LinManuelsHousecat

If you have more customers than your employees can handle and you're still not making enough, then you need to sort out your finances. Raise prices if necessary.

And compared to the costs of land, equipment, material, power, advertising, etc. it's really fucking cheap in the grand scheme of things to just hire enough people to actually make proper use of all your much bigger investments instead of wasting millions because you wanted to save a few thousand.

here in LFK, we used to have a few more bookstores until Amazon killed them off. neither Borders nor Half Price Books could compete with the beast

but you know which bookstores did survive? The Raven, The Dusty Bookshelf, and other independent booksellers (plus we've gained new independents like Farbeyond Books)

a few years ago, the Costco and Walmart CEOs got into a public argument. the Walmart guy said they needed to underpay their workers or they couldn't compete with small local businesses (though he phrased it about not getting enough profits)

the Costco guy mocked that claim by stating how they manage to pay their workers a living wage - with benefits - and still succeed in all business and customer satisfaction measures better than Walmart, which additionally enjoys public subsidies by having taxpayers cover welfare and food stamp benefits for Walmart employees

"The 9 years old girl who remained under the rubble for 10 hours has made it safely. I see no one sharing. If she were dead, everyone would share! Share positivity…"

no matter what you do and what precautions you take, no matter how active your kid is or how many sports they play, no matter how much you think this post will never apply to you, there may come a time in your life where your child gets sick and does not fully recover. there may come a time when they develop a chronic illness, an incurable medical condition, or become disabled. at any age. nobody is too young for this to happen to them. an accident, an illness, an injury, any one of the many genetic conditions out there without proper testing, something you thought they would recover from. any number of things here.

and if that happens. I need you to do this for me. I need you to look at your kid. no matter how much you wish nothing bad ever happened I need you to very seriously sit them down. and I need you to tell them

"I will love you even if you never recover."

and I need you to mean it.

The lineage of ring bearers is as follows.

Sauron.

Isildur

Deagol

Sméagol

Bilbo

Frodo

1. Home, the finger of my creator and other self.

2. Well, I don’t like it but I can work with this. Cause some trouble, get some revenge, find my way home, this is fine.

3. What the fuck is you?

4. Right personality, wrong species, I don’t know what you are but I hate you and I don’t know why you’re so resistant to my powers.

5. NO NO NO there are goblins everywhere how did I find another one of THESE horrible things. This one’s even more resistant than the last one and also disgustingly nice. I suffer.

6. Listen, I’ll cooperate, just get me the fuck out of this hellhole full of small cheerful people my power doesn’t work on properly. No, not like that. I hate you. Please stop. 

7. FUCK

8. (Frodo again) I still hate you with every molecule of my mortal form but at least you’re not number seven. Think I’m starting to get through finally. 

It is no good situation when you have to choose between two shitty candidates. But you have a two-party system.

russia has previously aided trump during elections, and they will do so again. A call to boycott the elections = a call to support trump

Also, a lot of his goons have been filling a LOT of important spots in the military and civilian fields to have positions available for trump to fill in with his loyalists and to easier do a hostile takeover if he wins the election.

Trump's presidency already gave cart blanche for the international far right rise, and I don't think we need to spell out to people that the state of the world today is directly credited to Trump's presidency, his incompetence, him being Russian puppet, etc etc.

As much as I am actually an opponent of the whole idea that USA is responsible of everything in the world, it does have a huge influence on international politics scene.

SO GO VOTE.

Biden is a leader too moderate for my tastes, who I really really wish wasn't so old. The things he has done have been unexpectedly good despite being hamstrung by the opposition. Love him? Nope. But Biden is making sucky choices from an array of sucky choices, domestic and foreign.

Trump is calling his opponents Vermin, outright explaining that he is 'retribution' and cracking jokes about victims of political and racial violence. He brags about being the one to kill Roe v Wade. In 2020 he asked why the cops didn't just shoot the protesters in the legs. He wants to deport immigrants, including all dreamers, and his plan starts with 'put them in camps.'

I know most people don't track political news. I get it. Its nauseating. But this idiot's gotten stupider, and he's gotten more hateful.

Think about the bastardly* boss-worker attitude of THAT.

At a March on Saturday, at a pro Palestine march, my group and I were targeted by by nazis. Not targeted for violence, but targeted for recruitment. They weren't wearing swastikas, they weren't spewing blatant antisemitic hate speech. They seemed like two normal dudes. They marched with us, talked about how awful everything in Palestine was, how we wished world leaders would grow a pair and hold Israel responsible for fucking war crimes, how existing in the world right now was hard. They were empathetic, they were kind, they seemed like genuine good dudes.

Until we passed a synagogue where people were handing our water to marchers. They had signs defending Palestine on their table. But the tone of the conversation changed. These two seemingly normal dudes started talking about how "performative" the gesture felt, that Jewish people should be doing more. That they needed to PROVE it. They started talking about "Zionist" propaganda in the US, about how it was deeply entrenched in capitalism. Things that, on the surface, seemed reasonable but it set off alarm bells in my head.

When I was a kid, I remember getting the speech of "don't repeat anything your uncle or cousin so and so says and don't argue with them. Try to avoid them but if you can't be polite." Because those uncles and cousins said a lot of hateful things about anyone who wasn't like them, but their favorite targets were black people and Jewish people. I would find out as an adult it was because many of those uncles and cousins were in the Klan. When I studied hate symbols for a class in college, I found my self looking at images I'd seen on arms and necks and hands my whole life, because I live in an area of the US where the KKK is still around. And standing in that crowd, listening to these guys talk, i had the most horrible realization I've had in a long time.

We were being fished by Nazis. We were a group of able body, white American leftists. At a march in support of stopping the murder and genocide of Palestinians, these motherfuckers were out here, trying to find people they could get to hate Jewish folks. I wasn't the only one in my group who clocked it, and when we called them on it, the masks came off. They called us a bunch of "Jew loving bitches" before they moved on.

But we're marched with these guys for a couple hours, talked with them, laughed with them, brought them into our circle. For a moment we forgot we also weren't immune to propaganda, we weren't immune to people who make hate sound reasonable and that people like that never start out saying the quiet part out loud, they lean on your anger and your sense of helplessness to move you where they want you. If the last eight years has taught us anything, it's that fascists know how to adjust to the times, to work with what they got, to recruit. They know how to radicalize people, how to weaponize anger and helplessness. And I'm sitting here, every day, seeing posts that sound exactly like these guys did and it worries me.

I know I'm talking to the No Reading Comprehension Website, but I'm begging you guys to develop some now.

If you are showing up to a protest organized by a college group in all black with no phone ready to raise hell, then not only will you be putting the organizers at risk with their college and the police, but you risk being targeted walking to or from the protest by fascists or the cops. Your black clothes will make you stand out in the protest and you absolutely will be targeted by the cops. And if you didn't bring your phone then guess what, you have no way to call for help if you are targeted.

Likewise, if you show up to a spontaneous protest or one organized by more radical groups in brightly colored clothes with your phone out ready to record, you are also putting yourself at risk of being targeted by the cops and you are putting other people at risk of arrest by recording them.

These posts that go around every time there's a wave of protests telling people who have never protested that they need to show up ready for a black bloc is wildly fucking irresponsible. If you are experienced and know what to expect from your local organizers, then absolutely show up ready to raise hell. But if you show up like that to a fucking civillian sidewalk demonstration because you couldn't be bothered to see who was organizing it, the you're not a revolutionary, you're a cosplayer. People will be recording to post on social media because that was the point of that particular demonstration, and you are going to stick out like a sore thumb.

The first and foremost best advice I can give you if you've never been to a protest before is to GET TO KNOW YOUR LOCAL SCENE ! What groups are in your area, which ones are organizing this specific protest ? Do they have an online/social media presence ? Have they made any statements about what they want from the protest ? It takes literally 10 minutes of research in most cases.

Either way, the things you should always do at every protest no matter what is mask up, hide identifying tattoos, wear non descriptive clothes, and bring a bag with snacks and water if it's going to be a long one. Don't record people but if youre going to a normal demonstration but be prepared for other people to be recording with the intention of it being posted. If you're going to raise hell and need to leave your phone at home, then you NEED to have a plan for avoiding being tracked by other means like car GPS, street cameras, and regular police surveillance. Otherwise you're just putting yourself at risk.