KIROKAZE
almost home

Origami Around

No title available
dirt enthusiast
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

Janaina Medeiros
styofa doing anything
Sweet Seals For You, Always

Kaledo Art

roma★
hello vonnie
occasionally subtle
Cosimo Galluzzi
NASA
One Nice Bug Per Day
taylor price
Three Goblin Art
d e v o n
Game of Thrones Daily
seen from Lithuania

seen from Australia
seen from South Korea

seen from India

seen from Costa Rica

seen from Malaysia
seen from South Korea
seen from Malaysia

seen from Hungary

seen from United States
seen from Mexico
seen from United States

seen from Brazil
seen from Thailand

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia

seen from United States

seen from United States
@polloinfernal
When the health food store unionized, something wild happened that I thought was just a goofy one-off, but makes more sense now.
There was a big push to eliminate "degrading jobs" but the strategy was to eliminate the position, then create a new position outside of the bargaining unit to do the work. So like, we wouldn't have dishwashers, but we'd have people who washed dishes that weren't eligible to be in the union.
I was like A) what the actual fuck? Dish washing isn't "degrading", it's fucking vital. B) What the actual fuck? You want to create a union just to exploit different people?
There were enough of us to be like "Absolutely the fuck not," and put a stop to it, but I was absolutely flummoxed that people involved in a union would say that out loud. Working with more leftists now, it makes sense.
I think it was coming from a background that viewed labor as necessary to accomplish anything, but advocated for the equitable distribution of the gains made by labor... and then being thrown in with people who just thought labor was icky.
The first time someone told me that busing tables was "degrading", I was like "Oh, uhh, yeah, like it's very necessary work but under compensated for how vital it is?" and they responded "No, touching plates that other people have eaten off of is disgusting."
But I want to eat off of clean plates. So somebody is going to have to touch/clean those plates. And I respect that person and want them to be able to afford to live.
Those people sound like a guy I'd make up to be mad at.
I mean, that job definitely had a Truman Show vibe. If they hadn't been in-person interactions, I'd think I was getting trolled.
Just to put a bow on it:
In bargaining, someone on the Union side suggested that we eliminate all the cashiers and exclusively use self-checkouts (they were a cashier and didn't like it). The organizer told them that the union wasn't in the habit of eliminating bargaining unit positions. (This is the same person I've talked about how said that "as a prison abolitionist" we just needed to execute most criminals.)
When I explained holiday scheduling (time off requests granted in order of seniority, shifts assigned in reverse order of seniority). Someone was angry and said that time off requests potentially being denied "wasn't in the spirit of the union". When I pointed out that our departments made like 30% of our annual revenue between Thanksgiving and New Years and that required production staff to be working, they said that we just needed to create a class of positions ineligible for the bargaining unit that wouldn't be able to request time off. (Which again, most of us figured we'd just rotate holidays or something, but assumed that some holiday production was mandatory.)
I was on leftie tiktok (as a creator) for a bit and I saw this attitude there as well. I specifically remember one argument around cleaners where someone said that employing a cleaner was, like, ethically bad, and that "after the revolution" we wouldn't have cleaners.
It got me thinking, along with Ann Russell talking about how to treat cleaners (being a cleaner herself), about how we conceptualise domestic service as particularly degrading in all its forms, when, really, why is that? Why is paying someone to do something intrinsically bad?
Like, even in a moneyless, gift economy society, there would still be people whose primary contribution to their communities would be cleaning. Some people like to clean, and are really rather good at it.
I've talked ad nauseam in the past about how British attitudes towards cleaners and other service based positions today are the descendants of Victorian attitudes. That is, both the attitudes of conservatives and many progressives of that time. The trade union movement was particularly exclusionary towards service workers.
I think people on the left thinking about forms of labour can sometimes be worse than people on the right. People who have taken these positions generally just conceptualise them as something you need to do to get by, and there are particular employers where these positions are degrading but in general the jobs themselves aren't.
Yeah, that really sums it up. There's stuff that needs to get done, so I'll never be of the opinion that it's degrading work. I worked in kitchens for a long time, and every other position is reliant on having clean dishes, so nobody can really be "above" washing dishes. The shitty thing about washing dishes or busing tables is how people treat the people doing it. The work itself is vital.
And some of those jobs are like, sure, you can throw almost any warm body at it and get it done adequately, but you still run into people where you're like "Holy shit, you're good at this."
People doing a job most people don't want to do should be paid MORE in order to get people to do it. That's how it would work if we weren't mired in a schema assuming that less-frequently-desired jobs are the province of people who "can't do better" and "deserve" poverty because they have less value as people.
Peer reviewing the tags: #these attitudes are also why ppl are weird about sex work#and weirdly enough visibly disabled people working - like esp thinking of like#places that employ ppl w LDs as workers and volunteers#what they FEEL is 'these people make me uncomfortable'#and they say 'they shouldn't have to do that'#so the solution is. no visibly disabled people getting to work#the fact that. they want to work. and want jobs#is irrelevant#too many people base their politics off their like. gut feelings of discomfort and unease#which are completely disconnected from both practicality and actual morality
Ship dynamics are always like Sunshine and Sunshine protector~ Cinnamon roll and their grumpy one 🤗 Well what about 2 cunts. They're both cunts and that's the dynamic. cunt4cunt.
I have never wanted to open a spam email so badly
ra, ra, Rasputin /
buy my secret penis cream
more leftists should be vegan. veganism and leftism operate on the same beliefs. social justice, no exploitation of labor, autonomy, environmental concern, intersectionality, an equal and just living etc. leftist praxis should include veganism
Indigenously: no.
Animal welfare and animal rights are different things; it is good and normal for humans to be slightly anthropocentric while acknowledging our role within the greater ecosystem. Factory farming should indeed be dismantled- I want all animals harvested for food/leather/fur/bones/organs to have full and rich lives with as little suffering as possible before they're harvested. But it is not anti-leftist to live as a predator within the ecosystem. It is not more wrong for humans to eat salmon than it is for bears and eagles to do so.
i used to work in a vegan restaurant and it had basically all the same labor and management problems as the other restaurants i worked at that served meat. obviously. because it was a business in a capitalist system so obviously theres an economic incentive to pay workers the bare minimum and charge customers the maximum you can get away with.
in fact, the restaurant used the vegan identity and environmentalism as fuel for their marketing in quite cynical ways. at the same time they had a deal with Whole Foods (implicated in prison labor allegations btw) to source ingredients, meaning that there were transcontinentally shipped produce lol. for example we used frozen blueberries that were product of Chile. for a restaurant in the pacific northwest region in the united states of america. there are blueberry farms in oregon, washington, etc. But it’s cheaper to exploit south american farms than get local blueberries i guess. (which still by and large exploit the labor of migrant farmworkers from mexico and south and central america, but i digress)
i was vegetarian at the time and i had a lot of deep conversations with my coworkers and manager and the conclusion i came away with is that veganism is merely a cultural practice and is not inherently “leftist” in any way. if you consider human lives equal to animal lives i think that is not compatible with a clear-sighted materialist analysis of the world we live in. its practically a religious belief. which, like, okay, you can be religious, you can have irrational beliefs, but that’s not what “”””leftism”””” is about. that’s not really what any socialist or communist theory is about. it could be syncretized with socialist theory, but it would always merely be an ill-fitting addendum.
I was going to put this in tags but no.
Cashews that make vegan cheese are extremely dangerous to harvest due to the fact they mist be harvested by hand and the fruit has corrosive enzymes. Most workers end up with scars from chemical burns.
Almond farms were linked to the declining bee population due to the number of bees needed to pollinate the plants. Most bee keepers were lucky to get half their hives back after farms rented them.
We all know about how much of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to make way for soy farms.
Agave is a main food source for many bats, but no, harvesting excess honey from bees that over produce it is the problem. If bees regularly have a large surplus of honey they swarm, the hive splits and some leave to start a new hive. Problem is that most bees don't survive this process because it makes them vulnerable to other environmental factors. So encouraging farming and over consumption of agave and stopping the consumption of honey, you're actually harming two different populations of pollinators.
"Vegan leather" is mostly plastic, which breaks down and sheds microplasics. Contributing to the ever growing landfill and contaminated water supply issues we have. Meanwhile cow hide is a natural byproduct from the meat industry, and real leather can last decades if taken care of. A single cow can feed 2 families of 4 for a year, and that leather can go towards making belts, boots, gloves and jackets that last decades.
If you want to actually support ethical food production and animal welfare do your research on where your food comes from. Look into local farms and their practices.
The terracotta army of strawmen.
Cashews that make vegan cheese... Veganism doesn't mean replacing animal products. It means harm reduction. Eating less dairy in order to reduce harm is already vegan. Eating no dairy is even better. Using artificial cheese is not necessary to be vegan.
Almond farms... Vegans don't advocate for monocultures. They advocate for harm reduction. Monocultures predate veganism, because they are easier to manage and more profitable—at the expense of enviroment and biodiversity. They don't exist because vegans want to drink almond milk. They exist because producing almonds in a vast agrarian steppe is more efficient (in the short term) and makes more cash.
We all know about how much of the Amazon rainforest has been destroyed to make way for soy farms. Almost 80 percent of global soy production is used to feed livestock. Rainforests aren't destroyed to feed a couple of vegans. They aren't destroyed because vegans and non-vegans eat more soy nowadays. They are destroyed to feed cattle.
Agave is a main food source... Again, veganism doesn't mean replacing each and every animal product. It means harm reduction. Personally, I know not a single vegan who uses agave syrup. Agave syrup's main selling point was being a "natural sweetener", opposed to "artificial sweeteners" like granulated sugar. That's stupid, but it works—on vegans and non-vegans alike.
"Vegan leather"... Calling it vegan leather is a marketing strategy. It's faux leather. It's been developed because it's cheaper to produce than leather. It is bought—most often by non-vegans, as they're more numerous—because it's cheaper than leather. It has nothing at all to do with veganism, it was around before veganism emerged from obscurity, before vegans were a target group. To pretend that faux leather exists solely to appease the small handful of vegans is simply nonsense.
Look into local farms and their practices. True. But there's no local farm that doesn't employ practices I want to abolish. I'd realy like to know where yall live—encircled by wide pastures full of frolicking sheep and cattle, surrounded by sustainable farms that produce enough so that an entire city can have meat on the table every day.
Throwing the problems caused by agriculture in the faces of vegans as a supposed gotcha is just lazy. Intensive agriculture exists independently of veganism. Agricultural workers are exploited indepentently of veganism. Service workers and prisoners are exploited independently of veganism. Veganism is one measure. It's not a panacea that solves all problems of capitalism and the environment. Vegans don't claim that it is. Please stop acting as if they do.
So many of these bad faith responses are perfect examples of people not understanding the end goal or main point of something.
“I worked in a vegan restaurant and they just wanted to sell stuff!” Yes, it’s called capitalism and marketing off what companies believe is a new popular trend so people will buy their shit.
It’s the same as when a company slaps other small or marginalized groups onto something. It’s capitalism. They want money. They don’t give a shit about the group they are using.
“Vegan leather!” Marketing. Capitalism and marketing, again. PU and other plastics used for faux leather are a marketing gimmick and cheap to create for people to purchase at a low price.
Amazing that the whole of tumblr, which claims to be so socially literate when it comes to things like class consciousness, racism, capitalism, etc can’t even get to not even this surface level reading
Because they want to dunk on a movement that is trying to reduce its harm and footprint (veganism) that they will throw any other groups under the bus to do it.
Y’all should be fucking ashamed of yourselves. Seriously. Leftists my ass.
Stole this from somewhere but i think it’s appropriate
Debating silently showing this to one of the flight attendants while boarding
I SHOWED IT TO MY FLIGHT ATTENDANT WHEN HE GAVE ME MY COOKIES AND HE LAUGHED SO HARD HE TOOK MY PHONE TO SHOW IT TO THE OTHER FLIGHT ATTENDANT
I don’t know how you got a good grade in being a passenger on an airline but that’s a totally normal thing to achieve and I’m not seething with jealousy at all.
Denying the role that individuals need to play in combating the climate crisis is the leftist version of climate change denial. Anyone responding to suggestions of realistic, accessible changes to reduce your own impact with anything resembling ‘100 companies are responsible for most of our emissions so this is pointless’ are engaging in science denialism.
There is no way that collective action takes place without individuals making changes in their own lives. Yes, the rich are more responsible than the poor and yes, what we need is systematic change. However, there absolutely are things we can and should be doing to reduce our own impact and put pressure on polluting industries through direct action and boycott.
These include stopping or reducing flying, eliminating or drastically reducing our consumption of meat and dairy, buying second hand where possible, repairing, recycling and supporting environmental action and rewilding efforts. None of this in isolation will mend the world but its a hell of a lot better than passing the buck while refusing to make any changes in our own lives.
I know that the idea that climate change is caused by someone else; somewhere else, and that it’s up to them to change instead of us is seductive rhetoric, but it’s also extremely dangerous. It encourages the kind of apathy that plays directly into the hands of corporations who want us to feel powerless and to continue to consume as we do now.
We can’t just sit around and wait for The Revolution; we have to live revolutionary lives.
Just to add for some of you in the notes, the ‘100 corporations are responsible for 71% of emissions’ headline was a gross, clickbait misrepresentation of the truth. Influencers and media outlets twisted the results of this study because they knew consumers wanted something, anything, to tell them that the responsibility isn’t on them to make any change, since it’s all the fault of those big nasty corporations. The following is from the Fullfact analysis of this study:
“In the original press release accompanying the report, CDP said: “100 active fossil fuel producers including ExxonMobil, Shell, BHP Billiton and Gazprom are linked to 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.”
“This means that the total estimated cumulative greenhouse gas emissions released by human activity (excluding carbon dioxide from land use, land use change and forestry, and agricultural methane) between 1988 and 2015, 71% of those emissions originated from 100 fossil fuel producers. This includes the emissions from producing fossil fuels (like oil, coal and gas), and the subsequent use of the fossil fuels they sell to other companies. Therefore, it might not come as such a surprise that these 100 entities are linked to 71% of human activity-related greenhouse gas emissions, since all 100 are fossil fuel producers.”
In other words, this study (which was extremely limited in scope) concluded that 100 companies produce 71% of the fossil fuels which are then used by other industries and by consumers themselves. 100 companies aren’t causing 71% of emissions, they’re producing the fossil fuels that are then linked to 71% of emissions. Those are completely different things.
Always bear in mind that there is absolutely no legitimate evidence that Luigi was actually the one who killed the insurance company guy.
Of course he wasn't. He was at a party with me that day.
No but like literally, actually. All bits aside.
He didn't do it.
The cops very clearly planted evidence on him because they had to make an arrest because all eyes were on them and whoever actually did the deed was making them look stupid.
Why would the real killer hero have kept the weapon on his person and traveled two states over while carrying it and a manifesto in his bag, conveniently turning the crime into a federal matter? The same guy whose bag they found in a park, filled with monopoly money? Why did the police turn off their bodycams, take Luigi's stuff, drive a block away, turn their bodycams back on, go back into the restaurant, and then arrest him?
From the moment of his arrest, even left-of-center media has been presuming his guilt without examining anything (e.g. calling him "the killer" instead of "alleged" or "accused") and then when I say he didn't do it, the nearest person chimes in with some quip that tells me they think he did do it but should go free anyway. Don't get me wrong, I would have the same attitude if he had done it. But he didn't. It makes me feel like the only sane person in the world, even among my staunchly leftist friends.
100%. The entire situation looks like a blatant frame job and your desire for a conventionally attractive face to put to a rightfully anonymous culture hero does not justify taking the authorities at face value as they ruin the life of an innocent man.
People hate on the ending of Mass Effect 3 for a variety of reasons. For me, it's the way they, like.
They know. The developers know that the Destroy ending is the obvious correct answer. The kneejerk reflex after all this fighting is to want them destroyed.
That's why they arbitrarily hold a gun to EDI and the Geth's heads over and go, "You better not. You BETTER FUCKING NOT. I'll shoot. I SWEAR I'LL DO IT."
Which completely ruins any philosophical nuance that deciding the Reapers' fate might have. "Should we seek symbiosis with them, take control of them, or kill them and also murder a bunch of other unrelated people in cold blood too why not?"
They knew the choices they were offering weren't very compelling. So they put a hand on the scale.
Because the thing is? Destroy is the kneejerk, of course. But after much consideration? Objectively, Destroy is the right answer for the Reapers. Or would be if they didn't have that gun. The very existence of the Control ending proves that.
The problem with Control as an option is that it eliminates the Reapers' capacity for agency. The ME3 ending states in no uncertain terms that the Reapers are slaves to program. They obey the Catalyst unthinkingly. They destroy societies in an endless cycle because that is what the Catalyst believes is best, based on his own ideas.
He, the Catalyst, is a self-aware AI.
But the Reapers are not. They just obey the Catalyst. For all their bluster in ME1 and 2, for all Sovereign and Harbinger like to talk big, they're all just word-processing. The Catalyst is the only thinking machine among them.
And the proof of that is that if Shepard replaces the Catalyst and sends them contradictory orders, the Reapers all universally obey the new protocol without question. They're in the midst of destroying worlds when the program "Do not destroy these races," comes through. And so they all drop what they're doing and leave without an ounce of hesitation or consideration.
Because they're just obedient machines.
And if that is true? If they're not intelligent, free-thinking artificial life like the Geth or EDI?
Then what value is their existence? They're just complicated warships built for genocide. That is the totality of their being.
And if that is true? Then why would we "seek coexistence" with brainless killing machines? Why would we want to control them, to arm a god-emperor with an armada of planet-killing super-weapons to keep the galaxy in line?
If Reapers obey the Catalyst unquestioningly, if they will obey Shepard unquestioningly, if they are just unthinking and unquestioning machines....
Then obviously we should just destroy them. That is the conclusion that the Catalyst and his choices inevitably brings us back to. If they're just the Catalyst's weapons of slaughter and nothing more, then those weapons of slaughter should not exist. They should all be destroyed and their destruction celebrated in the same way we would celebrate all the world nations disarming their nuclear arsenals.
But the game says no. If you destroy the Reapers, you destroy EDI and the Geth. Because it thinks they're the same, even as it introduces this plot point that completely upends any claim the Reapers have to being intelligent.
In the end, the final choice of ME3 is flawed at a point of basic principles. I reject the notion that it's founded on, that what you choose to do with the Reapers is a reflection of your beliefs towards EDI and the Geth, and their right to coexist with organic lifeforms.
Because they're alive.
And the Reapers are not.
The ending itself told me that.
There's also no explanation as to why choosing Destroy would indiscriminately destroy the reapers, EDI, and the Geth, but Control wouldn't let you control EDI and the Geth -- only the Reapers.
And don't get me started on how the synthesis ending would even be remotely possible without literal magic. Really has no business being included in a series that has consistently presented itself as hard scifi.
Even if they don't tell the audience how the crucible works (and I'd prefer they don't), THEY should have a very solid idea of the rules and logistics.
Instead we got this whimsical malarkey.
Now, personally I'm inclined to give them a lot of leeway. Big collaborative art is hard. I'm sure there were many decisions made in the first two games when they didn't have a specific ending in mind that came back to bite them. And this is mass market, they had to make an ending for people who haven't already read Childhood's End.
I'm saying I have sympathy, I see the shape of what they wanted to do, and I see some of the reasons they couldn't get there. Props for trying, must be infuriating. But this is what makes the shoot-the-messenger ending important. We wrapped up everyone else's stories really nicely and it wasn't enough, we couldn't go the last mile. They invite us to join them in saying "I'm tired and this shit sucks, I hope whoever comes next has a better run"
And that's beautiful, if you choose to see it that way.
I mean, I think the real problem is the high amount of turnover, that they fired or got rid of everyone from the first game, much less the KOTOR and Neverwinter nights and baldur's gate days, and the entire thing having a "mass market" focus at all.
The change to and, frankly, the damage to Bioware when it was bought by EA. Frankly, seemingly killed it. And ME3 and ME2 are the kinda the point where Bioware died.
“but what if you abort the baby who’ll cure cancer?!” sir the baby who will cure cancer is an organic chemistry major who works at a Home Depot because you use AI to go through your resumes
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History
one person does not cure cancer. teams of scientists who rely on funding from the government cure cancer. one person's singular novel ingenuity is not what is stopping us from curing cancer; fucking CAPITALISM IS.
Literally.
Kseniia Petrova - Wikipedia
Making exercises more accessible to the disabled? Fuck yeah!
i'm not normally one to make jokes about dialect or accent. but the way that British people pronounce "lieutenant" feels like an in-joke i'm not privy to
Aww, you're feeling lieut out?
Thousands of starfish had washed up on the beach, and a little girl was diligently throwing them back into the water, one at a time.
A man came up to the girl and said, "You'll never save all of them. What you're doing is pointless. It doesn't matter."
The girl threw another starfish into the water. "It mattered to that one."
The man snorted and walked away.
The girl kept throwing starfish, one after another.
To throw one starfish back into the ocean takes a trivial amount of effort, but to throw ten, or fifty, is much less so. The girl had not learned much of biomechanics, but she began to feel the strain in her back. Her skin had softened from the seawater, and the starfish themselves were abrasive. Her fingers had pruned. Her shoulder hurt. She was cut, twice, on her fingers, as the same storm that had stranded the starfish had also brought up broken shells and crab carapaces. The skin of a starfish was like sandpaper.
She tried switching hands, and could throw the starfish less well, and it wasn't long before she had mirrored all her injuries. She was bleeding, though the blood wept rather than flowing, briefly staining the starfish pink before they were tossed into the ocean.
It seemed as though there were just as many dying starfish as when she'd started.
After three hours, the girl was sunburnt. A passing man had told her that she should stop what she was doing, and had offered her some water, which she took, but he hadn't helped to throw the starfish back.
The girl's hands were cracked, scraped, and raw. Saltwater found the wounds, but she'd gone numb, and her motions became more mechanical.
"It mattered to that one," she thought to herself, "It mattered to that one," over and over, like a mantra. Her muscles ached, but the ache became familiar. When she'd started, her throws had been beautiful things, guided by purpose, but now they were sloppy and threatened to pull her off balance.
She did fall, more than once, landing on sand that was filled with jagged debris, and sometimes she was slow to get up. But she did get up, because there were more starfish to save, tens of thousands of them.
Night fell, and it was harder to see the starfish, but they were still in need of help. She was tired, and the cuts on her fingers had multiplied. The skin had been wet for too long, and in one place, on her palm, where she had gripped a thousand starfish to throw them, a piece of white skin had come off.
Still, she kept throwing starfish.
Her mother didn't find her until after midnight.
"Hi mom," said the girl. Her voice croaked. She had been saying, "It mattered to that one" under her breath for long enough that her vocal cords had strained. She threw another starfish into the ocean.
"You need to come home," her mother said.
"These starfish will die without me," said the girl.
"I know," said her mother. "But you need to come home, because if you keep doing this, you'll collapse on the beach, and like a starfish, you'll need to be rescued too."
The girl stooped down, back aching, and picked up another starfish. Many of them had died by this point, but there were still uncountably many that lived. The rough skin of the starfish grated at her tender skin, but she rose and threw it, arm protesting, and watched it fall down into the water.
Her mother grabbed her gently by the shoulders. "I'm bringing you home," she said. "It would be better if I didn't have to carry you, but I will if I have to."
"I don't want to be the sort of person who leaves starfish to die," said the girl, shrugging off her mother. But a part of her did want to be carried, because she'd walked for miles along this beach, one stooping step at a time.
"I know," said her mother. "But to survive, you have to be. Save as many as you can, but take breaks, get good sleep, eat well. Then go back and save more."
The girl swayed where she was. She was close to passing out, though maybe it was because her rhythm had been interrupted.
Her mother held out a hand, so they could walk together, like they'd done when she was smaller.
And it was then that she noticed the scars on her mother's hands, the calluses and rough spots, the places where cuts had healed. She had seen her mother's hands many times before, but had never asked why they were that way.
The girl slipped her hand into her mother's and began to cry as they walked back home.
XIII - Death