soymikki

[soymikki]

wow. Who am I anymore

[soymikki]

If you can eat and drink, sleep in a bed, read these words, and have a bank account—you have the power to help. Don’t stay silent. Do something for Gaza today.

The Sameer Project

Dahnoun Mutual Aid

Mona's Initiative

Hussein Team

Water is Life Gaza

[soymikki]

The local population in countries that export bananas typically eat different varieties grown primarily by small farmers. The ones for the Americans and the Europeans, Cavendish variety bananas, are grown in huge, monoculture plantations that are susceptible to disease. The banana industry consumes more agrichemicals than any other in the world, asides from cotton. Most plantations will spend more on pesticides than on wages. Pesticides are sprayed by plane, 85% of which does not land on the bananas and instead lands on the homes of workers in the surrounding area and seeps into the groundwater. The results are cancers, stillbirths, and dead rivers.

The supermarkets dominate the banana trade and force the price of bananas down. Plantations resolve this issue by intensifying and degrading working conditions. Banana workers will work for up to 14 hours a day in tropical heat, without overtime pay, for 6 days a week. Their wages will not cover their cost of housing, food, and education for their children. On most plantations independent trade unions are, of course, suppressed. Contracts are insecure, or workers are hired through intermediaries, and troublemakers are not invited back.

Who benefits most from this arrangement? The export value of bananas is worth $8bn - the retail value of these bananas is worth $25bn. Here’s a breakdown of who gets what from the sale of banana in the EU.

On average, the banana workers get between 5 and 9% of the total value, while the retailers capture between 36 to 43% of the value. So if you got a bunch of bananas at Tesco (the majority of UK bananas come from Costa Rica) for 95p, 6.65p would go to the banana workers, and 38p would go to Tesco.

Furthermore, when it comes to calculating a country’s GDP (the total sum of the value of economic activity going on in a country, which is used to measure how rich or poor a country is, how fast its economy is ‘growing’ and therefore how valuable their currency is on the world market, how valuable its government bonds, its claim on resources internationally…etc), the worker wages, production, export numbers count towards the country producing the banana, while retail, ripening, tariffs, and shipping & import will count towards the importing country. A country like Costa Rica will participate has to participate in this arrangement as it needs ‘hard’ (i.e. Western) currencies in order to import essential commodities on the world market.

So for the example above of a bunch of Costa Rican bananas sold in a UK supermarket, 20.7p will be added to Costa Rica’s GDP while 74.3p will be added to the UK’s GDP. Therefore, the consumption of a banana in the UK will add more to the UK’s wealth than growing it will to Costa Rica’s. The same holds for Bangladeshi t-shirts, iPhones assembled in China, chocolate made with cocoa from Ghana…it’s the heart of how the capitalism of the ‘developed’ economy functions. Never ending consumption to fuel the appearance of wealth, fuelled by the exploitation of both land and people in the global south.

[soymikki]

[soymikki]

I dunno who this guy is

[soymikki]

I dunno who this guy is

[soymikki]

Whatever, Go my [Tennas]

[soymikki]

This is [[stoopid]]

[soymikki]

Keep a [little momento] to stare at Longingly[[HATEFULLY!!!]]when you're [Down in the [[Dump]]

[soymikki]

Laughing bout [[Nothing at all]]

[soymikki]

words of affirmation

[soymikki]

things I would do if you're a nsfw/kink creative now because I've been eerily prescient about every single wave:

a) get a personal site with your own domain you own. now. not a carrd or third party squarespace. not next week. now. get it online with ugly-ass html but get your links there.

b) if you have the money: join one or multiple of eff.org / cbldf.org / freespeechcoalition.com

partly because they're actively fighting this, partly because they have members-only Lawyers You Might Need. Hint. Hint. Canary.

c) Write Down Those Lawyer Contact Numbers in meatspace. phone number of a real human being especially on paper, On You.

I have been in contact with lawyers for a few months now as my doujin circle knows. this should be telling you Many Things.

d) www.ecrater.com is where i'm going to be tentatively testing a shop because i like the fact you can *not* have payment processes and order digital/physical products via purely mail order.

(... be prepared for this to fall through too in the next 1-6 months.)

e) friends and followers of nsfw artists who earn most of their income through it: now's the time to support them. they're going to need the grace and financial flexibility especially mental health wise. domain/shop transfer/refund/therapy bills ain't free.

check in on them, and often.

f) get a VPN, use it daily to acclimatize, have them on your hard drive, several VPN's preferable. this is for the age verification laws coming. Start reading up on secure, privacy-focused infrastructure (prioritize email > website > shop in that order).

eff.org has a *ton* of resources.

g) prepare for discord and tumblr to be hit in the next wave. have alternatives *and actively start using them* if they're mission critical platforms for you.

I've played with matrix though I quite fancy IRC. if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I say these things not to fearmonger but to give yourself the maximum amount of time to prepare. the pendulum *will* swing back. it did with the 80's moral panic. it will for this too.

you just have to outlast the bastards.

[soymikki]

Damn… better than me

[soymikki]

[DELTARUNE]

On the topic of noses....(commisions are open btw...for no particular reasons haaha)

+ Bonus:

[soymikki]

100% fake

[soymikki]

Chris Smalls is finally released.

[soymikki]