It's not healthy for society. If you can't understand why, take it further, imagine instead that Musk manages to somehow accumulate far more wealth. He takes massive ownership stakes in every company. He buys out, or locks out through political influence, competitors, market by market until they fail/sell. He could buy out the media. If they won't sell, since he owns so many major companies, he pulls advertising. He slaps them with as many lawsuits as he can throw at them until they cannot sustain themselves, and must do as he says or sell. He'd have enough money to basically purchase any political race with ease. Between that and having the media doing his bidding, democracy is effectively dead. Imagine he decides to offer insane amounts of money to start buying all of the farms and ranches. Now he controls the food supply. Where it goes. Who gets it. What they have to pay for it. Wealth begets wealth. The more wealth you have, the faster your wealth grows, and the more disproportionately it grows compared to normal, working folks. A society which allows trillionaires while the bottom 50% are struggling to pay bills and wondering if they'll even be able to retire is a society that is headed rapidly towards failure. I suspect if there was a hypothetical communist multi-trillionaire that y'all would quickly realize how scary someone possessing that much wealth truly is.

i framed a colorful e ink on my wall to display a collage of any birds that have passed by my window today

this is how you know new york isn’t a real sports city bc people in philly will sign off work emails with “go birds” in the middle of the offseason after a first round exit

Commercial advertising, product placements, and corporate-sponsored promotions are explicitly prohibited on national parklands. The White House lawn is a unit of the National Park System. It also violates standard Anti-Vending and Solicitation Laws as well as misuse of public funds and government endorsement ethics. Everything this administration does spits in the face of our laws. Everything is a grift.

by thomas wykes. had me crying laughing

They expect us to believe these results and not ask questions 🙄

the phrase "lipstick on a pig" has always inspired a deep sadness in me. I think of the pig, looking forward to her big night out, and I bring myself to the verge of tears.

[on my death bed] "Why didn't I just buy a normal bed?"

Backrooms? Obsession? How about you head back to your room and start obsessing over some job applications

Here’s your monthly reminder that you shouldn’t be prompting coding agents anymore. It’s June. You should be looking at the unfurled leaves of trees shaking gently in the summer breeze, eating buckets of cherries, and reading a big fat history book you won’t finish.

In American slang we often refer to money as “benjamins” this is a subtle reference to Benjamin Netanyahu, an American folk figure who takes all of our money

trebuchet seemed like a good investment at first so i got one for what I thought was a great price but guess what, turns out it only can launch boulders from the same company that sold me the trebuchet because of some proprietary bs and it’s a monthly boulder subscription service

lmao

The screwworm program wasn't charity, it was a $10 million fence that kept a billion-dollar problem from eating our own livestock alive. That's the thing with most USAID funding: it looks like "aid," but it's really cheap self-defense. Solve a problem there, and it never lands on our doorstep. But sure, let a bunch of guys who can't define DEI without Googling take a chainsaw to it. They didn't stop to ask, "Will this cut hurt us too?" Unless that's the point, burn it all down and call it efficiency. As usual our inept agriculture secretary, blaming the Biden administration as usual, instead of offering a solution to the problem they created. Texan here A screwworm infestation is a nightmare for cattle, causing horrific wounds and economic devastation. For Texas, the situation has escalated dramatically in the last 24 hours with the first confirmed case of New World Screwworm (NWS) in over 60 years! This could have been avoided! Infested animal can kill a cow in less than two weeks. Treatment is extremely difficult and time-consuming, requiring the painful removal of every visible larva and deep disinfection of the wound. Ranchers no longer have much experience with this labor-intensive process, and there is currently no approved pharmaceutical treatment to make it easier. This has triggered a massive economic threat. The USDA estimates that a widespread outbreak would drain an astonishing $1.8 billion from the Texas economy alone in livestock deaths, labor, and medication expenses. How will this affect you? Tightening supplies will drive already high beef prices higher.

22nd anniversary

Barkeep at the tavern in the far away village to which I have traveled: Hero, our town has been plagued by a Goblin Prince whose underlings have been terrorizing our villagers. His den lies eastward, beyond the wheat fields. Me: ok do you have voodoo ranger

don’t sit on the sidewalk or the fascistic paramilitary force will disappear you