danosphere91

As i roar into the sunset you have to swerve* to avoid the small flotilla of hacked Towyota devices trailing behind me

There was a famous incident where test pilot Tex Johnston did an unauthorized barrel roll during a demonstration flight for airline executives.

Johnston is best known for performing a barnstormer-style barrel roll maneuver with Boeing's pioneering 367-80 jet in a demonstration flight over Lake Washington outside Seattle, on August 7, 1955. Bill Allen, the then-president of Boeing, had invited many aero-space and airline executives to enjoy Seattle's Seafair aboard his yacht. Allen had asked Johnston to make a fly-by over Seafair to show off Boeing's new airliner. Johnston performed the barrel roll during the fly-by, reversed course with a chandelle, and performed a second barrel roll on the way back. The following Monday, Allen called Johnston to his office and asked what he thought he was doing, to which he responded with "I was selling airplanes," and explained the maneuver was not hazardous. He kept his position as a test pilot, and did not get in legal trouble for his actions on the condition that he did not do it again.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

No subscription. Just program.

On your computer. You got to use it forever and ever and never had to worry about it going away.

Because it was physically on your computer. As a program. That you actually owned. Not because you got it separately, but because it was a standard inclusion with your computer.

I'm sorry but I'll just never get over it. I remember when companies cared about their products being usable out of the box. I remember when our things belonged to us.

Anti-communist sentiments were already strong in US leadership. The US didn't want communists gaining any more ground on the world stage and nuking Japan was a way to kill two birds with one bomb: end the war before the USSR entered and show the USSR that the USA could wipe out any of their cities in the blink of an eye. People sometimes try to argue that the second bomb had to be dropped because Japan didn't surrender after the first, but Japanese leadership didn't even meet to discuss the first bomb until shortly before the second dropped. At that point, losing an entire city had little effect on leadership. They already had entire cities leveled with conventional weapons. They hadn't yet processed that Hiroshima was leveled by a single bomb. It didn't matter though. The fact that they delayed at all gave America an excuse to prove to the USSR that they could do it again. The US obliterated two cities in Japan ultimately as a shot across the bow for the USSR.

What popular history likes to gloss over is the chain of events that lead to Perl Harbor. The US initially supported Japan (along with selling resources to all sides in the European war), even as Japan committed war crimes across China and Korea. The US had good relations with Japan at that point and saw Japan's invasion of China as a way to get a foothold in a country that had a history of being restrictive of foreign trade. Japan didn't roll out the red carpet for America though; they realized that they had something that the USA wanted and planned to use that to their advantage in global politics and trade. In response, the US stopped selling steel to Japan for their war effort. US leaders/strategists were very aware that cutting Japan off from resources they'd been relying on for their war would invite retaliation, and thus Perl Harbor happened. The US only ever cared about gaining greater access to markets and labor and was willing to fight a war over it, but in such a way that Japan would make the first move.

The US might have ended up on the right side of WW2, but not for the right reasons. The war in Europe was already going in the allies' favor and the entrance of the US only really expedited the war, but it gave the US a seat at the table when deciding what happened after the war. It let the US build military bases in Europe and bring more US businesses into Europe. The US suffered the least from the war and was able to take advantage of the fact that they didn't need to rebuild entire cities like every European country did. it was politically and financially beneficial to the US to join the war late on the side that was already set up to win, especially with a little extra push.