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With a grain of salt

@anvil527up

so what caught my eye today?
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my brother started calling our cat "doobie brother" which he then lengthened to "dubious brother" and has since morphed into "brother dubious" like he's some sort of fucked up little monk

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brother dubious

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Image description copied from alt text: A square graphic with a red background that shows a raised fist bearing the IWW logo and text that reads, "Did you know? The IWW was founded in Chicago, Illinois in June 1905." The union website, iww.org, is also listed. End image description.

Did you know?

The Industrial Workers of the World, or the IWW, was founded in Chicago, Illinois in June of 1905. Its members are often nicknamed "Wobblies," and the union itself is frequently called "the One Big Union."

Why "One Big Union?" Because the IWW was founded to serve every worker. At the time the IWW was founded, only a short list of specialized trades had unions. Major industries such as textiles, docks, agriculture, and mining were all without representation, and many of the IWW's first battles were to organize those very workers!

If you're a member of the working class, you have a place with the IWW!

Learn More:

Why they're smearing Lina Khan

My god, they sure hate Lina Khan. This once-in-a-generation, groundbreaking, brilliant legal scholar and fighter for the public interest, the slayer of Reaganomics, has attracted more vitriol, mockery, and dismissal than any of her predecessors in living memory.

She sure must be doing something right, huh?

A quick refresher. In 2017, Khan — then a law student — published Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox in the Yale Law Journal. It was a brilliant, blistering analysis showing how the Reagan-era theory of antitrust (which celebrates monopolies as “efficient”) had failed on its own terms, using Amazon as Exhibit A of the ways in which post-Reagan antitrust had left Americans vulnerable to corporate abuse:

The paper sent seismic shocks through both legal and economic circles, and goosed the neo-Brandeisian movement (sneeringly dismissed as “hipster antitrust”). This movement is a rebuke to Reaganomics, with its celebration of monopolies, trickle-down, offshoring, corporate dark money, revolving-door regulatory capture, and companies that are simultaneously too big to fail and too big to jail.

“These talking points got picked up by people commenting on Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley’s ruling against the FTC in the Microsoft-Activision merger. The FTC was seeking an injunction against the merger, and Corley turned them down flat. The ruling was objectively very bad. Start with the fact that Corley’s son is a Microsoft employee who stands reap massive gains in his stock options if the merger goes through.“

“This is surreal: a judge ruled that a corporation’s radical, massive merger shouldn’t be subject to full investigation because that corporation itself set an arbitrary deadline to conclude the deal before such an investigation could be concluded.“

Two points that stood out to me about the microsoft/activisiion judgement recently.

Oddly Specific Tarot: The Moose

Meaning: Unconquerable wrath. Natural disaster. Rage that can be neither contained nor reasoned with, only escaped. Large hostile ungulates.

Reversed: Canada.

the way these strikes get framed is always so funny to me

"the strike could stretch on until the end of summer" or the execs could pay their workers

"there won't be ANY new shows because of this strike" or the execs could pay their workers

"no more content for us because the mean old writers and actors are-" OR THE EXECS COULD PAY THEIR WORKERS

So Gregor Mendel (yes, the guy with the pea plants) wrote down that he wanted to be given a thorough autopsy after he died. The year he died was 1884. Autopsies were increasingly common at the time, but Mendel was an Augustinian friar and the arguments preventing donating your body to science for teaching autopsies, research, etc. were theological. The “ethical” source of teaching cadavers for doctors to autopsy was (in many places) the bodies of executed criminals, as a sort of post-mortem punishment.  Mendel became a monk specifically because he couldn’t afford to study otherwise, even after one of his sisters donated her dowry to the cause. He did too well as a monk to continue his work as long as he wanted: he got promoted to Abbott and the last sixteen years of his life were spent doing administrative work, and his experiments weren’t properly replicated, or examined as a viable alternative to then current theories on inheritance, until 1990. But he chose to donate his body to science (which he loved) and be of material benefit to the field of medicine, which he didn’t practice but two of his nephews did.  There’s just something beautiful about a guy who lived through the era where having your body dissected was the height of dishonor, in an institution that had advocated against the practice, deciding that anything that helps humanity as a whole was worth doing. There’s something just as beautiful about the fact that he was exhumed for genetic sequencing on his 200th birthday - usually we don’t just dig people up and grab their genes as a surprise party, because in addition to it being a lot of work we can’t assume they would have appreciated it, but Mendel? He would have been jazzed. 

found this informative, about how studios are going to attempt to use influencers (particularly small ones) to try to cross pickets by paying a lot for movie promos, and that SAG-AFTRA likely will not let you in if you do this. my suspicion is they're hoping people won't understand the implications so wanted to spread the word!!

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Very important note here, yes.

PROMOTION is part of an actor's job. And it's one of the things they're not allowed to do on strike.

SAG Actors are not allowed to do promotions at ComicCon this year. They can attend, as long as they don't:

  • Participate in specific-show promotions (e.g. "five years later - actors of X series")
  • Talk about their current work
  • Talk about upcoming work

They are encouraged not to attend at all, in part because those are complex issues and it's easy to trip on them.

TikTok and YouTube INFLUENCERS are likely to be contacted by studios and told, "how would you like to make a LOT of money, talking about this show?"

...Do not take the poisoned bait.

That counts as crossing the picket line, and would result in:

  • Being banned from SAG-AFTRA membership for life, and
  • Possibly being blocked from other union jobs if they find out that you scabbed during a strike.

I was showing my class that, contrary to popular belief, divorce rates aren’t at an all-time high but actually peaked in the 80s. When I asked them why they thought divorce rates went up so quickly in the 60s-70s, none of them could guess. One guy thought it might be because of all the “free love,” drugs, etc but I told him it wasn’t all hippies getting divorces. Not a single one of them had any idea just how hard it was for women to leave an abusive marriage before the late 1960s at the earliest.

In the late 90s, having secured a permanent and full-time position as a teacher, I applied for a car loan. During the conversation with the credit union rep I was told that I was a risk because I might get married within the 5 year loan period (with the unspoken implication that if this hypothetical marriage were to occur it would immediately result in my becoming a housewife) and that, not entirely linked to the possibility of nuptials, I might also get pregnant (and again, be rendered incapable of paid work.)

I was dumbstruck.

My parents had to go guarantors for the loan. My freaking parents.

I was in my mid-20s. I had a well-paying, secure job. I was single with zero intent to marry, and even if it had been on the cards it sure as fuck wouldn’t have been to the sort of person who would immediately insist I quit my job and stay at home.

But apparently, the fact that I was a woman overshadowed all of that stuff. That single factor meant I was a risky prospect and had to get my parents to back me.

It was absolute bullshit.

Dude, women in Ireland were forced to resign from their jobs upon getting married up until 1973

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In the late 60s, no-fault divorce became possible, and it spread throughout the US through the 70s.

The combination of “you do not have to prove to a [male] judge and [mostly-male] jury that your husband is abusive (without being able to afford a lawyer)” and “you can now have a bank account in your own name” did indeed kick off many, many divorces.

Divorce rates are lower now. Marriage rates are also lower now - because, again, women no longer need to get married to get access to a bank account, rent an apartment, own a car, etc.

[Image ID: Tweet from verified user Allison Winn Scotch (@/ asWinn) on 5/8/22 reading: I just told my husb that women couldn’t even get a credit card w/o a male signature until 1974, and he was incredulous. I think a lot of people don’t realize that the deep misogyny of this country is so close that it’s not even if the rear view mirror. It’s here. It neve left. /End ID]

We have GOT to stop being assholes to people with receding and balding hairlines. There's not a single person that it can't affect. It affects trans men, particularly on hormones, it affects trans women, particularly those not on hormones, it affects people with endocrine issues, something that's becoming more prevalent and common, and it can affect people without a particular cause, including cis women. It's a normal part of being human and we NEED to stop dehumanizing and humiliating ppl for it

My bf started losing his hair in his early 20s and the effect it's had on him is devastating.

He's an actor and he was dropped by his agent after he stopped hiding his hair loss. The roles he was cast in narrowed and shifted from more heroic characters to villains, and eventually he became so miserable about it that he stopped going to auditions altogether.

He used to enjoy dyeing his hair bright colours, and he lost that means of self expression. It alienated him from his own appearance, which knocked him back in coming out and exploring his queerness. The way he talks about it often feels dysmorphic. He says shaving makes him feel like he's "rotting" - like he's "scraping the mold off [his] head".

I've seen drunk people and teenagers yell at him in the street and mock his baldness. I've seen people come up to him and slap his head or touch it without asking for permission. I've witnessed this behaviour from other trans people and women who I know would absolutely kick off if he took such a degrading or entitled attitude towards a part of their body, but seem to think it's OK to do it to him.

Since going bald people perceive him as more masculine. He feels people are more suspicious of him. Women are less likely to approach him. Folks are quicker to put him in a box or misread his behaviour as aggressive or threatening, when the reality is that he's neurodivergent and can't conform to rigid social norms.

Baldness is a heavily gendered characteristic. If someone is conventionally masculine enough and/or is protected by other intersecting powers and privileges (eg wealth) then baldness can reinforce their maleness and the harm to their social standing is minimised. But if their performance of maleness is complicated by something like queerness or disability, it creates a dissonance. They have what is perceived as a hypermasculine trait standing in sharp contrast with their refusal/failure to perform normative, idealised masculinity.

And that's how baldness is typically read - as failure. Especially when it exists outside of wealthy, successful, heterosexual masculinity but tbh even there too - just look at all the jokes about Jeff Bezos' baldness or Elon Musk getting hair plugs. It's similar to insulting Trump over his weight. Like yeah fuck those guys but all you're really doing is revealing to the fat and bald people in your life that you think their bodies are deserving of mockery.

And God help you if you're a bald woman. All women with receding hairlines are at a huge risk from transmisogyny.

Sorry for the essay. Baldness is absolutely a body neutrality issue. It's an ageism issue, and a trans issue, and I WISH there was a broader recognition of this.

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I was teaching kids today and they got fixated on the usual ‘are they dead now?’ question when I was talking about historical figures. So I was just like ‘Yes, they’re dead now, everyone who was alive in the 1800s is dead now.’ and then one kid was like ‘Except for you’.

I’m sorry to hear about your scalp.

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Okay I must clear this up more concretely since this has gone far beyond my circle of folks who have the context of Why This Is Actually Funny, because there are thousands of people here who are like ‘kids are so rude, kids are so evil, I hate kids’ when…

1) Kids are little humans and they’re learning and they should be treated as little humans who are learning. Don’t be a dick to kids. Adults who are assholes to kids is such a bad look, and kids remember that shit.

2) This particular child was being SO earnest and ‘except for you’ was said not as an insult but like ‘oh…you’re the last one left 😢’.

I dress like this everyone:

[ID: image of a person wearing a puffy 18th century shirt, waistcoat, and cravat.]

Thank u, goodnight.