#when you work in an industrial sector!!!

[yamada-ryo]

It can fly!

[kalamity-jayne]

In case you were wondering where things are at in the film and television industry here's how post-production folks (editors, VFX, Colorists, etc) are doing. These screenshots are from The Blue Collar Post Collective's FB page (they are an International professional network for folks working in post).

This one is from a few months ago...

These are all from the past few days (from 2 separate Anon posts re "where to find jobs")...

My former post-supervisor really fucked me over and I've been unemployed for months. At this point I'm applying to jobs in grocery stores cause it's just dead dead dead out there. Winter is always the time of year you don't want to be without a film or series to work on but this just abysmal.

[esotericalchemist]

𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬: 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐡 ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

Masterlist - YouTube (subliminals)

In astrology, Venus represents the essence of attraction, guiding how you draw love, beauty, and wealth into your life. It symbolizes your values and desires, particularly when it comes to relationships, pleasure, and material abundance. Venus reveals your approach to money, showing not just how you earn, but how you appreciate and manage what you have. It also speaks to your relationship with luxury, comfort, and the things that bring you joy. Understanding your Venus sign offers insights into how you can align your financial path with your emotional and aesthetic needs, allowing you to attract wealth in a way that feels natural and fulfilling. By tapping into the energy of your Venus sign, you can create a harmonious flow of prosperity, rooted in what brings you true satisfaction and happiness.

𝐀𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For those with Venus in Aries, attracting wealth is all about embracing your bold, independent, and assertive nature. Aries Venus thrives on quick decisions and a competitive edge, so financial success often comes when you're willing to take risks, start new projects, and go after opportunities where you can stand out. You're likely to attract abundance by being fearless, stepping into leadership roles, and not hesitating to explore fresh ventures. With this placement, wealth is closely tied to your willingness to act and push forward confidently. The more you channel your pioneering spirit, the more doors open for financial prosperity.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Wealth flows when you embrace your individuality and confidence. By stepping into the spotlight and owning your unique qualities, you naturally draw attention and resources toward yourself.

2nd House: Your financial success is directly linked to taking action. You’re motivated to earn through entrepreneurial efforts, bold ventures, and quick-thinking initiatives that allow you to create wealth from scratch.

3rd House: Money comes through communication, writing, sales, or short-term projects. Your ability to network, act swiftly, and seize local opportunities can drive financial growth.

4th House: Financial gain may come through real estate, home-based projects, or family-related ventures. Invest in your personal space, and take charge of innovative ideas connected to property or domestic life.

5th House: Creative pursuits, entrepreneurship, and speculative ventures are tied to your financial success. Use your competitive edge in the arts, entertainment, or even sports industries to attract wealth.

6th House: Hard work pays off when you bring energy and a proactive mindset. You can attract money through leadership in everyday work, service-oriented jobs, or the health and fitness sectors, solving problems quickly for financial gain.

7th House: Partnerships, both business and personal, play a major role in your wealth creation. While you’ll need to collaborate, you’ll often take the lead in these relationships, driving the ventures toward success.

8th House: Wealth may come from joint ventures, investments, or other people’s resources. Financial transformations and taking strategic risks in areas like taxes, inheritance, or insurance can lead to prosperity.

9th House: Money could be gained through higher education, travel, or international ventures. Your bold ideas and willingness to explore new philosophies and global opportunities can inspire financial growth.

10th House: Career success—and the wealth that follows—depends on your leadership and initiative. You’ll attract financial opportunities by seeking recognition, going after promotions, or starting your own business.

11th House: Financial growth comes through your social network and group affiliations. By leading within communities or taking charge of bold initiatives in areas like technology, innovation, or social causes, you attract wealth.

12th House: Behind-the-scenes work, spiritual pursuits, or hidden resources like grants and donations could be sources of wealth. Embracing solitude and taking charge of your inner world may unexpectedly lead to financial rewards.

𝐓𝐚𝐮𝐫𝐮𝐬 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Taurus, attracting wealth revolves around stability, patience, and a natural affinity for material comfort. As Venus is at home in Taurus, this placement provides a strong ability to manifest financial abundance. Wealth comes when you focus on long-term goals, steady effort, and nurturing your resources. You naturally draw in prosperity by creating tangible results and valuing the process of building security. Your practical and grounded approach allows you to accumulate wealth gradually, with a keen focus on luxury, comfort, and sustainability.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success flows when you present yourself as confident, stable, and reliable. Your grounded nature and charm naturally attract wealth opportunities, often tied to how you carry yourself or express your values.

2nd House: This is the prime placement for Venus in Taurus. You have a natural talent for attracting money through investments, personal efforts, and financial stability. You build wealth through slow, consistent growth and wise material choices.

3rd House: Wealth can come through communication, writing, or local ventures. You may find financial success in marketing, sales, or networking, particularly through projects that focus on lasting value and stability.

4th House: Financial security is tied to property, home-based ventures, or family inheritance. Building wealth through real estate, or investing in family-oriented projects, provides a solid foundation for long-term financial success.

5th House: You can attract financial abundance through creative expression, entertainment, or speculative ventures. Money flows when you tap into your artistic talents or work on luxury projects that reflect beauty and quality.

6th House: Consistency and dependability in your work lead to financial success. Steady growth in your career, particularly in service-based industries or health and wellness fields, will build a solid financial foundation over time.

7th House: Partnerships, both business and personal, are key to your financial growth. You attract wealth through stable, long-term relationships, where both parties share a mutual vision of security and loyalty.

8th House: Wealth may come from joint ventures, inheritances, or shared resources. You have a natural ability to manage investments and grow money through transformative financial partnerships.

9th House: Money can be gained through higher education, international ventures, or global business. Your patience and focus on long-term goals bring wealth through teaching, publishing, or pursuing broad, expansive opportunities.

10th House: Financial success is closely tied to your career and public image. You attract wealth by building a solid reputation and advancing steadily in your profession, particularly in fields like luxury, real estate, or the arts.

11th House: Your social network and community play a big role in financial growth. By leading or participating in groups that align with your values, you’ll attract wealth through long-term ventures, especially in social or technological innovation.

12th House: Wealth may come from hidden or unexpected sources, such as behind-the-scenes work, charitable endeavors, or spiritual pursuits. Slowly building wealth through private or healing professions can bring financial success.

𝐆𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Gemini, attracting wealth comes through leveraging your communication skills, adaptability, and intellectual interests. This placement thrives in dynamic environments where quick thinking, networking, and versatility are essential. You draw in abundance by staying curious, open to new ideas, and building connections that lead to financial opportunities. Whether through writing, teaching, or speaking, your intellect and social skills are the key to unlocking wealth. Financial success often comes from exploring multiple income streams, staying flexible, and using your wit to navigate opportunities.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success comes from how you engage with others—your charm, curiosity, and adaptability open doors. Present yourself as communicative and approachable, and you’ll naturally attract wealth through social interactions.

2nd House: Your intellectual skills are a direct path to earning money. Writing, teaching, or selling ideas are lucrative ways to build wealth. By diversifying your income streams, you’ll keep things stimulating while attracting financial growth.

3rd House: Money comes through communication-based fields like writing, speaking, or short-term projects. Networking and staying attuned to trends, particularly in media or marketing, will help you generate financial opportunities.

4th House: Financial stability might stem from intellectual home projects, such as freelance writing or working in real estate. Family businesses tied to teaching, communication, or technology can be strong sources of wealth.

5th House: Creative pursuits, especially those involving writing, media, or speculative ventures, are tied to financial success. Investing in art, entertainment, or even emerging markets like cryptocurrency can also be profitable.

6th House: You attract wealth by using your intellectual talents in your daily work. Financial success comes from work that involves communication, technology, or writing. Staying adaptable and versatile will keep your income steady.

7th House: Financial growth is linked to partnerships where intellectual exchange is central. You attract wealth through collaborations in business or personal relationships, especially when ideas are shared and developed into ventures.

8th House: Joint financial ventures and investments, especially those involving intellectual collaboration, can be lucrative. You may find financial transformation through research, innovation, or partnerships that involve shared resources.

9th House: Wealth can be attracted through higher education, publishing, or global travel. Teaching, writing, or intellectual pursuits that have a broad impact will bring financial rewards, especially on an international scale.

10th House: Communication and intellectual pursuits are key to your career success. Wealth comes through adaptability in professional environments, such as media, public speaking, or networking, where you can showcase your quick-thinking nature.

11th House: Social networks, technology, and innovation are your financial allies. Engage with communities that align with your ideas, and wealth will flow through collaborative ventures in technology or social causes.

12th House: Financial success may come from intellectual work done behind the scenes, such as research or writing in solitude. Spiritual or psychological pursuits, or hidden opportunities in these areas, can also bring unexpected wealth.

𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐫 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Cancer, attracting wealth comes from tapping into your emotional intelligence, nurturing nature, and strong connection to home and family. Venus in Cancer thrives when it feels emotionally secure, and financial success follows when you invest in ventures that offer both material and emotional stability. You draw wealth by creating safe, comforting environments, whether through home-based businesses, real estate, or family enterprises. Your ability to care for others, build meaningful relationships, and prioritize emotional fulfillment leads to financial abundance.

Through the Houses:

1st House: You attract wealth by presenting yourself as nurturing, empathetic, and emotionally intelligent. Your ability to connect with others on a deep level draws financial opportunities, often through personal relationships and your caring nature.

2nd House: Financial success is closely tied to your home and family. You build wealth through property investments, family businesses, or by creating a stable financial foundation that supports your loved ones and provides long-term security.

3rd House: Money comes through communication that reflects emotional intelligence, such as writing, teaching, or counseling. You may also attract wealth through sibling relationships or short-term projects that involve nurturing others.

4th House: Wealth flows through real estate, home-based businesses, or family ventures. Your ability to create a comfortable, nurturing environment at home leads to financial abundance, particularly when you invest in property or family-oriented projects.

5th House: Financial success comes through creative endeavors that evoke strong emotional connections, or through activities related to children and family. You attract wealth by investing in artistic projects or businesses that involve nurturing and caregiving.

6th House: You attract money through caregiving professions, health, or nurturing roles. Fields like healthcare, therapy, or social services, where emotional intelligence and empathy are essential, can bring financial success and fulfillment.

7th House: Partnerships are key to your financial growth. Whether in business or marriage, you attract wealth through emotionally connected, supportive relationships that foster mutual growth and create a stable financial foundation.

8th House: Wealth may come from joint ventures, inheritances, or other people’s resources. Your deep emotional connections with partners can lead to financial transformations, allowing you to share and manage wealth effectively.

9th House: You attract wealth through emotionally fulfilling ventures related to travel, education, or spiritual growth. Teaching, nurturing others on a global scale, or engaging in meaningful cultural or spiritual exchanges can lead to financial success.

10th House: Career success and financial abundance are linked to emotionally fulfilling work, particularly in real estate, caring professions, or roles that provide security and comfort to others. You attract wealth by nurturing others through your professional life.

11th House: Financial growth comes through your emotional connections within groups or communities. You attract wealth by leading or nurturing social causes, particularly those focused on emotional well-being, family, or group support.

12th House: Wealth may come from hidden sources, spiritual pursuits, or behind-the-scenes efforts. Your compassion and emotional depth can attract financial opportunities in healing, caregiving, or charitable work.

𝐋𝐞𝐨 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Leo, attracting wealth is all about embracing your creativity, confidence, and desire for the spotlight. This placement thrives when you can express yourself boldly, drawing money through artistic endeavors, entertainment, or leadership roles. You attract wealth by owning your charisma, inspiring others, and creating something of value that highlights your talents. Financial success follows when you are able to shine, whether it's through a creative project, a business, or a leadership position. Your magnetic personality naturally draws abundance when you're in spaces that allow you to express your uniqueness.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success is linked to how confidently and boldly you present yourself. By embracing your natural leadership qualities and taking center stage, you attract wealth and recognition effortlessly.

2nd House: You can attract money through luxury ventures or creative talents. Financial success is tied to activities that bring you joy, such as indulging in your artistic skills or leadership abilities, allowing you to earn through self-expression.

3rd House: Wealth may come through communication, creative writing, or media-related projects. Your charismatic, expressive nature can lead to financial opportunities through public speaking or local ventures where you showcase your flair.

4th House: Financial success could come through property investments, home-based businesses, or family ventures. You may also attract wealth by transforming your home into a space of creativity and luxury or through creative real estate projects.

5th House: This is a highly favorable placement for Venus in Leo to attract wealth. Financial success comes through artistic endeavors, entertainment, or speculative ventures. You might find money flowing through the arts, sports, or investments in entertainment.

6th House: You attract wealth through leadership roles in your daily work. Financial success follows when you bring creativity and passion into your job. You may also find opportunities in fields related to the arts or luxury services.

7th House: Partnerships play a crucial role in your financial success. Wealth may come through business or marriage relationships where creativity, collaboration, and leadership are key. You thrive when you can express your flair alongside a partner.

8th House: Wealth may come through joint financial ventures, inheritances, or other people’s resources. Financial transformation is possible through bold investments, particularly in creative or artistic fields, or through dynamic partnerships.

9th House: You can attract wealth through teaching, travel, or international ventures. Financial success comes when you take on opportunities that allow you to shine on a global scale, such as publishing or sharing your expertise in a way that inspires others.

10th House: Career success is closely tied to creative leadership roles. You attract money by being recognized for your talents and passion. Financial success comes from being at the forefront of your profession, particularly in industries where you can express your creativity.

11th House: You attract wealth through your social network and involvement in large groups or organizations. Leading in creative or entertainment-based groups, or social causes where you can inspire others, brings financial rewards.

12th House: Financial success may come from behind-the-scenes work, such as creative projects done in solitude or spiritual endeavors. You might also attract wealth through charitable work or personal, reflective creative pursuits.

𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐠𝐨 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Virgo, attracting wealth revolves around your practical, analytical, and detail-oriented mindset. Venus in this sign thrives in environments where organization, efficiency, and service are key. Financial success comes from applying your talents in fields that demand precision, whether it's in healthcare, service industries, or professions that benefit from your meticulous nature. You draw money by offering value through problem-solving, improving systems, and being of service to others. Your careful, methodical approach to finances allows you to build wealth gradually and sensibly, focusing on sustainable growth.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success comes from presenting yourself as dependable and detail-oriented. Your ability to solve problems efficiently and with precision naturally attracts wealth, as people recognize your analytical skills and practical value.

2nd House: You attract wealth through careful budgeting, service-based work, and practical investments. Financial success stems from your ability to plan meticulously and manage money wisely, ensuring slow and steady growth.

3rd House: Wealth may come through communication-based professions, such as writing, editing, or teaching. Your ability to convey well-researched, thoughtful insights can lead to financial success, particularly in areas requiring intellectual precision.

4th House: Financial success is linked to your home environment. You might attract wealth by managing family finances, working in real estate, or operating a home-based business where your organizational skills can shine.

5th House: You attract wealth through creative endeavors that are structured and well-planned. Financial success may come through teaching, wellness projects, or health-related creative ventures. Analyzing speculative investments can also bring profitable outcomes.

6th House: This placement is ideal for Venus in Virgo to attract wealth. You build financial success through hard work, attention to detail, and offering practical services. Health, wellness, or service-oriented careers provide a steady path to wealth.

7th House: Financial growth comes through partnerships and collaborations. You attract wealth by being a valuable problem-solver in business or personal relationships. Financial success is linked to partnerships that appreciate your meticulous and organized approach.

8th House: Money may come through shared resources, joint ventures, or investments. You manage other people’s finances with care, attracting wealth by offering practical, transformative solutions in financial partnerships.

9th House: Financial success may come through teaching, publishing, or international business. You attract wealth through intellectual pursuits that emphasize practical application, where your attention to detail and research is valued.

10th House: Career success is tied to your meticulous and organized approach to work. Financial growth comes from service-based careers, health and wellness industries, or roles where you can streamline processes and improve efficiency.

11th House: You attract wealth through social networks or organizations that value practicality and intellectual rigor. Financial success comes from working with groups that focus on service, improvement, or the exchange of helpful, detailed ideas.

12th House: Financial success may come through behind-the-scenes work, research, or spiritual and healing professions. You attract wealth by offering practical, often overlooked solutions in areas where deep insight and discretion are needed.

𝐋𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Libra, attracting wealth revolves around your charm, diplomacy, and ability to build strong social connections. Venus thrives in Libra, a sign focused on balance and harmony, making you naturally adept at drawing wealth through relationships, partnerships, and an appreciation for beauty. Financial success comes when you leverage your sense of fairness, aesthetic sensibility, and social skills. Whether through negotiation, business collaborations, or creative endeavors, you attract money by creating harmony, cultivating relationships, and using your natural grace to foster balance in your environment.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success comes from how you present yourself—graceful, balanced, and charming. Your sociability and ability to build strong relationships naturally attract wealth and opportunities through your public image and interactions.

2nd House: You attract wealth through partnerships and ventures related to luxury, beauty, or aesthetics. Financial success follows when you align your personal values with those of others, often earning through design, social work, or luxury goods.

3rd House: Wealth comes through communication, writing, or social media where you can charm and connect with others. Building harmonious relationships in your local environment will lead to financial opportunities, especially through negotiation or collaboration.

4th House: Financial success may stem from home-based businesses, real estate, or creating a beautiful, harmonious home environment. You can attract wealth through property investments or family-related ventures that emphasize design and balance.

5th House: You attract wealth through creative endeavors or projects related to beauty, art, or aesthetics. Financial success may also come from speculative ventures, particularly in the arts or entertainment, where balance and harmony play a key role.

6th House: Financial success comes through service-oriented roles where balance and fairness are essential. Careers in law, social justice, healthcare, or roles that involve creating harmony in the workplace will bring wealth, particularly when aesthetics or fairness are valued.

7th House: Wealth is closely tied to partnerships, both in marriage and business. You attract financial success through balanced, harmonious relationships and collaborations that focus on mutual financial goals and shared values.

8th House: Joint financial ventures, investments, or other people’s resources may be significant sources of wealth. You attract money by negotiating fair and balanced financial partnerships, and financial transformation comes through equitable agreements.

9th House: Financial success may come through higher education, law, or international ventures focused on diplomacy or justice. You attract wealth by promoting balance and harmony in global or educational settings, especially in fields like law or teaching.

10th House: Career success and financial growth are linked to leadership roles that emphasize beauty, balance, or justice. You attract wealth through fields like law, design, or diplomacy, where fairness and aesthetics are central to your reputation and professional path.

11th House: Financial success is linked to your social network and involvement in group activities. You attract wealth by working harmoniously with like-minded individuals or through organizations focused on fairness, beauty, or social causes.

12th House: Wealth may come from behind-the-scenes work, charity, or spiritual endeavors. You attract financial success through private ventures or by creating balance in hidden areas, such as managing finances for charitable organizations or engaging in spiritual work.

𝐒𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐩𝐢𝐨 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Scorpio, attracting wealth is all about harnessing your deep, transformative energy and laser-focused determination. This placement thrives in environments where you can uncover hidden opportunities and dive beneath the surface to gain control over financial resources. You attract wealth by taking calculated risks, especially in areas related to investments, joint finances, and transformative ventures. Scorpio Venus has a magnetic attraction to power, so financial success often involves profound changes and navigating complex financial dynamics, such as shared resources or inheritances. Embracing your desire for transformation and confidently tackling financial challenges leads to significant wealth-building.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success comes from projecting intensity, focus, and magnetic confidence. You naturally attract wealth by exuding power and an ability to handle resources, often drawing financial opportunities your way through your strong presence and resourcefulness.

2nd House: You attract wealth by uncovering hidden financial opportunities and making strategic, long-term investments. Success comes from careful management of resources and the willingness to take calculated risks, particularly in building and sustaining wealth over time.

3rd House: Wealth may come through intense communication, research, or writing, especially in fields where secrets or hidden truths are revealed. Success could be found in areas like psychology, investigative journalism, or any profession requiring depth and intensity.

4th House: Financial success is tied to property, inheritance, or deep family connections. You attract wealth by transforming family resources or through real estate investments. Profound changes in your home life or family dynamics may also play a role in financial growth.

5th House: You attract wealth through passionate creative ventures or speculative investments that carry an element of risk. Financial success may come from intense projects in areas like entertainment, art, or the stock market, where deep emotional investment fuels success.

6th House: Wealth is gained through transformative work in fields like psychology, medicine, or crisis management. Your ability to focus deeply on your job, especially in service roles that require handling challenging situations, leads to financial success.

7th House: Financial success comes through deeply transformative partnerships, whether in business or romance. You attract wealth by forming committed relationships where resources are shared, and financial growth occurs through mutual investments and joint ventures.

8th House: This is a highly favorable placement for Venus in Scorpio. Wealth comes through joint ventures, inheritances, or managing other people’s resources. Financial transformation occurs through bold investments, strategic handling of shared assets, and navigating taxes or inheritances.

9th House: You attract wealth through deep philosophical exploration, transformative education, or foreign ventures. Success may come from international investments, higher learning, or ventures that require a strategic, intense approach to uncovering new opportunities.

10th House: Career success is linked to your ability to transform and take control in professional environments. You attract wealth by excelling in fields like finance, psychology, research, or crisis management, where your intense focus and leadership are key assets.

11th House: Financial success is closely tied to your powerful social connections. You attract wealth through deep, transformative relationships within groups or organizations, particularly in areas involving shared resources, financial ventures, or communal transformations.

12th House: Wealth may come from hidden sources, behind-the-scenes work, or transformative spiritual or psychological efforts. You attract financial success by focusing on inner work, managing hidden assets, or engaging in spiritual or charitable ventures that bring profound personal growth and financial rewards.

𝐒𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐮𝐬 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Sagittarius, attracting wealth involves embracing your adventurous, optimistic, and freedom-loving spirit. You thrive when exploring new opportunities in travel, education, or philosophical pursuits. Your financial success is deeply connected to ventures that expand your horizons and align with your personal values of growth and exploration. Whether through international business, teaching, or publishing, you attract wealth by seeking experiences that inspire both personal and financial growth. The key to financial success lies in pursuing opportunities that resonate with your desire for adventure, truth, and learning.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success comes from presenting yourself as adventurous, open-minded, and optimistic. You naturally attract wealth through your vibrant personality and opportunities linked to travel, education, and cultural exchanges.

2nd House: You attract wealth by seeking new financial ventures, particularly those related to education, international business, or travel. Financial success is tied to investing in opportunities that broaden your horizons and reflect your values of exploration and freedom.

3rd House: Wealth may come through communication, writing, or teaching, particularly in areas that involve sharing knowledge and expanding minds. Financial success is likely through intellectual pursuits, travel-related writing, or media projects that inspire others.

4th House: Financial success can come through property or family ventures tied to education or travel. You attract wealth by creating a home environment focused on growth and learning, possibly earning through international real estate or family-owned educational projects.

5th House: Wealth flows through creative projects or speculative investments, especially in areas related to travel, education, or philosophical exploration. Financial success may come from creative ventures that inspire others to think broadly and embrace growth.

6th House: You attract wealth through work in service roles that involve teaching, travel, or higher learning. Financial success comes from roles that allow you to spread knowledge, inspire others, and work in international or educational settings.

7th House: Financial success is closely tied to partnerships, both business and romantic, that value freedom and exploration. You attract wealth through relationships built on shared goals related to travel, education, or philosophical pursuits.

8th House: Wealth may come through joint financial ventures, investments, or inheritances involving travel or education. Financial transformation occurs through bold, adventurous financial decisions or partnerships focused on deep exploration and growth.

9th House: This is an ideal placement for Venus in Sagittarius. You attract wealth through higher education, international ventures, teaching, or publishing. Financial success comes from expanding your knowledge and sharing it with others, especially on a global scale.

10th House: Career success is linked to leadership roles in fields like education, international business, or travel. You attract wealth by pursuing professional opportunities that allow you to inspire others and encourage exploration and growth.

11th House: Financial success is connected to your social network and involvement in groups focused on education, travel, or philosophy. You attract wealth by leading communities that value expansion, learning, and personal growth.

12th House: Wealth may come from hidden sources, spiritual work, or international ventures. Financial success is drawn from behind-the-scenes efforts or by aligning your spiritual beliefs with ventures that offer both personal and financial growth.

𝐂𝐚𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐧 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Capricorn, attracting wealth is all about discipline, structure, and long-term vision. Venus in this sign thrives on building a secure financial foundation through hard work, responsibility, and a methodical approach to managing resources. You attract wealth by focusing on steady, long-term growth rather than chasing short-term gains, often finding success in traditional, well-established industries. Your financial success comes through consistent effort, wise investments, and a strong sense of ambition. Wealth flows when you commit to ventures that promise longevity, maintain discipline, and stay focused on sustainable financial growth.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success comes from presenting yourself as ambitious, responsible, and disciplined. Your public image reflects a strong work ethic, and you attract wealth through opportunities where your determined approach and desire for stability are recognized.

2nd House: You attract money through careful, long-term financial planning and investments. Financial success comes from steadily building wealth over time, particularly through traditional industries or ventures that offer stable returns.

3rd House: Wealth may come through structured communication, writing, or business projects that require careful planning and persistence. Financial success is achieved through intellectual endeavors that have long-term potential and value.

4th House: Financial success is often tied to real estate, property investments, or family businesses. You attract wealth by creating stability in your home and family life, and you may build lasting financial security through real estate or legacy planning.

5th House: You attract wealth through practical and structured creative endeavors. Financial success may come from investments in fields that blend creativity with structure, such as architecture, traditional arts, or engineering, where long-term planning is key.

6th House: Financial success comes through hard work, discipline, and responsibility in your daily work life. You attract wealth by staying focused on long-term career goals, particularly in fields like corporate business, government, or finance, where structure and ambition are rewarded.

7th House: Financial growth is tied to partnerships, particularly in business. You attract wealth through long-term, stable partnerships, where both parties share a focus on building a solid financial future and working toward mutual goals.

8th House: Wealth may come through joint ventures, investments, or carefully managing shared resources. Financial success is achieved through disciplined handling of other people’s money or through inheritances, where a strategic approach to long-term investments pays off.

9th House: You attract wealth through disciplined educational or international pursuits. Financial success may come from higher education, law, or structured travel-related ventures that combine personal growth with long-term financial potential.

10th House: Career success comes from leadership roles that value discipline, responsibility, and structure. You attract wealth by building a solid professional reputation over time, often finding financial success in established industries like business, law, or politics.

11th House: Financial success is linked to your involvement in structured groups or organizations. You attract wealth by leading or participating in social networks and communities that focus on long-term growth, ambition, and success.

12th House: Wealth may come from behind-the-scenes work or through spiritual or charitable endeavors. Financial success comes from disciplined efforts in solitude or private ventures that offer long-term financial security, often in areas that others overlook.

𝐀𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐮𝐬 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Aquarius, attracting wealth revolves around your innovative, unconventional, and forward-thinking approach. Venus in Aquarius thrives in exploring new ideas, technologies, and social connections that push boundaries. You naturally attract wealth by embracing your uniqueness and being open to progressive financial ventures. Financial success is often tied to your involvement in technology, humanitarian efforts, or social causes. You find wealth when you combine intellectual creativity with a sense of purpose, focusing on futuristic or community-driven financial goals that align with the greater good.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success comes from presenting yourself as innovative, unique, and open-minded. You attract wealth by showcasing your individuality and unconventional thinking, often drawing opportunities through tech-related or progressive ventures.

2nd House: You attract money through modern, forward-thinking ventures such as technology, social causes, or innovation. Financial success comes from investing in futuristic projects and earning through your social networks or involvement in the community.

3rd House: Wealth comes through communication, writing, or intellectual pursuits centered on innovation and social change. Financial success may stem from networking, teaching, or working in fields related to technology, social justice, or progressive ideas.

4th House: Financial success may be linked to unconventional home-based ventures or real estate. You attract wealth by applying modern ideas to property investments or by creating a unique, progressive home environment or family business.

5th House: You attract wealth through creative, innovative endeavors, often involving technology or speculative ventures in cutting-edge industries. Financial success comes from thinking outside the box in areas like entertainment, tech, or futuristic arts.

6th House: Financial success comes from working in service-oriented roles tied to social causes, innovation, or technology. You attract wealth by focusing on improving the collective, especially in fields like science, technology, or social reform.

7th House: Financial success is closely tied to unconventional partnerships or collaborations. You attract wealth through relationships with forward-thinking individuals who share your vision, particularly in business or social ventures focused on technology or progressive goals.

8th House: Wealth may come through joint financial ventures, investments, or managing other people’s resources in innovative ways. You attract wealth by transforming shared resources through tech-driven or unconventional methods, particularly in fields related to social causes.

9th House: You attract wealth through higher education, international ventures, or philosophical pursuits that promote progressive ideals. Financial success may come from teaching, publishing, or travel, particularly when focused on forward-thinking or humanitarian efforts.

10th House: Career success and financial growth come from leadership roles in innovative or progressive fields. You attract wealth by excelling in industries like technology, science, or social reform, often achieving financial success through careers that promote change and advancement.

11th House: Financial success is linked to your social network and community involvement. You attract wealth by leading groups or organizations focused on innovation, technology, or humanitarian causes, particularly when working within futuristic or socially conscious industries.

12th House: Wealth may come from behind-the-scenes work or involvement in charitable, spiritual, or humanitarian efforts. Financial success is often found through private ventures or by working in fields that focus on helping the collective in unconventional or innovative ways.

𝐏𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬

For Venus in Pisces, attracting wealth involves channeling your imaginative, compassionate, and spiritual energy into your work. Venus in this sign thrives when it combines creativity with a deep emotional or spiritual connection, allowing you to attract wealth by following your intuition and engaging in endeavors that inspire and uplift others. Financial success comes from artistic, healing, or spiritual professions that resonate on an emotional level. Your compassionate and idealistic approach to money enables you to draw abundance by offering value through emotional fulfillment and service to others. Wealth flows when your financial path aligns with your spiritual or artistic vision.

Through the Houses:

1st House: Financial success is linked to how you present yourself—compassionate, imaginative, and spiritually connected. You attract wealth by embracing your artistic and empathetic side, often finding opportunities in creative or healing professions.

2nd House: You attract money through intuitive and creative means. Financial success comes from artistic ventures, spiritual work, or compassionate service. Professions in beauty, art, or healing can be financially rewarding for you.

3rd House: Wealth comes through communication or artistic expression, particularly when you use your empathy and imagination. Financial success is likely in writing, teaching, or creative projects that deeply inspire or emotionally touch others.

4th House: Financial success may come through property, real estate, or creating a nurturing, spiritual home environment. You can attract wealth by transforming your home into a healing or creative space or through family-related ventures.

5th House: You attract wealth through artistic and creative endeavors that are emotionally or spiritually connected. Financial success comes from engaging in music, film, visual arts, or any creative field that deeply resonates with others' emotions.

6th House: You attract wealth by working in compassionate service or healing professions. Financial success stems from serving others in ways that align with your spiritual or artistic values, particularly in healthcare, wellness, or charitable roles.

7th House: Financial success is linked to relationships and partnerships that are deeply spiritual or compassionate. You attract wealth through business or romantic relationships rooted in emotional or spiritual bonds.

8th House: Wealth may come from joint financial ventures, inheritances, or other people’s resources, particularly when connected to healing or spiritual transformation. Managing shared resources with compassion and intuition can lead to financial success.

9th House: You attract wealth through spiritual or creative teaching, travel, or higher education. Financial success may come from working in fields related to art, spirituality, or humanitarian service that reach a global or expansive audience.

10th House: Career success is linked to roles where creativity, compassion, and spirituality are central. You attract wealth by pursuing careers in healing, the arts, or spiritual guidance, often gaining recognition for your emotional depth and intuitive abilities.

11th House: Financial success comes through your social network, especially in communities focused on spirituality, healing, or creative arts. You attract wealth by engaging with groups or organizations that aim to uplift and inspire.

12th House: Wealth may come from behind-the-scenes work, spiritual endeavors, or artistic expression. Financial success arises through compassionate service, charity, or spiritual healing, especially in fields where you work quietly and intuitively.

Masterlist - YouTube (subliminals)

[racefortheironthrone]

Nobody is making anyone go into scriptwriting. No one is born in a Netflix company town where their dad takes them into the script mines at age 12. Fuck writers who want to get paid more than once for the same job. They should only get residuals AFTER all the people who do REAL WORK, like construction, grips, costume, makeup & animators etc. Most of them are much better at their jobs than writers especially for streaming services, and they are what screenwriters can lean on & novelists can't.

People need to realize that the unions for white collar people like WGA or SIEU or NEA (public sector unions are why cops who kill the people they were supposed to serve & protect remain employed get pensions) is not the AFL-CIO or any other historical union fighting for the lives of the people who built the country's industry and made it run, any more than the NRA are the Minutemen of 1775 New England.

First, go fuck yourself, you fucking scab. No, seriously - you don't come to my blog and spout off about what workers deserve unions and decent pay and what ones don't, like it's your fucking decision. The intellectual labor that writers perform is just as real as any other work done on a film set - "all who labor by hand or brain" is the inherent logic of industrial unionism for a reason.

Second, writers aren't asking to get paid more than once: residuals are deferred pay, you absolute moron. In Hollywood, whether it's writers or actors or voice talent or whatever, you get a small fraction up front - it's usually an ok check, depending on the union's day rates and so forth, but you can't make a living off stitching these together - and then most of your pay comes from monthly royalty checks that provide you with the income you need to live off when you're between jobs.

The problem is that, historically in Hollywood, residuals have been structured with a very long "tail" - the payments start out relatively low and then get more generous over time as the show has more seasons and (presumably) goes into syndication. This doesn't work with streaming's new business model, where increasingly shows are getting 2-3 seasons max and streaming services have become increasingly quick to not just cancel shows but yank them off their servers in order to avoid paying residuals.

So what WGA writers are fighting for is a system that ensures writers (but also actors and other creative workers, because the unions pattern bargain) get a fair share of the show's revenue, even if the show is only given 2-3 seasons.

Third, the U.S labor movement would not exist today if it wasn't for white collar workers and public sector workers. About half of the U.S labor movement - 7 million workers - is public sector, and those workers are overwhelmingly women of color, mostly working as either teachers or postal workers. Likewise, about half the U.S labor movement is made up of white collar workers, and we're graduate students and adjuncts and lab researchers, teachers and social workers, administrators and IT departments.

I'm both public sector and white collar, and I'm a member of an NEA union. I'm an adjunct professor who earns $6,000 a course and it's my job to get working adults with jobs and families who've never gone to college or who've been out of higher ed for a decade to graduate with a bachelor's or a master's. If you don't think that's real work, you're free to research and write all the lectures and powerpoints, deliver those in an entertaining and educational fashion, answer a flood of questions from students who need help navigating academia, and then grade all the midterms and finals and research papers.

[philosopherking1887]

More good things the Biden administration is doing: OSHA heat safety rules for workers

Remember when Texas and Florida passed laws preventing local and municipal governments from implementing their own heat safety rules and said that if heat is such a big problem, OSHA should make rules that apply to everyone? If not, NPR can remind you. OSHA has now accepted the challenge, moving much faster than they usually do:

OSHA National News Release U.S. Department of Labor July 2, 2024 Biden-Harris administration announces proposed rule to protect indoor, outdoor workers from extreme heat WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor has released a proposed rule with the goal of protecting millions of workers from the significant health risks of extreme heat. If finalized, the proposed rule would help protect approximately 36 million workers in indoor and outdoor work settings and substantially reduce heat injuries, illnesses, and deaths in the workplace. Heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S. Excessive workplace heat can lead to heat stroke and even death. While heat hazards impact workers in many industries, workers of color have a higher likelihood of working in jobs with hazardous heat exposure. “Every worker should come home safe and healthy at the end of the day, which is why the Biden-Harris administration is taking this significant step to protect workers from the dangers posed by extreme heat,” said Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su. “As the most pro-worker administration in history, we are committed to ensuring that those doing difficult work in some of our economy’s most critical sectors are valued and kept safe in the workplace.” The proposed rule would require employers to develop an injury and illness prevention plan to control heat hazards in workplaces affected by excessive heat. Among other things, the plan would require employers to evaluate heat risks and — when heat increases risks to workers — implement requirements for drinking water, rest breaks and control of indoor heat. It would also require a plan to protect new or returning workers unaccustomed to working in high heat conditions. ���Workers all over the country are passing out, suffering heat stroke and dying from heat exposure from just doing their jobs, and something must be done to protect them,” said Assistant Secretary for Occupational Safety and Health Douglas L. Parker. “Today’s proposal is an important next step in the process to receive public input to craft a ‘win-win’ final rule that protects workers while being practical and workable for employers.” Employers would also be required to provide training, have procedures to respond if a worker is experiencing signs and symptoms of a heat-related illness, and take immediate action to help a worker experiencing signs and symptoms of a heat emergency. The public is encouraged to submit written comments on the rule once it is published in the Federal Register. The agency also anticipates a public hearing after the close of the written comment period. More information will be available on submitting comments when the rule is published. In the interim, OSHA continues to direct significant existing outreach and enforcement resources to educate employers and workers and hold businesses accountable for violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act’s general duty clause, 29 U.S.C. § 654(a)(1) and other applicable regulations. Record-breaking temperatures across the nation have increased the risks people face on-the-job, especially in summer months. Every year, dozens of workers die and thousands more suffer illnesses related to hazardous heat exposure that, sadly, are most often preventable. The agency continues to conduct heat-related inspections under its National Emphasis Program – Outdoor and Indoor Heat-Related Hazards, launched in 2022. The program inspects workplaces with the highest exposures to heat-related hazards proactively to prevent workers from suffering injury, illness or death needlessly. Since the launch, OSHA has conducted more than 5,000 federal heat-related inspections. In addition, the agency is prioritizing programmed inspections in agricultural industries that employ temporary, nonimmigrant H-2A workers for seasonal labor. These workers face unique vulnerabilities, including potential language barriers, less control over their living and working conditions, and possible lack of acclimatization, and are at high risk of hazardous heat exposure.

[alexanderwales]

The high-level prophecy interpreters all worked for the government or major corporations. They were the ones with the money, and the ones most likely to be the subject of a prophecy. Sometimes you'd have a multi-billionaire hire on a prophecy interpreter, but usually they just had one on retainer. The same went for celebrities who were famous enough to attract significant prophecies.

But at the lower level, there were prophecy interpreters who opened up their own firms, usually just one or two if they weren't in a major city. That was me: I had gotten in prophecy interpretation in college and ended up majoring in it after the Kepler Incident. I had my name on bus stops and billboards, and a single secretary in my employ who thankfully handled most of the phone calls.

In the field we sometimes divide the business up into three sectors based on timing. There's "prophecy impact", which is when we do a consultation right after the prophecy has been made, or at least sometime before it rears its head. Some prophecies are decades in the making, but people want to be told what to do about them. I hate that part of the job, personally, because there's not a whole lot to do, depending on the language. Plus the conversations are pretty repetitive: a guy hears a pretty clear-cut prophecy that he's going to die falling out of a plane, and he's begging for some way out, as though there's something I can do about it, as though I can tell him that prophecies are lairs sometimes. Prophecies are liars, but they're clever liars, hiding meanings inside words, only clear after they've passed. You can't escape prophecy, and at least half of "prophecy impact" clients explaining that fact to them.

The second sector is "prophetic immanence", when the client has a prophecy that they think is coming true. Sometimes this can be because there's a trigger phrase in the prophecy, a conditional that appears to have been met. One of the dirty secrets of the industry is that nine times out of the ten, people are mistaken: the nature of prophecy is such that you can't often pinpoint when the prophecy is nigh. In my opinion, you can judge a prophecy interpreter by how upfront they are about this. The weasels will milk their clients dry by pretending that every moment is a crisis moment.

It's the last sector that I find the most satisfaction from, which is why it's a disappointment that it's the least in demand. This is post facto prophecy interpretation. You're not trying to prevent anything, you're not formulating a reaction, you're just trying to figure out what happened and how it all fit together. These are clients that are in the aftermath of prophecy, or what they're pretty sure is the aftermath, and a lot of the time, they just want someone to talk to more than they want my specific expertise.

My client that day was an artist, a rising star who had a few very successful gallery showings. It had been prophesied that her older brother would accidentally kill her father, but it had been her instead. This wasn't a recent trauma, but the wound was clearly still there, so I tried to navigate it as carefully as I could.

"One of the things that makes prophecy tricky is ambiguity," I said gently. "There are some, outliers, that depend on pretty tortured readings. But in this case, I think it's just an alternate meaning. From what you gave me, the prophecy was specifically 'the child who first draws breath', and that's in reference to your career as an artist."

"That's stupid," she said. "He's two years older than me, would he really never have doodled a person drawing? Just a few lines indicating that something is coming out of their mouth?" Her hands were folded in her lap. They were curiously still, for someone who used her hands for a living, but maybe artists were like that, preserving the tools of their trade.

"It's stupid," I agreed. "But I do think it's entirely possible that his drawings didn't include anyone breathing, and that yours did."

"How can we know for sure?" she asked.

"We can't," I replied. "Though if we take for granted that the prophecy was fulfilled, and that you were the one to fulfill it, then we have to search for answers within the realm of what we know. And if you're not satisfied with that answer, then I need to spend some time searching for alternate meanings, to find some interpretation that lands better."

"I could understand it if I had some obsession with drawing breath," she said. "If I had done a series of paintings of visible breath escaping from a person's body, then that would make sense. But it's not that, it's the first to draw breath, and that's just ... I mean, doodles we did when we were children. It means nothing. We have no way to mark that. It wasn't pivotal."

I shrugged. "It is what it is." I use that phrase a lot. "There's a selection effect with prophecies. The ones we hear about are hugely ironic, they show the hand of fate, they warp and twist people. But many of them are just," I shrugged again. "Things that happened."

"My brother moved away," she said. "My father had kind of accepted it, probably from the moment we were born, or before that. He'd made peace with it, hadn't tried to fight it. But it was a hard thing to learn for my brother, and he'd just left to go to school a thousand miles away, and coming home was always stressful for him, because maybe this was when it was going to happen."

I nodded. "I can see where that would be difficult. How did he handle it?"

"Poorly," she sighed. "Dad was a good guy. My brother lost all that time, and it had always been a source of tension between them, not the death, but their perspective, you know? Dad preached acceptance, my brother wanted to avoid it, and so when my brother went out west, dad was disappointed. He said it was like losing his son, and that he'd have rather died than have that happen. So not only did my brother not have a close relationship with my dad because of the prophecy, it turns out that dad was right all along. It would have been better for everyone not to fight it."

"Maybe," I said. "In the business we don't counsel people not to fight prophecies. Sometimes it's the right thing to do."

"Well, sorry for wasting your time," she said. "Though I guess I'm paying by the hour, and I'm not going to apologize for something I paid for. So I'd like my apology back, please."

I smiled at her. "Certainly."

She stood up to go, and I marked the time so I could bill her later, but she paused for a moment. I put in the time all the same; so far as I was concerned, we were off the clock.

"Do you have any unresolved prophecies that you know of?" she asked.

"That's sort of a personal question," I said. "But I get it a lot, and if it might help you, I can share: I'm going to be eaten by an alligator."

"You're ... what?" she asked.

"An alligator?" I asked. "They live in swamps."

"And how are you going to be eaten by one?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know," I replied. "There's a chance I've dodged it already, or ... dodged it in the way that you can sometimes dodge an obvious reading." I held up my hand and showed her my pinky, or rather, my lack of pinky. "I went down to Florida, had my finger amputated, then fed it to three baby alligators under the supervision of a zoo keeper."

She stared at me. "And that works?" she finally asked.

"We'll see," I replied. "In general, yes, it's an approach with relatively good outcomes. A self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a peace of mind thing."

"But ... your finger?" she asked. She was looking at it. I sometimes thought that going with a toe would be better, or a chunk of flesh from somewhere else, but I had heard that losing a toe could interfere with balance. I had never regretted that it was a pinky finger.

"If I didn't avert the prophecy, I want to be the kind of guy who says 'oh, well that's funny'," I replied. "I think ... whatever helps you, you know? And now I don't need to stay up at night wondering how the hell it's going to happen. See, your father had it right, I think. You have to find a way to make peace with it. And this was what it took for me to make peace with mine. Though I have to admit that I'm not a fan of zoos, and I don't take vacations south of the Mason Dixon, so maybe I'm not as much at peace as I would like myself to believe."

"Huh," she said. She looked away from the missing finger and to my eyes. "Thank you for sharing that."

"It's okay if you think it's kooky," I replied.

"No," she said. "I was just ... thinking that if my brother had something like that, he might have had more time with dad before he passed."

I nodded. "You can share that story, if you think it will help. Sometimes it does."

When she left I went back to my computer, cruising the local news sites to see whether there had been any updates. I hadn't given her the best advice. My mind had been elsewhere.

A local guy had been busted for breeding reptiles without a license. I was sure it was nothing, but they hadn't said what specific reptiles it had been. It was probably nothing. I mean, a full-grown alligator escaping from custody, finding me, and managing to eat me was a little too much for me to believe.

But fate is a funny thing sometimes, and I was going to keep my eyes open.

[wordsmithic]

unpopular opinion but with the new tide of Greek mythology stories and retellings, Greek Cultural Sensitivity Readings are absolutely necessary. We are in 2024, with thousands of fics and retellings out there!! How is this not a thing yet?? There's vast improvement one can achieve by working professionally on their text with a Greek. I've seen it so many times!!

Also, duh, I'm offering the service BUT I want you to know that the situation with the inaccuracies of SERIOUS works is so dire that initially I didn't even do it for money. As a writer I just wanted to... fix things, to set a new standard for writers and the industry that sells us the most heavily Americanized pop-culture material and passes it as "authentic vibes of Greek mythology". (And of course there were writers who wanted to do right by their story and they had reached out to me. So kudos to them as well!)

Okay, but why does Cultural Sensitivity Reading make a vast difference and it's not just smoke and mirrors?

As a Greek, I am tired of well-meaning writers and authors butchering very basic elements of my culture. It's not their fault exactly, since they were raised in another culture with a different perspective. And nobody clued them in on how different Greek culture is from theirs, so writers sometimes assume that their culture is the default and they project that into ancient Greece. (Even published professionals like Madeline Miller have written "UK or US in antiquity" (with a very colonialist flavor) instead of writing "Ancient Greece". (Looking at you, Circe!)

Even writers who researched a lot before coming to me still had a lot of misinformation or wrong information in their text, easily verifiable by the average Greek. Again, not their fault. They can only access certain information, which does not include Greek scholarly work and scientific articles that DO offer valuable context.

Translation, accuracy, and meaning: If you ever wondered what a word means or how to pronounce it, here's your chance! There are Greeks like me who are knowledgeable and have a keen interest in antiquity and they will be able to read and compare ancient texts, and dive deeper into the work of Greek scholars regarding those texts.

If you want to create new words, you can do that as well! (It doesn't always work, but we can try. Greek is a really rich language and has a word about everything) If you use existing words, I can help you separate reality from fantasy in the context of your story.

(Do not assume we Greeks are ignorant of our heritage, or that we don't know how to research! Our archaeology sector is huge and archaeological museums are closer to most of us than your local Target is to you)

I guarantee there are things you never thought about Greece and the Mediterranean - from the ancient to the modern era. Sprinkling elements like phrases, types of interactions, customs, songs, instruments, dances, etc , into your text will make your text absolutely rich in culture.

Names matter!!! The genders of the names matter, diminutives matter (If I see one more "Perse" for Persephone I will claw my eyes out along with a few thousand Greeks), naming traditions matter!!! In many cases you should not even use a diminutive!!

You will be able to write about a foreign culture easily! Because of the continuity of Greek culture, you can even write a few more recent Greek elements to fill in the gaps. I can make sure they are not mismatched, and they will complement your ancient setting. I have observed a few things I didn't know we had since antiquity, but they make sense because our land has certain characteristics.

Non-Greek writers often miss the whole context of Greek culture! Do you know how Greek respect towards deities and parents looks like? What tones we use when we talk to our elders? When to use honorific plural - if your setting is more modernized?

Oh, and please let's avoid caricatures when describing Greeks?? (even fantasy Greeks) There can be heavy exotisation and odd descriptions of Greeks, as if we are another species. Even in published works. For many western writers it's difficult to catch, unfortunately.

The whole process is actually way easier than you think. You send me a text, I make notes and then we have some discussion on your vision.

It's always okay to seek guidance from the locals! You are not "guilty" when you admit you don't know! How can you know if you don't ask?? You can't imagine what relief and "πάλι καλά!!!" I read/see from other Greeks when I tell them another foreigner is using me for cultural sensitivity? Greeks want you to seek help and will NOT shame you for it!

(On the contrary, you have no idea how many eye-rolls Greeks do when they see a blatantly wrong thing in a story... Which has happened pretty often for many years now. Can we do better as an industry?? Please???)

You can send me a personal message to share your story, or ask what this whole cultural sensitivity thing is all about, or ask about what I have done so far and how I can help. But for the love of all that's good, don't let your story be another "generic greek myth retelling"! And don't let others sell you their generic greek myth retellings!!

[reasonsforhope]

hey, how do you cope with people saying we only have a small amount of time left to stop the worst effects of climate change? no matter how hopeful and ok i am, that always sends me back into a spiral :(

A few different ways

1. The biggest one is that I do math. Because renewable energy is growing exponentially

Up until basically 2021 to now, all of the climate change models were based on the idea that our ability to handle climate change will grow linearly. But that's wrong: it's growing exponentially, most of all in the green energy sector. And we're finally starting to see proof of this - and that it's going to keep going.

And many types of climate change mitigation serve as multipliers for other types. Like building a big combo in a video game.

Change has been rapidly accelerating and I genuinely believe that it's going to happen much faster than anyone is currently predicting

2. A lot of the most exciting and groundbreaking things happening around climate change are happening in developing nations, so they're not on most people's radars.

But they will expand, as developing nations are widely undergoing a massive boom in infrastructure, development, and quality of life - and as they collaborate and communicate with each other in doing so

3. Every country, state, city, province, town, nonprofit, community, and movement is basically its own test case

We're going to figure out the best ways to handle things in a remarkably quick amount of time, because everyone is trying out solutions at once. Instead of doing 100 different studies on solutions in order, we get try out 100 (more like 10,000) different versions of different solutions simultaneously, and then figure out which ones worked best and why. The spread of solutions becomes infinitely faster, especially as more and more of the world gets access to the internet and other key infrastructure

4. There's a very real chance that many of the impacts of climate change will be reversible

Yeah, you read that right.

Will it take a while? Yes. But we're mostly talking a few decades to a few centuries, which is NOTHING in geological history terms.

We have more proof than ever of just how resilient nature is. Major rivers are being restored from dried up or dead to thriving ecosystems in under a decade. Life bounces back so fast when we let it.

I know there's a lot of skepticism about carbon capture and carbon removal. That's reasonable, some of those projects are definitely bs (mostly the ones run by gas companies, involving carbon credits, and/or trying to pump CO2 thousands of feet underground)

But there's very real potential for carbon removal through restoring ecosystems and regenerative agriculture

The research into carbon removal has also just exploded in the past three years, so there are almost certainly more and better technologies to come

There's also some promising developments in industrial carbon removal, especially this process of harvesting atmospheric CO2 and other air pollution to make baking soda and other industrially useful chemicals

As we take carbon out of the air in larger amounts, less heat will be trapped in the atmosphere

If less heat is trapped in the atmosphere, then the planet will start to cool down

If the planet starts to cool down, a lot of things will stabilize again. And they'll probably start to stabilize pretty quickly

[mostlysignssomeportents]

What the fuck is a PBM?

TOMORROW (Sept 24), I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Terminal-stage capitalism owes its long senescence to its many defensive mechanisms, and it's only by defeating these that we can put it out of its misery. "The Shield of Boringness" is one of the necrocapitalist's most effective defenses, so it behooves us to attack it head-on.

The Shield of Boringness is Dana Claire's extremely useful term for anything so dull that you simply can't hold any conception of it in your mind for any length of time. In the finance sector, they call this "MEGO," which stands for "My Eyes Glaze Over," a term of art for financial arrangements made so performatively complex that only the most exquisitely melted brain-geniuses can hope to unravel their spaghetti logic. The rest of us are meant to simply heft those thick, dense prospectuses in two hands, shrug, and assume, "a pile of shit this big must have a pony under it."

MEGO and its Shield of Boringness are key to all of terminal-stage capitalism's stupidest scams. Cloaking obvious swindles in a lot of complex language and Byzantine payment schemes can make them seem respectable just long enough for the scammers to relieve you of all your inconvenient cash and assets, though, eventually, you're bound to notice that something is missing.

If you spent the years leading up to the Great Financial Crisis baffled by "CDOs," "synthetic CDOs," "ARMs" and other swindler nonsense, you experienced the Shield of Boringness. If you bet your house and/or your retirement savings on these things, you experienced MEGO. If, after the bubble popped, you finally came to understand that these "exotic financial instruments" were just scams, you experienced Stein's Law ("anything that can't go forever eventually stops"). If today you no longer remember what a CDO is, you are once again experiencing the Shield of Boringness.

As bad as 2008 was, it wasn't even close to the end of terminal stage capitalism. The market has soldiered on, with complex swindles like carbon offset trading, metaverse, cryptocurrency, financialized solar installation, and (of course) AI. In addition to these new swindles, we're still playing the hits, finding new ways to make the worst scams of the 2000s even worse.

That brings me to the American health industry, and the absurdly complex, ridiculously corrupt Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), a pathology that has only metastasized since 2008.

On at least 20 separate occasions, I have taken it upon myself to figure out how the PBM swindle works, and nevertheless, every time they come up, I have to go back and figure it out again, because PBMs have the most powerful Shield of Boringness out of the whole Monster Manual of terminal-stage capitalism's trash mobs.

PBMs are back in the news because the FTC is now suing the largest of these for their role in ripping off diabetics with sky-high insulin prices. This has kicked off a fresh round of "what the fuck is a PBM, anyway?" explainers of extremely variable quality. Unsurprisingly, the best of these comes from Matt Stoller:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-lina-khan-pharma

Stoller starts by pointing out that Americans have a proud tradition of getting phucked by pharma companies. As far back as the 1950s, Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver was holding hearings on the scams that pharma companies were using to ensure that Americans paid more for their pills than virtually anyone else in the world.

But since the 2010s, Americans have found themselves paying eye-popping, sky-high, ridiculous drug prices. Eli Lilly's Humolog insulin sold for $21 in 1999; by 2017, the price was $274 – a 1,200% increase! This isn't your grampa's price gouging!

Where do these absurd prices come from? The story starts in the 2000s, when the GW Bush administration encouraged health insurers to create "high deductible" plans, where patients were expected to pay out of pocket for receiving care, until they hit a multi-thousand-dollar threshold, and then their insurance would kick in. Along with "co-pays" and other junk fees, these deductibles were called "cost sharing," and they were sold as a way to prevent the "abuse" of the health care system.

The economists who crafted terminal-stage capitalism's intellectual rationalizations claimed the reason Americans paid so much more for health care than their socialized-medicine using cousins in the rest of the world had nothing to do with the fact that America treats health as a source of profits, while the rest of the world treats health as a human right.

No, the actual root of America's health industry's problems was the moral defects of Americans. Because insured Americans could just go see the doctor whenever they felt like it, they had no incentive to minimize their use of the system. Any time one of these unhinged hypochondriacs got a little sniffle, they could treat themselves to a doctor's visit, enjoying those waiting-room magazines and the pleasure of arranging a sick day with HR, without bearing any of the true costs:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/the-doctrine-of-moral-hazard/

"Cost sharing" was supposed to create "skin in the game" for every insured American, creating a little pain-point that stung you every time you thought about treating yourself to a luxurious doctor's visit. Now, these payments bit hardest on the poorest workers, because if you're making minimum wage, at $10 co-pay hurts a lot more than it does if you're making six figures. What's more, VPs and the C-suite were offered "gold-plated" plans with low/no deductibles or co-pays, because executives understand the value of a dollar in the way that mere working slobs can't ever hope to comprehend. They can be trusted to only use the doctor when it's truly warranted.

So now you have these high-deductible plans creeping into every workplace. Then along comes Obama and the Affordable Care Act, a compromise that maintains health care as a for-profit enterprise (still not a human right!) but seeks to create universal coverage by requiring every American to buy a plan, requiring insurers to offer plans to every American, and uses public money to subsidize the for-profit health industry to glue it together.

Predictably, the cheapest insurance offered on the Obamacare exchanges – and ultimately, by employers – had sky-high deductibles and co-pays. That way, insurers could pocket a fat public subsidy, offer an "insurance" plan that was cheap enough for even the most marginally employed people to afford, but still offer no coverage until their customers had spent thousands of dollars out-of-pocket in a given year.

That's the background: GWB created high-deductible plans, Obama supercharged them. Keep that in your mind as we go through the MEGO procedures of the PBM sector.

Your insurer has a list of drugs they'll cover, called the "formulary." The formulary also specifies how much the insurance company is willing to pay your pharmacist for these drugs. Creating the formulary and paying pharmacies for dispensing drugs is a lot of tedious work, and insurance outsources this to third parties, called – wait for it – Pharmacy Benefits Managers.

The prices in the formulary the PBM prepares for your insurance company are called the "list prices." These are meant to represent the "sticker price" of the drug, what a pharmacist would charge you if you wandered in off the street with no insurance, but somehow in possession of a valid prescription.

But, as Stoller writes, these "list prices" aren't actually ever charged to anyone. The list price is like the "full price" on the pricetags at a discount furniture place where everything is always "on sale" at 50% off – and whose semi-disposable sofas and balsa-wood dining room chairs are never actually sold at full price.

One theoretical advantage of a PBM is that it can get lower prices because it bargains for all the people in a given insurer's plan. If you're the pharma giant Sanofi and you want your Lantus insulin to be available to any of the people who must use OptumRX's formulary, you have to convince OptumRX to include you in that formulary.

OptumRX – like all PBMs – demands "rebates" from pharma companies if they want to be included in the formulary. On its face, this is similar to the practices of, say, NICE – the UK agency that bargains for medicine on behalf of the NHS, which also bargains with pharma companies for access to everyone in the UK and gets very good deals as a result.

But OptumRX doesn't bargain for a lower list price. They bargain for a bigger rebate. That means that the "price" is still very high, but OptumRX ends up paying a tiny fraction of it, thanks to that rebate. In the OptumRX formulary, Lantus insulin lists for $403. But Sanofi, who make Lantus, rebate $339 of that to OptumRX, leaving just $64 for Lantus.

Here's where the scam hits. Your insurer charges you a deductible based on the list price – $404 – not on the $64 that OptumRX actually pays for your insulin. If you're in a high-deductible plan and you haven't met your cap yet, you're going to pay $404 for your insulin, even though the actual price for it is $64.

Now, you'd think that your insurer would put a stop to this. They chose the PBM, the PBM is ripping off their customers, so it's their job to smack the PBM around and make it cut this shit out. So why would the insurers tolerate this nonsense?

Here's why: the PBMs are divisions of the big health insurance companies. Unitedhealth owns OptumRx; Aetna owns Caremark, and Cigna owns Expressscripts. So it's not the PBM that's ripping you off, it's your own insurance company. They're not just making you pay for drugs that you're supposedly covered for – they're pocketing the deductible you pay for those drugs.

Now, there's one more entity with power over the PBM that you'd hope would step in on your behalf: your boss. After all, your employer is the entity that actually chooses the insurer and negotiates with them on your behalf. Your boss is in the driver's seat; you're just along for the ride.

It would be pretty funny if the answer to this was that the health insurance company bought your employer, too, and so your boss, the PBM and the insurer were all the same guy, busily swapping hats, paying for a call center full of tormented drones who each have three phones on their desks: one labeled "insurer"; the second, "PBM" and the final one "HR."

But no, the insurers haven't bought out the company you work for (yet). Rather, they've bought off your boss – they're sharing kickbacks with your employer for all the deductibles and co-pays you're being suckered into paying. There's so much money (your money) sloshing around in the PBM scamoverse that anytime someone might get in the way of you being ripped off, they just get cut in for a share of the loot.

That is how the PBM scam works: they're fronts for health insurers who exploit the existence of high-deductible plans in order to get huge kickbacks from pharma makers, and massive fees from you. They split the loot with your boss, whose payout goes up when you get screwed harder.

But wait, there's more! After all, Big Pharma isn't some kind of easily pushed-around weakling. They're big. Why don't they push back against these massive rebates? Because they can afford to pay bribes and smaller companies making cheaper drugs can't. Whether it's a little biotech upstart with a cheaper molecule, or a generics maker who's producing drugs at a fraction of the list price, they just don't have the giant cash reserves it takes to buy their way into the PBMs' formularies. Doubtless, the Big Pharma companies would prefer to pay smaller kickbacks, but from Big Pharma's perspective, the optimum amount of bribes extracted by a PBM isn't zero – far from it. For Big Pharma, the optimal number is one cent higher than "the maximum amount of bribes that a smaller company can afford."

The purpose of a system is what it does. The PBM system makes sure that Americans only have access to the most expensive drugs, and that they pay the highest possible prices for them, and this enriches both insurance companies and employers, while protecting the Big Pharma cartel from upstarts.

Which is why the FTC is suing the PBMs for price-fixing. As Stoller points out, they're using their powers under Section 5 of the FTC Act here, which allows them to shut down "unfair methods of competition":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The case will be adjudicated by an administrative law judge, in a process that's much faster than a federal court case. Once the FTC proves that the PBM scam is illegal when applied to insulin, they'll have a much easier time attacking the scam when it comes to every other drug (the insulin scam has just about run its course, with federally mandated $35 insulin coming online, just as a generation of post-insulin diabetes treatments hit the market).

Obviously the PBMs aren't taking this lying down. Cigna/Expressscripts has actually sued the FTC for libel over the market study it conducted, in which the agency described in pitiless, factual detail how Cigna was ripping us all off. The case is being fought by a low-level Reagan-era monster named Rick Rule, whom Stoller characterizes as a guy who "hangs around in bars and picks up lonely multi-national corporations" (!!).

The libel claim is a nonstarter, but it's still wild. It's like one of those movies where they want to show you how bad the cockroaches are, so there's a bit where the exterminator shows up and the roaches form a chorus line and do a kind of Busby Berkeley number:

https://www.46brooklyn.com/news/2024-09-20-the-carlton-report

So here we are: the FTC has set out to euthanize some rentiers, ridding the world of a layer of useless economic middlemen whose sole reason for existing is to make pharmaceuticals as expensive as possible, by colluding with the pharma cartel, the insurance cartel and your boss. This conspiracy exists in plain sight, hidden by the Shield of Boringness. If I've done my job, you now understand how this MEGO scam works – and if you forget all that ten minutes later (as is likely, given the nature of MEGO), that's OK: just remember that this thing is a giant fucking scam, and if you ever need to refresh yourself on the details, you can always re-read this post.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

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/2024/09/23/shield-of-boringness/#some-men-rob-you-with-a-fountain-pen

Image: Flying Logos (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Over_$1,000,000_dollars_in_USD_$100_bill_stacks.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[feminist-space]

"Seminario cited the recent report, “Employer-Reported Workplace Injuries and Illnesses,” that shows that the number of respiratory illnesses in the private health care and social assistance sector increased from 145,300 in 2021 to 199,700 cases in 2022, an increase of 37.5 percent.

...

As an industrial hygienist, Seminario was extremely critical that there were no experts in respiratory protection on the committee nor did it include engineers who developed ventilation guidelines. She believes that the HICPAC committee members are likely so opposed to respirators “because once you are into recommending respiratory protection, with that comes a full respiratory protection program from OSHA,” with penalties for violations.

An epidemiologist and consultant, Michael Olesen, echoed this, believing the changes reflect “pressure to remove liability from hospitals.” He added, “I take a very clear position that we should be having respiratory protection mandates in all healthcare settings right now.”

...

Many patients who spoke at the HICPAC meetings said they had gotten Covid-19 when they went to the hospital and that the new policies were keeping them from getting care.

Given that, Dr. Art Caplan, professor of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, previously told me that dropping masking requirements in hospitals is “utterly, completely, irresponsible.” Similarly, staff refusing to mask, even when a patient requests it, is a moral failure. “The first principle is, you must do what is in the best interest of your patient,” he said.

...

Several people were asked why they believe HICPAC is determined to water down protections. Consistently, respondents say, “to reduce liability.” Earlier in the pandemic, hospitals regularly tested patients and staff for Covid-19, and you could often tell where and how you became infected. Since staff are no longer masking and continue working when ill, and patients are not being tested on admission, you can no longer prove who infected you. Hospitals are the only ones who win in this scenario, absolving themselves of responsibility and liability."

[cumbunnywitch]

I've seen at least one, but posts saying not to blame the people who didn't vote for Harris because whatever are fully in the wrong and they always will be.

You chose moral high grounding and purity culture over the possibility that our protests would work. You chose "she leaned too right in her campaign" over "Trump and the people who want to puppeteer him are going to get a lot of people killed." You chose the democrats being idiots over the republicans want a racist rapist.

You didn't choose? No, you had a choice. You used yours. If you chose not to vote because you wanted to use your non-vote as a voice to show the democrats that they have to win your vote, you're still going to get your face eaten by the leopards. They aren't going to hear you anyway.

Protests work on the left side of our shit-ass two party system because they at least pretend to care.

Here's just, off the top of my head, the things you decided were less important than telling the democratic party "No you have to be good enough":

Student Loan Forgiveness or Relief

Healthcare

Trans Rights

LGBTQIA Safety

Abortion rights

Palestine/Gaza

Ukraine

Industry Regulation(notice all those recalls on food lately?)

Cost of Living

Police Reform

Taxes

There's no such thing as a single-issue voter, not anymore. The right is diametrically opposed to making any of the above better for anyone, whether or not they voted for that shitstain, unless you're very rich, and very white, and a very straight man.

Honestly, if you voted for Jill Stein, at least you fucking voted. Her numbers won her absolutely nothing but at least you voted.

But no. "Don't vote for Harris because she's not good enough! She's running a campaign to secure moderate republicans!" Yea no fucking shit. That's what they've been doing for the last forever. Yea, it still sucks. But most moderate liberals who actually vote still struggle with that list up there. There's literally a democrat trans woman who just got voted in who wants to support Israel's genocidal campaign of murdering every Palestinian.

And you know what? If she sees that line, she might actually stop and think and move a little bit over to my perspective. Every conservative sees that line and immediately thinks "Yea kill the fuckin' brown people!" because they don't consider them fucking people.

If you didn't vote because you saw people saying Harris wasn't leftist enough, not liberal enough, she was a former prosecutor or the democrats haven't done enough for you in the last 4 years, you fell for the Russian psyop. You fell for the propaganda.

Does it suck that Harris wanted to court the swing states and their moderately conservative voting base over to vote for the first woman president? Yea, it's been a shitty idea for decades and they've been doing it for as long as I've been voting. Obama was the center-ist centerist ever, and he still got healthcare reform passed. He also drone striked a lot of people and gave banks billions of dollars when the financial sector faceplanted after trying to balance on a pin for the longest time.

I was gonna add a read-more or chop this up better but no. You get to read the whole thing. If you didn't vote, or you voted for trump, I want you gone. Unfollow me, block me, because you clearly either don't care enough to prevent our slide into authoritarianism and a fixed court for the next 60 years, or you actively hate me.

[queen-of-deans-booty]

Don't Fight It

Pairing: Dean Winchester x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~2.3k

Warnings: angst, gun violence, murder, fluff

Request by @jessicalynnann: Dean standing by a window and he is a multi millionaire mob boss… any ways. Standing by the window with a glass of whiskey waiting for the reader who he keeps denying his feelings for…. Any ways her best friend calls says that someone is bothering the reader and won’t leave them alone. Well he rushes down and saves the reader after he finds her in the alley almost being attacked and then he confesses everything 😂☺️

Summary: You work for not only a successful businessman but also a man who does less than legal things in his spare time. He hopes to never have to bring you into that side of his life but when your ex makes an appearance, he has no choice but to use his deadly skills to get you out of trouble alive.

Square Filled: “it’s not an addiction. it’s a coping mechanism.” (2023) for @spnaubingo

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

x

Never in your professional career have you ever been late except for today. Your car didn’t want to start this morning so you had to jumpstart it using a portable charger you had lying around from the last time your brother was staying with you. He claims he forgot it but you know he left it there intentionally. He’s always looking out for you whether you want him to or not.

You walk into work clutching your purse and water cup to your chest as you make your way to your desk. Due to the darkness coming from underneath your boss’ door, you assume he’s not in right now. Thank God. You don’t have to confront him after being late. You quickly get settled in and immediately pull up your emails to see what kind of day you’re going to have today.

As the personal assistant to the CEO of Winchester Industries, you always have a lot on your plate. There is seldom any time for yourself at work which is a good thing because that means the day goes by faster. You admire Dean for what he does and the impact he has made not only on the town you live in but in towns across America. He is involved with environmental technologies, medical devices, and the telecommunications sector. He cares so much about the environment that he develops equipment that helps farmers, medical devices mostly for animals, and strengthens the telecommunication sector across America.

He had an idea one day and decided to do something about it instead of waiting for someone else to do it. Now, he’s one of the richest men in the country because of it.

Speaking of the devil, when Dean walks out of the elevator, you’re already halfway through your emails.

“Good morning, Y/N,” he drawls.

“Good morning, Dean.”

“Hey, did you happen to get the contracts for--”

“Already on your desk.”

“What about the proposal for--”

“Already done, waiting for your seal of approval. I also have reached out to Phoenix Zoo and set up a Zoom meeting at ten since their medical equipment broke for their gorilla.”

Dean leans against your desk with a sexy smirk on his face. What you wouldn’t give to see that smirk behind closed doors. If you put aside the fact that you’re his personal assistant, there is one reason why you shouldn’t fall for a man like Dean Winchester. He’s a successful CEO but you know he’s involved with shady shit on the side. You’re not sure what his deal is but you know it isn’t legal. You turn a blind eye to the many times he’s come into work with bloodstains on his stark white shirt.

Maybe you should run. Any sane, logical person would but you’ve never been the one to listen to that side of you.

“What would I do without you?”

“Cry, maybe. This business would crumble without me.”

“Don’t I know it,” he chuckles.

“So, I have two interviews coming in today, both for the marketing department, Dalton Martinez wants to schedule a meeting with you, and--”

“How about this,” he cuts you off, “you take care of the interviews today and I’ll take care of everything else.”

“Okay.”

He walks into his office and you can’t help but watch him leave. He’s such a good-looking man that it’s hard not to fall for his charm. You tried asking what he does in his free time when you saw his bloody shirt for the first time but he refused to talk about it. You haven’t asked him about it since even though you want to.

The two interviews come and go and now you’re stuck at your desk replying to emails, drafting up contracts for Dean, and planning his next work trip. Right when the clock strikes twelve, Dean comes out of his office without his jacket on. He rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and you vermouth waters at the sight of his white shirt stretching across his broad chest.

“Hey, are you busy for lunch?”

“No.”

“Want to have lunch with me? I’ll be stuck in this office all day.”

“Sure,” you smile. You log out of your computer and grab your lunch bag from the fridge you have underneath your desk. You pass by one of the other ladies on the floor and she tsks when you approach her desk. “What?”

“Be careful not to get involved with him.”

“I’m not. It’s just lunch.”

You walk into Dean’s office who is standing by this floor-length windows with a glass of whiskey in hand.

“Don’t tell me that glass is your lunch.”

“No.” He walks over to his desk, reaches into the mini-fridge, and pulls out a meatball sandwich he made before coming to work. “So, tell me about your day.”

You eye the glass of whiskey on his desk. “Maybe we should talk about your day. Addiction can ruin someone’s life.”

“It’s not an addiction. It’s a coping mechanism.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“I’d rather talk about you. Any plans this weekend?”

“I might need something stronger than water if I’m going to talk about that,” you chuckle.

“Don’t let me stop you.”

You get up and pour yourself a strong drink before downing it in one go. That will be a mistake later but you don’t care. You pour yourself another glass before sitting back down across from him.

“Let me know if this is unprofessional but I haven’t had a date in two years. In the last relationship I was in, he tried to have me killed. I come from very old money but I like to work hard for what I have instead of using what my family gives me every week.”

“I understand,” Dean nods, leaning back in his chair as he listens intently.

“When my ex-boyfriend found out about my money, he wanted it. He wanted to be rich and powerful, but I realized that all he ever wanted from me was money. I was done giving it to him so I broke things off which is when he tried to kill me. I tried to move on but he’s always there to ruin things for me. I kind of gave up on romance and having friends. So, the answer to your question is no, I don’t have any plans this weekend. He won’t let me.”

“What’s his name?”

“Like I’m going to tell you that,” you scoff. “Don’t think I don’t know you’re into some shady shit. I might not know what you do in your free time but I know it’s not legal.” He raises an eyebrow at you. “Am I wrong?”

“No,” he shakes his head.

“Don’t worry about me. I can handle him, but it’d be really nice if I could just wake up one day and feel free.”

Dean leans forward and rubs his hands together. All he can think about is your life in danger and the mere thought sends him into a rage.

“Listen to me. I want you to call me any time of the day and I will help you if you need it.” You nod. “I need you to promise me.”

“Okay, I promise.”

“Cherry is my safe word.”

You immediately choke on your water and almost spit it out on the ground. You cough as you try to regain your composure while Dean watches with an amused look.

“Excuse me?” you cough.

“When someone I know is in danger, they tell me cherry and I know to drop everything for them. That includes you, too.”

“I don’t think I’ll need it,” you clear your throat, “but I promise to use it if I do.”

The rest of the day goes by smoothly and without issue. Dean has been working hard to get everything done before his work trip to Europe, and you’re working hard to make sure he has everything he needs. He asked you to come but you haven’t given him an answer yet. A whole trip with Dean by yourself? That’s a mistake waiting to happen but it would be nice to go to Europe for a week.

Every day for the remainder of the week, you and Dean have lunch in his office and talk about anything and everything. If you didn’t know him as your boss, you two would have made such great friends… maybe something more. He’s leaving for Europe on Monday so you have at least three days to give him an answer on if you’re going or not. Everything will be paid for so all you have to do is show up at the airport at four in the morning if you want to go.

Maybe…

Friday comes around and you’re staying a bit later than normal to finalize everything he needs for his trip. It’s past eight when you finally get done and you shut your computer down for the weekend. Dean is still in his office when you leave, and you head to the carport where your car is. You’re looking at your phone and not paying attention when someone steps in your way. You stop feeling a set of eyes on you and you look up to see your ex-boyfriend at the entrance of the carport.

“Hey, Y/N, long time no see,” he grins.

You immediately turn and head back to work when you see two of his friends blocking that way. The only way you’re going to get out of this is to use the alleyway next to the building. If you can cut through it, you’ll be on the other side of the carport where your car is. You might be able to make it if you’re quick. Elijah must know what you’re going to do because he starts walking over to you. You jump into action and sprint into the alley with your phone clutched in your hand.

Cherry! Cherry! CHERRY!

You almost run into Elijah because you’re texting Dean, and you nearly fall on your ass while stumbling away from him.

“Why are you running from me? I just want to talk.”

You look behind you and see his two friends right blocking the only other way out of the alley. You turn back to Elijah and notice something black glinting in his hands. He has a gun. Your heart starts to race but you force yourself to keep a clear head.

“What do you want, Elijah? I made myself clear the last time I saw you. I don’t want anything to do with you. Please leave.”

“I will when you give what you owe me.”

“What I owe you?”

“You know the trouble you caused the day you left me? You know me pretty well so you know I don’t tolerate bratty behavior. I think two million dollars will make me forget how you left me. Right, boys?”

One of his friends steps to your back and you freeze in fear when you feel his hot breath on your neck.

“Look at her, Eli, she looks like she’s about to cry,” he grins.

“She’s always been a crybaby.”

“I don’t have what you’re asking. Just leave me alone.” His friend grabs your hand and yanks your head back. “You son of a bitch!”

“Give me what I want and I’ll get out of your hair,” Elijah says and steps closer to you.

“Until you need your next fix, huh? Bite me,” you growl.

His friend lets your hair go and steps back to allow Elijah to deal with you.

“Leave her alone.”

All four of you look at the entrance of the alley to see Dean standing there with a deadly look on his face. He came. He got your message and he’s here. You’re scared that Elijah is going to hurt him even though Dean doesn’t seem the type to be scared of a gun.

“Beat it, old man,” Elijah growls.

“I don’t think you heard me,” Dean chuckles. “Get. Away. From. Her.”

“Yeah? What are you going to do about it?” Elijah waves his gun around and you stiffen in fear. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with so just leave before you get put into a body bag.”

“It’s you who will leave in a body bag. Not me.”

Dean takes out a gun from his suit jacket and points it at Elijah. Your ex panics and jumps behind you to use you as a shield, and he presses the barrel of the gun into the side of your head.

“Yeah? What about now?”

“Dean,” you whimper in fear.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m very good at what I do.”

“Get back! I’ll shoot her!” Elijah yells. “She’ll be dead and it’ll be because of you!”

Dean aims his gun at Elijah and pulls the trigger. The shot causes both of his friends to scatter knowing you’re not worth the trouble. Blood sprays on your neck just as you scream in terror. Elijah’s grip on you loosens and he falls back onto the ground. You’re about to fall yourself but Dean is quick to catch you. You’re shaking like a leaf in his arms, and he uses the sleeves of his white shirt to wipe the blood off your neck.

“You’re safe, sweetheart.” You look around frantically, having not heard him. “You’re in shock right now but you’re safe. I didn’t shoot you.”

“What?” you ask and finally look at him.

“I didn't shoot you. You’re safe. He will never bother you again.” You try to look at your ex on the ground behind you but Dean grabs the sides of your face to stop you from doing so. “I told you, I’m very good at my job.” You put your head on his chest and cry, and he smooths down your hair. “Do you live alone?”

“Yeah.”

“Not tonight, you won’t. You’ll stay with me.”

“Okay,” you whisper.

“Come on, sweetheart. Let’s get you cleaned up.”

“Thank you,” you say as Dean is bringing you back to his office.

“You don’t ever have to thank me. I will always be here if you need me.”

Yeah, falling for him is inevitable. It’s going to happen whether you want it to or not so may as well run with it instead of fight it.

x

Want to be tagged? Follow my library blog @aqueenslibrary​​​​​​ where I reblog all my stories, so you can put notifications on there without the extra stuff :)

[dresshistorynerd]

The Real Cost of the Fashion Industry

Atacama Desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile. (source)

The textile industry is destroying the world. The industry is wasting massive amounts of energy and materials, and polluting the air, the ground and the water supplies. It overwhelmingly exploits it's labour and extracts wealth from colonized countries, especially in Asia. I assume we all broadly understand this, but I think it's useful to have it all laid out in front of you to see the big picture, the core issues causing this destruction and find ways how to effectively move forward.

The concerning trend behind this ever-increasing devastation are shortening of trend cycles, lowering clothing prices and massive amount of wasted products. Still in year 2000 it was common for fashion brands to have two collections per year, while now e.g. Zara produces 24 collections and H&M produces 12-16 collections per year. Clothing prices have fallen (at leas in EU) 30% from 1996 to 2018 when adjusted to inflation, which has contributed to the 40% increase in clothing consumption per person between 1996 and 2012 (in EU). (source) As the revenue made by the clothing industry keep rising - from 2017 to 2021 they doubled (source) - falling prices can only be achieved with increasing worker exploitation and decreasing quality. I think the 36% degrees times clothing are used in average during the last 15 years (source) is a clear indication on the continuing drop in quality of clothing. Clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2015, while 30% of the clothes produced per year are never sold and are often burned instead (source), presumably to prevent the returns from falling due to oversupply.

These all factors are driving people to overconsume. While people in EU keep buying more clothes, they haven't used up to 50% of the clothes in their wardrobe for over a year (source). This overconsumption is only made much worse by the new type of hyper fast fashion companies like SHEIN and Temu, which are using addictive psychological tactics developed by social media companies (source 1, source 2). They are cranking up all those concerning trends I mentioned above.

Under the cut I will go through the statistics of the most significant effects of the industry on environment and people. I will warn you it will be bleak. This is not just a fast fashion problem, basically the whole industry is engaging in destructive practices leading to this damage. Clothing is one of those things that would be actually relatively easy to make without massive environmental and human cost, so while that makes the current state of the industry even more heinous, it also means there's hope and it's possible to fix things. In the end, I will be giving some suggestions for actions we could be doing right now to unfuck this mess.

Carbon emissions

The textile industry is responsible for roughly 10% of the global CO2 emissions, more than aviation and shipping industry combined. This is due to the massive supply chains and energy intensive production methods of fabrics. Most of it can be contributed to the fashion sector since around 60% of all the textile production is clothing. Polyester, a synthetic fiber made from oil which accounts for more than half of the fibers used in the textile industry, produces double the amount of carbon emissions than cotton, accounting for very large proportions of all the emissions by the industry. (source 1, source 2)

Worker exploitation

Majority of the textiles are produced in Asia. Some of the worst working conditions are in Bangladesh, one of the most important garment producers, and Pakistan. Here's an excerpt from EU Parliament's briefing document from 2014 after the catastrophic Rana Plaza disaster:

The customers of garment producers are most often global brands looking for low prices and tight production timeframes. They also make changes to product design, product volume, and production timeframes, and place last-minute orders without accepting increased costs or adjustments to delivery dates. The stresses of such policies usually fall on factory workers.

The wage exploitation is bleak. According to the 2015 documentary The True Cost less than 2% of all garment factory workers earned a living wage (source). Hourly wages are so low and the daily quotas so high, garment workers are often forced through conditions or threats and demand to work extra hours, which regularly leads to 10-12 hour work days (source) and at worst 16 hour workdays (source), often without days off. Sometimes factories won't compensate for extra hours, breaching regulations (source).

Long working hours, repetitive work, lack of breaks and high pressure leads to increased risks of injuries and accidents. Small and even major injuries are extremely common in the industry. A study in three factories in India found that 70% of the workers suffered from musculosceletal symptoms (source). Another qualitative study of female garment workers and factory doctors in Dhaka found that long hours led to eye strain, headaches, fatigue and weight loss in addition to muscular and back pains. According to the doctors interviewed, weight loss was common because the workers work such long hours without breaks, they didn't have enough time to eat properly. (source) Another study in 8 factories in India found that minor injuries were extremely common and caused by unergonomic work stations, poor organization in the work place and lack of safety gear, guidelines and training (source). Safety precautions too are often overlooked to cut corners, which periodically leads to factory accidents, like in 2023 lack of fire exists and fire extinguishers, and goods stacked beyond capacity led to a factory fire in Pakistan which injured dozens of workers (source) or like in 2022 dangerous factory site led to one dead worker and 9 injured workers (source).

Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 is the worst industrial accident in recent history. The factory building did not have proper permits and the factory owner blatantly ignored signs of danger (other businesses abandoned the building a day before the collapse), which led to deaths of 1 134 workers and injuries to 2 500 workers. The factory had or were at the time working for orders of at least Prada, Versace, Primark, Walmart, Zara, H&M, C&A, Mango, Benetton, the Children's Place, El Corte Inglés, Joe Fresh, Carrefour, Auchan, KiK, Loblaw, Bonmarche and Matalan. None of the brands were held legally accountable for the unsafe working conditions which they profited off of. Only 9 of the brands attended a meeting to agree on compensation for the victim's families. Walmart, Carrefour, Auchan, Mango and KiK refused to sight the agreement, it was only signed by Primark, Loblaw, Bonmarche and El Corte Ingles. The compension these companies provided was laughable though. Primemark demanded DNA evidence that they are relatives of one of the victims from these struggling families who had lost their often sole breadwinner for a meager sum of 200 USD (which doesn't even count for two months of living wage in Bangladesh (source)). This obviously proved to be extremely difficult for most families even though US government agreed to donate DNA kits. This is often said to be a turning point in working conditions in the industry, at least in Bangladesh, but while there's more oversight now, as we have seen, there's clearly still massive issues. (source 1, source 2)

One last major concern of working conditions in the industry I will mention is the Xinjiang raw cotton production, which is likely produced mainly with forced labour from Uighur concentration camps, aka slave labour of a suspected genocide. 90% of China's raw cotton production comes from Xinjiang (source). China is the second largest cotton producer in the world, after India, accounting 20% of the yearly global cotton production (source).

Pollution

Synthetic dyes, which synthetic fibers require, are the main cause of water pollution caused by the textile industry, which is estimated to account for 20% of global clean water pollution (source). This water pollution by the textile industry is suspected of causing a lot of health issues like digestive issues in the short term, and allergies, dermatitis, skin inflammation, tumors and human mutations in the long term. Toxins also effect fish and aquatic bacteria. Azo dyes, one of the major pollutants, can cause detrimental effects to aquatic ecosystems by decreasing photosynthetic activity of algae. Synthetic dyes and heavy metals also cause large amounts of soil pollution. Large amounts of heavy metals in soil, which occurs around factories that don't take proper environmental procautions, can cause anaemia, kidney failure, and cortical edoem in humans. That also causes changes in soil texture, decrease in soil microbial diversity and plant health, and changes in genetic structure of organisms growing in the soil. Textile factory waste water has been used for irrigation in Turkey, where other sources of water have been lacking, causing significant damage to the soil. (source)

Rayon produced through viscose process causes significant carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide pollution to the environment. CS2 causes cardiovascular, psychiatric, neuropsychological, endocrinal and reproductive disorders. Abortion rates among workers and their partners exposed to CS2 are reported to be significantly higher than in control groups. Many times higher amounts of sick days are reported for workers in spinning rooms of viscose fiber factories. China and India are largest producers of CS2 pollution, accounting respectively 65.74% and 11,11% of the global pollution, since they are also the major viscose producers. Emission of CS2 has increased significantly in India from 26.8 Gg in 2001 to 78.32 Gg in 2020. (source)

Waste

The textile industry is estimated to produce around 92 million tons of textile waste per year. As said before around 30% of the production is never sold and with shortening lifespans used the amount of used clothing that goes to waster is only increasing. This waste is large burned or thrown into landfills in poor countries. (source) H&M was accused in 2017 by investigative journalists of burning up to 12 tonnes of clothes per year themselves, including usable clothing, which they denied claiming they donated clothing they couldn't sell to charity instead (source). Most of the clothing donated to charity though is burned or dumbed to landfills (source).

Most of the waste clothing from rich countries like European countries, US, Australia and Canada are shipped to Chile (source) or African countries, mostly Ghana, but also Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire (source). There's major second-hand fashion industries in these places, but most of the charity clothing is dumbed to landfills, because they are in such bad condition or the quality is too poor. Burning and filling landfills with synthetic fabrics with synthetic dyes causes major air, water and soil pollution. The second-hand clothing industry also suppresses any local clothing production as donated clothing is inherently more competitive than anything else, making these places economically reliant on dumbed clothing, which is destroying their environment and health, and prevents them from creating a more sustainable economy that would befit them more locally. This is not an accident, but required part of the clothing industry. Overproduction let's these companies tap on every new trend quickly, while not letting clothing the prices in rich countries drop so low it would hurt their profits. Production is cheaper than missing a trend.

Micro- and nanoplastics

There is massive amounts of micro- and nanoplastics in all of our environment. It's in our food, drinking water, even sea salt (source). Washing synthetic textiles accounts for roughly 35% of all microplastics released to the environment. It's estimated that it has caused 14 million tonnes of microplastics to accumulate into the bottom of the ocean. (source)

Microplastics build up into the intestines of animals (including humans), and have shown to probably cause cause DNA damage and altered organism behavior in aquatic fauna. Microplastics also contain a lot of the usual pollutants from textile industry like synthetic dyes and heavy metals, which absorb in higher quantities to tissues of animals through microplastics in the intestines. Studies have shown that the adverse effect are higher the longer the microplastics stay in the organism. The effects cause major risks to aquatic biodiversity. (source) The health effects of microplastics to humans are not well known, but studies have shown that they could have adverse effects on digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive and immune systems. (source)

Microplastics degrade in the environment even further to nanoplastics. Nanoplastic being even smaller are found to enter blood circulation, get inside cells and cross the blood-brain barrier. In fishes they have been found to cause neurological damage. Nanoplastics are also in the air, and humans frequently breath them in. Study in office buildings found higher concentration of nanoplastics in indoor air than outdoor air. Inside the nanoplastics are likely caused mostly by synthetic household textiles, and outdoors mostly by car tires. (source) An association between nanoplastics and mitochondrial damage in human respiratory cells was found in a recent study. (source)

Micro and nano plastics are also extremely hard to remove from the environment, making it even more important that we reduce the amount of microplastics we produce as fast as possible.

What can we do?

This is a question that deserves it's own essays and articles written about it, but I will leave you with some action points. Reading about these very bleak realities can easily lead to overwhelming apathy, but we need to channel these horrors into actions. Whatever you do, do not fall into apathy. We don't have the luxury for that, we need to act. These are industry wide problems, that simply cannot be fixed by consumerism. Do not trust any clothing companies, even those who market themselves as ethical and responsible, always assume they are lying. Most of them are, even the so called "good ones". We need legislation. We cannot allow the industry to regulate itself, they will always take the easy way out and lie to their graves. I will for sure write more in dept about what we can do, but for now here's some actions to take, both political and individual ones.

Political actions

Let's start with political actions, since they will be the much more important ones. While we are trying to dismantle capitalism and neocolonialism (the roots of these issues), here's some things that we could do right now. These will be policies that we should be doing everywhere in the world, but especially rich countries, where most of the clothing consumption is taking place. Vote, speak to others, write to your representative, write opinion pieces to your local papers, engage with democracy.

Higher requirements of transparency. Right now product transparency in clothing is laughably low. In EU only the material make up and the origin country of the final product are required to be disclosed. Everything else is up to the company. Mandatory transparency is the only way we can force any positive changes in the production. The minimum of transparency should be: origin countries of the fibers and textiles in the product itself; mandatory reports of the lifecycle emissions; mandatory reports of whole chain of production. Right now the clothing companies make their chain of production intentionally complex, so they have plausible deniability when inevitably they are caught violating environmental or worker protection laws (source). They intentionally don't want to be able to track down their production chain. Forcing them to do so anyway would make it very expensive for them to keep up this unnecessarily complex production chain. These laws are most effective when put in place in large economies like EU or US.

Restrictions on the use of synthetic fibers. Honestly I think they should be banned entirely, since the amount of microplastics in our environment is already extremely distressing and the other environmental effects of synthetic fibers are also massive, but I know there are functions for which they are not easily replaced (though I think they can be replaces in those too, but that's a subject of another post), so we should start with restrictions. I'm not sure how they should be specifically made, I'm not a law expert, but they shouldn't be used in everyday textiles, where there are very easy and obvious other options.

Banning viscose. There are much better options for viscose method that don't cause massive health issues and environmental destruction where ever it's made, like Lyocell. There is absolutely no reason why viscose should be allowed to be sold anywhere.

Governmental support for local production by local businesses. Most of the issues could be much more easily solved and monitored if most clothing were not produced by massive global conglomerations, but rather by local businesses that produce locally. All clothing are made by hand, so centralizing production doesn't even give it advantage in effectiveness (only more profits for the few). Producing locally would make it much more easier to enforce regulations and it would reduce production chains, making production more effective, leaving more profits into the hands of the workers and reducing emissions from transportation. When the production is done by local businesses, the profits would stay in the producing country and they could be taxed and utilized to help the local communities. This would be helpful to do in both exploited and exploiter countries. When done in rich countries who exploit poorer ones, it would reduce the demand for exploitation. In poor countries this is not as easily done, since poor means they don't have money to give around, but maybe this could be a good cause to put some reparations from colonizers and global corporations, which they should pay.

Preventing strategic accounting between subsidiaries and parent companies. Corporate law is obviously not my area of expertise, but I know that allowing corporations to move around the accounting of profits and losses between subsidiaries and parent companies in roughly 1980s, was a major factor in creating this modern global capitalist system, where corporations can very easily manipulate their accounting to utilize tax heavens and avoid taxes where they actually operate, which is how they are upholding this terrible system and extracting the profits from the production countries. How specifically this would be done I can't tell because again I know shit about corporate law, so experts of that field should plan the specifics. Overall this would help deal with a lot of other problems than just the fashion industry. Again for it to be effective a large economic area like EU or US should do this.

Holding companies accountable for their whole chain of production. These companies should be dragged to court and made to answer for the crimes they are profiting of off. We should put fear back into them. This is possible. Victims of child slavery are already doing this for chocolate companies. If it's already not how law works everywhere, the laws should be changed so that the companies are responsible even if they didn't know, because it's their responsibility to find out and make sure they know. They should have been held accountable for the Rana Plaza disaster. Maybe they still could be. Sue the mother fuckers. They should be afraid of us.

Individual actions

I will stress that the previous section is much more important and that there's no need to feel guilty for individual actions. This is not the fault of the average consumer. Still we do need to change our relationship to fashion and consumption. While it's not our fault, one of the ways this system is perpetuated, is by the consumerist propaganda by fashion industry. And it is easier to change our own habits than to change the industry, even if our own habits have little impact. So these are quite easy things we all could do as we are trying to do bigger change to gain some sense of control and keep us from falling to apathy.

Consume less. Better consumption will not save us, since consumption itself is the problem. We consume too much clothing. Don't make impulse purchases. Consider carefully weather you actually need something or if you really really want it. Even only buying second-hand still fuels the industry, so while it's better than buying new, it's still better to not buy.

Take proper care of your clothing. Learn how to properly wash your clothing. There's a lot of internet resources for that. Never wash your wool textiles in washing machine, even if the textile's official instructions allow it. Instead air them regularly, rinse them in cool water if they still smell after airing and wash stains with water or small amount of (wool) detergent. Never use fabric softener! It damages the fabrics, prevents them from properly getting clean and is environmentally damaging. Instead use laundry vinegar for making textiles softer or removing bad smells. (You can easily make laundry vinegar yourself too from white vinegar and water (and essential oils, if you want to add a scent to it) which is much cheaper.) Learn how to take care of your leather products. Most leather can be kept in very good condition for a very long time by occasional waxing with beeswax.

Use the services of dressmakers and shoemakers. Take your broken clothing or clothing which doesn't fit anymore to your local dressmaker and ask them if they can do something about it. Take your broken and worn leather products to your local shoemaker too. Usually it doesn't cost much to get something fixed or refitted and these expert usually have ways to fix things you couldn't even think of. So even if the situation with your clothing or accessory seems desperate, still show it to the dressmaker or shoemaker.

If it's extremely cheap, don't buy it. Remember that every clothing is handmade. Only a small fraction of the cost of the clothing will be paying the wages of the person who made it with their hands. If a shirt costs 5 euros (c. 5,39 USD), it's sewer was only payed mere cents for sewing it. I'm not a quick sewer and it takes me roughly 1-2 hours to cut, prepare and sew a simple shirt, so I'm guessing it would take around half an hour to do all that for a factory worker on a crunch, at the very least 15 minutes. So the hourly pay would still be ridiculously low. However, as I said before, the fact that the workers in clothing factories get criminally low pay is not the fault of the consumer, so if you need a clothing item, and you don't have money to buy anything else than something very cheep, don't feel guilty. And anyway expensive clothing in no way necessarily means reasonable pay or ethical working conditions, cheep clothing just guarantee them.

Learn to recognize higher quality. In addition to exploitation, low price also means low quality, but again high price doesn't guarantee high quality. High quality allows you to buy less, so even if it's not as cheep as low quality, if you can afford it, when you need it, it will be cheaper in long run, and allows you to consume less. Check the materials. Natural fibers are your friends. Do not buy plastic, if it's possible to avoid. Avoid household textiles from synthetic fibers. Avoid textiles with small amounts of spandex to give it stretch, it will shorten the lifespan of the clothing significantly as the spandex quickly wears down and the clothing looses it's shape. Also avoid clothing with rubber bands. They also loose their elasticity very quickly. In some types of clothing (sport wear, underwear) these are basically impossible to avoid, but in many other cases it's entirely possible.

Buy from artisans and local producers, if you can. As said better consumption won't fix this, but supporting artisans and your local producers could help keep them afloat, which in small ways helps create an alternative to the exploitative global corporations. With artisans especially you know the money goes to the one who did the labour and buying locally means less middlemen to take their cut. More generally buy rather from businesses that are located to the same country where the production is, even if it's not local to you. A local business doesn't necessarily produce locally.

Develop your own taste. If you care about fashion and style, it's easy to fall victim to the fashion industry's marketing and trend cycles. That's why I think it's important to develop your personal sense of style and preferences. Pay attention at what type of clothes are comfortable to you. Go through your wardrobe and track for a while which clothing you use most and which least. Understanding your own preferences helps you avoid impulse buying.

Consider learning basics of sewing. Not everyone has the time or interest for this, but if you in anyway might have a bit of both, I suggest learning some very simple and basic mending and reattaching a button.

Further reading on this blog: How to see through the greenwashing propaganda of the fashion industry - Case study 1: Shein

Bibliography

Academic sources

An overview of the contribution of the textiles sector to climate change, 2022, L. F. Walter et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science

How common are aches and pains among garment factory workers? A work-related musculoskeletal disorder assessment study in three factories of south 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, 2021, Arkaprovo Pal et al., J Family Med Prim Care

Sewing shirts with injured fingers and tears: exploring the experience of female garment workers health problems in Bangladesh, 2019, Akhter, S., Rutherford, S. & Chu, C., BMC Int Health Hum Rights

Occupation Related Accidents in Selected Garment Industries in Bangalore City, 2006, Calvin, Sam & Joseph, Bobby, Indian Journal of Community Medicine

A Review on Textile and Clothing Industry Impacts on The Environment, 2022, Nur Farzanah Binti Norarmi et al., International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide emissions from viscose fibre manufacturing industry: A case study in India, 2022, Deepanjan Majumdar et al., Atmospheric Environment: X

Microplastics Pollution: A Brief Review of Its Source and Abundance in Different Aquatic Ecosystems, 2023, Asifa Ashrafy et al., Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances

Health Effects of Microplastic Exposures: Current Issues and Perspectives in South Korea, 2023, Yongjin Lee et al., Yonsei Medical Journal

Nanoplastics and Human Health: Hazard Identification and Biointerface, 2022, Hanpeng Lai, Xing Liu, and Man Qu, Nanomaterials

Other sources

The impact of textile production and waste on the environment (infographics), 2020, EU

Chile’s desert dumping ground for fast fashion leftovers, 2021, AlJazeera

Fashion - Worldwide, 2022 (updated 2024), Statista

Fashion Industry Waste Statistics & Facts 2023, James Evans, Sustainable Ninja (magazine)

Everything You Need to Know About Waste in the Fashion Industry, 2024, Solene Rauturier, Good on You (magazine)

Textiles and the environment, 2022, Nikolina Šajn, European Parliamentary Research Service

Help! I'm addicted to secondhand shopping apps, 2023, Alice Crossley, Cosmopolitan

Addictive, absurdly cheap and controversial: the rise of China’s Temu app, 2023, Helen Davidson, Guardian

Workers' conditions in the textile and clothing sector: just an Asian affair? - Issues at stake after the Rana Plaza tragedy, 2014, Enrico D'Ambrogio, European Parliamentary Research Service

State of The Industry: Lowest Wages to Living Wages, The Lowest Wage Challenge (Industry affiliated campaign)

Fast Fashion Getting Faster: A Look at the Unethical Labor Practices Sustaining a Growing Industry, 2021, Emma Ross, International Law and Policy Brief (George Washington University Law School)

Dozens injured in Pakistan garment factory collapse and fire, 2023, Hannah Abdulla, Just Style (news media)

India: Multiple factory accidents raise concerns over health & safety in the garment industry, campaigners call for freedom of association in factories to ‘stave off’ accidents, 2022, Jasmin Malik Chua, Business & Human Rights Resource Center

Minimum Wage Level for Garment Workers in the World, 2020, Sheng Lu, FASH455 Global Apparel & Textile Trade and Sourcing (University of Delaware)

Rana Plaza collapse, Wikipedia

Buyers’ compensation for Rana Plaza victims far from reality, 2013, Ibrahim Hossain Ovi, Dhaka Tribune (news media)

World cotton production statistics, updated 2024, The World Counts

Dead white man’s clothes, 2021, Linton Besser, ABC News

[csanflower]

are you my soulmate?

pairing: idol/model! jungkook x part time staff! reader

genre: fluff, sfw

wc: 2.7k

synopsis: You offered to do some part time work for a Calvin Klein shoot to earn some quick cash. The job was simple. Do whatever the higher ranked people told you to do. You expected a simple job like making coffee or ordering lunch for the staff. You definitely did not expect the biggest star in the world following you around like a puppy, thinking you’re his soulmate just because a bell rang when you crossed paths with him…

*inspired by jungkooks comment abt hearing bells ring when he meets his soulmate ^^ BUT NOTE THAT THIS IS NOT SOULMATE AU

“y/n, thank you so much for helping us out! Our shoot today is extremely important for the company and we needed all the help we could get! You are aware of who the model is, right?” Sejin, your overall manager for the shoot today approached you as you entered the shooting area.

You immediately noticed how large scale this shoot was, compared to the other shoots you’ve been to before. As a college student interested in the modelling sector, you had always tried to find opportunities to get yourself familiarised with the industry, and at the same time earn some money to pay off your school fees. Thus you’ve dabbled in helping out with basic chores for shoots, such as buying coffee for the staff, organising the mess on the tables, or the occasional touch up of the model’s makeup. However, all of the shoots you’ve been to so far have been small scale, quick shoots, unlike this shoot which seemed to have about 100 staff members in a rush to get ready. Whoever the model was must have been a huge figure.

“Sorry, this job was kind of last minute so I didn’t have time to read up on the information. Who is the model?” You replied Sejin with slight embarrassment.

“It’s fine, no need to be sorry. The model is Jeon Jungkook of BTS! Do you know how many fans this guy has? This shoot is going to make our company stocks rise to the max!” Sejin laughed out loud at the mere thought of company stocks rising.

Jeon Jungkook? Wow. Who didn’t know Jeon Jungkook? He was the most famous and desired man in the whole South Korea — in fact maybe the whole world. Your jaw hung open. You were going to see Jeon Jungkook? Sure, you were probably not going to reach within a 10 meter radius of him as a small staff, but you were gonna be in the same room as him. You weren’t a big fan of him but you had heard of how famous he was. Jeon Jungkook was a household name. You’ve personally heard your mother and siblings fangirling over him. Who would have known that y/n l/n, the only one in the l/n family who did not fangirl over Jeon Jungkook would be meeting him first. You laughed to yourself, imagining your family’s reaction when you tell them about it.

“Ah, y/n, the shoot is about to start, i’m about to get busy. Could you do me a favour and help me get my file for todays shoot? It’s in my office, you should know where it is.”

“Sure! I’ll go now!” You immediately replied, hoping to do good job so you could get on his good side. You bowed at him quickly, before rushing to his office.

When you reached his office, you immediately found the file, with big, bolded letters written on it. “For Jungkook shoot! Extremely important!” You were about to grab it and leave, when you notice a golden bell beside it, with a post it note written on it. “Bring to the shoot! In case I need to get everyone’s attention since nobody ever listens to me anymore!” You laugh at the note, grabbing both the bell and the notes as you head out of the office.

As you walked in the hallway, you suddenly got a text message from sejin. You placed the bell on top of the file and barely balanced it with your left hand, as your right hand held your phone to read the message.

Help me take the bell too please! Thank you!! - Sejin

You inwardly praise yourself saving a trip back, trying to type a response to sejin with your right thumb.

Just as you were about to hit send, you suddenly felt a hard chest in front of you, harshly colliding into it, sending you to the ground.

Ding! The loud sound of the bell resonated in the empty hallway as it hit the ground.

“What the hell…” You rub at your painful head as you lay on the floor, rushing to get up to grab the file before its contents fly around.

Dischevelled, you grab the file and bell, hugging it close to your chest as you glared up at the person who caused the mess.

You definitely did not expect to see a pair of doe eyes looking at you curiously, with a glint of excitement in them. His mouth was open slightly in awe, as if he just saw an angel. But your jaw hung wider than his when you realised you just bumped into THE JEON JUNGKOOK?

“Oh…OH MY GOD! I’m so so so sorry!” You quickly sobered up, standing up and bowing at him multiple times. You avoided eye contact as you walked past him and tried running away in embarrassment.

But before you could leave, you felt strong, large hands grabbing your wrist.

“W-wait! Don’t go… who are you? Are you my soulmate?”

When you heard what he said, you almost burst into laughter. What? Soulmate? What was this famous star on? Was the most famous guys in the world really asking you if you were his soulmate? You let out a muffled laugh, trying your best to hold it in as you say, “Excuse me?”

“T-the bell. It rang when we bumped into each other. It’s fate.”

You finally let out your laughter at that, laughing uncontrollably at what you thought was a joke, until you noticed his hardened stare and realised maybe he was not joking.

“Um the bell rang because it fell on the floor… I don’t think we are ‘soulmates’, sorry man.” You said awkwardly.

The both of you stood in silence, staring at each other. After 30 seconds, the awkward tension started getting to you and you slightly bowed before walking away back to the shoot.

If you thought that would be the the end of the very weird experience, you were very wrong. As you walked, you could feel a presence behind you. Using your peripheral vision, you were 100% sure Jeon Jungkook, the world’s most desired bachelor was following you around like a puppy. You were starting to get annoyed, the other staff were starting to notice and the attention was definitely not what you needed. You whipped around, face to face with Jungkook.

“Why are you following me?” You ask infuriatingly.

At your annoyed tone, he lets out a small smirk, suddenly having some newfound confidence.

“I’m not following you, I’m going the same way as you.”

You let out a frustrated sigh, turning around and stomping at a quicker pace to the shoot area. Of course, he was still following you closely.

When you reached the shoot, you felt an instant relief with the amount of people bustling around.

“Jungkook is here!”

“What! Where?”

“Jungkook!”

The moment Jungkook entered the room behind you, people immediately took notice of him, running to be by his side and crowding around him. You took the opportunity to blend with the crowd and get away from him.

As you turned back to look at him, you noticed he was looking around for you, after losing you in the crowd. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed as he carried a small frown on his face, eyes glancing around the room trying to find you.

For a guy who could get any girl he want, he seemed weirdly obsessed with you. Did he really think you were his soulmate because of the bell? Maybe he was just playing with you like with other girls. You were just a nobody to him after all. You place the thoughts at the back of your head as you get back to work, finding Sejin.

“Thanks y/n, you can go take a lunch break. I’ll text you if I need you!” Sejin seemed satisfied at your swift pace as he released you for a break.

You give him a small smile as you walk out to the cafeteria with a sigh of relief. Taking one last glance at Jungkook, he still seemed to be trying to find you, with a small cute pout on his face as he seemed slightly frustrated at his futile attempts.

You sat down on an empty bench as you chewed on your sandwich, glad that you could take a short break before the real demands start coming in when the shoot gets busy.

Emergency: Contact some models to see if they’re available ASAP. Part time models OK. Get a variety. Jungkook being picky. He doesn’t want to work with Nari. - Sejin

You furrowed your eyebrows at the message. Jungkook didn’t want to work with Nari? Nari was the biggest female model in Korea. Why didn’t he want to work with her? She was ‘the most beautiful girl in Korea’ and every man loved her. Why did he have to be so uncooperative and make my job so hard? You quickly messaged your model contacts, asking them to come as soon as they could.

Of course, all of them immediately accepted. Who wouldn’t be dying to get an opportunity to model with Jungkook? You led the 4 models to the shoot, noticing the grim and dark mood as soon as you entered. You could tell there was tension due to Jungkook’s lack of cooperation.

When sejin noticed saw the models, his face immediately lighted up.

“Jungkook! The models are here! You can choose any of them to be your partner! These girls are all highly esteemed models and they are all experienced! Any of them would be a great partner!”

You could feel the girls beside you fixing their posture and making a juice pose as they awaited in anticipation for Jungkook to see them.

Jungkook looked up from his phone in disinterest, quickly skimming over the models until his eyes landed on you. Immediately, you noticed a glint of sparkle in his eyes, a child like smile on his face as he pointed at you.

“I want her.”

You instantly tensed up, staring at sejin in shock. You could feel the rest of the staff’s shock as well. You wanted to climb into a hole and die from the tension. Why did he have to cause so much problems for you?

“A-are you sure jungkook? Y/n is a beautiful girl but she’s a staff, not a model…”

You looked at Sejin in desperation, slightly shaking your head and telling him with your eyes that it was a no. However, Jungkook was relentless.

“If it’s not her, i’m not doing this shoot.” He said nonchalantly.

You wanted to smack his handsome little face so bad. You should have just stayed home today. Sejin walked over to you, pulling you aside apologetically.

“I’m so sorry y/n, but you know how important this shoot is to us. Could you please help us out this once? It’s just for today. We will pay extra and it’ll be a great experience! You want to work in the modelling industry in the future right? You could hear desperation in his tone.

You thought about it. Of course this would be a great experience for you, but you were so unprepared. What if you didn’t do well? Or worse what if his fans hated on you? You couldn’t handle that. But with Sejin staring at you so desperately, you felt that the guilt of rejecting him would kill you on the inside. You knew how excited he was for this shoot.

“Fine.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much y/n! Here take this file and read up on the looks for the shoot. I’ll bring you a makeup and stylist team ASAP. The shoot will start immediately when you’re ready!” He handed you a file with immense gratitude written on his face.

You reluctantly grabbed it from him, making your way to the makeup room as you tried to avoid the heated jealous stares of the girls around you. You glared at Jungkook as you walked past him, receiving a smirk in return.

When you reached the makeup room and sat on the model’s chair for the first time, you flipped through the file, reading the contents, your eyes widening and jaws dropping when you read it.

“Underwear shoot???!!”

You stared at yourself in the mirror after you had gotten your makeup and styling done. You were only wearing Calvin Klein underwear and a Calvin Klein jean jacket. Were you really about to do this? Of course, you looked hot. This was probably the hottest you have been in your whole 21 years of your life. But you were so nervous. You sucked in a deep breath, telling yourself: You have to do this well. This will give you many opportunities. Just suck it up.

You walked out awkwardly, feeling the heat of everyone’s stares. You could especially feel Jungkook’s heated stare.

“y/n! You look great! Come here! Let’s start the shoot!” Sejin commented in excitement when you came out.

You awkwardly walked over to in front of the camera where Jungkook was already waiting.

“Ok, y/n, I need you to sit on Jungkook’s lap and grab his neck while looking up innocently at the camera.”

You looked at Jungkook who had a smug look on his face as he waited for you to approach him. You tried not to stare down at Jungkook’s sudden exposed abs. Sucking up your embarrassment, you did as Sejin said.

Unexpectedly, the shoot went smoother than you expected. You managed to do many of the poses Sejin told you to do, even the intimate ones. Sejin even commented that you were a natural. Looking at the pictures taken, you also noticed that you somehow had a natural chemistry with Jungkook, with all your pictures with him seeming natural, like a real couple. In one of the pictures, you were straddling Jungkook as you both stared into each other’s eyes as if you both loved each other. You felt yourself blush as you stared at the picture. Despite the slight embarrassment, you couldn’t help but feel a new sense of pride when you were praised by everybody there, even staff members who previously did not even acknowledge your presence.

“And that’s a wrap! Thank you to everyone!” Sejin shouted.

You felt a flush of relief feel your body, a sense of tiredness taking over your body as you could finally relax.

You slowly got up from Jungkook’s shirtless body, looking away from him. You could still sense him staring at you as you walked away to change out of the uncomfortable undergarments.

After removing the extravagant makeup and changing into comfortable clothes, you walked out of the shoot feeling much more relaxed. You looked at the time on your phone, noticing it was already 11pm. Everybody must have already left by now.

You let out a content sigh, thinking back on the stressful day.

“y/n, wait! Dont go yet!”

Just as you were about to step out of the building, you heard a panicked voice behind you.

You turn around, seeing Jungkook who was panting hard as he bent down to catch his breath. He had changed into more comfortable clothing, with a hoodie and sweats, without any makeup on his face. Yet with such a natural look, he seemed so much more attractive to you. He must have ran after you if he was panting so much.

You crossed your arms, playfully smiling at him as you asked him why he stopped you. You felt a newfound sense of comfort with him after the shoot with him, maybe because you had been in such intimate positions with him.

“I-I need to tell you something. T-there’s something wrong with your phone. It doesn’t have your number in it…” Jungkook seemed nervous.

You looked at him in confusion, not understanding.

“W-wait! I mean there’s something wrong with my phone! It doesn’t have your number!” Jungkook hit his head in frustration, seeming actually annoyed at himself for not pulling off his pickup line correctly.

“So what do you want me to do about it?” You ask with a playful smirk on your face.

“You can fix it by giving me your number.” He said with a shy smile, still slightly embarrassed from his failed pickup line, as he reached out his phone to you.

You laughed out loud at his shyness and relentless determination. Jungkook laughed along with you shyly as you both shared a moment in the sweet darkness of the night.

You grabbed his phone from his hand, typing out your phone number.

*HII IM NEW TO TUMBLR i may make a part two depending on how wrecked i am after seven comes out :’)

[genericpuff]

All That Glitters is Not Feminism - An Analysis of LO's Brand of "Feminism" and What Remains of its Fanbase (The Twist)

Alright y'all, I've been waiting a hot minute to talk about this because I wanted to see how it fully panned out before saying anything about it. And it's not even specifically about LO, but I do think it's very adjacent to it in a way that I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear. Much of it speaks to how we prop up white writers even at the expense of POC.

This is 'the twist' attached to my first post that I made just a couple hours ago that concerns an entirely other topic but I feel ties into this subject very well.

If you haven't heard, there's this author who recently fucked around in the Del Rey publishing scene.

Her name is Cait Corrain.

In the original tweet calling this person out, names were not dropped, but it was made very clear that what Cait did was unacceptable behavior.

You can read the entire thread that started it all from Xiran here:

There's also a GREAT recap thread from one of the affected authors, Bethany Baptiste:

I want to make it clear that Cait Corrain isn't just a debut author.

Cait Corrain is - or now, was (foreshadowing is a literary device that-) - a debut author who had an agent, a publishing deal with Del Rey (an imprint of Random House which is a MAJOR publisher) and even an upcoming Illumicrate deal - meaning, her book was going to be packaged in a monthly loot crate subscription shipped directly to people's doors, quite possibly one of the best marketing deals a debut author could ever get, usually unheard of in this industry. All the pre-reviews were strong and positive.

Cait's book was literally set up for success. All she had to do was sit back, relax, and watch the fruits of her labors roll in. She had written the book. It was ready for release. The hard part was technically over.

But I guess the racism brainrot got to her because as it turns out, since April - for EIGHT MONTHS - she's been making alternate accounts on GoodReads to review bomb the indie and debut works of her friends and peers, most of whom were POC and did not have the same opportunities set up for them as she did. There are loads of receipts to back this up that you can find in those above threads ^^^

To say that this is appalling is an understatement. This was an intentional and deliberate act of racism by a white queer writer who claimed to be "jealous" - of what, I can't imagine - so much so that she deliberately sabotaged her peers, people who had supported her and her book.

And then when she got caught? She doubled down on it and claimed it was a "friend", also an alternate account she made up.

The exchange between her and this made-up person is actually the funniest shit out of this entire thing, it's so poorly written and as soon as people noticed the time stamps were out of order, that was when it truly cemented her newfound clown status.

"oooooh he's standing right behind me, isn't he?" energy right here LMAO

yes keep expositing cait, that's really selling the "this is a genuine conversation that really happened with a real person" bit 🤡

Anyways, it became abundantly clear that Cait was just going to continue to dig her heels in over something she caused.

This has been a hot topic in the UnpopularLO Discord, not just because of how crazy of a situation it is that we had to talk about it - and we have people within the community who work in the literature and media sector - but because we noticed one very telling thing in the list of series that she had review bombed in her very own personal act of wrath.

You see, Cait made one fundamental mistake that led to her undoing - she didn't just review bomb the works of her peers, she positively reviewed her own book and others.

What's her book about though?

It's an Ariadne x Dionysus retelling set in space.

It's literally another "modern retelling" of Greek myth.

And wouldn't you know it, guess who else created a modern retelling of Greek myth that she included in her positive review raiding while she was sabotaging the work of her actual peers?

Now, I think it goes without saying that what I'm about to say should be taken with MOUNTAINS of salt, I'm sure a lot of you are reading the headline and going, "Ugh, really? You're gonna make this about LO? Could you give it a rest already???"

I need you to understand, with the current state of Rachel's fanbase and 'modern' Greek myth literature as a whole, at this point Lore Olympus - and the works that are literally inspired by it such as A Touch of Darkness - has basically become the shopping cart litmus test of basic decency. It's like when someone says they like Harry Potter - you can't take it automatically at good faith anymore, because there isn't a whole lot separating someone who simply liked Harry Potter as a kid and still rewatches the movies from time to time from someone who fully supports the politics and agenda of J.K. Rowling. No, not everyone who still watches the movies or reads the books fondly is a TERF by default, but it's justifiably a reason for suspicion when the consequences are often too dire to risk.

There's this thing that's been happening in the LO fanbase that I frankly saw coming, but has really recently started to hit its peak. It's what I call the "Kanye Effect", where the comic has become so absurd and backwards in its misogyny and white feminism that the only people who seem to be left supporting LO are the people who are legitimate white feminists and misogynists - because all the normal level-headed people fell off the comic ages ago (or transitioned into the critical side of the community).

I mentioned it in my last post, but it bears repeating - Rachel's fanbase has literally been shipping Hera, a victim of abuse, with her abuser, Kronos. I'm really hoping a lot of them realize how fucked up that is now that Hera herself has called it what it is - abuse - within the comic, but I also can't count on the LO fanbase picking up on that or even noticing it with how quickly people swipe through it each week, it's very apparent at this point that most of LO's readers don't know how to chew their food and don't pay attention when Persephone and Hades aren't onscreen.

But I'm digressing. Or am I? We're talking about Crown of Starlight after all. The debut Dionysus x Ariadne sci-fi/fantasy romance that was quite literally advertised using Lore Olympus as its baseline-

This. This is what the ongoing cultural erasure and white feminist uwu-fication of Greek myth is doing to the literary zeitgeist surrounding Greek myth as a whole. This is why we criticize Lore Olympus and works like it that are created by disingenuous people who only seek to use the assets of Greek myth material as a way to shoot themselves up into fame and stardom. This is why we demand better standards in the literature and webcomic industry, so that people like Rachel and Cait can't use their privileges to quite literally erase the source material that they used to make themselves famous in the first place.

If anything, Cait's actions didn't just affect the people she negatively review bombed, or the people she was affiliated with, but also the people she positively reviewed. While I don't support what Rachel creates, she wasn't the only one who Cait went out of her way to review positively from her alt accounts, there were many others as evident in the Google Doc - but all this really does is tarnish the legitimacy of these books and their ratings by artificially jacking up their numbers that are advertised to others.

Making Greek myth fanfiction or fun creative retellings was never the problem, but it's now being sabotaged alongside so many other genres and mediums by toxic white individuals who can't even keep themselves from committing hate crimes, let alone create something purely for entertainment that's transparent in its illegitimacy, lest it destroy the illusion that these people are qualified to speak over those whose voices are being stifled, often by these very same people. Many of these writers get caught and are still allowed to continue what they're doing - that was certainly what we feared with Cait.

Until today.

It was revealed today that Cait's book will no longer be featured in the Illumicrate May 2024 box.

Del Rey has dropped Crown of Starlight from their publishing schedule.

Daphne Press will be hopefully following suit.

And, most telling of all, Cait's own agent has severed ties with her.

For anyone not familiar with the inner workings of the publishing industry, Cait has essentially been blacklisted. Without an agent or a publishing house, she'll have to entirely rely on her own resources through self-publishing. Unless she manages to sneak her way back in under an alias (which I wouldn't put it past her to try) she no longer has access to the mainstream publishing industry that was already guaranteed for her before she let her 'jealousy' get the better of her.

Her career was already made for her. She had a red carpet laid out for her debut. Her book was getting good pre-reviews and she had quite literally nothing keeping her from her success. The best thing she could have done was nothing. Somewhere in her head, she made up a threat that didn't exist, and sealed her fate in acting on it, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I think in these situations such as with Cait Corrain, Rachel Smythe, and - also recently and relevant - James Somerton, we need to become increasingly aware of how white voices are still overpowering POC voices, not just in their actions, but in the opportunities they're given over others which they then use to further stifle the voices of those they feel "threatened" by or feel entitled to speak over. While neither James nor Rachel have used sock puppet accounts to "take out the competition" (at least as far as we know lmao) James did quite literally steal the words and voices of queer writers who were deserving of their time in the spotlight, and Rachel's work is being quoted as "rewriting Greek myth" as if its blatant gentrification and appropriation should be marketed as some sort of positive.

It's all too common for these deeply-rooted prejudices to rear their ugly heads and for the people who carry them to act out in this way while justifying it as "jealousy" or "a mistake". This isn't jealousy. This isn't a mistake. This isn't someone "starting drama". This is genuine, targeted hate, with the intention of snuffing out the voices of others who should be empowered, not silenced.

All that time and effort, and for what? Racism and petty jealousy? It just goes to show, it doesn't matter how many opportunities you're given, how high up on the ladder you already are - it won't fix the deeply-rooted insecurity and racial pettiness that spurs people on to do such horrible things.

I've spent enough of my time and words today talking about Cait, and James, and Rachel. So to end this off, I want to join in with all the others who have highlighted the books that were review-bombed by Cait, and help in uplifting them so they can have successful debuts. I'll be pre-ordering a few of them, so I'll be happy to make dedicated posts for them in the future after they release. Please consider purchasing them for yourself if you want some new reading material <3

The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste:

So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole:

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X Chang:

Mistress of Lies by K.M. Enright

Voyage of the Damned by Frances White:

(I'm sure there are plenty others so if I missed any here, please let me know so I can add them here and check out their books!)

If there's any silver lining to this, I hope that it makes people aware of the media they consume and who it's being created by. I hope it makes people more willing to seek out the books that aren't getting the same opportunities as Cait Corrain and Rachel Smythe. I hope it's a wake-up call to the industry that matters like this need to be taken seriously and that POC writers are still being silenced under their own noses. And most of all, I hope it's a reminder that we shouldn't even need at this point that this behavior is not okay, no matter what level a person climbs to - that just because someone is part of one minority doesn't mean they're not capable of sabotaging another. It sucks that that has to be said, it sucks that despite these groups being so intersectional there are still people within them who submit to their deeply-rooted insecurities and find ways to feel threatened that they use to justify hateful behavior.

Having a platform is a privilege. It should never be weaponized against your own peers or those who you simply feel "threatened" by for no reason beyond your own imposter syndrome or doubts or internal struggles. Because as much as you may feel like you've earned where you are, that never gives you the right to weaponize your opportunities against others who were never given those same opportunities in the first place. "Feminism" is not using your power to crush "other women". "Progressiveness" is not exclusive to the progress that only benefits you.

I wish only the best to those who were affected by the actions of Cait Corrain. You deserve to be heard and seen and appreciated for the work you do and the abuse you've had to tolerate. I look forward to your debuts in 2024 <3

[transmutationisms]

have you seen the articles on ai supposedly eating up tons of water a day on continuous use? bc ive only seen those articles circulate in spaces where they also think ai doesnt have a soul and is stealing art so. i was wondering if you had any thoughts. i tried to go through and compare them w the water usage of other common things (ie normal office laptops, planes, etc) but stats of this kind isnt really my strong suit

to my knowledge, those articles are true, but a bit misleading in that they don't tend to discuss the context (resource use for computing in general). i think the implicit argument is that, when it's 'ai' using water, this is a particular travesty because 'ai' is particularly stupid / useless / unethical. which is not really a good way to frame this discussion because it evades a broader conversation about resource use and technology. i think the tech sector is like the meat industry in that the current consumption levels by a very small number of wealthy westerners are simply unsustainable and will not scale; that doesn't mean that in a communist future no computers or animal foods will exist, but the idea that it's normal to eat meat daily or replace a smartphone every 24 months or whatever is pretty blatantly predicated on imperial relations of exploitation and resource extraction.

so just to say that i don't know what is the place of 'ai' in a just and sustainable degrowth communism, but determining that requires a much broader conversation about technology and access to it. it's silly to act like 'ai' is uniquely a problem in terms of the tech sector's resource consumption (i think people are modelling this on the wave of similr articles about cryptocurrency, but many of those were also silly and the ones that weren't, were pointing out that crypto mining requires massive amounts of redundant work to be done, and in that sense actually is more wasteful than other comtech).

i'm also not sure that the comparisons to, like, pouring out a bottle of water are accurate because can't the cooling water be reused? i don't know enough about data facility practices to answer that though lol