Done

Mineral oil is a petroleum distillate, a byproduct of fossil fuel production. I’m not saying it’s necessarily unsafe or unethical to use, but calling it “all natural” is a bit of a reach.

Same as when one of the big name hosting companies takes a site down. You hope it’s archived, and if it was important enough to you, hopefully you saved it to your personal server.

What you’re describing is a major benefit of federation. Any site can be taken down. But when a federated server goes down it’s because the site owner exercised their control over their own data. If Google or Amazon takes a site down, you lose your data, but they keep copies to use however they want.

To a capitalist, there is no good shoplifting. Nobody’s going to check the expiration dates on what you stole before arresting you. You took stuff off their shelves that they could have sold - come on, do you really think stores pull expired product the day it expires? - and that makes you the bad guy.

Conversely, to an anarchist, there is no bad shoplifting. Why should it matter if the store owner could make a profit off the item or not? If you’re willing to steal from the owner you’ve already decided you don’t care about his profits 😆

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I completely agree that second hand goods and clothing are a vital part of anything punk. Especially if there’s a particular brand or model that’s routinely found secondhand in good condition, due to its durability or whatever - that’s the sort of information we should share with one another.

I wouldn’t want to see too harsh a sourcing requirement for secondhand goods, even. It’s not like you can prove a statement like “I see these at yard sales all the time” even if you do. And even posts about things that are rare and difficult to find are valuable posts, because they let people know “hey, if you see this at a yard sale, you should grab it”.

Maybe require that every post has a sourcing statement - “this is where I got X” - and require that either the item is still sold or you acquired it secondhand recently indicating the item is currently available secondhand. That will disallow the “I inherited this refrigerator fifty years ago, they don’t build them like this anymore, I refill it with bootleg Mexico CFCs and it runs like a dream” kind of posts and still allow for secondhand and vintage stuff.

No, you got the context right.

But look at what you’re writing.

You have enough financial security that you can buy from “ethical” stores even if they’re more expensive than other options.

You have reliable enough transportation that you can get to “ethical” stores even if they aren’t within walking distance or on public transit lines.

You have the time, and energy, and information resources, to identify what stores meet your ethical code and what don’t.

That’s all privilege. You realize that’s all privilege, right?

And if you’re going to look down at people who shop at businesses whose ethics they disagree with, I say, with kindness but very sincerely, check your privilege.

(And then there’s the less important point of relative privilege, and how someone desperate enough to steal food needs that food more than the store owner needs money for the food, no matter how good a person the store owner is, because to each according to their needs, right?)

That’s the point of the 15 minute city - that is, a city where everything its people need is within a 15 minute walk. People travel less and when they travel they walk or bike. The alternative, in other words, is better city design.

Instant Pots aren’t a fad anymore, either, so you can probably pick one up used cheap or on a buy nothing group.

I don’t use my instant pot for rice because a saucepan is simpler and easier to clean, but I’m happy with it and I’m sure it would work just fine for rice.

Where I live people hop the gates all the time. Mostly unhoused people or groups of teenage kids. The rules are rarely enforced because transit cops aren’t posted at stations all the time and station staff isn’t paid enough to risk an ass kicking.

If something hurts other people, you shouldn’t do it because it’s immoral, whether it’s legal or not.

You, as a person, have a responsibility to decide whether an act is moral or immoral and act accordingly, regardless of what other people decided about it in the past.

Obeying the law because you assume the people who made the law had a good reason abrogates your own responsibility for your actions.

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He probably did it with a uniform on so nobody dared stop him.

Police are America’s largest and most violent gang.

This quote has been going around for a while:

“Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don’t appreciate or understand.”

I don’t see the moral difference between stealing baby formula to feed your baby and stealing baby formula to sell for rent. Capitalism fucking sucks and people do what they have to do.

And for all y’all saying "they’re probably just stealing for drug money or to buy designer clothes or (insert bad reason here) - that’s your bias speaking. You think the worst of shoplifters because you want to think the worst of shoplifters. You don’t know why someone is stealing. You don’t know what their life is like or what they need.

Do you know for a fact someone isn’t stealing to feed themselves or their kids? No? Then give your fellow man the benefit of the fucking doubt. Keep your mouth shut and your hands off.

And frankly, if someone develops an addiction because they use illegal drugs to mitigate the symptoms of their untreated mental illness or to numb the pain of being homeless in a capitalist society, and they steal to feed that addiction, who the hell are you to judge them? Everyone has a right to medical care, which means addicts have a right to medical care to treat their addiction, which is a hell of a lot more valuable than a few hundred dollars in baby formula, and society has stolen that right from them, so why shouldn’t they steal a little of their own back?

Even the least excusable shoplifting has a reason for it. And it is, quite frankly, a victimless crime, because corporations aren’t people. And I don’t give a shit if somebody in upper management loses his Christmas bonus over shrinkage. Wage theft by corporate employers steals three times as much as all other forms of larceny and theft in the US combined. So think about who the real thieves are before you go judging people.

If you’re using Starbucks as an example of a “good corporation” your neoliberalism is terminal and reading “Steal This Book” would probably give you several heart attacks.

You spelled “pay bribes and walk free” wrong. Tate set up shop in one of the most corrupt countries in the world for a reason.

100%.

You can get around paywalls trivially by going to archive.org and plugging the link into their search bar.

I’m not going to do it for you because it’s an Internet survival skill everyone should learn 😆

Looks like it was 2018:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/chicago-bait-truck.html