V-A-L-N-T-Y-N-E

Anyone with a name that starts with a “Z”, ends with an “i”, and isn’t some kind of Italian pasta, IS SERIOUS

According to the post below, AO3 issued a DMCA takedown after finding out that all works before March 2025 were scraped and uploaded as a dataset to potentially train AI. The ability to take legal action against scum like this is the direct result of people donating to AO3 so they can keep functioning and they don't pocket any of it because they are a non-profit organization.

So when you see the AO3 donation drives, please remember that this is what the money is going toward and support it when you can!

Individual calls matter little, but if they get tons of calls on one topic then they take it seriously. The example above was probably during a time where the office was flooded with so many calls at once that they took the phones off the hook, which actually means that calls are working especially well. When the phones are blowing up, everyone in the office notices.

on wednesday my history professor pulled me out into the hall and asked me how me and my family doing. i told him about how we're trying to get people out of gaza but it's getting harder and egypt is upping the prices to leave. he nodded and then said "today i wanted to talk about the biden administration and how they're handling the situation in class" and i nodded and right before we headed back in, i stopped him and said "by the way palestinians are really sensitive over using the correct words for this situation. we don't like hearing 'conflict' or 'war' because that implies there are two militaries against each other and palestinians don't have a military, and 'war' implies it's an equal fight when it's not." and he nodded and said "okay what words do you want me to use" and i said "genocide. call it a genocide, that's what it is." and the LOOK. the LOOK he gave me. i can't even describe how horrible it was. just a pure look of surprise shock and disgust and it was like every single microaggression i've ever received all put in one face. you could instantly tell he was uncomfortable. i then said "you can also call it a humanitarian crisis" and he stared at me for a while and then nodded uncomfortably and said "yeah i'll just call it a humanitarian crisis". i shrugged, nodded, and we walked back into class.

about 2/3s of prisoners in the united states work and most of those people make nothing for their work. if they make any money it's averaging 52 cents (that's $0.52) per hour and most of the money gets withheld for "room and board, taxes, and court cost" by the prison. some states, including alabama, arkansas, florida, georgia, mississippi, south carolina, and texas, pay nothing. here is a 150 page ACLU report on this that was published in 2022. if you refuse to work you might be sent to solitary or have your parole chances destroyed. there are no labor protections. people get killed. incarcerated people produce billions of dollars a year and almost never get paid.

there are basically three forms of prison labor. the first is labor inside of prisons to keep the prisons running. which means that if they let people out? their admin goes down. which is a reason to not let people out. the second is work release, providing inmate labor to private companies at offsite locations, like poultry plants, cattle and dairy farms, and other agricultural services. (this includes firefighting. incarcerated people are saving your fucking lives for less than five bucks a day.) the third is production of goods for external sale, including farm work, manufacturing, call center, distribution services, and others. and yes, before you ask, this includes immigration detention, which may i remind everyone is made up of civil detainees; immigration violations are not crimes but civil violations and people are trapped and exploited in private prisons and then utilized for profit.

this is legal because of the thirteenth amendment to to the US constitution, which states (and this is a direct quote), that "neither "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[.]"

colorado banned prison labor five years ago but prisoners say it's still going on as of november 2023. there are other state initiatives trying to get prison labor banned, but when the government literally relies on incarcerated people to keep running, it's an uphill fuckin road.

companies which use prison labor or sell products made by prison labor include:

walmart

kroeger

target

aldi

whole foods

mcdonald's

wendy's

starbucks

sprint

verizon

victoria's secret

the dairy farmers of america

dickinson frozen foods

badlands quilting

pizza hut

hickman's egg ranch

fidelity investments

jc penny

american airlines

avis rental cars

the oregon department of motor vehicles

3M

allstate insurance

american apparel

american express

costco

enterprize

fedex

frito lay

hertz

HP

little caesars

kfc

office max

sara lee

xerox