Hemingways_Shotgun

  • 4 Posts
  • 183 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • The U.S. is like any other country; it has its share of assholes. But I generally avoid painting everyone of however many million people with the same broad brush.

    There is a somewhat obnoxious level of patriotism to Americans in general that comes from simply being the biggest economy and a net cultural exporter to the rest of the world; think blue jeans and coca-cola, metaphorically. (I’m sorry, Americans, but it’s true. Put on your big boy pants and deal with the criticism like adults, please.)

    But it only rises to the level of arrogance in those people who think that the rest of the world only exists because of them and should behave as some sort of client state to American hegemony.

    That’s not all Americans. Heck, I’d say it’s not even most Americans. But they’re just really really loud and drown out everything else.







  • I lean pretty hard left who is also pro death-penalty (IN VERY SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES)

    • If the case has absolutely been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

    • All appeals have been exhausted.

    • Proof is absolutely undeniable.

    • Guilty party shows no remorse.

    • Crime is suffiently heinous (mass murder, child killing, serial killers, etc…)

    • A legitimate psychiatric board has deemed that there is little to no chance at rehabilitation nor does the guilty party show any inclination to want to rehabilitate.

    if ALL those things are true, (plus some that I haven’t even considered) then I would rather execute them than pay for their living expenses for the rest of their natural life, or worse see them released at the end of their sentance absolutely knowing that they’ll do it again.



  • Marketing.

    Convincing stupid people that their self-worth is based on how much they spend.

    Not a thing that is exclusive to Apple, of course. It’s how society has been since the 80s and Reaganomics, with Nike and other running shoes being the first really noticeable marketing push in that regard.

    Where Apple paved the way is that, even back then, a company would make a product, assign a profit margin to it (traditionally about 30-40%), and sell it at that price…

    Apple came along and said, “the only limit to a profit margin is how much you can convince stupid people to pay. We’ll use billions of dollars in advertising to convince people that they’re sub-human if they don’t agree with it. If the consumer is dumb enough to pay 250% profit margin for a phone device that costs us literally a couple hundred bucks to make…than that’s on them and their own stupidity.”

    So in short, profit margin is no longer a relatively stable number dictated by market forces and the relative strength of the economy, and (thanks to Apple) instead has become a function of marketing. How much can you convince suckers to spend.