I think there may be more to Ukraine’s abstention than being “too busy with their own shit,” probably they don’t want to annoy the US govt and risk having military aid further reduced.

Sure, I can agree that division of labor is crucial. But I work in a factory where what I suggest is somewhat of a reality. Cross training is a purposeful practice because it creates a more flexible/robust workforce. Jobs that are the worst to work are typically shared amongst a large number of people so that nobody has to do it all day, which promotes worker wellness and thereby efficiency. Ergonomic and safety concerns are addressed so that workers stay healthy and can work more efficiently.

The place I work is a B corp.

Your implied stance that people should only do one thing ever doesn’t make sense to me. For the more specialized roles at my facility that are potentially odious, they generally have a much easier workload, and they aren’t doing only that one task anywhere close to all day most days.

So let’s not say that people should give up on making factories places where workers can be happy. You can have efficient workers who know how to do more than one thing.

I think we are generally in agreement that standing in front of a blast furnace all day would suck pretty badly. But I am not sure such work must always be miserable. To be fair I have never worked with a blast furnace, but I don’t see why someone’s job should be to do the same thing every day for years on end. Management should switch up worker roles frequently, perhaps multiple times a day if the task is particularly odious. And if there are ergonomic or environmental reasons it isn’t tolerable or safe, those reasons should be addressed, such as providing better PPE or custom built tools.

Adding extra incentives is part of making factory work sustainable in the long run, but it’s going to take more than an extra $(insert number)/hour to make workers safe and happy. And I really don’t think we should give up on trying to make factory workers safe and happy.

Fair to point out that Trump and Lutnick suck bad and aren’t really going to do anything to help factory workers. I guess that point feels obvious to me so I gloss over it in my comments. When I read an article like this, my takeaway may not always be the author’s intended point.

I still resist the idea that it must always be better to “escape” the factory and work elsewhere.

You say you aren’t shitting on factory work. But you also seem to feel that the ability to exit the factory is fundamental to having a good life. I agree that people should be able to choose what field they work in, so no I don’t think that every person should feel locked in to factory work, but I do think that we should focus on how to make factory work appealing, unlike it is now.

We need to be talking about more than just worker protections (although that is where policy needs to start and I agree they are the foundation for any further progress). We need to talk about government recommendations for management practices, grants for labor research, and possibly incentives for progressive management styles. We need to make factories into places that people don’t want to escape.

And as consumers, we need to push for the reality we want to see. If we have the ability, we should do our best to support companies with better labor practices - for example, the B corp and the Well certifications require certain employee wellness minimums, so when buying mass produced goods, prioritize ones with a certification like that.

So then it would seem more productive to bash the Trump administration’s labor policies than to bash the idea that there should be factory workers. The take away from this article for me is not that it is crazy for people and their children (once grown) to work in factories, but that we need to advance the policies you point out to make that into a reality that is sustainable.

Alright folks, I agree that this dude is tone deaf. Buuut…

Coming from a factory worker - life in the factory doesn’t have to be as shitty as it currently is in my opinion. I see it as a failure of management that factory work is so soul sucking.

And as a society we rely on the efficiency that factory production brings - my understanding is that without factories, an economy is generally less able to support artists etc.

I feel like the core idea that many people will be working in factories isn’t necessarily bad…

Maybe RFK really is just meaning vaccines when he says “environmental contaminant,” but couldn’t he mean microplastics or PFAS or PCBs or any of the other extremely common, poorly understood (in terms of health effects) actual environmental contaminants?

This article takes a very narrow view of the topic in my opinion. The point is well taken that the recent increase in reported numbers does not represent a sudden spike, but there is a serious conversation to be had about the potential link between pollution and autism. From the article:

Zoe Gross, director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, said some initial studies have suggested an association between autism and environmental factors such as pollution, but she was unaware of studies “demonstrating a causal link between the two.”

Demonstrating a causal link takes a lot of effort! Just because there isn’t a clear causal link doesn’t mean there isn’t an important association. And because some pollutants (like PFAS) are so widely distributed that they are in rainwater pretty much worldwide, you can’t find an “unpolluted” control group, so proving that they are causing health impacts is doubly difficult. The way RFK talks about it is dumb but the topic itself is worthy imo.

The sad thing about this is that probably for most of these folks this will only further confirm their views. Trump and his allies were pushing the idea that FEMA is corrupt and ineffective while Biden was still in office. The Trump admin will argue that this is FEMA’s fault, not Trump’s. His voters will eat it up.

As I understand it: The long term vision is that by increasing the cost of imported goods, domestic goods will have an easier time being competitive. The short term vision is that tariffs can be used to bully other countries into doing things the U.S. wants.

I feel like hypothetically it is a worthwhile thing to share with your friends that you and your partner have decided you want children and that the time is now. It’s a big life decision, and when the time comes for myself and my partner, I will definitely want to talk with my close friends about it.

The conversation doesn’t have to be about raw dogging, instead it could be about planning for children. Many people plan for children in advance of getting pergenat.

My setup maybe is not as fancy as you are thinking, it’s a banger with a terp’ pearl heated with an e-nail, I honestly don’t know what a ball injection rig is.

Seems like if you left it in there long enough to put a carb cap on it there would be some scorching action (with flower rosin at least). On my rig even when I dab at 420F the flavor is completely destroyed after the first hit. I bet I could get it a few degrees lower using your technique? I have heard some people suggest that you can and should dab at 380F, which…

I just tried and so I guess maybe it does work. I’m gonna have to get back to you on this one. One (sometimes) advantage of higher temperatures is that more THC will break down into CBN thus providing a more sedative experience.

Would these methods work for flower rosin? I use an electric heater with a quartz bucket and a ruby ball and although it’s pretty nice it could taste better… Usually hitting around 445F/230C. Is there a way to adapt this method to my setup?

Curious what temp you go for.

In all US states except for 2, the popular vote determines who ALL the electors are from that state, so the gerrymandering does NOT have a direct impact on the result of the presidential election, or at least not very much (I believe gerrymandering can affect Maine and Nebraska electoral votes, but only a small number of them, much less than the 10% you suggest would be needed).

Gerrymandering DOES impact things like voter ID laws and other policies that can make it harder for certain people to vote, so in that way you could argue that gerrymandering indirectly affects the presidential election.

If you really want to argue that the presidential elections in the US are rigged, you should focus on voting machines I would say. But even then I think it’s a stretch.

I won’t deny the oligarchy thing, but I think it’s a pretty hot take that the election was predetermined.

Occam’s Razor… There are many other possibilities that seem more likely to me. Such as the Biden campaign floundering at the last second - which you could again argue was rigged, but once again, seems to be the less likely thing. You’re suggesting that many people would be in on this conspiracy and that ALL of them would stay quiet. All the thousands of regular citizens who participate in the election process would also have to stay quiet. I know some of those people - they are regular people living regular lives. You’re also supposing that this cohort of dishonest people would find it advantageous to spend a huge amount of resources on elections - it’s pretty incredible how much effort goes into it, and if they already knew what the outcome was going to be, I would think they would act differently (perhaps you argue “that’s the point, just to fool you”).

We start to paint the picture of a conspiracy to control the American people when they are already under control because of capitalism. Everyone would have been under government control regardless of the election outcome. So I don’t understand the supposed motivation for everyone working together to rig the election in Trump’s favor. There are oligarchs who this election result does not favor as well, so I don’t buy that it is just them pulling the strings. Oligarchs have influence no matter the administration, so why would they care to rig the election? Maybe a few of them would rig it to try to get power (see Musk), but it doesn’t make sense that they would all be working together to rig it.

So I don’t buy that the Biden and Kamala campaigns were in on it, and I don’t buy that election workers were in on it.

What makes you so sure the election was rigged??

I bring up blacklisting because it is the clearest demonstration of intentionally starving people that comes to mind. Sure, Stalin wanted collectivization to go off without a hitch. Problem was, there was a hitch. So he decided it would happen anyway, starving people be damned. Imo good governments don’t intentionally starve people in order to achieve their goals.

To me your argument boils down to “the ends justify the means.”

How do you defend the “blacklisted” villages? I don’t detect any remorse in the material you have cited, just concern over making sure his policies are being properly enacted. It seems pretty clear to me that Stalin considered the loss of life in Ukraine to be worth it in order to drive his agenda forward - why else would he have allowed policies that forbid farmers themselves from eating the food from the fields they tended? Why else would he have allowed policies keeping farmers from traveling for any reason? To ensure that they produced food for the rest of the union, which would focus on industrial output. You can argue that he was right - without such rapid industrialization, they almost certainly would have lost to the Nazis imo.

Also, don’t conflate socialism with collectivism. I never said that the gains made in terms of education, life expectancy, etc. were possible without socialist policies. You can have socialism without collectivism/without stalinism. I think it’s much better that way.

*there wasn’t a country better for the working class that survived

Imo you can’t just ignore all the people who died as a result of the rapid industrialization and collectivization. And how great is your life if you have to change everything about what you say and how you act just to appease party officials?

I don’t want to ignore all the great things that happened during the Soviet era. I think you’re right about better access to education and many of these other things, but there are so many asterisks.

I argue that the same things could have been achieved without collectivization and without so much political violence. Social support programs are great, but they should be available to everyone, regardless of how much you support the prevailing political party.

And just how sure are you that Stalin would have gone back in time to prevent the Holodomor? I’m unconvinced - it quelled an inconvenient uprising.

If you look at the holodomor I think it’s hard to continue painting the Soviet Union as having uplifted the proletariat. Soviets starved their people to achieve rapid industrialization - a tradeoff that most of those who died would probably not have agreed with. IIRC most historians say that collectivization was a horrible failure and was not good for the working class.

First hand accounts of life during stalinism make it clear that people had to develop weird mannerisms to avoid making it seem like they were disloyal/anti-party; basically everyone walking on eggshells all the time.

The conversation around “tankies” reminds me heavily of “neolibs” - loosely defined in the minds of the folks discussing them. Basically a catch-all term for your own idea of what a liberal outgroup should be.