A Sorry State of Affairs

That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.

My mom has an iPhone 6 Plus and hasn’t even had it for a year when one day it suddenly died and would not charge. So she took it to an authorized Apple repair place and they charged her $50 for a diagnostic only to tell her that she would have to buy a brand new phone.

So she decided to go to the AT&T store to talk to our usual guy that upgrades our phones and handles any problems for us. She tells him what’s wrong and he takes her phone to the back only to come out two minutes later, puts her phone on charge and it comes back to life. 

She asks him what was wrong with it that he managed to somehow fix when the people at the “authorized apple repair place” couldn’t. And you know what he told her?

All companies want you to buy their new products. None have gone to the lengths that Apple Inc. has gone to make end user repairs as impossible as is legally viable. I have been repairing electronics and computer systems privately, commercially and active duty in the US military for about 30 years. 

Apple puts extra effort into special hardware requiring proprietary tools that are only legally produced by their licensed manufacturer and can only be purchased through licensed repair shops if at all. 

Companies like iFixit can only exist as profit making companies because they are able to make workaround tools and kits that are still profitable but less of a blatant ripoff than Apple. 

wow

This is a decision that likely happened because ROK felt the US could no longer protect them from the DPRK. This is because Trump has no consistent Secretary of State, and while Tillerson was Not Great, Mike Pompeo is literally Satan, so. Negotiations with the DPRK have always been tri-lats with the US, ROK, and the DPRK, often involving another western power, and it is ALWAYS first and foremost about what the US can get out of it, how can we isolate the DPRK, how can we make them bow to what we want, which is nuclear disarmament. IDK if any of Y’all know realist theory, but that AINT GONNA HAPPEN, because the US doesn’t know how to MIND ITS OWN FUCKING BUSINESS, and has created a unipolar international system, with itself at the top. it’s why China freaks US policy makers right the fuck out. Any perceived threat is then blown WAY out of proportion. 

Yeah, Bush called the DPRK part of the ‘axis of evil’ but that was more to use language to make the US population hate Iraq the same amount as the DPRK. it’s also a HUGE chip on the US’s shoulder that they were so fucking box kicked in the Korean War, which we shouldn’t have gotten involved in. 

This decision and agreement between ROK and the DPRK is happening because Trump is So Shit at his job. He isn’t consistent, he has constantly removed us from international agreements that were designed to protect us and the other partners from international threats, we might be coming out of the Iran deal which Iran is following the rules of better than we are right now, and he doesn’t like NATO. 

President Moon is looking at that, and like a SMART FUCKING PRESIDENT, is going ‘hmmmmm the protection we were supposed to have from the US could be instantly taken away from us if we anger this ignoramus who is the president, might want to try something else’ and so reached out to Kim. Kim probably is thinking ‘holy fuck, an actual international win, people will think about this, instead of the literally gulags i run’ and so is getting involved. 

the US did LITERALLY NOTHING to facilitate this, and actually, in terms of foreign policy, is Not Great for the US, because we like to think we’re the international police force, and this effectively proves we are ‘weak’ (i personally fuckin disagree with that, but whatever). 

“The officer who fired the fatal shots at the 16-year-old, however, was cleared of all charges by a grand jury.” 

Kanye West willingly guest stars on TMZ to blame Chattel Slavery on Black People. He happily goes onto live television to state that the systematic and extremely violent plague that was Chattel Slavery and The TransAtlantic was a choice made by Black People.

This is beyond disgusting. The stench of disgrace that emanates from man is putrid and vomit inducing.

As if Chattel Slaves could just walk off plantations? It’s not like escaping was a walk in the park. White People had dogs trained to catch scent and hunt slaves. Some slaves were branded and beaten; others raped and molested… quite a lot were both. Death and inhuman torture were often the fate handed to those who were even hinted at doing anything to change the system. These were regularly performed in front of other slaves. Slaves of different origins were brought together so they couldn’t understand one another. Education and writing wasn’t given to slaves so they couldn’t pass messages along.

A choice? What a pathetic excuse for a human being. His ancestors shed tears from the grave knowing that this is their flesh and blood.

Get =/= Jet

Gift =/= Jift

Give =/= Jive

In English, words with a ‘G’ followed by an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ can be pronounced with either a hard ‘G’ or a soft ‘G’.

Words with Germanic roots such as ‘gear’, ‘get’, ‘gift’, ‘give’ (see above) are pronounced with a hard ‘g’ while words with Latin or Greek roots such as ‘gem’, ‘general’, ‘giraffe’, ‘giant’, are pronounced with a soft ‘g’.

So no, it’s not exactly a “general rule” that ‘g’ followed by an ‘e’ or an ‘i’ makes a soft ‘g’ sound. 

“they’re burning all the witches” 

MASCULINITY SO FRAGILE

“I decided to build this dog and make it crappy to downgrade the statue, exactly how the girl is a downgrade on the bull.”

The placement of the Fearless Girl statue recontextualizes the other artist’s sculpture (Charging Bull) without his consent, turning the guerilla art that he created in light of America’s troubles into a symbol of evil. 

This sculpture of a girl was put here and is ruining the art that someone created–and when he rightfully tries to speak on the fact that his art and reputation is being re-contextualized without his consent to make him seem like a villain, he’s called out as being “afraid of women taking up space” 

This is a fucking white nonsense sculpture. It was literally commissioned by State Street Global Advisors–it’s a bid by big business to see progressive, and they’re stomping all over the work of an artist who had to actually fight to have his art put there, instead of being funded by an investment management place that wants to seem Feminist™. 

Slightly pointy

Very pointy

Triangles