Den of the Dragoness

I haven't seen anyone talking about this and just wanted to make a quick post on here.

Akihiro Miwa recently passed away peacefully june 20th, and was not only a drag queen and a queer icon, but also the japanese voice of Arceus in the movie Arceus and the jewel of life, as well as the witch from Howl's moving castle and Moro from Princess Mononke.

Hello everyone!

Last year I started designing a series of Coat of Arms, themed in the spirit of Pride Month and using different mythological creatures as heraldic animals. I now aim to turn these designs into wearable pins and will be running a Kickstarter in July to fund this endeavor! I have found a very trustworthy local manufacturer, who has already shown the quality of their craftsmanship with the first batch of test pins I received, just look at the detail they were able to produce!

Since I try to support local manufacturers, which produce pins with fair wages and are more ethical than outside of Europe, the pins are more expensive to create than through the usual pipeline via Asia.

I therefore seek to crowdfund the expenses since they would be more than I can afford. If you are interested and look forward to support this little endeavor, please follow the link below to sign up for a mailing list. People who signed up on the email list and pledged during the campaign will receive an exclusive sticker set by the end of a successful launch consisting of the following designs:

SIGN UP ON OUR PRELAUNCH WAITING LIST TO GET THESE LITTLE GUYS FOR FREE

Our Kickstarter Prelaunch Page:

but it literally hasn't happened. people steal fried chicken and pack steaks into a duffel bag. or they have me write on cakes for their coworkers birthday and run out the door with it. they eat chicken and dump the bones on a shelf they pay for the rest of their "groceries".

Like, let's set aside the practical concerns, like how "unhealthy" food has more calories while taking up less bag space, people can't survive on nothing but bread and water, many poor communities are food deserts where fresh food isn't even available to steal, and many people (including the explicitly unhoused man in the meme) don't have a way to prepare frozen chicken. Let's set all that aside, because poor people aren't required to justify every single action to you specifically

Instead let's talk about the sheer undisguised hatred of the poor on display here. "The fried food at the grocery store is for me, because I'm a good special boy with money, if the filthy poors want to steal they can steal the dried gruel powder because that's all they're good enough for. Or they can have meat, I suppose, but only if it's frozen meat that they'll have to go heat up themselves to prove to me that they've earned it. And make sure they grab some raw vegetables that they'll have to chop and cook themselves too, that'll be a good use of their bountiful time and energy. If they wanted not to be miserable, they should have tried not being poor, like me!"

There is literally no justification for this shit. If you believe that stealing bread from a chain grocery store is a justified act that hurts no one, why the fuck would you feel different about steak? Why are you even thinking about this shit? Why are you sitting around fuming at the thought of poor people having anything that makes life worth living? What does it fucking matter to you?

That mini fridge was a miracle, but I didn’t have anything like a hot plate or a way to prepare food - just a pot for coffee/hot water. Mostly what I ate was peanut butter and jam sammiches, apples, and lunch meat and cheese if I could get it, because it was expensive. I never got to the point of stealing… but it wasn’t because I thought I was too good to steal. The smell of the fried chicken in the grocery store deli was murder. I just didn’t think I could get away with it.

The people stealing from your corporate overlords aren't the ones choosing to understaff your workplace, cut your hours, pay you empoverishing wages much less than true value of your labor, nor fire you because they think the store's shrink is too large: Your corporate overlords are the ones doing that and they blaming John val John hoping you and everyone else believes them so you don't organize and demand concessions: and you've swallowed that pill like a potassum supository.

You've been in retail for five years; do some fucking organizing, form a union, fuck your boss's wife, and don't be the snitch that gets John 6 years hard labor for stealing some bread to feed his family.

It's not that hard*, just do what Chris Smalls do: he led a win against Amazon. FUCKING Amazon. Successfully unionizing, or even failing to unionize but scaring the shit out of the corporate overlords that you might succeed will have a lot larger, more positive effect on your material conditions than bitching on the internet about poor people wanting necessary or nice things they can't comfortably afford.

*Don't misunderstand me, it's hard work, organizing. Chris Smalls fought for over two years and a wrongful termination to acheive the win for fellows, but you'll more likely to find success in unionizing even against the most notorious union buster than you are to baulk even one person from theft of either necesity or pleasure on the basis of, in my opinion, a critically flawed moral argument**.

**I view the so-called property rights of corporations as illegitimate***, so 'stealing from a store' is to me morally nonsensical even as I'm forced to recognize its legal reality. The point of this footnote being that I don't think there is anything morally wrong with freely taking what ought be freely available to you, and you'd never convince me against 'shoplifting' using a moral argument, least of all the consequencialist one you're making because, as previously stated, you're misassigning blame. Again, unionize and fuck your boss's wife, yeah?

they made us do half an hour of cleanup after we’d all clocked out or we’d be penalized for not ‘clocking out on time’ but also ‘not finishing facing’. half an hour of work at minimum wage was about 3$, multiplied by 5-8 employees per shift, multiplied by about three shifts. per year. forever.

they’d hammer on and on and ON at us about loss prevention and shrinkage, while skimming off 45$-72$ from their own employees in wage theft. every day. plus the hours of free work managers put in. but whenever we were denied raises or bonuses or pizza rewards or whatever it was always because of ‘all the shrinkage this quarter’ and they’d blame thieves, for their shitty secondhand crap they bought in huge remaindered job lots anyway.

my manager cried in her office once, for a company that extracted hundreds of dollars worth of free work off its employees every month, and then blamed the poor for our abuse.

A corporation is not a person, the people stealing even expensive things are living, breathing people.

You want to know why people steal non-food items? Because we live in a society that operates on profit. Electronics like TVs and Headphones, expensive jewelry, shitty brand expensive clothing, etc. Are all valuable items that can be sold. That money can go to fresh meals, phone bills, campsite fees or hotel fees, or a common one is Fines, because it's rare to be homeless and not have a cop cite you some bullshit, hundred dollar violation for something like sleeping on a bench, or your car having a missing brake light, and thats if you're lucky and said cop doesn't beat you or steal what you have on you.

Corporations are not people. Corporations are a infinite money glitch cycle so some rich fucks can horde money like fucking Smaug and convince the employees that oh we could pay more if Homeless Susan didn't steal that $25 package of diapers.

If you are a retail worker, you are closer to being that homeless person stealing a bucket of security cameras than to even your District Manager, and yet the rich have you convinced that you are somehow better than your fellow humans.

As a retail worker, you are not allowed to be punished if someone steals in front of you and you don't stop it. In fact, and actual retail workers will tell you this, we are advised to literally let people walk out because if we jump in we could open the Store up for lawsuits or workman's comp claims, so they'd rather eat the shoplift than pay for the medical bills of an employee who got hurt.

And even if you get a talk down from your manager, I'd say that's better than living with yourself knowing you just helped the Cops arrest a starving person who was just trying to get some food, clothes, or money so they could live another day.

Corporations aren't humans, they have no loyalty. That homeless person who just stole a flat-screen is more likely to give you support if you can't pay your rent and find yourself evicted, than a Corporation. A Corporation will not show you the loyalty you show it, a Corporation will throw you on your ass if your performance suffers due to illness, disaster, grief, disability etc. Because a Corporation is. Not. Human. And they will not be there when you fall.

i work at autozone, and i'm assigned to part sales, which means i'm almost always at a register at the very front of the store. sometimes i'll do other jobs when it's needed, but for the most part, i am at a register, so i get to look at everyone entering and leaving the store. which means that if anybody steals anything, i get to see that, too. autozone of course doesn't sell food, apart from some snacks up by checkout, so anything that people do steal are tools or car parts or fluid.

and when i see somebody pocket a pack of headlights, or a wrench, or a bottle of brake fluid?

i keep my fucking mouth shut instead of being a class traitor.

seriously, nobody WANTS to steal things, more accurately nobody wants to be in the position where they have to steal things. we don't even sell stuff people need to live, and i still shut up about it, because i don't know what they're going through. especially because while you don't need to to fix your car to survive, you do need it to have a half decent existence out here, and if it's got an out headlight you're gonna get pulled over by the state funded terrorist group patrolling the streets and at best they'll suck away half your paycheck in fines, at worst they'll just shoot you dead on the spot when you reach for your id.

"well then don't drive it!"

they need to get to work, don't they? what happened to getting a job?

"well then walk to work!"

lol, lmao. it gets to -3 fahrenheit in the winters here and sometimes it'll rain so hard the sidewalk floods, and in the summer you'll fry like an egg.

"well then bike to work!"

again, unsheltered

"well, take public transit!"

don't have any

"well what about the employees when they steal?"

most places don't dock hours for shrink, if they do, fuck em, unionize.

That fried chicken that everyone keeps bringing up, as well as any hot food items at grocery stores, they cannot be purchased with food stamps.

Just a couple months ago I was really struggling. I had ~$20 in my bank account, ~$20 in my EBT account, my fridge was empty and a few weeks to go before I would get paid next. So I'm looking online for coupons and deals and doing the math to see what I can get for cheap that will last me until the first of the month. That's when I remember the local grocery store has a cheap chicken deal where I can get an 8 piece for $7. I figure that with some deli sides it will be plenty to fill my fridge and I can keep the money in my bank account for gas and other necessities. Only for my EBT card to be denied at the register.

You know what else you can't get on food stamps?

•tampons/pads

•paper towels

•toilet paper

•pet food

•medicine/vitamins

•ANY FOOD THAT IS 'HOT' AT POINT OF SALE (taken straight from the USDA website)

honey why do people BUY those things?

WHY is the only thing the underclass allowed mere HOMEOSTASIS?

WHY is being of an upper class the thing that makes you DESERVE joy? DESERVE self expression? why are these things gatekept by class privilege?

just speaking as my welfare recipient 4 times homelessness survivor self: why would I want to stay alive without art??? art is breath to me. it is somatic therapy that welfare insurance won't cover.

One, I used to work for a major UK supermarket chain. "Shrinkage" is the term for products that turn up unsellable. It's also the term for stolen goods. It's also a serious bane of anyone who works in a supermarket, as you are literally ordered to destroy it. Nobody can have it. It's gotta be bagged up and binned. It gets incinerated. Seriously.

Two, that leads me to the countless stories I've heard of people losing their jobs for daring to try and reduce the worthlessness of shrinkage. I know someone who's technically family (in-laws of in-laws kinda stuff) who got sacked because, no joke, they were the manager of a pizzeria and after closing some of the staff in a meeeting ate some of the pizza that was to be wasted. As if that's not infuriating enough, that also means someone at that meeting told corporate. And that's fucking low, man. I also personally witnessed multiple members of staff admonished for eating products marked for shrinkage. We're talking multipacks where a single one's got lost in transit and all the rest are perfectly fine. It's sackable on the spot at some places.