#wage dispute

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"SIT-DOWN STRIKE HALTS MACHINES AT LOCAL PLANT," Hamilton Spectator. May 26, 1943. Page 7. --- Burlington Steel Employees Refuse to Start Mill in Wage Dispute ---- Company Officials Say Vital Production Delayed By Latest Development ---- Employees at the Burlington Steel Company, Limited, are out on a sit-down strike to-day. The night shift went out last evening, refusing to start the mill over a wage dispute, the management stated, and this morning H. J. Stambaugh, president of the company, said the situation remains unchanged.

The company, which is engaged in vital work, was not prepared to say how many men were out and said the statement, issued last night, outlines the situation and nothing can be added at present, other than it is a matter for the War Labour Board.

Company's Statement This statement follows:

"This evening the night shift at the Burlington Steel Company, Limited, refused to start the mill. Rivet and bolt stock urgently needed by Pacific coast shipbuilding companies was scheduled to be rolled. A substantial order for this type of steel was accepted by the company from War-time Merchant Shipping, Limited, early in March for delivery in April.

"Production was started on March 22, but was halted by a sit-down strike on March 24, the employees claiming they were not being paid a fair rate for the work performed.

"Since then the matter has received consideration from the Regional War Labour Board of Ontario; representatives of the company and employees have appeared before the board and presented their views. The regional board under date of May 18 set up rates which, in their opinion, were fair and reasonable."

[alwaysbewoke]

[tyrannosaurus-trainwreck]

The self-dealing and vertical integration you get with really big monopolies can also very much mean that the budget isn't really the budget.

If Disney makes a movie for $300 million all-told, but 70% of that was paid out to f/x companies that Disney owns, and prop rental warehouses that Disney owns, and marketing companies that Disney owns, and broadcasters and publishers that Disney owns, and licensing clearinghouses that Disney owns, and so forth, then Disney can hardly be said to have lost $300 million even if the movie never earns a single penny. They would have just shuffled $210 million out of Marvel Studios or wherever and into other subsidiaries, with Marvel Studios then being able to take a huge tax write-off because of their on-paper $300 million dollar loss.

Sometimes depending on what's going on with other subsidiary companies, you get massively bloated film budgets that are really just an excuse to shunt another $25 million out of the studio for tax purposes, or to avoid having to take out a loan by the production partner the money's going to, or to trick investors into thinking the subsidiary just had a gangbusters quarter, or because your bro who's VP of that subsidiary will get a huge annual bonus off the sudden profit boost and you're pretty sure the movie can make the money back once it's released so it won't hurt you any.

I'd also be shocked if a company as huge as Disney was using a financial company that wasn't under their own umbrella to finance these things, meaning that the interest on whatever loans they take out to bankroll the film is also going back into Disney coffers and that if something does happen to tank the production, one of their own companies is still collecting the insurance payout.

I got bored so here's a movie chart

I went to the List of biggest box-office bombs wikipedia article and put all the data into an excel sheet. I simplified the data by taking the highest estimates anytime there were ranges of estimated loss/budget. Then I made a neat little chart.

On the left axis you have the amount lost in millions, adjusted for inflation. Each dot represents a film and is placed at the year it came out.

So! What does this tell us?

This tells us that, even accounting for inflation, box office failures have been more and more expensive and more and more frequent. Which means two things - films are getting more and more expensive as are their failures... but also, those failures are no longer enough to kill studios.

It used to be that even a major production studio could risk dying out from one or two big budget bombs. It is no longer the case. A lot of the later ones, the second half of the 2010s and the 2020s, are Disney productions.

In fact! out of the 25 films on this list that came out in the 2020s, 15 are Disney or 20th Century productions (20th being owned by Disney). That's completely ridiculous. Those films all have budgets of 150 million dollars at least. They all lost at least 100 million dollars. And that is not accounting for the marketing budget of the films - it is generally accepted that a modern film's real budget is double its production cost, because studios will spend around the same amount marketing the film as they do making it.

The fact that Disney productions is not currently reduced to ashes is complete nonsense.

And that, dear readers, is what monopolies do for you. That is what "too big to fail" means. It doesn't mean too big to encounter failure... It means too big for any failure to really affect you.

[aanews69]

Dockworkers on STRIKE Dockworker strike in effect from Maine to Texas amidst demands for fair wages and limits on automation. Could this trigger new shortages and reshape our holiday shopping season? Your thoughts? #DockWorkersStrike #AutomationHurtsFamilies #FightForFairWages #AutomationDispute #SupplyChainCrisis Subscribe👇: https://vist.ly/3mhr82d Get Gear 👉: https://vist.ly/3mhr829

[townpostin]

Court Order Ignored: PHED Employees' Salaries Remain Unpaid

Non-Gazetted Employees Federation plans legal action over delayed wages PHED Adityapur Division faces backlash as employees’ salaries remain unpaid despite court order. JAMSHEDPUR – The Executive Engineer of the PHED Adityapur Division is being accused by the Non-Gazetted Employees Federation of disregarding a High Court order to pay overdue salaries. For the past eight months, seven employees of…

[tenth-sentence]

It even won over some working-class wives who exchanged poorer wages for themselves for better pay for their husbands.

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory

[legalstudiesin1]

Labor Laws in India: Protecting Employee Rights, Contracts, and Dispute Resolution

Introduction Labor laws in India are a set of legal provisions designed to protect the rights and welfare of employees. These laws govern various aspects of employment, including working conditions, wages, benefits, dispute resolution, and more. The objective of labor laws is to ensure fair treatment, social security, and a safe working environment for workers across different sectors and…

[newsbites]

Striking public service workers are growing more frustrated.

In an update Wednesday outside Parliament Hill, National president Chris Aylward said their bargaining team learned Tuesday night that government won’t move from their position on wages.

He’s calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to settle the dispute.

“He can either get involved personally, and help settle this dispute, or he can turn his back on the workers who are striking, predominantly women who are making 45-60-thousand dollars a year,” said Aylward.

He added that if Trudeau turns his back, he’ll turn his back on every single worker in the country.

Earlier today, Treasury Board president Mona Fortier told reporters that they’re still at the table, but the offers from the union are unreasonable.

It’s the eighth day of the strike, as over 155,000 public service workers seek better pay and to work from home more often.

[defensefilms]

I Don’t Watch College Hoops Because Exploitation Isn’t Entertaining

“Because you don’t learn financial management and budgeting by being broke”

For all intent and purposes, the American college basketball circuit is probably one of the biggest influences that creates the NBA, which I love oh so much.

And I don’t care.

I really wonder, how it is that in a country that values business, enterprise and the ability to earn a living like the United States Of America does, and yet, still does not see the need to garuantee this kind of fairness across the board.

How much money do you think the NCAA makes in a year? Like in one season of college basketball how much do you think the NCAA is worth with it’s live game attendance, ticket sales, merchandise sales, advertising revenue and television broadcasting rights. How much do you think that operation is worth in 1 season?

Whatever you valuation is, it’s wrong, and in all likelihood, lower than what you expect or project because this organization/business does not have to pay it’s labour force.

A quick search on investopedia.com reveals that the NCAA made 1 billion dollars in profits in 2022.

Not a single penny of that goes to the players and I can’t abide it.

This culture of blatant exploitation is not entertaining, or rather it gets in the way of me finding college basketball entertaining.

There is an almost insidious level of intolerance towards the idea of a college athlete being paid any money to represent an institution in a sport, and I don’t understand why, because the pie is more than big enough that players can be compensated right now, and not have to wait until they make it to the NBA.

Stories like Jalen Rose, Chris Webber and The Fab Five, demonstrate firsthand the kind of vitriol that awaits any college athlete that tries to make a buck for themselves, without the stuffed shirts giving them express permission to do so.

I also don’t buy the idea that players are recieving a free education and therefore getting a full ride to study and play for free, is the only incentive they deserve.

That’s nonsense.

Firstly, college athletes are required to study and play/represent thier college in a sport, but they are also being sent in to the modern day job market where are degree or qualification is less advantageous than at any time in history.

And lastly, these colleges have to understand that they are sending a majority of these athletes in to the modern day labor market, and with that should come an adjusting of the rates. College degrees, qualifications, as well as modern hiring practices are not the trump card that they used to be.

The current revenue share between athletes and college institutions, does not reflect this at all.

In the video above posted by CNN, former college basketball player, Cody McDavis explains that paying college basketball and football players, would likely mean college institutions cutting spending on less profitable sports programs altogether, specifically with regards to the smaller schools.

In 2019, former staff writer for Forbes, Chris Smith, posted a video, courtesy of Forbes, which went in to depth to looking at valuations and revenue streams for the most profitable colleges, all of whom would have made at least half a billion dollars in 2018. 

These teams are making money from everything including game tickets, parking tickets, food and concession, merchandise, media rights deals, sponsorships, television rights, advertising revenue, and in regard to the bigger schools, who can also pull in donations from alumni members in the form of contributions/donations.

In the same year of 2019, CNBC did a video in which they broke down som of the financials of the annual March Madness tournament, and the network reports that the latest television deal made the NCAA 857 million dollars in 2018. 

In addition to that the March Madness tournament also brought in 1.32 billion dollars in television ad spending, which is more than the NBA, the MLB and college football.

All of that is outside of other things like the yearly NIT, which is an adjeacent tournament to March Madness, and which together with the NCAA, reportedly brings in upwards of 132 million dollars a year.

This revenue is all collected and essentially redistributed amongst all the competing schools in the tournament, and also helps subsidize alternate sports programs that do not make enought profit on their own, but when you’re dealing with entities this size, with mutliple revenue streams and a nationally televised product, I can tell you, the money is there. What isn’t there is the will to pay it out fairly, on the part of the institutions in question.

The reality is that, I cannot and don’t abide, a multi million dollar company, which continues to grow financially on the backs of unpaid labor.

The concept of basketball players skipping college is a thoroughly unpopular one, in every sphere of the mainstream media.

You have to understand there is an infastructure at play here, with mulitple billion dollar corporations either indirectly benefitting or directly profitting. From media outlets and publications to broadcast and media entities, aside from people that are actually involved with the athletic side of the game like coaches and scouts.

The only one of these entities that could exist no matter where they get thier players from, is the NBA.

When you understand this kind of basketball economy, you understand why those in the national media are reluctant to support any kind of change to this system. 

The issue with accepting this at face value, is the reality of how much college basketball coaches are paid, and that’s where this becomes more apparent as a labor issue.

Above is a video posted by CBS News on the Youtube channel in which Duke University lecturer, Nathan Kahlman-Lamb, details all the ways that the NCAA’s labor practices are a violation of multiple antitrust laws based on the percentage of the profits that actually get paid to the athlete.

Kahlman-Lamb, makes it clear under no uncertain circumstances that the only way that the NCAA is as proftable as it is, is becasue they do not pay thier labor force.

In 2016, PBS News Hour did a report in which former college athletes like Ed O’Bannon, who was the MVP of the 1995 NCAA finals, and he makes it clear that he considers the NCAA to be a cartel, a fact he believes so much, he has filed a lawsuit regarding the matter.

I don’t buy the idea that the players are interchangeable either. 

If anything I believe the NCAA is the replaceable entity. The NBA will always need a feeder system for players, because that’s the nature of thier business. Where they find this talent pool and the rules that govern said aqcuisitions is the interchangeable part.

You can start a league for new/young/developing players, in fact, the NBA wouldn’t even need to do that, they could simply just expand on the existing G-League infastructure.

The NCAA however would have a much harder time convincing kids to play for free if they had a competing entity that was willing to pay players, straight out of high school.

In recent years, the NCAA has relaxed regulations that now allows college athletes to take advantage of brand deals, sponsorships and image rights, but that’s a separate issue to being paid for the revenue they actually help create for the NCAA.

You can call it what you like, but there is absolutely no way, I am going to watch/write about or create content about or concerning, an entity that openly exploits the most important part of thier work force, and subsequently their money machine.

What I would suggest, is a basic minimum for all college basketball players, regardless of which insitution they represent, or whether they go on to be eligible for the draft.

And please don’t give me any of that crap about how college student will waste money they are given, because you don’t learn financial management and budgeting by being broke, so cut the nonsense.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How Google’s trial secrecy lets it control the coverage

I'm coming to Minneapolis! Oct 15: Presenting The Internet Con at Moon Palace Books. Oct 16: Keynoting the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing.

"Corporate crime" is practically an oxymoron in America. While it's true that the single most consequential and profligate theft in America is wage theft, its mechanisms are so obscure and, well, dull that it's easy to sell us on the false impression that the real problem is shoplifting:

https://newrepublic.com/post/175343/wage-theft-versus-shoplifting-crime

Corporate crime is often hidden behind Dana Clare's Shield Of Boringness, cloaked in euphemisms like "risk and compliance" or that old favorite, "white collar crime":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/07/solar-panel-for-a-sex-machine/#a-single-proposition

And corporate crime has a kind of performative complexity. The crimes come to us wreathed in specialized jargon and technical terminology that make them hard to discern. Which is wild, because corporate crimes occur on a scale that other crimes – even those committed by organized crime – can't hope to match:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

But anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. After decades of official tolerance (and even encouragement), corporate criminals are finally in the crosshairs of federal enforcers. Take National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo's ruling in Cemex: when a company takes an illegal action to affect the outcome of a union election, the consequence is now automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

That's a huge deal. Before, a boss could fire union organizers and intimidate workers, scuttle the union election, and then, months or years later, pay a fine and some back-wages…and the union would be smashed.

The scale of corporate crime is directly proportional to the scale of corporations themselves. Big companies aren't (necessarily) led by worse people, but even small sins committed by the very largest companies can affect millions of lives.

That's why antitrust is so key to fighting corporate crime. To make corporate crimes less harmful, we must keep companies from attaining harmful scale. Big companies aren't just too big to fail and too big to jail – they're also too big for peaceful coexistence with a society of laws.

The revival of antitrust enforcement is such a breath of fresh air, but it's also fighting headwinds. For one thing, there's 40 years of bad precedent from the nightmare years of pro-monopoly Reaganomics to overturn:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

It's not just precedents in the outcomes of trials, either. Trial procedure has also been remade to favor corporations, with judges helping companies stack the deck in their own favor. The biggest factor here is secrecy: blocking recording devices from courts, refusing to livestream the proceedings, allowing accused corporate criminals to clear the courtroom when their executives take the stand, and redacting or suppressing the exhibits:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-27-redacted-case-against-amazon/

When a corporation can hide evidence and testimony from the public and the press, it gains broad latitude to dispute critics, including government enforcers, based on evidence that no one is allowed to see, or, in many cases, even describe. Take Project Nessie, the program that the FTC claims Amazon used to compel third-party sellers to hike prices across many categories of goods:

https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/amazon-used-secret-project-nessie-algorithm-to-raise-prices-6c593706

Amazon told the press that the FTC has "grossly mischaracterize[d]" Project Nessie. The DoJ disagrees, but it can't say why, because the Project Nessie files it based its accusations on have been redacted, at Amazon's insistence. Rather than rebutting Amazon's claim, FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar could only say "We once again call on Amazon to move swiftly to remove the redactions and allow the American public to see the full scope of what we allege are their illegal monopolistic practices."

It's quite a devastating gambit: when critics and prosecutors make specific allegations about corporate crimes, the corporation gets to tell journalists, "No, that's wrong, but you're not allowed to see the reason we say it's wrong."

It's a way to work the refs, to get journalists – or their editors – to wreathe bold claims in endless hedging language, or to avoid reporting on the most shocking allegations altogether. This, in turn, keeps corporate trials out of the public eye, which reassures judges that they can defer to further corporate demands for opacity without facing an outcry.

That's a tactic that serves Google well. When the company was dragged into court by the DoJ Antitrust Division, it demanded – and received – a veil of secrecy that is especially ironic given the company's promise "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful":

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

While this veil has parted somewhat, it is still intact enough to allow the company to work the refs and kill disfavorable reporting from the trial. Last week, Megan Gray – ex-FTC, ex-DuckDuckGo – published an editorial in Wired reporting on her impression of an explosive moment in the Google trial:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

According to Gray, Google had run a program to mess with the "semantic matching" on queries, silently appending terms to users' searches that caused them to return more ads – and worse results. This generated more revenue for Google, at the expense of advertisers who got billed to serve ads that didn't even match user queries.

Google forcefully disputed this claim:

https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1709726778170786297

They contacted Gray's editors at Wired, but declined to release all the exhibits and testimony that Gray used to form her conclusions about Google's conduct; instead, they provided a subset of the relevant materials, which cast doubt on Gray's accusations.

Wired removed Gray's piece, with an unsigned notice that "WIRED editorial leadership has determined that the story does not meet our editorial standards. It has been removed":

https://www.wired.com/story/google-antitrust-lawsuit-search-results/

But Gray stands by her piece. She admits that she might have gotten some of the fine details wrong, but that these were not material to the overall point of her story, that Google manipulated search queries to serve more ads at the expense of the quality of the results:

https://twitter.com/megangrA/status/1711035354134794529

She says that the piece could and should have been amended to reflect these fine-grained corrections, but that in the absence of a full record of the testimony and exhibits, it was impossible for her to prove to her editors that her piece was substantively correct.

I reviewed the limited evidence that Google permitted to be released and I find her defense compelling. Perhaps you don't. But the only way we can factually resolve this dispute is for Google to release the materials that they claim will exonerate them. And they won't, though this is fully within their power.

I've seen this playbook before. During the early months of the pandemic, a billionaire who owned a notorious cyberwarfare company used UK libel threats to erase this fact from the internet – including my own reporting – on the grounds that the underlying research made small, non-material errors in characterizing a hellishly complex financial Rube Goldberg machine that was, in my opinion, deliberately designed to confuse investigators.

Like the corporate crimes revealed in the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers, the gambit is complicated, but it's not sophisticated:

Make everything as complicated as possible;

Make everything as secret as possible;

Dismiss any accusations by claiming errors in the account of the deliberately complex arrangements, which can't be rectified because the relevant materials are a secret.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/09/working-the-refs/#but-id-have-to-kill-you

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

Image: Jason Rosenberg (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/underpants/12069086054/

CC BY https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

--

Japanexperterna.se (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/japanexperterna/15251188384/

CC BY-SA 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"REPORT DISAPPOINTS SAYS HEAD OF UNION," Toronto Star. January 11, 1943. Page 11. ---- Sydney, N.S., Jan. 11 - George MacNeil, president of the Sydney branch of the United Steel Workers of America, today described the report of the Barlow steel commission as "very disappointing."

"There has been unrest right along over the wage conditions." Mr. MacNeil declared. "We are 100 per cent. behind a stoppage."

The commission recommended there should be no change in basic wage rates at the Dominion Steel plant here and at the Algoma Steel Corporation plant at Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

To Decide Tuesday Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., Jan. 11- (CP) - William Mahoney, secretary of the Sault local of the United Steel Workers of America (C.I.O.). said the union's course, following announcement of the Barlow commission report, will be determined Tuesday night. Mahoney said he has "little doubt" that a mandate, given some months ago to call a strike, would be upheld.

[writers-potion]

The Pirate's Glossary

Ahoy - an interjection used to hail a ship or a person, or to attract attention.

Arr! - an exclamation

Avast! - a command meaning stop or desist

Aye (or ay) - yes; an affirmation

Becalmed - the state of a sailing vessel which cannot move due to a lack of wind

Belay - (1) to secure or make dast by winding on a cleat or pin (2) to stop, most often used as a command

Bilged on her anchor - a ship holed or pierced by its own anchor

Bilmey! - an exclamation of surprise, short for "God blind me!"

Blow the man down - to kill someone

Boom about - when a ship turns in the wind the boom can swing violently enough to injure or kill a person on board. "Boom about" may be shouted to warn others the boom is about to move.

Bring a spring upon her cable - to come around in a different direction, oftentimes as a surprise maneuver.

Careen - to take a ship into shallower waters or out of the water altogether and remove barnacles and pests such as mollusks, shells and plant growth from the bottom.

Chase - a ship being pursued, or the act of pursuing a ship.

Code of conduct - a set of rules which govern pirates behavior on a vessel.

Come about - to bring the ship full way around in the wind. Used in general while sailing into the wind, but also used to indicate a swing back into the enemy in combat.

Crack Jenny's teacup - to spend the night in a house of ill repute.

Crimp - to procure (sailors or soldiers) by trickery or coercion, or one who crimps.

Dance the Hempen jig - to hang

Davy Jones' locker - a fictional place at the bottom of the ocean. In short, a term meaning death.

Dead men tell no tales - standard pirate excuse for leaving no survivors.

Deadlights - (1) strong shutters or plates fastened over a ship's porthole or cabin window in stormy weather. (2) Thick windows set in a ship's side or deck. (3) eyes.

Fire in the hole - a warning issued before a cannon is fired.

Furl - to roll up and secure, especially a ship’s sail.

Give no quarter - the refusal to spare lives of an opponent. Pirates raise a red flag to threaten no quarter will be given.

Handsomely - quickly or carefully; in a shipshape style.

Haul wind - to direct a ship into the wind.

Heave down - to turn a vessel on its side for cleaning.

Heave - an interjection meaning to come to a halt.

Ho - used to express surprise or joy, to attract attention to something sighted, or to urge onward.

Letter of marque - a document given to a sailor (privateer) giving him amnesty from piracy laws as long as the ships plunders are of an enemy nation.

List - to lean to one side

Long clothes - a style of clothing best suited to land. A pirate, or any sailor, doesn't have the luxury of wearing anything loose that might get in the way while climbing up riggings.

Marooned - to be stranded, particularly on a desert isle.

Me - My

No prey, no pay - a common pirate law meaning a crew received no wages, but rather shared whatever loot was taken.

Overhaul - (1) to slacken a line (2) to gain upon in a chase; to overtake

Parely - a conference or discussion between opposing sides during a dispute, especially when attempting a truce, originating from the French, "parler," meaning "to speak." The term was used in "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" as part of Pirate law.

Piracy - robbery committed at sea.

Quarter - derived from the idea of "shelter", quarter is given when mercy is offered by pirates. Quarter is often the prize given to an honorable loser in a pirate fight.

Reef sails - to shorten the sails by partially tying them up, either to slow the ship or to keep a strong wind from putting too much strain on the masts.

Run a shot across the bow - a command to fire a warning shot.

Sail ho! - an exclamation meaning another ship is in view. The sail, of course, is the first part of a ship visible over the horizon.

Scupper that! - an expression of anger or derision meaning "Throw that overboard!"

Sea legs - The ability to adjust one's balance to the motion of a ship, especially in rough seas. After walking on a ship for long periods of time, sailors became accustomed to the rocking of the ship in the water. Early in a voyage a sailor was said to be lacking his "sea legs" when the ship motion was still foreign to him. After a cruise, a sailor would often have trouble regaining his "land legs" and would swagger on land.

Shiver me timbers! - An expression of surprise or strong emotion. In stormy weather and rough seas, the support timbers of a ship would "shiver" which might startle the crew. The phrase may have been less common during the Golden Age of Piracy than it had become later in fictional works.

Show a leg! - A phrase used to wake up a sleeping pirate.

Sink me! - An expression of surprise. Many pirate exclamations used exaggerated imagery to highten a point. Ye might say the sailors were punchy or a bit melodramatic after a lengthy stay at sea.  

Smartly - quickly

Take a caulk - To take a nap. On the deck of a ship, between planks, was a thick caulk of black tar and rope to keep water from between decks. This term came about either because sailors who slept on deck ended up with black lines across their backs or simply because sailors laying down on deck were as horizontal as the caulk of the deck itself.

To go on account - A pleasant term used by pirates to describe the act of turning pirate. The basic idea was that a pirate was more "free lance" and thus was, more or less, going into business for himself.

Warp - To move (a vessel) by hauling on a line that is fastened to or around a piling, anchor, or pier.

Weigh anchor - To haul the anchor up; more generally, to leave port.

Ye - you

If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸

Reference:

https://www.pirateglossary.com/

[townpostin]

Bank Employees' Union Mulls Nationwide Strike in Jamshedpur Conclave

AIUBEA Meets in Jamshedpur to Address Worker Concerns Union Bank staff representatives gather to discuss employee shortage, wage issues, and potential industrial action. JAMSHEDPUR – All India Union Bank Employees Association convenes central executive meeting to address pressing workforce challenges. The All India Union Bank Employees Association (AIUBEA) has initiated a crucial two-day meeting…

[queeranarchism]



Since it's been a while since I sang the praises of my favorite book 'Anarchy Works' by Peter Gelderloos: here's a reminder that there is an easy to read anarchism book out there organized around frequently asked questions and it's online for free with the authors consent. I'll copy-paste them all just to showcase how great it is:

Introduction

Anarchy Would Never Work

What exactly is anarchism?

A note on inspiration

The tricky topic of representation

Recommended Reading

1. Human Nature

Aren’t people naturally selfish?

Aren’t people naturally competitive?

Haven’t humans always been patriarchal?

Aren’t people naturally warlike?

Aren’t domination and authority natural?

A broader sense of self

Recommended Reading

2. Decisions

How will decisions be made?

How will decisions be enforced?

Who will settle disputes?

Meeting in the streets

Recommended Reading

3. Economy

Without wages, what is the incentive to work?

Don’t people need bosses and experts?

Who will take out the trash?

Who will take care of the elderly and disabled?

How will people get healthcare?

What about education?

What about technology?

How will exchange work?

What about people who don’t want to give up a consumerist lifestyle?

What about building and organizing large, spread-out infrastructure?

How will cities work?

What about drought, famine, or other catastrophes?

Meeting our needs without keeping count

Recommended Reading

4. Environment

What’s to stop someone from destroying the environment?

What about global environmental problems, like climate change?

The only way to save the planet

Recommended Reading

5. Crime

Who will protect us without police?

What about gangs and bullies?

What’s to stop someone from killing people?

What about rape, domestic violence, and other forms of harm?

Beyond individual justice

Recommended Reading

6. Revolution

How could people organized horizontally possibly overcome the state?

How do we know revolutionaries won’t become new authorities?

How will communities decide to organize themselves at first?

How will reparations for past oppressions be worked out?

How will a common, anti-authoritarian, ecological ethos come about?

A revolution that is many revolutions

Recommended Reading

7. Neighboring Societies

Could an anarchist society defend itself from an authoritarian neighbor?

What will we do about societies that remain patriarchal or racist?

What will prevent constant warfare and feuding?

Networks not borders

Recommended Reading

8. The Future

Won’t the state just reemerge over time?

What about other problems we can’t foresee?

Making Anarchy Work

Recommended Reading

It Works When We Make It Work

There, all you gotta do is click the question and read! Or start at the beginning and read the whole book if you want the best reading experience. It’s one of my favorite books. It doesn’t cover everything but it’s a great place to start.

[amournoir]

Hi can u do a fic where the reader and Klaus are in a relationship and the mikaelson's hate her .

Thanks

𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐭 ┄ 𝐢

pairing: niklaus mikaelson x f!reader

count: 1.4k

warning: angst

author’s note: thanks for the request hun! 💋 p.s, here's part 2

The streets of New Orleans pulsed with life, and Y/N, Klaus Mikaelson's spirited and vivacious girlfriend, seemed to embody the very essence of the city's energy. She reveled in the thrill of the night, seeking joy and adventure wherever she went. But little did she know that her vibrant spirit was causing a storm within the Mikaelson family. 

Rebekah and Elijah, Klaus's siblings, observed with disapproval as Y/N led Klaus into the wild festivities of the French Quarter. They detested her carefree nature, seeing her as a disruption to the carefully constructed order of their lives. In their eyes, Y/N was a distraction, a youthful folly that would only lead Klaus astray. The siblings had made their opinions known countless times, urging Klaus to end the relationship. They saw her as a threat to their family's stability and tried to set him up with a "more suitable" woman— a 30-year-old socialite whose poise and maturity contrasted sharply with Y/N's exuberance. 

One evening, as the Mikaelson family gathered for a somber dinner, tensions reached their breaking point. Rebekah and Elijah, fueled by their desire to protect their brother, confronted Y/N, leveling accusations of infidelity.

“You're nothing but trouble,” Rebekah hissed, her eyes flashing with disdain. “You're not right for Nik.”

Y/N's face paled, her heart pounding in her chest. “What are you talking about? I love Klaus with all my heart,” she protested, her voice trembling.

Elijah shook his head, his tone cutting like a blade. “You're young, reckless, and unreliable,” he stated coldly. “You're only going to hurt him.”

Tears welled up in Y/N's eyes as she struggled to find the right words to defend herself. She had always tried to be honest with Klaus, to give him everything he deserved, but now she felt like she was being torn apart by the very people she had hoped to call family.

“I love him,” she repeated, her voice breaking. “I would never hurt him, and I would never cheat on him.”

But her words fell on deaf ears, and the Mikaelson siblings remained adamant in their disapproval. Klaus, torn between his love for Y/N and his loyalty to his family, was caught in the crossfire of their bitter dispute. For days, the rift between Y/N and the Mikaelson siblings grew wider. Each encounter was fraught with tension, with accusations and misunderstandings that only deepened the wounds. Y/N felt isolated and alone, her heart heavy with the weight of their judgments.

One night, as the moon hung low in the sky, Klaus found Y/N sitting alone by the fireplace, tears silently streaming down her cheeks. He approached her, his heart aching at the sight of her pain.

“Love talk to me,” he pleaded, his voice soft with concern.

She looked up at him, her eyes filled with sorrow. “Your family hates me,” she whispered. “They think I'm not good enough for you.”

Klaus wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. “I don't care what they think,” he said firmly. “I love you and I won't let them come between us.”

But as the days turned into weeks, the constant pressure from his family weighed heavily on Klaus's mind. Doubts began to seep into his heart, and he found himself torn between his love for Y/N and the desire to mend the fractures in his family. In the depths of his turmoil, Klaus faced an impossible choice— to stand by the woman he loved or to appease his family by letting her go. His heart and mind waged war within him, leaving him in a state of inner turmoil that threatened to consume him.

As the darkness of uncertainty loomed over their once blissful relationship, Y/N and Klaus were left to navigate the shadows of doubt and find a way back to each other. The storm of angst and heartache showed no signs of abating, leaving them with the ultimate question…could love conquer all or would the family's disapproval be too much to bear? 

A few months had passed without another confrontation from his siblings but that silence period was over today. The Mikaelson mansion stood in silence, its opulent halls shrouded in a heavy tension that seemed to seep into the very air. Y/N, the vibrant and spirited love of Klaus Mikaelson's life, felt the weight of disapproval from his siblings bearing down on her like a storm cloud. At 23, her heart beat fiercely with a passion for life, but to Elijah and Rebekah, she was nothing more than a youthful whirlwind that threatened the delicate balance they had carefully crafted. 

It was a chilly evening, and as Y/N wandered through the dimly lit corridors, her footsteps echoing emptily, she couldn't shake the sense of unease that seemed to linger around her. The disapproving glances, the hushed conversations that ceased when she entered a room— all of it gnawed at her soul. It had been months since she had embarked on a romantic journey with Klaus, a love that burned with an intensity she had never known before. But even that powerful connection couldn't shield her from the critical eyes of his siblings.

Rebekah's icy words had sliced through the air like a blade. “You're just a child, Y/N,” she had said with a condescending tilt of her head. “My brother deserves someone who understands the dangers of our world.”

And Elijah, the embodiment of elegance and poise, had looked at her with a mixture of pity and dismissal. “Klaus is not one to be taken lightly,” he had warned. “You need to be more mature, more level headed.”

Each word had etched itself into Y/N's heart, a constant reminder of her perceived inadequacy in the eyes of those she so desperately wanted to accept her. As she entered the living room, she found Klaus standing by the grand window, nursing a tumbler of bourbon in his hand. His gaze was distant, his features etched with a mixture of frustration and weariness. She approached him, her heart aching at the distance she felt growing between them.

“Klaus,” she murmured, her voice soft and uncertain.

He turned to her, his eyes meeting hers with a mix of conflict and affection. “Y/N,” he said, his voice tinged with a hint of regret.

The silence that followed was heavy, a chasm that seemed to swallow their words before they could be spoken.

“I can't do this anymore love,” Klaus finally confessed, his voice breaking the stillness.

Y/N's heart shattered, the pain more intense than she could have ever imagined. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

Klaus's gaze was tortured, his emotions warring within him. “Elijah and Rebekah,” he said with a sigh. “They won't accept us. They think you're too young, too impulsive.”

Tears welled in Y/N's eyes, and she felt a lump forming in her throat. “And what do you think?” she choked out, her voice quivering.

Klaus reached for her, his hand cupping her cheek with tenderness. “I love you,” he said, his voice raw with emotion. “But I can't keep going against my family. It's tearing us apart.”

The pain in Y/N's chest was suffocating, a weight that threatened to crush her. “So, what are you saying?” she asked, her voice shaking.

“I'm saying that we need to take a step back,” Klaus admitted, his voice barely audible. “Perhaps it's best for both of us.”

Y/N's heart shattered completely, and she took a step back, her eyes welling with tears. “You're choosing them over me?” she whispered, her voice cracking.

Klaus's eyes filled with anguish, and he reached out to her, his fingers brushing against her cheek. “Y/N…” he started desperately. “I love you, but I can't keep fighting this battle. I'm sorry sweetheart.”

The room seemed to close in around her, and Y/N turned and fled, her heartache echoing in the emptiness that surrounded her. Days turned into weeks, and the absence of Klaus felt like an ache that she couldn't escape. She could feel the weight of his absence in every corner of her life, a constant reminder of what once was.

As she stared out at the moonlit night, Y/N realized that love was not always enough to conquer the obstacles that life placed in its path. She had lost the man she loved, not because he didn't care, but because the world they lived in was too complicated, too tangled with expectations. lol She whispered his name into the night, her heart heavy with sorrow, Y/N learned that sometimes love wasn't enough to mend the fractures that threatened to tear their world apart. And in that painful realization, she felt the bittersweet ache of a love that had been both beautiful and heart wrenching—a love that would forever remain etched in her soul.

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[jollmaster]

trivia: sir Pentious as mortal

• real name: Spencer [steward]

• period of life: second half of the XIXth ct.

• region: British Empire

• belonged to side branch of the Stafford family, not fabulously wealthy, but wealthy enough; the eldest of three sons

• an atheist, hated social life, said everything what he thought

• wasn't interested in relationships, because he thought that women are boring (got engaged to a lady from a good family, but she got leprosy and died)

• once Spencer said that he's going to keep up with victorian age of progress, completely forgot about going out in public and invested in setting up a gun factory, where was actually the chief engineer and worked hard

• the factory began to make losses in the second half of 1880s, so he had to cut back on payments to the workers; won an arm wrestling match with one of them when there was a dispute over wages

• in last weeks, when fingers lost sensation, Spencer realized he had been a carrier of leprosis because of bride

• cause of death: tuberculosis

main gang, actual designs: Vaggie, Charlie, Angel Dust, Niffty, Cherri Bomb, sir Pentious, Husk, Alastor

as mortals: Vaggie [María de la Vega], Angel Dust [Antonio Costa], Niffty [Nadia], Cherri Bomb [Saoirse], sir Pentious [Spencer], Husk, Alastor

+ Charlie in full-human form