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 “liberal” 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.
So yeah fuck Trader Joe’s.
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!
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.
That’s a shame about Brave, does anyone have an reccomendations for another browser that reduces digital fingerprinting in a similar way?
Anything on the stock market
GNC. The vitamin stores. They knowingly sell expired merchandise and withhold commissions from their employees.
Is that you, Luigi?
IMO most of the suggestions here are small beer.
If you want to be very scientific about this, and to calculate cumulative sums of harm, with no discount for the future, then just look for some little-known hydrocarbons corp - it will top the list.
If you apply a future discount, but no discount (or a small one) for the suffering of non-human animals, then some meat company will probably top the list.
DuPont. Here’s just a little tidbit:
Between 2007 and 2014 there were 34 accidents resulting in toxic releases at DuPont plants across the U.S., with a total of eight fatalities.[93] Four employees died of suffocation in a Houston, Texas, accident involving leakage of nearly 24,000 pounds (11,000 kg) of methyl mercaptan.[94] As a result, the company became the largest of the 450 businesses placed into the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s “severe violator program” in July 2015.
In Anniston, Alabama, plaintiffs in a 2002 lawsuit provided documentation showing that the local Monsanto factory knowingly discharged both mercury and PCB-laden waste into local creeks for over 40 years.[220] In 1969 Monsanto dumped 45 tons of PCBs into Snow Creek, a feeder for Choccolocco Creek, which supplies much of the area’s drinking water, and buried millions of pounds of PCB in open-pit landfills located on hillsides above the plant and surrounding neighborhoods.
These are the kind of companies that inspired the cartoon villains of the 1980s that just dump pollution because.
Monsanto gets do much worse than polluting. They tried (succeeded? Not sure) in hooking farmers to only buying their seeds through genetic modification to grow anything. I remember huge protests, then we all sort of moved on.
Ah the old terminator seeds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_use_restriction_technology
In a similar vein:
There’s at least a chance that PepsiCo’s patented potatoes had gotten into the worldwide supply on accident and it really was no fault of these farmers for growing patented food.
Also similarly, varieties of apples are also patented.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1142333/
The US chemical giant DuPont learned its lesson of Bhopal in a different way. The company attempted for a decade to export a nylon plant from Richmond, VA to Goa, India. In its early negotiations with the Indian government, DuPont had sought and won a remarkable clause in its investment agreement that absolved it from all liabilities in case of an accident.
The Bhopal disaster was Union Carbide and then Dow Chemicals baby, but as this paper points out, companies like DuPont learned some particularly evil things from it.
DuPont is also responsible for Teflon, which is what’s typically used in “non-stick” cookware. It’s unclear what its long-term effects are (I.e. if it’s even safe to cook with), and it’s also one of those lovely forever chemicals that doesn’t break down properly.
Bad bad bad.
I’ve read a bit about Teflon. My understanding is that the big health hazard is during the application process, primarily for the factory workers - you really don’t want to breath aerosolized uncured Teflon, or get it in your eyes. It’s not the most hazardous industrial chemical out there, I don’t think there’s any particular ethical issue with manufacturing products with Teflon as long as workers are provided PPE. If it’s a sweatshop product well then there are obviously a lot of ethical issues.
Once it’s cured it’s chemically inert (which is kind of the whole point) - I’m not aware of any research showing that the human body can absorb any harmful chemicals from cured Teflon - basically your stomach acid and digestive tract bacteria can’t do anything to it. You shouldn’t worry overmuch about being harmed by cooking in a Teflon-coated pan, it’s not a heavy metal or anything like that.
That said, a deteriorating Teflon coating can be a hazard. The material is fairly stiff and again, your digestive system can’t break it down. Any small particles should (hopefully) pass through, but larger flakes could get stuck somewhere and then… well your body can’t break it down. It’s going to be there causing a blockage until something dislodges it, it’s not going to bend very much, and it might have sharp enough edges to irritate or damage the surrounding tissue.
And yeah, nothing breaks it down naturally, so it is just going to be in the world forever, gradually eroding into smaller and smaller particles along with all of the other plastic pollution, so yay.
I can’t point to any specific sources on this, it’s from reading various articles over two decades, I’m definitely not an authority.
That said, a deteriorating Teflon coating can be a hazard
This is my concern. I don’t know if I’m just being too rough with my cookware, but in my experience, non-stick coating (Teflon included) doesn’t tend to last longer than a few months before deteriorating. Which then requires more substantial cleaning to remove stuck-on food, which further damages the coating, and so on and so forth.
Find it’s better to just avoid the stuff entirely, but there’s a lot of cookware that you can’t easily get in a non-non-stick format. Specifically muffin tins and air fryers. I’ll stop there before this turns into a rant…!
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.
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
Louis Rossmann just made something like that.
Edit: here is a link https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Main_Page
If the company you work for is bought by Alpine Investments, get a lawyer. Especially if you’re a woman or expect severance when they ditch you.
If you haven’t seen documentary The Corporation, you must watch it . Amongst other things It explains how there really cannot be any non shitty corporations - so you have to look really hard to find small business that meet your needs.
The concept of “shareholder value” from the Milton Friedman playbook coldly permits any behaviour that increase profits.
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.
All restaurants
Red Ventures. They buy up web properties, fire everyone, and turn them into ai-generated click farms. For example, C|Net. They steal from their employees too.
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.
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.
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
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.
Any franchise or corporation that makes their religion known. So fuck chick fil a, hobby lobby, and in n out.
Any local small business with political signs or flags, or religious things on full display as well.
Disagree, I wouldn’t instantly say that any gay bar is bad because “it states its political views”. More like, any business that supports a facist, or is clearly religous.
Cool. I was talking about religion. Gay people have a right to exist and if a bar is friendly for them, so be it. There are other bars.
Chic Fil A is not trying to merely appeal to those of their own beliefs only. They are willingly taking anyone’s money and turning around and using that for religious zealotry. In fact, the example you bring up feels extra fucked considering that fucking company goes out of its way to donate to anti-LGBTQ organizations.
Thr right will tell a basketball player to “shut up and dribble” and a burger joint oughta only make fucking burgers then.
Cultural issues =/= politics
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My point is that a place can still be not political while supporting objectively good social movements.
The personal is political
Does In-N-Out do hateful religious stuff like Chick-Fil-A does?
All I know about is they put things like “John 3:16” on the packaging, but it’s tiny and usually in a hard to see place. On the cups it used to be on the inside of the bottom rim. I’m sure they donate to religious organizations.
That said, in-n-out consistently pays ABOVE minimum wage and treat their workers very well. Prices also haven’t gone up like other places. So with them, unless I find out they have a specifically evil viewpoint I’ve been unaware of, then just being religious gets a pass.
They’re good burgers, Walter.
Not that I’m aware of but they do print Bible verses on their stuff and at this point fuck even that.
I think we’d compile a shorter list if we tried to name wholesome, respectable companies.
