To put their own interests first and their company’s interests second, and both of those interests above those of their employees and customers…
There’s a trust gap between business leaders, employees, and consumers. This is why
Tag: hypocrisy
And how does keeping secrets affect your characters?
Your secrets hurt your mental health. What’s the alternative? | Aeon Essays
A lot in here that can apply to us (as a person) and to story characters.
How many stories have you encountered where characters keep secrets from one another? How did it affect them and their relationships?
It also talks about guilt and shame: the differences between them, their effects on people, and ways to handle them.
The author pursued these studies of keeping secrets because he and his brother are products of a secret his parents decided to keep from them before the kids were even born: That each was the product of sperm donors. Different donors. So the usual childhood discussions of “who was the most like Dad” had a secret depth they weren’t even aware of.
If you’ve followed the Marvell Comics Universe stories about Thor and Loki, those are stories of keeping secrets, and what happened when they came out.
The movie Thor: Ragnarok is particularly about keeping secrets. The secret of their banished sister Hela, the secret of how Asgard became so powerful. When the secrets came out, Asgard was destroyed!
The James Bond movies starring Daniel Craig regularly have secrets coming back to bite the characters. In fact, the entire plot of Skyfall is about M’s secret betrayal of an earlier Double-Oh agent to the Chinese, and how that eventually kills her and massively damages the agency.
So read the essay and think of how keeping secrets affects themes, plots, characters.
Pope urges Romanians to work together to confront challenges
This is what he has to say in it that I think pertains to all societies:
“Only to the extent that a society is concerned for its most disadvantaged members, can it be considered truly civil.”
Keep that in mind when some Libertarian, anarcho-capitalist or other right-wing lunatic says that society is supposed to be looking out for the rich and powerful.
Also keep note that the Catholic Church’s definition of “most disadvantaged” does not include LGBTQ or women.
The poor might have always been with us…
…but charity has not.
Those pseudo-Christians whose budgets cut support for the poor are the followers of pagan Rome, not Christ.
Late-modern capitalism as the second circle of Hell
A real horror for Halloween
I think a Catholic diocese in Iowa needs a visit from God. Their historic leadership seems to have denied him pretty thoroughly:
Assorted religious quotes
Some very old, one quite new:
“It is no stranger for an atheist to live virtuously than it is strange for a Christian to live criminally. We see the latter sort of monster all the time, so why should we think the former is impossible?” – Peter Bayle
“We know the impression made on people’s minds by the idea that they are fighting for the preservation of their temples and altars … how courageous and bold we become when we fixate on the hope of conquering others by means of God’s protection, and when we are animated by the natural aversion we have for the enemies of our beliefs.” – Peter Bayle
“If the Multiplicity of Religions prejudices the State, it proceeds from their not bearing with one another but on the contrary endeavouring each to crush and destroy the other by methods of Persecution. In a word, all the Mischief arises not from Toleration, but from the want of it.” – Peter Bayle
“The cause of the worst crimes of Christians is repeatedly identified as false zeal, a passion that masquerades as the love of God but that really amounts to politico-religious partisanship mixed with hatred of anyone who is different.” – Michael W. Hickson
Florida’s real-estate reckoning could be closer than you think | The Seattle Times
Hey, south Florida:
Maybe sell your properties to Trump? He doesn’t believe in climate change, so he’d be the perfect sucker!
Dear Chief State Economist
KHNL: People keep leaving Hawaii in droves and this year was no exceptlon:
http://m.hawaiinewsnow.com/hawaiinewsnow/db/330510/content/L9UvhHGG
It isn’t because of Hawaii’s high cost of living. Other places are expensive to live in, too.
It’s because of the massive gap between our cost of living and the pathetic excuse for pay in Hawaii.
When I worked here as a technical writer, Hawaii pay for same experience/same work was half what it was on the mainland.
Also, our disgusting – and (in my opinion) criminal and blatently discriminatory – minimum (aka starvation) wage means people have to work two fulltime jobs if they want to eat regularly and live anywhere except on the streets.
(Our continued building of housing for billionaires and corporations instead of real people who live here just makes it worse.)
So, if you had a choice of slaving away for practically nothing, or moving elsewhere with decent pay – what would you do?
Mary, the Magnificat, and an Unsentimental Advent
Even Mary wouldn’t support the power- and money-mad ones who call themselves ‘Christian’:
Dancing Treefrog 