I feel like I am way less interested in being an informed person because media + Trump combo had me so burnt out on all of it by the time the 2016 election rolled around. I used to listen to NPR daily and consumed alot of journalism in general, now I can go a week without checking my news app and I never listen to anything except podcasts that are completely unrelated to anything concerning politics or current events. So I’m just kind of dull and apathetic about all of it which is depressing.
I’ve had a couple of tense conversations with some of our European suppliers today.
Swiss CNC MAchine shop here. Prices went up 25% on most of the metal stock we use. Plus side, jobs are pouring in at a record rate.
I work in the electrical supply industry. At least four of the manufacturers we work with raised prices 5-7%, specifically because of the steel and aluminum tariffs.
I’m in the fire sprinkler industry. 2 days after Trump hinted about steel tariffs, Tyco (Grinnell) announced all of their grooved fittings will have a 10% price increase.
I work in mental health and the medicaid budget was totally fucked this year. We have less than half of the medicaid money we would normally get and theyre planning on more cuts next year. We no longer get paid if a MCD client no-shows an appointment and 90% of MCD clients no show consistently. It’s making my job very hard and we are losing more money than ever. But hey I guess the extra $15 on my paycheck from that tax cut was worth it.
I work in mental healthcare in a very blue state. The funding for research has dried up, grad students have lost their grants, and a suicide hotline I volunteer at will most likely be losing half of it’s funding and we’re resorting to things like bake sales to pay the 3 full-time staff. We’re even losing funding for needle exchanges, with Trump pretending to give a damn about the opioid epidemic.
I’ve told this story before, but I used to work at a hospital that began a multi million dollar renovation when Obamacare was seen as established law. After Trump got elected, the hospital cut staffing to the bone to offset future losses from a potential repeal of Obamacare. Patient volume was through the roof and the acuity level was super high. It became a very dangerous place to be a patient. The majority of the existing staff left, myself included, because we were worried about losing our licenses. I moved out of state to find another job, so I miss my friends and family. The people still at the hospital I left say it’s a real nightmare now. Bad for the health care workers, but the patients are the ones who are really suffering.
I work in higher ed. Funding for environmental research was abruptly cut, which eliminated grant money for many of our grad students. It also destroyed several long-term research projects, but that didn’t affect me personally. Also, our university HR determined that it was much less likely to succeed in a request for an H-1B visa, so they are usually unwilling to put in the significant effort required to file and defend the paperwork. This means that it’s a lot harder to hire for certain positions. Some are still unfilled.
While it hasn’t affect me, exactly, some family members who depend on Obamacare are seeing their benefits and options whither away, because the federal government is going back on its commitment to help fund insurers. Not sure whether Trump is the architect of that or just a cheerleader.
Wife works for a renewable energy company. They were growing fast. Doubled their number of employees every year for the past two years.
The solar tariffs fucked things up. For the first time since the company began a decade or so ago, they’ve laid off people. It set them back probably one or two years.
Have a few clients who are in the touring industry. My business is down because their business is down. It’s not due to competition, but rather tourism has declined in general considerably. The general concensus is the same from my clients – that the U.S. doesn’t have it’s enticing charm anymore and not a place travelers associate with the word vacation.
I work at a University with a large percentage of international students. Thanks to the travel ban and general fear of coming here, international enrollment is down. This means we may have to shut down certain graduate programs that rely on these students and their tuition. It also means domestic students won’t receive the funding they normally would. It is incredibly short-sighted not to realize that these things affect our own population as much as the international community.
Here’s an odd, albeit very minor, impact that I’ve noticed. I feel weird wearing patriotic clothing now, specifically a shirt that just has an American flag on it.
I love the shirt, been wearing it out and about for years now, but I’ve noticed in the last year that people kind of look at me funny when I wear it now as if being proud of my country automatically makes me a Trump supporter. I feel like his administration has made a point to demonize criticism and now any dissatisfaction with how things are being run automatically makes you anti-American. So by consequence, the flip side of showing any pride for the country must mean I’m a proud Republican
Much of my family could not attend my wedding due to on again off again visa issues thanks to the “Muslim Ban”. I couldn’t have my parents walk me down the aisle.
On a personal note: my own aunt couldn’t come to see her son graduate from Rutger’s University because of these issues. She’s a well-known Westernized politician in her country, married to a U.S. Citizen, with kids who are also U.S. Citizens.
I’m a Southern Baptist. What upsets me the most isn’t what Trump has done; it is all the support that the people I stand in fellowship with have given him. They call him a good man. They call him a Christian. A believer.
They hate the “left” so much that they ignore truth. They ignore the philandering. The ignore the scams he has run. They ignore the hatred he spews. They ignore the lies he tells. They ignore that he is likely a traitor to the nation. They ignore that he has no idea what being a Christian actually is.
And in doing so, they tarnish the image of church. They dishonor the Name of the Almighty God. They turn people who are hurting away from a place where they are supposed to be loved, and comforted, and supported. Hell, they even kick them on the way out. If you are gay, or an immigrant, or a liberal, they will hate you.
I know that the church has failed. I know it didn’t start with Trump. But for me, this is the worst part of his presidency so far.
Until recently, I worked in criminal prosecution. The vast majority of our victims and lay witnesses come from marginalized communities: inner-city African-Americans and Hispanic people of sometimes questionable immigration status.
Since Trump took office, race relations have taken a nosedive, especially as it relates to law enforcement. Many of our victims and witnesses have been scared to come to court, believing (sometimes with good reason) that ICE will be waiting to take them into custody. My job, which was to prosecute criminals, became much more difficult under Trump.
I didn’t cherry pick. I didn’t go hunting.
I literally just went down the list and picked one response after another, after another, after another.
You didn’t have to cherry pick because this thread was created to be extremely biased towards reddit’s hugely left-leaning userbase (making the tumblr/reddit hate even more confusing).
This thread is full of responses from people who hate Trump. It’s an echo chamber.
reddit’s hugely left-leaning userbase
…riiiiiight
I guess that means all the alt-right, incel, and “trigger-comedy” reddits just vanished?
Wanna see something funny?
The moment that thread hit the front page I found a really cool pattern on the rising thread page!
Yep. And a lot of these accounts were commenting on each other’s posts.
Thanks /r/enoughtrumpspam for showing us whose enjoying the weather in Russia.
And do people seriously think Reddit is left leaning? It’s the definition of brogressive at best, and Alt right for the most part. Sadly even subs like /r/Canada have been totally taken over by altrighters and American trolls.
Hope this will spread as much as save net neutrality posts
it’s way worse than that law actually, in US they “just” wanted your money, here the EU goverment wants to take our freedom without even giving a choice
SPREAD THIS
I’m just speechless. Dudes, this is wayyyy worse then The Net Neutrality bullshit in the US. Spread this like a wildfire! I don’t wanna lose everything I have thanks to this law!
Oh my gosh why am I only hearing about this now? Please everyone, spread this! Most of the time we talk about problems that are happening in the US but this time it’s in the EU and we need to stand against it!!
Please help if you can it’s going to make so much damage! Just for an example, both of my blogs will disappear if it isn’t stopped, ao3 will also disappear for european countries just like every website like these ones.
So please, help!!
Actually reblogging that one because 1) I checked the original poster and 2) I felt doubt when no french media outlet that wasn’t obviously alt-right dwelved on the subject, so here I go with a list of reasons this post is dead wrong.
1) made by a self-proclaimed fascist with a blog called “Think-critically” whose blog is full of racist, transphobic, fascistic, mysoginist content. Allow me to doubt.
2) the guy in the video is a friend of the EDL. You can see another of his videos from 2 days ago where Tommy Robinson, leader of this islamophobic group which is on numerous hate watch list, supports this channel’s messages.
3) EDRI and Techdirt are also websites associated with the alt-right.
4) From everything I’ve gathered about said article 13. It’s actually meant to stop, block and disable fake news campaigns. Like the ones Russia did in France in 2017, the UK during brexit, Italy, Germany, Poland, etc…. It’s a way to also put responsability on websites that host the information (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook. All 3 having a pretty tulmutuous relationship with European countries (Read: don’t comply with the law and refuse to pay taxes)) as a deterrent to make sure they’re careful during election season (Which, to their credit, they were during the Irish referendum, blocking foreign media outlets). That means
5) The alt-right just got 30k Tumblr users to sign a petition against blocking Russia’s interference in our elections, dressed it up as a brave struggle for freedom (This will END the internet guys. Trust me on this one. They want to destroy it because….. BAD. Not GOOD.) And y’all not checking your damn sources played right into their hands.
In conclusion: Fuck Putin and fuck the Alt-right, go out and vote, check your sources.
The EU are not going to shut the Internet down omg! You just got trolled by the alt right. The only thing in the UK and Dutch press with regards Internet access is over GDPR – which is a good EU regulation designed to protect consumers. If there’s no news about it, then there’s a reason for that???
The English Defence League (EDL) are such a nasty racist bunch of fuckers, and now many tens of thousands of you have just given them and their fascist, xenophobic cronies at places like InfoWars your support because you didn’t spend 5 fucking minutes Googling the truth behind this post.
They deliberately put shit together that sounds legit. Don’t people think anymore??? Read up on something before you mindlessly hit the reblog button! There’s no excuse to not check something out!
Seriously people please research things yourself when you see them. A very quick google search brings up 1 article from a website I’ve never heard of. If international news sites like, to name a few, BBC and Al Jazeera, aren’t reporting it, it is probably not an issue.
(I know I joked about it earlier but, honestly, please do your own research)
okay these guys are obviously a terrible source for the information and they surely warped it, but article 13 is potentially still not great?? Cause I did doubt this shit too, and I DID put in the time to read parts of the proposal and more specifically Article 13.
Like it says in the image above, Article 13 is about the use of protected content (meaning copyrighted stuff?), and stopping people that don’t have the rights to it to post said content. If they implement upload filters to catch copyrighted material this could be the end of memes (okay not a great reason to not strengthen copyright laws, but man the internet would sure be a lot duller) and anything that uses copyrighted material to create something new? it could be a huge encroachment on many creative things i and most of us enjoy on the internet, and on things people on here use to make money
The proposal in itself is a great thing and a good step towards keeping things like fake news from happening, but Article 13 itself is not really part of that??
Agreed. I’ve both researched and contacted my MEPs about this and I’m still concerned. Yeah, the guy in the video is a pro-Robinson, ‘free speech’ conservative dude.That doesn’t mean the Digital Single Market legislation doesn’t have masses of flaws (also GDPR has had quite a few flaws already with EU residents being blocked from quite a few sites that have decided to just block EU users rather than deal with it).
I’m also not sure how so many people think no one is reporting it.
Some parts of the Digital Single Market might deal with fake news, but the concern is specifically with Article 11, dubbed the ‘link tax’ and Article 13, partially linked above which will either massive change how some websites and/or EU residents will be blocked.
My pro-Article 13 Conservative MEP had this to say about it:
“I appreciate your concerns regarding the new Copyright reform proposals. However, the objective of Article 13 is to make sure authors, such as musicians, are appropriately paid for their work, and to ensure that platforms fairly share revenues which they derive from creative works on their sites with creators.
In the text under discussion, if one of the main purposes of a platform is to share copyright works, if they optimise these works and also derive profit from them, the platform would need to conclude a fair license with the rightholders, if rightholders request this. If not, platforms will have to check for and remove specific copyright content once this is supplied from rightholders. This could include pirated films which are on platforms at the same time as they are shown at the cinema. However, if a platform’s main purpose is not to share protected works, it does not optimise copyright works nor to make profit from them, it would not be required to conclude a license.
Closing this “value gap” is an essential part of the Copyright Directive, which Secretary of State Matthew Hancock supports addressing (https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/matt-hancocks-speech-at-the-alliance-for-intellectual-property-reception) . The ECR supports the general policy justification behind it, which is to make sure that platforms are responsible for their sites and that authors are fairly rewarded and incentivised to create work. Content recognition will help to make sure creators, such as song writers, can be better identified and paid fairly for their work. Nevertheless, this should not be done at the expense of user’s rights. We are dedicated to striking the right balance between adequately rewarding rightholders and safeguarding users’ rights. There are therefore important safeguards to protect users’ rights and to make sure only proportionate measures are taken.
As regards to Article 11 and the “link tax”, this remains under discussion. The objective is to enable the publishing industry and journalists to be given their fair share of revenue. However, as currently drafted it is too far reaching for the ECR to be able to lend its support to it.”
There is nothing in that on dealing with fake news or Russia and even the Conservatives – the profit focused authoritarians that they are – think Article 11 is too far.
For those interested in researching further, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52016PC0593 is the legislation in question so you don’t have to scroll back up and https://saveyourinternet.eu/ gives scripts for contacting MEPs because seriously the wording of the legislation butchers the fair use of creative works that many of us rely on. It’s like youtube’s copyright claims issues (which has already been used by abusers to try to get personal details of people) on all the steroids from what I can see.
tumblr has basically stopped notifying me about anything at this point so please don’t think I’m ignoring you if you tag me in something, I just haven’t been receiving notifications!
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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