#minimum wage worker ghost

[iguessthisisanewobsession]

“Back off or I’ll bite.”

To be fair he had just gotten off of a shift and was ready to become one with his shitty mattress.

Danny thought he made himself pretty clear.

So you can’t blame him when some bobo the clown knock-off tried to start some shit while he was walking home and did not heed his advice.

A fun fact he learned a couple days later is that in an average human’s mouth there’s about 6 billion types of bacteria and several of those types are deadly if not treated properly at a hospital.

And Danny was very much not an average human.

Let’s just say he started to sweat bullets when he found a frontline article about the death of the clown prince.

Suddenly that feeling of someone watching him wasn’t being written off as paranoia.

[ghelullu]

The negativity here is, once again, fucking incredible.

Exclusive first day streaming for new releases is regularly around 20$. Is that a lot of money? Yes. A LOT. Is it - unfortunately these days - normal? Yes. I've seen the same thing with my friend's K-Pop releases. Is it Tobias fucking with us? No. Absolutely not.

I see this as them doing this for those who could not see it in a theatre so they don't have to wait the months until a DVD release, they said something like that in an interview and also that there's some struggle with getting a streaming release out. (And no, "just stream it for free" is not an option. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to host HD streaming for THAT many people?)

You can just wait for the Bluray release (which is technically already confirmed, plus it's Tobias "Physical Media" Forge.) and not buy the streaming ticket. I, for example, won't either, I hate streaming and don't have a ton of money, so I'll just buy the Bluray and watch it 9000 times. Nobody is forcing you. Tobias is not standing here with a guitar ready to smash it in your face if you don't buy 2 tickets. Just saying.

Please, learn how to enjoy things without panicking and seeking negativity everywhere, I'm begging.

[msfcatlover]

Just poppin' in to say that i absolutely love your Monster!batkids au!!

the detail is great and the monster's allocated fit the characters really, really well!

random question: does Echo!Tim ever have issues when it comes to ordering food/coffee at restaurants?

Aww, thank you! I’m really glad you enjoy it!

Echo!Tim does all his shopping and ordering online or via apps, because it is a massive pain to actually order things in person. People cut in line, because they don’t realize he’s part of it. Cashiers look right past him when they call out, “Next!” Waiters walk past his table over & over, even if he managed to get formally seated, because they assume it’s empty. Tim needs to do something incredibly attention grabbing & disruptive for people to actually realize he’s there, and it’s just unpleasant for everyone involved. (An example of one such interaction would probably go something like, “Hi, I’m here to pick up… Hi? Um, hello? Excuse me? Excuse me. Excuse me. Hey! HEY! [*slams his fist down on the counter hard enough to make everything on it bounce, now has the attention of everyone in the room*] …I’m here to pick up my pizza.”)

Once Tim’s part of the family, things do get a bit easier because he can bring someone who cares about him with him to do things, but it’s just not his habit anymore, and Tim’s a bit too stubbornly independent to want to ask for help with what should be perfectly ordinary tasks. Why bother Dick, or Bruce, or Steph with Tim’s problems when he’s perfectly capable of handling them himself? (Tim asks, pulling out his phone to place another order on his newest delivery app, after the last one got taken over by Punchline or something.)

[meanderfall]

i havent thought about any of my original stories or characters in, like, a decade, but ngl. i miss these bitches

[sangrefae]

got hit w the idea of "the good place but labru" and now i'm thinking about it so much

kabru is a low-ranking government worker w a degree in sociology who dies a very heroic death (something like pushing a kid out of the way from being hit by a car, that type of thing) and so he doesn't really question ending up in the good place but the entire thing feels Off. this is confirmed to him when he meets laios, former minimum wage worker at the corner store AND the guy kabru hooked up with a year or so ago and promptly ghosted him. laios ofc doesn't remember him but is very confused as to why he's in the good place and has been afraid to say anything bc he doesn't want to leave but he sucks at acting, cue shenanigans as kabru tries to keep it under wraps while also killing laios in his mind with hammers

i think that falin is still alive, along w marcille. im not 100% on who would be there w kabru and laios but the funniest contenders are mithrun and thistle. the winged lion would be in the same position as michael in the series. chilchuck would be the equivalent of mindy in the medium place

[onegianthotmess]

Amelia takes any job she can around NRC as long as she gets paid since Crowley basically gives her nothing to live off of. What doesn’t go to food and toiletries goes to repairs, which is basically no money going to a million repairs-

Amelia starts at Sam’s shop. He’s one of the only nice people from the beginning, despite being eccentric and pushy, and quickly lets her help around his store for an okay minimum wage job. She stocks shelves, checks people out, points them in the right direction, and is silently horrified every single time Crewel barges in to yank another box of explosives from her hands that Sam ordered-

Then Crowley eventually starts giving her odd jobs around campus. Water the plants in the botanical garden, change the light bulbs in a few lamps around the school, dust the library, shelve books in the library, help the lunch ghosts, and figure out how to synch Crowley’s Pineapple mePhone to his mePad because he can never figure it out. It’s a bunch of odd jobs that are usually big for about an average of barely ten thaumarks each, but beggars can’t be choosers at NRC.

And finally, Amelia makes it to the Monstro Lounge for a job. She gets some dirt on Azul in order to force him to pay her a little less than double the amount he pays full time workers in the Lounge and she has no regrets. Sure, she wants to strangle Azul most of the time and has to shoo away Floyd and Jade when new freckles, or “koi scales” as they call them, pop up on her skin, but it’s the best pat she gets overall. She waits tables, carries in supplies, sometimes takes shifts that are from opening to closing, cleans up, occasionally fixes drinks, and even offers up new menu ideas that become year-round staples due to how popular they are.

Yes, hours are long and exhausting and make her want to bash her head in, but she’s repairing the shithole that is Ramshackle and feeding herself and her greedy ass cat. She doesn’t have money or time for herself, but she’s not dead.

Though, occasionally other people will give her a little something for helping with them. Trey always makes her a few extra treats and puts together some leftovers for her to take home if she helps with an Unbirthday party. Riddle will negotiate on assignment deadlines when he knows she’s busy working and babysitting the Adeuce duo. Vil will give her a little self care package when she helps him with Epel. Malleus gives her an unnecessarily expensive gift in return for helping him log onto his gargoyle fanboy website. Leona will randomly shove a couple of his nice wallets into her hands for helping him with Spelldrive Club practice. Jamil will give her a few packed meals when she helps prepping for and cleaning up after one of Scarabia’s banquets and getting Kalim to help clean. The first years will stand guard as she naps and tell Azul off if he comes looking for her because she’s their overworked mom friend and helped them study for their last test. Floyd and Jade will secretly slip her a nice, big bonus in her paycheck after helping them fuck with Azul.

Amelia doesn’t think she’s doing anything big, but everyone appreciates the things she does.

…in their own ways-

[miasmaclockworks]

Inhale (killk me)

kinito pet au ideas (all mine now)

Pirate au, swap/opposite au, frenzy au, beach vally au, valentines au, broken computer virus (BCV) au, house care au, real virus au, mimic au, best friend au, candyland au, light's out au, time traveler au, steam punk au, ghost au, phasmophobia au, dragon barrier au, librarian au, magical forest au, fruit au, fruit au, furry au, sailor moon au, pride au, obsessed au, ice cream au, midnight starlight au, AHIT au, star collector au, broken heart au, rejected friend au, accepted friend au, Poppy Playtime au, Five Nights At Freddys au, Warrior cats au, Midnight driver, killer au, prince of the night au, pool swimmer, Magical boy au, Critical au, Escape room au, god au, AU god au, Au hunter AU, scream au, Mii au, plane crash au, pilot au, mc donalds worker au, driver au, smile tapes au, nightmare au, night gamer au, artist au, over eater au, roblox au, creator au, caseoh au, wii au, wand au, childhood friend au, possessed au, apple core au, string worm au, drunkie au, caretaker au, love maniac au, drier au, washing machine au, Im a pretty princess au, venting au, among us au, gentle man au, Youtuber au, Actual axolotl au, you are what you eat au, mince meat butcher au, butcher au, doxxed au, sally the witch au, autistic au, ADHD au, Autistic and ADHD au, Motherborn au, alien au, Mother Mother au, soul au, dragon born au, vampire au, vampire hunter au, it was all just a dream? au, sunshine au, digital circus au, clockwork au, gymnastics au, rainbow factory au, twisted and turned au, patchworks au, unseen au, joker au, minimum wage worker au, skinwalker au, kinito darling au, forever and ever, everlasting pain, story teller au, time teller au, zoo keeper au, smiling critter au, truth be told au, rizzler au, farmer au, anthro au, Digital pop up au, backfired au, chef au, cuphead au, BABQFTIM au, carnival au, internet explorer au, kidnapper au, robber au, parental figure au, parent au, father au, apple picker au, trans au, siren au, mermaid au, cloud critters, monster energy au, emo au, goth au, alt goth, prince au, princess au, priest au, reality au, Epic the musical au, bass voice au, prince of the sea au, stranger au, never used au, stranger things au, abandoned au, hazbin hotel au, lemon and lime au, softie au, grunge au, sugar crush au, rainbow friends au, block break friends au, sugar crush au, sweet tooth au, undertale au, heartless au, toxic au, waist au, epic au, error au, fresh au, reaper au, horror au, other sans aus, medical au, high school au, ruby and max au, little horrors au, planter au, plant au, crystal au, glass crystal au, rockstar au, ancient Greek au, mario au, shroomba au, sonic the hedgehog au, snowday au, cave monster au, dinosaur au, game show hoster au, lunar moon au, bloodmoon au, eclipse au, sundrop au, moondrop au, dignity au, angels gaurd au, demons gaurd au, king of hell, king of the sea au, mother nature au, king of the land, landlord au, your boyfriend au, planetary au, leopard gecko au, leopard au, train conductor au, mountain lion au, polar bear au, Mad Scientist au, don't die au, raindrops au, seraph au, always watching au, teacher au, birthday party au, husk au, royal au, gummy bear au, cannibal au, discord au, My little pony au, bumblebee au, cat au, animal au, sweet treat au, warzone au, warframe au, roblox au, unicorn au, factory worker au, you au, dihedra au, pee au, every au I forget, Deleted forever au (not really), sleep tight au, Fire borne, dragon au, mythical animals au, goodbye friend, rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles au, Replicate au, smartie pants au, femboy au, backrooms au, gurlie au, too silly au, silly au, TADC au, lovesick au, grand master au, crazy au, lab monster au, (insert every animal here) au, Monster under your bed au, sloozy au, nightmare monster au, aroace king au, your imagination au, salamander au, desktop pet au, ukagaka au, he knows what you are au, roller blades au, you can run but you can't hide au, poison rain au, dementia au, mr worldwide mr 305 au, anime au, welcome home au, Yume Nikki au, gacha life au, gacha club au, Battle blocks au,

[wh1spyz]

A LITTLE BIT AWKWARD - profiles (1)

minimum wage starbucks workers ‼️🙏

y/n !!

you are somehow living and breathing despite the amount of weirdos and zooted white males come into the starbucks with their only motivation to get their dicks sucked. you've never dated a guy in your life, closest thing was a situationship with an old friend before he ghosted you. you have pretty average grades (thank god) and unlike most of your friends, survivng college just fine!

giselle - loves to party and is SO close to failing all of her classes no joke. despite her friends' advice, will probably never settle down and take her classes seriously..

natty - is probably doing the best academically out of all of them, she is a major procrastinator and could definitely get all 100s on everything if she wasnt lazy and didnt save her studying 2 days before an exam.. she did get a job offer somewhere else due to her maturity but she finds her minimum wage job quite fun.

yuqi - flirts with every single damn girl in her classes (including y/n), but its mostly just to get homework answers or tutoring from them (which is how giselle and yuqi clicked so well). only has ever been in one serious relationship but after that she doesnt think she wants to do anymore and would rather b the cool aunt.

jiung - holy shit his ass is barely holding onto his sanity. manager of the lovely starbucks but forgets often cause he just got promoted randomly when the manager disappeared one day. he loves all of the employees but sometimes he thinks hes gonna rip his hair out.

jeongin - really doesnt like seungmin (clearly)! after the day seungmin took his leftovers, it was war. honestly really funny and is the only one who doesnt give jiung a hard time. hes also failing one of his classes and passing the other by 4%.

seungmin - simple guy. did not mean to take jeongins leftovers at all but rather let this petty fight continue instead of telling him what actually happened. has ok test scores he just refuses to try harder than he already does.

| masterlist | next >

[tomorrowusa]

Corporations pay their CEOs extravagantly while trying to cheat on taxes.

It would be one thing if, alongside the exorbitant executive pay, the quality of American CEO-ing was going up. But these executives are making off with bigger bags of boodle despite their persistent incompetence: Media executives keep running their businesses into the ground, tech firms are laying people off because of vibes, the planes keep nearly crashing, and examples of insane eye-popping greed—like Rite-Aid’s decision to claw back severance paid out to laid-off workers on the same day they handed their CEO a $20 million bonus—keep on coming. So it may come as no surprise that there’s a robust connection between the overindulged CEOs and the firms that are most flagrantly dodging their fair share of taxes. For a report released Wednesday, the Institute for Policy Studies teamed up with Americans for Tax Fairness to spelunk into the balance sheets at some of America’s best-known tax scofflaws between 2018 and 2022. What they found was pretty consistent: The firms took home high profits and lavished their top executives with exorbitant pay, all while stiffing Uncle Sam. The excess is stunning. “For over half (35) of these corporations,” the study reports, “their payouts to top corporate brass over that entire span exceeded their net tax payments.” An additional 29 firms managed this feat for “at least two of the five years in the study period.” Eighteen firms paid a grand total of zero dollars during that five-year span, 17 of which were given tax refunds. All in all, the 64 companies in the report “posted cumulative pre-tax domestic profits of $657 billion” during the study period, but “paid an average effective federal tax rate of just 2.8 percent (the statutory rate is 21 percent) while paying their executives over $15 billion.” Which firms are the worst of the worst? You can probably guess the company that tops the list because it’s the one run by The New Republic’s 2023 Scoundrel of the Year. During the five years of the study, Tesla took home $4.4 billion in profits as CEO Elon Musk carted off $2.28 billion in stock options, which, since his 2018 payday, have ballooned to nearly $56 billion—a compensation plan so outlandish that the Delaware Court of Chancery canceled it. Tesla has, during that same period of time, paid an effective tax rate of zero percent through a combination of carrying forward losses from unprofitable years and good old-fashioned offshore tax dodging.

Elon Musk is either the world's richest or second richest person. But he still wants more. Give him credit for pathological greed.

In all fairness, Musk is not alone when it comes to enriching himself while screwing workers.

What sort of innovations have these CEOs wrought from this well-remunerated period? T-Mobile’s Mike Sievert presided over the Sprint merger that led to $23.6 million in stock buybacks and 5,000 layoffs. Netflix’s Reed Hastings poured $15 billion in profit into jacking up subscription rates. Nextera Energy has devoted $10 million in dark money in a “ghost candidate scheme” to thwart climate change candidates. Darden Restaurants has been fighting efforts to raise the minimum wage. Metlife has been diverting government money meant to fund low-cost housing into other, unrelated buckraking ventures. And some First Energy executives from the study period are embroiled in a corruption scandal that’s so massive that even Musk might find it to be beyond the pale.

These oligarchs are going to spend lavishly to elect Republicans who would give them even bigger tax breaks.

Fortunately, they can't literally buy votes. If we return to old school grassroots precinct work then we can thwart the MAGA Republican puppets of billionaire oligarchs.

One to one contact is a more important factor than TV or online ads in convincing people to vote your way. It takes more effort, but democracy was not built by slacktivism in the first place.

[wprowers]

Sonic boom (series) little silly facts.

that I've gathered around. pt3

• eggman is scared of ghosts.

• sonic is competitive to the point he goes crazy about it.

• sonic panics when he has to wait too much or when he can't move/is stuck in one place. (ejem ejem adhd ejem ejem)

• both sonic and knuckles have worked at meh burger (we love minimum wage workers)

• tails made personalized communicators for each member of the sonic team + friendbot (that is so cute please) (sticks does not have one btw)

• the password to access eggman's lair is "chili dog"

• amy knows how to juggle.

• Tails has a problem with taking off sheets/cloths of things for some reason? he always struggles with it (he couldn't take off his own cloak, when revealing stuff the cloth always gets stuck) idk he is so cute.

• Besides not being able to swim, this sonic is scared of water, it terrifies him. And when they went to the underwater fight with eggman, his fear only increased.

• sticks loves shiny things !!

• she also likes rummaging through garbage.

• amy has a picture of sonic in her purse... and a life size doll of him too (very ugly may i say)

• The doll is used to distract eggman and later on he keeps it.

• tails experienced short term memory loss due to eggman hitting him with a pillow. hard.

• sonic was banished from the village once. (and was unbanished almost immediately)

• tails experienced short term memory loss due to eggman hitting him with a pillow. hard.

• the team has been put in quarantine when the village thought they had fleas (that was just the fleabots)

• tails' inventions are not always well received by the team (i don't believe it's out of meanness but because he tries too much sometimes, few examples of this are his laser-guided unbolteriser, UT or his super antenna) (I FOR ONE LOVE EVERYTHING YOU DO TAILS)

• eggman has respect and admiration for sonic deep down (has been hinted many times) perhaps even wants to be friends with him.

Previous |

[acepalindrome]

I’m not gonna reblog the post in question because I’m 100% being pedantic but I saw someone argue that is you take A Christmas Carol and adjust for inflation, Bob Cratchit was better off than a minimum wage worker in the US today. And yeah of you just plug in his 15 shilling a week wages to modern currency, it does come out to about $13.50/hr in USD. But that doesn’t account for the cost of food, clothes, and pretty much everything being comparative higher! Circa 1843, the average cost of a turkey was about 10-12 shillings. Which would have been almost Bob Cratchit entirely weekly paycheck, to buy just an average sized turkey to feed his family of 8. Nothing else, just a turkey. And that’s not even touching on one of his children being disabled, which the family received zero financial assistance for. Modern disability is shit, but it just didn’t exist in 1843 England.

The point of this is that you can’t apply a modern lens to things in the past and expect it to match it perfectly! And really the bottom line is that Bob Cratchit’s rich boss paid him absolute dog shit and didn’t try to become a better person until a bunch of ghosts told him he was going to die alone and suffer eternally for his crimes.

[finemeal]

Ultimate Enemy Plot Holes & Fixes (Maybe)

Alright, so sigh okay Ultimate Enemy has a LOT of plot holes. If you've watched it, and dissected it, you'll notice that. Like, how does the CAT answers get attached to Danny if he was intangible? That literally makes no sense. Also, how did the Nasty Burger blow up originally? Because from what we see, it only happens because Box Lunch and Danny fight, blowing up Nasty Burger, and now the hot sauce is touching the somehow still functioning grill which causes it to overheat and later kill Danny's family. But that wouldn't have happened in the original timeline? How did Danny get the test originally? How did the Nasty Burger get to the point it was blowing up? Am I overthinking this? (most definitely but shhh)

I've decided to write my own fixes that I will be considering "canon" from now on since Bitch Fartman doesn't know how to have a consistent show (fuck you Bitch Fartman). Will it be perfectly without plot holes? Prolly not, I'm doing this before I have to go do something, if you want to fix my fixes feel free to do so, I don't care.

So, how I think Dark Danny should come about in his timeline is honestly not going to be too far off from the show. I'll borrow some things, it's fine, not that serious.

How do Nasty Burger blow up? Well, no one said it had to be Box Lunch he was fighting, did they? I think it's possible Danny fights another ghost, and similar things happen. But, instead of Nasty Burger blowing up which would cause the grill to turn off, no electricity (I know my shit, I was a manager at a fast food joint). I think the fight will lead to the hot sauce container-thing leaning close to the grill, but no one really notices since it's such a slight change.

You still get Nasty Burger up and running, electricity going, and the hot sauce will still rise above temperature it should be (assuming Nasty Burger is open 24/7 so electricity is always running and that they don't have any safety measures in place to somehow prevent the sauce from getting overheated like morons).

How does Danny get the test answers? Well he's still a damn ghost y'all. I imagine he's driven to do so by A) being terrified of becoming a failure, B) being constantly compared to Jazz who scored phenomenally and C) there are bullies at this school, I bet Flash or some other A-Lister teased him about how he'd fail. Combining all this? I can see what would push this 14-year-old child to cheating on a test he think is going to determine his future.

After that, well, it follow sort of what we can infer happens?

If Lancer assumes Danny cheats by either A) hearing Sam & Tucker talking to Danny about it, B) literally catching Danny cheating (since this is assumed to be his first time doing it so he might not be as sneaky/subtle as he should be), or C) some other reason since they can't seem to keep straight if Lancer is a good or shitty teacher. Then, Lancer still asks Danny's family to come to the Nasty Burger to have a meeting, Jazz comes along cuz she would, (not an insult, but Jazz would do it), and Tucker & Sam usually end up tagging along to these sorts of things anyway.

If we go with the thinking that Danny does get away with cheating, I can see the Fenton's along with Sam & Tucker (who may or may not know Danny cheated) going to the Nasty Burger to celebrate his score, and Lancer could be there cuz it is a popular place. Then, the place still blows up, and there's no monuments for the workers because people who work minimum wage jobs are obviously not people (sarcasm, if you can't tell).

Either way, the end goal is achieved: Danny loses literally everyone he loves because he cheated on a test he was stressed about. Yeah, that makes sense (again, sarcasm).

Vlad, being a little shit, sweeps in and takes a mentally unstable Danny under his custody (he was also prolly left in the will as his caretaker or used his money since Vlad is a billionaire).

Now, do I think future Vlad is a reliable narrator? Hell no I don't! I think he's a lying piece of shit, and even if he does one good thing for once it doesn't make him less of a terrible person.

So, I think Vlad decided to rid Danny of his ghostly half since he sucks and knocks Danny out to do so. Do I think Phantom would then immediately go for revenge? No! I think Plasmius tries to attack him and, in self defense, Phantom separates Vlad and Plasmius. I think Plasmius would then merge with Phantom and cause this already unstable half-ghost to have a mental breakdown prolly.

I think that Danny, shaking and scared after having half of himself ripped away would try to stop this fusion and get caught in the crossfire, causing his death in the end. There's no way that Dark Danny just straight up murders Danny but leaves Vlad alive. Not unless Danny somehow accidentally brought Dark Danny's ire. Or, if Vlad snuck away somehow.

But would Dark Danny go straight into murder? I guess that's up to each their own. Personally, I think it's possible Dark Danny would? Especially since it's Phantom fused with evil as hell Plasmius. I don't think it's very likely though.

I do think it would start off as an accident, Dark Danny adjusting to his new life and accidentally attacking a human. Or if the GIW started hunting him down very seriously. Or, if a human gets caught in the crossfire while Dark Danny is fighting another ghost, which could lead to humans starting to be terrified of Dark Danny. Leading down a road of ... well what we end up seeing.

The point is, this is a very disproportionate consequence to cheating on a test.

Either way, this is what I think is what could've happened to make Dark Danny happen originally. If you see plot holes, feel free to reblog with your own fixes. Do you have a different fix for the Ultimate Enemy plot? Pop off. This is just a thought, and I know there are people out there who have some great ideas of their own.

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight -  Jack This Bitch Store UP

For: @gamma-radio-dp @mr-lancers-english-class

Is he locked inside a building or is the building locked up with him

Danny would like it to be known that he did NOT plan this. He just happened to fall asleep in a really comfy spot but at a really inconvenient time, why was it inconvenient? Well because he managed to stay asleep till two am inside of the upper toilet paper shelves in a grocery store… a grocery store that doesn’t have a night crew seemingly. This isn’t even an Amity Park grocery store, so it didn’t have any protections against ghosts or Danny. There also wasn’t any security people or whatever, if there was they definitely should have come running when he rolled over and fell off the shelf, taking out the entire thing of toilet paper in the process; Danny landing in a tangle of limbs, toilet paper wrapping, and mangled toilet paper. Danny hand sprung up, readying for an attack before clueing in that this would be a stupid ass place for a random ghost to drop him off at after knocking him out.

So yeah, here he was, ‘locked’ (but not really, he was a ghost after all) in a grocery store, at night, when all the cameras are off, alone… Time to find the pillow basket and jump in. That turns out to be more like quicksand than Danny ever thought fluffy pillows could be; he practically has to swim out of them. Ten outta ten would recommend again. Crawling into the inflated ball bin is almost as good and gives him even more of a sinking feeling.

He’s half tempted to turn on a tv and plug in a console, but he is not spending this time playing a fucking video game. Instead crawling up a shelf on to the top beam separator thingies, running along them and just kind of looking down on everything, it was kinda cool seeing things from this vantage point. Holy fuck so much of this shit is dirty as shit, and there’s some clearly super old stuff up here that is severely discoloured. Ew. But also, why the fuck would they clean up here all the time anyways? What fucking minimum wage sucker would be stupid enough to climb up here, risk their life, and clean this for less money than what two goddamn tacos would cost.

And then he finds a boom box? Why was there a boom box hidden up here? Ah fuck it, who cares, he has a phone and a phone connects to Bluetooth and the boom box has Bluetooth, meaning Danny can ‘crank those jams’… fuck that was the cringiest thought he’s ever thought, holy fuck. So anyways, music. Aggressive phunk mixed with meme music mixed with TikTok remixes mixed with overtly political shouty punk. It’s very loud and he loves it, he also jumps off of the top area and makes a beeline for the ‘employees only’ door. Immediately jumping into the black garbage bin and pushing around with his arms like bumper cars and knocking more than a few things over. He absolutely winds up smashing it into the side of a pallet jack so hard the thing flips end over end and sends him sprawling on the ground.

Okay fuck that pallet jack, he’s taking it and he’s going to smash it into something. A wall? Some food? Shitty overpriced chocolate? A shelf to see if the things tip over easily? Well okay that last one might, might, get him arrested or something. Maybe. Pah, as if they could ever hold or catch him. He crashes it into the fish bin, the kind made of hollow plastic and just has fish resting on a thin layer of yummy ice that everyone secretly eats as they walk by but doesn’t admit to. He hopes that jack stinks like fish for days. Fuck that pallet jack, and considering someone wrote ‘piece of shit’ on it clearly the workers agree. So there, he’s doing them a favour, not totally destroying property. And the fish was smelly and probably old; he absolutely slips and falls on his ass when he steps on some of the fish juices, though.

He grabs those Covid social distancing divider things, sticking them under his armpits and stomping around with the metal feet; it’s a surprisingly fast mode of transportation. If the place was closing down and they decided to hold a ‘most unsafe method of destruction’ contest to help tear the place down then Danny might just be a winner; he was totally fucking up a few floor tiles. Heh. He crashes himself right back into the pillow pit, his face smacking into the metal cage making the landing less soft than he really intended it to be; and when he moves to pull back from it the whole damn thing tips over, it’s a bit of a bitch to crawl out of.

He then meanders his way to the fake wines, cracks one because hey, if they’re going to charge twenty fucking dollars for a bottle of fake ass wine then he should be able to steal it. At least acting drunk is mildly fun, and works as an excuse to grab all the bouncy balls and release them like he’s setting free demon spawn about to ruin the world, “go and rule!”. It’s stupid and silly but that’s the fun of it. An excuse to be a mischievous spooky boi, to terrorise a place a little without actually scaring people or being too weird in public. That and it was just plain old fun.

He finally manages to set off the security alarm by ‘riding’ the blades of the ceiling fans and shrieking like a banshee; he might have broke it. He would still like it to be known that this wasn’t his fault in the slightest… and alarm blaring barely audible over his killer music didn’t change the fact that he feels actively better than he did yesterday. Causally haunting a grocery story for the win.

-

When security showed up they were extremely confused. There’s clearly been a break-in, except who or whatever did said breaking-in seemed to just run around messing things up. There’s ketchup smeared on multiple TVs, a couple of the security people caught the end of the weird grating music, somehow a ceiling fan got mauled, there was balls and pillows everywhere, multiple isles stank of wine, and all the fish was garbage; what most were really confused about was how the fuck a goddamn pallet jack got inside the trash compactor??? The fuck???

End.

Prompts: Danny at the grocery store at 2am, what crimes will he commit? and Danny is a Creature and loving it.

[macmanx]

To some extent, the significance of humans’ AI ratings is evident in the money pouring into them. One company that hires people to do RLHF and data annotation was valued at more than $7 billion in 2021, and its CEO recently predicted that AI companies will soon spend billions of dollars on RLHF, similar to their investment in computing power. The global market for labeling data used to train these models (such as tagging an image of a cat with the label “cat”), another part of the “ghost work” powering AI, could reach nearly $14 billion by 2030, according to an estimate from April 2022, months before the ChatGPT gold rush began.

All of that money, however, rarely seems to be reaching the actual people doing the ghostly labor. The contours of the work are starting to materialize, and the few public investigations into it are alarming: Workers in Africa are paid as little as $1.50 an hour to check outputs for disturbing content that has reportedly left some of them with PTSD. Some contractors in the U.S. can earn only a couple of dollars above the minimum wage for repetitive, exhausting, and rudderless work. The pattern is similar to that of social-media content moderators, who can be paid a tenth as much as software engineers to scan traumatic content for hours every day. “The poor working conditions directly impact data quality,” Krystal Kauffman, a fellow at the Distributed AI Research Institute and an organizer of raters and data labelers on Amazon Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcing platform, told me.

Stress, low pay, minimal instructions, inconsistent tasks, and tight deadlines—the sheer volume of data needed to train AI models almost necessitates a rush job—are a recipe for human error, according to Appen raters affiliated with the Alphabet Workers Union-Communications Workers of America and multiple independent experts. Documents obtained by Bloomberg, for instance, show that AI raters at Google have as little as three minutes to complete some tasks, and that they evaluate high-stakes responses, such as how to safely dose medication. Even OpenAI has written, in the technical report accompanying GPT-4, that “undesired behaviors [in AI systems] can arise when instructions to labelers were underspecified” during RLHF.

[shadowmaat]

Work Ethics

The CEO of Home Depot, a company (and man) worth billions, recently complained in an interview that workers "don't give a damn anymore."

It's a lament we've been hearing more and more often from increasingly-rich bosses, and the funny thing is that they don't seem to realize that they fall into the "don't give a damn" category as well.

The CEOs of these billion-dollar corporations seem to have this vision that their industry-strangling chains are some kind of mom-and-pop store, where employees should feel like family and should be happy to work there for the simple joy of helping people and helping their "family" prosper. They continually fail to understand why this isn't the case.

Part of the problem is that while they expect their employees to be grateful and happy to help, the CEOs only see them as mindless little minions who exist solely to make them more money. They don't care about them, their struggles, their needs, etc; they just want more money. And in order to maximize their own profit they will skimp in every way imaginable.

It's a very Scrooge-like attitude. They will pay the barest minimum (or less, if they can manage it), they'll cut corners wherever possible, they'll argue over every expense no matter how important, and they firmly believe their workers will always try and cheat them. Mostly because that's what they do, themselves.

Their employees could be starving, they could be homeless, they could be desperately ill, but none of that matters to the CEO (or the various bosses under him) because their sole concern is their own money. All those jokes about "buying their third yacht" are very accurate. Wealth is seen as a sign of success and increased status and for the bosses of the world (or at least the Western world) that's what's important. If their workers are suffering and dying, well, who cares? At least it benefits them. And as that other joke goes, if they didn't want to be poor they should have been born rich.

Granny Weatherwax once pointed out that "people as things" is where true evil starts, and that's exactly how bosses view their employees: things that exist to help them get richer.

While workers have always been fighting for rights and fair wages, I think it was the pandemic that helped them realize just how important they are in the grand scheme of things. After all, without them all those billion-dollar names swaggering around sipping Domaine Leroy Musigny Grand Cru and eating gold leaf-encrusted wagyu beef wouldn't be able to do that without them.

The fact that all these uber-rich assholes could easily afford to pay their employees a livable wage without making a significant dent in their profits doesn't matter: it would still be making a dent and that must be avoided at all costs. The Toddler Rules of Possession are very clear about that.

Anyway, I know I'm not alone in wishing the workers of the world all the best. May unions prosper while CEOs suffer. May everyone be fairly compensated for their work. And may the modern Scrooges of the world suffer audits, legal troubles, and the wrath of people who have too long been labeled as "things."

Ghosts only worked on Ebeneezer because he still had kindness in his heart. These days they only thing that works is hitting them right in their profit margins.

[un-officialbookreviews]

Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

Rating: 9/10

Initial Thoughts: I loved this book. It was thrilling and it kept me invested. It's managed to keep the same style that pervaded all of Jonathan's previous work of The Magnus Archives and yet still stands out on it's own. It is an amazing book.

Time to read: 2 1/2 months. Admittedly this is because I just struggle with POV changing books and get constantly thrown out due to that.

Recommended for: Fans of The Magnus Archives, horror fans in general, fans of the supernatural genre, and fans of slow burn books.

Not Recommended for: People who don't like shifting POV's, being unable to truly know the characters, horror genre, and stories with an anti-capitalist message.

Spoilers ahead-

Overview: Thirteen Storeys takes place in the location of Banyan Court, an apartment complex in London. It goes in depth about the deep crevices within this complex and through the personal accounts of twelve people we get a good look at just how deeply haunted this place is. From a plumber to a door guard, to a minimum wage worker, to the richest of the rich, this story takes the perspectives of everyone and just how deeply hidden the rot is within society.

Analysis: While I've seen a couple people upset at not getting to know the characters more than the skim we get with every chapter, I think that was the point. We aren't meant to get completely attached to these people. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Banyan Court is our main character, as it is this place that we get to know and view as alive as the story goes onward.

Something I loved about this book is the attention to the very fact that it doesn't matter who is involved, the rich, the poor, the adults, the children, and everyone else in-between. No one is safe from the constant corruption. And sure, it's an anti-capitalist story, but that doesn't mean it isn't the end of the world. It truly encapsulates the horror of the real world.

Honestly the twist at the end wasn't all that unexpected if you paid attention to it. How cruel Tobias Fell truly was, what the ghosts haunting everyone represented, it felt personal, in a sense. And all the more real just how desperate this old decrepit man was in escaping his own horrors.