#releasing energy

[wordsofwisdomandsoul]

[frommyfavoritebooks]

they asked her,

“what does letting go mean?” 

she answered,

“letting go does not mean erasing a memory or ignoring the past; it is when you are no longer reacting to the things that used to make you feel tense and you are releasing the energy attached to certain thoughts. it takes self-awareness, intentional action, practice, and time. letting go is the act of getting to know yourself so deeply that all delusions fall away.”

(presence)

- clarity & connection, yung pueblo

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon" energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss

Today (Oct 20), I'm in Charleston, WV at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

For a brief time this year, the bestselling "bitter lemon drink" on Amazon was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by Catfish UK prankster Oobah Butler in a stunt for a new Channel 4 doc, "The Great Amazon Heist":

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist

Collecting driver piss is surprisingly easy. Amazon, you see, puts its drivers on a quota that makes it impossible for them to drive safely, park conscientiously, or, indeed, fulfill their basic human biological needs. Amazon has long waged war on its employees' kidneys, marking down warehouse workers for "time off task" when they visit the toilets.

As tales of drivers pissing – and shitting! – in their vans multiplied, Amazon took decisive action. The company enacted a strict zero tolerance policy for drivers returning to the depot with bottles of piss in their vans.

That's where Butler comes in: the roads leading to Amazon delivery depots are lined with bottles of piss thrown out of delivery vans by drivers who don't want to lose their jobs, which made harvesting the raw material for "Release Energy" a straightforward matter.

Butler was worried that he wouldn't be able to list his product on Amazon because he didn't have the requisite "food and drinks licensing" certificates, so he listed his drink in Amazon's refillable pump dispenser category. But Amazon's systems detected the mismatch and automatically shifted the product into the drinks section.

Butler enlisted some confederates to place orders for his drink, and it quickly rocketed to the top of Amazon's listings for the category, which led to Amazon's recommendation engine pushing the item on people who weren't in on the gag. When these orders came in, Butler pulled the plug, but not before an Amazon rep telephoned him to pitch him turning packaging, shipping and fulfillment over to Amazon:

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-let-its-drivers-urine-be-sold-as-an-energy-drink/

The Release Energy prank was just one stunt Butler pulled for his doc; he also went undercover at an Amazon warehouse, during a period when Amazon hired an extra 1,000 workers for its warehouses in Coventry, UK, in a successful bid to dilute pro-union sentiment in his workforce in advance of a key union vote:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-great-amazon-heist-oobah-butler-review

Butler's stint as an Amazon warehouse worker only lasted a couple of days, ending when Amazon recognized him and fired him.

The contrast between Amazon's ability to detect an undercover reporter and its inability to spot bottles of piss being marketed as bitter lemon energy drink says it all, really. Corporations like Amazon hire vast armies of "threat intelligence" creeps who LARP at being CIA superspies, subjecting employees and activists to intense and often illegal surveillance.

But while Amazon's defensive might is laser-focused on the threat of labor organizers and documentarians, the company can't figure out that one of its bestselling products is bottles of its tormented drivers' own urine.

In the USA, the FTC is suing Amazon for its monopolistic tactics, arguing that the company has found ways to raise prices and reduce quality by trapping manufacturers and sellers with its logistics operation, taking $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar they earn and forcing them to raise prices at all retailers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The Release Energy stunt shows where Amazon's priorities are. Not only did Release Energy get listed on Amazon without any quality checks, the company actually nudged it into a category where it was more likely to be consumed by a person. The only notice the company took of Release Energy was in its logistics and manufacturing department – the part of the business that extracts the monopoly rents at issue in the FTC case – which tracked Butler down in order to sell him these services.

The drivers whose piss Butler collected don't work directly for Amazon, they work for a Delivery Service Partner. These DSPs are victims of a pyramid scheme that Amazon set up. DSP operators lease vans and pay to have them skinned in Amazon livery and studded with Amazon sensors. They take out long-term leases on depots, and hire drivers who dress in Amazon uniforms. Their drivers are minutely monitored by Amazon, down to the movements of their eyeballs.

But none of this is "Amazon" – it's all run by an "entrepreneur," whom Amazon can cut loose without notice, leaving them with unfairly terminated employees, outstanding workers' comp claims, a fleet of Amazon-skinned vehicles and unbreakable facilities leases:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Speaking to Wired, Amazon denied that it forces its drivers to piss in bottles, but Butler clearly catches a DSP dispatcher telling drivers "If you pee in a bottle and leave it [in the vehicle], you will get a point for that" – that is, the part you get punished for isn't the peeing, it's the leaving.

Amazon's defense against the FTC is that it spares no effort to keep its marketplace safe. As Amazon spokesperson James Drummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.

In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," FTC Chair Lina Khan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

In Butler's documentary, Khan's hypothesis is thoroughly validated: here's a company extracting hundreds of billions from merchants who raise prices to compensate, and those monopoly rents are "invested" in union-busting and countermeasures against investigative journalists, while the tools to keep you from accidentally getting a bottle of piss in the mail are laughably primitive.

Truly, Amazon is the apex predator of the platform era:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[stuckinapril]

megan thee stallion is the perfect example of unbothered energy. nicki has repeatedly vagueposted about her, gone on unhinged rants about her, gone so far as to mention her dead mother (such a classless low blow), threatened her on live, and has now released the tackiest diss track in history. and what has megan done? literally nothing. she straight up ignored her, aside from that one ig story where she posted herself laughing (which was perfect btw). she is the epitome of “i will not dignify that w a response.” i love it.

[ryllen]

[reikifromlourdes]

This photo has been infused with Energy to Release Negative Experiences. It is the first video of a 3 part series. Here is the link to the Energy to Release Negative Experiences, https://bit.ly/3xthZEU For Reiki sessions (like the June Reiki Sunday Special), attunements, and services go to ReikifromLourdes.com ​#restrelaxationreiki ​#reikifromlourdes #reiki #energyhealing #reikihealing #reikimaster #relaxation #releasenegative energy #releasenegativethoughts #releasenegative experiences

[call-me-nineki]

Floyd is so silly lmao 💀💀💀

[roubee]

Why do they look so stupid when they stand…. I love them…

[watermelon-jooce]

I actually dont think ive posted this here yet

MADE THIS back inn may, took me around 9-10 hours and is still one of my favourite peices

I might post some more older peices i have..

BUHBYE

[pasta-pardner]

spotify | john marston's revenge quest, set to music from 1960s spaghetti westerns.

Fun detail: the opening cutscene for Red Dead Revolver (2004) features an instrumental version of "His Name Is King". The lyrical version is oddly fitting for John, given that it's a song about seeking vengeance for a dead brother.

[yrsonpurpose]

GEORGE VILLIERS: and i'd do it over and over and over again if I could

[quirkle2]

ritsu!

[teru] [mob] [reigen]

[bigsnaff]

realistically if anet really wants to implement a new big money-making system for them and have something of a "renaissance" of the PoF era with how groundbreaking the mounts were, I really think it needs to be player housing. like, actual player housing and not just the fixed, uncustomizable "home" instances we have right now.

still make those instances the default, starter player homes, yeah... no need to get rid of them. but absorb them into a new housing system and make them more adaptable and customizable? and then have entirely unique homes we can buy via gems or astral acclaim or achievements or whatever. absorb some of the guild hall system into it, make it better, easier, and more fun. anet gets money and we get more shiny stuff to wage fashion war with.

[carefulfears]

the main reason why i literally don’t care about anything less than continuity in the x files is because so many of the things they did were just for vibes. why was mulder colorblind in one episode and then never again? for the vibes. why was mulder afraid of fire in one episode and then never again? for the vibes. why was it snowing in north carolina in spring at mulder’s funeral? for the vibes. so a 20-something girl could write prose fic about it being fitting that the ground was hard and unrelenting as he was lowered into it. is that not enough????

[jezyan]

this movie obliterated me in the best way possible, so here are some doodles! ❤️‍🩹

[phantom-phoenixx]

Lazarus Pits were foul.

There was no nicer way to put it.

They were supposed to be cracks inbetween the 2 realms where ectoplasm, truly dead and rotten ectoplasm, sank to the bottom of the Ghost Zone and seeped through into the living realm to become apart of the earth, the water, the air. To gather energy and be renewed in order to seep back into the zone to contribute to the everlasting exchange of energies between the 2 realms.

That's what they were supposed to be. Until they were stopped up.

The dead ectoplasm never stopped leaking through, but it never returned back to the zone. It got stuck, held in place with old magics whispered in lost tongues that forced it to stay. To stagnate. To ooze over souls that were supposed to pass over and draw them back into their earthly bodies.

The Pits were a literal crime against nature and those who bathed in it came out with the stench of rotting magic clinging to them like a thick sludge as a marker to the dead and those blessed with the sight that there was something very wrong with the person.

Which is why when Phantom met the Red Hood for the first time, he instantly recoiled with his nose scrunched up in disgust and said 'Oh god ew, what the fuck.'

This happened in front of everyone.