Tag: Image

bernie sanders voters be like

prismatic-bell:

systlin:

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phineaslightfoot:

hollowedskin:

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hollowedskin:

fullten:

ohmygil:

fullten:

mostlyjudson:

fullten:

mostlyjudson:

What 16 trillion dollar debt? I have no idea how my free stuff is going to appear. I just know I want it.

He’s raising taxes on the rich

He’s planning on stealing more from people… ok that makes sense. Just because *They* are rich doesn’t mean those people deserve to have more of their wealth stolen from them.

Yes because the wealthy billionaires that steal and undervalue labor, and companies that scapegoat paying taxes are really hurting

why even bring up the national debt if you don’t want people to pay taxes

I’m on the phone half asleep, but yeah, Thank you for real

I don’t think OP understands what rich people are.
Like
they literally won’t even notice the taxes. It will make no impact on the wealthy at all. You could take literally 50% of the income of the top 10% and they would have to make zero changes to their lifestyle.

Money to them is just a high score. They whinge when you take them down a bit but it makes literally no difference because they’re still winning the fucking game.

They do actually 100% deserve to have their money taken. People are starving to death because we think disability payments shouldn’t be enough to live on and minimum wage should be half of what you need to survive so yeah, I think millionaires and billionaires deserve to have a tiny fucking fraction of the money they could never spend in a fucking lifetime so I can fucking EAT AT ALL.

I also don’t think people understand actually how much a billion dollars is. Like. it’s such an enormous number.

We think of numbers that big like a set of stairs, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million, ten million, a hundred million, a billion.

With each jump just being another step on the staircase and not realising HOW FUCKING HUGE each step is, and how vast the gap is between each of them.

Aside from the fact that even a million dollars is far more than you need, a billion is disgusting excess. There is no conceivable way one person could justify needing a billion dollars when you know HOW MUCH that is.

To put it in perspective:
a million seconds is 11 and a half days
a billion seconds is 31 years and 9 months.

Another example would be Warren Buffett:
He made $US12.7 billion in 2013. That was his yearly income, not his total worth. Just his income for 2013.

That’s $37 million per day;
$1.54 million per hour;  
$25,694 per minute 

How much do you get per hour? Is it enough to live on?
the minimum wage in america is $15,080 per year
That man makes more money per minute just for being alive, even in his sleep than most of you do in an entire year.  

also, just using seconds for reference again

15,080 seconds is just over 4 hours.
12.7 billion seconds is 402 years and 4 months.

Can someone please make a staircase graph with dollar amounts?

I have discalcula and have a hard time conceptualizing numbers.
I feel like that’s a great analogy and would help me.

Ok so I tried and the number differences broke the weird little graphing thing I was using.

so here we have one thousand (1,000) not showing
one million (1,000,000) at one pixel

and one billlion (100,000,000) is the big pilon there.

I added fifty million in to show because that graph goes in increments of 50 million.

So how much is 50 million compared to a million though, it’s only one pixel? 

so smol.
But still we’re trying to get down to a thousand, (which is ten hundred-dollar-bills.)

So what does a million look like compared to a thousand?

oh. We broke it again. It will only go in 50 thousands. 
So we got to look at how big 50k is compared to our wad of hunjies.

ok.

This is why i like using the seconds instead of graphs… 
But I won’t give up here. 

the reason it’s so so hard to process is because a BILLION is an enormous number. there comes a point with numbers where we can’t actually process them and its just like…a lot. And more than “a lot” is still “a lot”.

So we need visual representation. Lets use pennies (thanks megapenny)

Imagine a penny. Just one.

Ok, you get a thousand pennies a week, and you end up with 52 thousand in a year. If they were dollars that’s a nice paying wage.

with me?

now this is a thousand pennies. 

this is 50 thousand pennies (1 square foot solid of pennies! COOOOL)
It’s roughly how many pennies you would have in a year if you got a thousand pennies a week.

This is a million pennies

And this is a billion pennies

(Which is 5 schoolbuss sized blocks of solid pennies.)

that is so many.

.

The problem with numbers is that we see them written like this

1
100
1000
1000000
1000000000

And we kind of subconciously go “well… it’s only increasing a little at a time, like a staircase. When the progression is more like 

1.

10……….

100……….

……….

……….

……….

……….

……….

……….

……….

……….

……….

1000………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….

………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….

………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….

………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….

………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….

………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….

………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….

………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….

………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ……….

………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. ………. 

And so on. which is not a staircase I want to climb because it starts off reasonable and then jumps to building size, then mountain size.

We ‘add a zero’ which is confusing because it’s timesing (x) not adding (+).

to make ten thousand dots, I would copy all the dots in my thousand pile, and paste them ten times. to make a hundred thousand, I would copy all the dots in my ten-thousand-dot pile and paste them ten times. thats what “times by ten” means. 

That’s what adding a zero is, it’s multiplying (x) the last number we had by ten. (i also say timesing: as in copy and pasting it ten times)
try it with a word document and see how many pages it takes to get you a billion dots, and how many it takes for 15 thousand (minimum wage anual)

hopefully this was at least somewhat useful.

Anyway, the point is that if we imagine them as dollar coins, and one square block is established as good enough to live by a year, there’s no reason one individual deserves 5 bus-worths.

Omg this is excellent!
Thank you so much, that does really help!
The pennies in particular

Check out this awesome visual representation of how messed up our society is, everyone!

I literally was about to google a visual representation of this and then THERE IT WAS IN THE POST

Seriously. It’s time for people to wake the fuck up. I’m sick of the godsdamned wilful blindness.

We had this conversation in my sociology class.

If you dont understand the wealth distribution in america, here you go

This is what OP and America thinks it is

What it actually is. Evaluate your life. Evaluate your income. This is why we need to take from the 1%

The 1% makes so much money its off the grid. 

If you stack the 1% money next to eachother it would be like this

That 0% is your college students and people working fast food. Its below the poverty line. So taxing the 1% wont do shit to him.

This post got so incredibly awesome I’m almost glad OP posted it in the first place-almost

Idgaf how much a billion is. You not about to take MY money and spend it on who knows what to pay a debt when you shouldn’t have been borrowing the money in the first place.

People be making policies with the mindset that they going to be poor forever.

Socialism and more government intervention is NOT the answer

They’re not taking YOUR money. You are not at the top of that graph. 

And you’re not gonna get there either. That’s the myth they sell you, but it’s just that; a myth. 

My problem isn’t loans, asshole, it’s that food costs money. I’d like to NOT die of malnutrition because in my world broccoli is a LUXURY ITEM, you feel me, asshole?

s-s-s-senp-p-p-pai:

vermofftiss:

secretladyspider:

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dvasxmeka:

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dragonkitty:

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lord-kitschener:

instructionsfordancing:

artaeum:

lord-kitschener:

Obviously I want you to take care of your pets and make sure they get food and fresh water on a regular basis, but cats being huge drama queens and screaming hysterically at you and acting like they’re tragic famine victims who haven’t eaten in weeks and are about to drop dead from starvation right mcfuckin now, because you’re 10 minutes late feeding them is always going to be one of the funniest things to me

the cat who lives at the vet clinic i volunteer at was mad yesterday because his dinner was half an hour late due to a busy day. he proceeded to go to all the (empty dw) garbage cans and tried to knock them over and started desperately scavenging for scraps of food because obviously no one loves him or cares about him and if he must eat garbage to survive then so be it

not food related, but one time my cat cried at me for 20 minutes before i worked out that the reason why she was upset was because there was a coat hanger on her favourite cushion

This is absolutely beautiful and changed my life, thank you so much. Please protect her from hangers at all costs

wow. am STORVING and humaines here making joke laugh at cate honger ?!

My cat is a social eater who is not food motivated at all, so I was baffled when I first got him because he didn’t seem to care about food but he would SCREAM at me for hours when I knew his bowl was full. Any time I went to double check that he did indeed have food, he’d book it to the bowl and snarf like his life depended on it, but as soon as I walked away he’d follow me screaming again.

Eventually I figured out that he just wanted a dining companion and was screaming about how we’re a family and families eat together, god damnit! I moved his food bowl under my computer desk and it fixed the problem. But if I’m ever out for more than 12 hours I’ll come home to find him in a passive-aggressive kitty huff because dinner has been ready for hours but he’s been trying to be considerate (unlike some humans) and waiting for me to eat it. 

My cats are indoor cats. Being indoor cats, they can’t go outside to hunt for food (mice, rats, birds, etc) to gift to my sister and I.

But they know that the kitchen has food. They know where the easily accessible cat food is. And obviously my sister and I are just Really Big Stupid Hairless cats.

So if my sister and I go without leaving our rooms for too long? My cats will sit outside our doors and scream for our attention, lead us to their food bowls, and then only stop the screaming and leading once they see us sit down at the table and eat something. Because they think we’re hungry.

Your cats are the sweetest beings on the Earth, it makes my heart warm knowing that they exist. They love you very much and they care so much, they want you healthy and happy and will make sure you don’t neglect yourself and oh god they are so perfect. Real pure love exists, I am happy to be alive today.

My neighbor is a hardcore drunk. Like, 9am and dude is drinking vodka, but he had a cat that’s pretty much his honest to god caregiver because I have seen this cat visibly screaming at this man to keep him from hurting himself and sometimes when he hasn’t been outside for a while, the cat will scream at my door until I go outside to knock on the door to check on him. Cats are literal angels.

I have a cat named a Kitty Pryde who has an extra thumb and these giant paws and while she’s not super bright she did learn that she likes being pet. So I must like being petted right? So if I’m watching TV alone she’ll come up and just with her giant paw gently stroke my arm or hand until I pet her back and she waits and pets me again and it goes on a while. Cats are angels.

My cat once stuffed my bath mat into the litter box

Mine wakes me up if I sleep in too long cuz she wants me to take my pills. Fiance said she was yelling at him all day yesterday. She stopped whwn I got home…and asked him if he tooks his meds. He hadn’t.

My girlie screams at me if she thinks I’m up past bedtime. Apparently this transfers to my new roommates too: Maeve led @katculator to her room, yelled until she was under the covers, then came back to the kitchen to do the same to me.

BABIES

My cat scratches at my tv when he wants my attention because he knows the sound is the one thing that I absolutely Want To Stop. He does this for many reasons:

  • It’s 7:01 and I haven’t been fed yet
  • It’s 5:01 and I haven’t been fed yet
  • It’s 10:30 and past bedtime
  • It’s not 10:30 but I’m tired
  • I want to sit in the window
  • I can’t find the dog and I miss her
  • And more!

Also, if I get up late, he’ll come into the bathroom with me and sit on the counter until I’ve taken my medication. Then he goes about his day.

Cats are good.

I want a feline guardian angel please, they seem more competent than I am and WILL take care of me in the process, dang

systlin:

wodneswynn:

karama9:

systlin:

wodneswynn:

val-ritz:

systlin:

wodneswynn:

wodneswynn:

wodneswynn:

As part of my recent deep dive into philosophy and political economy, today’s audiobook is The Federalist Papers, and man…I really wish they’d teach The Federalist Papers in more detail in civics class, because Hamilton, Madison, and Jay are very up-front about their desire for an American empire and their suggestions for making one. They’re not even subtle.

Madison is such an absolute hawk. He’s all like “The democratic-republicans think we shouldn’t have a standing army, but if we don’t maintain a peacetime army then how are we gonna use the threat of force to bully our neighbors into compliance? Or finish doing genocides on the natives? And what if someday we need to kill a whole bunch of our own citizens and establish a police state? Betcha didn’t think about that!”

I try to avoid commenting overmuch on pop culture negatively or taking a dump on people’s favorite media but I swear to God if anybody from the Hamilton fandom comes on this post all like “Oh there go my faves being drama queens again :3” then I’m gonna come to your house and tar and feather you and force you to move to Kentucky.

These people were goddamn animals.

In the latter, it has reference to the proportion of wealth, of which it is in no case a precise measure, and in ordinary cases a very unfit one. But notwithstanding the imperfection of the rule as applied to the relative wealth and contributions of the States, it is evidently the least objectionable among the practicable rules, and had too recently obtained the general sanction of America, not to have found a ready preference with the convention. All this is admitted, it will perhaps be said; but does it follow, from an admission of numbers for the measure of representation, or of slaves combined with free citizens as a ratio of taxation, that slaves ought to be included in the numerical rule of representation? Slaves are considered as property, not as persons. They ought therefore to be comprehended in estimates of taxation which are founded on property, and to be excluded from representation which is regulated by a census of persons. This is the objection, as I understand it, stated in its full force. I shall be equally candid in stating the reasoning which may be offered on the opposite side. “We subscribe to the doctrine,” might one of our Southern brethren observe, “that representation relates more immediately to persons, and taxation more immediately to property, and we join in the application of this distinction to the case of our slaves. But we must deny the fact, that slaves are considered merely as property, and in no respect whatever as persons. The true state of the case is, that they partake of both these qualities: being considered by our laws, in some respects, as persons, and in other respects as property. In being compelled to labor, not for himself, but for a master; in being vendible by one master to another master; and in being subject at all times to be restrained in his liberty and chastised in his body, by the capricious will of another, the slave may appear to be degraded from the human rank, and classed with those irrational animals which fall under the legal denomination of property. In being protected, on the other hand, in his life and in his limbs, against the violence of all others, even the master of his labor and his liberty; and in being punishable himself for all violence committed against others, the slave is no less evidently regarded by the law as a member of the society, not as a part of the irrational creation; as a moral person, not as a mere article of property. The federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety on the case of our slaves, when it views them in the mixed character of persons and of property. This is in fact their true character.

Alexander Hamilton, Federalist no. 54

So yeah. I’ll help you with the tar and feathering. 

That passage in particular is… complicated. Hamilton’s argument is less that slave shouldn’t be viewed as people, and more that Southern slaveowners were perfectly willing to call slaves “people” when it came to things like determining population for governmental seats, but “property” for things like. Rights, and freedoms, and stuff. The man himself was nowhere near perfect, but he was an abolitionist.

“This is in fact their true character.” is a glaringly unambiguous statement

“Like, yeah they’re people, but we can still own them.”

I dunno how you interpret that any way but “Wow fuck this asshole.” 

It’s far more than just they’re people but we can own them. There is a blatant contradiction between the admission that their ‘master’ can chastise them in their body whenever they damn well feel like it (by the capricious will) and the later claim that they’re life and limbs are protected from harm, that I guess is meant to balance out the next little gem:

Although they can be ‘chastised’, and sold, and ordered around, etc, they can be prosecuted if THEY commit any kind of violence. 

When it comes to they’re having rights, they’re degraded to below human ranks and likened to “irrational animals”. Property. But when it comes to having the option to throw them in jail (despite the fact prisoners did force labor, that hardly seems like a consequence that would satisfy many prosecutors – just a guess) or execute them (I’m guessing that one was more common – guess again), they’re people and responsible for their actions. 

Slavery was fucking disgusting. Historical figures, regardless of what else they did, do NOT get a pass. You like some accomplishment by Random Early Important American but he had slaves and/or approved of slavery? Fine, like the accomplishments, but also be very clear that that person’s stance on slavery WAS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING DISGUSTING. If they’re not known to have ever changed it and actively tried to make reparations, it is UNFORGIVABLE. Whatever they accomplished is still there. But it was done by a monster and it’s not right to deny it.

And before anybody tries to call any of these analyses “anachronistic” or otherwise tries to resort to “well, they were a product of their time”:

John Brown

Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!

John. Motherfuckin. Brown. 

theweefreewomen:

theangriestlittleunicorn:

otarsus:

This is the best D&D

“I have a dexterity of bad” is my favorite

[a series of tweets from DungeonRobyn:

first: “Can one of us dress in the dead leader’s corpse?”

“What about just his clothes?”

“Yes, I suppose that would be easier.”

second: “You are fighting a wolf.”

“Just a wolf?”

“Yes. It’s a wolf in wolf’s clothing.”

third: “What did you get when you rolled your d8?”

“9. This may be the wrong die.”

fourth: “You transform from a bear back into human form.”

“But I’m an elf!”

“Then something went terribly wrong.”

fifth: “Maybe we should heal the tieflling before we loot the room.”

“He’s fine. Look at him – he’s breathing.”

sixth: “Did I hit? I rolled a two.”

“We’ll give that a soft no.”

seventh: “Are you finally doing something selfless?”

“Oh my word, no. I’m doing something violent.”

eighth: “How did you get bit by that snake?”

“I have a dexterity of bad.”]

A detailed analysis of American ER bills reveals rampant, impossible-to-avoid price-gouging

crazy-pages:

cipheramnesia:

mostlysignssomeportents:

For more than a year, Vox’s Sarah Kliff has been investigating hospital price-gouging in America, collecting hospital bills from her readers and comparing them, chasing up anomalies and pulling on threads, producing a stream of outstanding reports on her findings.

In her latest installment, Kliff digs deep into the famously bizarre
world of ER bills and points out some of the most egregious ways in
which these are rigged.

For example, if you are injured and also financially precarious, you
might travel to a more distant ER just to be sure that the hospital
you’re visiting is in-network for your insurer, but that means nothing.
“In-network” ERs often staff “out-of-network” doctors, and there is no
way to find out whether the doctor treating you is covered by your
insurer until you get the bill: one of Kliff’s readers got bills for
$8,000 from an out-of-network surgeon who treated his broken jaw at an
in-network hospital.

And much of the care you receive at an ER is subject to bizarre price
gouging: one of Kliff’s readers was charged $238 for two drops of the
generic eyedrop ofloxacin which retails for $15/vial; the routine
pregnancy test that ERs administer to women of childbearing years can
cost up to $465, enough to buy 84 pregnancy kits at the pharmacy; and
one Seattle hospital charged $76 for a squirt of generic neosporin. Not
all hospitals gouge on all drugs, and many of these drugs are not being
administered for urgent health problems – a halfway honest hospital
could advise a patient, “We charge $238 for this eyedrop, why don’t you
pick up a bottle for $15 next door and administer it yourself?”

Finally, Kliff uncovers wild variability in the “ER facility fee,” which
is a cover-charge you’re assessed just for walking in the door at an
ER. One of Kliff’s readers paid $5,751 for sitting in a hospital waiting
room with an ice-pack and a bandage while waiting to see a doctor, but
who left because she was feeling better and didn’t need care after all.
Kliff’s work reveals that these “facility fees” are rising at twice the
rate of other health charges, with no rhyme or reason.

All of this refers to people who come into the ER under their own power,
out of an abundance of caution – for example, my daughter recently
broke her collarbone, but we didn’t know that until we went to the ER
for an X-ray, and if we’d less prudent, we could have iced it and made a
regular doctor’s appointment for the next day, leaving her untreated
and undiagnosed. But of course, ERs treat large numbers of people who
are unconscious or in agony when they arrive, either on their own or on
an ambulance gurney. These patients can’t possibly be expected to shop
around, to demand to know whether their medicines are medically
necessary (I once had a small eye injury that I went to get checked out
on a Sunday just in case and had to stop the nurses from pumping me full
of IV dramamine just in case it turned out I would need neurosurgery!),
to evaluate whether the doctors are in- or out-of-network, and so on.

(We ended up paying $2,400 out of pocket for our daughter’s ER visit,
including $2.50 for a generic tylenol, despite having gold-plated
insurance from Cigna)

Kliff’s work reveals the whole story of “market based medicine” to be a
fiction. Markets are regulated zones where consumers compare the
offerings of producers and make purchase choices based on their
information. To call being wheeled unconscious into an ER and raced into
an operating theater and then presented with a bill months later a
“market transaction” is to make a terribly, grisly joke.

It’s as good an argument for Medicare for All and single-payer health care as you could ask for.

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/14/grifters-in-gowns.html

Article is from March 2019

Remember that hospitals around the world exist without this price gouging. This goes entirely to line the pockets of healthcare executives.