Ow, My Eyeballs!

Nothing of importance.

[hell-on-sticks]

Today in australia they started senate hearings on the bill the government hopes will make enough disabled people die or disappear to make us all less irritatingly expensive for them. We had two weeks to submit feedback on over 400 pages of complicated legal terms. They don't care what we have to say and they don’t care that this will kill people and disenfranchise disabled people across the country.

There are 760,000 Australians on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, the system that - if they feel like it and your personalised plan says you get to have it - provides funding for everything from personal hygiene care to support workers to therapies to assistive technology. It's already very hard for disabled people to get on the NDIS, regardless of your disability. It's near impossible to access most support and equipment without being on the NDIS. And the government has announced that they want that number to drop to 600,000 in four years. 160,000 of us cut off the Scheme - and countless more denied access. This will cause deaths. People will die and people will suffer because there is no safety net. The NDIS is the only option for most of us. Even private health insurance doesn't cover most of these things. Nobody will swoop in to save us.

The bill wants to give the (non disabled!) NDIS minister basically unlimited power to cut our funding. They're already planning what they'd do with that power. What rights they'll strip from us. What dignity and freedom they'll remove to make their budget look better.

The bill wants to force people to try every treatment out there before they're allowed to be on the NDIS. Including if the treatment is literally impossible to access. There’s a lot of us living in regional areas or out bush who can't just pop to the capital cities for specialists. This will especially hurt disabled First Nations people in regional and remote communities, who already experience limited access to healthcare.

If you're australian and worried, the ABC did a good breakdown of the proposed changes.

I know australia stuff doesn't really pop up on the radar on this site, but I want everyone to know what's going on. What we're fighting for here. Your australian disabled friends might be NDIS participants fearing for their life, rights, and freedom. They might not be a participant and afraid these changes mean they never will have access. We deserve better. The government built a system with no backup plan, and now they want hundreds of thousands of disabled people to pay the price for their bad planning.

Sorry we're too expensive to have rights, I guess.

[ajaxgb]

Okay no I need to talk about the book version of Howl's Moving Castle. I love the movie but the book has such a different vibe and you, yes you, should read it.

Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.

Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.

In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.

In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)

In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.

The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.

In the movie, the fourth and final location that the magic door connects to is some sort of black void / mindscape / time portal dealy. In the book the fourth location is Wales, in the UK, on Earth, so that Howl can visit his family, because from Howl's perspective this is an isekai story.

[dontcallmebymyusername]

Does this count as finding a walrus at your door?

[baddywronglegs]

Absolutely, and definitely less surprising than a fairy

[existencebringsonlypain]

I will concede, in this specific circumstance, it makes more sense

[dailycatsblog]

[the-composite-doll]

Wait is that THIS cat?

IT IS

[rialtostation]

pacific rim fucks severely for a lot of reasons but my favorite is that it opens with "the lizard aliens are unionizing so we built robots running on the power of love to fight them you got all that right" and before you have time to really process that concept bam gunshot body on the floor and the movie goes "now consider the vast power of grief in this setup" it never really stops considering

[catgirlbignaturals]

It also has a scene where the robot uses a boat as a baseball bat. That also fucks tremendously.

[northstareclipse]

A lot of criticism of delivery apps focuses on the fact that they offer convenience and variety, which I find much less compelling than criticizing the fact that the apps often send their contractors on fetch quests from Hell.

There are real labor problems here. Base pay is often insulting. Customer tips carry too much of the burden. Workers need better protections, more transparent algorithms, protection from arbitrary deactivation, and actual recourse when the app or a customer screws them over. Car-dependent delivery is also an environmental and infrastructural problem, though in a denser city I’d still be doing this work; I’d just be doing it by bike.

But when people talk about delivery work, I rarely see them talk to actual delivery workers. I see a lot of abstract arguments about convenience, consumer decadence, “hustle culture,” and internalized neoliberalism. Meanwhile, when I’m out working and waiting in restaurants for orders, the other Dashers I meet are usually people who only speak Spanish, people who read as neurodivergent, visibly physically disabled people, or some combination of the above.

I have not met this mythical Disco Elysium poor ultraliberal hustlegrinder-wannabe people seem to be arguing with. Maybe that archetype exists somewhere. If it exists among any kind of gig worker, it would probably be rideshare drivers. But most of what I see looks less like “rise and grind” and more like “this is one of the few forms of work available to people who need flexibility, low barriers to entry, limited managerial surveillance, or a way to work around language barriers, disability, burnout, chronic illnesses and injuries with symptoms that come and go unpredictably, caregiving, résumé gaps, or discrimination.”

That does not make the current system good. It means the current system is filling a real gap that a lot of supposedly better systems do not even acknowledge.

As a disabled person who is burnout-prone and demand-sensitive, contracting as a delivery driver has given me an unprecedented level of financial flexibility. I can work when I have capacity. I can stop when I’m deteriorating. I can build my day around my actual body instead of being trapped under a manager who thinks “reliable” means “able to perform the same way every day no matter what.” That matters. It does not cancel out the exploitation, but it is also not fake just because it is politically inconvenient.

And delivery itself is not some inherently decadent evil. Sometimes people live alone. Sometimes they are sick. Sometimes they are disabled, exhausted, overwhelmed, grieving, overloaded, or recovering from something else - perhaps the stress and fatigue induced by their own job. Sometimes they need medicine, groceries, or a meal that will actually unplug their sinuses instead of whatever generic community-care slop someone thinks they should be grateful for. Humans are allowed to need specificity. “Food” is not the same as “the food I can actually eat right now.”

A serious labor critique would ask how to make delivery work safer, better-paid, less tip-dependent, less car-dependent, less algorithmically punitive, and less precarious. It would ask what kinds of flexible, accessible work should exist for people who cannot thrive in conventional employment. It would ask how cities could support bike delivery, worker cooperatives, public infrastructure, and real protections without simply replacing one bad system with a moral sermon about how nobody should ever want takeout.

But a lot of the discourse does not do that. It treats convenience itself as suspicious. It treats wanting flexible work as false consciousness. It treats the needs of disabled people, immigrants, and other people who can't fit into traditional employment structures as details to be swept aside in favor of a cleaner political image.

I guess the opinions of delivery workers only count when they are politically convenient.

[exwife-of-frankenstein]

Youtube is full of ads, spotify is full of ads, tumblr is full of ads, pinterest is full of ads. Everything uses ai. Every new update makes the website/app worse. Youtube auto translates almost every video I want to watch. Sometimes pinterest only loads ads for me. Check out this new ai feature. Here's a new update that breaks ur laptop. Here's a new update that breaks ur phone. Why are u complaining about ur phone, just get the newest iphone lol. Join my patreon. Join my membership. Pay a monthly membership to get all features. Upgrade your membership to get even more features. Subscribe to netflix. Subscribe to disney. Subscribe to amazon. Subscribe to hulu. This content isn't available in ur country. This content was removed. This website was removed. This feature only exists for apple. This app only exists for apple. U need to a WiFi connection to play this game. U need an account. We need your email to finish creating this account. We need your number to finish creating your account. We need your id to finish creating your account. In order to delete your account please write an email. In order to delete your account you need a laptop. Oops our database was hacked and ur information was stolen. Ur data was sold from this random website u used once 10 years ago. Spam call. Spam call. Spam call.

[jabberding0]

The chanclafone (Papua New Guinea)

[b33tl3b0y]

homunculus let out into the yard for a few minutes of recreational getting thrown from the roof time

[baba-fett]

Reblog to bonk your mutuals on the head every time they start thinking negatively about themselves

[paranormal-taters]

specifically this kind of bonk.

[humanityinahandbag]

Reblonk

[slothful-rabbit]

I laughed so fucking hard at this

[paint-lady]

[were--ralph]

im not a furry but recently ive been thinking about what if there was a global outbreak of a virus that transforms you into your fursona? so i made one just in case. not because im a furry (im not) but just ouf of safety if i need one in a pinch. he's very cute and fluffy btw

No yeah that makes sense like you always have to be prepared

[psikonauti]

Vanessa Stockard (Australian, b.1975) 

Satan taking a break from hate crimes ,2022

[blxnc]

there’s this term i coined in my friendgroup i call “the charizard effect” and it can apply to anything and everything, but it was born from me explaining my feelings about the pokemon charizard. the term is basically about how overexposure to something be it by corporate shilling or fandom prominence drives me away from really enjoying something bc i’m exposed to it so much against my will i become tired of it. it came to me bc i was ranting about how tpci does not, and cannot stop reinventing charizard, and how it is popular and obtusely included in almost every region, merch, etc in every way possible and it’s highly commodified.

i dont dislike the pokemon charizard, in fact i really like its X form, but i am exposed to so much charizard in my pokemon consumption that i cant be bothered to care for it in any more than in passing. this applies to a bunch of other stuff i’d otherwise be ok with, but i always just call this aversion phenomena “the charizard effect”

[blxnc]

making this term has done numbers for me being able to concisely express how i feel abt something. like. its not charizard’s fault i feel this way, im sure i’d feel normal abt it if it was stripped of all this over commodification, but i cannot. hence the name

[manuciruja]

awww the like button turns into a rainbow when you press it! that's so cute...hey staff what's with all the trans women you keep nuking?

[manuciruja]

i think we should be ridiculing them more for this. you don't get to try and go all "queer website" when your staff likes to go on nuking sprees targeting the trans fem users

[smadsel]

would be remiss not to mention that the rainbow notably straight up just removed the trans flag colors from it. like they’re gone. it’s the progress flag minus the trans flag colors.

[smadsel]

that’s not the whole flag, now is it

[manuciruja]

hey staff what the fuck

[villainessbian]

hey staff don't you think you're being too on-the-nose

[shrodingers-catgirl]

HEY STAFF DONT YOU THINK YOU'RE BEING TOO ON-THE-NOSE

[theauspolchronicles]

The vast majority of One Nation MPs quit before the end of their first term. They're either expelled or quit because of internal bickering and dysfunction. Pauline Hanson herself was kicked out of the party and wasn't part of it from 2002 to 2013.

Barnaby Joyce will not be a One Nation MP by the next election. David Farley will likely quit or be expelled by the end of this year.

What's missing from all this media obsession with how much One Nation is rising in the polls because of all the oxygen and hype the media is giving to it is the issue of longevity and stability. One Nation has never been stable. Barely any of its members maintain party allegiance after a year in office. Why aren't journalists bringing that up?

One Nation is not a viable alternative. It's the gutter where those too dysfunctional to be part of real political parties go to see if they can whip up enough racist scaremongering to keep their paycheck at the next election.

It doesn't matter how many seats One Nation wins at the next election. It won't have kept most of them by the time the next election afterwards happens. One Nation is a grift. A con. A trap for the disillusioned and angry who want change but don't realise One Nation is the worst way to make that happen.

[redlipstickresurrected]

Vanessa Stockard (Australian, b. 1975, Sydney, Australia) - Is his crown on wrong .. is his ruff on right? What’s going on in his head? I don’t know..Kevin just happens and I have no control, 2023, Painting