ace of clubs

like without government intervention, strawberry jam would have wood in it. like it's a thing. food companies realized that they could use less of the expensive strawberries as ingredients and just use wood. there are laws you cannot legally call it strawberry jam if you do this. you have to call it a strawberry product or spread. food companies are always trying to get that shit through. they have lobby groups pushing that all the time

it is more expensive to put metal detectors in a food processing plant. companies want to cut costs. it is a legal requirement in a lot of countries to have them. so it forces companies to install them.

also to do routine inspections. that is a government requirement. so are building codes. a lot of codes are the bare minimum. like some companies will exceed the code and have more protections but a lot don't. like if it is not in the code, they don't do it. so that's why having governing bodies that regulate building safety, worker safety, food safety and product safety are crucial. because without them, your employer will not see the need to have exit doors with quick release handles, or do routine fire sprinkler inspections or have road salt for the sidewalks. some of it is basic fucking stuff.

companies when left alone do not regulate themselves. it's been historically untrue. companies want to give you a product that is cheap for them to make and that they can sell at the highest price so they can get the most profit. for everyone who loves capitalism, that's what it is. the free market will not self-regulate. if you don't have anti-monopoly laws and anti-wage theft laws and workers' protections, the open market will not fix that organically.

Night Swimmers Study - Jeremy Miranda , 2026.

American , b. 1980 -

Apparently you can do a saliva test kit at home:

this one made me happy. while i don't want to be misinterpreted as saying "all artists are morally obligated to voluntarily give up the possibility of ever getting paid" (since this wouldn't meaningfully alter the structural problems at play), i do like when stuff is public domain. if you want to release your original work for free then the creative commons license is your new best friend

real as hell and not mentioned nearly enough in these discussions, thank you for bringing it up. if copyright monopolises the distribution of educational materials for decades after publication then the only source of up-to-date knowledge is locked behind a paywall that's simply inaccessible to anyone outside of a fairly select group.

if, for example, i wanted access to the lancet medical journal then it'd run me about 22 bucks a month. certainly not nothing, but cheaper than a premium netflix subscription. a minimum wage bartender in my country could cover this in about 2-3 hours. in somewhere like india, where the minimum wage can be as low as $1.92 per day, we're talking about more than a quarter of someone's entire income for something that costs me the equivalent of a round of drinks. when every journal comes with its own pricetag, shadow libraries like sci-hub are vital for people and institutions that can't realistically pay for unlimited access.

on the other hand, profit.

shit sucks, it's horrible and it serves to maintain imperialist exploitation in a supposedly post-colonial world.

great addition, thank you again for bringing it up.

insanely funny, thanks for reminding me of it, check out the video here. it should also be mentioned that metallica's biggest hit ever is incredibly similar to a 1989 song by excel, who said at the time that even if it is stolen, they couldn't pursue a "lengthy, tiring court battle" against the biggest metal band in the world. once again small artists can't even get into the courtroom, let alone win.

grouped these ones together because they illustrate the kinda central point of all of this: every single time this conversation comes up, you have one side basing their arguments on the actual real-world effects of copyright and another which ignores them in favour of an imaginary good copyright that functions completely differently.

for example, as you said, ip law has absolutely been used to screw racialised (particularly Black) musicians out of getting paid ever since the earliest days of the record industry. it replicates and perpetuates existing wealth disparity through an unequal balance of power: when you have a kid trying to escape poverty up against professional contract lawyers, the negotiations get very one-sided and the artist comes out much worse off. the only way to win is to become one of the suits and restart the process from the other side. this is why rappers start their own labels, why diddy, dre and jay z are all billionaires, and why most of michael jackson's wealth came from buying other artists' publishing rights rather than the billions of dollars he made for sony.

just like any other capitalist legal framework, ip law was built by an exploitative, racist society and preserves the power structures of that society under the guise of free and fair exchange. it places power in the hands of those able and willing to exploit others. it is directly implicated in over a century of misery worldwide, particularly against racialised/colonised people, and i have never, ever in my life seen a pro-copyright argument that properly acknowledges this.

Maleficent reforms sometime in the fourteenth century, greatly reduced. She wanders the countryside in the shape of a harridan, another bogeyman to warn children of.

The peasantry - who remember Maleficent as the fey who inexplicably sent her minions to inspect every cradle in the kingdom - think that she is another of these goblins.

They call her La Mauvaise Paysanne.

***

She arrives in England in the eighteenth century on the back of a fairy tale.

Fairies take the shape of the stories told about them. The myth has changed, and so has she. She takes the shape of an enchantress, the punisher of naughty children, the rewarder of the good.

The English people call her the Merry Peasant.

***

By the nineteenth century, the edges of her myth have been sanded off entirely. She’s known as a fairy godmother who blesses good children.

She doesn’t mind this, but when she gets the chance to reshape her wand, she gives it a crow’s head in memory of her old familiar.

They’ve started calling her Mary Pauper.

***

By the twentieth century, Mary Poppins is more powerful than she’s been in centuries.

She’s also changed completely. She understands this to her core, and mostly she’s fine with it.

She misses it every now and then, of course. The palace, the minions, the mistress of all evil. She sniffs and says these are are ridiculous thoughts, but she thinks them nevertheless.

I 20s (F) have a 20s (M) fiancé, V, and he’s been talking about this terrible secret he cannot tell me and he keeps almost starting to come out and then backing out. The issue is V and I were raised together by his parents, and my surrogate 40s (M) father and (now deceased) surrogate mother arranged for our marriage back when we were both children. They thought it was the best for us and at the time we were too young to realize the implications and had no reason to reject to the match. When we were teenagers our mother was on her deathbed and she told us again that she wished for us to marry, and of course we both agreed. However, V is also best friends with a 20s (M) guy called H, and they were nearly inseparable as boys and teens. They also went to university together and shared an apartment but V had to come home due to family reasons. Lately he’s been going out all day and coming home at night hours later. He insists that he’s fine and that we all leave him alone and not worry for him, but I think he and H have been sneaking around. He even delayed our wedding day by arranging a trip to go to England alone with H. It’s exhausting for all of us and I think I should just tell V I know and support him and that we can call off the marriage, but I’m not sure that’s the best course of action? I’m completely fine with not marrying him - he always felt more like a brother to me anyway - but I worry it might come off wrong. The worst part is he’s really beating himself up about it. He’s so guilty it’s beginning to take a toll on his health. I don’t care if he has a boyfriend I just want him to be happy.

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