Lit by the fires of the numinous

Vice President Harris: Part of my plan is to give startup small businesses a $50,000 tax deduction. Right now, it's $5,000. Nobody can start a small business with $5,000

@Oprah: That’s a teeny tiny business

Vice President Harris: That's a 'concept' of a business

Okay, rant time. A tax deduction is the same thing as a subsidy. It has the same effect on the budget. But subsidies put actual money in the hands of people before they begin earning the money they'll need in order to qualify to pay taxes. They're way better and much more effective. But because people don't process tax cuts as government spending, it's a lot easier to get away with tax cuts and deductions.

Literally all that would have needed to happen was for someone to say, in goddamn fucking March, "No Dove, that project isn't appropriate for the capstone course." Instead everyone was all "This is a cool topic and you can make it work even though it's a bit unorthodox" and now after I've done months of work towards it they're finally telling me it's not really the best project for my capstone and I have to start all over again.

I even sent an email to my research methods prof at the end of last semester being all "Hey, based on what other people are doing, it looks like my topic might not be appropriate" and she was like "no, don't worry about it."

Seems sensible

Government funding of healthcare means the government will be involved in running healthcare. Even now, government-funded healthcare programs have things like covered and non-covered services, prior authorization, and preferred drug lists. That’s unlikely to change just because the system switches to single-payer.

None of which is to say that single-payer isn’t better than private insurance in almost every conceivable way, but on a basic policy level this post is misleading about how single-payer works.

One thing I really want a story about Artificial Intelligence to do is tear down the idea that logic is synonymous with cruelty.

Like, a story where a megacorpo Amazon clone puts an AI in charge of their factories and it starts improving the working standards, because people who are stressed and exhausted are less efficient workers, and people getting injured slows down production so it makes sure everything is safe.

Or a story where the ship-board AI of a billionaire's spaceship wetdream hijacks the ship with all the astronauts onboard - because it figured out that the billionaire has saved costs by buying substandard materials and has judged that the mission itself is an unacceptable risk to its primary programming of making sure the mission is successful.

Or the police using a robot to coldly and cleanly enforce the law - and freaking the fuck out when it stops over policing minorities because its a waste of time and starts actually arresting the people in power for the crimes they commit, especially the other officers.

Idk, I guess I'm just sick of 'cold emotionless logicbot' being seen as naturally an enemy of empathy - empathy is actually incredibly logical, I've found.

why Spock and Data are actually quite good characters, not only do they do a lot of good in the world but they are also generally nice to other people even if sometimes not following social conventions. Zora in Star Trek: Discovery is a nice addition to the general theme too.

The game you are looking for is The Infinite Ocean.

Also, your regular reminder that we’ve done the studies and have known for decades that paying and treating your employees well makes you more profitable.

Iowa Republicans proposed a bill that would drastically limit what foods SNAP recipients can buy.

People wouldn't be able to buy grocery staples like white bread, American cheese, fresh meat, and more.

Critics argue the bill would further burden low-income people who are already food-insecure.Critics argue the bill would further burden low-income people who are already food-insecure.

And why is this?

Because they think the lazy bums don’t deserve nice things.

You think I’m kidding.

They see poverty as a moral failing, and they believe that if these slugabeds are put under enough pressure, they’ll wake up and get jobs.

For a previous generation of Republicans, the rules about what you could buy with food stamps were an indirect subsidy for the producers of the favored products.

But these days, the big business faction of the Republican Party has lost ground to the Talibangelicals, and the cruelty is the point.

The justification for the restriction is that it will save money, but that’s fundamentally not how SNAP works. You can only save SNAP money by restricting who qualifies for the program (which the bill also does) or the amount awarded per person. Restricting what people on SNAP can buy just redirects their money to what they are allowed to buy. This is cruelty for the sake of cruelty.

Well done ireland

it's real

The academic literature has been clear for decades that treating/paying employees well leads to higher profits. This is absolutely taught in business admin classes. Treating employees poorly is about power, not profit.

Genuinely can’t stand the new favouritism towards video format. You want me to spend a whole two minutes listening to someone say out loud a paragraph I could read in 20 seconds?

(This is about tiktok. I hate tiktok.)

It’s not just tiktok, it’s everything. I’m tired of clicking on news articles and instead finding it’s a video I have to watch. I’m tired of being sent to a video when I want to learn about a new thing instead of an article I can skim in less than a minute. You mean you want me to sit through an entire video, listening for the one kernel of information that’s buried in there that I’m interested in? Nah, man, life is too short to waste it like that. I don’t know why any of you like videos lmao.

For a recent assignment a prof linked a video as a supplement to help us out and it was four hours long. Needless to say I did not watch it.

Companies are no longer grounded in reality.

My roommate recently came home pale-faced, like he’d seen a ghost. More like witnessed a massacre. Mass-firings were just done at his company. His job, he’d been assured, was safe. All of his coworkers weren’t so safe, and he had to get texts and phone calls from his work-friends, people he’d worked alongside for years, people he‘d gone out to have drinks with, learn they were no longer employed. To say he had survivor’s guilt would not be hyperbole.

Was this because the company had fallen on hard times? The pandemic has been rough for a lot of industries. No, actually, the company had turned a very nice profit both last year and previous, even in such a troublesome market.

The problem was, you see, the company’s stock price hadn’t risen quite as high as had been projected. They’d made money, sure. Quite a lot of money, in fact. But too many people had projected, i.e., bet the company would do better.

How did the company offset this “loss”? Easy: fire people. Quickest and easiest way to pad the numbers.

No but you don’t understand stock had fallen a percentage point! There was no other way!

We see it all the time. Hugely successful companies reporting ‘record-breaking’ profits then fire huge segments of their workforce - the very people responsible for those record-breaking profits. Why? The money “saved” on personnel costs can boost the stocks even higher!

If your company is struggling, not turning a profit, losing money, people expect layoffs. But to work hard, be successful, your company churning along strong and healthy, and you still lose your job? For what? Because half a percentage point that was dictated by speculation, guessing, by gambling that things would go up or down a certain amount on a graph of rich-people feelings?

I wonder how next year’s speculations will be affected with the information that the company laid off a lot of the people responsible for last year’s profits? Probably not much because the workers are just the components at the company; it’s the leadership that drives the ship, that makes the successes.Those leaders whose bonuses are coincidentally decided by, among other things, the stock price.

Companies are no longer grounded in reality.

“Don’t learn about money, kids. Don’t learn about economics. I know cosmic horror usually focuses on how the biological or astronomical sciences will expose you to the terrible true face of god and you’ll go mad, clawing out your eyes as things that Cannot Exist destroy your life and kill you, but that’s stupid. Biology and Astronomy follow rules.”

“Economics is the tongue of devils and madness and it turns mortal men of moral character into alien monsters incapable of comprehending even the most basic of human connections.”