#the stockholders

[artcalledcinema]

A picture I captured

Today

Never thought to ignite a flame!

[phoenixcatch7]

Like I know it's self indulgence but it'd be so funny to see a full kardashian style Brucie Wayne, spoilt playboy prince of Gotham, local sunshine idiot on the front page every other week for darwinian levels of idiocy or billionaire levels of donations.

But he gets kidnapped or something and there's illusions or mind magics that make him think he's in the bat suit and then he gets dumped in the middle of a live world broadcast arena to fight some goons.

Like he doesn't think anything of it, batman's been kidnapped and forced into gladitorial arenas for sport many times before, maybe he always carries concealed weapons so he's still got like grapples and batarangs and stuff, but he's just going full doomslayer on these guys. No cowl. No suit. Just an open silk shirt and a pair of slacks. In full view of the world.

Tell you what, what about the whole justice league. Just a group of the motleyest people you've ever met. There's about as many famous people as there are absolute nobodies.

Several billionaires defer to the guy who writes articles on outdated lead in buildings and socio economic corruption. There's a renowned museum curator flying and uppercutting aliens so hard they get tossed across the room. There's a guy who spoke in science conferences about meta containment procedures running up the wall and delivering a roundhouse kick to three enemies at once. Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen. Of all people. Two world famous idiot ceo celebrities. And they're back to back whaling on armoured alien henchmen like a well oiled team. A ten year old podcaster shooting lightning from his fingers and no one in the group bats an eye.

Just.... Insanity.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

why is my follower count going up. what did i do. u weirdos are freaking me out. buddy whats up

[thearsonistofarland]

Xbox woman jumpscare

[commandermeg]

Reminder that Paramount doesn't actually care about Trek or its fans

[stallation]

Jessica Stockholder

Sex in the Office, 2007

plywood, plastic floor liner, acrylic, oil and spray paint, glass, 2 pieces of stucco finished table base, book shelf, 4 metal table legs, frame and plegii glass, yarn, plasticize, zip ties, thread, shells, spray paint, rubber car mat, tape, canvas from oil painting

[jeyuwuso]

White room torture, but with a twist

When Whumpee wakes up, all they can see is white. White padded walls. White padded floor. White clothes. No spots of color, no shadows, no anything apart from the glaring white. There's a door with a slot that Whumpee can't open, and beside it sits a white bowl containing a scoop of bland white rice.

At first, it's terrifying. Whumpee yells for help, searches for escape, claws at the door. They cry out until their voices fail. They hammer on the walls until their fists bruise and bleed.

After that, it's boring. Painfully boring.

The go from sleeping all day to never sleeping. Whumpee gnaws at their nails and cuticles. The blood satisfies them; the taste of iron and the color red are a welcome distraction. Their thoughts have become radio static, a white hum broken by the occasional fleeting phrase.

After gulping down their daily bowl of rice, Whumpee slips into a deep, dreamless sleep and wakes up bleary-eyed and sore. Their fingers have been wrapped in white bandages. Looking up, Whumpee sees something new: a screen, glowing white.

They hear Whumper's calm voice come through a speaker. "One... Two... Three..."

"Hey! HEY!" Whumpee's voice sounds strange in their ears. "LET ME OUT OF HERE!"

Whumper doesn't answer. They just keep counting in that same drawling monotone. "Four... Five... Six... Seven..."

"PLEASE!" Whumpee doesn't care how desperate they sound.

"Eight... Nine... Ten."

A soft tone plays, and that's it.

Whumpee screams for hours. They plead. They bargain. They offer to do things that would normally make them sick to their stomach.

It doesn't matter. The voice is gone.

It goes on this way for weeks. Once a day (or so Whumpee thinks; they lost track of time long ago), the speaker comes on, and Whumper's voice counts to ten.

It's small, but it's the only distraction in the silent void, and Whumpee clings to it like a life raft. It's the best ten seconds of Whumpee's day. They look forward to it for hours, and when it's over, they fall into despair, knowing it will be so long until they find relief again.

Eventually, the numbers are replaced by the alphabet. Whumpee is elated; a whole twenty-six seconds of distraction feels like the height of luxury.

More time passes, and Whumper moves from reciting the alphabet to reading their to-do list. It's different every time, and Whumpee spends their hours fantasizing about what the next one might say.

As the days pass, the communications become longer and more detailed. Whumper begins talking about themselves, telling stories from their past and tidbits about their day. Whumpee hangs on their every word. They commit it all to memory, playing it back in their minds when the loneliness begins to crush them.

Finally, the blank screen changes. It shows Whumper's face as they speak. Whumpee is captivated. They memorize every inch of Whumper's face and study their expressions. No one has ever looked so beautiful. They can't remember their own face or the sound of their own voice. The only real thing in this world is Whumper.

When the door finally opens to show Whumper standing there with a broad smile on their face, Whumpee doesn't even think to run anywhere but into their arms.

[powdermelonkeg]

Elon: *being taken to court after arranging for Tesla to pay him $56,000,000,000* This is why your insulin is so expensive by the way.

Article

Image ID under the readmore

[Image ID: A string of tweets. The first is from Reuters Pictures and reads "A person transports boxes with documents for the trial of Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter, regarding his Tesla pay package at the Delaware Court of Chancery in Wilmington, Deleware." The tweet is accompanied by an image of someone pulling a pallet cart holding over 20 boxes of papers.

The second tweet is from Elon Musk, and reads “The actual attackers in class-action lawsuits are the law firms. They just find someone in the class to be their puppet.”

The third and final tweet is also from Elon, and reads “Current class-action-law is actually a massive tax on the American people and desperately needs reform. It is one of the reasons medication is so expensive in the USA. Somehow, other countries do just fine without class-action law.”

The final tweet is dated Nov 17, 2022, at 10:53 AM, sent from Twitter for iPhone. End ID.]

[xols-ex-girlfriend]

Alphabet Inc is holding a stockholder vote and of course the board wants us to vote against all of the good, transparent, and helpful shit.

[wack-ashimself]

*Replace 'Vault-tec' with 'Military affiliated manufacturers & their stockholders.' "So the US government has outsourced the survival of the human race to Vault-tec. Vault-tech is a private corporation that has a fiduciary responsibility to make money for its' investors. And how do they make money? By selling (doomsday) vaults. But they can't sell vaults if these peace negotiations go through. So Vault-tech has the fiduciary responsibility that it don't work out." -fallout s1, e6

<None of us find it weird this show is mediocre as fuck, but, the central theme of the end of the world is Russia and USA nuked each other?>

[streetmatt]

On repeat.

By Matti Merilaid.

[secret-engima]

Heyyyy so I usually don’t pay attention to stuff like- this. But uh. This really lit me off. The topic in the video I mean.

I’m sure lots of people already know about this? But like- tl:dr if you didn’t and don’t wanna watch the vid is that WB’s CEO decided that paying artists and actors a *very small fee that gets tinier each year* for the shows they worked on was dumb. And he was going to cancel a bunch of them so that he could artificially inflate the fiscal profits of this year by making them into tax write offs. And then proceeded to have every youtube video, ad, and tweet related to those shows scrubbed from everything WB owns and also canceled production of the DVDs of some of those shows, who you only have to pay that fee to the artists and actors for if someone buys one.

And if HBO Max doesn't lose, say, a *ton* of subscribers and money to punish this behavior, then a lot of other streaming platforms will take it as a green light to pull this shit too and so all your shows will potentially just

magically poof away.

And yes yes pirating is a thing and pirate sites will likely have them but that’s still a huge slap to the face of the artists and people who worked on it??? And not *every* show has been pirated in totality, and pirated sites can *also* go down and like. Some of us don’t like to use pirated sites because of the risk of viruses and ads and stuff. Some of us like to actually, albeit distantly, support the people who put a lot of effort into making these works by buying their stuff or paying for a subscription to watch it, and now we’re being punished for that too.

This “business” behavior needs to be shut down. Hard and fast.

[sickleandprose]

They need my dollar more than they need my vote.

In my helpless paralysis I stop living,

To not work or spend is to die in their system.

So I am reborn and live without them.

I live without my dinner funding a genocide,

Without my shirt enslaving a people.

And they beg me to start again,

Because they need my dollar.

If I don't leave my house except for food,

And eat among my community,

They would be powerless.

Because they need my dollar, more than my vote.

We entertain each other by the hearth of solidarity,

Stories and jokes through smoke and smiles.

We find community in rooms of simply meals,

Simple cloths, simply free from them.

Because they need our dollars, more than our votes.

The helplessness our ancestors scoff at,

will no longer be lost to me.

I grow and sow the flax,

Weaving my independence.

No longer begging for rights,

I buy it through my labor, toppling empires.

Because they need dollars, more than votes.

But what started as helpless sorrow,

turns into righteous reverence.

Not a boycott, but a removal.

Shaking off the suffocation.

And without my dollar they withered.

And when they learned their place,

Long after we built ours,

Then I will spend my dollar, and they will beg for my vote.

[garadinervi]

Le choix des femmes, Texts by Eric Colliard, René Denizot, Xavier Douroux, Franck Gautherot, Bernard Marcadé, Le Consortium and Frac Bourgogne, Dijon, 1991 [Exhibition: November 17, 1990 – January 12, 1991] [BOOKS@RET]. Including: Hanne Darboven, Gretchen Faust, Isa Genzken, Marthe Wéry, Laurie Parsons, Jessica Stockholder, Judith Barry, Annette Messager, Cindy Sherman, Rosemarie Trockel, François Vergier

[alientitty]

funniest part of being an art major was when we (small class) took a field trip to a collectors house and everyone was like "jesus christ he has no idea what this art is about because half of it is criticizing people like him." and the profs were like uh whoops

[penemues-quill]

I believe there is a problem that affects the entire world that we are failing to acknowledge and address; a problem by which mankind has screwed itself. And I realize also that the excision of this problem is going to be very painful and very difficult.

But it is the stock market. The existence of a parasite caste that not only survives but grows fat by feeding on the working class.

And if you don't know about this problem I'll do my best to explain.

It started when people had the idea of selling shares of a potential business idea they had in order to have capital to begin the business.. If the business did well then the people with the shares could trade them back in for that percentage out of the value of the business. Which sounds fine, right?

Where we got into trouble was the practice of trading shares on a marketplace, which meant that startups had to compete with each other directly to get people to invest in them. They had to offer the best return. And it was no longer about people liking the ideas and investing because they wanted to see that thing brought into the world - it became about profit and nothing else.

The other major ingredient in this fuckup salad was that companies would sell as many shares as they could to amass capital. Then spend that to make themselves look more successful and drive up demand.

The issue with that is that the shares in the hands of the shareholders end up being worth more than the typical large company has in available liquid assets. In short, if the shareholders were to start cashing in, the company wouldn't be able to afford to pay them and would go out of business.

And since the shareholders have gotten used to living off of the growth of the company shares, if that growth stops, they will indeed cash out and find another new startup to invest in. So the company promises growth, and has to find ways to increase profit every year. Which is very difficult once they've expanded to fill their market. Once there's no more room for natural growth, they have to start finding other ways to increase profits.

They'll look for cheaper means of production, offer less for the same price, start firing employees, cutting corners on safety regulations... They wind up trimming their own fat to feed the parasites.

And they've dug in so deep, their heads are buried so completely in the thick skin of the world's economy, that I don't know how to extract it.