Izzy

Image Description.

Facebook post from Matt Norris.

Post reads like a conversation between 2 people:

Prison labor is a problem we need to address soon.

Convicts in prison should have to work like the rest of us.

You mean like slavery?

No, we’re giving them 3 meals and a bed, at our expense, while they just sit around and watch TV. They should have to work!

Right. Like slavery.

It’s not like slavery!

Can they leave?

No.

Can they refuse work?

No.

So how exactly isn’t this slavery?

We DO pay them!

Do we pay in accordance with labor laws?

No. We pay them between 33 cents and $1.41/hour with a maximum daily wage below $5, then take up to half of that as room&board fees and victim compensation.

Right. So like slavery.

BUT.

No.

Image then links to this url.

Below URL image reads “fun bonus fact: enough of our labor market currently relies on labor at these depressed rates, that it has a substantial downward pressure on both wages and job availability in low-skilled sectors. Immigrants aren’t taking your jobs. Slavery is.

End description.

I’d also like to add it’s not just private prisons. It’s also private detention centers where ICE keeps the immigrants.

It’s not even covert. It’s blatant and overt. It’s even called slavery in the constitution.

“Slavery is illegal except as punishment for a crime.”

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

People just don’t care because they think it’s all murderers and rapists, despite the fact that the number of violent criminals in jail is so small it might as well be negligible.

As of September 30, 2009 in federal prisons, 7.9% of sentenced prisoners were incarcerated for violent crimes,[39] while at year end 2008 of sentenced prisoners in state prisons, 52.4% had been jailed for violent crimes.[39] In 2002 (latest available data by type of offense), 21.6% of convicted inmates in jails were in prison for violent crimes. Among unconvicted inmates in jails in 2002, 34% had a violent offense as the most serious charge. 41% percent of convicted and unconvicted jail inmates in 2002 had a current or prior violent offense; 46% were nonviolent recidivists.[46]

It’s literally slavery, just dumbass racists and capitalists don’t care enough to figure out why we’re calling it that.

faux leather is pleather, which is plastic. the process of mining, refining, and fabricating plastic causes enormous environmental damage at every step of the way. oil refineries regularly cause massive die offs of birds, small mammals, and EVERY local invertebrate. the degrading plastic from pleather garments (which break down after only a few years) produces microplastics and leads to groundwater contamination, killing off amphibians and, later, sea life. faux leather can't be repaired or recycled, only replaced by a new, equally toxic product.

tanneries are not exactly fountains of health, but a leather jacket uses the skin of a domestic cow that was already killed for meat. leather jackets can also be refurbished or recycled. once entirely discarded, leather will rot in place, rather than fragment into toxic forever particles.

leather is the product of an animal's death in a tangible, recognizable form that you can immediately assess. one jacket, one cow. you touch the skin of that dead animal and you flinch from it.

pleather can tell you that no animals were harmed, because it harms animals that you will never see. it outsources responsibility. you're not touching the skin of the birds that drowned in oil spills and the tadpoles that hatched into toxic rivers. the fish that will choke on the microplastics of your new jacket aren't born yet when you walk out of the shop. the material of the jacket is so abstract and your culpability is so obscure that you can believe what you are told: it is clean. you are clean. no harm, no foul.

There is more ecologically friendly tanning that will take longer but uses a lot less of the chemicals that we wouldn't want to see in nature.

The only real issue is, that our cows grow too fast and leather isn't available in thicker qualities anymore, so some leather articles just aren't possible that were half a century ago, not to mention durability is a function of thickness as well.

him: "well if you're not allowed to use the men's bathroom, just go to the women's! that'll show them."

me: "yeah but I'm just as likely to have the cops called on me for 'using the wrong bathroom' in there. have you seen me lately?"

him: "but if one of the options is wrong and not allowed then the other one has to be the right option. what do they want you to do?"

my grandma, helpfully: "I think they want trans people to not go to Florida"

my dad: spluttering frustratedly

me: "I think the thing is that you are more logical and reasonable than Ron DeSantis."

“I’d like to, but I can’t safely travel there,” I told her.

“Wh-wait why?”

“I’m visibly queer. If I went there with my partner we’d be unsafe.”

“Oh… you could just… not hold hands?”

I gave her a flat look and asked, “Would you want to travel somewhere that holding your husbands hand put you in danger?”

“Oh… I guess not.”

“Besides, it’s not enough. Just looking like we do is enough to trigger aggression. Even if we don’t hold hands. I’ve been threatened just walking near my girlfriend in a parking lot on multiple occasions.”

Yes, of course, this is one of my favorite snakes!!!

Tentacled Snake (Erpeton tentaculatum), family Homalopsidae, found in SE Asia

Aquatic and piscivorous

Rear-fanged, mildly venomous

The tentacles have a mechanosensory function, able to detect small movements in the water.

Photographs by Dick Bartlett

Photograph by Tommy Hui

photograph by P Scanlon

photographs by Jonathan Hagström

If you know you know.

ChatGPT, initially built by an open source company but then Sam Altman decided he needed a billion new sports cars, won’t be programmed to look for nuanced takes in “the dirty places” of the internet (tumblr, … and reddit I suppose). That is, it must only look at “reputable” news sources.