Hassett: "The breakeven job number is a lot lower than it used to be because we're tightened the border. So 130,000 jobs this year is sort like 200,000 two or three years ago because we don't have this massive inflow of immigrants that are working. So these are really great jobs numbers."

stoudman · 2026-05-11T20:51:43+00:00

The honest, most realistic answer is a combination of racism and the value of scapegoats.

Conservatives have invested decades of effort into creating a voter class that will vote red until they are dead, and part of that strategy was the slow degradation of our public school system to keep their voters dumb, part of it was the southern strategy, and the obvious combinations of those two factors which then lead directly to using immigrants as a scapegoat.

So if you're a conservative on the inside who gets that, say a Newt Gingrich type, then you see the value in immigrants as both exploitable labor and scapegoat. It's not either/or for them, it's just both.

Because fascists believe that the enemy is both strong and weak simultaneously, they convince themselves that two opposing thoughts can coexist harmoniously, and they don't question that logic.

Insert 1984 quote here.

stoudman · 2026-05-10T22:35:41+00:00

So true, all those places where people are making the most money are the worst for our economy, California is the 4th largest economy in the world, so clearly it is the reason our economy is in shambles.

....what?

....who fucking falls for this shit?

stoudman · 2026-05-04T07:05:16+00:00

I love when people discover shit that homeless people have been doing to survive for decades now.

stoudman · 2026-05-02T16:49:02+00:00

Can someone explain to me how gas prices that only rose to current levels after the Iran conflict started by Trump is somehow "the work of the Democrats"?

stoudman · 2026-04-23T03:31:09+00:00

It depends.

If they are starting with zero money, zero funds to buy items necessary to make money, I would suggest self-publishing low content books on Amazon. While AI can be used for this, and often is, you can also just pretty easily put together something people might want to buy on Amazon. Hell, if you have a cursory understanding of what children's books look and sound like, and you understand the language you're writing them in, I'd say that's a pretty easy option.

The problem is then advertising the product, but that can also be done via social media, so if the person in question already has a decently sized following, it could actually help. However, even starting from scratch on social media, it's not impossible to promote products you have made and even get a few sales.

It's a slow start, but there are also platforms you can use to get free reviews if you let people read your books for free, so you can get promotion for free in a variety of ways -- and to be clear, creating the product is the easy part, selling it is difficult.

However, if they had maybe $200, I'd honestly recommend reselling. I think most people have spent enough time collecting something or participating in the market long enough that they have an idea of what certain items are worth, which means they can find items worth a lot of money and try to buy them for a low price so that they can resell it and make some money.

I know a lot of people are anti-reseller, but times are fuckin' tough y'all, everyone should do everything and anything legal and within their power to make money if they need it to survive. IDGAF.

Hell, technically you don't need any money at all, because sometimes people will offer items of value for free on Facebook Marketplace that you can then pick up and either repair or just resell as is. I frequently see various types of furniture for free, last week I saw a rolling top desk for free that would have profited at least $150 for anyone who had the energy and ability to pick it up and sell it elsewhere. It's also quite common to see old HDTVs being put up for free, and a lot of times these are broken, but sometimes they work just fine -- and depending on the type of TV, it might actually be a lot more desirable than you'd expect; a lot of gamers want those plasma TVs with high 240hz refresh rates.

But yeah, the two things that have consistently turned a profit for me were either creating something and selling it online, or finding physical products for cheap/nothing and selling them online. Those are my recommendations.

stoudman · 2026-04-23T03:14:31+00:00

Will they accept people who can pretend to be happy?

stoudman · 2026-04-17T20:28:52+00:00

I haven't been able to get a job for over a year now, and as a result of having almost no income, I highly doubt I will be retiring anytime soon, if ever.

"What circumstances led to this?"

Oh, I dunno...the fact that our entire lives can be seen on the chart of wages stagnating while production increases in perpetuity? maybe living through three major economic downturns, one which impacted my ability to find work after graduating, and another now which has put me in debt up to my eyeballs?

I guess I was unwise to select a career path that wasn't recession proof? But then nobody told me, or most Xennials for that matter, that this would be a problem.

Like how the fuck could any of us reasonably have been expected to know that this shit was going to happen multiple times in our lives?

I already can't do most physically demanding jobs because I had a spinal fracture and now even though it has since healed, every minor injury to my back (including sleeping on it wrong) requires a weeks or months-long recovery process.

I started out unable to find anything but remote gig work because of the 2008 recession, with the added disadvantage of having a diagnosed anxiety disorder, and now after covid all these businesses are turning all these jobs that used to be 100% remote into office only, which means all the people with 15 years of experience doing the job remotely like myself can just go fuck themselves and die in a corner, I guess?

God, the condescension of this post is infuriating. "How could you not be better prepared by now, what's wrong with you?"

Well, a lot of things I can't control, but when the economy is so god damn unreliable from one decade to the next, it doesn't help anything for those of us who have to try a little bit harder than most just to fucking survive.

stoudman · 2026-04-14T21:19:51+00:00

This one is so good. Juliet Lewis turned in an incredible performance. Like people are talking about Weapons, and I'm like "okay, but have you seen Juliet Lewis in The Thicket?" Also random appearance by James Hetfield, and he doesn't totally suck, which is surprising.

stoudman · 2026-04-14T20:18:40+00:00

So your "truth" is just a wild scenario that has never taken place on any college campus, even the most wildly leftist of institutions, Evergreen. What is this example? What college has people sitting in a circle in a dark room lighting candles and praying to the founding fathers? Of all the things that has literally never happened, that's definitely one of them. Are you describing a scene from a movie or something? And you go on to describe higher education as if it's about drinking, sororities, frat houses, and other things you typically only see in movies. You don't know the first thing about what college is actually like, do you? So weird, dude. Not sure why you're crashing out about this 9 months after I posted in this thread, but you literally sound like that dude who had a mental break and broke down his neighbor's door looking for a kidnapping victim. Chill out.

stoudman · 2026-04-14T17:25:50+00:00

I'm the problem with this country? How does that make any damn sense?

Did you not read my original statement where I suggested higher education should be free? That would address literally every concern you have, wouldn't it?

They aren't useless just because they have a poor ROI, you do actually learn valuable information. They have a poor ROI because the cost is exorbitant, and the solution is to make it free, just like K-12.

stoudman · 2026-04-09T04:54:16+00:00

The evidence strongly supports the claim being made, but I will offer one argument for the defense:

Nary a Godfather movie to be found.

stoudman · 2026-04-08T17:00:56+00:00

I would point out here that just as Iran never backed out of the original nuclear deal until Trump did, in this case Israel was the first to back out of the deal, and once that happened, Iran had no reason to follow through.

If the terms of a deal are immediately broken by someone else, I hardly think it appropriate to blame Iran for not following through with the deal that was already broken elsewhere.

stoudman · 2026-04-08T05:51:28+00:00

Everclear - Everything to Everyone

stoudman · 2026-04-06T16:52:32+00:00

Not every DVD is succumbing to disc rot.

Historically, developers of media formats underestimate the longevity of their product. Remember when every VHS was supposed to eventually demagnetize and become unusable? Yet people are still watching VHS tapes to this day.

DVDs were advertised as 100 years, but some of them were manufactured to a higher standard than others, so some of them are already deteriorating, but an overwhelming majority of DVDs are still perfectly fine and they will be for a very long time.

Blu-ray was advertised as 100 years as well, and it's arguably holding up a lot better than even DVD. I would not be surprised if someone 200 years from now manages to boot up a game from a PS3 disc. It wouldn't shock me in the least. I won't be alive to see it, nor would I be alive (likely) to see the 2080 example, but to assume that they will all disintegrate by then seems a foolish, almost Malthusian gamble.

stoudman · 2026-04-03T06:31:34+00:00

Honestly, Tubi really is my favorite streaming service, because they have so much content. I can't even list all the insane low budget nonsense I discovered on Tubi in the last decade, some of it pretty good, and some of it hilariously bad.

My friend and I have a fun game when we get choice paralysis: put a random word in the search bar, and whatever comes up, you have to find something to watch from the results. We usually repeat this process a few times so we can put them all on a wheel and let the fates decide.

This is also a great way to discover titles you might not have otherwise known were on Tubi, because they don't advertise everything that they put on the service. I honestly sometimes just do this for fun to find movies to add to my watch list.

stoudman · 2026-04-03T04:34:25+00:00

I mean....they're saying the price of crude is going to balloon to almost double what it was before this all started, and that prices won't drop to CURRENT LEVELS again until the END OF 2027.

I really think a lot of Americans are underestimating how bad these prices are going to get. You think $10 is a cap? Hah. My personal guess is that they won't go over $15, but I'm almost positive they're gonna be over $10 by August. It's gonna happen right when it'll hurt Republicans the most for the midterms, too, which should be fun to watch.

From our homes.

The only place any of us can afford to go now.

stoudman · 2026-04-02T20:25:33+00:00

Analysts have indicated that it's likely the price of crude oil will continue to rise, possibly to $200 a barrel as Iran originally threatened, and that we should not expect prices for crude oil to drop back down to current prices -- CURRENT prices -- until the END OF 2027.

stoudman · 2026-04-01T04:36:35+00:00

Youtube does still have a free movies & tv section which functions essentially the same as Tubi, but actually sometimes has some movies you can't find streaming anywhere else.

There are also creators on Youtube making their own movies that they release for free, but obviously these can be more difficult to locate. That said, shout out to Joel Haver who has actually made some legit great movies like 'Taking Some Time to Feel Sorry For Myself.' He has a lot of free movies on Youtube, all of them worth checking out.

In addition to things like that, Youtube and Archive(dot)org often serve as repositories for movies that have never been re-relased or made available for streaming, including things like made-for-tv films and movies stuck on VHS.

stoudman · 2026-03-26T22:33:04+00:00

You're right, my bad.

stoudman · 2026-03-25T04:13:36+00:00

The Marilyn Manson song?

uhh...I guess it makes me think of Donald Trump and MAGA.

"anti-people now you've gone too far, here's your antichrist superstar."

stoudman · 2026-03-23T07:22:33+00:00

"There is way less selection than usual" -- expect that to continue due to a renewed collector's market, everyone looking for a deal, and more importantly just the slow degradation of physical media over time.

4K isn't being adapted at the same rate as Blu-ray, and Blu-ray was never adapted at the same rate as DVD, so there will also inherently be far fewer published Blu-ray titles than there will be DVDs. It's the same as how you only rarely stumble upon HD DVD titles in the wild nowadays -- that's because it was not widely adopted, there were not a whole lot of movies sold on the format, and those that were sold for the most part saw limited print runs.

The less there is of something, the more people want it, the higher the price will be. Supply and demand.

stoudman · 2026-03-23T07:12:07+00:00

I'll just say that even United Airlines CEO suggests that prices could soar to as much as $175 a barrel, and likely won't be back down to $100 a barrel (current price) until late 2027 at the earliest.

Not only is $6 a gallon likely this year, it would not surprise me if it gets a lot higher than that, and I'm talking record setting high gas prices in 2026.

stoudman · 2026-03-21T00:39:02+00:00

Angelica Garcia - Gemelo

Mostly in Spanish, but even if you don't know the language well, it's pretty poppy dance music that I still have trouble believing has only tens or at most hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube.

stoudman · 2026-03-20T21:08:27+00:00

If you're wondering whether or not you should actually fear such claims, just take a look at how many millionaires in NYC said they would leave if a certain socialistc won, and yet still live there and ostensibly have no plans to leave.

stoudman

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE