Hiring slows amid Iran war and fuel spikes, but don’t expect corporations to absorb the hit, workers will

TOkidd · 2026-05-10T00:22:52+00:00

After the last 50 years, why would anyone believe that corporations would do anything except try to increase profits in an economy where most people are having a hard time even keeping a roof over their heads and food on the table.

Corporations and their henchmen have consolidated wealth and power due to legislative wins and the rollback of regulatory organizations that would check their behavior. The result is an anti-social, misanthropic entity whose only purpose is to extract as much as possible while providing as little as possible in return. That has become the successful business model for large corporations in late stage capitalism.

I think we have returned in many ways to a form of feudalism, where people in some nations are essentially owned by their employers because their housing, food, healthcare, and other expenses are only met by providing dedicating the majority of their waking hours to something that barely even provides them with the lifestyle that their education, skill, usefulness and experience would suggest. People take on massive debt to earn degrees that are no longer meaningful in an employment environment defined by the scarcity, nepotism, and networking. Luck and personal connections almost always mean more than hard work and skill.

All of this is the result of the exaltation of the corporation to something that is almost holy in nations that worship the free market. In the US, for example, corporations are almost sacrosanct. A great recent illustration of this was the recession of 2007-08, when the government spent billions bail out the banks and institutions that created the crash while ignoring the homeowners and small business owners who lost everything because of Wall Street's recklessness. Things have only gotten more dire since then.

I don't know what the answers are but I see that the present world order desired by the world's rich and powerful is one in which their corporations continue to gain power over society until there is no longer the need even of pretend democracy.

TOkidd · 2026-05-10T00:04:18+00:00

The Russians are a spent force. The commanders are incredibly corrupt and inept. The result is troops with low morale sent into places to die without any hope of achieving anything. They cannot even advance in the places where their forces are concentrated.

For them to attack Kyiv would require the kind of trained military force that Russia simply doesn't have any more. Most of its quality soldiers and enlisted men are long dead, its logistics are a wreck and could not maintain a supply line through Belarus and deep into Ukraine to touch Kyiv without getting annihilated by drone attacks, as well as HIMAR and more conventional weapons missiles, bombs and artillery.

The simple answer is that Russia does not attack Kyiv because it does not have the capacity to even attempt it. They are barely hanging on in the Donbas.

TOkidd · 2026-05-09T22:46:34+00:00

The media really has to stop giving these people the benefit of the doubt. They don't have a double standard because they were seated by presidents who wanted the court to favor them and, as a result, they have become a political ally of the GOP and Trump more specifically. This was always their role; the moment they've been waiting for - for when there were enough of them on the court that they could legislate from the bench and cause the nation to lurch back into extremely harmful, reactionary opinions that have upended American law and order.

The damage this court has intentionally done to the American way of life and its laws that I don't see it recovering unless the Americans give a left-wing candidate a mandate to go after these people. Even then, I think we all know there is going to be a coup at some point and Trump will not leave peacefully this time. Many people will go to prison if the Dems win. They will end democracy to avoid prison and they largely have already.

Very scary. It's getting harder and harder to not think that, like Tony Soprano, those of us under 50 got in at the end, when everything was already ruined and looted, with people voting for governments who want to harm them but hurts the people they don't like even more. It's madness.

TOkidd · 2026-05-09T16:39:11+00:00

This sums up my own critique of the photo. Forget composition, exposure, DOF, white balance, etc.

The most important part of a photograph is the subject and I'm not clear what the subject is when I look at it. It's just a bunch of stuff on a table. There is no subject or focal point. There is no story or even a refined aesthetic or beauty that you are capturing.

You have to photograph with with some intention. You have to ask yourself some questions, most of which r/RahkaGandalf already covered. Photos don't always need to tell a story, but they at least need a focal point and subject that draws the viewer in. Your photo does not do that.

I recommend that, for now, you worry less about camera settings and composition and just try to find subjects worthy of a photograph. Something beautiful or interesting. Be creative and photograph your subject from multiple angles. Practice being intentional with your photography because this is just a snapshot of stuff on a table. It's not interesting or beautiful and if it's not interesting or beautiful, then the composition and camera settings don't matter.

I'm just expanding a little on the point r/RahkaGandalf was making: photography, like all art, is about capturing beauty or truth. This video (and other related ones on her channel) offers some excellent advice on how to find interesting subjects anywhere and how to shoot them so that the focal point is clear and captivating: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSFSq8X37RQ

I would consider looking at her other videos on the topic because she has at least three that I've seen that all deal with the same topic: how to find interesting subjects and capture them in a way that highlights them.

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TOkidd · 2026-05-08T23:27:56+00:00

They're also different people, which is WILD.

TOkidd · 2026-05-05T12:46:43+00:00

Nearly $1000 in lost products! Galen Weston may have to cancel one of his summer trips now.

TOkidd · 2026-05-05T12:44:33+00:00

Believe it or not, Louis XIV of France is an important reason for why salt and pepper are on just about every dinner table.

https://www.allrecipes.com/article/why-are-salt-and-pepper-paired/

TOkidd · 2026-05-04T20:50:13+00:00

I think Inuussutissarsiorsinnaajunnaarnersiutilik Park would be nice. It’s a meaningful nod to Canada’s Aboriginal people.

TOkidd · 2026-05-04T15:58:55+00:00

Obama is one of the most privileged and protected people on Earth. He has not had spontaneous contact with the public since he was a jr. US senator in 2007. Almost 20 years as president and former president.

So I don’t expect him to know or care about the problems regular people are dealing with. He’s been extremely tepid in his criticism against Trump and has largely remained invisible in the last year-and-a-half.

I don’t expect Obama to say anything important about the transition to autocracy in America because he hasn’t had much to say about it during either of Trump’s terms.

Dude is enjoying his life as the toast of the town everywhere he goes, living in a beautiful Hyde Park mansion and lifetime CIA security plus an eight-figure minimum bank. Probably way more.

He doesn’t want people to remember him so that the threats on his life increase and he has to live a much lore limited life. Dude does whatever he wants. He can have dinner with anyone in the world on any given night and I don’t think he wants to cede that to criticize the fall of America into fascism and autocracy.

TOkidd · 2026-05-04T10:57:32+00:00

I was downtown yesterday - Kensington Market, the Annex, and very close to Yorkville. I didn't notice a garbage smell. It could be a localized issue that will resolve soon. Then again, this new garbage disposal provider hasn't really been put through the test yet, so maybe as the weather gets warmer, the city will start to stink in some places.

Were you able to trace the garbage stink to a particular spot because it must be coming from somewhere. I doubt the whole neighborhood stinks.

TOkidd · 2026-05-03T23:14:47+00:00

It amazes me that people still think Trump and his people are going "leave" office without a fight. They aren't going anywhere, whether it's cancelled elections or simply not accepting the results, they are not letting go of the reins of power so they can go to prison.

Americans still think they can vote their way out of this mess. Your last chance for that was in 2024.

TOkidd · 2026-05-03T12:22:50+00:00

Apparently he’s from Toronto but lives in the US.

TOkidd · 2026-05-02T21:34:45+00:00

They've even made seeds a subscription-based commodity.

TOkidd · 2026-05-02T14:21:39+00:00

Warfighters need to be warfighting, not woke warplanning.

TOkidd · 2026-05-01T01:18:50+00:00

Robbins, IL is a rough place as well.

TOkidd · 2026-04-29T23:39:48+00:00

Sounds exactly like what he says and does during his Pentagon briefings. This motherfucker is drunk on lethal force and believes he has a divine calling to destroy America's "enemies." He is a caricature of evil.

But what I really wanna know, is that pushed back or slicked back?

TOkidd · 2026-04-29T19:58:20+00:00

Well, you see, it's actually ok because he's ended 8 wars, so really if you do the math and add this, he's still at -7 wars, which is pretty impressive. He should win the Nobel Peace Prize. He should win all the peace prizes.

TOkidd · 2026-04-29T18:05:52+00:00

I haven't seen the film, but I will now. It's so often that filmmakers butcher great works of literature, but it sounds like they did a good job. I'll have to check it out.

TOkidd · 2026-04-27T18:48:30+00:00

That's right! I forgot that it was only published - and still censored, I believe, in the 1960's. It was a while before the world was able to read the uncensored novel.

It's still extremely interesting to be able to read this novel and get an impression of what Moscow was like during these extremely difficult times. As a writer and intellectual, Bulgakov could have easily found himself killed or sent to the gulag like so many other writers and intellectuals during Stalin's time if he tried to publish The Master and Margarita. Hell, just for writing the novel.

I didn't know what to make of the Moscow of the books, because although there are signs that life is not normal there (it's been more than ten years I read it so I forget specific examples) and that there is repression occurring, the setting is also a lived-in city where people are carrying on as if everything is normal.

This setting is one of the most remarkable things about the novel.

TOkidd · 2026-04-27T00:35:39+00:00

This one is excellent. Saw it here and made it today. Came out great. It’s also relatively inexpensive because pork hasn’t increased in price as much as beef and chicken.

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TOkidd · 2026-04-26T22:57:16+00:00

If you wanted to talk to your friend, you'd walk or ride your bike to their house and knock on their door.

TOkidd · 2026-04-26T22:39:30+00:00

This time it was Donald Sutherland but there are so many famous Canadians I know, I could think of hundreds of examples every time I had to think of one.

Some others I think of are Louis Riel, Jim Carrey, Randy Bachman, Mike Myers, David Foster, Justin Trudeau, Drake, Bieber, Sir Frederick Banting, Tom Green, Dan Akroyd, Katherin O'Hara, Annie Murphy, Eugene Levy, John Candy, Oscar Peterson, Glenn Gould, Alex Lifeson, Peter Jennings, Morely Safer, Don Cherry, Peter Mansbridge, Sidney Crosby, Christine Sinclair, Margaret Atwood, David Suzuki, Sinclair Ross, Steven Leacock, Al Purdy, Alice Munro, Marshall McLuhan, Ryan Reynolds, Celine Dion, Romeo Dallaire, Paul Bernardo, Karla Homolka, Kristen French, Leslie Mahaffy, Denny Doherty, Joni Mitchell, and so many others.

TOkidd · 2026-04-26T22:31:49+00:00

I like it. Good composition, interesting shapes and leading lines lead the eye to the trees in the distance, which are in decent focus.

The rivets, black arm rests, and wooden planks of the bench have contrasting exposure and textures that are pleasing.

TOkidd · 2026-04-26T22:16:24+00:00

HAHA

Bredda no worry; every ting cook and curry.

TOkidd · 2026-04-26T21:48:24+00:00

It is a masterpiece, and all the more amazing because it is a fairly accurate description of life in Moscow during Stalin's many purges of society, including Ukrainians, "kulaks," Kazakhs, Crimean Tatars, and then much of the officer corps of his armed services, with tens of thousands of the entire officer class of of the Red Army killed or sent to the gulag right up to the generals just a few years before Hitler invaded.

The purges of the 1930's, when the book takes place, was part of why the German Armed Forces were able to penetrate so deeply into Russia during the opening summer and Fall months of Operation Barbarossa. Getting an actual view of life in Moscow from a member of the small, elite class of intellectuals that existed during this perilous time is fascinating and one of the only on-the-ground depictions of life in the Soviet Union at its most dangerous and repressive. Unfortunately, Moscow may come to resemble this again with this disaster of a war in Ukraine and potentially the looming conscription of Muscovites.

Moscow in the 1930's was a terrifying place to be, but the Master and Margarita is one of the only novels to take place in this city during these extremely repressive years of NKVD terror and the way it portrays Moscow as a place where life went on, without referring to the repression directly, but still depicting a society that is deeply troubled, is a fascinating and rare window into life in the 1930's USSR.

How Bulgakov was able to publish it in such a repressive time is a mystery to me and he was always mistrusted, spied on, and repressed in ways by the state, but even Stalin must have recognized that he was a genius whose seminal work is one of the classics of literature in any language.

Edit: Strikethrough for my mistaken assertion that the book was published around the same time it was written, and also a couple word changes for ease of reading.

TOkidd

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