#Packaging factory UK

[garthwest]

Garthwest is UK based sustainable corrugated cardboard print & packaging manufacturers with wide range of Packaging solutions for design, suppliers, packaging & boxes.

[kropotkindersurprise]

July 8, 2024 - Palestine Action activists targeted Kite packaging in Sheppey Way, UK, who secure and transport Elbit’s weaponry that is used by Israel to slaughter Palestinian civillians. The company’s complicity was confirmed when actionists broke inside Elbit’s Instro Precision factory in Kent last month, exposing numerous suppliers of the Israeli weapons maker. [video]

[insanityclause]

EXCLUSIVE: One year ago we told you that a second season of John le Carré adaptation The Night Manager was quietly being developed under the codename Steelworks.

Now, Deadline can reveal that the BBC and new co-pro partner Amazon have gone big on a supercharged two-season order of the thriller, with Tom Hiddleston returning to lead, Hugh Laurie coming back as EP and with a new director in I Hate Suzie’s Georgi Banks-Davies. A third season has also been greenlit. David Farr returns as writer and Stephen Garrett is showrunner.

The Night Manager Season 2 will begin filming later this year and will pick up with Hiddleston’s Jonathan Pine eight years after the explosive finale of Season 1, going beyond the original book, which was written by the celebrated British writer in 1993. Additional plot details are being kept under wraps and there is not yet confirmation as to whether EP Laurie’s Richard Roper, who was last seen in the back of a paddy wagon driven by arms buyers who were not best pleased with him, will return to star. Hiddleston will also EP and will discuss in more depth on tonight’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!

Produced by The Ink Factory in association with Character 7, Demarest Films and 127 Wall, and in co-production with Spanish partner Nostromo Pictures, The Night Manager Season 2 was sold to Amazon by Fifth Season. The first was co-produced with AMC.

New director Banks-Davies, a BAFTA-nominee who takes over from Susanne Bier, has credits including I Hate Suzie, Garfield and upcoming Netflix series Kaos.

The Night Manager Season 1 was a huge success, watched by millions and winning multiple BAFTAs, Emmys and Golden Globes including best actor for Hiddleston. Also starring Tom Hollander, Olivia Colman and Elizabeth Debicki, it followed Pine – who ran a luxury hotel in Cairo – as he attempted to infiltrate the inner circle of Roper’s crime syndicate after being hired by Foreign Office task force manager Angela Burr.

The first season was commissioned more than 10 years ago and the show has since been remade in India, lapping the UK version by swiftly having a Season 2 greenlit for Disney+ Hotstar in May last year.

Simon Cornwell and Stephen Cornwell, le Carré’s sons who run The Ink Factory, said Season 1 proved “a landmark moment for the golden era of television – uniting on-screen and behind-the-camera talent at the top of their game – and an audience reception which was beyond our wildest imagining.”

They added: “Revisiting the story of Pine also means going beyond the events of John le Carré’s original work: that is a decision we have not taken lightly, but his compelling characters and the vision David has for their next chapter were irresistible.”

Amazon MGM Studios Head of Television Vernon Sanders said: “We are elated to bring additional seasons of The Night Manager to our Prime Video customers. The combination of terrific source material, the wonderful team at The Ink Factory, a great writer in David Farr, an award-winning director in Georgi Banks-Davies, as well as the talented cast truly make the series the full package.”

Hiddleston said: “The first series of The Night Manager was one of the most creatively fulfilling projects I have ever worked on. The depth, range and complexity of Jonathan Pine was, and remains, a thrilling prospect.”

BBC content boss Charlotte Moore added: “After years of fervent speculation I’m incredibly excited to confirm that The Night Manager is returning to the BBC for two more series.”

The Night Manager series two is created and executive produced by Farr, based on the characters created by le Carré. Additional executive producers include Garrett for Character 7, Banks-Davies, Laurie and Hiddleston; Joe Tsai and Arthur Wang for 127 Wall; Stephen and Simon Cornwell, Michele Wolkoff, and Tessa Inkelaar for The Ink Factory; Adrián Guerra for Nostromo Pictures; William D. Johnson for Demarest Films, Nick Cornwell, Susanne Bier, Chris Rice for Fifth Season and Gaynor Holmes for the BBC.

[heckyeahponyscans]

hi! do you know if there's a way to tell if a pony has an actual factory error or if someone just switched up the head of two different ponies? I was thinking about buying a repro pony that has skydancer's body and butterscotch's head. the seller says it's a fabric error but I'm unsure. they say they work with factory suppliers and errors happen from time to time. the pony does look new and although it comes with no box it's possible to see in the picture that it has a seal in its hair.

I happen to know about this kind of Basic Fun Frankenpony and even have several, including Butter-dancer! I got mine off Taobao but they're probably being sold elsewhere too.

I wouldn't call them factory errors. IMO what happened is the excess of previous BF lines were sold to a wholesaler (which I believe is legal in China); they put together as many "proper" ponies as they could (like Butterscotch head + Butterscotch body), and after that they started putting random heads/bodies together based on color.

The only time mismatched head ponies have been sold in retail would be in the UK at the very end of G1 (where, similarly, they were trying to get rid of whatever old pieces were lying around--but those actually did make it into shops! in baggie-style packaging) or in some of the wackier international lines, like South African ponies.

^ "Princess Woosie" has lavender Woosie's bbody and Princess Sparkle's head, she was one of the UK Frankenponies.

Anyway, the long and short of this is the Basic Fun Frankenponies are fun curios but not factory errors.

[chussyracing]

what is happening in the world of motorsports?

Williams confirmed they will send Alex's (technically Logan's) chassis damaged in Japan back to their UK factory before China to repair it (so they will both have repaired ones) and their destructor championship cost is already around 2m for this year (that means up to one or two upgrade packages in F1 numbers)

Ralph Schumacher is trying to stir the pot as per usual because he said that Logan Sargeant doesn't have a contract for the full year and he gets contract for each GP individually meaning he could be replaced for any GP from now on (I call BS)

Rumouredly, Mercedes is looking into a possibility of hiring Pierre Waché from RBR

Also, a rumour slash insider info from my comm (maybe others knew but I am kinda shocked): a lot of teams are surprised by the tyres this year from one race to another because apparently Pirelli mixes them a bit more than just for every reason, but the features are different for every race basically (so although Bahrain and Japan had the same allegation of tyres, it's not just the weather conditions and track surface why they act differently)

Marko Helmut spoke to OE24 (Austrian journal) and mentioned that they are ready to give Checo Perez a new contract after they saw his results because he is their best option for the second seat and Checo himself said he expects a lot of contracts being announced in upcoming weeks, including his own future which should be settled within a month

NXT GEN Cup won't be supporting Formula E at all this season due to "unexpected constraints" although it was supposed to support all European races, and they already tested at Misano World Circuit (FE spokesperson also says they want to raise young talents through FIA Girls on Track and other positive initiatives)

Misano will also feature a 30 mins FE rookie test on Friday with some familiar faces like Zane Maloney, Robert Shwartzman, Ciao Collet, Taylor Barnard, Tim Tramnitz, Jack Aitken or Jordan King

Lewis reportedly walked out of an interview after a reporter asked if he was jealous of Ferrari's results, saying "don't you have any better questions?" (go off tbh)

Speaking of Lewis, am I the last person to learn he has his own TV and movie production company, Dawn Apollo Films?

Peter Kenyon, who previously worked in Manchester United and Chelsea, is joining Williams as a commercial advisor

Regarding Carlos still being jobless, Eddie Jordan believes he is going to Aston Martin starting 2025 (but has "no real hardcore evidence") and racingnews365 reported that Audi (and Seidl who already worked with Carlos) are interested in him but want to lock drivers for their 2026 in 2025 already so they gave him a deadline to give his final answer by the end of April on their deal and Helmut Marko said they have no interest in the market right now and you won't hear from them till mid-season at least concerning new drivers or personnel

Lewis is looking into the possibility of testing the monocoque of Ferrari at the end of this year but "doesn't know if Mercedes will allow him"

Katherine Legge will race Indy 500 for e.l.f. cosmetics brand with number 51

Heikki Kovalainen, who underwent a heart surgery, says that he might fully recover thanks to a fast intervention from the doctors

Fernando was asked if he will try to get the Mercedes seat and joked that he is not interested in a team that is behind them in pace, so Toto won't hear from him any time soon

after some F1 tests and current results, Kimi Antonelli now has enough points to drive in F1 with superlicence but since he is still 17, he has to wait to be of age

RB and Sauber are testing in Suzuka these days for the 2025 Pirelli tyres testing (so both dry and wet condition tyres)

speaking of the future of F1, some rumours leaked about the 2026 regulations and it doesn't look good, because to simplify it, the active aero on the rear wing in combo with the engine on full power makes drivers spin out on straights or in the mildest of turns in simulations with a test car - and to avoid it they have to drive slowly to the point of going slower than the current regulation of F2 cars; there are also some concerns about the 50/50 split engine (the problem is it is too late to change the 2026 regs so what they will try now is to make the active aero on both front and rear wing and see how it goes)

like they teased previously and like rumours suggested, Prema is joining Indycar with two entries starting with 2025 season

René Lammers (15 years old Dutch f4 driver) won Ferrari's scouting camp and 2023 CIK-FIA European championship and his father Jan Lammers now told GPFans that his son was offered a 10 year deal from Ferrari but they decided to refuse although it looked promising at first so he will stay non-related to any F1 team and continue with MP Motorsport in Spanish F4

Max spoke about F1 Academy and especially the competitiveness, the ladder to F1 and the impact of F1 teams and I have a lot of mixed thoughts I won't share here but I'm willing to discuss if anyone is interested

apparently during Lewis' talks with Ferrari, he completely omitted his current manager, so he saved money and got the deal for himself (but also this comes from a Czech source that is not super reliable)

also in GQ Lewis said that Niki Lauda wasn't happy with his ventures into the fashion world at first because he thought it would be distracting him from racing

Theo Pourchaire will be on "standby" for McLaren's Indycar car number 6 for the next race (because David Malukas got injured and they are not sure if he will be good to race and because Callum Ilott who is on standy has WEC duties that weekend)

British American Tobacco (BAT) renewed sponsorship of McLaren - they began sponsoring them in 2019 but European Union banned the advertisement of tobacco, now they will advertise electronic cigarettes and nicotine pouch products on both F1 and FE cars

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk is a man comfortable with risky bets. He pledged to send 1 million people to Mars (SpaceX), to fill factories with humanoid workers (Tesla Bot), and to create a network of highways deep underground (the Boring Company). All of these bets are yet to pay off. But six years ago, Musk took a leap of faith that would also affect him personally. He tied his own pay at Tesla to a series of financial targets over the next decade, including boosting the company’s market value from $59 billion to $650 billion. Such targets were decried by commentators at the time as “jaw-dropping” and “his most unlikely goal yet.” And Musk’s wage from the company if he didn’t pull them off? Nothing at all.

The board agreed to the plan in 2018. However, a heavy-metal drummer named Richard Tornetta, who owned just nine Tesla shares, did not. In June of that year, he decided to sue, claiming the pay package was unfair to investors like him. By the time the case reached court in Delaware in 2022, Musk had just one milestone left before the big payout. But the judge agreed with Tornetta in January, voiding what she called an unfathomably large pay package and describing the directors who negotiated it as beholden to Musk.

Musk succeeded in hitting those 12 jaw-dropping targets by the close of 2023, following Tesla’s brief spell as a trillion-dollar company. And now, despite what happened in Delaware, he’s demanding to be paid. At Tesla’s annual meeting on Thursday, shareholders are being asked to vote again on whether Musk should receive what has by now swollen to a nearly $50 billion pay package, the biggest in US corporate history. The $50 billion question for shareholders is: Is Musk worth it?

Posing the question of whether he deserves his pay packet at all marks a significant shift for the relationship between Musk and the electric automaker he has led since 2008. “The resistance shows that there is a ceiling to the influence that a single person has on the company,” says Mike Ramsey, an automotive analyst at the consultancy Gartner. “This is the the first time Tesla shareholders might be willing to say, ‘You can’t have unlimited power.’”

The vote comes at a difficult time for Tesla. For the first time in the company’s history, Tesla is facing intense competition in the electric car market—especially from cheaper Chinese competitors. Meanwhile, some observers have puzzled over Musk’s response and his pivot to robotaxis and artificial intelligence.

“The debate here really is about the future, not the past,” says John Colley, professor of practice in strategy and leadership at the UK’s Warwick Business School. “Tesla has become a mature business, and it’s got all the problems that mature carmakers have now.” Whether a visionary like Musk is the best man to lead a mature business is unclear, he adds.

The pay package is just one in a series of measures that shareholders have already been asked to vote on by proxy, ahead of Thursday’s meeting. Others include whether Tesla’s incorporation should move from Delaware to Texas, whether the company should soften its hardline stance on labor negotiations, and whether the company should preemptively impose a moratorium on using minerals mined from the seabed.

Yet none have been as divisive as Musk’s pay. Deep rifts among investors have been exposed in the lead-up to the vote. Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm has backed the pay package, as has billionaire investor Ron Baron. “Tesla is better with Elon,” Baron wrote in an open letter last week. “Tesla is Elon.” Yet the deal’s opponents include two influential proxy advisory groups, which guide institutional investors on votes, as well as shareholders from the Nordic countries, where Tesla has clashed with workers over labor rights.

Norway’s trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund has said it will vote against the pay deal, as will the country’s largest pension fund, KLP. “While we acknowledge that the company has grown significantly and successfully during the performance period, we still note that the total award value remains excessive,” Kiran Aziz, KLP's head of responsible investments, told WIRED, adding the fund will vote in favor of the motion urging Tesla to engage in labor negotiations. “Recent [dispute] between Tesla and the company’s workers in Sweden as well as Tesla’s history of accusations of interference with workers’ rights is of great concern and shows that the company needs to do better work in the area.”

Behind the scenes of the vote, lobbying has been intense. Tesla has paid for ads on Google and X, which is owned by Musk, telling investors to “protect your investment” and support the proposal, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In April, Tesla also launched a website urging shareholders to vote against the Delaware court decision and support the pay package. “The Court’s decision, if implemented, means that Elon would not receive any compensation for the tremendous accomplishments that have generated significant stockholder returns in less than six years,” the website reads.

“This is the most advertising I can remember from any proxy solicitation,” says Robert Anderson, a professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law. He believes the Musk effect—the CEO’s ability to attract endless publicity—has contributed to this situation. But the pay package and the proposed Texas move are both unprecedented in the business world, he adds. “Either [of] those things by themselves would be pretty significant, even if he were not a public figure.”

The vote will be decided by a mix of institutional investors as well as an unusually large cohort of retail investors, who control around 44 percent of the business. Among shareholders, there are concerns that if Musk does not win his compensation, “his attention might drift to some of his other ventures a little bit more,” says Anderson. Musk managed to juggle multiple ventures for years, but he has been more publicly distracted since acquiring the social media service Twitter and renaming it X. There, his visible turn to right-wing politics has garnered new fans and left some old ones behind.

Whatever happens this week, Tesla and Musk may emerge looking a bit less superhuman. For years, the two have insisted that Tesla is a tech company, with a Silicon Valley–style startup scrappiness. “We should be thought of as an AI or robotics company,” Musk told investors—or voters—in April. “If you value Tesla as just an auto company … fundamentally, it’s just the wrong framework.”

[battleangel]

Small Talk, Ecocide & Genocide

The societal obsession with civility, small talk, decorum & “being nice” is slowly killing the planet & allowing a merciless genocide to continue unabated for nearly a year.

Its not “polite” to engage in small talk about climate change or the fact that the fucking planet is literally dying and there is an impending ecocide that over a hundred studies predict could happen by 2100.

Literally in less than one human being's lifespan from today, the earth is predicted to be uninhabitable.

But thats not “nice” to say and its not “polite small talk”.

Last year, on my birthday three days before Halloween, for the first time in my life — 42 years — it was 80 fucking degrees on fucking Halloween weekend!

I even wrote a tumblr blog post about it because I was so fucking gagged by the weather.

Still, societally, you are only allowed to acknowledge that its “kind of warm for October” or “its going to be a hot Halloween”.

Banal small talk to cover up extreme unprecedented weather never before seen instead of calling it for what it is — the literal destruction of planet earth.

The sky is actually falling but still anyone wants to do is discuss unprecedented weather as it pertains to their Labor Day weekend, beach, travel, party and dinner plans.

Never about climate change, never about fossil fuels, never about forever chemicals, never about landfills, never about deforestation, never about excessive central air conditioning and heat usage, never about replacing air conditioning with open windows and a ceiling or box fan, never about maximalism, hypercapitalism, industrial pollution, industrial runoff, oceanic & air pollution, logging industry, big pharma, big ag, 9 billions tons of single use plastic, oil, coal, meat packaging, airplanes, cruise ships, automobiles, not owning a personal vehicle, the toxic forever chemicals produced by the batteries in electric vehicles, cobalt, mining, factory farms, sweatshops, war pollutants. . .

Ive lived in NJ my whole life for 42 years and for the first time in my life there was an earthquake earlier this summer.

Still, its just a dinner party topic, an icebreaker, something to discuss with a coworker.

Similarly, earlier this year, for the first time in 42 years of being a NJ resident, there was a tornado.

Still, no actual climate change legislation is ever enacted that would produce results that would actually save the fucking planet.

Elon Musk is already planning to colonize Mars.

Once Earth has been humped, pumped and dumped, they will repeat the pattern again with Mars.

Rapists.

It is the beginning of September. Labor Day was yesterday.

I do get that its Fall and that Summer is over.

However, a TWENTY SIX DEGREE DIFFERENCE IN WEATHER IN ONE FUCKING DAY IS THE VERY FURTHEST thing from normal.

I live in a one bedroom apartment and do not utilize air conditioning.

I live in NJ and we do have heat waves that get up to 100+ degrees which happened several times this summer. My apartment has gotten as hot as 90 degrees. 

I still did not turn my air conditioning on.

I opened the windows and turned on a ceiling fan.

I wear light, minimal clothing and stay hydrated and drink water.

92% of American homes utilize air conditioning — 92%!

The EPA states via a survey that Americans keep their thermostats at a disgustingly wasteful and fucking ridiculous 68 degrees to 72 degrees and the vast majority (76%) dont even bother to fucking adjust the thermostat up when they arent home.

So fucking disgustingly wasteful.

Air conditioning utilizes the most energy in a home outside of heating and refrigerators.

It emits the equivalent of millions of carbon units a year.

Americans use more air conditioning than the rest of the world COMBINED.

Most homes in the UK, France and Germany dont have air conditioning.

Many public buildings and residential homes in Japan dont have air conditioning.

In certain Scandinavian countries, it is illegal for offices to utilize air conditioning.

The EPA suggests in their guidelines that Americans keep their AC thermostats at 80 degrees.

I suggest Americans do what I do and just turn their air conditioning off and open the windows and turn on a ceiling or a box fan.

My grandparents in rural Georgia where it got very hot did not have air conditioning when I would visit them for a month every summer as a kid.

Air conditioning was only invented in 1906 — it isnt a NECESSITY, it is a LUXURY and Americans pretend otherwise even though in my own lifetime, there were plenty of homes and buildings without air conditioning!

Air conditioning is completely ubiquitous in America to the level of brainwashing — you can literally go an entire summer in America and never once encounter an internal environment or building without artificially cooled air!

That is brainwashing!

My windows have been open every single day all summer — June through August.

I came out to my living room this morning and it was fucking frigid.

56 degrees outside.

But I wont bother closing the windows because due to climate change, the high today is an unbelievable 76 degrees and the low is 50 fucking degrees.

Still, noone just says, you know it was never the norm for a twenty six fucking degree change in weather in one fucking day.

I have an oversized sweater, leggings and socks on inside my apartment with the windows open and my fingertips are legitimately numb.

And the average American on a day like today just shuts their air conditioning off mindlessly in the morning then just as mindlessly blasts it in the afternoon when the temperature is going to jump twenty fucking degrees to a high of 76 then just as mindlessly shuts their air conditioning off at night as the low is a fucking disgusting 50 degrees tonight.

Never with one single solitary fucking thought.

I left corporate in 2019 and have been a work from home freelance podcaster since 2021.

But I worked in corporate for 15 years — six years in customer service, five years as a recruiter and then I owned my own career coaching and resume writing business for 3 years.

I know for a fact if I was still in a W-2 job that the weather today instead of being correctly and honestly flagged as one of the most fucking egregious and disgusting examples of climate change I have ever witnessed — along with the earthquake and tornado both for the first time fucking ever earlier this summer and the 80 degree weather Halloween weekend last fucking October — it would have just been another inane topic of small talk.

And if I had dared to bring up climate change, I would have been accused of “politicizing” things.

For telling the fucking truth.

So then, instead, someone tells a “joke” about how Starbucks brought the Pumpkin Spice Latte back “early”. Then someone says Dairy Queen also brought their Fall menu out early. Then someone chimes in that Ritas Italian Ice did the same.

Cue laugh track.

Instead of telling the fucking truth — that these extreme weather patterns, these extremely humid and hot heat waves, earthquakes and tornados in fucking NJ, 80 degree weather Halloween weekend in NJ, a TWENTY SIX DEGREE CHANGE IN THE WEATHER IN ONE FUCKING DAY has been proven in study after study to be a sign of our impending planetary doom and incoming ecocide and death of our planet if we dont change our hypercapitalist, maximalist, overconsumptive, consumerist, materialistic, wasteful, single use plastic, throwaway culture, fast food eating, Doordashing, fast fashion obsessed, toilet paper obsessed, air conditioning addicted, automobile addicted, vacation addicted, airplane flying, cruise shipping, retail shopping addicted, Amazon delivery addicted, Starbucks coffee addicted, Runs on Dunkin addicted, trash generating, food wasting, Amazon landfilling ways. . . 

But no, instead of that truth, which we can all evidently see and feel — climate change and the extreme weather, heat waves, natural disasters, 30+ degree weather changes in ONE fucking day, 80 degree weather in October that should have been a wake up call to change our ways and save our planet — it just becomes yet another inane small talk topic of discussion.

Add it to Paris Olympics, Met Gala, NFL, Oscars, Kamala, Biden, Trump, Vance, Walz and all the other bullshit.

Anything to avoid discussing a genocide that every American adult that earned more than $400 as a freelancer, all entrepreneurs that generated income and all W-2 earners are funding that has murdered over 198k Palestinian civilians despite it being livestreamed to us in real time every single day on social media in the palms of our hands on our phones.

We're seeing elderly men handcuffed being run over by armored Israeli tanks.

Were seeing children be stepped on, bombed, cut to pieces, exploded, injured, dying, crying, screaming, running, evacuating, mourning murdered family members.

Were seeing executions, war crimes, atrocities, crimes against humanity, torture, rapes, mass graves with hundreds of civilian bodies and bombings of refugee camps, open air street markets, residential areas, hospitals, schools and homes by the IOF — Israeli OCCUPATION Force — a genocide is not defense — with total impunity as the IOF is calmly documenting their own war crimes and uploading them to social media.

Still, the ICC and ICJ do nothing.

Ten months of this!

Still, Netanyahu and Gallant arent arrested.

Still, the US continues to send Israel billions — $17 billion this year alone by the Biden/Kamala administration but all anyone cares about is that Kamala is half Black??

Still, the US continues to supply the IOF with 500 lb bombs by Boeing meant to be used on fortified military bunkers being dropped on tents in refugee camps instantly incinerating the civilians within.

Still, the world stands by in silent complicity and streams it live like an updated reality TV show. Every day, more images of death, destruction and despair as you stream peoples deaths live on your couch.

Survivor: Genocide Style!

Who will be voted off the Gaza Strip next?

Netanyahu demands the Phillipi corridor in any ceasefire agreement and in the map during his genocidal press conference he has the absolute fucking unmitigated gall to claim West Bank as part of Israel.

Still, mainstream western media stays complicit referring to this genocide, the mass slaughter of Palestinians, tens of thousands buried unidentified under rubble, tens of thousands blown up bombed and incinerated into pieces unidentified — 198k dead Palestinian civilians & 4k dead Israeli civilians and you have the motherfucking audacity in the mainstream Western media complex to call that a “war”, a “conflict” and “complicated”?

Israel was created in 1948. The Nakba happened in 1948 displacing and murdering hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

There is nothing “complicated” about that.

The state of Palestine was first recorded in history thousands of years ago.

Israel is a false creation by the US & UK. 

This is readily admitted to.

Biden stated while addressing Congress in 1986 that if Israel didnt exist, “we” would have had to create her.

Ask yourself who “we” is.

But even an ongoing streamed in real time live on your nearest cell phone in gory 4K clarity realness genocide isn't enough to slow down the small talk dick sucking for clout social climbers that use even a genocide as social currency and capital.

Just another blip on the small talk radar.

And if you dare to tell the truth that polio reappeared for the first time in decades for the first time in Palestine because of Israel destroying Palestines infrastructure which has caused open sewage, mountains of trash, bacteria, insects, infections and now polio and even scabies. . .

So, Israel caused the reappearance of polio in Palestine — how can anyone not question the IOFs intentions this weekend temporarily pausing their butchering and murdering (“pausing hostilities”) to distribute a fucking vaccine for a goddamned disease that they are responsible for reintroducing to Palestine?????

The same genocidal fucks that have murdered at least 15k children (probably double or triple that if you count the bodies buried under rubble and cut up into unidentifiable pieces) now all of a sudden care about these same exact children getting polio when they have been indiscriminately murdering them for the past ten fucking months which we have seen endless literal videos for????

If Israel was so “concerned” about a polio outbreak in Palestine spreading to Israel, dont you think that Israel would be vaccinating THEIR OWN POPULATION and NOT vaccinating Palestinians?

Its not a vaccine, you dumb fucks.

The US has done this before — it is the exact same playbook.

The US gave blankets to Native Americans as a “gift” which they actually infected with diseases that they knew the Native Americans had no immunological defense for killing thousands.

Some gift.

The US medically experimented on Black Tuskegee airmen trying to develop vaccines for STIs.

The US has forcibly sterilized women in Puerto Rico without their consent against their will.

Why do you think Israel isnt sterilizing Palestinians and lying and claiming its some vaccine?

The US has done this exact same thing in the very recent past.

You'll notice noone in the IOF is injecting themselves with this “polio vaccine” — why do you think that is?

If Israel is so worried about the polio outbreak in Palestine — wouldnt they be vaccinating their genocidal troops with the same vaccine Israel is administering to Palestinians?

I post videos about this and TikTok and Youtube immediately removed them.

“Medical misinformation”?????????????

Wake the FUCK up at some point!!!!!!!

[danatheelf]

Welcome to my NISA Nightmare.

This is beyond a bloody joke, now, and I am livid.

For almost six whole weeks now, I have been given the runaround by NIS America Europe's Customer Support, for an issue entirely their fault. And it's not the first time.

I love the games NISA publish. I preorder the vast majority of the Collector's Edition packages they put out, in spite of my precarious financial situation. Because I love these games and I want to have those nice sets to celebrate the art and music and game with a nice, generally sensible set of extra stuff that isn't just cheap tat to fill a box and charge a fortune for.

I have maintained "Diamond Prinny" loyalty status for years, which doesn't really mean much more than "buys their stuff a lot and gets offered small discounts when new ones go up" but you'd think if they recognise a group of their biggest customers, they would at least try to offer solid Customer Support for that group.

Here's the backstory: On September 8 2022, I placed a preorder with NISAE for four Collector's Editions. If you're unfamiliar with preorders, how this is supposed to work is that you pay money now, and they put a copy aside to make sure that you get them when they come out; I try to order as many things as I can at once, because shipping to Australia is expensive, and it helps to spread the load. When placing the order, one of the games I was ordering had an option for an Australian cover sheet - the only difference being the little rating symbol on the cover - so I picked that because... hey, why not?

At some point in production, they changed their mind, and decided they wouldn't bother printing that Australian cover sheet. No big deal, you might assume - just swap it for the UK English cover; no big deal.

Ah, sweet summer child, I see you have never had to deal with NISAE's order system backend.

Any other web store on the internet can make simple changes to an order relatively easily - but NISAE is special. They can't even change a tiny little dropdown menu option for which printed cover sheet should be included with the game.

To make any small change to your order, the entire thing must be cancelled. You must wait for a refund to clear. Then you must place the order again yourself with the changes in place.

Remember that thing about how preorders work? Yeah. It doesn't work if they just cancel your order without warning, and tell you to make the order again when something in your order is now out of stock.

For weeks now, I've been assured that they're securing a copy of the game that was out of stock, because I guess when your order is cancelled, they immediately incinerate the copies that should have been set aside for you.

But they'll have it shortly, so I can make the order then!

I've been dreadfully concerned about the other parts of my order going out of stock while I wait for them to find me a copy of the game I preordered. And naturally... that exact thing happened.

I've been keeping an eye on the stock situation and... now another one is completely sold out.

They haven't even fixed the first screw-up, and now this is added on top. It's cartoonish levels of incompetence. I have a heart condition! I can't deal with this kind of constant stress for weeks and weeks!!

If you know me, you'll know I am a very patient person. But this is really my limit. I'm fed up, and genuinely upset.

This isn't the first time I've had trouble with NISAE before, either.

A while back, I received a copy of a collector's edition set with a soundtrack CD - I love soundtrack CDs and they're a major reason I get these versions! But for some reason, one of the discs was just... missing.

Factory error, I suppose. Not much you can do about that.

So I contacted support, and they promised to just pack a replacement in with the next order that would be shipped out; it wouldn't take long for that, so, sounded to me like a perfectly reasonable solution.

Well, my next order from them came... and the next... and the next... and no CD.

After contacting them again, to see what the deal was... they just decided to send it out by itself, and eat the cost of shipping.

Screwed themselves over in that one, really. I was mildly inconvenienced, but it all worked out without too much hassle.

On another occasion, I had a preorder combined with some older items - the order won't ship until everything is ready to go, but it saves you on shipping, so, hey. That's fine.

Between the time of my order and the time it was ready to ship, they moved to a new warehouse. In the process of doing this... they lost the copy of something I ordered that had been set aside. And they had no more left.

Of course.

There was really nothing that could be done, at that point. "Sorry, we lost the very last copy of the thing you ordered." I was very unhappy about this, but... it was at least understandable. Moving to a new warehouse is a massive undertaking, and losing the last copy of some old stock... well, it sucks, but I get it. Exceptional circumstances; things happen.

So it's with this history of excusing mistakes that I am now faced with the latest one. This time, there is no massive warehouse to move; no unusual situation of sending out a replacement for part of a set that was botched by the factory.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect better than this.

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the barest minimum features of an online shop to include "swapping a tiny option in an order" and "actually getting the things you paid a couple hundred pounds to preorder six months ago."

I don't think it's unreasonable to expect better from the official European branch of a very prominent publisher, handling a large number of beloved titles that can't be bought elsewhere.

As it stands, if you have the option to buy NISA games from any retailer other than the NISA Europe Online Store, I advise you to choose that other option. I desperately wish this weren't the case, and would prefer to support the publisher directly... but until they get some web developers to implement a functional backend... I truly recommend choosing literally any other option, if you have it.

Maybe if I'm lucky, people will see this and they'll actually do something.

[beardedmrbean]

Helsingin Sanomat carried an article asking parents how they felt about Finland's drop in Pisa rankings.

Pisa is the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment, which measures 15-year-olds' ability to use their reading, mathematics and science knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges.

Not terribly long ago, youths in Finland regularly topped the rankings, but results have worsened in recent years. However, Finland still ranks above the average.

Many parents who responded to the newspaper's call for opinions put the blame squarely on their kids use of smartphones, with some calling for a return to pencil and paper.

One Helsinki parent said that their child's school introduced a smartphone "parking lot" to store kids' devices during classtime.

"Surprisingly, the kids liked it right away. They said the whole school felt improved and that they could concentrate better in class," one Helsinki parent told HS.

The parent added that disputes about their kids' phone use have become the norm at home.

"The phone is like a drug and we regularly argue about how much time we can spend in front of the screen."

Such sentiments were shared by parents and an earlier HS article asking teachers how they felt about Finland's Pisa ranking collapse.

In addition, parents were concerned about their kids' dealing with mental health, larger class sizes, and that they were now carrying a heavier load in their education.

EU packaging bill

Business daily Kauppalehti reported that the Council of the European Union is to decide on disposable packaging regulations on Monday.

The European Commission's regulations plan on limiting the use of single-use plastics, particularly in the food and beverage industry.

This vote is crucial as the regulation will significantly impact the operational environment of the Finnish packaging and food industry, potentially affecting the country's bottle return system.

According to the Commission's proposal, 10 percent of all non-alcoholic beverages should be packed in reusable packaging in 2030, and in 2040 the proportion would rise to 25 percent. This would mean that items like milk and juice could switch from cardboard containers to reusable plastic ones.

The Finnish packaging sector prefers the European Parliament's position on the issue and considers it more flexible than the Commission's proposal.

There are concerns that the Council might diverge from the Parliament's view. Much of this hangs in the air depending on Germany's decision, which carries weight amongst the member states.

Matti Rantanen, the Director General of the European Paper Packaging Alliance, expressed concern that the Council's current draft, prepared by Spain, is more radical than the original Commission proposal.

Rantanen emphasised the potential divergence from the Parliament's scientifically grounded and material-neutral stance.

He noted that the current regulation, if passed as per Spain's proposal, could necessitate member states taking time to find a sensible compromise.

Despite acknowledging the Commission's commendable goal of reducing packaging waste, Rantanen urged for a more balanced approach that provides predictability to industries amidst the EU's extensive Green Deal initiatives.

Hockey safety

Tabloid Ilta-Sanomat highlighted that the unexpected impact a death in ice hockey had in Finland.

Former NHL player Adam Johnson bled to death after another player's ice skate blade cut his neck during a game in the UK. The Guardian described the tragedy as a "freak accident". Johnson's death has sent ripples throughout the world of ice hockey, even reaching a sports equipment manufacturer in Southeastern Finland.

"The whole thing blew up. 700 neck protectors were ordered immediately after the accident," said Iiro Partanen, owner of the Liiga Sport Wear factory in Imatra.

Before the accident, the company only received orders for a few dozen neck protectors per month. In the past six weeks, the factory has now produced a record number of around 1,500 neck protectors.

Article updated at 11:10 to provide more context for Adam Johnson's death including that he was a former NHL player and was playing in the UK at the time of his death.

[eaglesnick]

Double Whammy

According to Diabetes UK 4.3 million people in Britain have diabetes, 90% of these having the avoidable type 2 diabetes. Diabetes costs the NHS £10 billion a year, and in some hospitals over a quarter of beds are taken up by  people with diabetes. The number of people with diabetes has doubled in the last 15 years and is continuing to rise.

The great tragedy of type 2 diabetes is that it is largely avoidable. 

“Research shows that living with obesity is the single greatest risk factor, and accounts for 80-85% of someone's risk of developing the condition, and our previous data revealed that the number of people living with obesity in England has almost doubled in the last 20 years from 6.9 to 13 million."  (Diabetes UK: 05/04/21)

One of the major causes of obesity is the consumption of ultra-processed foods such as mass produced bread, pre-packaged meals, breakfast cereals, sausages and other reconstituted meat products, yoghurts with sweeteners or stabilizers, chicken nuggets, frozen meals, crisps, soft drinks, biscuits, etc.

We may think we can avoid ultra-processed foods but the evidence suggests otherwise. According to the Guardian (02/02/18):

“Half of all the food bought by families in the UK is now “ultra-processed”, made in a factory with industrial ingredients and additives invented by food technologists and bearing little resemblance to the fruit, vegetables, meat or fish used to cook a fresh meal at home."

As bad as ultra-processed foods are for adult health, think how much worse they must be for the heath of developing children, yet

“Almost a third of baby and toddler foods sold in the UK are ultra-processed, risking children’s long-term health and development."  (Guardian: 08/05/23)

This Tory government has known about the links between ultra-processed foods and the rise in diabetes for years.

“MPs have criticised the Department of Health and the NHS in England for being "too slow" to act in preventing and treating diabetes… Being overweight is the main risk factor for type 2 diabetes, and 90% of adults with type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese.” (BBC: 22/01/16)

Despite this knowledge, the government, rather than introducing policies to wean people off ultra-processed food, is actively promoting its consumption. As recently as February this year Sunak’s Tory government was recommending ultra-processed food as part of a healthy diet.

“An app launched by the UK government, supposed to encourage healthy eating, has been found to be promoting ultra-processed foods.” (www.schoolfoodmatters.org:01/02/23)

The Grocer magazine (25/05.21) asked this question:

“Why is government incapable of saying ‘avoid ultra-processed food’?”

The answer is provided in Great British Life (18/05/23) when it reported:

“The Soil Association said it was “deeply concerned” about the influence of the food and drink industry on UK health policy as the NHS Food Scanner app continued to recommend biscuits, cakes, crisps, chocolate puddings and fizzy pop as “good” options for a healthy diet.”

The sad truth is, this Tory government puts corporate profit before public health. Our health,  and especially that of our children's, is being put at serious risk so that the giant food companies can continue to reap massive profits.

“Millions of people in UK facing food poverty as supermarkets announce record profits.” (Sustain: 22/05/22)

But this isn’t just a UK problem.

“Top 100 Food and Beverage Companies for 2022: A Year of Succulent Profits. 2021 could be called the year of meat and soft drinks. All of the top companies in those two categories had blowout years, adding billions of dollars to their top lines and similarly handsome increases to their bottom lines.”  (Food Processing: 05.08.22)

The food-processing companies and the big British supermarkets are both powerful and influential when it comes to determining government food policies. They are motivated by one thing only: profit. If the largest profit to be made is by promoting and selling ultra-processed food then so be it. To the supporters of neo-liberal free market economics the only duty of corporate management is to maximise profits for their shareholders. Any concern for the health or social consequences of their actions is in the words of Milton Friedman ”pure and unadulterated socialism” and no Tory government wants that.

But where is the “double whammy” of the title? It is in the insane situation whereby the government is now offering a “cure” for obesity by making a drug, costing millions of pounds, available on the NHS.

“THE UK should be "front of the pack" in dishing out weight loss drugs to obese Brits, Steve Barclay said today.

The Health Secretary last night announced a £40million two-year pilot that will look at ways to make obesity medicine accessible to patients outside of hospitals.” (Sun: 07/06/23)

Rather than curing obesity at source, by reducing the amount of ultra-processed foods we are being sold, the government is giving taxpayers money to the big pharmaceutical companies to produce weight-reducing drugs. The message is clear, people are to be to encouraged to go on eating ultra-processed food, and then be supplied with a drug to reduce the excess weight gain that results. It’s a win-win situation. The food-processing companies and super markets  go on making massive profits, and the pharmaceutical companies go on making massive profits. The only losers are our children and the 28% of England’s population who are already grossly over-weight, but who cares about them? Clearly not Steve Barclay or Rishi Sunak.

[firespirited]

Long post. Press j to skip.

I AM SICK OF THE STUPID AI DEBATES, does it imagine, is it based on copyrightable material, are my patterns in there?

That's not the point.

I briefly got into website design freelancing (less than 3 months) before burn out.

The main reason was that automation had begun for generating stylesheets in somewhat tasteful palettes, for automatically making html/xml (they really haven't learned to simplify and tidy code though, they just load 50 divs instead of one), for batch colourising design elements to match and savvy designers weren't building graphics from scratch and to spec unless it was their day job.

Custom php and database design died with the free bundled CMS packages that come with your host with massive mostly empty unused values.

No-one has talked about the previous waves of people automated out of work by website design generators, code generators, the fiverr atomisation of what would have been a designers job into 1 logo and a swatch inserted into a CMS by an unpaid intern. Reviews, tutorials, explanations and articles are generated by stealing youtube video captions, scraping fan sites and putting them on a webpage. Digitally processing images got automated with scripts stolen from fan creators who shared. Screencaps went from curated processed images made by a person to machine produced once half a second and uploaded indiscriminately. Media recaps get run into google translate and back which is why they often read as a little odd when you look up the first results.

This was people's work, some of it done out of love, some done for pay. It's all automated and any paid work is immediately copied/co-opted for 20 different half baked articles on sites with more traffic now. Another area of expertise I'd cultivated was deep dive research, poring over scans of magazines and analysing papers, fact checking. I manually checked people's code for errors or simplifications, you can get generators to do that too, even for php. I used to be an english-french translator.

The generators got renamed AI and slightly better at picture making and writing but it's the same concept.

The artists that designed the web templates are obscured, paid a flat fee by the CMS developpers, the CMS coders are obscured, paid for their code often in flat fees by a company that owns all copyright over the code and all the design elements that go with. That would have been me if I hadn't had further health issues, hiding a layer in one of the graphics or a joke in the code that may or may not make it through to the final product. Or I could be a proof reader and fact checker for articles that get barely enough traffic while they run as "multi snippets" in other publications.

The problem isn't that the machines got smarter, it's that they now encroach on a new much larger area of workers. I'd like to ask why the text to speech folks got a flat fee for their work for example: it's mass usage it should be residual based. So many coders and artists and writers got screwed into flat fee gigs instead of jobs that pay a minimum and more if it gets mass use.

The people willing to pay an artist for a rendition of their pet in the artist's style are the same willing to pay for me to rewrite a machine translation to have the same nuances as the original text. The same people who want free are going to push forward so they keep free if a little less special cats and translations. They're the same people who make clocks that last 5 years instead of the ones my great uncle made that outlived him. The same computer chips my aunt assembled in the UK for a basic wage are made with a lot more damaged tossed chips in a factory far away that you live in with suicide nets on the stairs.

There is so much more to 'AI' than the narrow snake oil you are being sold: it is the classic and ancient automation of work by replacing a human with a limited machine. Robot from serf (forced work for a small living)

It's a large scale generator just like ye olde glitter text generators except that threw a few pennies at the coders who made the generator and glitter text only matters when a human with a spark of imagination knows when to deploy it to funny effect. The issue is that artists and writers are being forced to gig already. We have already toppled into precariousness. We are already half way down the slippery slope if you can get paid a flat fee of $300 for something that could make 300k for the company. The generators are the big threat keeping folks afraid and looking at the *wrong* thing.

We need art and companies can afford to pay you for art. Gig work for artists isn't a safe stable living. The fact that they want to make machines to take that pittance isn't the point. There is money, lots of money. It's not being sent to the people who make art. It's not supporting artists to mess around and create something new. It's not a fight between you and a machine, it's a fight to have artists and artisans valued as deserving a living wage not surviving between gigs.

[garthwest]

Garthwest is UK based sustainable corrugated cardboard print & packaging manufacturers with wide range of Packaging solutions for design, suppliers, packaging & boxes.

[emmashouldbewriting]

Don’t American food companies put corn syrup in everything? Corn is heavily subsidised by the government so they put it in everything…. I heard even the bread at the supermarket is sweet, like I see videos online and why is the bread so perfectly white with no holes??

Not entirely true. Yes, everything here in the US is sweeter but it's not always corn syrup. It's sugar, butter, and all kinds of artificial sweeteners, which includes corn syrup. It's a "by-product" of how commercialized and mass-produced our food is. Sweeteners are added to our food to make it taste better because the commercialized systems that produce our food overprocesses the food, which removes the actual taste from the food. Corn syrup in particular is used as a preservative that keeps packaged food (i.e. the stuff from the factories that most Americans eat because it's cheaper than real fresh food) "fresh" for longer. So everything is sweeter because it's literally being preserved to be shelf-stable for months, if not years.

One of the reasons we do this is because of food accessibility. People will sometimes go for weeks between grocery shops - either they don't live close enough to a grocery store to go frequently (e.g. the daily or several times a week like the average European does) or the price of "clean" food is so high that it's unaffordable. So we default to these pre-packaged super sweet foods because of how much more accessible it is over farm-to-table ingredients/foods. Which in turn gives us this sugar addiction that makes healthy eating movements incredibly difficult. For instance, Michelle Obama and Jamie Oliver's healthy school meals initiatives failed partly because of cost but also mainly because the kids didn't like the food - the new healthy meals weren't sweet enough, compared to "old" meals and other foods, to appeal to the kids.

Thank you for this! US food is so, so sweet comparatively, it's wild.

I do have to ask though - do you include the UK in the 'Europeans several supermarket' visit thing? Because us Brits usually go once a week then to our local corner shop to grab anything extra like milk. We don't typically do a grocery shop more than once a week unless we plan for it. However whenever we've been in Greece this definitely applies, we've always stayed in small villages and gone every few days!

But I agree with you overall. We sell our excess eggs at the end of our driveway and were worried about raising our prices this year to account for the raise in feed for our ducks/chickens... our poor girls can't lay them fast enough right now. But we won't raise our prices because good, healthy food should be more accessible than it is.

[bizworldinsights]

Hot Melt Adhesives 

The global hot melt adhesives (HMA) market was valued at over USD 9.3 billion in 2019 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.4% during the forecast period. This growth presents significant revenue opportunities for industry stakeholders.

Hot melt adhesives have gained immense popularity across various end-use industries due to their low emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and extended shelf life compared to solvent-based adhesives. The hot melt adhesives sector has consistently outperformed the overall chemical industry, driven by rising demand for high-performance solutions in heavy industries. Increased competition has prompted companies to prioritize product launches and patent acquisitions to enhance their market presence.

Industry Developments and Innovations

Leading companies have undertaken several initiatives to boost revenue and strengthen brand recognition. For instance, in 2015, Eastman Chemical Company introduced Aerafin Polymer A, a new polyolefin designed for hot melt adhesives, targeting glue manufacturers. Similarly, Jowat launched a PUR hot melt adhesive specifically for window profile wrapping. Additionally, the number of patents filed has surged since 2010, reflecting a commitment to innovation. In 2013, Bostik, Inc. secured a patent for a high-styrene SBS hot melt adhesive, while H.B. Fuller patented a hot melt pressure-sensitive adhesive containing vegetable wax. This trend of innovation and patenting is expected to continue throughout the forecast period (2018-2028).

Market Segmentation

By Product Type

Polyolefins: Anticipated to experience the fastest growth, with a CAGR of 6.1%. These adhesives are favored for their excellent adhesive properties and rapid setting speeds, making them suitable across various industries. The rise of smart factories is expected to further drive growth in this segment.

By Application

Packaging: The largest end-use market for hot melt adhesives, accounting for approximately 24% of the global market share in 2019. The packaging industry, valued at USD 550 billion, is one of the fastest-growing segments worldwide, presenting significant opportunities for hot melt adhesives.

Regional Analysis

In 2019, the Asia-Pacific region dominated the hot melt adhesives market, holding an estimated 45% share. China, in particular, led the regional market, thanks to the presence of numerous production facilities that benefit from lower production costs and favorable government policies. As the world's largest market for packaging and consumer electronics, China generated substantial demand for hot melt adhesives, with a market value exceeding USD 2.1 billion in 2019. The packaging segment contributed to 27% of this revenue, while ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) and styrene-based hot glues represented 73% of the market share in 2018.

The Chinese market features over 210 suppliers, predominantly small-scale companies operating on a contract basis. Key players include Henkel, Tex Year Fine Chemical, Bostik, and H.B. Fuller. Established companies are expected to maintain dominance in the high-end market due to efficient supply chains and a strong focus on product innovation.

Competitive Landscape

In mature markets like Europe and North America, companies are increasingly adopting inorganic growth strategies. The UK, Germany, and France are projected to account for 69% of the hot melt adhesives market in Western Europe.

Key Players in the Hot Melt Adhesives Market

Adhesive Technologies, Inc.

Worthen Industries Inc.

American Chemical, Inc.

3M

Jowat SE

Evans Adhesive Corporation Ltd.

Avery Dennison Corporation

Tex Year Industries Inc.

Bostik Inc.

Capital Adhesives & Packaging Corp.

LORD Corporation

Costchem srl

Daubert Chemical Company, Inc.

Ashland Global Holdings Inc.

Dow Corning Corporation

Alfa International Corporation

H.B. Fuller Company

Henkel AG & Co. KGaA

Sika AG

Industry Segmentation

By Product Type:

EVA

Polyolefins

Styrene Block Copolymers (SBC)

Polyurethane (PUR)

Hot Melt Pressure Sensitive Adhesives

Others

By Application:

Packaging

Electronics

Automotive

Hygiene Products

Construction

Furniture

Textile

Others

[onedirectdeals]

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