???

Disabled Person: YOU COMPLETE AND UTTER FOOL!

The United States Government:

In order for disabled people to receive any sort of financial assistant for their housing, food, bills, medical supplies, etc., they cannot ever have more than $2,000 of resources to their name. Ever.

It doesn’t matter what it’s for.

You’re saving up for a new wheelchair?

For college?

To put a downpayment on a house?

Hell man, you just happen to budget for once in your life so that you can have some extra money in case something bad happens?

Your benefits immediately get cut off if you’re a cent over $2,000.

And, even worse, you usually end up having to pay back every dollar the government gave you that month.

So say you get $400. If they find out you’re twenty dollars over the resource limit, you have to give them all $400 back and you undergo an investigation of your funds to see if you will continue getting money.

“What if I spend the money that day?”

Doesn’t matter. In fact, from what I can tell, people who do this are actually put under investigation for fraud.

before the movie came out, Marvel gave him an exclusive preview screening. SOme people were upset because they felt if Marvel was really wanted to thank mantlo, they should have donated money to Mantlo’s family.

Sometimes, at the end of the month, he has no idea what to do with his money because the whole month went by and he still has 400-ish bucks in his account, and he fucking panics because he doesn’t want to get anywhere near 2,000.

And here’s the funnest part of the story!

One day he did a huge commission on Second Life and wound up earning 1500 bucks off of it, and he told the guy to donate it 500 bucks at a time over 3 months. The guy didn’t want to, and just donated all 1500, which put my brother at 2,036 bucks.

The state IMMEDIATELY (I’m talking less than an hour) called him up to tell him over the phone that they were canceling his SSI, because they noticed he had gone over the 2,000 buck threshold. He had to tell them that someone had made a charitable donation to him and that this was not a common occurrence in any way shape or form, and upon not believing him, my mother had to call to talk to them as his legal caretaker and say basically the same thing until they called off the cancellation of his SSI money.

He also had to cancel his renter’s assistance because it put him to 1,062 a month, so if he went 30 days without spending any money they’d cancel his SSI altogether. Like, none of us in the family have any fucking clue why that regulation is in place and it’s the stupidest shit in human history.

Wool farming, if done with an eye on animal welfare*, does absolutely nothing to harm a sheep or alpaca. It’s no different than a haircut. And just like a haircut, it’ll grow right back. If your argument is that sheep may be cut in this process—very occasionally a sheep may be nicked. To be clear, I say NICKED, not cut. Think about shaving your legs or face and hitting a bump, and ow, you bleed a couple drops. That is what may, rarely, happen. But RARELY, because farmers are going to take damn good care of the animals who keep them in funds. Should it happen, it’s as much an accident as you finding that bump while shaving.

Likewise y’all should be promoting ethical beekeeping and honey farming. Bees are unique among livestock in that if they don’t like their keeper, if they think the hive is shitty, they can, and will, just…leave. You can’t put a collar or ear tag on a bee. Bee populations are declining and they’re incredibly important in our biodiversity (as pollinators, yes, but also in other ways). And bees do, indeed, make too much honey for themselves. That’s why they swarm. A nest gets too full of comb, or they outgrow it, and they just dip. Swarming is dangerous because it leaves the bees vulnerable—the queen is mostly unprotected, they have only as much food as they could carry with them so if it’s late in the season they’re dead meat, humans spot swarms and freak out and send exterminators because they don’t realize swarms aren’t dangerous as long as you’re calm….it is, BY FAR, better to have bees in a hive that never overfills, where they can be checked for parasites and diseases that would destroy the colony or even an entire apiary and can receive honey substitute rather than starving to death if winter should be particularly harsh or long, and where an excess of their natural product and instincts can be siphoned off for the benefit of humans with no detriment to the bees.

Honey is less harmful to us and to the planet we live on than agave syrup, stevia, or cane sugar. It does not rely on any kind of slave labor (again: if the bees weren’t happy, they’d leave). It does not upset entire economies. And by its nature there are more independent keepers than there are giant conglomerates, which is better all the way around! (Although the conglomerates are trying to change that, so like. Support your local beekeepers.) Plus, old no-longer-needed honeycomb is made of beeswax, which can be used in all manner of things in lieu of more harmful chemicals like phthalates. There is no downside here!

“Never do anything involving an animal ever” should not be the goal. That completely ignores that we are animals that grew up in a complete ecosystem. “Do the least amount of harm and be good stewards, because this planet doesn’t belong to only us” should be the goal.

Wool and honey. We can argue another time about eggs. For right now let’s agree that sheep, goats, alpacas, and bees make far more of these products than they will ever need, that in some cases an excess can even be detrimental to them, and that it is a GOOD THING to find a way to live in balance rather than poisoning our world with “vegan leather.”

I Am Not Your Asian American Doll: a comic for AAPI Heritage Month 2023

I usually spend a lot of time editing and fine-tuning my comics so that they come across as polite and inoffensive. But honestly, I’m really tired of the way Asian cultures and countries are treated / talked about while Asian people themselves are excluded, and thought it was about time I really let my rage out lol.

Like no we're not going to just throw you out, or put you in camps, or any of that shit. We just want to be able to take care of our ancestral land and be the ones in charge of protecting it.

Like I know these people were raised with a colonial mindset but after a while I just start to lose sympathy.

What will change for you, Whitey McWhiterson, if LandBack takes place?

Not a whole fucking lot.

You might be incentivized to switch to less-polluting modes of transportation, such as biking. Gas might be discouraged.

The environment might be prioritized.

You might become a citizen of, say, Mi'kma'ki instead of the USA.

Your kids might be taught an Indigenous language in schools.

History class would be a lot more up front.

But your day to day life? Very little will change. You're not gonna be kicked out if your house. You're not gonna be rounded up and put into a camp. You might be required to have the minimum basic decency towards the environment. It will be the Sovreign Peoples running the show.

But you, Joe Shmoe, will be left alone to live your life.

Their cult teaches them that the world is full of scary monster people who hate them for being so good and loved by god. If you swear at them and call them names or get in their face you’re just doing the cults work for it.

I’m not saying you have to listen to their presentation or try to debate them (and really getting into a debate without thoroughly understanding what they’re being taught will just make things worse)… I am just saying to be polite and say no thank you like if they were trying to hand you a flyer for something you don’t care about.

It’s easier for them to see the world outside their bubble as less scary if they see everyday people just going about their business and being as nice to them as you are to everyone else. This goes doubly for anyone who happens to dress modestly, not swear, and not drink or smoke because whatever you believe, they’ll see you as a “good” person who happens to strangely have no interest in their “message”, and that might be enough to get some curious about the possibility of themselves living in the real world.

It’s sometimes hard to be nice to people who seem to represent something you dislike. Just remember these “elders” are sheltered young men, some of which are getting their first real contact with people of other/no faiths.

SETTLE IN FOR A LESSON ON UNIONS AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIES, EVERYONE: 

Read the below comment from Peter Cullen, originally posted in this article here: 

“Cullen warns that Netflix hiring only cheap, non-union voice talent sets a dangerous precedent for the industry, which is heavily regulated by the Screen Actors Guild [SAG] to ensure fair pay and working conditions. 

Cullen is arguing for something more than just a lost paycheck - he’s looking out for his fellow actors.” 

There’s a lot of history to this, but I’m going to summarise a key event here so that everyone has context:  

From 2016-2017, with original build up for the strike having started in 2015, there was a serious SAG/AFTRA voice actor union strike, specifically against video game companies who refused to treat voice actors, mo-cap actors, and others involved in the video game industry well.

This wasn’t just about wages, but about workplace health and safety, gruelling and misleading hiring practices, and more– Which isn’t just a video game industry concern; It’s video games, animation, and special effects industries that have very similar if not identical and long-running practices of mistreating workers. 

It was the longest strike in SAG history, which is notable, and the union did indeed eventually win, although practices have largely not changed much and while some problems were addressed, many more still persist or occur under the table. 

Notoriously, creative industries struggle to unionise in the modern era (let’s say ever since the Victorian Industrialisation period, which is the root of a lot of creative field abuses), and the mistreatment of people in creative jobs has been essentially hard-baked into not just specific studios or creative career paths, but it actually literally facilitates the sustained presence of the industries themselves.

By which I mean, Hasbro will still make money off of War for Cybertron and their Netflix deal. They didn’t hire Cullen or Welker because it was, on the surface, a cost saving measure– And a totally unnecessary one, because no matter what, this would bring in the cash for Hasbro. They would make no loss by hiring these two. 

Yet they didn’t bother, despite knowing that if anything, hiring these two would only bring them even more of an income on return for the series as even more people would be inclined to give the series a chance. More people would watch it if these two were in it. Views = money. Hasbro knows this. 

And they still didn’t hire them. 

Why? 

It’s not about the money; It’s about sending a message. It’s union busting. 

They are punishing Cullen and Welker and intimidating other actors at the same time by saying, “we don’t hire union members”. Which translates into, “we don’t hire people who respect themselves and each other more than they respect the brand, and we like our workers alienated and paid as cheaply as possible with no regard for your wellbeing or experience with us”. 

And this is a common thing in creative fields: Companies and franchises and brands know they will make money no matter what on certain lines of product, after a certain threshold of popularity is met. 

Transformers is one of the most recognisable and popular franchises in the world. 

Hasbro knows that they could hire almost anyone, old talent or new talent. And we know that their confidence in their brand is extremely high; They are willing to churn out lower quality shows because they know people will watch it anyway, at the very least kids will be into it no matter what because they’re kids and robot car people from space are cool, and they have an immense amount of security and power as a company because of that. And they are very self-aware of this.

A common cynical and abusive practice is to purposefully bring in less experienced people who are more vulnerable to manipulation and mistreatment in the workplace that are willing to put up with poor workplace practices because they are either dazzled by the opportunity to work on a major series, they know that working for X production will massively boost them up for other more impressive or long term work, or cheaper and less experienced people are dazzled by even the lowest tier pay checks from huge entertainment companies like this. Pennies to a global franchise powerhouse, but good as gold for those looking for work. 

Now, do not blame the people who took these jobs, because actors need to eat too – And that is part of the problem, in all industries, but especially in creative industries. 

Gary Chalk came out and actively apologised for the bad voice direction/vocal performances in War for Cybertron, as he rightly should, but this is likely as much as he is able to say about the whole project without getting fired. We know Hasbro is willing to do whatever with their talent, just because they can. The axe is hovering over his neck as well, and that’s why companies do this kind of thing to their workers. 

Creatives are notoriously underpaid and mistreated at work. From wage theft to actual physical injury on the job, the abuses of workers in creative industries goes almost totally ignored, because a lot of it is behind the scenes work that nobody ever sees. 

Our bar is on the ground in hell for workplace standards, and I’ve done and still do a lot of creative work; I’m speaking from experience. I’ve done performing arts, I’ve done illustration and multimedia visual arts, I’ve done fashion design and photography. 

Every creative industry does this kind of thing to keep their workforce and talent pool divided, stratified and therefore positioned against one another as competitors in a very selective job market, and keep workers afraid. 

By explicitly refusing to re-hire Peter Cullen and Frank Welker, some of the most well established names in voice acting with Frank quite possibly being one of the most prolific voice actors ever to live, what Hasbro is doing here, is making a threat.

Hasbro is saying “these two are some of the best of the best, and we will still not hire them purely to spite their self-respect”. 

It’s malicious, hateful, manipulative, genuinely mean-spirited, and actively threatens the power and practical legitimacy of not just SAG but any such worker’s union. 

Hasbro made a decision to weaponize their casting process in a spiteful and unnecessarily rude and blatantly passive aggressive way. 

I have supported SAG/AFTRA for years, and especially non-screen actors and non-screen creative workers in the entertainment industry. 

We have to call this union busting scum bag behaviour out for what it is, and we need to let Hasbro know that we’re on the side of the workers, not the side of the corporations. 

And Hasbro has done this before; We all know about how they dropped the ball so badly with the Aligned Continuity, but all we know for certain about that is fairly fragmented:

They hired a new incoming director for Transformers Prime who held an opposing creative vision for the series right as Beast Hunters was about to start, the whole season was essentially scrapped short notice and re-tooled at massive stress and inconvenience to all involved, and it didn’t perform as well as prior seasons did– So Prime was cancelled. 

With Prime’s cancellation, because Hasbro has the money and the means to pretty much pull this kind of massive waste off without caring all that much about the impact on their company budget– Yet they still cite the “failure of Prime” 

I don’t know how many of you have worked in big creative industries before, but I’m telling you that you don’t just randomly hire a brand new director for your flagship franchise/brand/product without being VERY aware of who that person is and what their conceptual vision is for the thing you’re about to put them in charge of. Especially when that thing involves literally millions and millions of dollars.

We have no real details, because of course, creatives can never talk about industry stuff because everyone will get fired. 

And that’s a huge worker’s rights issue, in and of itself. The problems can’t be addressed if nobody knows about the problems, and we can’t put pressure on big media franchise companies like this if we don’t know the nature or extent of how bad working environments or conditions may be. 

Hasbro obviously has issues with treating their animation project related staff well, from production team members who are left bitter by the experience, to voice actors who are pushed aside for daring to demand basic rights as working performers.

(link to this cnn article) ^

Please note the third degree felony???

(link to this tweet) ^

Also lots of articles if you search "Florida book ban" or smth similar online. I'm just shocked I've not seen much about this, maybe people don't know it's happening??