The obvious choice would be to stay of course. But the offer with the chance of wiping debit in the even they didn’t want to stay gives a “safety net” vibe. Puts a nice outline with a goal of taking out two birds with one stone. And if a student doesn’t want to stay even with having their original debts, it doesn’t prevent them from still getting a degree without owing extra. Some people like to know they have options (even if the options are in most cases dumb)
The capitalists are providing the very ropes from which we shall hang them with. It is crucial that leftists really really start agitating dramatically everywhere, but especially in states like KY. If not, then it allows the fascists to use their false narratives and reactionary actions to spread. Too many workers suffered, fought, and died to bring the basic protections we have. It is beyond time to take the power back after so many decades of the masses believing the lies used to remove everything. The libs can’t be allowed to claim that they are the “heroes” of the workers and the poor. They will try to steal the movement and just stop real change.
A vanguard of socialists must form and counter the propaganda that has rewarded ignorance in painting anti-capitalism as somehow being the worst option. Getting unions on board would also help as they too are painted in a similar light as socialism. They aren’t the solution, but they do have structures that can be applied to quickly shutting things down and copied by other workers that are still asleep with what needs to be done (aka the “I don’t really follow politics” crowds).
Gotta love when the public sector military officials and those serving in offices go nuts condemning and de-funding publicly/state owned things in favor of heavy privatization/for-profit corps. But are somehow shocked and emotionally hurt when said for-profit corps don’t find public/state stuff profitable after so long.
The US Postal Service is one example of the massive differences between publicly/state owned service and for-profit private corps. The pro-business/privatization elected officials drone on and on about it needing to be made “profitable” or shutdown. But the whole point of a public service is that it isn’t supposed to be about being profitable, it is about always having a service that is both accessible and affordable to all citizens. Any profits are supposed to be put into either employee wages and/or re-investing into making it better/maintaining infrastructure. Which is also seen in how so much of our public infrastructure nationwide are being held together with tape and bubblegum.
The war-hawks are not really by their own hands not really allowed to complain about this shit, when they are the ones that have been wrecking shit. A pro-capitalist government can’t be seen fucking with for-profit/private companies. As it would mean that the anti-capitalist nations and masses have been correct this whole time. For-profit private companies are like mercenaries. They only work for you while the profits are high and the flow of money never drys-up. They aren’t friends, family, or really members of the communities. Which also makes it fucked up that they are legally equal to (technically higher than) people.
Pocket Casts isn’t on Android. I kept hearing it brought up when I was looking to replace DoggCatcher and went with Podcast Addict. Took Google so long to finally allow people to manually add feeds from URL. Which was why I never really used it unless just wanting to stream an old ep of a listed show randomly. So when they added that ability, I was happy to see they seemed to be kind of supporting it seriously. But I was already moved to PA and am glad to not gone with Google.
I liked their original Listen app for being ridiculously bare bones and no ads or anything that requires more data. But they killed that long ago. I am not sure if Google just loves to create trust issues with users. Or if they just really have self esteem issues and can only act in dramatic ways that don’t make sense.
For real! Hell, they even openly tried to fucking join NATO at one point. They tried going capitalist as fuck really fast to get the west to back the fuck off of the whole “most evil nation that is always trying to end the world because communism”. But it wasn’t going to ever matter and were still always painted as being a KGB police dictatorship, even though the west was treating other nations with much more literal versions of that shit as being our best friends in “freedom”. NATO existing after the USSR and now even expanding to literally non-North Atlantic regions at this point should be so fucking obvious to it being anything other than a mob. Everything “aggressive” being done by Russia is the result of NATO members (especially the US and UK but not limited to them) never having any plans to let Russia be treated as equal.
And the idea that China is basically pulling an op on making Russia bow to them is beyond some of the dumbest lib (both conservative and progressive)/reactionary shit. They were both being treated in every bad-faith ways possible and constantly being loudly pushed as being “evil” no matter what. Both are treated as trying to push the world into another war anytime they do big military training exercises (both joint and just within their branches internally). While the US and NATO are constantly rolling up on their borders and making sure to do similar or larger exercises and always seen as somehow not aggressive/pushing for war.
You are thinking about it all wrong. You see such amazing innovators like him have figured out the ouroboros of capitalism/consumerism. First you figure out a trend/fad that you can manage to fill/do well enough to get big. Then you do everything possible to milk that shit for everything while it is peaking. Then once basically saturation is hit, you don’t try to just do lame shit like “just focus on realistic sustainability.” Fuck no!
You instead take your time on the up-swing to plan how to again innovate by going all-in on making not the original thing the new thing. Start really getting the idea of the old thing to seem lame/boring/frustrating at best, or maybe show that it is unhealthy/damaging at worst. Then push for how much better whatever the thing before the current thing is by using the mass consumer/corporate amnesia to paint the old thing as being 100% new and cool. Though you can also point to it as being a old/retro idea in concept (hit them in the “feels”/“member berries”), but just make sure to change wording and/or anything and everything that are just the most surface level to show how innovative you and your ideas are.
Once the new-old thing becomes the new-old-current thing, you just keep on swallowing that tail feeding that ouroboros by prepping for going back around again!
/s
Though I am sure that he did make sure to put as much of the “earnings” he got paid (both as the CEO and as a shareholder) to buy up as much newly cheap as fuck commercial spaces as possible. Given how many places went out of business or didn’t renew leases to cut costs during the Covid years. I am sure they were able to acquire a lot of spaces in order to be ready for what they (and really many people) thought would happen after all the restrictions/legal liability of being back in a office setting went away. Just wasn’t prepared for so many larger companies to see office spaces as being mostly a big cost that had been cut.
I personally like that it seems so many people are at least getting to work from home if they do function better there. Though I am kind of glad that I don’t work in a field that would mean I had to work from home. I would be way to annoyed at the feeling of never leaving the office (even if I were able to only do work things in one room and leave the rest of the house to non-work life). I also do worry that not being physically around other workers will make it easier for companies to much more quietly purge staff without anyone noticing. Which would be perfect for controlling the narrative and keeping workers more isolated and much less likely to even flirt with the idea of organizing.
Even with all that, I do imagine that the comfort of being at home does really help a lot of people work much better than the office. So maybe this guy will just get fucked and lose a lot of money. Landlords are leeches anyway.
The best solution would be to just pay all of their people correctly. That goes for everyone down to the “lowest” level staff. It is however a very Disney thing to do while trying to paint the folks they need in order to run an entertainment media company as the assholes.
The legal charges that would also be brought by the cops/legal system would be the real punishment likely (depending on the state and whatnot). The school doesn’t really need to do anything, and I am guessing it is more a fallback or show of denouncing someone. Though I agree that it is odd that they don’t outright expel given the nature of the other examples given. Maybe it has to do with being a public school or something? Or maybe suspension until after the legal results? Idk.
I think they are slightly playing up the “assault rifles” bit though, as I imagine that the same suspension would be applied to any long rifle or shotgun (maybe even pistols tbh). I agree with the overall point of drawing attention to how incorrect the punishments are being applied to the pro-Palestine protestors. As shit is very very different from someone or a group of people showing up armed to a school campus. As I imagine the people more likely to jump to doing that would most certainly be the pro-Israel no matter what crowd. Though it might be getting to the point of pro-Palestine/anti-genocide folks having protection. At minimum access off campus. As the right most certainly does, and would likely be following people home.