Im physically crying

Unmute !

This is what “Boys Will Be Boys” should mean

That poor guy… has a snore like that AND was burned horribly by his friends???

Just an FYI for those in the US with insurance issues

Important information! Insurance coverage decisions are made by medically ignorant bean-counters. Until we can dismantle the whole shitty system, know how to scare them into submission.

This is like that procedure Mr. Incredible told that old lady

having executive dysfunction, ADHD and just a complete lack of any conception of the workings and passage of time means that i consistently roll a critical fail in punctuality

me: okay so i have to be there at 9 so i’ll get up at 7, actually get up at 7:30, get off my phone and into the shower at 7:45, finish dressing at 8, stop reading my news feed and make breakfast at 8:15, clean my teeth and leave at 8:30 with 10 minutes extra time to spare if shit goes sideways. there’s no way i can possibly be late.

me, still in my pyjamas in bed, scrolling through twitter at 08:59: motherfucker i did it again

my brain with every passing second drawing towards a rapidly approaching deadline:

my last, chronically overworked, almost entirely nonfunctional brain cell: read @ 11:59 PM ✔️✔️

tl;dr my country is literally on fire and the politicians refuse to help

I know there’s a lot going on in the world, but you probably haven’t heard about what’s happening in Australia.

we’re on fire.

approximately ¼ of australia’s population is in catastrophic fire danger. A catastrophic fire level means your only chance of surviving is leaving before it’s too late.

it’s Spring in Australia, and rainforests aren’t meant to be dry enough to burn, yet at the time of writing this (11/11/19) there are 71 active fires in NSW (43 out of control), and 51 active fires in Queensland - not including those that have already burned before now, and there are more in other states. Sydney is already rated “catastrophic”, the first time this rating has ever been used there since its creation in 2009. That’s right, we had to add yet another level of destructiveness, because “high”, “very high”, “severe”, and “extreme” were no longer adequate. To quote the Fire Danger Ratings, “for your survival, leaving early is the only option”. conditions tomorrow will be the worst they have been, and people are evacuating as we speak. the fire fighters are preparing as best they can.

This isn’t just about people losing their homes; people have died and will die, countless animals have already lost their lives and many more will still perish. our land, our lives, and our hope is up in flames and will soon be nothing but ash. the annual fire season has not even begun yet. this is only the beginning. my native land is burning, and there is nothing i can do to stop it.

the government refuses to acknowledge that we are in a climate crisis. the fires have never been this bad. we have been in severe drought for more than a year which has only contributed to the force of these fires. the Prime Minister Scott Morrison has done nothing but send his “thoughts and prayers”. He will not accept aid from other countries because he is too egotistical to admit that we need it. All the while the people of this land are suffering. Climate change needs radical human change to be combated. we are already seeing the results of years of indifference, and this is barely the beginning of something that will only get worse the longer government’s and big companies refuse to act to counteract climate change.

Our government has also cut funding to Fire and Rescue NSW by 35.4%, the Rural Fire Service by 75.2%, and QLD Rural Fire Service by 26.42%, resulting in closures of services; they don’t have the resources to cope. We are fighting a losing battle against the results of climate change.  and this is only the beginning.

So I've probably mentioned that work has been kind of a shit show over the past few months. Some of it was just timing and schedule juggling but there's more stuff that happened since then and someone (not me) went public with this shit, so I'm gonna share it here. Please note that per minute equals per audio minute and not how long it takes to actual transcribe a thing. If you think I can caption a whole 60 minute file in 60 real time minutes, uh... No.

Here is a thread by someone way braver than I am, and more willing to toe the line of the NDA than I am. This is my only income so no, I can't see myself doing the thing.

And if you wanna see this all summed up in video form, here you go.

So yeah, I'm concerned. Transcription folks are working for like 4.50 an hour in some cases. I don't work on that side much because I prefer to caption. But a lot of changes have happened and I'm concerned for my fellow freelancers and what this means for the future.

Also, there are a lot more companies out there that use us than you probably think. Y'all have definitely seen my captions in the wild, though I can't tell you which ones are which, because of the NDA.

Anyways, there's a petition if you wanna sign it in solidarity with us.

Thanks for your support and reblogging this, if you can.

ive waited all year to be able to reblog this

Spooktober in VRChat

I honestly hope Mauga’s “Tourist” gimmick is a thing that goes beyond the “What You Left Behind” story. I thought it was the most charming thing when he was looking at a tourist guidebook for the mansion they were about to storm. Like once he gets introduced he gets a little “snapshot, snapshot, selfie”  or a “Check guidebook” emote or a setup line in Lijiang that’s like “It’s not too late to hit up one of the vendors right?” It would be such a good sense of dark humor that the guy who is fully willing to enjoy the space he’s in is well aware it may be in flames due to Talon within the hour. I mean one of my favorite things about Overwatch is that it’s a globetrotting story with unique maps all over the world, so it would be fun if you had a character who appreciated that too, and it would be a darkly funny twist if it were an antagonist.

if Mauga and Sombra aren’t buddies I’m gonna riot!!

BOYFRIENDS ❤️

Tell em

DIRECTORY OF CRIMINAL SYSTEM BAIL FUNDS

National organizations funding bail across the U.S.

Local organizations funding bail for immigrants

Arizona Tucson Second Chance Bail Fund Colorado Colorado Freedom Fund California Bay Area Immigration Bond Fund Immigrant Families Defense Fund The Orange County Justice Fund Connecticut Connecticut Bail Fund Immigrant Bail Fund Florida LGBTQ Freedom Fund Hawaii Hawaii Community Bail Fund Illinois Champaign County Bailout Coalition Chicago Community Bond Fund Iowa Eastern Iowa Community Bond Project Kentucky Louisville Community Bail Fund Louisiana New Orleans Safety & Freedom Fund YWCA Greater Baton Rouge Community Bail Fund Massachusetts Massachusetts Bail Fund Minnesota Minnesota Freedom Fund Nebraska Omaha Freedom Fund Nevada Vegas Freedom Fund New York City Bronx Freedom Fund Brooklyn Community Bail Fund Lorena Borjas Community Fund WSLS Bail Fund New York State Columbia County Bail Fund EOC of Suffolk Inc. Charitable Bail Fund OAR of Tompkins County Bail Fund Syracuse Jail Ministry North Carolina Southern Coalition for Social Justice Bail Fund Alamance County Community Bail Fund North Carolina Community Bail Fund of Durham Oregon Portland Freedom Fund Pennsylvania Dauphin County Bail Fund Philadelphia Community Bail Fund Philadelphia Bail Fund Tennessee Hamilton County Community Bail Fund Memphis Community Bail Fund Nashville Community Bail Fund Texas Detained Migrant Solidarity Committee Fianza Fund Community Bail Fund of North Texas Virginia Richmond Community Bail Fund Roanoke Community Bail Fund Charlottesville Community Resilience Fund Washington Northwest Community Bail Fund Wisconsin Free the 350 Bail Fund

DIRECTORY OF IMMIGRATION BOND FUNDS National organizations across the U.S.

Arizona Pima Monthly Meeting Immigration Bond Fund California Bay Area Immigration Bond Fund Immigrant Families Defense Fund Orange County Justice Fund San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium – Borderlands Get Free Fund Colorado Immigrant Freedom Fund of Colorado Connecticut Immigrant Bail Fund Iowa Eastern Iowa Community Bond Project Massachusetts Beyond Bail & Legal Defense Fund Michigan Kent County Immigration Bond for Our Neighbor’s Defense Fund Minnesota Minnesota Freedom Fund New Hampshire NH Conference UCC Immigrant and Refugee Support Group New York LIFE Bond Fund (New Sanctuary Coalition)New York Immigrant Freedom Fund Ohio (includes Northern Kentucky) 3R Fund for Immigrants Texas Fronterizo Fianza Fund Hutto Community Deportation Defense & Bond Fund RAICES Texas Bond Fund Vermont Vermont Freedom Bail Fund  Virginia Cville Immigrant Bond Fund Washington Fair Fight Immigrant Bond Fund

Sanders and AOC team up for an anti-loansharking bill that will replace payday lenders with post-office banking

Yesterday, Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez jointly introduced The Loan Shark Prevention Act, which will cap credit card interest rates at 15% (and closes the loopholes that lets credit card issuers exceed their stated APRs with the use of hidden fees) and which re-establishes American post-office banking.

Critics of the bill say that it will put the payday lending industry out of business and that this will harm poor people, who struggle to get credit elsewhere. It’s a position that has been carefully cultivated by the wildly profitable predatory lending industry, who spent lavishly on academic research to support the position, then used bots to flood regulatory proceedings that might have produced evidence to counter it. This has allowed for a modern return of usury, targeting the poorest and most desperate Americans, with out-and-out swindles going unpunished (naturally, Trump has dismantled any protections victims of the debt industry might have sought).

But capping interest rates at 15% won’t just benefit the desperate and poor. Today, banks charge an average of 17% on their loans, but – thanks to generous federal monetary policies and low fed interest rates – they only pay 2.5% to access capital. That massive spread means that banks are guaranteed massive profits – at taxpayer expense, and with taxpayers pickup up the pieces when the banks’ usury destroys Americans’ lives.

America does have a problem with underserved and underbanked poor households, and this has indeed created a thriving alternative finance industry to serve these peopel. Underserved households with annual incomes of $25,000 are spending an average of 9.5% of their annual income ($2,412)/year on finance costs – a sum equal to the average family’s grocery bill.

But the reason these people can’t get traditional loans is that they’re bad credit risks, and the reason they’re bad credit risks is that they’re grossly underpaid and literally can’t survive on the money they earn, so they have to borrom just to keep from being evicted or starving. There’s no reason that people working full time jobs should be in debt traps: after all, corporate profits are commanding an all-time high proportion of US GDP, meaning that companies have lots of excess profits they could be transfering to their workers through higher profits. If your business is profitable because its workforce is desperate enough to accept sub-starvation wages, then your business isn’t profitable, it’s an indirect welfare recipient, receiving a public subsidy in the form of housing and food benefits, and socialized bankruptcy costs that are inflicted on the whole of society.

Meanwhile, the Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez bill has an alternative to both traditional and subprime finance for poor people (and everyone else): post office banking, a feature in most advanced nations, and once a mainstay of American finance. Post office banks leverage the convenient locations and long hours of post offices across the country, offering services to the unbanked, and meanwhile shoring up the public mail service against the monopolists who are trying to abolish public postal services, like Fedex, UPS, and Amazon.

https://boingboing.net/2019/05/10/predators-vs-posties.html

So, the nonprofit I work for has a policy arm that has been fighting payday lenders for years. I’ve heard the most heartbreaking stories from our people working on the project, of the folks they’ve talked to who were victimized by the predatory lending industry - and I do not use the word victimized lightly. Our direct services arm also tries to reach underbanked populations and offer better alternatives thru our services but it’s slow going - there’s a big trust barrier we’re working against.

This is a huge, HUGE mechanism by which class-based oppression is maintained, people being thrown into dire straits by poverty wages then sucked in by predatory financial services companies and bled dry til they’re in utter financial ruin. And it’s hard to come back from that, once your credit is trashed - the only way to rebuild your credit is to take on debt and pay it off, but the only people who will lend to you at that point are the predatory types, keeping you further trapped in that cycle as they put you into impossible-to-maintain lending products so instead of fixing your credit, it gets worse.

So please, everyone, do everything we can to support this bill. The Orange Menace will veto it, of course, but there’s another election coming, and gods willing the Menace will be out of office and we’d stand a chance at actually getting this through then.

happy mother’s day to miss honey from matilda

my botany professor: cork is harvested from the tree Quercus suber, most commonly in spain and portugal. the cork comes from the thick outer bark the tree produces; harvests are very technical and have to be done by hand, because removing all the bark without harming the tree is very intuition-based and can’t be accomplished via machine. instead, teams of highly skilled workers are tasked with using axes to carefully harvest the bark. it grows back completely in 10-15 years, whereupon the next harvest can take place. the trees can live up to 200 years and can undergo over 10 harvests in their lifetimes 

me: hehee,,,…..the trees are nakey

nakey

give them their pants back