“woke”, used in a US political context (and not as the past tense of “wake”, as from sleep), doesn’t have any meaning in the first place. It’s made-up propaganda noise invented by the far-right. I refuse to parse any sentence containing the word, from the media, because that sentence is guaranteed to contain right-wing propaganda, if only obliquely. I certainly won’t utilize the word in any political way myself - that would mean that I accept as legitimate the propaganda machinations of the right-wing. And they are pure festering slime, so no.
- 32 Posts
- 39 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: March 13th, 2023
You are not logged in. If you use a Fediverse account that is able to follow users, you can follow this user.
4·10 months agocitizens of another country
Or another planet. Back in the day we addressed the alien problem with style, advanced technology, and a cool theme song. Nowadays it’ll be just MAGA bumfucks running things, people who can barely put two coherent thoughts together, and that’s on a good day.
Loser incels are so pathetic.
If this becomes law the charitable-giving industry is going to be slammed. Right now there are lots of ways that you, a donor, can give to your favorite causes via an intermediary, taking a current tax deduction for doing so but (possibly) having the intermediary pay out in the future (an endowment), possibly forever (if endowment growth exceeds charitable outflows). If all of a sudden a large chunk of the nonprofit space are deemed anti-Trump “terrorists” then these intermediaries (public and private foundations and donor-advised funds (DAFs) for example) will suddenly have far fewer recipients to write checks to, and may have no recipients at all in the case where funds are directed to just a few recipients or areas-of-interest by the terms of the donation. Oh sure, the money will be disposed of one way or another, but it might very well not be disposed of in the way the donor intended at the time of the donation, and might well end up being disposed of in a way the donor would never have agreed to. Tough luck donor, you took the tax write-off, you can’t get the donation $ back and you can’t have it disbursed to non-charities either.
These intermediaries, the foundations and charitable-fund managers, are themselves charities. Their job is to disburse donor funds to a myriad of charities more or less according to the wishes of their donors. So what happens when, say, Fidelity Charitable is deemed a “terrorist” org for sending donor money to the ACLU? If it’s stripped of its nonprofit status, it can no longer be a DAF manager, so what then? What happens to the donors and all the assets under management? I suppose there will need to be a follow-on bill that will compel the fund managers under such circumstances to cut checks to Trump and Trump-affiliated orgs (nonprofit or not). I read recently that the sum of DAF assets under management alone is around $250B (2023 numbers I think) so if a substantial amount of those funds are deemed “terrorist” funds, then it’ll be mighty tempting for “somebody”, somebody bad at business yet well-known for criminality to see about doing some confiscation.
Also, right now, if one is, say, a DAF donor, many of the managers (most?) allow you to make anonymous donations out of your account. But if you are (or were) having checks sent to newly disfavored (i.e. not regime-aligned) orgs, will the manager have to turn your name over to the government? After all, you’d then be a “terrorist” yourself wouldn’t you?
I could really see this decimating the charitable-giving industry. Charitable foundations and fund managers have got to be losing sleep over what these laws could entail. As a donor, unless I was already MAGA-aligned and really wanted that tax deduction, why would I bother with all this uncertainty and risk?
Good. From another article posted here today, regarding NC domestic terrorists:
In the summer of 2024, before Hurricane Helene, Veterans on Patrol was active in Spokane, Wash. In Telegram message from July 2, 2024, Veterans on Patrol announced to the police that it “would no longer be safe” for one of its officers “to work his beat.” The channel also posted the home addresses of city council members.
The assault was one of at least 439 mass shootings in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that defines mass shootings as incidents involving four or more victims.
Ah, a @YourChildhoodRuined moment. Just great. :-(
King County Juvenile Court Judge Joe Campagna found probable cause for five counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder and ordered the teenager be held in secure detention.
O’Brien also outlined evidence that was withheld that pointed to Michael Holman — a former police officer, who died in 2015. Evidence showed that Holman’s pickup truck was seen outside Jeschke’s apartment, that he tried to use her credit card, and that her earrings were found in his home.
The appellate court’s ruling said the record “strongly suggests” that police buried their investigation into Holman.
One of the appellate court judges noted particular concern about what happened when Holman, the discredited police officer, couldn’t be ruled out as the source of a palm print detected on a TV antenna cable found next to the victim’s body.
The FBI asked for clearer prints, but police didn’t follow up. Jurors never heard about that or other evidence because the police never informed prosecutors.
New article with more details: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/oct/16/12-year-old-who-brought-loaded-handgun-to-school-t/ .
Court records say another student was skipping class and hanging out with JV near the stairs when she saw the barrel of a handgun inside his backpack. When she asked about it, he said he was holding it for someone.
The student criticized JV for bringing a gun to school and he responded, “If you snitch, I will pop you in your head the next time I see you,” records say.
Another student who was skipping class told police JV showed her the gun and asked her not to judge him. He said he had it because another student would be coming to the school, records say, but didn’t give any more details.
The semi-automatic, 45-caliber Springfield model handgun found in the backpack had bullets loaded in the magazine, but no round was yet chambered in the barrel.
I don’t understand what the word “certified” is supposed to mean in his rant. Is this some new teen-speak redefinition that he’s trying to appropriate? “power certified”? Huh?
“MAGA is eating out” - this is happening to the colleges in N. Idaho as well, possibly all of ID. Schools losing accreditation, admin and faculty bailing, students unable to xfer credits… a big shit-show that fucks over students but makes the local Fascists think that they’re “taking back education”. Got kids? Send 'em to FL or ID and they can get an unaccredited PhD in Ignorance Studies in a year or less.
At the scene, multiple people pulled over in a car and fired with at least one automatic weapon at one person before getting back into the vehicle and fleeing the scene, Birmingham Police Chief Scott Thurmond said in an update Sunday morning. More than 100 shell casings were collected at the scene, among other pieces of evidence, and bystanders were caught in the crossfire.
Thurmond said the shooting was not random and may have stemmed from an alleged murder-for-hire against an individual in the Five Points South entertainment district at the time. No one is in custody, but police are asking for businesses and witnesses to report any information they have.
City and police officials believe a switch — a small device that can convert a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon — may have been used in the shooting.
https://wbhm.org/2024/birmingham-police-4-dead-dozens-injured-in-five-points-south-mass-shooting/
Spokaners do not drive across the border into Coeur d’Alene for cheaper groceries or a half-price Big Mac.
I actively boycott any and all ID businesses, because of the state’s shitty labor and reproductive-rights laws and its nurture of Christofascism. They can Gilead all they want but it won’t be with my financial support.
I haven’t bought anything via the Amazon site in years. At least three, possibly five or more. Anything I need I can get elsewhere either online or in person without supporting Amazon’s anti-union, worker-exploiting policies. I won’t even use AWS for business purposes because of how they treat their workers. Boycott away, there are plenty of Amazon options that are “good enough” if not actually better.
A “quick haircut” sort of place (kind of a barber, sort of , but super-high-volume and just one worker, the owner) that I’ve been using for a while now has a super-annoying dark-pattern in their payment flow. They book appointments, and take in-person payments using Square. After your cut, when you’re paying via their hand-held kiosk with a card, the screen shows you a bunch of huge “tip amount” buttons, and it’s implied that the customer has to choose one of them, while the provider looks on, in order to finish the transaction and leave (probably not true - they’ve already got your CC info by that point). Guess which button is highlighted/pre-selected and front-and-center! That’s right, 20%. If you want to select another tip, or no tip, you have to select another button while she watches you do so. The owner lists all prices on her square website, and it’s those prices you think you’ll be paying when you book an appointment online, but she still feels the need to be tipped. You KNOW that the provider/barber has configured Square to present that UI to the customer. Not quite the same as the restaurant fees scam, but it’s actually more manipulative though, in my view.
I use the one that’s built in to the Fastmail service. I have a custom domain just for aliases. The Fastmail alias-creation API is integrated with the Bitwarden app (which I use) so that makes creating new accounts (that use email addresses as usernames) on websites really easy. I also use Spamgourmet which is free, convenient, and has been around a very long time. No custom domains there, but they let you use a variety of their domains and they have some short ones which is nice, but I do find that they’re blocked pretty often, mostly by major mailing list services.
Insurance companies still do many versions of this with a byzantine coding system, complex “out of network” exclusions, etc. Anything to deny a claim.
Yep. My criminal insurance company (CIC) marketing docs trumpeted how my ER costs were “fully covered” (which they’re required to be by law, I think). That’s obviously bad for profits, so the solution? Well just interpret any ER line-item (pick some expensive ones) as non-ER, even when they pertain to an ER visit, then charge the whole slew of separate copays/deductibles that go with the new interpretation. Profit! The hospital, which has a contract with the insurer, will cooperate and code all these line-item services with ambiguous language and codes, making them ripe for the picking by the screw-you insurance dweebs.
Oh, I can appeal the insurance decisions? Great. Appeal #1 is decided by the insurance company itself! 100% internal. Appeal #2 is done by a third party company, selected by the insurance company and paid by the insurance company. Think your state insurance commissioner is going to step in when foul play occurs? Think again. If they pay attention to you at all, they’ll claim to have no “authority” to make “medical decisions” about the abuse the insurance companies subject you to, and if they do anything at all, it might be to write a mildly-stern email to the insurance company reminding it of your complaint and their supposed obligations. That’s it, the commissioner’s office is not on “your side” and even if it were to some extent, they’ll claim to be “too overloaded” to do anything, anything like actually regulate the insurance companies, on your behalf or on behalf of the other millions of insurance customers.
It’s called “dying of an apparent suicide” and the authorities can find no sign of foul play. It’s so sad when this sort of thing happens. The company’s thoughts and prayers are with his family.