Watching Internet leftists try to figure out who counts as the oppressor class is always a trip. I literally saw a dude who was describing a period in his life where he had to live in his car for half a year because he couldn’t afford housing get called out as bourgeois scum because he admitted he owned a car.
look at this fatcat who admits he can afford internet
And this is why we used to make cars out of STEEL instead of FIBERGLASS! Sure, fiberglass is a lot lighter in weight and hence a hell of a lot better for gas mileage. But you hit anything at more than 20 mph and the entire body explodes off the fucking thing, and now you’re spending more to repair the car than it’s worth because you need a entire front end, read end, or side panel. They can’t just take the damaged section off, beat it out with a hammer, sand it, and repaint it.
Everything is made with the idea of it being easier to replace than to maintain, aka planned obsolescence. Thanks, capitalism
You guys are obscenely, dangerously wrong.
It’s not planned obsolescence, it’s physics.
Modern cars crumple to absorb and distribute the forces of impact in an accident in an effort to protect the occupants. When cars didn’t have those crumple zones, the occupants, being the soft, squishy things they were, took those forces and were mangled or killed in horrible ways. Also, those older cars took hidden damage that often went unnoticed and made them very dangerous to drive. IT’s really easy to hide a twisted frame when all you need to do to make the car look okay is a bit of sanding and paint.
I recently watched a TV show where a small sedan was run over by the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler. Run. Over. They had to unwrap the crumpled ball of a car from the undercarriage of that trailer. Guess what? The driver suffered only minor injuries because the car collapsed in exactly the way it was designed to so that she, in the very strong frame surrounding the passenger compartment, was protected.
And no, don’t thank capitalism for these modern cars. Thank Ralph Nader and countless other safety activists who worked tirelessly to make car manufacturers accountable for the safety of the people who drove their cars.
If you ask a white teenager, you might get the answer, “Four hundred years ago.” But that’s not the answer. Four hundred years ago was 1615, when the Jamestown colony had only existed for eight years and chattel slavery was just beginning.
Others might say, “When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, of course.” But that’s not right either. That only freed slaves in Confederate territory seized by the Union. The Union slave states—Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and the then-in-formation West Virginia—were exempt and allowed to keep their slaves, along with Tennessee, which had more or less been returned to the Union, and Union-loyal areas of Louisiana (including New Orleans) and coastal Virginia. Because it was unenforceable in most of the Confederate states, only about 1-2% of slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation.
“Well, then,” they might say, “it was definitely when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed.” And still, they would be wrong. While that pivotal law did free the vast majority of America’s slaves, the text of the law is this: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.“
So when did slavery end in America? The answer is, “Never.”
As discussed in the PBS documentary Slavery By Another Name (available in full by clicking the link), as the federal government withdrew funding and support for Reconstruction, the South began a system of leasing prisoners—allowed by law to be used as slaves—to the plantations to replace their free labor. Those affected by this system were treated even worse than those held in bondage under slavery before the Civil War, as slaves were an expensive investment—the $800 average cost of a slave in 1860 is roughly $21,000 in today’s dollars—but leased prisoners were replaced by the prison if killed and payment continued as scheduled, deincentivizing what little humane treatment was afforded slaves.
It was so profitable and in such high demand that, within ten years of its implementation, the stereotype of black people in America had changed. Prior to the Civil War, the stereotype of black people was that we were inherently docile, servile, and loyal. This only makes sense, because if we were viewed as inherently violent and thieving and criminal like we are today, why would they have trusted us with their livelihoods, their crops, and their children? (Side note: this is also where the stereotype of black people loving watermelon came from—the idea that if we were just given a cool slice of watermelon on a hot day, we would work forever). But once they were no longer allowed to own us outright and had to lease us from prisons, police and judges did everything in their power to make sure they had a robust source of free labor. Black people were arrested on false or trumped-up charges, and within ten years, the recorded arrest and conviction rate for black people had skyrocketed so much that the stereotype was entirely inverted from what it had been previously.
The prison system may have stopped leasing prisoners to plantations, but they still lease prison labor to corporations and local governments. Prisoners—primarily black, of course, because we are targeted—are forced to fight wildfires, manufacture consumer goods, and even make goat cheese for Whole Foods. Our economy was built on slave labor, and it still runs on it to a disconcerting extent. And to make that work, black and Latino neighborhoods are targeted by law enforcement and manipulated through things like school closings and schools being unfathomably underfunded to ensure an ever-growing population of prisoners, an ever-growing population of slaves.
So the next time someone asks you when slavery ended in America, tell them the truth. Tell them, “Never.”
Read this because it’s so fucking important to know.
“Hello? Yes, this whale looks very suspicious. I think he may be trying to get inside a part of the sea that’s not his. Just come quickly.”
So now white people are calling the cops on whales, SMH.
this is the most annoying family ive ever heard
I fully expected it to be a white woman on the phone before I unmuted this.
@why-animals-do-the-thing to me this does seem like it could have been a dangerous scenario, both for them and for the whales, and they sound like they’re from the US, so how would the marine mammal protection act come into play? Something about the responses to this video just seems too flippant to me.
It’s absolutely a dangerous situation for both of them, but I think they did the best they could given the situation.
As far as I can tell from the video, these people didn’t approach the whale on purpose – it came up and started investigating their boat. That’s genuinely scary. The whale could easily capsize a boat that small if its investigatory behavior became physical. They’re right to be freaked out. And as much as people make fun of them for calling 911, I don’t really think it was inappropriate for them to do so in this situation. Most Americans are taught to call 911 when there’s an emergency and/or their lives might be in danger … I’d say being freaked out that a whale might topple your boat in deep water qualifies. There’s nothing 911 could do in the situation, but I understand the reflex and they’d honestly have the resources to alert help if something bad did happen.
What’s dangerous about this for the whale is the fact that they started the boat – propeller injuries are very common, unfortunately. A small private craft wouldn’t do as much damage to a whale as a larger commercial vessel, but it would still be bad. While I’m not happy they did that, again I can understand it, because most of them were genuinely scared and wanted to get away.
I don’t think they’re going to be at risk from the MMPA because they don’t appear to have sought the whales out or done anything except try to remove themselves from the situation. The government will generally pursue people for purposeful violations of the harm and harassment prohibition around marine mammals, but there is also a certain amount of understanding that if a whale chooses to come up to you, there’s really not much you can do about it.
All of that being said, this would be such an incredible experience to have.
Editing to add: In current-day America, people absolutely use 911 to target minority groups in ways that are unconscionable. I know that’s what the joke in the screenshot is about, but I’ve also had people comment that calling 911 in this response was silly. My comment is only meant to address the latter issue – that it was actually a reasonable response to this specific situation.
there’s the coast guard who are responsible for rescuing people at sea in dangerous situations. So maybe they could have called them?
My original response to that thought is that most people in distress might not think to google the phone number for the Coast Guard and would reflexively just call 911.
I looked up the contact information for the coast guard, and it turns out:
“People in an emergency and need of Coast Guard assistance should use: VHF-FM Channel 16 (156.8 MHz), dial 911.”
Vegans of tumblr, listen up. Harvesting agave in the quantities required so you dont have to eat honey is killing mexican long-nosed bats. They feed off the nectar and pollinate the plants. They need the agave. You want to help the environment? Go back to honey. Your liver and thyroid will thank you, as well. Agave is 90% fructose, which can cause a host of issues. Bye.
NSF’s Expeditions in Computing program is marking 10 years transforming science and society. This Expeditions research aims to support children on the autism spectrum with socially assistive robots, customized to each child’s individual needs, to help guide the children toward long-term behavioral goals.
its really funny to me how tfa sentinel was basically just Chad from your jrotc group that cheated off your homework and got u kicked out of jrotc and idw sentinel is like. ancient parasitic creature who almost destroys cybertron
My proposed next take is to make him an isolationist who argues against defending other citystates from the decepticons if those citystates are “too culturally distinct from our own.”
Monsters and Stuff 