obligatory Atlantis reference

“billionaires bad” is an objectively good opinion actually

One of the best soundbites I’ve heard about modern economics is (paraphrased)) “It’s not possible to earn a billion dollars. It is possible to steal a billion dollars.” There is nobody smart enough, hardworking enough, trained enough and dedicated enough to earn a billion dollars without leveraging corrupt systems and exploiting people. The poverty threshold in America is $11,490 for one person. If someone has a billion dollars, that is 87,032 times the poverty line. It’s possible for someone to be twice as smart as another worker. It’s possible for them to be four or five times as hardworking. It’s possible for one person to have ten times the training of another person. So if you have one person that is half as smart, a fifth as hardworking, and a tenth as trained, they should reasonably earn one percent of the other. That’s the very outside figure. But anyone who takes in more than a million dollars per year did not earn that, they stole it. They found a vulnerable system to exploit or they found a group of people to cheat. Maybe they did it legally. Maybe they paid someone to make it legal to do that. It happens. But “earn”? Actually -deserving- that much money because of their merits and efforts? No.

"Business owners around the country are offering up a lament: 'no one wants to work.' A McDonalds franchise said they had to close because no one wants to work; North Carolina congressman David Rouzer claimed that a too-generous welfare state has turned us all lazy as he circulated photos of a shuttered fast-food restaurant supposedly closed 'due to NO STAFF.'

Most of these complaints seem to be coming from franchised restaurants. Why? Well, it’s not complicated. Service workers didn’t decide one day to stop working — rather huge numbers of them cannot work anymore. Because they’ve died of coronavirus.

A recent study from the University of California–San Francisco looks at increased morbidity rates due to COVID, stratified by profession, from the height of the pandemic last year. They find that food and agricultural workers morbidity rates increased by the widest margins by far, much more so than medical professionals or other occupations generally considered to be on the 'front lines' of the pandemic. Within the food industry, the morbidity rates of line cooks increased by 60 percent, making it the deadliest profession in America under coronavirus pandemic.

Line cooks are especially at risk because of notoriously bad ventilation systems in restaurant kitchens and preparation areas. Anyone who has ever worked a back-of-the-house job knows that it’s hot, smelly, and crowded back there, all of which indicate poor indoor air quality. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Environmental Protection Agency recommended increasing indoor ventilation to fight the virus, but such upgrades are costly and time consuming. There is no data available on how many restaurants chose not to upgrade their ventilation systems, but given how miserly franchise owners are with everything else, one could guess that many, if not most, made no upgrades at all.

Ventilation issues are deadliest for line cooks and other back-of-house jobs, but there are other reasons why food workers’ morbidity rates shot up. Food workers are much more likely to be poor and/or a racial or national minority, and poor people and black and Latino workers are much more likely to die of complications from the coronavirus.

Restaurants are often intentionally short staffed, making it difficult to take time off, so sick workers likely still came to work (and infected others in the process). Bars and restaurants are COVID-19 hotspots, and service workers and customers alike get sick after prolonged restaurant exposure. The difference is that many of those customers have health insurance and other safeguards to prevent them from dying of the illness; 69 percent of restaurants, on the other hand, offer their employees no health benefits at all.

When coronavirus is spread at restaurants, and restaurant workers make little money and rarely earn health benefits, it’s no wonder morbidity rates are so much higher for food service workers. But rather than collectively grieve the deaths of tens of thousands of the people who serve us and keep us fed, and keep such tragedies in mind when considering the state of the food-service industry labor market today, business owners and their political lackeys call these workers 'lazy.'

There are, of course, also living, breathing people who have decided they do not want to risk their lives for $7.25 per hour and no health benefits. That is a perfectly rational decision for the homo economicus to make. Given how dangerous restaurant work is during a viral pandemic, if restaurant owners really wanted more workers, they would offer living wages, health benefits, and adequate personal protective equipment. But all the wage increases in the world won’t bring back the dead.

There aren’t enough people working in the service industry, and service bosses have somehow turned that into our problem, into something we ought to be ashamed of. We shouldn’t fall for it. Profits accumulate because of labor — without workers to exploit, the owning class can’t get richer. Capitalists cannot exploit the labor of the dead, so when large swathes of the working class die, they turn their ire on the living.

This is a barbaric response to mass tragedy. Workers across the country and the globe are dead or grieving. We shouldn’t risk further tragedies for a paltry minimum wage."

- Sandy Barnard, "Service Workers Aren’t Lazy — They Just Don’t Want to Risk Dying for Minimum Wage." Jacobin, 5 May 2021.

Sometimes I feel like unhinging my jaw & screaming at the entrenched establishment “HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO EXPLAIN THAT WE ARE ALL BROKE?” Because 9 times out of 10, when a “millennial” does something weird, untraditional, or otherwise confusing to previous generations, the core reason is because we’re broke, thus the old ways are not accessible to us, so we’re using new stopgaps and alternatives. An “obsession” with phones/social media? It’s a cheap way to socially connect when many of us are pressed for time due to work or can’t afford to go out. A fixation on food? It’s the last comfort splurge we can feasibly afford, when vacations and the like are not an optipn. A resistance to large life milestone acquisitions? Can’t afford houses, cars, raising children. Weird craft/homebrew/DIY hobbies? Trying to save money, or spin some profit in whatever way can be managed. Widespread cynicism, anxiety and depression? We literally have to take up group fundraising collections for things like emergency expenses, rent and medical care. We’re broke and it’s slowly driving us bananas.

My parents can’t understand why I behave the way I do. My grandmother has never understood me better.

this tweet changed my entire life

drill is one of the greatest philosophers of our age and i’ll fight anyone who says otherwise

How you make a 30 second masterpiece about grilled cheese.

Bitch I’m wet

Why is this cinematically better than like actual movies?

Or am I just fat?

(The new working title of my memoirs)

Jackie Chan is currently the world’s most famous martial artist. As a director, producer, action choreographer, martial artist, comedian, singer, stunt performer and, most importantly, an actor, Jackie has stunned billions of movie goers worldwide with his martial arts and acrobatic movements. “I never wanted to be the next Bruce Lee. I just wanted to be the first Jackie Chan”. Jackie 

“Life is not a song. You may learn that one day to your sorrow.” -Petyr Baelish

4ft 8.5"

Why 4 FEET 8.5 Inches is Very Important

Fascinating Stuff …

Railroad Tracks The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.

That’s an exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?

Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.

Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So, who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.

Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

In other words, bureaucracies live forever.

So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, ‘What horse’s ass came up with this?’, you may be exactly right.

Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.

Now, the twist to the story:

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.

The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.

The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.

The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.

The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.

And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important!

Now you know, Horses’ Asses control almost everything.

Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn’t it?

This is the single most mind blowing fact I’ve read on tumblr, every day is a school day-thank you.

Nice history lesson!

My daughter and I were just discussing this very subject.

Boardroom executives at Nick Jr.

https://twitter.com/sota_96/status/792671865684701185

they have this guy on standby for when Les Claypool inevitably dies in a horrible fly fishing accident

Kitten vs Sandal 

Walk into your kitchen at 3am and this wizard is waiting for you, having drunk your beer and sampled, but disliked, your potato chips, hasn’t done the dishes, and he isn’t happy

What do you do?

“Really, Carl? Really? Christ, I knew the breakup with Cindy was bad-but not THIS bad! How’d you even get in my house? Why are the Utz all over the floor? Wh- how did you get in my house!?”

“Damn your fool’s mind, Randy, the mists of dream still you know my Amulet of Saros allows me passage through all portals, physical and arcane. I came here as this apartment provides protection from the mental ravaging of that dark sorceress, Cindy, gods blast her name! Your fermented beverages are all that have kept me from darkness this night, Randy, would you turn me away in this hour of terror?”

I feel like I read the book this is from

Fucking physics

Somewhere in the world, a physics professor writes the perfect exam question.

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann’s (天元突破グレンラガン) beauty captured in these breathtaking illustrations by Yoh Yoshinari (吉成曜), Little Witch Academia director and mechanical designer for the series ! 

Dedicated to Aria for finishing TTGL