Seeing some nerdrage about the fact that if SAG-AFTRA strikes, actors won't be able to do promotional stuff for their projects including at SDCC and, anyway I am once again asking online fandom to recognize that there are real human beings behind your entertainment products. Their welfare and their ability to just like, have a career at all doing the things they and you love (because most people who act for a living are not celebrity superstar multi-millionaires) are in fact more important than whether you get to stand in line for hours just to pay too much money for a handshake and a scribble on a photo. And I say this as someone who has paid too much money for those scribbles myself. Also the future that studios want to create where acting and writing is replaced by AI is bad for consumers, too, bad for anyone who cares about art! And also just, more basically: artistic labor is labor and if you enjoy the products of that labor, you should want the people who make that for you to be fairly compensated and treated well.
Message AF!!
THE POST OFFICE DOES NOT COST MONEY
IT IS SELF FUNDED
THE. POST. OFFICE. IS. SELF. FUNDED.
THE POST OFFICE IS SELF FUNDED I AM GOING TO KEEP FUCKING SCREAMING THIS UNTIL THE PRIVATIZATION ARGUMENTS CEASE
SOURCE BECAUSE I AM A GOOD SCIENTIST: https://facts.usps.com/top-facts/
exhale
and
prepare coffee
reblogging this again because it SHOULD cost money we SHOULD be pouring tax dollars into it and sending letters should be FREE and packages should be LOW COST and FAST because we SUBSIDIZE with community money.
I swear to God there's a whole swath of people in the US who will not REST until we're all charged by the minute for the water we drink, the air we breathe, and every blink we take.
Stop coming for the USPS. Not only is it self-funded as mentioned above, but "it's not profitable" should NEVER be an argument against services that support basic needs. We should be working toward making things like public transit, healthcare, utilities, etc. entirely free-to-use via government funding, not arguing to whittle things down for not being Amazon-esque-enough.
The Economist can eat my ass.
I dunno if this has been posted yet, but.....
Keep this shit off AO3
We don't want that kind of pearl clutching 'christian' conservative sitting on the AO3 board. Keep Moms For Liberty out of our fanfiction.
this is the second fucking year in a row someone has tried to pull this crap. but if you're still on the fence about it (though fair warning, I am not copying everything she wrote as a response, which you can read on the OTW website):
Would you be in favor of creating a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee? Why or why not? I see no reason creating another committee would help anything in light of the continued staffing issues, and see several ways it could hurt. Lumping nonwhite, and non-English-speaking, and non-American volunteers together in one committee is just tokenism with a bow on top. Those experiences are not singular or universal. The DEI consultant to be hired by the organization will be able to speak to this far better than I can. The cost of becoming a member/voting in elections is prohibitive for many users, particularly disabled, international and POC ones. Do you have any ideas about how this could be improved to make the otw more inclusive and less privileged? No.
Also, just for some proof of the "Republican" part, from Twitter:
like, it's not a pejorative, it's how she's self-identified
also, ENTIRELY unrelated to this crap, but she's only been a volunteer for about a year and a lot of her answers to questions about ongoing problems is "I don't know because I've only been here a year." she doesn't even know what PAC is.
A concept: me, 5 years on T, lounging under my messy duvet with my faded top-surgery scars brushing against it. I am covered in tattoos and my house plants are thriving
hi, past me. here’s what you’ve got to look forward to:
almost 8 years on T. fluffier duvet, still messy. fading top surgery scars, abdomen cranky post-hysto but it’s finally gone & no regrets. more tattoos but not as many as you would think (surgery is expensive). houseplants? oh they are THRIVING and you’re still depressed, but not enough to neglect them.
you’ll get there, just slowly.
[ID: A screenshot of the original post reblogged by @dreamlogic on March 9th, 2017, with tags that read: “me atm: 2 years on T. messy duvet. no surgery. not nearly enough tattoos. houseplants suffering because i’m too depressed to water them. but!!! that’s like 50/50! i’m getting there just slowly!!!”. End ID]
my problem with most age gap discourse isn’t that i don’t think it’s creepy that so many middle aged celebrities chose to date exclusively women under 25, it’s more that people think the issue is that the women is “basically a child” and not the actual issue of “dating a skinny white young woman is still a status symbol for rich people” because acting like older people are unfuckable is only feeding into the issue.
for real it’d be nice if more discussions of age gap discourse was surrounded on how youth is often fetishized and how aging is seen as a curse and not that anyone under 25 is completely unable to make their own decisions because setting that precedent is only gonna cause more harm than good.
republicans in oklahoma are trying to pass a bill that would ban trans people under the age of 26 from gender affirming care and while i don’t think asinine age gap discourse on twitter and tiktok are the root cause, the general popular pseudo science that your brain stops developing at 25 (which isn’t true and is an oversimplication that is just easy to remember) and that anyone under that arbitrary number is still a child is definitely going to cause large amounts of harm.
I slept in and just woke up, so here's what I've been able to figure out while sipping coffee:
- Twitter has officially rebranded to X just a day or two after the move was announced.
- The official branding is that a tweet is now called "an X", for which there are too many jokes to make.
- The official account is still @twitter because someone else owns @X and they didn't reclaim the username first.
- The logo is 𝕏 which is the Unicode character Unicode U+1D54F so the logo cannot be copyrighted and it is highly likely that it cannot be protected as a trademark.
- Outside the visual logo, the trademark for the use of the name "X" in social media is held by Meta/Facebook, while the trademark for "X" in finance/commerce is owned by Microsoft.
- The rebranding has been stopped in Japan as the term "X Japan" is trademarked by the band X JAPAN.
- Elon had workers taking down the "Twitter" name from the side of the building. He did not have any permits to do this. The building owner called the cops who stopped the crew midway through so the sign just says "er".
- He still plans to call his streaming and media hosting branch of the company as "Xvideo". Nobody tell him.
This man wants you to give him control over all of your financial information.
Edit to add further developments:
- Yes, this is all real. Check the notes and people have pictures. I understand the skepticism because it feels like a joke, but to the best of my knowledge, everything in the above is accurate.
- Microsoft also owns the trademark on X for chatting and gaming because, y'know, X-box.
- The logo came from a random podcaster who tweeted it at Musk.
- The act of sending a tweet is now known as "Xeet". They even added a guide for how to Xeet.
- The branding change is inconsistent. Some icons have changed, some have not, and the words "tweet" and "Twitter" are still all over the place on the site.
- TweetDeck is currently unaffected and I hope it's because they forgot that it exists again. The complete negligence toward that tool and just leaving it the hell alone is the only thing that makes the site usable (and some of us are stuck on there for work).
- This is likely because Musk was forced out of PayPal due to a failed credit line project and because he wanted to rename the site to "X-Paypal" and eventually just to "X".
- This became a big deal behind the scenes as Musk paid over $1 million for the domain X.com and wanted to rebrand the company that already had the brand awareness people were using it as a verb to "pay online" (as in "I'll paypal you the money")
- X.com is not currently owned by Musk. It is held by a domain registrar (I believe GoDaddy but I'm not entirely sure). Meaning as long as he's hung onto this idea of making X Corp a thing, he couldn't be arsed to pay the $15/year domain renewal.
- Bloomberg estimates the rebranding wiped between $4 to $20 billion from the valuation of Twitter due to the loss of brand awareness.
- The company was already worth less than half of the $44 billion Musk paid for it in the first place, meaning this may end up a worse deal than when Yahoo bought Tumblr.
- One estimation (though this is with a grain of salt) said that Twitter is three months from defaulting on its loans taken out to buy the site. Those loans were secured with Tesla stock. Meaning the bank will seize that stock and, since it won't be enough to pay the debt (since it's worth around 50-75% of what it was at the time of the loan), they can start seizing personal assets of Elon Musk including the Twitter company itself and his interest in SpaceX.
- Sesame Street's official accounts mocked the rebranding.
I graduated high school in 99.
There was a student at our school named Wayne.
Wayne was gay. It was obvious. He was unable to stay in the closet even if he wanted to. To make matters worse, he was also Black. From a bullying standpoint, that was not a great combo. Both Black and white students made fun of him relentlessly. He was ostracized from the only community that may have given him protection. Only us theater kids stuck up for him, but not to significant effect.
Wayne was bullied so much that at one point he finally snapped and attacked his bullies with a lunch tray. I was actually seated in perfect line of sight and just sat there chewing my soggy fries in stunned silence. It didn't even seem real as I was witnessing it. The image of him wailing on his main bully as the food on his tray flew off is permanently logged into my long term memory.
The bully he attacked had blood all over his face and went straight to the nurse. Other than superficial cuts, he was not injured.
Before the attack, Wayne went to teachers for help. He went to guidance counselors for help. He went to the principals for help.
He did all of the things you were supposed to do. No one helped him. They wagged a finger at the bullies and warned them to stop.
Wayne's lunch tray melee was the only thing that worked. His bullies stayed far away from him. But a week later Wayne was expelled and the bullies were given no punishment.
So... no.
No one in my school talked about being trans.
Because the only way to survive being openly queer was to bash people with a lunch tray.
Also, to the original Twitter commenter: Just because *YOU* had proven yourself too much of an asshole in high school for anyone to trust you with information that could, at the time, have gotten them beaten to death, doesn't mean that no one *ELSE* never had a friend confide in them that something Wasn't Right with the way their body Was Supposed To Be.
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
Full thread from Sam on the SAG strike and Dropout!
[ID: A thread from Sam on twitter, as follows: “A thread about the strike and Dropout production: 👇✊. I stand in complete and utter solidarity with our striking performers. I myself am SAG-AFTRA, as are others on our executive team, having come from the world of working actors. I am nothing but sympathetic to their cause and outraged by the mafia-like behavior of the major streamers and AMPTP. It is harder than ever to make a living in this industry, and that goes even for the lucky few of us who get to work on meaningful projects.
In the meanwhile… 🤑 Uber-rich CEOs and shareholders are cashing in like never before 💸 Major streamers are gambling millions on dubious projects and business models 🍾 Hollywood is hiding profits and playing the victim while drinking champagne aboard their superyachts
Dropout production is right now on hold. Because we aren’t associated with the AMPTP, it’s possible we may be able to reach an interim agreement with SAG that allows us to continue to produce content during the strike.
But we’ll only do that, obviously, if we get the blessing of the union and the buy-in of our performers. If not, we have enough content in the can to last us a little past the end of the year.
I pride myself in that Dropout has always paid above SAG minimums. As the years go on and the company is healthier, we will strive to do even better, and then even better still. Without the talent of our performers, we are zilch. Zero. Nothing.”
Attached is an instagram post from an actor reading: “The Netflix show in question is shorter than a traditional half hour. But @ collegehumor and @ dropouttv paid me MORE than that for one of their scripted series. Dropout was a brand new online platform at the time and they still managed to pay their actors more than NETFLIX for scripted short form content.”
Thread continues: “Public companies don’t do this for the very simple reason that they feel more indebted to their executives and shareholders than they do their workforce. It’s why corporations are so often exploitative. Our industry, because our jobs are so desirable, is especially vulnerable to exploitation. Hollywood takes advantage of that by making us feel generally commoditized, cheap, and replaceable …which is ironic given just how personal our work so often is. That’s why unions - and the power of collective bargaining - is so important: because public companies often won’t pay their workforce any more than they’re forced to.
As for me, I intend to honor my union’s position that I not promote SAG productions as a performer – even if they are produced by me. That means that I won’t personally be promoting any of our shows for the time being.
Attached is a screenshot of Sam on Discord responding to the question “given the strike… what picket line chant will you be rockin’?” with “i’m a talent / CEO! me says me has got to go!”
Thread continues: “This year, instead of running a FYC campaign for Game Changer, we donated $10k to the Entertainment Community Fund in solidarity with the WGA. Today, in solidarity with SAG-AFTRA, I’m personally matching that donation with another $10,000. If you have any disposable income, I encourage you to donate as well: https://entertainmentcommunity.org. And as soon as I test negative for COVID, I’ll see you on the picket line. ✊”]
Sign up for Dropout. There is hours and days and weeks of hilarious shows on there in all forms from improv to scripted to game shows. It’s only $6 a month. I’m honestly watching Dropout more than the streamers lately.
Their talent is incredibly diverse and, for being the progeny of CollegeHumor, it is a ridiculously liberal network. As you can see by the tweets of their CEO.
They aren’t publicly traded and beholden to shareholders. They don’t seek profit. They don’t advertise or sell ads. They’re entirely word of mouth. They seek to bring joy.
And every single one of their shows has had me absolutely ROLLING with laughter at some point.
If a comedy network were perfectly made for the Tumblr audience it would probably be in the form of Dropout.
GO WATCH DROPOUT
oooooo what a cool post my mutual just reblogged ! I think I will reblog it as well !!! oooooh who did they reblog it from ? That username seems familiar,,, hohoho it's me ! from an hour ago !
Growing up, did anyone else think that the phrase "heard it through the grapevine" was refering to a litteral grape vine?
I always imaged two people picking grapes and talking shit about a third person that was blocked from view by grapevines
I always thought it was about hearing it through a grapevine roof. Like, either you're in the first floor of a house and people are spilling the tea under the grapevine or viceversa m
Wait, maybe those are not common knowledge everywhere?
This is far more visually appealing than the actual origins of the phrase, which because of this post, I just looked up, and apparently, the phrase originated with the telegraph, and people thought the wires looked like the strings used to train vines. Hence, they heard it through the "grapevine."
The more you know.
LOL
We need HOAs or some idiots will paint their house purple or put tractor tires in their front yard. If you want tractor tires, don’t move to a HOA neighborhood.
I couldn’t even fathom how horrifying it must be to live somewhere there are...purple houses and and yucky stuff in people’s yards. Thank God I don’t have any real problems like that.
listen my Nonna and Nonno live right by a purple house (it’s a nice lilac) and as a kid I was fucking obsessed with it because purple is my favorite color. I’d go nuts whenever we passed by it. Also it had a purple mailbox to match and it blew my mind.
No more HOAs. More purple houses.
imagine trying to control what someone else can do with or on their own property just because you don't agree with their taste in decor
NO MORE HOAs MORE PURPLE HOUSES
Related, becuase I just had to move: “just don’t move into an HOA” Do you know what a PAIN IN THE ASS it is to find NON-HOA Housing? Very nearly everything in the CO front range that isn’t a rental has an HOA these days!
Short list of the Shit the HOA at my pervious house tried to pull:
- Banning personal and community food gardens (The reason the tag for my garden is “The garden of earthly HOA violations”)
- Banning people from using thier personal yards as Native Plant Restoration microzones, something that looks gorgeous and is extremely helpful to the local ecology
- trying to get the city council to remove protections on adjacent city Open Space/Native Plant restoration zone so they could mow it.
- mandating the use of ONE landscaping company in the neighborhood, coinicdentally owned by the HOA president’s son
- Mandating the use of an unecessary water purification company on all properties.
- suing city animal control for collecting lose dogs and cats and returning them to the addresses on thier collars. You know. that thing animal control does so the animals don’t get run over or disemboweled by the coyotes or catch and spread rabies. The thing that’s illegal to let your pet do out here for those reasons Karen.
- Suing the city council to remove a city bus stop in the neighborhood that was heavily used by many residents. They damn near got away with it becuase the HOA meetings were always in the middle of the day on a weekday. You know, when the residents that use that stop are working.
- Sending people letters threatening to fine them for having “Out Of Season” holiday decor. Specifically targeting my Indian neighbors who were celebrating Diwali, not Christmas and the Jews with visible Menorahs.
- Fining people for doing thier own appliance and car repair on thier own personal property
- Fining people for operating a business out of thier house, specifically targeting a disabled neighbor that does comission tailoring and garment repair out of her home. never bothered a soul except the one snoopy bitch who didn’t like that her clients were allowed to park in the tailor’s designated and otherwise unused parking space.
- Trying to fine a neighbor for flying a Pride Flag
HOAs are invasive, bigoted, corrupt and cruel institutions that should never have been allowed to be created. If you live in and HOA area, showing up at the meetings to tell people what the fuck is wrong with them, Joining your HOA board to protect your neighbors and possibly organize the dissolution of the HOA is one of the best things you can do to protect the marginalized members of your community.
FUCK HOAs AND LONG LIVE THE PURPLE HOUSES AND TRACTOR-TIRE GARDENS OF THE WORLD.
Are y'all telling me this shit is actually LEGAL?
Here’s how to get an HOA to leave you and your purple house tf alone
cant stop thinking about this post. 😔
direct action
HOAs, IN THEORY, could be such a force for public good, and that’s what’s maddening. Imagine if an HOA was like “well we’ve got all these houses and this one empty lot, pay your HOA dues and we can install a community food garden!” or “leave your contact information on the HOA residents-only webpage if you’re willing to be an after-school dropoff for children in our community who may not have a parent at home” or “hi, Sally, we’ve noticed your yard’s gone rather hogwild and things weren’t like that before your husband passed last year, do you need some help? We have some folks in the HOA who can help you with maintenance, no charge.”
Instead they choose isolation over community in the name of a unity that’s in image only, and that’s really, really sad.
Friend of mine bought a small house, an old one in an old neighborhood. She had no idea it was an HOA neighborhood until the day she moved in. They arrived with paperwork she "had" to sign or things would get "complicated", aka do this or we're gonna make life hell for you. She immediately told them no, she has no desire to be part of the HOA, and they about blew a gasket. Went from civil to wtf real quick. They tried sending her violation reports, demanded she pay fines, threatened her, etc. What they didn't know is she's petty and gives zero fucks. She also lives keeping paperwork nice and tidy.
Shit hit the fan when she installed a wall around her property. A 3 feet tall 2 foot wide wall around her yard. Topped with gorgeous iron work with sharp points that make climbing dangeous. Think Addams Family Lite. They tried to stop the construction because she was using the /wrong/ company (a mutual aid group she worked with). Send her fines and fees, and made the mistake of sending a copy of the HOA contract with a forged signature.
Ooooo...it got so ugly! She remembered the HOA post here about that happening to others and, well, the HOA broke up because of other fuckery on top of this. But it was mostly due to her dragging them in court for fraud, harassment, disturbing the peace, trespassing, stalking, and a few other things. She was petty about it too, looked into every fucking thing she could to destroy them.
I was informed that you not, in fact, obligated to sign the HOA contract. It's not a legal requirement. When you look for a home, make sure to ask about the possible HOAs, and look at the details of your homeowner's contract. Sometimes HOAs have that shit written into the purchase. If you see it, change the contract, put your initials and date in the changed sections, and see how the real estate agent handles in. This is legal, btw.
Don't sign the HOA contract, learn the laws regarding yard stuff (did you know you can apply to have your yard declared a wildlife reserve?), and be petty af when the nosy neighbors won't mind their business.
Fuck HOAs, long live the purple houses with the tractor tire garden!
Bat houses are legal to install everywhere in the US, and once installed, many cannot be removed due to the endangered status of the bats which often inhabit them. Check your local regulations.
I tried making brownies at midnight and it was a 3 hour affair that ended with shockingly not the first time ive baked sweet soup
Be NICE TO ME
I tried to add frosting and, I have got say, its a thicker consistency than the brownie itself
…
…no…
But. It is fully possible that I misread it as a cup and a half and not. Half a cup.
:) here's the post in video format to the song hall of the mountain king
YESSSSSSS THANK YOU @randomgooberness IT IS COMPLETE
one of the big concepts I learned in therapy that has been fucking revolutionary for me is the concept that sometimes u can just feel feelings and they don't have to mean anything.
like, I can just be sad about something for a little while because it feels cathartic and helpful to let myself be sad, and it doesnt have to mean anything or change how I act or treat people.
like sometimes u just need to feel an emotion in order to process and work through things, and sometimes it just feels good to let urself be sad about a silly or little thing. and then once its out its over, uve experienced it and now it is done so u can move on.
and I dont have to derive greater meaning from it or do anything about it. i was just sad for a few hours and now i feel better and that's all that matters.
Don’t you just hate it when you give in to your lust for blood and you sink your fangs into a robot by mistake?
The vampire equivalent of the “accidentally ate the fake fruit” faux pas.
i feel so bad for nikola tesla like imagine spending years beefing with a guy who has conned the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and you end up dying broke and starving and alone and then 100 years later another guy cons the public into believing he's some sort of supergenius when in reality it's his overworked employees developing all of his world-changing inventions and he's doing it all IN YOUR NAME. he must be rolling in his grave like a fucking rotisserie chicken
His ghost is setting those cars on fire actually
I hadn’t really considered “the agnostic demigod of electromagnetism is the reason Musk’s companies fail” before, but I like the concept.
Sure I’ll incorporate that into my worldview
doES ANYONE ELSE REALIZE THAT WE’RE LIKE, THE FIRST GENERATION ON TUMBLR
GIVE IT 10-15 YEARS AND WE’LL ALL BE GROWN UP AND AN ENTIRE NEW SET OF KIDS WILL BE ON HERE BLOGGING ABOUT COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SHOWS AND BANDS AND MOVIES AND BOOKS
THE ONLY THING THEY’LL STILL BE BLOGGING ABOUT THE SAME AS WE WERE IS DOCTOR WHO
HOPEFULLY
We’ll probably all be blogging about Sherlock season 4.
maybe
7/22/2013
happy decade anniversary to this post
No TV show or movie I will ever watch is worth starving a writer from their home.