#good business ideas

[hinamie]

long way home

[thatskindarough]

Crowley sprawled out on a couch bathing under a heat lamp…an essential component of proper snake care.

This piece was a commission from the wonderful @alphacentaurinebula for their friend @fellshish ‘s amazing and hilarious fic, Empirical study on the principles of snake care for Fells’ birthday! It was a lot of fun to work on, happy birthday my friend!

[reasonsforhope]

Federal regulators on Tuesday [April 23, 2024] enacted a nationwide ban on new noncompete agreements, which keep millions of Americans — from minimum-wage earners to CEOs — from switching jobs within their industries.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday afternoon voted 3-to-2 to approve the new rule, which will ban noncompetes for all workers when the regulations take effect in 120 days [So, the ban starts in early September, 2024!]. For senior executives, existing noncompetes can remain in force. For all other employees, existing noncompetes are not enforceable.

[That's right: if you're currently under a noncompete agreement, it's completely invalid as of September 2024! You're free!!]

The antitrust and consumer protection agency heard from thousands of people who said they had been harmed by noncompetes, illustrating how the agreements are "robbing people of their economic liberty," FTC Chair Lina Khan said. 

The FTC commissioners voted along party lines, with its two Republicans arguing the agency lacked the jurisdiction to enact the rule and that such moves should be made in Congress...

Why it matters

The new rule could impact tens of millions of workers, said Heidi Shierholz, a labor economist and president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. 

"For nonunion workers, the only leverage they have is their ability to quit their job," Shierholz told CBS MoneyWatch. "Noncompetes don't just stop you from taking a job — they stop you from starting your own business."

Since proposing the new rule, the FTC has received more than 26,000 public comments on the regulations. The final rule adopted "would generally prevent most employers from using noncompete clauses," the FTC said in a statement.

The agency's action comes more than two years after President Biden directed the agency to "curtail the unfair use" of noncompetes, under which employees effectively sign away future work opportunities in their industry as a condition of keeping their current job. The president's executive order urged the FTC to target such labor restrictions and others that improperly constrain employees from seeking work.

"The freedom to change jobs is core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy," Khan said in a statement making the case for axing noncompetes. "Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand."

Real-life consequences

In laying out its rationale for banishing noncompetes from the labor landscape, the FTC offered real-life examples of how the agreements can hurt workers.

In one case, a single father earned about $11 an hour as a security guard for a Florida firm, but resigned a few weeks after taking the job when his child care fell through. Months later, he took a job as a security guard at a bank, making nearly $15 an hour. But the bank terminated his employment after receiving a letter from the man's prior employer stating he had signed a two-year noncompete.

In another example, a factory manager at a textile company saw his paycheck dry up after the 2008 financial crisis. A rival textile company offered him a better job and a big raise, but his noncompete blocked him from taking it, according to the FTC. A subsequent legal battle took three years, wiping out his savings. 

-via CBS Moneywatch, April 24, 2024

--

Note:

A lot of people think that noncompete agreements are only a white-collar issue, but they absolutely affect blue-collar workers too, as you can see from the security guard anecdote.

In fact, one in six food and service workers are bound by noncompete agreements. That's right - one in six food workers can't leave Burger King to work for Wendy's [hypothetical example], in the name of "trade secrets." (x, x, x)

Noncompete agreements also restrict workers in industries from tech and video games to neighborhood yoga studios. "The White House estimates that tens of millions of workers are subject to noncompete agreements, even in states like California where they're banned." (x, x, x)

The FTC estimates that the ban will lead to "the creation of 8,500 new businesses annually, an average annual pay increase of $524 for workers, lower health care costs, and as many as 29,000 more patents each year for the next decade." (x)

Clearer explanation of noncompete agreements below the cut.

Noncompete agreements can restrict workers from leaving for a better job or starting their own business.

Noncompetes often effectively coerce workers into staying in jobs they want to leave, and even force them to leave a profession or relocate.

Noncompetes can prevent workers from accepting higher-paying jobs, and even curtail the pay of workers not subject to them directly.

Of the more than 26,000 comments received by the FTC, more than 25,000 supported banning noncompetes. 

[mynabirb]

the temple of silence would probably be very interested in mysterious realms and baby dragons

[chloesimaginationthings]

Why is he kinda...

These two asks were right next to each other, and I think that’s beautiful

[cosmicinkstudios]

⭐️ Kirby’s Sweet Treats! (Remastered sticker sheet) 🍓⭐️

[screwpinecaprice]

Actually cute. Had to do a quick redraw.

Screenshot is from when Jay lit up the Jack-o'-lantern in the living room.

[cubbihue]

Could we maybe get some big daddy content, maybe him trying teach Peri and Timmy the “family business”

Big Daddy liked spending time with his grandsons a lot when they were younger! Peri was very fascinated with all the stories his grandpa shared. Though for a good chunk of them, Timmy had to cover his ears for.

As they grew older, Big Daddy was very interested in teaching his grandsons how to run the "family business". Wanda had to put a stop to it when she found Peri was learning how to use a weaponized wand. Big Daddy has good intentions and a big heart! He's just a bit misguided on how to express it to his grandsons haha.

Bitties Series: [Start] > [Previous] > [Next]

[old-desert]

Inktobertale 2024 Day 5: Camping

Cross doesn't know that the first law of the multiverse is that there's nowhere Ink can't be.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

space sweepers but they're delivery people and are at no point on screen through the entire movie

[choccy-milky]

the place me and my roommate were supposed to move into today was so disgusting and uninhabitable we just took our stuff and left and now we're gonna be staying at airbnbs and hotels until further notice/until we can find a new place hopefully quickly...........im in my homeless drifter era y'all!!!😍😍so if im not as active then thats why LMFAO

1 like = 1 prayer

[gatoburr0]

Oh no he’s fuzzy

[izzystizzys]

There is a scratch mark on the floor of the Council chambers that Mace has never noticed before. Not a deep one, mind, quite shallow. This matters because it’s making the white-hot pulse of agony stabbing through his eyeballs ebb momentarily. Then, he chances a glance upwards at the fidgeting Knight in front of them, and it returns in full force.

Huh, he’s never seen Oppo Rancisis’ face turn that colour before.

“Hmm”, Master Yoda hums, deep and scratchy. His expression is unreadable even to Mace beyond a baseline gremlinness, and the force with which he grips the edges of his seat is making his bones creak. Master of the Order you should become, they said. Follow the calling of the Force, you should. A fulfilling purpose, it will be. Mace is going to hunt the little goblin for sport when this is all over, and he’s going to laugh the whole time.

“Show us the livestream again, could you, Knight Parvo?” Yoda asks. Mace bursts a capillary, he’s pretty sure, and so does poor Knight Parvo, whose orange Mon Cala skin tips all the way into blood red with stress. “Most unusual, this is.”

“Absolutely not!”, Ki Adi intervenes before Mace has to, thank the Force for little mercies. Plo Koon’s tusks tremble slightly with either suppressed laughter or abject horror, maybe both, and Stass Allie has her head in her hands. “The holo stills should be enough”, Ki Adi proceeds to add, and Mace has to reconsider all feelings of grace he just felt towards his fellow Councillor.

He never wants to watch Yoda zoom in on someone’s abs again. Or Depa raise her eyebrows at the curve of thighs bent over the dripping front of a speeder.

“Speeder Wash For Our Troops”, his former padawan reads out loud from a still of what has to be hundreds of the things gathered in the public senate parking lot. “Fund Our Boys And Get A Wet Seeing-To!” The series of images features dozens of Coruscant Guard troopers in various stages of unkitted, gleaming and shining with soap suds and water. The fact that the whole thing is also massive shatterpoint after massive shatterpoint is, quite frankly, insulting.

“Well hello- oh dear”, Obi-Wan’s blue form crackles to life in his chair, followed by several sounds of choking that are definitely not him. Good, Mace thinks acidly. If he has to deal with this, then so does kriffing Skywalker. “I’m sorry, why am I looking at Commander Thorn using a washrag like a lasso on top of a speeder?”

“Oh, the Guard’s little fundraising project”, Bail Organa says, as he steps into the Council chambers. Normally, Mace likes the man well enough. Now, he just smiles and adds on, “I’ve already donated, in mine and Breha’s name. Remotely, of course.”

“The Guard’s fundraising speeder wash?”, Obi-Wan repeats, edges of his holo form flickering with what Mace suspects is Skywalker very unsubtly trying to edge in. Force, but the man really is horrible at any and all stealth, like kissing his secret wife in an open arena in front of his Master. “And they are fundraising for…?”

“GAR budget allocations have to come from somewhere”, Organa shrugs. “And with the tide of public opinion turning, they’ve been tending towards cuts. The Guard feels them more keenly than any other sector - they’ve been reduced from half to quarter rations, and medical supplies have not made more than a token appearance in the last draft. The Chancellor has cancelled three consecutive meetings on the matter, and thus it was agreed that a more hands-on approach was needed. Any surplus will go into the Army fund.”

“Surely it can’t be that dire”, Oppo protests, a slightly less concerning shade of purple now. Senator Organa shrugs again, jostling the smattering of cracks slowly building around his person in a way that makes Mace wince quietly. “It’s all publicly available data, Masters.”

It really can be that dire, as it turns out. And quarter rations is only scratching the surface of how dire, considering the Guard has apparently never had access to bacta in all their posting, and also includes requisitioning forms available to the Senate for reconditionings and decommissionings, two words Mace has only heard Ponds whispers amidst shuddering in the early days of the war before Shaak Ti went off and just about tore some throats out over it.

“Alright”, he concedes, rubbing at his temples. “Fair enough, we have failed to tackle a massive blind spot in the Guard’s well being. There is no Jedi assigned to Coruscant, and that’s an oversight on our behalf. But how in the everloving kriff did this get past the Chancellor and Commander Fox?!”

Who have both signed, black on white. Bail Organa smiles cryptically. “Well, if you scroll a bit past that one image, up to the industrial speeder in the back - Commander Fox is currently having credits stuffed into his codpiece in the back, I believe.”

“HE’S WHAT IN THE WHAT NOW”, Commander Cody screeches through the speaker of Obi-Wan’s holo image, and Mace has to summon every bit of Jedi-serenity he possesses in his body to keep from dropkicking a cackling Yoda through the chamber windows.

[byler-alarmist]

Do people know most paper receipts are harmful to their health?

I'm going to get up on my soapbox for a minute, but do people realize how pretty much everyone is being overloaded with endocrine disruptors like BPA/BPS on a near-daily basis??

I don't think many people understand that ever since most of the world transitioned to thermal paper receipts (cheaper than ink), almost every receipt you handle from the gas station to the grocery store to the Square terminal printer at the local co-op is coated with Bisphenol-A (BPA) or its chemical cousin Bisphenol-S (BPS).

These chemicals have not only been proven to cause reproductive harm to human and animals, they've also been linked to obesity and attention disorders.

Not sure if your receipt is a thermal receipt? If you scratch it with a coin and it turns dark, it's thermal.

BPA/BPS can enter the skin to a depth such that it is no longer removable by washing hands. When taking hold of a receipt consisting of thermal printing paper for five seconds, roughly 1 μg BPA is transferred to the forefinger and the middle finger. If the skin is dry or greasy, it is about ten times more. 

Think of how many receipts you handle every day. It's even worse for cashiers and tellers, who may handle hundreds in a single shift. It is also a class issue, since many people who work retail and food service are lower-income and will suffer worse health consequences over time from the near-constant exposure.

Not only that, receipts printed with thermal ink are NOT recyclable, as they pollute the rest of the paper products with the chemicals.

People don't know this and recycle them anyway, so when you buy that "green" toilet paper that says "100% recycled"? Yup, you are probably wiping your most sensitive areas with those same chemicals (for this reason, I buy bamboo or sugarcane toilet paper as a sustainable alternative to recycled paper).

This page from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has some good links if you want to learn more.

As consumers, we need to demand better from our businesses and from our governments. We need regulation of these chemicals yesterday.

If you are a buyer or decision-maker for a business, the link above also contains a shortlist of receipt paper manufacturers that are phenol-free.

If you work at a register, ask customers if they want a receipt. If they don't and you can end the transaction without printing one, don't print one!

As a consumer, fold receipts with the ink on the inside, since that's where the coating is. Some more good tips here.

And whatever you do, DO NOT RECYCLE THERMAL RECEIPTS

[lunar-system]

Stede Bonnet: The Sun.

Adapted from the traditional Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, Stede as the Sun rides through the tides, draped in gold and fine fabrics, radiating his own light. As the Sun he is open to the world like a child, full of optimism and about to make it everyone's problem.

Longer exploration of this card's symbolism under the cut.

My other tarot posts can be found here: Ed as the Star, Izzy as the Moon, Ed&Stede together, all three together.

The Sun: Happiness, clarity, moving forward towards a new life.

Rachel Pollack writes: The Sun brings clarity, simplicity. This is the moment when a new world, a new life, begins to take shape.

Whether it is him having left his marital home for the first or the second time, Stede as the Sun is ready. A new world has opened up, and he heads forward with no hesitation.

The Sun tells us to act boldly, with clarity and purpose, but also trust. Not the confidence of a warrior, but the openness of a child.

The qualities of the Sun make Stede shine as a captain. A clear and unique vision, a childlike trust, and purpose burning bright drives him and his crew forward no matter what.

The original Rider-Waite-Smith card shows a child riding a horse in a garden, signifying joy and freedom. In Stede's card the garden has transformed into an ocean, but it still remains like a playground to those who see it with childlike wonder.

Stede also has a lot of common with the Fool, the first card of the deck:

The Fool is alone, with nothing left but what you can carry in a bag on a stick. But the Fool is also freedom – freedom from rules, freedom from possessions, freedom from the narrow beliefs of what is important, even your own beliefs about yourself.

Freed from the shackles of society Stede is as free as the Fool, left with nothing but the clothes on his back and a heart full of love. He rides into the unknown with no bridle, with no means to guide himself, and yet he beliefs he will find his way. With the Sun in his heart he knows he can create the life he always wanted.

The Fool takes a risk, and in the Sun he is rewarded.

***

Sources

Image source: Pamela Colman Smith, 1909, republished as Tarot of A. E. Waite, 2016, AGM-Urania, Germany

Text source: Rachel Pollack, A Journey of 78 Steps, 2011, as cited in the booklet for instruction and guidance of Tarot of A. E. Waite, 2016, AGM-Urania, Germany

[kacievvbbbb]

I just know Crocodile brought on Mihawk because he thought he would be sensible, calm and collected, low maintenance. He thought it was going to be them against the idiocy that is buggy. And it is to a degree.

What he failed to calculate is that Mihawk is just as bad as buggy.

Worse even because at least Buggy can be bullied into doing paperwork. I just know everyday Crocodile is astonished by the absolute commitment Mihawk has to his aesthetic. Walks into his tent just to find that he has somehow converted this circus ass tent into a mid century gothic castle. Somehow carpeted the whole thing end to end is burning more that a 100 candles for “mood lighting”, has a fully open fire pit and a sewing machine in the corner.

Like Crocodiles essentially a mafioso he can appreciate the wanting nice things. Still won’t prepare him for the day Mihawk’s brings him a wine budget, a tailoring budget and an embroidery budget all painstakingly itemized.

Won’t prepare him for having to replace every single wine glass because buggy drank out of one and he can’t break up a set but refuses to use a cup that buggy’s put his mouth on.

He’s starting to think that the real reason the Warlords were disbanded was because they simply could not afford to pay for Mihawk’s upkeep anymore and decided they’d rather pay in cadet lives than see one more wine budget.

He is essentially being held hostage, in his own guild, by the whims of a bored middle aged vampire, and a fucking clown.