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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 8th, 2023

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  • Never had a parking ticket spiral eh?

    $85 + $50 dollar waiver fee if you pay and just say you’re guilty. OOOOR

    $85 fee if you go to court and lose.

    Only $95 in the bank.

    Well shit, $50 bucks lets you pay rent, so you take the time. But you have to get exacty $10 of gas, you get to the courtroom, do your best and lose. You gotta pay $85 dollars, and so you do – except the bank fucked you when you went to got gas, they haven’t processes that yet, and the courtroom requires a mandatory $2.95 “convenience fee” so they don’t have to take a check… So you pay, and the bank processes your payments dutifully, smallest to largest, but now you’re in the hole for $105.

    Rent is still coming next week, and you’re lucky it’s only $300 cause you share a 3 bedroom and sleep on the couch.

    To make the $300 dollars you gotta work 2 jobs, because Wallmart makes sure you don’t get the full 35 hours each week to qualify for benefits, and McDonalds only calls you to pick up the teenagers shifts on Fridays.

    But wait, you’re -105 in the bank, so you gotta go call up a bunch of people you know and bug everyone at McDonalds to see if you can cover their shifts. Finally you manage to scrape together 55 hours to pay your rent… but you get dinged on your mobile bill in the middle of that week, and you’re out another 40 dollars. You can’t cancel the mobile phone since it’s your only phone, and hell entertainment, you can’t afford a TV or a Netflix plan, that shit’s for the rich. You can’t even afford to eat where you work…

    Finally you get home, after working 7 days of 8 hour shifts you managed to scrape together (4 at wallymart and 3 at mcdonalds) and your bank account is empty, you don’t have any money for food, and your snap benefits keep getting denied because you live in a red state…

    So you watch youtube shorts, and tiktok doom scroll and try and forget you’re hungry…

    (I hope my landlord will let me give them 260 until I can cover the rest…)


  • Imagine investing in for-profit prisons, as a regular person. You’re hoping that society tears itself apart so you can watch line go up. Monstrous indeed.

    I have a “ethically challenged” investment set that I put money into. I hate every one of the companies, and every one of their missions. But it means when things go horribly with society, I make money… So I get to feel like a rich person, and then almost instantly feel like an asshole because I’m not making enough money to assuage the moral issues I have with it.

    When the pandemic hit, I bought a bunch of food service company stock… and various pharma companies. When I found out real estate companies were gouging people’s rent… I bought real estate investment trusts… and when I found out the GOP was going to revert roe v wade, I bought a bunch of health care companies stock (that particularly service the south…)

    Funny thing is, every time I get a shareholder vote notice, I always vote my conscience, but it doesn’t matter everyone else votes their pocketbook every time.



  • For a 200 year old law, it’s pretty straight forward. And for all it’s flaws, the Nth revolution didn’t like the Catholic church for … reasons, so they wanted to make a law to get them out of politics and make them liable for their shenanigans. Thankfully they didn’t discriminate when they wrote the law.

    https://www.gouvernement.fr/sites/default/files/contenu/piece-jointe/2017/02/libertes_et_interdits_eng.pdf

    1. PROHIBITIONS AND LIMITS TO INDIVIDUAL FREEDOMS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF “LAÏCITÉ”

     The principle of secularism means that the State and religious organisations are separate. There is therefore no state-run public worship. The State neither recognises, nor subsidises, nor salaries any form of worship. Exceptions and adjustments to the ban on funding are defined in the legislation and case-law; they concern in particular chaplaincies, which are paid for by the State1

     No religion can impose its prescriptions on the Republic. No religious principle can be invoked for disobeying the law.