So this tumblr thing...

Happy Birthday Trayvon Martin

Rest in Power

It was a tiny scene at the end of the fic, one I put in because I'd been researching left-foot driving adaptions for myself at the time due to some leg issues of my own. But it was something the commenter and their husband had never heard of before, so now the commenter is going to get him one as a surprise and for the first time in his life this guy is going to be able to drive comfortably.

It matters. Not just the big pieces of representation, but the little ones too.

The recruiter is not your friend. The military employs child psychologists to learn how to make you think the recruiter is your friend.

The recruiter is allowed to lie to you and makes more money if they do.

The recruiter is paid a commission to groom children into cannon fodder.

The recruiter will tell you you're special and will go into special smart soldier programs instead of combat. They're lying.

The recruiter may tell you they can tell if someone can get PTSD or not and only recruit people like you, who won't. They're lying.

The recruiter may tell you you'll be too busy attending free college (!!) to go overseas. They're lying.

The recruiter may ask what countries you want to travel to and promise you bougie placements on military bases in those countries. They're lying.

Even "It's just four years!" is a lie - the government is allowed to hold you past your enlistment period with a stop-loss order.

The recruiter actually has zero power to decide anything that happens to you after you enlist and they more importantly don't care what happens to you.

If you enlist, you will be brainwashed to make you willing to do things to other humans that you would never be willing to do today.

You will be ordered to do things that will kill children. And you'll do them.

The military is not the only way or even the best way for you to go to college or start a career.

Military brainwashing will actually make you into a terrible university student because it degrades your ability to think critically and question your sources.

Having PTSD and/or a TBI will make it harder to be a student and keep a job.

Veterans' benefits suck these days.

Being a veteran drastically increases your risk of homelessness, suicide, alcohol and drug dependence, prison time, and becoming an abuser to your loved ones.

The military will expose you to chemicals that will drastically increase your chances of developing cancer.

The military will withhold information about your rights to conscientiously object after enlisting.

If you want an organization who WILL tell you the truth about your rights to conscientiously object, how to legally get out of the DEP (Delayed Entry Program) or about any of your other rights in the military (whether you’re enlisted, thinking about enlisting, or a family member or friend of someone enlisted (or thinking about enlisting)), who will do it confidentially & for free, you want the

GI Rights Hotline

run by NGOs & non-profits, which has been counseling folks for DECADES now:

Or by phone:

Minimum wage in California just went up to $16.90. You need to be rank E4 or be E3 with at least 3 years of service before you're making more than the CA minimum wage in the military.

You will literally get better pay and benefits working at a costco. (And that's not even accounting for the fact that the military isn't a 40 hour work week, your entire life is on the clock)

My family is three generations of military and the first thing any of them will tell you is, RECRUITERS LIE. They are permitted to lie as much as they want and nothing they promise you is binding.

Whistleblower on Reddit rage-blogs about how the food delivery company he worked for as a developer is ripping customers AND drivers off.

Main post screenshotted here in case it gets yanked; the whole thread is worth a read.

And actually, somehow, it's even more fucked up than the reddit post conveys:

Algorithmic wage discrimination is the robot overlord of our nightmares: its job is to relentlessly quest for vulnerabilities and exploit them. Drivers divide themselves into "ants" (drivers who take every job) and "pickers" (drivers who cherry-pick high-paying jobs). The algorithm's job is ensuring that pickers get the plum assignments, not the ants, in the hopes of converting those pickers to app-dependent ants... Platforms like Uber distribute giant teddy bears ["prizes"] to pickers, as a way of keeping the ants scurrying from job to job, and as a way of convincing the pickers to give up whatever work allows them to discriminate among Uber's offers and hold out for the plum deals, whereupon then can be transmogrified into ants themselves. Dubal describes the experience of Adil, a Syrian refugee who drives for Uber in the Bay Area. His colleagues are pickers, and showed him screenshots of how much they earned. Determined to get a share of that money, Adil became a model ant, driving two hours to San Francisco, driving three days straight, napping in his car, spending only one day per week with his family. The algorithm noticed that Adil needed the work, so it paid him less. Adil responded the way the system predicted he would, by driving even more: "My friends they make it, so I keep going, maybe I can figure it out. It’s unsecure, and I don’t know how people they do it. I don’t know how I am doing it, but I have to. I mean, I don’t find another option. In a minute, if I find something else, oh man, I will be out immediately. I am a very patient person, that’s why I can continue."

If you have to use these services, TIP IN CASH.

I got taken in by this, too, because it says what I already think is true. It's extremely easy to get sucked into that kind of misinformation. And it really, really matters because the details of what these companies are doing to abuse workers are what we can hold them accountable for, make explicitly illegal, and fine/prosecute. Mixing the real bits up with false ones makes it easier for them to claim there's reasonable doubt in court.

Gods above I hate this cyberpunk dystopia that gets even harder to document and warn about because of other bits of the cyberpunk dystopia.