Private investment firms are already dropping inventory. It’s sad to say but housing has become a pump and dump somehow. The unfortunate thing is the people who get rugged will end up being people who bought from them.

Let’s nip this in the bud here. If I like hotdogs do I automatically hate hamburgers?

Why is it you are on such a crusade to paint someone as a racist simply for making a moderate statement? This isn’t a binary thing.

Further what makes what you are doing morally any better than what you are assuming the gift buyers to be doing?

You are entirely too wrapped up in this and it’s not a good look, man.

The one that you describe where the co-workers are being nice and the black guy is being an asshole for complaining about it.

Alternatively, this guy could be simply misinterpreting a pretty (all things considered) passable gesture. As I mentioned before: hanlons razor.

Or the other scenario where the black dude’s co-workers are making assumptions about the dude …

Totally plausible. This is an office party- we only know so much.

…based on stereotypes.

Why this? Yeah people can be insensitive but that’s a hell of a leap to make here.

In which case the black dude is rightfully bothered by this and the co-workers are making ignorant assumptions based on race.

Possible? Sure. Here’s my take: I just got cake and free booze. How we choose to interpret things goes a long way. Even if it were racially driven- there’s two sides of this… and only of them is backed by malice… and if so: as I mentioned … that’s a big spend to be a dick.

If he wants to be offended by all means: go to hr. But he posted it on Twitter. Excuse me for being blunt but based on where he posted it- he was looking for a reaction and won’t further speculate there.

And I see you making further ignorant …

I mentioned earlier that a lot of things have to do with perception. You are running to defend a dubious at best situation with minimal information. You have no skin in this- there is no reason to be so invested in something where you would attribute my blunt, but fair, assessment as malice. Many people would do well to take a breath before jumping to conclusions… we’d all be better for it.

We can’t know which scenario is true.

You should have stopped there.

Try to be a better person.

Every day. How about you?

That’s sort of the point. There is minimal context on the image so we are left to extrapolate from what we can see.

I see a nice office setting with a fairly dressed down couple of people who seem reasonably at ease in the space. It is a chocolate cake which is the typical go-to in most situations and appears to be store bought. Depending on where you live you can get liquor in the store or at a small store nearby. Some of the largest displays and most well known brands are Makers, Crown, and Hennessy. These are typically larger displays where even if you knew nothing about liquor you could probably pick one of those 3… and of those crown comes in packaging which would be a pain to take apart if you were just looking for a quick better than a birthday card gift.

…So assuming they knew fuck all about him there’s still a coin flip it would have been Hennessy. As far as the cake goes probably better than 60-70%. So hanlons razor: did someone just blow 70 bucks for a cake and booze to take a cheap shot at the guy? I doubt it.

I’ve worked in a lot of offices and I can tell you most people won’t go out of their way to get you a gift on your birthday outside of maybe a gift card from a boss. I see no malice here. Am I making assumptions? Sure. It’s an image and I provided my take on it. What was yours again?

Yup.

If someone got you a bottle of liquor you probably have drank with them or spoken about it… it’s not difficult to assume someone said oh he likes this lets get it for him. Further this is a pretty common brand and has a good chance of getting picked in general.

The speed at which people assume the worst and get offended recently needs to get dialed back… a lot. If I wanted to slight a dude I wouldn’t spend money to do it.

Will all due respect… What? If you want people to empathize or have a conversation you’re going to need to cut down on the generics / pronouns and provide some context. I tried to read that several times and it’s a word salad. We aren’t a hive mind nor are we having a shared experience… so context please?

“Google looking for a different guy to blame for search enshitifiaction when internal documents point to them ruining it long before ai was a problem”

I’m quite certain they tried.

In unrelated news we’ve been hearing rumblings of outlawing homelessness…

Was making a comparison to TiVO and old cable/satellite programming 😂

I look forward to when someone releases a box to record the screen or shows you want to watch on Netflix just in case the rights gets pulled before you get the chance to watch it. Added benefit is they can make it skip ads too. Gotta have a catchy name… like… NeVO for Netflix Video On(demand)

While funny: this is common practice. If a real ip is listed someone may attempt to mess with it. This is the exact reason phone numbers shown in media are now are led with 555.

I’ll be honest: I think this only made the news because it wasn’t league of legends. I was shocked.

Added benefit: preserving media that execs would rather just harvest a tax loss on.

Sorry my crew and I were out on a voyage, what was it they did exactly? 🏴‍☠️

…until morale improves? Dually noted lol.

I said as much multiple times.

The point of that statement was to highlight that it is possible to construct something that does not allow for consolidation and corruption of power… which it did. Your view simply was looking at present day examples which, as you correctly identified, do not work. That doesn’t mean nothing can work however … which is why I disagreed.

It’s a fun mental exercise to what if and try to construct something that could work. Can’t tear something down without considering what rebuilding it would look like.

I disagree. It’s about execution - creating an environment that is resistant to corrosion. A standing force can absolutely be viewed in that manner - which is why it cannot be a single static standing force.

The UN is the right idea but it needs teeth. And it needs the teeth to be double sided. If boots are on the ground peacekeeping they should be without bias and secondary interest. An attack on a peacekeeper has no guarantee of the creed nor country of origin of that keeper.

Peacekeeping should be like a draft. Every country that participates must provide and maintain a set number of rolling participants. These people will serve and train initially in humanitarian deployments with others… half way through their ‘term’ they should be moved to peacekeeping duties. This is idealized but would be good for both building trust amongst peacekeepers and goodwill towards them. This solves the military portion (roughly) - I have a lot of thoughts on this and believe it to be solvable… it just won’t be. No country gets to benefit therefore it has no merit.

That covered the military side… when talking about the economic side: the peacekeepers (let’s say un for simplicity) carry the ability to (by vote) censure a country and cut it off from direct trade / support. At that time any trade is then routed through the UN and it becomes the middleman. This allows economic pressures to be precisely controlled on an area. Once that country falls in line, by majority vote, operations are restored. Once again this is idealized and has no obviously advantaged party … so it has no merit and will never occur.

Basically everyone is equally held accountable and equally invested. Of course this means everyone gets a seat at the table and everyone gets one vote. I’m certain we can already see why this has 0 chance of ever happening. Those in power seek to keep it - very few will willingly give some away.

I imagine American Pie would have had a far more interesting scene if this played out there …