Soupy, 33, he/him. Will reblog nice things. Will post half-baked diatribes re: fascism. I am but a lowly tourist on the internet; I have only seen the first 38 minutes of Goncharov.
me, long ago, perfectly innocent: hm, i don’t have a lot of followers, but i wanna perform well for them so i’m going to construct a good queue system and post content that they’ll enjoy !!
Btw the heat *is* why we see water that's not really there, but mirages aren't exactly hallucinations so much as optical illusions:
It's just the changing density of the air refracting light weirdly, so it looks like there's a reflection of the sky on the ground, which our brains often interpret as a pool of water. It can also happen upwards instead of downwards, especially at sea, when the air is much colder near the surface and a warm front appears above it:
Which, btw, is one possible explanation for ghost ship sightings, so that's fun :)
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
It's been 55 years since Milton Friedman – cursed be his name – published his NYT editorial, "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits," in which he invented the idea of shareholder supremacy out of whole cloth and declared it to be a universal, freestanding, inarguable truth:
Friedman's editorial railed against the idea of "corporate social responsibility," arguing that corporate managers should confine the exercise of their consciences to projects involving their own money and resources. At work, managers must harden their bleeding hearts and do nothing except increase the returns to their shareholders.
Friedman wasn't merely arguing that this would give rise to better companies – the crux of his argument was that by adopting this "fiduciary duty" standard, it would be easy to determine whether a company was being well-managed or run into the ground:
Friedman argued that "being a good person" was a squishy, undefinable standard that could never be objectively measured. But "maximizing shareholder value" was a crisp, bright-line test that could be readily evaluated by any reasonable person. "Did this manager make as much money as possible for the company's owners?" feels like the kind of question we can all agree on, while, "Did this manager behave in an ethical way?" is much harder to answer.
But even a few moments' thoughts reveal the flaw in this line of reasoning. We can all agree whether a manager made money for the shareholders – but how can we know whether the manager made as much money as possible?
Think about how much "corporate social responsibility" cashes out to performative and insincere nonsense and/or cynical marketing. Target didn't stock Pride merch because they love their LGBTQ friends. They stocked it because they thought they could sell it (same goes for BP marketing its "green" gasoline). Google supports its coders' environmental/queer/antipoverty efforts because being the "don't be evil" company lets you hire in-demand workers who might otherwise go to work for Meta, and every engineer a Silicon Valley firm hires adds an average of $1m to the company's annual bottom line.
Further: it would be absurd to hold managers to the "make as much money as possible" standard in a competitive market, because in that market, there will always be a company that comes in second. If "as much money as possible" is the standard and you're Chairman of the Board of the number two company, with $10b in profit, while the number one pulled in $11b, "as much money as possible" demands that you fire the C-suite immediately, since they objectively could have done 10% better.
So the real standard isn't "make as much money as possible," it's "try to make as much money as possible." And here again, there's no objective way to evaluate managerial performance. Target made a lot of money by selling Pride merch…until they didn't. Do we fire the Target C-suite because they failed to anticipate that 2024 would mark America's transition into the chuddocene, an era in which selling Pride tchotchkes makes you cucked and soy and, you know, gay?
Whether it's "make as much money as possible" or "try to make as much money as possible*," shareholder supremacy can only be evaluated with the aid of a crystal ball…or a time machine.
Which raises a question: what made this nonsensical shareholder supremacy standard so damned attractive to corporate leaders?
Well, what if the ambiguity of shareholder supremacy was a feature and not a bug? What if the function of shareholder supremacy was to absolve the cruelest people for indulging their most sociopathic instincts? What if this "bright line test" was actually a universal excuse, an all-purpose accountability sink that could be used to justify any cruelty or cowardice? "Why didn't I fire my college buddy when I found out that he was sexually abusing his colleagues? Well, he was the best salesman on the team, and I have an obligation to my shareholders. Sorry, my hands were tied."
"Profit" shouldn't be the primary goal of any company. Money is a tool to facilitate the trade of labor, goods, and services. On its own it is entirely worthless - a million dollars only has value because it can be exchanged for things, not because of any inherent value or usefulness of having lots of money.
That doesn't mean profit and shareholder returns should be ignored, just that it should be secondary to whatever product or service the company actually offers.
What's especially crazy about this is that there really is a clear bright line we could be using. Marshall Rosenberg's version of human needs theory identifies "needs" as that category of resources essential to life, universal to every human who has ever lived, and making no reference to specific actions or specific people (with the exception of the need for other's well-being).
The economist Manfred Max-Neef has put forward 9 categories of needs, but with a little thought and practice needs are not difficult to either identify, or distinguish from non-needs (the test for universality is particularly useful). Some examples of needs include food, water, air, shelter, autonomy, intimacy, safety, play, and connection.
Any person can see how these things are critical to every person's life, from cavemen to CEOs—as opposed to, for example, money or a nice car. Under this terminology those are strategies to meet needs.
Rosenberg's version of human need theory has other things to say. Meeting needs drives all human behavior. It is possible to meet everyon's needs (though not via their preferred strategies). Needs are satisfiable. And to resolve a conflict is to satisfy the needs of everyone involved.
This last creates a clear standard for judging the behavior of both inviduals and organizations. And while people can always lie, the satisfaction of a need, at least to the person who has the need, is always directly identifiable. When you have eaten you feel full, when you spend time with loved ones you feel fulfilled, when you play you feel joyful.
So there'is a clear bright line here: satisfaction. And what is satisfied (needs, in the technical sense) can be objectively described and has a foundation in the physical reality of our bodies (as opposed to moral foundations, which are usually axiomatic). That means it successfully avoids the squishiness trap that 'maximizing shareholder profits' shares with every moral system ever invented. (this is explicitly not a moral system, and take an anti-moral realist position on morality)
Of course, the process of organizing our world along these lines is change so extreme that it frightens those in power. And many too, cannot imagine it as an option. So, we plod along.
Idk if this is too personal, but have you got any philosophical tips on breakups?
Im not sure whether I will have to go through one (its a weird situation) but the prospect is giving me immense dread and it would be my first. No clue how to prepare myself :(
Some breakups you'll shrug off, some will always ache, less and less with time but never zero. The worst ones are breakups with friends. Pride is a worse teacher than humility. Sometimes deep love and affection can wind up becoming really bitter enmity and it'll be confusing how the same person could mean opposite things to you at different times in your life. Falling in love and wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone changes you forever. It changes you even more if they leave you, and even more if it happens to you more than once. But change can't be avoided and you can't control other people. Some of your mistakes will be forgiven, but some never will be and you'll have to live with being the villain in someone else's story. Sometimes you won't make any mistakes but things still won't work out, and you'll have to live with the unfairness of that too. Making the same mistakes again and again and learning slowly to be better is part of being a person. Everyone else is trying their best, just like you. But the absolute best breakup advice I ever got was this:
Watch the entire box set of The World At War (1973) and by the time the Red Army take Berlin you feel better!
Garak: My father simply showed me that all actions have consequences and that my feelings and fears don't matter and that I could die at any time and to trust nobody not even him because anyone may kill me at any time
Ezri: ......So that's like kind of definitionally abuse.
The Prince is coming to Los Angeles, ONE NIGHT ONLY at Dynasty Typewriter Theatre, 31st July
Me, Nicole Maines (Yellowjackets, Supergirl), Morgana Ignis (Helluva Boss, Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend) and Vivian Wilson in her acting debut. More cast TBA.
Can't make it in person? IT'S GONNA BE LIVESTREAMED AND RECORDED TOO. Tickets available through Dynasty Typewriter's website!
ABOUT THE SHOW
"Sam and Jen are trapped in a multiverse of Shakespeare’s complete works. On their quest back to reality, they notice something unusual about Henry “Hotspur” Percy. Now they must choose between finding their way home and helping someone who might be even more lost than they are. This boldly original and funny script blends Shakespeare with modern sensibilities, standing alongside I Saw the TV Glow and The People’s Joker as a genre-smashing exploration of queer identity."
Researchers focused on whether kids that are spanked are more likely to share or, conversely, more likely to have anxiety, years down the li
2021:
Spanking found to impact children's brain response, leading to lasting consequences.
2018:
The American Academy of Pediatrics says new evidence and research not only show that spanking affects a child’s brain development and increa
2016:
Kids who are spanked tend to act out more and have more problems later on.
2012:
A study reviewed more than two decades of research on the effects of spanking and found nothing positive to report, only that physical punis
2010:
A multiyear study shows spanking kids makes them more aggressive later on
I haven’t pissed people off lately by reminding them that ALL types of physical punishment of kids has been proven beyond ANY reasonable doubt to have only negative long term outcomes.
So let me scream it from the hilltops:
Stop hitting kids. End of sentence.
If you think, “but I was hit and I turned out just fine” let me pre-reply: NO YOU DID NOT. You think hitting a child is ok, how the fuck does that qualify as “fine”?????? From one abuse survivor to another: please start healing yourself.
The World Health Organization report I highly recommend because there are so many conclusions that are shocking and yet completely obvious.
For example, being exposed to corporal punishment as a kid makes it more likely for a person to commit domestic violence against a partner. In places where corporal punishment is normal, people are more likely to think that rape and intimate partner violence are normal. Kids who are spanked are more likely to be violent with and to bully other kids.
Spanking is literally teaching a kid that violence is okay and normal and it affects the whole society.
It also talks about how corporal punishment affects the brain in its development. It changes the structure of the brain and slows the development of mental abilities. Kids who get spanked have much stronger hormonal responses to stress.
A large class of readers, likewise, will suffer greatly from the introduction into the pages of this work of words printed with all their letters, which it has become the custom to represent by the initial and final letter only—a blank line filling the interval. I may as well say at once that, for this circumstance, it is out of my power to apologize; deeming it, myself, a rational plan to write words at full length. The practice of hinting by single letters those expletives which profane and violent persons are wont to garnish their discourse, strikes me as a proceeding which, however well meant, is weak and futile. I cannot tell what good it does—what feeling it spares—what horror it conceals.
Charlotte Brontë says stop censoring yourself for the algorithm in her editorial preface to the 1850 edition of her sister Emily's Wuthering Heights
people hate it when i say "black people getting cancer is racist" but im literally fucking right because systemic racism has led to chemical dumping being acceptable in black/brown neighborhoods and black people have higher rates of cancer as a result
For years there was literally a giant pile of used car tires just casually sitting in one of Dallas' Black neighborhoods and the city kept refusing to come get them for so long that people started developing respiratory issues just from having to live near it. Those people will almost definitely go the rest of their lives w/ a heightened risk of developing specific cancers.
I met more <50y/o Black women who actively had, survived, or regained cancer, within a year of living in one of the poorest neighborhoods of DC, than I did the rest of my time in living in/around DC.
i remember it being all over the news when a big university( not an hbcu [published that black neighborhoods are more likely to be downwind if industrial air pollutant sources,
Reasons for hope: Lots of amazing people did a ton of work to make this fantastic, fully interactive resource available - because no matter how bleak things seem, there are millions, and millions of people doing everything they can to protect both the world and their own communities.
You can use this to view and subscribe to updates, project statuses, and for at least some of them even whole dossiers. This is an amazing resource, I highly recommend checking it out
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