#it probably COULD be good

[greykolla-art]

Charlie: “I’m so glad my most villain-coded friend is at full power again! 🥰💕”

*throws this to you angst goblins like raw steak* ❤️

(No I will not do a part 2!❤️)

[egophiliac]

still ruminating over Lost In the Book With Spooky Skeletons Part 1, so here's a selection of some of my favorite little bits! (...some more loosely paraphrased than others) (I just feel like Idia has no room to criticize in general, okay)

anyway, I'm sure we're just going to have a fun time celebrating Halloween and nothing bad is going to happen whatsoever! :)

[citruschemical]

📷.

[secondbeatsongs]

for anyone too young to know this: watching The Truman Show is a vastly different experience now, compared to how it was before youtube and social media influencers became normal

before it was like, "what a horrifying thing to do to a human being! to take away their autonomy and privacy, all for the sake of profits! to create fake scenarios for them to react to, just to retain viewership! to ruin their happiness just so some corporate entity could harvest money from their very humanity! how could anyone do something so evil?"

and now it's like, "ah, yeah. this is still deeply fucked up, but it's pretty much what every influencer has been doing to their kids for a decade now. probably bad that we've normalized this experience"

[chloesimaginationthings]

The Mikes and Vanessas celebrate 10 years of FNAF!

[andstuffsketches]

vanity

[lazylittledragon]

the only thing scarier than vampire lords/mind flayers/death cults is meeting the in-laws

[awesomeland39]

sketchhg

[kooldewd123]

there's something to be said about the choice to use "prince" as the main signifier of military rank for the andalites. because it kinda obscures the truth of the situation, doesn't it? a group of kids getting magic powers from an alien prince sounds whimsical and delightful. a group of kids getting pulled into a war by an alien colonel sounds tragic and horrible. the slow reveal of what "prince" actually means over the course of the early books is perhaps the most underrated twist of the entire series, because it fundamentally recontextualizes the entire premise of the series without the reader even consciously realizing it.

[inkskinned]

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

[tiniest-hands-in-all-the-land]

Carry me home

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Out of sight, out of - wait.

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[egophiliac]

ENG PLAYERS I BESEECH YOU

I have been informed that you guys are getting part 4 of episode 7 tomorrow, which means we are FINALLY going to get the official romanization of Revaan's name, somebody please tell me because I need to know what it is.

like, yes, it's probably just Revan/Levan, but look, I'm sitting here with my finger over the button of all these Laverne and Shirley jokes and just waiting for the opportunity to deploy them --

[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. 

[xxplastic-cubexx]

personal happiness or what the fuck ever

bonus:

[floccinaucinihilipilificationa]