• 0 Posts
  • 33 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Here’s the difference.

    The Democrats are diverse. You’ve got some true believers who want universal basic income and free medicare for all. You’ve got right-leaning centrists who want lower taxes and less regulation, but they’re not as socially conservative as Republicans. You’ve got some who vote their conscience, and others who are corrupt. It’s difficult to get them all to agree, but when they find common ground, their ideas are generally pretty popular with the people (Obamacare, the Infrastructure deal, etc.).

    The Republicans have no platform. They have no plan. They have no consistent views. They have no desire to govern constructively whatsoever. The very few things they can agree on and get done, like conservative judges and banning abortion, are extremely unpopular and set the country back.

    You really think there’s no difference between the two parties? The difference has never been larger, ever.


  • Actually I’m going to disagree strongly with that statement.

    Small business are far, far worse at abusing workers. If a small business fires you, you’ve got absolutely no recourse. They can lay you off with no severance and then hire someone new a day layer, and who’s going to do anything about it? They don’t have that many employees so there’s no pattern and no class-action, and you can’t afford to hire a lawyer to spend years fighting them in court.

    In comparison, when you work at a big company, they have rules and an HR department to make sure they’re going everything legally. Your boss wants to fire you? First your boss has to give you a negative performance review detailing exactly what you’re doing wrong. Then they have to give you an opportunity to correct it. Only then can they fire you. At an absolute minimum, it gives you a chance to start looking for a new job. Often it gives you a chance to transfer within the company, if you were otherwise a well-liked and valuable employee.

    If a large company wants to let you go, they’re going to give you severance pay and extended benefits.

    Of course you hear about the occasional incident where Elon Musk fires someone on the spot or a Disney employee gets reprimanded for something silly. But those incidents are extremely rare, and most of the time they end up settling behind the scenes for a nice severance.

    Now, I know, I know. The HR department is there to protect the company, not you. But that’s exactly why the HR department ensures employees are treated well, even when they’re fired - because they don’t want a lawsuit later.


  • I have a hard time reconciling that with my observations in Europe:

    • People travel significantly faster than in the U.S., for example on the autobahn
    • Taxi drivers routinely do things I consider crazy in order to get around old European cities, like driving up on sidewalks, passing on narrow two-lane roads
    • There are a lot of narrow mountain roads and people seem to drive way too fast to be safe

    I’ve never felt like European drivers were “more safe”.

    The only differences I can think of that are positive for Europe:

    • Less drunk driving
    • Traffic circles instead of stop signs

  • I think there are two distinct groups of people:

    About half of Trump supporters just love him. They share some of the same personality traits. They believe in conspiracy theories. They’re mad at the world. They want to “own the libs”. They’re not very educated, they’re very tribal.

    The other half do not like his personality at all, but they don’t care because he’s effective and they like his policies. He’s a means to an end. These are the ones that are hurting the country so much more. They know that he’s destroying the political system and they don’t care, because they’ll get what they want. They support Trump over DeSantis not because they like Trump as a person, but because they think Trump has the best chance of winning.