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@robpertray
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I woke up last night, scribbled something down, and went back to sleep. This morning:
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This weekend the entire town of Paradise, CA was incinerated—but this wealthy neighborhood was able to buy itself protection from the flames. This is what climate change will look like under neoliberalism.
Kim and Kanye Reportedly Hired Private Firefighters to Help Them and Their Neighbors
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a massive death plume spanning multiple counties in Ohio is raining down hydrochloric acid onto people because a bomb train carrying vinyl chloride was deliberately classified as non-hazardous to save Norfolk Southern money and regulatory inconveniences
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we are providing deeply dangerous and deadly surveillance technology to people who cannot spell the word aerial
Ariel View - Atlanta Public Safety Training Center
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They could easily send free tests to every house. They could easily send us monthly $2K checks and mandate remote work & learning. They could do all of these things — but they don't want to. And every time they come on TV and say they can't, they're lying
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one of the largest banks in the United States just collapsed because of the same 2008 risky gambling shit and without even blinking the very same people who were melting down over your $600 unemployment check are now demanding that we bail them out
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a lot of people are comparing the east palestine disaster to chernobyl but I think it's more like the bhopal gas disaster or deepwater horizon — it's a purely capitalist disaster caused by capitalists doing capitalism
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Norfolk Southern made $12.745 billion dollars in 2022 — a 15% increase from 2021. executives there made from $3.4 to $13 million. rail workers in the US get exactly zero paid sick days and are not allowed to go on strike
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american leftists: using the word crazy is ableist
french leftists: we're in the 5th month of uprisings and nationwide general strikes halting essential services in order to lower the retirement age back down to 62
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"america is the freest country in the world" I tell myself as police murder protesters in the streets and peaceful demonstrators are routinely slapped with domestic terrorism charges and where there have been 33 mass shootings in the first 22 days of the year
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silicon valley destroyed entire industries and well-payed professions only to replace them with a new class of permanently unstable and low wage gig jobs which they skimmed off of to enrich themselves and now they're curious why everyone's giddily watching as they squirm
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Listen, is the Inflation Reduction Act perfect? No. But does it contain some important climate solutions? It doesn't. However, is it a good start, a step in the right direction? Also no
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someone once said hippies are bad people pretending to be good and punks are good people pretending to be bad and I think about that like every single day
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@tminusmat
it wasn't stopped because the CEO of this very bank spent tons of resources lobbying against regulations that would've stop this
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CEOs think they "create jobs" and landlords think they "provide housing" when in reality they've just enclosed age-old parts of being human (labor and shelter) and commodified them in order to live off of other people like leeches
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the East Palestine train derailment has done more to reveal the conflicts of interest with media companies and the corporations they report on than perhaps any other recent event — half the outlets reporting on this are owned by companies that own shares in norfolk southern
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when you understand that the total amount that striking writers are asking for could come out of the salaries of just two execs & still leave them filthy rich, you begin to see how the wealth of the rich doesn't come from an expanding pie — it comes out of the pockets of the poor
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yeah it's "we" because we're funding this shit with our money
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@BesDMarx
lol omg this reminds me of that time I saw a sign that said "free parking" and I freaked out for a second because I thought it said "all human beings have a right to self determination and dignity"
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@yourboykhoi
@DrTitanz
@notbeforenoon
@habesha_RA
rich people don't create jobs, they extract wealth from the work of the living world.
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the most absurd part of the whole "government handout" narrative is that it's literally our money. like, we handed it to you and now it's your turn to hand it back
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during the pandemic we had a fleeting and muted glimpse of what public services could be like (extended unemployment, expanded medicaid, child tax credits, WFH) — it's why it's been so difficult to take anything seriously since then. we all know the scarcity is manufactured
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@hopppernickle
"just say the thing that I invented in my head so that I can get mad at somebody online"
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@IHateNYT
the point of not using alienating language is because we want to show people that we care, it's not to come up with lists on twitter as a way to virtue signal. these people don't actually care about the people they claim to be doing this for, it's completely about image
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and in the process they gutted public transportation and destroyed the housing markets of dozens of cities, got us addicted to their little serotonin machines, and taught us all that selfishness and hyper-individuality are in fact good things
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you're not depressed and anxious because of a chemical imbalance in your brain, you're depressed and anxious because you're forced to do meaningless work that you hate for most of your waking life
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Plastics recycling was invented by the fossil fuel industry in an attempt to distract from the wastefullness of plastic products and to minimize the calls to "reduce and reuse."
It was, of course, a lie. Only 5% of plastic products are recycled — the rest end up in landfills
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@_bahhumbug
@emilydawnlove
it sounds like you're pretty committed to misunderstanding the point of the original tweet and are searching for rage likes to boost some dopamine? That's cool we all need dopamine these days, but let's just call it what it is
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we all thought this website's decline would be apocalyptic but much like our wider societal collapse, it's an excruciatingly slow and mundane decline that you acclimate to a little bit each day not realizing the full extent of how terrible things have really become
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The Federal Reserve has literally admitted that their interest rate hike will:
1) not reduce gas or food prices
2) will most likely lead to a recession
3) reduce the rate of wage increases for workers and increasing unemployment
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@kdgriffit
@BandsIsland
organs of the capitalist class gonna organize for the capitalist class
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@tminusmat
sucks to suck 🤷🏻♂️
NEWS: Documents show Silicon Valley Bank’s president personally pressured lawmakers to weaken bank regs.
Some lawmakers objected.
But the bank spent big on lobbying & regs were weakened.
Today the bank became the 2nd largest bank collapse in US history.
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a lot of people typing a lot of paragraphs trying to justify why aoc voted to impose an unpopular contract onto rail workers when all you need to know is that she voted to break a strike, period
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it must suck to realize that even tens of billions of dollars can't undo being a loser
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universal healthcare in this country would save corporations a massive, massive amount of money — but almost none of them support it. in fact, they lobby against it. why? because they understand that tethering healthcare (your life) to your job is the ultimate means of control
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@yourboykhoi
@DrTitanz
@notbeforenoon
@habesha_RA
no you misunderstood. if they were to move to another country (which they wouldn't), then I'm being polite and waving bye to them.
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'capitalism has pulled millions out of poverty'
my brother in christ what do you think put them in poverty in the first place
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@jackcalifano
The American middle class is so accustomed to boundless consumption that the slightest inconveniences are seen as premonitions of apocalypse
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wait, so you're telling me that under capitalism I can have a tomato any day of the year and that the only downside is a trail of hyper exploited workers, a rapidly warming climate, and that the tomato will be the most disgusting one I've ever tasted? yes pls sign me up
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The orchestra continued playing as the titanic sunk
Dyson may make wearable air purifiers that double as headphones, says report
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@JoshuaPHilll
you know when you REALLY think about it BLACK people should be paying reparations to WHITE people
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rainwater was drinkable for a billion years but isn't anymore because a tiny group if people on a dreary island off the decided to enclose its commons, colonize the planet, and force upon the world a system of private ownership and profit
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it makes absolute sense that Norfolk Southern has been identified as a major funder of cop city in the Weelaunee (Atlanta) Forest — the capitalist class understands well the need for a municipal army to protect capital accumulation and suppress the backlash against deregulation
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"the woke left has completely taken over my campus," I mutter to myself as I walk to my econ class in the newly built multi-million dollar business school to learn about why it's ok for poor people to starve to death
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we could all be working 15 hours a week and everything would be just fine, our society would be totally fine — in fact we'd probably all be much happier. the only reason this isn't the case is because one percent of the population wants servants and yachts
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I co-produce a documentary podcast series called
@UpstreamPodcast
which explores a variety of themes on economics through stories and expert analysis. Check it out:
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the almost unimaginable death and destruction wrought by capitalism would not be possible without otherwise nice, friendly people who are able to turn off or dim crucial parts of their humanity in order to go to work, clock in, and do the empire's bidding for it
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there was literally a mushroom cloud of death chemicals spreading over the midwest as you gave your state of the union speech
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anyone know of any mutual aid efforts or other grassroots community responses to this? pls share here if you do.
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the state using taxpayer money to bail out bankers isn't socialism for the rich — it's just capitalism. under capitalism the state exists as an organ of the capitalist class. of course they will bail out the banks, of course they won't cancel student debt — it's class war
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nonviolence is an absurd concept. no community was ever defended, no right was ever won, no oppressor ever defeated through nonviolence. it's a concept advocated for by privileged and naive people who rely on invisible violence every day of their lives
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@maxwellhallel
not disagreeing with any of this but adding the very important context that the power of the french uprisings is in a large part due to how organized french workers are and that that's one of the (many) reasons (but a big one) that a general strike in the US is next to impossible
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@RJonnyblack
my point here isn't that the left shouldn't be fighting against ableism, it's that policing language in extreme ways and lateral in fighting have outweighed the kind of organizing that can actually make material differences for people
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outlet after outlet is doing extreme levels of mental gymnastics to explain why that giant plume of death chemicals isn't actually that dangerous, doing absurd "fact-checks" that are meaningless hair-splitting, and using language that minimizes the disaster in irresponsible ways
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"doing your taxes" is a scam. the IRS knows exactly what you owe but businesses like H&R block have an arrangement with the state to make sure you have to pay for their services every year. everything in this system is designed to extract wealth from you — every single thing
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joining a union will increase your lifetime earnings more than going to college will
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@Vanessa_ABee
trains exist solely for her to pose in front of and not as a source of transportation
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The thing that terrifies the ruling class most about Marxism and communism aren't the theoretical frameworks or analyses contained within them, it's the simple fact that they actually name capitalism as a particular and in no way natural system that we live under.
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a black mirror episode in which you are forced to rent your labor to a predatory ownership class who then grant you "tokens" that you trade for basic necessities including food and shelter
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the incredible thing about capitalism is that literally nobody actually wants to be doing it except for a tiny number of miserable sociopaths and yet here we all are
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there are literally billionaires and multi-billion dollar corporations that don't pay any taxes and you're out here talking about fare evasion? is that really what you're concerned about or do you just hate poor people?
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@Boblack98
by executive order. And for those who can't work remotely, hazard pay and free PPE
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Moderna decided to not actually raise the price of their COVID vaccine by 400% after Bernie Sanders threatened to force their CEO to testify — so the Moderna vaccine will remain free.
just goes to show how much power is NOT being wielded by spineless democrats each and every day
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@bellaxspags
didn't mean to dismiss the hard work that I'm sure many people did. my point was more regarding systemic economic inequality and why that is dangerous esp in the face of future climate-fueled disasters. I wish you and your neighborhood the absolute best.
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the cost of everything is going up (except your labor) because the economy is pretend and those in power are making up terms like "inflation" and "price-wage spiral" to trick you into letting them rip you off
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really? cuz it sure seems like literally everyone in this country is one minor inconvenience away from a complete mental breakdown
Mental-health crisis from pandemic was minimal, study suggests
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"leftists" who get mad when you say the US is the worst country in world history? 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
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They're doing it to punish workers for the gains that we've made since the pandemic, that's literally the only reason. It's a class war by capital against the rest of us and it's being gleefully facilitated by the state. They're not even pretending anymore.
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yesterday
@USATODAY
"fact-checked" my tweet, claiming that it was false. I'll get to that in a sec, but I'm curious why the newspaper's fact-checker
@KochiSudiksha
didn't find it important to also disclose that the paper she works for has very serious conflicts of interest? (1/)
a massive death plume spanning multiple counties in Ohio is raining down hydrochloric acid onto people because a bomb train carrying vinyl chloride was deliberately classified as non-hazardous to save Norfolk Southern money and regulatory inconveniences
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It's not only that $10k of student loan cancellation is a drop in the bucket — it's that there's no plan or intention to abolish student loans as a system or to structurally address the higher education affordability crisis in the first place
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marx isn't just invaluable in an abstract sense — today I had to interact with my landlord & approaching the interaction through a frame informed by class war and internal contradictions helped me make sense of what otherwise would have felt like a shitty individual experience
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They're not refusing to cancel student loan debt because they can't afford to — they're doing it because they rely on debt peonage to keep this system going
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it's astounding that it's the year 2023 and liberals still think that pointing out republican hypocrisy is an effective political strategy
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so you're telling me that the man who fired employees for criticizing him, the same person who is knowingly costing himself billions to turn this website into a right wing haven, you're telling me it's silly to suggest that he's throttling the engagement of left-wing accounts?
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@yourboykhoi
@DrTitanz
@notbeforenoon
@habesha_RA
well, the worker themselves can create the job by being self-employed. or the government can create jobs as was done incredibly successfully during the New Deal. there are all sorts of ways of creating jobs without having someone at the top siphon off your labor
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I love that we live in a country where 50 million people have to get on their knees and beg an unelected panel of black-robed ghouls to lift a fraction of the crushing debt which they accrued through the unforgivable sin of pursuing an education in order to contribute to society
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a lot of people think that capitalism = commerce or markets (exchanging goods & services), but both of those things existed before capitalism and are in no way inherent to it — capitalism is simply when the forces of economic production are owned privately
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For anyone interested in going further,
@CJAOurPower
put out an excellent fact sheet outlining the (few) strengths and (many) weaknesses/threats/missed opportunities in the
#IRA
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the problem with capitalism is that eventually you run out of other people's commons
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
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it's insane to me that san francisco liberals are still whining about having to see the abject poverty and immiseration in the city that their own ideology and political decisions directly led to
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personally I think it's cool that capitalists all decided simultaneously that they are going to double the prices of everything except for labor
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wait, so you're telling me that under capitalism I can choose between 800 different cars to rot in traffic in every excruciating day of my meaningless, hollow life and all it'll cost is the occasional mini-Chernobyl bomb train explosion? count me in 👍🏼
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if rail workers had been allowed to strike for better safety conditions last year, the east palestine disaster might not have happened. but democrats broke the strike.
I'll say it again: organizing your workplace will do more to avert ecological collapse than voting ever will
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