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Baseball - General Megathread for April 7th, 2022
Removed by modBaseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two opposing teams, of nine players each, that take turns batting and fielding. The game proceeds when a player on the fielding team, called the pitcher, throws a ball which a player on the batting team tries to hit with a bat. The objective of the offensive team (batting team) is to hit the ball into the field of play, allowing its players to run the bases, having them advance counter-clockwise around four bases to score what are called "runs". The objective of the defensive team (fielding team) is to prevent batters from becoming runners, and to prevent runners' advance around the bases. A run is scored when a runner legally advances around the bases in order and touches home plate (the place where the player started as a batter). The team that scores the most runs by the end of the game is the winner.
Baseball’s origins from various bat-and-ball sports are hard to trace, but it is commonly accepted that it developed in the United States and Canada starting around the 1830s with the US’ first officially recorded game occurring on June 19th, 1846. While the sport is nicknamed “America’s Pastime”, it’s also popular in Latin America and East Asia with a multitude of countries having their own leagues and many of Major League Baseball’s past and present stars coming from around the globe.
Major League Baseball’s lengthy history lends itself to a multitude of topics (racial segregation and the continued discrimination black players faced in the integration-era, Curt Flood sacrificing his career for the players’ right to free-agency, the systemic encouragement of drug abuse from greenies to coke to steroids to opiates all come to mind even before recounting any specific games), since far better writers than me have written exhaustively on those topics and this post is going live for an opening day delayed by labor disputes, I’m going to focus on the recent CBA and the future of the MLBPA in the oldest comment on this post (this is already getting kinda long).
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Gonna ask for a $3 raise tomorrow and will accept nothing less than a two dollar one. I know what my co workers make, I given a demo of what a $2 raise will buy then. $3 gets them what I've been doing and two more things that I've purposefully not been doing even though I can. Anything less and I do less work.
I've been wanting to ask for a raise just because of how bad inflation is
Like bruh just give me 1 fucking dollar extra so I get what the new hires make AAAA
:agony-deep: I'm scared to ask
Do it. Don't let anyone ever scare you ever
I mean I get in trouble at work A LOT because I've turned into a lazy piece of shit as of late, so
I may try the angle that I get paid so fucking little the shit makes me not want to work rofl which is literally true
Tell them you bust your ass anyway. If they disagree, gaslight them
Edit: I work in a kitchen and it's been super obvious I've risen above my station and have been doing expo so front of house also has my back cause they really prefer it when I'm the one putting the food out
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You owe me at least that for daring to make this post, you bougie fucking swine
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When my family needs medical care they just kinda die
Pay me to agitate people more effectively than your posting can
Maybe just shut up
That really doesn't sound like $500 in my bank account. I need glasses. Give me some state of the art medical care.
:ooooooooooooooh:
I'd give a kidney if I could bring in half that. Obv don't answer if it's too revealing, but would you mind saying what you do? Or what field you work in?
I'm in software. I've been working my way up the ladder, so now I'm a software architect / director of software engineering. my goal is to keep going up the ladder until I have to do no work at all. Because contrary to popular belief, the higher your corporate rank, the less you actually do (but the more most people convince themselves they do)
The American Dream. Yeah, I don't think anyone here is exactly surprised by that. Well... congratulations comrade. (I mean that seriously and sincerely). Just try to fund and arm your local vanguard party tho, pls.
Edit: Do an Engels.
thank you, comrade. and that's the goal.
goal 1 is survive, which sounds weird to say with so much money, but in America, you're one cancer or whatever away from losing hundreds of thousands.
goal 2 is fix shit the best I can. mutual aid, donate to labor unions, environmental conservation, sheltering at risk people, etc etc.
if I do make it to a CEO level or something like that, I've already got a whole plan for starting an organization for communism/labor support.
Climate change just might end up being an equalizing force for all of us non billionaires. Maybe.
That's a better position than one cancer or whatever away from certain death, since most lack tens of thousands, let alone hundreds. But yeah, I hear you.
a little bird told me you're already doing the mutual aid thing to an extent, which is awesome, but I hope you're also not waiting on something to do the other stuff too. I mean, it doesn't need to be a goal, just something you do, ongoing. (I know I'm not telling you something you don't already know, just saying...)
Why wait? Set that plan into action. It's going to have to be clandestine either way, and we're already out of time.
All good points. In terms of the why wait, step one of my plan is to make enough to buy land that I can use to house people rent free, and start building up a community that way. Maybe that's a shitty plan, but I've been trying to wrack my brain about how to get real momentum going. And I think something like that would have deep enough roots that it wouldn't just fizzle out. People would be really invested in it.
But that sort of thing has a very high upfront cost.
Either that, or paying people to quit their jobs. But that also kind of has a minimum (and large) threshold to be effective.
So I guess the question is, how much money would it take, for example, for Galaxy and all their coworkers to feel comfortable quitting if they asked for $25/hr and didn't get it?
Consider this me throwing in my hat for a place to come work on your commune once it's established. Or hell, in helping to get it established.
I know no more than any other average leftist about how to go about such things, but honestly, I would recommend reaching out to people with experience in organizing and building communes, possibly even comrades here. If not direct experience, then an extensive background in communalism stuff.
What if we don't want to live in the co.mi we you bought for us, and under capital can take away at any time? This is lib shit.
the long term plan isn't for people to own land at all. but for leftism to have any chance of succeeding, it needs to built a broader base of support. and that starts with addressing people's material needs. All the people who are currently food and housing insecure are going to be a lot more able to talk about leftism when they aren't starving and cold, for example.
And yeah, buying everyone their own homes would be even better, but that's even MORE money. Which is why my first step would be to buy land to use to address people's immediate needs, instead of trying to make a billion dollars and claim that I just need a little more so I can buy up a city block and give it away or whatever.
basically, any successful revolution in this country is going to have to start by making people feel like they aren't going to starve to death if they go against the power structures.
You make $130/hr. I make $14/hr. Don't try to explain shit to me. Give me $500. You rich patronizing piece of shit
Going way to hard on a comrade here. My own mother died for want of what a day of his labor in medicine could have bought her. And if we attack all our comrades who have any means it will hurt our chances of ever fixing it. We need class traitors
Buy me land and I can more or less solve the homeless problem of a pretty large city
It's only as lib as their starting point though, right? How else is something that could become non-lib going to get started in the imperial core of this capitalist hellworld? Seriously, if someone bought a few hundred acres or whatever and then literally relinquished all of it to a collective of people living on it, would you say that was a bad thing? Or I don't know, maybe that's lib shit for me to say, I need to read more theory.
I'll wait for that to happen. Pretty big promise with no praxis there.
well yeah, me too. But I'd like to think it possibly could.
A rich dude buying up land to make communism is also like not a revolutionary idea. Its enclosure with socialist characteristics. Feudalist patronage under the guise of a socialist commune. Borderline Manson shit has generally been the result.
What should a rich dude do that would be a good revolutionary idea? Genuine question.
In the case of a wage worker with an obscenely high wage Ala Mayor Quinby, send money where irs asked and be informed, but if you're hauling in that much, You Will Never Be One of Us, even as a technical member of the working class in the same way a super well paid actor can't be. So like, if you are making that kind of cash, support pre existing orgs and don't try to take the reigns for yourself because you don't represent us. Don't be patronizing I guess. If you make it through capitalist means, cut that shit out and then we can talk.
If you make it through capitalist means, you should literally be washing then funneling all the capital to a revolutionary vanguard imo. As some rich guy with a salary, I don't know. Obviously what first jumps to mind is Engels when it comes to rich communists, but I know he was far from the only one.
I mean, even Marx, Mao, Sankara, etc were all privileged/rich/PMC. I would argue the greatest responsibility for leftist revolution falls on people like me. And that's not some "White Savior" shit or whatever. That's an acknowledgement that suffering and marginalized people do not bear responsibility for their own liberation. Privileged people who benefit from those structures have the responsibility of changing them.
It means you aren't the vanguard and should find one to funnel to, not try to become one yourself.
Engels was smarter than the people posting here. Tech nerd making too much money didn't help write foundational theory. You probably are closer to Trump Jr. than Engels as a rich failson poster.
I honestly am not educated on this enough yet to have an informed opinion here so I'll stfu after this. But it really feels like it would be shooting leftism in the foot to say it's not possible for someone with the extreme luck and privilege to be wealthy to be able to be a leftist or genuinely further socialism unless they completely unhitch themselves from that wealth by immediately giving it all away. Or unless they're smart enough to write foundational theory like Engels (privileged both in wealth and intelligence). Seems there should be ways to fund leftist projects and use their privileged position to undermine the system that affords it to them. And I fully agree, Quimby should be doing whatever that is. Though I imagine it's not like they can just come out and say it if so.
I could just also be a bit personally offended that they decided to mention their giant ass $130/hr paycheck and how They're tooopoptally gonna use that big ass salary to help build socialism but I need to provide more money in Healthcare than you see in a year, extended rich entitled babbling in response to me getting ready to debate my ass off for a $3/hr raise which is a huge ask at once in my industry yo get me from $14 to $17 somewhere that rent for a one bedroom costs $1500 without power and water bills etc. They could stand to keep their silver spoon laden mouth fucking shut if they don't want the wall
My former roommate and one of my best friends just got bashed in the head with a bottle over a panhandle spot and needed 7 staples in his head. That's in addition to his opiate money to not hit withdrawal. Cover that kind of daily expense for someone in your town, cause that guy exists.
I'm on suboxone and I know opiate addiction, I'm unemployed, have chronic health issues, and spend some time each day planning for... CW... using an exit bag when I'm totally depleted of resources and avenues. I would much much much prefer a place to go where I knew I'd never have to pay rent, and just be than get a $200 payment that might buy me meds and groceries for a short bit. If someone were providing that, I wouldn't give a shit if they were doing it to fund a revolution "in their image." I'd take it.
Just saw your other response. Yeah, it's not that simple as just "buying land" but if their goal is to make it so that people who are unhoused have a place to go other than the street or bullshit dangerous shelters, then good. I don't see why working at a problem systemically instead of giving out one-time payments that will only go so far is a bad thing when I know we all agree the problems are inherently systemic.
Literally just take $200 our of the bank and give it to the next bum you see and you're doing better praxis than trying to use your Capitalism money to fund a revolution in your own image.
what makes you think I'm not already doing that?
also, the ONLY reason I bring up my own money on this site is because I think it's important for people to feel entitled. the word "entitled" as gotten such a bad rap in recent years. But people should feel entitled af. If your bosses doubled or tripled your salary, it still wouldn't be enough. But can you honestly say that if your boss gave you a raise to $30/hr you'd still feel underpaid? You would still be underpaid. The mean household income in the US is roughly $120,000. That's what people should be demanding.
The only reason the bigger discussion of building socialism came up is because @InappropriateEmote kindly encouraged me to make sure I'm using my privilege and wealth to advance the larger cause.
What if instead of funding a revolution in any image, land was bought so the next bum they see could go live there indefinitely rent free, instead of just getting $200 on the spot?
Buying land isn't that simple and costs more. It also requires being an effectiveeans of long term housing to people that have a hard time maintaining housing. A lot of this is to fix one thing you need to fix an overarching thing until you get to full revolutionary conditions and basically until then, just give em $200 and donate as much to whatever shelter group exists and help out with you actual labor cause time and work does a lot more than money since most of this stuff can't pay a wage and requires volunteer labor. So you could also use itnto pay those already doing that volunteer labor, they know how to use it. Maybe try to make them take something for themselves
Could is doing a lot of legwork here
I don't disagree. At all.
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You mKe $116 per hour more than I do. Send me money
It's $130 more than I make rn.
Send them money
Send me $500 right now or never log onto this site again. Fuck you
You aren't my comrade
I'm not joking. Give me your fucking money you bastard.
130/hr?! If you're making that kind of money, send me $500 right now
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that's not really what I was saying at all. and the conversation ended up going in a very different direction like 25 comments in, so... idk.
The only real point is that it bothers me that people are reduced to asking for meager gains that are still way below what they deserve. And my experience has been that when I try to tell people that, I get a lot of "hey, it could be worse", instead of "hey, it could be a lot better, couldn't it?". and so I've found that putting a specific face on it and saying "hey, I'm here. and I don't deserve more than you. but I get it anyway because I'm lucky" helps people make that switch. It's not just some distant vague concept of billionaires and unattainable celebrity lifestyles. There are literally tens of millions of Americans living in comparative luxury and comfort while people are really suffering. And I just--maybe mistakenly--feel like that hasn't really sunk in for most people. I'm genuinely sorry if it came off the wrong way.
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I understand, and I appreciate the constructive criticism. It's also not to deflect, but just for your own understanding, I'm autistic, and I think that also leads to me getting these things wrong sometimes. The mods are a bit more gentle with me because I've talked to them about it before and they understand that I'm trying my best even if I mess up every now and then.
(I literally ended up staying up all night trying to figure out what I did wrong and feeling bad that I clearly upset someone so much.)
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I haven't reached out to them yet. I don't want to upset further. 😕
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ok, I'll give that a try.
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Get that bread comrade
I'm gonna do it after telling him about my new apartment costing more and also I'm living at home and both my folks caught covid but I'm still negative and that'll Lso come up first. Gonna follow the shock doctrine. My co workers either love or fear me but would all agree my current wage is an absolute insult.
Might gotta wait a day for laundry. I wanna be really scary looking while doing this.
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