chinese mantou (steamd bread or buns) be like
HEY HEY LISTEN THE VOICE OF THE MTA TRANSIT SYSTEM, ALL THE ANNOUNCEMENTS ON THE NYC SUBWAY LINE??
SHE'S A TRANS WOMAN AND TRANSITIONED AT 66!!!!!! THE BACKGROUND HUM OF MY CHILDHOOD, AND SHE'S LIKE ME!!!! WHAT THE FUCK
(Waves this around in executives faces) wow it's almost like profitable art happens without exploiting workers. Wow. Imagine that
Also it's good. The movie is good. It's nice to see something where you can tell the people working on it didn't just love the movie, but had fun working on it. Let film making be fun instead of detrimental to a person's physical and mental health
I’m gonna puke this makes me so happy to read. Idk. I just want more good news from the industry i’m going into
i want art to feel EARNEST. this disgusting, near pornographic level of tongue in cheek meta humor is making me sick to my stomach. i don’t know how many more movies i can take about clever subversions and the movie winking at you to say “we know it’s a little silly, but…” where is the whimsy? why can’t we believe in the pretend you’ve created? why don’t you have enough faith in it? in my ability to believe?
My (scalding) hot take here is that this is a byproduct of artistic cowardice in the face of unrelenting criticism.
It doesn't just plague mainstream media; this kind of tongue-in-cheek self-referential, self-deprecating "I know this isn't that good wink wink" is all over indie media too.
So many creators are deathly afraid of being criticized for their creative choices, so terrified of an increasingly volatile online audience, that they feel compelled to sell themselves short on what their intentions are, just to plant that tiny nugget of plausible deniability: maybe if I create the illusion of not taking this all that seriously I'll be more insulated from criticism.
If the thing they're doing actually *is* good and becomes well-received, then they end up looking like accidental geniuses who had a moment of inspiration amid a sea of shitposts, and if the thing they're doing is panned they get to laugh it off and go "well I wasn't taking this that seriously to start with! You're the one who's making a big deal out of it!"
If no one thinks you're really trying or that you don't wholly and fully stand behind your creative decisions, then anyone who tells you that you could be doing your craft better looks like an idiot, and that's the whole point.
A lack of earnestness is the perfect "get-out-of-criticism free card."
I honestly do not think “AI will never be as good as human creativity” is a good argument at this point. Like yes, it is true right now, but they’re just going to keep trying to prove it wrong. To me the line is, “Modern AI is built off of PLAGIARISM, UNPAID and UNDERPAID labor.” AI is a labor rights issue, not just for the people who’s labor it would replace, but for the people whose labor was STOLEN for the AI to “create” anything.
All of this. Plus, they aren't TRYING to be as good as human creativity. They're trying to be FASTER than human creativity. One of the tech bros working on AI came right out and said that AIs will never write better than people. What it CAN do is write FASTER. And eventually, real writers will get drowned in the flood and be almost impossible to find. THAT is their goal. Not to replace us, but simply to ERRADICATE us. And they're using our own stolen words to do it. They are trying to kill the very CONCEPT of creativity.
Do Not Let HR do this to you. It is not illegal to talk about wages in the work place. I did and got a 12% raise!
True info. Now let me add something: The power of documentation. (I was a long time steward in a nurses union.)
Remember: The "'E" in email stands for evidence.
That cuts both ways. Be careful what you put into an email. It never really goes away and can be used against you.
But can also be a powerful tool for workplace fairness.
Case 1: Your supervisor asks you to do something you know is either illegal or against company policy. A verbal request. If things go wrong, you can count on them denying that they ever told you to do that. You go back to your desk, or wherever and you send them an email: "I just want to make sure that I understood correctly that you want me to do xxxxx" Quite often, once they see it in writing, they will change their mind about having you do it. If not, you have documentation.
Case 2: You have a schedule you like, you've had that schedule for a while, it works for you. Your supervisor comes to you and says "We're really short-handed now and I need you to change your schedule just for a month until we can get someone else hired. It's just temporary and you can have your old schedule back after a month." A month goes by and they forget entirely that they made that promise to you. So, once again, when they make the initial request, you send them an email "I'm happy to help out temporarily, but just want to make sure I understand correctly that I will get my old schedule back after a month as you promised." Documentation.
[Image ID: Text reading: In the middle of a busy clinic at our practice, I got pulled in by my manager to speak to HR, who must have made a special trip because she lives several states away, and told I was being 'investigated' for discussing wages with my other employees. She told me it was against company policy to discuss wages.
Me; That's illegal.
Them: (start italics) three slow, long seconds of staring at me blankly (end italics) Uh...
Me: That's an illegal policy to have. The right to discuss wages is a right protected by the National Labor Relations board. I used to be in a union. I know this.
HR: Oh, this is news to me! I have been working HR for 18 years and I never knew that. Haha. Well try not do do it anyway, it makes people upset, haha.
Me: people are entitled to their opinions about what their work is worth. Bye.
I then left, and sent her several texts and emails saying I would like a copy of their company policy to see where this wage discussion policy was kept. She quickly called me back in to her office.
HR: You know what, there is no policy like that in the handbook! I double check. Sorry about the confusion, my apologies.
Me: You still haven't given me the paper saying that we had this discussion. I am going to need some protection against retaliation.
HR: Oh haha yes here you go.
I just received a paper with legal letterhead and an apology saying there was no verbal warning or write up. Don't even take their shit you guys. Keep talking about wages. Know your worth. /End ID]
At one of my old (shit) jobs my boss would continually come have these verbal discussions with me and would never put anything in writing so I took to summarizing every discussion we had in email. Like “just to confirm that you asked me to do X by Y date and you understand that means I won’t be able to complete the previous task you gave me until Z date - 2 weeks later than originally scheduled - because you want me to prioritize this new project.
The woman would then storm back into my office screaming at me for putting the discussion in writing and arguing about pushing back the other project or whatever. At which point I would summarize that conversation in email as well. Which would bring her storming back in, rinse and repeat ad nauseum.
Anyway I cannot imagine how badly that job would have gone if I hadn’t put all her wildly unreasonable demands in writing. Bitch still hated me but she could never hang me for “missing deadlines” because I always had in writing that she’d pushed the project back because she wanted something else done first.
Paper your asses babes. Do not let them get away with shit. If they won’t put what they’re asking you to do in writing then write it up yourself and email it to them.
i hate seeing people now making fun of those who care about privacy online. i've seen people saying things like "well they already have your data. what are companies going to do with it" and it's like, that's not the point. it's that companies /shouldn't/ be able to have my data and sell it. am i aware they probably already have my data? yes, absolutely. but i'm still going to try and keep them from monetizing it any further, why are we defending companies selling data they shouldn't have to begin with though?
adding this to the post because, 100%, just there's a fire doesn't mean you should pour gasoline on it
I have like ten different ad and/or tracking blockers on my PC and phone... just out of pure spite
Can link it? I wish to hop aboard that train.
- Firefox with build in tracker protection
- Ublock Origin adblocker for Firefox
- Adguard adblocker for firefox, for everything that gets past Ublock
- Mullvad VPN, one of the most reliable, cheapest and safest VPNs at the moment
- DuckDuckGo android app that blocks trackers for every app on your phone
- DuckDuckGo for firefox for blocking trackers and the likes
- SponsorBlock for firefox, skips the sponsor segments of youtube videos
- Adaway Adblocker for android (works much better with root access but doesn't require it)
Is there any benefit to using multiple ad blockers at once? I honestly don't know, but I haven't seen a single ad on the internet in ages and I get to use this image:
if you like strawberry shortcake or care bears, please consider buying something from the original creator and designer, Muriel Fahrion! she NEVER got paid royalties for creating/designing strawberry shortcake and care bears to this day. huge franchises that have profited off her work for over 40 years.
she went through incredibly tough times as an artist and went into debt after her husband died. in 2019 she started being more public on social media about being the original creator of these iconic characters. despite everything, she still loves strawberry shortcake and spreads nothing but kindness and positivity on her instagram (everyday she always posts a daily video of her dancing in her kitchen :) she’s so full of joy) it would mean a lot if you supported her and bought something cute from her website!
i'm aware that the sheer amount of climate anxiety that i have is not productive but it's also being shoved in my face every 0.5 seconds due to the fact that i study climate science. imagine if you were going to be a civil engineer and engineers discovered that all the concrete in the world was going to disintegrate in five years at the stroke of midnight like a concrete y2k and your teachers kept emphasising the long term risks of concrete and why we need to stop building with concrete and manufacturing concrete and the government inducts new Concrete Transition ministers but meanwhile every new building is still being made with fucking concrete because everyone is adamant that the engineers will find a solution to the Concrete Crisis, even though the solution is to just stop using concrete because its going to lose all structural integrity in five years. and they tell you to keep studying concrete and work something out to make it stronger. no wonder we are insane
live footage
