Sinclair group in the US, bought up basically every local news station and began inserting propaganda into scripts as stories. Highly insidious because the older population generally trusted their local news anchors more than the national outlets.
GEO group, one of the largest private prison corporations that also manages ice detention facilities and many mental institutions, not sure I need to say much more.
Sinclair is literally why I don’t have a local news station anymore, and also part of why after 10 years of working in local television news and being promoted to higher and higher positions I was finally like “fuck this, I’m out” and started working at a fucking Subway.
Similar to GEO, there’s a long list of companies providing phone service to jails and prisons and their entire existence is based off of extorting the living shit out of vulnerable people to be able to contact their families. The massive Securus hack also showed a high likelihood of these types of companies enabling violations of Attorney-Client privilege.
Ah yes, the Sinclair “This is extremely dangerous to our democracy” foreshadowing
The Sinclair monopoly is an invisible part of why Trump is in office. Local news doesn’t really exist anymore.
I’m now boycotting GEO Group. Henceforth, I will only do IRL heist missions in places where there’s a public prison option.
I think we’d compile a shorter list if we tried to name wholesome, respectable companies.
Nah, we have loads of great companies here in the UK.
Didn’t the UK develop the first large evil corporation?
It sure did!
among more brutality around the world, yes
riot games settles for 100 million dollars after sexually harassing its own employees.
Male employees (developers, I think) engaged in drunken “panty raids” where they would crowd into a woman’s cubicle and take things from her while she worked.
Riot games chose to pay these women to go away, rather than fix the problem.
They make League of Legends and Teamfight Tactics. I will never spend another dollar on their products.
I met a guy who really wanted to work at riot games and found no issue with their culture. And the longer I spent talking to him, the more I realize… Ah, you’re an edge lord. Of course you would like the company.
I want to add to this their absolutely egregious forced kernel-level anti-cheat. It demands full privileged access to a user’s machine, and unlike some competing systems, it doesn’t want to go away when the game is no longer being played.
The assurance this won’t be used or exploited for ultra-malicious purposes across the globe by a corporation owned ultimately by the CCP is…
“Just trust me, bro.”
They’re also 100% Chinese owned. It’s the major turnoff for me with their Path of Exile titles.
lesser known
It’s lesser known to people who go outside
And tbh I never knew about that so thanks for sharing!
Goodwill specifically hires disabled people under the guise of “giving them work experience”, but it’s really because they can get away with paying them less.
Chick-Fil-A supports conversion therapy.
Similarly, Salvation Army is a whackadoo pseudochristian religious cult masquerading publicly as a thrift store. They’re only about one degree removed from the Mormon church in terms of sequestering, abuse (sexual and otherwise), and manipulation of their members and those in their care. And of course also vehemently espouse the entire conservative fuckhead smorgasboard of homophobic, transphobic, sexist, anti-union views. They claim to do “good works” and superficially may even occasionally accomplish this, but it’s always couched in their hateful religious bullshit which really rather undermines the point.
Yes, Chick-Fil-A is also a famously fundamentalist wingnut organization. Being for conversation therapy is only the start of it.
As is Hobby Lobby – The nation’s only retail chain whose owners were busted for attempting to illegally smuggle stolen religious artifacts from the middle East for display in their personal bible museum!
Just to be clear, Goodwill is notorious for this, but any company can do this. The law allows the disabled to be paid less because they cannot complete the same job as fast. Essentially saying that getting the job done faster means you deserve to live more. It’s insanity that takes advantage of the weakest and most desperate in society under the guise of helping them. Because they cannot get as much work done to their mental or physical disabilities they deserve to be underpaid even though they worked a 40 hour week? It’s a fucking joke and a slap in the face to anyone disabled, but it’s the law. Once again, tons of companies abuse this, Goodwill is just well known for abusing it more than others.
Sometime around the mid 2010s, I worked at one of Goodwill’s busiest locations in the country. So busy we got calls almost every day complaining about the giant fucking traffic snake of donors blocking streets as they all lined up in their suburban safety bubbles to dump their literal garbage into our blue bins.
Absolute shitbox of a store. Run down, dirty, and always a mess. Especially the shoes and toys section. I already hated retail customers but that really sealed the deal. Just a bunch of broke ass motherfucking customers making broke ass workers days even harder. Two of my full-time coworkers were homeless. Those were just the ones I knew about because I worked by their side every day. Despite our poverty wages and grinding hours, I worked with some genuinely good people who cared about each other. It felt like we were all clinging to each other as we drowned in the rising tide that lifts all boats. None of us had so much as a life raft to rest in. Treading water while we gasped between waves of desperation.
Brian, I know you’ll never see this but I hope you’re still alive and got the help you needed. Daniel, you are far too intelligent and capable to waste your life there. I hope you got out.
A few times I had to visit the allegedly original Goodwill store. You might think if there’s one store corporate cares about enough to put a bit of polish on, it would be that one. But no. It looked like the most dystopian shopping experience imaginable. Crumbling architecture, merchandise strewn all over as if the customers were in a fight for their lives, and just like my store, workers who looked ragged, tired, and barely holding it together inside. And there worked at least one young woman with Down Syndrome who I reckon was making about a third of my not-even-close-to-livable wage of $10/hr. I was starting to suspect this Goodwill place isn’t in the business of good will. Then I visited the Training and Education Center which also serves as their corporate HQ in Seattle.
It was modern. Spacious. Clean. Safe. Nobody looked poor or unhappy. Any illusions I might have held about Goodwill were entirely shattered beyond any doubt.
I’ll never shop or donate there again and I’ll take every opportunity to tell anyone who will listen why they should stop patronizing the most for-profit nonprofit I’ve ever worked for.
Fuck you, Goodwill. Fuck you forever.
Where would you recommend donating instead?
Depending on your feelings about the Catholic Church, you might look into donating to the Society of St Vincent de Paul.
Where I grew up there were also some smaller independent thrift stores run by neighborhood religious organizations or other nonprofits on their own steam. You might check for any in your area.
I understand the viewpoint, but the alternative is that disabled people get hired way less or not at all. A real solution would be to reduce our dependence on capitalism or something, but that’s not likely.
God I (as a disabled woman) am SO sick of seeing this take every time this conversation happens, like it’s chill and okay to give us less rights.
I think their main point was that under capitalism, people will only ever be viewed for their economic utility - exploitation of affected groups is inherent to that reduction in a human’s rights and their contributions beyond menial labour.
So the take isnt defending the status quo, it’s saying how the best case scenario in an inherently soulless and uncaring system is to be paid cents on the dollar, and that more intervention to secure better pay, respect, and working rights, by definition, will always move further and further away from “capitalism” in it’s purest, most discriminatory forms.
Yeah, I really love people telling me I’m worth less than a “normal” person because my brain works differently so I should be grateful for whatever some capitalist shithead doles out to me.
True, both options under capitalism are pretty bad.
The one sole benefit to the disabled is being able to work for Goodwill for a few hours a week will be unlikely to go over their income limits so their SSI and so they can stay on SSI and still work at least a little to supplement their obscenely meager disability income. SSDI recipients fare far better and are literally allowed to have income as long as it isn’t worked. Meaning a rich SSDI recipient can stop working but still make a boatload of money off of investment income.
What are the acronyms?
SSI = Supplemental Security Income
SSDI = Social Security Disability Insurance
I was under the knowledge that goodwill pays less so that those who do work there don’t lose their benefits, which require you to basically make nearly 0 income. Has this changed?
The lower minimum wage for disabled people isn’t limited to those on benefits.
Red Bull, they are nazis and spread fake news about conspiracy theories on their own TV network in Austria. Source
Damn we need open source redbull
There are several RedBull type generic syrups you can buy as a bag-in-box
Are there really? I have a soda stream but all the syrups I’ve seen were like diet versions of stuff. Do you have an example you can link to?
I go to Penny, a discount, for that. Varying names, same shit, way more cheap.
Don’t tell the BuyEurope movement
They know it already.
Thai know it already.
51% of the company, and it’s origin, is Thai anyway.
Is Monster still ok though?
Monster is coca cola afaik
So, based on Wikipedia, Cocola has ~15-20% stake in the company, but does not own them.
Which is to say that Coca Cola probably has the most say on anything that goes, but is not running the show.
I remember seeing it written on the can but I checked my last can at home and that doesn’t even mention coke when other brands do so I could’ve been misremembering and had pure luck be why I wasn’t technically wrong.
You can dissolve a rat into Monster within a few weeks, do you really want to drink something like that?
Is that different from any other soda? They’re all pretty acidic.
Ones I haven’t seen mentioned here yet:
Honeywell is a major millitary contractor.
Meijer, Hanes, Circle K, Jimmy Johns, Thermos, Thortons, Hyvee, Milwaukee, Ryobi, Conair, AAA, Yamaha, Dixie, Roku, New Balance, Sparkle, Saucony, Hoka, Sport Clips, and Lowes - donate almost exclusively to Republicans
Tripplite (bought by Eaton) - Barre Seid donated 1.6 billion to a dark money conservative group.
It’s a minefield out there.
There’s a site called “goods unite us” that I’ll check before making a big purchase or deciding to make a store a regular stop. It has the average donation history of the company and who they donated to. It sucks that we have a Home Depot in a really convenient location but they’re especially egregious donators.
I use them as well. I wish there was a better agregator though, Walmart passes their check, but treat their employees and suppliers like dirt.
Conair
All my combs and brushes are made by evil? No wonder I can’t feather my hair right. They’re only good at keeping it straight.
I was pretty shocked at how many big brands around cosmetics, haircare, and hygeine were big Trump or Project 2025 supporters. It’s about as rampant as gas stations and tool brands.
Chemical regulations
Minefield, you say?
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004SPIE.5441...13R/abstract
The Self Healing Minefield (SHM) is comprised of a networked system of mobile anti-tank landmines. When the mines detect a breach, each calculates an appropriate response, and some fire small rockets to “hop” into the breach path, healing the breach. The purpose of the SHM is to expand the capabilities of traditional obstacles and provide an effective anti-tank obstacle that does not require Anti-Personnel (AP) submunitions. The DARPA/ATO sponsored program started in June 2000 and culminated in a full 100-unit demonstration at Fort Leonard Wood, MO in April 2003. That program went from “a concept” to a prototype system demonstration in approximately 21 months and to a full tactically significant demonstration in approximately 33 months.
Ah yes, not self-healing as in able to be disabled after the war is over, but self-healing as automatically “hops” mines into different locations to cover gaps after a single mine explodes.
(To be fair DARPA eventually dumped money into “smart mines” which can be disabled remotely. Still…)
Also I’m reminded of military contractor KBR and Halliburton:
https://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/jamie-leigh-jones-claims-iraq-rape-employer-held/story?id=13884264
June 21, 2011
A woman who says she was drugged and gang-raped while working for military contractor KBR in Iraq will face down an attorney for KBR in a Texas courtroom today.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 26, was working her fourth day on the job in Baghdad in 2005 when she says she was assaulted by seven U.S. contractors and held captive by two KBR guards in a shipping container. Jones, whose story was featured in an award-winning ABC News “20/20” investigation, is one of a group of women who claim they were harassed or assaulted while working for KBR and former parent company Halliburton in Iraq. She is suing KBR, former parent company Halliburton and KBR firefighter Charles Bortz, who she claims was one of the rapists.
She never got her day in a real court, the contract to force her to take it through arbitration court stood firm.
I am a bit confused as to why we don’t have landmines that has a chemical self disarming mechanism, I mean a compound explosive charge that would was armed by combining two liquids that reacted to form the explosive, but then slowly kept reacting to go inert after 10 years or so.
Sadly that not going to work; liquid explosives are a lot less reliable and far more unstable than the stuff they use now. All it takes is a little leak or some crack to set those off. This means manufacturing the mines is significantly more hazardous and transporting them is riskier. You wouldn’tbeable to stockpile them because the explosives would be losing potency from the moment the chemicals were made. Worst of all since they can’t be used to make shaped charges most of the explosive force would go into the ground instead of being directed up and anti tank mines would be impossible.
This isn’t to say self deactivating mines are impossible but every solution I’ve heard is either impractical or could easily be exploited by the enemy.
Good points!
Anduril, Palmer Luckey’s foray into military hardware and an ever-present surveillance state. Some of the first hardware they rolled out were surveillance towers for the US border patrol.
So Mark Zuckerberg officially isn’t the only giant pile of shit connected to Oculus, the original owner is a fucking pile of shit, too.
Trader Joe’s is also thought of by many people as “progressive” and a “good company.” Go learn about the conditions in their warehouses and you’ll find out that’s not true at all. I had a friend who worked TJ’s warehouse in Lacey, WA and all he had was fucking horror stories and how the warehouse was owned and run by MAGA fucks.
EDIT: Found the article my friend was excited about coming out that didn’t seem to get any MSM traction.
Inside ‘Teflon Joe’s’: Why your favorite grocery store is not what you think
How Trader Joe’s remains a beloved brand despite record product recalls, safety violations, worker misconduct complaints, and an environmental record that belies its reputation.
So yeah fuck Trader Joe’s.
Oh yeah and the CEO of Protonmail revealed himself to be a Trump supporter.
So fuck Protonmail.
The Brave browser CEO recently went on an hinged rant on that orange site about “lefties,” “glowies,” and George Soros. He also has a long history of being anti-gay, which is why he lost his job at Firefox, and Brave itself has a shady history with stuff like injecting affiliate codes into URLs.
So fuck Brave.
Anduril, Palmer Luckey’s foray into military hardware and an ever-present surveillance state. Some of the first hardware they rolled out were surveillance towers for the US border patrol.
Same vibe as Palantir by Peter Thiel, big data analytics platform used by many defense/security organizations. Far right pseudo-libertarians love abusing Tolkien’s lore, sadly.
Stopped shopping at Trader Joe’s after their anti union shenanigans. Shame because we love their food
I have found a small amount of Trader Joe’s food labelled under different brand names at WinCo. Same companies producing the food, just boxed and bagged with a different name.
To be clear, WinCo also has it’s own issues.
Let’s keep that surveillance state alive because nothing screams democracy like never trusting anyone!
That’s a shame about Brave, does anyone have an reccomendations for another browser that reduces digital fingerprinting in a similar way?
Oracle is so shitty to its customers there’s multiple law firms that specialize in helping customers sue them.
I agree, but the wording of that is imprecise…
Google reimplemented the same API (which should be legal) but “use” sounds like they called Oracle’s implementation of the function
Oracle tried to argue that writing your own virtual machine with the exact same same interface as theirs (even a clean room reimplementatio, or an improved version) was copyright infringement
If Oracle had won, it would likely have killed things like OpenJDK, WINE, Proton, Rosetta, etc. and would have made licensing around OpenGL/Vulkan very confusing (for a few examples)
Gotta love a company that will sue you if you benchmark their software…
Out here in Seattle, if you give your two weeks notice as a tech employee to Amazon, and you tell them that you’re going to Oracle, they’ll just send you home that day. Probably not every team/manager, but it’s a thing.
And Larry Ellison puts money into his charity looking into how to live forever…
Menards. They have a history of dumping waste illegally and then daring the DNR to sue them. One example:
That’s the one store Alec of Technology Connections refers to…
They’re popular in Wisconsin and Wisconsin-adjecent states. If I didn’t know the details, I would prefer to go to a local chain over Home Depot or Lowes or whatever, but, yeah.
REI. Just another corporation in a “Good Guy” costume. https://www.ourrei.com/2025-rei-board-elections
Union busting, problematic supply chains, pulling PPE from staff. Hell, officially supporting Trump’s pick for Secretary of the Interior because I guess they can’t help themselves.
They’re in the middle of a board election, all members get a vote. The union endorses none of the nominees, and suggests you vote for “none of the above”.
Oh fuck I just joined their lifetime membership. Is it possible to get that money back, why is every company owned by cunts. I thought REI was a Co OP?
Don’t know about getting money back, but it is something of a coop. My link includes a recommendation to vote “withhold” in the current election, why they recommend the action, and how to do so.
Had I known this I wouldn’t have bought from REI and joined their membership.
Any thoughts on sports basement?
Someone needs to create a website called boycotteverything.com or something, and list off every company to boycott because of something heinous they did.
But have a score out of 10; some are worse than others.
And link to sources / fact checks.
It’s been done before with things like the Better Business Bureau.
These kinds of initiatives tend to start taking money from businesses so they get a better rating and oftentimes end up as basically an extortion racket. Though sometimes they’re just straight up bought out by big corporation and suddenly that corporation and it’s business partners get great scores.
Why am I not surprised.
I guess the website itself would be on it’s on list to avoid?
Very meta/ironic.
You the same space cowboy of YouTube video game help videos?
Louis Rossmann just made something like that.
Edit: here is a link https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Main_Page
That website/domain seems to be available for purchase, I don’t see any relevant info. Maybe wrong link/TLD?
It was just an example. Didn’t check if it existed before typing it.
Ahhh my bad, I was a lil drunk last night and read your post very wrong haha
bruh
Removed by mod
Side note, Milton Friedman wasn’t just an evil fuck, he was also in many ways kind of dumb as shit.
His “four ways of spending money” is a prime example.
He claims the fourth way (spending somebody else’s money on somebody else) is how the government works, and thus it’s wasteful, but what he fails to fucking account for is with how large most corporations are that the fourth way of spending money is effectively how corporations work, too. Some bean counter in accounting and some finance guys and a variety of middle managers are all spending somebody else’s money (the company’s money) on someone else (the whims of the CEO and the board).
He holds this example up as showing how government spending is always bad and inefficient and how corporate spending isn’t, but he’s a dumbfuck, they’re actually the same.
I wish I believed in Hell, because the idea of Milton Friedman getting raked over hot coals for eternity is extremely satisfying.
College Board. Maker of the SAT
Fuck College Board with a rake. Seriously awful when college is already so expensive.
Samuel Smith Old Brewery is probably the shittiest company in the world. Or more specifically its owner, Humphrey Smith, is a full on twat. And, unlike most companies, this brewery and all associated businesses are unlimited companies, meaning that Humphrey bears full legal responsibility for everything his companies do.
Who’s Humphrey Smith? He’s an ultra rich Englishman (but no one knows his wealth size as all of his businesses are privately owned unlimited companies, so he doesn’t have to file financial reports apart from tax related stuff), he owns a pretty large part of Tadcaster town, hundreds of pubs across UK and he doesn’t give a shit about his employees, customers or people living in Tadcaster.
He has extremely strict rules for his pubs, which include no kids, no mobile phones, no TVs, etc. He regularly tours his pubs, kicks out people found using mobile phones and then fires the whole pub staff on the spot. He also blocked construction of a new bridge in Tadcaster when old one fell apart, because fuck locals.
Honestly I’m on board with the no phones TVs or kids in pubs. My favorite bars all have zero TVs.
Are you onboard kicking out customers and immediately closing the pub for every offence?
Sorta.
I’m ok with no tvs. Everything else about this is nuts though
Uline comes to mind
They are the reason I think I severely underestimate that sucess rate of junk mail. They essentially mail me a phone book 5 times a year ro my home and my office and I have ordered exactly zero products from them ever.
It can’t be cheap to send all those catalogs, so they must work.
They really have everything to supply an office or a warehouse. Procurement can use a single vendor for almost everything they need.
It’s a solid business model.
I get that, but why the 4lb, 800-page books sent to millions of people a multiple times a year just to end up in the trash without ever being opened? 90+ percent of their orders have to be digital where they just search the website.
so they must work.
hopefully that assumption will remain until it bankrupts them.
Worked a contract job for them. Would agree.
