#channelling this energy

[theprogressivesadist]

[ruporas]

trigunned the hades or hadesed the trigun (id in alt)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon" energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss

Today (Oct 20), I'm in Charleston, WV at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

For a brief time this year, the bestselling "bitter lemon drink" on Amazon was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by Catfish UK prankster Oobah Butler in a stunt for a new Channel 4 doc, "The Great Amazon Heist":

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist

Collecting driver piss is surprisingly easy. Amazon, you see, puts its drivers on a quota that makes it impossible for them to drive safely, park conscientiously, or, indeed, fulfill their basic human biological needs. Amazon has long waged war on its employees' kidneys, marking down warehouse workers for "time off task" when they visit the toilets.

As tales of drivers pissing – and shitting! – in their vans multiplied, Amazon took decisive action. The company enacted a strict zero tolerance policy for drivers returning to the depot with bottles of piss in their vans.

That's where Butler comes in: the roads leading to Amazon delivery depots are lined with bottles of piss thrown out of delivery vans by drivers who don't want to lose their jobs, which made harvesting the raw material for "Release Energy" a straightforward matter.

Butler was worried that he wouldn't be able to list his product on Amazon because he didn't have the requisite "food and drinks licensing" certificates, so he listed his drink in Amazon's refillable pump dispenser category. But Amazon's systems detected the mismatch and automatically shifted the product into the drinks section.

Butler enlisted some confederates to place orders for his drink, and it quickly rocketed to the top of Amazon's listings for the category, which led to Amazon's recommendation engine pushing the item on people who weren't in on the gag. When these orders came in, Butler pulled the plug, but not before an Amazon rep telephoned him to pitch him turning packaging, shipping and fulfillment over to Amazon:

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-let-its-drivers-urine-be-sold-as-an-energy-drink/

The Release Energy prank was just one stunt Butler pulled for his doc; he also went undercover at an Amazon warehouse, during a period when Amazon hired an extra 1,000 workers for its warehouses in Coventry, UK, in a successful bid to dilute pro-union sentiment in his workforce in advance of a key union vote:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-great-amazon-heist-oobah-butler-review

Butler's stint as an Amazon warehouse worker only lasted a couple of days, ending when Amazon recognized him and fired him.

The contrast between Amazon's ability to detect an undercover reporter and its inability to spot bottles of piss being marketed as bitter lemon energy drink says it all, really. Corporations like Amazon hire vast armies of "threat intelligence" creeps who LARP at being CIA superspies, subjecting employees and activists to intense and often illegal surveillance.

But while Amazon's defensive might is laser-focused on the threat of labor organizers and documentarians, the company can't figure out that one of its bestselling products is bottles of its tormented drivers' own urine.

In the USA, the FTC is suing Amazon for its monopolistic tactics, arguing that the company has found ways to raise prices and reduce quality by trapping manufacturers and sellers with its logistics operation, taking $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar they earn and forcing them to raise prices at all retailers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The Release Energy stunt shows where Amazon's priorities are. Not only did Release Energy get listed on Amazon without any quality checks, the company actually nudged it into a category where it was more likely to be consumed by a person. The only notice the company took of Release Energy was in its logistics and manufacturing department – the part of the business that extracts the monopoly rents at issue in the FTC case – which tracked Butler down in order to sell him these services.

The drivers whose piss Butler collected don't work directly for Amazon, they work for a Delivery Service Partner. These DSPs are victims of a pyramid scheme that Amazon set up. DSP operators lease vans and pay to have them skinned in Amazon livery and studded with Amazon sensors. They take out long-term leases on depots, and hire drivers who dress in Amazon uniforms. Their drivers are minutely monitored by Amazon, down to the movements of their eyeballs.

But none of this is "Amazon" – it's all run by an "entrepreneur," whom Amazon can cut loose without notice, leaving them with unfairly terminated employees, outstanding workers' comp claims, a fleet of Amazon-skinned vehicles and unbreakable facilities leases:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Speaking to Wired, Amazon denied that it forces its drivers to piss in bottles, but Butler clearly catches a DSP dispatcher telling drivers "If you pee in a bottle and leave it [in the vehicle], you will get a point for that" – that is, the part you get punished for isn't the peeing, it's the leaving.

Amazon's defense against the FTC is that it spares no effort to keep its marketplace safe. As Amazon spokesperson James Drummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.

In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," FTC Chair Lina Khan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

In Butler's documentary, Khan's hypothesis is thoroughly validated: here's a company extracting hundreds of billions from merchants who raise prices to compensate, and those monopoly rents are "invested" in union-busting and countermeasures against investigative journalists, while the tools to keep you from accidentally getting a bottle of piss in the mail are laughably primitive.

Truly, Amazon is the apex predator of the platform era:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

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/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[eggwishing]

someday... you gotta learn when to QUIT.

[magicomens]

Jeez, Arthur, at least let him have his dramatic confession scene

First >> Prev >> Next

[pookietsunoda]

Look I know it's promo for a new Aston Martin car but the Astons having "ALL WILL BE VANQUISHED" in blood red on their halos is really not helping them beat the supervillain team allegations

[ofmd-ann]

[hinamie]

色彩 [Shikisai]

[sirenmoontarot]

A letter from your Future Self 📜🪽

𝒲𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝒹𝑜𝑒𝓈 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝒻𝓊𝓉𝓊𝓇𝑒 𝓈𝑒𝓁𝒻 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓉𝑜 𝓀𝓃𝑜𝓌?

𝑀𝓎 𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓅 ~ 𝒫𝓈𝓎𝒸𝒽𝒾𝒸 𝑅𝑒𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 ~ 𝐻𝑒𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈

Group 1

Okay guys for this group i am sensing your future self wants you to understand the importance of the unseen right now in your life, the unseen powers, the etheric guidance you receive, clairvoyant, intuitive hits. The power of the unseen forces in your life.Your future self is telling you that the apparent dead ends in your current road have an important and necessary purpose, they are meant to be. You have a vision, and its important you become more conscious about it, about your sense of purpose, some of you felt it since very young, and if not, try to know yourself more, to de depth to understand what drives you. All that is happening now, is leading you to your vision, and to your purpose here, and much more you cant yet see, this is the biggest theme here, being led to where you really cant see, all the detours, road ends, side paths... all is subtly and succesfully leading you to where you need to be. Some of you guys have important father issues, you have to acknowledge these issues and start healing them. You have to become your own parent, a nurturing one, and use the masculine energies to hold and support your vision. The masculine energy inside of us is very important, it also help us protect ourselves, defend what is important for us, sutain us and our projects, responsibility, etc. You need nurutirng, again, this is very important for you. The nurturing side of the archetypal father energy. You lack and need a strong healed masculine energy. Nurture, balance and heal the masculine in yourself, it will help you to find a suitable partner with healed masculine energies. you must allow changes to come to your life. you msut trust in the power of syncronity, in order to fruition your goals. For some of you guys, you are really encouraged on just focusing and working on your present time, your gudes are like, winking at you and just giving you the present moment certainty because its the only way you could make things work right now, everything else is blurred so you focus on what youhave to focus till the fog disappears! And a very different and exciting landscape will be in front of your eyes. Work on celebration, celebration of this present moment, gratitude, engage more with the people around you, finx excuses to gather or celebrate a party.

Thank you for reading dear group number 1 🤍 Lots of blessings 🦋see you in next PAC readings 🪽⭐️

𝑀𝓎 𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓅 ~ 𝒫𝓈𝓎𝒸𝒽𝒾𝒸 𝑅𝑒𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 ~ 𝐻𝑒𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈

Group 2

Okay guys, in this group, damn the messages are getting are so deep T.T. Your future self is calling for you to literally melt into oneness, in order to release, find divine acceptance, forgive, and then, let it go, let it fade into the light, let it destroy itself even. This is also a message of, closing the doors of past traumas, finding closure, in order to finally end them, to end the ways they influence your life right now, because they are not benefitting you. I keep hearing ‘’destroy’’. Maybe some of you have to give yourselves the liberating power of saying ‘’not again’’, of getting mad, of feeling the rage that initiates the fire to let all that that needs to be destroyed, burn. Rage initiates change. Sometime it is good and it is called sacred rage for a reason. Maybe some of you have supressed anger for a long time and, specially your true feelings for so long, trying ti behave, trying to react and behave in the proper way. For some of you this is a huge rock, tied to your foot that doesnt let you advance. How could you dance trhoguh life with such thing attached to your foot. It is time you claim your sovereignity, your power, it is time to do so and only you can do it. You are not meant to carry these stuff that holds you, you are meant to decide, choose for your life and embrace all your power, some of you are scared of that. Now for this group you are also encouraged to heal the mother energies, the mother wound, and integrate this aspect, healthily in your subconscious. Mohtering yourself, your inner child, the aspect of the mother energies that is capable of supporting you, holding you, loving you unconditionally while you are transiting this time is the one you need. You need not to feel alone and unsupported by yourself.

Your future self is telling you to call in the Queen archetype, the queen energies, the worthy, the one that knows her value, her deservingess, her power, she is sovereign, she chooses her own life, she knows what she wants, she has no doubts, she doesnt believe in ‘’no’’, i feel some of you in this group, restrict or have restricted yourselves a lot and your future self is telling you noooo dont do that. Embody this powerful archetype and believe all you want you can have and you will have because that is how the Queen believes so, eveyrthing is possible for her. Having a safe space is important but do not constrain yourself, do not put too many limits on yourself, for example you might be a bit shy, and you think it is okay etc, but at some point you will have to grow and for some situations you will have to need not to be so shy, it is just an example, it is not wrong to be shy, but the thing is that, for some of you, your path requires you to grow certain aspects for certain situations that you are not comfortable with.

Thank you for reading dear group number 2 🤍 Lots of blessings 🦋see you in next PAC readings 👑🍰

𝑀𝓎 𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓅 ~ 𝒫𝓈𝓎𝒸𝒽𝒾𝒸 𝑅𝑒𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 ~ 𝐻𝑒𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈

Group 3

Your future self is telling you is to stray from the enrgies of self judgment, be midnful how you use this archetype within you, if its limiting you. You are very wise, you have a lot of discernment, a lot of knowledge of the truth, but you need to stop the internal judge. And i am getting lush mountain vibes, you have to connect with your inner queen energy, again this archetype is coming up in this reading, like in the group two but in this case, this archetype might be less alien to you. You are called to own your sovereignity, self worth and the belief in your power and ability. You are called to do so, and to also find your own personal temple, some of the people on this group have gone trhough insane big internal changes, for you the time is for rest and restoration now. Your future self is telling you that you have worked so hard and that you need this period now. Your future self wants you to engage in more recreational, enjoyful non productive activities, stop working so hard for a while you deserve this rest and restoration. And very importantly, Love. Ahh love is essential, I feel the energies are telling you guys, that you are born warriors, you fight for your causes, it is in your core, however you are being called to, embrace the heart energies, connect to your dreams, connect to love. Not everything has to be a fight… put the warrior energies at rest. You have to understand what youre going trhough, face your shadow, your darkness. And love is a big theme here in the sense of, a positive influence that will come in your lives, you need to work on your relations, add more love into your life, allow love into your life.The big changes you went trhough or are going trhough are revolving your deepest roots. A need to reassess your fights, endeavours, a need to become more serious and awake about what is important to you, and to connect to your heart more and give it more space and presence in your life with healthy, meaninful positive relationships, let yourself love.

Thank you for reading dear group number 3🤍 Lots of blessings 🦋see you in next PAC readings 💘☁️

𝑀𝓎 𝓈𝒽𝑜𝓅 ~ 𝒫𝓈𝓎𝒸𝒽𝒾𝒸 𝑅𝑒𝒶𝒹𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈 ~ 𝐻𝑒𝒶𝓁𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈

Alla 𓇬 @sirenmoontarot

[grumfield]

♪ I’m catatonic in your arms

Crying, “How did I cause so much harm?”♪

[halfstayed]

Maisie Peters, "Holy Revival" / art by Henry Wolf and Fletcher Sibthorp

[takaraphoenix]

Single Mom Stiles (*cough* Stiles and Liam) leaving the pack because of Theo and, now packless, find their way to the Hale Pack.

Who are. Still alive and around and thriving.

Alpha Derek, Peter, Isaac, Boyd, Erica, Jackson, Cora, maybe the twins, I haven't decided on that one yet.

(Maybe Malia/Kira will go with them. Because I love Kira and I think Malia needs to get to own the Hale heritage.)

Can you imagine Derek seeing Stiles be pack mom even without a pack and desperately wanting to court Stiles, like, his inner wolf is going nuts over this. But. To get to Stiles, Derek will have to get past Stiles' very protective pup first.

[dailyhatsune]

ended up taking a nap because wow it is Very Hot

[jays-supersonic-dynamo]

new prediction for dragons rising just dropped

[bread-cat-luna]

Happy pride month here's these two losers

[hisbucky]

Chris: You. Tommy: ...Me? Chris, shaking his head: I thought you were cool once. Never again. Tommy: Wha-what did I do? Chris: Of all the things you had to do, you really had to muck up all the progress I've made with getting my dad to ask Buck out! Tommy: Say what now? Chris: You better make my other dad happy, because I've got crutches and I'm not afraid to use them! Tommy, blinking aggressively: ...What.