#trying to fuck private sector workers

[flourescencia]

this country is laughably fucked over. instead of cutting down the work week our politicians are approving a project to have people working 4 days a week BUT 12 hours a day and no extra hours paid ... I remember a conference I watched in which someone explained that we are belatedly experiencing a wave of pure neoliberalism that other Latinamerican countries had in the early 2000's and it's so hopeless to think of

[sportsbianism]

could you tell us about your apprenticeship?? how did you get into it etc? i'm really thinking abt moving towards a trades career but it's a bit intimidating

depending on what trade u r going into and where u are going into it it can be a piece of cake or a bit difficult. here in alanta joining the union is easy as fuck. i haven't even taken my exam yet and i am already placed in a job. definitely did not require a resume. the exam is high school english and algebra. if u pass, you immediately get a raise and begin your official apprentice period. but for the same union, if you apply in portland for instance, you are competing against thousands, must submit a portfolio and go through two interviews, and your job placement is dependent on how high you score on the exam. high scorers getting the first and best placements, low scorers having to wait potentially months and months for placement. honestly still worth it bc the pay in that area is sooooooo good, and it's still doable, not that crazy, certainly not harder than getting into college.

DONT BE INTIMIDATED!!!!!

whatever your trade, definitely consider going union if possible. one great thing abt the union is, if you hate the company or crew you are working with, you can request a new job assignment very very easily. so if there's a crazy or sexist guy giving you a hard time, you can just go work somewhere else, it's a piece of cake. plus these guys are really not trying to lose their pensions or get into trouble w the union. but if u work for a private company and not the union, much more difficult to get out of a shitty situation.

i think electrician is a great way to go for women. i think machinery mechanic or crane operator (chachingggg $$$$$) could also be a good way to go... hvac could be cool, i know a lot of female carpenters but not on my jobs bc my local is mainly industrial and not residential.... pipefitters and sheetmetal workers make good money but tbh i haven't seen any women in those crews so far, they're a bit heavier on the heavy lifting, and the guys seem like fucking knuckleheads, but idk. women make superb welders. from what i have seen.

cnc machinist could be cool but idk if the money is all that good. there's a based as fuck aircraft mechanic here on tumblr, that's a cool option. pilot is another cool ass trade, high demand rn, with a strong union presence though it works a bit differently in their area.

also a good option? ups? but if u go ups try to get that first package handler job at an air hub, not a ground hub, way more women and dykes in the air industrial sector in that company.

[greenerteacups]

Re economy question it tickles me how the Ministry looks like the biggest employer of Wizarding Britain…their economy is a mishmash of preindustrial commerce and landholding held together by a kleptocracy

The number of people employed by the Ministry is like, absurd. To the point where I assumed it was overrepresented for Plot Reasons. Like, we need Arthur to have a Ministry job so he has the inside scoop on Bertha Jorkins and a bunch of stuff in fifth year, we meet a lot of Aurors because this is a story about a war, a lot of the bureaucrats who get involved with Harry's hearing/school administration are a result of the Umbridge Arc, and I take it as implicit that most of all jobs Just Happen Somewhere Else, because like.

Okay sidebar about the Ministry. Let me talk to you about the Ministry. Can I talk to you about the fucking Ministry? Put aside the fact that there are more named Ministry employees in this story than there are normal taxpayers. Put aside the fact that the banking system being run exclusively by a disenfranchised underclass that you happen to treat like shit is a policy move that ranks up there with "invading the Soviet Union in December." Put aside the fact that this is basically a modern welfare state stapled on top of a market that's still hammering out the kinks of industrial economics in 19-fucking-91. Here's my question, alright:

WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING?

Let's do an exercise. In 1990, public sector employment was 27% of the British national workforce (and growing). The population dynamics of Harry Potter are irrevocably fucked, so this is only going to even-sort-of-work if we fudge it, as I'm about to do: I'm setting the number of Ministry workers, e.g. salaried bureaucrats, at 10,000. Base pay for a government bureaucrat in 1990, is, what, £25-30,000? Let's say so. Multiply that by 10k, you get a personnel budget of £300 million. Sounds like a lot of money, right?

Except what the fuck does the Ministry do? The reason employment costs balloon in the late twentieth century is because we see the rise of social services that require a lot more administrators to vet and deliver — social security in the United States, the NHS in Britain, public education, etc., etc. Public housing! This is why Maggie Thatcher goes postal and starts hack-sawing the national budget. But what, exactly, does the Ministry of Magic deliver? We don't see any poverty relief programs being administered to the Weasleys. Pensions are a thing, but only for Ministry workers. Health services? Sure, let's say St. Mungo's is a public hospital, fair enough. And Hogwarts is free for all British citizens, that's cool, that's probably some expense. But those are two institutions. Where's the rest of it? Where are the big-ticket items that justify this huge corpus of employees? A pure regulatory state does not require this much personnel! There's a whole Department for Games and Sports (e.g. quidditch — oh wait, that's a private league sport!), but not a Department of Energy, or Department of Housing? Fuck off! There is not!

That's not even the biggest problem, though. There's a much, much bigger issue with Ministry organization: There's no fucking Inland Revenue! It doesn't matter how the budgets are balanced, frankly, because unless IR is hidden somewhere in a secret department we don't know about, nobody is paying the government for fuck!

Admittedly, this is pedantry, at some point. JKR was frankly under no obligation to explore the finer points of tax collection in her series of children's novels. I get that, I do. But I'm reminded of what George R. R. Martin said about his annoyance with fantasy novels — the fact that you never got to judge these mythical kings and Chosen Ones by their actual leadership choices. You never see what Aragorn's tax policy is like. And in reality, that's much more important than how good you are with a sword. So — especially in things like The Cursed Child, which actually does try to explore the "adult" world of Harry Potter — it's fascinating that there are so are so many parts of the universe that just live in the world of inference.

[theculturedmarxist]

If the Democrats have nothing to run on besides "you don't want TRUMP to win, DO YOU?", and still can't get people to vote for them, that's the fault of the Democrats.

And why would anyone vote for them? What at all makes them any different from the Republicans?

Clinton was a continuation of the policies of Bush and Reagan. We got foreign wars, cuts to social spending, more onerous criminal laws and more savage punishments. We got NAFTA, originally a Republican project that devastated the US's industrial sector and impoverished millions, and also dealt a savage blow to organized labor in the Northern Hemisphere.

Everything he did set up for the tyranny of Bush II, where we got more of the same. The US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and began a global reign of terror where it attacked pretty much at will. The Department of Homeland Security was created to enforce the draconian Patriot Act, instituting a regime of mass surveillance in the US that has since spread around the entire planet.

And after all that? Democrats promised to undo Bush's excesses. We'd have the right to abortion enshrined in law. The economic collapse so devastating that it nearly lead to the destruction of the entire global economy would be set to rights, the people responsible would be punished, and the people would be made whole again. They'd institute universal healthcare. They'd end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and work on "resetting" the US's reputation by working with the world instead of bombing it.

Instead we got none of that. In spite of overwhelming majorities in both houses, an amenable judiciary, and widespread public support, Obama did none of those things. Instead of the universal healthcare that we were promised, we got a mandate to buy private insurance that has only increased the costs of care and enriched the companies that now run the country's hospitals. The people responsible for wrecking the economy weren't punished, but the people were. Millions of black Americans lost their homes while the banks were bailed out. The executives running those banks got cushy jobs in Obama's cabinet. In order to maintain high pay for executives that by all rights should have been in jail, millions of workers that had done their jobs and retired had their pensions cut and benefits revoked. Instead of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan we got "troop surges" instead and an escalation of Bush's drone program. The DOHS wasn't closed, but made permanent. The Patriot Act wasn't ended, but extended.

The "reset" never happened either. Obama continued the program of expanding NATO in Europe with the complete and full understanding that it was antagonizing Russia. The "Pivot to the East" was started to try and surround China with hostile regimes and deadly weapons. Libya, a prosperous, rapidly improving African state was turned into a fucking crater, and the same thing was attempted with Syria.

And we got more empty, broken promises and Republican bogeymen in his second term! "Obama couldn't do what he REALLY wanted in his first term because there'd be Republican backlash (as if there wasn't already "Republican backlash"), but his second term is when he'll do all the things he said!" And people believed that! And then he didn't fucking do it! There was just more crackdowns on the people when they rose up with Occupy Wall Street, and Obama and the democrats lead a nation-wide police crackdown on the people upset that they'd been lied to!

And what came after that? The fucking fascist that Democrats are now trying to scaremonger with—the very one that not only did they themselves lay the fucking foundation for, but the very one that they themselves elevated! Democrat-friendly news networks gave him absurd amounts of screen time, plastered their webpages in nonstop coverage, and repeated his every fucking word! Because the people that run the Democratic Party decided they'd run one of the most unpopular candidates in the country's history, and the best way they could think of to win was to run Hillary against Trump.

And then she fucking lost. To Trump.

And Democrats and their shills like the OP haven't reflected on that for an instant. All this "vote or you're helping the fascists" bullshit just displaces the blame from where it belongs: The Democratic Party. They have to try and deflect blame onto the electorate because they're doing the same thing they've been doing since Clinton, which is laying the groundwork for the Republicans to take over.

Have they gotten Covid under control? No. They've declared it over, ended safeguards and restrictions, and sent people back to work after hundreds of thousands of Americans were killed by it, many thousands more are killed by it every week, and tens of millions are left to suffer with Long Covid.

Have they stopped the country's Imperialist adventures? Biden withdrew from Afghanistan only to finish the job in Ukraine that he and Obama both started nearly a decade ago. Now hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are dead, hundreds of thousands more disfigured, and millions displaced—on top of bringing the entire world to the brink of nuclear war.

The planet is experiencing a rapidly advancing climate catastrophe that threatens to kill billions. Do the Democrats plan on doing anything about it? No.

Inflation is impoverishing millions of Americans. Do the Democrats plan on doing anything about that? No.

On top of the war in Ukraine, the Biden administration continues to antagonize China with the ultimate goal of going to war with it. Is there any kind of opposition to this in the Democratic Party? Absolutely not.

When the ruling that would eliminate abortion rights across the country was known WEEKS in advance, did the Democrats do anything, anything to try and stop it? No, they didn't. But they did raise millions of dollars on promises to do something about it! No, honest, for real this time!

And as dire as all of this is, do the Democrats promise anything at all to earn people's votes? Do they promise to re-institute the Child Tax Credit which alleviated crushing poverty for millions? Of course not, especially not after voting unanimously to kill it—with the sole exception of Bernie Sanders who they chided.

Universal Healthcare isn't even mentioned any more, in the middle of a deadly pandemic! Are the Democrats going to lift even a finger to try and build unions in this country? Probably not after Biden squashed the railroad worker's attempted strike. What about increasing the national minimum wage and maybe helping out working people that desperately need it? Doesn't fucking seem like it from here.

What about paying the rest of the $600 dollars they promised us last time they desperately wanted our votes? You know, when they promised people $2000 stimulus checks, got what they wanted, then changed their story.

No. None of that. Nothing. They're just running on the same thing they ran on in 2016 and 2020, which didn't work the first time and barely did the second. You don't want Trump, do you? they ask, while doing everything possible to give us Trump.

And that's the one, single thing that Democrats absolutely will deliver on. Either this election, or the one after, or the one after that, Trump, or someone very much like him, and probably very much worse, is going to win, not in spite of the Democrats, but because of them.

right now it’s almost halfway through 2023, and 2024 is an election year in the US. I have started to see a growing proliferation of posts suggesting that there is no difference between the republican and democratic parties–the exact same kind of posts I saw an awful lot of before the last major election here. I am unfollowing folks who post or reblog these sort of posts, as I consider these posts to be fascist propaganda framed as leftist discourse, designed to suppress anti-fascist votes and voters. 

[cherryblossomshadow]

The Employer-Based Social Safety Is a Disaster. We Can End It.

Hamilton Nolan

Companies can do math … Classic defined benefit pensions are the single most costly benefit that employers traditionally provided, when you add up their total cost over the lifetime of workers. So, for more than 40 years, unionized companies have been absolutely cutthroat at the bargaining table in their determination to shift their workers into 401(k)s. Over the decades, in the private sector, pension after pension has fallen, each a lost battle in an economic war.

Even the man who invented the 401(k) now acknowledges that this process has been a financial catastrophe for workers.

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I am not bringing this up just to bemoan the fact that companies are greedy. Yes, companies are greedy, but that is because they are in essence machines programmed to maximize profits, so cursing them for being greedy is like yelling at a beaver for making a dam. That is what they do.

What the fuck are we doing? This is all very dumb.

If America were a rational nation we would have sat down after WW2 and said, “Well, we rule the world and we are about to be so, so rich, we’d better just pass a sensible piece of legislation providing for health care and retirement and child care and other basic necessities for all, like a normal and reasonable country.” Of course we did not do that. Instead, deep in Cold War psychosis, we evolved our way into a system that provided health insurance for most people from the employers, which may be a crazy way to do it but is definitely NOT COMMUNIST. Then later we kind of grafted on Medicare to try to plug the hole for people left out of this system. The evolution of employer-provided benefits has continued for generations. But our original sin was allowing ourselves to be drawn into this plainly inferior system in the first place.

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Not to get super technical here but, because private companies are constantly trying to maximize profits, they have an ENORMOUS and NEVER-ENDING incentive to chip away at the cost of employee benefits. So it is unsurprising that, over time, such benefits will be jettisoned by employers at the first possible opportunity. I know I am speaking in generalities here, but this pretty much captures the trap we have gotten into: 1) Tie necessary life-sustaining benefits to employment, rather than building a universal public government-funded safety net. 2) Erode the unions which are the only force that prevent companies from engaging in a race to the bottom on the quality of these benefits. 3) The benefits go away and people die. In a mature and serious country, “workplace benefits” would be things like, you know, “a variety of free bagels.” Not stuff like “your health insurance” or “your ability to avoid poverty in your old age.” Remarkably stupid system. Really idiotic.

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The “gig economy” is, in aggregate, an attempt by capital to build a system of employment with no employees. Companies have realized that if you can turn every full-time employee into an independent contractor and every job into a gig, then you can escape the responsibility of paying benefits (and enjoy a work force that is legally unable to unionize). The gig economy is the arbitraging away of the employer-based social safety net. The savings go to the investment class. The model, as you can see, expands to the entire economy, sucking in not just Uber drivers but also adjunct professors. The root cause of this is that we have created an enormous financial incentive for companies to get out of playing the role of Real Employer, which comes with a host of demands for employee benefits. The people who designed this system should have seen this all coming. If they did, they didn’t care.

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You can write books on this topic, of course, and many people have. (One I read recently is “Over Work” by Brigid Schulte, an interesting exploration of various often stymied attempts to make workplace benefits more humane.)

.

Today, all I want to do is point out the fact that there is an escape route from all of this. This is an issue that presents the opportunity to create a natural alliance of convenience between business and workers. Not because business “cares” about human quality of life, but because business cares about itself.

.

If you open an ice cream shop, you want to sell ice cream. Do you want to be a health insurance provider? No. Do you want to be a life insurance provider? No. Do you want to be a retirement investment account provider? No. You want to be an ice cream provider. The absurd burden of making businesses into benefit providers weighs most heavily on small businesses, which are forced to pay to outsource this stuff to large firms. The system is predatory and confusing for employers and employees alike. Unfortunately, the logic of capitalism is simply for employers to try to escape their obligations to provide benefits, which leaves employees with nothing.

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What needs to change is simply the calculation that employers make about what the path of least resistance is for their own operations. The rise of the gig economy is what happens when employers believe that their best option is just to pretend like none of this is their problem. Yet it is—in the long run, employers need a stable society that creates healthy working people who can survive and are not so desperate that they steal from their employer and also chop up the CEO and throw him in a river.

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Employer-based health insurance, a system hated by everyone that benefits nobody except health insurance companies, is probably the single most obvious issue upon which the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce should be on the same side. Business should be demanding Medicare For All as loudly as Bernie Sanders is! They don’t want to deal with this shit either! All of this is, by definition, a distraction from an employer’s core business, and a financial burden. The same goes for providing retirement benefits to workers. Adequate public health care and adequate Social Security that obviates the need for private health insurance and private retirement plans would be great for American business. It would leave them to just do the thing that they are in business to do.

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I don’t want to sound like a naive moron here. In order for the business world writ large to come to this conclusion, the first thing we must do is to close off the easier possibility they now prefer, which is to escape their responsibilities altogether through subcontracting and pushing full time jobs off their books, or whittling down benefit costs to the smallest possible number by eradicating union power. That means that we need to regulate the gig economy out of existence, at least in the sense of requiring gig economy companies to treat their workers like employees rather than independent contractors.

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Building a public safety net would mean more taxes for businesses.

But a government system would be more efficient, meaning the long term cost would be lower, and

employers would also get the invaluable gift of never having to think about this shit again.

Providing a necessary social safety net to all citizens is properly the role of the state, not of private business. The very idea of outsourcing this role to private employers is plainly ludicrous.

[goblincow]

I was at a rally for the first Amazon in the UK to unionize today, the day after UCU (higher education) start their strike alongside CWU (communications workers, post offices) who are continuing to strike, plus ASLEF (railways) striking tomorrow & more across the country & in Scotland.

The NHS is balloting for historic strike action right now, PCS (public sector) is doing the same and NEU (education) is getting ready to strike in the new year.

Socialists and trade union members have been calling for more organised coinciding strikes and I'm glad to see representatives from other picket lines that are out right now showing up to Amazon to support the workers there who just lost their first ever ballot for strike action by 3 votes (thanks to anti-worker laws, but they've learnt their lesson and they're going to absolutely smash the turnout required for the next one, just watch).

Amazon workers in 40 different countries are on strike today, and litigators working with the GMB union (which now represents one of the biggest and the FIRST EVER unionised Amazon warehouse in the UK!) have fought the US government about human rights abuses at guantanamo bay in the past - and they said earlier today that they moved to fight against private employers like amazon because conditions there are as bad if not even worse than they've seen fighting against the US government.

Solidarity with all workers, it's time to build for more united strike action because the solidarity between workers in different unions is immense. It's a political fight too: strikes earlier this year got rid of Boris Johnson and made Liz Truss lose to a lettuce. Time to get rid of the rest of the conservatives and Labour too - just this week Keir Starmer has been trying to turn workers against their favourite scapegoat: the refugees that this government is killing and abusing at a horrific rate.

All strikes are political, and by building the rank & file in the trade union movement, by building solidarity in the working class, we demonstrate the power of the alternative to capitalism, a world run by the working class and for the working class.

Solidarity to members of all striking unions, victory to the workers, and let's continue to build these strikes until we seize the means of production and fully rid ourselves of the capitalist class.

Fuck Jeff Bezos

Here's to the workers at Amazon BHX4!

Watch them crush the anti-union laws and together we'll bring the bosses to their knees! ✊

[vagrantblvrd]

Another modern day au? But this time with more ridiculousness.

The one where Grogu is the sole witness to a Nefarious Crime who can identify the Nefarious Crime-doer and is placed in protective custody for his safety.~

But then Nefarious Crime-doer puts the word out they want Grogu dealt with, resulting in their right-hand man, someone named Gideon to oversee things on that front. But, because Nefarious Crime-doer doesn’t want things traced back to them, the job of ~deaing with Grogu gets outsourced.

Which is how Din, bounty hunter and generally speaking Very Tired Man, finds himself accepting a job that turns out to be more than he reckoned for, what with finding a tiny child at the end of it and all.

One who was in the care of federal agents who were gunned down by someoe else claiming to have been hire by the same mn, the one who Din had been told to refer to as “The Client” and apparently set a price on the kid’s head too tempting for anyone not squeamish about killing a kid to pass by.

He wasn’t told it was a kid, wasn’t told others had orders to kill the kid, none of this is what he signed up for and th sight of the dead federal agents, the cold look in the man in front of him tells him he’s already past the point of no return.

(Finish the job or let the man do his, and he’s still fucked because the damn federal agents.)

Din realizing he’s not a heartless bastard as he saves Grogu from someone who is a heartless bastard and takes Grogu and has to go on the run to keep him safe becuase he just killed a man and dear God, what did he just do???

(But then little Grogu and the sight of the other man about to shoot him, and there was really no other choice.)

Adventures! Shenanigans! Din and Grogu dodging people out to kill both of them as he realizes just how much trouble he’s gotten himself into!

But also, Kuil, Karga, Cara and all the others he meets along the way who become allies and friends he knows won’t sell him out.

And, you know. U.S. Marshals and other feds and whatnot looking for the kid and whoever killed the agents assignd to protect him and it’s just.

A lot to deal with okay? A lot.

Meanwhile, Luke is one of the U.S. Marshals tasked with finding Grogu and whoever took him.

There’s this whole thing where he’s the youngest on his team and the son of a legendary agent, he gets his fair of good-natured grief from his co-workers.

But this thing with Grogu is big, big news and a tskforce is put together and the good-natured grief he gets from the people who know him, have worked with him for years suddenly isn’t.

Nothing new there, Anakin Skywalker is a point of contention in the agency due to The Incident that happened shortly before Luke and Leia were born.

Corrupt politician and a powerplay, corrupt federal agents across several agencies and a conspiray theory that still affects those agecies to this day.

Also, the thing where Anakin left the U.S. Marsha service once things were over (with typical Skywalker Dramatics, Obi-Wan had told him laushing at Anakin’s long-suffering groan) and joined the private sector.

Didn’t actually mean to start a mini-exodus when he did, but, well. Charismatic and such, and he and Obi-Wan are fo-founders of a personal protection business that does quite well for itself thanks to its first client being a well-known a respeted politician and such.

(Luke loved hearing that part of the story as a kid, knowing everything his dad did back then had been for love of his mom.)

Luke could have, should have, gone to work for his dad and Obi-Wan, but there was a recruiter. Someone who talked up working for the U.S. Marshals and they need someone like him, and other things.

Anakin is like *sigh* because that’s pretty much how they got him too, you know? But you can bet he keeps an eye on things with Luke in case it turns out he and the others didn’t manage to rip out all the corruption on their way out.)

Luke’s got all that to deal with, a federal agency that’s still finding it’s feet all this time afterwards and...fellow federal agents who look at him and see a problem agent just like his father. (Don’t know the full story, think his dad should be in jail and all that and apples falling from trees, and anyway, he’s lucky to have his team and superiors who know better and it’s not that often he runs into problem like this.)

Anyway, Luke and this taskforce looking for Din, thinking he’s a heartless bastard looking to cash in with the kid - Grogu, according to the - but Luke is like.

He’s That Guy, the one who looks at the crime scene, reads everything they have on Din and goes, “Something doesn’t add up,” because of course he is.

His team’s used to that, learned to trust his instincts on things like that so instead of looking at Din like he’s just another common criminal, violent thug, they look the whole situation from a different perspective, that he’s trying to protect Grogu rather than cash in on him. (His death.)

But because of Luke’s history with the agency the rest of taskforce isn’t inclined to believe that, think Luke’s...who even knows, bubt they’re dismisive of his theories and aren’t subtle about it and there’s a new nesion between the teams on the taskforce.

As Din gets caught up in situation after situation and witness accounts and so on paint Din in a good light - more of the taskforce leans towards Luke and his team’s view on Din not being a bad guy here? But there are still holdouts, bitter about the hand Anakin had in the resturcturing of the agency, old friends and mentors exposed as corrupt and wasting away in jail and personal grudges and so on.

And then!

Luke checking on a lead, going to talk to one of Din’s new associates in  little town in the desert, a former soldier and a guy who runs a bounty hunting business and happens to be in the right place at the right tie to actually see Din.

Grogu’s with him, seems happy enough, not scared of Din, and Din is watching the kid like a hawk.

Right up until a group of guys show up and the shooting starts and it’s Luke’s day off, but he’sworking on the whole work/life balance thing, but is also trying to stay alive.

Also, hey, hi, M. Djarin, fancy meeting you here, as they end up taking cover behind the same overturned table, Cara and Greef grabbing Grogu and getting him the hell out of the line of fire, and anyway, anyway, what a lovely day, wouldn’t you say?

The thing where they have to flee together and Luke gets a little bit shot - nothing fatal, really, just you know.

Fashionably injured in which Din has to haul him to safety and some dingy motel somewhere and medical supplies from a gast station or pharmacy and Luke watching Din as he patches him up so he doesn’t bleed to death.

Calloused hands with old scars on his knuckles tuching him ~gently, with the kind of care that seems at odds with his checkered patch, and the man is all nerves because his situation gets worse every damn day he’s on the run with Grogu.

And now, okay, now he’s got a federal agent’s life in his hands, someone who probably thinks he’s the bad guy here, might put a bullet in him to keep from going to jail and it’s.

A lot, alright? The same it’s been since he took the damn job, set eyes on Grogu and ruined everything he’s worked for his whole damn life.

But Luke, okay. Luke is just wathcing him, relieved his instincts were right about Din because he had no reason, no reason, to help Luke out. Save his life, drag him to safety and the whatnot. No reason to risk being identified when he went out for medical supplies to tend to Luke’s injury, and yet he did.

The whole thing where Din’s just waiting for Luke’s people to bust in, haul him off to jail, but it never happens.

Not even when he falls asleep because he hasn’t gotten nearly enough of it the last few weeks , gives Luke the chance to call for backup, lock Din away.

None of that happens, although there is a moment the next day where Luke tries to talk Din into coming with Luke, trusting him to clear his name and take care of Grogu where he almost, almost thinks Luke means what he says -

But then the baddies find them again and it’s a whirlwind car chase that ends with a shootout and Din sneaking away when the cops show up and Luke has to explain that hey, no, he’s on their side and please don’t shoot him, he’s been shot enough for the time being, thanks.

More shenanigans in which Din and Grogu elude baddies and Luke (and his team, a few from the task force who are one their side) try to catch up to them only to be too late every time.

And then!

There’s a thing where the baddies get their hands on Grogu and Din has no choice but to call Luke for help, doesn’t care what happens to him so long as Grogu’s safe and it’s just.

A lot of Drama and Angst and this whole convoluted plan to draw the baddies out using Din as bait or whatever because he’s a loose end they can’t afford and it’s all very exciting and dramatic.

(Also, Luke making sure he or someone he trusts is with Din the whole time he’s with them preparing to get Grogu back, keeps him from running by just being there, someone he trusts.)

Exciting action climax in which there is shooting - so much shooting - and Daring Feats and also an Evil Monologue or two, who knows.

Din gets fashionably shot as well, makes a shiity joke about him and Luke matching now with the whole being shot thing what is wrong with him and is reunited with Grogu thinking it’s the last time he’ll see him and all.

Because Witness Relocation for Grogu and jail for Din and just, you know how it is.

But there’s Luke watching Din and Grogu, nd he’s thinking, you know?

Luke with connections he only clls on when things are Dire and never for himself, and anyway, anyway.

There’s a thing where Grogu goes into Witness Relocation until the trial and Nefarious Crime-doer goes to jail for a long, long time . Din doesn’t get tossed into a cell, although he does spend a lot of time talking to federal agents of all kinds before they let him go home.

And Luke, okay, Luke is Plotting.

Meanwhile, Din goes about his life best he can after the upheaval and chaos of the last few months.

All these little reminders of Grogu in his life in the form of a toy or shirt or somehing left behind, forgotten until he stumbles accross them and it’s all very Angsty for  bit.

But then there’s a job offer, this personal protectoon company and it doesn’t click in Din’s mind until he’s waiting for the interview that wait, wait.

Skywalker isn’t exactly a common name, and Boba mentioned something about this Anakin Skywalker who almost burned the U.S. Marshal service down over twenty years ago about a conspiracy and whatot.

(Boba meddles in Din’s life even though he’d deny it to his dying day, and he got the whole miserable story about Din’s adventures in keeping Grogu alive and that one federal agent who didn’t think Din was a heartless monster.)

Anyway.

Din gets called in for his interview - didn’t want to take it, but he needs a job and bounty hunting had already lost its shine before he met Grogu, and anyway. Boba insisted.

So he walks into Skywalker’s office, not sure what to expect, but it sure as hell isn’t Luke, and defintiely isn’t Luke and Grogu with an older man who must be Anakin smiling at the two of them as they ply some kind of game and Din really needs to sit down before he does something embarrasing as faint.

Which, you know. Perfect time for Luke to explain that with Nefarious Crime-doer in jail and his criminal organization torn up by the roots, there’s no reason Grogu has to stay in Witness Relocation.

That, circumtances being what they are, he’s up for adoption and would Din happen to know anyone interested?

(Luke has been busy, the last few months, okay. Very busy calling in favors and whatnot and it’s all worth it to see the look on Din’s face, gap-toothed smile on Grogu’s.)

Also, though.

Anakin has heard all about Din from Luke, and he has been looking for more people since business has been good, and Din is just.

Overwhelmed, because too much good happening all at once.

Luke and Anakin share this look because wow, yes, they know the feeling. Luke takes Din and Grogu out for lunch, go to a quiet, out of the way place to let the poor guy think over his options because he really hasn’t had the luxury to do so for a while now.

Grogu is delighted, because he missed the hell out of Din, and Luke’s been pretty great too, and after a while Din stops worrying and pays attention to that, to Grogu.

Sweet kid, really, and Din already knows he’d do anything for him. Adopting him would be the smallest of it.

As the job...he’ll have to think about it a little longer, uncomfortable with the thought Luke got it for him rather than him earning it, and when he eventually mentions that in another meeting with Anking a week or so later, Anakins is just.

“Well, alright then,” and lets Din prove why he deserves the job.

Anakin knows he does already, okay, from what Luke told him about the whole Situation when he was on he run with Grogu and saving Luke’s life and the praise Luke’s team and others have had for Din. But this is about Din needing to know he does, and he’s more than willing to give that to him.

And then!

Once things have settled down in Din’s life, once he’s got his kid and a good job and some semblance of stability for both of them, Luke is kind of just.

There.

Around Din’s work because of Anakin, and the business’ firt client is Luke’s mother, and also Grogu being all :(((((((( becuase he misses Luke, and Din hates it when Grogu’s :(((((((((, so.

Luke is around, and it’s a little awkward at first, takes Din a while to realize that okay, wow, yes, Luke is actually flrting with him and not just being his usual friendly self.

(Cara and the others just shake their head at him when he has that realization because seriously, okay, seriously.)

Anyway, anywy, awkward flirting and dates and a goodnight kiss where Din is like oh, no, because this relationship of theirs is serious and he does’t know how to do this, be a normal human being in a functioning relationship, okay.

(And yes, part of him knew it was serious before then, it hadn’t sunk in yet, and anyway, yes.)

Uncharted territory and all, but Luke is smiling at him and according to several reliable sources (Leia and Han among others) is a human disaster in his own right, so maybe they can figure things out together, you know?

Might be nice.

(It is, though, absolutely the nicest.)

[transcendentalmaggot]

When you’re born with a rare birth defect you’re faced with a litany of roadblocks that compound the older you get. The local hospital that treated me both times my recurrent infections due to anatomical anomalies and a host of other issues developed into a kidney infection leading to sepsis had no adult urologist or nephrologist that had treated someone with my condition before. The only one was a pediatric urologist. They were finally able to create a Transitional Care Program run by this urologist through the pediatric urology department that now gives me the ability to even have a consultation with a pediatric urologist as a 30 something and finally get a consultation with the only doctor in the entire state that has any experience treating patients with bladder exstrophy. Cue the calls every few weeks of confused office staff trying to figure out why an adult has an appointment on the books or assuming I must be pregnant since that’s the only reason they can fathom being scheduled to see him at all.

I can’t go out of state because I haven’t had an income in almost 3 years due to multiple disabling conditions after being injured in 2019 disrupting my hours and then being laid off during Covid 2020 so I’m on a ACA state exchange plan with supplemental Medicaid - much to my inconsolable shame my exorbitant premium is covered by my Dad. I’ve lost my job and have been struggling to find a new one that can accommodate my conditions despite wanting to do just about anything that isn’t abhorrently unethical or physically impossible at this point. My SSDI hearing denial is being appealed and I’m in worse shape than I was when I began due to having to pick and choose which life-sustaining medical care to receive based on my limited support. Entire countries don’t have any doctors at all with working knowledge of this condition and experience performing surgeries to treat it causing people to need to take trips by airplane for simple check ups. Of course I receive a call today that my appointment on August 4th is being bumped until August 23rd because apparently the doctor is never in the office the day they made the appointment.

I don’t blame the office staff. I blame a system that sees sick kids even more intensely through that sense we all know - if you’re sick, die, or make a complete recovery with no residual effects from the initial ordeal. The charities we have, funded by profit making ventures in the private sector more than any other depending on the charity like smiling, wholesome, and conspicuously uniform in sanitized smiling faces imploring you to give them money to find the cure. But no support for those currently living with the disease (outside a community camp out or hosting an online support group). Once those kids, those that do survive, reach adulthood we’re disposed of entirely. The process for surgeries for me is arduous. At the hospital I’ve been going to since the day I was born, I need both an adult and pediatric urologists. This means they have to organize switching time slots for the OR across separate departments. The bureaucracy and capitalization of every aspect of this system is killing us all, workers included.

Sure, you’ve missed more than a couple years worth of schooling, socialization including spending more time in a hospital than a home for the first few years of your life, dream jobs, opportunities you worked years to get to, anything I’ve ever wanted to put effort towards, relationships, missed most major life events you were excited for on multiple occasions, but this is all clearly just evidence you’re hysterical and weak. You’re expected to never put the burden of needing help on others while being endlessly scrutinized each and every moment as to whether this is all an act. For what fucking purpose? Sure, they’ve spent millions of dollars, implanted complex medical implants and cadaver parts and animal muscles into me across several hospital systems, and the insurance has paid out each time (usually with a fight) because I like to take my vacation from a hospital bed. I’ve fooled hundreds of medical professionals according to this convoluted and cruel mindset somehow.

I vacillate between soul-shattering rage, immense grief, and a numbness that goes beyond any dissociative state I’ve experienced.

[interstellarrambles]

rules. dh.

pairing: dominic harrison x female!reader

warnings: sex work and clear sexual undertones but nothing really explicit

a/n: so I'm not a sex worker but I have absolutely nothing but respect for sex workers and would love to try working in that sector at some point. this fic is entirely fictional and I have taken some artistic liberties as a result but if any sex workers have any advice on how to write sex workers or if I have gotten anything wrong or I've written anything disrespectful please let me know! this is gonna be a miniseries

dominic is rightfully angry at himself.

all his life, or at least the most recent parts of it where he's been able to call himself a rockstar, he has known that you just don't fall for a sex worker you're soliciting. eyes fuzzy and heart mushy, he can't manage two minutes around you without swooning and it honestly sickens everyone around him. (this includes himself sometimes too, though it doesn't seem as though you ever notice.)

lying in the shadows of your private room, Dom wonders how many men have sat where he is and thought of you in the way he currently is. quickly, he pushes that thought from his mind, wiping sleep from his eyes and vowing to do something about the love that has filled his heart.

exhaustion stunts the speed of his movements and his head gets stuck in the hole as he shoves his t-shirt on, at the exact moment you walk back into the room and let out a giggle at his predicament.

"fuck, love can I get a hand here?" he speaks before you can, and laughs along hoping you don't notice the blush spreading on his face as your hands aid him.

"that's not usually the context men ask me that question in, but I'll take it," you joke, passing him his ripped jeans and smiling in the middle of the room, wearing an oversized tshirt that used to be Dom's.

thighs peering out from under the hem of his old t-shirt, a cheesy grin spread across your lips: this is worthy of a million photos, and before you can adjust your position, Dom whips out his polaroid camera and takes one of you there. as he waits for it to develop, he holds it between his teeth and sets the camera down, laughing at your shocked face.

"you're just too beautiful love," he whispers, slowly padding over to you.

"you're such a sweet talker, I know what's on your mind." you giggle, a sound enriched as he pulls you onto the bed and straddles you, a grin spreading across his face too.

"now where would you get that idea from?"

..............

hickeys are off limits. that was your one rule.

knowing that it would devalue your work and put off potential customers, Dom usually seemed fine with it, sticking to bruises from his fingertips and sweet kisses instead of insistent biting.

under the red neon signs, something in him had changed tonight though and as your hips swayed against his, sweet gasps and torturous touches filling his senses, he begged you to give him one. hazy, caught up in the moment, you agreed and did as he asked. for all your feisty facades and promises you forced him to make, at the end of the day you'd do anything for dom. all he had to do was ask.

....................

gaudy neon light mixing with the morning sun spilled through the thin curtains, and Dom marvelled the way it shone onto your body, half hidden by your lacy attire. smirking, he noted you had worn his favourite, a bodice he had bought you as soon as he had the courage. despite it being more expensive than he would ever admit, it looked amazing on you and made his mouth water every time he caught a glimpse of it.

here and now, you had broken another rule. you weren't supposed to fall asleep with your clientele; not that either of you minded, but that meant you had to watch the other leave, torturous glances behind rolled up notes.

now though, with his gentle breath fanning your bare chest and his hands splayed on your waist, you tried to forget where you were and what this was. dreaming, you tried to come up with a million lifetimes you could have had with Dom; anything would be sweeter than this.

perhaps you were young lovers - this was your first time, clumsy and awkward yet still sweet. or maybe you could be married, two children in bedrooms across the hall, and this was a moment of peace before one ran in.

before you could close your eyes and further the daydream, both of you shook awake as the sound of Dom's phone buzzing separated you. bounding up and reaching to answer it, you helped him find his clothes and be on his way. Adam's voice yelled through the speaker and you deduced Dom was late for a studio meeting, and though you know you should have been bothered, you found it sweet he forgot about it for you.

"alright mate I'll be there in five tops," and he ended the call, rolling his eyes as he smiled over at you, "fucking hell, I'm sorry love."

padding over lightly to him, you offered him a smile and his t-shirt, which he put on and returned softly.

then you noticed it. in all its glory.

burning into his skin, a patch of bluish purple, singed yellow and black in places, the bruise you'd bitten into his collarbone showing fully over the collar of his shirt. as his eyes followed your gaze in the mirror, he let out a proud laugh and his face filled with glee.

"it looks cool as fuck!" he almost shouts, before hugging his goodbyes and leaving a note on the side. right as he ends the hug, he looked at you as though he was going to say something but nothing came out.

you couldn't quite hide the way it tore at you when he shut the door and you heard his heavy feet get further away. running your fingers gently across your collarbone exactly where his bruise would be, you wished things were different.

maybe one day, maybe.

[shacklesburst]

so Bavaria (and Germany, I guess) is going into hard lockdown mode again, with all the usual stupidity that brings:

The RKI (the German CDC, basically) publishes guidelines that infections outside are extremely uncommon while most infections occur at home or at the workplace

naturally, the lockdown is supposed to maximize time spent at home or at the workplace while minimizing time outside, going as far as to impose a nightly curfew ... as we all know, coronaviruses just love to strike at night

going to work is explicitly made a blanket exception for everybody, not just “essential workers”

this of course makes it harder to impose WFH policies in the private sector -- just last week we’ve had a heated discussion at work as to why we’ve been trying to make WFH pretty much mandatory if even the government thinks coming into the office should be totally okay

“stupid management is not letting me see my workmates” - “that’s the fucking idea, jake!”

schools and daycare likely just have a second order effect -> children get infected at school, are largely asymptomatic and infect their families, this gets counted as infections “at home”

at least they’re closing schools again as well now, but damn, why did it take so fucking long

Asian countries’ fairly intense contact tracing seems to be working, which means Germany will use fewer resources on contact tracing from now on

don’t wanna be all negative here, so: not really loosening restrictions for Christmas is a good move.

the bad thing is that it’s obviously unenforceable, so quite a few people are still gonna meet their extended family in private unventilated homes for a day

this is how you start fairly well, closing down small restaurants and bars that were positively overflowing just a few weeks ago, and then fuck everything up with apparently allowing religious services without masks until just last week (now, I have no idea how many people went there and I wouldn’t think it’s all too many, but, really?) and going about the whole “trying to follow the science” in the classic jurist and MBA way “so what you’re saying is it’s not impossible to contract the virus outside? ... this means we must listen to science and impose mask wearing everywhere, especially when you’re outside on your own. not at home, of course. that would be barbaric.” (<- this is legitimately what the social democrats are currently trying for)

am I just too stupid to see how this all is gonna help? I can’t be the only one who thinks that mandating remote schooling and WFH for everybody wherever possible instead might curb infections better than not leaving your house after 9pm?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trudeau promises massive covid stimulus

Canadian Prime Ministers have a fun gambit: when things start to go really badly for them, they "prorogue" (suspend) Parliament, which dissolves all committees, inquiries, etc, until such time as they are ready to reconvene, with a tabula rasa.

Most egregiously, the far-right asshole and climate criminal Stephen Harper prorogued Parliament in the middle of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis in order to avoid a no-confidence vote that would have triggered new elections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Canadian_parliamentary_dispute

While this DID save Harper's bacon, it also left Canada without a legislature during a global crisis that threatened the nation's entire future. It was a crazed, reckless thing to do.

Canada has a safeguard to prevent this kind of gambit: as a constitutional monarchy, Canadian parliamentary manoeuvres have to receive the Crown's blessing, in the form of assent from the Governor General, the Queen's rep to Canada.

This is the sober, apolitical adult supervision that fans of constitutional monarchies are always banging on about, and then-Governor General Michaëlle Jean completely failed to do her fucking job, leaving Canada without a Parliament during the GFC. She literally had one job.

Proroguing Parliament didn't just save Harper from a no-confidence vote: it also dissolved all the Parliamentary inquiries underway at the time, including the "Afghan detainee transfer" affair, which was investigating Canadian forces' complicity in the torture-murder of POWs.

In many ways, Trudeau is the anti-Harper: a charismatic Liberal who tells refugees they're welcome in Canada, marches with Greta Thunberg, and appoints the first-ever First Nations person to serve as Attorney General .

Truly, there is no policy so progressive that Trudeau won't endorse it...provided he doesn't actually have to make it into policy. Because many of his policies are indistinguishable from Harperism, albeit with a better haircut.

This started before he won the election, when Trudeau (whose father once declared martial law!) whipped his MPs to vote for a human-rights-denying mass surveillance bill, C-51.

Trudeau did so while insisting that the bill was a massive overreach and totally unacceptable, but claiming that the "loyal opposition" should still back it so as not to be accused of being soft on terrorism in the coming election. He promised to repeal it after.

Of course, he didn't.

Trudeau is often compared to Obama, a young and charismatic fellow who makes compromises, sure, but comes through in the clutch.

Tell that to pipeline protesters.

After the Obama administration killed the Transmountain Pipeline - the continent-spanning tube that would make filthy, planet-destroying tar sands profitable enough to bring to market - Trudeau bailed it out, spending billions of federal dollars to keep it alive.

Then, Trudeau - who campaigned on nation-to-nation truth and reconciliation with First Nations - announced that he would shove this toxic tar-sand tube through unceded treaty lands across the breadth of the naiton.

And then he had the AUDACITY to march with Greta Thunberg at the head of a climate march, demanding a change to policies that would see billions dead in the coming century.

HIS OWN policies.

I mean, Trudeau's boosters have a point - Harper NEVER could have pulled that off.

The Harper years were a Trumpian orgy of blatant self-dealing and cronyism.

The Trudeau years, on the other hand...

One of Trudeau's major donors is SNC Lavalin, a crime syndicate masquerading as a global engineering firm (think Halliburton with less morals).

SNC Lavalin had done so much crime that it was on its final notice with the Canadian legal sysem, a probation that it must not violate on penalty of real, big boy federal criminal prosecutions.

Then it did more crimes.

Remember Trudeau's historic appointment of a First Nations woman to the Attorney General's seat? Now was AG Jody Wilson-Raybould's moment to shine.

As Wilson-Raybould began aggressively pursuing these corporate criminals, she started getting calls from Trudeau's office.

For avoidance of doubt, these were not calls of support. They were demands to drop the case and let the SNC Lavalin crime syndicate get off scot-free. Eventually the PM himself called her and demanded that she give his cronies a pass on their repeated criminal actions.

Wilson-Raybould went public, decrying political meddling in the justice system. Trudeau denied everything and began to smear her (Harper had tons of scandals like this, BTW, only the counterpart was usually a rich old white guy, not a First Nations woman).

But Wilson-Raybould had recorded the conversations, and she released the recordings, and proved that Trudeau had lied about the whole thing. Trudeau fired her and kicked her out of the party.

But at least he's not Trump, right? He's the anti-Trump! (Well, except for the pipeline and that time he announced "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there").

Remember the Muslim Ban? As Trump was tormenting refugees at the US border, Trudeau tweeted "To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada."

Yes, that was awesome. There is no policy so progressive that Trudeau won't endorse it...provided that he never has to do anything to make it happen.

Canada and the US have a "Safe Third Country Agreement" that says that asylum-seekers turned away from the US border can't try again in Canada. To make #WelcomeToCanada more than a hashtag, Trudeau's government would have to suspend that agreement.

Instead, Trudeau's government insisted that under Trump, "the conditions of the Safe Third Country Agreement continued to be met" and thus they would not suspend the agreement and give hearings to those turned away by Trump's border guards.

But at least Trudeau handled the pandemic better than Harper handled the Great Financial Crisis.

No, really, he did!

Mostly.

I mean, unless you were in a nursing home or on a First Nations reservation.

https://www.canadalandshow.com/podcast/an-emergency-season-pandemic/

But still, Trudeau's government did a MUCH better job than the Trump government, or Boris Johnson's Tories. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives will really fight cronyism, climate change or authoritarianism, but there are still substantive differences between them.

But in some ways, they are depressingly similar.

Take corruption.

Long before the plague struck, Canadaland was publishing damning reports on We Charity, a massive, beloved Canadian charitable institution nominally devoted to ending child slavery.

Canadaland's initial reporting on the charity focused on its partnerships with companies that were using child slaves to make their products, but the investigations mushroomed after the charity sent dire legal threats to the news organisation over its coverage.

And then Canadaland founder Jesse Brown found himself smeared by a US dirty-tricks organization that got its start working for GOP politicians, who got a contract to plant editorials criticizing Canadaland's We coverage in small-town US newspapers.

Private eyes started following Brown around, even keeping tabs on his small children. Rather than being intimidated, Brown kept up the pressure on We, which prompted whistleblowers to leak him even more details about the charity's activities.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/03/turnkey-authoritarianism/#we-charity

These included massive, mysterious real-estate holdings, hard-to-excuse criminal investigations of its Kenyan activities, and (here's where I've been going with this all along) GIANT CASH PAYMENTS to Trudeau's family, as well as valuable gifts to his Finance Minister.

And, as with the Wilson-Reybould affair, Trudeau's initial response to this was to simply deny it, calling his accusers liars. But then the scandal kept unspooling, his Finance Minister quit in disgrace, the charity (sort of) folded up and shut down, and Trudeau...

Well, Trudeau prorogued Parliament, shutting down Canada's government in the midst of a crisis that was - unimaginably - even worse than the 2008 crisis that Harper had left the nation rudderless through to avoid his own scandal.

(Again, for constitutional monarchy fans, that's two entirely political proroguings in the midsts of global crises, signed off on by the Queen's supposedly apolitical and sober check on reckless activity)

Shutting down Parliament seems to have rescued Trudeau's government from snap elections, which may well have been won by the Tories, who have resolved their longstanding racist and plutocratic tensions with a new ghoulish nightmare leader:

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/canada-erin-otoole-conservative-party-cpc/

And, as Trudeau has reconvened Parliament, he's promised something genuinely amazing: a massive, national stimulus package meant to keep families, workers and small businesses afloat through the looming second pandemic wave.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-canada-economy/canada-bets-the-farm-on-big-spending-as-second-wave-threatens-economic-recovery-idUSKCN26F1NF

This is something Canada - and the US, for that matter - desperately needs. Canada is monetarily sovereign: it issues its own currency and its debt is in the same currency, meaning it can never run out of money (no more than Apple could ever run out of Itunes gift cards).

The Canadian DOES face constraints on its spending, but they're just not MONETARY constraints - they're RESOURCE constraints. If the Canadian government creates money to buy the same things the private sector is shopping for, there'll be a bidding war, AKA inflation.

But as a new wave of lockdowns and mass illness looms over the country, there's going to be a hell of a lot of things the private sector isn't trying to buy - notably, the labour of the Canadian workforce, millions of whom will be locked indoors through the winter.

An analyst warns that Trudeau's proposal is likely to add CAD30B to the deficit, which is a completely irrelevant fact unless that new money is going to be chasing the same goods that Canadian business and citizens are seeking to buy.

Trudeau has promised to create a national prescription drug plan (a longstanding hole in Canada's national health care system), as well as universal childcare, and he's denounced austerity as a response to the crisis.

There's a part of me that is very glad to see this. My family and friends are in Canada, after all, and if Trudeau lives up to his promise, he will shield them from the collapse we're seeing in the USA.

But that is a BIG if. Trudeau isn't Harper. He's more charismatic, he's got better hair, and he says much, much better things than Harper.

However, when the chips are down, Trudeau out-Harpers Harper.

Mass surveillance legislation. Corruption scandals. Lying about corruption scandals. Bailing out the pipeline. "No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there." Abandoning asylum-seekers to Trump's lawless regime.

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." It would be pretty naive to assume that merely because Trudeau has promised to do the right thing, that he will do the right thing.

Indeed, if history is any indicator, the best way to predict what Trudeau will do is to assume that it will be the OPPOSITE of whatever he promises.

I won't lie. I felt a spark of hope when I read Trudeau's words.

But hope is all I've got - and it's a far cry from confidence.

Or relief.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Being a Cryptid

One thing the COVID pandemic did was to bring to the forefront some of the issues of the National Health Service.

Some. Not all.

I mean, yes, the nurses and the care staff and even the doctors get treated badly (though at least the doctors get paid worth a shit). You know who else gets treated badly?

THE FUCKING ADMINS.

When the NHS started getting underfunded, know where the first cuts went? Yeah, three guesses and the first two don’t count. I recall being called into a staff meeting about how they were changing the pay bands and basically downsizing the admin department. I remember the time we were down to, like, three admins out of, like, twelve because of recent holidays and a particularly bad flu season and being told that we couldn’t have a temp because the one agency we were allowed to hire from had no temps left. These days, one NHS admin staffer has to do the work of at least two, for less pay than any one decent secretary would generally get for the same work in the private sector (healthcare or otherwise).

Ever seen the admin wing of any NHS hospital department? Unless it’s for the Chief Executive of the Trust, the entire place is generally a hellhole, no matter how nice the rest of the hospital is. One office I worked in had no window because it used to be a scanning room and the window was covered in lead. That was one of the nicer ones. I’ve worked in rooms that were clearly larger once but had walls thrown in to make more offices - that or it was literally a closet with a hastily-added window. The one I’m in now has ceiling panels still removed from the ceiling - with exposed wires - from when we had the new intercom system put in, buckets still on the floor from when the ceiling leaked, the smell of mildew coming from the space between floors because of that leak, a bathroom no one has ever maintained, and walls that have cracked and been hastily covered over with plaster that no one’s bothered to paint over. Also the cleaners don’t come nearly often enough, and when they do, it’s generally during working hours.

All of this morale-destroying bullshit ... and we keep things running. We arrange the appointments, send results where they need to go, ensure records are up to date, ensure that diaries are managed appropriately and that everyone gets to where they need to go, when they need to get there, with the things they will need when they get there. Your healthcare situation is bad and requires a multidisciplinary team? We’re the ones that coordinate that so that you can still see the doctor you’re most used to and thus most comfortable with but still benefit from the expertise of doctors who might have a different take on your issue that might help you get better faster ... or get better at all. You need your appointment moved forward because a symptom did something really weird and atrocious? We’ll do what we can to facilitate that, up to and including trying to shake a phone consultation out of the consultant. The NHS wouldn’t run without doctors or nurses or care workers ... but it wouldn’t run without us either.

But no one sees us. So no one actually seems to realise we’re there ... at least not until it’s time to pin blame on someone.

We’re the fucking shoemaker elves of the health service. We turn up, we work our arses off, we make things work ... but since we’re apparently invisible or some shit, we get either a) a bunch of people who seem to think that all the stuff that happens on the back end is just magic and just happens or b) some overpaid, underworked gobshite gets the credit for our hard work.

In the interview that got me the current job, they asked me what I thought being a secretary was all about. I explained that we are the feet under the swan; the swan glides gracefully and serenely across the water ... and you wouldn’t know from looking that underneath, those little webbed feet are paddling like mad. We’re the ones who paddle like mad to keep the illusion of serenity and grace.

But yeah, we’re also shoemaker elves; all of the work, none of the credit.

Between the erasure / invisibility of my gender presentation and sexuality and this? It’s a wonder anyone ever sees me at all. But I guess at least I’m a cryptid.

...Fuck this; I wanna be a kelpie.

[antivirusprogram2020]

I am an antivirus program (2020)

> CHAPTER 2 The new human type cannot be properly understood without an awareness of what he is continuously exposed to from the world - Theodor Adorno. Minima Moralia, 1951 We can not change the medium as the medium is predicated on the message (use my square space code for a 10% discount)- we are fixed in this web 2.0 and the control of knowledge will be met with the streamlining of UI and UX design. Design tools like the adobe programs will continue to increase their premium and their monopoly hold on the design space - to be a designer is to be implicated with this process, regardless if you pirate software or notThis is where I raise flags against the tepid conglomeration of blog sites and web in general, the astroturfing of the internet has only amplified the feedback of Graphic Design. You’d typically call this commercial design. Commercial design fits the criteria of an evolving media world, “It is important to note that this ultimate stage of pictorialization was a reversal of pattern. The world of body and mind...was not photographical at all, but anonvisual set of relations”1. Commercial Design started to drive an efficiency science behind it’s aesthetic - you make the access mode immediate and your engagement success is far higher, and you do this through the pictogram, and when photography came about, that too was made into a design appendage. “To understand the medium of the photograph is quite impossible, then, without grasping its relations to other media, both old and new. For media, as extensions of our physical and nervous systems, constitute a world of biochemical interactions that must ever seek new equilibrium as new extensions occur.”1 This is potentially a valuable understanding of media, and thus design, presented by media theorist Marshall Mcluhan, commercial design (and all art and design in a sense) are schizophrenic presentations of the world, they accumulate meanings outside the presented scope of an advertisement, or typography - they link the relational experience of the mass media consumer, as Mcluhan states. However, this is not all, he states an ‘equilibrium as new extensions occur’ - in my context now this weighs with a great importance, we know the new extensions already, something that Mcluhan unfortunately didn’t get to experience fully, and that’s the web, the modern computer, the pocket mobile device. These are in their own rights mediums, your OS (operating system) is a computer language medium that dictates other program mediums, the access mode to the rest of the systems of design, websites contain live feeds and streams to distant realities, it’s all so lucid but at the same time it feels like an astral projection. At times this can feel nauseating, that collapsing feeling of ‘space’ and ‘time’. This presents a wider problem with modern design, technology has embedded itself into the core of the practice since the dawn of paper and pen, stone and chisel etc. The problem being that while technology has stopped gapped connectivity, it refuses to go further - refuses to return the creativity of a design practice unless commandeered. This has led to the necessity for the designer to code, and script, to kit bend and utilise AI - once again “fragmenting” the work role. “Under conditions of electric circuitry, all the fragmented job patterns tend to blend once more into involving and demanding roles or forms of work that more and more resemble teaching, learning, and “human” service, in the older sense of dedicated loyalty.” Graphic design namely has done well to adapt and reshape, showing its versatility in the age of digital design. Not only that, it hybridizes aesthetic models much like a fashion season generates new styles, which keeps design itself fresh and alive, while sometimes slipping into the contrived and over-saturated. But is the “human” service really what Graphic Design is becoming? It certainly hints to this with the proactive design studio model. Interaction and Bureaucracy, it’s an efficiency tactic. All design requires hierarchy even if that hierarchy is to not have one. I see the office space, I remember the spider plant, I see the shore line, I see the whitecaps. The workers space is a micro-territorial space of capital politics and a grab for faux socialism in most cases, in some, it is an honest attempt to form comradery - the cafeteria is an effective grounds to reinforce or detourne this thinking. People like artist Olafur Eliasson effectively install a commons space for the studio team to interact and communicate, job roles are made equal in that space. “The studio, as much as we don’t like it, means working in your own little departments, compartmentalised. And there are hierarchies even though everyone’s a part of the democracy. The kitchen is a nice leveller.” It’s a universal ideology that falls into a majority of Eliasson’s work that provides an effective future-proof for how the operations of studio practice should be carried out (see the Auteur myth). My cynicism is only symptomatic of the consumerist prerequisite that allows design to exist in the first place - a degree in the topic definitely is met with a careerist sentiment, to be financially viable within a milieu of art and design subjects. Graphic Design should not try to divorce itself from this grouping, it stands stronger with the complex wovings and multitudes that allow it to bloom as an individual practice that arranges the practice of others. The efforts here are a concern with the design practice no less, and how ethics and politics are sequestered by a shifting responsibility of effects, how and why Graphic design mutated into the corporate virus that it is now. ”All media work us over completely.”8 This is Mcluhan’s sentiment from his writings in the 60’s, and It stands up true to this day, more so than ever. Algoration (the use of data algorithms to curate a web feed) are notorious and globally implemented into most ‘social media’, but outside social media, it’s used as predictive data. This is the “reversal pattern”, Graphic Design puts a face to this slippery coded underbelly. The automation of design media has become an efficient business strategy to overmine its user base data, and subsequently requires illustration. To be concise, the study of the Graphic Designer is in part the study of Media, the study of media is the lens of relational activities and connectivity. And this is the permitted virus. Adversely, the antivirus program is a research protocol invested in studying the autonomy available to a Graphic Designer, and an extended hand to all fragmented sectors that require a similar reclamation. Language dictates media – media manufactures consent, therefore language manufactures consent. A small quibble no less, that the Graphic Designer goes to bed with media every day. And in the morning they arise with vast spawns of editorials, emailing lists, content posts - lots of fucking content posts by content creatures. The homogeneous sprawl of media is a compounded expository of new design conditions. “Today, the mass audience can be used as a creative, participating force. It is, instead, merely given packages of passive entertainment.”8 The passive entertainment is reflexive of its audience, an audience that is content on not being challenged when engaging and consuming media, not being challenged when creating and releasing it - the language logic is a false preposition - things don’t have to occur in the forefront of our percepts, media can be a stealth operation for critical theory or a dog whistle for nazis. Even a glass of milk is steeped in meaning. “The photograph is just as useful for collective, as for individual, postures and gestures, whereas written and printed language is biased toward the private and individual(s) posture.”1 Mcluhan and designer Rapheal Roake seem to fit perfectly in collusion with one another here, “All design is a political act”, this fits Mcluhan’s collective principle for the photograph precisely, as this explicitly gives backing to the relational dynamics of media itself, it sits in the collective sphere - the global village. It all begins to feel like a fever dream, the spectres of Helvetica, Comic sans and Papyrus jumping on your chest as you’re paralysed in a waking dream. Blink and you’ll miss the horses head 144hz refresh rate. The grid settings of your life are closing in tighter and tighter as you cant kern in a moment for peace, please adobe I’m plugged in to your creative cloud let me use my kettle already, yes dear, they’re wacom tablet plates, we threw out the cutlery and replaced them for tote bags and ironic panel hats. The decoherence of the 21st century is here and it’s got anthropocene smeared all over its lips. Everyone wants to fuck their OLED displays, the screen is constantly flirting with me, it bulges and writhes along with it’s circuitry like an obscene Cronenburg slide show, and with a tilt of the hinge, it rips my hands straight off the bone. It’s simultaneously psychosexual and completely meaningless, but there doesn’t seem to be any Big Other alternative, can you see the demons wearing the guise of post-modernity, and where they emit a solar flare? Just tryna game the system can’t you see, if I shake it at just the right moment, at the right angle, I’ll get an additional diet coke. You don’t understand how fucking much I like diet coke. A man who finds himself among others drinking diet coke is irritated because he does not know why he is not one of the others drinking diet coke. I have graphic design Stockholm syndrome, what do you mean you don’t know who Gerrit Noordzij is? At this point going outside will trigger my flight or fight response, I’m afraid of being swooped by seagulls while I’m bound on a rock, I sleep in a bed with a faraday blanket, I’m absolutely glowing, washed in sunlight. “As for the anticipation of reality by images, the precession of images and media in relation to events, such that the connection between cause and effect becomes scrambled and it becomes impossible to tell which is the effect of the other” These collective postures translate into all modern media and are littered with effects. One is singular and rhizomatic in any given instance of engagement towards media and the invisible hand of the ‘designer’. And on the contrary the medium is an assemblage of arborescence and is later politicised in the factory line assembly - a by-product of ‘essential’ capital labor. The capital fiction is overwritten by the post-market mythos of a company and it’s figureheads, it’s in-house publishing team use individual members to feature in nice magazines. Effects, we are overcome by so many different effects daily, to the extent that we become desensitized to the potential the subsequent causes and effects, modern reality makes sure to compound these consequences of media to a sensory overload of hysteria, the neurotic ones take to pinterest to organise themselves. We like to order things, It gives clarity and comfort within the dysphoria and entropy of our lives, pinterest, tumblr, are.na, instagram are all negentropical solutions in an overstimulated digital environment. “Instant communication insures that all factors of the environment and of experience coexist in a state of active interplay.”8 To understand this I need to clarify that the medium, the message, the photograph and all subsets of visual and nonvisual information are communication - it goes without saying - but this establishes the politicised and astroturfed space of Graphic Design, a designer is expected to make commercially viable work to thrive, and usually this is achieved by co-opting styles to any degree appropriate to a brief. This results is the parody, the hyperstition and hyperobject - an overly ironic and self aware ventilation apparatus that keeps the gimmicks of Graphic Design alive. The overtures of a design piece can appear stark placid and regurgitated. It’s very much easy to default to a ctrl-c, ctrl-v automation process. Reinforced no less by an autodidact push of some educational institutions - more concerned with juggling design briefs than focusing their teachings on a core design system (despite their ever love for the Bauhaus - yes huni the library is open). Of course, with the new emphasis on a technology dominated world we are expected to rely and reinforce the techno-dependent designer (work smart not hard). And we are yet to catch up to this mutation in design, where design was once a phylogeny of different features that collected to assume a physical medium, centrered on type, constrained by fibres and ink and oil - these components have congealed onto the Macbook, the ergonomics of physical/digital unbound the Designer from the difficulties of a physical medium. So why do we remain in the realm of rehashing typefaces and conventional media, why are we tied down to the revolving doors of design trends - surely now than ever we have all the components, all the tools to produce new design movements, this can’t keep up “When the circuit learns your job, what are you going to do?”8

[soulvomit]

Ok, look, this is actually an area where I have a personal axe to grind. I was very, very lucky and did not encounter significant crab bucket mentality in most of my spaces in my teens and twenties. There was competition but more in the vein of "I'm pushing you to do better, but then I'm going to exceed you! Catch me if you can!" with both parties pushing each other forward. This had drawbacks too. (And why does everything have to be a competition?)

But in later spaces - especially in many female and LGBTQ spaces - the competition amounted to, "I'm going to knock you back or get in your way so that you don't make me feel bad about myself, or make me look incompetent."

(I feel like I've seen this dynamic in other work settings - especially lower status work - and it's always blown my mind - "you said you didn't want that person's hours or you want to quit anyway. So why are you trying to get the other person fired?" In a toxic work culture it can manifest as people trying to get the better workers flushed so that they have fewer expectations placed upon them.)

Or, in situations where the disempowered parties *were* trying to "get ahead" in a manner meaningful in a capitalist world, there was the assumption that only one space was available, or that only *one* person in their marginalized category would be chosen. There's the assumption (often justified) that in a competition, women and or LGBTQ people are not competing apples-to-apples with the greater number of cis het white men, but with each other for one coveted space.

"There Can Be Only One!"

The "Highlander Rule."

Or there was a dynamic in women's spaces and female dominated job settings of tearing women down by expecting more Giving Tree behavior from them in contexts where self-promotion and self-focus were needed. This looks like, to name just one example, your achievement resulting in getting voluntold into helping positions instead of pushed forward.

"You did great, you're the TA I need, I'm going to have you tutor while I write the college admissions rec for your classmate. It'll be good on your resume!"

Or we're funneled into spaces specific to our identity and removed from competition in the bigger world *that* way. (Keep in mind that it's possible to be in training scenarios where most of the working graduates in the private sector are men, but most teachers are women who themselves were Public Sector Tracked *by other women.*)

I'm talking about horizontal aggression stuff, btw. The ways in which we fuck each other over.

We are already expected in most social environments to *not* put our own oxygen mask on first, figuratively speaking. And there are whole demographics of people who are expected to serve those "higher up" without reward.

But we need to acknowledge that we punish each other for not doing this very thing.

[hachama]

Second Democratic Debate Analysis, pt. 1

Like last time, I’ve (finally) read the transcripts.  I read the fact-checkers’ analysis.  I have ranked them. 

Also like last time, due to the size of the field, I’ll be splitting my analysis into four groups.  This first one will be the Please Do Not Make Me Vote For Them group: 

Good news!  Due to candidates dropping out, it’s a shorter list!

Biden, Williamson, Delaney, Ryan, and Bullock

Under the break, I’ll be analyzing their debate performance, how effectively they represented themselves on the issues, and how much I hate them, in reverse order of preference. Let’s begin.

17) Bullock

Governor Steve Bullock did not make an appearance in the first set of debates, and now I know why. He is the Shirley Exception made flesh. “Surely no one would actually use our laws to hurt someone.  Surely if someone is really a good person they won’t face terrible abuses.  Surely not…” Stevie, these are things that are currently happening.  These are facts.  

Those who read my analysis of the first debates should know that I do not accept any luke-warm “healthcare choice” arguments, and Steve is full of those, too.

He’s very worried about other candidates campaign promises being unrealistic, and says that it’s important to listen to “real Americans,” as if democratic socialists and the majority of Americans who support universal healthcare aren’t “real” enough for him.

As if that weren’t enough, he also argues in favor of some of the abuses of immigrants, as a deterrent to immigration.

To his credit, he supports treating gun violence as a public health issue, including research by the CDC into causes, which could inform actually useful gun control policies.  He wants to see Citizens United overturned, which is also good.  But not good enough.

16) Ryan

Representative Tim Ryan has the distinction of being one of the candidates I hated entirely in this debate. I agreed with none of his points, and most of my notes contain profanity.  He introduced himself as New and Fresh, playing on his youth (he’s 45. The average age of the democratic candidates is 54.  There are 4 people running who are younger than Tim) without offering much substance.

He opposes decriminalizing the border.  On healthcare he seems to think we can’t make healthcare better for everyone because then unions won’t have anything going for them which is just… He thinks letting businesses “buy in to medicare” is a good idea, and all I can hear is “privatize the social safety net and let companies decide whose grandma actually deserves to have proper care when she breaks her hip.”  

I’m not saying Tim is evil. I’m saying he’s spineless and would let bad things happen because it’s too much work to stop them.

15) Delaney

Representative John Delaney joins Tim Ryan in the dubious category of “I hate you and everything you stand for.”  The only reason he ranks slightly higher than Tim is because someone had to.  Their scores were the same level of shrieking profanity.

John thinks that reminding everyone that he was the youngest CEO in the history of the New York Stock Exchange is a good thing, showing that he has absolutely no idea what democrats are looking for in a candidate.  Surely, we should trust him!  He sold his soul early and has abided by the contract for so long!

He is another candidate decrying “unrealistic” campaign promises.  He reiterated his concern that Medicare for All would underfund the healthcare industry in America, he considers it an “extreme” policy proposal, and called it an “anti-private sector strategy.”  Yes, John, because the private sector’s profit motive has been working so well, let’s all continue dying so that small groups of people can make lots of money off of the price of insulin.  Fuck you.

14) Williamson

Marianne Williamson’s contributions were blessedly brief and infrequent.  She supports public campaign funding, which is great, but she also spent an entire minute on “I have concerns” without once proposing a solution, referred to the American healthcare system as a “sickness care system,” which for me evokes concerns about chemtrails and chemikillz, and her opening statement evoked American Exceptionalism.  

I’m so tired of Marianne Williamson.

13) Biden

Former Vice President, Former Senator Joe Biden was invited to comment on everything.  As a result, I have over a page of notes just for him. The moderators’ bold strategy of checking in with Uncle Joe every time anyone said anything gave him opportunities to say a few things I agreed with, but ultimately was not enough to get him out of my lowest ranked category.

As he said in the last debate, Joe supports rejoining the Paris Climate Accord.  This time, he said we need to “increase” the standard, apparently recognizing that solutions negotiated several years ago will not be sufficient now, and he wants to see an end to fossil fuel subsidies.  These are good things I can agree with.

Joe is concerned by the treatment of immigrants seeking asylum, and the excessive wait times for their cases to be heard and the refugees either released or returned to their country of origin.  His solution is to “flood the zone,” spend more resources to make decisions faster. This guarantees nothing except a reduction in detainees which, while generally positive, is less than half a solution.

The thing Joe said that I liked best was about the treatment of former-inmates after the completion of their prison sentences.  Joe said that former-inmates should have access to public programs and benefits upon release.  This would be a significant change from the current system, which continues to punish people long after their sentence is served.  He also said that drug crimes should result in rehab, not prison.

Joe continued to use his association with Obama as a shield against criticism, which was worn thin before the first debate started.  He evaded questions about Eric Garner, refused to answer questions about Obama-era deportations (with the added bonus of “what I said was said in confidence, you’d share it, but not me”), invoked American Exceptionalism in his opening statement, interrupted Cory Booker at one point, blamed all of our current political and social dysfunction on Trump, and thinks we should renegotiate the Trans Pacific Partnership.  

The cherry on top of this shit sundae?  He said the phrase “I have the only plan that (…)” I haven’t talked about this much, because it’s a little hard to express in text, but I have a very, very negative response to any claim to being the only person who can solve a problem.  It’s bad when Trump does it, it’s bad when Biden does it, it’s an abuser’s tactic.  “I’m the only one who loves you, I’m the only one who can help you, I’m the only one” is always a) a lie, and b) a red flag.

Granted, I was so far behind that some of Biden’s comments formed parallels I might not have seen when he initially said them, but some of the things he said about immigration were symptomatic of the same thought process that gave us that abominable rewrite of Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus.  Biden, when trying to make a point about the strength of America being in our diversity, said that “we’ve been able to cherry pick from the best of every culture,” and followed it up with “anybody that crosses the stage with a PhD, you should get a green card for seven years. We should keep them here.” Not everyone who immigrates to the U.S. is going to have an advanced degree. Not everyone who immigrates to the U.S. is going to be “the best and brightest.”  And that’s a good thing.  There is a limit to the number of doctors and lawyers a society needs. Some immigrants are going to be nurse’s assistants and cab drivers, and we need them here, too.

Even with all of that, the worst of what Joe had to say was about healthcare.  Joe thinks that limiting co-pays to $1000 per person is part of making healthcare accessible to everyone.  He thinks your health insurance premium should be no more than 8.5% of your annual income.  I did some math.  For minimum wage, that’s almost $2500 for insurance, out of pocket, before anyone sees any benefit.  After taxes, that leaves about $10k for a minimum wage worker to live on for a year. At $15/hour, $20k to live on.  These are not reasonable numbers in most of the country.

[coffee-n-ritalin]

I'm a hard worker. I graduated with a 9.2/10 avarage from a prestigious law school. When I tried to find a job, I realised people were offering 40 hour a week lawyers positions for 1.500 or 2.000 bucks a month, plus 5% of your winnings in suits

Minimum wage is 1.000. Minimum wage for waiters is 1.200 plus tips

So I'm doing what people do in my country. I'm preparing for civil service. It pays obscenely above the private sector avarage and you get tenured after 3 years. Plus the status, it's what middle class children have been doing for three hundred years

With all those perks and tradition, it is not surprising competition is ridiculous

It takes a few years, three or four, on avarage, to be approved in a nice civil service post, if you're smart and diligent and a bit lucky

It takes studying dozens of hours a week and it can't be done with a full time job, as a waiter, say, because honestly lawyering in a firm for a couple thousand bucks is out of the question

You also need to accumulate experience as a lawyer. Judgeship, for instance, requires three years of practice. So I take clients from the public defenders' office, which is a hassle to represent and another one to collect

I also have to pay the Bar Association fees, transport, student loan, books and other study supplies. So I take on private clients when I can find them

They're regular middle class people in a third world country, so we charge with a payment plan. A tiny little bit every month

Then I have to figure out how the fuck to try a fucking case without an experienced boss to show me the ropes

So, yeah, I'm ranting and venting and hating my mother's insistence on complaining about her life right now