#Fast News

[hinamie]

happy gojoday to all who celebrate

[yodaprod]

Burger King Internet corner, New York (1998)

[ashoss]

my beautiful wife kori and her guy

[muhomorovna]

in her name

[lycandrophile]

in 2024 i want to see more songs sung in t voices, more grown-out t scruff, more hairy tits and top surgery scars, more gay sex involving t dicks and pussies, more cutting each other’s hair when the hairdressers can’t get it right, more helping each other with t shots and sharing extra bottles of t gel, more passing down binders and post-surgery pillows like family heirlooms, more crackly laughs and excited voices that don’t know how loud they are now, more proudly showing off phallo scars like we show off top surgery scars, more teaching each other how to shave and tie a tie and all the other things our dads didn’t teach us, more sheer shirts over post-op chests, more skirts and short shorts on hairy legs, more moving the fuck out instead of living with transphobic parents, more breaking up with partners that wanted girlfriends not boyfriends, more pregnant dads, more twinks turned into otters and bears by t, more scars and binders on the beach, more romanticization of t dicks and meta dicks and phallo dicks, more rage and resistance against anyone who would try to rob us of our history or our ancestors, more pride in complex manhoods and queer masculinities, more getting louder every time someone tells us to shut up about the things that are important to us, more searching for transmasculinity in every piece of media and injecting it into anything that failed to consider us, more cuntboys and boygirls and transfags and butch dudes and transsexual men, more jumping headfirst into masculinizing transitions, more delighted reactions to realizing “holy shit i think i’m actually a guy”, more trans manhood and transmasculinity as force of nature and fundamental truth and fact of life that cannot under any circumstances be ignored.

[reasonsforhope]

Federal regulators on Tuesday [April 23, 2024] enacted a nationwide ban on new noncompete agreements, which keep millions of Americans — from minimum-wage earners to CEOs — from switching jobs within their industries.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday afternoon voted 3-to-2 to approve the new rule, which will ban noncompetes for all workers when the regulations take effect in 120 days [So, the ban starts in early September, 2024!]. For senior executives, existing noncompetes can remain in force. For all other employees, existing noncompetes are not enforceable.

[That's right: if you're currently under a noncompete agreement, it's completely invalid as of September 2024! You're free!!]

The antitrust and consumer protection agency heard from thousands of people who said they had been harmed by noncompetes, illustrating how the agreements are "robbing people of their economic liberty," FTC Chair Lina Khan said. 

The FTC commissioners voted along party lines, with its two Republicans arguing the agency lacked the jurisdiction to enact the rule and that such moves should be made in Congress...

Why it matters

The new rule could impact tens of millions of workers, said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. 

"For nonunion workers, the only leverage they have is their ability to quit their job," Shierholz told CBS MoneyWatch. "Noncompetes don't just stop you from taking a job — they stop you from starting your own business."

Since proposing the new rule, the FTC has received more than 26,000 public comments on the regulations. The final rule adopted "would generally prevent most employers from using noncompete clauses," the FTC said in a statement.

The agency's action comes more than two years after President Biden directed the agency to "curtail the unfair use" of noncompetes, under which employees effectively sign away future work opportunities in their industry as a condition of keeping their current job. The president's executive order urged the FTC to target such labor restrictions and others that improperly constrain employees from seeking work.

"The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy," Khan said in a statement making the case for axing noncompetes. "Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand."

Real-life consequences

In laying out its rationale for banishing noncompetes from the labor landscape, the FTC offered real-life examples of how the agreements can hurt workers.

In one case, a single father earned about $11 an hour as a security guard for a Florida firm, but resigned a few weeks after taking the job when his child care fell through. Months later, he took a job as a security guard at a bank, making nearly $15 an hour. But the bank terminated his employment after receiving a letter from the man's prior employer stating he had signed a two-year noncompete.

In another example, a factory manager at a textile company saw his paycheck dry up after the 2008 financial crisis. A rival textile company offered him a better job and a big raise, but his noncompete blocked him from taking it, according to the FTC. A subsequent legal battle took three years, wiping out his savings. 

-via CBS Moneywatch, April 24, 2024

--

Note:

A lot of people think that noncompete agreements are only a white-collar issue, but they absolutely affect blue-collar workers too, as you can see from the security guard anecdote.

In fact, one in six food and service workers are bound by noncompete agreements. That's right - one in six food workers can't leave Burger King to work for Wendy's [hypothetical example], in the name of "trade secrets." (x, x, x)

Noncompete agreements also restrict workers in industries from tech and video games to neighborhood yoga studios. "The White House estimates that tens of millions of workers are subject to noncompete agreements, even in states like California where they're banned." (x, x, x)

The FTC estimates that the ban will lead to "the creation of 8,500 new businesses annually, an average annual pay increase of $524 for workers, lower health care costs, and as many as 29,000 more patents each year for the next decade." (x)

Clearer explanation of noncompete agreements below the cut.

Noncompete agreements can restrict workers from leaving for a better job or starting their own business.

Noncompetes often effectively coerce workers into staying in jobs they want to leave, and even force them to leave a profession or relocate.

Noncompetes can prevent workers from accepting higher-paying jobs, and even curtail the pay of workers not subject to them directly.

Of the more than 26,000 comments received by the FTC, more than 25,000 supported banning noncompetes. 

[paimt]

its just supervised phone calls like

in the wise words of stan himself: give me money

[unikhroma]

he's going on an unforgettable journey

[amevdw]

[nothingbizzare]

Reigen's special technique " Distracting spirits with sick saxophone solo "

[shotmrmiller]

i need simon to be the one neighbor with a generator when the light's been out for days and when you shakily ask him if he can let you at least charge your phone he just drags you into his home and tells you that you can stay if you pull your weight ie. feed him and wash his ripe work clothes.

sure. you don't know how to cook but he eats it like gordon ramsey made it, doesn't even leave crumbs on the table.

you mix colors with whites, dark with light, but luckily for you, all he wears is black. (not like it matters. if you stained a wife beater pink, he'd blame it on his girl mixing her red thready knickers in with his own clothes)

it works, you suppose, but then he tells you that yall are about to have company so make plenty of food. it's 3 others but they all eat like a family of four.

and this is where things take a turn. where he always left you alone before, his hands are on your shoulders. waist. hips. curling around your ankle, thumb digging into your foot beneath the table. the scottish one notices and tells you both to keep it PG. ye're in decent company, he grumbles.

he helps pick up the dishes once everyone's happy and full of whatever you threw in the oven. stands so close he's pining you against the sink, counter digging painfully into your skin.

"they like ya," he says. well yes, you rather noticed when they kept complimenting the science experiment you called dinner. you also noticed that they called you missus. or maybe you misheard. their accents are pretty thick.

after a nightcap, he sends them on their merry way. "the missus is tired. off with ya." so you hadn't misheard.

you aren't sure how one thing led to another. how you'd been aimlessly drying dishes with a rag to having his head between your thighs, tongue dragging between your folds, fingers pressed into you up to the knuckle.

what do you know is that where he bit your neck as you came still aches. he'd been talking filth that would have even a sailor apple cheeked as he used his spit slick thumb to rub your stiff pearl in tight little circles, feeling you felt your peak approaching at a speed that almost frightened you when he sunk his crooked teeth into the junction of your neck. hard.

enough to feel a bit of a stinging tearing of skin.

ouch. you'd ask if this is also a part of pulling your weight but he's doing it for you as he drags you toward his bedroom.

[daily-beau]

Day 13: A blinding sun

[ruby-lith]

harrow + bones

[samsketchbook]

[perfectlyasymmetrical]

The Pentagon ran an anti-vax psyop in the Philippines at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic

Pentagon ran secret anti-vax campaign to undermine China (usatoday.com)

Please read this article. It makes me sick.

TLDR: The US is directly responsible for the over 60,000 people who have died from COVID-19 in the Philippines since the summer of 2020. The pentagon made at least 300 fake social media accounts on twitter targeted at making Filipinos believe that the Chinese-made Sinovac vaccine was dangerous. The Sinovac vaccine came out before any US-made vaccine and was widely available in the region before the smear campaign started. They used lies that the vaccine contained pork gelatin (which is considered haram to Muslims—Islam is the second largest religion in the Philippines). Their aim was to harm China's reputation and to sell more American-made vaccines in the developing world for high prices.

[andisupreme]

I moved recently to start a new job and part of my commute now involves one of those high capacity toll booths where a two lane road suddenly flares out into 5-7 lanes of total anarchy with no lines anywhere, and then narrows back down to two lanes again, and we're just supposed to sort ourselves out? Who designed this

anyway I dreamed up this helpful anatomical guide on the drive home