pachrist @ pachrist @lemmy.world

Why are you reading this? Go do something worthwhile.

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2 yr. ago

Words are wind.

It's an interesting stat. Is this individuals or households? Is it "head of household" or is it also counting minors?

Regardless, there's enormous disparity.

The median wealth in India, according to Wikipedia, is $3755. There's probably hundreds of millions of people there who fall into the less than $380 category.

Again, Wikipedia, but Africa has just over 700M inhabitants with a median $1242 wealth. That's $879B. For everyone on the continent. 8 people have 1.5X more wealth than an entire continent full of people.

But maybe it's not 3.6B people. Maybe it's 3B or only 2B people. It's still not OK.

I remember sitting in the theater for Episode VII. I had a sense of excitement because it could be anything. It wasn't an adaption of a book I'd already read, like Game of Thrones. It wasn't a remake, like the Disney live action stuff. It was a reboot, but in a totally new direction since they threw out all the EU stuff.

It was retreaded garbage.

The only movie I've ever been more disappointed in while sitting in the theater was Cowboys and Aliens, because I was so excited for it to be xenomorphs. So sad. But it did cement that I will never trust a movie with old Harrison Ford in it.

But what about Istanbul and Konstantiniyye?

My wife keeps threatening to get me a "My other Subaru is a Subaru" for my old Outback. I threaten to get her one for her Tribeca, but a Tribeca isn't a Subaru.

It's traditionally explained with two lemonade stands on a long beach. If their product is generally indistinguishable and both want to maximize their number of customers, they will eventually settle on halfway mark of the beach. One gets all the foot traffic from the left, the other from the right, splitting it 50/50.

The same applies to businesses on a map, not just a one dimensional beach. Most consumers don't really care if it's a Home Depot or Lowes, or a BP or Exxon. If one of them discovers a gap in the market and places something there, someone else can come along and grab half the market. It's something Walmart has done in a lot of small towns. They'll come in and split market 50/50 with a small, local shop knowing that there's not enough money to turn a profit with splitting the market in half. But they know they the can run a loss for a year or two, the competition will close, and then they'll have 100% of the market.

It's a really topical thing in politics. There are more centrist voters than at either extreme end, so politicians tend to fall more in the middle. Politicians like Trump change the landscape though. While an extreme candidate, the Republican party had already been shifting more right for a while, so he only marginally pulled the voter base right, but pulled most Republican politicians right, or pushed them out. Democrats moved to match. It essentially means that far right Republicans have a short stroll to the nearest lemonade stand, but far left Democrats have to trudge a couple miles in the hot summer sun, and they're deciding it's not worth it.

I've had some luck explaining it by asking folks why multiple gas stations are at the same intersection, or asking why Lowes and Home Depot are always right next to each other.

I live in Tennessee. The number of lives that Dolly Parton has changed for the better is immeasurable. The two things you're supposed to do as a Christian are to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

She loves her neighbors more than she loves herself. Anyone talking trash about Dolly is the worst kind of person.

One of my favorite pieces of the Bible is the Parable of the Talents where Jesus tells a story about three men who are given different sums of money. The first two are given more. They do stuff with it and are rewarded. The guy who gets the least buries it in a field and is punished.

It's often used an an example of stewardship, and regularly used as an excuse to not give drug addicts and homeless people money. They might use the money for drugs. That's a sin and a "bad investment." It ignores the fact that nobody looses money in the parable. The point of the story is that any good thing you do in good faith with the gifts you're given is commendable.

I don't understand telling 50% of your church that the most important thing they can do is be a PreK Sunday school teacher or nursery volunteer. That's burying talents in a field.

Yeah, about a year ago when all the "wow, lemmy really feels like an edgy early internet discussion forum" threads were popping up, I think people forgot that those early forums were just eternal flame wars between communists and anarchists.

Wow. We'd be lucky if that were true today. With slavery, it's 3/5, but with things gerrymandered correctly, it's essentially 0/5.

You're getting downvoted, but this is true. 13 colonies were able to fight the British better than each one doing their own things. Reich means realm, or more specifically empire. Germany unified as a single country in the mid-late 1800s. Hitler then came along and decided Germany needed more space, lebensraum, and prestige to do all the things they wanted to do. They killed millions for it. Manifest Destiny, from sea to shining sea, all that is what this is. The US has done it too. We murdered and moved native Americans for decades for white immigrants to have "living space".

However, I don't think any of the dumbasses who made this stupid video know any of that. It was a joke to them. Right now, I'm not scared of Nazis in the White House. I am scared of people who think Nazis are a funny joke being in the White House, because that leads to Nazis in the White House.

"I'm not gay for sucking dick; this dick is gay for getting sucked."

This is logic.

Eh, c'est la vie.

Imagine the year is 2012. Many Christians are taking their views door to door, urging you to vote for the Christian candidate, Mr. Mormon Mitt Romney, and not the Muslim, professing Christian Barack Obama. One of them goes to church. The other got married in ceremonial underwear. But one is black and the other is white.

If you won the lottery, what's the first irresponsible thing you'd do with the money?

No paying off student loans, no buying your parents a house. It has to be irresponsible but not necessarily indefensible. Great icebreaker question.

The US is the really annoying parent in a grocery store counting to 3 over and over to try to get their child under control.

I mean, Hillary absolutely rigged the 2016 Democratic primaries. She just didn't feel the need to put out the effort to rig the general election. She learned the Watergate lesson. Why rig an election you're absolutely going to win? You run the risk of getting caught. It's only worth rigging an election if you think you might lose.

Men are logical. Women are emotional.

Such an enormous generalization and oversimplification. Very false.

I mean, if the choice is instant, painless death or decade after decade of your parents asking why you don't own a house, I guess death is fine?