When Your Method Of Flirting Is Talking About The Viability Of Murder Plots And Conspiracy Theories

Oh my god this is me writing essays as deadlines approach

this fic will never be done

I don't generally like wrestling but Jack Gallagher is cool

When you roll a nat 20 dexterity save against an attack:

Gif by @gifsme

I've been wearing glasses just about my whole life. And glasses prices are BS. People are literally taking advantage of my need to see in order to create a customer base which can't refuse to buy an overpriced product because it's necessary for my survival. Companies which take advantage of medical needs in order to exponentially raise prices unnecessarily are trash. I consider them just as bad as the people who create predatory loan schemes. Taking advantage of the fundamental needs people have to survive in order to make massive profit is disgusting.

One company bought all the retail outlets for glasses, used that to force sales of all the eyewear companies and jacked up prices by as much as 1000%

If you wear glasses, you might have noticed that they’ve been getting steadily more expensive in recent years, no matter which brand you buy and no matter where you shop.

That’s because a giant-but-obscure company called Luxottica bought out Sunglass Hut and Lenscrafters, then used their dominance over the retail side of glasses to force virtually every eyewear brand to sell to them (Luxxotica owns or licenses Armani, Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Chanel, Coach, DKNY, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Oakley, Oliver Peoples, Persol, Polo Ralph Lauren, Ray-Ban, Tiffany, Valentino, Vogue and Versace); and used that to buy out all the other eyewear retailers of any note (Luxottica owns Pearle Vision, Sears Optical, Sunglass Hut and Target Optical) and then also bought out insurers like Eyemed Vision Care and Essilor, the leading prescription lens/contact lens manufacturer.

Controlling the labs, insurers,  frame makers, and all the major retail outlets has allowed Luxottica to squeeze suppliers – frames are cheaper than ever to make, thanks to monopsony buying power with Prada-grade designer frames costing $15 to manufacture – while raising prices as much as 1000% relative to pre-acquisition pricing.

It’s even worse for lenses: a pair of prescription lenses that cost $1.50 to make sell for $800 in the USA.

LA Times columnist David Lazarus wrote a column about skyrocketing eyewear prices and was approached by Charles Dahan, who once owned one of the largest frames companies in America, Custom Optical, which supplied 20% of the frames sold at Lenscrafters prior to the Luxottica acquisition. Dahan describes how Luxottica cornered the horizontal and vertical markets for eyewear and pushed out or bought out every other company (Oakley refused to sell or lower prices, so Luxottica boycotted it from its retailers, forcing the company into such a precarious position that it Luxottica was able to buy it for a fraction of its peak book-value just a few years later).

This is a good example of how decades of far-right ideologically driven antitrust malpractice has hurt everyone. After all, glasses aren’t just a fashion item: they’re a necessity for people with poor vision, a prerequisite for driving, walking, cycling, reading, getting an education or doing your job.

Luxottica grew through acquisition, by buying up its competition. This was banned under classic antitrust law, until the Reagan years. This pattern has been repeated in many other domains: beer, whiskey, retail pharmacies, and so on. In every one of those domains, we are getting screwed, as are small businesspeople and the families they serve.

https://boingboing.net/2019/03/12/luxottica.html

Praying that $1500 randomly comes to you when you need it the most this year.

Prepared food is bomb as hell so I support the humans cooking to evolutionary progress 100%

Okay so I don't know why people say sex or love is what makes us human. Lots of organisms in nature have sex or mate for life. You know what makes us human? Cooking. Nothing else in nature cooks except humans. Checkmate aphobes. Sincerely, an ace cook.

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is that true??

Holy shit!!

30 Cozy, Homemade Soup Recipes You Can Make In 30 Minutes

girl culture is turning around every few feet when you’re walking alone to see if someone’s following u

Too true

Watch: George Carlin spoke the truth about pro-lifers in 1996 — and it’s still being proven today.

So animal misinformation is very common within society so I thought about making a list of a couple of things that you probably should know about animals:

Do not flip rabbits upside down (it can literally kill them)

While we’re talking about rabbits, do not bathe them in water

Rabbits can’t eat lots of carrots, they have too much sugar

75% of their diet should be hay

that cage you bought for your hamster is most likely too small

Any tank or bowl under 5 gallons is way too small for anything unless you are keeping snails

Your aquatic animal needs a filter

Yes, your beta fish needs a heater (as do all tropical aquatic animals)

No, fish are not decorations

Goldfish and koi are pond animals, goldfish can live in some tanks but they need to be big

You can not just buy 2 fish that school (like guppies, neon tetras, etc)

Trust nothing that petsmart or petco tells you about fish they actually know nothing

When you purchase a reptile you need to be willing to take care of it for it’s entire lifespan (some of the common reptiles sold at the store can live up to 50 years)

Your reptile needs a heater

Live feeding rodents actually isn’t that good and can harm your snake (only do this if the snake refuses frozen)

DO NOT RELEASE REPTILES INTO THE WILD! ESPECIALLY IF YOU LIVE IN A WARM STATE LIKE FLORIDA!

your reptile needs a water dish

Your turtle can’t live in a fish tank that just has a floating log for them to rest above water on

Most birds are social and should have companions

If they do not have a companion you need to make sure you spend enough time with them daily to make up for that

They can’t live off just seeds

You can’t cohabitate large and small birds

You should not put bedboxes or encourage nesting for tropical birds unless you plan on becoming a professional breeder and taking care of the babies yourself when the parents are incompetent

On the opposing side, domestic birds like pigeons and chickens need a nesting box because they will lay eggs reguarly (although these eggs will be unfertilized)

The chicken eggs you buy at the store are not unhatched baby chickens

Chickens legit don’t care if you take their eggs, they will eat the unfertilized eggs if left in the coop for too long, the eggs have a lot of nutrients that can help them, but do long as the chickens are getting a good diet they won’t need to eat the eggs

Honeybees make way too much honey and taking it from them prevents them from swarming (something that most of the time ends in the death of the entire colony)

You know how your neighbor/farm down the road/etc has horses? Yeah it’s fun to pet them and all but do not feed them random stuff you bring, you don’t know if they have special diet regulations or what is/is not poisonous and sending a horse to the vet is very expensive if you want to feed them something ask the farmer beforehand

I shouldn’t have to say this but do not enter any cow/horse/large animal pasture without the owners permission

Cows aren’t as sweet as the media makes them out to be, never let your guard down around a cow

Pigs are not herbivores, they are omnivores, they eat meat and basically whatever else they can

The same applies to chickens

Do not release domestic or domestic raised animals into the wild. Ever

You shouldn’t declaw your cat (get those rubber claw covers instead!)

Also don’t let your cat be an “outdoor” cat

That doesn’t mean don’t let your cat go outside, but when they are outside it should be under supervision and on a leash

If you don’t want to leash train them, get a catio!

Your omnivorous or carnivor animals CANT BE VEGAN

Feel free to add more to this list!

Democrats: alright we finally did it, Trumps been impeached. Time for a trial in the-

Republicans: lol yeah about that trial. It’s not gonna be fair or anything, we’ve already made up our minds and there’s gonna be like, 0 witnesses

Democrats: oh? Ok then. If that’s the case then I guess we’ll just hold on to these *pockets articles of impeachment*

Republicans: