If they didn’t pay (or “pay” with points/gift cards/etc) for people’s donations, most people who donate blood products would stop. Donation isn’t quick or easy, and most people are afraid of needles. Until somebody invents viable substitutes for blood, plasma, platelets and so on there will continue to be a need for blood products, and there needs to be some mechanism to encourage donations.

It’s about the power dynamic and how it informs the relationship between the electorate and elected (or, for that matter, other hierarchical structures.) The theory is that policymakers treat people better if there are real consequences for not doing so, such as losing their elected seat. (Or more…extreme consequences.)

Another version of this would be a manager giving their unionized employees a raise because of the threat of a strike. Whether you frame it as fearing the employees or frame it as cold logic, the dynamic between a union and their boss is fundamentally different than between a single employee and their boss.

I don’t know if this works for raspberries, because I don’t like and don’t buy raspberries, but washing cucumbers in 10 parts water to 1 part white vinegar does wonders for keeping them fresh in the fridge.

Yeah, that was some ambiguous wording on my part. To elaborate: Americans are told from birth that capitalism is this wonderful system that gives us freedom of choice, and that the free market causes the best products and the most well-run companies to prosper. This belief system is reflected in prosperity gospel, which is the same ideology but coated in a layer of religion. We americans are told that if we just work hard enough, we can be rich too.

But that’s not how capitalism really works. The division of people into working and ruling classes, and the abstraction of value means that the more money you have, the more you can extract from the workers who actually produce the value. This reality is largely ignored, or suppressed, or denied.

So you have these massive numbers of people who were told capitalism will let them be “successful”, ie financially secure and…it doesn’t. There’s only one grocery store in town so you buy what’s available. There’s no bus system so you buy a car and be in debt however long it takes. The so-called “free market” is dominated by actors who can afford to purchase their competition.

Capitalism works as intended by the elite who do more to uphold it than anyone else: they get more and more money. The nominal goal of prosperity and growth for all is never realized, and this is framed as individual failures rather than the effect of the system itself. “Just work harder and your boss will give you a raise!”

And also: capitalism is failing the majority of people by continuing to funnel wealth to those who already have money. Voters are offered a choice between two options, neither of which actually want to solve this, because both major parties are controlled by wealthy corporate donors. The two-party system prevents any third party, no matter their platform, from having any chance at election.

Democratic socialist candidates got elected in NY because Mamdani is demonstrably helping people in actual, tangible ways. The most famous example is fixing potholes. This is a breath of fresh air for voter and is the same “sewer socialism” strategy used in the first half of the 1900s in wisconsin, which focused on pragmatically improving life for the general public…famously by improving the sewer system.

Oh, definitely. The DSA-backed candidates won against a lot of corporate donor spending: https://nysfocus.com/2026/06/24/ny-primary-election-results-dsa-state-legislature-2026

Well yeah, there are two sexualities: normal and political /s*

*this is a simplification of how bigots in privileged groups tend to see the world: “normal”, or the default, and aberrations from the default. Labeling people or things as “political” is a way to attack those who don’t fall into the narrow “default” group in order to enforce their invisibility. (An aside: the negative connotations of the word deserve an essay on their own.)

Thus, women in video games is “political”. Nonwhite characters in TV shows are “political”. Being visibly queer -including posting about rainbow cookies during Pride month- is “political”.

*affected. Affect is the verb, effect is the noun. Pedantry aside, lovely sentiment.

Copied and pasted from Francesca Hong’s policy platform page: We’re going to make sure nobody goes to sleep cold, and that renter protections are consistently enforced. As governor, Rep. Hong will use her executive authority to bolster rental unit regulations, pursue aggressive regulation of slumlords and serial housing-law violators, and make it easier for tenants to flag issues and find support.

Ctrl+F for “housing” here: https://francescahong.com/policy/

Me attempting contact staff (I saw a guy do some tricks once and immediately decided I had to learn. I am absurdly bad.)

“Direct” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there