Mumbly Grumbly Braincrumbs

Jun 19

[video]

stfuconservatives: liberalbutnotpartisan: workingamerica: A new report shows the real cost of Walmart’s low wages: a single 300-employee Walmart Supercenter in Wisconsin may cost taxpayers anywhere from $904,542 to nearly $1.75 million per year, or about $5,815 per employee. While taxpayers foot the bill for subsidized housing assistance, the food-stamp program, child-care subsidies, energy assistance, and reduced school meals for Walmart’s low-paid workers, Walmart profits. LIKE and SHARE if you didn’t agree to subsidize Walmart! Learn more here: http://1.usa.gov/17zQJot via American Rights at Work on Facebook And it’s not like everyone can just boycott Walmart, either. I mean, obviously, some people can and do, but let’s face it…there a lot of people who, for whatever reason, can’t boycott Walmart. Really low prices are part of it, but what if you live in an area where Walmart is really the only true food source you have access to? Some people have no option other than Walmart, so they wind up subsidizing everything listed above without any true say in the matter. I guarantee you the head honchos at Walmart know that, too. ^ Excellent point. You should avoid Wal-mart if you can afford to avoid Wal-mart. The executives make it a point to open Wal-marts in poorer areas and push out local businesses. They know what they’re doing. They WANT to make their crap the only option. And for many people, it is. But if you can afford to shop somewhere else, do it. Otherwise? Keep on keepin on.

stfuconservatives:

liberalbutnotpartisan:

workingamerica:

A new report shows the real cost of Walmart’s low wages: a single 300-employee Walmart Supercenter in Wisconsin may cost taxpayers anywhere from $904,542 to nearly $1.75 million per year, or about $5,815 per employee. While taxpayers foot the bill for subsidized housing assistance, the food-stamp program, child-care subsidies, energy assistance, and reduced school meals for Walmart’s low-paid workers, Walmart profits.

LIKE and SHARE if you didn’t agree to subsidize Walmart!

Learn more here: http://1.usa.gov/17zQJot

via American Rights at Work on Facebook

And it’s not like everyone can just boycott Walmart, either.

I mean, obviously, some people can and do, but let’s face it…there a lot of people who, for whatever reason, can’t boycott Walmart. Really low prices are part of it, but what if you live in an area where Walmart is really the only true food source you have access to? Some people have no option other than Walmart, so they wind up subsidizing everything listed above without any true say in the matter.

I guarantee you the head honchos at Walmart know that, too.

^ Excellent point. You should avoid Wal-mart if you can afford to avoid Wal-mart. The executives make it a point to open Wal-marts in poorer areas and push out local businesses. They know what they’re doing. They WANT to make their crap the only option. And for many people, it is. But if you can afford to shop somewhere else, do it. Otherwise? Keep on keepin on.

Certain Shades of Limelight: mayak46: Clois Editorials: Why Superman/Wonder Woman is the most... -

mayak46:

Clois Editorials: Why Superman/Wonder Woman is the most patriarchal concept to ever exist at DC Comics

quietlyandclearly:

therearecertainshadesoflimelight:

I’ve had multiple requests from people to make this post rebloggable. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure I was…

sagansense: Evolution Isn’t Neat. Why Your Brain is a Freaking Mess. Why is it that mere ideas can activate the pleasure circuit when those ideas have nothing to do with evolutionary survival, or adaptive advantage at all? There are a couple of possible explanations. I think the most likely one is that there are a lot of things that are created accidentally in evolution. There are a lot of side effects. So you can evolve a pleasure circuit for adaptive things so you will eat food and drink water and have sex. And you can evolve social cognition and then you can connect up your social cognition center with your pleasure center. And then you can take pleasure from positive social evaluation, which is something that you can imagine would promote group cohesion and in hunter/gatherer societies would be adaptive. But then you’ve built a machine that can be operated on in all kinds of ways in terms of culture and behavior. And we shouldn’t fall into the trap and think that all those ways are adaptive or useful just because they’ve evolved. Evolution is a tinkerer and not an engineer as Francoise Jacob famously said. And when you’re a tinkerer, you throw things together to solve the problem at hand. You don’t build elegantly and you don’t build the way an engineer would build to try to consider all the possible contingencies. You’re just solving the one problem that circumstances have dealt you at this moment. There’s a tendency, particularly when looking at brain function, to be over-awed by the brain and, this is understandable. We say human consciousness is manifest in this two-and-a-half pounds of tissue in our skull and that’s amazing. You say, “that’s amazing,” but that doesn’t mean that when you lift the hood and look at how it’s built, either anatomically or electrically or genetically, that what you see is well-engineered. No. It’s a freaking mess in there. It’s a freaking mess both at these biological levels and a lot of times it’s a freaking mess at the behavioral level. The sort of thing that gets you a behavioral advantage in one situation can actually work to your detriment in another. The pleasure circuit that makes it so that you are motivated to eat food and survive is great in one context, but when you figure out how to get heroin out of a poppy plant and you get pleasure from that and that can kill you, well that’s not so great. But obviously we didn’t evolve to get pleasure from heroin. This is just history. via bigthink

sagansense:

Evolution Isn’t Neat. Why Your Brain is a Freaking Mess.

Why is it that mere ideas can activate the pleasure circuit when those ideas have nothing to do with evolutionary survival, or adaptive advantage at all? There are a couple of possible explanations. I think the most likely one is that there are a lot of things that are created accidentally in evolution. There are a lot of side effects. So you can evolve a pleasure circuit for adaptive things so you will eat food and drink water and have sex. And you can evolve social cognition and then you can connect up your social cognition center with your pleasure center.

And then you can take pleasure from positive social evaluation, which is something that you can imagine would promote group cohesion and in hunter/gatherer societies would be adaptive. But then you’ve built a machine that can be operated on in all kinds of ways in terms of culture and behavior.

And we shouldn’t fall into the trap and think that all those ways are adaptive or useful just because they’ve evolved. Evolution is a tinkerer and not an engineer as Francoise Jacob famously said. And when you’re a tinkerer, you throw things together to solve the problem at hand. You don’t build elegantly and you don’t build the way an engineer would build to try to consider all the possible contingencies. You’re just solving the one problem that circumstances have dealt you at this moment.

There’s a tendency, particularly when looking at brain function, to be over-awed by the brain and, this is understandable. We say human consciousness is manifest in this two-and-a-half pounds of tissue in our skull and that’s amazing. You say, “that’s amazing,” but that doesn’t mean that when you lift the hood and look at how it’s built, either anatomically or electrically or genetically, that what you see is well-engineered. No. It’s a freaking mess in there.

It’s a freaking mess both at these biological levels and a lot of times it’s a freaking mess at the behavioral level. The sort of thing that gets you a behavioral advantage in one situation can actually work to your detriment in another. The pleasure circuit that makes it so that you are motivated to eat food and survive is great in one context, but when you figure out how to get heroin out of a poppy plant and you get pleasure from that and that can kill you, well that’s not so great. But obviously we didn’t evolve to get pleasure from heroin. This is just history.

via bigthink

nprfreshair: JournalistShane Harristells Terry Gross about why the T.I.A (Total Information Awareness) program was shut down: The name creeped people out. It was called ‘Total Information Awareness,’ it had this logo of the pyramid from the great seal of the United States with this floating eye on it casing a beam over the globe. It looked very menacing. And it did not help at all that they guy running it was John Poindexter, who was best known was the key architect of the Iran-Contra Affair. … And people looked at this and said, ‘This is exactly the kind of surveillance excess that we’ve been warning about since 9/11. This is the government going way too far, and being way too intrusive into people’s private lives, and they shouldn’t be allowed to collect this kind of information. So shut the program down.’

nprfreshair:

JournalistShane Harristells Terry Gross about why the T.I.A (Total Information Awareness) program was shut down:

The name creeped people out. It was called ‘Total Information Awareness,’ it had this logo of the pyramid from the great seal of the United States with this floating eye on it casing a beam over the globe. It looked very menacing. And it did not help at all that they guy running it was John Poindexter, who was best known was the key architect of the Iran-Contra Affair. … And people looked at this and said, ‘This is exactly the kind of surveillance excess that we’ve been warning about since 9/11. This is the government going way too far, and being way too intrusive into people’s private lives, and they shouldn’t be allowed to collect this kind of information. So shut the program down.’

(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

rhinogirl1: Lions waiting to be picked out and shot. Canned hunting The hunting of wild animals in a confined area, from which they cannot escape, is widely known as canned hunting. It is common in South Africa and North America and has become a massively lucrative industry. Hunters are prepared to pay exorbitant fees to shoot an animal, often at close-range, for a guaranteed trophy. The victims may be hand-reared and semi-tame. Canned hunting operations refer to the hunting of captive animals that are trapped within enclosures and have little chance of escape. Some canned hunt operations have recently begun to allow their clients to hunt these trapped animals remotely via the internet. PETITIONShttp://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Stop_Canned_Hunting_in_South_Africa/http://www.causes.com/actions/1671426-save-our-lions-from-canned-hunting

rhinogirl1:

Lions waiting to be picked out and shot.

Canned hunting

The hunting of wild animals in a confined area, from which they cannot escape, is widely known as canned hunting. It is common in South Africa and North America and has become a massively lucrative industry.

Hunters are prepared to pay exorbitant fees to shoot an animal, often at close-range, for a guaranteed trophy. The victims may be hand-reared and semi-tame.

Canned hunting operations refer to the hunting of captive animals that are trapped within enclosures and have little chance of escape. Some canned hunt operations have recently begun to allow their clients to hunt these trapped animals remotely via the internet.
PETITIONS
http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Stop_Canned_Hunting_in_South_Africa/
http://www.causes.com/actions/1671426-save-our-lions-from-canned-hunting

(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

(Source: arcaneimages)

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[video]

“Nearly 73% of abortions in America could end tomorrow if the “Pro-life” moment actually cared about ACTUAL people (i.e life) in order to gather the funds to create an environment in which abortions were unneeded.” —

-75% of women who get abortions cite financial reasons for their abortions, if women were supplied with an environment where their jobs and education were protected, their medical needs were fully covered and their children were guaranteed with a reasonable level of basic care upon birth that promised for a future better than the women could currently supply that would end nearly all abortion that are needed for non-medial reasons.

And it would cost only around 6billion/year or to put that in perspective 0.009% of what the U.S. spends on killing people (military budget)

If pro-lifers really wanted to STOP abortion they’d be fighting for this world. Not one where women get jail time at best and septicemia at worse for abortions.

( destroyingfaith)

(Source: destroyingfaith, via rabbleprochoice)