#lines on a map

[chamerionwrites]

Nearly a dozen children were working shifts cleaning meat processing equipment used at an Iowa pork plant’s so-called kill floor over a four-year period, the US Department of Labor announced.

Eleven children were using corrosive chemicals to clean as well as perilous “head splitters, jaw pullers, bandsaws, neck clippers and other equipment” at a Seaboard Triumph Foods pork processing plant in Sioux City, according to officials. This is the second time federal investigators have found children working at that particular Sioux City meat processing plant.

The most recent settlement comes with Qvest LLC, an Oklahoma-based cleaning company hired by Seaboard from 2019 to 2023. The company was fined $171,919 for violating federal law.

In September 2023, Seaboard hired a new cleaning contractor: Fayette Janitorial Services, headquartered in Tennessee. Investigators found Fayette hired 24 children to work overnight shifts – some as young as 13 and carrying glittery school backpacks – including some of the same minors who were employed by Qvest, the previous cleaning company. In May, Fayette was fined $649,304.

“These findings illustrate Seaboard Triumph Foods’ history of children working illegally in their Sioux City facility since at least September 2019,” said wage and hour midwest regional administrator Michael Lazzeri. “Despite changing sanitation contractors, children continued to work in dangerous occupations at this facility.”

The federal investigation comes after a 2023 New York Times report on migrant child exploitation, in which the paper documented children working dangerous jobs and overnight hours.

Children who arrive at the US’s southern border alone often stay in the country for years before their cases are adjudicated. While they wait, they live with sponsors. As of 2023, only one-third of migrant children went to live with their parents, a sea change from a decade ago. That can leave children vulnerable to exploitation or trafficking.

[chamerionwrites]

Yeah, absolutely hilarious to make funny memes out of the USA’s bipartisan callousness toward refugees

[melorasmushrooms]

I totally get that there’s an expectation that Brennan Lee Mulligan DMing for you would include the whole package of everything the production team of D20 has to offer but if I’m being perfectly honest, if that man said “sure! I’ll DM something for you” and rolled up with dry erase map boards and mancala beads, I’m LOCKED IN and asking if he has a preferred almond flavor

[narikill]

freak4freak

[chamerionwrites]

Because it’s the seat of an extractivist empire.

Others have said this in far more depth than I have the time for right this moment, but sort of against my better judgment I’m going to jump in here real quick because I feel it’s crucial for people to understand this: so long as money can cross them far more easily than people, borders are colonialism by any other name. They are a way of ensuring that wealth can be extracted by more-powerful nations from less-powerful nations with minimal obstacles, while simultaneously barring the citizens of those less-powerful (formerly-colonized) nations from sharing in any of the plunder. Like it’s not remotely an accident that national borders started to harden globally into our modern system of immigration enforcement at exactly the same time that the world started to (for a given value of the word) decolonize.

And people migrate for the same reasons that humans beings have always done so: because there are limited opportunities to make a safe life where they are. Refugees flee from wars because they don’t want to die. Refugees flee from famines because they don’t want to starve. On an intra-national level, people don’t flee from - say - an impoverished company town centered around an oil well or a coal mine, to the city where that very company has its gleaming corporate offices, because that city is some kind of shining beacon of freedom and justice. They flee because the guys sitting in those gleaming offices have systematically drained their little mining town of wealth and resources and opportunity for any kind of life that isn’t Backbreaking Labor For A Pittance Until You Die. (Or because, y’know, the company cops are cracking down on labor organizing to the point that the town is an increasingly violent place to live! Because their kid is sick and they’re struggling to access medicine anywhere except the company store at insanely marked up prices! Because where there’s grinding poverty there’s almost always (1) increased risk of domestic violence and (2) lack of resources for victims! Or or or or. Pick your knock-on effect.)

Likewise at the international level, the whole POINT of imperialism is to concentrate prosperity and security for the few at the expense of the many. As a result many people face poverty and violence. As a result some of those people make the (frequently difficult and dangerous!) choice to travel to places where there is more prosperity and security. As many many other human beings have done throughout literally all of recorded history.

(Also plenty have already pointed this out in the comments, but the USA very much was the first colony in the Americas to gain its independence from Europe; this can be true without taking anything away from the point that self-congratulatory USAmerican rhetoric about democracy often amounts to a whole lot of ahistorical nationalist mythmaking & propaganda. US president #3 aka Thomas “all men are created equal” Jefferson presided over the US government’s increasingly hostile foreign policy stance toward Haiti. Gee I wonder why this plantation owner and his ilk were enormously unsettled by a slave revolution.)

genuine question why would the US be an example for democracies anywhere in the world asides from propaganda you've been fed, you've got the worst voting system, an INDIRECT voting system ("representative"), you didn't invent democracy you took some fucked up feudal system and slapped the name democracy on it because you don't even have a real democracy! You weren't the first country to gain independence from Europe by any means, you weren't the first one to grant equal rights to women or POC and also you failed catastrophically at it when you supposedly did because the only place where something like Jim Crow happened was apartheid south africa, you never had any sort of welfare state, you never had any sort of robust public system for anything, so what is it that you're bringing to the international table? you aren't the moral police you aren't the paragon of anything

[andr0nap-02]

orowyrm encounter

[caricatureblue]

Re-Re-Re-mapping Revachol

… and the Insulinde as a whole

Very much inspired by ssshiversss and Map Max, whose versions of the map were absolutely invaluable for wrapping my head around this project. Combining their work with the original map of Jamrock, and doing my best to stay loyal to the (often contradictory) descriptions in the text of the game, I think I’m happy with what I’ve ended up with.

Much like my predecessors, I have elected to separate Coal City and La Delta, and in fact ignore any attempt by the game to convince me that La Delta is west of Martinaise. It just… It just isn’t.

Game description struggles aside, this was really fun!! Details/Description in the alt text.

I just like maps

EDIT // L’Insulinde: Now with Pale encroachment

[mayhw]

Star map inspired by Ahsoka’s ending credits

[sweetmapple]

Best voice line

[chamerionwrites]

Also it brings me zero pleasure to be Cassandra here, but “mass deportation” is a synonym for murder. I need you all to understand this. Even in the absolute best case scenario, it means large numbers of people being warehoused in slapdash facilities where illness spreads quickly and medical care is inadequate. It means government contractors providing food, trying to make a killing, and inevitably cutting corners on costs/quality/safety. It means police violence against people being rounded up. It means US citizen children being removed from their families or deported with them. It means people being returned to countries they fled in fear of their lives, and killed by domestic abusers/gangs/governments. It means bureaucratic mixups (/apathy/malice) that result in people getting dropped off in dangerous cities that they’ve never even visited late at night.

It means all of this and more, and if the government comes for your neighbors you should respond as if you are witnessing an attempted murder.

[idontcaboose]

Haunted car au, pt 6

The next part is fighting me a bit, so I will just post this one for now.

Previous

Duke reeeaalllyyy does not get paid enough for this.

Good news, he was able to get the names of the dealers and suppliers and also narrowed down the places of interest to three warehouses. All he had to do was drop that info onto the server for the night crew, and that was that, not his problem anymore.

Bad news, the car is becoming his problem.

When Duke entered the cave, he could see the wheels turning, and not in a sick burnout way Jason does anytime he gets behind the wheel, they were just turning left and right. Then to add more insult to Duke's attempt at ignoring it, the car opened its driver door in what may have been a mockery of a greeting. Honestly, Duke could have also ignored that but then it seemed to fucking Panic and set off its own alarms and proceed to flail all the doors open and reverse to the point that the back wheels made it off the platform and into the gutter that runs though the cave. If Duke was a betting man, and he was, he would bet that whatever possessed or replaced the Batmobile was so incompetent that he had to worry more about Its safety from the Batfam. Whether that was protection from arrest or adoption is still up in the air.

Either way, this is becoming Duke's problem. He is really not paid enough for this. Time to calm down a sentient car.

“Hey, car buddy? You ok?”

Duke wasn't sure what he was expecting when he was talking to a car of all things, but absolute silence wasn’t it. Was this thing going to try to play car now? After everything that just happened? Duke slowly walked up to the driver's side door and looked in for the green blob person, only to see them in the back seat sprawled out. Duke tried to not think too hard while putting the car back in its spot, but the list of facts he has so far kept ticking.

1. The Batmobile has a new passenger or has been replaced

2. The thing/person is not good at hiding, so probably not a villain plot

2a. If it is a villain plot, they got the absolutely wrong person to do it

2aa. Possible meta forced to spy?

3. The person just freaked out so hard they fainted after setting off the Batmobile alarms.

4. Alfred will know what to do right?

5. Try to communicate again with the person in the car.

It didn't take long for the blur on the backseat to shift again. Luckily they didn't immediately jump into the driver's seat, where Duke still sat. Duke turned to look in the backseat, time to start this interrogation.

“Hey, you ok?” Duke was happy that he was able to see the head nod that the fuzzy blur gave.

“That's good. Now, I can't see you too well, but we can work out some basic questions, alright?” Another head nod answered him.

"Are you in danger? Like, did someone force you to do this?” The head shake that was produced shook the car. Duke internally sighed in relief, not a villain plot or meta trafficking gone wrong.

“So this was just an accident, and I am guessing you are now stuck?” Duke knew he was not as good at body language reading as the others, but the wave of embarrassment and resignation this blob was giving off confirmed that whoever/whatever this is, was not a total threat.

Next?

As usual tag list!

@kizzer55555 @sebas-nights @candeartist422 @trappednyourheart @fandom-life-corrupted-me @tkiesai @2lbballpeenhammer @admiralwidow @rewrittenwrongs @whotfevenknowsanymore @symmetricalastigmatism @atinygracie

[ping-ski]

unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality

au belongs to @pluck-heartstrings !! if u havent read or caught up u totally should <3 (sorry for the tag)

[neon-ufo]

It's true the world is ugly But everything could change, someday

Song for April: Someday by Cub

~~~ Last month's wobbly little animation made me want to try actually animating again! I also wanted to do something with an old game vibe for the background, so I used photos to get that effect. <:

[ranticore]

i use a lot of subtle, low-opacity gradient maps when colouring and i've always liked making wacky ones like this which don't have any real use and kind of obfuscate details when used on real art. but they are an absolutely perfect for illustrating me kobolds. this is the actual skin colour

so i decided to go all in on temperature zones & phases being very important to them and i did mention (somewhere?) their physical traits changing based on external temperature and i thought it would be fun to assign each one a gradient (unique to them, can be any series of colours but usually one end is dark and one is light) based on those temperature fluctuations, making each one essentially a big heat map of their body. the colour change takes weeks, it's not quick, but it is always in a state of flux.

it's based on the images captured by heat sensitive cameras. the hottest areas are the face (particularly around the eyes), the chest, armpits, and groin. the 'cold' areas are those which experience the least amount of heat loss (the extremities are 'cold' because the body doesn't waste resources trying to heat them up). in this pic darker = these areas are cool to the touch, and lighter = warm to the touch (so 'cold phase' is full heat conservation mode, and 'hot phase' is actively trying to lose heat so more areas are warmer). the skin colour has no effect on temp gain or loss it's just a side effect. maybe if they ever saw sunlight in their normal lives it might, but in a cave? doesn't matter

the hair & juvenile down is also affected but of course only the roots will change, which means over time if an individual experiences prolonged periods in different temperature zones, their hair can grow in stripy

[kaiasky]

what do u mean by the chat gpt thing in ur bio?

I'd be happy to explain what "opinions expressed on this blog maybe the result of chatgpt and do not reflect my own" means! It's common for the social media accounts of professionals such as journalists to have a disclaimer that their opinions are their own and do not reflect their employer. The phrase is best understood as a humorous parody of that trend, by disclaiming personal responsibility for posts because somebody else is responsible for the content. Blaming ChatGPT, which is unpopular on Tumblr, adds an additional layer of irony. If you'd like to explore the meaning of anything else let me know!

[franciscolemos]

Some OSR style hexes I made just for fun.