Gaslighting victim blaming bullshit and Priti Patel knows it. The Met went prepared to brutalise peaceful women at a vigil where there was absolutely no chance of violence had the police not started it.
Patel is trying to weaponise police violence to turn the UK into a police state with the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill, which, if passed tomorrow, will mean a protester found guilty of defacing a statue will be jailed for longer than a rapist.
Please don’t pirate books at least while the author is alive. I’ll make an exception for actual billionaires and wildly expensive textbooks you cannot afford yet need to complete your studies. I can’t make an exception for assholes, because we’re all considered assholes by someone. I don’t know how many people realise how many writers who created successful, beloved stories and characters still die poor while other people get rich off the same work. I don’t think people realise that in the UK the current average yearly earnings for an author has nosedived over the last fifteen years to £10,500. That obviously is forcing people to quit writing. It increasingly means writing is a job for people who’ve inherited money or have wealthy spouses who can support them. I don’t know if people realise that in general, writers are poor and getting poorer. I’m sorry, but if you think widespread sense of entitlement to free books has nothing to do with that … you’re just wrong.
I say I don’t think people realise - the truth is I hope they don’t, because the alternative is that they don’t care. That’s certainly the impression I’ve got from Twitter, where a truly horrifying number of people are arguing that copyright on all books should expire after thirty years, and you should be able to acquire books for free after that. This … would not just mean that everyone gets free books. It would mean if you write a book at 30, not only do you lose any royalties from it at 60, but Disney can take it, make a franchise out of it, Scrooge McDuck it up in a pool of money while you starve because writers don’t get workplace pensions.
Some threads on the unintended (?) consequences of this. I can’t go over it all again. John Brownlow NK Jemisin Michael Marshall Smith Me Marina Lostetter Kari Dru and others William Gibson and others
There are plenty of others. It’s not that this actual idea will actually happen, but I do think it reinforces the idea that it’s not only okay, but sometimes actually virtuous to search for ways to enjoy writers’ work without paying for it. Like it’s somehow a step towards a better world. Not just at the reader end, to be fair, at the employer end too. And I do see a lot of people here too who are all about supporting workers unless the workers are writers in which case fuck’em.
Like. If you want to radically change society in such a way that mass-media conglomerates don’t exist and so can’t exploit us and we’re supported to make art in some other way than fine. But can you start the revolution with actual rich people please, not ask us to live right now, in the society we’ve got, without the money we need to survive it. Finally, a plea: I really, really, do not want to debate this. This whole thing genuinely makes me feel tense and shaky and sick. If you’ve got to disagree - unfollow me, block me, vagueblog somewhere I can’t see it. The Twitter version of this already has me feeling like I’ve been kicked in the gut. I didn’t want to write this post. I just felt I wasn’t going to have any peace until I did.
More from Courtney Milan, including on how no, it’s not like patents.
So much good here.
not even about the topic at hand but
I can’t make an exception for assholes, because we’re all considered assholes by someone
Fucking seriously, [REDACTED]? I say how upsetting I’ve found this whole thing, how deeply I do not want to debate it, (and by the way I am not the only one) how very free you are to go and write your own post where I will not see it, and you dump this in the tags on mine?
If people do not know yet that Tumblr immediately notifies the OP about tags now they really need to catch the fuck up.
Anyway, you know what? No, I didn’t “go into a profession [I] knew at the beginning wasn’t gonna pay [my] bills”, because when I started out it did. Yeah, you still needed luck, but it wasn’t unreasonable to aim for. Average earnings have halved, nose-diving below the poverty line not somewhere in the dim and distant past, but over the last fifteen years.
Even if we HAD known, how the fuck does that make it OK? Why are we less deserving of a living wage than anyone else? Why on earth is the poverty of past writers an argument for us to be OK with being poor? Edgar Allan Poe died poor – yeah he also died at forty is that also something I should accept? Did I sign up for that too when I first opened a Word doc?
I’ve just explained how the current reality is increasingly meaning people who don’t have wealthy family to support them, people who now DO know it’s “not gonna pay the bills”, are either quitting writing or not starting in the first place. You are looking at a world where only the upper class can write and saying “well, that’s fine. Stupid poors shouldn’t have been poor if they wanted to write anything.”
“imagine a writer taking their work to the grave just to keep companies from making money off them” … imagine a writer wanting not to die poor while others get rich off their labour. That is literally all this is about. “Whether they’re alive or dead it feels limiting” I… don’t know how to explain to you that there is, actually, a quite significant difference between me alive and me dead? And the alive version of me needs money to stay that way?
No, lending books between friends does not count as piracy, Jesus Christ.
Also, join a library.
mutuals do this
I am dead serious: If you are a Walmart employee, at any level and in any store — like if you are a high school kid with a part time job stocking shelves — message me any question you have about unions. Like ask me “What’s a union” if you want. I will explain it to you. I am a grievance chair for a white collar union whose workplace only unionized within the last five years and whose management fought as every step of the way, but in the end we fucking won. It can be done, and I can tell you how.
Rb to kill wal mart
Unionizing is our wet dream I promise you.
I like how it’s described as a union could “cripple American Capitalism” when more precisely it’s just that a union would be so powerful as to force WalMart (or any other company) to pay their workers like human beings. That’s not going to break Walmart. They’ll barely notice.
They’ve successfully convinced us that the unions are the greedy monsters. For so many years, the companies have painted unions as “we want you to pay janitors three million dollars a year and if you don’t we’ll set your stores on fire”.
But it’s more like “We want you to take an almost imperceptible fraction of your bountiful profits and use it to make your employees’ live marginally better, and maybe give them medical benefits, y’know, so they don’t die”.
Big companies did not stop hiring ten year olds to work in coal mines because they just woke up one day and said “my god, we’re monsters”. They did it because their workers stood together and said “really, enough of this crap”.
Companies are not going to give people raises unless it’s economically necessary that they do so. Anything they can do to lower their expenses, and raise their profits, they are going to do. And no one person can stop them.
But thousands of people, millions of people? Better chances.
To anyone that wants to claim it wouldn’t work:
Just another reminder that Walmart Germany was a spectacular fail because of ver.di (which is a national service trade union that has it’s control over almost all trade and service companies in Germany) among other things.
Like, ver.di essentially came up to the CEO of Walmart Germany and was like “Hi, welcome, we wish you the best and that we can work together well :)” and the dude was like “hahaha no” and tried to pull the american concept here so ver.di pulled out a list of all the breaches of german law that Walmart was doing (underpaying workers, trying to avoid paying health care by using part-timers, trying to be open for more than 80 hours per week, firing people on short notice without warning or exit payments, etc) and long story short, they got some massive hefty fines for it. They also set up a list of demands for the workers and organized national strikes to push them through, making the employees of 85 hypermarkets neatly stand in front of the store doors with signs, whistles and chants (and certainly not the “Wallmart! Wallmart!” chant). In the end, that plus other things caused them to bail after 9 years with a gigantic loss (almost a billion just from sales) from one of the best retail markets in the world.
So all those issues like “no healthcare” or “work full-time and need food stamps” or “work on sundays and holidays” and shit? Unions are there to set their foot down against that for you. They are there to keep you safe from the corps wrath while fighting for your rights.
Cause if you, an individual, complain, they just fire you and laugh about it. A union is a collection of hundreds up to MILLIONS of people, supported by lawyers, going against employers for you.
How does the quote go?
Don’t thank god for Friday’s; thank unions.
Reblog if you think janitors should be paid $3million a year or want to burn down a Walmart
They are talking about a second Krystallnacht, let us be clear about this. For the week of J20, be careful, support your locals, and be armed and ready to dip.
They will apparently be targeting higher profile Jewish persons and places but other activists/PoC/Minorities are not off the menu. They are out for blood, please plan with your community, make yourselves safe.
Image Description: DMS or comments labeled ‘Boogaloo comments’. A message labeled ‘Boogaloo Intel Drop’ leads as follows:
A graphic with the words Million Militia March, January 20, 2021 Washington DC. Beneath the words “@/wuishappening The Trumpists will be keeping DC and the military busy on the 20th as you can see. Meanwhile the lizards homes all across the country should be open for more professional ops.”
Then there is another message, in a thread labeled ‘The Great Reset’, which reads as follows: “Gee what do we have here [eyes emoji]. The technocrats panicking and fortifying their sacred little civic religion capital? I bet they fully plan mass arrests of trumpist conservitards all in one spot.
However it seems they’re disregarding the fact that unlike a centralized bureaucracy the common accelerationist isn’t one org, it’s multiple groups in multiple locations. There is no formal hierarchy. Thus, it would be pretty stupid if anyone here was actually considering going to a meme 2nd protest in DC just to get mowed down/arrested.
The smart ones are those who exploit the divided attention and the incapability of this Jewish government to protect more than one place and more than a few persons. A popular guerrilla onslaught is a nightmare for them, why do you think they’ve been so hellbent on banning guns and body armor?
These lizards have addresses outside DC, all over the country, hell maybe nearby in your fly-over state. Is the military going to deploy in mass everywhere?
They can’t”
End ID
Corroboration and expansion by a trusted friend, so I’m putting this in a reblog now: if you’re a POC in Seattle and you need someone to run errands or somewhere to shelter, feel free to DM me. I don’t really have money, but I’ll do everything that I can that doesn’t require it.
Please take this seriously.
If you’re willing to help out jewish people in these areas, too, please say so. These motherfuckers are explicitly targeting Jewish people and Jewish communities. “Lizard” is still code for “Jewish”. Don’t leave these communities out of your offers for help.
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This is a scandal. Vouchers are far more useful to families.
Worth bearing in mind that kids at school on Free School Meals can get a full hot meal, if they want it, and for some of them that’s their main meal of the day. So a cheese sandwich and a banana doesn’t really cut it tbh.
original url http://www.geocities.com/dacota49/
last modified 2004-02-28 10:21:58
Since the beginning of the year it has only reached $2547 out of $10000 (as of December 21st 2020). If you can donate or share this, please do!!
You know this world is messed up when something like this does not surprise me, but it still horrifies me beyond words. Please spread this so we can raise awareness and look for ways to help!
No, but seriously. If whenever you get up from wherever you start to feel faint, get palpitations, get numb, get nauseous, get light-headed and/or literally feel your blood drop to your feet, check the symptoms of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.
Also add more salt to your diet lol. With or without the POTS unless you have hypertension in which case I’d be more cautious.
Actually, it’s not just that you can reblog this. I want people to reblog this.
My poor mom went by years without knowing why the fuck she was having all these debilitating symptoms.
All it took was me making her add some more salt to her diet and have an isotonic drink daily and she IMMEDIATELY (as in, less than an hour) stopped feeling faint whenever she got up from kneeling down and her hair is slowly falling off less and less.
She used to need at least 5 minutes to recover from kneeling down and now she kneels down and stands up like it’s nothing. Even her joint pain from EDS and brain fog have improved tremendously and she has much more energy.
I’m pointing all these things out as abnormal because chronically ill people tend to not realize that our symptoms are symptoms.
Our individual bodies are the only bodies we’ve experienced and since most of us don’t look any different from others and aren’t taken seriously when we complain of any ailment, we assume our symptoms happen to everyone. They do not.
People with no physical conditions (at least not impairing ones such as being a bit short-sighted) do not have their bodies make life difficult for them, unless they’re temporarily ill. But we are ill ALL the time.
If your body is making life difficult for you, there’s probably something going on with it, and if it persists and nothing makes it go away, it may be a chronic illness.
POTS can develop in previous healthy people after a Covid infection. If you have had Covid recently or know someone who has, please keep this in mind.
10.10.20. Washington DC
BLM protests continue, over 120 days now. DC protesters have been in the streets for months to defund the police. In response to calls to defund the police, the police have increased their brutality. How could reform work on those who abuse power to maintain it?
it's interesting how I haven't seen news coverage about it in months. I wasn't even aware they were still ongoing.
people drop everything as soon as it isn't trendy.
You also have these baby teenage mutant ninja turtles to protect you.
This is actually such a good tactic for people with serious anxiety problems. Thank you. Really. Omg.
For my fellow anxiety peeps
Her expressions 😂😫
[Image description: tweet by Robert Reich @RBReich: “Georgians: If you turn 18 by January 5, 2021, you are eligible to vote in the run-off elections that will determine whether we take control of the Senate from Mitch McConnell. You have until December 7 to register to vote. Please tell your friends.”]
DIRECT LINK TO OFFICIAL GEORGIA GOV. REGISTRATION WEBSITE: https://registertovote.sos.ga.gov/GAOLVR/welcome.do#no-back-button
DIRECT LINK TO OFFICIAL GEORGIA GOV. REGISTRATION REQUIREMENTS AND INFORMATION: https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/Elections/register_to_vote
DIRECT LINK TO ABSENTEE BALLOT REQUEST FORM FOR GEORGIA (you can request starting November 18th, 2020): https://ballotrequest.sos.ga.gov
Just remember. There is no such thing as a fake geek girl. There are only fake geek boys. Science fiction was invented by a woman.
Specifically a teenage girl. You know, someone who would be a part of the demographic that some of these boys are violently rejecting.
Isaac Asimov.
yo mary shelley wrote frankenstein in 1818 and isaac asimov was born in 1920 so you kinda get my point
If you want to push it back even further Margaret Cavendish, the duchess of Newcastle (1623-1673) wrote The Blazing World in 1666, about a young woman who discovers a Utopian world that can only be accessed via the North Pole - oft credited as one of the first scifi novels
Women have always been at the forefront of literature, the first novel (what we would consider a novel in modern terms) was written by a woman (Lady Muraskai’s the Tale of Genji in the early 1000s) take your snide “Isaac Asimov” reblogs and stick it
even in terms of male scifi authors, asimov was predated by Jules Verne, HG Wells, George Orwell, you could have even cited Poe or Jonathan Swift has a case but Asimov?
PbbBFFTTBBBTBTTBBTBTTT so desperate to discredit the idea of Mary Shelly as the mother of modern science fiction you didn’t even do a frickin google search For Shame
And if you want to go back even further, the first named, identified author in history was Enheduanna of Akkad, a Sumerian high priestess.
Kinda funny, considering this Isaac Asimov quote on the subject:
Mary Shelley was the first to make use of a new finding of science which she advanced further to a logical extreme, and it is that which makes Frankenstein the first true science fiction story.
Even Isaac Asimov ain’t having none of your shit, not even posthumously.
You know what else was invented by women? Masked vigilantes, the precursor to the modern superhero. Baroness Emma Orczy wrote The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1905. The character would later inspire better known masked vigilantes such as Zorro and Batman.
Stick that in your international pipe and smoke it
I have literally been telling people this for over a year.
the first extended prose piece - ie a novel, was not, as many male scholars will shout, Don Quixote (1605) but The Tale of Genji (1008) written by a woman
The first autobiography ever written in English is also attributed to a woman, The Book of Margery Kempe (1430s).
The day may come when I find this post and do not reblog it, but it is not this day.
I boosted this elsewhere, but I feel like I should post it here too.
REBLOG
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