I'd argue alpine skiing isn't bougie if you live within two to three hours of a mountain. Secondhand equipment is cheap, and lift tickets were affordable until relatively recently.
ComradeKingfisher
joined 4 years ago
Let's goooo
Nope, fleeing enemies are valid targets. It's attacking surrendering enemies that's a war crime.
spoiler
Consider the following case:
Alice and her dog: Alice self-describes as being in a romantic relationship with her dog. She cares a lot about his wellbeing and strives to ensure that his needs are fulfilled. They often sleep together; he likes to be caressed and she finds it pleasant to gently rub herself on him. Sometimes, when her dog is sexually aroused and tries to hump her leg, she undresses and lets him penetrate her vagina. This is gratifying for both of them.
Alice’s story describes a kind of relationship commonly described within the Zeta movement, where there is a reciprocal emotional attachment between the human and the animal and sexual contacts are sexually gratifying to both of them. It is tempting to think that Alice’s relationship illustrates one way in which humans can develop more equal and non-exploitative relationships with animals, that go beyond our negative duties not to harm them.
What Alice’s story also illustrates is that there is a continuity between zoophilia and affectionate relationships that ordinary people have with their pets. What is it that makes affectionately caressing one’s cat of a different ethical standing than sexually caressing one’s cat? If there is no clear-cut boundary between the ordinary love that pet keepers express and the romantic love that some zoophiles express, then why accept one and not the other? Alice
White women aren't beating the allegations
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Call EDD because I've not been paid in six weeks despite still having money in my claim balance and being on extension already
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All numbers are maxed out and won't even put you on hold
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latest call has them saying that they're closed and to call back during regular business hours (M-F, 8AM-8PM)
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it's 1pm on a Monday
Goddamn, I'm extremely lucky that I've some cushion (which I really don't want to dip into because that's what I'm using to pay for top surgery this summer), but the vast majority fucking don't. Guys on r/unemployment are talking about how they've not been paid for weeks. They're out of money for food, their cars are being repo'd, they're month's behind on rent, they've not been able to pay bills and their credit is now destroyed, etc. There's been next to 0 communication from EDD, and the new reps they've onboarded are giving out conflicting information on the phone. It's been a month since the new bill passed and the systems are still FUBAR.
Oh, and Gavin Newsom is reopening the state under pressure from businesses, despite SoCal being at 0% ICU capacity, with both the UK strain and they newly ID'd LA strain ripping through the pop.
This past year I've seen the homeless pop only grow and grow, and we've not even hit the lifting of the eviction moratorium yet. Doubly infuriating because WE HAVE ENOUGH FUCKING HOUSING FOR EVERYONE.
It's really fucking hard to not be a doomer knowing everything that's coming down the pipeline :doomer:
Good point, the availability of secondhand equipment isn't something that ever crossed my mind.
I grew up in the California Bay Area. The PMC types buy equipment, use them for a season or less, then get rid of them on Craigslist and/or yard sales—the surplus drives the prices way down, especially during off-season. It's still too expensive if you're struggling to put food on the table and pay rent, but it's viable if there's breathing room in the budget.
In the 90s and 00s a decent set up of used jackets, pants, helmets, skis, and boots could be had for under $100, and last you for well over a decade. Hell, my dad is still using gear he bought in the 90s.
Gear is more expensive now. We recently had to kit up my cousin's bf, and we managed to scrounge everything for $155. He's a min wage worker, but in our cultures multigenerational living is the norm, and that reduces the cost of living enough that spending that much won't put him in the red. He also didn't have spend everything at once, because our family could loan him whatever he was missing while we searched for good deals.
Lift tickets also aren't what they used to be. Growing up, lift tickets at smaller resorts could be had for $10-15, so overall the sport was affordable for working class refugees with only a highschool education and a middling income. Now the cheapest lift tickets at the smallest resorts are $25, and that price is only available once a month.
Had my parents fled to the US now or within the last decade instead of when they did in the 80s, we wouldn't have been a skiing family. With the increase of lift ticket prices, we remain a skiing family only because we have all the gear already, and living with my parents lets me save up enough to buy us season passes. If I were living on my own I wouldn't be able to afford it, nor would my parents since they're on a fixed income.
Skiing with family and friends are some of my fondest memories, and introducing new people to the sport and watching them fall in love with it is phenomenal. Watching year after year as that joy becomes increasingly out of reach for the working class is enraging. Don't even get me started on the insulting, increasingly low pay of resort workers, destroying another solid avenue that working class kids used to use to afford slope time.
You could never really be poor and ski around here, but to the average middle class family it was doable. Now only those in, just below, or above the upper middle class can afford it. It's only going to get more bougie from here on out, which is a travesty.
That blows big time, I'm sorry. While the resort slopes are exclusive to skiers, the miles and miles and miles of hiking trails in the Sierra Nevada are open to regular and snowshoe hikers, as well as cross country skiers. Y'all are getting hosed. We're all getting hosed. Death to capitalism.