Does anyone have an update on where things are at with the writers strike? It's disappeared from my various feeds and algorithms.
The writers' strike is ongoing and the studios are still not returning to the negotiating table. Unfortunately a lot of the coverage has tapered off because we're on 50+ days of striking and it's not new anymore. The last strike in 2007 lasted 100 days, so don't be surprised if this strike lasts as long, or even longer.
The biggest recent news is that the Directors' Guild of America (DGA) voted to ratify their new agreement with the studios (article from June 23), and it appears likely that the actors' guild (SAG-AFTRA) will also take a deal instead of striking (article from June 24). Although this is disappointing news, it's completely expected. During previous strikes, the WGA held its own without other unions going on strike. Which is to say—don't be disheartened by the news that there won't be a triple strike. The WGA is strong enough!
Please keep vocally supporting the WGA online to keep the pressure on the studios & to keep WGA members motivated and encouraged! There are many ongoing donation drives, such as the Star Trek fan snack squad (Twitter account required to DM the organizer) and the Our Flag Means Death snack squad (opens the PayPal fundraising page—no Twitter required). There's a longer list of ongoing donation drives here.
The Entertainment Community Fund is also always accepting donations to support entertainment workers affected by the strike. Please boost and encourage your friends to keep supporting the strike. Hashtag #IStandWithTheWGA #DoTheWriteThing to boost the cause!
It's sad to see the DGA go the way they went. SAG-AFTRA are still, I think, waving in the wind.
But for the WGA, this strike is (borrowing a metaphor) Helm's Deep. We have to take the stand that will allow us to—in a month or two, or three (argh), when shit starts to get serious at the AMPTP's end)— roll up in front of Minas Tirith and let the other side hear the horns in the morning.
They think they're going to successfully wait us out. They are now slowly (however slowly) beginning to realize that we're waiting them out. Writers are USED to one form or another of the Great Hiatus. They're not. Their stockholders are going to get restive.
We can wait, though it hurts. It's what writers do.
i know we're all sick of self-care being a marketing tactic now, but i don't think a lot of us have any other concept of self-care beyond what companies have tried to sell us, so i thought i'd share my favorite self-care hand out
brought to you by how mad i just got at a Target ad
OP this is EXCELLENT
Now THAT’S a self care resource! If you’ve gotten distracted by capitalism’s appropriation of “self-care” and watering the meaning down to nothing this is a super helpful guide to cut through the bullshit.
Pokémon Human Character Tournament: THE FINAL SHOWDOWN
scarabest
it's berry season here. i've eaten so many berries. i have a 5 pound box of blueberries next to me now.
scarabest
berry time
crabs-and-baramundis
Whatcha got there?
NOT FOR BEAR!!!
crabs-and-baramundis
RUDE
Palpatine looks like an evil Colin Mochrie
but why would you hide this in the tags though
what if a rat said cheesus christ
for the Spanish crowd: y si las ratas dijeran quesucristo
im so fucking angry because "cheesus christ" made me smile, but "quesucristo" made me choke on a laugh
Doc, what are the top five items food banks LOVE to receive? I'm doing a collection soon and want to ask for specifics.
MONEY. WE WANT MONEY. MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY. WE CAN DO SO MUCH WITH IT. WE HAVE ACCESS TO DEALS YOU COULD NEVER. MONEY
That aside.
I’m only going to talk about food items but if your food bank takes personal items, a lot of times diapers, feminine hygiene products, etc, are very very welcome.
1) Canned chicken and beef
looooooove this stuff. It’s expensive, it lasts forever, it tastes good and it can be used a variety of ways. This stuff is fucking catnip to food banks, it’s so hard for us to provide proteins.
2) Fancy nut butters
Peanut butter is a standby for food banks as a shelf-stable inexpensive protein, but if we have a family with a kid with a peanut allergy that’s not going to work. Non-peanut butters are expensive and it’s something we hardly ever see donated. (we also like peanut butter, but that’s easier for us to buy ourselves than non-peanut butters)
3) Canned or packaged tuna
You may notice a trend here in shelf-stable proteins. And yeah. That’s basically it, so I’m not going to keep harping on it. But this stuff is a godsend.
4) Easy breakfast things for kids (Granola bars, instant oatmeal, and the like)
Whatever Donald Trump tells you, most people who get food from food banks are actually working their asses off and so they have to leave Obama to raise their baby or whatever, and they don’t have a lot of time in the morning. Things like this that kids can make for themselves are expensive. (Another trend you may be noticing–donate shit that costs a lot of money. That helps us more than all the shitty green bean cans in the world) But they are so helpful for busy working families where the parents may not have a set schedule and sometimes little Amanda is making her own breakfast before she runs off to school. Don’t let kids go to school hungry.
5) Shelf-stable juice
This is one people never think of! But if you show up with a bunch of (preferably reduced sugar stuff) bottles of juice at my door, oh man, you are gonna get so many check mark and okay hand emoticons. This stuff is great for kids, and it doesn’t require refrigeration until it’s opened, so it works great for food drives.
But seriously, give money
And it’s way better food, too, anything you get prepackaged has A TON of sugar and/or salt in it…collecting cans may be more exciting than writing a check, but if the point is to help people, the check is going to get a lot more done
Yoooooo heads up for those of you with kids, I know this time of year schools start holding canned food drives so keep this in mind if you’re able to give.
collecting cans may be more exciting than writing a check, but if the point is to help people, the check is going to get a lot more done .
hint: the point should be to help people.
Also, please consider setting this as a scheduled post for June/July. A lot of food insecure families with children rely on school lunch to make ends meet, and that’s obviously not an option during summer vacation. Lots of people give during November and December, but summer is a lean time for food banks. Which is a shame, cuz fresh produce is at a boom during that time of year, so not only would summer donations boost how many people the food banks can help, it would boost the quality of the help they provide.
If you want to do a cash drive but also exploit the dopamine hit people get from dropping their can of garbanzo beans into the box, my middle school did something that was SHOCKINGLY effective:
A penny drive.
(DuckDuckGo tells me a penny in 1999 would be worth two cents in 2023, but given how much food prices have gone up, I’d make this a dime drive in the modern day.)
Here’s how it works.
Every classroom got a gallon water jug. You brought in your pennies from home and put them in the jug. Every penny equaled one point, and at the end of a set time period, the classroom with the most points won a pizza party. All the funds were then donated.
BUT.
You will notice I didn’t say the class with the most pennies. I said the class with the most POINTS.
And that is because you could sabotage other classrooms by putting other denominations in their jugs. The number of pennies equal to the cent amount of those denominations would then be deducted from the penny total (so for example a nickel would lose you five points). I saw one kid absolutely TANK some of the eighth-graders by dropping a five-dollar bill in their jug, which they then had to make up in pennies before they could make any further progress.
(If you’re wondering who rolled all those pennies: it was me. Literally it was me, I volunteered because I’m an autistic weirdo who thinks counting change is fun and it got me out of class. The office ladies helped too.)
To modify this for adults, consider having it be one work shift versus another. Or there are multiple jars split between options for a vote and you get to vote by putting your change in a jar. And you MUST include the sabotage—for one it makes it more like a game, which humans love. And for another, if you’re asking for quarter donations but someone really wants to tank another group, they’re gonna whip out a twenty dollar bill. It generates higher donations because people want to win by nature.
You can ABSOLUTELY make cash drives sexy. You’ve just got to know how.
God. Remember when Greg Ellis went insane and started larping as Cullen on social media after getting publicly fired from ever working at Bioware again on twitter?
Sometimes when I'm feeling down, I think about that and am reminded that while we live in a bizarre hellworld, it occasionally conspires to be VERY funny.
if you want me to consume a new media you MUST catch me at the exact moment when the stars are aligned and the air pressure is equal to the current degree of the sun’s peak against the horizon and all the cosmic energies are perfectly unified (aka my old interest is fading out) or i will nod and say “im adding that to my list!” Knowing theres no chance i will check it out
“unless its a book!” “unless you tell me it has gay people in it!” “this but only for live action shows” “theres a good chance i’ll get to it eventually” no wrong this post is not for you this post is ONLY for bitches who could have a treasured friend recommend them something that sounds grown in a lab to be your personal catnip and, with no choice in the matter, immediately know it will never be the right time to watch/read/listen to it
The YouTube content creator community was wracked by macabre tragedy this morning after Amelia Bedelia was instructed to hang streamers for a six year old’s birthday party
meowth team rocket will go episodes forgetting he himself is a pokemon and his main hobby will be breaking the law, attempting to ruin a childs life, and generally being an asshole and thats cool but then hell curl up on a table to go to sleep and im like OHHH... HES A KITTY.. hes just a little cat. a little kitty cat meow meow meow. mrow
insanely cat moment
lemme just, put these here...
showing these pics to eachother like pokemon cards
st-pam
Oh my gods they’re adorable! Have a nice day at work, Employment Jelly
No no no you don't understand. I don't want to write a fic. I want to have written a fic. These things are not the same.
Everyone gets “The 90s” look wrong and I hate it
Couple years ago I saw these two board games at the store back to back. Well, not saw them per se, but ya know. Spied them out of the corner of my eye. And for a moment without reading the text, I couldn’t tell you which was which decade at first. Funny. Either they were in a rush to get these out the door or they wanted their throwback trivia game boxes to look uniform. I didn’t think too much of it.
Only, from then on I started seeing it MORE. Every time someone markets a 90s or 80s throwback…
Goddammit they’re identical! What??! How did we let this happen? As a 90s survivor and a designer, this drives me up a wall.
Look, I know I’m late to the party to complain about “the 90s look” when we’re just starting to get sick of the Y2K nostalgia train. But c’mon, the 90s were not The 80s: Part Two™
Trust me when I say that we weren’t all wearing neon trapezoids up until the year 2000. The 90s look being peddled is so specific to the tail end of the 80s and an early early part of the 90s - a part of the 90s when it wouldn’t stop being the 80s. This is Memphis design being conflated with the wrong decade.
Keep reading for a long ass graphic design history lesson and pictures of old soda and fast food.
Padme lives aus are always good but it gets funnier when you consider that if padme lives the rebellion vs the empire will be just the messiest divorce in history featuring custody battle for the twins
padme leading the rebels and vader leading the imperials meeting in the battlefield and the fight stops for a verbal argument of galactic proportions
hands u a comic bc im literally obsessed w this
“If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.”
Aragorn II, Son of Arathorn