mechoman444

I encourage you to read through my common history.

There has been a major uptick in people supporting socialism under the guise of social programs. Many will claim to support socialism because they favor things like universal healthcare, fair wages, unions, and similar policies. In reality, however, these things have nothing to do with socialism itself. They are social welfare programs that can be implemented under virtually any form of government.

What many of these people are actually advocating for is social democracy, not socialism. The fact that both terms contain the word “social” does not make them the same thing. Socialism, traditionally defined, involves some form of collective or public ownership of the means of production. Universal healthcare, labor protections, welfare programs, and unions do not inherently require that.

The most frustrating part is that many people simply redefine words to fit their preferred narrative. They make declarative statements that are objectively incorrect, then dismiss the actual definitions when challenged. At that point, it becomes nearly impossible to have a productive conversation because you’re no longer debating ideas, you’re debating the meanings of the words themselves.

Actually, the guy with the headset taking my order is fine. He’s usually just zoned in on the process and not really thinking about it, so I go along with it because that’s the fastest and most expedient way to get through the drive-thru.

What annoys me is the automatic “Are you using the app today?” followed by the donation pitch.

I will never, ever use the app. Ever. It’s fucking McDonald’s. I don’t need to hunt down the best deal they’ve got this week. They push that app constantly, and I’m not going to spend a second pre-ordering a damn Big Mac meal. Just take my order, take my money, and let me go.

“welcome to McDonald’s, will you be using the app today?”

“No, lemme get a number 9 medium diet coke”

“Hey how you doing, what can I get you?”

“number 9 medium diet coke”

“Two hamburger meal, and what to drink?”

“Diet coke”

“What size?”

“Medium”

“Does everything look right on the screen?”

“Yes”

“Would you like to round up for the Ronald McDonald Foundation”

“No”

“Drive around to the second window”

The more I think about it, the more I realize daycare centers probably don’t make nearly as much money as people assume.

My three-year-old goes to daycare, and we pay around $1,000 per month. Sometimes they send home a list showing which children are assigned to bring certain food items, so we have a rough idea of enrollment. The last time we counted, there were about 18 kids in my son’s class. That’s roughly $18,000 in revenue from that classroom each month.

Now consider the costs. There are four employees plus a manager. Even if each one only makes $15 an hour, payroll alone consumes a huge portion of that revenue. Then there are utilities, insurance, food, equipment, building maintenance, transportation costs for the bus, licensing requirements, and everything else needed to keep the facility running.

If anything, they may not be charging enough.

The real issue is that the entire system seems broken from the start. Daycare is barely affordable for many families, yet many childcare providers are operating on razor-thin margins. Parents struggle to pay for care, workers aren’t highly paid, and daycare centers themselves often aren’t making huge profits. Somewhere along the line, the economics simply don’t work very well.

Absolutely disgusting.

Who the fuck is researching this and what is the process of their information gathering?

Just a bunch of scientists sitting around watching birds goon all day going “ya, this seems perfectly natural!”

Wait wait wait. You mean the oil industry made 59 billion dollars.

Saudi Armaco made around 1.8 TRILLION dollars last year. It cost them $11.50 to produce one barrel of oil. They make around 3.9 billion barrels per year. There roughly 45 billion in production costs.

Guys. The war with Iran was nothing more than an excuse to raise prices.

So I’m not sure what is happening in this post. The premise is ludacris and the top responses are nonsense.

A five mile ambulance ride to the hospital for non emergency services is like 5k alone.

A simple conversation and basic exam by a doctor is 300 bucks on the low side. That’s just the doctor with a stethoscope checking your heart and lungs.

If you have to go to the emergency room you’re done.

That’s why we have health insurance here. It’s basically a racket.

My inbox is flooded with doomsayers and fear mongering about how they’re going to kill Linux because of this and no matter how hard I tried to convince them that it would be physically impossible to enforce such a law/rule on open source software they just wouldn’t listen.

Looks like the blokes in calif had to eat a lot of truth to come to this decision.

O, before you comment I am fully expecting more doomsayers. So please enlighten me.

Granted you paid for that John Deere update.

O… kay…

So there are other countries on this planet aside from America. In fact, there’s an entire department of the U.S. government, headed by the person fourth in line for the presidency, whose sole purpose is handling foreign policy and relations with other nations.

Foreign policy is arguably the single most important qualification a president can have.

I’m 40 years old, and I’ve been saying this since I was a teenager because I’m not short-sighted enough to think the world ends at America’s borders.

And moreover, I literally said in my original comment that we may need somebody inexperienced like AOC at this point. Did you somehow miss that part?

And before y’all start downvoting an indie game has nothing to do with budget. As long as it’s not made by a major publisher it is considered indie. Just like Mixtape and Expedition 33 are both indie games right along with schedule 1 and balatro.

I already defined it in my first post.

But here it is again: an indie game is any game made by a none-major publisher.

Examples of major publishers: Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft, Sony.

Examples of non-major publishers: Larian Studios, Annapurna Interactive, Playstack.

An indie game has nothing to do with budget or how many people developed the game. It is exclusively referring to the publisher.

I know man… I know… America is so fucked.

Well. Luckily there’s already an established definition of the word indie.

No? I’m going with a no. 🤷👍

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is young and lacks experience, especially in foreign policy. But that may be exactly the kind of person we need as president: someone relatively untainted by both the DNC and the GOP, and someone who has not spent decades being shaped by corporate lobbying and the protection of profit margins.

We need leadership that is still capable of idealism, somebody willing to push for the kind of social programs this country increasingly needs if we want to reverse the direction things are heading right now.

AOC absolutely could be elected. A 2028 presidential run is not some impossible fantasy. The deciding factor is simple: younger voters would actually need to show up and vote in meaningful numbers.

You know what’s funny? I actually think the situation is a lot better than you’re making it out to be.

You’re not entirely wrong. There absolutely are positions in hospitals where people do insane schedules like 24 or 48 hour shifts. But that’s mostly concentrated around emergency medicine, trauma, surgical residency, ICU coverage, and certain on-call specialties. There’s definitely a culture surrounding ER staff and surgeons where sleep deprivation almost gets treated like some badge of honor.

But the majority of the medical world in America does not operate like that.

Most hospitals primarily run on normal shift structures. Nurses on regular floors and patient wings are usually working standard 8 or 12 hour rotations with multiple shift changes throughout the day just like any other industry. And once you get into private practice, some doctors are only in office a few days a week seeing a relatively small number of patients across different locations.

People also forget hospitals are not run exclusively by doctors and nurses. They’re massive operations with huge amounts of support staff, technicians, imaging departments, transport, administration, custodial staff, billing, labs, and so on, most of whom work completely normal schedules.

So yes, what you’re describing does exist. But I don’t think it’s remotely as universal or apocalyptic as people make it sound. A lot of public perception comes from dramatized media where every hospital is portrayed like a nonstop trauma center operating at DEFCON 1 twenty-four hours a day.

It’s never been a major studio. They make a very specific kind of game they publish themselves or through a small publisher. So they’re by definition indie. In fact many people call larian AAA indie.