Papier Collant

Most of these complaints seem to be coming from franchised restaurants. Why? Well, it’s not complicated. Service workers didn’t decide one day to stop working — rather huge numbers of them cannot work anymore. Because they’ve died of coronavirus.

A recent study from the University of California–San Francisco looks at increased morbidity rates due to COVID, stratified by profession, from the height of the pandemic last year. They find that food and agricultural workers morbidity rates increased by the widest margins by far, much more so than medical professionals or other occupations generally considered to be on the 'front lines' of the pandemic. Within the food industry, the morbidity rates of line cooks increased by 60 percent, making it the deadliest profession in America under coronavirus pandemic.

Line cooks are especially at risk because of notoriously bad ventilation systems in restaurant kitchens and preparation areas. Anyone who has ever worked a back-of-the-house job knows that it’s hot, smelly, and crowded back there, all of which indicate poor indoor air quality. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Environmental Protection Agency recommended increasing indoor ventilation to fight the virus, but such upgrades are costly and time consuming. There is no data available on how many restaurants chose not to upgrade their ventilation systems, but given how miserly franchise owners are with everything else, one could guess that many, if not most, made no upgrades at all.

Ventilation issues are deadliest for line cooks and other back-of-house jobs, but there are other reasons why food workers’ morbidity rates shot up. Food workers are much more likely to be poor and/or a racial or national minority, and poor people and black and Latino workers are much more likely to die of complications from the coronavirus.

Restaurants are often intentionally short staffed, making it difficult to take time off, so sick workers likely still came to work (and infected others in the process). Bars and restaurants are COVID-19 hotspots, and service workers and customers alike get sick after prolonged restaurant exposure. The difference is that many of those customers have health insurance and other safeguards to prevent them from dying of the illness; 69 percent of restaurants, on the other hand, offer their employees no health benefits at all.

When coronavirus is spread at restaurants, and restaurant workers make little money and rarely earn health benefits, it’s no wonder morbidity rates are so much higher for food service workers. But rather than collectively grieve the deaths of tens of thousands of the people who serve us and keep us fed, and keep such tragedies in mind when considering the state of the food-service industry labor market today, business owners and their political lackeys call these workers 'lazy.'

There are, of course, also living, breathing people who have decided they do not want to risk their lives for $7.25 per hour and no health benefits. That is a perfectly rational decision for the homo economicus to make. Given how dangerous restaurant work is during a viral pandemic, if restaurant owners really wanted more workers, they would offer living wages, health benefits, and adequate personal protective equipment. But all the wage increases in the world won’t bring back the dead.

There aren’t enough people working in the service industry, and service bosses have somehow turned that into our problem, into something we ought to be ashamed of. We shouldn’t fall for it. Profits accumulate because of labor — without workers to exploit, the owning class can’t get richer. Capitalists cannot exploit the labor of the dead, so when large swathes of the working class die, they turn their ire on the living.

This is a barbaric response to mass tragedy. Workers across the country and the globe are dead or grieving. We shouldn’t risk further tragedies for a paltry minimum wage."

The hedge funds never actually owned these shares to begin with because they were short selling so they never actually paid for them.

Redditors saw this and decided to buy up all these shorted shares to gamestop a company that wasnt failing that the hedge funds would then be forced to buy back as they never actually owned the shares.

rich hedge funds have the ability to sell stocks they havent paid for yet that other people actually own and then pay for them after a certain amount of time. they can sell these stocks trade them whatever but they will eventually have to buy them back.

So they shorted gamestop shares from 20 dollars all the way down to 3 dollars, meaning they borrowed shares to then massively sell.

they sold shares at like 20 dollars and then 18, etc. and because when investors see massive amounts of shares being sold they get nervous and then sell their shares which drives the price of the stock ever further down.

so they took something worth 20 that they sold for 20 dollars and all its downward prices and instead of paying for it at $3 dollars they thought theyd CONTINUE to short the market, meaning they kept driving the prices down because apparently this obscene amount of money wasnt good enough.

Redditors who dont say the stock market is magic and mystical astrology saw this very obvious evidence that these hedge funds would be forced to buy back all these fucking gamestop shares and decided to drive the price of these shares up knowing that the hedge funds would then be forced to buy back the shares they have yet to pay for at increasingly wild prices.

what they were looking for was over 100% of all stocks shorted on a company that wasnt even failing or in complete disarray

they used this knowledge to bring stock that was 20 dollars brought down to $3 all the way back up to $140

the hedge funds still have to pay for all of those shares they never technically even owned in the first place which these redditors knew so they held onto these stocks they bought in a company whose shares were oversold.

INSTEAD of acknowledging this they decided to have media campaigns lie and make the stock market look even more mystical and crazy to people who dont know shit about finance so that your average folks wouldnt catch them in the act of just getting a fucking 2 billion dollar bailout for being greedy fucking pieces of shit.

They also dont want your average person to KNOW they do this shit especially when they drive shares so deep into the ground ($3)

TL;DR: Every time you call the stock market magic and mystical and ooo makes no sense, you pretty much allow these motherfuckers to get away with robbery of the average person (given a government bailout is paying for this)

Understanding how these things happen and knowing what to look for allows people to work together and not only stop it but rob back from the billionaires when they pull this shit.

Now, the one thing you need to the know about the stock market is that it is run by PEOPLE. And people are panicky. It really doesn’t matter how “well” a company is doing if its stock is being sold off en-mass. People panic, think that somebody knows something they don’t, and sell their stock/refuse to buy. 

The hedge funds basically bought a very specific kind of bike and pawned all of them. They bet that people would see a lot of a specific brand of bike at the pawn shop and refuse to buy because there MUST be something wrong with that brand right? Why else would a ton of them be in a pawnshop? Better ditch your own right now or risk the wheel falling off or something. 

So, Gamestop’s stock is in the toilet and the hedge funds are about to make a shit ton of money. 

Enter reddit.

Upon seeing that Gamestop’s stock is artificially low because of hedge fund dickery, one forum decides to start buying Gamestop stock out of spite. Buying raises the stock price. The Redditors raise the price enough that the hedge funds start panicking. The time when the HAVE to buy back the stock is coming due and now it is WAY more expensive than they sold it for. Its like Bob walking pass the pawnshop and seeing the bike’s price is now three times what he sold it for. Bob panics. Bob makes a horrible decision. He complains to everyone about this. EVERYONE. 

Hedge funds were on tv whiny and attracted the attention of people who REALLY DON’T LIKE THEM. People like Elon Musk whose company has been targeted by shorting before and has no problem finding the cash to buy the inflated Gamestop stock and have the social media platform to shine an even bigger spotlight on this. Now other people outside of the Reddit forum are joining in because they smelled blood in the water. 

i havent watched this commercial in 10 years (which was also when it was posted) but yes i remember this playing on TV when i was younger

heres an article from 2009

heres an interview from 2009

in fact, these were so culturally relevant that i distinctly remember watching a dane cook special where he had a bit about it (i think he also mentions rape so tw for that) 

i grew up hearing gay be thrown left and right as a derogatory term, and its a small part of why i dont identify with the word.

But there’s more to it that some people aren’t getting, either.

“Gay” and “Lesbian” were used as weapons; even if someone wasn’t queer, if they were hated enough, the rumors spread. “Don’t hang out with her, she’s a lesbian.” “Hey, should (name) be allowed to change in the locker room? You know they’re gay, don’t you?” And so on. Depending on where you were, especially if you were trying to have a career (like a teacher) being labeled “gay” enough times to be believed cost someone their career, because of “concerns,” especially if the job involved particularly young kids. And that’s just the people who got lucky enough to only lose a job.

And she specifies various things (my one friend with dyed hair looks like a troll doll, a different friend has bad teeth), but at the end of the video, she says, “Anyway, they’re all lesbians.” And it’s not that she hates us because we’re lesbians – it’s an afterthought, like she just tacks it on at the end there – it’s just a catchall term. It’s not specific, like our appearances, it’s generic. Everyone would understand what she meant, and it wasn’t “they all date women, therefore I don’t like them,” it was, “I don’t like them, therefore they date women.”

This is why I’m never going to be on board with the “queer is a slur” thing (outside of it just being TERF rhetoric). Because I’ve actually literally had “gay” and “lesbian” used against me, personally, as a slur, but I’d never demand that people tag those terms or stop using them to describe themselves or their communities.

Gay has been a slur since at the absolute least 1976. I have personally experienced this. 

“Queer is a slur” is a lie. Not because queer isn’t a slur, but because it implies that gay and lesbian aren’t. They absolutely have been for a very long time. There are no terms we use for ourselves or that anyone uses for us that don’t get turned into slurs, because our identity is a slur in the eyes of many people. 

No one has the right to ask for queer to be tagged as a slur, and frankly I really feel like no one has the right to ask for it as a trigger request because otherwise, what? Autistic people can’t talk about ourselves because some people were tormented by being called autistic? Blind people can’t talk about themselves because “what are ya, blind?” Absolutely using their identity as a slur. Gay and lesbian people can’t talk about themselves because gay and lesbian are absolutely slurs and have been for a very long time? Do all of us have to treat our own identities delicately, like they might offend somebody?

Oh, and FWIW, my friends called me a dyke, because it was an in-joke and a reclamation. So despite that word having way worse connotations for any reasonable person, that was the “good” word for me because I knew it was coming from other dykes or at least friends.