#capitalism corruption

[lobsterenthusiastt]

this has got to be my favorite c&h comic of all time. he just turns evil for no reason at all

[politijohn]

Source

[sinister-yet-satisfying]

I hate it here

Let this be a lesson against believing politicians lies.

Keeping wealth concentrated in the 1% is the end goal of capitalism.

They will do whatever is necessary to keep the working class desperate and dependent on the system that impoverishes them.

[nando161mando]

[podcastwizard]

brennan lee mulligan was right the true villain of dungeons and dragons is and always will be capitalism

[allthecanadianpolitics]

As more Canadians find themselves struggling to afford or find housing, the country's smallest province is the only one that can point to legislation recognizing housing as a human right.

The Canadian Press asked every province whether it agreed with the federal housing advocate that shelter is a human right, and if it intends to introduce legislation upholding that right.

Most did not answer the questions directly and responded with a laundry list of initiatives launched to address the housing crises brewing in their jurisdictions.

In Quebec, the government's lack of interest in addressing the question was revealed in an errant email sent to a reporter.

When prodded for a response one week after an initial request, a spokesperson for Quebec's housing minister mistakenly sent a reply intended for a government colleague.

"Do I ghost her again?" she wrote Thursday. "Otherwise, a general response that doesn't answer, to say housing is a priority for our government?" By Friday afternoon, Quebec had not provided a response. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland, @vague-humanoid

[thoughtlessarse]

IKEA has been accused of contributing to the rapid deterioration of Romania’s biologically rich forests. Two recent investigations reveal the impact of the flatpack furniture giant on the country’s Carpathian mountains, one of Europe’s largest remaining areas of primary and old growth forests. According to a Greenpeace report, more than 50 per cent of Romania’s ancient forests have disappeared in the past 20 years, due to corruption and poor law enforcement. A new report from the NGO details the role that IKEA and the Ingka Group, its largest franchisee, have played in this plundering - some of which has taken place in supposedly protected areas. Why are Romania’s forests under threat? Around 3,000 square kilometres of Romania's forests are protected by European laws as Natura 2000 sites. But Romania’s multi-billion euro timber industry - with the so-called ‘wood mafia’ at its heart - is plagued by systemic corruption and poor law enforcement. Logging and irresponsible forestry practices threaten the remaining forest. In 2019, leaked data from a government report revealed that almost 40 million cubic metres of wood are cut from the country’s forests each year, half of which is illegally harvested.

continue reading

[visenyaism]

astarion baldursgate being a nepo baby corrupt magistrate before his death is a deliberate narrative choice meant to highlight that in the tradition of The Vampire being an incredibly transparent metaphor for class dynamics of feudalism (evil lord living in a palace demanding the blood of the peasantry,) the category of the Vampire Spawn exists as a clear analogue to the bourgeoisie and their role in perpetuating the power of the aristocracy. in the rest of this deranged fucking text post i will

[socialjusticeinamerica]

[this-is-a-name-dont-worry]

things that seemed reoccurring this update:

- Meat

- peas

- jelly

- Hibernation

- Eddie's absence

- Acting out a script (Sally mumbling asking if it's her cue and Howdy changing the script of the narrator in Homewarming storybook, characters general interactions with the narrator, different moments in the video, like the Sally and Frank ad break or the song a barely silent night, where the two literally fight over who get to sing, Sally mentions she wrote the lyrics, and Frank says she already has a song. yeah all of these are easy to see as meta goofs in the original material, but it's the fact there's so much of it this update) (of course all this wrap up with the end of the video where Eddie and Frank are obviously acting off script)

- Being alone (Eddie not having any news of anyone and not even seeing anyone outside (which is interesting as the story says that Sally was up in a tree near his home and saw him fret over having nothing to do), Wally saying it's so quiet during Homewarming and it's just he and Home for a while (potentially the show putting out a christmas special and then being on break? can a show do that?), and in the normal website material, the end of "An ode to hibernation", Frank saying "Where all that's left is me", the "me" being a "...me?")

- Welcome Home being used to sell stuff (cigarettes, medicine, eggnog, cereals, and the cookbook lists ingredients that are a specific brand)

(I'm putting under read more my rambling thoughts so you can just reblog the list without having to see them)

so I can't really make sense yet of all the food stuff. Maybe there are cultural elements/expressions I don't know that explains it? But I still find it very interesting how fucking unhinged that cookbook is yet the commercial and the website treat it normally. The cookbook is overall extremely interesting, because some of the recipes seem to actually be written by the characters; Barnaby who only presents you weird hot dog dressings with pictures but no recipe (and all jokes), Frank who lists not just the ingredients but also the material, and overexplain each steps (at least overexplain compared to the other recipes. it's actually interesting to know why you do x or y), and Julie who turns her recipe into a game at the end, and felt a bit harder to follow? anyway.

The cookbook, the Homewarming tradition of hanging a ham in the tree, Santy Claus being said sometimes instead of Santa, the ham for Santa? Once again, the christmas commercials being so casual about some of the weird stuff it says and presents? This almost feels like an alien who only has a blurry grasp of Christmas and what humans enjoy made the cookbook and the live commercial.

Sometimes, Welcome Home feels like it never actually aired and produced things, but we're making it retroactively exist. Something is making it exist. Like a retcon of the universe, "What do you mean you never heard of Welcome Home? No, of course it always existed and was very popular, look at all this old material we find!"

So maybe whatever is making it exist doesn't fully get humans and accidentally creates things that are weird to prove its existence. Like a cookbook that tells you a single pea in a buttered plate is a classic meal, or that of course you give Santa ham on Homewarming! (tbh almost getting an AI weirdness feel)

But in total contrary, in its story, Welcome Home also feels like it always existed, but got somehow completely wiped from people's mind, as something caused its sudden stop, and its characters gained consciousness of what they are and their world. As an existential dread fell on them one after the other, slowly realizing something isn't right. As Eddie felt anxiety and nervousness over no one being there or contacting him, to then having the story acts lightheartedly about it, the narrator saying things have been solved but he doesn't feel it, and suddenly Home is staring at him.

Both "It never existed but the universe is being retcon into it existing" and "it existed but something terrible happened that erased it from peoples mind" seem plausible. If two theories contradict each other, that means there's a third one that needs to be found.

Maybe it existed. Maybe it truly was popular, but something corrupted it, leading to its disappearance. A disappearance so big it stopped to exist. And now the thing that corrupted it is trying to crawl back, make it exist again, but it's making it come back completely off.

Anyway.

Also, I think the show may have been on hold during the Holiday season, "hibernating", and the character who got some self awareness realized that something was off. They're alone because there's nothing new, so no one is there bringing life to the neighborhood.

[ratbastarddotfuck]

I've never been truly able to get on board with "if you go far enough left, you get your guns back" because I genuinely just don't think we should be mass producing weapons that can facilitate mass murder at the scale we do. like, sure, I'm not against the principle of "marginalised people and activists should have the same access to weaponry that others do, especially for protection in a state of fascism" but I just. we only have these things as a result of the military industry, finding the most efficient ways to kill. these things should never have been made. we shouldn't be producing assault rifles for mass consumption, we shouldn't be producing them at all.

so like. sure. if you go far enough left you get your guns back, I guess. but I think that's a short-sighted and disingenuous way to phrase it, when I would assume that the more "radical" leftist stance is something more akin to global demilitarisation and the cessation of mass-production of weapons (alongside a lot of other garbage made for mass consumption under capitalism - we need to de-industrialise production on a major global scale).

(I don't necessarily mean getting rid of guns "completely" because people will always find ways to engineer them, but I think there is a massive difference between a gun designed for responsible hunting or sport vs a gun designed to kill people as fast as possible, or to be wielded as a threat the way cops do.)

idk. obviously this is a very future-focused perspective and I guess the "far enough left etc." crowd are usually talking more in the present. I just have concerns that this particular piece of rhetoric encourages some leftists to be less critical of the weaponry industry than perhaps we should be.

[lambnotincluded]

no promise of heaven will make me march with my final breath I deny the church

[politijohn]

Source

[gentle-hero-blog]

saw someone point out how Samus' gunship refuses her entry at the end of Corruption because it doesn't even recognize her as Samus and ough. OUGHHH

[nando161mando]

▶️ Pro-Palestine protesters rally on the Democratic National Convention final day in Chicago

[praesaepe]

person of interest and leverage are both hidden gems of late 2000's/early 2010's cable tv that you expect one thing out of (a typical procedural show of the era) and get something else that is completely mind blowing and difficult to really describe