money for workers creates more demand for commodities which raises the prices, but again, the total amount of currency doesn’t change. You’re not going to buy 7 cartons of eggs just because you make more money, and spending it doesn’t make it more scarce. You’ll buy as much as you need for the week just like last week, except now you don’t have to choose between food and going to the Dr.
Real economic inflation or deflation is caused when the amount of currency doesn’t match the amount of production. Or to simplify, money is representative of something that was produced, and can be exchanged for commodities; and the whole money supply is representative of the whole productive capacity of a nation (or issuing body). Paying people more doesn’t lower production, it would theoretically stay the same though experiments have proven that productivity increases. Raising wages raises the amount of money that businesses make because there is more money in circulation, it isn’t just sitting in accounts collecting interest. Increase in demand actually drives hiring more workers.
Lots of nice ideas in your post but none of it are demands that bring workers together to organize and fight for what they deserve, we have to hope that some politician will give it to us. Fighting for wage increases does mobilize workers, and it has only ever been organized mobilizations of workers that have driven economic changes under capitalism.
- Comment on If everyone had access to healthcare the net benefit of treating the mental illness and other disabilities holding them back would easily cover the cost of the healthcare itself. 1 month ago:
That’s how you can see the true nature of the system. It isn’t designed to maximize production, it is designed to subordinate production.
- Comment on IBM sues a Zurich-based startup over 'unlawful' use of mainframe technology 2 months ago:
since the 80s
Do you wanna know who sold the time-punch machines for the concentration camps to the Nazis?
Nazi Germany was IBM’s second largest customer after the USA.
- Comment on If a universal basic income started today with the stipulation that you had to put 40 hrs/wk towards making the world a better place or solving societal problems, how would you spend your time? 2 months ago:
Political organizing and education. Most problems, especially economic and societal problems are rooted in political causes: bureaucratization, consolidation of power, bottlenecking, corruption, etc.,
Only active participation in democratic organizing of mass movements along class concerns has ever been effective at combatting these social illnesses. This starts and ends with educational development. We are kept weak through confusion and ignorance.