praisecrablord

They’ve successfully convinced us that the unions are the greedy monsters. For so many years, the companies have painted unions as “we want you to pay janitors three million dollars a year and if you don’t we’ll set your stores on fire”. 

But it’s more like “We want you to take an almost imperceptible fraction of your bountiful profits and use it to make your employees’ live marginally better, and maybe give them medical benefits, y’know, so they don’t die”.

Big companies did not stop hiring ten year olds to work in coal mines because they just woke up one day and said “my god, we’re monsters”. They did it because their workers stood together and said “really, enough of this crap”.

Companies are not going to give people raises unless it’s economically necessary that they do so. Anything they can do to lower their expenses, and raise their profits, they are going to do. And no one person can stop them.

Just another reminder that Walmart Germany was a spectacular fail because of ver.di (which is a national service trade union that has it’s control over almost all trade and service companies in Germany) among other things.

Like, ver.di essentially came up to the CEO of Walmart Germany and was like “Hi, welcome, we wish you the best and that we can work together well :)” and the dude was like “hahaha no” and tried to pull the american concept here so ver.di pulled out a list of all the breaches of german law that Walmart was doing (underpaying workers, trying to avoid paying health care by using part-timers, trying to be open for more than 80 hours per week, firing people on short notice without warning or exit payments, etc) and long story short, they got some massive hefty fines for it. They also set up a list of demands for the workers and organized national strikes to push them through, making the employees of 85 hypermarkets neatly stand in front of the store doors with signs, whistles and chants (and certainly not the “Wallmart! Wallmart!” chant). In the end, that plus other things caused them to bail after 9 years with a gigantic loss (almost a billion just from sales) from one of the best retail markets in the world.

So all those issues like “no healthcare” or “work full-time and need food stamps” or “work on sundays and holidays” and shit? Unions are there to set their foot down against that for you. They are there to keep you safe from the corps wrath while fighting for your rights.

this literally is not an exaggeration

It’s also worth noting that Leon’s VA for dbd Riley McShane knew exactly what he was doing.

In ASL and SSL, this is the gesture for "Inshallah," which means means "God willing"; it's used to express hope that a specific future event will come to pass.

In a few hours, a temporary ceasefire or "humanitarian pause" is going to start

Shortly after posting this, the "pause" began—and the IOF immediately broke it by opening fire on Palestinians returning to their homes in northern Gaza.

A true, permanent ceasefire is one of the most urgent demands, but WHEN a ceasefire is declared, nobody gets to pat themselves on the back.

And end to the violence can't mean a return to business as usual, where the occupation and apartheid continue and Palestinians are still getting displaced on their own land.

israel must be abolished. They, the US, Canada, the EU, must be made to pay reparations.

Inshallah, we will not stop at a ceasefire

Inshallah, we will see complete liberation for Palestine

🇵🇸 Things you can do below 🇵🇸

in most languages the word for ‘mother’ usually starts with an M, because phonetically [m] is one of the easiest sounds for a newborn to make when they start babbling, and mothers tend to be the one most around the child. so in my mind that crosses M off the list, because it’s automatically associated with a feminine figure

similarly, ‘father’ tends to start with D, T, P, or B. (phonetically these sounds are very close together; [p, b] and [d, t] are all only different because of being voiced or unvoiced.) these are also phonetically easy letters and ones kids pick up on earlier.

now the hard sounds for kids are the following: [ɹ, d͡ʒ, tʃ, θ, ð] or in normal speak: the English R, the “j” or “dge” sound in “judge,” the “th” sound in “thigh” and the “th” sound in “the.” and we don’t want kids unable to say their parent’s name for years, so those are also off the list.

additionally, it’s easiest for young kids to just repeat the same sound twice rather than figuring out the tongue gymnastics of putting different sounds together, which is why kids will say Ma-Ma or Da-Da and not Ma-Mo or Da-Po. and we’ll want to stick with low back vowels like “ah” and avoid ones like the hard “i” or “ee.”

so what does that leave us? when we want a sound kids can learn easily and early but don’t want to just put a funky spin on “mama” or “dada”?

my suggestions: G, K, W, L. i personally lean towards W and L. they’re called liquids, since they’re the consonants that kind of aren’t consonants, and kids (and ESL learners) will tend to swap out the English R for a W or L until they can learn the R.

if i ever have a child, they’ll start calling me Wawa. then when they get older, they’ll call me Wala, or maybe even Wally.

and then, once they’re finally phonetically developed, they can call me by my true title as their nonbinary guardian for their 18+ years:

Like, I just went "I'M GONNA MAKE SOME FUCKING MUFFINS" and I was preheating the oven and then WHOOPS I'm out of vegetable oil.

The past (poorly remembered)

Right the fuck now (the only time that is real. Finally, for the first time, you are awake)

I was completely aware of the Unfortunate Implications of orogenes as black people/Jewish people/closeted queer people/neuroatypical people and having Special Powers. That was the point, actually. At the time I was early in THE FIFTH SEASON, I was watching Ferguson unfold, and listening to Darren Wilson’s bullshit about how Mike Brown seemed superhuman (or subhuman) to him.  And the whole time I kept thinking, “So-the-fuck-what if he was a demon? He was still an unarmed 18 year old whom you shot 10 times while he was running away.” From that to stories of doctors assuming black people aren’t capable of feeling pain to the same degree as white people – I was just done with it.  Fucking done.

Because it should not matter if we are big, or dark-skinned, or wearing “villain clothing” like hoodies, or whatever. All that shit’s just an excuse anyway; racist white people are scared of us when we’re small and light-skinned and wearing business suits.  The problem isn’t us. The problem is chickenshit white people and the imaginary monsters they carry around inside them.

And over the course of the Broken Earth trilogy I poked at this notion. The society of the Stillness could at any point choose to accommodate orogenes in a way that is safe for all… but it chooses not to. Orogene parents have no trouble raising orogene kids. Orogenes in communities police each other the same way non-orogenes do – because at the end of the day, they’re all people. Even if some of those people are extraordinary, they can live together if there is respect.

Black people are extraordinary in so many ways. Not superhuman, obvs – but we aren’t white, which is what this society insists upon calling “normal.” We will never be white, and that’s fine. We will never be “ordinary” in the eyes of racists – and we shouldn’t have to pretend otherwise. We shouldn’t have to stoop if we’re naturally tall, or speak softly if we’re naturally deep-voiced, just so that small-minded people will be less afraid in our presence.  Our children shouldn’t have to think and act as if they’re older than they are, just because white people misjudge their ages. The problem isn’t us. And a good, diverse society, one that actually accommodates and respects all of its members, should be able to handle both the ordinary and extraordinary with no trouble.

Trevor Noah/The Daily Show found all the receipts that prove Ted Cruz is a hypocritical a$$hat.