Last Week Tonight Discussion : Brazilian Election+Law and Order (9/25/22)

[Sara Nilsson]

I kinda like their subs. But holy shit I had NO fucking idea how shady they where. I mean, I guess I shouldn't be surprised, it seems like every single fucking corporation these days is filled with wankstains and fuckboys.

[Oniya]

I'm just going to say that Jersey Mike's has better subs on the average, and the controversies I was able to find were more of the 'didn't read the room' variety than 'sandwich mafia'.

[TheGlyphstone]

Sadly the closest Jersey Mike's to me is 45 min away. There's a real good local sub shop but its just far enough away to be 'special trip' over 'im hungry'.

[Vekseid]

Better late than never again. This week John takes aim at the nefarious and malicious...Subway corporation, which is apparently the Mafia of sandwich franchise.

https://youtu.be/jDdYFhzVCDM

The end of that was... something.

[TheGlyphstone]

The man loves to spend large chunks of his budget on incredibly weird things. I guess this season it's fake Korean TV ad skits.

[TheGlyphstone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEa3sK1iZxc

John is all alone this weekend, without his staff or family. So he's discussing Kandiss Taylor, a prominent loser in the race for governor of Georgia, how the Republican Party doesn't know what furries are, and rocks.

[Twisted Crow]

Also... Bruce Bostleman is just as clueless about furries, it seems. 

[Sara Nilsson]

Almost everyone is, its more fun to make fun of us than it is to take 10 mins to look shit up.

[TheGlyphstone]

To be fair, it sounds like he spent even less time than that. I've heard and read lots of odd things people believe about furries, but 'children dressing as cats and dogs in schools and using litterboxes' is...pretty out there.

[Sara Nilsson]

probably because he didnt want the truth, he wanted something to be outraged out that would rile up the base.

[TheGlyphstone]

You're probably right - or at least he didnt care whether it was true or not. Though at least I'm happy to see John has turned his own leaf on furries - 3 years ago he used it as an insult in his epic musical 'Eat Shit Bob' (alongside selling drugs to Bill Cosby, being the Zodiac killer, and writing the Macarena, so its impossible to ever really judge his sincerity). Now he's buying art of his fursona and being much friendlier.

[TheGlyphstone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgwqQGvYt0g


In the wake of Uvalde and the renewed discussion of additional security in schools, John addresses the question of if they do more harm than good.

He brings up some good points, though I'm sure his examples were cherry-picked for being outrageous, but I'm not entirely sold on a few points. For example, the argument that schools with SRO's have a higher rate of disciplinary issues - not knowing how SRO's are assigned to schools in the first place, is this a problem of the chicken coming before the egg where the SRO's were placed in schools because of their disciplinary needs?


EDIT: Embed changed to hyperlink because minors are shown in the video.

[Oniya]

I've seen studies (and will have to look them up) that excessive 'police presence' in schools adds to the sense of fear and anxiety - and kids get enough of that going into a math exam .  *grabs cane* Back in my day, the school 'security officer' was more interested in people breaking into lockers or sneaking off to McDonalds (across a 4-lane divided road) for lunch. 

[Humble Scribe]

You have armed police in your schools?

Jesus.

[Iniquitous]

You have armed police in your schools?

Jesus.

Yes. They are called School Resource Officers.  I know in the state I live in they are deputies with the Sheriff's Department. I am not sure what kind of officers other states use.

[Oniya]

They call them 'school resource officers' here in PA as well.  I recall they were in the standard greyish police uniform when Little Oni was attending.

[TheGlyphstone]

I only vaguely remember the existence of the school officer when I was in HS. I know he was on the regular force though, all 3 of them or something, and was basically a part time assignment.

[Bezukhov]

I've seen studies (and will have to look them up) that excessive 'police presence' in schools adds to the sense of fear and anxiety - and kids get enough of that going into a math exam .  *grabs cane* Back in my day, the school 'security officer' was more interested in people breaking into lockers or sneaking off to McDonalds (across a 4-lane divided road) for lunch.

I wonder if that doesn't apply to other places, too. I mean, I remember the nervousness seeing heavily-armed military patrolling the metro stations gave me when I used to live in Paris. Or the other day, when I got pulled over for what I believed was a routine control and the police told me to walk out of the car and keep my hands in sight. It turned out I got mistaken for someone else, but still...

[Oniya]

I wonder if that doesn't apply to other places, too. I mean, I remember the nervousness seeing heavily-armed military patrolling the metro stations gave me when I used to live in Paris. Or the other day, when I got pulled over for what I believed was a routine control and the police told me to walk out of the car and keep my hands in sight. It turned out I got mistaken for someone else, but still...

Oh, absolutely!  Now imagine that you're 10-12 years old (the Uvalde shooting was at an elementary school), and these armed dudes tower over you.  You're supposed to be focusing on pre-algebra and remembering your history assignment.

[TheGlyphstone]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXf04bhcjbg

Tonight, John takes his aim at Big Tech - not for the reasons conservatives think are important, but for their monopolistic control over crucial portions of our modern society and the anti-competitive tactics they use to maintain that dominance.

Google: Always Watching. Seriously, I've had ads tailored to me based on the content of private emails. Why is that not an issue?

[LostInTheMist]

This episode was a bit weaker for me. For one thing, there wasn't a trademark Jon Oliver tirade, but also he did a lot of explaining the problem, but didn't really give us a solution. And the simple fact is... I'm going to keep buying from Amazon anyway. I mean, I try to buy local as much as possible. I'll buy books from Powell's books up in Portland, if I know a few weeks in advance what books I'm going to want, and I buy my groceries locally, but there are things that I can get off of amazon that I just can't get around here or that I can use to avoid going to stores. (I know my measurements and brands that I like, what colors I own and what colors match, and I buy my clothes off of Amazon, because I HATE going clothes shopping.)

For Apple, I use an apple computer (I have a desktop and a laptop, both apple.) I use a Google phone however, because most of my life is contained on Chrome, and the Chrome integration on the Pixel is much smoother than on the Apple.

I am aware of what Google does with searches now, and when I'm searching for something specific, it's annoying to have to scroll through half a page trying to answer what I'm not asking. But I'm also ABLE TO FIND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR though Google.

The tech giants are giants because they earned their spot. Are they bad for small competitors? Sure. Should we find a way to curtail their power to look into our lives? Sure.

But it's a capitalist world out there. There's a reason they're so big and so powerful. It's because they were first, and best at what they do. Naturally, if Google had to fold today, and shut down their search engine, we'd all find different search engines, and they'd have to innovate to do things Google can't do, and that would be good. If Amazon shut down, society wouldn't collapse; we'd just all have to use a bunch of different retailers, etc.

Point is, I think there are bigger fish to fry at the moment (environmental, political) than whether or not I get tailored ads online, and whether or not I buy from Amazon. (Who were able to deliver my replacement headset for my job in ONE day, thus letting me avoid missing multiple days of work.)

[TheGlyphstone]

I'd argue that monopolies in this sense are anti-capitalist in that they stifle competition and prevent innovation - they became giants because they got there first, but they stay giants by crushing any potential upstart competitors in their infancy rather than simply being better than said competitors. But you're still sadly right that there isn't any practical solution to the problem - what it would take would be forcible trust-busting, in the vein of Theodore Roosevelt breaking up Standard Oil in the early 1900's, and we're a century gone past having the political will and temperament to go after a zillion-dollar corporation like that.



But now we have a new topic: Rental housing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4qmDnYli2E

This one does hit harder to home for me than usual, because I live in rental housing currently, and may shortly be moving to another state where I'll have to find rental housing to live in too. So rents going up is definitely a concern I have.

[Oniya]

Jiminy fucking Christ this hits home.  I started writing an AITA post about my current rental situation and wanting to get out of it.  (I'm fairly sure I'm NTA, but I am also insecure in such things.  I blame my mother's guilt-tripping.)  It's a full page in my word processor, and then some.

Mind you, finding a new rental is going to be a different bunch of stress entirely, but the current place is 'less house and more problems' for just about what we were paying for mortgage back in Ohio (until Mr. Oniya lost his job and we got foreclosed on.)

[GloomCookie]

Quick TL;DR for our peeps in a hurry:

John Oliver goes over the major points of how rent is designed to fuck over people who are poor and offers a few simple solutions:
Rent stabilization, protect housing choice voucher recipients, seal eviction records, and right to counsel in housing courts.



Something I want to point out is that some of the issue on cheaper housing and private landlords is because in the US, single homes often get what's called “homestead credit”, meaning your primary home is given better tax rates, but second homes (and yes, that means homes intended to rent out) cost more, which adds to costs. In addition, some of the cities with the worst availability of rent must deal with increasingly complicated building codes, which costs more and more money. Every time the codes get more difficult to implement, it costs more, and so the only way to afford it is to have more money to soak those costs. That's why you see a fucking ton of Walmarts and Targets because they, no joke, look at a $1 million cost to their store for something and shrugging their shoulders because they'll make it back in less than a month, while a small business looks at the additional costs and tries to cut corners where they can.

Around here there's a ton of people moving in due to Walmart's Home Office soaking up talent from around the country, and that's making prices go bananas. I had a rental that cost me $800/month and that was at the edge of civilization. It took me a 30 minute drive just to get into the heart of one city and then I had to get across that city to the next to get to work. Also, that place was sketch. I can't begin to imagine how that place has spiked in price.

I'm fortunate that I have a good deal currently as a caretaker for this home, but I'm hoping to buy in a few years. Even making as much as I do, I'm probably going to need to buy a house far and away from where I currently live and work, and even then I can't go too far in some directions or the cost will go up again because I'm either too close to the lake, too close to another major  town, too close to this other town, etc.

I just want a fuckin house, not a mansion!

Also, fuck that guy Matthew Chase. Cursing people for not knowing their legal protection? Fuck you, asshole! There's a reason that Miranda v. Arizona demanded that cops read you your rights prior to being interrogated, because most people are not lawyers. Most people don't have any idea what their legal protection in certain circumstances are.

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't give a shit about certain laws until they directly affect me. What I do know is that even then, the law is so insanely complicated, so massively geared towards lawyers who are paid to fight among each other, that there's no way the average person can ever hope to learn it and maintain a normal 9 to 5 job. Even so, if I ever got involved in the rental business, something I would do is make sure every single one of my tenants when they sign gets a pamphlet of their rights as renters. They have the legal right to know and it also means that since I'd be the one typing it up, that I myself am aware of what their rights are.

So yeah, fuck people like Matthew Chase. He gives off vibes of “Fuck you I got mine” and I hate people like that.

[TheGlyphstone]

So John is off this weekend and next weekend, thought he'll probably do another of his web exclusives.

But I did forget to post last week's episode anyways, regarding the increasingly dire water crisis afflicting the western/southwestern U.S.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtxew5XUVbQ

On-the-ground input from anyone who lives in that area would be of great value here.