We don’t give foreign aid to be altruistic. We give foreign aid because soft power is a much cheaper and more effective way to protect our own economic interests than hard power is. Our corporations are bleeding those countries dry, which is the main reason they’re shitholes. That’s the legacy of colonialism.

You know, I suspect us occupying it for 20 years, during which time we beat and oppressed its people and literally emptied out their gold reserve, might have had a bit more to do with it than a charitable foundation having some of its funds misdirected by the administrators of the place they were trying to help.

You don’t own it, which makes it even easier for a small handful of massive corporations to control what we see and hear. It’s likely the version of of 5 Million Ways to Kill a CEO that used to wake me up in the morning disappeared simply because of some sort of dispute between DJ Spooky and someone somewhere, since…

The US is a large nation that has enough natural resources to be self-sufficient, while Haiti is a small island nation that needs to trade with the rest of the world. But the colonial powers blockaded them until they agreed to compensate France for their losses to the tune of $31 billion in today’s dollars. It took…

Methinks people are a bit more motivated than they were during Occupy.

Of course they do, but it’s only the difficulty of spreading cold butter on toast that everyone bitches about.

Cut/shave slice of cold butter, place on hot toast. Plate other food and pour beverage(s). Carry everything to the table. Sit down and spread the now-softened butter. End of problem.

So because you don’t like the system, you punish the victims of that system rather than the perpetrators, which is why they keep getting away with it. 

That would fall under the heading of more reporting on racism, no?

They aren’t that heavy. An Arrisun only weighs 23 lbs, and lights are getting lighter and smaller and more versatile all the time. Ditto cameras. The best boy, ie head grip, on a film I PA’d for was short girl. Sure, she had to carry it with two hands and make a second trip for a C-stand, but that sort of thing…

Seriously, the story at that link about why so few black people produce or drink craft beers, dating back to when Prohibition was sold to voters by appealing to racism, was actually really interesting.

On the one hand, she isn’t qualified. On the other, she’d no doubt ask Obama for his input on her Cabinet, and then actually listen to their input. For she is intelligent and informed enough to know that while the sort of “experts” that shill products on daytime TV are good for ratings, you need real experts to run…

This more than any other single thing makes me think that it actually is possible that Trump might usher in a massive progressive backlash that will ultimately benefit the country, rather than its destruction.

People aren’t afraid of it because we have been doing it since before we were human beings. The desire to alter perception is not restricted just to humans, or even to primates. Monkeys that find fermented fruit that gets them drunk will go back to that spot over and over. Ditto hoofed ungulates encountering…

The media ignored them for too long, which is one reason why so many white people are surprised at how racist this country actually is. The media should be reporting on racism more, not less.

Whitewater was an even bigger bullshit scandal, because every time Kenneth Starr failed to find sufficient connections between the Clintons, who lost money on the deal, and the people at the bank who were behind the deal, he just started over, casting the net wider and wider, until Bill was finally impeached for lying…

I had not read your guide to Game of Thrones until just now. I laughed like hell, and also felt like you missed an opportunity to mention that the Starks, unlike the other major houses, are descendants of the First Men, ahem.

Many white people are bad at dancing, so we hang onto each other when we do it.

Corollary to this, people who expend the energy to post TL;DR rather than expending the energy to just fucking read it. It’s like, “if you actually gave a shit about time and energy, you would not do that, you just want to be an asshole.”

I now do closed captioning, which is destroying my wrists, because I can no longer find work copy editing, which did not. I am that bitch on steroids.