please do not percieve me i beg

i don’t know about you guys but the main reason i am still on tumblr in 2024 is BECAUSE it is the most cloutless least influential social media app out there and that is the experience i am after. absolutely none of this will ever translate into significant attention or real success in my life and that is so beautiful.

what in the

This is wild

the hilarity of the post being I will have no clout in the cloutless website being uploaded by a white girl seeking clout in the insufferable seeking clout app

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.

she let me hit because i say things like “okie dokie”

I’ve started calling my blood glucose monitor “the blood machine” and this has not proven to be a popular move among the other members of my household

Also apparently my family doesn’t like me saying “hold on I need to record these numbers in my blood book”

american maid cafe review

luigi mangione facing the death penalty just seems like a bad decision for america. so there's this guy that everyone loves and considers a hero, and we arrested him after very obviously planting fake evidence. and now we're going to subject him to an unfair trial and kill him at the end. there's no way anyone will be mad about that right

This panic happens like every few months.

Apparently the unofficial Skyrim patch stops you from pickpocketing money off of skill trainers.

I’m going to become the joker.

Very rarely do I use mods but I saw one that restores unused content and I was like eh sure why not let’s do a lightly modded playthrough

But it requires the unofficial Skyrim patch. Which removes all of the fun bugs. You can’t even turn the Mysterium Xarxes into a bucket anymore. Extremely lame.

What am I supposed to do? Level up archery naturally? Like some kind of masochist?

WHAT. A pox on their house.

Functionally, there's very little difference between watching a movie on poob and watching a movie on basic cable. Yet, for some reason, the advertisements on poob offend me far more

ad breaks on poob always interrupt important scenes or make really jarring cuts.

when it's on cable, they've timed the commercial breaks in a way that generally isn't as disruptive. someone took the time to "reformat" the movie for tv.

ads on poob always KNOW that they're on poob and want me to interact with them or click them. the number of QR codes or ads-in-separate-ad-framing/window are infuriating and jarring.

cable commercials are just stupid little skits i can mute to go use the bathroom.

ads on poob are less than 2 minutes--not enough time to do anything, but enough time to piss me off.

cable commercials are 2-5 minutes, which is enough time to go do something/bathroom or snack break, or talk to whoever you're watching with.

ads on poob are the same 3-4 commercials over and over and over and over again, often cutting to them immediately with no warning, and poob struggles to like, catch up to the fact that it's having to show a different progress bar, or a different timer.

cable commercials, esp during primetime, generally cycle through like 10-15 minimum, so you can go an ad break or two without seeing the same commercial. and they usually only pop up during quiet moments, at regular intervals, so you can see them coming--and there isn't a weird lag/loading time.

in both cases i am being accosted by advertisements and treated like a consumer to manipulate and exploit. the volume changes on cable and poob, the brightness level is eye-searing in both cases.

but poob doesn't respect that i'm here for the MOVIE. cable, thanks to preexisting, decades-old norms around broadcast television, still kind of does. kind of. it's easier to ignore those commercials than the ones on poob.

basically i think poob follows ad norms established on the internet--pop-ups, invasive flashing bullshit, creating lag, taking up time and attention--and cable follows established cable norms of, "time for a few minutes of ads that are just stupid little skits instead of spam machines, and then back to your otherwise uninterrupted movie."

Yeah honestly that all tracks.

#you are doing some goncharov shit to me

I mean i know what you're saying, but there's about a dozen free ad-supported streaming services and i respect none of them to use any of their names. Meanwhile, Poob has fully entered the tumblr lexicon as a shorthand for stupidly-named tech products, especially streaming services.

things that happened to me when i was a woman in STEM:

things that have happened to me since becoming a man in STEM:

like. yes some PI's will still be assholes regardless of the gender of their subordinates but, I've lived this transition. misogyny in STEM is killing women's careers, and trans men can and do experience male privilege.

Wake up it's time to get blocked and reported

Get blocked idiot

Game Changer : Season 7, Episode 1 The Return of the King

i cant believe sam reich created and funded a commit to the bit competition featuring the most known commit to the bit comedians in the dropout-sphere and then was surprised with how hard they all committed to the bit.

sam fr thank you for this masterpiece

Shoutout to Vic Michealis for being the first person to ever score negative points on Game Changer. The only person to truly understand that the game is the players vs Sam and stick to that no matter the cost. The real winner, if you ask me.

i learned about a stupid looking bird today and i cant stop laughing

its called a crested satinbird (cnemophilus macgregorii)

heres another picture of it yelling

fuuuuuck (my friend @ne0nwithazero allowed me to post this)

I’ve always been a big fan of characters who eat shit and die so badly it changes their pronouns