Michael Francis

@sciencegirl When I was a child large grocery stores had parking lot attendants who helped put them away, occasionally packed groceries into cars, kept it clean, etc - so it used to be a job for someone that was then stripped away by making people put coins in as a deposit.

The older I get, the more I realise that returning a shopping trolley is a personality test.

@N0RINCO @JohnRad15 @BigMoperson What will be interesting is to watch (perhaps my hobbies need a revamp) Chinese housing prices in the next decade as older generations had affordable homes while the younger generation will struggle if that ratio does not shift.

@JohnRad15 @mdf_michael @BigMoperson It keep it in context. The average house in China is roughly the same price as the average house in the US in nominal value. Their currency is just so much weaker than ours that it's far less affordable than housing is here. To claim housing is more affordable China is silly

Reposting because I think this is an important point. Capitalism enforces its specific land regime, making land a commodity. It does so using police with guns. That is profound state interfence in the economy.

@N0RINCO @JohnRad15 @BigMoperson This conflates many unrelated things as well as making a claim about what was said - nobody has said homes are more affordable - just that ownership is higher. Also a weaker currency is largely irrelevant because Chinese buyers are paid in yuan and buy homes in yuan.

@ThrillaRilla369 I have done this a few times and when I was a university student had someone add a few dollars to my count as I dug around for change to pay for groceries.

Would you help a person at the checkout if you noticed they were a couple dollars short on their groceries? 🥖 🥛 🥚

@NikkiHaley Yet they have cleared 20% of the population from the South, seized lands and destroyed whole villages. This is clearly a lie.

This needs to be said loud and clear. Israel is not attacking Lebanon. They are targeting Hezbollah. An Iranian funded terror proxy that has struck Israel 2,000 times since the April ceasefire. Israel has every right to defend itself. Don’t fall for the Iranian regime’s distraction.

When Obama bombed Libya, the justification was "humanitarian intervention." "Protection of civilians." "Responsibility to protect." The language of international law and moral obligation. Libya was subsequently destroyed. It has open slave markets today. The humanitarian outcome was catastrophic. But the language was immaculate. The syntax was perfect. The suits were pressed and the speeches were moving and the Nobel Peace Prize sat on the shelf while the drones flew. Trump bombs things and says it's about the oil. In terms of honesty, pure, raw, unmediated honesty about what American power actually does, Trump is more accurate than any of his predecessors. This is not a defense of Trump. This is an indictment of everyone who made the polished version seem acceptable. The lie was always more dangerous than the liar currently in office. Because the lie had good manners.

@Marlayna29 Great Grandma was born in 1895, walked across Canada with her parents to settle in a sod house in 1900 when 5. Saw the railway come when she was 7, age of flight and air travel, space age, 2 World Wars, start of the computer age, before her death in the 1990s.

@N0RINCO @JohnRad15 @BigMoperson Yet 90% of families do this while only 64% of Americans own property.

@mdf_michael @JohnRad15 @BigMoperson It's not much lower cost. The average home in China is way less "affordable".

@N0RINCO @JohnRad15 @BigMoperson It offers security of tenure, true they do not own the land but the lease is long-term often 70 years. And it is much lower cost than the USA.

@mdf_michael @JohnRad15 @BigMoperson Their homeownership is like saying I own a camper. They have no ownership or equity in the land. They have leased baked into their mortgages, monthly fees, the SMF etc. It's not comparable to US homeownership

@N0RINCO @JohnRad15 @BigMoperson China has one of the highest homeownership rates in the world, with roughly 90% of households owning their homes.

@JohnRad15 @BigMoperson Hint, mortgages can be paid off. Or just buy cash. Even in China where the state owns all land, "homeownership" is more expensive than it is here. You can't just "use" someone's land, private or state controlled

@uahikea Sometimes neutralising language to meet academic conventions also neutralises the argument.

An editor suggested I refrain from using "racialized language" in describing the individuals who illegally overthrew the Hawaiian kingdom's government as white. Don't say that I can't take feedback. I'm making the suggested change and revising to "white supremacists."

@nettermike What gushing sentimentality over a crooked politician whose sole purpose is ego not service. BTW - He dodged the draft for Vietnam - not sure why one of the pics is him in a uniform as a youth.

I don’t care who gets upset by this: President Trump, thank you for something bigger than politics. Thank you for waking up every day at 79 years old and carrying pressure most people could never handle. Thank you for the missed meals, lost family time, sleepless nights, constant travel, nonstop attacks, and the weight of leading a nation that always demands more. Thank you for standing back up every single time people tried to tear you down. Thank you for enduring criticism, lies, betrayal, and pressure that would have destroyed most people. Thank you for giving up comfort, privacy, peace, and the life you already had to sit in one of the toughest positions in the world and fight for this country. You didn’t need to do any of this. You already had the wealth, success, properties, lifestyle, and freedom. You could have walked away. Instead, you chose sacrifice. You chose responsibility. You chose America. Thank you for everything you carried that many people never truly saw. Thank you for continuing to put this country before yourself. We see you. We appreciate you. And we thank you. God bless you. God protect you. And may God continue giving you the strength to carry what most people never could.

@noinconsistency It's even weirder that every thing Marx ever wrote is available freely online and the constant claims about what Marx said is never backed by what Marx actually said. They just regurgitate talking points.

do right wingers think marx's books are full of him telling people to be gay and starve to dеath or something cuz the stuff i've seen them say is just perplexing

@ZombieTNinja @ProleOtter It's an old spitting image skit from the 1980s that was intended to rile up Apartheid supporting South Africans. Spitting image did not treat anyone with kindness or respect - they were great as nobody was safe from ridicule.

White south african, saying this? Whoda thunk it

@DiamondJim1990 @TarikCyrilAmar This daft talking point has been debunked many times. If you believe this you are a fool who is accepting genocidal propaganda.

@TarikCyrilAmar In what kind of genocide does the genocided population grow?

He is unhappy because Israel isn't genociding hard enough.

@tomorr53 @mcsquared34 So renters can just sleep in the park to drive down rents?

@mdf_michael @mcsquared34 Rent prices are determined by the renters, not the landlords. Landlords can't charge that much if people are not paying for it. Should I be forced to only rent a place out for $300 a month because that was the mortgage on the house twenty years ago?

@tomorr53 @mcsquared34 Not always - the balance shifted. One should not be able to rent for more than mortgage payments as this will skew markets drive up rents and housing costs (all already underway)

@mdf_michael @mcsquared34 It's always been like this. This is how people make a profit renting out their property.

In 2020, there were 3,328 Sudden Unexpected Infant Deaths (SUID) in the US, of which SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) accounted for more than a third of cases. The SIDS rate rose by 15% from 33.3 to 38.2 per 100,000 live births between 2019 and 2020, becoming the third leading cause of infant death.

@mdf_michael @BarronTNews_

Did you know during the lock downs of 2020, millions of babies missed their "well baby checkups". Which meant they didn't get their scheduled vaccines. Did you know that same year, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome became nearly non- existence?

@elander777 @atrupar Piracy was a noble profession - don't debase it

@atrupar We should probably just go ahead and replace the stars on our flag with a skull and crossbones.

SYKES: Are you aware the US was taking millions of barrels of oil from Iran? WRIGHT: We are preventing the flow of Iranian oil SYKES: That is not what I asked you. Can I play some audio? *plays audio of Trump admitting the US is stealing Iranian oil* WRIGHT: I think the president is talking casually SYKES: Do you think that it's appropriate to 'talk casually' about war? WRIGHT: I think you talk to all different audiences and you talk in all different styles SYKES: There are 13 service members who are dead WRIGHT: He treats this war deadly serious SYKES: You just said he was speaking casually WRIGHT: He speaks 20 hours a day

@BadMedicalTakes One hundred and twenty years ago (around 1906), the average life expectancy at birth in the United States was roughly 47 to 50 years. Exactly 120 years ago (around 1906), the average life expectancy at birth in the UK was about 45 to 50 years. So much natural death.