"...me my money."
Problem is no humanity in "human resources".
Exclusive clandestine agents of the business that work to train you to be as vulnerable as you can with them. Only as info gathering to be used as leverage against you if needed. Especially in the US now with the collapse of already lacking agencies like the NLRB, CFPB, FTC, etc... folks need to really JOLT themselves out of programming according to an old rulebook.
Whistleblowers are literally ending up dead, companies are adjusting their tolerance for inclusive practices and they are quickly losing fear of any regulation or retaliation.
Fuck 'em. Any way you find a way to slow things down or make them difficult. The social contract is broken, so quit trying to hold up your end with corporations. You aren't going to help them grow a conscience with your righteous and admirable principled adhesion to the old rules as they stab you and colleagues in the back.
I admire your spirit, OP. Be careful. Operate outside of your own industry if possible. Find job descriptions within that industry, directly copy key terms and add to a fake resume that will catch the attention of their sorting algorithm on job boards. As companies continue mass layoffs for sport to juice a stock price, the "talent acquisition" people only see you as pigs coming into slaughter (or at best, the fresh meat at the top of the grinder that will inevitably push the old meat through the grinder dye).
Society is in the decline. Internalize that. Act accordingly. Doesn't mean you have to set it on fire or give up a fight, but they've shifted the overton window on human decency. Your principled stand doesn't even register on the scale anymore.
Average union dues are typically 1-3%. This claims an 18% increase in weekly salary for union workers... So what are you thinking isn't getting factored in here and what is your point if it isn't represented inb these numbers?
Unions aren't "tricky", they are vital.
Luxury is a choice. I've never owned a "new" car. I could afford new cars eventually, but the reality is the world meant that I was never going to put myself close enough to a potential edge, that the purchase of a nicer car could lead to future discomfort for me or my family.
You really have no idea how out of touch you are. Your next point is, "Getting a gold foil wrap on a cybertruck is an investment! You don't get the full value of that investment on resale... Do you expect me to just take that loss?"
You are tone deaf. You doing see it at all, and that's really the point.
Ate you seriously trying to tell a sad story about imagined poor unfortunate souls that are barely scrapping by on a "tight budget" and drive.
"Maybe some of you have Beluga caviar with every meal, but us working folk can only afford sevruga 3-5 times a week, at best!"
RFK Jr., a man vaccinated against the measles, says your kids should get measles.
Go look at the down votes on all your posts and just how universally unpopular your take is - That's called being wrong. That's fine, you can be wrong sometimes, that's okay. It doesn't define you, but stop digging in the wrong direction.
I can pay for music, I often don't on principal. I work to find other ways to contribute to artists as directly as I can (patreon, merch, shows, etc). I'm not alone in that. You had some weird guilt socialized into you that tells you your value is in what you spend and own. Protest at any level is valid. Copyright law is bullshit, DMCA takedowns are bullshit, DRM and digital streaming music that you never actually legally own is all bullshit. Anything you can do to make that broken system nervous or hurt is a great and valuable thing to broader society.
You are unequivocally wrong here, you're the last person to realize that, but you still can realize it here and now today and go forward from here. How about it, take the olive branch, bud?
It will be what we make it. For now, stop performing on social media though and try to listen and think a bit. We take in history and try to learn from it. That's the first step.
You're scared, that's fine. Take strength from knowing that this isn't brand new. Doesn't mean it's easy or the good guys "win", but means people have survived this before, fascist regimes have toppled, just not in the US yet. So we'll see. We'll hope there's less death, less destruction, but there already is and will be some.
It's okay for you to be scared. There's probably SOMETHING you can be doing to help though. Take some time and consider what that might be.
"Full shelf driving" still needs to be in quotes. It's a feature's brand name for a product that doesn't actually have full self driving capabilities.
Try not to carry water for their attempted, repeated lie.
"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.
"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’
"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.
"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.
"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.
Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 166-73 of They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer
It's a problem. Also reports of some reviews that do have mute buttons, but the functionality gets selectively disabled - I.e. on the YouTube app, pressing mute will pause an ad, but not mute. The point is to force you to complete watching ads.
Anyone else not being allowed to sign this?