just a reminder - do NOT boycott streaming services or not watch new things. the unions have not called for one for a reason. for one, it affects residual payments, which as minimal as those currently are, actors are still getting them during this time, and for two, studios will use lack of viewership as an excuse to cancel shows because you are showing them there is no demand. it deeply affects the industry the writers and actors stand to come back to once the strike is over

Also: going to these places puts pressure and demand on the company. Demand they can't meet without actors and writers. That puts stress on them, and stress is good.

^^^^ive been looking for a rb with this addition because YES. if a customer wants a burger and there is no cook to make it, that puts pressure on the owner to pay the cook what they want so the customer will still give them money. if there is no customer, the owner has no reason for the cook to make burgers

Stop watching IF AND ONLY IF the unions call for a boycott. For the time being since they haven't, streaming the shows actually helps. You're not crossing a picket line to watch because that picket line does not exist unless a boycott is called for.

can we talk about the ups strike can we PLEASE talk about the ups strike

i know since writers and actors are already striking thats gonna take up most of the news space on social media but like. ups has until july 31st to meet the teamster's demands and if not then theyre going on the biggest strike against a single corporation since the early 1900s. the uaw (auto manufacturers union) contract is up this fall, and i believe the alu (amazon labor union) is as well. there's a huge possibility that they might strike as well, depending on how long the ups strike lasts.

im seeing a lot of talk about hollywood going down but i want to see more talk about labor rights and working class solidarity across the board... like A Lot of shit is about to go down

we're about to see a lot more propaganda by more than just hollywood, we're about to see a lot of bullshit political moves on local, state, and federal levels. dont fall for it. workers have power.

Leona's post is here.

Her YT video is here.

Please spread Leona's story, and her evidence, as much as you can. She has a mountain of evidence proving Bethesda/Zenimax a hostile work environment for trans women, and she deserves to be heard and to receive justice for being forced out of her job.

A woman whose epilepsy was greatly improved by an experimental brain implant was devastated when, just two years after getting it, she was forced to have it removed due to the company that made it going bankrupt.

Specifically, because she couldn't afford to buy the implant from the company. They basically took her implant back to recoup their losses. This is what happens when you privatize healthcare and health research. The group providing her with this implant should not have been able to go bankrupt in the first place, let alone repossess her implant to pay off their debts.

This is what disabled people mean when we say that cyberpunk horror is just a reality for us. This woman was literally forced to undergo a surgery because she couldn't pay to keep the implant already inside her brain. How long till companies start repossessing pacemakers and transplants?

this is so fucking insidious

This is why fat shaming can have tragic consequences.

If this sort of weight-based medical bias happens to any of y'all, politely tell the doctor (during your visit) that you want them to write in your file that they are refusing ordering tests for you because of your current weight. This usually causes them to order the test anyways because they do NOT want a malpractice suit. Remember: You want to make a paper trail to hold them accountable.

Black panther poster. Just as relevant today

I HATE YOU SUPREME COURT!!!

Spider-Verse Artists Say Working on the Sequel Was ‘Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts’

Why don’t more animated movies look this good? According to people who worked on the sequel, Across the Spider-Verse, it’s because the working conditions required to produce such artistry are not sustainable.

Multiple Across the Spider-Verse crew members — ranging from artists to production executives who have worked anywhere from five to a dozen years in the animation business — describe the process of making the the $150 million Sony project as uniquely arduous, involving a relentless kind of revisionism that compelled approximately 100 artists to flee the movie before its completion.

While frequent major overhauls are standard operating procedure in animation (Pixar films can take between four and seven years to plot, animate, and render), those changes typically occur early on during development and storyboarding stages. But these Spider-Verse 2 crew members say they were asked to make alterations to already-approved animated sequences that created a backlog of work across multiple late-stage departments. Across the Spider-Verse was meant to debut in theaters in April of 2022, before it was postponed to October of that year and then June 2023 owing to what Entertainment Weekly reported as “pandemic-related delays.” However, the four crew members say animators who were hired in the spring of 2021 sat idle for anywhere from three to six months that year while Phil Lord tinkered with the movie in the layout stage, when the first 3-D representation of storyboards are created.

As a result, these individuals say, they were pushed to work more than 11 hours a day, seven days a week, for more than a year to make up for time lost and were forced back to the drawing board as many as five times to revise work during the final rendering stage.

"For animated movies, the majority of the trial-and-error process happens during writing and storyboarding. Not with fully completed animation. Phil’s mentality was, This change makes for a better movie, so why aren’t we doing it? It’s obviously been very expensive having to redo the same shot several times over and have every department touch it so many times. The changes in the writing would go through storyboarding. Then it gets to layout, then animation, then final layout, which is adjusting cameras and placements of things in the environment. Then there’s cloth and hair effects, which have to repeatedly be redone anytime there’s an animation change. The effects department also passes over the characters with ink lines and does all the crazy stuff like explosions, smoke, and water. And they work closely with lighting and compositing on all the color and visual treatments in this movie. Every pass is plugged into editing. Smaller changes tend to start with animation, and big story changes can involve more departments like visual development, modeling, rigging, and texture painting. These are a lot of artists affected by one change. Imagine an endless stream of them."

"Over 100 people left the project because they couldn’t take it anymore. But a lot stayed on just so they could make sure their work survived until the end — because if it gets changed, it’s no longer yours. I know people who were on the project for over a year who left, and now they have little to show for it because everything was changed. They went through the hell of the production and then got none of their work coming out the other side."

the uncommon allergy haver to anticapitalist pipeline

in January 2023, companies became required to label sesame on all products it was present in, and undergo rigorous cleaning procedures to prevent sesame contamination, after it was declared the 9th "major" food allergen in the United States.

so, instead of considering this a mandate to give a single shit about people with sesame allergies, almost all American companies decided to just add sesame flour to all their relevant products. because apparently that was cheaper.

it's almost impossible for me to find hot dog and hamburger buns without sesame now. and I am one of the lucky ones. I'm someone who just so happened to notice the label updates, not get caught unawares and have a severe allergic reaction. I'm someone lucky enough to be surrounded by multiple choices of supermarkets, and someone with the incredible privilege to have parents who'll help me search the shelves, and cover those costs that my allergies rack up. not everyone with allergies/other intolerances has all or any of those privileges to begin with.

most food allergies will never be prevalent enough that under capitalism, it will be profitable to give them the level of accommodation that they deserve. I speak from experience with a wide portfolio of hypersensitivity quirks when I say that the rarer the food allergy, the worse it gets.

and here's the thing: I can live without hamburger buns, with only superficial decreases in my quality of life. but sesame isn't my only rare allergy, and ever since this legislation hit, I've been lying awake at night, afraid of what I might lose access to next.

I've been lying awake at night wondering what I'll have to do to live, to obtain enough safe food to survive, if any of my other allergies get this same treatment. and I reiterate. I am one of the privlidged ones.

what these companies have done is completely legal. what these companies did has also cut off up to over a million people from what were previously safe, affordable staples of their diets. a system that has any incentive not to accommodate the dietary needs of any population is not a system that can be allowed to exist. this is the uncommon allergy haver to angry, fuming anticapitalist pipeline.

[Image description: two screenshots of tumblr tags, reading:

"also pea protein. mcdicks just added pea protein without any proper warning so if you got a legume allergy, don't eat their buns."

"did you know pea protein and pea flour is a thing. i didn't. but i sure found out quick after i ate frozen nuggets and when i got gravy from a restaurant. now i have to check fucking everything because i've also found pea protein in ice cream of all things." End description.]

thank you @butchwelddone and @insidejupiter respectively for these psas. signal boosting here for all my fellow legume-allergic folks, stay safe (and stay away from McDonalds buns)

My dad has a cow milk allergy, my sibling has a coconut allergy, one of our close friends is allergic to most spices, wheat, and soy. If we’re lucky, we can find a product that any two of them can eat. Almost anything that calls itself “allergy free” is loaded with coconut.

Also! Fifteen years or so ago, all the whipped toppings went from being dairy free to advertising how they were “made with real cream!” Not to mention various other foods that followed the trend, and really screwed everyone over for having cow’s milk and whatever original milk alternative they used to cut costs both in everything.

So, yeah. For-profit food my belothed.

USAmerican corn-allergy-haver here l love you all and I think we should burn it all down.

By the way the practical [miserable] advice is to cook most things from scratch for yourself and to eat out rarely and only at restaurants you've completely vetted.

The advice that fucking nobody ever tells you about and that is why I literally went back to school to get a degree in nutrition is

If you suffer from a food allergy that cuts you off from bread and cereal products in the US you probably need to supplement your diet with vitamins because the primary source of folate in the American diet is fortified cereals and a severe folate deficiency is basically a form of anemia.

You can supplement this with vitamins but :) if you have :) grain allergies :) make sure :) that your allergens :) aren't used :) as fillers in :) the vitamins :) :) :) :)

Either you can take folate/folic acid on its own or you can take half a daily prenatal vitamin to meet the RDA for folate.

I have wheat, corn, and sesame allergies. I eat out about once a month and have to bring my own food to weddings, conferences, and anything else that will take me away from my own kitchen. I don't go to theme parks because there's nothing I can eat there. Backpacking and camping are difficult because pre-made camping foods contain my allergens and it's hard to carry foods that I know I can eat. If I go out to eat with friends no I don't I go out to have a cup of coffee - oh, is artificial creamer all you've got? nah it's got cornstarch in it, that's fine, I'll just drink it black that's okay oh wait all you've got is decaf that's fine I'll just have water OH you are using eco-friendly corn plastic cups well that's okay I am at least here being with people I'll eat when I get home. I am not on at least three medications my doctor recommended because corn is part of the product and I can't afford to have the meds made at a compounding pharmacy. Corn is in all of these things because it is RIDICULOUSLY cheap which is at least partially as a result of subsidies and is also at least partially as a result of the scaling economics of monocrops for agribusiness.

It is ten dollars cheaper to get 21 ounces more mac and cheese *shipped from canada* than it is to buy one of the pre-made foods that I can actually eat.

You may say "oh, well that's because that's the weenie organic brand that uses artisinal cheddar, of course it's more expensive than kraft" and I would have to say:

THE WEENIE ORGANIC BRAND ALSO DOESN'T PUT FUCKING CORN IN EVERYTHING.

Anyway. This has done extremely normal things to my ability to feed myself, maintain my health, and socialize as well as my desire to do arson.

New update just dropped [5/2023]!

Zuckerberg is in such better shape than Musk, and is trained in combat sports. This will be humiliating if Elon shows up

I think the rich should engage in bloodsport for the entertainment of the masses more often. Let's get Kissinger and Cheney into a ladder match.

“What News Story Are They Burying?”

Reminder that if a billionaire CEO does something outrageous in the news, this should always be your first question.

Today that news story is that Meta, Zuckerberg’s company, is blocking all news content in Canada for Facebook and Instagram due to a new law requiring compensation to news publishers. Facebook is using its vast resources to apply public pressure to stop the laws of a foreign government and protect its profit margins. And they are getting sued by Malaysia.

Reblogging to potentially save a fur friends life

I get why people are talking about the whole submarine titanic thing.

It's awful.

But I'm here to address a different boat related tragedy.

One that absolutely breaks my heart.

Where a boat of migrants sank off the coast of Greece.

This boat had 300 Pakistanis and more than 500 Syrians.

The boat was carrying migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Egypt who were fleeing their countries dire economic conditions.

And we're trying to reach relatives in Europe.

What happened with the submarine is a terrible thing.

I just wish this story got the same coverage.

One is about billionaires the other about people escaping economic disasters.

Both about people losing their lives.

This definitely reminds me of the captain, Carola Rackete, who rescued 42 refugees at sea was facing jail time for her kindness and for helping them—because Italy’s policy was to NOT help refugees at sea.

(source)

There are two completely different standards for rescues at sea, depending on your country of origin and your skin color.

And refugees and asylum seekers from the global south are treated just as badly on land.

These glaring double standards are racism, plain and simple.

And for the record, anyone and everyone from the Greek Coastguard ship who helped sink the boat full of innocent men, women and children need to face a lifetime in prison.

(x)(x)

[ID: Tweet via Lydia Kiesling: Housed people have the privilege of having their worst moments in private; unhoused people don't. This gives some people the profoundly mistaken impression that the person they see acting belligerent on the street is and will be that person every single moment of their life. /end ID]

EXACTLY. And that is why he declared so far in advance. He thought it could thwart an indictment. 

He knew he'd be indicted because he deliberately ignored a request from the National Archives, refused to return all the documents required, did not secure the documents in his possession, told his lawyers to remove some documents before returning others, and lie to law enforcement about what was kept/returned. This goes above and beyond what Trumpsters accused Hillary Clinton of doing.

I encourage everybody to read the actual indictment document.

It's deliberately written as a narrative story and very easy to understand. The DOJ wanted us to see with our own eyes what the former guy did, when he did it, and why it was wrong.

Yes, it's 49 pages, but it's double-spaced with huge margins, crammed with photographs & tables. It only took me a few minutes, even accounting for the times I stopped to re-read some things because they are so batshit insane.

I guarantee you most people defending him haven't read it.

Just because facts don’t matter to Repuglicans doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know them.

Click and read.

the cognitive dissonance from people who want the products of modern medicine but get weird about animal research. like im sorry but this is necessary for the survival of the society we currently live in. and the scientists who work on these things are not evil cackling psychopaths. anyone you talk to in animal research has incredibly complex feelings about their work and incredibly complex relationships to the animals in their care. there are regulations and oversight and penalties in place to make the work as humane as possible and scientists are overwhelmingly the ones enforcing and advocating for better care.

@velvetdemon I'm doing a full reply because I want to give this question the time and space it deserves, and I really do appreciate your curiosity about this.

The short answer: It is deeply unethical. There are nowhere near enough willing patients in the world to be able to do this, and it would be criminal to put them through this.

The long answer: The one side of the equation you're focusing on is: how much of a drug is too much, to the point where it will cause negative side effects or even death? And this is crucial to know. But it's not just a matter of finding out the lethal dosage of a heart cholesterol medication, you need to know that it can actually lower the cholesterol of any living thing. There is no way to know this without giving it first to...a living thing.

But beyond this, I need to emphasize: The goal of a drug trial is to effectively cure people who are already suffering from disease, who are living on limited time.

Drug trials don't just happen on any member of the public, they need to happen specifically on people affected by the disease you're trying to treat. There is at any time a very limited and very marginalized population of the world affected by early onset, familial Parkinson's disease. Because you cannot ethically induce disease in a human being, you are working with, speaking with, and helping patients and their families who are hopeful and desperate for a cure.

If you were to jump straight to human trials from petri dishes, not knowing absolutely anything about how the drug functions in a living, breathing animal body, it would look like this:

I could go on, and on, and on.

The vast majority of these problems can be nearly or almost entirely averted by testing other animals first.

These are all people who possibly could have waited for the normal progression from animal testing to human testing and thus received better outcomes. Some people will pass away in the time it takes to get to that point, and that's heartbreaking, and we all wish science could be faster.

But the cost of expediting science could mean a life of profoundly greater suffering or an even shorter life than the one where no intervention happens at all. And at that point, you have completely exhausted your trust, your goodwill, and your patients' hope, after you've failed to do anything or even worsened the lives of people who are already deeply suffering.

hi, i’m an animal research professional. making sure laboratory animals stay alive, healthy, and enriched has been my full-time job for several years now.

animal research is not the mad scientist wild west that PETA wants you to think it is. there are extremely strict federal laws in place to protect the well being of these animals. animal welfare organizations like AAALAC ensure that lab animals are treated with dignity & respect and are given enough specialized care & enrichment to be happy and content in captivity, just like AZA accreditation with zoos.

not a single animal from a zebrafish to a mouse to a dog to a macaque goes unaccounted for. if an animal gets moved to a new cage, paired for breeding, has a procedure performed on it, gives birth, gets sick or injured, dies, etc. it is legally required that this information is recorded and kept on file for the US federal government to access. failing to record & retain this information is very much punishable by US federal law.

let me tell you - if you abuse or kill an animal, even a mouse - you are almost certainly getting both fired & blacklisted from the industry. if you abuse or kill a more ‘advanced’ animal, such as a dog or monkey, you will likely face criminal charges. killing a monkey is as serious and disastrous as a nuclear meltdown. you are expected to reasonably explain every illness, injury, or death of an animal under your care. you must record all of this information. animals that are clearly suffering with low QOL are required to be euthanized according to AVMA guidelines.

research animals are highly expensive. yes, even the "lesser" animals like mice. the cheapest mice will run you a few hundred $ per individual, with some of the most expensive mice i've cared for being $25,000 per individual. in research we have the "three Rs" - reduction (reduce amount of necessary animals to a minimum), refinement (refine processes to ensure research is accurate and animals feel no pain or distress), and replacement (replace animals with non-living research models as they become available). i can assure you no proper research team is wasting animals (*do not* say "b-b-but elon musk--" his research team is actively being investigated for animal abuse by the government).

research methods that do not require live animals are currently being looked into & efforts spearheaded by - you guessed it - the animal research industry itself (notice how the animal rights people are strangely silent & unhelpful when it comes to this?) but current technology is rudimentary and does not compare to live animal models.

some research animal fun facts (US edition):

so yes, you can rest knowing that laboratory animals are treated with the utmost respect by their caretakers. and you can stop this awful, ignorant talk of human experimentation that will only end in the abuse of nonwhite people, LGBT people, disabled people, indigenous people, and so many others. please just take a look at this wikipedia page if you think “ethical” human experimentation can exist.

How to Finish

I drew this poster for Jon Acuff and his FINISH book tour. Big thanks to Jon for this collaboration, his book has some great ideas about how to complete creative and life goals.

Love this, but reblogging it specifically for “Get rid of secret rules.” That’s one of the most amazing illustrations—and points—I’ve ever seen.

so important especially for perfectionists who procrastinate and never finish, or even start because they set such high standards for themselves.

This is exceedingly common. Cops will shoot their own dogs, then use their deaths as copaganda.

The vast majority of police dogs “killed in the line of duty” are killed by the cops themselves.

Cops also kill an average of 25 pet dogs every single day, per Justice Department statistics. Frequently these dogs are shot and killed while children are present.

Dogs and cops do not mix.