Ah yeah, that type. I just didn’t serve them until they quit their shit, but I was lucky enough not to have a boss present that could scold me for it. Just turn your back and walk away kind of moments.

What do you think brings so many more of them to that one location?

As smug and insufferable as Adam Conover’s character was in that show, IRL he’s making progress leftward and has been an active labor organizer for years, so he’s earned my respect.

Wish he would read some theory. He’s sooo fucking close and would make a good ally.

I’ve had political campaign volunteers knocking on my door multiple times a day and calling me non-stop, mainly to try to get me to vote Democrat for the last week. The amount of political flyers they send to each house is obscene. I had a good sized pile of them I collect just from last week. Talking to the volunteers is ok. We’re always respectful with each other and I participate in their surveys, but their campaign has reached the levels of harassment, so in a moment of mischief, I acted out to entertain myself a bit.

I’ve made my own version of the little free library, for all the political flyers I collected and posted it outside my home: Little propaganda library. Take a flyer, share a flyer.

They’ve stopped knocking on my door.

No, you got it exactly right with

China invests in many African and Latin American countries

Western countries don’t invest, they exploit. They can’t even conceive of working with other countries as equal partners. People who project the same intent on China’s Belt and Road projects do so out of either ignorance or ill intent.

It’s quite clear that what China is doing is building up the industries and infrastructure of other countries under very favorable terms for their partners so as to build an international community that mutually benefits from trade. It just undermines US hegemony, by which I mean the insidious, parasitic stranglehold on global trade created by Western monopolies, cartels, and mob-like financial institutions intent on sabotaging the economies of most countries for US benefit.

If Western European countries embraced the Belt and Road Initiative, they too could see a great benefit, but not nearly as great as what China and West Asia would see. This is part of why the US works so hard to destabilize West Asia through war: they know that the Silk Road was the greatest trade route in the world and the vast amount of wealth it created all along its length. This would be the Silk Road 2.0, resplendent with modern modes of transportation that would completely change how trade is done throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe, let alone the effects on other continents.

Combine these efforts with BRICS leading to the decline of the petrodollar and you’ll see that the efforts of China to unite the world are about to kick the shit out of the sand castle that is the US’ dominance over the global economy. All of the nasty trucks they’ve used to devalue foreign currencies while artificially bolstering the dollar have become precarious. This is why the US is upping its aggression towards China despite having no chance of coming out ahead in a direct war with China. They see the writing on the wall and are desperate to prevent this. Maybe I’m overly optimistic, but with all the momentum behind BRICS and the extent to which their military might is overextended right now, I don’t see any way the US can prevent the erosion of their global economic power in the decades to come. I just hope we can prevent it from doing the damage they will try to inflict while fighting this downfall.

I would bet that most countries only continue to put up with the fits the US throws out of a fear of military or economic retaliation and we already see the later eroding. Give it time and you’ll see them put up with less and less as alternative power structures begin to dominate.

China is proving Mao right, that the US was a paper tiger all along.

The United States has set up hundreds of military bases in many countries all over the world. China’s territory of Taiwan, Lebanon and all military bases of the United States on foreign soil are so many nooses round the neck of U.S. imperialism. The nooses have been fashioned by the Americans themselves and by nobody else, and it is they themselves who have put these nooses round their own necks, handing the ends of the ropes to the Chinese people, the peoples of the Arab countries and all the peoples of the world who love peace and oppose aggression. The longer the U.S. aggressors remain in those places, the tighter the nooses round their necks will become.

Have you tried being a bit of an asshole back? I don’t mean just being rude, but familiar like in the way that their friends might give them grief in a joking way, without all the typical customer service framing.

My work moved a store from a small city to a small town once and there was a bit of a cultural difference between the locations. I could swear at my clients and say things that would have gotten me complaints from in the city, but at the new location, everyone loved it. If I treated them with the typical sort of customer service the people in the city preferred, it came off as fake. They wanted “genuine” people (not actually genuine, just the appearance of feeling of it, which is why I say it was cultural). Most of our clients were long-haul truckers, ranchers/farmers, and mill workers.

I don’t come off as a tough guy or particularly masculine at all, I just started responding to their crap with half-joking grief and eventually learned it was better to just dish some out from the beginning. Swearing also helped a lot.

I don’t know the specifics of your work and it could be a completely different situation, but maybe there is something about this location that is different from the other stores and approaching your clients differently would help ease the pressure? Likewise, maybe they’re just assholes for some reason.

Not to mention the possibility of wage garnishment and bank levies.

If you do this, please let us know the outcome!

If it were me, I’d be starting conversations like, “did you see someone stuck a bunch of communist books in our library? At first I thought about getting rid of them, but I don’t actually know anything about it besides all the cold war propaganda saying communism was bad, so I decided to actually look at what they had to say. Some of it was pretty interesting.”

Recruit the neighbor to make a tiny library with you, set it up, and then begin filling it with the types of books they should be reading.

I wish this quote more frequently included the additional context when it is used, mostly for the sake of those who have never read Mao and those who are not familiar with Marxism.

Very big difference in play styles, but DSP is also a fun game.

my former manager who wanted projects estimated in minutes.

That wasn’t a manager, that was a demon.

Have you checked out Soviet Republic: Workers and Resources? Similar to many of these games, and it can go from relatively easy with unlimited resources to ridiculously hard, realistic construction mode where you have to provide all realistic services including heating and waste. You may find it interesting if you like factory/supply line games.

A few years ago, the cargo trains stopped running on a few of the tracks that go through one of our bigger cities and down into many smaller ones nearby. It would be really helpful to put a passenger line going down these tracks. There are ridiculous waves of traffic throughout this area and it’s quite a dangerous road due to the speed and volume of cars, particularly in the winter. Much of this could be relieved by a passenger train and the tracks are already there!

In the last two years, every city has paved over these railway crossings. I guess all we get is cars.

Ok, where is Saddam?

You’re doing good work. I am absolutely stealing this and sharing it with friends who don’t realize they are still on the fence about the US. It’s tough to kick that US patriotism that’s so ingrained in every aspect of US life when you grew up there, so I intend to make them feel the weight of their contradicting feelings because I’m just a fun friend.

I’ll make it up to them later with cute cat pics and an interesting link about Settlers of Catan.

Good idea. I was thinking of sending an email to them with the principal cc’ed or something to create a paper trail with positive feedback.

I had no idea, will have to check this out. Thanks!

It’s just the worst one.

It’s similar to the types of jokes that come on popsicle sticks. It sounds like a dad joke.

Should have written this meme on a Popsicle stick.