endure . survive

@thesecretsongofbees / thesecretsongofbees.tumblr.com

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Capitalism is getting very much more dystopian very quickly

Itโ€™s a matter of time before companies start their own Pod-communities andย โ€˜strongly encourageโ€™ workers to live there and set up rules like no alcohol and no defamation of the company in the Pods.ย 

As nightmarish as this is (and it is), this is only new for documented white people. From seasonal archiculture workers to construction workers to sweatshops, โ€˜sleep where you work and live your whole life controlled by your boss and coworkers pressured to spy on youโ€™, has been very much a thing for a looooooooong time.ย 

This is one of many things capitalism has always done to workers and now theyโ€™re going โ€œhhmmmm.. if I can do this to some workers, why not all of them? if I present it as a hip new way of urban living people for the โ€˜freelancersโ€™ that I exploit, I might even be able to do it without the armed guards that run my sweatshops and plantations.โ€

I donโ€™t really get the issue with the โ€œsex is bannedโ€ part tho

I donโ€™t want to hyperfocus on that part becauseย โ€˜live without privacy, convert your bed into a desk by day and just work work workโ€™ is distopian enough as it is and I donโ€™t really want to distract from a conversation about the new fuedalism to just talk about sex.ย 

But can you not understand how that monotomous soulless life defined by work becomes even more soulless when you are not permitted to engage in (what is for most allosexuals) one of the most intimate moments of recreational joy and interpersonal connection? & how much it says about our lack of power when we live in places that control our sexual and reproductive lives?ย 

well yeah, but itโ€™s communal living. I mean youโ€™re spot on with the rest but idk, a ban on sex when you share your living quarters with like two dozen other people? it doesnโ€™t seem that deep tbh.ย 

You know, Iโ€™ve spend time in socialist and anarchist self-organized communal living spaces where lots of people shared bedrooms because they liked it and all these spaces had a place for sex. They all acknowledged that that was a thing many humans loved and valued and so they organized to make that good thing possible. Some had a spare room with a lock on the inside that couples could use, others had dorms where sex was okay and dorms where it was not so people could choose where to sleep. It is not difficult to have communal living for those that like sharing bedrooms and also organize a place for sex.ย 

This, however, is not communal living. This is crammed, dehumanized corporate living. This is squeezing as many people as possible into a space defined by work. The inhabitants own nothing in this space and have no control over their environment, they canโ€™t even paint the walls let alongย organize the space to meet their needs. In such a space, sex is made impossible on purpose:

โ€œWe built the pods facing each other so the community polices itselfโ€

The people that made this could have organized privacy and opportunities for sex. They deliberately did not do this, they dilerabetely designed the space for minimum privacy. The purposeful banning of sex from this space is just one part, but one very obvious part, of the way these spaces are not build for humans, they are build for employees whose whole identity should be limited to their productivity.ย 

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, mining communities and factory towns encouraged workers to join their ranks by offering company housing and company stores, where workers and their families wouldnโ€™t have to worry about money, because their rent and whatever they wanted from the store would simply be deducted from their paychecks.

Didnโ€™t take long for workers to realize they were spending over 100% of their paychecks, and would have to work the rest of their lives in soul-crushing poverty to pay the company back.

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patrickat

Slavery isnโ€™t gone, it just changed its name.

Adding to what @robstmartinย has to say:

โ€œI sold my soul to the company storeโ€ isnโ€™t just a line in a song, itโ€™s about Minerโ€™s Scrip. When coal mines forced their employees to live in company housing, paid them in company credit usable only in the literal company store, and they charged astronomical rates for rent and food.ย 

Most miners ended up in multi-generational debt because their wages were so low they could not afford the basic necessities of food, clothing and shelter and ended up owing so much to the company store their grandchildren would essentially be enslaved to the company to pay off the debt.

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This becomes especially chilling when you realize Cheeto Supremo ran on a policy ofย โ€œbring back coal jobsโ€.

This is just deadass feudalism 2 Electric Boogaloo

Gilded Age exploitation popping up at a time when Gilded Age inequality has returned. Thatโ€™s not a coincidence. I canโ€™t speak for the Tories, but in the US bringing ^^^THIS^^^ back has been the goal of the Republicans since the New Deal.

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gehayi

By the way, the lyric isnโ€™t โ€œI sold my soul to the company store.โ€ Itโ€™s โ€œSt. Peter, donโ€™t you call me, โ€˜cause I canโ€™t go/I OWE my soul to the company store.โ€ Which is a hell of a lot bleaker, and, given how expensive company stores were and how deeply in debt employees could be when they died, painfully accurate.

Hereโ€™s a playlist of pre-1970s American bluegrass music about how much coal mining is trying to kill you โ€“ you worked for a company, lived in company housing, shopped at company stores, owed the company money, and got to die of black lung disease at the age of 50: https://www.allmusic.com/album/music-of-coal-mining-songs-from-the-appalachian-coalfields-mw0000490027

We donโ€™t need that to be a revived economic model for the future, thanks.

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As a speech therapist/educator, Iโ€™m always trying to find simple techniques/explanations to help little kids process and understand their emotions and then teach them healthy ways to express themselves when theyโ€™re angry, frustrated, etc. I notice that telling them I deal with the same difficulties, like wanting to yell when Iโ€™m angry, goes a long way. Then they know what they feel isnโ€™t weird BUT there are ways to handle their emotions that donโ€™t hurt themselves or others.

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Just a tip!

If you're in a place, mentally or physically, where you only have the spoons to take care of yourself in one way, I HIGHLY recommend taking care of your teeth.

Acne goes away. You can always start working out later. Stink is easily fixed with a single shower. Hair can be brushed and cut.

Issues with teeth are expensive, painful, and overall suck. Your teeth health can have an impact on other things, too, like jaw issues.

If you're faced with the choice of either taking a shower or brushing your teeth, I highly recommend brushing your teeth. Whatever tools help you to do that, disposable floss picks/toothbrushes, kids fun-flavored toothpaste, soft bristled brushes, anything is better than nothing.

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sa2ha

parts of an amazing article you can read here: https://theoutline.com/post/3151/the-skincare-con-glossier-drunk-elephant-biologique-recherche-p50?zd=1 on the recently spewed hazardous skincare craze and trends.

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inmilkwood

โ€œa blemish seems like a referendum on who you are as a person.โ€ holy shโ€ฆmost cathartic article ever written.

Acne is inevitably a public affliction and in its gnarliest forms can breed shame and low-self-esteem as well as inflamed face nodes. When itโ€™s angry enough, you canโ€™t really hide it. At best, you can turn a red lump into a brown one, and fool people from far away. It makes you feel uglyโ€”I should stop using second-person. It makes me feel ugly. It makes me feel like Iโ€™m dirty and I need to be scrubbed raw to be clean again.
Enter St. Ives.
Hatred breeds violence, self-hatred no less so. If the thing that makes you hate yourself is on your surface, it makes sense to try to scrub your surface away. โ€œItโ€™s like using sandpaper on your face,โ€ one dermatologist said of the St. Ives scrub, in an interview with New York magazine, and I can say from experience it feels that way, too. โ€œIf it hurts, it must be workingโ€: my longtime approach to acne treatment.
Iโ€™d buy the highest possible concentration of benzoyl peroxide or salicylic acid and heap it on my blemishes, taking comfort in the burn. Iโ€™d leave the shower with my skin red and stinging from a fresh St. Ives assault and refuse to moisturize afterward, hoping the zits would crumble into dust and I could rebuild my desert face from the ground up. Then of course, thereโ€™s the old classic of popping, squeezing, scratching and picking at zits, willing to draw my own blood so long as I can remove the invaders.
This self-harming form of warfare is common, Chiu says: โ€œFrom teenagers to adults, acne is an incredibly frustrating issue, and almost everyoneโ€™s first impulse to scrub, pick, and overdry the skin. ย This then can cause even more irritation, or even worse scarring and discoloration, which feeds into a cycle of worsening acne. Overdrying and irritating the skin sometimes confuses the oil glands and paradoxically makes them more active. โ€
But the skincare industry itself perpetuates this practice through some of these products that promise purity through violence. Biore pore strips are essentially pieces of paper that you glue to your face and then rip off, yanking out your blackheads (and often taking your hair along with it). One of the slogans on the companyโ€™s product page is โ€œDonโ€™t be dirtyโ€โ€”feeding right into my old insecurity. Commercials for rough exfoliating scrubs tend to have a woman with already perfect-skin extolling the โ€œdeep-cleanโ€ and splashing her face with pure blue water. In this old St. Ives commercial I found on YouTube they just drop the bottle into some water, which is weird, and a girl says, โ€œweโ€™re not talking some deep spiritual cleansingโ€”but almost.โ€
Elsewhere, you can find people claiming the pore strips made their pores larger, or irritated their skin. The subreddit r/SkincareAddiction holds particular vitriol for the St. Ives scrub, which some dermatologists say is so abrasive that it can cause small tears in the skin. The subreddit rejoiced in the announcement of Browning and Basileโ€™s lawsuit, as Slate recently reported. Itโ€™s hard to find actual studies on the efficacy of specific products, but certainly St. Ives Apricot Scrub and its ilk perpetuate this idea that the best way to get the skin you want is to destroy the skin you have. They facilitate the worst impulses of the frustrated acne-sufferer declaring war on their skin.
The marketing of skincare products preys on vulnerability, even if not intentionally, promising that this new product is the one thing that will finally work, that your zits will be gone in time for prom, that your wrinkles will be less noticeable in four weeks. Without a lot of good information out there, itโ€™s no wonder if I and others put our faith in these promises, and overdo it, thinking if it hurts, it must be working.
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i dont think you get it. 1980 was twenty years ago. 1990 was 10 years ago. 2000 was 10 years ago. 2016 was two years ago. 2018 was also two years ago. 2017 was last year. 2014 was four years ago. do you understand me now?????

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