Wow.

You should really listen to the WHOLE thing because this woman does not mince words

Palestinian artist Asmaa Aljueithni shares a photo of the only thing that survived the airstrike that left her Gaza home in ruins: one of her paintings.

austin w

To The Person Who Walked Past The Window - Jordan Bolton

My first book ‘Blue Sky Through the Window of a Moving Car’ is now available to pre-order! Get it here - https://smarturl.it/BlueSky

Maybe this is the wrong platform to pose this question given the average tumblr user but

Is it just me or did our generation (those of is who are currently 20-30 ish) just not get the opportunity to be young in the 'standard' sense?

Like, everyone I talk to who's over 40 has all their wild stories about their teens and 20s, being young and dumb, and then I talk to my friends and coworkers and classmates, and we just... dont.

My mom tells stories of skipping school to sneak across the border and spend the day at a bar in Mexico. I was threatened with not being allowed to graduate because of senior ditch day. One of my friends had to go to his first hour class on senior ditch day because the teacher, who almost exclusively taught seniors, arranged a huge exam that day with no available makeup days, specifically to punish kids who took part in ditch day. Our wild and crazy ditch day was playing mini golf and then stopping for ice cream on our way back to one of our friends' houses to play cards against humanity.

Don't get me wrong, we had fun. But all of that, threats of not graduating, threats of failing classes over a single test, over some mini golf and ice cream?

Throughout high school and early in college, my friend group got kicked out of malls, stores, and even a parking lot just for being there wrong. Not being loud of disruptive. Not causing problems. Just being there too long, or without buying anything.

My mom graduated high school, after repeating her senior year, without a single grade above a D, and was offered a full ride scholarship to a state university to play on their women's football team. I had a 3.8 GPA, multiple extracurriculars, a summer job, and over 100 hours of volunteer work, and barely got into that same university, and then couldn't afford to go there anyway.

We've made getting into college so important and yet so difficult that kids are sacrificing their childhoods for it.

Then they become adults and it doesn't go away. Your employer/ potential employers are searching your social media and internet presence so you'd better hope no one has ever posted a picture of you at a party, or with alcohol, or wearing revealing clothes, or whatever else they've deemed unprofessional. And if you want to go out it's a 10 dollar cover and drinks are at least 8 dollars, and you need to tip if there's any kind of live entertainment, who can afford to do all that regularly?

My physical therapist, when I was 18, told me about his 21st birthday, how the last thing he remembers is people taking body shots off him. I spent my 21st birthday alone, was in bed by 10pm because I had to be at work the next morning. My boss had already told me that they knew it was my 21st, and if I called out, she'd write me up for improper use of sick leave because you're not allowed to use sick leave for a hangover. I don't know anyone whose 21st birthday was a big deal. No one went out and partied for it.

I dont really know where I'm going with all of this. I guess I just don't understand the point of it all. We spend our youth working hard to provide a future that we still can't afford. We have to be responsible and professional as teenagers. And we get nothing out of it. We can't afford life or friends or fun. At least our parents got to have fun being young and dumb, we just got groomed on kik.

So I'm not the only one noticing this. I wish I had an answer or at least something to say about it. But I dont. I'm just tired.

Original report (waybacked PDF) is from 2007. That's Gen Z kids.

When I, Gen-Xer, was about 12 - in my rural home, I had about a three-mile range. (Could've pushed it to more, but didn't want to walk that far.) In the city, it was about a mile. Not that anyone was checking; again, that was about the distance I wanted to walk, and besides, that covered all of "downtown."

My kids? Closer to that 300 yards limit at the same age. Not because I wanted to restrict them, but we live next to a freeway on-ramp and between two sets of train tracks... and there is absolutely nothing kid-friendly within a half-mile for them to visit.

I spent my 21st birthday bar-hopping. My kids spent their 21st birthdays at home with a nice meal. I don't think either of them wanted to go bar-hopping - but yeah, as a society, we've removed a LOT of teen-friendly options.

See also: End of Third Places, switch from video game arcades to home consoles (hey, then every kid has to buy their own copy--great for game-makers!), shutdown of malls or restrictions on youth at them, closure of public parks, reduced/removed after-school programs, etc. Plus the places that think it's illegal for a 12-year-old to walk to the corner store unsupervised.

I am, however, DELIGHTED to hear that the booze & other vices industries are panicking over Gen Z not going out to party. Like, you spent 30-odd years removing all the places and ways people can hang out together and have fun outside of someone's personal house, and... guess what, when people hit milestone events (graduation, milestone birthdays, job promotion, whatever), they don't immediately flock to the Party Zone that they have never been welcome at. How shocking.

It sucks that Gen Z does not get to party, does not have good celebration options. REALLY sucks that that's often because school or job has decided to tell them not to celebrate, rather than just not having places to go. I'm just not upset over party capitalism taking a hit.

Legalizing sex work isn't the answer to safer sex work, decriminalization is.

Legalization means corporate interests over workers every time. Legalization means bosses raking in mountains of cash while workers make a dime. Decrim means we can do our work without being legally impacted and without businesses popping up like fucking weed dispos in Albuquerque with set rates that our bosses would choose in the case of legalization

Which, again, the problem isn't sex, the problem is work culture in late stage capitalism.

The real way to "save" sex workers is to save all workers from poverty. All humans. All people forced to work in order to put food in their mouths. Which is most humans. Most people will live treated like animals on the streets if they refuse to work. If you erase sex from the human experience entirely, work still exists. People still starve. People still die in harsh weather from being unhoused. People still die from police violence. The problem was never sex and legal industries kill every day. This will never stop until the system is radically changed. Pretending sex is the problem is a wonderful distraction and the sex work industry makes a great fall guy in a "sex is bad and your body is property that you can't do what you want with" society

The idea that "many whores can never leave" being part of the tragedy of being a whore is a twisted narrative, one that people assume means whores can't stop whoring bc they're forced by another human to whore. In reality, if we've whored, we can't get hired in many "legal" industries because of the narrative set up against us, and many of us find "legal" work much less easy to survive than whoring. It's easier for a lot of us to make $200 in an hour with every risk that comes with that (violence from authorities is a bigger concern than violence from a client) than it is to go legally work for someone tearing our bodies apart for $10/hr to do repetitive nonsexual labor.

Legalization kills. Decriminalization is what we need. And the destruction of the capitalist machine entirely. And for people in customer service to actually realize that they're worse off than most whores, genuinely. The idea of the abused whore is a fun tale but is no more common than any other abused worker. Physical violence as a sex worker isn't worse than having a robotic arm impale you at a factory for $11.50/hr and then have all your bosses threaten to destroy you if you sue. It just fucking isn't.

And if you've never worked a job that was degrading, humiliating, physically abusive, or emotionally ruining without doing sex work, you have immense privilege and need to keep your mouth GLUED SHUT. It is not worse to be stalked as a whore than it is to be stalked as a cashier. It just fucking isn't.

Please watch this.

Shit, I’ve only seen stills of this.

the photoset really didn’t do this scene justice im yelling

this is one of those rare cases where the dub adds deliciousness to the source material

Honestly him pouring out all his pencils onto the desk and looking at the guy expectantly was actually such a power move

"The unit voted UNANIMOUSLY - with 100% participation - to authorize a strike if management does not reach a fair new contract before their current agreement expires this Friday, April 19."

dunken.mp4

Official Post of Massachusetts

I read somewhere, and believe it, that inkjet printers work on the modified Gillette razor principal: sell the initial product cheap and profit by selling the always-needed refill that keeps it working.

Except that - and here's where "modified" comes in - while safety razors will take any blade of the correct shape, printers can be DRM-chipped (looking at you, HP) to ignore anything but the manufacturer's own refills. Those can then be priced as that manufacturer pleases, and discount sources can do only so much to ease the sting.

They can also be chipped to stop working when one colour runs low, no matter the state of the others. (Looking at you again, HP). This can be annoying enough with individual colour cartridges; it's bloody infuriating if the four colours are in a single unit that has to be replaced en bloc before the damned thing starts working again.

We had one of those (guess what brand) and it didn't take much simple arithmetic to realise that it would take very few refills before we reached the price of a more expensive but much better device.

So we sold the HP and got a Brother mono laser 3-function for heavy work, and a cheap-ish Canon colour inkjet 3-function for everything else.

*****

Best move ever.

It cost about €130 more than a printer-only inkjet, was bought in April 2018, is only on its second toner cartridge (generic, not branded), works reliably on the house network and so can print from any device from PC to phone.

*****

For colour work @dduane has that non-network Canon, which continues to print well when required - cross fingers, spin three times and spit to foil the gremlins - probably because its 4 x individual-colour (we made sure of that) cartridge consumption is more balanced by doing only colour printing rather than heavy black-only use for docs.

*****

The Brother we got was DCP-L2530DW...

...which may be available at discount since it's been discontinued and replaced by DCP-L2660DW...

...though IMO this other current model, DCP-L2620DW...

...is better for home use.

The specs suggest it's a more direct replacement for our device, and that flat top is far less intrusive than the angled feed hopper (which also prevents use as, inevitably, a part-time shelf).

DD's Canon is Pixma MG2550S...

...and AFAIK is still current.

This info is provided for reference; we're not shilling for Brother or Canon, just passing on satisfied-customer opinions, so all of the above is IMO and YMMV

:->

Humans have finally managed to land on Mars, only to find a locked safe buried in the Martian soil. The key is apparently on Earth, but no one knows where.

The galactic council watched on to see how humanity would handle the task, much as they had with several species before. What the test was supposed to show was whether or not a species of violent nature could ever be brought to work together. They finally picked something up, another ship already headed to Mars? Was it possible humans were that clever to have found the key, maybe it was more specialists and equipment to analyze the locked crate to ensure it was safe to open. A few minutes after landing, they got another broadcast from the red planet.

“This is the LockPickingLawyer and today I’ve got something quite special, this locked alien chest. First of all I have to thank everyone who recommended me for the job, I’m honored that you all thought of me. Now let’s get to work”

The council representatives were confused as they started analyzing the translation, before even getting through the name he spoke something haunting

“Normally I don’t say things like this but this lock is quite unique, however with no security pins it will still be quite quick.”

“There we go, a click on 3… “

All the species of the galactic council sat dumbfounded, they spent many galactic cycles refining and perfecting their study and in all their time not a singular race had tried this method. Click after click, even in such an intricate lock the human had only spent around five minutes tampering with it.

“There we go, now while I can’t open this as part of my video I can say that I at least have a clue what the key should look like in case it ever gets locked again. I admire the design choices and the fact that at least it was harder to get open than anything Master Lock has made”

we are the “oh, I know a guy” teamwork species

[Image description: a screenshot of tumblr tags reading

#tumblr fiction # THAT’S THE THING THO #humans are a team effort species #but we’re a team effort species THROUGH individual specialized roles! #you don’t all try to go hunt the elephant! #you have a handful of dudes who are experts in hunting elephant! #and they do it!]

We are the “oh I know a guy!” teamwork species!

That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out how to say about adulting. Adulting isn’t about knowing how to handle every situation. Adulting is about knowing who knows how to handle any given situation, and how to contact them. No one knows all the things; the adultiest of adults still has places where they don’t have a damn clue — they just call another person who’s adultier in that area than they are.

I vote we stop calling it inflation at all. Seize the language. It's price gouging, not inflation. Inflation is a nebulous concept that invokes feeling of being too complex for the layman, a struggle as old as economy itself against a beast no one has ever truly slain.

Price gouging is the truth of it. And it makes it very clear who is to blame, and what must be done to end it.

Can confirm this works wonders. Australia is in a cost of living crisis rn and the two major supermarkets are a big part of it, as they pretty much have a duopoly on not just the grocery shopping market, but a bunch of others considered to be essential (things like fuel). They are trying to blame their price rises on inflation, but the media recently started reporting it as price gouging (which it is), and it got the average person pretty worked up, better than blaming inflation did.

You come to my post and try to out-perform me.

Update: Eid Celebration!

For Eid, Hussam hired some entertainers and bought some chocolate, biscuits, and flavored milk to put into a goodie bag to help bring a bit of joy to Rafah camp children.

He managed to put together 200 goodie bags for the kids, which you can see being put together in the video! After that, they gathered all the children to enjoy a celebration with music and dancing while also hiring entertainers to help them out.

The kids loved it! Thanks to your donations, you helped put a smile on these children’s faces, yet again!

[ID: First part of video is of people putting together goodie bags. Second part is various shots of the Eid celebration while they sing songs and a clown helps entertain the kids. At the end they distribute the goodie bags.]

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