the blowjob queen of saskatoon

And GLaDOS interjects like, "You didn't do this. She did all the work!"

I find that interjection fascinating because. Like.

GLaDOS doesn't actually know anything about what happened behind the scenes. She lost track of Chell and Wheatley after Wheatley opened up a wall panel and they bolted off together into the facility's inner workings. She doesn't see them again until Chell falls for her fake door trap, at which point GLaDOS is unpleasantly surprised to discover that Chell's disabled the turrets and neurotoxin in the meantime.

She has no evidentiary foundation to base that accusation on.

This is also before GLaDOS recognizes Wheatley as the Dumbass Core, so it's not based on an assessment of him.

The only explanation it leaves is that it's based on her assessment of Chell. Despite GLaDOS's enmity towards Chell, the one thing she rarely goes after Chell for is her intelligence.

When she does, it's an admission of her high standards for Chell; Like when the fake door trap works and GLaDOS concedes, "I didn't actually think that would work. I already built a much better, smarter trap up ahead for when this one fails." That's a backhanded insult. It's calling her dumb, but in a disappointed way rather than an affirming way.

Chell tests very well. Between the two games, GLaDOS has developed a strong understanding of Chell's aptitude for critical thinking and problem-solving in stressful situations.

something something dykes on bikes 🏍️🌈💨 (because it's not pride without some l e a t h e r)

just so you know if you forego certain foods because you can't afford them or you can't "justify" spending the money, you might be able to get that food at a pantry.

i was living in a super wealthy area once where the only grocery store within a 40 minute drive was all fancy upcharged local organic and i literally pretty much stopped eating fresh produce because i couldn't afford it. i went months without eating a carrot or greens or anything that didn't come from a can. sometimes i got frozen veggies.

so sure, i was eating. i wasn't starving. i was getting nutrition. but it was nuts that as an animal on earth where plants grow in abundance, i didn't get to eat any of them fresh. people deserve fresh produce!

one day i was lamenting it and my friend was like, "oh yeah i get all of my produce every week at the food pantry."

i was surprised bc she made the same paycheck as me and i wouldn't have thought of either of us as someone who 'qualified' for food assistance. i went to the food pantry and found out because the median income in our town was so high, i did qualify. more than that, they asked for no proof of income, it was more of a 'if you think you need help, we don't make you prove it,' situation.

for like 8 months i got all of my produce (and eggs!) there every week. and yes if i had made sacrifices elsewhere in my life i probably could have afforded some produce at the local grocery store. i could have, i don't know, skipped seeing the one movie i saw at a move theater once every couple of months and spent the $8 on spinach one time instead of the ticket and had spinach once every couple of months.

but the point is the food pantry had more than enough to go around. if i hadn't taken some of their produce, it would have gone bad. the resource was available to me, and there was no reason for me to crawl on my hands and knees to qualify for it.

resources like food assistance are not available everywhere and they can be very limited and hard to come by. they won't be given out just for fun to anyone. if you ask for assistance and are offered assistance in reply, you need to believe that the assistance is available for you.

if a food assistance program doesn't have resources to help you, it'll say so. there is no harm in asking! you will be told 'yes' or 'no.' but you won't know until you ask.

stop convincing yourself that you don't deserve assistance, that everyone else needs it more than you, that you're taking it from someone else, that you should have nothing at all in order to deserve anything.

you deserve to not only eat but to eat well. if there's assistance for you to access better foods than what you have, understand how fortunate you are, and stop denying yourself that resource!

accessing food assistance at pantries is also a great way to help yr community, because you can spread the word and help normalize receiving food assistance in yr community. you can even become a volunteer and be part of the team providing to you and others (i did that and it rocked)!

below i am going to illustrate why exactly this was bad in every single way imaginable

i thought that was interesting.

how close can we get….

Pet Foolery, #93

Imperialist core entry level jobs have been replaced with outsourcing for the working class and internships for the wealthy.

The lack of entry level jobs means that recent graduates are not hired because they are expected to know in advance how to behave in the workplace rather than being trained when they begin working.

Actually as many as 1-in-3 job listings are fake, because this allows companies to claim they are "actively recruiting and growing" even when they aren't, which looks good to investors and can lead to government benefits as well.

In the US, hiring several part time jobs allows companies to save about 30% on benefits compared to hiring one full time job. This is directly because of the US's predatory healthcare system and lack of the worker protections common in other imperialist core economies.

The US minimum wage has been static for my entire adult life, in part because efforts to pin the minimum wage to cost of living metrics are constantly stonewalled by wealthy political groups.

The US labor participation rate is around 80% of abled adults, which yes, does mean about 20% of abled adults are not working, but perhaps much more damningly, this is actually very high participation compared to a lot of US history, and yet the cost of living and pay are so mismatched that quality of life is reaching impressive lows.

Masters degrees are being devalued as a consequence of the prior devaluation of Bachelors, that itself caused by the destruction and devaluation of compulsory public schooling in the US. This combines with the absence of entry level positions in deeply fraught ways.

I am unable to corroborate the claim that US job searches average greater than a year. However they do average well over 7 months, and the US's notoriously spiteful and underpaying unemployment system cuts off support much sooner than that. If you can even get unemployment support in the first place.

A Nervous Old Man (right) and his Emotional Support Violence Machine (Left)