Republicans warned to steer clear of the ‘abolish slavery’ slogan

Republicans need to drop the “abolish slavery” political slogan if they have hope of winning back the majority in Congress, a center-left think tank is warning.

Third Way, in a memo to Republicans shared first with NBCNews, warned Republicans against talking in extreme terms in the wake of the highly charged days following the execution of John Brown.

“The impulse is emotional. The slogan is simple. But politically, it is lethal,” a memo written by Sarah Pierce and Lanae Erickson, leaders in social policy for Third Way. “Every call to abolish slavery risks squandering one of the clearest opportunities in years to secure meaningful reform of agricultural labor — while handing Democrats exactly the fight they want.”

If that’s your own photo, a match would’ve been handy in that moment…

Edit: ah it’s indoors. Would be worth paying for 1 paper to burn a whole outdoor box’s worth, though

We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution. But I can, I believe, express the confident hope that the youth which is working so splendidly in the socialist movement of Switzerland, and of the whole world, will be fortunate enough not only to fight, but also to win, in the coming proletarian revolution.

- Vladimir Lenin, January 22nd, 1917

The revolution will not be televised.

- Gil Scott-Heron

How does it keep getting worse and worse? Amazing

B-but that would be falsifying the lore!

But honestly I’ve always felt this bit was kinda mean-spirited, right from the jump, so in all seriousness, I kinda don’t like the idea of retroactively vindicating the old sub for its frankly cruel irony-poisoned reaction to the original post.

these little guys

For your sake, I hope this is wrong, and that it ought to be “these little ladies” or some such.

The guy didn’t actually want to fuck the bunny cop, that’s why it’s not as good as you want it to be. This is actually only the main post the guy made, he went on to crash out in multiple additional threads about it. By the end people were unironically telling him that it was a joke and he should leave because the whole thing was clearly causing him a lot of emotional distress, but it didn’t really seem to take.

Only part of the solo? I can see why this belongs in c/badposting

Oh my God just let the kid enjoy the Disney movie ffs, he didn’t actually want to fuck the bunny cop, that was just a joke people made

(Sorry, I couldn’t help it)

What the actual fuck is that facial expression supposed to be?

I would argue that the reduction in socially necessary labor time is the driving force behind the way these numbers end up working. Your counterexample is unlikely because the firms that work on mechanization of production are aware of the market forces acting on their clients.

The real hole in my scenario is the fact that you could spend your $900 on nine more buildings and hire another 36 workers, keeping the rate of profit at 6%. But this is where socially necessary labor time does come into play: the fact that automation exists to reduce the socially necessary labor time means that prices can potentially fall, if competitors who do automate join the market, meaning any participant is forced to automate or eventually fold.

But even in close-to-monopolized markets, we still see the TRPF applying; the way capitalists have been finding new ways to escape the TRPF is by cannibalizing older industries (think Uber “disrupting” the taxi market), or by some form of enshittification or other cost reduction at existing firms (for example, my own employer has been both doing layoffs and reducing benefits to improve its margins recently, much to my chagrin). The reason for this is that automation technologies are typically far more expensive than in my example, in which an automation technology that cuts labor costs by fully 75% while simultaneously boosting production fivefold, aka a 20-fold productivity increase, costs a mere 150 days’ profit, and only nine times as much as the original investment; this is already unrealistic, so your suggestion that there might be something even better is a bit silly, given that, again, firms doing the automation know how much their efforts are worth. So, the rate of profit still tends to fall even in oligopolized markets that don’t face major price pressures from competitors.

The Fed is a bank. You joined the fedS, plural

Per worker

This is actually going deeper than is necessary. Suppose you have a business that requires spending $100 to buy a building in which workers can labor, such that you can hire 4 workers to produce 1 widget each per day at a pay rate of $1/day, with materials costs of $0.50/widget, and you can sell each widget for $3. Your rate of profit (and the rate part is key, as we’ll see in a moment) is 6% per day, since you earn $6 profit on an initial capital investment of $100.

Now, suppose you get a chance to build some robots within that building that will massively reduce labor costs: for another $900, you can set up your building so that it produces 20 widgets per day and only requires one worker. You’re now spending only $1 + (20*$0.50)=$11 per day, and raking in $60, for a profit of $49/day, much more than before. But your rate of profit is 4.9% on your $1000 investment, a reduction from the previous 6%. The extra step of prices going down according to the reduction in socially necessary labor time (which may not actually happen under the monopoly conditions toward which capitalism tends) is not necessary for the rate of profit to fall.

The article quotes a lady from a “sex worker support group” that turns out to be a SWERF organization:

L’Amicale du Nid firmly supports the belief that prostitution is intrinsically incompatible with human dignity and equality between men and women; the human body cannot be construed as an object or piece of merchandise. It refuses to liken it to a profession and wishes to build its action along consistent abolitionist lines, advocating for the ban of any form of sexual intercourse for payment

It goes on about non-penalisation of sex workers but last I checked, a total ban wasn’t what actual sex workers wanted.

I don’t know, this just might be a broken-clock kind of thing. Probably for the worst possible reasons, though, if I had to guess.

Exif metadata? What’s that?

It’s 2x2. That’s length and width; depth is not mentioned (it is mentioned when referring to the CIA box), and it says they are unable to sit down, not unable to stand. It also says their feet are attached to the ground in the current cage at issue, again implying that the prisoner is being forced to stand for a long period of time.

The article is confusing and poorly written, though; the CIA box is mentioned again, after the quote about the one at this immigration site. This later mention includes a reference to being unable to stand (but also refers to being “barely able to sit,” thus distinguishing this as the CIA box and not the immigration one, in which we’re told sitting is not possible).

Edit: we don’t have any photos of this thing, and at no point is depth mentioned in the Amnesty International source report, but page 38 of the PDF linked below has an illustration of it. Note that the illustration does not depict a box with any dimensions matching 2 feet, so it’s unclear how accurate this illustration actually is, nor does the artist’s name appear in the report beyond copyright notes for the various images.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/AMR5105112025ENGLISH.pdf

The CIA one was worse IMO, because it was 21 inches by 30 inches by 30 inches. You can at least stand up in the cage at issue here. Less confinement seems better than lack of exposure to me, though that is admittedly a subjective opinion.

That said, it’s really fucked up to have to make fine-grained judgements about the relative level of atrocity being perpetrated. Absolutely irredeemable country, this.

To the tune of the Mickey Mouse Club song:

B O U

R G E

O I S I E

Bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie,

They’re the ones who have to die

So we can all live free!

Bourgeoisie, bourgeoisie,

B O U!

R G E!

O I S I E!

I must not fedpost

I must not fedpost

I must not fedpost

I MUST NOT FEDPOST