I didn't believe you but yeeeeeesh. Lots of self righteous penises ITT. If people buy an expensive hard drive, it should work. Not everyone knows everything there is to know about data storage, have a little grace people

Yeah I thought this was old news. I'm a licensed medical professional in Florida and I received an email from the department of health about these changes 3 or 4 months ago. The one about refusing care on moral grounds is newer, about a month or two old. This has been a thing for a good while now

Gotta say, pre-emptive defederation seems like a bit of an over reaction. There's plenty of leftists in other instances, not just hexbear and lemmygrad. Hell, I'm an anarchist that regularly comments on political/social threads in this instance, it doesn't seem to be an issue. Lemmy in general is pretty obviously far left leaning. I don't see the harm in federating with hexbear, unless they show themselves to be actively harassing or trolling. But you'd have to federate first to find out if they will

"Voting with your dollar" is bullshit. Just stop buying oil? Ok, let me go to the no oil store and buy a new car that doesn't run on gas and isn't made with any plastic. Let me spend my entire 5 dollars worth of disposable income to buy a new vehicle. And then take that vehicle to the store that has 0 petroleum products. No cans lined with PFAS, no plastic bags, no plastic packaging, no products made entirely of plastic. Never fly again in your life, or take the bus. Don't you even think about eating out again. Live life as a hermit, make your own goods, provide your own services and maintinence to yourself to ensure an oil free existence. Better start soon too, the planets only getting hotter. Rinse and repeat x8,000,000,000.

Markets are driven by capital. Those with the most capital have the greatest influence. Your pittance of a wage isn't going to change a damn thing. 10% of the global population has 52% of the purchasing power. Even if the other 90% of us all united together at once, about a single thing, we still wouldn't have the purchasing power to overwhelm them. You can't reform a system that's made to perpetuate consumption and pollution. It's cheaper to pollute by design. Do you think it's a coincidence that bills meant to make polluting more expensive either don't get passed or are so rife with loopholes they're effectively useless? Pull your head out of your ass. If there was ever a time this shit show could be reformed, it's long gone.

Someone will come along to call me a bootlicker

It's me. I'm here to call you a bootlicker. Ya bootlicker. No one works hard enough to earn a billion dollars, simple as. He got as wealthy as he did by employing the usual monopolization tactics. Such as undercutting his competition to drive them out of business. There's also the whole thing about Amazon barely paying taxes, exploiting and abusing their workers, union busting and horrible conditions things too. Among many, many others. Using his ill gotten gains to then expand vertically and horizontally (shipping infrastructure and AWS for example) are also common tactics utilized by companies aspiring to be a monopoly to keep their overhead low and further eliminate competition. Amazon should have never been allowed to get this big. Amazon and Jeff bezos are only as big as they are because of a corrupt system that didn't rein them in.

Also, billionaire philanthropy is a tax dodging scheme that rarely, if ever, does what it's "supposed" to do

What do you think of the fact that the GOP is responsible for the vast majority of overspending the US does? They consistently drive up the national deficit every time they're in a position to do so. They deregulate and remove the teeth from federal agencies, bitch about how ineffective the government is at dealing with things, deregulate more, cut taxes for the wealthy, drive up taxes for the poor and middle class, and then shovel our money into the Pentagon. If you were actually compelled by small government and less spending, you'd be voting democrat every time. They're the only ones that actually reduce spending on a federal level

Ol' Wesley coming in hot with the zingers

Toxic epidermal necrolysis is a severe form of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. It's a life threatening skin reaction that's thought to be caused by an immune response to certain medications. The medications known to trigger TEN range from ibuprofen, certain antibiotics (penicillin being one), anticonvulsants, and steroids. We aren't sure what exactly causes it or how to stop it. One day you're taking something for your headache, a few days later you start getting painful red splotches on your skin. Once the first ones show up, they spread, often across your entire body. The redness grows and gets more painful, blisters form, and then your skin starts falling off! Everywhere! The only level of care at this point is to treat you like a severe burn patient, because that's essentially what you are. With large swathes of skin completely gone from your body, the only recourse is skin grafts and management of symptoms. Infections are common during the healing process and the prognosis isn't great. If it progresses into TEN, the odds of survival are about 50%. But don't worry, it's so rare and triggered by so many different medications it's pointless to try to avoid it. If the good Lord decides to kill you with it, there's nothing you can do about it!

Don't worry. Next year we're doing 2020 2: electric boogaloo

There shouldnt be any middle ground on the statement "trans rights are human rights". If you think there's room for compromise on the oppression of marginalized groups then you're either a lost cause or willfully ignorant of the world around you. People that are in a safe space, specifically dedicated to them and people like them, have no obligation to educate or entertain disingenuous "discourse" about whether or not they should be allowed to exist.

If I had the money, I'd be running for Europe right now. America has gone to shit and it is only going to get worse from here

Do you live in a retention pond? How on earth does a belt get and stay damp enough to grow mold? How long has it been sitting undisturbed? I didn't know about leather being antimicrobial until just now. Even then, a moldy leather belt just seems wrong lol