#4 channel

[pgoeltz]

[setaflow]

Gay pride happens in June and gay wrath happens whenever hbomberguy drops a 3+ hour video essay about a specific topic

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon" energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss

Today (Oct 20), I'm in Charleston, WV at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

For a brief time this year, the bestselling "bitter lemon drink" on Amazon was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by Catfish UK prankster Oobah Butler in a stunt for a new Channel 4 doc, "The Great Amazon Heist":

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist

Collecting driver piss is surprisingly easy. Amazon, you see, puts its drivers on a quota that makes it impossible for them to drive safely, park conscientiously, or, indeed, fulfill their basic human biological needs. Amazon has long waged war on its employees' kidneys, marking down warehouse workers for "time off task" when they visit the toilets.

As tales of drivers pissing – and shitting! – in their vans multiplied, Amazon took decisive action. The company enacted a strict zero tolerance policy for drivers returning to the depot with bottles of piss in their vans.

That's where Butler comes in: the roads leading to Amazon delivery depots are lined with bottles of piss thrown out of delivery vans by drivers who don't want to lose their jobs, which made harvesting the raw material for "Release Energy" a straightforward matter.

Butler was worried that he wouldn't be able to list his product on Amazon because he didn't have the requisite "food and drinks licensing" certificates, so he listed his drink in Amazon's refillable pump dispenser category. But Amazon's systems detected the mismatch and automatically shifted the product into the drinks section.

Butler enlisted some confederates to place orders for his drink, and it quickly rocketed to the top of Amazon's listings for the category, which led to Amazon's recommendation engine pushing the item on people who weren't in on the gag. When these orders came in, Butler pulled the plug, but not before an Amazon rep telephoned him to pitch him turning packaging, shipping and fulfillment over to Amazon:

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-let-its-drivers-urine-be-sold-as-an-energy-drink/

The Release Energy prank was just one stunt Butler pulled for his doc; he also went undercover at an Amazon warehouse, during a period when Amazon hired an extra 1,000 workers for its warehouses in Coventry, UK, in a successful bid to dilute pro-union sentiment in his workforce in advance of a key union vote:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-great-amazon-heist-oobah-butler-review

Butler's stint as an Amazon warehouse worker only lasted a couple of days, ending when Amazon recognized him and fired him.

The contrast between Amazon's ability to detect an undercover reporter and its inability to spot bottles of piss being marketed as bitter lemon energy drink says it all, really. Corporations like Amazon hire vast armies of "threat intelligence" creeps who LARP at being CIA superspies, subjecting employees and activists to intense and often illegal surveillance.

But while Amazon's defensive might is laser-focused on the threat of labor organizers and documentarians, the company can't figure out that one of its bestselling products is bottles of its tormented drivers' own urine.

In the USA, the FTC is suing Amazon for its monopolistic tactics, arguing that the company has found ways to raise prices and reduce quality by trapping manufacturers and sellers with its logistics operation, taking $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar they earn and forcing them to raise prices at all retailers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The Release Energy stunt shows where Amazon's priorities are. Not only did Release Energy get listed on Amazon without any quality checks, the company actually nudged it into a category where it was more likely to be consumed by a person. The only notice the company took of Release Energy was in its logistics and manufacturing department – the part of the business that extracts the monopoly rents at issue in the FTC case – which tracked Butler down in order to sell him these services.

The drivers whose piss Butler collected don't work directly for Amazon, they work for a Delivery Service Partner. These DSPs are victims of a pyramid scheme that Amazon set up. DSP operators lease vans and pay to have them skinned in Amazon livery and studded with Amazon sensors. They take out long-term leases on depots, and hire drivers who dress in Amazon uniforms. Their drivers are minutely monitored by Amazon, down to the movements of their eyeballs.

But none of this is "Amazon" – it's all run by an "entrepreneur," whom Amazon can cut loose without notice, leaving them with unfairly terminated employees, outstanding workers' comp claims, a fleet of Amazon-skinned vehicles and unbreakable facilities leases:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Speaking to Wired, Amazon denied that it forces its drivers to piss in bottles, but Butler clearly catches a DSP dispatcher telling drivers "If you pee in a bottle and leave it [in the vehicle], you will get a point for that" – that is, the part you get punished for isn't the peeing, it's the leaving.

Amazon's defense against the FTC is that it spares no effort to keep its marketplace safe. As Amazon spokesperson James Drummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.

In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," FTC Chair Lina Khan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

In Butler's documentary, Khan's hypothesis is thoroughly validated: here's a company extracting hundreds of billions from merchants who raise prices to compensate, and those monopoly rents are "invested" in union-busting and countermeasures against investigative journalists, while the tools to keep you from accidentally getting a bottle of piss in the mail are laughably primitive.

Truly, Amazon is the apex predator of the platform era:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[ghosted-jazz]

Did Cosmo and Wanda have a fairy Timmy back in the day? I hadn't watched A New Wish yet but iirc their relationship was strained by Timmy, I think because of the whole "no one aged for 50 years" thing in Timmy's Secret Wish. So would that mean Timmy messed up their marriage?

Yep! Timmy was Cosmo and Wanda's first fairy!

Cosmo and Wanda were newly weds with no support systems thus miserable enough to get their own fairy!

For the first few years, the three of them were perfect but Timmy overstayed his welcome, none of them wanting to lose this new family they created. Timmy used his magic to try and force a magic solution to make Cosmo and Wanda happy again, to varying levels of success.

New fairy management notices that Cosmo and Wanda seem to be getting more miserable despite having Timmy, so they get assigned a new fairy:

Chloe is here to fix all of Timmy's mistakes. But their happy little family isn't going to be separated so instead of being replaced, Timmy and Chloe end up as coworkers.

But even with two fairies, Cosmo and Wanda keep getting more miserable. With a fresh new set of eyes and someone to talk to, Timmy finally admits that the Fairywinkle-Cosmas might be better off without him since most of their conflict does seem to revolve around magic. So both Chloe and Timmy resign, erasing Cosmo's, Wanda's, Poof's Peri's and Sparky's memories of magic.

That day, the Fairywinkle-Cosma's pet goldfish, the one they got when they got their first house, dies. The whole family is very torn up about it, crying even though they don't know why they feel so strongly about losing this goldfish.

As for the whole 50 year time loop thing:

After granting that accidental wish, Timmy does not come clean about it for 50 years in fear of getting into trouble. A swap version of Timmy's Secret Wish does happen and undoes the time loop but yep, that wish absolutely contributed in the decline of their marriage. Not that Cosmo and Wanda would remember it anyways

[negiwave2000]

[knightinsmilingarmor]

Long nights in the dojima household

[meli-mouse]

super hanamura brothers

[ignushi]

bridget fanart 🧁🫶💕

[henryxcavill]

𝘕𝘪𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘢 𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘭𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘴 𝘔𝘢𝘨𝘨𝘪𝘦 𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘯. ╰┈➤ Big Mood - Ep. 1

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bonus 7: Time moves sideways

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[menheim]

Peder Lindell as Morgie 🤍

Descendants: The Rise of Red (2024)

[kimorasimz]

solomon & solomon's place

[aashwarr]

my simself's recent instagram stories...

[rheya28]

☁︎At Henford on Bagley ☁︎

[bridgetfromwonderland]

[ahalliance]

antoine + étoiles insane moments for ur consideration :] @etoilesbienne @icockeatpanda @jahanmp4

eng transcript below:

[Video Transcript:

(First clip plays.)

Antoine: Look at what’s written in the heart, dude.

Etoiles: Holy shit, it’s you and me, dude!

Antoine: Oh yeah, A + E, dude

(overlapping) Etoiles: Antoine and Etoiles. Dude, holy shiiiit

Etoiles: Hey all that is destiny, dude

Antoine: I’m the one who did it in the hopes of stumbling across it on Geoguessr one day

Etoiles: Fuck, and after all these years you’ve finally realised your objective

Antoine: And yeah, dude….

Etoiles: peepoShy, as we say

(Second clip plays.)

Etoiles: Where are you, Antoine?

Antoine: I’m on— I’m on the blue level of the TDM (Tour de Merde)

Etoiles: Where are you, darling? I’m coming

Antoine: The blue level of the TDM

Florence: No but he’s horny, Rayou, tonight

Bagz: But Rayou— he arrived— he arrived (to the stream) saying, “I’m exhausted’, and he’s really in shape!

Antoine: He just wants to fuck, Rayou, tonight. He wants to fuck so badly tonight

Etoiles: But I said ‘darling’!

(overlapping) Bagz: In ‘Just Fucking’ (as a Twitch stream category)

Etoiles: No but I hate you all, bro

(Third clip plays.)

Antoine: I want to vape but I can’t

Etoiles: Vape my ass, dude

Antoine: Wow, what the fuck? What—

(Fourth clip plays.)

Etoiles: Well I don’t know what my favourite party is, is it the one where we played the capitals game? Or—

Antoine: Or the one where I sucked you off? Oh, no, sorry. No, you were saying? Yeah

Etoiles: That one— that one was crazy

(overlapping) Antoine: Sorry, my bad

(Fifth clip plays.)

Etoiles: Antoine I just looked at the camera, you’re incredibly handsome, dude

Antoine: Really?

Etoiles: Yeah. You have a cool look about you

Zerator: You mean, as opposed to normal?

Etoiles: Yeah, because usually you’re disgusting but here, honestly… I find you very fuckable tonight

Antoine: Well, thanks so much dude

(Sixth clip plays.)

Etoiles: Me, I’ve never cried. The only time I’ve had water on my face is when I’ve showered

Antoine: When I performed a facial on you too, no?

Florence: Oh nooooo. No but I respect it, you guys do what you want

Etoiles: Actually it’s not water it’s sperm

Antoine: In sperm there’s water, dude

(Cuts to a later portion of the same stream.)

Etoiles: Y’know you’re only gross with me, with your other friends you don’t make jokes like that

Antoine: That’s true. I don’t know why I’m like this with you. Maybe I should be asking myself questions, bro. I don’t know!

end Video Transcript.]