#Jobs By Industries

[celeryman6]

Tusky making a few extra bucks this summer 🥒🍹 Uncropped, high res (and the flavor shots in question) on my Patreon!

[inkskinned]

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

[sparrowlucero]

thoughts on The Sea Beast 2022 (if youve seen it)

when I was ever so briefly at netflix for concept work that movie was in pre production (?) and I was actually hoping they'd put me on it, they did not 😅

but yeah I like it! weirdly I find the first third of the movie (when they're killing the dragons) way more engaging, the tone and pacing falls off a bit once they befriend the sea monster. Kind of goes from "traditional high seas adventure movie" to "cute kids movie where not a ton happens"; if they had kept up that former tone while still telling a story about a sea monster hunter realizing the value of conservation when he befriends one of the monsters, it would be a 10/10. Oh well, still pretty good for what it is.

Creature design wise, I think a lot of the concepts for the titular sea beast are a lot more cool and charming. It feels very possible they just couldn't render markings or complex details because of the size of the character? Who knows.

The final design never really escapes the knockoff toothless look to me. I guess it's a bit hard to do a toothed whale inspired dragon with front facing eyes that doesn't look a bit like that, but yeah, it doesn't quite click and feel like it's own thing.

also i hate the way it walks on its flippers. I think they wanted to avoid having it look awkward like a seal and accidentally made it look way worse

am i being too mean here or does the way it walks look crazy stupid to everyone else

[ot3]

something kind of gross to me is the way that some artists who post about how AI is going to take their jobs speak in a way that makes it seem like they think they are the first and only profession who has ever faced this kind of existential threat. they just seem fundamentally uninterested in relating the fear they're currently experiencing to the larger context of labor movements and the history of technological advancement/automation's effects on other fields.

they only ever discuss the problem with automating creative labor. there's this sort of implicit stance that when labor they view as not requiring The Divine Spark Of Creation Only A Human Can Possess gets automated that is just the natural course of technological advancement. But when it comes for their labor it's suddenly a completely new thing and a threat to the fabric of our Culture. The idea that creative work should be venerated above other forms of labor and is uniquely deserving of protections is just kinda shitty and stupid.

[spaceinvadeeer]

you're a vampire too

[tenvishund]

F I S S I O N - Why the hell do you hurt yourself for this?

[foldingfittedsheets]

There is truly no better way to ensure I have a busy sales day than coming in with the intention of sitting at my laptop alone and uninterrupted.

[heartscrypt]

every day is like hell for jamil. ruggie's chilling though

[baaad-omens]

doing some research on parapsychology as a field. in short, it's the study of how the supernatural relates to psychology, and is largely regarded as pseudoscience with only a handful of people studying it, and very very few universities will even offer a parapsych program.

so… martin, buddy, did you just google 'what degrees do people get for paranormal research' and go with the first one that popped up? you did didn't you. idiot.

[collophora]

Found a cool color palette. Might finish it later. (Probably not.)

[brandinotbroke]

actually let me add to this whole "sims 5 is going to be free" (+ microtransactions) because it is particularly disgusting with their recent history: Their rebranding is specifically and increasingly trying to appeal to children.

The way they dressed their presenter during the stream was specifically done to seem more relatable to children.

The way they already dumbed down Sims 4 is to specifically appeal to children. They even lowered the age rating.

Making Sims 5 free will make it incredibly easy for kids to get the base game (especially if it comes out on mobile) and once they have access to it, they'll pester their parents to buy microtransaction bullshit.

I am not usually one who goes for "omg they are targeting your children"-hysteria, but this one is so on the nose, it's really astonishing. They should be ashamed.

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[every-yumichika]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YUMICHIKA!!!

these are pieces i commissioned from @drugsandsocks_ on twitter!

it's been just over a year since i posted the first panel of yumichika on this blog and alot has changed since then!! i'm excited for cours three and manifest new chapters from kubo one day soon

[cozylittleartblog]

if star wars was pitched for the first time in today's entertainment industry it would be turned down. and so would any other thing that's currently a "big IP". where do idiot executives think the IPs come from to begin with???

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

If you don’t mind sharing, since you don’t work for a zoo what is your job situation like? Making a living while working at a definitely zoo seems tricky. Is your main income zoology/animal related or is that more of a side thing?

Sincerely,

- a curious zoology student

I have a (mostly) unrelated jobjob - I’ve never actually been affiliated with a single facility, unless you count college internships before I started this blog. I freelance, working as a science media fact-checker and taking paid research contracts occasionally. I do work on a lot of animal / biology related fact-check content, but it’s not my entire scope of work. I also have the privilege of having family assistance, as I have chronic health issues that interfere with the normative 9-5 grind.

Everything I do in terms of blog writing/research, zoo industry research and publication, and photography is unpaid and pretty much a hobby at this point.

Prior to the pandemic I was trying to find funding for the intra-industry research and public-facing outreach I was doing, but there was never any money for it. (The industry is very used to expecting labor from young women for free. There was and is a lot of interest in the work I do, but the number of people/orgs that have ever provided compensation or financial support is in the single digits). The pandemic actually gave me the chance to pivot to focusing on professional fact-checking.

The only funding I get for any of this work is through a somewhat defunct Patreon I set up years ago when I was trying to make this blog / scicomm a full time gig. I’m terrible at updating it, and I’m conflicted enough about that to have been considering deleting it entirely. (For those of you who have stuck it out despite the radio silence, you’re incredible. You’ve facilitated the donation of my time to write a really cool paper with a zoo disaster response org, which will hopefully get through peer review soon).

To make something like this blog and everything else I do in the field actually financially sustainable, I’d need to fundraise and market more. The thing about a fact-checking career, though, is that it’s reinforced the need to make sure everything I write/say publicly is completely and 100% correct - because that level of rigor is what supports my professional reputation! Which means I’m slow to produce research and reticent to talk about it before it’s finished. My work comes out all the better for it, but it doesn’t fit into a content model that produces revenue.

So yeah, all of this is a side thing that I fit in around my paid work and my health. Because sometimes I just need to go see a tiger and smell an elephant, y’know?

[raineandsky]

#132

tw: knives, stabbing, death

Everything is, quite literally, on a knife’s edge. Everything the villain ever wanted, everything they didn’t, is right here, in this moment.

Victory, happiness, freedom, all a few seconds away. They need this. They need to act.

“I can’t,” the villain says.

The hero is under their blade like it’s where they belong. One little flick—that’s all it would take. One flick and the villain’s worries would be over.

“You’re strong,” the hero says plainly, and the villain isn’t sure how they mean it.

They’re strong? The hero must be joking. No, the villain isn’t strong. They’re faltering, they’re second guessing. What the hero must think is great self-restraint is nothing more than cowardice.

The villain knows that their knife is trembling traitorously in their grip but they can’t find it in themself to care. Why is this so hard? Why did it have to be the hero?

The hero smiles, the confident kind that all heroes seem to do, shifting slightly to pull themself closer to the villain. The edge of the blade brushes against their neck, and the villain flinches more than the hero.

“It’s okay, [Villain],” the hero says. Their tone is bland, like they spend most Sunday afternoons under the blade of someone who supposedly wants them dead. Well, no, not supposed—the villain hates them, they do. “You can stop now.”

The hero is everything the villain despises; the agency’s abhorrent nature personified. Too cool, too nonchalant, too easy to trip and kind of fall in love with.

All the villain can find to say is that same faint, “I can’t.”

The hero slips past the villain’s blade with that stupid smile still on their face. Maybe, the villain thinks, the hero is the affectionate kind. The type to pull a villain into a hug and warp their heart into abandoning their life as a criminal. The villain hates that they want that. They’d change the world for the hero.

Warmth blossoms in their chest as the hero gets close. Then the warmth turns hot. Pain pierces the feeling like glass is buried in their heart. The villain’s own blade, tight in the hero’s grip, is hilt-deep against their chest.

“I know you can’t,” the hero says in that usual flat voice, “but I can.”

It’s hard to breathe. The hero tears the knife out, giving the villain an idle push as they study the blade. The villain meets unforgiving concrete and the hero laughs.

“I think I’ll keep this, if you don’t mind,” they say brightly. “I doubt you’ll be using it any time soon.”

The hero turns on their heel and leaves without another word. As heroes do—the villain knows that well. They should’ve known this would happen. They did, really. Villains just have a habit of ignoring common sense and flying into danger head-first.

It’s colder than the villain remembers it being. They should’ve brought their coat. The breeze bites at their face as they watch the hero’s frame recede until they’re nothing more than a memory the villain is already forgetting.