He’s a compulsive liar who’s angry at things he’s fabricated for his own benefit. How the fuck is he even being considered for the job?

🤔 which is more news worthy:
1 - the chairman of the house judiciary committee tweeted a picture of trump hugging a kitten and a duck.
2 - a member of the committee calling him out and asking if he’s okay because he posted the picture.
3 - The claim that “aliens are eating pets”.

The origin of the claim that Haitians are eating pets in Ohio appears to stem from right-wing media accounts running with a Fox News story about an Ohio woman named Allexis Telia Ferrell, who was arrested for allegedly killing and eating a cat. The report about the lone woman sparked claims that Haitians are kidnapping people’s pets and eating them.

local news being owned by news conglomerates

Yeah - I’ve watched the Sinclair segment. I recognize that but that’s not the case everywhere. More troubling is how local newspapers are struggling and going out of business. I’m in Philadelphia where we still have decent locally-owned and/or operated journalism.

I’m not sure how the lawsuit would go down but I’d be open to whatever it takes to make the right changes. Perhaps the threat of digging into city coffers is precisely why nothing has happened in forty years. It’s already costing tax payers millions of dollars every year to not recycle. I’d support millions to hold people accountable and make the needed changes if that means saving us money down the road.

I don’t even have vibration on. The display will turn on to show notifications but the vast majority of the time my phone is in another room on the charger. I even leave it at home some times.

I’ve had trouble listening to podcasts while I’m home doing other things. Perhaps I should try audio books and sitting down to do nothing but that. Generally, I don’t like audio books for a bunch of reasons but they could be applicable for this issue. Thanks for the suggestion.

100%. I don’t get any marketing or robocalls so it’s either family, someone from work, or someone from an appointment or delivery I have. At this point, I much rather speak with someone on the phone than sit around and text back and forth.

They where saddled with waste and had to deal with it, they did as good as they could.

FOR FORTY YEARS?!

Yeah. Our city published the recycling restrictions on their website but people still put out stuff that’s not able to be recycled. Specifically, wet or greasy cardboard. They should send out flyers every year.

Dude. It’s been 40 years.

I didn’t say news conglomerates. I said investigative news agencies - meaning the local news.

At some point over the past forty years, someone in government and someone at a local news paper has known there was a conspiracy. These people need to be held accountable. They’re the ones who have cost tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Granted, I may be giving too much credit to local government. I don’t think most voters in the country care very much about electing people smart enough to put two and two together.

What I have such a hard time with is that people like yourself are so quick to excuse gullibility. The big powerful plastic company promised us it would be okay. Why would anyone dare question them or their motives? The fossil fuel company certainly has the public and the environment at their best interests. So many people are so quick to shrug and say “not my fault”. Did you even attempt to ask questions or were you afraid that knowing the truth would be bad for your administration?

I would sooner hold out local municipalities who run the recycling centers and our investigative news agencies for not clearly informing the public that recycling plastic has not been the ecological solution we’ve been promised.

I mean, sure, the plastic producers lied but the recyclers have known about it this entire time too. How this has been such a secret for decades may suggest some deeper conspiracy.

And, if it’s the case that our governments were genuinely unable to know this was an issue, we should be more critical of them for not knowing what other outside agencies are fooling them into using tax-payer dollars against our best interests.

You may consider getting some labs done. I was deficient in B12 and found taking vitamins did help a bit. Cutting out / back on carbs and beer helps even more.

Not to entirely discount depression, but I have the opinion that we’ve become so addicted to a life of instantaneous everything that even brief moments of nothing happening can feel like withdrawal.

One suggestion: instead of regularly turning off your phone, just permanently put it in silent mode. Really consider what you must know immediately (for me it’s family phone calls) and allow only those notifications to come through. Everything else can wait for you to find the time to get to them.

I also struggle with this so I’m interested in the conversation. I love to read but have a really hard time choosing a book over television. I’m mindful of “blue light” and try to stop using any screen at all after 8pm but that can be difficult if I just want to unwind after a long day. People did it before tv though. I think maybe a less fulfilling life, or life fulfilled less, may actually be more healthy.

“Free society” is an oxymoron. Pick one or the other.

This is why republicans are opposed to reasonable gun control. These emergencies are money making opportunities. The more our lives are under threat, the more opportunity there is for businesses to cash in on our fears.

Smith said the panic alarm system at Apalachee, powered by Georgia-based safety solutions company Centegix, has only been in place at the school for about a week.

Other companies also offer technologies that claim to improve real-time reporting in emergency situations, NBC News has previously reported.

Centegix, in particular, advocates for Alyssa’s Law — a measure, passed in seven states and introduced in nine others, that would require schools to install silent panic alarms that are directly linked to law enforcement.

I mean, yes it’s fantastic that we have these technologies to notify emergency services but, what are we doing to actually prevent the emergencies?

We can pass laws requiring states to spend money on buying things from other businesses but we refuse to pass laws actually preventing the emergencies from occurring.

No. Because I have a basic understanding of economics and business operations, it depends.

If you could show me the revenue, profits, sales, investments, and salaries for a company and put their finances in context with the entire industry and external factors, then I could form some opinion about that company or the industry as a whole.

Egg producers on the west coast had to slaughter over four million hens due to bird flu. Taking this single event as it is, it would suggest that the wholesale cost of eggs on the west coast would decrease while the east coast would see prices increase. Because the overall supply of eggs decreased and, as its been reported, the demand has increased, retail prices went up. This price increase is due to the need to acquire eggs from other locations and juggling the supply chain. When dealing with unknown economic forecasts, due to bird flu or hurricanes or forrest fires or covid, an intelligent CFO would increase prices to prepare for a downturn in sales. Then, when they have too much stock, they could sell the product cheaper to get rid of it. If it turns out that there’s a sustained economic stress, they’ve banked some cash to continue operations - employing staff. They might even hoard capital to make investments. These investments could be for needless CEO bonuses, they could be for union pensions, they could be for expanding infrastructure, or buying other failing companies.

“Record profits”, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. How they acquired those profits and what they do with them is what’s to be judged.

Well, that’s entirely incorrect. You can make up all the words you want but those words already exist and have definitions.

Corporate greed and inflation could not be more separate from each other. At least apples and oranges are both fruits.

Honestly, it’s difficult for me to understand how you could compare the two. I’d like to hear your thought process.

I should edit my comment and add “post rage bait”.

You’re absolutely right. I’d describe myself similarly to you. I even created a local community here for my city. But it feels like I’m speaking quietly on top of a mountain while the nearest person is a time zone away. Perhaps a handful of people would stop by and subscribe to the content but this isn’t about subscribing - it’s about engaging. Communities are about exchanging ideas. Posting something that compels people to engage is one way to increase activity. As more people notice the community, they’ll be more likely to engage when there’s enough noise around that doesn’t single them out too much.

The major social platforms know this. This is why they promote trash over quality information. This is why I get frustrated on Instagram because it continues to show me posts from two or three days ago notifying me that I missed an exciting event.

You can post all the great informative content you want on your little corner of the fediverse but without engagement, is it really there?

By permitting advertising.

“Normies” are not “microbloggers”. Most people just want to follow what their friends and family and news organizations and “influencers” are posting.

My biggest gripe with the fediverse (indirectly) is that all the information I would get on Twitter about my city is not available to me - concert announcements, restaurant specials, road closures, major news, hobby meetups, etc. They’re posting on Facebook and Instagram (which is IMO the worst of all social platforms) and slowly adopting Threads. My issue with these platforms is mostly regarding the algorithm deciding what it thinks you want. This is driven by advertising.

Twitter didn’t really pick up steam until celebrities and news outlets were posting and engaging on the platform. Then they pushed hard for ads to increase revenue and expand features and stability (for better or worse). Then they just got greedy. Then they were sold for the dumbest amount of money in the history of sales.

Getting normies here means getting influencers here. Influencers want to make money for being assholes. If you don’t want influencers and ads here, don’t ask for the normies to come. Accept the beauty of this micro micro blogging platform. If you want to share outside the open fediverse, embrace cross posting to the closed platforms. That’s kind of the whole point of it. You can post in your tiny little corner while still engaging with the more popular platforms.

TL;DR: be careful what you wish for.

Kinda. That’s an additional problem caused by resellers. This topic is about farmers and whole sale prices and consumer demand. What you’ve linked to is not inflation but corporate greed.

“On milk and eggs, retail inflation has been significantly higher than cost inflation,” Groff wrote.

Two different subjects.

Edit: Man, people are so angry about “____” that they completely ignore the facts presented to them. It’s incredible. I can’t understand that after all these years people still put their feelings before facts. I would have thought the world would have collectively learned this lesson by now.

Yes. I don’t understand your question. Are you not aware of what facts are?

I’ll buy the flu and demand angle when I see the egg suppliers post losses.

So you’re rejecting verifiable and well known facts to appease your feelings? Cool.

This is called inflation. Every company ever has done this. Prices are increased explicitly to reduce demand. If they were to lower the prices and take a loss when there’s already no supply, they’d go out of business. Every company adjusts the price of their goods based on demand.

If you’re not happy about it, don’t buy the product. Or, buy products that are already priced at the value they offer. I’ve been paying over $5 for eggs for over ten years. The prices have not changed. Paying a dollar for a dozen eggs is absolutely ridiculous. Finding out that people were pissed because an egg was costing in excess of a dime or two is something I’m still struggling to come to terms with.

If you want to go on about corporate greed in agriculture, you should be looking at the beef and pork producers. The entire industry is a literal organized crime ring run by four companies using a shared database of sales and profits to push prices up in unison.

Rob a bank.