Fictitious Reality

omnipotentseal:

wilwheaton:

adambozarth:

Why Millennials aren’t buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy

HAHA NO MONAY!!!!!

Maybe our generation aren’t buying houses and cars because EVERYTHING IS SO FUCKED

You want us to actually talk to bank people and get home loans and auto loans? They are still fucking us! Any time I go into a bank, I feel disgusted. You want me to do MORE business with the who want to charge me 5 dollars for every single swipe of my debit card? Get fucked!

You think I’m gonna buy a car? A car? Where am I gonna get the money for a car and the insurance and the insurance against the insurance company if God forbid they decide to do the same things they did to the poor Fisher family and countless others? And fucking GAS? Are you crazy? The planet is dying, and you want me to buy gas at $FUCK.YOU/gallon?

In the past 5 years since the economy fell apart, we’ve been adapting. We’ve been listening to countless horror stories of those who made the risk. Those who saved and did it right, and still ended up with an inferior product with inferior service that RUINS YOUR LIFE. It’s not like ordering a pizza, and instead of sausage, you get cheese. It’s like ordering a pizza and then your credit is ruined and you are flat broke. The pains of acquisition aren’t worth it if it can all be taken away like a bureaucratic fart in the bathtub. It would be smarter to save our money for tickets to god-damn Mars than to invest in these hideous, broken systems.

We aren’t cheap. We fucking hate doing business with you people. 

All these pieces on Millennials are so mired in confusion since we don’t even trust journalists any more. The news, our entire lives, has been scary. Think about being 8 and processing the deaths of abortion doctors or homegrown terrorism. Now try to process the news when every asshole on camera just lies. The news hasn’t had an ounce of truth in it for 10 years. Can you not understand how much we don’t trust anyone who is older than us? How can you trust anybody when the president and vice-president of the United States lied to the Secretary of State so they could START THE WRONG WAR!

Fucking seriously.

Also, that graphic? Is that what you think we all look like? Are you fucking kidding me, Atlantic?

I hope they never find out how to market to us. I hope we splinter so much that companies like Ford will have to make a decent product instead of asking the Vomit Spouts that created Jersey Shore how to create MORE fantasies about how great THINGS will make your life. We don’t attach to things because things break. We saw everything break.

But, that’s just me.

Hope for the future. I have it.

Well said, good sir!

Eeeeeexactly. It isn’t that we don’t want them, we are being practical; all the wanting in the world won’t give us $250,000 (or a loan for $250,000) for a medium-sized, old, and probably run down house (or the +$300,000 for a new house. ugh.). Neither is it all that useful when it comes to getting that new car. A decent number of us have cars—they’re just used. Probably from someone in our family or friends or something and was almost definitely made before 2005. If there was a way to turn our college degrees into gold that we could trade for nice cars and new houses, do you really think we’d say NO? As it is, debt is already a monster on our shoulders. Why would we ask for more if we’re still working through our school loans?

At least we have a chance at getting a smart phone with a data package. 

stfuconservatives:

other-stuff:

Afghanistan 90 days
Algeria 14 weeks
Angola 90 days
Argentina 90 days
Australia None ETA: No longer true - as of 1/1/2011, you get 18 weeks government-funded paid leave. -added by STFUConservatives
Austria 16 weeks
Bahamas, The 8 weeks
Bahrain 45 days
Bangladesh 12 weeks
Barbados 12 weeks
Belarus 126 days
Belgium 15 weeks
Belize 12 weeks
Benin 14 weeks
Bolivia 60 days
Botswana 12 weeks
Brazil 120 days
Bulgaria 120-180 days
Burkina Faso 14 weeks
Burma 12 weeks
Burundi 12 weeks
Cambodia 90 days
Cameroon 14 weeks
Canada 55% up to $413/week for 50 weeks (15 weeks maternity + 35 weeks parental leave shared with father)
Central African Republic 14 weeks
Chad 14 weeks
Chile 18 weeks
China 90 days
Colombia 12 weeks
Comoros 14 weeks
Congo, Democratic Republic of the 14 weeks
Costa Rica 4 months
Cuba 18 weeks
Cyprus 16 weeks
Côte d’Ivoire 14 weeks
Denmark 18 weeks
Djibouti 14 weeks
Dominica 12 weeks
Dominican Republic 12 weeks
Ecuador 12 weeks
Egypt 50 days
El Salvador 12 weeks
Equatorial Guinea 12 weeks
Estonia 455 calendar days (100%)
Ethiopia 90 days
Fiji 84 days
Finland 105 days
France 16 weeks (100%) rising to 26 weeks (100%) for third child
Gabon 14 weeks
Gambia, The 12 weeks
Germany 14 weeks (100%) 6 before birth
Ghana 12 weeks
Greece 16 weeks
Grenada 3 months
Guatemala 12 weeks
Guinea 14 weeks
Guinea-Bissau 60 days
Guyana 13 weeks
Haiti 12 weeks
Honduras 10 weeks
Hungary 24 weeks
Iceland 90 days 80% up to a ceiling of Íkr480,000 (€5,300, $6,700) monthly (minimum monthly payment Íkr 91,200 (€1000, $1,275) + 90 days to be shared between the parents
India 135 days (Central Government) 90 days or 12 weeks in State Governments
Indonesia 3 months
Iran 90 days
Iraq 62 days
Ireland 22 weeks (26 weeks from March 2007)
Israel 12 weeks
Italy 22 weeks (5 months) (80%) 2 before birth
Jamaica 12 weeks
Japan 14 weeks
Jordan 10 weeks
Kenya 2 months
Korea, South 60 days
Kuwait 70 days
Laos 90 days
Lebanon 40 days
Libya 50 days
Liechtenstein 8 weeks
Luxembourg 16 weeks
Madagascar 14 weeks
Malaysia 60 days
Mali 14 weeks
Malta 13 weeks
Mauritania 14 weeks
Mauritius 12 weeks
Mexico 12 weeks
Mongolia 101 days
Morocco 12 weeks
Mozambique 60 days
Namibia 12 weeks
Nepal 52 days
Netherlands 16 weeks
New Zealand 14 weeks
Nicaragua 12 weeks
Niger 14 weeks
Nigeria 12 weeks
Norway 54 weeks (12.5 months) (80%) or 44 weeks (10 months) (100%) - mother must take at least 3 weeks immediately before birth and 6 weeks immediately after birth, father must take at least 6 weeks - the rest can be shared between mother and father.
Pakistan 12 weeks
Panama 14 weeks
Paraguay 12 weeks
Peru 90 days
Philippines 60 days
Poland 16-18 weeks
Portugal 120 days
Qatar 40-60 days
Romania 112 days
Russia 140 days
Rwanda 12 weeks
Saint Lucia 13 weeks
Saudi Arabia 10 weeks
Senegal 14 weeks
Seychelles 14 weeks
Singapore 12 weeks
Solomon Islands 12 weeks
Somalia 14 weeks
South Africa 12 weeks
Spain 16 weeks
Sri Lanka 12 weeks
Sudan 8 weeks
Sweden 480 days (16 months) (80% up to a ceiling the first 390 days, 90 days at flat rate) - shared with father (minimum 60 days)
Switzerland 16 weeks (100%), 8 weeks mandatory
Syria 75 days
Tanzania 12 weeks
Thailand 90 days
Togo 14 weeks
Tunisia 30 days
Turkey 12 weeks
Uganda 4 weeks
Ukraine 126 days
United Arab Emirates 45 days
United Kingdom 6 weeks (90%) 20 weeks at a fixed amount (as of March 2006 = £108.85)
United States None 
Uruguay 12 weeks
Venezuela 18 weeks
Vietnam 4-6 months
Yemen 60 days
Zambia 12 weeks
Zimbabwe 90 days

The US and Australia with the outstanding 0 days or weeks of mandated paid maternity leave.

America and Australia are the only countries on the list without mandated paid maternity leave.* (I notice North Korea isn’t on there — we probably don’t have access to that information given that it’s North Korea and everything. Anyone know?)

In America, we have the PDL and the FMLA.

PDL. Pregnancy Disability Leave (PDL) which entitles you up to four months of unpaid, job-protected leave when disabled by pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition.

FMLA.  Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) if you have been employed with the Company for at least one year, provides up to 12 weeks job protected leave.

So you get a few unpaid months off if you gave birth, and they can’t legally hire someone to replace you. But that’s about it. Shameful, America.

-Jess

ETA: Australia has a new legal policy where you get 18 paid weeks’ leave. So America is alone on this one.

smaddox:

ianishollywood:

socialistscum:

pieceinthepuzzlehumanity:

Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Haslem has signed the ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’ bill into law. Earlier this year, the Tennessee Republican controlled legislature overwhelmingly passed the bill, passing the House 68-23 and the Senate 28-1. The governor signed the bill before the Mother’s Day weekend.

The law is so vague that it could define kissing and holding hands as ‘gateways to sexual activity’ and make it difficult for sex education teachers to address such activity in class. The law also may prevent sex education teachers from discussing contraception.

The new law allows teachers who do encourage the use of contraception to promote safe sex to be punished, which could scare teachers from even mentioning contraception at all, meaning sex education courses would consist of just abstinence-only programs, which are proven to not work in preventing teen pregnancy.

The law also levies a fine of up to $500 to guest speakers who promote safe sex or “gateway sexual activity.” So if a speaker from Planned Parenthood or another organization visits the sex education class to speak, talking about anything that isn’t abstinence-only would be punished. What this amounts to is the punishing of free speech and it’s the Republicans who passed it.

[Read More]

I want to make out in his office.

I hate living here sometimes.

Click here to read the text of the bill, HB3621. 

This bill defines “family life education” as an abstinence-centered sex education program that builds a foundation of knowledge and skills relating to character development, human development, decision-making, abstinence, contraception and disease prevention. This bill prohibits an LEA from utilizing the services of any individual or organization to assist in teaching family life if that individual or organization endorses student non-abstinence as an appropriate or acceptable behavior, or if that individual or organization promotes gateway sexual activity.

This bill requires that a family life education curriculum, among other things and to the extent that the topic and the manner of communication are age-appropriate: 

(1) Exclusively and emphatically promote sexual risk avoidance through abstinence, regardless of a student’s current or prior sexual experience; 
(2) Encourage sexual health by helping students understand how sexual activity affects the whole person including the physical, social, emotional, psychological, economic and educational consequences of non-marital sexual activity; 
(3) Provide factually and medically-accurate information;
(4) Encourage students to communicate with a parent, guardian, or other trusted adult about sex or other risk behaviors;
(5) Address the benefits of raising children within the context of a marital relationship and the unique challenges that single teen parents encounter in relation to educational, psychological, physical, social, legal, and financial factors; 
(6) Discuss the interrelationship between teen sexual activity and exposure to other risk behaviors such as smoking, underage drinking, drug use, criminal activity, dating violence, and sexual aggression; and
(7) Educate students on the age of consent, puberty, pregnancy, childbirth, sexually transmitted diseases, and the financial and emotional responsibility of raising a child.

Instruction of the family life education curriculum may not: 

(1) Promote any gateway sexual activity or health message that encourages students to experiment with non-coital sexual activity; 
(2) Provide or distribute materials on school grounds that condone, encourage or promote student sexual activity among unmarried students;
(3) Display or conduct demonstrations with devices manufactured specifically for sexual stimulation; or
(4) Distribute contraception on school property; provided, however, medically-accurate information about contraception and condoms may be provided so long as it is presented in a manner consistent with the provisions described above and clearly informs students that while such methods may reduce the risk of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases or becoming pregnant, only abstinence removes all risk.

At least there’s this: 

This bill instead requires that prior to adopting a family life education curriculum that was developed either by the LEA or the department [of education], the LEA must conduct at least one public hearing, at which time the program would be explained to members of the public and the public would have the opportunity to speak and express their concerns. 

If you live in TN, especially if you have kids who are in or will be in the public school system, I strongly encourage you to pay attention. to attend the public hearings on this issue and make it known that not all Tennesseans are so blinded by religion as to enact a law based on such ignorance. It blatantly attempts to teach our children to be ashamed of their bodies and their desires while disallowing any collaboration between schools and Planned Parenthood. This is some bullshit on so many levels, so I’m asking you to please, speak the fuck up, to your principals, teachers, school boards, state legislators, friends, neighbors, everybody. 

*speechless*

fishingboatproceeds:

The next debt crisis.

(Source: think-progress)

feminishblog:

Do not attempt to change the world, lest the world change you. Aim to change aspects of it, people in it… and you will begin to see that this world is in fact changing too.

That’s how I feel. And I finally put words to it today…