#Take Your Retail Business Online
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sophsweet · 2 months ago
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A new local creative cafe venture - jumping in
When discussing this idea with a friend recently, expecting everyone to talk me out of it, I realised that every time I had considered a new venture or starting down any path if anything ahead was not visible, I got serious cold feet. The other realisation I had was that everything I have done, which was worthwhile – including a course during 2020 that paid a stipend and turned out better than…
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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months ago
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The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street
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I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).
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Walmart didn't just happen. The rise of Walmart – and Amazon, its online successor – was the result of a specific policy choice, the decision by the Reagan administration not to enforce a key antitrust law. Walmart may have been founded by Sam Walton, but its success (and the demise of the American Main Street) are down to Reaganomics.
The law that Reagan neutered? The Robinson-Patman Act, a very boring-sounding law that makes it illegal for powerful companies (like Walmart) to demand preferential pricing from their suppliers (farmers, packaged goods makers, meat producers, etc). The idea here is straightforward. A company like Walmart is a powerful buyer (a "monopsonist" – compare with "monopolist," a powerful seller). That means that they can demand deep discounts from suppliers. Smaller stores – the mom and pop store on your Main Street – don't have the clout to demand those discounts. Worse, because those buyers are weak, the sellers – packaged goods companies, agribusiness cartels, Big Meat – can actually charge them more to make up for the losses they're taking in selling below cost to Walmart.
Reagan ordered his antitrust cops to stop enforcing Robinson-Patman, which was a huge giveaway to big business. Of course, that's not how Reagan framed it: He called Robinson-Patman a declaration of "war on low prices," because it prevented big companies from using their buying power to squeeze huge discounts. Reagan's court sorcerers/economists asserted that if Walmart could get goods at lower prices, they would sell goods at lower prices.
Which was true…up to a point. Because preferential discounting (offering better discounts to bigger customers) creates a structural advantage over smaller businesses, it meant that big box stores would eventually eliminate virtually all of their smaller competitors. That's exactly what happened: downtowns withered, suburban big boxes grew. Spending that would have formerly stayed in the community was whisked away to corporate headquarters. These corporate HQs were inevitably located in "onshore-offshore" tax haven states, meaning they were barely taxed at the state level. That left plenty of money in these big companies' coffers to spend on funny accountants who'd help them avoid federal taxes, too. That's another structural advantage the big box stores had over the mom-and-pops: not only did they get their inventory at below-cost discounts, they didn't have to pay tax on the profits, either.
MBA programs actually teach this as a strategy to pursue: they usually refer to Amazon's "flywheel" where lower prices bring in more customers which allows them to demand even lower prices:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaSwWYemLek
You might have heard about rural and inner-city "food deserts," where all the independent grocery stores have shuttered, leaving behind nothing but dollar stores? These are the direct product of the decision not to enforce Robinson-Patman. Dollar stores target working class neighborhoods with functional, beloved local grocers. They open multiple dollar stores nearby (nearly all the dollar stores you see are owned by one of two conglomerates, no matter what the sign over the door says). They price goods below cost and pay for high levels of staffing, draining business off the community grocery store until it collapses. Then, all the dollar stores except one close and the remaining store fires most of its staff (working at a dollar store is incredibly dangerous, thanks to low staffing levels that make them easy targets for armed robbers). Then, they jack up prices, selling goods in "cheater" sizes that are smaller than the normal retail packaging, and which are only made available to large dollar store conglomerates:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes
Writing in The American Prospect, Max M Miller and Bryce Tuttle1 – a current and a former staffer for FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya – write about the long shadow cast by Reagan's decision to put Robinson-Patman in mothballs:
https://prospect.org/economy/2024-08-13-stopping-excessive-market-power-monopoly/
They tell the story of Robinson-Patman's origins in 1936, when A&P was using preferential discounts to destroy the independent grocery sector and endanger the American food system. A&P didn't just demand preferential discounts from its suppliers; it also charged them a fortune to be displayed on its shelves, an early version of Amazon's $38b/year payola system:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola
They point out that Robinson-Patman didn't really need to be enacted; America already had an antitrust law that banned this conduct: section 2 of the the Clayton Act, which was passed in 1914. But for decades, the US courts refused to interpret the Clayton Act according to its plain meaning, with judges tying themselves in knots to insist that the law couldn't possibly mean what it said. Robinson-Patman was one of a series of antitrust laws that Congress passed in a bid to explain in words so small even federal judges could understand them that the purpose of American antitrust law was to keep corporations weak:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men
Both the Clayton Act and Robinson-Patman reject the argument that it's OK to let monopolies form and come to dominate critical sectors of the American economy based on the theoretical possibility that this will lead to lower prices. They reject this idea first as a legal matter. We don't let giant corporations victimize small businesses and their suppliers just because that might help someone else.
Beyond this, there's the realpolitik of monopoly. Yes, companies could pass lower costs on to customers, but will they? Look at Amazon: the company takes $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar that its sellers earn, and requires them to offer their lowest price on Amazon. No one has a 45-51% margin, so every seller jacks up their prices on Amazon, but you don't notice it, because Amazon forces them to jack up prices everywhere else:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees
The Robinson-Patman Act did important work, and its absence led to many of the horribles we're living through today. This week on his Peoples & Things podcast, Lee Vinsel talked with Benjamin Waterhouse about his new book, One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America:
https://athenaeum.vt.domains/peoplesandthings/2024/08/12/78-benjamin-c-waterhouse-on-one-day-ill-work-for-myself-the-dream-and-delusion-that-conquered-america/
Towards the end of the discussion, Vinsel and Waterhouse turn to Robinson-Patman, its author, Wright Patman, and the politics of small business in America. They point out – correctly – that Wright Patman was something of a creep, a "Dixiecrat" (southern Democrat) who was either an ideological segregationist or someone who didn't mind supporting segregation irrespective of his beliefs.
That's a valid critique of Wright Patman, but it's got little bearing on the substance and history of the law that bears his name, the Robinson-Patman Act. Vinsel and Waterhouse get into that as well, and while they made some good points that I wholeheartedly agreed with, I fiercely disagree with the conclusion they drew from these points.
Vinsel and Waterhouse point out (again, correctly) that small businesses have a long history of supporting reactionary causes and attacking workers' rights – associations of small businesses, small women-owned business, and small minority-owned businesses were all in on opposition to minimum wages and other key labor causes.
But while this is all true, that doesn't make Robinson-Patman a reactionary law, or bad for workers. The point of protecting small businesses from the predatory practices of large firms is to maintain an American economy where business can't trump workers or government. Large companies are literally ungovernable: they have gigantic war-chests they can spend lobbying governments and corrupting the political process, and concentrated sectors find it comparatively easy to come together to decide on a single lobbying position and then make it reality.
As Vinsel and Waterhouse discuss, US big business has traditionally hated small business. They recount a notorious and telling anaecdote about the editor of the Chamber of Commerce magazine asking his boss if he could include coverage of small businesses, given the many small business owners who belonged to the Chamber, only to be told, "Over my dead body." Why did – why does – big business hate small business so much? Because small businesses wreck the game. If they are included in hearings, notices of inquiry, or just given a vote on what the Chamber of Commerce will lobby for with their membership dollars, they will ask for things that break with the big business lobbying consensus.
That's why we should like small business. Not because small business owners are incapable of being petty tyrants, but because whatever else, they will be petty. They won't be able to hire million-dollar-a-month union-busting law-firms, they won't be able to bribe Congress to pass favorable laws, they can't capture their regulators with juicy offers of sweet jobs after their government service ends.
Vinsel and Waterhouse point out that many large firms emerged during the era in which Robinson-Patman was in force, but that misunderstands the purpose of Robinson-Patman: it wasn't designed to prevent any large businesses from emerging. There are some capital-intensive sectors (say, chip fabrication) where the minimum size for doing anything is pretty damned big.
As Miller and Tuttle write:
The goal of RPA was not to create a permanent Jeffersonian agrarian republic of exclusively small businesses. It was to preserve a diverse economy of big and small businesses. Congress recognized that the needs of communities and people—whether in their role as consumers, business owners, or workers—are varied and diverse. A handful of large chains would never be able to meet all those needs in every community, especially if they are granted pricing power.
The fight against monopoly is only secondarily a fight between small businesses and giant ones. It's foundationally a fight about whether corporations should have so much power that they are too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care.
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Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enforcement-priorities
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dutiful-wildcraft · 1 month ago
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This one is for all my retail pals
John Price has never worked retail in his life and it shows.
Price x reader, meetcute? if this qualifies
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You're scrambling, have been since you walked through the door. They were already calling your name by the time you clicked your radio on.
From that moment forward you were hustling back and forth across the store, helping who you could, pulling orders for customer pick ups, trying to answer questions for the seasonal team members who got thrown to the wolves with slap dash training. 
You're tired, you're hungry, and you've been listening to the same 5 christmas songs on repeat since the 1st of November. 
You're trying to make it back to the break room for a quick snack, walking at mach speed, head lowered, praying that those you passed could see the sheer overwhelmed energy radiating off of you in waves and not ask you anything.
But there is always one.
“Excuse me!”
Your blood pressure shoots up immediately. 
You stop short, try to school your expression into something friendly. He's a big man, shoulders wide enough to fill a doorway, with mutton chops that strike you as odd, but suit his face. The man hustles toward you, holding an expensive jacket out to you like a toddler.
“Can you tell me the price of this?”
Everyone thinks you have a scanner.
The chops age him, but a closer look reveals that he must only be a little older than you, pretty blue eyes scrunched apologetically. You think this grown ass man should be old enough to see the scanners staged on every other aisle, the big signs attached to the ceiling highlighting their location. Irritation wells up like a geyser as you pull the garment from his hand searching for a tag. 
You search and search, even fishing around in the pocket to see if some kind soul accidentally yanked it off and put it back.
“Must be free!” Chops chuckles, and you think you should be able to pass out one free throat punch a day for simply working under these conditions. 
It takes effort, not to shrivel up like a raisin over the monotonous comment. Trying desperately to focus on finding the fucking price and ignore the way the big bastard bores holes into your face. He could have looked it up on his phone, you're certain, but instead he's standing a little too close, watching you flounder, at least his cologne is nice. 
A painful silence falls between you when you don't even giggle at his joke. But you must have a scrap of patience left in you because the angel of good will tugs on your ear, reminds you that not everyone stares at this shit day in and day out like you do, and he probably would have trouble finding it online anyway. 
You suck in a deep breath, fish out your own phone to pull up your company's website. 
“M'sorry for the trouble sweetheart” he murmurs, rolling almost sheepishly on his heels, hands reaching at his shoulders as if to grab something that isn't there, falling uselessly at his sides as he hovers over your shoulder. 
The pet name should piss you off, but the rumbly timber of it tickles you somewhere in your monkey brain, he is a handsome thing, and something about the way he crosses his arms, peers over your shoulder like this was a problem he's helping you solve is kind of endearing. 
You feel bad immediately for your bitchy attitude toward the fella. 
“Sorry It's taking a second, I'm trying” 
“I can see that, I appreciate you. I know you lot are busy, think I've seen you make a few laps now.” he teases, nodding to the bustle of people about the store, rummaging through once neatly folded tables like it's a yardsale. 
You type in the style number with a little amused huff. “You have no idea, I get in miles trotting around this place” you joke, scrolling through site’s workwear options to match the jacket in your hand. It's one of the nicer one's the store carries, a sturdy brown canvas with a fleece lined collar and interior. You try to make small talk that you're notoriously terrible at.
“You must work outside.” 
“Something like that” he muses, “been meaning to get the house prepped up for winter, I waited a bit late.”
You snort, “Hell me too, I barely have enough wood left for the stove myself, I'm just going to pile on blankets this winter!”
“Well that won't do.” 
The hard tone of Chop's voice breaks you from your searching. A quick glance confirms he's serious, brows pinched as his posture has shifted to looking directly at you. Chin tucked to his chest.
“What?” 
“You've got no one taking care of you?”
Nosy fuck. You don't know why you get defensive. “I take care of me just fine.” you retort confidently, finally pulling up the stupid jacket and telling him the price. 
“Negative.” is all he replies, looking at you with the same stern gaze. You suddenly feel like a child, wanting more than anything to prove to this man you were more than qualified to handle yourself. You work retail for fucks sake.
He cuts you off before you can smart off again. “You're going to write down that number for the coat, and your number, so I can bring a load of lumber by. I won't have a pretty thing like shiverin’ in the night.”
Something inside your brain purrs at the idea. The idea of somebody looking out for you when you barely have time to keep your clothes washed and body fed was…appealing. Especially coming from a pretty gorgeous stranger. And yet?
“I'm not giving my number to a stranger, sir.” you retort with some semblance of authority. 
Chops is having none of it, he makes a pointed show of raking his eyes down to your nametag dangling against your chest before flickering back up to your face. Your name rolls off his tongue easily, and you can't help the little shiver up your spine at the timber of it.
“John Price” he offers after, big paw curling around your own to shake playfully. “Not strangers now are we?”
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astrodice · 2 months ago
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What career suites you best based on destiny matrix? (part 3/3)
part 1 part 2
To find out what career suits you best and what can you do to succeed, we have to look at the number under the dollar sign.
note: there are so many different career choices and the options I'm listing here are just general examples based. you're free to choose any career, and hopefully, you don't feel pressured by this post to suddenly become philosopher.
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16 - The Tower
People with the tower energy are resilient to change when it comes to finances and career. They face obstacles that affect their careers and finances pretty often, but still they can overcome all the problems. These people are strong, adaptive and energetic.
The most suitable career:
lifeguard
builder
electrician
renovator
Challenges that affect career:
fear of change (the tower is a proof that you can overcome all the obstacles, rebuild yourself and your career)
self-destruction
overestimating your skills
unfortunate circumstances (something that can't be forseen like job loss)
I couldn't find famous people with this placement. If you have it, please tell me what you do for a living 🤩
17 - The Star
People with this energy usually have a dream job, and they can achieve their dream if they believe in it. They are creative, artistic and the public loves them. But it doesn't mean that their career will be necessarily related to art, it may be something more mundane, but it requires a creative approach.
The most suitable career:
artist/actor/singer
designer/architect
astrologer
astronaut
Challenges that affect career:
rejecting your dream
being shy about being talented
being passive
"star sickness"
over consumption
Famous people with this placement: Zaha Hadid (architect), Ryan Gosling
18 - The Moon
People with the moon energy are empaths who have an ability to to materialise their thoughts. The can achieve the most success when they do art or create something material.
The most suitable career:
poet/writer
doing show business
astrologer/fortune teller
psychologist
bloger
Challenges that affect career:
fear of failure
taking no action towards your dream (maladaptive daydreaming entered the chat)
storing negative energy (repressed anger, holding back tears, etc)
escapism
Famous people with this placement: Kylie Jenner, Lana Del Rey, Elvis Presley
19 - The Sun
People with the sun energy are ambitious, energetic, they know how to make people pay attention to them, know how to lead the crowd. When the energy is in the negative, these people can get fixated on one thing, which may lead to burn out.
The most suitable career:
politician
CEO
motivational speaker
global artist
top manager
Challenges that affect career:
pride
excessive demands on people around you
being critical
inaction
Famous people with this placement: Beyonce, Justin Biber, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Zayn, Kurt Cobain
20 - Judgment
First of all, this arcana is related to your family. You have to check how you parents/family affect your relationship with money and career. Maybe they have a belief that it's impossible to get rich, and therefore you adapt their belief. Moving on, 20 indicates success in the fields of politics, science and education. Also, 20 can indicate having a successful business with family.
The most suitable career:
journalist
politician
advocate
scientist
philosopher
teacher
Challenges that affect career:
being involved in family conflicts
controlling tendencies
dependence on the opinion of elders in the family
fear of change
denial of progress
lack of education
Famous people with this placement: Priscilla Chan (pediatrician and philanthropist, co-founder of Meta), Tatyana Kim (CEO of the largest online retailer platform in Russia, teacher, before staring business with her husband she was teaching English), Perrie Edwards, Aaliyah
21 - The World
People with the world energy are able to carry large-scale projects. They are influential, open-minded and they are in tune with the world around them.
The most suitable career:
diplomat
traveler
travel agent
software developer
artist/musician/actor
Challenges that affect career:
power abuse
staying in comfort zone
limiting beliefs
intolerance
technical backwardness
Famous people with this placement: Timothée Chalamet, Camala Harris
22 - The Fool
This arcana makes people spontaneous, they are guided by their passions and intuition. They are the ones who can come up with successful startup, business plan, etc. Also, they have creative/artistic potential. The downside of the fool is that office job and schedules make them stress too much, because they find it hard to concentrate.
The most suitable career:
bloger
movie director
startup(er)?
dancer/actor/musician
producer/movie director
poet
photographer
Famous people with this placement: Elon Musk, Kris Jenner, Marilyn Monroe, Donatella Versace
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cosmicstarlatte · 2 years ago
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Devil-Mart ⭐ (Obey Me!)
━━━━━━━━━━ ✦ ━━━━━━━━━━
You got hired at mega retailer, Devil-Mart⭐. Naturally, the guys "suddenly" need a job too and start working alongside you.
»Characters: Demon Bros + Bonus Dia and Barb
»Tags: Humor, Bulleted Style fic, Gender Neutral Reader/MC
»Notes: How about shopping with them?-> [Devil-Mart: Shopping]
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Lucifer:
"...Mammon put us in debt this month."
Was worried you'd be bullied (or eaten) surrounded by demons/other monsters
Is that coworker who acts like a boss
Actually does make it to management within the first week
The customer isn't always right. He's the manager to call for rude customers
Actually likes stocking, finds neat aisles soothing
The home improvement dept is his favorite
Frequently makes sure you take all your breaks
Doubles as store security if needed
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Mammon:
"I just needed extra cash alright?"
Was worried you'd fall for some other demon
Failed in all departments except online orders (he's very fast!)
Bags for orders would occasionally go missing
Took extra long breaks but Lucifer caught on and wrote him up
Would try to frequently visit you in your department
Started fights with other workers who were busier staring at you than their work
"They're not meat, beat it!"
Got fired for trying to steal electronics
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Levi:
"Theres a lot of new merch releases coming up soon!"
Didn't want to be the only one left out so he applied...plus you won't see him anymore!
Electronics department ONLY
You won't find him cross trained anywhere else, he refuses
Is actually really good with upselling
Can be aggressive if you don't go with his recommendations
Has received a few complaints for that reason
Tries to match his breaks with you since that's the only time he really gets to see you
Was the one who tattled on Mammon
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Satan:
"This is for research."
A lie he almost believes but knows he just wants to be near you
Works the same department as you so you see each other all day
Never put him on registers or customer service
Almost got into a fight on the first day
Retail is rough for him but he does it for you
Complains to Demon Resources about Lucifer daily
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Asmo:
"Ugh...a job!? I'm gonna cry. Oh but my fans would love if I relate to them! And your job will be fun with me there!"
Upfront about his reason lol
Refused to do anything except customer service
Just stands back and talks to customers while the coworker alongside him completes any transactions
Makes DevilToks on the clock
Frequently leaves his spot to talk to you and Satan
Gets all the work gossip
Lucifer never catches on
"You know, this isn't so bad! I'm such a good worker right!?"
Gets employee of the month
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Beel:
"I don't like the thought of you surrounded by demons alone. This isn't RAD."
Aalajffkslsjda the cutest honest protector
Is cross trained everywhere but
Never put him near grocery ever again
Likes to work with you if he gets the chance
Usually works in the backroom unloading and back stocking things
Has a doctors note that let's him take frequent breaks for eating
His favorite department overall is security because Lucifer gives him extra treats if he prevents high valued thefts
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Belphie:
"I'm here because I have things I would like to have."
Is there an extra meaning to that?
Works in the back with Beel usually
Takes frequent naps in hidden areas of the backroom
Pretends to look busy if Lucifer is around
Also complains to Demon Resources about Lucifer daily
Fights with Levi on your breaks because he also wants to spend time with you when he can
Is the reason some coworkers don't approach you
He makes it known to not fuck with you
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Diavolo heard you started a new job alongside the brothers! He goes to visit with Barbatos in tow.
Diavolo:
"Can I get a little help here?"
Flirts with you while on the clock. He thinks the red vest on you is cute!
Was wowed by the store in general
(Normally Barbatos does the shopping alone)
Liked sampling the food that was around the store
Was tempted to apply but Barbatos shut it down
Took a photo of Lucifer in his manager clothes
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Barbatos:
"Seeing you here will make my shopping trips more enjoyable."
Praises your work
Did have to go to customer service to complain and ran into Asmo
Didn't believe Asmo was gonna clean the restrooms but at least the complaint was taken
Takes a survey and compliments you
Has to fight Dia to get him off the racecar cart
"It's for parents with children my lord."
Returns the cart to the cart corral like an upstanding citizen
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My first bulleted story post lol. I had fun with this & hope to make more in the future. <3
⬦You might also like: Coconut︱Mexican Restaurant︱Waffle House︱You ARE The Father
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taldigi · 5 months ago
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domestic fluff aside, implying that the IT are no longer invested in persona bullshit and must "pass on the torch" to the PTs or must "grow out of it" is one of the worst takes when A) the shadow operatives are right there, still dealing with persona bullshit. and B) if p4a is to be believed, the TV world not only still open and abusable (unlike the dark hour or the metaverse-) but it's still crazy dangerous and needs people to check in on it.
they're scary as teens, scarier as adults- and while some of them desire or need to spend time away from inaba for some reason or another, idk if I can really believe they'd want to stay away forever.
you can't tell me that teddie doesn't receive weekly pensions from the Kirijo group in order to send in TV world status reports or that Yu doesn't scamper back first thing out of college. I think it's mentioned somewhere that Inaba had a pretty big population surge and that they had been investing in bigger community events.. once that place gets internet, shits gonna get INVESTED in-
"Oowooh, inaba is so boring weh weh" no it's not YOSUKE because everyone KNOWS you're gonna crawl your ass back there after you score your business degree and realize life is better when you don't have to work for your parents in RETAIL. Then open that niche record store that will struggle for three years as grow your hair out, then get featured on travel blogs by music nerds wherein you make enough money to not have to worry when you inevitably get into arguments with Kanji about who's online store is doing better. It's called CHARACTR DEVELOPMENT maybe you should kiss YU about it.
where was I going with this again?
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20dollarlolita · 10 months ago
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Did you hear about joannes going bankrupt? Do you have any thoughts on that?
(Quick note so no one um actually's me: I'm aware that not all bankruptcy is Chapter 11. Thank you)
As a crafter, I'll say: oh dear, that's going to make shopping harder.
As a person who was aware of the insides of how that company was running, I'm going to say, "about fucking time."
See, here's what was happening with Joann. Problem #1 was that they stopped taking the "you have to spend money to make money," mentality and applying it to labor. A store is not about the products or the customers. The life of a store, the thing that keeps it beating, is the employees who serve the customer and serve the corporate ownership.
When they first started notably cutting labor, the store did have a lot of driven, passionate people who were willing to pick up the slack. It's possible to cut the freight shift one night a week when you have daytime floor associates who can do the freight when there's no customers immediately needing help. You can expect store managers to clean and recover the store, because it's a task that keeps them free to disconnect from when a store needs a manager to be acting as a manager. You can expect any free employee to fill in at the register or cut counter to cover a break or a lunch or fill in during a high-customer time. The store had a lot of employees who didn't mind doing some multitasking, and didn't mind being completely busy from the start of the shift until the very end.
However, when these labor cuts proved to be an effective way to save the store money, the amount of multitasking, and the amount of expecting one shift to cover for cuts made to another shift, started going up. It was no longer cutting the freight shift one day a week. It was cutting the freight shift until it was ONLY one day a week.
And that's where they made the big mistake in labor load. Instead of, "serve the customers, and do these tasks when you have time," it became, "do the task, and serve the customers if they demand your attention." A store is not the customers; it's the people who work in the store. But one of the key players in a retail store's staffing is the employees for whom making the customers happy is their primary drive. The way that stores were staffed, people whose primary drive was to serve customers were not allowed to adequately do so to reach customer satisfaction.
We need to add to this that, in addition to demanding more from every employee, Joann corporate has several of their demands on employees to be automatically measured. Customer response surveys, ship-from-store fulfillment, buy online pickup in store response times, number of remnants that were rolled to be sold, all of that can be sent to corporate with a pass/fail number assigned to it. Other elements of the store, like how much freight from a box actually makes it onto the shelf on time, or if a wheelchair can navigate the store, are not measured. This means that the company prescribes which tasks will actually be done and which can be shoved in the back for later. With the work load that was being put on employees, corporate decided that the ONLY tasks that should get done are ones that have specific metrics tied to them.
Employees whose drive is to help customer, who are not permitted to help the customers asking for help, will quit and go to a place where customers actually come first. Employees who are okay with doing two people's jobs, but who are asked to do three jobs, will leave to a place where they only have to do one job. Employees who have worked for the company for 4 years and never received a raise despite being praised for excellent work will go to a job where they get paid more. And suddenly, the only people who are left are the people who aren't overworked, because they're the people who will only do one job no matter how much demanding corporate has for them.
The last two years that I was at Joann, there were tons of employees asking or begging for more hours. It was not that they couldn't hire people. It's that they wouldn't assign labor hours. Employees who would happily work 35-40 hours a week, but who are assigned three hours a week, will leave and find a job where they can get a consistent number of hours. When they made all floor managers part time, a lot of people who had been with the company for years left to get more hours or some health insurance.
But, despite all of this, corporate never said, "if we put more people on the floor, our customers will be happier, and will spend more money." They still continued to treat labor as an unnecessary expense that should be limited. Why put more people on the floor when you can just overwork the people who bothered to show up for work today?
So, weirdly enough, that business model was absolutely not working for them, and it's all come crashing down. Damn right, as it should be. Respect the people who work for you, and they'll work for you. Take away the things that they're there to do, and they'll go somewhere else. Simple math.
Also, in the last decade, the fact is that, "Joann has a lot of coupons, so I can save money!" changed in the eye of the public into, "Joann is overpriced unless you know how to play the coupon game."
So yeah. I'm not surprised, and I hope their restructuring does good things for the employees who work there. Hell knows they need it, because their current system just proved that it cannot survive in that state.
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darlingillustrations · 11 months ago
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I feel like I should be panicking more. My rent is due in one week, my landlord isn't friendly, and I have no one to ask for help. And yet? I have an eerie sense of calm about it.
I know the calm that happens when you are not actually calm but panicking and your body is helping you survive. This isn't that kind of fake calm. I am sleeping at night. I'm not snaping at my kids. I am *at peace.*
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(Read more for musings about the economy, my spiritual mindset in the midst of it all, and some Mary Oliver poetry.)
Five years ago? I would be panicking and staying up late working long hours and burning myself out. But now? These days I'm working full days, then stepping back and cooking meals or working on projects for my kids. It feels more stable this time. I feel like I've matured.
I got a report in my email yesterday which showed that retail sales in January plunged 0.8% from December, far worse than the consensus forecast for a decline of just 0.2%, and the largest monthly loss since March 2023. On the one hand, it made me feel better that it's not just me. On the other hand, it sucks that lots of other people are struggling, as well.
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Still, I make the time to meditate every morning. Still, I pull out my poetry books and take my life advice from Mary Oliver. In the poem One or Two Things she wrote:
One or two things are all you need to travel over the blue pond, over the deep roughage of trees and through the stiff flowers of lightning--some deep memory of pleasure, some cutting knowledge of pain.
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You don't need to have all the answers. You just need to put one step in front of the other.
Last year when I launched my wholesale business, I drummed up over 1000 leads. I'd pick a city and use google maps or yelp to search for gift shops, stationary stores, coffee shops... anywhere that I thought might want my work... and I took the time to write a personal note to each and every one of these businesses. This month I decided to check back in with them again, and so many of the businesses are now closed or their email addresses no longer work.
Having exhausted these leads, I sat at my computer yesterday with the knowledge that I needed to wait on people to get back to me, that the wholesale leads were out of my hands. And that I still did not have money to pay my landlord. Not once did I fear I would join the list of closed businesses. I did not despair.
Instead, I turned to my first joy. I went back to the sales history on my website and found my very first customers from back in 2016 when I launched my web shop. I emailed them, each of those first customers, sending personal emails. I did not ask them to buy anything. That wasn't what I needed. I asked how they were, what they have been up to, where their lives have taken them.
I was searching for that deep memory of pleasure, that cutting knowledge of pain. One or two things is all we need, after all.
And I got one email back.
This woman was the first person to ever buy an art print in my online shop--a honeybee boy painting--and it is still hanging in her stepson's room, nearly 8 years later. She shared pictures of her new baby, and I shared the pictures with my kids. This woman had sent me many emails over the years, asking for life advice or encouraging me on a hard day. She shared that she didn't realize her emails had made such an impact on me.
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Funny how none of us truly sees how impactful we are to those around us. Funny how life keeps going on, whether we worry about it or not.
In One or Two Things, Mary Oliver also wrote:
For years and years I struggled just to love my life. And then the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind. "Don't love your life too much," it said, and vanished into the world.
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I want my character to be defined not by what I do when things are easy but by how I carry myself when things are hard. And I do believe things happen for a reason. Maybe the line between delusion and faith is very thin, but the universe has shown me time and again that it's had my back. I've been in worse scrapes and still came out ok.
If you've read this far and you want to help me get through the next week, you can buy something from my shop or support me on Patreon.
And if you've read this far but you are in a similar boat, don't fret. We will find our way through the fires. one. step. at. a. time.
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mcromwell · 1 year ago
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Ayo! New follower here. I love your art and your mind set of just messing around to make cool stuff. but I’ve also seen you love been to at least one convention (I didn’t scroll far enough to see more about conventions) and I wanted to ask. How you did it? I really enjoy making art and I would love to make it a career so this boils down to :
how did you do it? And how can I do it too?
not just like first steps but what happens after that? I’m young enough that if this doesn’t work out I have plenty of time to look into other careers before worrying about paying for rent or necessities with money from my future occupation. I know that everyone’s experience is different but I still hoping you can give me a somewhat clear answer.
thank you for inspiring me
(sorry this ask was so long)
Hello there! Thank you for your message.
These questions are large and hard to answer. Being more specific in your questions helps. "How I did it" is very... large in scope. That question could be answered just by saying, "I did it by never wanting anything else and never losing sight of my goal." But that doesn't help you much. So I'll just try to touch on some key points and contexts.
I'm 32. Only in the last couple years has my practice been enough to make a living doing it. I've always wanted this and literally everything I've done in my life has been to get here. I've worked two jobs my entire working life (age 19-now): retail/customer service and art stuff on the side. Because of the pandemic, I got double unemployment and stimulus checks, which became my initial investment into merch and savings safety net to get started. I started therapy to address my fears of asking for help, my negative self-talk, and catastrophic thinking. (Therapy has helped me with my art so much.) Then I was laid off for real in 2020 and hit the ground running with art. I split rent with roommates, I live very very cheaply, and art is my passion. If art for a living is what you want to do and you're happy to make lots of concessions to get it, this career works. It takes a while to get momentum and regular sales/attention-- just don't quit. The more stuff you do the more people will recognize you and like your work.
It would be dishonest to not address my privilege here, too. My parents have always emotionally supported my practice, my friends too, and I got to go to art school with no debt. I did outside of school art mentorships. My art education experiences taught me a lot of art techniques and self-employed skills and that only happened due to the support of my folks. I had resources a lot of people don't. (Which is why I want to help new artists learn this stuff as much as I can; not everyone is as lucky as I am.)
My advice for you if you want to do what I do, which is being self-employed making and selling art and art merchandise for a living:
Get used to making concessions right at first. Your art career will probably not start out gangbusters, so get used to low sales and saving money and working hard. Make things within your means and grow from there.
Fuck around and find out. Try making merch, try making videos, try things you see other artists doing, try everything and see if it works for how you like to make stuff. I learn so much from YouTube, to be totally honest. Artists are good sharers.
Follow a shit ton of artists and see what works for them. Join artist groups and ask thoughtful, specific questions to learn from those already doing it.
Learn how to write about your art. Write about why you make it. It helps make it more compelling to others. "How to Sell Your Art Online" by Cory Huff is a good book to read for tips on this.
Develop a healthy relationship with art-making. If you sit down at a blank page and it terrifies you: address that first. Don't try to start a business if you're still struggling with making art regularly.
In fact, don't start a business until you're really ready. Art comes first. You can easily do art and build skills and do commissions and run an online shop along with working a job that pays bills reliably while you grow into the artist you're meant to be.
Don't pigeon-hole yourself into only one channel: don't JUST apply to cons, try street fairs too. Don't JUST sell online, get your work into cafes as well. You'll see which routes are more profitable/worth the time as you try them out. Eggs in many baskets, you know.
There's probably a whole essay I could write on this. And you're right--mileage varies between person to person vastly. The part of the world you live in, your access to transportation, education, your mental health, what type of work you like to make, etc. Art careers almost never look the same 1:1 even in fandom spaces like furry/anime. If you're self-made, it will reflect that.
I recommend the YouTube channels Rafi Was Here, Robin Sealark, Cat Graffam, and the website The Abundant Artist (again by Cory Huff) for more resources.
Don't be afraid to take leaps of faith. Try everything. Be true to what works for you and what doesn't feel sustainable. Be authentic with your art and stay true to your interests. And good luck.
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spnfanficpond · 11 months ago
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Weekly Pond Newsletter
Monday is President's Day in the US, which means if you work in parts of the government or banking system you might have the day off work. If you're in retail, you're probably working a sale. Sorry about that. In honor of the day, though, let us know about fics set in the White House! Reblog or reply with a link to your favorite Presidential fics!!
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Old Business:
Fishing For Treasures - This weekend is FFT weekend here at the Pond, and this month's theme is SMUT!! Since we got almost 250 links sent to us, and we can only queue 50/day, this weekend will end sometime on Wednesday. Enjoy!! 🤣
#TweetFicTues prompts - Since we missed the last two weeks, we've got three sets of prompts for you!
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New Business:
Weekend Giveaways in the Discord server - The past few weeks, Admin Michelle has been cleaning out her collections of random things in her office by giving them away! We have now added a new channel just for giveaways! This weekend, you could win a near-pristine copy of the EW Ultimate Guide to Supernatural edition! All you have to do is drop a link in the giveaways channel for a fic that features the bond between Dean and Sam. Can be Wincest or gen fic, just as long as the bond between them is central to the story!
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Manta Rays in the Discord server - This week, Manta Rays Arthur and Spencer will be spending time in the Discord server chatting with you! Keep an eye out for announcement posts with exact dates and times, or take a look at our calendar. (You can also add our calendar to your Google calendar by clicking this link.)
Jason Manns and Paul Carella in the UK online - Jason Manns is across the pond touring with Paul Carella for the next week or so, and they're going to stream their VIP show online next weekend! Click here to learn more and get tickets!
SPN Rewatch: Fanfic Edition - Next weekend we are having another chat in our series rewatch, and we'll be discussing 1.19 Provenance and 1.20 Dead Man's Blood. Sam kisses a girl! John returns! Vampires exist! So much to talk about!!
Writing Sprints - Our sprint room is open all the time to anyone who wants to sprint, but next weekend you can win prizes for sprinting! Since a few have asked, writing sprints are where we set a timer, for usually 15-20 minutes but that is up to those sprinting, and you just write. You compete to see who can write the most words. They don't have to be polished words, just words on the page/screen. Some of our members use it kind of like ADHD body-doubling, even if there's no one else around to sprint with them! Competitive sprints mean you get to win prizes, too! If you have any questions about sprints, feel free to ask.
Angel Fish Awards - February is almost over, which means the monthly raffle deadline is approaching! Every fic rec you submit is one entry into the drawing, and there is no limit to how many you can submit! Spread some love and win prizes, too!! Here's a link to January's Awards, and more info about how it all works can be found at this link here.
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(Divider by @glygriffe!)
That's all for this week! To see all Pond events, and also other SPN-related things like conventions and online concerts, check out our Google calendar! Click here for a static view in Eastern US/Canada time (desktop only, no mobile app access, sadly), and click here to add our calendar to your own Google calendar! We try to keep it as up-to-date as possible. If there's something you want to see on the calendar that's not there (maybe a convention we missed, cast birthdays, or something similar), send us an ASK and let us know!
Hope you have a great week! - From your Admins and Manta Rays, @manawhaat, @mrswhozeewhatsis, @mariekoukie6661, @thoughtslikeaminefield, @spencereliotwinchester and @heavenssexiestangel!
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sophsweet · 2 months ago
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Put Offer In - Waiting For Outcome on Cafe Venue
It’s Friday 1st November and I just put an offer in for a cafe venue in Falmouth. Apparently I might hear back tomorrow. It is exciting whatever the outcome. I’m trying to stop myself getting too attached to this venue as there are more. However, very few have big windows facing the harbour and views beyond. Firstly, I got out the spreadsheet given to me by Oxford Innovation. From the accounts I…
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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago
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A link-clump demands a linkdump
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Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:
https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/
The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/
All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.
It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.
But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.
Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.
This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands
I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.
The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:
https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/
The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.
Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8
Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!
Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer
It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai
WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/
But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/
The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:
https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/
One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":
https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/
Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:
https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/
I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:
https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/
The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/
The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.
The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:
https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges
The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money
The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.
All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:
https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/
These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.
The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:
https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/
The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:
https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/
Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.
Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.
Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.
But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/
In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/
He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.
That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":
https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/
Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/
This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein
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bubblegum-glitch · 4 months ago
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The Lines We Won't Cross and How They Change
Let's rewind time a little bit, back to the year 2011. I had joined this little website called tumblr and had made an acquaintance whose confidence would begin to inspire me to branch out and try all kinds of things I never could have seen myself doing before that point in my life. I began recording and publishing vocal covers to YouTube, I started showing off my artwork publicly, and I even posted a single topless photo of myself online - all because I couldn't stop comparing myself to this random fucking girl. If she could do it, so could I...
But I was determined that I could do it better.
The "relationship" I built with this online stranger is a little odd, and probably would throw up several red flags for some people. I can't explain why I felt such a strong sense of rivalry between us, and I know she never felt the same, but there was just something about my interactions with this person that made me want to always do better than her, even to this day (even though I'm 100% sure she doesn't even remember who I am).
Creepy? Weird? Stalker-y? I dunno. Probably. Harmless? Absolutely. All I can say is she is the one who ultimately introduced me to the world of "Topless Tuesdays" and the alternative modelling site "SuicideGirls."
She had posted a set to SuicideGirls as a hopeful, and being in full rival mode at the time I had considered doing the same. Ultimately I decided against it however, as the fear of any member of my family every finding out gave me far too much anxiety to overcome (hold this thought). Not to mention I couldn't bring myself to believe I was "pretty enough" to succeed.
I often wonder what would have come of that if I had ever gone ahead with that hopeful photo-set submission.
But I digress.
Let's jump ahead in the timeline to around 2017/2018 (I can't quite remember when). I had a case of the retail woes, a certificate in photography, and a foolish idea to escape the Hellscape that is customer service once and for all. The internet had informed me that feet pics were in and there was mountains of cash just waiting for me, all I had to do was step on a twinkie or two.
Long story short (or short story shorter) I failed in this business venture pretty much immediately. It's harder than you think to market and sell pictures of your tootsies.
Now, let's spin back a bit to where I mentioned my fear of my family discovering my nudity online. This is a topic I will address a bit more in a future post, but I will let you know now that although my parents do try their best to steer more towards the life of liberal boomers, they are still very uncertain of LGBTQA+ topics and VERY against sex work. I have built a strong and close relationship with my mother, but if she ever discovered what I've begun doing for work I believe it would ruin all of what we have.
Early in 2023 I began weighing that fear of my family discovering me against the possibility of actually making a living wage by taking my shirt off for strangers online. After many discussions with my husband (who has been fully supportive since day one) and a long time of back and forth with my decision, I finally decided to give OnlyFans a try.
Originally I had no intentions of posting more than some topless photos. I used what I knew about photography, photo editing, and makeup to my advantage to create some high quality, if a little bit minimal, content. Upon seeing there was some interest, but being unable to hold the attention of anyone for long, I decided to step over that initial line I had drawn for myself and posted some full nudes. Immediately I started seeing a positive response and suddenly I had a little extra spending money.
At that time I said that this was as far as I was willing to go. Excuse my vulgarity here but I had no intentions of doing pussy pics or spreading my asshole. Tasteful nudes, and no farther.
I stuck to that line for about a year, until the inevitable "Fuck it" moment I previously posted about occurred in July of 2024. I stepped over the line again and started posting some more risque content at a premium rate. It was then that my OnlyFans really started to take off and I was seeing actual financial gain in response.
Once more I drew a new line for myself that I swore I would not cross. Absolutely no video content.
But then I couldn't stop considering making that video content. I would think about it so often that I actually began frequently dreaming about creating pornographic films.
So once again I turned to my partner and we discussed the pros and cons, and eventually I decided to dip a toe over the edge and get a sense of the temperature of the deep end.
Admittedly, that first masturbation video I made embarrassed the fuck out of me. I felt exposed, I felt ugly, and I felt very stupid. But then the response to it came.
"I love this."
"That was so hot."
"You're so gorgeous."
"More, please."
So I decided to try again, and again, and then suddenly I fucking LOVED making the videos. The sense of empowerment, the ego boost - It gives me this absolute sense of control. Something I have been missing in every single career I've ever had in my life.
It was about the third video that I realized "This is it. This is exactly what I want to keep doing with my life for the next several years."
But this is the point where I want to say this to anyone reading my blog who is considering this vocation as a future (or even current) option:
Set your rules early. Understand what you do and do not feel comfortable doing, and express that to your followers. You NEVER have to do anything that you are not comfortable with, even if it's what people are trying to push you to do. At the end of the day it is about your level of comfort, not their level of enjoyment. Set the line you will not cross and do not cross it unless YOU want to. You might have to work a little harder to build a community, but you can get there.
I still have multiple things I will not do, some of which I will likely never do, and others I might be open to one day exploring.
There is no timeline in existence where I will ever be comfortable sexting someone. I'm not even comfortable doing that with my own husband. It's just not for me.
I will not do the dom/sub stuff.
BDSM - Yeah, not happening.
Fetish content - It depends, I have no problem sitting on a cake and giving my husband a foot job, but most Fetish content is a nope from me.
Threesomes? Absolutely not.
Meetups? Hell to the fucking no. My husband is the only person I'm sleeping with and I'm firm on that, thank you.
In this industry you are the boss. What you say goes and your followers can either take what you're giving and appreciate what you do, or they can pack up and find someone else to pester with their more extreme requests.
Who you are and what your destiny is belongs to you and only you. Don't let anyone convince you to change if that's not what you want to do.
Never be afraid to say no.
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As a side note before I close out this entry, I've opened up an Askfm account so you can ask me anything anonymously. It can be about me, about my journey, or even just general advice for starting work in this industry. I'm by no means an expert, but if I can offer some insight to help you out I would be honoured to do so!
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maya-chirps · 1 year ago
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[ID: a screenshot of a reblog by @/fleurtygurl. It reads: "Omg instant follow! I need more Philippines facts in my life!!! 😭😭😭
If you have any facts about filipino myths? That would be amazing. But also I will literally eat up everything you post!
I'm in desperate need of reconnecting with my roots, but I've been so busy that I haven't had any time to do any extensive research...."
/End ID]
@fleurtygurl Decided to make a whole post based on this because I loooove talking about Filipino mythology and researching more about different mythologies within the country and I also hadn't gone around to looking through the things I want to learn about.
Filipino mythology is a pretty huge umbrella term considering that there are hundreds of cultures in the archipelago that have different beliefs, practices, and traditions and especially before the Spanish colonial period. I won't get too deep into it, but basically if you want to learn about some grander pantheon or some general overarching compendium of beliefs that all precolonial Filipinos believe in, you won't be getting that sine historically, Filipinos were not a unified people, but a bunch of different countries and communities that were placed under one governing body for easy management for the Spanish crown.
With so many Filipino cultures and, by extension, mythologies, the best way with trying to reconnect with your heritage, it might be best to figure out which ethnic group you may have connections too and start researching from there. In my case, for example, I would look up both Tagalog mythology, Bikolano mythology, and Ilokano mythology in order to get a good grasp of the mythology of my roots since I'm mixed Tagalog, Bikolano, and Ilokano, and those three have widely different beliefs and especially with folk religion.
I guess the main issue with this is a lot of sources related to Filipino myths are often difficult to find, are unreliable, or plainly just non-existent. Lots of books are often out of circulation and print, or if they are still in print, they are often only sold by specific retailers and often cost a lot of money. Research papers are locked behind a paywall or are only available through specific e-libraries you can only access if you have an affiliation with a university. Online articles may be unreliable and source places that are hard to fact check. Blogs, honestly including mine to be frank, may parrot wrong information from other websites and articles, with their best feature being the possibility that they may have come from oral sources but those are also very few.
Honestly, I was about to go on a long tangent about discussing at least the Tagalog pantheon and mythology because it had a lot of sources I've seen online, but after hours of research, I've found out that there was also a lot of unreliable sources in terms of information about that so I've decided against rambling on further about it for now.
(I am still going to write about my findings on the Tagalog pantheon later but after what I've found out, I might take some time to look through a lot more primary sources which means colonial era texts and harder to find archived works.)
I will say that a good way to connect with more general Filipino folklore outside of mythology itself is probably consuming media that explores folklore and traditional beliefs. I recommend Trese, a Filipino comic turned series on Netflix if you want to see Filipino cryptids being used in a modern-day story made by Filipinos. There are also other comics that focus on Filipino mythology like The Mythology Class and its sequel The Children of Bathala by Arnold Arre.
There's also series and movies that take inspiration from Filipino folklore and mythology with Dayo: Sa Mundo ng Elementalya (English name Niko: The Journey to Magika) as my go-to suggestion. I had also heard good reviews for Amaya, a series created by GMA 7, but honestly I don't think the series clicked with me.
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copperbadge · 2 years ago
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Hi, Sam! Hoping for some insight as an adult-y, job-experience-having person. Do you think it's possible to get a job as a front desk receptionist with zero real work experience, other than some art commissions in the past, and some time in college but no degree? Or am I better off setting my sights on entry level food/retail jobs to start off with?
So much of it depends on what experience you do have and what you're willing to put on your resume or like...I don't want to say lie, but let's say...gently obfuscate about.
But also, por que no los dos? You can apply for both at the same time. I used to apply for a variety of jobs, and I just had a set resume and a form letter of interest that I'd slightly alter based on what was requested in the job listing.
The real question is whether you have the skillset to work front desk, and whether you can demonstrate somehow on paper that you do. Do you have experience answering phones, working in a call center? Do you know your way around Office suite? (You don't have to prove how, you just have to say you do and then have the most basic of chops to back it up.) Do you have customer service experience? Etc. etc. etc.
Most front desk positions require a college degree, which is frankly ludicrous, so you may find yourself facing a lot of applications that want you to list your degree information. If you can get through with just listing your college experience, I'd do that. But remember, apply for any job where you have even a hope of getting to the interview stage. If you have 60% of what they're asking for, I'd apply.
So here are some questions to ask when building up a resume and a portfolio of your skill sets for any job: Have you ever worked a volunteer job? (You don't have to mark it as volunteer on your resume.) Did you do any kind of workstudy job while you were in college? (This is real work and really counts!) Ever worked for a family business, or done work for a friend, or have you done reasonably extensive beta-reading/editing for fanfic? That's freelance, baby!
So more important than "should I apply to this" is "How do I apply to this reasonably". Applying for any single specific job once you've found one shouldn't take that long, an hour at most; I've got more about that here under the "cover letters and resumes" section. Especially for jobs like front desk, a good cover letter is super important; it's basically a writing sample that tells them a lot about your ability to communicate, your drive, and your intelligence, whether or not that's fair. Remember to emphasize your skills and never, ever mention or excuse your deficiencies; you want to tell them why you're good for the job, not pre-emptively argue with them about why you're not.
I do also recommend, if at all possible, you sit down with your college transcripts and work out how many credits you have. College credits are usually pretty transferrable, and it's worth your time, if you're able, to find a way to complete a degree -- an Associate's degree, particularly through an accredited community or online college, often only takes two years and if you come in with existing credits, probably even less. Studies indicate that having any degree of any kind increases your chances of being hired and also of earning more over your lifetime. I know not everyone has the ability to attend or complete college, and I don't think everyone should, but if you can, even if it's just one course a semester and the degree's a long way off, do consider it.
Good luck, Anon! And hey, if you do end up finding that retail/food customer service is where you're getting offers, there's no shame in that, that's good solid skilled work that will give you more to put on your resume when you're ready to move on.
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dua1999 · 8 days ago
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Top Business Ideas in the UAE for Entrepreneurs
Starting a business in UAE is an exciting venture, as the country offers numerous opportunities across various sectors. The UAE is home to some of the most lucrative industries in the world, whether you're an experienced professional looking for new growth opportunities or an aspiring entrepreneur searching for the ideal niche. There is a lot of potential to tap into, including in the areas of real estate, e-commerce, tourism, healthcare, and IT. We'll look at the best business concepts in this blog to help you start a profitable company in the United Arab Emirates.
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Why Entrepreneurs Find Success in the United Arab Emirates
In addition to being a prime location for companies, the UAE provides an environment that encourages development and creativity. It is a desirable location for entrepreneurs due to its tax-free zones, sophisticated infrastructure, and business-friendly laws. Whether you're looking to launch a local business or expand your global reach, the UAE is the place to be. However, which industries are the most lucrative and appropriate for would-be business owners?
Profitable Sectors for Starting a Business in the UAE
1. Real Estate
One of the most profitable industries in the UAE is real estate, and international investors are drawn to Dubai and Abu Dhabi on a regular basis. The nation is the perfect place for real estate services and property investment because of its expanding population, influx of tourists, and creation of famous landmarks.
Innovative Business Ideas in Real Estate:
Property Management Services: Providing property management services can be a profitable choice in an ever-growing market.
Real estate brokerage: Helping foreign customers purchase or rent real estate can generate a consistent income in this cutthroat industry.
Flexible office spaces are becoming more and more in demand as the entrepreneurial culture expands.
2. E-Commerce
Due to the widespread use of smartphones and the growing number of tech-savvy people, the e-commerce sector has grown rapidly in recent years. Starting a business in UAE’s e-commerce market can be an excellent choice, especially as the country embraces digital transformation.
Innovative Business Ideas in E-Commerce:
Online Retail Store: Selling specialized goods, such as electronics or clothing, can give you a firm footing in this cutthroat market.
Marketplace Platforms: In order to take advantage of the UAE's booming retail industry, establish a platform for local vendors to sell goods online.
Subscription Boxes: Provide specialized subscription boxes for niche markets, such as gourmet foods, wellness, or cosmetics.
3. Tourism
With millions of tourists visiting the UAE each year, tourism plays a major role in the economy of the nation. There are plenty of options for entrepreneurs with sights like the Palm Jumeirah, the Burj Khalifa, and the desert safari experiences.
Innovative Business Ideas in Tourism:
Luxury Travel Services: Provide wealthy people with unique and personalized travel packages.
Services for Tour Operators: Focus on speciality tours, like eco-tourism, adventure, or cultural experiences.
Travel Technology Solutions: Offer cutting-edge platforms or applications for travel that improve visitors' experiences.
4. Healthcare
The UAE's healthcare industry is expanding quickly, with an emphasis on offering both locals and visitors top-notch medical care. The government's drive for top-notch medical facilities and health technology innovation can help entrepreneurs in the healthcare sector.
Innovative Business Ideas in Healthcare:
Offering online medical consultations and healthcare services, telemedicine has become more and more popular in the post-pandemic world.
Fitness and Wellness: Open a yoga studio, fitness center, or wellness app to appeal to the health-conscious population in the United Arab Emirates.
Medical Equipment Supply: Provide medical devices and equipment to clinics, hospitals, or home care agencies.
5. IT and Technology
Fintech, AI, blockchain, and cybersecurity are among the rapidly growing tech-driven industries in the United Arab Emirates.. Starting a business in UAE in the IT sector is a smart move, as the government is heavily investing in technological infrastructure.
Innovative Business Ideas in IT:
AI Solutions: Create AI-driven solutions for companies in a range of industries, including retail, healthcare, and real estate.
Cybersecurity Services: Provide cybersecurity services to companies that want to safeguard their systems and data in a world that is digitizing quickly.
Blockchain Solutions: Develop blockchain-based software for logistics, finance, or supply chain management.
How to Enter These Markets
Understanding the local market, adhering to legal and regulatory requirements, and making the appropriate technological and infrastructure investments are all crucial for capitalizing on these lucrative industries. Starting a business in UAE requires careful planning, market research, and a solid business strategy. Operating in one of the numerous free zones can provide substantial tax benefits and streamlined business setup procedures for foreign business owners.
Start Your Business in the United Arab Emirates
Are you prepared to begin your business endeavors in the United Arab Emirates? The UAE provides business owners with a multitude of options, regardless of their interests in IT, e-commerce, real estate, or healthcare. Working with a reputable business setup company that can help you navigate local regulations and guide you through the process is essential to turning your vision into a reality. 
Starting a business in UAE has never been easier. Establishing a successful business in one of the most dynamic and business-friendly environments in the world is possible with the correct business idea, strategy, and support.
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