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you! tumblr user!

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can you reblog a two-part post in the correct order?

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Pokémon have gotten loose on Tumblr again!

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my brother had a brilliant idea that i wanted to share with other people who have four-legged family members: he trained our two cats to go directly to the door when they hear the fire alarm.

obviously at first the fire alarm sent them scrambling for cover, but he started slowly by giving them treats whenever it went off, when someone burned food or forgot to open the fireplace flu. he then progressed to calling them to the door to offer treats immediately after the alarm went off. and it actually wasn't too long before the cats voluntarily started going to the door upon hearing the alarm.

i think this was genius because in the event of a real emergency we know exactly where the cats will be and we will not have to waste precious time trying to find them to rescue them. i think this method would work equally well with dogs and probably other free-roaming pets such as rabbits, ferrets, etc. and i certainly encourage others to give it a shot!

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Worker solidarity.

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whats this guy doin

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And write physical letters to your elected representatives. It may seem outdated, but it gets more attention. Trans allies in Scotland need to let their MSPs know that they disapprove of the proposed “freedom of speech” amendment to the Hate Crimes bill. It’s literally an amendment that does nothing but allow “criticism of transgender identity”. It’s literally a clause in a hate crimes bill to allow hate speech against trans people specifically.

( thread link )

link to the fund: https://www.gendergp.com/the-gendergp-fund/

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Disney stiffs writer

Alan Dean Foster is an sf legend - a writer who produced a shelf of original novels but also made a reputation novelizing movies and TV from Star Wars to Aliens, turning out books that transcended quickie adaptations, becoming beloved bestsellers in their own right.

Disney now owns a bunch of these books, thanks to their acquisitions of Lucas and Fox, and these books continue to sell briskly. Disney not only isn’t paying Foster any royalties for these books - they’re refusing to even issue him royalty statements.

https://www.sfwa.org/2020/11/18/disney-must-pay/

Disney has blackholed Foster’s agents and lawyers, and also the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA); to the extent that they have communicated with him, they have espoused a radical (jaw dropping) copyright theory.

This is Disney’s theory: When they bought Lucas and Fox, they acquired the copyright licenses that enabled them to sell the Foster’s books - but not the liability, the legal obligation to pay him for his books.

As SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal says, this theory could absolutely upend the nature of copyright itself. Any publisher that wanted to go on making money from an author without paying them could simply sell the rights to a sister company, which then denies any obligations.

Foster brought his case to SFWA’s grievance committee - a group that has worked on my behalf in the past, extracting a fee from a multinational publisher that commissioned and accepted a story from me but then offered an odious and unacceptable contract they refused to amend.

Usually griefcom work happens in the background: a SFWA member goes to griefcom, griefcom goes to the publisher, the publisher settles. This is the first time in more than a decade that SFWA has gone public with a complaint.

To be fair, Disney DID offer to meet with Foster, but demanded that he sign an NDA PRIOR to any negotiation. This is Not Normal. Sometimes the OUTCOME of a negotiation is confidential, but you don’t go into a negotiation under NDA.

Disney appears to be taking a page from the private equity fund that acquired Taylor Swift’s masters from the cartoonish villain Scooter Braun, who refused to meet with her without an NDA.

https://twitter.com/taylorswift13/status/1328471874318311425

Foster’s case is a gross injustice. He has cancer and his wife is ill. He wrote these books, Disney bought them. They’re making money from them. They owe him money. Period.

But beyond the individual injustice being visited upon Foster, Kowal and SFWA worry that this represents a suite of new, corporate anti-writer tactics: flipping assets without liabilities, refusing to talk about it without an NDA.

You can follow Foster’s case with the #DisneyMustPay hashtag. If you’re a writer facing similar tactics (even if you’re not a SFWA member), they’re seeking your story, via this form:

https://airtable.com/shrr2S8rs4pcokske

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The Outbursts of Everett True was a comic strip that ran in papers from 1905 to 1927, wherein the aforementioned Everett True regularly beat the everliving shit out of rude people as a warning to anyone else who might consider being rude. Men have not only been taking up too much room on public transport for about as long as public transport has existed, but the people around them have been irritated about it for at least a hundred years. The next time someone tries to claim that manspreading is a false phenomenon, please direct them to this strip so that Everett True can correct their misconceptions with an umbrella upside the head.

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