#big three

[cometjuice]

wip: the beeg threee

[transspeciesguy]

Stop saying pedophile when you mean sex offender.

Stop saying zoophile when you mean sex offender.

Stop saying necrophile when you mean sex offender.

Stop saying paraphile when you mean sex offender.

[imabillyami]

(I still don’t think Naomi did it btw.)

Thoughts under the cut.

If she really did it? She probably did it for Bianca. Bianca is somehow tangled up in this, either pretending to be Naomi and attacking Jade or being in the cahoots with Naomi.

And it’ll probably lead to Jade vs Bianca (vs Naomi?) at Summerslam.

It has to, right?

Right?

Pure speculation, but what I’m thinking/ would love to see:

With Naomi out for a while, Bianca is gonna try and pin the whole thing on her. Pretend to be besties with Jade again.

And once Naomi returns she’s gonna go after Jade for going after her and costing her the Chamber, but also after Bianca for doing her so dirty (whether they were previously in the cahoots or not).

If Bianca gets that title at Mania… oh boy.

(I’ve been one of the people who’s been wanting a Bianca heel turn for years at this point.)

Big 3 in a World Title Match at Summerslam? Sign me uuuuup.

[sirius-ate-my-homework-irl]

I saw a post somewhere about how Percy is probably jealous of Jason's relationship with Nico, because Nico can connect with Jason as an older brother figure, while with Percy there's all this baggage and the reminder of Bianca hanging over them.

And I realized. Nico is probably jealous of Jason for similar reasons. Jason and Percy have this casual bromance going on. They fight together, they make storms together, they regard each other as equals. And Nico is just. There. The youngest one. The weird one. And there's too much stuff between him and Percy for them to ever be completely comfortable together, even though, I think, Nico would secretly love to get a Percy fistbump.

Idk now I want to write a fic about it

[puppyaulait]

[u-sari]

The future is ahead of us.

[cloverr-overr]

shitty mha doodles w the headcanon generator pt 2 :33

[mostlysignssomeportents]

"Efficiency" left the Big Three vulnerable to smart UAW tactics

Tomorrow (September 22), I'm (virtually) presenting at the DIG Festival in Modena, Italy. Tomorrow night, I'll be in person at LA's Book Soup for the launch of Justin C Key's "The World Wasn’t Ready for You." On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine.

It's been 143 days since the WGA went on strike against the Hollywood studios. While early tactical leaks from the studios had studio execs chortling and twirling their mustaches about writers caving once they started losing their homes, the strikers aren't wavering – they're still out there, pounding the picket lines, every weekday:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/09/how-hollywood-writers-make-ends-meet-100-days-into-the-writers-guild-strike.html

The studios obviously need writers. That gleeful, anonymous studio exec who got such an obvious erotic charge at the thought of workers being rendered homeless as punishment for challenging his corporate power completely misread the room, and his comments didn't demoralize the writers. Instead, they inspired the actors to go on strike, too.

But how have the writers stayed out since May Day? How have the actors stayed out for 69 days since their strike started on Bastille Day? We can thank the studios for that! As it turns out, the studios have devoted so much energy to rendering creative workers as precarious as possible, hiring as little as they can getting away with and using punishing overtime as a substitute for adequate staffing that they've eliminated all the workers who can't survive on side-hustles and savings for six or seven months at a time.

But even for those layoff-hardened workers, long strikes are brutal, and of course, all the affiliated trades, from costumers to grips, are feeling the pain. The strike fund only goes so far, and non-striking, affected workers don't even get that. That's why I've been donating regularly to the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps all affected workers out with cash transfers (I just gave them another $500):

https://secure2.convio.net/afa/site/Donation2?df_id=8117&8117.donation=form1&mfc_pref=T

As hot labor summer is revealed as a turning point – not just a season – long strikes will become the norm. Bosses still don't believe in worker power, and until they get their minds right, they're going to keep on trying to starve their workforces back inside. To get a sense of how long workers will have to hold out, just consider the Warrior Met strike, where Alabama coal-miners stayed out for 23 months:

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/warrior-met-strike-union/

As Kim Kelly explained to Adam Conover in the latest Factually podcast, the Alabama coal strikers didn't get anywhere near the attention that the Hollywood strikers have enjoyed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvyMHf7Yg0Q

(To learn more about the untold story of worker organizing, from prison unions to the key role that people of color and women played in labor history, check out Kelly's book, "Fight Like Hell," now in paperback:)

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Fight-Like-Hell/Kim-Kelly/9781982171063

Which brings me to the UAW strike. This is an historic strike, the first time that the UAW has struck all of the Big Three automakers at once. Past autoworkers' strikes have marked turning points for all American workers. The 1945/46 GM strike established employers' duty to cover worker pensions, health care, and cost of living allowances. The GM strike created the American middle-class:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-18-uaw-strikes-built-american-middle-class/

The Big Three are fighting for all the marbles here. They are refusing to allow unions to organize EV factories. Given that no more internal combustion cars will be in production in just a few short years, that's tantamount to eliminating auto unions altogether. The automakers are flush with cash, including billions in public subsidies from multiple bailouts, along with billions more from greedflation price-gouging. A long siege is inevitable, as the decimillionaires running these companies earn their pay by starving out their workers:

https://www.businessinsider.com/general-motors-ceo-mary-barra-salary-auto-workers-strike-uaw-2023-9

The UAW knows this, of course, and their new leadership – helmed by the union's radical president Shawn Fain – has a plan. UAW workers are engaged in tactical striking, shutting down key parts of the supply chain on a rolling basis, making the 90-day strike fund stretch much farther:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-09-18-labors-militant-creativity/

In this project, they are greatly aided by Big Car's own relentless pursuit of profit. The automakers – like every monopolized, financialized sector – have stripped all the buffers and slack out of their operations. Inventory on hand is kept to a bare minimum. Inputs are sourced from the cheapest bidder, and they're brought to the factory by the lowest-cost option. Resiliency – spare parts, backup machinery – is forever at war with profits, and profits have won and won and won, leaving auto production in a brittle, and easily shattered state.

This is especially true for staffing. Automakers are violently allergic to hiring workers, because new workers get benefits and workplace protection. Instead, the car companies routinely offer "voluntary" overtime to their existing workforce. By refusing this overtime, workers can kneecap production, without striking.

Enter "Eight and Skate," a campaign among UAW workers to clock out after their eight hour shift. As Keith Brower Brown writes for Labor Notes, the UAW organizers are telling workers that "It’s crossing an unofficial picket line to work overtime. It’s helping out the company":

https://labornotes.org/2023/09/work-extra-during-strike-auto-workers-say-eight-and-skate

Eight and Skate has already started to work; the Buffalo Ford plant can no longer run its normal weekend shifts because workers are refusing to put in voluntary overtime. Of course, bosses will strike back: the next step will be forced overtime, which will lead to the unsafe conditions that unionized workers are contractually obliged to call paid work-stoppages over, shutting down operations without touching the strike fund.

What's more, car bosses can't just halt safety stoppages or change the rules on overtime; per the UAW's last contract, bosses are required to bargain on changes to overtime rules:

https://uaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Working-Without-Contract-FAQ-FINAL-2.pdf

Car bosses have become lazily dependent on overtime. At GM's "highly profitable" SUV factory in Arlington, TX, normal production runs a six-days, 24 hours per day. Workers typically work five eight-hour days and nine hours on Saturdays. That's been the status quo for 11 years, but when bosses circulated the usual overtime signup sheet last week, every worker wrote "a big fat NO" next to their names.

Writing for The American Prospect, David Dayen points out that this overtime addiction puts a new complexion on the much-hyped workerpocalypse that EVs will supposedly bring about. EVs are much simpler to build than conventional cars, the argument goes, so a US transition to EVs will throw many autoworkers out of work:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-09-20-big-threes-labor-shortages-uaw/

But the reality is that most autoworkers are doing one and a half jobs already. Reducing the "workforce" by a third could leave all these workers with their existing jobs, and the 40-hour workweek that their forebears fought for at GM inn 1945/46. Add to that the additional workers needed to make batteries, build and maintain charging infrastructure, and so on, and there's no reason to think that EVs will weaken autoworker power.

And as Dayen points out, this overtime addiction isn't limited to cars. It's also endemic to the entertainment industry, where writers' "mini rooms" and other forms of chronic understaffing are used to keep workforces at a skeleton crew, even when the overtime costs more than hiring new workers.

Bosses call themselves job creators, but they have a relentless drive to destroy jobs. If there's one thing bosses hate, it's paying workers – hence all the hype about AI and automation. The stories about looming AI-driven mass unemployment are fairy tales, but they're tailor made for financiers who get alarming, life-threatening priapism at the though of firing us all and replacing us with shell-scripts:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

This is why Republican "workerism" rings so hollow. Trump's GOP talks a big game about protecting "workers" (by which they mean anglo men) from immigrants and "woke captialism," but they have nothing to say about protecting workers from bosses and bankers who see every dime a worker gets as misappropriated from their dividend.

Unsurprisingly, conservative message-discipline sucks. As Luke Savage writes in Jacobin, for every mealymouthed Josh Hawley mouthing talking points that "support workers" by blaming China and Joe Biden for the Big Three's greed, there's a Tim Scott, saying the quiet part aloud:

https://jacobin.com/2023/09/republicans-uaw-strike-hawley-trump-scott/

Quoth Senator Scott: "I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike. He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that we can use that once again, absolutely":

https://twitter.com/American_Bridge/status/1704136706574741988

The GOP's workerism is a tissue-thin fake. They can never and will never support real worker power. That creates an opportunity for Biden and Democrats to seize:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

Reversing two generations of anti-worker politics is a marathon, not a sprint. The strikes are going to run for months, even years. Every worker will be called upon to support their striking siblings, every day. We can do it. Solidarity now. Solidarity forever.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule

[ottpopfic]

Something i noticed about Big Three power’s

Demigods who are not big three have their gifts coming from inside themselves, directly from there body or genetic makeup. Leo’s fire is made from him its part of him, Pipers charm speak is something innate she can do, Will needs physical contact for his vitalkinisis because it comes from his body.

Big Three kids on the other hand are manipulating the world around them, they are in-tune with an outer element that they are controlling. Percy is directly manipulating water that is already there not making his own, Hazel is pulling gems from that earth beneath her, Jason controls air around him to fly its not something his body can just do

The only exception of this is can think of is Nico and Shadow Travel, and it is the only Big Three gift that is shown to negatively affect them physically past just getting tired.

[willsolace-loml]

why must there be a "most powerful of the big three kids"???? you could say any of them are the most powerful, theyre literally MEANT to be the most powerful.

[nflballgirl]

[clemensiadovecotes]

The underrated BIG 3!

I feel like they’ve kind of been undermined and a bit underused in the show and in the manga especially Nejire, I love them all so much and what they mean to each other��

[purpleshadow-star]

Grover was really out here finding and collecting Big Three kids like they were Pokémon. He really said, "gotta catch em all," and he did.

[whichbasketwitchbasket]

PAC: March Advice <33

Take what resonates, leave what doesn't. For entertainment purposes only. No pressure; take some of that off.

Pile 1:

Winter depression is so close to over, and you need to enjoy the cold weather. It's still snowing where I live, but we're replacing our fleece-lined with sweatshirts. You won't have time to bedrot in your next stage of life--at least enjoy the time you have. Get cozy. Change your sheets. Enjoy the cold while it lasts.

Pile 2:

Start applying NOW. Get those internships NOW. Get into college NOW. No dream is too small. Every dream is just as unrealistic as every other dream. I'm getting real creative vibes from this pile. It's one thing to talk about your projects (writing, drawing, posting, any people who sew out there?) it's another thing to *do* them. DO your projects. Spring is the season of growth, plant those seeds. Start. Now. I don't care how bad it is.

[erenfox]

Ranking the trios of the children of the Big 3:

1. Thalia, Percy, Nico: their dynamic is to die for. and the power team when they're together? pure. masterpiece. ik we got moments of them in pjo and the sword of hades but MAN would it have been badass to see them kick some primordial asses together in hoo and toa as well!

2. Jason, Percy, Nico: their dynamic, although rocky in the start, was fun to read by the time of jason's death. ik ricky never gave them proper brotherly bonding time and instead shoved the whole weird ass percico and jasico dynamic, but fanfics of them hanging out as normal brothers have cured me lmao.

Honourary #1: Bianca, Hazel, Nico: do i really need to explain to the rrverse community how this was such a tragically wasted potential ;_;

Honourary #2: Thalia, Jason, Percy: oof the hilarious trio they couldve been! the regular banter between thalia and percy with jason being dragged to choose between one of them lmaooo. and also the true sibling vibes they couldve radiated on the battlefield? missed opportunity fr :(

3. Thalia, Percy, Bianca: no cuz their relationship in ttc was so sweet ;-; the way thalia and percy looked out for bianca as if she was their little sister really makes me tear up on the rereads. rip bianca you couldve been such an overpowered child of hades, and together with percy and thalis you couldve showed the gods that demigods aren't to be messed with!

4. Jason, Percy, Hazel: the roman trio! oh how i wish we had gotten them governing camp jupiter together, showing the others why they deserve to be known as the roman little 3! but at least they got pagetime together on the argo ii lol, just wished we had more of their dynamic.

[bluespring864]

Andy telling us what he'd want the big four polycule to look like ;-)

[W]hat all gay tennis fans want to know, of course, is which one of his “Big Three” opponents does he most fancy.

So I ask him to rank Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in order of Snog, Marry and Avoid.

Murray throws his head back and emits a real belly laugh.

“Oh God! I’m not going to give you an avoid!” (He is nothing if not diplomatic.)

“Can I have an alternative to avoid?” he pleads, “or I’ll get crucified by whoever I pick!”

Eventually he comes up with his answer.

“I would marry Roger… and then I would have to snog the other two. I know it’s a cop-out but I’m not avoiding anyone!”

from this 2020 interview with Pride Life