videos LanyrdSkynrd • 2 weeks ago • 66%

Guy unloads a truly impressive string of verbal abuse on a cop. Predictably cops don't let that go unpunished

videos LanyrdSkynrd • 3 weeks ago • 100%

Excellent video about the real reason ADHD drugs are in short supply. Spoiler: it's about profits

news LanyrdSkynrd • 4 weeks ago • 100%

www.independent.co.uk

>The National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA) has cited the infamous 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision, which stated that enslaved people weren’t citizens, to argue that Vice President Kamala Harris is ineligible to run for president according to the Constitution. >The group also challenged the right of Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley to appear on Republican primary ballots. >The Republican group’s platform and policy document noted that “The Constitutional qualifications of Presidential eligibility” states that “No person except a natural born Citizen, shall be eligible, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President >“An originalist and strict constructionist understanding of the Constitution in the Scalia and Thomas tradition, as well as precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court cases ... have found that a ‘Natural Born Citizen’ is defined as a person born on American soil of parents who are both citizens of the United States at the time of the child’s birth,” the document states. >The group then cites six cases including Dred Scott v Sandford. The 1857 ruling came a few years before the 1861 outbreak of the US Civil War over the issue of slavery, stating that enslaved people could not be citizens, meaning that they couldn’t expect to receive any protection from the courts or the federal government. The ruling also said that Congress did not have the power to ban slavery from a federal territory. I thought this was some kind of op, like someone making a fake Republican org and putting out an unhinged policy paper. Citing Dred Scott is crazy, especially since it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the argument that she's not a citizen. Archive link: https://web.archive.org/save/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fus-politics%2Fkamala-harris-president-supreme-court-b2601364.html

Pets LanyrdSkynrd • 4 weeks ago • 100%

My cat Pepper has been on a diet for about 9 months. He was definitely overweight and has lost about 2 pounds, but I'm starting to worry he's being underfed now. He just seems more stressed when he goes to check his food bowl and it's empty and will wait for the machine to dispense for hours before his feeding times. He's a bombay, and I found some info online that says they should be under 15 pounds and some that says under 12. He's 12.6 now, and he still looks kinda chubby, but it's hard to tell because he has a big primordial pouch(loose skin in the belly area). I know I should ask a vet, but I can't afford a vet visit.

chat LanyrdSkynrd • 1 month ago • 100%

New Hampshire's school funding system is the worst that exists in the US. This image is pretty self-explanatory, but I want to add that this is not a cherry-picked example. There are other communities that could be compared that would show significantly larger disparities, but this example was chosen because they are 30 miles apart.  This disparity exists because most of the school funding comes from local property taxes. Property rich towns have plenty to spend on schools, while property poor communities must raise their tax rates. This causes businesses to leave, which lowers tax revenues, which forces them to raise tax rates even more. This also eliminates local jobs, which causes people to leave, which drives down property values, which drives down tax revenue. It's a vicious cycle that destroys communities. One of the aspects of this that enrages me the most is that the NH constitution requires the state to fully fund an adequate education. There was a series of lawsuits starting in 1998, where the NH Supreme Court ruled that the state must fund a study to determine the costs and fund that amount. As a result, the state legislature created SWEPT, a statewide education property tax. The funds would be passed to the state, and the state would be required to divide it out based on an equalization formula. This satisfied the court, despite the fact that the amount would not satisfy the cost of an adequate education established at trial. Just 2 years later, the legislature passed a law allowing communities to retain the SWEPT funds, as long as they spent them on education. Property rich towns reduced their local property taxes to 0% and tried to spend as much as possible even though their schools were already well funded. Despite their best efforts, equalization funds still flowed to the poor communities, they just couldn't spend it all. Then the rich towns discovered they could set a negative local property tax rate. Most of the richest towns did it, bringing their contributions to the SWEPT fund to 0. Over the years since there have been other lawsuits, most targeted at aid for students with disabilities. Some of those resulted in some targeted funding and adequacy aid, but today the funding looks like this(SWEPT in this chart is the amount kept locally, so it's a local tax as well):  This whole situation also makes the entire NH tax system regressive, meaning poor folks a larger share of their income in taxes than the rich. There's no personal income or sales tax and the interest and dividend tax was recently eliminated:  This is a system designed to keep poor people poor. Give them a terrible education, eliminate any chance of jobs in their communities, and tax them more than everyone that has a higher income. There is currently another lawsuit going that the state has lost, but judgement is delayed until after the next legislative cycle. Despite the fact that the state lost, and didn't even contest that they aren't properly funding an adequate education, I'm not hopeful. The current chief justice is a big proponent of private education and represented the state in a previous school funding lawsuit. They also have the roadmap of how to allow the state to continue to violate the constitution. Let them delay, pass small reforms and then undo them, forcing another 5 years of funding studies and litigation.

chat LanyrdSkynrd • 1 month ago • 100%

People talk about social media algorithms as if they're something disconnected from the decisions of the companies that make and control them. "The Algorithm" is not making YT push shitty content on your home page, YouTube is making that happen. It's a combination of ignoring certain trends and actively promoting others. For starters, these companies made the algorithms, they tweak them constantly. When Elsagate happened, YT made changes the reduced the amount of that very specific type of garbage that was shown. When advertisers stop advertising, they suddenly have great influence over the recommendations. That to me proves they have to ability to control with pretty fine detail what is recommended by their sites. It's been revealed that TikTok has a manual "[heater](https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/01/20/tiktoks-secret-heating-button-can-make-anyone-go-viral/)" function that allows them to force certain videos to appear in recommendations. They use this to set the tone of the site, lure influencers, and make brand deals. That exposure causes heated channels to gain subscribers, further amplifying the effects. YT trending is manually chosen as well, 10 main videos, 10 gaming videos and 10 shorts, updated every 15 minutes. When videos end up on the trending page, they get more views, which makes them get recommended even more. This gives them a constant source of influence over the recommendations. One mistake I see people make is to assume that recommendation algorithms are simply a reflection of the audience; "The algorithm is bad because we are bad". My counterpoint to that is that when the recommendations hurt the bottom line of the business, these companies change them. At the very least it's social media companies choosing not to fix bad recommendations and at worst intentional manipulation. Sure, people choose to watch a lot of gross stuff, but let's not act like YouTube couldn't get rid of, for example, misogyny for children content(Andrew Tate etc) quickly if they wanted to. The other is to treat it as a sentient creation that nobody has control over, "We're just chasing what the algorithm wants". It's one of the things tech bros dream of with regard to AI. They want to be able to put an algorithm in charge of the orphan crushing machine and say, "Sorry, I don't know why the algorithm keeps choosing to crush the orphans". Tldr: The purpose of a system is what it does.

badposting LanyrdSkynrd • 1 month ago • 100%

I'm doing my part 

podcasts LanyrdSkynrd • 2 months ago • 100%

www.podbean.com

A collection of Parenti speeches in podcast format. The audio is cleaned up, but some are still a little rough.

news LanyrdSkynrd • 11 months ago • 100%

www.aljazeera.com

>Joshua Bowles, 29, repeatedly stabbed the unnamed woman, who was working at British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), in March near its base at Cheltenham, England. >Following his arrest, Bowles told the police, “The target was selected for employment at the NSA.” >“Due to the size and resourcing, American intelligence represents the largest contributor within the intelligence community, so made sense as the symbolic target. I consider GCHQ just as guilty.” >Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb said on Monday that Bowles had carried out a “politically motivated attack” that was driven by “anger and resentment” towards GCHQ and women. >He had researched the attack online beforehand, including studying the American “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, who mounted an anonymous bombing campaign from 1978 to 1995. >Bowles also looked up attacks on women and white supremacy. >In one of his police interviews, Bowles said: “The system is rigged. I believe the intelligence community helps ensure this rigging, this view has been reinforced by my time working at GCHQ.” >Penny also said Bowles described himself as a “terrorist” after the attack, saying to one witness: “I make a pretty s*** terrorist, don’t I?”

videos LanyrdSkynrd • 11 months ago • 100%

youtu.be

Al-Jazeera documentary about Israel's illegal lobbying efforts in the US. It was never released, due to US pressure, but was later leaked on YouTube by Electronic Infatada.

askchapo LanyrdSkynrd • 1 year ago • 100%

I'm watching Telemarketers and it's reminding me of shady jobs I've had in the past. I worked for Rent-a-Center doing collections. It's a place that preys on the poorest people in America, getting them to pay extortionate interest on rent to own furniture, appliances and electronics. We had customers who would end up paying thousands of dollars on a couch that wasn't even new when they got it. Even worse was people who would hit hard times and get their stuff repoed and end up with nothing to show for thousands of dollars in payments. My job was to learn when these customers got paid, or when they got their disability or welfare check and hound them over the phone or in person. If they didn't pay, I'd be sent out to knock on their doors. If that failed I'd be sent to repo it. It was a soul crushing job. I've had shit jobs, but I'd never had a job that made me feel like I was doing harm to people before. Some of my coworkers would deal with this by demonizing the customers, acting like they were all deadbeats who deserved to get fleeced. Others would blame the customers, saying shit like, 'Anyone stupid enough to buy here was going to get ripped off by someone, and it might as well be us'. I couldn't do that, so I started getting fucked up at work like Pat Pespis. I started pretending to do my job, dialing the number and then hitting the flash button and faking the calls. I'd get sent on a repo and my coworker and I would go out to eat or to the mall and pretend they wouldn't answer the door. I expected my collection stats would fall low enough that I'd eventually be fired, but they barely moved at all. It turned out that hounding people to pay a bill wasn't actually doing much.

chapotraphouse LanyrdSkynrd • 1 year ago • 98%

Google making sure that propaganda is front and center

news LanyrdSkynrd • 1 year ago • 100%

newrepublic.com

https://web.archive.org/web/20230826102641/https://newrepublic.com/post/175206/ohio-republicans-change-abortion-ballot-language > Republicans are betting their fear-mongering will work when people read the new ballot language at the polls. > > Ohio Republicans are trying once more to thwart an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, this time by amending the ballot initiative language to be more extreme. > > The Ohio Ballot Board voted 3–2, along party lines, on Thursday to reject using the full text of the proposed amendment on the ballot in November. Instead, the ballot will have a summary of the proposal written by Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, using language such as “unborn child” instead of “fetus.” The summary also removes all mention that the amendment would protect non-abortion forms of reproductive health. > > The full text of the amendment has not changed. The amendment would allow people to decide for themselves about all reproductive health, including abortion, contraception, fertility treatments, and miscarriage treatment. The state could only restrict abortion access after a doctor determines the fetus is viable or could survive outside the uterus. Even then, abortions can be performed if the patient’s health or life is at risk. The text also explicitly states that the state cannot “burden, penalize, prohibit, interfere with, or discriminate against” someone exercising their reproductive rights. > > Still, the summary language is sure to sway some people at the polls. In addition to replacing the word “fetus” with “unborn child,” the summary also uses the phrase “pregnant person” instead of “pregnant woman” and refers to the procedures as “medical treatment” instead of a “decision.” > > The new text makes two other crucial changes: First, it says that “citizens of the State of Ohio” cannot infringe upon reproductive rights, instead of the state, making it appear as if state officials could still intervene. The summary also says the amendment will “always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability if, in the treating physician’s determination, the abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman’s life or health.” In doing so, the summary invokes the right-wing bogeyman of “late-term abortions,” a term designed to make it seem that pro-choice policies border on infanticide. Interesting that they use the term, "pregnant person"? Ohio Republicans went woke! Obviously it's just another blatant attempt to use transphobia to pass an abortion ban.