@spiritspodcast

I’m so goddamn mad that oil companies have known climate change is real for decades and did everything to stop people from acting on it. I want to burn their offices down. I want to throw their CEOs into a fucking pit. The world is being destroyed because some filthy rich fucks saw the end coming and figured making money off it was better than saving it. That’s pure evil, plain and simple.

Exxon knew about climate change almost 40 years ago and took steps to suppress the evidence

Likewise Shell.

This isn’t a conspiracy theory, this is a documented historical fact, and people’s heads should literally be rolling for it.

Torn Memory - Elements

Hectocrome

1996

It’s that time of the year again :)

jeff bezos: now that i’m the richest man on the planet with a net worth of over 100 billion dollars

jeff bezos: how about i create new ways to fuck over my employees and underpay them

jeff bezos: i’ve got it, i’ll legally not pay them while they’re still on the clock, and i’ll get the supreme court to agree with me

me: 

Jeff Bezos currently has a net worth of $133.2 billion. 

It’s remarkable to me that he could personally afford to fix Puerto Rico’s critical infrastructure, and still be among the top 10 billionaires in the USA afterwards. He could afford to completely repair Puerto Rico and still have enough money to be in the top 20. 

Jeff Bezos could afford to personally end world hunger for a year and still be among the top 10 US billionaires. He could feed the entire planet for 3 years and still be in the top 20.

If you had $133.2 billion in a savings account with an interest rate of 0.06% (the average rate), you would receive $79.9 million in interest every year without having to do anything. All he needs to do is keep breathing, and he will make 57 times more this year than an average US citizen will make in their entire lifetime. 

He could spend $80 million this year and would not even notice its absence.

It’s estimated that it would take $55 million and a year of work to fix Flint, MI’s water supply. 

I’m just saying. 

I can’t imagine having that kind of money and NOT trying to help others with it.

Edouard Baribeaud

PSA (VERY IMPORTANT!!!!!!)

Yuko Shimizu aka 清水裕子 (Japanese, b. 1946, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, based NY, USA) - Dusting off the Male Gaze for The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Women and Power in the Academy special issue, published in April 2018.

Safavid carpet, 16th c. GORGEOUS.

Marietoe - Withering Willows

I’m fairly certain America hinges now on propaganda that everything is okay and we’re still a first world nation when actually, our country is slipping further and further, and we’re really just. The best third world country out here. Not even comparable to most first world countries, so we fucking aren’t one anymore

Sounds like we live in a police state where the rich tax the poor not to feed or protect them but to fund programs and legislature that defunds their resources and encourages them to die. The rich get richer and the middle class shrinks and suffocates while the entire country falls apart because corporate power greed refuses to see the consequences of their actions.

I wish I had the faith to believe what goes around comes around, but I think it’s time to understand that we’re the ones that need to come around and take action. The rich aren’t going to do jack shit for us anymore. Even the rich that care about people on the bottom don’t have the courage to help people en masse

Economically speaking, one of the foundations of a 1st world country is a strong middle class (source, my BBA in Economics and International Business), and it’s been abundantly clear that America’s middle class has been shrinking.  Wages have been stagnant since pretty much the 1970′s, American CEO’s wage disparity is the highest in the world when compared to the average of their workers.  

Basically, the us *isn’t* a first world country anymore.  Our economy may still be one of the highest (I’m not sure if China has overtaken us yet), but our infrastructure is crumbling.  Roads and school and bridges are in dire need of repair, our education system is laughable when you see how much money we have available for it.  Military spending is out of control, often on things the military doesn’t even need or want.  All in the name of continuously soaring profits for the highest echelon of society, who never needed it to begin with.  

Here’s some expresses from a recent article about a UN official investigating poverty in the US:

“A United Nations official investigating poverty in the United States was shocked at the level of environmental degradation in some areas of rural Alabama, saying he had never seen anything like it in the developed world.

“I think it’s very uncommon in the First World. This is not a sight that one normally sees. I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this,” Philip Alston, the U.N.’s Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, told Connor Sheets of AL.comearlier this week as they toured a community in Butler County where “raw sewage flows from homes through exposed PVC pipes and into open trenches and pits.”

“Some might ask why a U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights would visit a country as rich as the United States,“ Alston said. “But despite great wealth in the U.S., there also exists great poverty and inequality.”

Alston also pointed out that the U.S. “has been very keen” on other countries being investigated by the U.N. for civil and human rights issues. “Now, it’s the turn to look at what’s going on in the U.S.,” Alston said. “There are pretty extreme levels of poverty in the United States given the wealth of the country. And that does have significant human rights implications.”

“The idea of human rights is that people have basic dignity and that it’s the role of the government—yes, the government!—to ensure that no one falls below the decent level,” he said. “Civilized society doesn’t say for people to go and make it on your own and if you can’t, bad luck.””

http://www.newsweek.com/alabama-un-poverty-environmental-racism-743601

WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY

My dad told me recently that the most important public health workers are garbage collectors and janitors. So much of our health relies on a clean environment. These people do some of the most important work in society. If we learned in dirty public environments full of garbage, we’d all be sick. I cannot thank these people enough for the valuable work that they do.

Shout out to all garbage collectors, janitors and housekeepers!

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