[17xinfinity]

i may have neglected to post that we obtained a cat after not being allowed to have one for years

[tzikeh]

Maryland to Become First US State to Ban Surveillance Pricing That Charges More After Mining Personal Data

Maryland will become the first US state to ban surveillance pricing in retail stores, after passing Protection from Predatory Pricing Act.

Jesus fucking christ that this exists in the first place

[boyslit]

I WAS FUCKING WONDERING WHAT THOSE DIGITAL PRICE TAGS WERE ABOUT SUDDENLY i had hoped they were so the workers didn't have to finagle those little papers into the slider part anymore 😭

[eclipticasolaris]

Hi, yes, that is the OFFICIAL excuse made to me by the guy replacing the paper tags with digital ones at my local Walmart, but the end goal is to remove the numbers off the shelf entirely, replacing them with QR codes that you have to scan with the app…. Which requires your login information….. and also stores your card information so even if you didn’t use your Walmart account at the physical checkout, if you used a card they recognize, they assign that purchase to your Walmart account purchase history.

I explained very clearly to the manager my issue with the meat section not having the price tags listed, and they claimed it was only going to be for the meat, since meat is by weight, and the price of each item is printed on the packs of each item.

Sure. That’s how they get their foot in the door. Fast forward not even two weeks, and here we are:

Bar codes. No prices, no item descriptions. No price stickers on the individual items. Heck, not even the name of the item that is SUPPOSED to be there.

No. The only way to see the price is to scan it on your phone app, which is also recording what you looked at recently, as a way of gauging what you might be looking for in the future.

So here’s what we’re gonna do gang:

Every time you go into a store that has implemented these price-less tags:

Take 1-3 items up to the cash register. Ask the cashier for the price, or hit the price check item on the self checkout, which will likely call over the attendant.

Express that you didn’t actually want it, you just couldn’t see on the shelf how much it was.

POLITELY, AND WITH A THANK YOU FOR THE PRICE CONFIRMATION, Give the items to the cashier or attendant to put back.

When they inevitably try to push the app, politely decline. If pressed for why not, say you don’t want to have to carry your phone in-hand the whole time you are shopping in order to see how much things cost. (Not having cell service or data to use the app is NOT a valid excuse, as stores already often have complimentary WiFi AND more stores will provide WiFi rather than give up on this push for surveillance pricing)

If it’s a shelf-stable item, the cashier will have to set it aside, taking up room in their limited operating space, and eventually pass it off to someone to put in a holding area to put back later. If it’s a fridge/freezer item, it might have to get tossed due to food product sale regulations.

In either case, you are making it a pain in the ass for them to have these digital bar codes. Tie up the checkouts. Give the employees more busywork that the company has to pay them to do. Hurt their bottom line having to toss the pint of ice cream you carried around in your cart for 20 minutes before giving it back to the cashier.

Yes, call your reps. Yes, push for more legislation like this in more places. But also take an extra minute out of your shopping trip to MAKE IT HURT for companies to pull this shit.

[antisocialxconstruct]

I've seen some people in the notes express (very fair) concern that this is only going to inconvenience already under-paid laborers, and not have any impact on corporate. While I can't speak for every company or every store, I do work in a grocery store and I can tell you this is precisely the kind of thing that would have an impact, especially if people are doing it en masse. Stores absolutely track their shrink numbers, and they do draw distinctions between what gets stolen, damaged, or wasted for other reasons. If people are making it clear that the reason they're bringing things to the cashier is that the prices are not adequately represented on the displays, and rather than improving business it's wasting product, slowing down transactions, and causing confusion and mistrust in customers, that is a language that shareholders speak.

[dovewithscales]

I worked in retail for years. If this had happened while I was working retail, I would have been delighted and felt great solidarity with anyone who was wasting my employer's time and money and giving me busy work as an act of protest. In point of fact every moment the employee spends carting items back to the shelves is a moment not spent standing at a register.

[curlicuecal]

I'm making a list of protagonists of Disney kids' shows that are into child murder

Right now I've got Anakin Skywalker and Tinkerbell

[curlicuecal]

The similarities are undeniable

[curlicuecal]

how dare you be funnier than me on my own post

[rinneg0ne]

Mothers to the Princess of Hallownest

Day 141 of drawing Hornet everyday until Sea of Sorrow comes out. and Day 5 of Hollow Knight Art Month: Mother

I drew this in 3 hours live on stream on my Youtube channel at Rinneg0ne_ARTS (same pfp) go find me :)

[footlongdingledong]

their polyamorous swag

[cant-think-of-a-good-one]

ah fuck im imagining it

[cant-think-of-a-good-one]

sorry

[vodam46]

why are the windows 7 minimise maximise and close buttons fucking on my dash

[wanderingcoasties]

“The LEGO Movie was my favorite movie of 2014, but it strikes me that the main character was male, because I feel like in our current culture, he HAD to be. The whole point of Emmett is that he’s the most boring average person in the world. It’s impossible to imagine a female character playing that role, because according to our pop culture, if she’s female she’s already SOMEthing, because she’s not male. The baseline is male. The average person is male. You can see this all over but it’s weirdly prevalent in children’s entertainment. Why are almost all of the muppets dudes, except for Miss Piggy, who’s a parody of femininity? Why do all of the Despicable Me minions, genderless blobs, have boy names? I love the story (which I read on Wikipedia) that when the director of The Brave Little Toaster cast a woman to play the toaster, one of the guys on the crew was so mad he stormed out of the room. Because he thought the toaster was a man. A TOASTER. The character is a toaster. I try to think about that when writing new characters— is there anything inherently gendered about what this character is doing? Or is it a toaster?”

— Bojack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg commenting on how weird gendered defaults in entertainment are, and why we should think twice about them. Excerpted from this longer original post. (via 360degreesasthecrowflies)

[oojamaflip-whatchamacallit]

#Shit I say this stuff all the time#Default is not male#Women are not a different species from men#It’s a toaster it’s make believe it can be whatever you fucking want it to be#Also voice actors get cast in the ‘wrong’ gender roles all the time#Do you know how many little boy characters are played by women#Do you know how many little boy characters are played by *Tara Strong*???#I did not watch an anime in which an adult man is played by a woman VA for 90 fucking episodes in the 90s#To have to suffer the stringent gender opinions of men who feel too threatened by the idea that a woman could be their equal

[curlicuecal]

The Lego Movie, Kung Fu Panda, Ant-Man

Part of a long tradition of movies in which, in order to demonstrate that the underdog EveryMan can succeed, he displaces a woman with much more talent and training and we’re not meant to think too hard about the implications of that

(Don’t worry! Talented well-trained women are allowed to be love interests as a consolatio prize.)

[hollowedskin]

I got a 4 min long video of Kimchi dreaming today, so here's a clip

You get the whole walk cycle and the little sprint at the end.

Sometimes her sprints last for like 4 or 5 seconds and she can shoot herself off the couch or into a wall if she gets a grip with her back claws. If she does it next to a wall, her head smacking into it sounds like someone is trying to break into the house. She doesn't wake up.

Later in the dream she injured her paw and was limping, and earlier she caught something and ate it.

[bewbin]

PROUD TO ANNOUNCE that i will be doing my laundry today. Thank you for all those who helped me get to this point in life #stayhardunlessitsdownysoft

[homestuck-music-tournament]

Eternity, Served Cold (Canon Edit) vs Doctor (Original Loop)

Which is the better Homestuck track?

Eternity, Served Cold (Canon Edit)

Doctor (Original Loop)

Remaining time: 2 days 16 hours

Eternity, Served Cold (Canon Edit) From [S] Collide. By Malcolm Brown Propaganda: None submitted

Doctor (Original Loop) From Homestuck Vol. 1-4 By Buzinkai Propaganda: "doctor is phenomenal. usagi buzinkai you will always be famous"

[homestuck-music-tournament]

Even in Death (T'Morra's Belly Mix) vs Lilith in Starlight

Which is the better Homestuck track?

Even in Death (T'Morra's Belly Mix)

Lilith in Starlight

Remaining time: 3 days 20 hours

Even in Death (T'Morra's Belly Mix) From Homestuck Vol. 8 By Clark Powell and Tavia Morra Propaganda: "Always my favorite Homestuck track. Absolutely beautiful." "i love this piece of music!!" "this track lives in my head rent free" "tmorras belly mix… youre a classic" "I HAVE NEVER VOTED SO FAST IN MY LIFE. EVEN IN DEATH T’MORRA’S BELLY MIX FOREVER. A6A4 was my favorite flash EVER for a good while and this song was a good part of the reason why. it goes so unimaginably hard. the crazy violin bit towards the end playing over the sweeping shots of LoTaK??? GOOOOOD SHIT. AMAZING STUFF" "esp this version of even in death has been haunting me since forever. i love it so much"

Lilith in Starlight From Homestuck Vol. 10 By Malcolm Brown Propaganda: "one of my faves ngl" "banger" "lilith in starlight i love that song" "Lilith in starlight feels like such a peak 3 years montage song. the use of the ebonpyre drums is really good!!!"

[sexhaver]

lmfao the Scots in town for the World Cup have made a pilgrimage to Boston's world-famous Cop Annihilating Slide

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.

[tommonikercomics]

I told you guys-

[nature-travel-photography]

The magical Hobbit Beach view from the Heceta Head trail. Oregon, USA - Author: Wild_Flower_Xxx

[bauliya]

so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

[darkshrimpemotions]

This reminds me of something I observed in college while I was doing my honors thesis on women in modern horror films. I watched a LOT of horror during that time as part of my research, and sometimes that was done with my family around.

And my dad and brothers? Were deeply disturbed by the movie Jennifer’s Body. I was flabbergasted. It’s not scary! It’s not even that gory. But they were horrified by it. These men who grew up on 70s slashers were legitimately shook by 90 minutes of Megan Fox eating a few teenage boys, mostly off-screen.

Similarly, my all-male reading panel for my thesis? Were so disturbed by my synopsis of the film Teeth that they couldn’t even talk about it. One of them said he couldn’t look at his wife for a week after reading it.

Again, grown-ass men who study and teach media for a living. Who definitely watch and enjoy horror movies. One of whom was a huge Tarantino buff. We watched and read worse in his intro to mass media class! But one movie about a girl whose vag could bite was enough to haunt him.

Then of course you have things like the Gone Girl backlash–men yelling that Amy Dunne is evil and women clamoring to assure everyone that they know she is not someone to emulate–the backlash against Carol Danvers, and, more recently, the griping from MRAs against the upcoming film Hustlers, which is about strippers scamming their Wall Street clients.

My conclusion? Most men–at least most straight, cisgender men, who are both my sample population and most of the ones whining that Carol is a “villain”–are perfectly fine with, and desensitized to, media where men do violence to women (horror movies), or men do violence to men (horror and action movies). They’re even sort of fine when women do violence to women (“ooooo cat fight!”).

But they get intensely uncomfortable when women are depicted doing any kind of violence to men, especially in films that tilt the balance of power to the other side of the m/f gender binary beyond a single moment or scene.

So woman as flesh-eating monster with men as her preferred cuisine? Woman who responds to unwanted sexual contact by biting it off? Woman who frames her cheating husband for murder? Woman whose response to harassment–behavior that many of the loudest whiners know is both creepy and reflective of their own thoughts/actions–is to break something?

Too scary. Unacceptable. Disturbing. These men hate being presented with the idea, even in fiction, that their position of power is socially constructed, that it could easily be flipped the other way. It terrifies them.

In feeling that terror, they experience a tiny modicum of what living, existing, moving, being perceived as a woman in the world is like.

And they flinch every time.

[tzikeh]

Here have a newspaper comic from 1993

[marzipanandminutiae]

my father, who is not a misogynist by any means and therefore surprised me by revealing this, DESPISES Saffron from Firefly (conwoman who seduces her predominately male targets)

in a series with multiple instances of men beating, humiliating, and occasionally killing female sex workers, including at least one main character and several sympathetic side characters. and two other main female characters being threatened with rape at various points

but the worst character, to him, is a woman who preys on men’s attraction to her

[abuu2go]

(via 「思わず二度見する不思議さ…」タトゥー風の足を持つ猫:らばQ)

[fierceawakening]

somebody cut and pasted the wrong leg onto this cat

[tj-crochets]

My grandma just called and, among other things, said “You have hips. That’s good! Men like hips!” and then she interrupted herself to say “Women like hips. People of your preferred gender like hips. I can never remember”  And I was like “Thanks grandma! My preferred gender is none of them, no thanks.” and she was like “Okay, no one will comment on your hips!” very self satisfied, like “aha, I have figured it out” I think like half her grandkids are some variety of not-straight and she can’t always remember which is which but she is the epitome of like “she’s a little confused, but she’s got the spirit!”

[tj-crochets]

Update: I gave it some thought and my estimate was wrong. Of the grandkids that are out, it’s 1/3, not ½

[tj-crochets]

I told my grandma that I’d told my friends about what she said and that some of y’all had said you wished she was your grandma, and she said “Well, you can never have too many grandkids!”  So like…consider her your honorary grandma* I guess? *if you want an honorary grandma, that is

[tj-crochets]

Update on my grandma: I told her my hair was standing up, but instead of straight line it was diagonal and she said “That’s okay, you’ve never been straight!” and then laughed so hard at her own joke I thought she was going to drop the phone

[tj-crochets]

Happy almost pride month! Have my confused-but-supportive grandma!

[tj-crochets]

An update: my grandma just called me to ask if I knew it was pride month

[tj-crochets]

Happy pride month!!