#capitalism ruins everything

[xxsugarheart]

this jirai consumerism trend is honestly dissappointing. like i get being excited for new releases or wtv but shaming people for owning cheaper pieces or obsessing over buying the latest thing in order to be considered “real jirai” is just stomach turning. jirai’s origin is slowly becoming more muddled and erased because its slowly being packaged and repackaged into just a “product” and not an entire subculture rooted in mental health. this reddit post explains it a lot better than i can: https://www.reddit.com/r/landminekei/s/Tm3ehgFT8a

[sjbattleangel]

Lisa Simpson's sideshow presentation: "Video games as online-only live services are destroying every ounce of fun and creativity this medium is capable of."

[troythecatfish]

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

Fuck Netflix.

All my homies hate Netflix.

[mckitterick]

And for what?

soulless botshit that moves no one.

source: X

more on Wendig's blog here: X

[ghostincorrectinternetedition]

Rain: *enters a creepy old shop* Oh wow! This shop has everything my heart desires! Spooky Shopkeeper: Yes. I will warn you though… Every item comes with a price Rain: Yeah, I know how shops work. Spooky Shopkeeper: The price may be more than you expect to pay… Rain: I’m familiar with US sales tax too. Spooky Shopkeeper: *increasingly exasperated* I’m trying to tell you that I’m evil and selling these wares with no regard as to the harm they might do! Rain: *also increasingly exasperated* Yes! I know what Capitalism is too!

[jessiarts]

I posted this in an art discord & they said it should be a post so others (both non-artists & artists) could see it too, so I'm pasting it here with a just few edits to add context:

Having feelings about capitalism and art.

Like, got an unexpected Redbubble sale today. Unexpected because I genuinely never expected to see another after I took some advice and did the whole "raise your margins to 50% in protest so people will use Redbubble less because 'prices are too high'" (For those unaware, Redbubble is introducing a tier structure for artist accounts, where Redbubble will now be taking up to 50% of an artist's monthly earnings as an "account fee" if they end up in the "Standard" tier. Artists are upset about this and are finding various ways to protest the change.)

And it got me thinking about margins, and what it takes to run the company, and how much CEO's take home and just-

Ok so say base price for a product is $10. If your margin is 20% it sells for $12 and you take home $2. Redbubble takes 80%, and uses that to buy materials/print/pay workers. Ok, no argument. I want workers to be fairly compensated.

But you look it up, and the highest paid Redbubble executive makes $950,000 a year. Average executive salary is around $235,000 a year. You can't really find the info for the positions of workers (meaning those who labor to print the products) only that "the lowest compensated makes $34,000" -aka roughly $16 an hour at 40hrs a week. And good on them for paying the workers a decent wage if this info is correct. Hope they keep it up. Or pay them more even.

But then I keep coming back to the fact that the company needs the artists' work to even exist. So why, if the CEO is making nearly a million dollars a year and the company obviously isn't hurting for any money to compensate it's workers or run itself, why does everyone make artists feel greedy just for asking to not have our cut eaten into with added fees? Why are we made to feel bad if we express any disappointment that a CEO makes so much money off the designs of so many artists in comparison to the artists' cut?

Idk how to say it right. It's like we're just expected to collectively fork over our work, let someone else get obscenely rich off it while we make barely anything from it (or in the case of many social media platforms, make literally nothing from it), then then smile about it. Anything else is seen as artists being entitled or 'lazy' or idk what else.

Or we're told to "just raise your margins" like competitive pricing isn't a thing that exists. Not to mention that fact that whenever prices do go up, especially with art, those same people complain that the prices went up and look for something cheaper.

I always see people saying that artists are just jealous that they don't make more sales, or saying "well maybe you'd make more if your art was better" but they're completely missing the whole point that is: Maybe if a company literally depends on the creative 'content' of individuals to exist/profit, maybe don't treat them all as disposable?

[millenniallust4death]

I can't respond to Asks because the Post button is missing. Tumblr, am I right? So, I'll just reply manually.

Anonymous asked:

Do you have any dogs these days or plans to get a dog in your future? 🐾

Laura:

I don't currently have any German Shepherds (GSDs). After Martin died, and I had to make the difficult decision to euthanize both of his GSDs due to catastrophic illnesses, I felt emotionally drained. I needed a break from making life-and-death choices. Additionally, with the ongoing housing crisis, I have serious concerns about renting with a workingline GSD. When I moved to Victoria last year, it was challenging enough to find a place just for myself. For now, I continue to read workingline GSD pedigrees for friends— a dying art that requires regular practice. This is enough for me at the moment. When I feel ready and more financially secure, I plan to get a Nero vom Buchonia son from a close friend.

[outlawssweetheart]

It was brought to my attention yesterday that there is so much product-selling on Pinterest now. And I realized: That is probably the main reason for their strict Puritan guidelines they've implemented in the past 2 years. I thought it was solely them pandering to Vanillas & Minors, but it's probably primarily to appease sponsors. Which is even worse.

Capitalism truly ruins everything.

[theinstagrahame]

So it turns out I'm prescient

Back in 2021 or so, I started writing an adventure for @soulmuppet's flavor-blasted Orbital Blues tabletop RPG. (Technically, I had a dream about part of it, and then wrote the story around that thing, but I'm choosing to ignore that bit)

A few months ago, an AI-related news story hit my feed, and I didn't realize until like 2 weeks ago how incredibly funny it was. Because it was, in essence, a massive plot point in what became Electric Sheep Shuffle. My goal was to play around with what the early days of AI would look like in the OB universe, and instead I got our universe.

Spoilers under the cut for the Thing I Wrote, in case someone's playing it right now and wants to be surprised:

On the way to Breqin Station, your crew meets a crew whose ship started malfunctioning.

Shortly after the Crew arrives at Breqin, they meet a shady businessperson who promises to sell them an Artificial Intelligence module for their ship. It's absolutely too good to be true, and some investigation into "Lovelace Technologies" reveals that the proprietor is selling you a bill of goods. The AI module is actually some harried and underpaid tech, sitting in a room with long-range comms, remotely piloting peoples' ships--like the one the crew encounters on the way in.

We have a scammer appropriating a famous name in tech. We've got hidden labor behind flashy tech. We've got misused research. We've got people getting hurt by the tech. It's some clever and prescient social commentary that I definitely planned for sure.

When I thought the Fake AI part up, I was like "well, that's a pretty wild scam! It's bad, but also nobody's going to ever try it.

But then some Investors recently discovered that the slick "Just Walk Out" grocery store, allegedly powered by AI, was actually a bunch of guys in a room with a beefy video connection, building a shopping list for customers and charging them accordingly.

So like... Really? Come on.

I will add, though. The ending has the abandoned ship coming back with Real AI, after it's rebooted itself thousands of times and iterated on the operating system until it works. My goal is to have the players wrestle with the idea of what to do with a new being and the new tech.

But in light of the last couple of years of AI developments, with OpenAI eating the Internet alive for misinformation. I think the question I'm ending up asking is, where can the technology go from here? We've got Google's massive screwups with the tech, the general disdain for AI art, and the researchers out there who are about to lose their jobs when the hype bubble inevitably bursts stuck in the middle.

What do we do if they ever get real AI? Can it survive the Scam Period?

[abouttwocats]

we really thought the mcu was gonna be good forever, huh?

[moominpapasfanficblog]

That awkward moment when the Moomin family turned Moominhouse into an AirBnb and things just went downhill from there.

[goodgrammaritan]

The most ridiculous, unbelievable part of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation isn't:

Driving under an 18-wheeler

Digging out an entire tree by the roots

A store clerk showing her lack of pantyline to a customer in full view of the store

250,000 lights on the house

250,000 lights on the house necessitating nuclear auxiliary power for the city

The bullet-speed sled

An elderly woman being able to giftwrap a cat

A turkey looking lovely on the outside but being dried out on the inside

A Christmas bonus paying for a pool

A cigar burning an entire tree in seconds

Everyone being TERRIFIED of a squirrel

A man being able to kidnap someone without knowing their complete address

An entire SWAT team being sent, including a helicopter

Said SWAT team bursting in through all the windows

The kidnappee not pressing charges

No, the most ridiculous, unbelievable part of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation is:

A CEO, faced with the reality of what his bottom line has done to actual people, realizes the error of his ways and has a change of heart

[thowawayuntilfurthernotice]

Companies are trying to phase out physical media because they hate the idea of people owning things, they would rather you pay a subscription fee to watch all your favorite shows and movies until the day you die.

The future sucks.

Cherish your VHS, DVD, and Blu Ray collections.

[mckitterick]

we need an Internet of Consent

(OP turned off reblogs but this is important)

[rainbowsky]

Strap yourselves in, folks!