I'll trade you the communal toothbrush for this joke.

The wonderful thing about patriarchy is that it circles back around and slaps men too.

Why not take it a step further and be fully serious?

I would like to see a new set of laws where if there are any employees at an organization who aren't earning a living wage with full benefits (not PTO or that 1 week vacation bullshit, paid sick leave and 5+ weeks of paid vacation per year, minimum), and if employees are regularly (more than 1 week out of a year) required to work more than 40 hours in a week, a timer starts.

They have 1 week to rectify the situation or the owners and entire executive team are given a prison sentence for 30 years and all of their assets are seized. No outside amenities or special privileges allowed in prison. Mandatory reeducation classes with public written and oral presentation assignments where the person must describe what they did that was wrong, why it was wrong, how their actions negatively affected others, and what actions they've taken to right their wrongs and learn to be better since their violation. When released, they are permanently barred from owning any portion of a private company or acting in a paid supervisory role for 20 years unless granted this right by unanimous vote by all of those they will supervise, subject to a new vote at the workers' discretion.

Supervisor pay is tacked to no more than 1.5x that of their lowest paid worker. Executives cannot receive stock options as any form of compensation. If a private company is found in violation, it and all of its assets are equally distributed, becoming the collective property of the employees unless they wave this right, in which case it becomes property of the state and can never be sold to a private party again. The law applies to all organizations where any participant is paid. In the case of the state, the rules for the executive team apply to the head of state and their cabinet.

Have fun fucking around with those laws, but I'm sure I could come up with more as they search for loopholes. For instance, those found to be subverting the system are subject to a 50 year sentence instead of 30.

I'd accept a socialist society as an alternative. I'm sure the workers could come up with laws they find appropriate in that case. My hope would be that mine would be oppressive enough toward the ruling class to make them desire the reprieve of socialism, the sadistic, parasitic fucks. This is more than they deserve.

...no one is above the law, no one is above the reach of US sanctions

A hypocritical statement if there ever was one since US sanctions can be considered a violation of international laws. I'm sure the only reason they don't impose them from the UNSC is because they could (and likely would) be vetoed by other members (and because the US is imposing sanctions on UNSC members.

The legality of economic sanctions is contested, with debates varying based on the scope of the sanctions, their goals, their effects, the authorities under which they are imposed, and many other factors.

One school of thought holds that it is only the United Nations Security Council that can legally impose sanctions (with that power derived from Chapter VII of the UN Charter). Unilateral sanctions, or multilateral sanctions not endorsed by the UNSC, in contrast, violate the principle of state sovereignty and undermine the international rule of law. According to former UN Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy, “the resort by a major power of its dominant position in the international financial arena against its own allies to cause economic hardship to the economy of sovereign States is contrary to international law, and inevitably undermines the human rights of their citizens.”

Economic sanctions imposed unilaterally by the US may also violate the Charter of the Organization of American States, to which the US is a party. Articles 19 and 20 of the Charter state:

"No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State. The foregoing principle prohibits not only armed force but also any other form of interference or attempted threat against the personality of the State or against its political, economic, and cultural elements. … No State may use or encourage the use of coercive measures of an economic or political character in order to force the sovereign will of another State and obtain from it advantages of any kind."

Other arguments against the legality of economic sanctions are based on their impacts. Given the significant harm to civilian populations, many economic sanctions can be said to violate international human rights law and treaty obligations, such as the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action and several UN Human Rights Council Resolutions. Further, as described by Jeffrey Sachs and CEPR’s Mark Weisbrot, “both the Hague and Geneva Conventions, to which the US is a signatory, prohibit collective punishment of civilians. Although these treaties apply only during wartime, UN human rights experts have argued that it does not make sense that civilians should only have this protection during situations of armed conflict.”

On the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Geneva Conventions, in 2024, 40 legal groups and 200 individual lawyers, including top scholars, sent a letter to President Biden calling on the US to end the use of broad unilateral sanctions, which they consider to violate international law, and amount to “collective punishment.”

To the extent that particular sanctions violate international law, they erode international legal norms and undermine aspirations toward a rules-based international order.

Many US sanctions rest on shaky foundations under domestic law as well. Most are imposed under the IEEPA, which requires declaration of a national emergency regarding an “unusual and extraordinary threat … to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.” In many cases, such a claim — that, for example, the political situations in Venezuela or Zimbabwe somehow constitute an “extraordinary threat” to US national security — has little to no basis.

US rules-based international order is when you can pick and choose which laws apply to your own actions.

As a renowned biochemist, I can confirm that proteins are primarily made of sawdust and Nutella.

The world isn't static and losses can be won again.

Idk if it's just my name and pfp, but I've had liberals assume I was Chinese because I didn't put up with their casual racism. They ended up calling me slurs based on these interactions.

It's like they have no idea what it's like interacting with anyone who isn't a white cis man and expect that racism and misogyny are acceptable if they can loosely define them as differences in political ideology. Much like the way they started talking about Russians after the SMO in Ukraine began.

They have no idea what it's like outside their bubble and then project accusations of echo chambers on everyone around them.

I do this to my boss and I think it annoys him as well.

I share something cool I observed in the lab "So how does this relate to the project goals?" "It doesn't! I just thought it was cool and wanted to share."

I think we have more pressing issues in certain airplanes at the moment, but that's a good point.

Essentially using the pretense of electoralism in order to actually strengthen the illegal party apparatus.

I thought that came across in my original comment?

My comments are pretty lazy and short here, so they won't capture additional nuance, but he's also saying (in the piece I linked) there are other benefits to participating in bourgeois elections that can help strengthen the party by helping fence-riders or those that haven't been exposed to socialist rhetoric be convinced to join the party. This is in addition to other subversive actions.

If your sole political effort is participation in elections, that's obviously endorsement of the existing system. Just in case, I was also not the person advocating for a vote for Democrats.

Communism is when I have to work and they don't! Wait...no, that's capitalism.

The influence of private capital and capitalistic exploitation is just as prevalent for scientists working in public institutions as it is for those in private ones. This doesn't just affect your work via the sources of funding and the ever-present risk of losing them, but it even tends to affect the direction of your scientific inquiries and stifles the types of data that are published and the types of papers that are written by such scientists.

As much as I wish it weren't so, capitalism has sullied the scientific world just as much as any other part of our society.