usamericans-
this is probably going around here like several times, but you can order 4 more free covid tests starting today. if you didn't order any back in september/october (I hadn't heard about it, so I hadn't gotten more tests), you might be able to get up to 8. it just told me 'hey you can get more' and let me do it again, it was very easy to do.
if you're like 'well, I should leave that for people who need it!' don't. order them. stockpile them. the more the program is used, the more likely it is that it will remain a funded program and send the message that covid-19 is still a concern. use the program. there's no needs testing, no nothing, just put in your name and address. if nothing else, you can give a couple to a friend who has a larger family, since it's a per household thing and some people might need more or less, or a mutual aid group in your area, or something. the more people who do this, the more likely they are to keep reupping this program.
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Nobody is making anyone go into scriptwriting. No one is born in a Netflix company town where their dad takes them into the script mines at age 12. Fuck writers who want to get paid more than once for the same job. They should only get residuals AFTER all the people who do REAL WORK, like construction, grips, costume, makeup & animators etc. Most of them are much better at their jobs than writers especially for streaming services, and they are what screenwriters can lean on & novelists can't.
People need to realize that the unions for white collar people like WGA or SIEU or NEA (public sector unions are why cops who kill the people they were supposed to serve & protect remain employed get pensions) is not the AFL-CIO or any other historical union fighting for the lives of the people who built the country's industry and made it run, any more than the NRA are the Minutemen of 1775 New England.
First, go fuck yourself, you fucking scab. No, seriously - you don't come to my blog and spout off about what workers deserve unions and decent pay and what ones don't, like it's your fucking decision. The intellectual labor that writers perform is just as real as any other work done on a film set - "all who labor by hand or brain" is the inherent logic of industrial unionism for a reason.
Second, writers aren't asking to get paid more than once: residuals are deferred pay, you absolute moron. In Hollywood, whether it's writers or actors or voice talent or whatever, you get a small fraction up front - it's usually an ok check, depending on the union's day rates and so forth, but you can't make a living off stitching these together - and then most of your pay comes from monthly royalty checks that provide you with the income you need to live off when you're between jobs.
The problem is that, historically in Hollywood, residuals have been structured with a very long "tail" - the payments start out relatively low and then get more generous over time as the show has more seasons and (presumably) goes into syndication. This doesn't work with streaming's new business model, where increasingly shows are getting 2-3 seasons max and streaming services have become increasingly quick to not just cancel shows but yank them off their servers in order to avoid paying residuals.
So what WGA writers are fighting for is a system that ensures writers (but also actors and other creative workers, because the unions pattern bargain) get a fair share of the show's revenue, even if the show is only given 2-3 seasons.
Third, the U.S labor movement would not exist today if it wasn't for white collar workers and public sector workers. About half of the U.S labor movement - 7 million workers - is public sector, and those workers are overwhelmingly women of color, mostly working as either teachers or postal workers. Likewise, about half the U.S labor movement is made up of white collar workers, and we're graduate students and adjuncts and lab researchers, teachers and social workers, administrators and IT departments.
I'm both public sector and white collar, and I'm a member of an NEA union. I'm an adjunct professor who earns $6,000 a course and it's my job to get working adults with jobs and families who've never gone to college or who've been out of higher ed for a decade to graduate with a bachelor's or a master's. If you don't think that's real work, you're free to research and write all the lectures and powerpoints, deliver those in an entertaining and educational fashion, answer a flood of questions from students who need help navigating academia, and then grade all the midterms and finals and research papers.
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Simon let out a growl, a sheen coat of sweat covering his entire body as he fucked you into the mattress below.
His eyes were transfixed on the headboard, forcing his mind to focus on the soft mewls that escaped your lips from beneath him, and the way your wet walls clenched down around his thick length.
Simon was angry, his blood boiling beneath his skin. You’d disobeyed him out on the field, went against his direct order and nearly got killed because of it. He let his eyes flicker down to you, watching your eyes flutter shut as he ruthlessly pounded into you.
He hardly ever fucked you when he was angry, he hated being rough with you, hated the possibility of hurting you. But now, he couldn’t care less. You’d nearly died today, and Simon wasn’t one to deal well with complicated emotions.
“You’re a fuckin’ brat, you know that?” Simon said, his hand finding its way to your throat, tightening its hold ever so slightly. “Nearly fuckin’ died because you can’t follow a simple order.”
“S-sorry.” You sputtered, your lieutenants grip on your throat making it difficult to get words out. The tip of his cock was kissing your cervix, making it nearly impossible to focus on anything other than his thick length sliding against your walls.
“Almost lost you today, and that’s all you have to say?” Simon roared, his hips coming to a halt. “I almost watched you fuckin’ die, Y/N, sorry ain’t going to cut it.”
You let out a whimper, causing Simon’s eyes to soften ever so slightly as he looked at you. He was so impossibly scared of losing you, he simply couldn’t fathom the thought.
Shaking his head, he let out a groan as he felt you clench around him once more. With his free hand, he grabbed both of your wrists and pinned them above your head in a firm grasp, his other hand still lodged around your throat.
“First, I’m going to fuck you, take out all my anger on this pretty little pussy.” Simon growled, pulling his cock out completely, before ramming it back into you. “Then, then we will discuss your insubordination.”
You’d be lying if you said you didn’t shiver in anticipation.
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I have to explain what is going on in the UK, because it is absurd.
So, this is Gary Lineker:
He's known for a fair few things over here.
He was a very good (association) footballer, playing for England in the 1986 and 1990 World Cups, winning the Golden Boot in 1986, and managing to never get a single yellow card in his playing career. He played for Leicester City, Everton, Barcelona, and Tottenham, before finishing his career in Japan.
But if you aren't in your mid 30s, you probably know actually know him him for a couple of other things.
The first is the role of spokesman for another Leicester icon, Walkers Crisps (which are sort of equivalent to Lays, but hit different), as pictured above. Despite being a notably clean player, he used to play a cheeky serial crisp thief. I don't think he's done that for well over a decade, but his ads were on the telly a lot when I was a kid and it's a bit like learning that the hamburglar was an incredibly clean (American) football player or something.
The second thing Gary is widely known for is having presented Match of the Day, the big football program on the BBC, the sort-of state broadcaster, since 1999. He is, incidentally, very well paid for this (though with a consensus that he could get even more if he went to one of the non-free-to-view broadcasters because he is very good at the job).
He also has a twitter account. And political opinions.
So, the UK government has got itself dead set upon doing heinous stuff that will totally somehow work to prevent people who want to come to the UK making the perilous crossing of the Channel (between England and France).
By heinous, I mean "openly advertise that they won't attempt to protect victims of modern slavery" stuff.
It's very obviously using a legal hammer to victimise a marginalised group of people in order to win votes.
And, uh, I should clarify that by "legal" I mean "using the passage of laws" - the policy is, in addition to all the other ways it's awful, probably incompatible with the Human Rights Act and the UK's international law obligations.
Gary, top lad that he is, objected to this.
On Tuesday 7th March, he made a quote Tweet of a video of the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, bigging up the policy, he wrote "Good heavens, this is beyond awful.".
This got a bunch of backlash from extremely right-wingers, and then he made the tweet that really got him in trouble (with right-wingers): "There is no huge influx. We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?".
Now, I am not actually subjecting myself to watching a video of Suella Braverman bigging up a cruel policy to say whether the specific comparison of the language to 1930s Germany is accurate.
But needless to say, Ms Braverman was amongst the many figures on the right of UK politics objecting to Gary's rhetoric.
And here's the part where a fact about the BBC comes in: it is nominally neutral and impartial (and so, of course, is routinely accused of bias from all sides but particularly the right-wing), and has something of a code for its contributors to this effect.
Now, that code has previously been applied to Gary Lineker, over a comment about whether governing Conservative Party would hand back donations from figures linked to the Russian regime.
But it generally hasn't been applied too strongly to people like Gary, whose roles have nothing to do with politics (such as presenting a "here's what happened on the footie today" show), on the basis that, well, their roles have nothing to do with politics.
However, when directly asked about whether the BBC should punish Gary Lineker for his tweets, government figures basically went "well, that's a them problem".
But a couple of days passed, and it seemed like Gary's approach of "standing his ground because he did nothing wrong" was working and everything would die down. He was set to get 'a talking to' but not much more than that. The Conservative right, after all their fire and fury earlier, had gotten bored and moved onto something else.
And then, on Friday 10th March, the BBC announced that he would be suspended from hosting Match of the Day this weekend.
But it could still go ahead, because there are, like, other hosts!
Except, well, funnily enough, when you take a beloved figure off air, for making a fairly anodyne tweet, no one wants to be the scab who actually takes up the role of replacing him.
Gary's two co-hosts, Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, said that they would not appear without him.
People who (co-)host Match of the Day on other days followed suit.
The net result is that Match of the Day is currently set to air without hosts, BBC commentary, or global feed commentary.
And the solidarity shown to Gary Lineker, over what is very flagrantly actual cancel culture and an attack on freedom of speech (the logic implied is that institutional impartiality requires that no one say anything too critical of the government ever), has continued to grow.
The BBC has pretty much been unable to run pretty much any live sports content today, and has resorted to raiding the BBC Sounds archive to fill the sports radio channel.
And, as of 17:30 on Saturday 11th March, the situation shows no signs of improvement, though some are calling for the Chairman Richard Sharp, who is separately facing corruption allegations, to resign (yes I linked to the BBC itself there, there is nothing, nothing, the BBC loves more than going into great detail about how much the BBC sucks).
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Is That A Promise? (Venom One-Shot)
Eddie Brock x GN!Reader / requests are open and encouraged
Summary: Telling you about Venom does not go entirely how Eddie planned.
CW: mentions of monster fucking, Eddie is oblivious and a dumbass (I think I have a type)
Venom Tag List: (send an ask to be added to a tag list!)
___ ___ ___ ___ ___
You’d known Eddie Brock a good while by this point. You’d started dating him a while back, and while he put others on edge, you’d found the way he talked to himself out loud rather charming, actually.
At first, you weren’t sure if he was just unmedicated, or undiagnosed. But then the news broke about the symbiote, and then there was the footage. And when Eddie started coming home right after news broke of some other attack or taking out of a bad guy or criminal or whoever, you’d put two and two together.
It was kind of hard not to. Particularly as his conversations with himself could vary from topic to topic in the span of six words or less.
Eddie had asked to meet up for lunch today at your favourite restaurant. He’d seemed a bit off on the phone, and given how prone you were to anxiety, your immediate thought had been that he was breaking up with you and that you’d done something to upset him or his bodily guest- who you did not officially know about, of course.
You’d gotten there early to prepare yourself for whatever shitshow was about to follow and to your immense surprise, Eddie had shown up pretty much right after you. Eddie was always running late, so this change in pace was also mildly concerning. You were not sure how this was going to go and you did not like that one bit.
“You’re here early, too,” Eddie had said, swallowing thickly and avoiding eye contact. You nodded, and cleared your throat, gesturing for him to sit down at the table opposite you.
“Yeah, I wanted to make sure we had a spot,” you replied, smoothing down your shirt. Bit of a nervous habit. That and ripping at your nails, but that was beside the point.
“Right,” Eddie replied.
And then the two of you lapsed into silence. You spent a good five to ten minutes appearing to read over the menu as if this wasn’t a regular spot for you and you didn’t know exactly what you were going to order. In fact, you’d be surprised if the cooks weren’t already making it up for you even though a waiter hadn’t come over yet.
“Shut up,” Eddie hissed quietly. You peered over the menu to eye him curiously, one brow arced in question.
“I didn’t say anything, Eddie.”
“Yeah, I know. I- uh, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. You hummed, and put the menu down to give him your attention.
“About me shutting up?”
“No- God, this is not going at all like I planned.” Eddie rubbed a hand over his face and sighed.
You said nothing, waiting patiently for him to work out his wording.
“I really like you,” he started, and you nodded, replying with the same sentiment. “And, well, there’s something I’ve been hiding from you.”
“Right…” This is where you expected him to tell you he was married (doubtful but not impossible) or had cancer or something terrible. Dear God, please no.
“Look- you’ve seen on the news, yes, the, uh- the attacks. Yeah?”
You nod. Ah, so he was finally telling you about his friend living literally rent-free in his body. Okay, you could relax a little.
“He’s me. Venom, he lives in my body. He’s in my head. Like, all the time. Right now.”
Eddie looked at the table where he was picking at the tablecloth. You were silent for a second, and Eddie clearly took that to mean you were horrified or disgusted or something. You were a little nervous about it, sure, but you’d also been living with him for the last few months. If Venom was planning to take you out, he would have done so by now, surely. You figured this to mean you were safe enough. You’d also seen your fair share of monster porn, so you weren’t exactly unkeen on the idea of dating someone who sometimes had a monster body. It was kind of hot, actually. You shook the thought out of your head and tried to focus.
“Oh, yeah- I knew about that,” you replied, and the way Eddie’s head snapped towards you was almost comical.
“You what?”
“Yeah, I figured that out a while ago. I was just waiting for you to tell me in your own time.”
Eddie blinked, and a black residue appeared on the back of his hand. It swirled and gathered on his hand before reaching for you delicately. You met it, brushing your finger over it softly. The goop (for lack of a better word) seemed to shiver pleasurably and you smiled.
“Can I meet him later?”
Eddie nodded, watching the interaction with disbelief. He’d thought that you’d go running and screaming through the doors or something, not be rubbing your fingers over Venom like you were fingering some Play-Doh.
“Y-yeah, later,” he agreed. “Not here. When we get home.”
You grinned and the black substance retreated back into Eddie’s skin as a waiter appeared by your table.
“What can I get for you? The regular?”
You looked at Eddie and clicked your tongue thoughtfully.
“The usual with a serving of chicken nuggets on the side, please.”
The waiter nodded, scribbled it own on his pad and wandered off in the direction of the kitchen. Eddie looked at you in question. He knew you weren’t big on nuggets.
“They’re for Venom,” you explained, propping your head up on your palm. Eddie looked to the side as if listening to something carefully.
“Venom says thank you-” Eddie said before cutting himself as Venom said something else in his head. “No, I’m not saying that. No. No.”
“Say what?”
Eddie sighed defeatedly- something you think he did a lot when it came to Venom.
“Venom said he could kiss you right now.” Eddie looked mortified as the words left his mouth. You burst into laughter.
“Is that a threat or a promise? I hope it’s a promise,” you replied, wiggling your eyebrows at the two of them.
Eddie swallowed thickly and blushed as Venom said something else. You’d have to see if Venom could swap hosts sometime. It would be nice to have a conversation while out and about like that.
“Promise,” Eddie replied.
Good.
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