Note: Reasons to Be Cheerful has had weirdly huge formatting issues for the past six or so months, so if that version is a mess, this link should work better.

"Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), the Sunshine State’s largest power utility, employs all the people you might expect: electricians, lineworkers, mechanical engineers — and a few you might not. For over 40 years, the company has kept a team of wildlife biologists on staff. Their task? Monitoring the giant carnivorous reptiles that reside in one of the state’s nuclear power plants. 

Saving the American Crocodile

What sounds like a low-budget creature feature is actually a wildly successful conservation story. It goes like this: In 1975, the shy and reclusive American crocodile was facing extinction. Over-hunting and habitat decline caused by encroaching development had pushed its numbers to a record low. By 1975, when it was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, there were only 200 to 300 left. 

Three years later, in 1978, workers at the Turkey Point nuclear power plant in Homestead, Florida happened upon something that must have made them gasp: a crocodile nest along one of the plant’s 5,900-acre “cooling canals.” Rather than drive the crocs away — perhaps the easiest solution — FPL hired a team of biologists and implemented a Crocodile Management Plan. Its goal was unconventional: provide a suitable habitat for the crocs within the workings of the nuclear power plant, allowing both to coexist.  

Over the course of the next 30 years, FPL’s wildlife biologists monitored nests, tagged hatchlings and generally created a hospitable environment for the reptiles. As it turned out, the plant’s cooling canals provided an ideal habitat: drained earth that never floods on which to lay eggs directly adjacent to water. Over the years, more and more crocs made the cooling canals home. By 1985, the nests at Turkey Point were responsible for 10 percent of American crocodile hatchlings in South Florida. In 2007, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service downgraded the American crocodile’s status from endangered to threatened, singling out FPL for its efforts. 

The program continues to this day. To date, biologists have tagged some 7,000 babies born at the plant. In 2021, there were a record-setting 565 crocodile hatchlings at the Turkey Point facility. 

"Reconciliation Ecology"

Turkey Point’s efforts are an example of what is known in the conservation world as “reconciliation ecology.” Rather than create separate areas where nature or animals can thrive in isolation from humans, reconciliation ecology suggests that we can blend the rich natural world with the world of human activity. Michael Rosenzweig, an emeritus professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, was a leading force in establishing this concept. The author of Win-Win Ecology: How the Earth’s Species can Survive in the Midst of Human Enterprise, Rosenzweig has pointed out that although human encroachment has typically been considered a threat to biodiversity, the notion that the world must be either “holy” or “profane,” ecologically speaking, is simply not true.  

“In addition to its primary value as a conservation tool, reconciliation ecology offers a valuable social byproduct,” writes Rosenzweig in his first chapter. “It promises to reduce the endless bickering and legal wrangling that characterize environmental issues today.”

-via Reasons to Be Cheerful, May 5, 2022. Article continues below. All headings added by me for added readability.

THE NHL????

For context these were the preceeding tweets, and there are multiple news stories (mostly from Republicans throwing a tantrum over the NHL supporting trans people, which is why I'm not linking to the articles) about the trans draft. So it isn't just an empty statement or an intern going rogue amidst twitters death rattle. This is like, a big deal

#transphobes go on about 'why do you have to be on the women's team why can't you be on your own team'#and then harrass the NHL when they set up a trans league#Almost as if it's not actually about fucking women's sports is it??#Almost as if none of you fuckers just suddenly decided to care about women's sports!#The sports leagues that all these men joked about all the time!

This.

Literally this.

tbh a neurotypical is just someone who hasn’t failed the game often enough or severely enough to be pathologized for it. yet.

part of the problem is that “neurodivergence” is so poorly-defined—which is fine when you’re talking about particular forms of accessibility and communication, but is immediately a problem when you start treating it as a binary in which “neurodivergent” people are a coherent class with shared traits other than disenfranchisement.

some people use “neurodivergent” to exclusively mean developmental and learning disorders, like autism, adhd, dyspraxia, dyslexia, etc. in this case it makes more sense to use a binary framework… there are people with developmental disorders that affect them in particular ways and people without, and accessibility can mean broadly similar things.

but other people use “neurodivergent” to mean basically anything in the DSM—autism, yes, but also OCD, dementia, depression, schizophrenia, bipolar, PTSD, even addiction—you name it! in this sense it’s useful to the extent of solidarity, mad rights, and addressing ableism and psychiatric abuse. what it is not useful for is identifying a binary of guys who are like this and guys who are like that; all we have in common is failure. and anyone can fail (or be failed), at any time, regardless of communication style or eye contact. this failure is racialized, it’s gendered, it’s class-stratified, it’s age-bound, it’s politicized.

“neurotypical” just isn’t a coherent Type Of Guy because sanity is a cultural construct that changes over time and context.

anyway. just say “allistic” if that’s genuinely what you mean.

Many conversations about atheism don't consider the existence of the second generation atheist, let alone more. Atheism is almost universally framed as some kind of personal rejection of one's upbringing, culture, family, and/or society, to one degree or another. There is not much widespread awareness of the fact that some atheists were raised that way.

But second generation and more atheists already exist, and as open atheists grow as a demographic, for more and more of them the answer to "Why are you an atheist?" is not going to be a long, involved story of self discovery or a bitter rejection, a principled decision or a sharp retort, but simply "Well, that's how my family was." Does your concept of atheism account for their existence?

How does the concept of children being raised by atheist parents make you feel? If it makes you feel uncomfortable, or like the children are missing out on something, you may need to unpack that. What responsibilities do you feel that atheist parents have to their children's religious education, and do you apply those same standards to religious parents? If you find yourself with a double standard, ask yourself if the higher one or the lower one is more reasonable to apply broadly.

The big question here is this: do you consider atheism to be an idea that can be held independently, or a solely reactive concept?

A summary of the responses so far: "Oh hey, it me, and here's the positives."

"Oh hey, it me, and here's some drawbacks."

"I'm just concerned about atheists forcing their children to not be religious."

"Every belief system can be abusive, and all children should have the freedom to make their own choices."

"Jewish atheist here reminding people that 'atheist' does not mean we're not Jewish."

"Wait, was this not already widely known?"

"What? I didn't know that was becoming common."

"I've never seen anyone bring this up before."

"I thought this was a normal part of life."

My autistic peeps, I have one bit of advice for you.

Be extremely selective about who you accept social rule feedback from.

Most autistic folks I know tie themselves up in knots, trying to figure out this social rule book that everybody else seems to have gotten, that they didn't get. In fact a lot of the "rigidity" that I see other therapists complaining about can be put down to the natural effects of people trying really hard to find one goddamn rule that will stay put.

The thing is- most people walk around as if they have the one universal, unassailable, common-sense rule book for social interaction.

And they are utterly full of shit.

In the US in particular there is incredibly low consensus about how people should behave. Just go post on twitter about whether it is or is not rude to wear your shoes in someone's house, or as a 70 year old and a 20 year old about phone etiquette. That's before we get into other demographic differences. Don't even get me started on "professionalism".

Neurotypical people get that feedback to, but are, on average, way more able to flag it as either 1) a rule for working with that person/similar people 2) bullshit. NOT as a universal rule they should have already known, that they should feel bad about not already knowing.

The number of things that people actually universally agree on is really low.

So when people give you feedback that the social rule they expect you to follow is obvious, they are often being a total dick.

Ask questions, look for patterns in specific settings, and make sure you've worked on your values enough to have a reasonable ecosystem of guiding principles.

But remember that nobody has that rule book.

I don't exactly disagree with this, but as an Autistic person, I, and many others, spent our childhoods running a kind of natural experiment about whether there are social rules and etiquette.

When allistic people think about social rules like this they seem to be thinking of, I don't know, wearing shoes in the house.

What about, say, if a coworker has a new haircut that you don't like, should you say,

"I don't like your haircut, it doesn't suit you. The old one was prettier "

Autistic people might reason about that like this:

"Well, honesty is important, and I'm just saying something true about something that isn't very important in the grand scheme of things."

Look, I get it, nothing is universal, 1 person in 99 will appreciate that honesty.

But you are going to have a lot of trouble if you start with, "Well, there are no universal rules so I'll just tell people when I don't like how they look it'll probably be fine at least half the time."

Something that I'm starting to think has been really underappreciated is that in primary school these kinds of experiments are dangerous. Treat the world like there's no rules and people laugh at you, or get angry, or scream, or throw things at you or hit you.

This is your formative impression of what happens if you act like there are no rules: you will be subjected to violence suddenly, without warning, and you won't get much help or sympathy.

As you become an adult that becomes less true, but that memory is still there with you, psychologically.

What I would communicate to my allistic peeps is, there is a difference between eating your salad with the dinner fork and scooping a big handful of mashed potatoes off of your neighbor's plate.

As a thought experiment, imagine what it would be like if you read that sentence and said,

"I have no idea which one of those is worse"

Imagine you could tell from the context I wrote it in that one of those things is different from the other but you can't quite get your head around which is the worse one no matter how hard you think about it.

How might you behave around other people? What kinds of fears or questions might you have on your way to dine with other people?

One interesting bit of role-reversal I've noticed, at least with under 40s people in the US, is that allistic people are very rigid about their definitions of terms like, "Social rules". They are very anxious to explain that something isn't a rule and shouldn't be rigidly obeyed, because the thing you're talking about is only actually true 99.9% of the time and it would only be a "rule" if it was true 100% of the time.

Here's an example that, as far as I can tell is actually a relatively common thought process for autistic people (Unlike the mashed potato example)

"Well, everybody around me tells me that looks aren't important, but it's what's inside that counts. A job interview is about seeing if I have the skills for the job, and my appearance won't help me be a better file clerk.

"Therefore, there's no reason to comb my hair before the interview or select an unstained shirt to wear."

Allistic people tend to assume that high functioning (or whatever the current term is) autistic people have never had those kinds of thought processes.

My personal experience, and I suspect that of many other autistic people, is that we spent something like the first two decades of our lives metaphorically scooping the potatoes off of our neighbor's plates and to the extent that we don't come off as potato-hands, we have only a very dim and confused understanding of why that is.

Here's another question to think on:

Suppose you now understand that in my example above, scooping potatoes off your neighbor's plate is the more egregious example, but you still didn't understand what the problem was. For example, is the fact that I mentioned potatoes significant? Is my example only rude when it comes to mashed potatoes, or other kinds of food also? Is the problem that I used bare hands, instead of utensils? Or is the problem something else?

What if you genuinely don't mind it when people take food from your plate?

Would it occur to you that other people might mind it?

What kinds of behaviors might you engage in and what kind of help might you look for if that was how you thought?

I wanted to emphasize that I really don't disagree with the OP; it's a tremendously important point.

I just feel that the allistic people who say it almost universally underestimate the scope of the problem.

Suppose I was learning English as a second language, and I say to you, "Hey, how do I make plural nouns?"

You might say something like,

"Well, there's no single one way to make a plural noun. English is kind of irregular about this and it's going to depend on the specific noun you mean. In fact, even native speakers will often use the incorrect plural when confronted with an unknown noun."

Everything you just said is 100% true.

And I have no idea how to make a plural noun.

And what happens when I listen to enough English and realize that in the vast majority of cases adding an "s" onto the end of the noun is correct, and in the minority of cases where it isn't correct people will understand what I mean and be able to correct me?

I have experience in this:

I'm going to be pissed off at you for your utter inability to speak clearly about something that you actually know about.

Here's a story:

Once upon a time, back in, oh, 90 or 91, I would have been in first or second grade, and I was standing in line at school singing a song from a My Little Pony cartoon that I liked. Another boy asked what it was about and I told him and he and another boy made fun of me for liking My Little Pony.

Now, we live in more enlightened times; when I talk about that with people today, they say that's very sad and those boys shouldn't have done that.

I have never, ever, not once in my life found an allistic person who was surprised by that story.

Because, at least in my memory, and in the memory of dozens of other similar incidents, I was surprised! After all, we talked about Ninja Turtles, why shouldn't I talk about another cartoon that I like?

And hey, you allistic people didn't get the rulebook either, there's no consensus in America, so I bet, like, at least half of you will be as shocked as I was back then? You'll be just as surprised as I was that boys weren't supposed to like girl things, right? And how come that second boy joined in? Isn't it crazy that I found two little boys in 1990 who thought it was funny for a boy to like My Little Pony even though they didn't have any kind of rule book either?

Funny how that kind of thing doesn't actually play out that way.

Funny how I keep running into situations where everybody tells me that there's no consensus and no rulebook but somehow 90% of the people I meet act the same in that same situation.

It's funny how often I meet people who tell me that I don't even need to be looking for a rule or pattern because there aren't any and then, 10 minutes later, tell me what an outlier I am, and that maybe I should consider trying to fit in a little more.

By funny, I of course mean god damned infuriating. Sometimes I want to hit people about it.

America has, genuinely and truly, way less consensus on what "appropriate" behavior is than it did 60 years ago. The scope of appropriate behavior has also expanded. When my dad was a kid random people would give him shit if his hair was shaggy enough to grow past the ears. Today I work in a formal restaurant and wear two foot-long braids and nobody bats an eye. Honestly even in my childhood society was so sexist that I am surprised that I've gotten nothing but compliments.

But what has also happened, and there is profound denial about this, is that when people do have concrete expectations of others, they are much worse at articulating those expectations than they used to be. There is more expectation that you conform yourself to the expectations of others by intuiting those expectations, rather than having them explained to you, even in cases where they can be easily explained. There is a profound discomfort, on the part of allistics, (Particularly younger and more left-wing allistics) with articulating what they expect from the people around them.

I cannot emphasize this enough: This is the case even when the allistic person in question has incredibly concrete expectations.

This problem puts me in mind of what you might call the "being friends with your servants" problem, which is where royalty or nobility or some filthy rich person wants to be buddy-buddy with their servants. They want to call them by their first names and have them be practically part of the family!! because it makes them uncomfortable to acknowledge the vast disparity in power between themselves and the people who work for them (due to the deep societal unfairness it represents.) So they try to erase it by being a "cool" employer who "treats you like an equal."

But of course, that doesn't actually make you equal. And as soon as you do something too casual, too presumptuous, too familiar, around your powerful employer, they will be shocked and appalled at you for taking such a liberty, and your job will evaporate.

And you know this, because you've seen it happen to others. So when they act casual, you smile and nod, but you keep maintaining a polite distance and a professional deference, because you don't want to lose your job. This frustrates them, though, because it inevitably draws their attention back to that power disparity they're trying to ignore, the one that makes them feel like the bad guy, so they keep pressuring you to be more informal.

I think it's a similar issue here. It's not just that allistic people will only agree there's a rule if it's a 100%-of-the-time rule. It's that often we know there's a rule, but the existence of the rule requires facing some reality we're uncomfortable with, whether that's the prevalence of sexism, or the reality that we are still very animalistic in how defensive we get about the food we have claimed for ourselves, or even just the reality that there really are people who need this kind of thing explained to them and we can't take anything for granted, even the right to be bitchy about someone not understanding something "obvious."

Beware of what spin is coming next in the media about the union strikes! The Levinson Group is real good at its job, so there's gonna be a lot of undermining happening soon. Don't fall for it!

As a WGA strike captain put it on Twitter:

They could just pay their workers fairly, instead of throwing money at PR firms to pretty up how they treat people like garbage.

I desperately wish people would start actually reading the AO3's TOS before confidently making 'user guides' to the AO3 that are just blatantly, flatly wrong.

Yes the AO3 has banned content. They do not allow anything that's illegal under US law - though US law, importantly, does not ban fictional depictions of things - and they do not allow any commercial content. That includes your ko-fi link, or mentions that you do fic commissions. If you do post fic commissions to AO3 and want to mention the commissioner, the fic is a 'request' from the commissioner. This protects the AO3 and you from copyright law.

No the AO3 is not 'a creative fanfiction archive'. It is a fandom archive. Your meta, insights, and theories are absolutely welcome and encouraged there. AO3 also encourages you to post other types of fanworks, like fan videos, podfics, and art, but unfortunately isn't able to natively host those like it does text, so fic has kind of become what it's known for. That absolutely does not mean that other types of fanwork aren't allowed, or are discouraged by the site culture! Anybody who tells you otherwise is just plain wrong!

sure, "I'm part of this marginalized group that I'm writing about" isn't a get out of jail free card for all bigotry, but if someone says "I'm portraying an exact experience I've had, this literally happened to me" and your response is "okayyy but think of the optics of showing that that happens? maybe keep that to yourself?" it might be time to reconsider your approach.

I found a place and I can move on the 1st if I can fund all the lease and moving expenses. Which is great because I only have until midnight in my current house.

Not only are they willing to take, a 29 year old artist with Asperger's and my 78 year old mother with dementia and our dog, we can live and have a storefront gallery that has huge waliking traffic. It's only a block away, so the move will not destroy my mom. I am short on moving expenses. I'll need another $4500 to hire a mover on short notice, have cleaners and cover the deposit. The rent is more than currently but utilities are included, so overall expenses go down. Plus I'll have my own gallery!!!

I need to convert art into cash immediately. My largest pieces on Etsy are 65% Off and full of new pieces.

Any help you can offer would be appreciated. All of the social safety nets that you think exist I've completely fallen through.

"How to get rid of the fucked up clown on your dashboard" I would never unfollow my mutuals like that :((

Paraglider and black vulture chilling

(via)

I NEVER get tired of this video. It would be fantastic if the bird was just flying near him, but the fact it feels safe and comfortable enough to land ON his paraglider, isn't startled when he pets it, and is NIBBLING HIS SHOES... blessed moment, absolutely fabulous, 10/10 gold stars.

Okay but the bird isn't just nibbling

Note that it doesn't start nibbling until he starts smoothing its feathers.

They're grooming each other.

This is called parahawking! That vulture is tame -- it’s wearing jesses (a leather tie around the leg that a falconer will use to hold a bird when it’s on the glove). In fact that vulture is employed. Parahawking birds seek out thermals the same way they would naturally, allowing paragliders to follow them in the process.

Vultures are often used for parahawking both because of their attraction to thermals, and because vultures, as scavengers, are comparatively gentler and more sociable than birds of prey!

Too many people are forgetting these things too quickly:

-SESTA/FOSTA passed. Despite the many, many warnings of sex workers.

-A bunch of apps started their censorship policies because Apple directly threatened their revenue if they didn't promise to cut down on the amount of porn on their sites

-MasterCard and VISA tried to outright stop processing OnlyFans work SPECIFICALLY because of the association with sex work, and no other feasible financial reason.

There is not a sudden regressive movement among individual people. Free The Nipple didn't fade into obscurity because people didn't care. It was stopped. By policies. By laws. By arrests. By censorship. These things have been purposefully put in place by companies and politicians. They saw the work we were trying to do wrt bodily autonomy, sexual liberation, and sexual freedom, and they forcibly put a stop to it.

First, the pervasiveness of this litter box thing is ridiculous. I think it has been debunked like a thousand times.

And the *actual* reason schools have cat litter has nothing to do with students identifying as cats.

"Columbine High School has been stocking classrooms with small amounts of cat litter since 2017, but as part of ‘go buckets’ that contain emergency supplies in case students are locked in a classroom during a shooting."

But I actually want to talk about the Tootsie Roll Pop gender thing.

They are trying to criticize a child psychologist, Dr. Diane Ehrensaft, who works at a gender clinic.

I'm sure a lot of their audience who see "gender minotaur" or "gender Tootsie Roll Pops" will completely write off this woman and claim she is a nutcase.

But conservatives and Fox News love to omit context and nuance.

Here is the document all of this stemmed from...

The implied Fox narrative is that Dr. Ehrensaft is creating silly genders and then labeling kids as minotaurs or smoothies.

In reality, she is describing all of the creative ways young kids and teens use to explain how they feel about their gender.

These kids probably don't have a lot of information or the vocabulary to express themselves in more traditional terms, so they've come up with analogies to help adults understand what they are feeling.

That doesn't seem ridiculous at all.

And I actually think these kids are quite clever.

So these conservatives are basically making fun of kids who are confused and seeking help to understand themselves.

Real classy.

And if these kids learn adults are making fun of them, they may feel embarrassed to use these communicative tools—making it that much harder for their therapists and doctors to help them.

[Image description

1. A tweet by Lis Power @LisPower1 on 24 August 2023 containing text and an image.

Text: Fox "straight news" anchor Shannon Bream spreads litter boxes in school hoax

Bream: "I have a lot of Northern Virginia moms who have kids in school who have told me that there are schools who are now having to put litter boxes in for kids who identify as cats"

Image: a Fox News screenshot with a picture of a Tootsie Roll Pop and a woman. Fox News. Professor: Kids can identify as Tootsie Roll Pops.

Image 2: a Health headline. Medical Group Publishes Guidance For Kids Who Are 'Gender Tootsie Roll Pops' with what might be a photo from a Pride march.

Image 3: another Health headline. Psychologist At Children's Hospital Gender Center Claims Kids Can Identify As Mythological 'Minotaurs'

Image 4: a tweet by Christopher F. Rufo X✰ @realchrisrufo

The American Psychological Association published this guidebook for diagnosing children as "gender smoothies," "gender hybrids," "gender prius[es]," and "gender minotaur[s]." These psychologists are psychopaths.

apa.org/pubs/books/The...

Image 5:

■ Gender fluid children. Children who defy the norms of binary gender and either slide along a gender spectrum or weave their own intricate individual patterns along the gender web. The word fluid here refers to the potential for movement through further development of one's understanding of their gender.

■ Gender smoothies. Gender smoothies are a variation on the theme of gender fluid. As one teenager vividly described it, "You see, you take everything about gender, throw it in the blender, press the button, and you've got me—a gender smoothie."

■ Gender hybrids. Children who combine or alternate between genders, often in a binary way. Among gender hybrids are the following:

■ Gender Prius. Half girl/half boy: This gender label was invented by a school-age child who, from the front, looked like any boy in basketball shorts, tank top, and basketball sneakers, and, from the back, had a long blond braid tied at the end with a bright pink bow: "You see-I'm a Prius, a boy in the front, a girl in the back. A hybrid."

■ Gender minotaur. A descriptor for the children who explain that they are one gender on the top and another on the bottom, this usually to account for genitals at odds with the gender they know themselves to be.

■ Gender-by-season children. Children who freely express their authentic gender (identity, expressions, or both) during summer and school vacations but never at school, or alternatively use school as the safe place to be their true gender self but keep it under wraps during home-based summers or vacations.

■ Gender-by-location children. A close cousin to gender-by-season, a child who knows the locations or is told the locations where free gender expression will be accepted and other locations where it is not, and chooses or is told to keep

End description]

I just wanted to say I really appreciate all of the folks who do image transcriptions. Sometimes I barely have the energy to assemble these posts and add my commentary.

Actually, I don't always have the energy. I have about 800 things in my drafts folder because I was unable to finish them.

To those who put forth this effort, I just wanted to thank you. I know it really improves accessibility.

I'm going to take the phrase "cross the picket line" away from tumblr until everyone actually starts reading strike demands and listening to union leadership and strike captains.

Random bloggers declaring things "crossing the picket line" means nothing. Read the actual goddamn strike information from the actual goddamn strikers. Stop calling for your own boycotts, stop trying to decide what is and isn't scabbing based on your own opinions, stop making judgment calls disconnected from the actual demands of the actually-striking workers.

Y'all have got to start reading the unions' official documents before arbitrarily deciding what is or isn't "proper solidarity" based entirely on your own feelings. Stop muddying the waters just because it makes you feel more involved.

IN A WORLD WHERE BEAUTY AND ATTRACTIVENESS HAVE BECOME SO COMMONPLACE AND MUNDANE THE EXCEPTIONAL UGLINESS HAS BECOME DIVINE

I SAW AN ADVERTISEMENT FOR A CAR THAT LOOKS LIKE EVERY OTHER CAR AND THEY COMPARED IT TO A UNUSUAL UGLY LITTLE VEHICLE AND ITS STRANGENESS WAS FAR MORE CAPTIVATING THAN THE SLEEK BORING CAR THE AD WAS ACTUALLY FOR

Umberto Eco, On Ugliness

BEAUTY IS FINITE, UGLINESS IS INFINITE LIKE GOD

for an alternate take...i'm pretty sure i read this in a cherik fanfic but it always stuck with me: "perfection is merely pretty. true beauty always contains flaws"

[Video description: Brennan Lee Mulligan, outside on the concrete, speaking into a microphone, surrounded by people and picket signs. Caption: Brennan Lee Mulligan DMing on the universal picket line.

"-if I told you this was not the first time I've played D&D on curb next to a parking lot!

Long you have journeyed through the mythic realms, through forests deep, caverns old, to arrive at the Valley of the Sun! (people laugh) LOL, big LOL. |It is in the dead of night, dawn has not yet come, and from an ancient sarcophagus lines with runes, you see rising from the mist, the vampiric form of John Strahd! (people laugh) CEO of Ravenloft Studios. (people boo)

He arises, (gasps), and you see behind him the vast collected treasures, artifacts, and magical items, all taken from the fine hands of your fellow wizards, bards, artificers. A massive horn like that of an ancient dragon!

He stands, "Ahh, adventurers brave. Defeating you will be a cruel, but necessary evil!" (everyone boos)

/end]

lest we forget

I love opening up this website first thing like the morning paper and immediately seeing multiple posts like "how to get rid of the evil clown on the dashboard". like oh is this what we're doing today

I'm gonna start adding this to every post I see about this advertising bs that tumblr are pulling

not only is it annoying, and in some countries probably illegal for not declaring a paid partnership

TUMBLR IS CROSSING THE PICKET LINE

They are taking money from Netflix to promote a show.

Actors and writers are unable to promote work because of the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

Netflix is under the AMPTP, so it is a struck company, making One Piece a struck work.

So they are using alternate ways of promoting their products, including paying companies like tumblr.

Both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have made statements saying that they consider anyone or company taking payment to promote struck work as crossing the picket line.

Tumblr is spitting in the face of struggling actors and writers to make a quick buck from Netflix

tumblr is not "crossing the picket line" by advertising for Netflix because tumblr is not a member of SAG-AFTRA or the WGA. Striking talent has stated outright that they want people to watch and engage with the work they've done and the series they've worked on, PARTICULARLY during the strike. The AMPTP needs to know that the things they make have VALUE to the common viewer.

They've encouraged film and television reviewers to continue reviewing. They've encouraged people to go watch the things they've worked on. Guild members can't advertise their work, so NON-GUILD PEOPLE HAVE TO IN ORDER TO PROVE THAT PEOPLE WANT WHAT STRIKING WORKERS CREATE.

This ad campaign fucking sucks, but this is absolutely not what you're posing it as. tumblr can't engage in "scab behavior" because TUMBLR IS NOT A MEMBER OF ANY STRIKING GUILD.

Scabbing and crossing a picket line are different things and you don't have to be a member of a union or guild to do either of them, btw.

true!

"crossing a picket line" would be going to work on a struck movie set, I think. and nobody on tumblr is doing that. that applies to, for example, the camera crew, lighting crew, teamsters delivering stuff to sets, etc. they're not on strike but they can show support for the strike by not showing up to the sets of struck productions.

"scabbing" in this case would be replacing work that would otherwise be done by striking workers. since tacky ad campaigns that do not involve actors are an entirely standard thing even when actors aren't striking, and this is not in any way replacing the promotional interviews an actor from the One Piece live action might do, it doesn't really make sense to consider it scabbing.

it's just an ad campaign for a show that's already finished production. annoying, but not really intersecting with the strikes in any significant way, I'm fairly sure.