reverendsteveii

39 checking in. in 2010 I was super broke, and when they shut my power off, my landlord said he wasn't gonna renew the lease next month. that meant I had no food, no lights, and 30 days to come up with 90 days' rent (first, last and security at a new place). I was lucky that I had someone to let me crash and start rebuilding my life, but I also promised myself I'd never for the rest of my life let my survival be dictated by luck and someone else's kindness.

I went to valid social commentary town. They all knew you.

honestly? lemme is teaching me that it's probably time to get away from social media as a concept. I'm having a tough time with it though. It's too automatic to pop open a new tab and type "l" or "r" or "f" or "t" and then just hit enter and get sucked into the outrage and/or validation loops

the wells fargo paddy wagon is coming down the street

"I never told them to commit fraud. I just set goals, and every time those goals were met I increased them until they had no choice but to commit fraud or be fired for not reaching their goals. I'm not responsible for their illegal behavior, and I shouldn't have to bear the consequences. I am, however, still responsible for their profitable behavior and should absolutely bear the consequences for that."

a year is a year to a rich man and a poor man alike. but a $50,000 fine is several years to a poor man and only a moment to a rich man. fines that don't scale with income are a sneaky way to make things only legal for the rich while pretending that there is equal protection under the law.

I love this thing where buying something has been replaced by buying an alterable, revokable license to access that thing. It lowers costs and adds flexibility for producers, which allows them to save money, and they pass that savings on to me in the form of higher prices and my shit that I paid real fucking money for just disappearing one day. Then they explain that I never really "owned" it despite the fact that they use the word "own" in the marketing material, because it's also legal to use words that have known definitions in agreements and then later explain that you were actually using an entirely different, secret definition of that word that's actually the opposite of what you very purposefully implied.

the internet is a machine that turns attention into currency, it does this at the same rate for negative and positive attention, and negative attention is a lot easier to get. you just burst onto a platform unbidden and say something that will piss people off. You get rewarded, the platform gets rewarded, everybody wins except the users who have a gross toxic time in the comments. Lemmy may not run ads, but it's structured the same way that other platforms are and we already have a way of using those types of platforms built into our cultural knowledge, so Lemmy just turns into a loose confederation of reddits.

"274"

wait, shit....

The requests were made under the guise of anti-terrorism laws

Remember this the next time someone in government says "We need tough anti-terrorism laws". They also get to define what counts as terrorism, so anyone inconvenient can be destroyed and the public told "We're just keeping you safe from terrorism."

can confirm. source: did this 3 separate times

at 1:48 they're in Agrabah, a place that doesn't exist

at 1:59 they're in Agrabah, a place that doesn't exist