The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

-John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

The more things change the more they stay the same.

It comes across like you feel we can’t protect gay/minority children from being exploited by huge corporations online because it would be homophobic to protect gay kids from psychological manipulation.

This is some weird ass fanfic you are writing about me for asking how the researchers came to their conclusions about LGBT ads, specifically, being judged to be inappropriate. I’m not engaging with this anymore.

You’re classifying all of these as malicious by virtue of being ads, which the researchers obviously didn’t. Take that up with them.

I question the idea that the reason these were classified as inappropriate was because of sexual pop ups. If that was the case than many innocuous sites with crappy ad practices would have also made it onto the list.

Knowing that queer people exist and that you could be queer isn’t “sexual advertisement,” by the way. Which is why I wanted to know more about how the researchers came to the conclusion that these particular ads were inappropriate.

Absolutely true! If the quiz contents were inappropriate in some way beyond like… acknowledging LGBT people and depression exists, I would like to hear about that part.

Adding an “are you gay?” quiz to the list of inappropriate ads shown to children immediately makes me question the researcher biases and methodology. Unless those have gotten WAY spicier since I was a kid, I remember passing so many quizzes like that around with my friends at that age.

How many ads related to heterosexuality were classified as appropriate? How does that compare to their classification of LGBT ads?

I wonder what would happen to you or me if we lied to a judge to get them to sign off on something?

There is not a way to justify ignoring human rights violations just because they live next to people who voted for Trump. What you’re describing is collective punishment, and it is unethical and inhumane.

40% of people who voted didn’t vote for fascism. Using the votes of someone’s neighbors to determine whether or not they deserve healthcare is deranged.

Absolutely bonkers to go “40% of the state voted against Trump, therefore everyone here wanted and deserves to have the measure they passed by 58% overturned.”

In the United States, the top 1 percent of households control 80 percent of company assets — the average person reading this has no way of ending the coal industry’s devastating reign over Appalachia, for example. That’s a decision to be made by shareholders and executives looming over us from the top of the pyramid.

I’m talking about how Catholic priests can legally refuse to report child abuse revealed to them in confessional in most states, the subject of this post.

Do the Boy Scouts have a legally protected mechanism to talk with each other about their child fucking that I’m not aware of?

If you were born before 1989 in the US, this is your reminder to either find your childhood vaccination records or get your antibody titers checked. Before 1989 a single MMR vaccine was considered full protection, and something like 8% of people don’t achieve immunity from a single vaccine (falls to like 2% with 2 vaccines).

Congratulations. You fell for propaganda by stupid framing.

No, you just don’t like their conclusion. The article explains what confessional is, which only alters your opinion of the case if you care more about the religious ‘right’ of a child fucker to talk about their child fucking in secret with someone who promised to not tell than you care about the wellbeing of the child victim.

Your lawyer line of reasoning is also based on a misconception: that attorney-client privilege universally extends to knowledge of child abuse, outside representing a client specifically on child abuse. This isn’t the case, there are states where attorney-client privilege doesn’t apply in this scenario. Bar associations in general also allow breaking confidentiality if they have reasonable belief that someone is going to be seriously harmed or killed.

Yeah, I was a kid when SNL was still airing those skits and they didn’t feel enlightened to me at all. Like, this is the same show that “joked” that Brandon Teena (who was already known to be murdered at that point) deserved to die for reporting his rape. Like, not as a shocking thing a heel would say, just a crass joke. It was hilarious to people then, that’s the environment It’s Pat is in.

The 90s were fucked up, y’all.

If you’re coding or whatever this is fine. But I would really, really like my doctors and engineers to be educated by other doctors and engineers.

You frame that as if the same can’t happen if you use AI. At least if you actually do the work you have the knowledge and the ability to research.

Can’t wait to see all the exciting ways this fucks up people’s computers.

Anything built in California today has to meet certain standards for earthquake resistance, if it didn’t meet those it wouldn’t get built.

You guys have been getting podcast ads about it? That’s wild, I haven’t got any at all. But I’m in California, maybe they’re only being played closer to NYC?