I'm a Basment Brimming with Nothing Great

This is also happening in the context of an extremely close Senate election in Texas where a Democrat, Beto O’Rourke, is in a statistical tie with wildly unpopular Republican incumbent Ted Cruz. There’s a lot of energy on the Democratic side of this election, especially in this state, and you know what happens if your citizenship is in question, if your birth certificate is no longer proof of where you were born? 

Do you ever think about how Jeff Bezos could feed literally more than a million food insecure people while losing an hour’s wage but you have to tell yourself no when you want to buy a coffee but can’t because that’s all your rent money?

This is really important and let me tell you why.

Ohhh no no no, this IS JUST Apple. 

This is called “planned obsolescence” - many companies do it, but Apple has made it into an art. Basically, companies - tech companies in particular - have realized that if their products are manufactured too well, they won’t be able to sell you a new one in three years. So, in order to keep consumers coming back for more, they design your gadgets to “expire” in all manner of ways; Apple is infamous for pushing software updates that render older model phones and computers useless right before releasing a new product so that consumers will be forced to purchase the newest version of a gadget they already have.

“Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction. Bruce comes along in the ‘70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says is that shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment. […] We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things. If you are not a good consumer capitalist citizen, if you’re spending your time bonding with the people around you and not buying stuff—in fact, we are trained from a very young age to focus our hopes and our dreams and our ambitions on things we can buy and consume. And drug addiction is really a subset of that.”

As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual.

gay person: haha hetties amirite

13 y/o Zavion Parker was kidnapped and tortured on his way home from school in East Houston by a group of White supremacists (5 teens and 1 adult all with red hair and the adult having a tattoo the confederate flag and another tattoo saying “I hate black people”.) Zavion said when they kidnapped they took him to a shack/cabin with guns and torture items and where he sees other Black people who aren’t moving. Zavion asked why he was kidnapped, the group of White supremacists said “because you’re Black”. As the White supremacists move to the next room to load a gun, Zavion makes his escape. Zavion was found with a torn shirt and no shoes by Camecia Carmouche. Police went to Zavion’s home to follow up the lead. He, his mom, and Camecia lead the officers to the cabin/shack. According to the police they found a wooden chair, shell castings and weapons.