#water saving product

[shitty-check-please-aus]

the problem with trying to remember songs from girl scout camp is that you end up googling insane shit because there are about a billion slight regional differences between different groups of children

[walkingbomb]

so what's your take on the bioware layoffs/ dragon age game situation? (asking cause u briefly mentioned in tags on that post)

oof that's a big question, anon.

to put it simply, I don't think there is one singular answer- Bioware/EA treated staff like shit, the very same staff that made this game possible- that is not up for debate.

does that mean the game should be boycotted? I can only assume that some people will believe that, many others won't because honestly trying to dodge products that have come from ethically/morally dubious sources in today's society is almost impossible.

there's also the fact that those same staff members and those that remain put so much time and effort into the game either way- is it the right thing to ignore the game completely, if that's the case?

it's not ideal, no. in my own selfish way I desperately want the game to be good, to experience the thrill of a new game and the fandom madness that goes with it. it most likely won't be a perfect game (is any game?) and we have to look at how the layoffs and treatment of staff may have impacted that.

but... i choose to remain hopeful, i guess. maybe its just the nostalgia goggles. i don't believe there's a clear cut answer- it's for each person to decide for themselves, it's too nuanced.

[ducktollers]

ai starbucks on doordash its so fucking over. if any company can afford to hire a photographer to take a picture of some cups sitting in water it is fucking starbucks ARE YOU KIDDING like are you joking. bye

[fiveminuterice]

my fatal flaw is saving all the art resources i see on tumblr, using them and realizing most are very exaggerated in post or even borderline useless, then falling for the next one i see.

[inkykeiji]

hi clari!!! hope you're having a wonderful week <3 can i ask you where do you write your fics? is it an app or just word?

hi sweetpea!!! (´∀｀)♡ aw thank you hehe i hope you are as well!!! <3 sure you can! i write using pages, which is pretty much like apple’s version of microsoft word. it’s just purely a word processing app & it’s available across all apple devices for freeeee so i use it on my phone, my ipad, and my mac respectively! tho u can use it if you have a pc as well through the icloud website!

[noxtivagus]

why is it 3 am T_T

[buttercuparry]

Recently there has been a fall in engagement with Palestinian content on tumblr, and for those of us who are helping Palestinians fundraise it is very obvious that this has happened directly after the very public smear campaigns, carried out by some racist users with significant followings.

It seems half the site somehow found it easier to believe in the horseshit about “belgian scam rings” and “russian botnets” in an effort to justify their apathy towards genocide victims, and the other half seems to think that everything is over and that the evil was defeated just because some racist bloggers got run off the site after giving half-hearted apologies that did nothing to mitigate the damage they had done.

THERE ARE PEOPLE STILL IN DIRE NEED OF HELP !! There are people who are still getting death threats from zionists every day and have to stay on this godforsaken website because their gofundmes haven't reached their endgoals yet...

I'm going to keep this brief:

Siraj's ( @siraj2024 ) family including his parents, and his five siblings and their families were displaced during the recent attacks by IOF on deir al balah

This means there are now 23 family members that Siraj is the sole provider for at the moment. 

10 of those members are young children.

Siraj's wife, Halima, is having a terrible flareup of eczema and his children are suffering from skin infections and badly need medical attention.

This whole family has been living in unhygienic conditions in 2 tents, packed like sardines during this heatwave, leading to spread of infections between them as well– all during a time where hygiene products have become unaffordable due to the israeli blockade, and when water has become scarce, and kids cant even receive life saving vaccinations during polio epidemic.

All this while everyday siraj risks his life trying to reach out to us from an internet point amidst violence and shelling from the IOF in what once was a “humanitarian safe zone”, even more desperately than before because–

THIS FUNDRAISER IS NOW THE ONLY LIFELINE FOR FIVE FAMILIES INSTEAD OF JUST ONE !!

Currently at $55,614/ $82,000 CAD

TIME IS RUNNING OUT!! We have to get to 60k by thursday i.e WITHIN THE NEXT THREE DAYS!! DONATE AND BOOST

Vetting link #219

If you want additional incentive to donate, pls check out:

Art raffle here (ending in 4 days!!!) - where you get to win this zine as a prize as well for as low as $5 for 1 entry, please dont miss it !!

[techtoio]

The Best Eco-Tech Products for an Energy-Efficient Home

Introduction

The newly developed innovations regarding eco-tech products have become necessary when building an energy-efficient house. Yet such innovation does not only lead to energy consumption reduction but also pulls efforts towards a sustainable future. Well, TechtoIO is forever committed to bringing the latest eco-tech products that make your home smarter, greener, and more performant. Here are the top products to make your house a comfortable and efficient sanctuary.

Now, with the Smart thermostats are one of the game-changers in energy-efficient homes. They learn your habits and optimize the temperature based on your habits and preferences so energy isn’t wasted when you’re not around. Among other smart devices, energy usage reporting with remote control in some popular monitored models include Nest Learning Thermostats and Ecobee SmartThermostat with voice control.

Optimized with significant energy savings, courtesy of smart thermostats, the efficiency of heating and cooling systems can increase. Read to continue link

[arolesbianism]

We did it boys we got our first game crash in oni 🎉

[tataagrico1]

The Importance of Timely Leak Repair: Build Your Pipe Repair Kit

Don't ignore a dripping faucet! It can waste water, damage your home, and even cause health problems. Learn how to identify leaks and fix them yourself with tata agrico DIY pipe repair kit, or call a professional.

Visit at: https://www.tataagrico.com/blog-post/the-importance-of-timely-leak-repair-build-your-pipe-repair-kit/

[kropotkindersurprise]

May 10, 2024 - Hundreds of radical environmentalists and anticapitalists have broken through police lines and fences and stormed the terrain of the Tesla Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg. They are attempting to stop the planned expansion of the factory, which would mean the destruction of surrounding forest and farmland. The factory also uses immense amounts of water, and all to sell shitty electric cars to give people the idea that personal consumption choices can save the environment from destruction, and make fascist Elon Musk even richer than he already is. The actions in the past days have forced Tesla to temporarily shut down production at the factory. [video]

[health-and-fitness-care]

Water Drink 8 to 12 cups of water daily | Drink Water  | 5 Litre

Drink Water Daily 5 Litres Drink Water Daily Water Drink 8 to 12 cups of water daily Drinking an adequate amount of water daily is crucial for maintaining good health. Experts recommend consuming 8 to 12 cups of water each day to stay hydrated and support various bodily functions.By making a habit of drinking enough water daily, you can improve your overall well-being, boost your energy…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp

For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!

A decade ago, a hedge fund had an improbable viral comedy hit: a 294-page slide deck explaining why Olive Garden was going out of business, blaming the failure on too many breadsticks and insufficiently salted pasta-water:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/940944/000092189514002031/ex991dfan14a06297125_091114.pdf

Everyone loved this story. As David Dayen wrote for Salon, it let readers "mock that silly chain restaurant they remember from their childhoods in the suburbs" and laugh at "the silly hedge fund that took the time to write the world’s worst review":

https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/

But – as Dayen wrote at the time, the hedge fund that produced that slide deck, Starboard Value, was not motivated by dissatisfaction with bread-sticks. They were "activist investors" (finspeak for "rapacious assholes") with a giant stake in Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden's parent company. They wanted Darden to liquidate all of Olive Garden's real-estate holdings and declare a one-off dividend that would net investors a billion dollars, while literally yanking the floor out from beneath Olive Garden, converting it from owner to tenant, subject to rent-shocks and other nasty surprises.

They wanted to asset-strip the company, in other words ("asset strip" is what they call it in hedge-fund land; the mafia calls it a "bust-out," famous to anyone who watched the twenty-third episode of The Sopranos):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_Out

Starboard didn't have enough money to force the sale, but they had recently engineered the CEO's ouster. The giant slide-deck making fun of Olive Garden's food was just a PR campaign to help it sell the bust-out by creating a narrative that they were being activists* to save this badly managed disaster of a restaurant chain.

*assholes

Starboard was bent on eviscerating Darden like a couple of entrail-maddened dogs in an elk carcass:

https://web.archive.org/web/20051220005944/http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~solan/dogsinelk/

They had forced Darden to sell off another of its holdings, Red Lobster, to a hedge-fund called Golden Gate Capital. Golden Gate flogged all of Red Lobster's real estate holdings for $2.1 billion the same day, then pissed it all away on dividends to its shareholders, including Starboard. The new landlords, a Real Estate Investment Trust, proceeded to charge so much for rent on those buildings Red Lobster just flogged that the company's net earnings immediately dropped by half.

Dayen ends his piece with these prophetic words:

Olive Garden and Red Lobster may not be destinations for hipster Internet journalists, and they have seen revenue declines amid stagnant middle-class wages and increased competition. But they are still profitable businesses. Thousands of Americans work there. Why should they be bled dry by predatory investors in the name of “shareholder value”? What of the value of worker productivity instead of the financial engineers?

Flash forward a decade. Today, Dayen is editor-in-chief of The American Prospect, one of the best sources of news about private equity looting in the world. Writing for the Prospect, Luke Goldstein picks up Dayen's story, ten years on:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-05-22-raiding-red-lobster/

It's not pretty. Ten years of being bled out on rents and flipped from one hedge fund to another has killed Red Lobster. It just shuttered 50 restaurants and declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Ten years hasn't changed much; the same kind of snark that was deployed at the news of Olive Garden's imminent demise is now being hurled at Red Lobster.

Instead of dunking on free bread-sticks, Red Lobster's grave-dancers are jeering at "Endless Shrimp," a promotional deal that works exactly how it sounds like it would work. Endless Shrimp cost the chain $11m.

Which raises a question: why did Red Lobster make this money-losing offer? Are they just good-hearted slobs? Can't they do math?

Or, you know, was it another hedge-fund, bust-out scam?

Here's a hint. The supplier who provided Red Lobster with all that shrimp is Thai Union. Thai Union also owns Red Lobster. They bought the chain from Golden Gate Capital, last seen in 2014, holding a flash-sale on all of Red Lobster's buildings, pocketing billions, and cutting Red Lobster's earnings in half.

Red Lobster rose to success – 700 restaurants nationwide at its peak – by combining no-frills dining with powerful buying power, which it used to force discounts from seafood suppliers. In response, the seafood industry consolidated through a wave of mergers, turning into a cozy cartel that could resist the buyer power of Red Lobster and other major customers.

This was facilitated by conservation efforts that limited the total volume of biomass that fishers were allowed to extract, and allocated quotas to existing companies and individual fishermen. The costs of complying with this "catch management" system were high, punishingly so for small independents, bearably so for large conglomerates.

Competition from overseas fisheries drove consolidation further, as countries in the global south were blocked from implementing their own conservation efforts. US fisheries merged further, seeking economies of scale that would let them compete, largely by shafting fishermen and other suppliers. Today's Alaskan crab fishery is dominated by a four-company cartel; in the Pacific Northwest, most fish goes through a single intermediary, Pacific Seafood.

These dominant actors entered into illegal collusive arrangements with one another to rig their markets and further immiserate their suppliers, who filed antitrust suits accusing the companies of operating a monopsony (a market with a powerful buyer, akin to a monopoly, which is a market with a powerful seller):

https://www.classaction.org/news/pacific-seafood-under-fire-for-allegedly-fixing-prices-paid-to-dungeness-crabbers-in-pacific-northwest

Golden Gate bought Red Lobster in the midst of these fish wars, promising to right its ship. As Goldstein points out, that's the same promise they made when they bought Payless shoes, just before they destroyed the company and flogged it off to Alden Capital, the hedge fund that bought and destroyed dozens of America's most beloved newspapers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/16/sociopathic-monsters/#all-the-news-thats-fit-to-print

Under Golden Gate's management, Red Lobster saw its staffing levels slashed, so diners endured longer wait times to be seated and served. Then, in 2020, they sold the company to Thai Union, the company's largest supplier (a transaction Goldstein likens to a Walmart buyout of Procter and Gamble).

Thai Union continued to bleed Red Lobster, imposing more cuts and loading it up with more debts financed by yet another private equity giant, Fortress Investment Group. That brings us to today, with Thai Union having moved a gigantic amount of its own product through a failing, debt-loaded subsidiary, even as it lobbies for deregulation of American fisheries, which would let it and its lobbying partners drain American waters of the last of its depleted fish stocks.

Dayen's 2020 must-read book Monopolized describes the way that monopolies proliferate, using the US health care industry as a case-study:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/29/fractal-bullshit/#dayenu

After deregulation allowed the pharma sector to consolidate, it acquired pricing power of hospitals, who found themselves gouged to the edge of bankruptcy on drug prices. Hospitals then merged into regional monopolies, which allowed them to resist pharma pricing power – and gouge health insurance companies, who saw the price of routine care explode. So the insurance companies gobbled each other up, too, leaving most of us with two or fewer choices for health insurance – even as insurance prices skyrocketed, and our benefits shrank.

Today, Americans pay more for worse healthcare, which is delivered by health workers who get paid less and work under worse conditions. That's because, lacking a regulator to consolidate patients' interests, and strong unions to consolidate workers' interests, patients and workers are easy pickings for those consolidated links in the health supply-chain.

That's a pretty good model for understanding what's happened to Red Lobster: monopoly power and monopsony power begat more monopolies and monoposonies in the supply chain. Everything that hasn't consolidated is defenseless: diners, restaurant workers, fishermen, and the environment. We're all fucked.

Decent, no-frills family restaurant are good. Great, even. I'm not the world's greatest fan of chain restaurants, but I'm also comfortably middle-class and not struggling to afford to give my family a nice night out at a place with good food, friendly staff and reasonable prices. These places are easy pickings for looters because the people who patronize them have little power in our society – and because those of us with more power are easily tricked into sneering at these places' failures as a kind of comeuppance that's all that's due to tacky joints that serve the working class.

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/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

[goblinbugthing]

Hello there! I hope the days have been kind to you ❤️Remember to hydrate much, smile more & have a sweet sweet day!

ough thank you

typa shit i love seeing in the morning

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #26

July 5-12 2024

The IRS announced it had managed to collect $1 billion in back taxes from high-wealth tax cheats. The program focused on persons with more than $1 million in yearly income who owned more than $250,000 in unpaid taxes. Thanks to money in Biden's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act the IRS is able to undertake more enforcement against rich tax cheats after years of Republicans cutting the agency's budget, which they hope to do again if they win power again.

The Biden administration announced a $244 million dollar investment in the federal government’s registered apprenticeship program. This marks the largest investment in the program's history with grants going out to 52 programs in 32 states. The President is focused on getting well paying blue collar opportunities to people and more people are taking part in the apprenticeship program than ever before. Republican pledge to cut it, even as employers struggle to find qualified workers.

The Department of Transportation announced the largest single project in the department's history, $11 billion dollars in grants for the The Hudson River Tunnel. Part of the $66 billion the Biden Administration has invested in our rail system the tunnel, the most complex Infrastructure project in the nation would link New York and New Jersey by rail under the Hudson. Once finished it's believed it'll impact 20% of the American economy by improving and speeding connection throughout the Northeast.

The Department of Energy announced $1.7 billion to save auto worker's jobs and convert factories to electronic vehicles. The Biden administration will used the money to save or reopen factories in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, and Virginia and retool them to make electric cars. The project will save 15,000 skilled union worker jobs, and created 2,900 new high-quality jobs.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development reached a settlement with The Appraisal Foundation over racial discrimination. TAF is the organization responsible for setting standards and qualifications for real estate appraisers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics last year found that TAF was 94.7% White and 0.6% Black, making it the least racially diverse of the 800 occupations surveyed. Black and Latino home owners are far more likely to have their houses under valued than whites. Under the settlement with HUD TAF will have to take serious steps to increase diversity and remove structural barriers to diversity.

The Department of Justice disrupted an effort by the Russian government to influence public opinion through AI bots. The DoJ shut down nearly 1,000 twitter accounts that were linked to a Russian Bot farm. The bots used AI technology to not only generate tweets but also AI image faces for profile pictures. The effort seemed focused on boosting support for Russia's war against Ukraine and spread negative stories/impressions about Ukraine.

The Department of Transportation announces $1.5 billion to help local authorities buy made in America buses. 80% of the funding will go toward zero or low-emission technology, a part of the President's goal of reaching zero emissions by 2050. This is part of the $5 billion the DOT has spent over the last 3 years replacing aging buses with new cleaner technology.

President Biden with Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau and Finnish President Alexander Stubb signed a new agreement on the arctic. The new trilateral agreement between the 3 NATO partners, known as the ICE Pact, will boost production of ice breaking ships, the 3 plan to build as many as 90 between them in the coming years. The alliance hopes to be a counter weight to China's current dominance in the ice breaker market and help western allies respond to Russia's aggressive push into the arctic waters.

The Department of Transportation announced $1.1 billion for greater rail safety. The program seeks to, where ever possible, eliminate rail crossings, thus removing the dangers and inconvenience to communities divided by rail lines. It will also help update and improve safety measures at rail crossings.

The Department of the Interior announced $120 million to help tribal communities prepare for climate disasters. This funding is part of half a billion dollars the Biden administration has spent to help tribes build climate resilience, which itself is part of a $50 billion dollar effort to build climate resilience across the nation. This funding will help support drought measures, wildland fire mitigation, community-driven relocation, managed retreat, protect-in-place efforts, and ocean and coastal management.

The USDA announced $100 million in additional funds to help feed low income kids over the summer. Known as "SUN Bucks" or "Summer EBT" the new Biden program grants the families of kids who qualify for free meals at school $120 dollars pre-child for groceries. This comes on top of the traditional SUN Meals program which offers school meals to qualifying children over the summer, as well as the new under President Biden SUN Meals To-Go program which is now offering delivery of meals to low-income children in rural areas. This grant is meant to help local governments build up the Infrastructure to support and distribute SUN Bucks. If fully implemented SUN Bucks could help 30 million kids, but many Republican governors have refused the funding.

USAID announced its giving $100 million to the UN World Food Program to deliver urgently needed food assistance in Gaza. This will bring the total humanitarian aid given by the US to the Palestinian people since the war started in October 2023 to $774 million, the single largest donor nation. President Biden at his press conference last night said that Israel and Hamas have agreed in principle to a ceasefire deal that will end the war and release the hostages. US negotiators are working to close the final gaps between the two sides and end the war.

The Senate confirmed Nancy Maldonado to serve as a Judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Maldonado is the 202nd federal Judge appointed by President Biden to be confirmed. She will the first Latino judge to ever serve on the 7th Circuit which covers Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin.

Bonus: At the NATO summit in Washington DC President Biden joined 32 allies in the Ukraine compact. Allies from Japan to Iceland confirmed their support for Ukraine and deepening their commitments to building Ukraine's forces and keeping a free and Democratic Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression. World leaders such as British Prime Minster Keir Starmer, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, praised President Biden's experience and leadership during the NATO summit