RINOs after inauguration

acquaintedwithrask:

thissometimepoet:

the-home-kvetch:

Okay, I’ve seen a lot of people claiming that Biden is somehow responsible for the baby formula shortage. You’re looking at the wrong president.

I’ve attached a picture of the man responsible below.

It’s a fun picture of Trump with some other suits surrounded by piles of paper cutting a ribbon with a gold pair of scissors. This was to represent cutting regulations. This was the point where everyone who’s ever worked in a lab started screaming.

See, those regulations weren’t there because OSHA agents were bored and wanted to slap fines on people. They’re there because people got hurt.

These were laws that said don’t put workers around radioactive materials without hazmat suits–caused by the Radium Girls ingesting radium daily and daily. Don’t leave meat out for hours on end and don’t just pick maggots off–Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is about the meat packing industry and how unsanitary it was. Workers have to wear helmets where falling is a risky–helmets reduced death and paralysis. Use vents and fume hoods to move gases away from workers–look at all the people with different cancer from breathing in Lord knows what. Provide a fire escape and don’t lock workers in–146 people died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. Don’t dump waste into the waterway–the Cuyahoga River literally caught fire. Don’t produce medical equipment in unsterilized factories with unsterilized equipment–the Dalkon Shield caused millions of infections because it was made in a repurposed Chapstick factory with no sterilization (among other things).

These laws are written in blood.

Every single regulation that is part of the EPA, OSHA, the FDA, and the DOJ is there because people were grievously injuried or died. They’re not there for fun. You might say that this is all common sense stuff but right now Amazon is tallying work place injuries faster than a textile factory at the start of the industrial revolution. Tesla refused to paint orange lines around machines, delineating where it was safe to stand. History tells us that capitalists will put profits first, worker safety be damned.

Now I haven’t read the very, very long list of all the regulations that Mr. Trump decided was worth getting rid of. I don’t think he read that list. But I’m guessing that there was a law about sterilizing equipment for food, maintenance for equipment, and/or consistent inspections that suddenly Abbott Laboratories no longer had to follow. And just like so many other big companies, they decided to put the profit over babies’ lives.

Capitalism is the monster here, and this wouldn’t have happened if one company didn’t have a monopoly on making baby formula. But regulations were a muzzle on that monster and they kept rampant capitalism somewhat in check. With that gone, this is what happens. It’s only a matter of time before we lose another important commodity because regulations were erased.

I remember the day this picture came out, and having worked in the food industry my whole life I knew it was going to lead to disaster…

If you think that there’s been a disproportionate number of salmonella recalls in food recently (lettuce and now peanut butter), you’re completely right and this is why.

Posting in a flare of anger at the thirty years of work we will have to do to unmake four years of overt fascism is perhaps unwise.

Regardless, one of the other people in that picture should have taken those scissors and stabbed Donald in the throat before the ribbon fell, just to demonstrate that they were the only human of value in the room.

So I think the most complicated variable in our society right now is two factors of how we currently operate in regard to a push back at emerging social norms. The most chaotic variables in society today are becoming violent variables that many of us havent figured out how to address.

The new hatred and skepticism towards kindness, softness and gentleness in our civilization.

and

Men’s resistance to their domestication.

Outlets for criticizing the emerging PC culture like the Alt Right/Alt Lite have become the forefront for displaying a disregard for masculine restraint and an untethered sense of call to arms to violently defend the “Might makes Right” worldview.

Trump, Le Penn, an ever more Corporate America and an outspoken anti gay Russia have contributed globally to the skepticism of altruism and the task of the “Universal Golden Rules” and an embrace of “whats mine is mine” and radical interpretations of unilateral liberty justified by skewed understanding and co opting of regional constitutions.

Notably, the question arose when discussing a particular punk scene where it was asked, “why do they all have to break windows and trash places?”, whilst at extreme music venues.

The observation of how early Metal culture had brandished the male camaraderie ethos and how the boys club of the early Metal scene was held as the “last bastion of free male display”. The pit of the concert at Punk and Metal shows has at least been the only place where young men can freely rip there shirts off, beat their chests, cover themselves in alcohol and scream and bellow their pent up energy as male animals in an ever increasingly male domesticated world where their female counterparts are ever more the subject of unilateral respect, as women in our world demand the compensation and the level playing field to achieve what men have always had the privilege to for centuries of history.

This coupling with the Trump presidency’s allure to the various cost cutting mentalities to every corner of regulation in our society.

The glamour of “rugged individualism ” and the sense of morality that pushes “Social Darwinism” onto our civilization has lead to a basic class war with every segment of society that cant defend itself with money, representation or privilege has contributed to the hatred of kindness in our world.

“Men’s Rights Activists” have spear headed the call for skepticism towards a caring society and pushes for the flags of traditionalism as men and the strong feel threatened by the meek’s emerging representation in society.

Especially the subject of “safe spaces” have been the spotlight for how the “might makes right” philosophy’s battle with the philosophy of caring for the meek and poor and sick.

Just the fact that the tenants of Alt-Right/Lite philosophy calls for a movement to “trigger” people just to hurt them and hopefully make them display their weakness in the face of strength, makes them blatant “violence rights advocates”.

It actually happend that a group of Alt -Right trolls sent a journalist critical of Richard Spencer and the ethno nationalism of the Alt Right, and a sufferer of epilepsy, a strobe light effect gif to trigger an epileptic episode. Literally attempting to send political dissident to the hospital.

Just the fact that someone may have even a medical condition is warrant enough for this new persuasion of “violenteers” to in effect erase weakness from this world.

The world right now is trying to create a chimera where “might makes right” is inseparable from what it means to be a man.

It is understandable that men like all humans are animals and do need accommodations just as women do.

The remedies discussed were to possibly create an environment, literally a place or even just an atmosphere for men to feel like they can beat there chests and rough house as they naturally may need to.

A literal safe space for men.

However, the task isnt to invalidate men from theire masculinty or theire sense of power but help them see theire differences as a bonding element rather than a separating one when met with a feminine society.

The Intent to fix this problem must be one where we find common ground in the sex war. Where it’s not Feminist vs Men’s Rights Advocates but men and women fighting for equalism.

That men can be just as free as women and women just as free as men.

The difficulty is dispelling men of the toxic masculinity that our corporate world pushes on them. Women also suffer from toxic femininity as well and is also pushed by unregulated capitalism and our consumer media. Men and Women should be just as interchangeable as a left and right hand.

The battle of the sexes is one thing to fix while the hatred for the meek continues to plauge the human soul.

Forests and oceans cant defend themselves, animals ultimately cant defend themselves yet we have a culture where people see this weakness as one to exploit as it’s our due as apex predators. Trophy hunting, military funded video games and media, Sports, Hollywood movies, even food chains perpetuate “might makes right” even down to the way your frame the understanding of beef in our food.

The news shows us that our society is willing to beat people literally into submission by using riot police, police militarization, tazers and even kill ethnic minorities with impunity when the meek try to demand fair treatment.

The pariah may not be men but it is certainly the seduction of power and money that clouds the hearts of men.

Men can be good fathers, good sons, good boyfriends and husbands and brothers if they can be saved from the toxicity of whats sold to them.

Mother Of Buffalo Shooting Survivor: ‘Your Thoughts And Prayers Are Not Enough’, June 8, 2022

Zeneta Everhart, mother of a survivor of the Buffalo, N.Y. supermarket shooting, testified before the House Oversight Committee about her son and called on lawmakers to pursue new gun laws.

MSNBC

I was browsing TechCrunch this morning, and came upon this article, addressing the idea of regulations for the new industry of ‘learn-to-code’ bootcamps. The article makes some great points in both the pro and the con columns, and in reality there’s a bit of both to the argument.

On one hand, these bootcamps are fantastic. The ones that have hit the mainstream, like App Academy, which boasts a 95% offer rate for its graduates, with an average salary of $91,000. Damn. That’s super impressive, especially when you consider that it’s free unless you get a job.

So some folks might be hesitant to allow bureaucracy and the pervasive inefficiencies of government into the very successful, brave new world of bootcamps.

Then on the other hand, private, non-post-secondary education can really start to get dangerous. It can be an easy industry to abuse– it’s definitely in good taste to ensure a certain level of quality of instruction, so that vulnerable potential-students don’t get roped into an expensive, worthless program.

No special treatment

The tech industry is my darling, and I hate to see old money and old politics get in the way of its success. Tech is the source of the future, and anything that gets in its way is just an annoyance. But it’s important to remember that this regulation isn’t really getting in the way.

It’s not getting in the way of a solid program with awesome instructors and a great curriculum and fair pricing strategies. It’s not getting in the way of successful organizations delivering impressive results. It’s getting in the way of the handful of jerks who think that they can abuse the system to make a quick buck.

As technologists, it’s important to embrace some of the little hurdles like governmental regulation, in order to ensure that nobody is able to cheapen the wonderful ideas spewing out of silicon valley or silicon beach or whatever silicon-embedded location you prefer.

We don’t want Silicon Valley turning into Wall St. We don’t want any Wal-Marts of the tech industry. We, as a generation and population of tech-enabled activists, should hold ourselves to a very high standard, and this is one example of that.

And I’m not alone in this opinion:

Ultimately, Anthony Phillips ( the co-founder of Hack Reactor ) said that he welcomed regulation of the “learn to code” world, and in some cases, would recommend that the BPPE hold schools to even higher standards.

The bigger picture

I suppose this comes down to a larger debate over the overall role of the government in business. I don’t want to get political, but if we accept that the way that it is done now, where consumers are protected from potential corporate and financial corruption, then this is clearly a good direction for the bootcamp world to go.

As the startups of today become the behemoths of tomorrow, we’ll have to address a lot of questions about the role of government in these new, highly-efficient, customer-centric companies.

There will be a lot of debates to be had, but I personally believe that our generation has a responsibility to hold our brainchildren to a far higher standard than our parents’ generation did.

The generation before us paved the way for McDonalds and their quality, recently-discontinued, employee benefits program.

We should aim to create a system where solid businesses like Costco and In-n-Out are the model, keeping prices low through good company culture, efficiency, and quality. The myth that business and humanity are somehow at odds with one another should be eradicated, and the tech industry is the best place to do just that.

Again, this is all my own opinion, and perhaps this will be the most divisive article I will have written, but I believe it’s an important issue to face. As millennials and technologists, we are responsible for creating the future, so let’s create a future that makes sense, rewards success, and tramples out inefficiency.