#basically no non profit will pay more than this

[sassmill]

Should I sign up for seeking arrangement again

[exeggcute]

the great reddit API meltdown of '23, or: this was always bound to happen

there's a lot of press about what's going on with reddit right now (app shutdowns, subreddit blackouts, the CEO continually putting his foot in his mouth), but I haven't seen as much stuff talking about how reddit got into this situation to begin with. so as a certified non-expert and Context Enjoyer I thought it might be helpful to lay things out as I understand them—a high-level view, surveying the whole landscape—in the wonderful world of startups, IPOs, and extremely angry users.

disclaimer that I am not a founder or VC (lmao), have yet to work at a company with a successful IPO, and am not a reddit employee or third-party reddit developer or even a subreddit moderator. I do work at a startup, know my way around an API or two, and have spent twelve regrettable years on reddit itself. which is to say that I make no promises of infallibility, but I hope you'll at least find all this interesting.

profit now or profit later

before you can really get into reddit as reddit, it helps to know a bit about startups (of which reddit is one). and before I launch into that, let me share my Three Types Of Websites framework, which is basically just a mental model about financial incentives that's helped me contextualize some of this stuff.

(1) website/software that does not exist to make money: relatively rare, for a variety of reasons, among them that it costs money to build and maintain a website in the first place. wikipedia is the evergreen example, although even wikipedia's been subject to criticism for how the wikimedia foundation pays out its employees and all that fun nonprofit stuff. what's important here is that even when making money is not the goal, money itself is still a factor, whether it's solicited via donations or it's just one guy paying out of pocket to host a hobby site. but websites in this category do, generally, offer free, no-strings-attached experiences to their users.

(I do want push back against the retrospective nostalgia of "everything on the internet used to be this way" because I don't think that was ever really true—look at AOL, the dotcom boom, the rise of banner ads. I distinctly remember that neopets had multiple corporate sponsors, including a cookie crisp-themed flash game. yahoo bought geocities for $3.6 billion; money's always been trading hands, obvious or not. it's indisputable that the internet is simply different now than it was ten or twenty years ago, and that monetization models themselves have largely changed as well (I have thoughts about this as it relates to web 1.0 vs web 2.0 and their associated costs/scale/etc.), but I think the only time people weren't trying to squeeze the internet for all the dimes it can offer was when the internet was first conceived as a tool for national defense.)

(2) website/software that exists to make money now: the type that requires the least explanation. mostly non-startup apps and services, including any random ecommerce storefront, mobile apps that cost three bucks to download, an MMO with a recurring subscription, or even a news website that runs banner ads and/or offers paid subscriptions. in most (but not all) cases, the "make money now" part is obvious, so these things don't feel free to us as users, even to the extent that they might have watered-down free versions or limited access free trials. no one's shocked when WoW offers another paid expansion packs because WoW's been around for two decades and has explicitly been trying to make money that whole time.

(3) website/software that exists to make money later: this is the fun one, and more common than you'd think. "make money later" is more or less the entire startup business model—I'll get into that in the next section—and is deployed with the expectation that you will make money at some point, but not always by means as obvious as "selling WoW expansions for forty bucks a pop."

companies in this category tend to have two closely entwined characteristics: they prioritize growth above all else, regardless of whether this growth is profitable in any way (now, or sometimes, ever), and they do this by offering users really cool and awesome shit at little to no cost (or, if not for free, then at least at a significant loss to the company).

so from a user perspective, these things either seem free or far cheaper than their competitors. but of course websites and software and apps and [blank]-as-a-service tools cost money to build and maintain, and that money has to come from somewhere, and the people supplying that money, generally, expect to get it back...

just not immediately.

startups, VCs, IPOs, and you

here's the extremely condensed "did NOT go to harvard business school" version of how a startup works:

(1) you have a cool idea.

(2) you convince some venture capitalists (also known as VCs) that your idea is cool. if they see the potential in what you're pitching, they'll give you money in exchange for partial ownership of your company—which means that if/when the company starts trading its stock publicly, these investors will own X numbers of shares that they can sell at any time. in other words, you get free money now (and you'll likely seek multiple "rounds" of investors over the years to sustain your company), but with the explicit expectations that these investors will get their payoff later, assuming you don't crash and burn before that happens.

during this phase, you want to do anything in your power to make your company appealing to investors so you can attract more of them and raise funds as needed. because you are definitely not bringing in the necessary revenue to offset operating costs by yourself.

it's also worth nothing that this is less about projecting the long-term profitability of your company than it's about its perceived profitability—i.e., VCs want to put their money behind a company that other people will also have confidence in, because that's what makes stock valuable, and VCs are in it for stock prices.

(3) there are two non-exclusive win conditions for your startup: you can get acquired, and you can have an IPO (also referred to as "going public"). these are often called "exit scenarios" and they benefit VCs and founders, as well as some employees. it's also possible for a company to get acquired, possibly even more than once, and then later go public.

acquisition: sell the whole damn thing to someone else. there are a million ways this can happen, some better than others, but in many cases this means anyone with ownership of the company (which includes both investors and employees who hold stock options) get their stock bought out by the acquiring company and end up with cash in hand. in varying amounts, of course. sometimes the founders walk away, sometimes the employees get laid off, but not always.

IPO: short for "initial public offering," this is when the company starts trading its stocks publicly, which means anyone who wants to can start buying that company's stock, which really means that VCs (and employees with stock options) can turn that hypothetical money into real money by selling their company stock to interested buyers.

drawing from that, companies don't go for an IPO until they think their stock will actually be worth something (or else what's the point?)—specifically, worth more than the amount of money that investors poured into it. The Powers That Be will speculate about a company's IPO potential way ahead of time, which is where you'll hear stuff about companies who have an estimated IPO evaluation of (to pull a completely random example) $10B. actually I lied, that was not a random example, that was reddit's valuation back in 2021 lol. but a valuation is basically just "how much will people be interested in our stock?"

as such, in the time leading up to an IPO, it's really really important to do everything you can to make your company seem like a good investment (which is how you get stock prices up), usually by making the company's numbers look good. but! if you plan on cashing out, the long-term effects of your decisions aren't top of mind here. remember, the industry lingo is "exit scenario."

if all of this seems like a good short-term strategy for companies and their VCs, but an unsustainable model for anyone who's buying those stocks during the IPO, that's because it often is.

also worth noting that it's possible for a company to be technically unprofitable as a business (meaning their costs outstrip their revenue) and still trade enormously well on the stock market; uber is the perennial example of this. to the people who make money solely off of buying and selling stock, it literally does not matter that the actual rideshare model isn't netting any income—people think the stock is valuable, so it's valuable.

this is also why, for example, elon musk is richer than god: if he were only the CEO of tesla, the money he'd make from selling mediocre cars would be (comparatively, lol) minimal. but he's also one of tesla's angel investors, which means he holds a shitload of tesla stock, and tesla's stock has performed well since their IPO a decade ago (despite recent dips)—even if tesla itself has never been a huge moneymaker, public faith in the company's eventual success has kept them trading at high levels. granted, this also means most of musk's wealth is hypothetical and not liquid; if TSLA dropped to nothing, so would the value of all the stock he holds (and his net work with it).

what's an API, anyway?

to move in an entirely different direction: we can't get into reddit's API debacle without understanding what an API itself is.

an API (short for "application programming interface," not that it really matters) is a series of code instructions that independent developers can use to plug their shit into someone else's shit. like a series of tin cans on strings between two kids' treehouses, but for sending and receiving data.

APIs work by yoinking data directly from a company's servers instead of displaying anything visually to users. so I could use reddit's API to build my own app that takes the day's top r/AITA post and transcribes it into pig latin: my app is a bunch of lines of code, and some of those lines of code fetch data from reddit (and then transcribe that data into pig latin), and then my app displays the content to anyone who wants to see it, not reddit itself. as far as reddit is concerned, no additional human beings laid eyeballs on that r/AITA post, and reddit never had a chance to serve ads alongside the pig-latinized content in my app. (put a pin in this part—it'll be relevant later.)

but at its core, an API is really a type of protocol, which encompasses a broad category of formats and business models and so on. some APIs are completely free to use, like how anyone can build a discord bot (but you still have to host it yourself). some companies offer free APIs to third-party developers can build their own plugins, and then the company and the third-party dev split the profit on those plugins. some APIs have a free tier for hobbyists and a paid tier for big professional projects (like every weather API ever, lol). some APIs are strictly paid services because the API itself is the company's core offering.

reddit's financial foundations

okay thanks for sticking with me. I promise we're almost ready to be almost ready to talk about the current backlash.

reddit has always been a startup's startup from day one: its founders created the site after attending a startup incubator (which is basically a summer camp run by VCs) with the successful goal of creating a financially successful site. backed by that delicious y combinator money, reddit got acquired by conde nast only a year or two after its creation, which netted its founders a couple million each. this was back in like, 2006 by the way. in the time since that acquisition, reddit's gone through a bunch of additional funding rounds, including from big-name investors like a16z, peter thiel (yes, that guy), sam altman (yes, also that guy), sequoia, fidelity, and tencent. crunchbase says that they've raised a total of $1.3B in investor backing.

in all this time, reddit has never been a public company, or, strictly speaking, profitable.

APIs and third-party apps

reddit has offered free API access for basically as long as it's had a public API—remember, as a "make money later" company, their primary goal is growth, which means attracting as many users as possible to the platform. so letting anyone build an app or widget is (or really, was) in line with that goal.

as such, third-party reddit apps have been around forever. by third-party apps, I mean apps that use the reddit API to display actual reddit content in an unofficial wrapper. iirc reddit didn't even have an official mobile app until semi-recently, so many of these third-party mobile apps in particular just sprung up to meet an unmet need, and they've kept a small but dedicated userbase ever since. some people also prefer the user experience of the unofficial apps, especially since they offer extra settings to customize what you're seeing and few to no ads (and any ads these apps do display are to the benefit of the third-party developers, not reddit itself.)

(let me add this preemptively: one solution I've seen proposed to the paid API backlash is that reddit should have third-party developers display reddit's ads in those third-party apps, but this isn't really possible or advisable due to boring adtech reasons I won't inflict on you here. source: just trust me bro)

in addition to mobile apps, there are also third-party tools that don’t replace the Official Reddit Viewing Experience but do offer auxiliary features like being able to mass-delete your post history, tools that make the site more accessible to people who use screen readers, and tools that help moderators of subreddits moderate more easily. not to mention a small army of reddit bots like u/AutoWikibot or u/RemindMebot (and then the bots that tally the number of people who reply to bot comments with “good bot” or “bad bot).

the number of people who use third-party apps is relatively small, but they arguably comprise some of reddit’s most dedicated users, which means that third-party apps are important to the people who keep reddit running and the people who supply reddit with high-quality content.

unpaid moderators and user-generated content

so reddit is sort of two things: reddit is a platform, but it’s also a community.

the platform is all the unsexy (or, if you like python, sexy) stuff under the hood that actually makes the damn thing work. this is what the company spends money building and maintaining and "owns." the community is all the stuff that happens on the platform: posts, people, petty squabbles. so the platform is where the content lives, but ultimately the content is the reason people use reddit—no one’s like “yeah, I spend time on here because the backend framework really impressed me."

and all of this content is supplied by users, which is not unique among social media platforms, but the content is also managed by users, which is. paid employees do not govern subreddits; unpaid volunteers do. and moderation is the only thing that keeps reddit even remotely tolerable—without someone to remove spam, ban annoying users, and (god willing) enforce rules against abuse and hate speech, a subreddit loses its appeal and therefore its users. not dissimilar to the situation we’re seeing play out at twitter, except at twitter it was the loss of paid moderators;  reddit is arguably in a more precarious position because they could lose this unpaid labor at any moment, and as an already-unprofitable company they absolutely cannot afford to implement paid labor as a substitute.

oh yeah? spell "IPO" backwards

so here we are, June 2023, and reddit is licking its lips in anticipation of a long-fabled IPO. which means it’s time to start fluffing themselves up for investors by cutting costs (yay, layoffs!) and seeking new avenues of profit, however small.

this brings us to the current controversy: reddit announced a new API pricing plan that more or less prevents anyone from using it for free.

from reddit's perspective, the ostensible benefits of charging for API access are twofold: first, there's direct profit to be made off of the developers who (may or may not) pay several thousand dollars a month to use it, and second, cutting off unsanctioned third-party mobile apps (possibly) funnels those apps' users back into the official reddit mobile app. and since users on third-party apps reap the benefit of reddit's site architecture (and hosting, and development, and all the other expenses the site itself incurs) without “earning” money for reddit by generating ad impressions, there’s a financial incentive at work here: even if only a small percentage of people use third-party apps, getting them to use the official app instead translates to increased ad revenue, however marginal.

(also worth mentioning that chatGPT and other LLMs were trained via tools that used reddit's API to scrape post and content data, and now that openAI is reaping the profits of that training without giving reddit any kickbacks, reddit probably wants to prevent repeats of this from happening in the future. if you want to train the next LLM, it's gonna cost you.)

of course, these changes only benefit reddit if they actually increase the company’s revenue and perceived value/growth—which is hard to do when your users (who are also the people who supply the content for other users to engage with, who are also the people who moderate your communities and make them fun to participate in) get really fucking pissed and threaten to walk.

pricing shenanigans

under the new API pricing plan, third-party developers are suddenly facing steep costs to maintain the apps and tools they’ve built.

most paid APIs are priced by volume: basically, the more data you send and receive, the more money it costs. so if your third-party app has a lot of users, you’ll have to make more API requests to fetch content for those users, and your app becomes more expensive to maintain. (this isn’t an issue if the tool you’re building also turns a profit, but most third-party reddit apps make little, if any, money.)

which is why, even though third-party apps capture a relatively small portion of reddit’s users, the developer of a popular third-party app called apollo recently learned that it would cost them about $20 million a year to keep the app running. and apollo actually offers some paid features (for extra in-app features independent of what reddit offers), but nowhere near enough to break even on those API costs.

so apollo, any many apps like it, were suddenly unable to keep their doors open under the new API pricing model and announced that they'd be forced to shut down.

backlash, blackout

plenty has been said already about the current subreddit blackouts—in like, official news outlets and everything—so this might be the least interesting section of my whole post lol. the short version is that enough redditors got pissed enough that they collectively decided to take subreddits “offline” in protest, either by making them read-only or making them completely inaccessible. their goal was to send a message, and that message was "if you piss us off and we bail, here's what reddit's gonna be like: a ghost town."

but, you may ask, if third-party apps only captured a small number of users in the first place, how was the backlash strong enough to result in a near-sitewide blackout? well, two reasons:

first and foremost, since moderators in particular are fond of third-party tools, and since moderators wield outsized power (as both the people who keep your site more or less civil, and as the people who can take a subreddit offline if they feel like it), it’s in your best interests to keep them happy. especially since they don’t get paid to do this job in the first place, won’t keep doing it if it gets too hard, and essentially have nothing to lose by stepping down.

then, to a lesser extent, the non-moderator users on third-party apps tend to be Power Users who’ve been on reddit since its inception, and as such likely supply a disproportionate amount of the high-quality content for other users to see (and for ads to be served alongside). if you drive away those users, you’re effectively kneecapping your overall site traffic (which is bad for Growth) and reducing the number/value of any ad impressions you can serve (which is bad for revenue).

also a secret third reason, which is that even people who use the official apps have no stake in a potential IPO, can smell the general unfairness of this whole situation, and would enjoy the schadenfreude of investors getting fucked over. not to mention that reddit’s current CEO has made a complete ass of himself and now everyone hates him and wants to see him suffer personally.

(granted, it seems like reddit may acquiesce slightly and grant free API access to a select set of moderation/accessibility tools, but at this point it comes across as an empty gesture.)

"later" is now "now"

TL;DR: this whole thing is a combination of many factors, specifically reddit being intensely user-driven and self-governed, but also a high-traffic site that costs a lot of money to run (why they willingly decided to start hosting video a few years back is beyond me...), while also being angled as a public stock market offering in the very near future. to some extent I understand why reddit’s CEO doubled down on the changes—he wants to look strong for investors—but he’s also made a fool of himself and cast a shadow of uncertainty onto reddit’s future, not to mention the PR nightmare surrounding all of this. and since arguably the most important thing in an IPO is how much faith people have in your company, I honestly think reddit would’ve fared better if they hadn’t gone nuclear with the API changes in the first place.

that said, I also think it’s a mistake to assume that reddit care (or needs to care) about its users in any meaningful way, or at least not as more than means to an end. if reddit shuts down in three years, but all of the people sitting on stock options right now cashed out at $120/share and escaped unscathed... that’s a success story! you got your money! VCs want to recoup their investment—they don’t care about longevity (at least not after they’re gone), user experience, or even sustained profit. those were never the forces driving them, because these were never the ultimate metrics of their success.

and to be clear: this isn’t unique to reddit. this is how pretty much all startups operate.

I talked about the difference between “make money now” companies and “make money later” companies, and what we’re experiencing is the painful transition from “later” to “now.” as users, this change is almost invisible until it’s already happened—it’s like a rug we didn’t even know existed gets pulled out from under us.

the pre-IPO honeymoon phase is awesome as a user, because companies have no expectation of profit, only growth. if you can rely on VC money to stay afloat, your only concern is building a user base, not squeezing a profit out of them. and to do that, you offer cool shit at a loss: everything’s chocolate and flowers and quarterly reports about the number of signups you’re getting!

...until you reach a critical mass of users, VCs want to cash in, and to prepare for that IPO leadership starts thinking of ways to make the website (appear) profitable and implements a bunch of shit that makes users go “wait, what?”

I also touched on this earlier, but I want to reiterate a bit here: I think the myth of the benign non-monetized internet of yore is exactly that—a myth. what has changed are the specific market factors behind these websites, and their scale, and the means by which they attempt to monetize their services and/or make their services look attractive to investors, and so from a user perspective things feel worse because the specific ways we’re getting squeezed have evolved. maybe they are even worse, at least in the ways that matter. but I’m also increasingly less surprised when this occurs, because making money is and has always been the goal for all of these ventures, regardless of how they try to do so.

[inthisuproar]

Was going to write this as a reply to something but realized it needed its own post.

The tl;dr is that, from the looks of it, Automattic absolutely has every intention of turning Tumblr into a marketing media platform.

I work for a marketing company. I build websites.

Specifically, I build websites on Wordpress.org, which is operated by the Wordpress Foundation.

The Wordpress Foundation is the non-profit counterpart to the for-profit company Automattic.

Automattic, as we know, is the company that currently owns Tumblr.

Now, the thing about Wordpress.org (not to be confused with Wordpress.com) is that it's very, VERY popular amongst small businesses. Not only can you build a fully-customizable website with relative ease, you can also add an online shop using another Automattic product: Woocommerce.

Not too long ago, I noticed a new feature was added to Woocommerce: A button next to each Woocommerce product which allows you to Blaze them to Tumblr right from the comfort of your dashboard:

This is what I get when I click that little "Blaze" button...

As someone who understands these tools, I understand the potential implications of these features:

The Blaze feature is basically an up-and-coming ad campaign system that's directly integrated with Woocommerce websites, which I think is the first ad marketing system of its kind. You don't have to log into a social media account to advertise your products, use a second-party integration, or even pay another service to manage your social media ads. It's all baked right into your business's website.

THIS is their planned money-maker, folks, not the rainbow checkmarks or crab armies. And the reason why Automattic would do this kind of thing is simple: Businesses are wealthier than individuals. By implementing a B2B service, Automattic can make more money off of Tumblr than user subscriptions and shoelaces will ever provide.

It's all the same song and dance. Businesses can now shove more ads into your face in a new, convenient fashion. It'll be ads that don't look like ads disguised amongst ads that do look like ads, just like it is with Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and literally every other marketing media service that calls itself a "social" media.

(Tumblr's new video feature? My guess is that it's there to prepare for video-format Blaze campaigns. Influencer-style videos are the only kind of ad format Gen-Z is receptive to, which is why you're suddenly seeing videos on every platform.)

All they really gotta do now is make Tumblr look appealing to the normies so they can draw in a userbase that isn't trying to escape the onslaught of commercialism that plagues other sites.

Tumblr is one of the last true social medias we have; a place where content is made purely for the sake of talking about it. But given the writing on the wall...I doubt it'll stay that way.

[linkhundr]

So NFTgate has now hit tumblr - I made a thread about it on my twitter, but I'll talk a bit more about it here as well in slightly more detail. It'll be a long one, sorry! Using my degree for something here. This is not intended to sway you in one way or the other - merely to inform so you can make your own decision and so that you aware of this because it will happen again, with many other artists you know.

Let's start at the basics: NFT stands for 'non fungible token', which you should read as 'passcode you can't replicate'. These codes are stored in blocks in what is essentially a huge ledger of records, all chained together - a blockchain. Blockchain is encoded in such a way that you can't edit one block without editing the whole chain, meaning that when the data is validated it comes back 'negative' if it has been tampered with. This makes it a really, really safe method of storing data, and managing access to said data. For example, verifying that a bank account belongs to the person that says that is their bank account.

For most people, the association with NFT's is bitcoin and Bored Ape, and that's honestly fair. The way that used to work - and why it was such a scam - is that you essentially purchased a receipt that said you owned digital space - not the digital space itself. That receipt was the NFT. So, in reality, you did not own any goods, that receipt had no legal grounds, and its value was completely made up and not based on anything. On top of that, these NFTs were purchased almost exclusively with cryptocurrency which at the time used a verifiation method called proof of work, which is terrible for the environment because it requires insane amounts of electricity and computing power to verify. The carbon footprint for NFTs and coins at this time was absolutely insane.

In short, Bored Apes were just a huge tech fad with the intention to make a huge profit regardless of the cost, which resulted in the large market crash late last year. NFTs in this form are without value.

However, NFTs are just tech by itself more than they are some company that uses them. NFTs do have real-life, useful applications, particularly in data storage and verification. Research is being done to see if we can use blockchain to safely store patient data, or use it for bank wire transfers of extremely large amounts. That's cool stuff!

So what exactly is Käärijä doing? Kä is not selling NFTs in the traditional way you might have become familiar with. In this use-case, the NFT is in essence a software key that gives you access to a digital space. For the raffle, the NFT was basically your ticket number. This is a very secure way of doing so, assuring individuality, but also that no one can replicate that code and win through a false method. You are paying for a legimate product - the NFT is your access to that product.

What about the environmental impact in this case? We've thankfully made leaps and bounds in advancing the tech to reduce the carbon footprint as well as general mitigations to avoid expanding it over time. One big thing is shifting from proof of work verification to proof of space or proof of stake verifications, both of which require much less power in order to work. It seems that Kollekt is partnered with Polygon, a company that offers blockchain technology with the intention to become climate positive as soon as possible. Numbers on their site are very promising, they appear to be using proof of stake verification, and all-around appear more interested in the tech than the profits it could offer.

But most importantly: Kollekt does not allow for purchases made with cryptocurrency, and that is the real pisser from an environmental perspective. Cryptocurrency purchases require the most active verification across systems in order to go through - this is what bitcoin mining is, essentially. The fact that this website does not use it means good things in terms of carbon footprint.

But why not use something like Patreon? I can't tell you. My guess is that Patreon is a monthly recurring service and they wanted something one-time. Kollekt is based in Helsinki, and word is that Mikke (who is running this) is friends with folks on the team. These are all contributing factors, I would assume, but that's entirely an assumption and you can't take for fact.

Is this a good thing/bad thing? That I also can't tell you - you have to decide that for yourself. It's not a scam, it's not crypto, just a service that sits on the blockchain. But it does have higher carbon output than a lot of other services do, and its exact nature is not publicly disclosed. This isn't intended to sway you to say one or the other, but merely to give you the proper understanding of what NFTs are as a whole and what they are in this particular case so you can make that decision for yourself.

[fans4wga]

August 4 - Hollywood Food Insecurity Spikes Amid Strikes

The entertainment industry’s most vulnerable workers are increasingly unable to feed themselves amid a historic double strike with no clear end in sight, according to non-profits tasked with addressing the food insecurity crisis. They describe Hollywood’s ongoing work stoppage — prompted by the contractual impasse between the writing and acting guilds on one side and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on the other — as a humanitarian emergency broadly affecting the community, not just striking union members.

The Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, which runs pantries for those in need throughout the county, attributes a meaningful portion of its nine percent uptick in year-over-year distribution to the strikes’ impact. “When income stops immediately, the demand rises very rapidly,” explains chief development officer Roger Castle.

“This is happening right after the pandemic, which drained a lot of people’s savings,” observes Keith McNutt, executive director at the Entertainment Community Fund, which has distributed $3 million to more than 1,500 workers as of Aug. 1. “So, you have the financial burden on people who’ve already been depleted.” As a result, his organization — whose donors include Seth McFarlane, Steven Spielberg, and Greg Berlanti — has seen an unprecedented wave of immediate requests for basic living expenses, including groceries. “Before this started, we would do about 50 grants out of the L.A. office a week. Now we’re getting 50 applications a day.”

On July 28, below-the-line unions IATSE and the Teamsters Local 399 held a drive-through food drive for industry members affected by the strikes at IATSE’s West Coast headquarters in Burbank. It drew about a thousand vehicles throughout the day.

According to the relief nonprofit Labor Community Services, which helped to organize the event and is planning another in August, the organization distributed 1,740 food boxes, feeding an estimated 8,700 people, that day.

In California, striking workers are ineligible to receive unemployment assistance, while nationally, they cannot receive SNAP food benefits unless they qualified pre-strike — something Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is aiming to change with a new bill, introduced July 27. One place that striking actors in particular can turn to for help during the work stoppage is the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, which offers emergency financial assistance and other resources, including grocery store gift cards, to union members. SAG-AFTRA made a seven-figure donation to the Foundation early in its strike to assist these efforts. (The WGA West does provide its own members with emergency financial loans from its strike fund and Good and Welfare fund.)

Cyd Wilson, its executive director, has seen an explosion in demand for the organization’s help. “People are making these decisions: Should pay my rent, or should I put food on the table? Should I put food on the table, or should I pay my utilities?” she explains. “There’s a great deal of suffering that’s happening.” By Wilson’s estimate, the foundation is now handling 40 times its typical number of applications per week, and it has already distributed as much in grants since the beginning of the WGA’s strike three months ago as it typically would in the span of a given year.

Meanwhile, Groceries for Writers, a direct aid project administered by Humanitas, a non-profit focused on film and television writers, has distributed more than 1,100 gift cards to WGA members since the onset of its work stoppage in early May. Humanitas executive director Michelle Franke says that “many of these writers have left notes indicating they’re in very urgent financial situations. Writers describe struggling with student debt, falling into eligibility gaps with CalFresh and EDD [state unemployment assistance], eviction notices, writing teams splitting low pay, having only just moved to Los Angeles and not having a large local support network as a consequence, dwindling savings.”

Groceries for Writers is hardly alone in addressing the growing need. In July, L.A.’s World Harvest Food Bank founder and CEO Glen Curado estimated to The Hollywood Reporter that his organization, which is offering free food to striking writers and actors, was serving an average of 150-200 members of this group per day. That effort was inspired by The Price Is Right host Drew Carey’s gesture of paying for all striking writers dining at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank and L.A.’s Swingers Diner for the duration of the work stoppage.

THR asked both the AMPTP and the talent unions whether they bear any responsibility for the worsening situation. In a statement, a spokesperson for the AMPTP said: “Like those negotiating on behalf of the guilds, representatives from the AMPTP and its member companies came to the table in good faith, wanting to reach an agreement that would keep the industry working and prevent the hardships caused by labor strikes.” SAG-AFTRA didn’t respond to a request for comment, while a WGA spokesperson said in a statement: “The public knows that working people are putting everything on the line in order to negotiate a fair deal with the studios who have caused this strike and the resultant suffering by refusing to address the reasonable proposals that writers brought to the table over 90 days ago.” Neither the AMPTP itself nor any of its major studio and streamer members responded when THR asked if the companies or their philanthropic arms had made any contributions specifically to address the industry’s food insecurity crisis since May.

Support staffers — early-career workers who fill roles such as assistants and coordinators and tend to be low-paid — are especially at risk at this time. “So much of the compensation that they receive is, no one’s going to say it, but it’s implied to be food-based,” notes Liz Hsiao Lan Alper, the co-founder of advocacy group Pay Up Hollywood and a WGA West board member. Alper says that support staffers are often paid the “bare minimum” but access complimentary food through writers’ rooms, craft services on sets or in agency kitchens and conference rooms. And so, when the strikes occurred, the need was “overwhelming,” she explains: “It’s invisible compensation that just went away when the work stoppages happened.”

For that reason, on June 7 Pay Up Hollywood relaunched its COVID-19-era Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund. So far, the fund has distributed around $45,000 in one-time financial need grants up to $1,000 apiece, according to organizer and support staffer Alex Rubin, who says she’s encouraged support staffers to obtain free food distributed on picket lines. “I think that there is a little bit of embarrassment and insecurity about not being able to feed yourself,” she says. “It is the reason why we give our grants as just like, ‘Here’s a one-time grant. You don’t have to tell us how you want to use this.’”

Helping people in entertainment with food during work stoppages is a “tangible message,” says James Costello, a Teamsters Local 399 driver and an IATSE Local 44 prop master, who was volunteering at IATSE’s July 28 food drive. A second-generation Teamster, Costello still remembers a union strike in the 1980s that prompted his parents to warn their children that their Christmas holiday would be affected that year, and the Teamsters emergency relief that arrived in the fall, offering groceries and a Christmas tree.

As the strikes drag on and both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA have yet to formally reprise negotiations with the AMPTP (although the Writers Guild is set to have a preliminary meeting with the studios’ organization on Aug. 4), the non-profits on the front lines of the industry’s food-insecurity crisis are girding themselves for a long period of need. SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Wilson says it’s pursuing a “very aggressive fundraising strategy” to meet the demand. (Already, it’s netted over $15 million in emergency assistance from stars like George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Matt Damon and Dwayne Johnson, who are donating $1 million or more apiece.)

The Entertainment Community Fund’s McNutt notes that pocketbook pain will outlast the current conflict. “Just because the strike ends, it doesn’t mean the need will end. Everyone doesn’t go back to work the next week. We’re going to be looking at this [elevated] level of need for months afterward.”

Give to the Entertainment Community Fund

Give to Humanitas' Groceries for Writers

Give to the Green Envelope Grocery Aid mutual aid fund

[robertreich]

The Biggest Economic Lies We’re Told

In America, it’s expensive just to be alive.

And with inflation being driven by price gouging corporations, it’s only getting more expensive for regular Americans who don’t have any more money to spend.

Just look at how Big Oil is raking it in while you pay through the nose at the pump.

That’s on top of the average price of a new non-luxury car — which is now over $44,000. Even accounting for inflation, this is way higher than the average cost when I bought my first car — it’s probably in a museum by now.

Even worse, the median price for a house is now over $440,000. Compare that to 1972, when it was under $200,000.

Work a full-time minimum wage job? You won’t be able to afford rent on a one-bedroom apartment just about anywhere in the U.S.

And when you get back after a long day of work, you’ll likely be met with bills up the wazoo for doctor visits, student loans, and utilities.

So what’s left of a paycheck after basic living expenses? Not much.

You can only reduce spending on food, housing, and other basic necessities so much. Want to try covering the rest of your monthly costs with a credit card? Well now that’s more expensive too, with the Fed continuing to hike interest rates.

All of this comes back to how we measure a successful economy.

What good are more jobs if those jobs barely pay enough to live on?

Over one-third of full time jobs don’t pay enough to cover a basic family budget.

And what good are lots of jobs if they cause so much stress and take up so much time that our lives are miserable?

And don’t tell me a good economy is measured by a roaring stock market if the richest 10 percent of Americans own more than 80 percent of it.

And what good is a large Gross Domestic Product if more and more of the total economy is going to the richest one-tenth of one percent?  

What good is economic growth if the way we grow depends on fossil fuels that cause a climate crisis?

These standard measures – jobs, the stock market, the GDP – don’t show how our economy is really doing, who is doing well, or the quality of our lives.

People who sit at their kitchen tables at night wondering how they’re going to pay the bills don’t say to themselves

“Well, at least corporate profits are at record levels.”

In fact, corporations have record profits and CEOs are paid so much because they’re squeezing more output from workers but paying lower wages. Over the past 40 years, productivity has grown 3.5x as fast as hourly pay.

At the same time, corporations are driving up the costs of everyday items people need.

Because corporations are monopolizing their markets, they don’t have to worry about competitors. A few giant corporations can easily coordinate price hikes and enjoy bigger profits.

Just four firms control 85% of all beef, 66% of all pork, and 54% of all poultry production.

Firms like Tyson have seen their profit margins skyrocket as they jack up prices higher than their costs — forcing consumers who are already stretched thin to pay even more.

It’s not just meat. Weak antitrust enforcement has allowed companies to become powerful enough to raise their prices across the entire food industry.

It’s the same story with household goods. Giant companies like Procter & Gamble blame their price hikes on increased costs – but their profit margins have soared to 25%. Hello? They care more about their bottom line than your bottom, that’s for sure.

Meanwhile, parents – and even grandparents like me – are STILL struggling to feed their babies because of a national formula shortage. Why? Largely because the three companies who control the entire formula industry would rather pump money into stock buybacks than quality control at their factories.

Traditionally, our economy’s health is measured by the unemployment rate. Job growth. The stock market. Overall economic growth. But these don’t reflect the everyday, “kitchen table economics” that affect our lives the most.

These measures don’t show the real economy.

Instead of looking just at the number of jobs, we need to look at the income earned from those jobs. And not the average income.

People at the top always bring up the average.

If Jeff Bezos walked into a bar with 140 other people, the average wealth of each person would be over a billion dollars.

No, look at the median income – half above, half below.

And make sure it accounts for inflation – real purchasing power.

Over the last few decades, the real median income has barely budged. This isn’t economic success.

It's economic failure, with a capital F.

And instead of looking at the stock market or the GDP we need to look at who owns what �� where the wealth really is.

Over the last forty years, wealth has concentrated more and more at the very top. Look at this;

This is a problem, folks. Because with wealth comes political power.

Forget trickle-down economics. It’s trickle on.

And instead of looking just at economic growth, we also need to look at what that growth is costing us – subtract the costs of the climate crisis, the costs of bad health, the costs of no paid leave, and all the stresses on our lives that economic growth is demanding.

We need to look at the quality of our lives – all our lives. How many of us are adequately housed and clothed and fed. How many of our kids are getting a good education. How many of us live in safety – or in fear.

You want to measure economic success? Go to the kitchen tables of America.

[dailyanarchistposts]

F.6 Is “anarcho”-capitalism against the state?

No. Due to its basis in private property, “anarcho”-capitalism implies a class division of society into bosses and workers. Any such division will require a state to maintain it. However, it need not be the same state as exists now. Regarding this point, “anarcho”-capitalism plainly advocates “defence associations” to protect property. For the “anarcho”-capitalist these private companies are not states. For anarchists, they most definitely. As Bakunin put it, the state “is authority, domination, and force, organised by the property-owning and so-called enlightened classes against the masses.” [The Basic Bakunin, p. 140] It goes without saying that “anarcho”-capitalism has a state in the anarchist sense.

According to Murray Rothbard [Society Without A State, p. 192], a state must have one or both of the following characteristics:

He makes the same point elsewhere. [The Ethics of Liberty, p. 171] Significantly, he stresses that “our definition of anarchism” is a system which “provides no legal sanction” for aggression against person and property rather than, say, being against government or authority. [Society without a State, p. 206]

Instead of this, the “anarcho”-capitalist thinks that people should be able to select their own “defence companies” (which would provide the needed police) and courts from a free market in “defence” which would spring up after the state monopoly has been eliminated. These companies “all … would have to abide by the basic law code,” [Op. Cit., p. 206] Thus a “general libertarian law code” would govern the actions of these companies. This “law code” would prohibit coercive aggression at the very least, although to do so it would have to specify what counted as legitimate property, how said can be owned and what actually constitutes aggression. Thus the law code would be quite extensive.

How is this law code to be actually specified? Would these laws be democratically decided? Would they reflect common usage (i.e. custom)? “Supply and demand”? “Natural law”? Given the strong dislike of democracy shown by “anarcho”-capitalists, we think we can safely say that some combination of the last two options would be used. Murray Rothbard argued for “Natural Law” and so the judges in his system would “not [be] making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.” [Op. Cit., p. 206] David Friedman, on the other hand, argues that different defence firms would sell their own laws. [The Machinery of Freedom, p. 116] It is sometimes acknowledged that non-“libertarian” laws may be demanded (and supplied) in such a market although the obvious fact that the rich can afford to pay for more laws (either in quantity or in terms of being more expensive to enforce) is downplayed.

Around this system of “defence companies” is a free market in “arbitrators” and “appeal judges” to administer justice and the “basic law code.” Rothbard believes that such a system would see “arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity” being “chosen by the various parties in the market” and “will come to be given an increasing amount of business.” Judges “will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality.” [Op. Cit., p. 199 and p. 204] Therefore, like any other company, arbitrators would strive for profits with the most successful ones would “prosper”, i.e. become wealthy. Such wealth would, of course, have no impact on the decisions of the judges, and if it did, the population (in theory) are free to select any other judge. Of course, the competing judges would also be striving for profits and wealth — which means the choice of character may be somewhat limited! — and the laws which they were using to guide their judgements would be enforcing capitalist rights.

Whether or not this system would work as desired is discussed in the following sections. We think that it will not. Moreover, we will argue that “anarcho”-capitalist “defence companies” meet not only the criteria of statehood we outlined in section B.2, but also Rothbard’s own criteria for the state. As regards the anarchist criterion, it is clear that “defence companies” exist to defend private property; that they are hierarchical (in that they are capitalist companies which defend the power of those who employ them); that they are professional coercive bodies; and that they exercise a monopoly of force over a given area (the area, initially, being the property of the person or company who is employing the company). Not only that, as we discuss in section F.6.4 these “defence companies” also matches the right-libertarian and “anarcho”-capitalist definition of the state. For this (and other reasons), we should call the “anarcho”-capitalist defence firms “private states” — that is what they are — and “anarcho”-capitalism “private state” capitalism.

[efangamez]

Introducing..... the Pride TTRPG Bundle Sale: Help a Queer Person Thrive! Buy nearly $70 of games for $25!

More info below, but basically I need money to live, and to do that, I have to host a sale! In this sale are some cool goals we can reach as well! So help out a trans and queer person during Pride Month! <3

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU CANNOT PURCHASE! <3

Join me in celebrating Pride Month by supporting me, a trans and queer creator looking for financial assistance to live life to the fullest.

This sale will help me to support myself as someone who makes less than $15,000 a year. I kinda wanna live a little and heal myself, and sadly, money is a big roadblock for me.

In this bundle, you can obtain:

GRIM, a retro FPS styled TTRPG inspired by Quake.

MOURN, another awesome retro FPS styled TTRPG that is inspired by DOOM.

Neon Nights, a cyberpunk TTRPG with nearly infinite build variety, and it's two MASSIVE expansions!

Tales from the Aerosphere, an amazingly fun and zany steampunk game that uses the Neon Nights P.E.R.K.S system!

Wrath of the Undersea, a TTRPG where you play as vengeful Eldritch peoples trying to reclaim the colonized surface.

Disk Master's expansions, where you can live out your Pokemon or Digimon dream on pen and paper!

There are also some stretch goals attached to the sale as well!

$500: This pays for debts and a month of groceries.

Will hold a Trans Rage Game Jam in July!

$1,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, and some cushion.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July AND will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August!

$2,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, and computer payments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$3,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, and gender affirming care.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, AND will have all games FREE during the month of October!

$4,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointments.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, AND will release another one-page PWYW game!

$5,000: This will pay for debts, groceries, cushion, computer payments, gender affirming care, and mental health appointment, and will help SUSTAIN these things that are paid for.

Will hold Trans Rage Game Jam in July, will release GRIM: Eldritch Arsenal weapon pack for GRIM in August, will have all games FREE during the month of October, will release another one-page PWYW game, AND will host monthly game jams for the rest of the year!

$5,000+: Any money after this would be donated to trans non-profits where I reside and GoFundMe's for Palestinian families on the Operation Olive Branch spreadsheet.

PLEASE REBLOG IF YOU CANNOT SUPPORT! <3

[eightyonekilograms]

What are the left-NIMBYs' policy positions? What are the YIMBY policy positions? I mean I know what they are in a broad sense (more regulation on constructing housing vs. less), but I'm curious to know in more detail. Obviously some regulation is good (living in California, I'm glad there are standards for earthquake safety), and some is bad (I'm generally against single-use zoning for a bunch reasons you probably agree with). The basic supply and demand stuff and how it affects the cost of housing is obvious enough to me, but the weeds of how specifically regulations should be changed in light of this seems like a more complex issue.

I don't identify as either a NIMBY or a YIMBY; this discourse is somewhat foreign to me, but I probably have some mixture of NIMBY-sympathetic and YIMBY-sympathetic positions, and I'm interested in getting a better picture of the details of the debate from someone who clearly knows a lot about it.

Also as an aside, if you have any good sources of information you can recommend on the present state of housing policy in San Francisco, and/or how it's changed over the years, I'd be very interested in them.

At least from my POV, left-NIMBY policy prescriptions generally seem to fall into one of three camps (arranged from least to most radical):

non-zoning regulatory updates to try and make housing more affordable; the canonical example being adding low-income requirements to new housing developments

large expansions in government-funded housing projects, possibly to the point of having all housing construction be government-funded

"housing can't be fixed until we abolish capitalism"

Each of these has a flaw, although they need to be analyzed separately.

The people in camp 1 are well-intentioned, but unfortunately in practice they are useful idiots for the people who want less housing to be built (landlords, homeowners who want to Preserve the Neighborhood Character, the aforementioned BlackRock investors from my original post, etc.). Those people know full well that the actual effect of attaching more requirements to new housing construction is that less new housing (of all kinds, low-income, high-income, etc.) gets made, because projects which were just-barely profitable get pushed into being unprofitable, and so they don't happen. Obviously individual cases vary, but in general, if you say "you can't build those 50 new housing units unless you also add 15 low-income units in that development" is not that you get 50 market-rate units and 15 low-income units, but that you get zero new units. Which helps nobody.

This is one example of a depressingly common pattern where left-NIMBYs unfortunately make it very easy for themselves to get played like a fiddle by people who say they have the interests of low-income renters at heart, but absolutely do not. As I said, the sorts of "wealthy suburban single-family homeowners" who go to their community meetings and demand that new construction include low-income unit requirements are doing that to murder low-income housing, but because it's an invisible murder (since the development simply doesn't happen), those homeowners with their In This House We Believe signs can keep saying they want to help the poor get housed, while guaranteeing that won't happen.

With camp 2, in general it seems to me like a lot of them aren't paying attention to what YIMBYs actually say, and instead have built up a strawman in their mind of YIMBYs as diehard anti-government libertarians. Some of them are, but most YIMBYs— myself included— do want more government-funded construction and think it definitely should be a part of a comprehensive solution for housing affordability.

The issue is, if you want government-funded housing, the government still needs to pay for the land, and the construction. And if land and construction are more expensive than they could be because of limited supply and burdensome, then the government has to pay more for this housing, and gets less for its money. I know a lot of left-NIMBYs tend to scoff at fiscal/budgetary constrains, but they are a real thing, if only because eventually you'll get voter revolt, and if you have X dollars of taxpayer money to spend on new housing construction, it would surely be better to make that X dollars go as far as possible and build maybe 5,000 units instead of 1,000. This is a case where the libertarian and socialist views do not need to be opposed and can in fact work in concert: the more land reform you have, the cheaper land gets and so the more bang for you buck you get. So even if you are a Camp 2er, you should support YIMBY policy reforms anyway.

The people in camp 3, well... I wanted these posts to be as factual and non-ideological as I could, but at some point there's no getting around the fact that camp 3 is delusional. We're not going to abolish capitalism, at least not any time in the foreseeable future. It could happen in succeeding decades, but in the meantime, wouldn't it be nice if people could have an affordable place to live now? Note that there are differences in housing affordability across areas, based mostly on to what extent they have YIMBY-like policies in place, so the claim that only abolishing capitalism can help seems empirically wrong. (And if the response to that is that helping people now is bad because it would delay the revolution, that's when I start yelling and pounding on my keyboard again. Accelerationism is fundamentally a monstrous, evil ideology, gleefully throwing people under the bus for the sake of a fantasy world).

[synchodai]

Just finished the Fallout TV show! Observations and spoilers under the cut:

GOOD: It's actually pretty lore accurate and canon compliant.

I don't understand the complaints that it retcons New Vegas? People argue that the Battle of Hoover Dam and "the fall of Shady Sands" both happening in 2277 renders FNV non-canonical, but that's not necessarily the case? It was clear from the chalkboard the fall of Shady Sands and the nukes dropping are two separate events? Meaning Shady Sands "falling," whatever that entails, doesn't necessarily contradict the NCR presence in the Mojave. Shady Sands is the capital of the NCR — not the entire NCR. Even without control of Shady Sands, they would still have rangers and citizens in their other settlements.

I think this is because people are so invested in this narrative that Bethesda hates FNV, and yes, they could have treated Obsidian way better and shafted them in numerous ways during game development, but developer Tim Cain himself said that Todd Howard loves FNV.

Yes, certain details in the show can be contradictory to its source text, specifically with how they handle ghoulification, but it wasn't like the games ever had a clear canon explanation for ghoul biology either. Fallout 4 showed that exposure to radiation isn't even the only way to turn into a ghoul — and I was certain the previous games emphasized that ghouls are ghouls because of overexposure to radiation.

All in all, the little details they do get right — the brand names, the music, the general vibe of how each faction operates — vastly outnumbers the ones that are a bit iffy.

BAD: They revealed who dropped the bombs and it doesn't make sense.

The twist of the entire series is that Vault Tec dropped the nukes because it wanted to increase sales and recreate the USA as a utopian, monopolistic corporatocracy. This doesn't exactly contradict established canon. In fact, with Mr. House being part of the corpo meetings discussing this, it explains how he was able to predict the nukes and shield his beloved Vegas before the bombs fell.

What this mainly contradicts for me is just...logic. This show clearly wants to tell its audience that corporations will prioritize profit over public welfare every time. It's a good, clear, and necessary message. However, corporations — no matter how evil they are — just wouldn't wipe out their own customer base, right? Who would they make profits from if 90% of Americans were dead? And let's say they don't care about the poors who couldn't afford their products and services anyway — they've just significantly reduced even the one-percenters' purchasing power by basically scorching the earth. Capitalists want to extract as much resources as possible. They will abuse and torture their golden goose so that it'll lay more eggs, but they will never just...kill their own goose.

There could have been a more logical scenario here. War is a one of the most lucrative times for corporations like Vault Tec. And American corpos ARE known for orchestrating wars and destabilizing entire regions, BUT they always do so outside the US — a safe, far distance from the paying customers and away from the company's executives.

If that board meeting talked about purposefully disrupting the hardearned peacetimes they were in and dropping a bomb ON ANOTHER COUNTRY just to incite people to buy more vaults, then yes, I can see that happening. I can even see them anticipating nuclear retaliation, but they're too blinded by greed and the need for infinite growth that they're willing to take that risk. Add some dialogue about how this is their way of manufacturing and exporting American nuclear annihilation anxiety so they can take their tech global, and we have something that's closer to reality than just....one-step self-immolation.

House in FNV more or less had the same motivations to recreate the world as a technocrat dictatorship, but FNV handled it better in that House knew that people, even rivals like the tribes, were better kept alive and converted to paying customers and/or employees than outright exterminated.

Unfortunately, since the entire theme is about how corporate capitalism can lead to the destruction of the world, the show portraying the "fidicuiary incentive" as akin to an ideology (a set of beliefs on how the world should be structured) is misguided I think. A corporation profit motive isn't ideological because only people can have ideologies and corporations are not people. They don't prioritize profit because they think this is the best system we have to achieve a utopian society — they do it because it is what corporate systems are designed to do. They do not care about societal good anymore than a cancer cell cares about the body it is in. All they want is to grow exponentially.

Corporations like Vault Tec and its ilk are more like machines made to churn money, and that has resulted in sometimes progress and sometimes destruction. But it is always uncaring of those consequences and the methods it has to utilize as long as it fulfills its end goal of continually making profit — and THAT'S the problem of capitalism. Not that corporate execs want total political control. Because if lax control meant they could continuing exploiting and siphoning resources and pleasing shareholders, they wouldn't care about governance or politics at all.

STRAY THOUGHTS

Mr. House at that table gave me everything I wanted. I'm so excited for season 2 being New Vegas centered.

I love the portrayal of vault dwellers. They all had quirky and distinguishable characters and there wasn't a vault dweller character I wasn't entertained by.

Vault 4 is such a good episode! It was so funny and such a good way to show Lucy and Maximus that kindness is still possible in the wasteland without making it uncharacteristically sappy or too after-school special.

Norm is such a compelling character. I didn't expect him to be such a big part of the story but I'm glad he was.

They did justice to the scenery. I love the deer because it shows it's been a while since the atomic bombs and how life inevitably recolonizes the land.

The twist that Hank Maclean helped nuke Shady Sands because his wife escaped to it? It's kind of a weak excuse to nuke an entire area again. I hope this gets elaborated on in season 2 and why Vault Tec decided to let the NCR become a full-blown national power before taking action.

Cooper Howard? No notes. Perfect performance.

I'm not a big fight scene person, but I appreciate the tribute to the games with the splattered body parts and how main characters didn't just curbstomp their opponents.

The vault scenes were the funniest but I hope they also lean in more to how weird the wasteland can be too.

A lot of threads left hanging. Who is Lee Moldover and why are the refugees of Shady Sands worshipping her? Why did she need whatever was in the Enclave scientist's head? Whatever happened to Vault 33's problem with their destroyed water chip? Why did Hank give Moldover the code just because Lucy told him to? WHERE IS FINAL PAM???

CONCLUSION

Amazing adaptation. Well-written characters that felt very at-home with the setting. It understood the games deeply enough to know that Vault Tec is the overarching villain of the series. Plot has holes and logical inconsistencies, but aside from what I've already discussed, these aren't egregious enough to take away from character arcs and the show's themes for me.

**Fallout games I've played:

Fallout 2

Fallout 3 (only got through half of the game)

Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout 4

[myconetted]

more tumblr meta in response to @alliered's post here

be warned: i am inarticulate yet verbose

on volunteer work

Tumblr has around 200 full-time employees. As of 2019, it looks like it had 16 million monthly active users. Two hundred people is just not a lot of people to run a social media site, which has to follow regulatory requirements and do moderation and all that shit. Volunteer work is going to happen and you can't really get around it. That's how scrappy teams operate.

Is tumblr chaotic? Yes. Could it stand to be more organized? ...Maybe? I remember the glassdoor reviews saying it was total cowboy culture and you were mostly left to your own devices. @jv (who works at tumblr) has also commented in late 2022 that tumblr is still very decentralized and you're encouraged to ask forgiveness rather than permission.

I don't work at tumblr so I have no idea how much of a problem this is, but it's worth remembering the point I made earlier: you can reduce chaos and thrash by adding process at the cost of making everything slightly slower. For tumblr specifically, since it's a remote team distributed across timezones, requiring people to come to meetings to make decisions can make things a lot slower because there will only be a few hours in the day that everyone can attend a meeting and limited overlapping waking hours. You're in the US and you wanted to ask your manage in the UK about whether you need to work on X or Y? Hopefully you asked in the morning, because your 2pm is their 10pm!

When you have a small enough team where everyone is very senior, it can actually be a huge productivity boost to do things in a pretty ad-hoc way. I personally have witnessed the transition from a ~70 person org to a 150-200 person org, and at 70 people we didn't need internal newsletters or super-fancy ticketing systems or dedicated project managers. Everyone knows everyone and can just ping each other directly. At 150-200 people, that starts to break down, and you get into situations where two teams might be working on very similar things without knowing.

Maybe that's something tumblr could do better, but it's also the type of thing that requires a shitload of concerted effort to get right: the worst thing you could do is introduce a bunch of middle management who end up wasting more time than they save because they don't have enough background information or technical expertise.

new features

also for bug fixing and new features.... the thing is that many users speak more on NOT wanting so much time spent on what seem like weightless updates when we want more focus in issues that have existed for weeks, months, and even years.

I think this point is really important for understanding a lot of the recent changes around tumblr that have occurred basically ever since it got acquired by automattic. Here's the bottom line: tumblr is not profitable and never has been. That means everything tumblr has been doing until now is not enough.

Tumblr needs more users and it needs to get more money from those users, or it dies. That's it.

The easiest and most reliable way to make money is to serve ads, serve a ton of them, and let advertisers pay more to target specific user demographics with their ads. In 2022, 90% of twitter's revenue was from ads. But tumblr's owners and staff don't want to do that, so they're exploring other options.

Which is why you've been seeing new features you didn't ask for: tumblr needs users, tumblr needs money; if the current features aren't cutting it, then they need to find some new features that will. Some features like the "live" thing are an attempt to get more users and/or engagement, to lure people in from other platforms like tiktok and instagram who are into that kind of thing. Other features, like the checkmarks and badges and merch, are more directly about getting money.

You may not like non-chronological timelines, but users coming from other platforms haven't had to curate their own feeds for like a decade now and just have no idea how to do that--tumblr offers recommendation-based feeds because it's empirically successful and helps you retain users. So you can see they're trying a lot of different things right now.

You might be wondering why this has only started happening within the last two or so years even though automattic acquired tumblr in late 2019. If public statements are worth anything, it's because they spent the first couple years rebuilding a shitload of backend infrastructure, probably paying down a ridiculous amount of technical debt, in order to make the platform stable and flexible enough for staff to work on a bunch of new features at once without worrying about extreme jank or bringing the whole platform down because someone removed a load-bearing print statement.

spam bots

Matt, CEO of automattic and the guy who's currently running tumblr as his highest priority, said last year that tumblr would need 2 million users to buy ad-free browsing in order to offset tumblr's running costs. At $40/yr, that's $80m annually to keep the lights on for tumblr.

EDIT: Here's a post from another staff member who breaks this down in a lot more detail and explains the motivation for the Live feature.

Fighting spam is just a notoriously difficult problem that no one has solved. The current situation mainly boils down to: get rid of all the spambots, or avoid accidentally banning real users. Pick one. That's it! To put this into perspective, neither Facebook nor Twitter have figured it out either. And they're both huge compared to tumblr, not just in terms of headcount but also in terms of the engineers they attract: we're talking about the combined efforts of hundreds of smart engineers who have tons of resources to tackle this problem. They haven't figured it out. In 2019 when tumblr was acquired by automattic, it had a total of 200 employees, whereas twitter had 4,900 and facebook/meta had 45,000. All things considered, I think tumblr's doing a pretty good job both in their automatic detection and their reporting system.

This is also one of those areas where people will be very tight-lipped about the specific things they're doing to fight spam, and for good reason. Fighting spam is a constant battle where each side is updating their strategies and trying new things. I don't know if you've noticed, but these spambots come in waves (at least that's how I've experienced it). The influx of spambots come in, tumblr figures out how to prevent and ban them, the spammers figure something else out, a new wave comes in, rinse and repeat. Making public posts about how the spambot detection works is a great way to tell spammers how to evade detection.

would finding a way to make the sign up process more difficult for spam bots be able to clear up resources elsewhere?

Yes, making sign-ups harder can make it more difficult for spammers to make accounts. But it also makes it harder for people to sign up. And again, tumblr can't really afford to add friction to the sign-up flow, because friction means losing potential users, and tumblr needs users. Also you would be surprised how easily spammers are able to circumvent these kinds of things so you end up in a state where you have fewer user sign-ups but the bots are still everywhere.

user feedback (tickets)

I mostly ran out of energy at this point but with respect to whether or not staff knows about things users want and how they're keeping track: that's what the ticketing system is for! That's why cyle keeps telling people to make tickets! The support tickets are how tumblr staff keep track of problems users are having and feature requests. Those tickets are connected to a ticket tracker where they can keep track of spikes in user requests and bugs and spam bots. I know it sounds stupid and it sounds like they're just telling you to put your suggestions directly into the trash, but that's actually the for-real tracking system they use for monitoring bugs and feedback. Everything else, like the various official and personal blogs, are because they're passionate about making some of this stuff visible to users.

So yeah they could maybe make portions of their internal tracker more public so users can see what tumblr is prioritizing, but that introduces its own problems, up to and including making the tracker less useful to staff. (I don't know if you've ever seen the chromium tracker. It's a nightmare.)

---

anyways tldr:

money hard without ads

tumbler need money and probably has to get this money without a significant headcount increase (not sure how much runway automattic has, but it's probably less than in 2019 because of the pandemic and the econony and all)

maybe tumblr could benefit from more internal process and organization but it's really hard to say as an outsider

otherwise i think it's kinda hard to ask staff to do more than what they're already doing cause they're doing a lot rn

don't let that stop you from giving them feedback, because even when you feel like all your feedback is going into a black hole whenever you open a support ticket, that's actually how they track these things. nothing screams user feedback like 300 new tickets in the queue about the same thing and they actually have to close those things out

i really didn't appreciate that last bullet point until i started working at a company with a product. users would ping individual engineers about things being busted and it's always like DUDE you're supposed to email support so it actually gets seen!! otherwise it's just hanging around in someone's inbox!

[alwaysxyou]

Writer’s Strike 2023

Seen a lot of people with questions but haven’t seen a easily understandable post so:

What is the strike?

The Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) is the union of writers throughout the entertainment industry. This covers TV, film, talk shows and more. They are striking after they tried to negotiate their working terms with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), and could not come to an agreement by the deadline. The AMPTP includes the major television and film studios - Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Universal, Fox, Sony, Amazon, Apple and more.

The strike began on Tuesday, May 2, 2023.

What is WGA asking for in negotiations?

The WGA went into negotiations with a reasonable proposal, largely asking for a deal that took into account the shift from basic cable (for ex: the shows that run on your TV if you have a cable package) to streaming. When cable TV was booming (pre-streaming), writers earned residuals off the episodes airing. Even as projects shifted to be available on streaming, they were still airing on cable TV and writers earned residuals.

The shift of the past couple of years has seen a boom of projects solely for streaming. With no contract terms of what happens in that case, writers profits have dropped considerably, making their wages below a living wage. Many writers are referring as it’s turned into a “gig economy” rather than writing as a job. They compare it to Uber where studios want to pay them for the script, but not for anything that comes after, even though the industry is entire dependent on their craft. Studios are no longer valuing the art of the writing and only concerned with the profits.

They are also asking for negotiations regarding AI regulation and improved working conditions.

Why did they not come to an agreement?

Despite the WGA offering many amended proposals, the AMPTP refused to budge on the main points. There was slight concessions for lesser points, but the main issues at hand they did not budge on. There is a set deadline to reach terms by and since they did not reach it by the deadline, they are striking.

How does the strike affect writers?

The strike means no WGA members can work in a writing capacity until a new agreement is reached and the strike ends. This is why you will see productions coming to a halt, as the writers have stopped writing.

You might see films continue production (filming). It’s more common for films to have their scripts finalized ahead of production beginning. Since they do not need an active writer at that point, they can continue. Some shows that are scripted in a way that they’re all turned in ahead of time are similarly able to continue. Shows that have writers on set, or where they are writing throughout the season, are halting production. More will have to stop the longer the strike lasts.

Writers are paid based on work. When they don’t work, they don’t get paid. They are willingly choosing to strike and fight for this, because it’s that bad. It’s also important to keep in mind the industry is still recovering for writers since COVID, when all productions shut down and many of them were just now being able to find work again.

What would the monetary affect on the studios be if they agreed to WGA’s terms?

It’s estimated that in many cases the increase WGA is asking for would be less than 2% of the total profits of the project.

How long will it go on for/how does it end?

The WGA is willing to strike as long as it takes. The AMPTP has the ball in their court. The WGA is ready to get back to negotiations when they are.

2007/2008 was the last Writers Strike. It lasted 100 days.

How did they decide to strike?

All WGA members get to vote on whether or not they strike if negotiations are not reached. 98% voted in favor of authorizing a strike. After not reaching negotiations, the WGA board unanimously voted to strike.

How do non-industry people avoid crossing the picket line?

At the time of writing (May 4, 2023) the WGA has not asked for any regular, non-industry viewers to boycott any projects or studios. You can keep streaming and consuming as you wish.

The WGA will post widely if that changes and you should withhold from streaming certain things. These things are changing very rapidly.

How can we support the strike?

If you are based in LA or NYC, or anywhere there are physical protests happening, you can join them. You do not have to be a WGA member to help picket. As always with a group you are not a part of, be respectful and follow the instructions of the leaders on the ground.

Follow the WGA for updates and help spread the word about the strike and encourage others to support the strike.

It’s much more nuanced and would take ages to explain every tiny detail. But it boils down to: writers are the backbone of the entertainment industry and the entire industry relies on their work. Please support them in asking for fair and equal compensation and rights.

More resources:

WGA West Website

WGA East Website

WGA Strike Website

[kittenwithabass]

Today's Strike in Aotearoa

Today (Tuesday 10 September), thousands of Woolworths employees will walk off the job between 12-14h in protest. For those overseas, Woolworths is a major supermarket chain in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, one of the most profitable businesses in the country.

In August the union bargained with Woolworths for nine days on the topic of a living wage and understaffing issues, who dismissed the issues while claiming it had brought a strong offer to the table. A week of early strike efforts followed; non-compliance with media and social media policies, workers wore stickers reading "underpaid, undervalued, understaffed" on their uniforms, and 10 stores gave out flyers in the style of a receipt.

"This is a case of one of the largest and most profitable businesses in New Zealand deciding that their workers no longer deserve a fair deal and must accept whatever they put on the table - it just doesn't work that way," FIRST Union national organiser for retail food Ross Lampert said. "Our members are seeking a living wage, safe staffing minimum standards and fair compensation for giving up family and leisure time to work understaffed night and weekend shifts."

Woolworths managing director Spencer Sonn said that the supermarket already pays top of the market, but this is simply untrue. The Woolworths starting rate is $24.93/hr, while Costoco's and Foodstuffs' are $27/hr and $26/hr respectively. Minimum wage is $23.15 and the living wage is $27.80. (Obviously, the currency here is NZD) If the pay was as good as Sonn says it is, then why is a Woolworths duty manager unable to shop there, even despite her staff discount?

The strike actions were followed by interference, bullying, attempted intimidation, and outright lies from company managers. This includes hiding strike stickers, telling staff that wearing stickers breaks the law (it doesn't), and threatening disciplinary action for striking (that's illegal).

"The cost of living is so high and it’s really hard to imagine surviving on the pay offer that Woolworths are talking about - it’s less than the rate of inflation and basically a pay cut for everyone."

But after the aforementioned efforts and even more fruitless bargaining, the union is still miles away from reaching a deal. Which brings us to today, where a central rally will take place in Auckland, and thousands more Woolworths workers around the country will be walking out as well. This will be the country's first ever national walkout by supermarket staff!

[acti-veg]

what do you think of the argument that it’s not fair on poor people with mental health problems who work really hard to keep their housing for someone who doesn’t work hard to get housing?

This is not my view at all btw but someone said it and idk how to respond

It is helpful to reframe the situation like this: “Do you believe that people who do not work deserve to be alive?” If the answer to this question is yes, then we need to provide those people with housing, food and basic amenities. If the answer is no, they then need to justify why they think that a person who doesn’t work deserves to starve or die from exposure.

Keep in mind that welfare spending makes up only a third of your average taxpayers contribution, at least here in the UK, and we are taxed more than most. That includes all welfare, including disability benefits, child benefits, free school meals, subsidised healthcare and housing. That is a pretty good deal to ensure that our fellow human beings are not living on the streets in massive numbers.

The other key point to consider, is that any system which requires people to work for their survival hands the power of life and death to employers. Do you want corporations to be able to decide who lives and who dies? Do you believe that conditions and workers rights would improve or deteriorate under a system where workers cannot quit if they can’t find another job, because if they do, they won’t be able to afford to stay alive?

If we want to address inequality, how about the billions in corporate subsidies paid for by our taxes? The intentional loopholes meaning the very rich pay less tax than the poor do? The fact that the welfare system is forced to subsidise the inadequate wages paid by some of the world’s most profitable companies? That corporations use far more of the infrastructure, the roads, the rails, the ports that they pay almost nothing to maintain? Let’s address all that first before we worry about poor people getting a few hundred quid a month in housing benefits, if they’re lucky.

I honestly think that welfare claimants, even fraudulent ones, are a non-issue. It is pocket change compared to the billions we piss up the wall on our institutionally racist police force, bailing out irresponsible banks, supporting genocidal regimes, maintaining our imperial fleet and subsidising corporate interests. Welfare spending would be a wholly insignificant sum if we actually taxed the rich properly to fund the infrastructure and the welfare system that they build their fortunes on.

A robust welfare system is the defining mark of a fair society. What is even the point of humans coming together as communities if not for the collective to guarantee the welfare of the individual through shared security and the equitable distribution of resources? Society exists so that we can look after one another, and that shouldn’t be dependent on people selling most of their waking life just to avoid homelessness.

[mayakern]

Hi Maya! I tried looking in your FAQs but am not able to find this information. The past few years I've only been thrifting as I grow more aware of how the clothing industry is. Fast fashion going in mountains of landfills aside, the treatment of workers is absolutely horrendous 99% of the time. Your Meyoco skirt is my first piece of clothing I didn't get from thrifting the past year, and I'm absolutely in LOVE. I believe it's more than fair to pay $60 for a skirt as long as every designer, worker involved is compensated fairly. I don't believe that someone as empathetic as you would ever partake in a business model that takes advantage of the others, but for the peace of my own mind I just wanted to outright ask and make sure that the skirts are produced in an environment/manufacturer/business where the workers are compensated fairly after you've received your fair share of profit margins. 😅I adore your designs so much, and am already budgeting how to make it a staple of my non-essential purchases, I just would like to know that I'm supporting a business that align certain values that's important to me! Thank you very much for reading!

this is a great question! sorry if i'm kind of scattered answering it, im still dealing with neck pain (just got a cortisone shot which should help in a couple days but for now i'm relying on rest, pain meds and muscle relaxers so i'm a bit out of it)

first off, we've always done our best to search for manus that have good working conditions. we don't have the budget to personally visit factories outside the US, but we get footage from the manufacturers that show the working environment (specifically while making our items) so we can ensure the spaces look up to snuff (good lighting, ventilation, enough space, cleanly kept, etc). we also always look out for any red flags like a PPU (price per unit) being too low to afford fare wages to the workers.

without being able to hire someone to do a full blown investigation it's hard to 100% know what's going on in a factory, and unfortunately we do not have the budget for that, but we do our due diligance.

and i'm really happy to report that our new primary factory, which we found with the help of a supply chain manager, is GOT certified, which is a HUGE leap for us. basically, GOT certification requires a factory to meet certain thresholds for ethical labor and environmental practices. for our factory specifically, this includes a biometric clocking system that makes sure the hours worked are consistent with GOT requirements, as well as regular medical check ins and a dr on site. they also run internal social audits (sedex, ICS, inditex). they provide food and transportation for the workers and have multiple regulated breaks.

GOT certification also covers things like making sure the dyes and materials are ethically sourced. unfortunately because our skirts are synthetic fiber, we cannot brand the skirts specifically as being GOT certified because GOT certification only covers natural fiber, BUT all the other materials and the labor practices surrounding the skirts are certified. they are also certified for their ethical recycling for reuse of scrap material specifically regarding their synthetic fibers.

in addition to this, we do not function the way fast fashion does. fast fashion relies on constantly pushing the trend cycle faster and faster so that garment workers are pushing out new garments in weeks or days rather than the more traditional 3-4 month cycle (which is where we fall). this traditional cycle is why we used to have fashion "seasons," which honestly we don't believe in either. our goal is that when you buy a skirt, it is loved and worn and kept for years and years. we don't follow trends or seasons: we just make things we like.

also, we strive to never order more garments than we think we can sell. traditional fashion/retail typically strives to order 20% more product than will sell so that they can make maximum sales because nothing will ever sell out. that extra 20% is baked into cost/loss and usually is what ends up in places like ross or in landfills. so although we know it's frustrating that we continually sell out of our designs, we do this for a reason: as much as we're able, we want to not contribute excess waste to this world. this is also why we don't include specialty boxes or packaging with our orders, even tho literally every piece of small business advice recommends doing this for improving brand recognition/customer retention. for us, even tho it might generate more sales, it's not worth it to generate more waste. it's a very small thing, but over thousands and thousands of orders over the years it builds up.

[thelaurenshippen]

Hey Lauren! I've just finished writing my first novel, I'm also the writer/creator of the audio series Life & Death on the Rim (Star Wars fan audio drama), and I've started my own company Galactic North Productions. What I really want to understand is how other writers/creators who are successful and profitable got there. If there are any insights you can give me I'm all ears, whether that's associations, conventions, marketing, etc etc I just really want to learn. Very determined. Thank you!

hey!!! first off, HUGE congrats on finishing your first novel, that's an incredible feat and you should be unbelievably proud!!!! secondly, I hadn't heard of this podcast before but as a huge fan of both star wars and fan works, I am absolutely putting it on my tbl list right now!!!!

so. this is a great question. and a hard question. and one that I'm probably going to spend way too many words answering, if I know myself at all.

I think this question, in part, depends on what you consider successful and profitable! for me, it's meant being a jack of all trades - a lot of my work has come from being someone who knows how to make a podcast from soup to nuts and from being a person who a lot of people know. you've already done the hard thing: making something. that's your resume, now get the resume out there!

I wish I could give advice about marketing and finding an audience, but honestly it's changed so much since I started out that I hardly know how to find an audience anymore. but the basic approach always stands I think: don't promo, build community. be authentic and enthusiastic, and hang out in online spaces that you're already excited to be in. share your passion with people. clearly you already know how to do that, making a fan podcast!

in terms of getting to know your peers, I always recommend people join the WGA Audio Alliance discord to get to know who else is working in the space and hear about events. I did meet a lot of people at events early on, but unfortunately a lot of those things don't exist anymore (or were one-offs to begin with) or were smaller, invite-only things. if you're in NY, LA, Chicago, or London, there are vibrant AD scenes, so seek those out and go to (or organize!) a meet-up.

knowing your peers is the single most important thing for getting jobs. with the exception of one cold outreach, every job I've ever gotten has been because I met somebody and vibed with them. stay in touch but not too much - don't email your industry contacts all the time, but every 8-18 months, reach out to folks and do a catch up zoom or coffee. but don't network just to network! get to know people whose work you really like. getting to know peers at your same level is just as - if not more - important as networking to those who are further along in success than you.

be incredibly findable. having the facebook page, instagram, etc. is great, but if you're a production company hoping to make money through providing services like producing, directing, writing, etc. (which is primarily how I've made a living - I don't really make money directly from my original podcasts), having a website is a must. if you don't want to pay for squarespace or wix, you can make a website through tumblr and then just buy a url and have it redirect (I wrote about this a bit in my production guide). same deal if you want to be hired as a writer - having a website or some kind of resume is huge. I'm not saying you need to have an instagram detailing your personal life or anything (for me, I get personal about my thoughts on social media, but I never post my family/partner/non-industry friends/etc. some creators have had massive success building mystery (lemony snicket, the team behind midst), but I have no idea how to do that lol

this is already too long, so to summarize: build a community, both in your audience and your colleagues, be very clear and open about the skills you have/services you provide, and, ideally, do a lot of different things that put you in front of a lot of different audiences. try a lot of things and stick with what works.

to speak more on my personal journey, just briefly: 90% of being successful in the art and entertainment industry is luck. I know that people always say that, and it sucks as advice because it's not advice at all, but it is just true. luck and timing. the only way to improve your chances are to make stuff, meet people, and be easily accessible.

I know that's all exceptionally broad advice - if you'd like to share more specifics about your career goals, I'm happy to get more specific too!