A Mess

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are we drawing the connection between worker safety and consumer safety & public health yet?

More on the health point:

"US Department of Labor proposes more than $1M fine following worker fatality at New Jersey vegetable processing facility"

Name the chains! At this point in the article it seems like contracting with prisons is the default for meat plants ☹

was it Hillary Clinton who lived in a mansion staffed by prison slaves? somebody please tell me which politician was called out

Namaygoosisagagun First Nation/Collins has burned to the ground. The entire community is nothing but ashes after being quickly consumed by wildfires. They did not have any support from emergency services, and no one offered aid. The community saved themselves by escaping into boats because no one came.

Mishkeegogamang and Cat Lake have lost power. Families are ending up in shelters with nothing. Armstrong, Lac La Croix, Whitesand, Gull Bay, Lac des Mille Lacs are currently in the fires path and all members are being evacuated.

All this loss, all this devastation, and it was entirely preventable.

After steadily underfunding wildland firefighting and purposefully excluding Indigenous wildland firefighters and Indigenous wildfire organizations from wildfire operations, firefighter training, decisionmaking, and resource exchanges, in 2025, Doug Ford slashed the forest firefighting budget.

It's hard to ignore his decision to cut funding and leave us out of adequate fire training (even though we've lived with forest fires for thousands of years—far longer than settlers have been in Canada—and made sure fires like the ones we're all seeing today were prevented through kinisitotēn) when, despite making up less than 5% of the population, we account for 42% percent of all wildfire evacuations in Canada.

And when we are successfully evacuated, we face discrimination and racism—like Kashechewan—because it's always been easier to blame us than it is to blame the true culprit: denialism, corportate greed, and colonization.

The people of Collins and every other impacted community deserve better.

Right now, the AFN is currently accepting donations to help Collins First Nation. If you're able to, please consider donating.

ONWA (Ontario Native Women's Association) is another great place to donate to. They have outreach vans going to motels and inns and offering food, water, resources, and cultural support to those impacted by the wildfires.

Other places to consider donating to are Mikinakoos Emergency Fund, Red Cross, True North Aid, Indigenous Climate Action. You can also send donations directly to Whitesand First Nation via e-transfer ([email protected]) and they request that you add your full name in the e-transfer comment section to receive a tax receipt.

*Before sending money, verify that the appeal appears on an official First Nation, Tribal Council or registered charity channel.

If you can't offer financial support, please consider donating items of need. Moontime Connections is currently accepting drop-off donations. If you live in the Thunder Bay area, Namaygoosisagagun Health Office is also taking in donations! They can also bemailed to Superior Inn Hotel & Conference Centre at 555 West Arthur Street, Thunder Bay, ON, P7E 5P8.

items needed are: food, diapers, medical masks, men’s and women’s joggers (all sizes), children’s clothing (newborn to size 14), children’s shoes, summer clothing, men’s clothing, toiletries (lotion, Vaseline, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo, conditioner, soap, deodorant, etc.), strollers, adult depends-all sizes, dog & cat food

"Going into Space

SO I GUESS THEY ARE GOING INTO DAMN SPACE AGAIN SOON.

A TWO AND A HALF BILLION DOLLAR CAMPING TRIP.

OH SURE THESE THREE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED MUCH IN THEIR LIVES.

THEIR BOY SCOUTING WILL FINALLY COME INTO A REAL TEST

WHY DON'T THEY HOVER THEIR SPACECRAFT OVER THE RESERVATIONS

OR HOVER THEIR SCREAMING STEEL OVER THE GHETTOS AND SEE

BUT I GUESS YOU CANNOT SEE THE POVERTY FROM 28 MILES ABOVE THE EARTH.

Francis Becenti, a Navajo, wrote this poem in 1971 when he was nineteen years old."

"Whitey on the Moon by Gil Scott-Heron A rat done bit my sister Nell with whitey on the moon. Her face and arms began to swell and whitey's on the moon. I can't pay no doctor bills but whitey's on the moon. Ten years from now I'll be paying still while whitey's on the moon. You know, the man just upped the rent last night cause whitey's on the moon. No hot water, no toilet, no lights but whitey's on the moon. I wonder why he's upping me cause whitey's on the moon? Why I was already giving him 50 a week and now whitey's on the moon. Taxes taking my whole damn check, the junkies make me a nervous wreck, the price of food is going up, and as if all that crap wasn't enough, a rat done bit my sister Nell with whitey on the moon. Her face and arms began to swell and whitey's on the moon. With all that money I made last year for whitey on the moon. how come I ain't got no money here? Hmm … whitey's on the moon. You know, I just about had my fill of whitey on the moon. I think I'll send these doctor bills air mail special, to whitey on the moon.

"Us? Oh, of *course* our Dachshund sleeps inside- we just let him out in the morning and make sure he comes back for dinner. He just does his own thing, no worries."

"Um, you know it's not humane to keep a chihuahua confined to an apartment? They're dogs, they're natural predators. They need to experience hunting behaviors or they get depressed. No we don't leash ours, he absolutely hates it, we just let him come and go whenever."

Yall get how fucking stupid that sounds, right? So stop letting your goddamn cats get eaten and attacked and infected and hit by cars

A toddler would probably love full unattended access to the neighborhood too, but we don't do that either, do we

Nothing is a habit! It's all deliberate choices and it's EXHAUSTING

It's like the difference between automatic breathing and conscious breathing. Imagine if automatic breathing didn't work for you and if you didn't decide to breath you would just run out of air. So you have to mentally manage your breathing on top of your normal functioning.

Now make that EVERYTHING. So no I'm not going to brush my teeth without thinking about it or do the exercise program automatically or make my bed or whatever. If I'm not thinking I'm not doing anything! I'm staring at a wall! And at the end of the day I'm almost always at this point where I have no mental spoons left and that means task queue is empty. My brain is tired and I'm powering down! I'm not even "going to bed" with all of the sub-steps that this entails like changing into pajamas and brushing my teeth, I'm just done for the day no more tasks the end.

So that stuff you can do as a habit is just another task on my to-do list requiring mental energy. Even resting is a task with its own requirements! And it leads to the constant feeling that I don't have enough time to do all the things I need to do, even when none of those things take very much time. It's just the task queue is so long! That's too many things! I can't add any more things, I don't have time! And managing the Task Queue is it's own task!

Food Empowerment Project maintains an updated list of chocolate brands they recommend based on the following standards:

transparency about the country of origin for cocoa

if sourced from Western Africa, the workers must own the companies/be in charge of the profits from their labor (this standard is because child labor and slavery have been widely documented for decades in this area)

if sourced from Brazil, the workers must own the company and/or be in charge of the profits from their labor, or the company must be going above and beyond to support the workers and their families (this standard is because "child labor and slavery only recently have been documented in cocoa in Brazil" and they are "giving Brazilian companies that are trying to address the issue by supporting the workers and their families the benefit of the doubt.")

[Source: "Understanding Our Chocolate List" from their website]

So, Tony’s allied with Barry Callebut to get its cocoa. Barry Callebut is one of the biggest chocolate companies in the world, and it is unethical, obviously. This led to Tony’s revealing in February 2022 that 1701 child laborers were in their supply chain. Barry Callebut had over 21K at the time. Both of those numbers have risen, and Tony’s has outright admitted they don’t give a fuck about child labor laws when asked about it, content to let children to continue farming their cocoa instead of actually doing the activism they claim to do. (business-humanrights.org, feb 6 2022)

About a week ago, Tony’s joined Barry, Nestle and Ferrero in pushing against the reinstatement of important EUDR deforestation legislations. Under that regulation that they pushed against, they would’ve had to be more transparent about their supply chains for their more key ingredients - So Tony’s is lobbying against the exact thing they claim to stand for. (confectioneryproduction.com, mar 18, 2026)

Won’t restate @closet-keys’s addition, of course. That’d just be redundant and maybe annoying since, yknow, it’s already been said.

If you wanna find a better chocolate brand it’s really damn easy. There’s lists on slavefreechocolate.org of both the ethical and unethical companies. Both lists can be found here:

are we drawing the connection between worker safety and consumer safety & public health yet?

More on the health point:

"US Department of Labor proposes more than $1M fine following worker fatality at New Jersey vegetable processing facility"

Oldest human footprint discovered, made 153,000 years ago in South Africa.

Oldest human footprint in North America, made 21,000 years ago in New Mexico, USA.

Our fucked up dolphins

Our fucked up porcupines

Our fucked up snakes

This