That's a major part of my point. The culture of the site isn't immediately clear to new users, as it isn't with most sites immediately. But no one ever listened to the time-wisened knowledge of "lurk moar." Since we're so small, a ton of redditors will come in at the same time, believe we're a reddit clone, and will treat it like a reddit clone, none the wiser that what they're doing is contrary to what we are trying to do here. It's not their fault, it's just that since they came in with a bunch of redditors, their experience here is.... a bunch of redditors.

It's hard to try to quantify and lay out to people the difference too. Saying "we care about personal relationships with other users" and "your network of people, ideas, sites, and connections is a vital component here" and "the experience is truly more in line with a coffee shop, or a pub, or any sort of local hub with people you love than an internet community". These are abstract ideas, and ones that other sites will use, and ignore, and they think it close enough to reddit that people will start to get angry at central components of the site, telling the people who have been here for years that they're wrong for wanting it one way or being resistant to change. And don't get me wrong, we value new ideas, but the angry vitriol people come in isn't new. You know how many times we've had to fight users about the mute function? It's tiring. I understand not wanting to put up with another month of assholes coming in and ruining something you love. I understand having a socialist, feminist safe space cut out for you on the site, only to have it shit on by assholes who don't get it over and over and over as new people come in.

The important thing is the people like you who come here, don't want to step on toes, do want to understand, and do contribute a very large amounts of good quality. But that's such a minority on the internet. That's why we're small anyway. People will come in, self-centered, see a platform to preach their stale language from, and will be angry when they're not given voice. Reddit serves that masturbatory sense of ego, where here, if there are people who want to listen, they will. If people don't want to, they won't, just like in real life. If you have the self-awareness of "I've made bad habits", and "I want to learn", and "I would hate to step on the culture". you're a hubskier that we want here. That's what we strive for. If it's the people saying "I want to shape this place for my voice", get the fuck out of my coffee shop.

Mom had her surgery. It went well. She was in the ICU for a week, then in the recovery rooms, and went home the other day. Getting more info from her is like pulling teeth, but she sounds like she's in great shape.

She would be better, but apparently on one of her last days, her mother called and wasn't making any sense. A check later and they determined she had a stroke. Major surgery that gets rid of cancer, and then her mother's in the hospital. This poor woman can't catch a break.

But all in all, good news for her future it seems.

In other news, we survived the storm in DC this weekend. arguewithatree and I went walking in the blizzard on Saturday for fun. My beard got... a bit frozen.

Today was the first day back at work too. We had every day from Friday until Tuesday with the entire city shut the fuck down because they, even with nearly two weeks' warning, couldn't properly coordinate clearing the roads. They're still a mess in most places.

I'll also be back around these parts. I took a break from pretty much everything for a while because I'd been working an obscene amount between my job and bartending and stress was just weighing me down hard.

Additionally, is anyone here familiar with Maine? Chelsea and I are tentatively planning on driving up for her second Spring Break (She calls in Jesusween because they have spring break and Easter break, because Jesuits are serious about this shit) and wanted to see if anyone had suggestions. We were thinking of going to Portland, because if we're up there we absolutely have to, and maybe do some nature trips, but I don't know enough to know where exactly.

Hi there!

Kevin was ten of my closest friends best friend, and I work for his alma mater!

Go fuck yourself you vile, racist piece of shit!

I'm back home. I spent a few days with my friends up in Humboldt hoping to get out of my uncle's hair and just decompress until the hospital finally got their shit together and scheduled my mom's surgery.

They didn't get their shit together.

I spent as long as I could possibly hold out on getting a flight home and took the cheap one I could last night (pretty lucky, less than $200 just two days before flying out). Of course, less than six hours after I booked it, the hospital scheduled her for this Friday. Which was like a double slap in the face, because even if I didn't buy the ticket, I simply could not afford to stay until then.

Then, in even more fun, my mom's work essentially ended her job for being gone too long, but guaranteed the job will be there when she's able to come back (in December, according to doctor's orders), but now her fucking insurance isn't working either, so she can't get any of her medicine, especially the vitally important pain pills, or her diabetes medicine without paying full cost. Which she can't. Because the disability office is fucking around too and still hasn't cut her check.

How the fuck we can live in this country without absolute, vitriolic disgust and unanimous upheaval of a system that:

-Cuts off a job

-Cuts off the benefits

-Has disability services be crippled by bureacracy

-Fucking make people fucking pay for fucking medicine and charges 200 fucking dollars for a vial of fucking insulin

Is so far beyond me it makes me lose hope in my countrymen that believe these are debatable topics.

On a side note though, everything you all donated made a goddamn world of difference and makes me feel a gratitude I'll never be able to repay any of you. I was able to get gas in her car, get food for the house, get some of her medications, get my flight home, and even was able to pay for an absolutely necessary vet visit for her cats. I'm still going to come up short on my bills, but I can hopefully find a way to make that work, while all the absolute most pressing things were taken care of by you amazing people. Seriously. Thank you. Every single one of you.

Okay, but what's the point of having Hillary Clinton win if she doesn't support our beliefs? It's either having a batshit crazy right-wing nutjob passing conservatives policies, or a center-right democrat with a record of right policies passing conservative policies?

Yeah, 'socialist' isn't very palatable for some Americans, but 64% of Americans identify as progressive, they just don't vote. Most don't because they're jaded and there are no true progressive candidates. Among millennials, an overwhelming majority say they would at least vote for a socialist candidate. This isn't an issue of him being unelectable because of his beliefs, it's a matter of our bloc doesn't vote because they don't see representation. If we can actually get to a way to get young people to get to the polls, he could win in a landslide without question. This is a matter of the Democratic Party being spineless as fuck and not standing for their policies or beliefs, or flat out not having them, because they want to be palatable to the center and center-right. It pulls the country further and further to the right and off the deep end.

My mother's cancer is back. Apparently it's worse than before. I don't know how that happens with as many follow up checks she had.

She's having a surgery Monday, exploratory I think, but I have an inkling it's more than that and she's not telling me. I've known her long enough to know that tone of urgency in her voice. So I have to fly out immediately to CA for her immediately. I have no idea how I'm going to do that or afford it, especially with not knowing how long I will be there. Making 12k a year is fucking brutal because it doesn't leave room for emergencies. And more than that I hate even having to think about it. That I'm going to go home to help my mother through the hardest thing in her life and I have to fucking think about money.

This in the first one that really hurts and makes me reconsider some stances. I don't know why she left, but I've always been of the stance of "when the redditors influx, give it a few weeks of shit before the assholes leave." But they haven't left and now one of my favorite contributors is gone, and I wonder if it's time to take a bolder stance to ensure the culture of the site isn't threatened.

Ugh.

I've still been away for a while, but this topic irks me so much for some reason that I have to jump into the fold again.

I eat meat. I enjoy meat a lot. I've been a hunter for a decade now as well, but very rarely get out. Guns and ammo are expensive, yo. nowaypablo mentioned getting a wild pig. I can tell you nothing is more exhilarating and terrifying than boar hunting. And really, Pablo, we should do that some time.

So that's one level of things to tackle. People want to make that mention of 'more ethical meat'. So let's lay out the levels of arguments on meat.

-The one I already mentioned, those that don't oppose meat eating when you're hunting for it, or at a stricter level, those are hunt meat to survive. These are the vegetarians that are able to take a step back from their First World privilege where they have the ability to not eat meat and recognize that other places in the world have no choice. Okay. Cool.

-The types of people that have no problems with meat being eaten by others, but don't personally want to. I don't see an issue with this. These are people that are usually conflicted in some way about taking a life or find animals adorable or have the ability to not eat meat without much issue. They recognize that they have their choices, and other people have theirs, and stepping into others' lives claiming 'ethics' is a breach of boundaries and common decency, despite whether they believe animals have freedom of choice or consciousness.

-The vegetarian, usually vegan as well, that opposes the entire entire of meat or animal products, that they are morally superior for not using these products in any way at all, and it is their god-given duty (and I mean God-given, as this more closely resembles Christian religious evangelism than anything else) to tell every last person on Earth about it. These are the people who don't take a step back from their position of privilege to understand there are other circumstances, and who will spout that even 'free range animals would prefer to be free than eaten :)' when, no, in reality, they'll still be eaten, just not by humans, and I don't think you understand that wolves don't have consideration for ethical killing, nor do they really care about the quality of life of creatures living in the wild vs. living in a range managed by humans. I think this is the most fantasy world that's most disconnecting humans and animals, despite their claims of "one in the same!" because they have some idea of an equation where "animals - humans = peaceful harmony where everything lives forever and is cute and happier."

-Lastly, the people who don't oppose meat, but oppose factory farms. I feel like factory farms are what lead most people to be vegetarians in the first place. I subscribe to this pretty well, for a lot of reasons. Nothing should have to have a miserable life, whether it has consciousness or not. A chicken doesn't care if its life purpose is to be eaten, but it does care if it never moves. Animals should have a high standard of living that meets or exceeds what it would in the wild (i.e. space, regular feeding, medication, safety). Beyond this, at a capitalist level, removing corporations and strong-arming small and family farms is absolutely fucking vital to every country. Allowing corporations to wholesale owning agriculture and food is one of the most dangerous things possible in the long term, and it isn't addressed enough.

Of course I have conflicted feelings on eating meat. There's always the chance of it turning out that every animal on Earth is exactly as conscious and aware of everything as humans are. But I don't see where that leads to making eating meat morally wrong. Everything dies at some point. Everything. Death is the absolute most important part of the life cycle. Why it shouldn't serve a purpose of sustenance of other creatures and enjoyment of others is beyond me. To discuss moral questions, one of the things that rustles my feathers most is Western human funeral procedures. We die, fill our bodies with toxic chemicals, seal them in boxes, and bury them, where they cannot become a part of the life cycle, and don't feed other creatures. How is that not wrong? We should provide animals freedom to die, or be eaten by other animals, but when you factor humans into the creatures that eat them, it becomes different because we're aware of what we're doing, or planning it agriculturally somehow it inverts it? And at the same time, we don't believe in the Earth completing its cycles naturally in our deaths, and well, fucking billions of other ways as well.

But sure. I can't actually come up with a reason why one should eat meat, in a wealthy, first world country with other options. Because there are other options, and you are taking a life from eating meat. If you find that makes you uncomfortable, that's your own right. There's nothing wrong with not eating meat. I simply don't find anything particularly wrong with eating it either. That's my stance, at least. I enjoy it. I don't find qualms with myself enjoying it. It's going to get eaten completely regardless, by other animals or 'eaten' by the soil when it dies. 'Life' is such weird, vague, ethereal concept to the human mind as it is, limiting it to the discussion of whether we should eat something is bewildering.

Personal anecdote on hunting: I have always found that hunting-- and most other hunters seem to think this way too, across the whole gamut of people who hunt-- is an activity that is completely a commune with nature and evokes an enormous respect for the world around you. I can't express what it's like to be tracking a deer for three days in the woods. You have every kind of life around you, and the majority of your time is spent is silence, and hopefully reverence. You try to understand the patterns of everything around you and the animal you're hunting. The kill isn't really the focal point at all, it's usually just a rote part of the cycle. You kill the animal to clean the animal, the use the parts of the animal for a world of necessary things, and you have the meat and energy provided by the animal to sustain yourself and others. It's a wonderful thing. And that hippy-dippy "one with nature" bullshit isn't possible without something like that. You can't separate yourself from animals and believe that you're respecting it when you simply close your eyes and cover your ears as to how the systems of nature work. It's belittling to believe you love the animals and respect them just because you don't eat them.

This reads more spiritual than I meant for it to be. Perhaps that's good, because most of the arguments against meat seem to read spiritually as well.

Do you know what an observational study is? Nothing was manipulated. There were no variables against you. The site's actions were observed. It's absolutely no different than someone seeing how attendance changes at the local park in different weather. You weren't part of an experiment like Facebook was, where they changed stories that came in to elicit emotional responses.

...

"We are assembled here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. And yet it should be noted, in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world; a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish. He did not feel this sacrifice a vain or empty one, and we will not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings. Of my friend, I can only say this: Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human."

EDIT: I was holding up until I came across that quote and then choked up. But I lost it after seeing his last tweet. I can't comprehend that level of acceptance of mortality, and in the moments leading up to your death, having the clarity and ability to put something valuable out there.

There was a debate when I was in high school over whether students should avoid reading that word when reading Huck Finn. Someone even released editions sanitized of it. Our school, thankfully, had a massive push back against that. Removing that part of history, and removing the struggle of black men in the story, and removing Mark Twain's harsh criticism of racism and that word not only completely misses the point, it's racist itself. It's harmful. I consider it akin to trying to hide the atrocities we committed against the Native Americans.

Yes, it's horrific. Yes, it's a heavy word that should not be used without purpose, but it's still unfortunately a word. It's a word deeply intertwined with our nation's horrible history.

The terrible thing is this polemic I'm writing is exactly the kind of thing that gets warped by internet white boys as a justification for using the word, and that we shouldn't have any restrictions on what we say in the form of judgement or consequences of choices of words, and they'll go on to say that judging them or calling their usage out as problematic is an offense on free speech. Which is not at all what I'm saying. Call out culture is extremely useful in educating, and is an active strategy in deconstructing the issues in our culture and society, many of which are unseen by the ruling class many times, and especially ending the silence on these things. And it doesn't have to be from a place of anger! Here's how this should go, first in the context of using the word in historical context like Huck Finn, and then in the larger:

"Reading Huck Finn includes many passages of hatred of people based on their skin color, including a vile word used to dehumanize and demean POC for centuries now. This is a very important word in our country, and should not be used lightly, but in respect for the people who went through these atrocities, we have to respect that it was there, it happened, and requires acknowledgement. Erasing the blood erases the conflict and the people who suffered."

Now in a casual setting with a friend:

"Hey sorry, you just used the word 'gypsy'. I know that's the term you've probably learned, but it's unfortunately a slur that's been used for a long time, including in genocides against Roma people. Generally the preferred term in Roma or Romani." and that can be more detailed or less. It can be as simple as "oh gypsy is a slur, by the way.", and you can continue education from there if they like. The problems arise when you say, "oh hey that's a slur" and they return with "what? No it's not. I've always used it. I'm not racist. What the fuck is wrong with you?" or "i don't give a fuck, that's the term I'm going to continue to use." and it becomes understandable why they things become escalated. Of course it's an issue when the starting point is "fuck you, you're a racist, I'm calling for your head" because our country is woefully terrible at teaching about the struggles of minority peoples the world over, but even of our own country. Education when you have it is great, and calling things out directly to people is a fantastic way of letting them know.

But it seems there's a rabid section of people completely opposed to the idea of confronting that they've been wrong, taught wrong, or know something wrong. Saying something racist unknowingly doesn't make you a racist, it just makes you ignorant of the history of a word. Knowing that it's wrong and being able to correct yourself is how you become a better person. We're going to say racist, or sexist, or transphobic things until we die because so much of it is ingrained in our society. Actively attempting to remove these things from your own vocabulary is important. Saying "I don't want them calling me out" or "I'm going to continue saying these things because free speech" is like saying "I know I'm saying the wrong thing, and I don't care that it's used for dehumanization", and that is a fucking problem.

EFF is one of the most credible sources. They're very much the frontline for privacy and digital rights.

Ugh. Some asshole named arguewithatree.

Just the worst. And I have the curse of loving her.

Fuck this.

Fuck the grand jury.

Fuck that patronizing, useless governor.

Fuck that white ass fucking prosecutor who laid blame on social media and everyone else but the fucking cops.

Fuck Obama for being a milquetoast neutral observer.

Fuck everyone involved that yelled about the violence of the protestors despite the only violence coming for the militarized police.

Fuck America.

This isn't a hospitable country for anyone but upper class, older, straight, white males. I have nothing but disdain for these people and anyone who claims any of this sham of a democratic process produces justice anymore.

I'm doing a fucking media blackout. I can't handle this shit. The US has emphatically said once again that they don't think black lives matter. That man stood up there and lied for twenty straight minutes.

I need a fucking cigarette.

This is what I'm getting at, too. When racist asshats dominate everything, it makes it preeeetty fuckin' clear to POC that this looks just like reddit. I've been racking my brain for a week about what better things we can do to moderate out scum, I've been picking the brains of other users, I was talking to mk today, and the few ideas I have will piss off a number of people no matter what. I find it worth fighting for though, so I'll push ahead as much as I can, but then again I'm not asked to defend my stances on race relations every single day. Oh wait, a racist asshat made sure there's been a thread in my feed every day for a week to tell me white privilege don't real. He must be right.

Ah I forgot it's Wednesday. Thought I'd update you all on the situation with my mother:

She had her first, exploratory surgery finally, and it went well. The news wasn't good at all though. The main surgery is going to require removal of urethra, uterus, and bladder.

To make matters worse, her job officially sent notice that, since she was on medical leave for more than two weeks, her job is terminated. Thus, so is her insurance. So not only can she not get her diabetes medication currently, she can't get the surgery. They apparently asked for $100,000.

Not that it matters right now. She's considering just not getting the surgery because she doesn't want to deal with having to carry a bag around. So I'll have to talk to her about that, because I apologize, but that's a fucking stupid reason to die.

She's coming to visit for two weeks starting next week, so I'll have plenty of time for that, when I'm not working,.

Thanks again for everyone's support.

He wasn't forced to resign, and he didn't peacefully oppose. The company, who's main product relies on a userbase to be able to use search engines which they are paid a (very, very small) amount to point towards Google by default. People were outaged at him and threatened to stop using the product.

Now they weren't outraged because he opposed gay marriage, but because he actively donated to a proposition to limit the rights of people. That was a political act, not a political belief, that relied on discrimination. Having a person like that as a head of a public company is not good, especially because it calls into question if he can reasonably separate his work from his personal biases. Would he not hire someone for being gay? Do we know if he have other discriminatory views? How can you know? And as a company, if you are paying a man, and he is using his own money to vote against gay marriage, you're indirectly doing the same as the company. Your name is attached to him.

Now on top of all this, he well and truly proved he had no right leading this company. He could have very easily lied and put this all to rest. He could have apologized for donated to the cause, said 2008 was a very long time ago, and made a simple sign of good will; but instead, he showed that his political acts and bigoted beliefs were far more important to him than leading the company. It simply didn't mean that much to him clearly. So he can fuck right off and go talk about the dangers of gays all he likes now, if he so pleases.

Look, man. TNG is too nice to attack people, but I'm really not, and I'm reeeeeally sick of seeing these comments pop up all the time. If you don't like the way things are run, actively involve yourself by making suggestions for making it better or not. Not this "I have a low opinion of the site" and "it's not as good as reddit" bullshit.

If you don't like it here, don't be here. We like it here, and I don't see anything of value lost from people who's seemingly main purpose of being on this site is to complain about it leaving. I value the opinions of the people here and what they have to say, I don't mute people who express their opinions, but I would for spammers and straight up assholes.

An important thing to remember in conversations about triggering, which people on the internet, especially redditors, like to refer to as "muh feels", but it's not about feelings or mood largely. Survivors of rape, or assault, or war, or whatever causes PTSD, or various other trauma-induced mental issues, have a serious risk of dissociation wherein, among other problems, a continuity of consciousness is broken. Now if you're reading an article at, say, your office, and you have issues with PTSD from your rape, reading a detailed description of something similar may cause you to dissociate. And this is just one of many issues that could arise, that are simply solved by adding something like "warning: graphic content regarding war trauma". This is something that causes no harm to the writer, or the unaffected people, but means a great deal to a victim, so they have the right to choose to read it or not, or save it for a more appropriate time.

I'm extremely careful elsewhere, but here I'm me, 100%. A significant portion of people here already know me personally and have met me multiple times, others can find out easily if they please. I'm not worried about that at all.

I used to be extremely careful about my online personas, ensuring that nobody could find out who I am. But I've come to realize it doesn't matter for me personally. I say nothing online I wouldn't say or stand behind in meatspace, and that's probably a result of my extreme caution over the years, but I'd be proud of anything I said in the last decade, or maybe a little embarrassed of how often I post in sports subreddits, but I don't say things that are compromising.

They is also generally accepted as a gender-neutral singular, and is generally the preferred pronoun of many gender non-binary people.

I have actually been taking it upon myself in the last few months to substitute they wherever possible when a gendered pronoun occurs, because I would like to break down the usage of assumption of gender or placing a gender on someone that may be incorrect.

My diminished presence during influxes mean I always miss these magnificent meltdowns. Thank the lord for having been linked on this one.

Listen, my only knowledge of you is through seeing those comments. kb might be an ass occasionally, but I've yet to see him be an ass to someone first. Moreover, he's very rarely wrong. And this case was no different. You were wrong. More often than not here, you will be called for being wrong, and very often--as this post shows--when someone is wrong, they go on very long-winded rants about minor things. Perhaps you need to take a step back and realize that if you're in that position, you may want to reconsider where you stand.

I'll probably make a few more comments like this one. I always end up getting sucked and and tell off some asshole who's overstayed their welcome after the influxes, but I don't know you that well yet. And you see to be introspective in these comments here at least, so there may be a chance you're a good guy at least. Just... understand that you don't need a diatribe meta-post when you realized you called out an expert.

Above all else, I'd like to note the cowardly actions of some hubskiers. Of fucking course rape culture is real. Denying that is denying the straight facts of our society, but instead of actively making their (albeit probably misguided) thoughts and opinions on the article and subject known, opted to anonymously change the user tag on this to 'no', which added nothing and changed no one's opinions, but made us aware of some snotty young person's dissent and attempts to discredit this idea without even acknowledging the arguments. Keep that bullshit on reddit, please; here we discuss things.

-Fair Housing Act expanded to acts that aren't obvious or intentionally discriminatory. Lawsuits can be brought against unfair housing even in the cases of neutral acts that are still discriminatory against minorities.

-I think the plates were banning the distribution of plates with the confederate flag.

This is something I brought up about a year ago because I have the same problem. I've mostly just done trial and error. If a spoke goes away, I hit it again, but obviously that's a stopgap.

Anything come of that, mk?

Fun story time:

I moved to DC a few years ago. When I did so, I had no house and no job. I was absolutely, insanely lucky to get both within three days. Even more incredibly, the housing situation I got was... free.

The deal I got from her daughter-- who was running this whole operation-- was that I live in the English basement of a very nice, very expensive house of a woman that came from old, old Pullman money. She was 82 and her mental health was failing, and she recently crashed her car because of her lack of mental faculties. My job was to help her out for 15 hours a week, mostly by driving her whenever she needed. I worked nearby, so if she ever needed me to come back to drive her, it wouldn't be a problem. Of course, this became insanely frustrating because she was determined to be independent and drive herself. I ended up having to play a coy game with her daughter of intentionally "losing" the key so she wouldn't drive, deal with her resentment for it, and do more and more basic things for her as her health declined. At a certain point, I was making or driving her to nearly every meal she had because she simply could not cook anymore. She'd leave the stove running for hours, or, more often, would try to eat raw meat because she forget that you have to cook things, and then would argue that's she's been doing it for decades and I'm trying to take away her freedom.

My point is, it was stressful. It became almost a much more time consuming ordeal, and I was keeping logs of everything I was doing for her daughter as well as keeping tabs of her disease's progression (a mix of things, really, but Alzheimer's early stages with rapidly progressing dementia were among them. Other things I'm not sure of, but the Alzheimer's clearly wasn't the primary issue at the time I was there.)

After some time, she started taking longer vacations to her farm up in Vermont. Getting out of the city was good, and the DC weather was becoming more unbearable for her. When this happened, her daughter decided I was would need to continue to 'earn my rent' somehow, and I was asked to do some physical labor around the house. I had no problem with that at first, but it eventually became a "please do all the yardwork that hasn't been done in a year or more around the sides and back of the house." This was a problem for two reasons for me:

1.) It was the dead of DC summer, so really fucking hot, and really fucking humid.

2.) The yards were formed entirely of ivy, kudzu, and bamboo. If you don't know what those three plants are like, they grow fast. The bamboo at this point was near 20 feet fall and the kudzu hid an entire alcove I didn't even know existed. The ivy covered paths and went halfway up the side of the house.

Regardless, I still felt I should do it because, hey, free rent. However, the daughter (or at least her husband), felt I wasn't do it fast enough. One week after asking me to do all of this, while I'm still working full time at two jobs on campus, they emailed me that I wasn't earning my keep. I apologized, worked harder on it (about three hours an evening or more at this point), and completed everything else they added to my list.

As I was cutting out the last of the bamboo and kudzu and whatever else was in there in a particularly productive feeling evening, I went back in, showered, and sat down to realize I had spent seven straight hours clearing everything away. I had 36 mosquito bites, 12 open cuts on my arms, and my muscles were killing me, but it felt great to complete it. Even better knowing that I had completed three days before, finally, after three years of fighting with terribly ruin bureaucracies at universities, I'd be taking classes for real, with good financial aid, and making just enough to be able to pay the remainder off.

I then checked my phone to see an email from the daughter saying that, with her mother traveling so much more lately, and they're trips to see her, they would need to start charging me $1500 a month because it was just very expensive to not do so. They knew full well I couldn't afford it, they knew full well that I was finally starting school, and worse, they framed it as a benefit for her mother, that they would be getting her a nurse (which, I happened to know was a lie, and here, years later, speaking to her neighbor I still know who is close with the mother, know was a lie because they have another student paying them and no nurse has ever visited), and claiming the cost was an insult to me personally as every single person in that family was making a half million a year, not to mention the amounts of money the woman had in the first place.

I had 30 days to find a new place, move out, move into the new place, while starting school, and a full time job, and having no vehicle to speak of. They burned me bad. The worst I've ever been burned.

I'm still reeling from the financial consequences of the entire ordeal because I ended up four miles from work, school, and home from any point. This was around the time I was having my massive, literally paralyzing headaches I was telling some people about at the hubski meetup, and I had to be biking everywhere. This stopped when I had to eventually go to the emergency room for the headaches, and drop out of my classes because I could not physically make it anymore, and pay way more money than I had between transportation, money owed to the university (which ended up being double the original amount monthly because-- surprise! clerical errors), and my insane fucking rent for a tyrant, bourgeois landlord, and the sky high utilities. No food. I didn't have money to buy food. My bosses, the saints that they are, bought all my food, outside my occasional things simply to remain sane.

So anyway, rambling aside, fuck bourgeois shits. Fuck kicking people out of the place they live to make more money. Fuck capitalism.

So, here's the main problem I have with you argument:

But I can guarantee you that if we were to hand out paychecks Oprah style, we would have tens of millions of Americans unmotivated to do anything other than watch TV and post about it on Facebook. It's arguably human nature... if there's nothing chasing you, why run?

Now hold on while I say the next sentence: why is that a bad thing? Yeah, obviously the people that do that are pretty much worthless at that point, but do you know of many people that given a basic income will sit on the couch for the entirety of their lives. 50 plus years of doing nothing? That sounds unreasonable to me. Perhaps some will, statistically it's possible, but not beyond the first generation, that won't continue.

The basic income would allow people to do what they want. Want to pursue a career in something you truly enjoy? Congratulations! Making a living wage is no longer a concern, you don't have to worry about funding it. Want to take up a high paying job to be able to supplement your income? Congratulations! You now have the time to study for that job, or pay for the schooling needed to get there. Want to travel the world and not have to stop to work? Congratulations!

It enables people to contribute to society as they feel they should, not as they have to. It solves the other issue of people being worried about losing their jobs to robots because all those low skill, replaceable jobs can be now without concern, because those previously displaced employees still pull an income, so technology advances. It would also cut the government spending on social wellness programs like welfare, as it was determined that if everyone had a basic income, the costs of administration and enforcement of welfare and all similar programs is eliminated, so the overall cost would be lower.

Will it happen anytime soon? No, you're right, the right would whine like pissbabies until their heads burst, but it doesn't make it something we shouldn't fight for.

Zoe is one of my favorite musicians working today. I've met and talked with her at least three times and have seen her perform seven. She's an incredibly open and honest person and talks about what's going on in her world and her music frequently, and things like this have come up before. Personally, I think what youtube is doing is scummy, and removing the autonomy of artists and all videos where anything their work is in is even worse. Even worse, this blog of her's is the first I've heard of youtube doing this. It's really shocking that Zoe is the first person to come out and mention it, and that she did is great. More artists should bring their qualms with it forward and see if, collectively, they can get youtube to change its mind. Realistically, blocking all the videos of many artists hurts youtube more than the artists, especially if the people know what's happening and what's happening isn't really the fault of said artist.

As a side note, it really is refreshing to see an artist speak so candidly about the business side of her music and her discomfort with it. Just getting that insight was one of the things that really made her shows special, along with her explanations of how her music works and her anecdotes about it. It's nice having someone so approachable be a voice outside of the corporate music industry that knows it well.

there are concentration camps everywhere

No. Stop right there. Do not continue.

I intentionally left out this subsection of vegetarians because I would never dare accuse anyone here of being ones of these people. This is the last group of vegetarians: the vile, dehumanizing people that put eating meat on fucking par with genocide.

Do you not realize how disgusting that is to do? When millions of human beings were systematically murdered, you see no problem with saying that's the same as animals being herded and eaten?

It comes dangerously close with equating minorities with lesser people. That there's a separation between humans and them.

I've been meaning to get rid of dropbox for a long time now. I never use it anymore because I'm so suspicious of them, and never kept anything valuable in there. Deleted now. Entirely gone. Scouring everything related to it. Telling everyone to do the same.

There is no reason for this. She has no place in that company and can do nothing good for privacy, but opens a world of potential hurt. Absolutely not taking any risks on this one.