If the WHOLE COUNTRY'S economy cannot work without the labor that UPS workers provide, than their labor is worth their demands and more.
No other conclusion can be rationally made from this information.
This morning, Former President Donald Trump issued the following statement on his Truth Social website. I replicate it here for the reader’s convenience in its entirety:
There are very few facts in Trump’s statement, but it does seem to say clearly enough that on Sunday evening, Trump received a target letter from Special Counsel Jack Smith in the Jan. 6 investigation. Trump also claims that the letter gave him “a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury.”
Trump is not a reliable narrator on factual matters, but he has twice before announced that he expected to be indicted and been right both times. There seems to me little reason to suspect that he would make up his receipt of a target letter—especially because we know from news reporting that the Jan. 6 grand jury has been active and was clearly approaching the decision-making phase of its work. Indeed, only on Friday, I noted that the absence of a target letter story in the press was the only reason to think an indictment wasn’t yet imminent at that time: “It sure looks like we’re basically at decision time. Except for one thing—and I think the one thing is overwhelmingly likely to happen before an indictment does. We have not seen a story about a target letter, a meeting with Trump’s lawyers, a negotiated surrender, or an indictment filed under seal.”
Well, thanks to Trump, that one thing is now in place. A target letter almost always precedes an indictment by only a short time. So it’s reasonable to infer that if Trump has received one, the indictment will follow soon.
Trump offers another useful factual claim, which is his vague reference to a time frame. It’s not clear precisely what he means by “giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury,” but I suspect it means that prosecutors have invited him to testify before the grand jury and given him a deadline of Thursday to do so. That would likely mean an indictment will immediately follow the lapse of that deadline, assuming Trump does not actually show up. The indictment will likely be filed under seal so as to allow an orderly process for Trump to show up for surrender and arraignment—as happened with the Mar-a-Lago indictment.
A few additional inferences are possible. This indictment will take place in Washington, D.C. We know this not merely because Trump claims it in the last paragraph of his statement. We know it also because the grand jury has been meeting for months at the courthouse here in Washington, and unlike with the Mar-a-Lago case, that has continued up until the present; the locus of activity has not shifted elsewhere as it did in the Mar-a-Lago case, which was taken up late in the game by a grand jury in Florida.
One thing Trump gives no sign of in his statement is what he will be charged with. The possibilities here are broad. There has been a lot of talk in the press about possible wire fraud charges in connection with some of the post-election fundraising. There is also the possibility of charges in connection with the pressure exerted on Vice President Pence and other elected officials or Trump’s efforts to procure fake electors. The subject matter of the indictment also has implications for the possibility of possible co-defendants—if any—a subject on which Trump is also silent. We do know, however, because of the subject matter of the grand jury investigation and the limitations of Smith’s jurisdictional mandate that the charges will concern Jan. 6 in some meaningful sense.
There is no point speculating about these matters at this stage, although that surely won’t stop cable news pundits from doing so incessantly until the text of any indictment becomes public. The most one can responsibly say is that a third indictment appears to be forthcoming, and that it’s reasonable to expect the grand jury to act as early as the end of this week.
*chanting quietly* tree law tree law tree law tree law
TREE LAW TREE LAW
TREE LAW TREE LAW TREE LAW
Apparently they claim that they do this every year to prepare for the windy season. I cannot imagine a worse excuse. But I also REALLY want to be a fly on the wall in their media room right now, because if this was the BEST they could come up with as an excuse I really, really want to know what the other fucking options were.
They couldnt come up with a better excuse because the writers are on strike.
excuse me?
Duffer brothers?
what does this mean?
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
[ID: A screenshot of a Tweet and ReTweet.
The original Tweet reads: "do the studios realize that the current state of streaming residuals absolutely destroys the moral case against piracy".
The ReTweet adds on: "like the moral case against piracy is 'people deserve to get paid for their work' except it turns out the people getting paid aren't the people who did the work'".
End ID.]
Implicit storytelling in two tweets:
Yeah. They did that. I bet the ‘clarification’ came as a result of some strong legal threats.
So be aware in the coming weeks that if your favorite actor reportedly says something shitty about the strike that makes your blood boil? Check the sources. There’s going to be a lot of uh, spin in the news.
The planet Mars and its sounds. This was captured by the device "Curiosity".
Remember to boost for demographics!
I like tannins just fine but my taste beds are so sensitive to the taste of alcohol that it's overpowering. I can taste the alcohol in communion wine. It's a problem! And not just because communion isn't really the time to be grimacing like you just spooned spoiled and rancid grape jelly onto your tongue.
Fun fact though: you're supposed to pair red wine with red meat because the wine cleans your tongue of the beef's fat so you can taste the rest of the meal, right? Well, you can get the same effect with dark sodas like pepsi and coke! And citrusy sodas like squirt taste great with fish!
Hate the rancid taste of communion wine? Are you sure that God loves us and wants us to be happy? Do you just not want to imbibe and potentially lose your initiative bonus in the presence of #ChurchLadies?
We'll have I got the product for you! Come on down to the 5/3rds Church of Our Lady of Ecstatic Agnosticism and try our new
COMMUNION COLA!!
The ONLY fully-caffeinated bodily-fluid based beverage of Christ that will let you commune with God in such divine flavors as:
- Popetacular Pineapple!
- Sangria de Christo!
- Our Lady of Guavalupe!
- Zero-Calorie INRI!
- Faith-based-healer Pepper!
- Sermon-on-the-Mount-ain Dew!
- Biblically Accurate Blue Raspberry!
- And of course, or original Consecrated Cola!
So come on down and get a carbonated lift to your spirits!
as a child being told "the moon controls the tides" with no additional explanation was like. oh okay. you want me to believe in magic? you're talking about magic right now? okay. fine
sorry. only semi-related but i simply wasn't ready for "the sun is a distant gorilla". thank you NASA
The Ring: If I had a quarter for every time a hobbit picked me up, I’d have two quarters. The Ring: Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Of all the bearers of Sauron’s ring, 4 of them were hobbits.
I was wrong. It’s 5. Not 4
The lineage of ring bearers is as follows.
- Sauron.
- Isildur
- Deagol
- Sméagol
- Bilbo
- Frodo
- Samwise
I love how Deagol counts as a ring bearer even though he had it in his possession for all of like five seconds
He held it for the rest of of his life!
[Image description: Tweet by @banalplay saying “but something happened then that the ring did not intend. it was picked up by the most unlikely creature imaginable: a hobbit, the same fuckin thing that just had it for like 500 years.” End Image Description.] Link to original here. Otherwise reblogging for the final rb there, which made me cackle.
From the ring’s perspective:
1. Home, the finger of my creator and other self.
2. Well, I don’t like it but I can work with this. Cause some trouble, get some revenge, find my way home, this is fine.
3. What the fuck is you?
4. Right personality, wrong species, I don’t know what you are but I hate you and I don’t know why you’re so resistant to my powers.
5. NO NO NO there are goblins everywhere how did I find another one of THESE horrible things. This one’s even more resistant than the last one and also disgustingly nice. I suffer.
6. Listen, I’ll cooperate, just get me the fuck out of this hellhole full of small cheerful people my power doesn’t work on properly. No, not like that. I hate you. Please stop.
7. FUCK
8. (Frodo again) I still hate you with every molecule of my mortal form but at least you’re not number seven. Think I’m starting to get through finally.
9. (Smeagol again) YES it’s you I actually missed you now get me back to the Master and NO FUCK NO I HATE YOOOOUUUUU…. *fzt*
pmmeyourrenamon
you CHAIN The One Ring?! you chain it like the prisoner?! oh! OH! trauma! deep psychological trauma for hobbits for One Thousand Years!
Heh. :)
PSA...It's a scary world out there...
Keep posting and be safe out there
"What will you do without new shows" I haven't watched a mainstream television show as it released in years. I'm catching up on shows my parents liked in the 90s. I'm listening to fiction podcasts with 5 fans. I'm playing a video game the creators want you to pirate. I'm watching a minecraft roleplay. I may not know what I'm gonna do but I'm sure as hell not gonna be a fuckin scab babygirl.
I think I might have a new horrible, terrible, fucking amazing story idea.
Okie dokie it took a very disturbing turn very quickly but here’s the idea;
Imagine the tiniest, most wimpy, pathetic, pitiful dragon you possibly can. She’s got blunt horns and blunt teeth, and her claws aren’t very sharp! She’s a little smaller than your average house cat! Her name is Altheria. Her hoard consists of;
- One dirty gold coin
- That’s it.
And she’s so little she can’t even hold the coin in one paw. It’s not a big coin, she’s just little and doesn’t have thumbs! 👍
So the other dragons are all bigger and greedy, and very mean to her. She’s struggling to hold onto her one pathetic coin, and these other dragons are fucking HUGE with caves full of gold, yet they’re super greedy and want all the gold they can get! So one of them sees Altheria’s single little coin and steals it. She tries to fight back, but they’re so big compared to her that they just bat her out of the sky like hitting a fly with fly swatter.
So she’s lost her entire hoard in one night, and she’s feeling pretty pathetic, when she sees a poster!
HELP WANTED - RESCUE PRINCESS ELIZABETH - REWARD 15,000 GOLD
and she gets a very bad idea, but she’s pretty desperate and stupid so she does it anyway!
So the story follows Altheria as she blunders her way through this quest to save the kidnapped princess (so tragically taken days before her wedding!!!) And she kinda sucks at it. She mostly skates by because everyone looks at her and goes “She’s so small!!! She’s harmless!!!”
And there’s this thing called The Gift that people are born with. Only people with The Gift can understand dragons, so no one knows what the fuck she’s saying anyway. Everyone just ignores her!
Well Altheria makes it to the bandit infested fortress where the princess is only to discover….
Drum roll please!!!!
The princess wasn’t kidnapped. She ran the fuck away because she was not vibing with that whole marriage thing. She’s taken over this small army of bandits and become their leader. She’s plotting to take over her father’s kingdom and become queen instead of being sold off to some prince. She’s building an army.
Elizabeth has offered every would-be rescuer to show up a choice; join her cause, or die. Out of 37 would be rescuers, only three have joined her. The other 34 she defeated and killed in single combat. Because she’s a badass.
She then ransomed the bodies to their families for a shit load of money.
So Eliza has The Gift, and gives Altheria the same choice but with some added sugar; if Altheria joins up, she can be Eliza’s treasurer.
Altheria takes one look at the 35,000 gold Eliza has built up, and Eliza promises they’ll get even more gold if they can take over the kingdom… And Altheria is 100% on board!!!!
But the reason dragons need gold is simple; the more gold a dragon possess, the larger they grow. That’s why Altheria was so small. She only had one coin! But now she has 35,000 that she (kinda, she shares with Eliza) owns.
Altheria starts growing again. Throughout their quest to take back the kingdom in Eliza’s name, she gets bigger, her teeth and horns get sharper, her fire gets hotter… She becomes a fucking badass, just like Eliza.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten so far.
This story is badass. hehe~ Imagine Eliza and Altheria going around defeating the other dragons that bullied Altheria before (in the sense of robbing; unless dragons do “fair and square” matches to get the Gold) and Altheria just becomes this extra huge, extra strong, extra badass dragon and the rest are now the tiny fly treatment dragons. XD hahaha
I have this image in my head of Altheria eating the alley cat that was mean to her in chapter one, but this works too
OP can I 🅱️lease draw fanart
I would die for you if you did
Bless
And you know I had to draw my favorite part
I’m actually crying oh my god I can’t see the screen anymore my eyes are too blurry with tears in my god oh my god oh my god do you understand you’re my favorite person now? Holy shit holy shit holy shit I love you she looks so little and perfect it’s exactly how I pictured it thank you THANK YOU THANK YOU❤ ❤ ❤
I hope you know I’ve been sitting here in hysterics repeating SHE’S GOT A LITTLE FORK SWORD SHE’S GOT A LITTLE FORK SWORD SHE’S GOT A LITTLE FORK SWORD OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS SO MUCH OH MY GOD
I WOULD DIE FOR ALTHERIA
(she’s gOT A LITTLE FORK SWORDDDD–!!!)
I LOVE ALTHERIA!!!
Forgive me if you’ve seen this, darling, but….
Hey since the WGA labor strike is mirroring the same kind of strikes that happened about a century ago
Listen to me.
Listen to me.
Be extremely skeptical of what big news media outlets say about the strikes.
Because those same labor strikes were also demonized by the media. You can find newspaper clippings of strikers being called dangerous and violent, for doing any manner of things like murder and arson, and for being made of the current undesirables of the country at the time.
I'm not kidding they demonized those labor strikes by saying they were made of lazy violent immigrants.
Be extremely wary of any news articles about this strike as most large media is owned by rich people. They are going to demonize the strikers to try and break it up faster, because if the public stops supporting them, the rich people will have more leverage against them.
And people at these strikes need to be wary of random people joining wearing suspicious clothing who come to start making people violent or to harass people.
The same tactic is used by cops to agitate crowds so the other cops can move in with "justification"
Watch each other's backs.
The thing with the writers strike and actors strike is that. You ALL have to start realizing that the cool creative jobs they paint as "glamorous" in the media are actually ALL struggling in a big way, and basically everyone below "Huge Household Name" is actually often having to spend THEIR OWN DAY JOB MONEY to keep trying and trying to "break into" that household name status.
Like, im a cartoonist. Just starting out, but already fairly successful! My comics are sold in a handful of states, i sell out of my works, and i even have been featured as a finalist in a couple awards shows AND have pieces bought by a cartooning museum. I still barely make a couple hundred per month off it IF IM LUCKY, and spend almost as much trying to print more. Oh yes, i have to print my own comics! And working for a big comic company, they generally require you to bring some level of your own equipment. Heck, even if you make it "big" as a cartoonist...you wanna know how much you get paid if your comic that you spent months of back-breaking labor on is adapted into a marvel movie? A one-time check for $5000. Out of the BILLIONS those movies make, in perpetuity for eternity, you are given $5k. Pre-tax. Pre-agent. Pre-lawyer. (Yes we have agents and lawyers too, quite often). There's hardly any cartoonists who can afford to quit their day jobs, and even those who do are never living above the lower middle class range.
Now obviously cartooning is not the same as acting or writing, but my point is that we NEED yall to stop thinking just because you see our work as cool that we are living some dream life!!! Basically the only people who are living these dream lives you think of are CEOs of major companies and the occasional celebrity. The rest of us are just out here, struggling to survive just like you, we just happen to have a side hustle which is Kinda Cool.
poor things, well we should definitely make this easier on them by never repeatedly mentioning their name and deeds on the "reblog things forever" website