Whats up faggots.

[Jerome Scuggs]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/15/b...nk-letter.html

On Tuesday, the chief executives of the world’s largest public companies will be receiving a letter from one of the most influential investors in the world. And what it says is likely to cause a firestorm in the corner offices of companies everywhere and a debate over social responsibility that stretches from Wall Street to Washington.

Laurence D. Fink, founder and chief executive of the investment firm BlackRock, is going to inform business leaders that their companies need to do more than make profits — they need to contribute to society as well if they want to receive the support of BlackRock.

pretty interesting thing to read, and it's nice to see that the idea that profits no longer explicitly mean improving society is something that's reaching these echelons. here's to hoping i'm wrong and "ethical capitalism" can exist!!!!

[Jerome Scuggs]

y'all im pretty stoked about chelsea manning running for congress

but im sad because i know the democrats are going to fuck it up. theyre so spineless. like when dems freak out on trump, the GOP circles the wagons and defends him even harder, you KNOW democrats dont do that shit, they're dumb enough to listen to the other side and they fucking cave

but idk. chelsea manning is as close to a political prisoner as we really have in this country. the textbook definition of a victim of the deep state, literally someone who was jailed for exposing a coverup.

can you imagine a world where Congress calls in the CIA/FBI directors to do their annual lying where they swear up and down they're doing everything by the book and not spying on americans etc etc etc and congresswoman manning is just like "ahem. yes. excuse me, i have some questions here"

[kthx]

LOOOOL baseless statement. You have been proven wrong over and over in the thread. This also coming from you..a guy who is a transgender denier. I seriously don't think anything you have said this whole thread is correct. You stand for a party that believes in teaching creationism in schools. Many conservatives in congress actually believe the world is only 6000 years old. You say you smoke weed yourself yet vote for Trump who inputs Jeff Sessions in charge of the justice department. I'm afraid YOU are the unexceptional one here ....

https://imgur.com/a/U9HMK

[Zeebu]

i used to listen to l'arc en ciel a little bit back in the day. are they any good?

[Jessup]

I can live with that Jerome, besides I am enjoying my snow day off of work. Sometimes you have to step back and realize that most people are Jessups and Dierightnows and that nothing will ever be perfect but its not that bad.

LOOOOL baseless statement. You have been proven wrong over and over in the thread. This also coming from you..a guy who is a transgender denier. I seriously don't think anything you have said this whole thread is correct. You stand for a party that believes in teaching creationism in schools. Many conservatives in congress actually believe the world is only 6000 years old. You say you smoke weed yourself yet vote for Trump who inputs Jeff Sessions in charge of the justice department. I'm afraid YOU are the unexceptional one here ....

[tagmost]

It's illegal, so it's bad.

once were samurais..

[Jones]

Marijuana is worse than meth because meth is more natural.

[Leland]

420 420 420 4204 2042 402 4024 204 2042 42420 4204 204 204 2420 420 420 420 420 4204 20 !!!!

[kthx]

super glad noone posted because i'm done

today around noon a friend called me up and proceeded to rant, unhinged, for 3 hours. i cant even begin to describe the genuinely depraved shit he said. not depraved in a sick or gross way, just... i dunno man. i've taken basic things for granted here. we might disagree about capitalism but for the most part everyone in this thread has a basic grasp on it, this dude at one point described "economics and politics" as "civilian stuff that doesnt matter", and what the real problem here was "governments and hegemony" (wat). he doesn't trust anything, because "sun tzu says that war is deception, and the CIA deceives people, therefore they're at war with us and therefore literally all news is fake" (exact words here. they're burned into my skull forever, like some lovecraftian horror i am doomed to forever remember, a deep dark gaze into the abyss of insanity)

this was a wake up call i needed. i might disagree with ya kthx, eph, but holy fuck i've been taken y'alls intelligence and grasp of basic shit for granted. i neeed to rethink life because i lost some faith in humanity today.

edit: oh his vision for changing america involves starting a communal weapons company and "simply" designing better weapons and "simply" putting the entire military industrial complex out of business. dawg. i cant make this shit up.

You see this is the scary part, conspiracy type shit is basically a drug, and remember I told you a while back that there are people who are able to handle taking drugs.. I can go out one night and have some drinks, do a few lines or bumps and not even think about it again for a few weeks, but some people can't quit like that.. they wake up and instantly need more and more until it consumes them. It sounds like your friend went down the path and wasn't able to compartmentalize all the shit he was reading, and took it all at face value without bothering to think through what he was saying. As Aristotle said "It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it." Despite my heavy handed arguments I understand that some socialism is a good thing and that it helped give a higher quality of life to many who were struggling, but I also still believe that it is better to teach a man to fish. I think we largely want the same thing but just have different opinions on the best way to get there, and to achieve it.

[kthx]

I can live with that Jerome, besides I am enjoying my snow day off of work. Sometimes you have to step back and realize that most people are Jessups and Dierightnows and that nothing will ever be perfect but its not that bad.

[Jerome Scuggs]

super glad noone posted because i'm done

today around noon a friend called me up and proceeded to rant, unhinged, for 3 hours. i cant even begin to describe the genuinely depraved shit he said. not depraved in a sick or gross way, just... i dunno man. i've taken basic things for granted here. we might disagree about capitalism but for the most part everyone in this thread has a basic grasp on it, this dude at one point described "economics and politics" as "civilian stuff that doesnt matter", and what the real problem here was "governments and hegemony" (wat). he doesn't trust anything, because "sun tzu says that war is deception, and the CIA deceives people, therefore they're at war with us and therefore literally all news is fake" (exact words here. they're burned into my skull forever, like some lovecraftian horror i am doomed to forever remember, a deep dark gaze into the abyss of insanity)

this was a wake up call i needed. i might disagree with ya kthx, eph, but holy fuck i've been taken y'alls intelligence and grasp of basic shit for granted. i neeed to rethink life because i lost some faith in humanity today.

edit: oh his vision for changing america involves starting a communal weapons company and "simply" designing better weapons and "simply" putting the entire military industrial complex out of business. dawg. i cant make this shit up.

[Jerome Scuggs]

http://www.businessinsider.com/world...8-1/?r=US&IR=T

lol i just deleted a genuine rage post re: this article

tl;dr: chile elected a socialist, the CIA killed him and installed a right-winger whose policies were given the thumbs up by the "chicago boys", a group of economists led by milton friedman. said right-winger routinely tossed leftists out of helicopters until his own crimes caught up with him. post-pinochet the world bank then rigs their statistics to make chile's economy look worse when a socialist gets elected, and better when a conservative gets elected. this is probably a factor in why Pinochet's grandson is forming a new right-wing party and gaining support.

literally none of the things i posted except that last sentence/link are personal opinions or theories, the wiki page on pinochet plainly admits that this is what the US/CIA did and the world bank admits it did what it did.

it's hard to remain clearheaded when i read about shit like this and then read posts like "if you want to see the results of socialism, look at (country that we directly destabilized or indirectly economically ruined)" and "the US doesn't owe any country anything" etc

we created north korea when we broke our postwar occupation agreements with the soviets, we've invaded haiti countless times for "reasons", we armed the soviets to fight nazis then armed jihadists to fight commies and now we're stuck in an almost two-decades struggle against the jihadists. we just concluded an arms deal with saudi arabia, birthplace of a majority of the 9/11 hijackers. central america was all but owned and operated by american businessmen (see: the dole corporation aka united fruit aka chiquita), giving birth to the term "banana republics", and we left in a hurry after basically looting resources & infrastructure.

but we talk about all these countries like they all had a clean, fresh slate and, through only their own inferiority, managed to somehow screw up each of their respective countries or regions, and we act shocked and confused when people from these countries are skeptical about our mythical devotion to peace and progress.

gee whiz this wound up becoming a ragepost anyways

edit: forgot to mention one of the more obvious ones as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Iran

i hate to be that guy who is now basically just linking wikipedia pages but that's what is frustrating, this isn't some obscure pizzagate style conspiracy theory. these are well-established facts fit to publish on wikipedia.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Of any country, it's the single greatest threat to world peace. I'm glad I'm an American, and the US has so many great things going for it, but that is absolutely not one of them.

this is why it's critical to bring socialism to the US. it's the only country we can't invade

[qan]

i'm not super invested in like, dying on this hill or whatever but for what it's worth there were ~16.5k meth arrests compared to ~3k weed arrests last year, which follows a general trend where there are far more meth-related drug cases than marijuana. amphetamines were first synthesized in germany but the meth- formation was first synthesized in japan. more specifically i read an interesting AMA by an American who sold weed in Japan, i figure someone who was this experienced in the japanese black market's a good source to lean on

Hmmm, fair enough. I did check out the guy's AMA and he does claim meth is more common. But then again, that's just a single opinion, based on Tokyo, and specifically the clubbing scene he frequented to sell his drugs, which means his sample's certainly a bit biased.

As for the arrests, it's an interesting point. But, one thing to consider: regular Japanese will consider smoking marijuana once just to say they've done it (especially as it's becoming legal in many countries and all hell hasn't yet broken loose in those places). On the other hand, only committed "druggies" would ever touch meth. Weed use I'd still argue is more common, but also far more subdued and irregular. Someone hooked on meth will be buying it regularly, putting themselves at risk constantly. Weed users are less likely to be habitual users, especially as they have to "appear normal" and can't let anyone know they use it, as it's unlikely anyone they know is a fellow smoker. Snitching in those situations is sort of a moral duty. ("Have to help them clean up their life before they overdose!") In other words, they would probably risk buying only very rarely, and would keep it extremely quiet. Also, I think it's more common in the countryside, where some people still do grow it. Just generally much more low-key. Whereas meth users would go to the club until 6am, get stumbling drunk, yell, piss in the streets, brag, go to blowjob parlors/soaplands, get in fights, etc.

[qan]

No one wants to work harder, no one wants to intrude upon our leisure time. Why work hard when we are owed a good life by the government? No one in Japan thinks or feels like this.

Hmmm. There are a lot of hard-working people in the US, just as there are a lot of lazy sods in Japan. (Trust me. The guys with dyed blond hair popping a squat in the parking lot of the convenience store, a FamiChicken in one hand and a 9% alcohol tallboy of Strong Zero in the other are not exactly "driven" individuals. But they do like to drive past your house on their mopeds at 2am, revving the engine into an early grave.)

Sure, generally speaking, the Japanese probably have a better work ethic. Though in reality, the two countries work roughly the same number of hours per week on average -- with the US actually working about 60 hours more per year than the Japanese. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-cou...orked-per-year

As far as education goes, the education system is based on rote learning. It's ... really bad. At any subject that requires long-term memory, critical thinking, or real understanding, the Japanese often fail. But give them a list of concepts they have to memorize for the test coming up next week and they will cram like no other. Only to empty their brains of all that they "learned," to be filled up with the next set of concepts that will be tested for. (Want proof? Japanese spend 6 years learning English, but their foreign language ability is rated 60th our of 61 countries in which this is measured. The reason is that learning a language absolutely can't be done via rote methods, and the Japanese are slow to adopt new ways of thinking, which is their greatest strength and greatest weakness.)

Meanwhile, Japanese science generally doesn't produce much original or ground-breaking research, there's not many famous Japanese mathematicians, not a hell of a lot of great Japanese literature is being produced, Japanese music is largely absolute garbage (except a few notable exceptions)... The US might not score as well on standardized tests, and there's definitely been a decline in the quality of education over the years, and an embrace of the culture of stupidity to some extent. But the US still is an absolute monster in terms of innovation and actually USING what is learned.

(The point I was making in saying that originally was that Japan is not really hyper-capitalist, and like most countries, includes some socialist elements, as it should: it has a pretty good support network in terms of health care, social security, etc. Much better than, say, "Communist" China, ironically enough. But, indeed, it's a unique culture and a big part of its success is certain cultural values.)

The US Left was done a good job convincing many people under50 that we are have screwed over the rest of the world, that we owe everyone money/restitution and a high quality of life.

I don't know if the US owes everyone restitution, but the US military-industrial complex sure does make a killing by knocking down countries and then rebuilding them. This is a very old game at this point. Especially after the Cold War ended, the money faucet had to keep flowing, so constant, low-level war became not just desirable but a necessity. Surely you don't think that the US is blameless...? Of any country, it's the single greatest threat to world peace. I'm glad I'm an American, and the US has so many great things going for it, but that is absolutely not one of them.