#AT YOUR SUPPOSEDLY UNSKILLED JOB

[hasturmcfuckface]

i bring an “all labor is skilled labor” vibe to the history class that the capitalists here dont really like

[stardew-bajablast]

if you haven’t at least tried sewing or crocheting or knitting your own clothes, you really should. even if it’s just one time and you never do it again, i really think everyone should do it at least once

learning how to crochet was what finally made me grasp the abject horror of the fast fashion industry and realize just how laborious and time consuming it is. i have to take a few days off a week so my back/wrists don’t get sore — and i get to do this as a leisure activity in the comfort of my own home, rather than in a sweatshop. it takes dozens of hours to produce a single item. there is just something about trying it yourself that makes you realize just how little the people making our clothes are being paid for retailers to be able to sell clothes at such obscenely low prices.

i understood in the abstract that people were earning literal slave wages to make my clothes, but that concept wasn’t real to me in a way i could understand until i spent 14 hours making something that i myself wouldn’t have even been willing to pay more than $10-20 for if i saw it in a store.

i have not bought any new clothes since learning how to crochet. every time i see clothes at a store (especially obviously handmade items like crochet), and i look at the price tag i feel genuinely sick to my stomach.

i’m not saying everyone needs to make their own clothes in order to be against fast fashion, but what i am saying is if hearing about the conditions and wages secondhand has not been enough to make you stop buying it, if you find yourself becoming desensitized to the suffering of the people who make your things, you should try making something yourself.

you need to see firsthand how physically and mentally demanding it can be and imagine how much worse it would be if you were forced to sit in a sweatshop for 16 hours a day doing it nonstop, earning pennies an hour to do so. you need to spend weeks laboring over something only for it to turn out looking like shit so you realize just how much wisdom and technical skill goes into these supposedly “unskilled” and undervalued jobs. if the abstract concept isn’t enough to get through to you, then you need to get hands on.

[g1rlken]

I'm so excited you're taking requests for Rupert Campbell-Black!!

Do you think you could maybe fo #15 from your prompt list about him showing up for the reader bc they don't have anyone else?

Idk if just love that trope and I think it works with him.

If you don't feel inspired by that one no worries!

Someone in the crowd

prompt15 Rupert Campbell Black x fem!reader

word count: 5.3k+

warnings: parental neglect, mild swearing, hurt comfort, FLUFF

AN: Ahhhhhhh ANON I love you this is my fav prompt I was initially planning on the same one anyways thanks for platform ing my Rupert obsession you’re the first one

The chronicles of the country side for a veterinary sciences PhD student included more than just animals, main reason she selected a university so far from the hustle and bustle of the city. Peculiar animals in their natural state, she came across more than just peculiar animals.

Trespassing loses its meaning for the engrossed researcher, she didn’t realise when she passed the forest to a private estate land whilst following the slow worm. The most advanced high end camera, that Rupert had only seen with those media folks and proper film production. However he assumed the girl in a camouflage jungle vest to be an intern in a tabloid firm, trying to prove herself to be ever so efficient to her superiors by sneaking in to his property for a few pictures. Too naive to realise he could sue her for all her fortune perhaps. Rather an amateur at her job perhaps, she was there to snap him yet her attention didn’t avert to him on his horse before he approached her himself, “Young lady” he cleared his throat sternly “You do realise you’re trespassing here?”

“Oh?” She looked out of her camera lens to the voice that called out her and in an instant she lost sight of the slow worm she was following. “Fuck!”

“And if you don’t delete the pictures and get off of this land right this second I will be suing you for all the jobs you don’t already have.” Rupert threatened, he truly misliked this breach of his privacy to no end. But because the girl seemed unskilled and gullible to her supposedly first job he felt he could let her get off easily.

“I’m not deleting any pictures I barely got two” she said with a heavy sigh, her eyes frantically searching for her subject within the grass again not too bothered by his threat. “And I don’t have any job as it is”

“Oh” he amused, getting off of the saddle of his horse to level with her, “are you one of those fans then? How many times do I have to tell you people-“

“What?” Her attention broke from her subjected reptile to the man this time, “a fan? I don’t even know you…”

“Oh right” he scoffed placing his hands by his hips, “surely you don’t.”

“I truly don’t. I was following my subject for today from the forest lands and I ended up here it was an honest mistake” she explained herself as she opened her camera to show him the pictures, they were all reptiles and not…him.

“You were following a snake?” He asked rather confused and somewhat intrigued as to what would bring her to this.

“It’s not a snake, it’s a is a legless lizard. Anguis Fragilis” she corrected the man, ever so casually as if it were the most common of knowledges to attain.

The man just burst into laughter letting go of the horse chain to contain it, his hand on his chest he could find the joke in the name and the scenario extremely comical. “You have got to be kidding me!”

Y/n felt a bit embarrassed as if she’d said the wrong name so she went through it in her head again and she wasn’t, wrong. It was perhaps like college again, info dumping on the wrong set of people who poke fun at peculiar passions. But the man seemed to be too old to be like those immature college kids who mock others so she was left rather confused “what is so funny?” She asked hesitantly, “it’s rather rare and native to this area we don’t come across them in the city…” she trailed off trying to fill in his boastful laughter with something to feel less uncomfortable.

“Oh is it now?” Rupert asked as his laughter subsided and he realised the girl was an enthusiast in a true fashion. He just found the name of the godforsaken reptile to have a double meaning to it, he thought she made it up but when she got awkward and explained further he realised she wasn’t joking. “My apologies, are you new here?”

“Yes Ive actually moved here for research, I’m studying veterinary sciences for PhD… ” she said still feeling a bit self conscious after he’d laughed like that.

“Anus Fragilis huh?” He repeated trying his best to suppress another set of laughter but he failed at it ever so evidently.

“Anguis…er-slow worm.” She cringed as she picked up on the joke that had him loosing his composure like that. Perhaps she judged him to act his age which he looked so fast. “It’s also called slow worm. I lost him regardless, so I’ll get going. Sorry to bother you.”

“No, no hang on a second darling” he said gripping her elbow as she attempted to leave but as she returned to face him again he left it just instantly. “Since you’re already here, allow me to indulge you in a coffee or so? It would be very disappointing if I don’t get to learn more about…” he wanted to say it, the joke. But the awkwardly offended look on her face of feeling small wasn’t worth it so he kept it to himself “slow worms and legless lizards”

“They’re the same.” She briefed him feeling his ignorance, the PhD aspirant did not seem to have time to entertain his indulgence. “Forgive me but I have to go, I’ve walked too far from my car.”

“Well then allow me to drop you?” Rupert offered with his usual charm which didn’t leave to phase a lot.

Not her perhaps, “It’s not that far” she said curtly. Packing her camera equipment in a hurry. “Thanks. And sorry for trespassing.”

Rupert watched as she hastily packed her lenses and the rolls. Just when he thought he could work on himself to not offend people on first impressions, he generally didn’t do so with ladies so perhaps this was a first. “I’m Rupert Campbell Black” He put his hand forward for a handshake, “Sports Minister.” He introduced himself.

She had both her hands full with her books and camera, which she could rearrange back in the bag to accept his handshake but she’d rather not so she just nodded shortly. “Yes, Mr. Rupert, so nice to meet you.” She said with half a smile, then paced away not even waiting for his reply.

“I suppose I’ll see you around?” He said with his usual grin but she was already pacing away back to the path she’d come from.

That is how the two first met. Not her most memorable nor pleasant interaction but surely intriguing for the minister. The next time he met her, late early evening at a cafe. It took a second to recognise her with her head down in a book but there was enough lighting cast on her against the window where she sat. “Slow worm!” He exclaimed as he approached her causing her to avert her attention from the book to him.

“You…” she trailed off however her tone didn’t match the same enthusiasm as his. “Hi.” She said as he gestured to the chair across her on her table, asking if someone was there but she shrugged and nodded “Please, go ahead” she said being polite, internally bracing herself for another awful interaction.

“I was hoping I’d run into you” he told her leaning forward on the table crossing his arms, “turns out, your little bugger is a frequent visitor of the stable sheds back at the estate.”

“That explains yeah” she nodded closing her book, the size of it gigantic and hardcover it made a small thud, “it eats slugs and snails, spiders too…”

“Wonderful aspect” Rupert complimented, under informed on the subject he didn’t know what to say. “Did you get proper observations for your research?”

“Superficially yes” she nodded, “I’ll run into more of those one of these days.”

“You can always just visit my place again…I would be honoured to help out a bright mind.” Rupert offered leaning back in the chair, unbuttoning his blazer.

“That is so kind of you, I’m very sorry for trespassing that day” she said it again, obviously not friendly enough with him to take him up on that offer.

“Well you could make up for it by telling me your name.” He shrugged as his lips formulated a smile.

“Y/n.” She told him. As the conversation progressed, learning more of him, telling him more about her research and the subjects she’d come across so far. For someone in a vastly different field he was such an attentive listener. She’d told him a lot, about the animals, her thesis, her lectures and sessions, being a TA, moving here.

“And what of your friends?” He asked her over his second cup of coffee in the same conversation because he wanted to keep it going.

“I don’t live on campus so I don’t have roommates to be friends with, then I’m a TA but everyone else is a bachelors and third year student. Had I done college here I’d have those friends…I do have friends from college back home but as of now it’s only my professors.” She informed him, very casual with it but as she formulated the picture in his head it seemed to be a rather isolating experience.

“And what do you do for fun around here?” He asked her to see if it was as isolating as he realised.

“Trespass estates.” She joked with a small giggle, but in truth she did absolutely nothing for fun because there wasn’t anything.

“Greatest hobby ever” he joked back. But as she didn’t follow up with another activity he realised that if he pried about it he’d just force her to admit she led a boring and somewhat lonely life. He wasn’t judging her, she was fresh out of college and had to move a whole place and seemed to have no friends here. Well except for him if she’ll have him. “Are you struggling?”

“Of course not. I love my work, I can easily afford rent too it’s not a problem.” She replied honestly, if only financial was all of her struggles.

“Don’t you think you’d save more if you lived on campus?” He questioned unsure of her choice to stay in a boutique flat in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods.

“My father wouldn’t allow it. He’s a bit of a tone deaf classist that way.” She admitted, rather casually.

“Allow?” He repeated, surprised. He didn’t know her precise age but by her educational status and the looks of it someone in their early twenties didn’t need their father’s permission on how to live.

“It’s just a bit complicated, he wants all of his children to take the right step that is work in our family business, his company. I tried, it’s soul draining and very unlike me” she sighed “So I just extended education.”

“To get far from him?” He perceived, perhaps not the way she saw it.

“—To explore my options. I don’t want to disappoint him when I can avoid it.”

“And is this the way to be?” He asked, his tone guarded and expression curious.

“Perhaps.” She replied, but on the inside she was so hyper aware that anywhere farther from the family business as all the way to be. She didn’t want to distanced from her father nor her family, she may not be the golden child but she wanted him to be ever so proud of her even though she didn’t walk on the road he chose for her.

“Your spirit likes the fight doesn’t it?” It was more of an observation than a question.

“I don’t indulge in self awareness that well” She replied with a bemused shrug and he just let out a low laugh that. And that was her first friendship in Rutshire. To Rupert’s likeness the cafe was another one of basil’s side quests but he visited there less frequently given the bar was his primary. Regardless, Rupert got him too. The prime customer and his newest friend, studied there most of the time because she lived close by and Rupert felt drawn to her company.

She had no other and he found her growing to be his favourite one. He fancied the conversations with her so much, in her absence basil teased him about it. This one afternoon, Rupert visited as his usual time, or perhaps y/n’s usual time which he picked up on but she wasn’t there. “The coffee can’t be that good.” Basil said with a small scoff, as he found Rupert with a disappointed expression in the girl’s absence.

“I’m just trying to reduce the alcohol intake” Rupert said nonchalantly, well aware he didn’t the caffeine he’d been consuming just for the conversations with her.

“I wasn’t talking about the coffee” Basil added with a devious grin hinting at the double meaning joke he was referring for.

“Piss off” Rupert rolled his eyes at the man with a heavy sigh of irritation sitting down at the table, rolling up his sleeves and facepalming. “This is her usual time to come and study here” he mentioned.

“Which you don’t let her do.” Basil said, the entire time indulging the poor girl in conversations and spontaneous outing plans. “She’d have to be extraordinarily brilliant to keep up with her courseworks with all the detours you put her up to.”

“She is extraordinarily brilliant.” Rupert briefed him.

“I suppose you’d know.” Basil shrugged leaning against the table where he was sat, “Does she have a boyfriend?”

Seemingly offended at the mere thought of that Rupert’s expression disgusted, “Of course not!”

“Of course not?” Basil repeated surprised with his affirm expression. “So you are sleeping with her.”

“I’m not sleeping with her.” Rupert emphasised on the word ‘not’ and it was probably the tenth time that Bas had asked him that this moment.

“Of course not” Basil humoured him mimicking his tone when he said that.

“I’m not, it isn’t like that with her.” Rupert tried to explain that to his friend who found that to be such a foreign concept. It was a very strangely unknown and unspecific feeling for Rupert himself too.

“You don’t want to sleep with her?” Bas questioned not believing nor understanding the prospect “she’s rather pretty.” besides he’d sleep with anything.

“She isn’t just pretty Bas, she’s beautiful, a bit too much even on the inside.” He paused “She is precious.” Rupert spoke with such genuine passion that basil had to lay off of the joke he was brewing.

“And what of you?” Basil asked, it was something Rupert hadn’t even questioned himself for well not yet anyways.

“What of me?” He answered the question with a question feigning innocence. Before basil could further explain himself, even though well aware that Rupert understood him. The bells of the door jingled announcing upcoming presence in the nearly empty cafe causing the men to turn at the voice.

“Hello-Hello, Gentlemen!” Y/n exclaimed in the most enthusiastic Sunday morning tone possible but it was a cloudy afternoon on a Tuesday. To Rupert she always sounded like a Sunday morning with her little giggles and all the mannerisms but today she seemed way more lifted with spirits.

“Want to bet a tenner she ran into a coyote.” Basil said as she made her way to their table sitting across Rupert whilst basil was still leaning against the table.

“I bet you a twenty its a pine marten.” Rupert said, he picked up on everything from their conversation. This week she was in search of that specific animal from her list or so, he kept track somewhat subconsciously.

“It’s neither” She said with a smile still plastered on her face as she sat her bag down to the side placing her hands on the table. “I’ve got great news, well not great but perhaps good, great to me.” She went in an adjective discourse and shook her head coming back on track “My professor submitted my thesis to this government honorary publications department and I’m getting an in-kind research grant!”

“The government is giving you money?!” Basil matched her enthusiastic tone leaning forward on the table.

“No, no it’s an in kind grant…as in-they present me with an award but the big thing is that I get policy access, lab space, government authorised datasets…” she explained further with her eyes so lit up Rupert wanted to bottle this warmth of emotions he felt in just seeing her happy like this and drink it like water.

“You are getting an award?!” Rupert said with loud earnest passion for her excelling. “Y/n! That is marvellous news!”

“You fucking genius!” Basil added further, giving her a side hug and kissing the top of her head, giving her hair a ruffle as he walked across the cafe, “this calls for a celebration!”

“Thank you” She replied with a toothy smile. Feeling very heart warmed. Then Rupert took both her hands in his, he looked just as lit up as if it was his award.

“My darling, you absolute mastermind. Your mind is a wonder, y/n I am so so proud of you!” He said, he didn’t have to reaffirm or reassure more so because out of everyone she’d come across, Rupert had been so supportive, a subject and felt so unfamiliar yet he’d reassured and let her know it so constantly that she’d always have him to be cheering so hard for her. “You deserved this!”

“Rupert, that is so kind! Thank you, seriously” she replied with a glint in her eyes he could feel coloured by. Just about on time, basil blasted the confetti cracker he happened to have lying around. He turned the open sign to closed at the door of the cafe and returned to the table, slowly she let her hands out of Rupert’s.

“Didn’t have champagne in the cafe but this should do” Basil said as he presented their table with a small cake.

“You didn’t have to close the place” y/n said with a small giggle as she saw the cake, a sign in red jam crossing out the name ‘Einstein’ and Y/n in its place. Classic Bas.

“Oh please love, I deserve this celebration.” Bas said with a dramatic roll of his eyes, any reason to not work was reason enough.

“Right of course since he worked so hard.” Rupert joked clearly forgetting he owed the man in staying the cafe for him to keep it open just in case y/n might come in. They kept congratulating her over and over again as the trio dug into the cake.

“So when exactly is the award function?” Rupert asked, it was going to be event of the week for him more than it was for y/n.

“It’s on this Friday, I get one visitor pass and my father is flying out to attend it!” She said, ebullient. It did irk him somewhat because he’d wanted to see her receive the award but he knew how much her father’s approval meant to her so he was happy in her happiness regardless.

“That is great news, what did he say?” Rupert asked keeping his disappointment for not being able to see her at bay.

“His assistant put me through in the very second call so he must really be impressed, he asked me about the function and he sounded very positive of it.” She told them about the seemingly brief phone call.

“You have to talk to an assistant to get to your fath-“ basil was quickly interjected with a small shove on the leg from Rupert to take a turn in that observation. Rupert didn’t want it to rain her parade, “It’s so nice he’s coming all this way.”

“He’d probably stay a day or two after that you should meet him!” She added, it seemed as if she was somewhat more joyous with the fact that her father was pleased than the actual award to her name. It was a grey line.

“I would be delighted to.” Rupert said, he would be. At least for her sake despite having his internal doubts towards the man.

-

The award function was an extremely formal event, you could barely tell apart the professors from the bureaucrats. Rupert could tell the difference easily though, he simply knew the later group, almost all of them. But he wasn’t there for any of those people. Taking his seat at the round table, next to the faces he knew very well but he was way too focused on the happenings of the stage to indulge in small talk. And then there it was.

The lady of the evening. At least for him, her research dissertation was called out and he recognised it was her turn before they presented her name as well. White shirt with several pins of animal welfare and her educational institution. Simplicity and grace, ever so precious. As she received the medal and the award plate Rupert clapped perhaps the loudest, standing up even. The stage wasn’t so far but she didn’t spot him because her eyes were searching another direction and the procession was short lived before she could avert her gaze.

Finally after all the names were done, she was free from the stage back to the softly mingling crowd. “There she is!” The enthusiastic exclamation caught her attention from her lost trance.

Adhering the man in suit with flowers in his hand, surprised and radiated expression, “Rupert?!” She was baffled and so relieved she didn’t understand the later feeling. She rushed to him, their distance getting closer as he opened his arms for her.

“Congratulations, darling” he said bringing her into a tight embrace both of them so joyous, hers was rather infectious. He easily lifted her from the ground out of glee, kissing the side of her face. “You were wonderful out there!”

“When did you get here?” She asked once he put him down and she pulled away yet kept her arms entangled with him. Enough to just see his face, “also how?”

“I’m an MP you thought I wouldn’t be able to get into a government function?” He amused, surprised she did not see it coming, perhaps she wasn’t expecting him but her reaction seemed as if she would rather prefer him. “I got here an hour before yours was announced.”

“I am so glad you made it!” She told him, the effort was so heartwarming to her. He’d came to an event which wasn’t initially his, making more arrangements to even get in for her. She didn’t want to voice it because he’d always reply with such a strange concern as if being loved more than to be sustained wasn’t optional, she wasn’t used to this concern nor sentimental support.

Rupert could tell her kind, wide eyes in a sort of turmoil of something she couldn’t figure out by even herself but he didn’t pry on it, “where is your father?” He asked looking around shortly.

“Oh he…he isn’t here. He could not make it.” She said with a small shrug, that is how casual his absence was to him.

“—How come?”

“Probably his flight, I forgot to notify him about our time zones or so. If he were skipping he would’ve called prior” there was a small hope tugging at her heartstrings trying to believe this wasn’t like the other times. “He would be here anyways, would just be missing the event.”

“I suppose” he replied curtly, being presented with two choices of either being truthful with her of her father’s harsh and uncaring constitution or hold the hope she held out for the man with her. None of the two seemed befitting to him. As the event progressed she introduced him to some of her professors and people that she worked with, he did the same with the other officials that he knew of. She grew tired of the socialising and asked him if they could leave the event, she wasn’t as tired as she was growing disappointed of a man who wasn’t even in the room.

Even though Rupert and her came to the event from a different place and were going back in difference directions it was a given that they leave together. At least to him it was, she’d just informed him she felt like leaving and he stood up in an instant. He was dropping her back to her place because she didn’t driver herself to the function. The two were walking, to his car in the chilly night with his suit blazer draped over her shoulders, flowers and his hand in her hand, he carried her award with her bag for her and a light hearted conversation. Serenity which ran away once they came across a pay phone call booth. “Do you mind if I go make a call?” She asked him, he nodded but he was well aware who that call was intended for.

Rupert leant against the phone stand with the small door of it open, close to her as she pressed the numbers inserting coins. Anxiously awaiting the other line to answer she replied when a voice answered “Hello, this is me, y/n. Did dad leave yet?” She asked, he hated to see her in such distress and was afraid the conversation ought to make it worse. “What? What do you mean—the event, my award he was going to be here for…like he promised.” Rupert could only hear y/n’s side of the conversation but he could pan out the other side, which wasn’t even her father just some office assistant. “Just let me talk to him…please…two minutes perhaps?” It was difficult to watch, begging for the scraps of her father to an assistant. After a few moments the call ended and she couldn’t even stomach the courtesy of a goodbye.

As she walked out of the booth he searched for her to meet his eyes, narrate to him the happenings of the call. “His plans changed” she said but nothing further. He could tell she didn’t feel like talking so he stopped walking and also held her back from the track, pulled her into his arms. Resting his chin on top of her head as he held her, enlacing his arms around her tightly. He could definitely stay like this for rest of the night. Even life? A small voice suggested and he quickly dismissed it as he was pulled back to her, she didn’t feel relaxed in his arms even though she hugged him back and her face so steady, he felt his shirt getting sprinkled with dampness, as if in smallest portions.

“Y/n…” he trailed off pulling away to confirm if she was crying, “are you crying?” He asked as she lowered her face so he couldn’t see it but he leant in her direction to see. “Hey..hey, it’s alright” he pulled her back to him letting her weep onto his chest as he ran a hand through her hair.

“I don’t understand why I feel so bad” she said through her tears, holding onto him like she would fall apart even more if he let go. Perhaps she would.

“It is alright darling just let it out” Rupert said as he continued to sooth her in his arms, trying to provide a present, grounding support.

“He promised me…” she trailed off crying harder, all those events where her father should’ve been present but wasn’t came back to her. Fancy dress competitions at school where the chauffeur that dropped her off would have to attend the show out of pity for the child, birthdays where he would have to be bothered a multiple times to come attend cake-cutting, evidently sad over a test but he simply couldn’t be bothered to ask his daughter if she was alright. So much life spent in I-promise-you-I’ll-be-there. So much disappointment and you’d think one would learn. “I just feel stupid-I thought this time would be different.”

Rupert held her face in his hands “look at me” he said forcing her to meet his gaze. “You are not stupid for what you feel, you are not at fault for someone so detached and irresponsible towards their own child.” He spoke whilst wiping her tears, “he will forever be an incomplete, deficient man for the kind of father that he is. But you my love are beyond him and how he treats you, you’re brilliant and kind and funny and you have a heart big enough to hold a planet. You are going to go so far, your suffrage of his conditional love and inflicted anguish will heal for the better. I promise you that.”

This was a better hope than the one she was always latched onto, hoping that he would change, come around for once. But letting go and a promise for a softer tomorrow seemed so much more beautiful. “But I am so tired”

“You have been so gentle through so much…you must have been tired too. But persevering is constant and you, you always do. There is so much life within you, those around you are infected with it, I know I am.” He confessed, he hadn’t voiced it out especially not like this even to himself but she was more than a lively feeling, more than a chase or a rush for attraction. No. She was life.

Such admission made her heart flutter, she felt the drumming in her ears and it wasn’t the anxious kind. This felt like a sunrise after a good dream, but she had no words for it because her eyes spoke enough and so did his that wandered down to her lips and back to his. Reciprocating the course of gaze when he leant forward, face so close she didn’t move even by the slightest tired of awaiting him to inch to the closest extent she caught a soft grip of his shirt, lowering her gaze right when he crashed his lips onto hers. She kissed him back and it felt heavenly, as the kiss deepened he felt like he had reached there.

Smiles glued to their faces once they pulled away to catch a breath, tucking a loose strand of her hair behind her ear he said “you are not the only one who’s won something tonight.”

“That means I’ve won twice” she said with a small giggle adding to his exaggeration that kissing her felt like a win.

“That isn’t the same.” Rupert corrected her, going in to kiss her again with a slower passion, taking his time letting the sweetness of it linger “for me this is centuries worth of wins.”

—

IVE SO MUCH MORE OF HIS STUFF COMING SOMEBODY SEDATE ME…next his enemies to lovers let me know if you want to be tagged

PLEASE comments are my fuel I am HUNGRY for validation please if you like this please please let me know

[thoughtsbeewild]

How do people not see how United States President who forcing Companies leaders to kill American people, leaving homelessness to a rise?

This is sad...Even I am in his position, not saying finding a job is easy peasy. You have millions of layoffs and people who are trying desperately to find a job. Knowing with layoffs, companies are posting positions but at a low rate. Basically you would be doing a job with lots of task, but it wouldn't still meet the rent, food, etc.

It really sad these are people who voted for installed Senile President of United States. If you think about it, government will put these policies and regulations in place, forcing companies to not meet demands of money. Therefore, they have to let go or fire there employees. Hence all the illegal immigrants that were trying fee to United States, Texas Border wall the orange man was trying built. These ruthless democrat corrupted leaders that are in place in businesses and corporate are terminating American people jobs and outsourcing to find unskilled workers at a low rate. That is happening all over the united states. Why are people continue be stuck on celebrities, influencers and self fishly talking about themselves. Why do we continue as a world society to promote that? How are we supposedly providing unity and helping others? We are not..Because so focused looking good for social media and thier life.

They could use thier platform to help others, but we live in a world people don't give two fucks and care only about thier life. I hate how Biden changed the leadership in high demand companies and made it corrupted. Your now seeing low pay jobs doing twice the work. Nancy Pelosi Revenge and people didnt believe the orange man. True story!

[kendrixtermina]

Edelgard and “meritocracy” - an essay

In this essay I wish to adress the common argument that “meritocracy bad, therefore edelgard bad” & the logical leaps therein.

Before we begin, I’d like to stress that she doesn’t even use the word “meritocracy” & they’re not even looking at it’s modern definition but reacting to the way it has been used as a fighting word to denigrate the poor specificically in the post reagan modern USA & then assuming Edelgard means the exact same thing by that without bothering to examine what she actually says & in what context.

Modern capitalism & the way it uses rhetoric of merit as an excuse is bad & with its reduction of human value to their moneymaking ability, definitely inherently ableist, I agree totally.

But 3H does NOT take place in the modern world. Progress is always relative to what came before. It*s progress away from entrenched problems.

It’s a total failure to even imagine a world different from the sucky one we live in - that’s exactly what tolkien meant  by that saying that if we’re prisoners we have a duty to escape.

Edelgard doesn’t live in a capitalist society nor is she bringing about capitalism (if anything Claude’s the one talking of free trade & giving the merchants what they want, though he is almost certainly playing them much like the church)

And the main component of capitalism - factory owners, rich elites who owns large swathes of companies or real estate - is nowhere to be found.

In our world that cropped up because industrialization made owning factories, offices, trade etc. more lucrative that just owning the land, so factory owners replaced landed lords, essentially promising the peasants freedom if they helped them overthrow the kings but granting them only in a limited manner - the flawed inequal democracies that resulted were a compromise between peasants and factory owners.

But by and large the nobles are very much in the same niche as the factory owners today - they own the land and get special trade privileges (the means of production), they often abuse the populace with impunity, the peasants are very poor.

Edelgard cracks down on corruption & special trade privileges even during the timeskip.

And like the rich of our world, they have a self-mythology propaganda justification based on merit. Yes, there is the “by the grace of god” argument, too, but crests give you extra fighting power, and if you look at the Ferdinand support for example you do see that Fodlan’s nobles - especially the adrestian ones - see themselves as a honed elite that is trained from birth & therefore better at ruling.

Not quite the same argument a modern billionaire uses - who is very invested in convincing you that they didn’t get their power and wealth by their birth - but a myth nonetheless.

Edelgard’s not bringing “meritocracy” as in brutal competition opposed to caring social safety nets, but as opposed to unearned privilege.

If you wanted to compare that to any kind of sociohistorical context, you might look at Napoleon’s peasant liberation or the implementation of civil service examinations in ancient China.

That wasn’t an all good thing - In the same way that Europe is very impacted by the legacy of rome both good & bad (there are persisting bad attitudes toward war, authority and agriculture for example), east asia still has a lot of education obsession causing pressure & unhealthy work habits to this day.

But if you compared ancient china before the reforms to ancient China after it definitely got better, by ancient china standards.

We couldn’t expect the people back then to come up with all advances up to our exact modern values at once (not can we be sure how much of our values will stand the test of time)

Considering that Fodlan’s ideal of merit is basically what Lorenz, Ingrid and Ferdinand are embodying for their respective countries, and that she stocks her inner circle with very different leaders, it is no stretch to say that she wants to shake up the social ideas of what even counts as merit, to make ppl value other things that crest power or elite upbringing, the same way we might say today that hey, cleaners are valuable actually.

Edelgard is basically doing her world’s equivalent of taxing the billionaires - reducing the power of what the overprivilieged class happens to be, & it’s obvious from her talk of how she despises inequality that she would hardly be for rule of factory owners.

When Edelgard says that she wants to make Fodlan more merit-based, that has to be taken in the context that she lives in a world where your birth determines everything, incompetent nobles can be as lazy as they want, and no one cares how competent you are if you lack a crest, title or both.

If she looked at our world, she would quickly see through the propaganda that it is supposedly “merit based” and object to how wealth and national origin obviously dictate wealth & opportunity while talented people go to waste in sweatshops.

Now of course there have been arguments even against “perfect” meritocracy - one is the devaluation of working class jobs.

To this one could answer that this is more a flaw in how merit is conceived. Historically there have been societies that exahlted blue collar work, artisans or farming.

The second argument, however, is not so easy to get rid of: That is devalues people who can’t just go & produce like machines, especially the unemployed, the sick, the mentally ill, the disabled…

But at this point we’ve got to lean back & get our definitions straight, & make it clear what we even mean by “meritocracy” -

Because if we’re just talking about the basic idea that competency should be rewarded, I don’t think too many people disagree with that. We might see a problem with valueing the competency of a doctor or lawyers dispropottionally over the competency of a cleaner or a bricklayer, but we all, by and large, want the people who prepare our goods and services to be competent. Maybe we wouldn’t exalt it over all over qualities, but most of us admire skill.

Of course the problem with the political rhetoric of “meritocracy” is that it goes beyond just rewarding skill, first with the afore mentioned rewarding of only some skills, but mostly with the reversion or overemphasis of the above: Saying that skill is the only thing that matters (to the exclusion of any inheent human value) & that those who don’t have it are worthless.

First I want to throw out the thought that this is a product of the production/profit orientation of capitalism, but one could of course imagine, as many sci fi authors have done, a non-capitalistic society that is still obsessed with merit at the exclusion of those who are not oriented towards productivity & care more about fun & relationships than producing, or those who can’t produce because they are sick or disabled.

So now we must ask ourselves the question: Which of those views does Edelgard actually hold?

Cause I want you to notice that they’re not the same. “Skill should be rewarded & jobs should be done by competent people”  is not the same position as “Skill is the ONLY thing that matters and if you don’t have it you are worthless”

In one position, skill is a good quality, in the other, it's a prerequisite to worth.

Most of us here probably agree that skill is admirable (we like and reblog pretty fanarts), but not that the unskilled are worthless.

Looking at her superficially I could perhaps see how someone might suspect her of the latter -  She gravitates to & surrounds herself with skilled intelligent people and she’s obscenely superpowered.

It’s an misunderstanding that Dimitri makes in-universe, he accuses her of “only benefitting the strong”

But note that her answer to that is that she wants to empower the weak to no longer be weak & decide their own lives, instead of accepting charity. (Contrast with how Dimitri romanticizes abyss, for example, even as Claude points out that locking the poor underground is hardly help.)

Of course she can say many things, as rulers often give florid speeches.

But let’s have a look at what she actually thinks. How does edelgard actually act towards people who struggle or aren’t productivity oriented?

This is one of her lecture questions from part I:

“When one professor lectures many students, some will inevitably have trouble keeping up, while others will get too far ahead in their studies. I wonder how this problem might be solved…”

Her favorite answer is “lectures should be optional”.

Which part of that sounds like a bell curve type eugenicist “only skill & intelligence counts” kind of person? She wants the struggling students to be taken proper care of, not just the good ones.

Look at the speeches she gives to Petra & Lysithea about not giving up on themselves & wanting them to move forward from an empowered mindset. Look at how she tells Lysithea to take it easy & not overtax her body. (Not "don't whine & keep working")

Look at Bernadetta - very much an ‘unproductive’ individual with great struggles & limitation. Does Edelgard dismiss her as a weakling? Not at all. Not even in the C support. She makes sure to stress her good qualities when introducing  her, makes an effort to be more patient so as not to scare her, & they become good friends.

Look at the Linhardt support - at first she mistakes his behavior for youthful lazyness (He’s 16 after all) & wants to get him to apply himself, but when she realizes that he just has different priorities, she respects that, & works to get him the exact sort of position that he wants. No “suck it up!” or dismissing such a different lifestyle. Nor does she chide him for hating fighting at any point.

Edelgard does everything in her power to accomodate people so they can do their best. She sees the value even in strange unsocial people that society would dismiss. She found a job for someone like Jeritza & helped him, she doesn’t hesitate to make Dorothea a general or Manuela the prime minister no matter what people say or if they don’t act like typical politicians.

Also, when she talks about choosing her sucessor, she wants them to be brilliant/competent yes, but also kind and 'an outsider' (ie, impartial) - hardly a PoV of "if you are skilled you can do whatever you want and if you aren't no other quality matters". She's prizing kindness & objectivity just as highly, something which is absolutely reflected throughout all her actions & behaviors towards others.

She doesn't devalue living quietly & low key without making waves - in fact, that is her dream life, which she deems superior to achievement and ambition, which are to her just tools to archieve good aims.

She couldn’t be further from having a narrow definition of what a “valuable” person is, she is all ABOUT empowering people to take control of their own lives, no pity-driven charity, no paternalism, none of that. This is one of my favorite traits about her, so I can’t help but get mad when people accuse her of being the exact opposite.

But maybe the biggest argument is abyss. This is where the genuine underclass lives, poor, struggling, traumatized, refugees etc.

Edelgard isn’t as vocal during Cindered Shadows as Claude - she can’t blow her cover & just isn’t as expressive personality wise. But she’s the one who makes everybody swear to take care of Abyss no matter who wins.

And her route is the one where, instead of telling you that they lost people, Hapi tells you that they’ve all been pretty much fine over the timeskip.

If you want to help the struggling & the poor and those who don't have "conventional" skills, you should back edelgard.

[apolesen]

Another side-product of my fic-writing: a chart over the Cardassian education system. Squares with unbroken borders represent separate institutions, while squares with dotted borders represent jobs. Below is a more thorough discussion of each step. 

TW Discussion of child labour and unhealthy work-loads in education ahead

We don’t have much canon on Cardassian education. What we have is: 

Children are put through memory training at age four (The Marquis part I)

There are universities (Profit and Loss, Enigma Tales)

There are institutes (A Stitch in Time)

There is also some stuff in The Never-Ending Sacrifice, but my memory of it is a little hazy. As that is about someone who gets dropped back onto Cardassia after spending most of his time living as a Bajoran, it’s not exactly representative. 

I have decided to put the age of emergence (which is similar to age of maturity) at 14. This appears to be the age at which you start at e.g. the institutes. There are passages in The Never-Ending Sacrifice that implies that it may be 16, but I tend to imagine Cardassian society making people grow up quite fast. Furthermore, they don’t really have any concept of child labour laws. Making a kid under ten work might be frowned upon, but after that, it is fairly normalised, particularly in domestic service and on farms. 

Proceeding from one stage of education to another requires passing exams and getting certain grades. Big career decisions are done under the guidance of government officials, and changing your plans is usually quite hard. 

This is intended to be the education system as it was before The Fire. I think that, as with many other institutions, the system was changed after the destruction at the end of the Dominion War. 

The stages of schooling are: 

Basic school (4-10 years) Supposedly mandatory, although in poor communities and in rural areas, this is not always enforced. The teaching is generally focused on  the three Rs (reading, writing and arithmetic), as well as a lot of facts about how great the Cardassian state is. This is also when the memory training mentioned above occurs. 

After basic school, some children will go into ‘unskilled’ labour (psst, there is no such thing), such as domestic service, farm labour or factory work. There is also the possibility of continuing to: 

Lyceum (10-14 years) More advanced school, going more in-depth into literature, history, mathematics and the natural sciences. This stage is not mandatory, but encouraged. 

People who have finished lyceum may go into similar jobs as those who have only had basic schooling, or they may go into administration, office work etc. This is also the cohort that generally gets enlisted into the Cardassian military (although they will sometimes enlist people with only basic schooling too - it depends on the situation). 

After Lyceum, there are a number of different routes for further education. These are by far less common than the first two steps. 

Prelims Preparatory studies for university. In order to go onto prelims, you need a conditional offer from a university, and you have to have a general idea of what you are going to study (e.g. natural sciences, humanities etc.) You go more in-depth into the field. No Cardassian schooling is kind, but here, the pressure is cranked up to eleven. The idea is to identify the people who will be able to deal with the pressure of university education. By the end of prelims, you will have to have decided (again under the watchful eye of the state) what you are going to study at university. 

Those who fail prelims may get the option of applying to an academy, but often they end up doing the kind of jobs that people with Lyceum qualifications do. Those who get through prelims go on to: 

University For advanced study. Quite uncommon. The time spent there depends on your subject, but people are generally expected to do at the very least the equivalent of a 21st century bachelor and master’s degree. Changing subjects is virtually impossible. While the most common route to university studies is through prelims, you can also get there through the institutes in some cases. In those cases, you are generally ear-marked for a certain ministry or the military. 

People going down the prelim+university route may become doctors, engineers, scientists, archaeologists and university researchers. 

Institutes Higher education that trains people for different types of government jobs. Follows directly after Lyceum - in order to be accepted you need to have shown exceptional skill and have a sponsor. The institutes takes nine years to complete. After three and six years, students who are not performing well enough are dropped. The institutes are incredibly strict, and students are not supposed to use their name during their time at the institutes. Instead, they are given a moniker based on their ‘group’ and their academic aptitude. The institutes are gender-segregated. 

The institutes that are named in beta-canon are: 

Bamarren (A Stitch in Time), which in state intelligence.

The Dekaris Institute (Fearful Symmetry), trains officers for the Cardassian military. 

The Institute for State Policy (A Stitch in Time), which I guess does what it says on the tin. 

Surjada (Fearful Symmetry), which, like Bamarren, seems to be a route into the Obsidian Order. In my opinion, there is no ‘official’ route to the Obsidian Order - they recruit people of all kinds of backgrounds, if their skills have been noticed.

I imagine there are a number of others, ranging from advanced economics to certain kinds of engineering.

Academies The most common of the three post-Lyceum routes. Academies are trade or vocational schools and encompass a lot of stuff that we would expect to be studied at university. The academies also provide also the shortest post-Lyceum education, lasting only a few years. There are separate academies for different jobs. Like the institutes, students are boarded. 

The academies educate teachers, pharmacists, accountants, some types of mechanics - anything that requires specialised knowledge but is not seen as ‘complex’ (psst that’s bullshit). 

One type of education I did not include in the graph is that of performing arts. I think it’s seen as something in between academies and institutes - let’s call them conservatories. These include specific types of music, dance and acting. (Also I kind of love the idea of Cardassians having something akin to the kpop industry, with people being trained for years and years before maybe ending up in a group.) There are only a few of these conservatories on Cardassia Prime, and only people who are seen as exceptionally talented are let in.  

[more-gremlin-than-fae]

ahhhhh, a trained goddamn nurse in this book just told somebody with EMT training to bring him peroxide for a serious stab wound.

This man has been knifed across the gut and you're going to disinfect his wound with PEROXIDE, fuck right off.

[spritzes the author in the face with a water bottle] NO.

I am begging you all, if you're going to write a wound care scene do the minimum of basic research.

Take a single solitary first aid course, the absolute most basic one you can find will tell you all need to know to write a decent wound care scene. Especially do this if your character is supposedly trained in any level of first aid or first response.

Get your friend on facebook or your tumblr mutual or your best friend's kid who just finished their babysitting certification or their lifeguard course to fact check you.

GOOGLE IT "First aid treatment for [wound]"

and then also think it through, if your character is holding pressure on the wound, he is then relying on the bystanders to prep his equipment and to know the specific tools he's asking for and also how is he going to wash his hands and put on the gloves he asked for before starting on cleaning the wound or administering treatment.

Holding a towel or gauze pack on the wound is the unskilled job here, it takes minimal training - you get your bystander(s) to do that shit while you do the stuff that takes specialty knowledge like prep the gear you need for putting stitches in this poor sucker's abdomen. BONUS IF YOU'RE WRITING THIS SCENE YOU DON'T HAVE TO DESCRIBE THE EQUIPMENT YOU NEED, YOU JUST SAY "I got out the suture kit and the other basics I needed to start cleaning and sewing the wound up."

[paquettesdownfall]

I really hated that promo because dude, if you don’t care about any of this and just want to sit at home with your kid, do it. Quit. Get a real job (willing to hire a high school dropout, so he’s looking at either learning a trade or unskilled physical labor) that requires you to show up 8 hours a day, 5 days a week and will penalize you for calling off excessively (how many tapings did he blow off for no reason prior to the fictional baby, four, five?) and showing up visibly hungover. There you go, problem solved for you. Or, y’know, force your wife to get a real job and keep your ass, which is more likely, given the succession of women that clothed, sheltered and fed him while he pursued a career he really doesn’t seem to want.

I would love to see a series of opponents tell him to quit, get a real job and shut the fuck up because most of them have kids and don’t feel the need to include their disgruntled fatherhood in their narrative. Shit, Matt Hardy has been pretty vocal about how much AEW allows him to be with his large brood, why is this asshole bitching?

That promo was simply the worst thing he has shown in a long time - and his promos are generally not good. The man doesn't tell stories to create storylines, he just tells BS to remind people of his private life. The idiot is like Prince Harry, he wants his privacy, but talks non-stop about supposedly private things.

[codenamesarestupid]

most of the discussion around 'unskilled labour' I encounter on here seems to be involved with convincing people that all labour requires skill in some capacity, but I don't really care. The less training expected for your job, the easier for your swift replacement to be held over your head as a threat to keep you agreeing to bad working conditions, something that is equally unfair regardless of if your job is the easiest or most difficult thing in the world. If your labour is necessary, and pretty much every job that gets labelled as 'unskilled' is incredibly necessary for the world as we know it to function, then your role doing it should be treated with respect. If everyone on the planet decided they were going to train to get the skills/qualifications supposedly required to avoid bad work environments, assuming that they even had the means to do so in the first place, then our world would come grinding to a halt. Telling people that if they want better working conditions, they need to acquire more valued skills, is an admission that you want there to be a permanent underclass to exploit.

[missweber]

Here’s the final part of this story for Day 7 (Free Day) of @lardo-week! Please excuse any typos, but I am falling asleep as I type. AO3 version goes up tomorrow. I had good intentions, but Benadryl.

(Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6)

Read the entire thing on AO3

Chapter 7 - to arrive where we started

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time"

–T.S. Eliot

A year after Lardo graduated, her bà ngoại moved into a retirement community. It wasn't quite assisted living, but assistance was available. 

At first, Lardo's mom looked at it as a failure on her own part. As a dutiful daughter, she should be the one to look after her mother in her old age just as her mother had looked after her during infancy.

Lardo knew all too well what it was like to struggle with the idea that what you thought you should do wasn't always the right thing to do. 

Bà ngoại had laughed aside the idea as she patted mom's hand. "We would murder each other, my precious girl. Besides, I'm going because I want go and before I have to go. And all of my friends are there. I'll be able to play cards every day, if I like."

Oh, yes. Cards. Lardo had seen bà ngoại at the card table. Bà ngoại at the card table was like Lardo at the pong table. 

It didn't take much imagination to see a younger bà ngoại kicking everyone's asses at flip cup. 

Scratch that. It didn't take much imagination to see bà ngoại kicking everyone asses now.

"What are you smiling at, child?" Bà ngoại asked with an innocence that fooled absolutely no one.

"The way you're going to totally dominate the canasta table. So, do you need any help moving? I know some big strong guys who owe me a favor or five."

And so it was that all four foot ten of bà ngoại led a procession of current and former hockey players down the halls of the Fern Hill Retirement Community. Lardo wasn't sure what grapevine had been called into play, but all of her bà ngoại's friends had found some reason to pass through that part of the building. 

Later, Lardo would swear she saw one woman fan herself like she was Blanche from the Golden Girls.

If the smugness radiating off of bà ngoại could be converted into energy, all of Boston would be shining like the sun.

Bà ngoại had few enough things that none of the guys had to make more than two trips. Ransom and Holster took their leave as soon as they were done, as did Snowy, but from the look of things, Tater had gotten himself adopted by a couple of elderly Russian widows, while Bitty had locked in on the community's most avid bakers as if he were a butter-seeking missile. She wasn't sure where Jack and Shitty had gone off to, but they could look after themselves.

The larger pieces of furniture had been set where they needed to be with little fuss (except for one carved wooden table which had to be set just so), and all the boxes were placed in the appropriate spots as decreed by Lardo's clipboard.

"Do you need any help unpacking, bà ngoại?"

Bà ngoại waved her off even as she dug into the one box that she had carried herself. "No... actually yes. I would love it if you got my bed made up. I have a few things I need to do before I can call this place home, and then I think I will take a nap."

It didn't take long to find the sheets and make the bad, thanks the clearly labeled boxes. When she returned to the living room, she smiled to see the old photo of her ông ngoại already set up on the carved wood table, right where it belonged, surrounded by the familiar vases, bowls, and incense burner. 

But bà ngoại wasn't done with whatever it was she needed to make this place a home. She held a large framed picture to her chest and was clearly deciding between two possible walls. 

"There, I think," bà ngoại said, pointing to the wall next to the kitchenette. "Can you help me hang this?"

This was a framed picture of a blobby, spiky animal—supposedly a triceratops—in faded pinks, yellows and oranges. It was an unskilled drawing, but Lardo could see the beginnings of a sense of color, of form, of light.

"Yeah," she said, voice thick. "Let's do this."

There was measuring, and marking, and squabbling, and a couple of bent nails, but eventually the picture was up.

"There. Now this is home," bà ngoại declared. Her late husband's photo and her granddaughter's drawing were both where they should be, and apparently that was all it took.

Lardo hugged her gently, remembering when bà ngoại had been the taller one and she was the smaller one. 

Lardo had been Larissa back then, a little girl who had loved dinosaurs almost as much as she loved her bà ngoại.

"Do you remember how you always said you wanted to be a paleontologist when you grew up?"

Lardo sort of remembered that, but what she actually remembered was—

"You always used to get so mad when your parents told people how you used to pronounce it!" bà ngoại said gleefully.

"Arrrgh!" Lardo cringed in embarrassment and tugged at her hair. "They said it was cute! I hate being called cute!" 

The way bà ngoại smiled said that she knew damned well just how much Lardo hated it—and found it cute.

"I remember how much you loved making up stories with your toy dinosaurs. Do you still have that big plush one?"

"Mr. Steggy?" She scoffed. "Heck yeah I still have him!"

"Good. I thought it was a little sad when you stopped being so interested in dinosaurs."

"Mr. Steggy is forever. And now I'm into ducks, which are, like, stealth dinosaurs."

She still remembered the little thrill when she learned that dinosaurs were still around in the form of birds. 

They hadn't gone extinct.

They just weren't what you expected them to turn out to be. But they were still there.

She hugged her bà ngoại goodbye and went to collect her boys.

The others assumed that her thoughtful mood on the way home was due to the idea of moving her grandmother into a retirement community, but that was only part of it.

She thought about all the times her family asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. 

At first, she had wanted to be a paleontologist the way other kids wanted to be astronauts, back when it wasn't the reality of the job you wanted but the cool factor of ACTUAL MONSTERS or SPACESHIPS.

Then, there was the dream of being an artist.

And fuck it, she was an artist. She just also happened to be an equipment manager for a professional hockey team, a job that wasn't in any way, shape, or form on her list of dream jobs at any point ever.

But, via a 'happy accident,' George had mentioned something to Thirdy about needing to train up a replacement for Stu, and Thirdy had said something to Marty, and...

And because a previous 'happy accident' had led her to Jack and a job that got her away from that miserable deep-fryer, here she was.

She had taken to the job like a duck-billed dinosaur to water. It hadn't taken long for the team to take to her. Of course it helped that Jack already loved her, Tater already adored her, Snowy already admired her, and Poots already (rightfully) feared her.

She was jolted out of her musings when Jack pulled up in front of Haus 2.0.

"Later, gator?" Shitty asked. Lardo didn't say anything, but gave him a lingering kiss. 

With training camp starting up soon, it made more sense to crash with Jack and Bitty during the week. In another year, she and Shitty would probably be ready to find a place of their own, so it didn't make sense to move into our out of either place completely.

Jack and Bitty had to go on a grocery run, which Lardo suspected was an excuse to give her some alone time.

Jack was a good bro, really he was.

Lardo let herself into the condo. The picture hanging next to the kitchen pass-through was familiar enough that she didn't usually notice it anymore, but now she stopped to look at it.

Bitty had declared that Still Life With a Fuckton of Jam was one of his favorite graduation presents, and the fact that he hung it by his beloved kitchen said more than a 'thank you' ever could.

She passed by her Junior Show sky-scape as she cut through the living room. She loved that it was owned by someone who saw it being made and who wanted to hang on to the memory of the making of it.

No, this wasn't what she pictured when she thought about being an artist when she grew up, but that dream was still very much alive. Just not in the way she had expected it to be.

It was better. She would never say this out loud, because it would completely nuke her cred, but it was all tangled up in love. 

Even when she was doing work for hire, it was still about the people. She still went to the Macey's used bookstore where the steps she had painted enticed young readers up to a nook furnished with cushions and hidey-holes. And every time, Macey still gushed about how she had wanted a staircase like that in her bookstore ever since she saw one as a child, and now she had the store of her dreams, and wasn't it wonderful?

She was halfway through another commission, this one for a friend of Snowy's who needed a re-do on his mask after getting traded to the Aeros. Jukes was super-psyched about the retro-futurist space-themed design she was doing in the Aeros' silver and red, so psyched Lardo half-suspected that kid-Jukes would have said he wanted to be an astronaut when he grew up (possibly a hockey-playing astronaut—he was Canadian, after all).

Snowy had taken one look at the design and had declared that by the end of the season, Lardo would have a three year waiting list, and that if he weren't so superstitious about his current mask, he'd be next in line after Jukes.

Having another job (one that she loved) gave her the freedom to pick and choose the art she wanted to do the way she wanted to do it and for the people she wanted to do it for. One day, she might be able to do it full time and she really hoped she would get there.

The important thing was, she was an artist. It was an essential part of who she was and who she would be, just like Bitty didn't need to own a bakery to be a baker.

She flopped down on the bed in Jack's guest room (which was already halfway to being 'her' room). She was exhausted enough to want to nap, but too keyed up to do so.

So, she picked up her bedside sketch pad, flipped to a mostly empty page, and began doodling.

She started with a triceratops.

[ralfmaximus]

ARTISTS aren’t skilled labor? Really.

Make me some art RIGHT NOW. Paint me a portrait in oil-based acrylic. 

What? You don’t know that acrylics are water based, not oil based? Gee, that’s something only a skilled painter might know.    

Or instead compose me a song. Design packaging for this new product we’re launching in 10 days. Make me a webpage with eye-popping graphics you didn’t steal from another site.

Artists do all that. In fact, every manufactured thing you touch passed through the hands of a skilled artist at some point.

FAST FOOD! If fast food is ‘unskilled’ then why does Wendys, McDonalds (et al) expend time on training employees? Surely if any asshole off the street could do the work they can just slip right in there and start slinging happy meals on day one, right? 

Do you know the correct EH/OSHA-approved way to wash your hands? Do it wrong and you are literally violating the law. 

Quick: what do the symptoms of Hepatitis-A look like?  

Or let’s talk janitorial services. Do YOU think you can clean an entire floor of an office building in the allotted time? Where does the trash go? The recycling? How do you get ahold of the waste removal company when the dumpsters are inexplicably full at 4am? Whom do you call? What’s the account number? Is this even your job to worry about? If the dumpsters are full where do you put a night’s worth of collected trash?

What do you do with hazardous waste you might encounter, if you’re cleaning (say) an industrial workspace? Dispose of it incorrectly and that’s a crime.

What’s the procedure for when you encounter a trespasser in a secure building where supposedly nobody but you is working? Can you identify a fake or expired employee badge? Are you supposed to? Your training probably covered that. 

How much would we have to pay you, dear @ithinkthatthismustbetheplace, to deal with a seriously clogged toilet? Shit-smeared walls, standing waste water, the entire place trashed as if it was 3am after a frat party? You have less than an hour to return that restroom to pristine condition. And no, building services is not going to help you.  

You don’t think that requires skill? 

Or adequate compensation?

[whois-this]

You're *right* except on unskilled refugees, as those are a money pit who will drain the economy, balkanize our culture and thereby politics, and contribute very little compared to the homegrown canadian at the end of it all. But that's something else

Now, which is more expensive:

A) funding a constantly growing batch of weeds forever, who shall always be low-yield

B) Rooting out the weeds and thereby preventing their spread, saving yourself the long-run maintainence & opportunity costs of keeping a garden full of weeds in place of flowers

*

First gen immigration typically falls into the unskilled part of the value chain. Even when you consider that their children shall eventually produce value, the "startup" costs for teaching a refugee english,   giving them the trudeau gold-plated-toilets subsidizedn housing, welfare and employment supports while they get a job and hold it is not great. Especially when you consider that the return on investment with future children here isn't phenomenal either when a canadian-born is infinitely cheaper

But that doesn't actually talk about the core problem, which is culture/race and has nothing  to do with how it supposedly "changes over time". Increasing a diversity of minorities by default adds additional division (unsurprisingly the same concept, different manifestations of it) in cultural-political preferences, which is then picked up on by parties who use this to split voting by ethnic pandering rather than justice for all.

I've used this example before, but think about how diverse India is and how much violence and hate exists in that society to this date. Or even our own history where a french-canadian minority has caused anglophone feuding for generations. This is not a good thing for canadian stabillity.  Selective immigration with skilled workers, in qualified amounts below canadian demographic trends I am ok with. Mass immigration under the guise of "refugee" as if we're the worlds orphanage and expect to turn a buck off it is ridiculous.  

Second, this marketplace of ideas concept is wishy feel-goods. The truth is that fundamentalist and aggressive ingrouping movements have been very successful in growing, because they create a shared support base that discriminates against those outside the circle. The Naivity of the liberal doctrine is in thinking that the "marketplace" (like all markets) isn't a zero-sum game where discrimination is an economic weapon.   In effect, liberalization/ open borders destroys domestic cohesion and displaces the whole point of the state (discrimination against the other for competitive advatage) onto ethnic-cultural groups who are able to take up the slack

*

Discussing how culture changes is a total red herring, because unlike beliefs you can't change your skin color. Which is the basis for these political fault lines and forever shall be, as the division is constantly aggravated using charges of race-baiting from everyone involved. There's absolutely nothing wrong with taking in value-adding people who do not threaten the cultural-racial balance of Canada, that's my whole point as to why mass immigration is a problem: because it doesn't factor in maintaining a stable balance

Regarding this marketplace, I guess it's kind of funny that nobody believes in the sacred cow of liberalism-uber-ideology anymore. The valid application isn't the market, but instead Herbert Spencer's correct idea of Social Evolution- which has been unfairly maligned by antievolutionary egalitarians who don't believe culture shapes competitiveness, while accepting ironically that culture shapes everything else. Which is why ingrouping is such a big thing, because neither the market nor the cultural realms are ever inclined to be free

*

Skin colour/the underlying component of Race is important because you can't get rid of it and it's a highly visible method of ingrouping. Everyone discriminates against everyone for some reason or other, it just happens that race is big one for this. It's so corrosive that we now have to advocate things like racial equality quotas rather than actual meritocracy, because people get offended by the merest notion of racial favoritism. What IF populations with two copies of the MAOA "warrior" gene are more presupposed to violence (they are), and are resultingly more likely to land in prison? If we were talking about a subgroup of say, only whites with two MAOA, this wouldn't even be a debate. But with racial fault-lines the inherent genetic differentiations of people is now a big issue because of the perception of racial mistreatment. This is just an example, this same concept happens everywhere- the only "solution" now because of racial fault-lines is to try and artificially boost all peoples into the same egalitarian camp. And in so doing, fight our own genetic natures and not grade by efficiency.  Even worse, despite the concept of being "colour-blind" as a supposed alternative, the supporters of anti-racism are so actively focused on race they bring it into higher resolution as an issue. This is such a toxic swamp that I see no good in making it an even bigger part of Canadian political life.

If you're saying it's destabilizing for the majority race to grow in number, that does not follow the logic of what I am saying. The question is who holds the balance of power, and that as the white majority declines this is a flashpoint for various other ethnic ingroupings to compete amongst each other- as if the state itself with it's centralization of violence were to collapse: both results end in feuding

Anyways, I'd say it's still basically applicable to whites as well. Suppose we took in thousands upon thousands of unskilled russians: do we want the inevitable eastern mafia that will also come along? Further, do we even need an unskilled slave class in Canada that will be eventually as discontent as today's service-sector types? Recall that immigration sparked the labour crises of the early past century

[artdjgblog]

​Innerview: Jane Lerner / Print Magazine​ Regional Design Annual

July 2008 

Image: Gluekit

​Note: Q​&A on the​ Midwest's​ “State of the Union in Design​.​”

Question:​

I am mainly interested in your take on the “state of the union” of design in Missouri. In writing the regional essay, I am curious as to your thoughts on the quality of local design and designers, the challenges designers currently face in your area, the kinds of clients you are seeing more / less of, the influence of local art schools and the new crop of designers, the effects of larger social issues (the economy, the election, recent flooding, the housing crisis)—really anything you’d like to offer would be illuminating. I’m especially interested in any changes you may have felt in your business since last year, either improvements, declines, shifts in assignments, anything…I am just hoping to collect some thoughts from local designers in your area on the state of design in your area, with a special emphasis on how your work has changed, evolved, improved, or been challenged in the past year. Really anything you’d like to offer would be helpful and illuminating, but don’t feel like you need to put to​o​ much time or effort into writing anything up! ​Answer:​

Honestly, for about forty minutes each Fall, I let Print’s Regional Design Annual treat me to a view of what they think is the state of design union in Missouri and beyond these borders. But, do I use it as my design doctrine or bible? Nope, just reference per the moment and mild-mannered time passing. And besides, it’s always about a year behind (har-har). The rest of the year I barely flip a design magazine or book page based upon today’s happenings and I don’t interact much with other design unless having a ba-jillion images pass by me on the web world bulletin boards, the grocery aisles and department stores or when I watch movies and play passenger in cars. Oh, so then again, I guess I DO flip through (and flip off) a lot of design out there! And geesh, I can barely read most restaurant menus these days! I get confused and convoluted from a lot of design overload. Though, I guess I do care. I do celebrate design. I do love it and hate it on occasion. I do get too serious at times and then feel the need to step it back because I have to be a human being. Publications like Print must be doing something right being that they’ve been in print for decades now. And I might read it more if I could afford a subscription. But, I still think that all design is relative to the viewer who makes contact and then it’s up to them. Them being, both the general people and the people who really push the production, politics or peep show. But, mostly it should be left up to the uneducated design people (I mean that in the best way possible) that the end product is placed within eye-shot. They have to look at the whole spectrum majority of the junk, not knowing what is good or bad in design aesthetics, but what feeds them on a personal level or how hungry their pockets are. For the majority of my own nest-kick-chicks, that would be street level. I think I’m not too far off by putting my poster work in the same batter as that of street vending / food cart. It’s cheap, catchy, quick and not for everyone. But for those few minutes (or seconds pending on how fast you digest) it may or may not treat you right and then you pack up and move on to the next pickings. Sometimes you might want to try it again and that means a lot to me in this age of quick tastes and slick takes. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind for each experience to be a new taste / take. In some cases, multiple tastes / takes in one bite. So, lots of different street vendor selections or even toppings? Maybe more like one big thing of flavored beans? Canned or candied? Of course the design hand-picked for a design magazine is done so by designers. They do a fine job, but is design all relative to designers too? Maybe we should start letting non-designers pick the work just for the heck of it? I think it would be a great experiment to see what truly works on a popular vote in the culture instead of designers controlling the pop culture waves of their own profession. Something I learned about this “profession” a long while back is that there is no good or bad design, only smart or stupid (I think there are “pretty” and “ugly” categories too). I find joy pulled from all sides. More times than not, I find more breathable life in things made by the hands of unskilled makers of things. Though, it depends, I guess. And for the most part, whether it is folk art or a church secretary’s thumb prints, the egos, arrogance factor and financial bullpens typically come in less shades of gloss and floss as well. Still, one can’t help but think there is a fine line once all the meat is boiled with any “design” job. I guess that is where my formative training and “I think I know it so-and-so’s” come to bite me in the rear. I try to not think, but end up thinking too much when these questions come. What does all of this nonsense say about the state of the union? Should we even care about a state of the union with design? I have no idea. Tricky question, nonetheless. Designerly reality hits when I feel that a lot of non-designers think they are designers and that a lot of designers think that they are designers too. Though, this has probably more-so been a “thing” with many since the personal computer came into play and that’s a subject that has been beaten to death. It’s good and bad and smart and stupid and pretty and ugly. Oh, and the ability to change colors and images on myspace pages and cell phones has got the “modern” world in a hoopla of cool-aid. Everybody’s got an agenda to style and decorate everything, non-designers and designers. Whatever and way-to-go…each to their own scarecrow. I try to stay out of design dogma, fads and politics for the most part. But, it can be challenging when the “profession” feels a lack of respect compared to what it may have had decades ago (I’m still a young pup so I wasn’t around, but I love to look at old makers of things working in a room without a compouter), when brains were illuminated instead of monitors. I’m not sure if this is my area of the box to bash. But, it makes for interesting passing through. And I have a pooter too. I stick to my guns as much as I can, but still it’s a game of roulette with each day cause I never know what I’m personally going to get out of it or if what I get translates to if he or she or they or it wish for tickets to the gun show. But, I try to always do my best work per that moment and keep true to whatever direction of the dotted line it fits. Unfortunately some days make for more paper dolls than snowflakes. Personally, whenever I pull from all things, the cannon of life that I’ve built and have come to know, this is when I’m tickled most within the work. But, it shouldn’t be about me and I am no specially marked pre-packaged product. A healthy dose of all angles and ingredients apply for this position. Design calculators are nice and all, and knowing what you think you know is more than just knowing as it becomes powerful like OCD to the core and every drip and wink of life becomes that. It can be fulfilling and it can also make you want to dive in a landfill. Anyway, it’s a strange brew and I’m best when I stir and just let it happen. And I’ve had to work a full-time day job (and some) since starting on my personal design odyssey seven years ago, so I don’t know enough of “much” to really qualify for this question. I’m in constant scrape for scraps of my own eye lids. But, then again, Print Magazine has kindly donated some fine-printed room on their pages the past six years for my silly D.I.Y. bump and grinds. As if I couldn’t confuse myself even more, I found out that Print picked a piece of my mind to help represent Missouri that I didn’t think was anything too special on a whole and now they want my opinion on the state of the union. Design is all relative even among designers. I don’t get out too much, but Kansas City has had a hot bed of art and design activity burning bright for several years now. And ever since I was making visits from the farm to the city as a child, I’ve thought the architecture alone in this town stands for itself old and new. Right now there is a lot of development buzzing and lots of expensive looking structures and changes filling out formerly anorexic lots and buildings. Supposedly we are making a dent in the landscape all-around with the arts, which is kind of exciting. And there is a great sense of hometown pride right now. Though, how does that add up in comparison to the higher crime rate, poverty, loaf of bread, gallon of gas or milk? Or, anywhere? I guess in designerly terms, Print will let me know for sure later this year what is exactly going on as they summarize the Missouri plot. All I know is that the loop is small here in Kansas City and I myself have somehow managed to remain fairly anonymous and out of the loop, yet have been fortunate to grasp a few goggles. But, like I said, I don’t get out much and I don’t get to do design full time. At times, and in these times, I wonder how some individual designers and larger design firms keep all of their monitors turned on. Maybe I should hang around some of these kids who are getting by on their arts and crafts alone and learn a trick or two? But, I will just keep riding my little pony now. I suppose the new crop of talent has been a constant for a long time with the Kansas City Art Institute being here and all. Though, many newbies come in from all areas of surrounding towns and other states, not just for formal schooling. And I’m sure the location between big college towns like Lawrence, KS and Columbia, MO draw in the post-graduates. It seems like a lot of people that transplant or migrate here stick around and drop anchor for a bit. The central location, four seasons and big-little city atmosphere help make for a comfortable stay. You can throw an iPhone and hit somebody who makes stuff or plays in a band or something in the area of the arts. It’s fairly easy to find kindred spirits, comfort and a bit of headlines if you’ve got something to say. And in some cases you don’t need to say much to get attention. But, I think that in most any city now you can find a lot of people who are pushing towards titles of artist, designer, writer, filmmaker and so-on. However, the “everyone’s an artist” tag line doesn’t bulge the waist line here as much as in a city like say, Portland, OR. But, I think that there is an edge here with milder mid-west manners and a cheaper and comfortable cost of living in comparison to equally-sized and more artistically-endowed cities. Still, gas and economy prices are rising all the time so added whoopee cushions are deflating a bit. But, cats are cheaper than kids so my wife and I almost have my formal art and design education paid off. Whoopee, for real. Though, most of the natty resources I’m in constant search of right now in my pockets are time, energy and clear conscience. In my own personal art department, internet advertising on social networks mixed with small town word-of-mouth and an incestuous music scene of like twenty people pretty much makes the concert poster secondary information today. At least it seems that way on some days…some days like today. And some days feedback comes in the vein of, “It’s alright I guess, but I think we’ll just make our own in OUR style.” I have no idea what that means, but it seriously cracks me up in a “you and me take ourselves way too serious” kind of way. Stuff like that makes me realize that all of this that I push and pine for means nothing when all the images are stacked up. I like the idea of the time line and of the paper trail with life and celebrating creation, but a lot of it can take life out of context. I’m guilty a lot. Fooey…I don’t think the concert poster is a dead art and I must add that I’ve had great response and clientele to work with here. To top off this tearful tier, I have no idea what else I could do. This is the only thing that I’m told that I’m somewhat “OK” at. When fitting their “style”, of course. So, Kansas City…I simply fell into the right position with you and I enjoy you sometimes and sometimes I don’t. But, that is how the hamster ball scuttles. Though, much of my smoke stacks have cut back collaboration with concert stuffs due to just wanting to take it easier on myself and to see where else I can crawl with this pile I’m sitting on. And I come back quick, up and down. I think there will always be an avenue for printed products, plus for a long while now the concert poster in general has become a pretty hot item. Though, that is not why I do it. I just do it. Out of the gutter and onto the milk crate. Regardless, I’ve taken a step back from my typical trappings anyway to just breathe a bit in life and to avoid burning my torch out. I’m also seeing what other areas to plow. Though, I think I’ve recently caught a bit of fire again and I’m burning my brain and yours in this windy waste of writing. Adding it all up, I’m well down my seventh well here. I like it, but I have itchy roots that dig into my country backbone woods. There’s a piece of me that wants to get a piece of rural property to see some stars again and have a little full tank of time making things shack out back. And just close enough to the city for a fix of my secondary roots here if need be. But who knows what the next wind will blow? -djg

[cardio-maegaly]

Saturday was good. I opened at the store and finished my barista retraining. Then I went to The Parlor with Britton and some of her new friends. It went ok, but I had been up since 3am. I was tired and had a hard time socializing, so I felt awkward about that. I also felt a little out of place. I’m not really into sports, and I’m not as accomplished or settled in as everyone else there was. I felt a little insecure. But they were so friendly, everyone I met gave me hugs when I left & offered to walk out with me. It made me feel really welcomed.

Work yesterday went well, too. I really like working at Starbucks. Rude customers don’t bother me nearly as much as they used to. & I feel like it’s easy to get along with people that work there. There’s something about being in customer service that makes you really flexible and good at getting to know people quickly.

After work, I went to the dispensary. I couldn’t spend a lot, but being able to smoke a bit after work has really helped my anxiety & with being able to enjoy my time a little more. It also helps for when I want to sit down and focus on writing how I’m feeling.

Today’s my day off. The only thing I was planning on doing today was going to a nearby costume shop. I saw they had signs up for 60% off backpacks since the school year just started. If they’re not too expensive, I’d like to get a something to replace my laptop bag. My purse is too small for my apron and hat when I’m going to work, but my laptop bag is so big that it’s actually kind of unwieldy when the buses are busy.

I downloaded some otome games. I’ve been playing My Horse Prince since I got here. It’s hilarious and I’ve actually enjoyed it so much that I looked up some other, more serious novel-like games. Mystic Messenger was the most popular one, so I just started playing that today. I’m not ready for dating real people yet by a long shot, but uhh...damn it’s nice to see my phone blow up with cute messages from AI anime boys. 😍

I told Matthew I was going to be vegan when I came here unless the food was free (& then I’d stay vegetarian). But being by the ocean makes that pretty hard, I’ve bought seafood food twice (California sushi rolls! Fried shrimp by the beach! 🤤). I’m terrible, I know fish farming is bad for the environment (...and for the fish) but it’s an infrequent vice so I don’t feel too terrible about getting it occasionally. I’ve also been getting vegetarian options just because there’s so much to try here & I don’t want to limit myself when I’m going out & meeting people.

Ah, but since I’m only getting one paycheck in September & my budget is tight, I haven’t been able to eat out much. I feel better when I eat vegan & I need to lose weight anyways. I’ve been getting free meals from Starbucks, and cheap snacks and sandwiches for when I’m home. I’ve also been tracking my calories and staying around 1200-1500 calories for the last week. I felt better about my body and my health last year when I wasn’t 5 lbs overweight. & hell, eating less is one way to save money. 

But I’m already deciding where I want to go next when I can, maybe to celebrate things going good here on weeks where tips come in well. Place #1 is Doomie’s which has a closer location in Culver City now! That’s a bit of a bus ride from here, but it’s worth it because I’ve had it before & I know it’s my favourite vegan place here. Vegan animal fries are so much better than In n Out’s. It does suck that that’s the pricey option, though. Place #2 is C&O Trattoria. It wouldn’t have vegan options really, but I could eat vegetarian. It’s by work on the boardwalk, and it supposedly has the best garlic bread knots in LA. How can I KNOT try them? (ehh? ehh? >_>) According to reddit and Food Insider, it is custom to fill up completely on free garlic knots before your food comes out, and then take your entree home with you. Totally going to be doing that sometime when I move to my regular workplace.

Over the last week or so, I went through a couple different lists of personal values. I think it was helpful to consider what my own values are, some core personal ideals to consciously reflect in my actions. I didn’t settle on the ones that I wished I had. I think I’d be setting myself up for being disappointed in myself if I did that. Instead, I chose the ones that I think come naturally to me, make me feel good about myself when I uphold them, and make me feel like something’s wrong when I don’t.

They were:

Simplicity - I don’t really need a lot of “things” to be happy. I like traveling, I like food & cooking, I like having some art supplies & a ukulele or two around, and that’s about it. My happiest memories are when I’m just hanging out, indulging in those hobbies by myself or with a few close people. I feel satisfied and content when I can go to the ocean, or sing along to a meaningful song. I have fond memories of going to Friends meetings in Lawrence & meditating (even though I’m agnostic). I value experiences and close relationships over material wealth, signs of status, and other shallow or frivolous pursuits. As long as my needs are met, I’m healthy, & I have a peaceful routine, I am content. 

I’m not true to this one when I get insecure comparing my life to others. I feel like I should be earning more money or doing something more prestigious, and it leads me into situations where I’m not able to live simply or spend time doing the things I love. But I still worry sometimes that I’m not ambitious or successful enough. 

Authenticity - More than just simple honesty with others, I feel like it’s important to be honest with myself. I like me better when I let myself just be. I’ve always been kind of dorky and off-beat, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, a lot of folks even like dorky and off-beat people! Being open with myself and others about how I feel and who I am reminds me that my inner critic is a harsher judge of me than anyone else ever is. & it’s okay to enjoy things, even if there’s reasons others might judge me for it. Just the fact that they make me happy is enough, and nothing else matters. Acting with integrity and being upfront about my mistakes is important to me.

I’m not true to this one when I try to alter or “dilute” my identity to suit the needs of others. I’m not always honest about how I feel because I try to avoid conflict. I sometimes feel insecure about being too dorky, too unrelatable, or too unskilled at my hobbies, and so I isolate my interests from others. These make me feel stifled.

Compassion - I feel good when I can make others feel good. I enjoy hosting friends & making a big dinner at a table for everyone to eat at. I don’t even like eating meat because it’s a product of animal suffering. I feel honored when someone feels enough trust in me to open up about their problems and let me help them solve them. I get satisfaction from being a part of something bigger than myself. It’s important to me to be thoughtful and considerate of those around me, and I’m motivated by what I can do to lessen others’ suffering.

This is actually the one value I feel like I overextend. But I’m not true to consistently acting with compassion when I spread myself too thin. I sometimes worry too much about other people’s problems and try to take them on as my own. I’m not always compassionate to myself. When I experience compassion fatigue and when I am not compassionate to myself, I retreat and I’m unable to help anyone. I feel like I need to learn to take care of myself first, like putting your oxygen bag over your own face before you’re able to help the people next to you.

Humor - I feel good when I can make people laugh. More than that, I've intentionally cultivated a sense of humor that is adaptive. It’s mostly affiliative (jokes everyone in a group would get, funny faces to make people laugh, wordplay, puns), but also about self-enhancing (jokes about my situation that aren’t mean to myself, but just generally commenting on the absurdity of life & being able to laugh at myself; “i watched so much steven universe that i moved to the beach and got a job on the boardwalk so i could eat fry bits & play ukulele by the ocean lol”). I like spreading cheer in a way that makes people feel good about themselves, and I feel proud when people know me for that. I make my own life and others’ easier when I use humor to diffuse stressful situations.

This is part a coping mechanism. I have a nervous laugh when I don’t know what to say, and it’s funny and odd so it makes others laugh. In fact, they enjoy it so much that they’ve intentionally tried to get me to laugh more. It’s such a defining part of *me* that sticks out to other people, that people miss when I’m not around, that I’ve learned to embrace it. I feel unhappy and disingenuous when I use self-deprecating humor or sarcasm. I get uncomfortable when others use a sense of humor that’s mean, aggressive, or self-deprecating.

Growth -  I feel best when I’m practicing open vulnerability about my struggles with others, and I appreciate it when others feel they can do the same with me. I always feel proud of myself when I admit I don’t know something and want to learn more. I love trying and learning new things just for the sake of it, & then teaching those new things to others. I get a lot of satisfaction from giving others useful advice. I find my thoughts frequently go to what I could be doing next, what my next challenge will be. I feel confident when I can look back on the person I used to be and see progress. Personal development is important to me.

Self-reflection can easily turn into unproductive navel gazing. Also, while I enjoy being in “advisor” roles where I can help others solve their own problems, I need to be careful to avoid “leader” or codependent roles where their problems become my responsibility. Sometimes, I try to spend too much energy solving problems that aren’t solvable and I stagnate. I have a hard time deciding what I want to do next, and that sometimes means I end up doing nothing at all.

[vashikaranspecialistsonline]

Using Brain Dumps for Oracle Certifications Is Truly Brainless

The job market for the past several years has been bad in the United States and around the world. One of the few job markets that has never really stopped hiring (although it certainly slowed for some time) has been Information Technology. In the past year or two, I’ve seen the number of open positions start to grow rapidly once again. There is almost always a shortage of skilled IT professionals. It’s no surprise then that a large number of people are interested in entering the IT field, or that they see Oracle Certifications as a means to do so. I fully agree. I have been in the position of looking to fill entry-level slots for Oracle professionals and candidates with Oracle certifications are certainly something I look for. What is disturbing to me, however, is what I am seeing on forums, blogs, and certification sites. It appears that a rising number of people, primarily candidates with little experience, are looking for shortcuts to Oracle certification. Specifically, I’m seeing a marked rise in candidates who are openly seeking ‘brain dumps’ to use in trying to pass a given test. Brain dumps are sets of ‘supposedly’ actual test questions and answers from Oracle Certification tests. If you have either used, or have considered using brain dumps, take a few minutes to give the concept some thought. Since no paper is allowed in or out of testing centers, these questions and answers are coming from the memories of previous test takers. Whether the dumps are really actual test questions and answers depends on the memories of the test takers. However, for this article, I’ll simply assume that dumps contain real questions with correct answers. After all, any candidate using these dumps is making that same assumption. Some of the candidates who use brain dumps argue that they aren’t cheating, but rather that dumps are simply another valid method of studying for the exam. This argument is completely and obviously wrong. ‘Studying’ for a test by memorizing actual questions and answers is not studying. It is cheating. This activity does not give you the background information the test is designed to determine if you have. If you’re willing to cheat on a test, I seriously doubt that you will change your mind based on this article. However, you should be honest enough with yourself to admit that this is exactly what you’re doing. That aside, what you as a certification candidate should focus on is this: Oracle certification tests are designed to determine if you are skilled with some portion of the Oracle suite of products. This shouldn’t be a shock — an algebra test is designed to determine whether you really did your algebra homework, and a history test is designed to determine if you were listening when your teacher discussed the French Revolution. The difference is that the people taking Oracle certification tests are doing so because they intend to work with that product. On a typical workday, you’re unlikely to be asked to solve a quadratic equation, or to discuss the socioeconomic policies that led to the collapse of the French monarchy. However, you might very well be expected to recover from a database failure, troubleshoot a database performance problem, or write a complex SQL statement. If you passed your 11G Administrator OCP exams though the use of brain dumps, and then got a job on the strength of that certification — chances are you can’t do any of those tasks as well as you should be able to. If you’re going to work in this field, then many of the questions being asked in Oracle certification tests are regarding things that you really should know and will need to learn sometime. If you need to know the information, it is *much* better to learn while in the context of studying for a test rather than in the middle of a real-life crisis when you’re being watched, timed and evaluated by the people paying your salary. If you gain certifications without having the knowledge behind them, this will become obvious sooner or later. There will be some hiring managers that might not be able to spot candidates with a thin veneer of Oracle knowledge during an interview. However, most companies hiring for entry-level positions will have one or more senior Oracle personnel sit in on the interview. I’ve been in these interviews and have outed unskilled candidates. Even if you get hired, sooner or later if you don’t become knowledgeable about Oracle, it will be obvious that you can’t do the job and you’ll be fired. If your plan is to learn the skills you need after getting hired, why skip learning them for the certification? Using dumps means you risk losing your certification for cheating. If you’re hired on the basis of the certification, you risk being outed as a fraud if you can’t do the work. I stand by the article title. If you still think that using dumps is a good idea, more power to you. However, you’ll never make it into any company where I have a say in the matter.

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Insourcing: American Lose Jobs to H-1B Visa Workers 07/26/2016 06:57 pm ET Updated Jul 27, 2017

Disney characters sing lofty messages about finding your true self, developing your special talent and becoming successful doing what you love. Their stories never say: study to become a highly-skilled Information Technician, work hard for years at Disney, train your foreign replacement, and don’t forget to leave your benefits at the door when it slaps you on the back.

Since October of 2014, Disney aggressively used “guest workers” for low-wage staffing to replace American workers. The H-1B, a 3-year work visa, allows foreigners to enter the country for specific jobs. Originally, H-1B visas were structured to bring in highly skilled, uniquely talented individuals if the American labor pool ran dry. But since 1990, employers have been abusing the visa program to reduce payroll and maximize profits.

Gary Beach, of the Wall Street Journal said the H-1B visa “was intended to complement, not replace American workers. It’s gotten out of hand.”

Americans are losing jobs to foreigners and training their replacements.

Disney laid off 850 American workers, some of whom were given 90 days to train their replacements with the threat of losing their severance pay if they didn’t stay to the end. “We all felt humiliated when the foreign workers sat next to us and watched everything that we did,” wrote one Disney employee going through the experience. The training sessions prove that the H-1B workers don’t hold special skills that American workers lack. “If our own pool of IT professionals were so incompetent, then why would companies like Disney have us train our replacements and spend months teaching them?” wrote the displaced worker.

So many staff spoke Hindi during their training period that a departing employee remarked, “I really felt like a foreigner in that building.”

Disney calls the practice “knowledge transfer” whereby IT professionals chart the step-by-step processes of the job, audiotaping conversations and recording their computer screens. “We were then astonished as everything that we did on our job was documented and read right back to us for further critiquing.” By the end of the 90 days, new workers had an instruction manual to which they could refer after the Americans left.

Employers Have Reasons to Abuse Foreign Guest Visas

Carly Fiorina is legend for replacing American workers with low wage visa workers at Hewlett-Packard. Employers aren’t required to pay minimum wages, don’t have to offer benefits, and social security taxes are waived for five years, reducing costs by 17 to 21.5% of their total salaries, saving employers billions of dollars annually. High tech giants Google, Xerox, and Facebook have taken advantage of H-1B workers.

Corporations such as Toys ‘R Us, Xerox, Molina Medical, Pfizer, and Microsoft used H-1B “guest” workers to reduce their payroll costs. Utility company Southern California Edison laid off 500 employees, warning SCE workers to train their replacements in 90 days or they wouldn’t receive severance.

The Numbers of Replaced American Workers are Staggering

In 2015, the number of visas issued to all immigrants crossing the borders legally was almost 11 million, according to statistics collected at Foreign Service Posts.

Supposedly, the government has set a cap of 85,000 new H-1B’s each year for the entire country. But many workers come in using other types of visas such as:

OPT: Optional Practical Training F-1: student B-1: business J-1: exchange visitor CPT: (Curricular Practical Training) interns who are recruited later Q: Special Disney-invented visa for workers who are “authentic to the Epcot experience”

Workers then switch to an H-1B. Switches are not recorded as part of the 85,000 cap and there are no checks and balances in place to reign in visa clearances.

The Department of State, who issues worker visas, reports figures for all 16 different types of work-eligible visas, showing that 70 million have been issued since 2007.

When the Government Accountability Office studied the H-1B visa program in 2011, they reported reasons why the numbers of guest workers are impossible to track:

The total number of H-1B workers in the U.S. at any one time—and information about the length of their stay—is unknown, because (1) data systems among the various agencies that process such individuals are not linked so individuals cannot be readily tracked, and (2) H-1B workers are not assigned a unique identifier that would allow for tracking them over time—particularly if and when their visa status changes.

The AFL-CIO reported in 2009 that as many as 25% of imported workers have fraudulent visas. Today, this translates to as many as 17.5 million foreign employees gaming the system.

9-11 Terrorists Arrived Here With Worker Visas

Scariest of all, the visa worker program is poorly administered. Homeland Security doesn’t screen applicants at the airport, so visa holders gain entry at airports, making a wall at the border obsolete.

“The main, legitimate criticism right now — which is one we would level as well — is that the accountability mechanisms are not fully integrated and not seamless,” says Dean Garfield, President and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council.

When the Government Accountability Office reviewed the H-1B program in 2011, they wrote “a recent Department of Homeland Security study reported that 21 percent of the H-1B petitions they examined involved fraud or technical violations.”

Potential Terrorists in Key Positions

In March, 2006, David Huber, a worker who was replaced at ComEd in Chicago, testified in front of the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, “Two of the three individuals who replaced me were from China. As part of my job, I had access to all the data communication switches that control the electrical grid for the Chicago area. Anyone with this access could shut down the entire telecom operations for the power company and possibly the power grid itself. It is very likely that my replacements will return to China, taking with them detailed knowledge about the inner workings of our electrical grid system. After the recent controversy over our ports, I can’t believe that Congress thinks this is a good idea.” Corporations with Record Profits Cut American Jobs

Disney posted $7.5 billion in profit in fiscal year 2014, a month after major layoffs in October 2014. The company continued to lay more Americans off until 850 lost their jobs from Orlando, Florida to Anaheim, California.

Is this replacement of American workers for unskilled foreign workers a matter of greed? Or is it simply a global shift in workers in a flattened world?

Ron Hira, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Howard University and author of Outsourcing America: What’s Behind our National Crisis and How We Can Reclaim American Jobs, says it’s shifting corporate goals. The stakeholders of companies used to include workers, the community, and the nation. Now the focus is on shareholder value and increasing profits. “Much of the compensation of 46 million dollars that Bob Iger [CEO of Disney] received is from stock,” Hira said, explaining how management benefits from stock performance. “At some point, you have to ask the question, when are these CEOs and the shareholders going to be satiated? When are they going to share some of those profits and prosperity with the workers who have created that value? I think the answer is: never.”

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“Staffing” Companies Find Cheap Labor

For CEO’s, cheap labor is just a phone call away. They call themselves consulting, staffing, or employment companies. But those who are fighting against the industry call them “body shops.” International (HCL Global Systems, Tata Consultancy Services, Satyam, Infosys, Accenture, Cognizant) and domestic (IBM) outfits facilitate the process of replacing Americans with foreign workers. Six of the largest firms are based in India. An attorney at VisaPro will teach human resource personnel how to use H-1B visas to cut costs with foreign nationals.

Cognizant Technology Solutions, Inc. boldly states, “We have an active recruitment program in India” in their informational materials. Some staffing companies entice foreign nationals with high figures, but when they arrive, they make as little as $25,000 per year. Once in America where the cost of living is comparably expensive, living conditions are poor.

Complaints are rarely filed against the staffing companies, since the workers often fear reprisals and removal from the country. Investigations into wrongdoings take years, and require an indictment by a grand jury before the Department of Justice will confirm or deny allegations.

How did abuse of the guest worker program start?

Follow the Money Around Washington

Before 1990, the visa program made it difficult for employers to hire guest workers. They had to explain why they needed a candidate with specialized skills, what training the specialist had that Americans don’t have, and they screened the applicant.

Then Microsoft went to Washington. Ostensibly to hide the trail of money, an organization named Business Software Alliance (BSA) acted as cover while lobbyists greased wheels in Congress. Microsoft spent more than $20 million during the critical years 1998-2000 to tweak H-1B legislation, such as giving students on an F-1 visa the ability to work.

High tech firms and the staffing agencies who help job seekers come to the U.S. are still getting around the 85,000 workers-per-year cap through a “H1B cap-exempt” workaround.  Companies lobby for loosened visa legislation, then abuse the loopholes they created.

In Washington, two laws created exemptions from the cap (then set at 65,000 H-1B visas per year). The first was disingenuously titled “The American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000”. One of the biggest funders of visa-friendly bills is the Information Technology Industry Council. Their member companies, some of the biggest names in the industry, hire, recruit, train, place, and/or subcontract foreigners. The following are just a snapshot of some of the bills making it easier to replace Americans with foreign nationals:

S.2045 The American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act of 2000. Allowed more non-immigrant visas (H-1B’s) for years 1999 through 2003, and made those who were already granted visas exempt from being counted toward the cap.

HR. 4227 Amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to eliminate the cap on H-1B visas for 2000.

HR. 4444 (1986) Repeals the visa application fingerprint requirement and certain related provisions. Repeals existing requirements that immigrant visa applicants submit supporting documentation in duplicate and that consular officers retain duplicates of all issued immigrant visas.

In the works:

HR. 2758 Allows non-agricultural immigrants a permanent exception to the annual limit.

These changes have already hurt Americans. “Statutory changes made to the H-1B program have, in combination and in effect, increased the pool of H-1B workers beyond the cap and lowered the bar for eligibility,” reported the Government Accountability Office in a 2011 study of the guest worker program.

Presidential Candidates Need to Weigh In

Unless Hillary Clinton states otherwise, she supports importing more foreign workers to replace and fire competent U.S. workers. In 2011, as Secretary of State, she assisted the U.S. Embassy in India by authorizing them to break federal law and accept every visa in excess of 60,000 to replace American workers. According to James Otto, labor rights attorney, Clinton also spent more than 40 million taxpayer dollars to educate foreigners and import them.

Developer Donald Trump hires illegal aliens for his construction jobs. Trump hired 200 undocumented Polish workers to demolish the building that made way for Trump Tower in Manhattan. According a Reuters review of U.S. Department of Labor statistics, Trump sought to hire 1,100 foreign workers on the visa program. Much as he maligns Mexicans, if he wants cheap labor, he may use undocumented workers to build his wall.

What can be done to improve the worker visa program?

Hira said, “You have to have policies in place that give workers at least a fair shake. When you’re bringing in guest workers, you’re really creating unfair intervention in the labor market, unfair competition for those workers.” He suggests raising the wage floor for guest workers, so that employers have to pay a premium for their specialized skills, following the spirit of the guest worker visa program.

Otto also suggests the law automatically recognize that all guest workers are employees of the U.S. corporation who hires them in addition to the staffing company. This creates a paper trail of how many foreign born workers are used by each corporation. A statute created by the state or federal government would thus give authorities the ability to track numbers. In addition, every H-1B applicant should be required to provide certified college transcripts that must then be verified by their agency or employer.

Lawsuits

In the meantime, 18 former Disney employees filed a lawsuit, hoping to shed light on the problem of insourcing, a topic that isn’t getting much press.

“The F-1, foreign student, used to be a non-working visa,” says Otto, the attorney representing replaced Disney and Molina Healthcare workers in Southern California, “but because of change of the rules, the employer doesn’t have to pay them minimum wage, and the foreign student doesn’t have to pay any taxes.” After 6 months as an F-1, the student can take a job in the U.S. and then change immigration status to an H-1B. “A foreign worker can take a non-specialty job, displacing one American worker, and then after 12 months, and without any experience, change status before he graduates to an H-1B, where he displaces yet a second American worker who is highly skilled.”

“There is no doubt that the imported guest workers are not the best or the brightest,” said Otto. “I’d like to ask (Presidential candidate) Trump, what difference will it make to build a wall when so-called American companies are hiring illegals by the truckload through the H-1B workaround?” Foreign Workers Left Stranded

If a company is done with an employee, guest workers often find themselves stranded in the U.S. without a job. After five years as an H-1B, employers are required to start paying social security, so the worker becomes less attractive. When the job is over, so is the visa, making them into illegals. Their staffing company may hold their paperwork hostage, forcing them to pay thousands of dollars to seek legitimacy.

Meanwhile, American IT workers and others are left stranded without jobs.