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Mumblings, ramblings, rants and whatever catches my eye.

[la-laborista-republiko]

"Working 9 to 5, what a way to make a living. Never getting by; it's all taking and no giving. They just use your mind and they never give you credit. It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it."

--Karl Marx (ed. Friedrich Engels), Wage-Labor And Capital

[legsdemandias]

My number one piece of advice for anyone at all involved in any kind of activism, whether it be political, lgbt/queer related, feminism, blm, w/e, is: do not be a reactionary. Be a reflectionary. 

Example: Straight people aren’t lgbt!!! Stop insisting that they are! 

Reaction: Obviously straight people aren’t LGBT and anyone saying otherwise is homophobic.

Reflection: After a bit of thought, I realized that some trans people are straight and maybe the person saying the original statement are transphobic or think that nonbinary people are fake. Maybe they don’t believe in bisexuality/asexuality/pansexuality and equate them with being straight. The original statement is misleading and I do not agree with it. 

It’s really easy to react to information. It’s really easy to let your initial gut feeling guide your political choices, but if you stay in that reacting area you will be taken advantage of. Because people full of hatred and violence know that your reaction is very easy to take advantage of. 

React. React all you need to. But as soon as your reaction is done, reflect. 

[fuckyeahasexual]

Upon reflecting on this, I think reflectionary could be revolutionary

[kamorth]

This is an excellent example of why mental health coping systems like CBT and DBT prioritize RESPONDING over REACTING. Often your kneejerk reactions are actually wrong/detrimental/maladaptive so it is FAR better to give yourself a few seconds to breathe, think, and respond instead of just instantly going with your instinctive reaction. It’s one of the many skills those systems teach that is useful for everyone, not just people with mental health issues.

[legsdemandias]

Also, I just want to remind everyone that you are not defined by your reaction. Yo can react to information, situations, experiences, whatever, and then step back and have a reflection.

A very common form of this is: seeing a person and thinking “they’re probably gross–why would you say that? you don’t even know them”. The italics is your reaction, the following is your reflection. Your reaction is normal, your reflection is what defines you. If you don’t reflect, you don’t move forward. 

[legsdemandias]

When are we going to talk about how utterly over the top and ridiculous neurotypical advice for ADHD and sleep is?? It’s straight up fucking bonkers. 

Someone with ADHD: I really really struggle to fall asleep at “regualr times”, no matter how tired I am I just can’t seem to fall asleep at 10 pm!!! But I almost instantly fall asleep any time after 2 am. What should I do?

NT sleep advice: You, someone who cannot conceptualize time in any way whatsoever, need to identify TWO HOURS in advance when you want to sleep and, with your executive dysfunction that makes making decisions at will almost straight up impossible, make the decision to stop whatever you’re involuntarily hyperfixating on. Then, you, with a focus disorder that makes it so that you have to be doing something at all times, sit and do nothing for 2 hours. You cannot read. You cannot be on your phone. Do not move. Do not talk to people. Just sit and do nothing. If you can’t fall asleep it’s because you Did Something and it’s your fault. Bluelight 24 hours before you want to sleep is the reason. Never look at a TV, Phone, computer, OR let one of these objects be within a 24,000 mile radius of you. Never ever go NEAR your bed unless you’re already asleep. If you are AWAKE in your bedroom ever you will not be able to sleep. 

ADHD Sleep Advice: Get a job that starts at 2 pm or later and go to sleep at 4 am and wake up at noon. 

[whatevercomestomymind]

Half my life right here lol

[eddiescouch]

All my life I have had intense insomnia and all the sleep advice I’ve gotten has been like the NT bullshit. Everyone told me it was my fault and I wasn’t trying hard enough. I finally went to a sleep doc and she just laughed and gave me the ADHD version of sleep advice. She told me more often than anything else she prescribes people permission to go to sleep late.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

80% of Britons want happiness, not growth

A YouGov poll found 80% of Britons “would prefer the government to prioritise health and wellbeing over economic growth during the crisis, and 6 in 10 would still want the government to pursue health and wellbeing ahead of growth after the pandemic”

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/10/britons-want-quality-of-life-indicators-priority-over-economy-coronavirus

GDP is a terrific example of Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Or, as Alice Taylor puts it, “Any number you put on the wall will go up.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

There’s a trivial sense in which economic growth correlates to broad prosperity, but GDP is a uniquely jukeable stat.

First, “economic activity” is not synonymous with “prosperity-producing activity.” Torching a home and paying a crew to clear the wreckage is “activity.”

Consider that in the LIBOR-rigging scandal, traders at rival firms were able to juke their stats by colluding so that one would sell millions of dollars of paper to the other, who would immediately sell it back.

https://boingboing.net/2017/09/24/empathy-not-sympathy.html

But even where GDP measures useful activity, it’s a mistake to assume that the benefits increase general prosperity. As we’ve seen, the benefits of growth are often hoarded by rich people while everyone else’s wealth stagnates or decreases.

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

An emphasis on economic growth paves the way for the rich getting richer, often through destructive tactics like the Private Equity trick of buying a company, loading it with debt, and running it into the ground.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#prop-bets

Neoliberal and centrist governments have long paid lip-service to the idea of  measuring “General National Happiness” or other metrics that try to put prosperity and wellbeing on equal footing with raw economic measures. This never transcends the cosmetic.

That’s because the finance sector (obviously) has a lot of money, and they spread it around to ensure that any measures that might nerf enrichment for the rich get neutered before they goes into effect.

But that might change.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/05/the-hard-stuff/#pandemic-profiteers

As unemployment hits 25-35%, governments will have two choices:

1. Do nothing, face civil collapse. States with protracted massive unemployment fail. Not as in “we failed to put people to work” but as in “failed state.”

2. Create national jobs schemes that will result in 25-35% of workers becoming new government employees (in addition to existing public employment).

We’re in real danger of 1 happening, so maybe go and source a pole now so you can go digging through rubble for canned goods.

But assuming we’re not all drinking our own urine and fighting in the Thunderdome in a year…

Option 2 means that something like half the workers in the country will see their destiny totally decoupled from finance benchmarks.

Whether the line goes up or down will have no impact at all on their take-home pay or benefits or savings or pension.

This great decoupling might finally weaken looter capitalism to the point where we can start treating its perpetrators as sociopathic wreckers.

Rather than celebrating them as heroes.

[whitepeopletwitter]

[luthienne]

“‘Do you fall in love often?’ Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.”

— Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries

[maaarine]

Vice: Shelter in Place with Shane Smith & Edward Snowden

“People in power who see that there is a political advantage to disguising, or concealing, or massaging, or denying numbers, may choose to lie about it.

It’s happened before and it’s almost certainly happening now.

We see the Chinese government recently working to expel Western journalists at precisely this moment where we need credible independent reporting from this kind of region.”

[undeadlibertarian]

Pathologists were able to trace the origins of the Spanish Influenza to Haskell County, Kansas which was a rural farming community. The winter of 1917 - 1918 was particularly brutal in that area with cold temperatures and lots of snow. Because of the weather conditions, farmers in the region began moving their livestock inside to protect them from the elements. It’s around this time that a novel H1N1 influenza virus jumped from a bird (probably a chicken) into a pig, and then into a human. It then began to spread around the local community.

The influenza outbreak in Haskell County, KS was so severe that January, that the local doctor sent a telegram to Washington D.C. indicating the severity of the flu epidemic. That telegram was only a footnote in history and was ignored as the U.S. prepared to enter into WWI. Upon entering the war, we began recruiting troops from all over the country. Some of those troops came from Haskell County, KS and those troops were stationed in barracks at Fort Riley, KS. It was here that the Spring Wave of the Spanish Influenza began. Within a week, Fort Riley had hundreds of cases of influenza and the milder wave of the disease was moving along with the troops.

When the troops went to Europe to fight, people who had a milder form of the influenza continued to fight in the trenches and didn’t infect many people, while people with a more severe form of the disease were transported to troop hospitals where they had the chance to infect far more people. In this way, the wartime conditions rewarded the virus for making us sicker and killing more people. Over time, the virus mutated into a relentless killer.

The Spanish Flu did, in fact, get its name because Spain was a neutral country in the war and was reporting accurate information. From the general consensus at the time, it seemed like the flu was striking Spain particularly hard, with some speculating that the virus had originated from Spain. That’s why it was named the Spanish Flu. When pathologists and historians were able to track the true origins of the virus decades later, the name had already stuck.

[feministism]

[biglawbear]

OH IT MAKES SENSE NOW THANK YOU FOR PUTTING IT INTO WORDS

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Same story for evil cops. Environments that allow predators and abusers to thrive and be protected are going to fill up with predators and abusers no matter how good the people around them are.

[postilionstruckbylightning]

It happens in a lot of fields. Cops, social workers, priests, volunteers who work with kids, foster parents. Predators operate at their peak in positions of authority where they can act unquestioned.

[sandandglass]

Keira Knightley talks about Pirates of the Caribbean and her boobs.

[kirstenelizabethh]

Oh I love her

[thequeerofthenorth]

they also digitally enhanced her boobs for the King Arthur movie poster which she responded with “comes from market research that clearly shows that other women refuse to look at famous actresses and stars with small breasts.”

[browngxl]

My daughter also needs to see if your son can manage a house, cook food. Only then we’ll agree to this marriage.

[random-browsing]

It’s a nice ad from BIBA India with a good ending as well. Link - (x)

[wherda-cat]

Okay, he’s got potential. :)

[whitepeopletwitter]

[whitepeopletwitter]

[jenniferrpovey]

After stay-at-home:

Consider whether that trip is essential (Essential to your mental health counts).

Wear a mask any time you might have to interact with or be close to other humans, removing only to eat or drink. Always handle your mask by the sides, not the front. Carry a small bottle of hand sanitizer and sanitze your hands after removing a mask and after putting it back on. Put your mask in a paper bag or large envelope, NOT on a surface somebody else has to clean. Wash your mask every time you use it. The mask is not to protect you. It is to protect others. It is not a sign you are a coward.

Wash your hands before leaving the house and after returning.

Touch as little as possible.

If shopping, try to touch only merchandise you intend to buy. If you have to try clothes on, don’t put the ones you don’t want back on the shelf to be nice to the workers. They probably have to wash them. Get in, get out, don’t linger.

If you really want to eat out and the restaurant has outdoor seating, sit outside if the weather allows. Transmission rates are much higher indoors. (This is why some places are only allowing outdoor seating currently).

Continue to stay six feet from people not in your household as much as possible.

Don’t hug or shake hands.

At some point we will have sufficient effective treatments (remdesivir alone is not sufficient due to its cost and the fact that it doesn’t actually help everyone) that we’ll be able to start relaxing this. But this is how we’re going to have to live for a while.

So.

Don’t think of it as everyone else being toxic. Because omg is that bad for you. I just read an article from somebody who’s fallen into that trap and the poor woman can barely function.

Think of this as everyone else is vulnerable and you are shielding them.

Much healthier.

[theconcealedweapon]

[noctumsolis]

Wait.

These haircut-demanding toddlers have actually actively killed people?

[white-throated-packrat]

There’s been at least one murder of a store guard, one shooting at a McDonald’s because the seating area was closed, one town that lifted its mask order because customers were threatening retail workers who were trying to comply with it, and one assault on a park ranger who was trying to enforce social distancing.

There are people who are so damned self-centered that they don’t care who they endanger as long as they get to do what they want.

[ruffboi-mags]

#I fucking hate this #I fucking hate these reactionary assholes #it’s fine for a store to deny you your gay marriage cake #until they ASK YOU TO WEAR A MASK #and then suddenly it’s not about the store owner’s rights it’s about your PERSONAL FREEDOM #just admit you’re a selfish asshole who’s happy to hurt other people as long as you get what you want and… #y'know what I’m not even gonna tell you to gtfo just go out and get coronavirus from your fellow assholes and die #the world will be better without you #legit I don’t want anyone to die from this #but if this is our baboon garbage dump moment (…ask me for an explanation if you like) #I will actually welcome it with open arms #but also yeah this is real #store employees have been pepper sprayed assaulted and straight-up murdered for trying to enforce mask rules #it’s fucking horrifying (via @taibhsearachd​)

[deadcatwithaflamethrower]

Disney Wants Your Stuff. (No, I’m serious, they literally say you own the copyright to your fanwork until they say that THEY own it, i.e. Welcome to the new Disney TOS, Baby.

First up, the link, so chill already: https://disneytermsofuse.com/  Your relevant and terrifying passage(s) are the entirety of Section 7. Go read it. I’ll wait.

Now. First thing to understand is that the legal language within the new TOS *implies* that Disney is only referring to people who use its services, people who clicked and agreed to this new TOS. But it’s implication only. That’s not what this TOS actually says.

This TOS spends a lot of time defining fanworks, or as they call it, User Generated Content.

They want to make it clear that,

a) You totally have the right to make User Generated Content (UGC) all you want.

b) You can put that UGC anywhere you want, whether they own the site or someone else does. What matters is that you’ve put that UGC in a publically accessible place…like, oh, AO3.

c) Disney spends a few breaths saying that the creator of the UGC owns the copyright to that UGC…except if you read those words carefully, they’re not guaranteeing you anything, because THEY own the copyright.

d) Disney then says, since they own the copyright to your UGC, they can literally do anything they want with it. They can steal it, crib it, use the entire thing as their own, make money off of it, reprint it, ANYTHING–and you do not get credit. You do not get paid. You do not get acknowledgement. You might get a DMCA telling you take down your UGC because it is now *their* content that they’re selling and how dare you steal from them. (No, I’m not kidding.)

e) Nobody seems to know a fucking thing about this.

f) The bullshit on Twitter over May the Fourth was just a smokescreen, sorry. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/28/21238909/disney-star-wars-maythe4th-hashtag-copyright-contract-twitter

Disney doesn’t want your Tweets. They just wanted to see who was paying attention, and how, and if they could get away with it. (Yes, they did go after someone who reposted Disney’s own tweets. No more information on that yet.)

g) Yes, you should absolutely take this seriously. You should be terrified, because how many fan content creators have the bank to fight this if their “copyrighted content” that Disney specifies is still *their* copyrighted content is stolen? OTW exists for this very reason, but this is fucking Disney. They. Own. Almost. Everything. In. The. Corporate. United. States. Entertainment. Industry.

h) No, your MCU, Star Wars, Pixar, Disney animated films, ANY such fanworks, are not safe. If Disney likes it, they will take it. If you say they can’t, they’ll point to their new site-wide TOS and say that they can. Is that legal? Don’t actually know, but think about who’s in the White House right now. Think about who he’d support. Yes, the Library of Congress and the House of Reps are supposed to be in charge, but how long until we could push for them to deal with/fix this shit?

i) Yes, Disney is probably trying to steal content in order to survive the pandemic, seeing as their major sources of revenue (parks and movies) aren’t happening right now.

j) Yes, I will be removing my Star Wars content. I didn’t work on that fucking story for nearly 20 years just for some corporate shill to fucking steal it.

k) Someone who currently wishes to remain anonymous has pinged an OTW peep to see if they’re aware.

l) If they weren’t so specific to point out that they really do mean Any Public Place, I wouldn’t be so concerned…but it doesn’t. This isn’t just about their services. This is about the entire fucking internet.

That’s it. You guys now know everything I know, so no, I wouldn’t be able to answer any of your questions. I suggest spreading the word, if only so someone else with more information can step up and reassure us that Disney can’t do what they believe they can do…

…but it’s fucking DISNEY. They nearly destroyed Public Domain in the United States over fucking Mickey Mouse a hundred years ago. Do you really think they’re going to say, “Oh, sorry, our bad” about this?

[kendrick-harlow]

OP is a hero for pointing this out. Some highlights from the terms of service:

To the extent that we authorize you to create, post, upload, distribute, publicly display or publicly perform User Generated Content that requires the use of our copyrighted works, we grant you a non-exclusive license to create a derivative work…provided that such license shall be conditioned upon your assignment to us of all rights worldwide…in all formats and media…

In most instances, we do not claim ownership of your User Generated Content; however, you grant us a non-exclusive, sublicensable, irrevocable and royalty-free worldwide license under all copyrights…for the full duration of those rights to use…and otherwise exploit such User Generated Content, in whole or in part…in any number of copies and without limit as to time, manner and frequency of use, without further notice to you, without attribution (to the extent this is not contrary to mandatory provisions of applicable law), and without the requirement of permission from or payment to you or any other person or entity. 

We may monitor, screen, post, remove, modify, store and review User Generated Content or communications sent through a Disney Product, at any time and for any reason, including to ensure that the User Generated Content or communication conforms to this Agreement, without prior notice to you.

[adjective-object]

you grant us a non-exclusive, sublicensable, irrevocable and royalty-free worldwide license under all copyrights

[deadcatwithaflamethrower]

Reblogged from: @deadcatwithaflamethrower

First Section, Second Paragraph B of the new Disney TOS, found here: https://disneytermsofuse.com/english/#These-Terms-of-Use-Are-a-Contract-Between-You-and-Us

“B. Agreement. You  represent to Disney that you have read, understood, and expressly agree  to be bound by this Agreement, and the terms, conditions, and notices  contained or referenced herein, whether you have created a Disney  account (and agree to this Agreement at the time you created that  account) or whether you simply browse, use, or access a Disney Product  offered directly by Disney or through a third party (and agree to this  Agreement when you browse, use, or access any aspect of the Disney  Product). If you do not agree to the Agreement, you may not use the  Disney Products.”

Reblogged from @morgynleri

And just because that’s not legally enforceable doesn’t mean they won’t try to use it against people.

Hell, even if they don’t actively use it against people (and I’m not willing to bet on that), just that existing is going to cause people to delete or not post things they’re working on. Or stop working on things they’ve partially made.

Which is exactly what those fuckers want.

[silascaptor-deactivated20210107]

Remember they own Fox now too, so that’s everything from Sound of Music to Rocky Horror Picture Show to The Matrix

[silascaptor-deactivated20210107]

Holy shit I just realized they’re retroactively saying they now own all the x-files fanfic

[sheogayrath]

these are the voyages of the starship enterprise, its ongoing mission: fuck around and find out

[theconcealedweapon]

[staywellakell]

and you DIDN’T hear a peep out of us bc this community knows what it’s like to let a virus go unchecked and for the government to not give a single shit

[mahimahi713]

Except it’s not fucking eternal. No body likes this. It sucks. But we understand it has to be done to keep people safe. Because look what happens when states did open back up??

Like how selfish can you be?

[ghostbender96]

When we complain about shit being cancelled we’re not saying “wow I can’t believe you won’t let us do stuff” we’re saying “wow I can’t believe we can’t do stuff bc you handled this so poorly and it’s never ending bc so many selfish people are still going around spreading this shit despite everything in the world saying to S T O P.” We see why everything is cancelled and we’re mourning our loss of freedom too but it’s different bc we want things to be cancelled so people stop dying. Our pride parades are not worth lives and we see and understand that.

[transbloke]