Companies with TDS just love spreading their contageous mind virus.  Only a few days before their tariff rant, they posted this:

QuoteI just came across a document that nicely ties things together: Survive the Tyrant: An RPG-style guide to living under an oppressive regime. Using the terminology and tropes of roleplaying, it explains the challenges of living in, and resisting, an authoritarian regime. There are character classes (Agitator, Community Leader, Transport and Sanctuary specialists) and foes (Informants, Corrupt Bureaucrats, Quislings). Under "Skill and Ability Checks" are suggestions for staying safe, out of custody, and healthy. Treasure is defined as the community ties and activities (including creative pursuits and playing RPGs . . .) that help you stay sane and brave. Mind you, this isn't a game system! It's a lesson plan and an action plan. And I imagine a lot of people would find it relevant.

For Reasons.

They must think this is clever.
Keep in mind they punish people who talk politics on their forums.
Keep in mind also that they're unaware of what "oppressive" or "regime" really mean, or that after four years we just liberated ourselves from one.  We could have used this post in 2021.

And just like that, the stock market stabilized and a new leftist talking point emerged...

Quote from: Cathode Ray on April 08, 2025, 07:23:05 PMCompanies with TDS just love spreading their contageous mind virus.  Only a few days before their tariff rant, they posted this:

QuoteI just came across a document that nicely ties things together: Survive the Tyrant: An RPG-style guide to living under an oppressive regime. Using the terminology and tropes of roleplaying, it explains the challenges of living in, and resisting, an authoritarian regime. There are character classes (Agitator, Community Leader, Transport and Sanctuary specialists) and foes (Informants, Corrupt Bureaucrats, Quislings). Under "Skill and Ability Checks" are suggestions for staying safe, out of custody, and healthy. Treasure is defined as the community ties and activities (including creative pursuits and playing RPGs . . .) that help you stay sane and brave. Mind you, this isn't a game system! It's a lesson plan and an action plan. And I imagine a lot of people would find it relevant.

For Reasons.

They must think this is clever.
Keep in mind they punish people who talk politics on their forums.
Keep in mind also that they're unaware of what "oppressive" or "regime" really mean, or that after four years we just liberated ourselves from one.  We could have used this post in 2021.

Kind of funny that the side of the political spectrum known for gulags, brainwashing, and mass death also gets a hard-on for being the resistance against non-existant oppression from the other side.

Quote from: Corolinth on April 07, 2025, 06:43:06 PM

Quote from: D-ko on April 05, 2025, 04:46:22 PMNobody understands the working conditions of factories in the USA. It's literally worse than other countries. Prisoners ask to go back to jail. The bathrooms are full of graffiti warning workers to quit before they get financially trapped there for life. Machines are operating on DOS OS. Hydraulic cutters are leaking oil everywhere. Blood gets dripped onto the merchandise due to clumsy workers being overworked, promised a normal workweek 'someday' but that's actually when they get laid off instead. Everybody is fucking and cucking each other in the bathrooms when they're not smoking and it's so loud that your boss has to yell at you just so you can hear them. All this in the middle of the night. By the end of the workday, your hands can't physically open and close all the way in a normal fashion. It's terrible.

I've spent a considerable amount of time in American factories.

The bathrooms didn't have any graffiti. Computers on the factory floor are running outdated operating systems, but it's Windows 7, not MS DOS. You certainly do see oil and grit, but no it's not leaking all over the place. I'm sure there are injuries, but I've never seen an open wound or blood. Can't speak to "normal work week" because I don't track anyone's hours. Never seen any sex in the bathrooms, but that doesn't mean it's not happening on the night shift. Nobody smokes indoors. It is definitely loud. Heavy machinery makes noise. There are definitely people in the factory who go home sore.

The production floor is a rough environment, but it also has rough, tough guys working there. These two things go hand in hand.

By the standards of the factories I've been in, you're wildly exaggerating. I'm not calling you a liar. America is a big country. What you've described does match up with the description a UAW friend gave of his work environment. I suspect that labor unions have something to do with this, or maybe more accurately, the hostile nature of negotiation between labor unions and businesses.

Instead of worker safety, the union negotiates for expensive, top shelf health insurance packages that the company has to pay for. The company then decides this health insurance counts as doing their due diligence on worker safety. Got hurt on the job? Fuck you, you've got the best health care coverage on the planet. The working hours is a similar situation. The union negotiates for pay and hours for its members, but in exchange they're committed to providing a certain amount of workers. The union could split those hours up among a larger pool of workers, but they want to offer their members 6-figure salaries. You get that money, but you're getting worked like a dog.

This also does touch on outdated and damaged equipment. Unions try to block new equipment that improves workplace efficiency, because that new equipment means fewer hours to pass along to their members. The maintenance workers who are supposed to repair that equipment are also union, and they're moving at their union pace. A damaged piece of equipment means that the guy at that station gets to ride the clock until it gets fixed, so he may not even report it. He sits on his ass doing nothing until his supervisor asks why he's not getting any work done.

One thing that definitely happens regarding equipment is that businesses are often more interested in investing capital in foreign countries. They're allowing their American factories to decay while they build new ones overseas. This is true of both union and non-union factories.

Sounds like you're seen the very best example of a factory in America and even that still had issues. As an aside, most of the workers were women. I'm no sexist, but you get a bunch of tired, angry ladies together at night with hydraulic cutters and holy shit, that alone is a scary aspect. Lots of the workers I worked with were former criminals as well, so topics such as how they dealt fentanyl in the past for more money would be a normal topic of discussion. There was also a wide pay disparity due to paying whatever it took to fill a random position at a random time. I was making more than a lot of the workers who had been there for years and that created further tension. Even more difficult was when the plastic product being sent to us to be cut had production issues, the lead would accuse me of being a drug user when I pointed out that the quality was degrading and the structural integrity of the pipe fittings were being compromised that we were sending out. It was like I was some kind of enemy of the state for simply doing my job. At one point on QC, I just let everything through because I knew my he'd make my night hell if I pointed out issues with the final product. And yes, in America there was a huge smoking area inside the factory. Phones weren't let inside due to trade secrets (and probably fears of remote detonation of pipes by a disgruntled worker of which there were many) and while the place promised insurance, it was difficult to actually lock in and I'm not sure it really covered much because the managers would blame us whenever we had any kind of issue. Hearing damage? Well you should've worn earplugs more often. But! If you didn't hear my instructions, you're going to get bitched out. There was no winning.

And just like that, unless you're buying specifically from Chinese slave labor factories, all the huge tariffs are paused for 90 days as they work out tailored bilateral trade deals with the countries that didn't act like complete asshats.

I'm sure SJG can now get its plastic parts and book printing from Vietnam or South Korea while someone here works up a viable Made-in-the-USA alternative.

All of this does feel like a "wait 1-2 weeks and see how it goes" kind of thing instead of "freak out every day at things coming up"

Quote from: Banjo Destructo on April 09, 2025, 03:59:27 PMAll of this does feel like a "wait 1-2 weeks and see how it goes" kind of thing instead of "freak out every day at things coming up"

The Trump doomcasters make their hay out of every Trump decision being the End Of The World. And when the world does not, in fact, end, they look like idiots.

I've been slammed by tariffs. I do not object to the concept. I object to the manner it was done. And fuck you for not caring about those details.

During his first administration Trump imposed many tariffs. Biden also continued them. But the way Trump did it, he gave businesses lots of notice, and told them what the new rate would be in advance so they had time to make logical business decisions about whether they wanted to buy goods under those terms, pass along costs, change where they bought, manufacture at home, etc..

This time, he literally imposed massive tariffs on products on ships already on the water. Less than a weeks notice. Products left port under one customs rule, and arrived at the US port under an entirely different one. Businesses often had no ability to make decisions based on the change. No possible new manufacturing could happen from it. No possible change to the products or even the prices in many cases could be made as customers were often locked in to contracts as you do with wholesale.

MEGA corps can afford that loss. Small businesses like mine, and most medium sized businesses, cannot.

There is a Government agency which can help with this sort of thing. The SBA. Trump cut their budget and staffing by 50% before he raised the tariffs. So the one place you can go for help, suddenly couldn't help. Then the markets tanked, and banks reacted by immediately ceasing loans to anyone who was a risk - which is small businesses impacted by a huge unexpected tariff.

So yeah, I object to the way this was done.

And those who say tough shit this is for the greater good: you're EXACTLY like those fuckers who supported Obamacare and told me the same thing when my insurance costs skyrocketed with worse coverage. If you want sacrifices for the greater good, volunteer to make that sacrifice yourself. Don't voluntold me to do it for your principals.

There was an opportunity to do this without harming small and medium sized businesses. It was EASY to do it that way and still do tariffs - he had already done it that way successfully before. He chose the reckless path instead. Which sucks and deserves criticism instead of this sheep-like parroting of the Administrations lame talking points.

Quote from: Mistwell on April 09, 2025, 09:54:14 PMMEGA corps can afford that loss. Small businesses like mine, and most medium sized businesses, cannot.

How much did you lose?

Steve Jakcson games just released their shareholders' report.  They of course couldn't keep their TDS in their pants, as expected.  They added this paragraph in italics:

QuoteFinishing this report as I am in early April of 2025, it's hard to remember that I am writing it "as of January 1." A new national administration has come in, the economy is in disarray, and our hobby (like many other sectors) is reeling from tariffs and uncertainty. So clap your hands very hard and pretend you are reading this before life got so interesting.

Life was not interesting before 2025?
Let's review some of the things that made 2024 interesting:

- The economy was in disarray
- Puff Daddy gets thrown in jail
- A senile "President" finally gets seen on the national stage for the nation to witness
- Biden's party forces him out of the campaign
- Biden's party selects their nominee without a single vote
- Pro-genocidal protests throughout nation and college campi
- Jews on college campi fear for their lives at Harvard, Columbia,
   and other universities as they are trapped/held hostage in libraries by genocidal protestors
- Trump found "guilty" of 34 trumped-up charges in Soviet Style attempt to eliminate Biden's polticial opponent
- Haitian illegal immigrants stealing pets and local wild ducks
- Alec Baldwin gets away with murder
- Tulsi Gabbard walks away from the democrat party
- Illegal immigrant gang seizes an apartment complex in Colorado
- An assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Butler PA
- Secret Service found to be negligent at best, complicit at worst
- Head of Secret Service resigns in disgrace
- Satanic Olympic opening ceremonies and the resulting backlash
- A mean beat a woman to a pulp and wins an Olympic gold medal in women's boxing
- Robert F Kennedy Jr walks away from the democrat party
- Assassination attempt #2 at Trump's property
- New agency, DOGE, is announced
- Boeing planes fall apart in the sky in midflight
- Boeing spaceship breaks down, strands Americans on International Space Station
- Trump wins reelection, taking all 7 swing states
   Kamala HQ, in disarray, just goes home midway through election night
- Marxist fascist murders United Healthcare CEO

But tell me things weren't interesting

Oh, and the report states that 2024 was "about the same" as 2023.  What it conveniently omits, obviously to mislead, is that 2023 was a loss for them, because the economy was "so great" then.

I imagine that the tariffs are about to do my employer's supply chain major harm, but at the same time I really don't think that this is a bullet which could have been dodged. The tariffs are all about China and their malicious compliance in the supply chain, and a lot of the hullabaloo on "Liberation Day" was about distracting from the obvious truth that China was the primary target. It's likely a secondary goal was to maximize the internal chaos this creates in China because the logical retribution from the CCP is to invade Taiwan in an attempt to deny the US access to chips to build new industry with. You have to paralyze them with a disaster, and even that is probably only going to be temporary.

I can see that it was done disruptively, but I can't actually see doing it differently playing out any better. You do it less disruptively and China would already be mobilizing to invade Taiwan.

FYI: I actually think the US Dollar is starting to deflate as a delayed reaction to the Fed's quantitative tightening back in 2022. Most people don't know about Fed policy, but if you actually look up official FRED data, QT policies in response to inflation actually shrank M2 by about $1 Trillion. However, in economics, some goods have stickier prices than others, so the market will not respond to deflation at a uniform rate.

If I am correct, increasing prices in response to tariffs is a suicidal idea. If prices aren't yet changing because of price stickiness, then the demand curve will steepen instead. If you increase your price, your demand will drop a lot faster than you anticipate.

For the record; I didn't say "tough shit, it's for the greater good."

That was all the Leftists telling small businesses they were "nonessential" during the pandemic.

I said "you screwed your neighbors out of work they could be doing to save a few bucks by getting into bed with communists using slave labor. You deserve this."

So does SJG if they're still in bed with China. I'm going to have a toast when Nike, patron saint of profiting via slave labor, goes under.

Businesses doing business with their fellow Americans aren't even touched. Those doing business with someone other than Chinese slave labor have another 90 days to get affairs in order or hope for a good bi-lateral deal.

The net change on printing from anyplace that isn't China is pennies per book. And if you're doing business with Chinese slavers... again, you deserve this.

^thumbs up, fuck the Chicoms

Quote from: Cathode Ray on April 10, 2025, 05:14:33 AMSteve Jakcson games just released their shareholders' report.  They of course couldn't keep their TDS in their pants, as expected.  They added this paragraph in italics:

QuoteFinishing this report as I am in early April of 2025, it's hard to remember that I am writing it "as of January 1." A new national administration has come in, the economy is in disarray, and our hobby (like many other sectors) is reeling from tariffs and uncertainty. So clap your hands very hard and pretend you are reading this before life got so interesting.

Life was not interesting before 2025?
Let's review some of the things that made 2024 interesting:

Spoiler

- The economy was in disarray
- Puff Daddy gets thrown in jail
- A senile "President" finally gets seen on the national stage for the nation to witness
- Biden's party forces him out of the campaign
- Biden's party selects their nominee without a single vote
- Pro-genocidal protests throughout nation and college campi
- Jews on college campi fear for their lives at Harvard, Columbia,
   and other universities as they are trapped/held hostage in libraries by genocidal protestors
- Trump found "guilty" of 34 trumped-up charges in Soviet Style attempt to eliminate Biden's polticial opponent
- Haitian illegal immigrants stealing pets and local wild ducks
- Alec Baldwin gets away with murder
- Tulsi Gabbard walks away from the democrat party
- Illegal immigrant gang seizes an apartment complex in Colorado
- An assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in Butler PA
- Secret Service found to be negligent at best, complicit at worst
- Head of Secret Service resigns in disgrace
- Satanic Olympic opening ceremonies and the resulting backlash
- A mean beat a woman to a pulp and wins an Olympic gold medal in women's boxing
- Robert F Kennedy Jr walks away from the democrat party
- Assassination attempt #2 at Trump's property
- New agency, DOGE, is announced
- Boeing planes fall apart in the sky in midflight
- Boeing spaceship breaks down, strands Americans on International Space Station
- Trump wins reelection, taking all 7 swing states
   Kamala HQ, in disarray, just goes home midway through election night
- Marxist fascist murders United Healthcare CEO

But tell me things weren't interesting

Oh, and the report states that 2024 was "about the same" as 2023.  What it conveniently omits, obviously to mislead, is that 2023 was a loss for them, because the economy was "so great" then.

Well, in SJG's faux-defense, none of those things directly impaired his ability to save $1.62 by outsourcing to producers under the control of a brutal authorian regime commonly accused of using alleged slave prison and child labor to achieve those savings.   

Quote from: Mistwell on April 09, 2025, 09:54:14 PMAnd those who say tough shit this is for the greater good: you're EXACTLY like those fuckers who supported Obamacare and told me the same thing when my insurance costs skyrocketed with worse coverage.

Nonsense, Obamacare effected everyone, was permanent, and based on a lie. Tariffs are a short term bad that will go away or push different sourcing so they don't matter. I understand your pissed but that's a bad comparison.