Living ~400lbr

so much rage for anyone who tells the story of the radium girls like “ohoho weren’t people in the 20s fucking stupid” and not like “corporate greed has always cost people’s lives and health”

History Lesson:

The Radium Girls were factory workers who painted glowing markers on watches. They pointed their paint brushes with their lips after being told do so and that it was safe for them to do so by their managers. The paint had radium in it to promote the glow.

Dentists became the first people aware of the medical complications happening amongst all the women working in this factory. Complaints of loose bones, teeth, ulcers, etc. began to circulate amongst the staff.

Eventually, the girls started to die. The first one’s jaw literally came off her skull before her death as a result of radiation poisoning.

Perhaps all of that you could say was “stupidity” on behalf of the workers and corporation.

But what came next wasn’t. The corporation, the U.S. Radium Corporation, originally called the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, lied to the public and said that their workers were dying from alternate causes such as syphilis. They continued to instruct their staff to work business as usual, perpetuating more deaths and illness amongst their staff so their product could continue to be made.

The Radium Corp offered to change the method of painting dials, but the alternative brushes slowed down work and they were paid by the dial. To continue earning the wages they needed, the girls were forced to continue to use the brushes that they had to wet with their mouths.

The girls eventually took the matter to court. They took it to court eight times because Radium Corp continued to appeal until 1939.

As a result of their win, which provided a settlement to each girl a lump sum, a yearly stipend, and medical expensed paid by the company, LABOR LAW changed to ensure that companies could be held accountable for not properly protecting their employees from disease. New health regulations and standards were put in place to keep workers safe and they stopped using the brushes after that point.

(I don’t have the data to say if there was a corresponding wage increase to factor for lost wages due to a slowing down after new regulations were made).

The point, though, is that this company willfully knew that its staff was geting sick and dying from the procedures they put in place, and lied to their staff and started a public smear campaign saying these women had sexually transmitted diseases instead.

That’s not on the “stupid” women, that’s corporate greed.

I’d also like to add that they were intentionally delaying the court case so there would be less girls left alive to be there. Even after they’re caught, they are still heartless shits. Don’t ever forget these poor women and the company that thought cycling through workers and leaving a trail of bodies was worth making more money at the top.

Every single company will continue to do shit like this for as long as they exist btw, this is the INTENDED behavior of capitalist enterprise. As long as there are managers, they will be coercing workers into damaging their health for productivity or just as a method of control.

I think maybe the most ironic part of the white supremacist “Muslims are taking over Europe, save European culture and its people!” rhetoric is that they’ve been saying it for the past 1,300 years. No exaggeration. This is something they’ve been fearmongering about since the 8th century.

Then they’ll complain about how historically inaccurate and woke it is that there are nonwhite characters in European period dramas like it is totally impossible for a North African man to be in England in the 13th century and we don’t have manuscripts of assholes complaining about it from back then.

and my personal favorite:

i love getting validation as a lefty but also learning about new fun ways it continues to suck

I have to squeeze my fucking wire crimpers with my RIGHT hand because if I don't everything has to be upside-down

OMG. Somebody said it out loud.

Disney is absolutely not the only studio doing this though.

It seems to have become standard practice across movies and series everywhere.

Anything that doesn't do it is like a breath of sunlight and fresh air inside a dank musty cave.

It's part of the 'fix it in post-production' epidemic sweeping through the studios. Fix it in post is often used as a time/money-saving measure - and is absolutely part of the same mess that the WGA is fighting against currently.

Rather than fixing things on-set - audio, lighting, something in-frame that shouldn't be, etc. (which is all handled by unionized crew) - they leave it for the CG folks (not unionized) to edit later.

(on ridiculously tight schedules that leave them scrambling, cutting corners, and working inhumane hours)

See also: that part where scripts aren't finished, because the studio won't fully staff the writers room, and won't pay to have writers on-set for day-of-filming script questions and fixes (which could resolve issues such as 'what kind of lighting do we need here?')

Anyway, all this shit we, as audiences, keep complaining about - bad lighting, bad sound, wonky visual effects, over-usage of not-great CGI, stilted acting on green-screen sets, scripts that seem not-quite-finished, costumes that look like they're cheap and flimsy, terrible hair and makeup, films and series that aren't as polished as they could be...

Plus the complaints we have about streaming services and their shenanigans...

All of that is enmeshed in the extreme capitalism that has taken over everything, including entertainment, to the point that studios are abusing their workforce and churning out material that - at best just doesn't live up to its potential - at worst, is just unwatchable shit.

it wasn't so awful, was it?

stills below ->

I don’t think you’re ready to have an adult conversation about politics until you’re able to admit that there are things you love and enjoy that would not and should not exist in a just world. $8 billion dollar budget movies every other month don’t exist in a just world. New 900 GB AAA video games every year don’t exist in a just world. Next day delivery doesn’t exist in a just world. 80 different soda brands don’t exist in a just world. 

All of those things come from exploitation on some level, and if you wouldn’t trade those for a world where everyone can eat and have a home no matter who they are or what they do, I don’t know what to tell you. 

Man, this post makes me feel conflicted, because on the one hand, of the things listed, next-day delivery is the only one that DOES actually exist in the world today. The others are exaggerations, and while I understand the point being made, they do detract from it.

I understand—and agree with—that sentiment of, “I want slower deliveries by drivers who are paid better,” as one recent tumblr post put it. I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to produce and consume less as a culture, and that an actual substantive conversation about politics should involve willingness to relinquish the many modern luxuries that are built on exploitation.

I don’t think these are good examples of those luxuries, though.

Large budget movies are possible because consumers (and investors) are willing to pay for them. A large budget is actually a necessary component in making sure workers are being adequately compensated; the fact that they currently are often exploited by studios is a result of deliberate misallocation of resources, not anything intrinsic to the size of the production. Same thing goes with high-quality video games. As for releasing a new film/game every month/year, that’s only unsustainable because there’s only a handful of monopolistic studios doing it. In a well-regulated industry that encourages growth and competition, we could see tens, if not hundreds of studios producing big-budget films and games. And, with a well-compensated and socially-supported citizenry, consumers would have enough disposable income to support it.

Similarly, the problem with soda isn’t that we have 80 brands; it’s that we have two. And those two brands each own 800 different labels. In a healthy economy, these monopolies would be dissolved, and we could support well over 80 moderately-sized independent beverage companies producing their own sodas.

Same-day delivery, again, could be easily supported with proper allocation of resources. Currently, we have huge centralized distributors like Amazon exploiting gig-workers with slave-wages to ferry cheap mass-produced crap to people, and that’s what makes it bad, not the speed at which they do it. If instead, we had something like a super-robust USPS, with well-compensated deliverypeople working reasonable hours within a decentralized network of independent-but-cooperative suppliers, there would be absolutely no reason why you couldn’t get something delivered to you from the distro ten miles down the road within a day.

When we critique capitalism, and they respond, “Yeah, well capitalism made the cell phone you’re using!” our response shouldn’t be, “Oh shit u right,” it should be, “No, capitalism made the cell phone I’m using break after a year so I’ll buy a new one, and they use slave labor to do it while they pocket the rest.”

There are luxuries, and there are artificially-valued, mass-produced, built-to-break trash that are marketed as luxuries. But we don’t solve the problems of fast-fashion by saying, “Welp I guess I shouldn’t wear clothes.”

yeah that’s a decent rebuttal imma reblog now

people don’t realize how much stuff you used to be able to get locally

nowadays I might pay for rush shipping on sewing supplies if I need them for a project deadline. 100 years ago, I could just go to a store and buy silk thread, a zillion different types of braid in different fibers, cut glass or steel buttons, a tailor’s ham for ironing, a needle board for ironing velvet, etc. there were entire stores just for ribbons, for faux foliage, for specialty sewing machine attachments, for individual varieties of fabric. and most of it was locally produced

especially since I live in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. if you told someone in 1924 that I couldn’t find any newly-made glass buttons for sale in a city the size of BOSTON, they’d look at you like you were insane. doubly so if you told them that buttons, period, could only be purchased at like three stores in the area, from maybe two different brands

today I go to the craft store and it’s. one brand of polyester thread. maybe seven colors of cotton thread, all dull or dark. one size and brand of snaps. one size and brand and type of ironing board. plastic buttons (MAYBE a few cards of wood or metal). flat polyester ribbon trim in a few sizes and colors. and that’s pretty much it

you didn’t NEED next-day shipping as much even as recently as 60-70 years ago, because more things were manufactured and sold closer to you

This is the only tiktok you’ll ever need, I’ve made about 13 of these and I’m not stopping anytime soon

I’m reblogging again because I did it myself and added pictures for those who have trouble learning from the video.

First take a standard rectangular piece of paper (I used one from a small notebook which I ripped out then cut the holes off)

Then fold in half touching the shorter side to the opposite shorter side.

Fold again making the new shorter side touch the other new shorter side

I did this one more time, but this time I unfolded it right after to get back to where it was only folded twice. It should have left a crease in the paper.

Using this crease, fold the corners up alongside it to look like this

This are also going to be unfolded, but this time you’re going to push in alongside the triangular folds you just made and undid.

Doing this once will result in this

Hold tight because tumblr won’t let me add more pictures. I’ll reblog will the rest of the instructions

Continuing on,

Do the other side of you haven’t already to get this

You’ll open these newly created flap to change which parts are touching

Leaving you with this

Then you start pulling the top “tabs” down

Do both sides to get the final folded form

Decorate as desired.

Hope this helps!

Ratio for the rectangle size is 2:3

So 6 cm by 9cm

I uh, lost an evening:

Thanatos knows that I hecking love cute origami, and moths, so really, what was I supposed to do, scroll past and not take the opportunity to make butterfly and moth page markers???

Homeland Security Admits It Tried to Manufacture Fake Terrorists for Trump

A new Homeland Security report details orders to connect protesters arrested in Portland to one another in service of the Trump's imaginary antifa plot.

The Department of Homeland Security launched a failed operation that ensnared hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. protesters in what new documents show was as a sweeping, power-hungry effort before the 2020 election to bolster President Donald Trump’s spurious claims about a “terrorist organization” he accused his Democratic rivals of supporting.

An internal investigative report, made public this month by Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, details the findings of DHS lawyers concerning a previously undisclosed effort by Trump’s acting secretary of homeland security, Chad Wolf, to amass secret dossiers on Americans in Portland attending anti-racism protests in summer 2020 sparked by the police murder of Minneapolis father George Floyd.

@riotbard @socialistexan @ubernegro

I can barely contain myself right now

holy shit

HOLY SHIT

holy CRAP.

Artists, creators, students, and researchers of all types, take note:

Digitized photos and text. 2D and 3D object renders. Music and other sound files. Videos. Research datasets. Collections metadata.

On a Creative Commons Zero license: Take what you want. Use it. No permission or attribution required. Yes, even for commercial use.

There is a lot wrong with the world at the moment, but the Smithsonian… the Smithsonian is right.

The archive includes fashion images!

I have some big news!

Today was my last day at King Features.

I was offered a choice between a very reduced role and a severance package, and I took it as a sign that the universe is telling me to try new things! I have been there for 16 years!

I’ll be available for new opportunities for 2025.

Just some highlights of the past 16 years:

Working as a comic editor with beloved humor, action-adventure, and soap opera comics

Writing and editing brand and character bibles for properties with over 100 years of history

Managing a roster of close to 100 comic writers and artists

Revamping classic characters for a contemporary audience

Overseeing all stages of content approvals for an international licensed book program

Developing entertainment pitch resources for beloved comic characters

Managing social media accounts for character brands

Building custom websites either from scratch or on Wordpress

Managing an active submissions and acquisitions program

Writing about comic art & history

Writing marketing copy for characters and comics

Some things I’ve only done a little of but would love to do more of, and things I haven’t done but would love to try:

Fiction writing

Comic writing

Game writing

Developing new stories and characters from the ground up

You can find my resume and writing samples at http://www.teaberryblue.com

If you know of someone who needs someone like me, tell them to get in touch!

i do not know who else needs to hear this aside from just me but i am writing it down because it helps:

there is no weight limit for liking your body.

there is no rule that says if you’re over a certain bmi you have to hate yourself. you’re not required to think you’re ugly if you’re not skinny, and you’re not required to want to lose weight.

you are allowed to not want to be thin.

this world we live in tells us that we should only like thin bodies and therefore should only like ourselves if we are thin. but your body is yours, and nobody should get to tell you what to think about it.

give yourself permission to love it.

It pisses me the fuck off that yoga is actually ancient and really good for you. Part of me still feels like it was invented to extract wealth from white socal moms.

I hate New age shit so much I actually get kinda mad when cleaning my room and drinking water actually improves my mood.

Like what do you mean moderate exercise and disciplined self respect actually improve my life. Cut the bullshit and invent cigarettes that are good for me already.