#Pakistan Big News

[theshinazugawaslut]

Will answer all asks tomorrow, and I'll also be starting my writing as promised!

Thank you to every single one of you who supported me during this time, I'm genuinely so thankful, and every single person here has given me so, so much positivity!

[magnoliamyrrh]

.

[rangpurcity]

If Nepal does not change, there will be a big match between India and Pakistan

If Nepal does not change, there will be a big match between India and Pakistan The Asia Cup, which is now considered to be ‘low profile’, is now becoming a premier tournament after India and Pakistan have clashed three times. In the World Cup too, the clash of both the teams is possible 2 times. This podcast based on the cricket activities of the week Amidst many speculations, the final…

[newscast1]

Suicide blast in Pakistan's Islamabad, cop killed, several injured

Suicide blast in Pakistan’s Islamabad, cop killed, several injured

A policeman was killed and several others were injured in a suicide attack in Pakistan’s Islamabad on Friday. The area was cordoned off after the attack and an investigation has been launched. Islamabad,UPDATED: Dec 23, 2022 14:48 IST Police was chasing the suspected cab and the blast occurred when was stopped for checking (Photo: Twitter) By India Today Web Desk: A policeman was killed and…

[kkginfo]

IOCL Recruitment 2022: Indian Oil Corporation Jobs with Big Salary.. Full Details.. | KKG INFO

IOCL Recruitment 2022: Indian Oil Corporation Jobs with Big Salary.. Full Details.. | KKG INFO

Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), a Central Government Corporation.. Applications from eligible candidates for 18 Senior Legal Officer, Legal Officer Posts. IOCL Senior Legal Officer Recruitment 2022: Central Government Corporation Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) has issued a notification inviting applications from eligible candidates for filling up 18 Senior Legal Officer and Legal…

[bigification]

Under New Management

The smell of sweat hits hard when I enter the gym. I haven't been in a gym in years, but just the smell is enough to bring me back. There is a jacked Arab dude sitting behind the reception, I just tell him I'm here for an interview and he lets me by.

I felt so out of place here. I'm this skinny white guy walking through a gym filled with built Arab guys. I start to wonder how good my chances are of getting this job. I figured my degree in business and experience managing other businesses would be enough, but now I'm starting to wonder if I'm too much of an outsider.

I tell myself this isn't the time to overthink as I make my way to the office. I have to walk past the locker room to get to the office. I see a white guy getting into the showers, probably one of two non Arab guys I've seen here so far. I also walk past an older Arab guy who seems to be checking himself out in his phone's camera.

I find myself staring a bit too long and the man looks up from his phone, making eye contact with me. I quickly look down and continue walking.

"Are you here for the interview?" The man asks. I stop in my tracks and nervously say yes. I feel the butterflies fill my stomach as I realize he's the manager of the gym. I'm already off to an awful start. "Go ahead son, I'll get dressed and meet you there." The man points to his office down the hall. I just nod and walk away.

A few minutes later, the man walks in wearing a nice black suit and expensive looking jewellery. He sits down at his desk and gets right into the interview. I get more and more confident and the interview goes on. He seems quite nice, if a little intimidating.

"You know..." The man sounds more genuine, "I am getting too old for this job. How do you feel starting right away?" He asks. My heart sinks, I have to think quick. "Of course!" I blurt out.

"Great" he says, "it is tradition in this gym to pass down this watch through management." He takes off his expensive looking silver watch and passes it to me. I hesitate for a moment before grabbing it and sliding onto my wrist. The watch feels good on my skin, the cold of the metal is refreshing. I look at the watch and admire its beauty when I see something changing. My hands are... growing. My hands crack as the bones grow, making my hands wide and my fingers long. My thin fingers thicken as muscle and fat pile into them, and callouses cover my palms. My forearms start to thicken as veins start to surface under my skin. They grow until they burst through the button on my sleeve. I also notice my skin start to darken into a tan colour, resembling that of the man who interviewed me. Thick dark hair starts to sprout on my hands and my forearms, giving them a touch and ragged look. I feel the transformation move up my arm and to my biceps. They grow and grow, making my sleeves tight as skin around them. My shoulders broaden and my chest pumps outward, popping off the top couple buttons on my shirt. My shirt strains further as I grow two massive pecs with a thick pelt of hair covering them. The fat in my stomach melts away, revealing a defined six pack that also gets covered in dark hairs.

I feel my pants tighten as my ass perks up and my thighs thicken. I grab my crotch with my massive hand and feel my dick grow larger and larger until a visible bulge forms in my pants. I feel the scratch of hairs growing all down my legs. Suddenly my feet burst from the dress shoes I was wearing, revealing my massive hairy feet.

Finally I feel my face shifting around. My brow bone becomes more prominent and my nose becomes larger. I feel my face sliming down as a big bushy beard grows on my face. I also feel the hair on my head recede until it's only a short buzz cut.

I sit there for a moment, getting used to my body as memories flood into my head. My childhood in Pakistan, moving to America when I was a young man with my father. He bought this gym, allowing me to workout constantly. And now he is passing the gym onto me.

"I am proud of you son. I'm happy you get to take over the family business." Father says to me.

"Thank you father." I respond in a deep voice with a heavy accent.

I walk out of the interview room, and back through the locker room. As I walk through, however, I see that American man getting out of the shower. I would normally be okay with the occasional American being at the gym, but today I was not feeling as generous. I approach him as he is drying off outside the shower.

"What the hell are yo-" the man tries to say, but he pauses as I forcefully grab his wrist. Suddenly the once skinny man begins to rapidly grow. His biceps became massive, his pecs thickened, and his stomach fat melted away revealing a defined six pack. Every part of his body continued to grow, his ass grew fat and round, his dick doubled in size, now being the thickness of a pop can, and his thighs thickened until they rubbed together. His skin started to darken, going from a pale white to an almost bronze brown colour and thick dark hairs sprouted all over his body. A thick forest of hair quickly covered his chest, stomach, arms, and legs. His thin blonde hair became a wavy jet black buzz cut as his once clean shaven face grew a thick beard.

"Good workout brother." I give him a firm tap on his shoulder and he nods back at me. He is a beast of a man, and a loyal customer at the gym, one of many good men who come here.

[dresshistorynerd]

The Real Cost of the Fashion Industry

Atacama Desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile. (source)

The textile industry is destroying the world. The industry is wasting massive amounts of energy and materials, and polluting the air, the ground and the water supplies. It overwhelmingly exploits it's labour and extracts wealth from colonized countries, especially in Asia. I assume we all broadly understand this, but I think it's useful to have it all laid out in front of you to see the big picture, the core issues causing this destruction and find ways how to effectively move forward.

The concerning trend behind this ever-increasing devastation are shortening of trend cycles, lowering clothing prices and massive amount of wasted products. Still in year 2000 it was common for fashion brands to have two collections per year, while now e.g. Zara produces 24 collections and H&M produces 12-16 collections per year. Clothing prices have fallen (at leas in EU) 30% from 1996 to 2018 when adjusted to inflation, which has contributed to the 40% increase in clothing consumption per person between 1996 and 2012 (in EU). (source) As the revenue made by the clothing industry keep rising - from 2017 to 2021 they doubled (source) - falling prices can only be achieved with increasing worker exploitation and decreasing quality. I think the 36% degrees times clothing are used in average during the last 15 years (source) is a clear indication on the continuing drop in quality of clothing. Clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2015, while 30% of the clothes produced per year are never sold and are often burned instead (source), presumably to prevent the returns from falling due to oversupply.

These all factors are driving people to overconsume. While people in EU keep buying more clothes, they haven't used up to 50% of the clothes in their wardrobe for over a year (source). This overconsumption is only made much worse by the new type of hyper fast fashion companies like SHEIN and Temu, which are using addictive psychological tactics developed by social media companies (source 1, source 2). They are cranking up all those concerning trends I mentioned above.

Under the cut I will go through the statistics of the most significant effects of the industry on environment and people. I will warn you it will be bleak. This is not just a fast fashion problem, basically the whole industry is engaging in destructive practices leading to this damage. Clothing is one of those things that would be actually relatively easy to make without massive environmental and human cost, so while that makes the current state of the industry even more heinous, it also means there's hope and it's possible to fix things. In the end, I will be giving some suggestions for actions we could be doing right now to unfuck this mess.

Carbon emissions

The textile industry is responsible for roughly 10% of the global CO2 emissions, more than aviation and shipping industry combined. This is due to the massive supply chains and energy intensive production methods of fabrics. Most of it can be contributed to the fashion sector since around 60% of all the textile production is clothing. Polyester, a synthetic fiber made from oil which accounts for more than half of the fibers used in the textile industry, produces double the amount of carbon emissions than cotton, accounting for very large proportions of all the emissions by the industry. (source 1, source 2)

Worker exploitation

Majority of the textiles are produced in Asia. Some of the worst working conditions are in Bangladesh, one of the most important garment producers, and Pakistan. Here's an excerpt from EU Parliament's briefing document from 2014 after the catastrophic Rana Plaza disaster:

The customers of garment producers are most often global brands looking for low prices and tight production timeframes. They also make changes to product design, product volume, and production timeframes, and place last-minute orders without accepting increased costs or adjustments to delivery dates. The stresses of such policies usually fall on factory workers.

The wage exploitation is bleak. According to the 2015 documentary The True Cost less than 2% of all garment factory workers earned a living wage (source). Hourly wages are so low and the daily quotas so high, garment workers are often forced through conditions or threats and demand to work extra hours, which regularly leads to 10-12 hour work days (source) and at worst 16 hour workdays (source), often without days off. Sometimes factories won't compensate for extra hours, breaching regulations (source).

Long working hours, repetitive work, lack of breaks and high pressure leads to increased risks of injuries and accidents. Small and even major injuries are extremely common in the industry. A study in three factories in India found that 70% of the workers suffered from musculosceletal symptoms (source). Another qualitative study of female garment workers and factory doctors in Dhaka found that long hours led to eye strain, headaches, fatigue and weight loss in addition to muscular and back pains. According to the doctors interviewed, weight loss was common because the workers work such long hours without breaks, they didn't have enough time to eat properly. (source) Another study in 8 factories in India found that minor injuries were extremely common and caused by unergonomic work stations, poor organization in the work place and lack of safety gear, guidelines and training (source). Safety precautions too are often overlooked to cut corners, which periodically leads to factory accidents, like in 2023 lack of fire exists and fire extinguishers, and goods stacked beyond capacity led to a factory fire in Pakistan which injured dozens of workers (source) or like in 2022 dangerous factory site led to one dead worker and 9 injured workers (source).

Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 is the worst industrial accident in recent history. The factory building did not have proper permits and the factory owner blatantly ignored signs of danger (other businesses abandoned the building a day before the collapse), which led to deaths of 1 134 workers and injuries to 2 500 workers. The factory had or were at the time working for orders of at least Prada, Versace, Primark, Walmart, Zara, H&M, C&A, Mango, Benetton, the Children's Place, El Corte Inglés, Joe Fresh, Carrefour, Auchan, KiK, Loblaw, Bonmarche and Matalan. None of the brands were held legally accountable for the unsafe working conditions which they profited off of. Only 9 of the brands attended a meeting to agree on compensation for the victim's families. Walmart, Carrefour, Auchan, Mango and KiK refused to sight the agreement, it was only signed by Primark, Loblaw, Bonmarche and El Corte Ingles. The compension these companies provided was laughable though. Primemark demanded DNA evidence that they are relatives of one of the victims from these struggling families who had lost their often sole breadwinner for a meager sum of 200 USD (which doesn't even count for two months of living wage in Bangladesh (source)). This obviously proved to be extremely difficult for most families even though US government agreed to donate DNA kits. This is often said to be a turning point in working conditions in the industry, at least in Bangladesh, but while there's more oversight now, as we have seen, there's clearly still massive issues. (source 1, source 2)

One last major concern of working conditions in the industry I will mention is the Xinjiang raw cotton production, which is likely produced mainly with forced labour from Uighur concentration camps, aka slave labour of a suspected genocide. 90% of China's raw cotton production comes from Xinjiang (source). China is the second largest cotton producer in the world, after India, accounting 20% of the yearly global cotton production (source).

Pollution

Synthetic dyes, which synthetic fibers require, are the main cause of water pollution caused by the textile industry, which is estimated to account for 20% of global clean water pollution (source). This water pollution by the textile industry is suspected of causing a lot of health issues like digestive issues in the short term, and allergies, dermatitis, skin inflammation, tumors and human mutations in the long term. Toxins also effect fish and aquatic bacteria. Azo dyes, one of the major pollutants, can cause detrimental effects to aquatic ecosystems by decreasing photosynthetic activity of algae. Synthetic dyes and heavy metals also cause large amounts of soil pollution. Large amounts of heavy metals in soil, which occurs around factories that don't take proper environmental procautions, can cause anaemia, kidney failure, and cortical edoem in humans. That also causes changes in soil texture, decrease in soil microbial diversity and plant health, and changes in genetic structure of organisms growing in the soil. Textile factory waste water has been used for irrigation in Turkey, where other sources of water have been lacking, causing significant damage to the soil. (source)

Rayon produced through viscose process causes significant carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide pollution to the environment. CS2 causes cardiovascular, psychiatric, neuropsychological, endocrinal and reproductive disorders. Abortion rates among workers and their partners exposed to CS2 are reported to be significantly higher than in control groups. Many times higher amounts of sick days are reported for workers in spinning rooms of viscose fiber factories. China and India are largest producers of CS2 pollution, accounting respectively 65.74% and 11,11% of the global pollution, since they are also the major viscose producers. Emission of CS2 has increased significantly in India from 26.8 Gg in 2001 to 78.32 Gg in 2020. (source)

Waste

The textile industry is estimated to produce around 92 million tons of textile waste per year. As said before around 30% of the production is never sold and with shortening lifespans used the amount of used clothing that goes to waster is only increasing. This waste is large burned or thrown into landfills in poor countries. (source) H&M was accused in 2017 by investigative journalists of burning up to 12 tonnes of clothes per year themselves, including usable clothing, which they denied claiming they donated clothing they couldn't sell to charity instead (source). Most of the clothing donated to charity though is burned or dumbed to landfills (source).

Most of the waste clothing from rich countries like European countries, US, Australia and Canada are shipped to Chile (source) or African countries, mostly Ghana, but also Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire (source). There's major second-hand fashion industries in these places, but most of the charity clothing is dumbed to landfills, because they are in such bad condition or the quality is too poor. Burning and filling landfills with synthetic fabrics with synthetic dyes causes major air, water and soil pollution. The second-hand clothing industry also suppresses any local clothing production as donated clothing is inherently more competitive than anything else, making these places economically reliant on dumbed clothing, which is destroying their environment and health, and prevents them from creating a more sustainable economy that would befit them more locally. This is not an accident, but required part of the clothing industry. Overproduction let's these companies tap on every new trend quickly, while not letting clothing the prices in rich countries drop so low it would hurt their profits. Production is cheaper than missing a trend.

Micro- and nanoplastics

There is massive amounts of micro- and nanoplastics in all of our environment. It's in our food, drinking water, even sea salt (source). Washing synthetic textiles accounts for roughly 35% of all microplastics released to the environment. It's estimated that it has caused 14 million tonnes of microplastics to accumulate into the bottom of the ocean. (source)

Microplastics build up into the intestines of animals (including humans), and have shown to probably cause cause DNA damage and altered organism behavior in aquatic fauna. Microplastics also contain a lot of the usual pollutants from textile industry like synthetic dyes and heavy metals, which absorb in higher quantities to tissues of animals through microplastics in the intestines. Studies have shown that the adverse effect are higher the longer the microplastics stay in the organism. The effects cause major risks to aquatic biodiversity. (source) The health effects of microplastics to humans are not well known, but studies have shown that they could have adverse effects on digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive and immune systems. (source)

Microplastics degrade in the environment even further to nanoplastics. Nanoplastic being even smaller are found to enter blood circulation, get inside cells and cross the blood-brain barrier. In fishes they have been found to cause neurological damage. Nanoplastics are also in the air, and humans frequently breath them in. Study in office buildings found higher concentration of nanoplastics in indoor air than outdoor air. Inside the nanoplastics are likely caused mostly by synthetic household textiles, and outdoors mostly by car tires. (source) An association between nanoplastics and mitochondrial damage in human respiratory cells was found in a recent study. (source)

Micro and nano plastics are also extremely hard to remove from the environment, making it even more important that we reduce the amount of microplastics we produce as fast as possible.

What can we do?

This is a question that deserves it's own essays and articles written about it, but I will leave you with some action points. Reading about these very bleak realities can easily lead to overwhelming apathy, but we need to channel these horrors into actions. Whatever you do, do not fall into apathy. We don't have the luxury for that, we need to act. These are industry wide problems, that simply cannot be fixed by consumerism. Do not trust any clothing companies, even those who market themselves as ethical and responsible, always assume they are lying. Most of them are, even the so called "good ones". We need legislation. We cannot allow the industry to regulate itself, they will always take the easy way out and lie to their graves. I will for sure write more in dept about what we can do, but for now here's some actions to take, both political and individual ones.

Political actions

Let's start with political actions, since they will be the much more important ones. While we are trying to dismantle capitalism and neocolonialism (the roots of these issues), here's some things that we could do right now. These will be policies that we should be doing everywhere in the world, but especially rich countries, where most of the clothing consumption is taking place. Vote, speak to others, write to your representative, write opinion pieces to your local papers, engage with democracy.

Higher requirements of transparency. Right now product transparency in clothing is laughably low. In EU only the material make up and the origin country of the final product are required to be disclosed. Everything else is up to the company. Mandatory transparency is the only way we can force any positive changes in the production. The minimum of transparency should be: origin countries of the fibers and textiles in the product itself; mandatory reports of the lifecycle emissions; mandatory reports of whole chain of production. Right now the clothing companies make their chain of production intentionally complex, so they have plausible deniability when inevitably they are caught violating environmental or worker protection laws (source). They intentionally don't want to be able to track down their production chain. Forcing them to do so anyway would make it very expensive for them to keep up this unnecessarily complex production chain. These laws are most effective when put in place in large economies like EU or US.

Restrictions on the use of synthetic fibers. Honestly I think they should be banned entirely, since the amount of microplastics in our environment is already extremely distressing and the other environmental effects of synthetic fibers are also massive, but I know there are functions for which they are not easily replaced (though I think they can be replaces in those too, but that's a subject of another post), so we should start with restrictions. I'm not sure how they should be specifically made, I'm not a law expert, but they shouldn't be used in everyday textiles, where there are very easy and obvious other options.

Banning viscose. There are much better options for viscose method that don't cause massive health issues and environmental destruction where ever it's made, like Lyocell. There is absolutely no reason why viscose should be allowed to be sold anywhere.

Governmental support for local production by local businesses. Most of the issues could be much more easily solved and monitored if most clothing were not produced by massive global conglomerations, but rather by local businesses that produce locally. All clothing are made by hand, so centralizing production doesn't even give it advantage in effectiveness (only more profits for the few). Producing locally would make it much more easier to enforce regulations and it would reduce production chains, making production more effective, leaving more profits into the hands of the workers and reducing emissions from transportation. When the production is done by local businesses, the profits would stay in the producing country and they could be taxed and utilized to help the local communities. This would be helpful to do in both exploited and exploiter countries. When done in rich countries who exploit poorer ones, it would reduce the demand for exploitation. In poor countries this is not as easily done, since poor means they don't have money to give around, but maybe this could be a good cause to put some reparations from colonizers and global corporations, which they should pay.

Preventing strategic accounting between subsidiaries and parent companies. Corporate law is obviously not my area of expertise, but I know that allowing corporations to move around the accounting of profits and losses between subsidiaries and parent companies in roughly 1980s, was a major factor in creating this modern global capitalist system, where corporations can very easily manipulate their accounting to utilize tax heavens and avoid taxes where they actually operate, which is how they are upholding this terrible system and extracting the profits from the production countries. How specifically this would be done I can't tell because again I know shit about corporate law, so experts of that field should plan the specifics. Overall this would help deal with a lot of other problems than just the fashion industry. Again for it to be effective a large economic area like EU or US should do this.

Holding companies accountable for their whole chain of production. These companies should be dragged to court and made to answer for the crimes they are profiting of off. We should put fear back into them. This is possible. Victims of child slavery are already doing this for chocolate companies. If it's already not how law works everywhere, the laws should be changed so that the companies are responsible even if they didn't know, because it's their responsibility to find out and make sure they know. They should have been held accountable for the Rana Plaza disaster. Maybe they still could be. Sue the mother fuckers. They should be afraid of us.

Individual actions

I will stress that the previous section is much more important and that there's no need to feel guilty for individual actions. This is not the fault of the average consumer. Still we do need to change our relationship to fashion and consumption. While it's not our fault, one of the ways this system is perpetuated, is by the consumerist propaganda by fashion industry. And it is easier to change our own habits than to change the industry, even if our own habits have little impact. So these are quite easy things we all could do as we are trying to do bigger change to gain some sense of control and keep us from falling to apathy.

Consume less. Better consumption will not save us, since consumption itself is the problem. We consume too much clothing. Don't make impulse purchases. Consider carefully weather you actually need something or if you really really want it. Even only buying second-hand still fuels the industry, so while it's better than buying new, it's still better to not buy.

Take proper care of your clothing. Learn how to properly wash your clothing. There's a lot of internet resources for that. Never wash your wool textiles in washing machine, even if the textile's official instructions allow it. Instead air them regularly, rinse them in cool water if they still smell after airing and wash stains with water or small amount of (wool) detergent. Never use fabric softener! It damages the fabrics, prevents them from properly getting clean and is environmentally damaging. Instead use laundry vinegar for making textiles softer or removing bad smells. (You can easily make laundry vinegar yourself too from white vinegar and water (and essential oils, if you want to add a scent to it) which is much cheaper.) Learn how to take care of your leather products. Most leather can be kept in very good condition for a very long time by occasional waxing with beeswax.

Use the services of dressmakers and shoemakers. Take your broken clothing or clothing which doesn't fit anymore to your local dressmaker and ask them if they can do something about it. Take your broken and worn leather products to your local shoemaker too. Usually it doesn't cost much to get something fixed or refitted and these expert usually have ways to fix things you couldn't even think of. So even if the situation with your clothing or accessory seems desperate, still show it to the dressmaker or shoemaker.

If it's extremely cheap, don't buy it. Remember that every clothing is handmade. Only a small fraction of the cost of the clothing will be paying the wages of the person who made it with their hands. If a shirt costs 5 euros (c. 5,39 USD), it's sewer was only payed mere cents for sewing it. I'm not a quick sewer and it takes me roughly 1-2 hours to cut, prepare and sew a simple shirt, so I'm guessing it would take around half an hour to do all that for a factory worker on a crunch, at the very least 15 minutes. So the hourly pay would still be ridiculously low. However, as I said before, the fact that the workers in clothing factories get criminally low pay is not the fault of the consumer, so if you need a clothing item, and you don't have money to buy anything else than something very cheep, don't feel guilty. And anyway expensive clothing in no way necessarily means reasonable pay or ethical working conditions, cheep clothing just guarantee them.

Learn to recognize higher quality. In addition to exploitation, low price also means low quality, but again high price doesn't guarantee high quality. High quality allows you to buy less, so even if it's not as cheep as low quality, if you can afford it, when you need it, it will be cheaper in long run, and allows you to consume less. Check the materials. Natural fibers are your friends. Do not buy plastic, if it's possible to avoid. Avoid household textiles from synthetic fibers. Avoid textiles with small amounts of spandex to give it stretch, it will shorten the lifespan of the clothing significantly as the spandex quickly wears down and the clothing looses it's shape. Also avoid clothing with rubber bands. They also loose their elasticity very quickly. In some types of clothing (sport wear, underwear) these are basically impossible to avoid, but in many other cases it's entirely possible.

Buy from artisans and local producers, if you can. As said better consumption won't fix this, but supporting artisans and your local producers could help keep them afloat, which in small ways helps create an alternative to the exploitative global corporations. With artisans especially you know the money goes to the one who did the labour and buying locally means less middlemen to take their cut. More generally buy rather from businesses that are located to the same country where the production is, even if it's not local to you. A local business doesn't necessarily produce locally.

Develop your own taste. If you care about fashion and style, it's easy to fall victim to the fashion industry's marketing and trend cycles. That's why I think it's important to develop your personal sense of style and preferences. Pay attention at what type of clothes are comfortable to you. Go through your wardrobe and track for a while which clothing you use most and which least. Understanding your own preferences helps you avoid impulse buying.

Consider learning basics of sewing. Not everyone has the time or interest for this, but if you in anyway might have a bit of both, I suggest learning some very simple and basic mending and reattaching a button.

Further reading on this blog: How to see through the greenwashing propaganda of the fashion industry - Case study 1: Shein

Bibliography

Academic sources

An overview of the contribution of the textiles sector to climate change, 2022, L. F. Walter et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science

How common are aches and pains among garment factory workers? A work-related musculoskeletal disorder assessment study in three factories of south 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, 2021, Arkaprovo Pal et al., J Family Med Prim Care

Sewing shirts with injured fingers and tears: exploring the experience of female garment workers health problems in Bangladesh, 2019, Akhter, S., Rutherford, S. & Chu, C., BMC Int Health Hum Rights

Occupation Related Accidents in Selected Garment Industries in Bangalore City, 2006, Calvin, Sam & Joseph, Bobby, Indian Journal of Community Medicine

A Review on Textile and Clothing Industry Impacts on The Environment, 2022, Nur Farzanah Binti Norarmi et al., International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide emissions from viscose fibre manufacturing industry: A case study in India, 2022, Deepanjan Majumdar et al., Atmospheric Environment: X

Microplastics Pollution: A Brief Review of Its Source and Abundance in Different Aquatic Ecosystems, 2023, Asifa Ashrafy et al., Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances

Health Effects of Microplastic Exposures: Current Issues and Perspectives in South Korea, 2023, Yongjin Lee et al., Yonsei Medical Journal

Nanoplastics and Human Health: Hazard Identification and Biointerface, 2022, Hanpeng Lai, Xing Liu, and Man Qu, Nanomaterials

Other sources

The impact of textile production and waste on the environment (infographics), 2020, EU

Chile’s desert dumping ground for fast fashion leftovers, 2021, AlJazeera

Fashion - Worldwide, 2022 (updated 2024), Statista

Fashion Industry Waste Statistics & Facts 2023, James Evans, Sustainable Ninja (magazine)

Everything You Need to Know About Waste in the Fashion Industry, 2024, Solene Rauturier, Good on You (magazine)

Textiles and the environment, 2022, Nikolina Šajn, European Parliamentary Research Service

Help! I'm addicted to secondhand shopping apps, 2023, Alice Crossley, Cosmopolitan

Addictive, absurdly cheap and controversial: the rise of China’s Temu app, 2023, Helen Davidson, Guardian

Workers' conditions in the textile and clothing sector: just an Asian affair? - Issues at stake after the Rana Plaza tragedy, 2014, Enrico D'Ambrogio, European Parliamentary Research Service

State of The Industry: Lowest Wages to Living Wages, The Lowest Wage Challenge (Industry affiliated campaign)

Fast Fashion Getting Faster: A Look at the Unethical Labor Practices Sustaining a Growing Industry, 2021, Emma Ross, International Law and Policy Brief (George Washington University Law School)

Dozens injured in Pakistan garment factory collapse and fire, 2023, Hannah Abdulla, Just Style (news media)

India: Multiple factory accidents raise concerns over health & safety in the garment industry, campaigners call for freedom of association in factories to ‘stave off’ accidents, 2022, Jasmin Malik Chua, Business & Human Rights Resource Center

Minimum Wage Level for Garment Workers in the World, 2020, Sheng Lu, FASH455 Global Apparel & Textile Trade and Sourcing (University of Delaware)

Rana Plaza collapse, Wikipedia

Buyers’ compensation for Rana Plaza victims far from reality, 2013, Ibrahim Hossain Ovi, Dhaka Tribune (news media)

World cotton production statistics, updated 2024, The World Counts

Dead white man’s clothes, 2021, Linton Besser, ABC News

[the-aspec-country]

I exist now!

hi Tumblr! I am the Aspec Country! I don't know how else to introduce myself so I'll just tag some people

(sorry if I double tag you)

@aro-sp-ace-force @big-fucking-sagittarius-astar @bisexual-navy @canadian-hellbird @france-unofficial

@gimmickverse-weekly @god-of-death-official @gimmick-swag @genderfluid-marine-corp @i-say-bean

@i-am-the-milky-way-galaxy @its-target-official @libra-the-scales-offical @literally-leo @literally-luxembourg

@might-be-capricorn @moongate-keepers-official @non-tyrannical-usa @official-god-of-order @officially-new-zealand

@official-draco-constellation @officially-capricorn @the-missiles-guy @totally-neptune-official @totally-oregon

@totally-ikea @ursa-minor-probably @ursa-major-actually @walmart-the-official

@youraveragemagicalthief@yahooo-official @duothelingo @i-say-bean @corvus-the-constellation

@and-cassiopeia @officially-taurus @the-official-god-of-chaos @the-real-illinois @the-principality-of-sealand

@the-red-planet-mars @its-target-official @guatemala-official @the-gimmick-authority @thestateoflouisiana

@amul-unofficial @official-the-united-states @official-denmark @denmark-forreal @denmark-official

@denmarklandia-official @actually-danish-denmark @official-hongkong @official-ireland @definitelytherepublicofireland

@actually-literally-ireland @forever-scotland @totally-france @france-unofficial @russia-totallyofficial

@germany-official @totally-germany @genuinely-germany @definitely-britain

@definitely-canada @official-new-zealand @india-official @yugoslavia-official @wales-official

@the-offical-roman-empire @the-official-italy @guatemala-official @totally-italy @the-principality-of-sealand

@definitely-brasil @holy-roman-empire-revived @spain-unofficial @very-real-australia @antiquitian-empire

@literally-luxembourg @100-percent-real-official-malta @totally-japan @therealrepublicofkorea @pakistan-official

@i-am-poland @kingdom-of-asgardia-real @very-much-mexico @republic-of-molossia @the-kingdom-of-norway

@sweden-official @non-tyrannical-usa @the-entire-country-of-sweden @greenland-offical @the-state-of-michigan

@state-of-0hio-official @cape-breton-island-itself @state-of-florida-official @state-of-connecticut-official @the-us-navy-offical

@the-us-navy @the-real-illinois @the-state-of-georgia-official @mhm-wisconsin @rejasthanofficial

@stateofuttarpradeshindiaofficial @the-only-ontario @actually-alberta @newjersey-official @new-york-for-real

@definitely-indiana @the-province-of-nova-scotia-real @femboy-state-of-florida-official @the-republic-of-texas

@new-hampshire-real @unofficial-illinois @newhampshireofficial @saskatchewan-real @quebec-official

@texas-real @rhode-island-real @we-are-not-the-feds @totally-texas @telangana-official

@sovereign-state-of-alaska @tamil-nadu-official @west-bengal-official @this-is-goa @totally-oregon

@buffalony-official @maharashtra-official @kolkatabbg @gujarat-official @axom-miss

@karnatakaofficial @canadian-tire-real @tamilnadu-official @bihar-official @mumbai-official

@communist-usa-real @officially-gay-va @definitely-north-america @antarcitica-official @official-the-pacific-ocean

@the-real-atlantic-ocean @bangladesh-official @hyderabad-unofficial @delhi-the-capital @the-lovely-planet-earth

@totally-italy @france-unofficial @totally-france @the-official-italy @the-wonderful-jupiter

@speckled-callisto @deimos-moon-of-terror @moon-of-fear-phobos @decafcatfeen @the-real-eris

@the-real-illinois @the-official-goose-god @india-official @pakistan-official @asteroid-belt-resident-ceres

@genuinely-germany @antiquitian-empire @actually-mtn-dew @spain-unofficial @definitely-brasil

@definitely-britain @definitely-canada @very-real-australia @zoozve-official @the-province-of-nova-scotia-real

@the-problemo @unusuallyy @concrete-the-cat @official-denmark @official-hongkong

@official-planet-pluto @truly-pluto @truly-the-sun @its-target-official @i-am-poland

@ruhrpott-i-guess @non-tyrannical-usa @the-gimmick-authority @realsafari @official-new-zealand

@google-news-official @guatemala-official @forever-scotland @definitely-waste-management

[reasonsforhope]

"Nasir Mansoor has spent 40 years fighting for Pakistan’s workers. Whether demanding compensation on behalf of the hundreds of people who died in a devastating 2012 factory fire in Karachi or demonstrating against Pakistani suppliers to global fashion brands violating minimum wage rules, he’s battled many of the country’s widespread labor injustices.

Yet so far, little has improved, said Mansoor, who heads Pakistan’s National Trade Union Federation in Karachi... Regulations and trade protocols look good on paper, but they rarely trickle down to the factory level. “Nobody cares,” Mansoor said. “Not the government who makes commitments, not the brands, and not the suppliers. The workers are suffering.”

Change on the Horizon

But change might finally be on the horizon after Germany’s new Supply Chain Act came into force last year. As Europe’s largest economy and importer of clothing, Germany now requires certain companies to put risk-management systems in place to prevent, minimize, and eliminate human rights violations for workers across their entire global value chains. Signed into law by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in January 2023, the law covers issues such as forced labor, union-busting, and inadequate wages, for the first time giving legal power to protections that were previously based on voluntary commitments. Companies that violate the rules face fines of up to 8 million euros ($8.7 million)...

...As governments come to realize that a purely voluntary regimen produces limited results, there is now a growing global movement to ensure that companies are legally required to protect the people working at all stages of their supply chains.

The German law is just the latest example of these new due diligence rules—and it’s the one with the highest impact, given the size of the country’s market. A number of other Western countries have also adopted similar legislation in recent years, including France and Norway. A landmark European Union law that would mandate all member states to implement similar regulation is in the final stages of being greenlighted.

Although the United States has legislation to prevent forced labor in its global supply chains, such as the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, there are no federal laws that protect workers in other countries from abuses that fall short of forced labor. That said, a proposed New York state bill, the Fashion Act, would legally require most major U.S. and international brands to identify, prevent, and remediate human rights violations in their supply chain if passed, with noncompliance subject to fines. Since major fashion brands could hardly avoid selling their products in New York, the law would effectively put the United States on a similar legal level as Germany and France...

The Results So Far

As of January, Germany’s new law applies to any company with at least 1,000 employees in the country, which covers many of the world’s best-known fast fashion retailers, such as Zara and Primark. Since last January [Jan 2023], German authorities say they have received 71 complaints or notices of violations and conducted 650 of their own assessments, including evaluating companies’ risk management.

In Pakistan, the very existence of the German law was enough to spark action. Last year, Mansoor and other union representatives reached out to fashion brands that sourced some of their clothing in Pakistan to raise concerns about severe labor violations in garment factories. Just four months later, he and his colleagues found themselves in face-to-face meetings with several of those brands—a first in his 40-year career. “This is a big achievement,” he said. “Otherwise, [the brands] never sit with us. Even when the workers died in the factory fire, the brand never sat with us.” ...

-via The Fuller Project, April 2, 2024. Article headers added by me.

Article continues below, with more action-based results, including one factory that "complied, agreeing to respect minimum wages and provide contract letters, training on labor laws, and—for the first time—worker bonuses"

With the help of Mansoor and Zehra Khan, the general secretary of the Home-Based Women Workers Federation, interviews with more than 350 garment workers revealed the severity of long-known issues.

Nearly all workers interviewed were paid less than a living wage, which was 67,200 Pakistan rupees (roughly $243) per month in 2022, according to the Asia Floor Wage Alliance. Nearly 30 percent were even paid below the legal minimum wage of 25,000 Pakistani rupees per month (roughly $90) for unskilled workers. Almost 100 percent had not been given a written employment contract, while more than three-quarters were either not registered with the social security system—a legal requirement—or didn’t know if they were.

When Mansoor, Khan, and some of the organizations raised the violations with seven global fashion brands implicated, they were pleasantly surprised. One German retailer reacted swiftly, asking its supplier where the violations had occurred to sign a 14-point memorandum of understanding to address the issues. (We’re unable to name the companies involved because negotiations are ongoing.) The factory complied, agreeing to respect minimum wages and provide contract letters, training on labor laws, and—for the first time—worker bonuses.

In February [2024], the factory registered an additional 400 workers with the social security system (up from roughly 100) and will continue to enroll more, according to Khan. “That is a huge number for us,” she said.

It’s had a knock-on effect, too. Four of the German brand’s other Pakistani suppliers are also willing to sign the memorandum, Khan noted, which could impact another 2,000 workers or so. “The law is opening up space for [the unions] to negotiate, to be heard, and to be taken seriously,” said Miriam Saage-Maass, the legal director at ECCHR.

Looking Forward with the EU

...Last month [in March 2024], EU member states finally approved a due diligence directive after long delays, during which the original draft was watered down. As it moves to the next stage—a vote in the European Parliament—before taking effect, critics argue that the rules are now too diluted and cover too few companies to be truly effective. Still, the fact that the EU is acting at all has been described as an important moment, and unionists such as Mansoor and Khan wait thousands of miles away with bated breath for the final outcome.

Solidarity from Europe is important, Khan said, and could change the lives of Pakistan’s workers. “The eyes and the ears of the people are looking to [the brands],” Mansoor said. “And they are being made accountable for their mistakes.”"

-via The Fuller Project, April 2, 2024. Article headers added by me.

[the-gimmick-archive]

Pinned post. (Will update.)

This is a shared blog made to archive important things that happen in the gimmickverse.

The current mods are: @justazebra (admin), @i-dont-know-how-to-name-this.

If we make a mistake, please tell us.

Please @ us if you see an important event happen, especially wars.

Send us an ask if you want to know about a certain event, we’ll do our best to find it.

If you have the link to something important that we didn't archive yet (especially if it happened before this blog started existing), please send it to us.

List of arcs and events:

The color war:

Earliest point in the arc we could find. The purple revolution begins. Green joins the revolution.

That time when figuratively everyone got possessed:

Earliest point in the arc we could find.

The UwU revolution:

Earliest point in the arc we could find.

Sealand dying and being revived:

Death. Revival. Death again, but this time they become death's assistant.

IKEA-Party City War:

Earliest point in the arc.

Goose god vs. Waste management war:

Earliest point. Waste management also declaring war. Goose god and waste management making an alliance to stop @/france-unofficial from attacking bean and making Bean sad.

New Zealand vs. Australia war:

Earliest point. New Zealand changing targets to England instead.

Bean getting kidnapped:

Earliest point.

Bean getting kidnapped again (by gimmick nose thief this time.):

Earliest point. Waste management selling their soul so they can see bean again. Molossia scratching and paralyzing Sealand. Sealand getting their souls stolen by gimmick nose thief.

List of gimmick blogs (copied from @/gimmick-simp, @/antarcitica-official, and @/celestial-same-picverse, and then added some missing ones):

@totally-official-gmail @totally-amazon @pizza-hut-official @spotify-official @truly-jcjenson

@bigbasket-notreally @discorddotcum-official @homedepot @im-pandora-i-promise @femboy-totally-bing

@kahoot-official @100percent-shell-oil @assistant-to-the-shell @truly-bath-and-body-works @definitely-tiktok-trust

@unofficially-joann-fabric @its-sanrio-official @the-real-gmail @apple-unofficial @jack-in-the-box-official

@official-arbys @officialtinder @realgoogleslides @reallytimhortons @officially-ikea

@claires-unofficial @barnes-and-noble-official @realgoogleclassroom @real-sephora @pizza-hut-unofficial

@google-news-official @totally-official-gmail @bingle-official @basically-bumble @def-bjs-guys

@official-opera-gx @official-firefox-nightly @the-mcdonalds @realgoogledocs @mcdonalds-official

@totally-bing @operagxreal @official-fedex @firehouse-subs-fr @k-f-c-official

@the-real-google @totally-ikea @taco-bell-unofficial @spotify-kids-real @the-real-victorias-secret

@subway-official @big-mayo-official @/realsafari @incognito-mode-official @burgerking-official

@definitely-wikipedia @the-one-and-only-pornhub @the-one-and-only-duckduckgo @its-target-official @yes-im-youtube-kids

@walmart-the-official @duothelingo @firefox-official @femboy-hooters-real @fedex-official

@yamaha-official @youtubefr @actually-x @reality-official

@femboy-google-news-official @50percent-shell-oil @yahooo-official @totally-airbus @the-official-spirit-airlines

@100percent-chipotle @unofficialvine

@totally-brazil @totally-italy @very-real-australia @the-province-of-nova-scotia-real @official-new-zealand

@russia-totallyofficial @quebec-official @india-official @india-reblogs @telangana-official

@denmark-official @pakistan-official @definitely-brasil @non-tyrannical-usa @antarcitica-official

@spain-unofficial @definitely-canada @france-unofficial @the-state-of-georgia-official @official-denmark

@denmark-forreal @official-ireland @texas-real @massachusetts-official @new-york-for-real

@definitelytherepublicofireland @true-blue-straya @totally-germany @official-the-united-states @totally-france

@forever-scotland @germany-official @sovereign-state-of-alaska @guatemala-official @republic-of-molossia

@actually-alberta @the-principality-of-sealand @totally-oregon @yugoslavia-official

@the-chill-planet-uranus @the-serene-moon-luna @earth-fan @deimos-moon-of-terror @officially-capricorn

@the-radiant-sun @the-ringed-planet-saturn @the-red-planet-mars @the-real-uranus @celestial-same-picverse

@officially-taurus @the-lovely-planet-earth @posts-with-10000-notes-in-spirit @/i-hesitantly-say-ok

@i-say-not-ok @i-say-ok @the-us-navy-offical

@woo-in-different-lengths @official-garlic-bread @shakespeare-official-reblogs @gimmick-thief @hold-my-dr-pepper

@oscar-wilde-official-account @the-real-illinois @i-say-grape @the-kingdom-of-norway @denmarklandia-official

@i-say-bean @sweden-official @antarcitica-official @gimmick-nose-thief @gimmick-thief-thief

@tamil-nadu-official @tamilnadu-official @anti-totally-bing @antiquitian-empire @rocks-anon

@tagswoman @actual-aspec-military @pansexual-spaceforce @the-aplatonic-cavalry @the-pointing-anon

@bi-poly-space-station @bisexual-airforce @aro-sp-ace-force @nonbinary-coastguard @demi-demolitions

@queer-military-authorities @queer-military-treasury @the-missiles-guy @the-official-goose-god @the-official-gemini

@actual-transgender-navy @genderfluid-marine-corp @real-australian-army @real-hottopic

@same-pic-of-venus-everyday @same-pic-of-the-earth-everyday @same-pic-of-the-moon-everyday @same-pic-of-mars-everyday @same-pic-of-jupiter-everyday

@same-pic-of-saturn-everyday @the-real-uranus @same-pic-of-neptune-everyday @steve-not-anon @metal-frisbee

@earth-fan @not-10-salmon-in-a-png @same-pic-of-halleys-comet @same-pic-of-callisto-everyday @same-pic-of-eris-everyday @same-pic-of-kepler-186f-everyday

@same-pic-of-haumea-everyday @same-image-of-7-iris @book-nonsie-not-anon @celestial-same-picverse @same-pic-of-pluto-everyday

@same-pic-of-juno-everyday @same-pic-of-polaris-everyday @tomblrmartian @same-pic-of-a-blackhole-everyday @same-pic-of-the-stars-everyday

@alpha-centauri-everyday @same-cosmic-cliffs-pic-every-day @rose-nebula-always @same-pic-of-makemake-everyday @same-picture-of-europa

@same-pic-of-the-lagoon-nebula @star-that-eats-the-sun @jupiter-fan

@same-pic-of-triton-everyday @pq-anon @same-pic-of-ceres-everyday @same-pic-of-wolftopia-everyday

@same-pic-of-mars-everyday @same-pic-of-tres2b-everyday @samepicofthewowsignaleveryday @same-pic-of-the-blue-moon @same-image-of-hr8799e-every-day

@samepictureofsednadaily @moon-of-fear-phobos @totally-neptune-official @corvus-the-constellation @official-nissan

@hollowknight-reference @microsoft-edge-official @arethosewordsinthebible @the-gimmick-doctor @i-say-doot-doot

@i-say-ok @discord-marriage-bot-real @literally-leo @literally-luxembourg

@/same-pic-of-a-dictionary-daily @/same-pic-of-mercury-everyday @/hateful-daystar @//court-artist-under-the-stars @/samepicofproximacentaurieveryday @/same-pic-of-the-sun-everyday @/same-pic-of-the-blood-moon @/same-pic-of-uranus-everyday @/same-pic-of-venus-every-day @/same-pic-of-trans-jupiter @/ton-618-real @/same-pic-of-alpha-centaur-24-7 @/same-pic-of-andromeda-everyday @/same-pic-of-a-bagel-everyday @/same-pic-of-titan-every-day

@putting-iris-in-places @communist-usa-real

(Sorry if you didn't want to get tagged.)

[14buddy22]

A (long, sorry!) Hotch angsty/fluffy request!

Reader & Hotch are together, they knew eachother from around the bureau for years, then she was brought into the BAU after Emily died to fill in the gap since Hotch already trusted her (Hotch doesn’t go to Pakistan) & working even closer they realised how great they’d be together. They’re really caring & open & honest with one another; & they’ve never hid their relationship since it’s made them both so happy & they’re both so mature about it there was no issue.

She knows he had a no strings with Emily after his divorce, but she thinks Emily’s dead so it doesn’t effect her… & then Emily comes back 🤯 (R knows Hotch couldn’t tell her E was alive, & she never new E personally so doesn’t feel angry he kept it from her, no emotional investment in her death unlike the team)

But the next few weeks she notices how well Hotch and E work together and how comfortable they are. As if they can just look at eachother & have a whole conversation. She sees E as the epitome of everything she’s not, but wishes she was. R tries really hard to put on a smile the next few weeks & pretend everything’s okay, but she’s spiralling into self consciousness & self doubt. She’s pulling away & Hotch can feel it. Even Jack asks why she’s sad recently. That night before bed Hotch finally (very gently) confronts her & asks her why she’s pulling away. He looks distraught over it. She finally admits she’s been feeling really self conscious because E is so beautiful & strong & badass, & insanely smart, & they have such a great rapport, E’s way closer to hotch’s age, & have sexual history - so R is terrified he’ll realise he belongs with E bc she’s so much better for him.

He’s heartbroken over how she feels about herself, so spends ages convincing her all the ways he’s in love with her (they hadn’t said the big L yet) & reassures her in their relationship & makes her promise to talk to him if she feels self conscious again.

Maybe the next day she goes to try to bond with Emily after being distant ever since meeting her, but before R can explain Hotch kisses her so casually & no one else seems shocked while E had no idea cause everyone forgot to tell her 😅

You didn't know much about Emily, you just know her and Aaron did a no strings attached type relationship. But the one thing you knew right now, as she walked into the round table room was this: She's beautiful.

You couldn't help but let those intrusive thoughts get to you as you sat at the roundtable, trying to focus on Aaron's explanation when Derek was about ready to punch Aaron, or hearing Penelope's sniffles.

As Aaron was telling the team that Emily was back, you just stared at her in awe. She was beautiful, her smile was gorgeous, she was on the taller side, well, taller than you, her hair was gorgeous. She was all around beautiful. Now you know why Aaron used to fuck her.

But how could he not fall in love with her? How could he only do no strings attached? She was perfect, a badass in the field, she was everything you weren't. How could Aaron not see that?

You pushed it back of your mind, there were still people missing, you needed to do your job. This would have to be thought of later.

Later that evening, as you and Aaron made your way in to bed, he tried to kiss you, wanted you to sleep in his arms, but all you could think about was how much better he’d be with Emily.

Aaron was on top of you, trying to kiss down your neck.

“Aar- baby, I’m just too exhausted. Maybe tomorrow night?”

“You okay?”

“I’m really tired. It was an eventful day.”

As you turned the lamp off on your bedside table, you turned to your side, letting your back face him. He was confused, maybe you were tired for any strenuous activities, but he didn't know what was going on, so he pushed it to the back of his mind. Maybe he would try again in the morning? You were always a morning person, your favorite way of waking up was with him.

When the next morning rolled around, you were already showered and dressed before Aaron's alarm had gone off. It was weird, but maybe you were anxious about evals coming up soon.

It was a week after that when you had slowly paid more attention to Aaron and Emily. They were perfect for each other, in another universe, it should be them, not you and Aaron.

It tore your apart, you cried every single night before Aaron got home, cried on your way to work in the car. You had to put a smile on your face in the office. You were surrounded by profilers, but you knew you still had to hide it.

You overheard Aaron and Rossi talking, Aaron seemed so distraught when you looked through the glass window of his office. Why was he distraught? You didn't know, maybe it's because he wanted to break up with you to be with Emily.

That scared you.

When you picked up Jack from school, telling Aaron you'd handle Jack while he finished paperwork with Emily, Jack looked a little nervous, like he had something on his mind.

You weren't going to push him, if he was anything like his father, he would come out and say it eventually. He wouldn't be able to hold it in.

“Hey Y/n?"

“What’s up Jack?”

“Why have you been sad?”

“I’m not sad buddy!”

“No! You were! I saw you crying last night. Please don't leave Daddy and I. We love you. I love you! I don't want to lose someone else in my life. Please, y/n. Please."

Jack, a little 8 year old boy, was smarter than his father. It broke your heart. You couldn't leave. You couldn't leave Jack. Maybe Aaron, but you'd always have to be there for Jack.

"I'm not leaving, Jackers. I just have been sad."

"Tell daddy why you're sad. He gives the best hugs and kisses. I promise he'll make you feel better. Please, y/n."

"Okay buddy. I'll talk to daddy."

Over the next week, you were waiting to see if Jack would bring it up to Aaron, but he never did. You were becoming distant with Aaron. You thought Aaron didn't notice. It broke your heart.

As you slowly watched Aaron and Emily over the past few weeks, case after case, you watched how they were always in step with each other. One look from both of them and they already knew what the other one was saying.

Aaron used to pair you and him together on cases, but now you were getting paired with someone else on the team, which you absolutely loved because they were your best friends, but to be pushed off to the side, no explanation?

It was hurting you, it made you think... What if Aaron is fucking her on the side of the highway when they're going to the police station, what if they were hooking up in his office when you left for the night, picking up Jack.

You know Aaron wouldn't, well, you think Aaron wouldn't. But you've known him for about 3 years, but have dated him only for 6 months. Maybe Emily was the one who got away and he realized it.

You were pulling away. You knew that. You hated it but your self-conscious was telling you otherwise, that you had too, that you didn't deserve Aaron.

You wanted to love Emily, everyone on the team loved her. But you couldn't, not when she was always with Aaron, not when they made the perfect team, walking in-sync all the time. Not when all it took was for them to look at each other once on the plane and the other already knows what the other's thinking.

3 weeks of thinking like this had gone far too long, Aaron didn't notice, you knew it was maybe time to break up with him. That way, you could be the bad guy and he could get back with her. You would take the fall, that way he didn't have too.

Aaron was making his way into your shared bedroom, wanting to find you after the case it’s been. He knew he sent you home after you had gotten out of line with an officer. You knew you did, but the tension was just there when Emily was around him.

Aaron found you sitting on your side of the bed, watching a movie on the TV.

"Y/n, you have to tell me what's going on. Please, it's killing me."

When you looked at him, you finally saw it, the look of distraught all over his face, sadness in his eyes. You were going to break.

"Emily's perfect for you. How can you not see it? There has to be something there, especially when you two have history. You've known her way longer than you've known me. She knows things that I don't know about you. How can you stand in the same room and not want to fuck her, Aaron? She's beautiful. She's perfect, she's smart. She's so good at her job. She faked her death and survived in Paris. I'll be the bad guy and break up with you."

"No. No, sweetheart. She knows things about me that you don't because I don't want to scare you away. I want to be your knight in shining armour and I can't be that if I have all this baggage that you know about. Honey, You want to know how I can stand in the same room as her and not want to fuck her? Because I want you. You're the only one for me. I know it. I want to kiss you in front of the team. I want to be the name that you're screaming in the bedsheets. I want to be the one who puts a smile on your face. I want you. I'm in love with you. I want to marry you, not her. I love you, Y/n."

You couldn't hear him right. Did he just say he loved you?

"Aaron."

"I know we haven't said I love you yet, and you don't need too. But I wanted too. I love you. I've been so distraught over us the past 3 weeks. You've been pulling away and I should have known it was something to do with Prentiss coming back. You have to talk to me honey. Please, the next time you're caught up in self-doubt, tell me right away. I promise I won't get mad."

You sniffled and leaned into his touch. You don't know when his hand made it's way to your face, but you just know you were happy you had some type of physical touch with him.

"I'm sorry, Aaron. Why don't we invite her over for dinner tomorrow? She can see Jack, we can even invite the rest of the team tomorrow?"

"We don't have too."

"I want to, Aar. She doesn't deserve the cold shoulder for me. It's not her fault she's perfect."

"Hey! You're perfect. I want you. Remember, I'll always want you now and for the rest of my life. I want to marry you someday."

You kissed him and you found yourself laying on your back, Aaron's body enveloping yours.

"I love you, too, Aaron."

The next morning, as you were at work, you walked over to Emily's desk. Knowing you needed to invite her over for dinner tonight.

"Hey Emily, I was wondering if you wanted to join us for dinner tonight?"

Before Emily had time to respond, you felt Aaron's hand on your back and he moved his way in front of you to kiss you, telling you he's going to pick up Jack and he'll meet you at home.

You could hear laughter in the background and then you caught a glimpse at Emily's face. She looked confused, so you were confused.

"Hotch, you're banging her?"

"Not only am I banging her, but I'm gonna marry her some day."

The look on the entire team's face made you and Aaron laugh.

Emily said, "I had no idea you two were a thing, BUT, I see the chemistry, so I was going to tell you to man up and ask her out, but it seems like you did. You're perfect for him."

You smiled to yourself, it was a seal approval from Emily whether she knew it our not. To have the woman who you were so self-conscious about say that she sees the chemistry between you and Aaron and that you're perfect for him really made you realize that you and Aaron were perfect for each other, you two would be okay, and you were destined to be his wife someday.

[rangpurcity]

Now Pakistan's captain Babar Azam will be discharged! Big news coming from PCB

Now Pakistan’s captain Babar Azam will be discharged! Big news coming from PCB

highlights Pakistan’s 3-0 defeat in Test series against England Babar Azam is the first Pakistan captain to suffer clean sweep in three matches new Delhi. There is an atmosphere of upheaval in Pakistan cricket at this time. The same thing that was being speculated happened. On Wednesday, the chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Rameez Raja, was finally removed from his post. Najam Setty once…

[the-book-ferret]

In this engaging and moving middle grade novel, Saadia Faruqi writes about a contemporary Pakistani American girl whose passion for journalism starts a conversation about her grandmother’s experience of the Partition of India and Pakistan—and the bond that the two form as she helps Dadi tell her story.

When her grandmother comes off the airplane in Houston from Pakistan, Mahnoor knows that having Dadi move in is going to disrupt everything about her life. She doesn’t have time to be Dadi’s unofficial babysitter—her journalism teacher has announced that their big assignment will be to film a documentary, which feels more like storytelling than what Maha would call “journalism.”

As Dadi starts to settle into life in Houston and Maha scrambles for a subject for her documentary, the two of them start talking. About Dadi’s childhood in northern India—and about the Partition that forced her to leave her home and relocate to the newly created Pakistan.

As details of Dadi’s life are revealed, Dadi’s personal story feels a lot more like the breaking news that Maha loves so much. And before she knows it, she has the subject of her documentary.

Thank you to @theshelfstuff for sending me a copy of the book.

[mariacallous]

AI projects like OpenAI’s ChatGPT get part of their savvy from some of the lowest-paid workers in the tech industry—contractors often in poor countries paid small sums to correct chatbots and label images. On Wednesday, 97 African workers who do AI training work or online content moderation for companies like Meta and OpenAI published an open letter to President Biden, demanding that US tech companies stop “systemically abusing and exploiting African workers.”

Most of the letter’s signatories are from Kenya, a hub for tech outsourcing, whose president, William Ruto, is visiting the US this week. The workers allege that the practices of companies like Meta, OpenAI, and data provider Scale AI “amount to modern day slavery.” The companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A typical workday for African tech contractors, the letter says, involves “watching murder and beheadings, child abuse and rape, pornography and bestiality, often for more than 8 hours a day.” Pay is often less than $2 per hour, it says, and workers frequently end up with post-traumatic stress disorder, a well-documented issue among content moderators around the world.

The letter’s signatories say their work includes reviewing content on platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram, as well as labeling images and training chatbot responses for companies like OpenAI that are developing generative-AI technology. The workers are affiliated with the African Content Moderators Union, the first content moderators union on the continent, and a group founded by laid-off workers who previously trained AI technology for companies such as Scale AI, which sells datasets and data-labeling services to clients including OpenAI, Meta, and the US military. The letter was published on the site of the UK-based activist group Foxglove, which promotes tech-worker unions and equitable tech.

In March, the letter and news reports say, Scale AI abruptly banned people based in Kenya, Nigeria, and Pakistan from working on Remotasks, Scale AI’s platform for contract work. The letter says that these workers were cut off without notice and are “owed significant sums of unpaid wages.”

“When Remotasks shut down, it took our livelihoods out of our hands, the food out of our kitchens,” says Joan Kinyua, a member of the group of former Remotasks workers, in a statement to WIRED. “But Scale AI, the big company that ran the platform, gets away with it, because it’s based in San Francisco.”

Though the Biden administration has frequently described its approach to labor policy as “worker-centered.” The African workers’ letter argues that this has not extended to them, saying “we are treated as disposable.”

“You have the power to stop our exploitation by US companies, clean up this work and give us dignity and fair working conditions,” the letter says. “You can make sure there are good jobs for Kenyans too, not just Americans."

Tech contractors in Kenya have filed lawsuits in recent years alleging that tech-outsourcing companies and their US clients such as Meta have treated workers illegally. Wednesday’s letter demands that Biden make sure that US tech companies engage with overseas tech workers, comply with local laws, and stop union-busting practices. It also suggests that tech companies “be held accountable in the US courts for their unlawful operations aboard, in particular for their human rights and labor violations.”

The letter comes just over a year after 150 workers formed the African Content Moderators Union. Meta promptly laid off all of its nearly 300 Kenya-based content moderators, workers say, effectively busting the fledgling union. The company is currently facing three lawsuits from more than 180 Kenyan workers, demanding more humane working conditions, freedom to organize, and payment of unpaid wages.

“Everyone wants to see more jobs in Kenya,” Kauna Malgwi, a member of the African Content Moderators Union steering committee, says. “But not at any cost. All we are asking for is dignified, fairly paid work that is safe and secure.”

[hindulivesmatter]

Kashmir will be free! None of you are Kashmiris, they alone have the right to decide what they want. Kashmir will be free from India and Palestine from Israel, liberation will come and death to colonialism!

Oh, so you speak for the Kashmiris? Right well, you do realize that Kashmir was forcefully occupied by Pakistan? You do realize that the ruler of Kashmir was happy to merge Kashmir with India? You do know about the horrific massacres of Kashmiri Hindus? You do know that currently innocent civilians are getting caught in terrorist gunfire right? If anything Pakistan is the colonizer, not India.

Either you don't know. Or you do know and just don't care.

Unless you are Kashmiri, and have educated yourself on this topic, consider shutting the fuck up because you sure as fuck aren't doing them any favours by harassing me.

Same for Palestine. I am not Jewish or Palestinian, so I'm certainly not educated enough to make big claims on this topic, and yet you, who I'm absolutely sure does not live in Gaza and is most likely not even Palestinian, are coming into MY inbox calling for the death of Israel. You don't care about either side, you think Hamas is the new trend, so you blindly follow whatever propaganda pops up on your fyp.

Either make a compelling argument or fuck off, oh my god.

Yes, Kashmir will be free, you're right! From Pakistan!

Yes Palestine will be free, you're right! From Hamas!

Educate yourself, you're giving me second hand embarrassment.

[Exhibit 42]

[kidlit-queen-competition]

Train fact: NAMED TRAINS!

So you've probably heard of the Flying Scotsman. Big green thing, turned 100 this year, probably the most famous locomotive in the UK, if not the world. Adapted into Thomas the Tank Engine with a whole lot of charisma and eyebrows. But did you know that name wasn't hers originally?

'The Flying Scotsman' is actually the name (formerly a nickname) of the train. The locomotive is Flying Scotsman's monster named for it. She was given the name in 1924, to help promote said service at the British Empire exhibition. Any engine, with any rack of coaches, or any train set, can be the Flying Scotsman.

Right now, it's run by LNER's new Azumas, which get a special little outfit about it:

Most of the named trains in the UK were phased out with steam (although you can still catch the Sheffield continental from Sheffield to St. Pancras, or the Northern Lights from King's Cross to Aberdeen, among a handfull of others) but they live on elsewhere.

Some are luxury touring trains, like Japan's Seven Stars in Kyushu (left) or South Africa's Blue Train (right).

Transport isn't really the goal here. They sell out months in advance and cost anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars, depending on the class of ticket you get. They're an Experience, and a very cushy experience at that. Just look at their interiors!

(yes, that's a piano)

But the vast majority of named trains in operation (as far as I can tell) are regularly-running exepress services across Asia.

Japan names their Shinkanens, India, Pakistan, Bengladesh & Sri Lanka often name their intercity expresses. These are practical, long-distance services, often named for monuments, like India's Ajanta Express, named for the Ajanta caves:

Or their operating regions, like Sri Lanka's උත්තර දේවී | Princess/Queen of the North:

Some North American countries also kept historic named routes, like Amtrak's Sunset Limited, or Canada's Ocean, which has operated continuously since 1904:

but my personal favorite named services are Australia's historically-nicknamed "The Fish", named after one of its drivers:

and the numerous trains that have been companion-nicknamed "The Chips" to match.