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Hello 👋, My name is Momen Al Madhoun / I am a digital artist /a father of two children " Ezzdeen & Amir " I live in Gaza City in the heart of the Genocide, working tirelessly to amplify my voice to the world through my artwork.

I want to say thank you a lot. Your donations helped me improve our displacement conditions. But my family still needs your contributions to keep going We rely on you, you are our hope for survival.

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The same day that Pixar laid off the staff who'd been in crunch mode since September 2023, they announced the crunch-bonuses would only be paid to active employees

Pixar is a non-union studio, which means they pay much lower rates and stay competitive by promising large bonuses at the end of the year or end of a project, which can reportedly amount to up to the equivalent of ten weeks worth of pay. A lot of their people have come to depend on those bonuses and it’s part of why they’re so willing to keep their heads down and work under crunch to get projects out faster.

By laying them off, Pixar not only made them not eligible for these bonuses, they also took away their normal income and their health insurance! Being laid off does qualify them for unemployment and COBRA, but that translates to a quarter of the income and double the healthcare cost at least. And as the article points out, this is an incredibly bad look given that it comes on the heels of a movie about mental health.

To ice the cake, Pixar locked them out of their network with zero warning. They couldn’t access any files on Pixar servers to use for their reels (which they will need to get hired elsewhere in the industry), they couldn’t access benefits or unemployment information, they couldn’t even physically access the buildings and were in fact asked not to come during normal business hours to get their things so that the remaining employees wouldn’t see them and feel bad.

The only team that saw no layoffs was the executive team. The only team that didn’t think the crunch was worse than usual to the point of excessive was also the executive team. See where I’m going with this? Pixar is quite literally lining the pockets of the executive team with the blood, sweat, and tears of editors and animators and other incredibly skilled ground level professionals who worked themselves to the bones for months to make Inside Out 2 such a huge success.

RE-REGISTER IF NECESSARY! They can purge you, but they can't stop you from just slapping your legally valid registration right back in the system! Don't let them get away with stealing your vote!

Curiously of the three of us, only the woman of the group had her registration purged right after, and she got a letter saying her vote didn't count. Maybe it's because non-male and non-white people have a tendency to be left leaning. Maybe she forgot how to spell her name that she's spelled correctly all her life. WHO CAN REALLY SAY?

His name is Jim Sterling and he is a rather… colorful games journalist who actually uses his platform to report on stuff like horrible working conditions, abuse and even stuff like sexual assault in the games industry.

Why? Because a massive scandal broke at the major game publisher Ubisoft revealing a culture of systematic sexual abuse, including high-ranking officials within the company that would regularly drug and rape female employees, which management and HR seemed fully aware of and would protect and move around the perpetrators Catholic-church-style. Reviewers were told not to talk about it and, when it became impossible to contain, to not talk about it where it’s “irrelevant” – that is, never mention or hint at any such stuff when actually reviewing and promoting Ubisoft games, because it’s a separate thing, see, no need to distract from the game (Ubisoft’s goal here was to be able to continue to advertise their games to players who hadn’t heard about it, and wait out the scandal until those who had just assumed everything was dealt with and forgot, which worked).

Jim refused. They knew this would tank their career, they knew they were throwing away an incredibly promising future. They did it anyway.

James Stephanie Sterling in one of a very small number of game reviewers out there with an actual fucking spine and a moral code made from titanium. They’re still effectively blacklisted from the industry, because since then they’ve refused to reform and play Good PR Robot like reviewers are supposed to do (because the AAA games industry thinks ‘reviewer’ and ‘critic’ are synonyms for ‘PR person in a gig economy’), shining light on repeated abuses and scandals in the industry, both internal scandals like this (discrimination, worker abuse, fraud, the normalisation of crunch culture and not paying workers) and ways at which the AAA industry scams players (abuses of early access, loot boxes and ‘pay to win’ mechanics that used to be the realm of free-to-play games now dominating paid titles while the prices of those titles also go up, abusive subscription models and ‘always online’ services, fun little tricks that companies love to pull with “remastered” games, and lately NFTs). Jim’s usually a good six months to a full year ahead of the curve on spying out this bullshit, able to see and warn about it before it becomes trendy enough for other reviewers to touch, and the result has been being continually silenced by game companies and passively buried by algorithms due to illegitimate DCMA takedowns, incorrect copyright strikes spurious lawsuits, being frozen out of gaming news, and whatever other nasty tricks people can pull. They came out as nonbinary very shortly before hitting a million subscribers (despite the forces agaisnt them) and then suddenly lost a lot of subscribers over a short period of time. Which was surely a complete coincidence. Yep. Just a coincidence. Have they backed down on literally anything? No. Because they decided to do this properly despite the cost and they are NOT fucking around.

They also call out particularly bad bullshit of indie developers (we’re talking the con artists and bigots in indie development in particular), not just AAA, which once hilariously resulted in a tiny no-name developer attempting to sue them for TEN MILLION DOLLARS. (Well, I found it hilarious after the fact. It was incredibly frustrating and somewhat stressful for Jim at the time, if one of the more ridiculous silencing tactics.) You can see them report on that here:

They choke slam people

“What’s next, a mixed-race immigrant on the autism spectrum?” Hi, my name is Rachel, also known as Rachna, and I’m a mixed-race immigrant on the autism spectrum. 

“What’s next, a transgender Latino man with chronic pain?” What, you mean my former colleague, Marco? 

Please don't auto share. Check your sources, and vet their wording/sourcing carefully.

Ask yourself - What do you not need evidence to believe? Be very careful with those biases.

Breaking News Consumer's Handbook

In the immediate aftermath, news outlets will get it wrong.

2. Don't trust anonymous sources.

3. Don't trust stories that cite another news outlet as the source of the information.

4. There's almost never a second shooter.

5. Pay attention to the language the media uses.

"We are getting reports"...could mean anything.

"We are seeking confirmation"...means they don't have it.

"[News outlet] has learned"...means it has a scoop or is going out on a limb.

6. Look for news outlets close to the incident.

7. Compare multiple sources.

8. Big news brings out the fakers. And photoshoppers.

9. Beware reflexive retweeting. Some of this is on you.

While normally I'm only here to look at or post silly things, I'll do things differently for this one.

This is a document about RoxSerpent, creator of Flavor Frenzy and Dandy's World.

Please, if you can, spread this post. Spread the document. Spread it everywhere you can, and to everyone you know that plays Roblox, especially if it's any of the two mentioned experiences.

This is no petty drama as it's being sold in the BlushCrunch server. This is a criminal.