#workers injury

[allthegothihopgirls]

when the batboys get broken bones or other things that can't be fixed in the batcave, and have to go to an actual hospital, they make up the most outlandish sounding excuses for their injuries:

dick (with a broken leg): "well you see, i was actually trying to jump over a river on a pair of rollerskates"

jason (with broken ribs): "i was volunteering at the zoo... feeding the alligators. i fell backwards with the meat in my hands, and one pounced on me. funny how much damage they can do."

tim (with the worst concussion man has ever seen): "oh that? i was walking outside.. and my brothers were playing basketball on the top floor of the house, and one of them accidentally threw the ball out the window, and it landed on my head"

(bruce hears that one and has to reconsider whether or not the version of the story tim told him (getting hit by condiment king's mustard launcher) was the truth or not)

damian (with fingers twisted in every direction): "i play the piano... very violently"

[oliversmith1]

The Benefits of Working with a Workers' Compensation Attorney

Anyone who has been injured at work or in another way needs to file a claim. They'll need a skilled worker's compensation lawyer who knows what to do with the employer and the state's worker's compensation organizations to accomplish this. This is important because you might not be able to get paid unless you talk to an attorney.

This is due to the fact that worker's compensation law is extremely specialized and intricate. The average person will have a hard time remembering a lot of the details. Because of this, you need to make sure that an experienced attorney will represent you. If you are able to locate a worker's compensation attorney who is experienced in the field, you will almost certainly receive the appropriate compensation, which will be sufficient to cover your legal fees. Make sure the attorney you hire has a good track record, the right credentials, and a lot of experience.

There are numerous scenarios in which you could become involved in a work-related accident. Lift trucks and other vehicles, machinery, and even common slips and falls are all causes of these accidents. Keep in mind occupational diseases like black lung and Legionnaire's disease. Your state system may compensate them without your knowledge. As a result, you should consult an personal injury attorney. He or she will have the information you need to determine what is covered and how to demonstrate that you are afflicted with one of these crippling conditions.

In reality, worker's compensation cases are the sole focus of many of the attorneys who practice in this area. This is because this kind of work requires specialized medical and legal knowledge. In most cases, you can get your attorney to suggest orthopedic doctors, physical therapists, medical doctors, and other professionals who can provide you with the appropriate treatment. These could even be professionals who have a specialization in resolving issues at work. Why should we use a doctor who specializes in this field? Attorneys use these doctors because they know what kind of medical evidence is required in a worker's compensation case and how to put together and submit the necessary paperwork for your claim. They are willing to collaborate with your attorney and frequently hold all bills until the case is resolved.

Finding a Good Lawyer for Workers' Compensation Cases Accidents Can Happen Anytime, Even While You Are At Work It's possible that you fell while working on a wet floor or that you were hurt while doing your job. You can actually apply for workers' compensation when these things happen to you.

Workers' compensation laws mandate that the injured worker receive medical care and a replacement income, particularly when the job is deemed high risk. The laws governing workers' compensation also ask for a trade-off. In exchange for not suing the business, the injured worker receives compensation. In effect, it creates a situation where both parties benefit.

The benefit for workers' compensation varies from state to state, but it is typically paid by a provider of workers' compensation. This provider is typically an insurance company. However, there are a few things you need to prepare before you can claim compensation benefits.

Informing your employer of the injury should be your first action. Additionally, it would be prudent to take photographs of the injury and its location. In most cases, a written claim form is not required, but it may be necessary for situations involving weekly payments for more than three months and payments of more than $7,500.

 The employer would now be responsible for informing the insurance company about the injury. After this is complete, the insurer will begin making provisional liability payments while conducting an investigation into the facts. Payments would continue or not depending on the investigation's findings. Pictures of your injury and hospital records can be used to support your claim during this time.

In most cases, the insurance company will be able to make a definitive decision within 21 days of receiving the information or before the provisional liability payment ends. The Workers Compensation Act of 1987 stipulates the basic requirements for whether your claim will be approved: (1) the injured person must be a "worker," (2) the injury must be related to work, and (3) work must be a significant factor in the cause of the injury.

Naturally, you would need a competent attorney to seamlessly navigate all of this. A skilled workers compensation attorney like Bellotti Law Group P.C. can assist you in building your case and negotiating with the insurance company. You would also need one if you wanted to challenge the insurer's decision to stop making provisional payments. The majority of lawyers, on the other hand, work on a contingent fee basis, which means that if the case is won, they will be paid a certain percentage—typically between 30 and 40 percent—of the award. They don't get anything if they lose.

An employee can file for a variety of benefits when filing for workers' compensation. The insight required to assist in determining the benefits that are most applicable to the unique circumstance of the injured employee can be provided by the expertise of a workers' compensation attorney.

Medical care, death, various levels of disability, bodily disfigurement, vocational and rehabilitation benefits, and wage compensation are typically the primary benefit categories under worker's compensation. In particular, the main advantages include:

• Reasonable medical treatment to recover from the work-related injury or reduce its effects.

• Benefits upon death for surviving relatives.

• Benefits for temporary total disability (TTD). While the injured worker is recovering and unable to work, these benefits provide compensation.

• Benefits for temporary partial disability (TPD). These benefits are paid to the injured party while they are recovering from their injuries and can work part-time or for less money during this time.

• Benefits from disfigurement If the injured person is permanently disfigured in the head, face, neck, hand, or other specific parts of their body, benefits are paid. The expertise of your worker compensation lawyer Boston can be particularly helpful in cases involving disfigurement.

• When an injured person is unable to work as a result of participating in a vocational rehabilitation program that has been approved, they are eligible for vocational rehabilitation benefits.

• When an injured party is forced to take a lower-paying job because their injuries prevent them from returning to their previous position, they are entitled to wage differential benefits.

A worker's compensation lawyer can assist in determining the specific benefit or benefits for which an injured employee may be eligible. Other benefits, such as lump sum settlements, may also be available.

[bacchuschucklefuck]

and! barbarian!fig! its her

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The moral injury of having your work enshittified

This Monday (November 27), I'm appearing at the Toronto Metro Reference Library with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen.

On November 29, I'm at NYC's Strand Books with my novel The Lost Cause, a solarpunk tale of hope and danger that Rebecca Solnit called "completely delightful."

This week, I wrote about how the Great Enshittening – in which all the digital services we rely on become unusable, extractive piles of shit – did not result from the decay of the morals of tech company leadership, but rather, from the collapse of the forces that discipline corporate wrongdoing:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

The failure to enforce competition law allowed a few companies to buy out their rivals, or sell goods below cost until their rivals collapsed, or bribe key parts of their supply chain not to allow rivals to participate:

https://www.engadget.com/google-reportedly-pays-apple-36-percent-of-ad-search-revenues-from-safari-191730783.html

The resulting concentration of the tech sector meant that the surviving firms were stupendously wealthy, and cozy enough that they could agree on a common legislative agenda. That regulatory capture has allowed tech companies to violate labor, privacy and consumer protection laws by arguing that the law doesn't apply when you use an app to violate it:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But the regulatory capture isn't just about preventing regulation: it's also about creating regulation – laws that make it illegal to reverse-engineer, scrape, and otherwise mod, hack or reconfigure existing services to claw back value that has been taken away from users and business customers. This gives rise to Jay Freeman's perfectly named doctrine of "felony contempt of business-model," in which it is illegal to use your own property in ways that anger the shareholders of the company that sold it to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

Undisciplined by the threat of competition, regulation, or unilateral modification by users, companies are free to enshittify their products. But what does that actually look like? I say that enshittification is always precipitated by a lost argument.

It starts when someone around a board-room table proposes doing something that's bad for users but good for the company. If the company faces the discipline of competition, regulation or self-help measures, then the workers who are disgusted by this course of action can say, "I think doing this would be gross, and what's more, it's going to make the company poorer," and so they win the argument.

But when you take away that discipline, the argument gets reduced to, "Don't do this because it would make me ashamed to work here, even though it will make the company richer." Money talks, bullshit walks. Let the enshittification begin!

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/22/who-wins-the-argument/#corporations-are-people-my-friend

But why do workers care at all? That's where phrases like "don't be evil" come into the picture. Until very recently, tech workers participated in one of history's tightest labor markets, in which multiple companies with gigantic war-chests bid on their labor. Even low-level employees routinely fielded calls from recruiters who dangled offers of higher salaries and larger stock grants if they would jump ship for a company's rival.

Employers built "campuses" filled with lavish perks: massages, sports facilities, daycare, gourmet cafeterias. They offered workers generous benefit packages, including exotic health benefits like having your eggs frozen so you could delay fertility while offsetting the risks normally associated with conceiving at a later age.

But all of this was a transparent ruse: the business-case for free meals, gyms, dry-cleaning, catering and massages was to keep workers at their laptops for 10, 12, or even 16 hours per day. That egg-freezing perk wasn't about helping workers plan their families: it was about thumbing the scales in favor of working through your entire twenties and thirties without taking any parental leave.

In other words, tech employers valued their employees as a means to an end: they wanted to get the best geeks on the payroll and then work them like government mules. The perks and pay weren't the result of comradeship between management and labor: they were the result of the discipline of competition for labor.

This wasn't really a secret, of course. Big Tech workers are split into two camps: blue badges (salaried employees) and green badges (contractors). Whenever there is a slack labor market for a specific job or skill, it is converted from a blue badge job to a green badge job. Green badges don't get the food or the massages or the kombucha. They don't get stock or daycare. They don't get to freeze their eggs. They also work long hours, but they are incentivized by the fear of poverty.

Tech giants went to great lengths to shield blue badges from green badges – at some Google campuses, these workforces actually used different entrances and worked in different facilities or on different floors. Sometimes, green badge working hours would be staggered so that the armies of ragged clickworkers would not be lined up to badge in when their social betters swanned off the luxury bus and into their airy adult kindergartens.

But Big Tech worked hard to convince those blue badges that they were truly valued. Companies hosted regular town halls where employees could ask impertinent questions of their CEOs. They maintained freewheeling internal social media sites where techies could rail against corporate foolishness and make Dilbert references.

And they came up with mottoes.

Apple told its employees it was a sound environmental steward that cared about privacy. Apple also deliberately turned old devices into e-waste by shredding them to ensure that they wouldn't be repaired and compete with new devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

And even as they were blocking Facebook's surveillance tools, they quietly built their own nonconsensual mass surveillance program and lied to customers about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Facebook told employees they were on a "mission to connect every person in the world," but instead deliberately sowed discontent among its users and trapped them in silos that meant that anyone who left Facebook lost all their friends:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

And Google promised its employees that they would not "be evil" if they worked at Google. For many googlers, that mattered. They wanted to do something good with their lives, and they had a choice about who they would work for. What's more, they did make things that were good. At their high points, Google Maps, Google Mail, and of course, Google Search were incredible.

My own life was totally transformed by Maps: I have very poor spatial sense, need to actually stop and think to tell my right from my left, and I spent more of my life at least a little lost and often very lost. Google Maps is the cognitive prosthesis I needed to become someone who can go anywhere. I'm profoundly grateful to the people who built that service.

There's a name for phenomenon in which you care so much about your job that you endure poor conditions and abuse: it's called "vocational awe," as coined by Fobazi Ettarh:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ettarh uses the term to apply to traditionally low-waged workers like librarians, teachers and nurses. In our book Chokepoint Capitalism, Rebecca Giblin and I talked about how it applies to artists and other creative workers, too:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

But vocational awe is also omnipresent in tech. The grandiose claims to be on a mission to make the world a better place are not just puffery – they're a vital means of motivating workers who can easily quit their jobs and find a new one to put in 16-hour days. The massages and kombucha and egg-freezing are not framed as perks, but as logistical supports, provided so that techies on an important mission can pursue a shared social goal without being distracted by their balky, inconvenient meatsuits.

Steve Jobs was a master of instilling vocational awe. He was full of aphorisms like "we're here to make a dent in the universe, otherwise why even be here?" Or his infamous line to John Sculley, whom he lured away from Pepsi: "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?"

Vocational awe cuts both ways. If your workforce actually believes in all that high-minded stuff, if they actually sacrifice their health, family lives and self-care to further the mission, they will defend it. That brings me back to enshittification, and the argument: "If we do this bad thing to the product I work on, it will make me hate myself."

The decline in market discipline for large tech companies has been accompanied by a decline in labor discipline, as the market for technical work grew less and less competitive. Since the dotcom collapse, the ability of tech giants to starve new entrants of market oxygen has shrunk techies' dreams.

Tech workers once dreamed of working for a big, unwieldy firm for a few years before setting out on their own to topple it with a startup. Then, the dream shrank: work for that big, clumsy firm for a few years, then do a fake startup that makes a fake product that is acquihired by your old employer, as an incredibly inefficient and roundabout way to get a raise and a bonus.

Then the dream shrank again: work for a big, ugly firm for life, but get those perks, the massages and the kombucha and the stock options and the gourmet cafeteria and the egg-freezing. Then it shrank again: work for Google for a while, but then get laid off along with 12,000 co-workers, just months after the company does a stock buyback that would cover all those salaries for the next 27 years:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/

Tech workers' power was fundamentally individual. In a tight labor market, tech workers could personally stand up to their bosses. They got "workplace democracy" by mouthing off at town hall meetings. They didn't have a union, and they thought they didn't need one. Of course, they did need one, because there were limits to individual power, even for the most in-demand workers, especially when it came to ghastly, long-running sexual abuse from high-ranking executives:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/google-sexual-harassment-andy-rubin.html

Today, atomized tech workers who are ordered to enshittify the products they take pride in are losing the argument. Workers who put in long hours, missed funerals and school plays and little league games and anniversaries and family vacations are being ordered to flush that sacrifice down the toilet to grind out a few basis points towards a KPI.

It's a form of moral injury, and it's palpable in the first-person accounts of former workers who've exited these large firms or the entire field. The viral "Reflecting on 18 years at Google," written by Ian Hixie, vibrates with it:

https://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1700627373

Hixie describes the sense of mission he brought to his job, the workplace democracy he experienced as employees' views were both solicited and heeded. He describes the positive contributions he was able to make to a commons of technical standards that rippled out beyond Google – and then, he says, "Google's culture eroded":

Decisions went from being made for the benefit of users, to the benefit of Google, to the benefit of whoever was making the decision.

In other words, techies started losing the argument. Layoffs weakened worker power – not just to defend their own interest, but to defend the users interests. Worker power is always about more than workers – think of how the 2019 LA teachers' strike won greenspace for every school, a ban on immigration sweeps of students' parents at the school gates and other community benefits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Hixie attributes the changes to a change in leadership, but I respectfully disagree. Hixie points to the original shareholder letter from the Google founders, in which they informed investors contemplating their IPO that they were retaining a controlling interest in the company's governance so that they could ignore their shareholders' priorities in favor of a vision of Google as a positive force in the world:

https://abc.xyz/investor/founders-letters/ipo-letter/

Hixie says that the leadership that succeeded the founders lost sight of this vision – but the whole point of that letter is that the founders never fully ceded control to subsequent executive teams. Yes, those executive teams were accountable to the shareholders, but the largest block of voting shares were retained by the founders.

I don't think the enshittification of Google was due to a change in leadership – I think it was due to a change in discipline, the discipline imposed by competition, regulation and the threat of self-help measures. Take ads: when Google had to contend with one-click adblocker installation, it had to constantly balance the risk of making users so fed up that they googled "how do I block ads?" and then never saw another ad ever again.

But once Google seized the majority of the mobile market, it was able to funnel users into apps, and reverse-engineering an app is a felony (felony contempt of business-model) under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a crime to install an ad-blocker.

And as Google acquired control over the browser market, it was likewise able to reduce the self-help measures available to browser users who found ads sufficiently obnoxious to trigger googling "how do I block ads?" The apotheosis of this is the yearslong campaign to block adblockers in Chrome, which the company has sworn it will finally do this coming June:

https://www.tumblr.com/tevruden/734352367416410112/you-have-until-june-to-dump-chrome

My contention here is not that Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in personnel via the promotion of managers who have shitty ideas. Google's enshittification was precipitated by a change in discipline, as the negative consequences of heeding those shitty ideas were abolished thanks to monopoly.

This is bad news for people like me, who rely on services like Google Maps as cognitive prostheses. Elizabeth Laraki, one of the original Google Maps designers, has published a scorching critique of the latest GMaps design:

https://twitter.com/elizlaraki/status/1727351922254852182

Laraki calls out numerous enshittificatory design-choices that have left Maps screens covered in "crud" – multiple revenue-maximizing elements that come at the expense of usability, shifting value from users to Google.

What Laraki doesn't say is that these UI elements are auctioned off to merchants, which means that the business that gives Google the most money gets the greatest prominence in Maps, even if it's not the best merchant. That's a recurring motif in enshittified tech platforms, most notoriously Amazon, which makes $31b/year auctioning off top search placement to companies whose products aren't relevant enough to your query to command that position on their own:

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

Enshittification begets enshittification. To succeed on Amazon, you must divert funds from product quality to auction placement, which means that the top results are the worst products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

The exception is searches for Apple products: Apple and Amazon have a cozy arrangement that means that searches for Apple products are a timewarp back to the pre-enshittification Amazon, when the company worried enough about losing your business to heed the employees who objected to sacrificing search quality as part of a merchant extortion racket:

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-gives-apple-special-treatment-while-others-suffer-junk-ads-2023-11

Not every tech worker is a tech bro, in other words. Many workers care deeply about making your life better. But the microeconomics of the boardroom in a monopolized tech sector rewards the worst people and continuously promotes them. Forget the Peter Principle: tech is ruled by the Sam Principle.

As OpenAI went through four CEOs in a single week, lots of commentators remarked on Sam Altman's rise and fall and rise, but I only found one commentator who really had Altman's number. Writing in Today in Tabs, Rusty Foster nailed Altman to the wall:

https://www.todayintabs.com/p/defective-accelerationism

Altman's history goes like this: first, he founded a useless startup that raised $30m, only to be acquired and shuttered. Then Altman got a job running Y Combinator, where he somehow failed at taking huge tranches of equity from "every Stanford dropout with an idea for software to replace something Mommy used to do." After that, he founded OpenAI, a company that he claims to believe presents an existential risk to the entire human risk – which he structured so incompetently that he was then forced out of it.

His reward for this string of farcical, mounting failures? He was put back in charge of the company he mis-structured despite his claimed belief that it will destroy the human race if not properly managed.

Altman's been around for a long time. He founded his startup in 2005. There've always been Sams – of both the Bankman-Fried varietal and the Altman genus – in tech. But they didn't get to run amok. They were disciplined by their competitors, regulators, users and workers. The collapse of competition led to an across-the-board collapse in all of those forms of discipline, revealing the executives for the mediocre sociopaths they always were, and exposing tech workers' vocational awe for the shabby trick it was from the start.

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/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

[battleangel]

A History of Violence

I wonder if Kris Jenkins who was recently drafted in the second round by the Bengals, same name & same position as his father who was a Pro Bowler who played 10 seasons for the Panthers, Patriots & Jets, ever bothered to read what his father told the New York Times in 2011 about what it was like playing in the trenches in the NFL?

Kris Jenkins - View of Life in the NFL Trenches

Article Excerpt

"N.F.L. fans, people outside, they have no clue what goes on. This isn’t like playing Madden. This isn’t like being the popular kid in high school. When you do those things in the real world, and it don’t work out, you still have your health. The thing about football is you’re directly playing with your life, the quality of it and the longevity of it. The stakes are up there.

You ever been in a car crash? Done bumper cars? You know when that hit catches you off guard and jolts you, and you’re like, what the hell? Football is like that. But 10 times worse. It’s hell."

Nothing is questioned, nothing is learned.

Cycle and history of violence from father to son continues.

The son will just repeat everything his father went through.

Life in the trenches, on the line.

His fathers New York Times article was only written 13 years ago — did his son even bother to read it?

Article:

"The debate about concussions wasn’t there yet. I’ve had more than 10, including college and the pros. Nobody cared. And that’s the thing. We play football."

Are we as an audience, as fans, as a nation of football loving fanatics so blasé about the same violence that was visited upon the father being visited upon his son?

Does that not even get us to collectively pause before checking pre-season match ups in preparation for Week 1 next month?

America's collective Christmas in September — footballs back!!!!!!!

Do actual thoughts ever creep in amongst the unbridled ebullience, enthusiasm and unchecked joy of, "Football!!!!!!!!!!!!".

Or is the unthinking emotion inherent in football fanaticism across all levels, players and non-players alike, the point?

The pure emotion and the short circuiting of logic.

Its probably not a great idea for me to go bash my head against that dudes head 70 to 80 times a game, every game, every season.

But, its football!!!!!!!!!

So, nothing else matters?

Unlike rules now protecting quarterbacks and other positions from helmet to helmet hits, absolutely nothing has changed for offensive & defensive linemen and running backs — you're still smashing yourself head first into a concrete wall — as a running back, 20 to 30 times a game and as a lineman, 70 to 80 times a game.

No matter how much the NFL lies about this and tries to pretend the issue is concussions, its not — the existential issue threatening the sport of football itself is the repetitive SUBconcussive head impacts involved in every blocking and tackling play in football.

They are absolutely unavoidable and occur literally over a thousand times every single season.

It is these repetitive subconcussive head impacts — average 1500 hits to the head per season in high school, football & the pros — that 10 to 15 years after their playing careers are over, can cause neurological disorders and conditions like CTE, Parkinsons disease, Alzheimers disease, ALS and dementia in former players.

We have seen the movie before.

Im pretty sure Will Smith was in it.

And even that movie was nothing but masterful subterfuge from the NFL as they named it as their eternal smokescreen — Concussion — instead of what actually turned Mike Websters brain into CTE mush — Repetitive Subconcussive Head Impacts.

Doesn't have the same Hollywood ring to it, does it?

But it doesn't make it any less true or the NFL any less deceptive.

The NFL's own disability paperwork for former players says players can be compensated as early as 36 for early-onset dementia.

Is a game really worth someone losing their literal mind at 36?

When do we question the every day violence inherent in every tackling and blocking play in football?

Article:

"I remember one game, at Carolina, my second year. We played Arizona, and the double team weighed 780 pounds combined. They just kept double-teaming me, hoping I would fold and cave in. I didn’t. But that was probably the most painful day I had.

From the double teams, over the years, I wore the left side of my body down. I was past hurt.

I was at the point of numb. Like my body was shutting down nervous systems, so I didn’t have to deal with pain.

The numbness started at the very beginning. I couldn’t feel part of both arms. I couldn’t feel part of both legs. It was worse on the left.

I’m just starting to get feeling back in my left side. Look, football is no joke.

But I’m going to say this much: somebody has to be the grunt. That’s why there’s no better position on the field than interior defensive line. Forget quarterbacks or specialists. They’ve got it easy. If we don’t come to play, nobody else on defense can do their job. We’ve got the toughest job on the field. We don’t care about our facial hair. We play a grimy position.

Piles, oh, my God, they’re brutal. I’ve had my ankles twisted. I’ve been bit. I’ve done stuff. I’ve tried to break guys’ elbows, pinching people, twisting ankles, trying to bend up their arms, pop an elbow out. Why? I had to fight back."

Tackle football is cognitive dissonance & constant dissociation.

The inherent violence of football is never seriously questioned nor is it held up under a critical lens.

The most violent, punishing plays are casually dismissed post-game by players waving their hands and saying, "It was just a football play."

Yeah — thats actually the exact problem.

Ah, pile ups. Just a good old fashioned rugby scrum.

Nothing dehumanizing, nothing to worry about.

As long as its not my dick being grabbed at the bottom of a pile as I dig my way through my second bag of Fritos Scoops, safe and secure on my couch, while those dumb fucks kill themselves for an oblong shaped ball for my entertainment.

Exploitative, much?

The spectacle of the pile up.

The brainwashing so clearly evident when grown adult men who would be ashamed to act this way publicly over anything else suddenly leap in unison into the air like feral animals as Troy Aikman shouts with unfettered glee, "The ball is loose!!!!!!".

So is our collective humanity in watching a several ton mass of flesh undulate, eye gouge, scrotum twist, bite, spit and hurt each other for...what?

Us? Them? Football?

Article:

"Mentally, we’re conditioned to be tough. We’re conditioned to feel no pain. The only injury I ever felt while playing was when one of my knees tore. That’s the only time I felt pain and was like, O.K., that hurt.

But Mondays, you wake up, and it’s hard to get out of bed. It hurts wherever you got hit. I remember one time getting hit by Edgerrin James. He put his head in my chest. I woke up, and I couldn’t even move, because it felt like my chest was going to collapse. It was sore for days. All you want to do is get the blood circulating.

Hot tub. Cold tub. Hot tub. Cold tub."

Hot tub. Cold tub. Hot tub. Cold tub.

That's brainwashing.

A dissociative brainwashing ritual to dissociate the self from the pain & violence of the game.

It's like Junior Seau when he referred to himself in third person when he was mic'd up for NFL Films before every single hit for the duration of an entire game.

Very creepy if you can find it on youtube.

It literally sounded like he was programming himself to hit, then he would hit the hole, collect himself on the ground and do it.

Hard. Goddamned hard.

Again. And again. And again. And again.

If thats not brainwashing, what is?

Article:

"The brain fog? It still hasn’t stopped. It feels like you’re punch-drunk, like someone hit you over the head. It’s like you knock yourself stupid. When you have to concentrate on things, then it becomes an issue. My head gets foggy to the point where I really can’t function."

And yet you put a helmet on your son's head and you sent him out to play the same position.

Like father, like son.

Just like fathers in the military who have sons who "follow in their footsteps".

Often, articles will speak of a newly drafted player's heritage and lineage in the sport and if his father had a storied career, the hyperbole of the newly drafted son "being born to play" is routinely trotted out.

Smacks of eugenicism, genetic determinism, militarism, rigid heirarchies, dynasties.

Capitalist masculine toxicity.

Article:

"We know it’s going to hurt. We know because pain in football is consistent over time. You’re still hurting in the off-season. You’re hurting when the next season starts.

I mean, guys play hurt, but it’s a choice. They do a pretty good job now, with all the scrutiny around concussions.

On the line, it’s still painful. By the end of the year, half an offensive line might be getting shots, draining fluid from their knees. Most stay away from cortisone now, because it’s degenerative.

Everything gets off center. Bulging disk. Herniated disk. For linemen, it starts in the lower back. Throws everything off."

What did Jason Kelce recently say on his podcast with his wife?

His back is so fucked up from playing football that he cant bend down to pick up his 1 year old daughter nor can he hold her while standing.

Kelce also played on the line as the center for the Eagles.

Is it worth it?

Should children be playing this game?

Should anyone in its current incarnation?

Has science shown that the risk of repetitive subconcussive head impacts causing neurological conditions & disorders is too high for any child to assume?

What about teenagers in high school who are legally minors and not adults?

Should they be able to assume risks as teenagers that can mentally incapacitate them later in life as soon as their 30s?

Potential suicide due to CTE in their 20s?

1500 hits per season every season starting in high school.

So, that's 6k hits to the head in four years of high school football.

Another 6k more hits to the head in four years of college football.

12k hits to the head before the pros not counting youth football prior to high school which is ages 5 to 14 aka Pop Warner.

Even 5 year olds endure on average 336 hits to the head every season in Pop Warner.

5 year olds!

Kindergartners!

Ask yourself where else you could hit a 5 year old child 336 times in the head over the course of a few months without being arrested and jailed?

Is it really okay just because it's football?

Does that truly justify that amount of head impacts to a 5 year old child?

Wouldn't we call that abuse if it was happening in the Boy Scouts or any organization other than Pop Warner?

Should it be happening at all?

In service of whom and for what?

Football? Glory? Masculinity? Manhood? America? Pride? Militarism?

All of the above?

Article:

"I can’t blame anybody for my death. I made the choice to play football. I made the choice to walk through the concussions. I could have stopped. I could have said, my head hurts. It was my choice, as a man."

But who told you that playing through permanent brain injuries is what makes you a man?

Can't we blame that person?

Your father and your coaches from youth, high school, college all the way to the pros?

Militaristic views of masculinity kills boys and young men for the game of football.

It's a militaristic war game that simulates combat yet kills people in slow motion for real.

The violence suffered by players in football is as celebrated as militaristic ideals of what soldiers suffer through in war: valor, courage under fire, physical courage, endurance, stoically fighting through unimaginable injuries & pain, the quarterback heroically leading his squad as their captain marching his troops down the field to victory just like any military commander complete with a chevron like system that awards stars for each year or season of service very similar to how stripes function in the military.

This militaristic ideal of masculinity is endlessly promoted, encouraged, rewarded and valorized in football just as it is in the military.

Football is Americas killing fields.

High school players — teenaged boys, not adult men — die every year playing football.

Over a million boys play high school football each year and only a handful die or suffer permanent, disabling and/or catastrophic injury.

Would you be so glib about the numbers though if it was your son or your brother or your boyfriend or your best friend who died playing high school football?

What if they were permanently paralyzed from the neck down playing college football?

It's easy to treat the above numbers as a statistic or rounding error when you can close out of the Facebook support page for the now dead or disabled high school or college player and get ready for Chiefs/Ravens next month.

What if you couldn't just X out of the Facebook page because you had to quit your job to take care of your disabled son for the rest of your life?

Or what if your brother killed himself from having CTE from playing college football?

The reality is, we can drop a "sad crying" emoji on a Facebook status and move on — the families of the young boys and men sacrificed to this sport definitely can't.

Go ask Tyler Sash's mom if she's "moved on".

Hasn't science proven at this point that tackle football just doesnt work the way it is currently played?

Why are we okay risking future Junior Seaus, Mike Websters, Justin Strelczyks, Phillip Adams, Tyler Hillinskis with every boy and young man that straps on the pads and helmet and charges on to the field?

Is it 10% of players that get CTE? Is it 20%?

Is it more? Is it half?

More than half?

The truth is we wont know until a CTE test is developed for living players.

Pop Warners Chief Medical Director is working with the FDA to develop the test as I type this.

Why do you think that is?

The NFL's own study funded through a university admits that NFL players are 19 times more likely than non-NFL players to develop neurological conditions and disorders.

19 times!!!!!

As long as its not your brain getting scrambled right?

And you can just sit there and watch the leagues reigning back to back MVP and reigning Super Bowl Champ slowly deteriorate their minds while accumulating permanent brain damage for your entertainment.

Pass the chips.

Article:

"We consider football a gladiator sport because we understand you’re going to get hurt. You’re putting your life on the line.

You might not die now, like in an old Roman arena, but 5, 10 years down the road, you could. You know that.

I wouldn’t change anything.

During my career, I kept my mouth shut. This now, speaking out, it’s about telling you my life. There’s no agenda, no vendetta. This is what football’s really like.

The first warning is the first meeting you have with an agent, when you realize this is real. My choices count at this point. I’m going to be prostituting myself for the next 18 years of my life.

That’s the first warning.

The next one is that good old combine.

That’s when you realize, when you march in that room half naked, I’m a number now."

No, thats when you realize that the NFL is MODERN DAY SLAVERY.

It's a modern day meat market.

6% of the US population is Black male. 75% of the NFL is Black.

0% of the owners are Black. Only 2 out of 32 coaches are Black.

Almost all of the NFL owners are white with very few exceptions and exactly none of them are Black.

The NFL is a modern day plantation.

Article:

"I loved New York. I loved playing there. I loved the spotlight. I was fine in New York, but I also played for Eric Mangini. We started 8-3, Brett Favre, all of that. Everybody told Mangini, stop with the long practices, you’re killing us. You practice too hard. We’re on turf."

36% of all injuries that occur in the NFL are due to turf & 1/4 of all concussions are a result of players heads slamming against turf.

So...

Why won't the NFL replace turf with grass in their stadiums as the NFLPA has been asking for for years?

Because they're cheap as hell and would rather injure their own investments then pay for grass.

The owners & the league have the same exact disregard and disdain for their own players.

The NFL has agreed to switch out turf for grass for the World Cup because the soccer players refused to do what NFL players are forced to — fuck their bodies up on turf.

It proves the NFL and owners could do it and, in fact, they did do it so they could host the World Cup in their football stadium — unless it's actually for the players in their own league.

In that case, you're shit out of luck.

Should have played soccer.

Article:

"What you hear from guys like Ray Lewis, James Harrison, what they’re saying is we’re well aware what we’re signing up for. The violence, we love it. The madness, we love it. We love measuring ourselves in it.

Those guys express themselves with their pads. You soften the game, you’re taking away their freedom of expression. Nobody wants to see flag football, and now, you might as well give guys flags, tell them to hug afterward, all that."

Did he even read the beginning of his own article???

Constant cognitive dissonance is the distillation & essence of tackle football — by the players, the audience, coaches, trainers, medical personnel, announce team, play by play, color, pre-game & post-game hosts, team & network journalists.

I see no repetitive head impacts causing CTE.

I hear no repetitive head impacts causing CTE.

I speak no repetitive head impacts causing CTE.

Article:

"The violence is what I remember. Like against Buffalo in 2009, when I had the game of my career. Or the time I slapped a lineman out of the way in Houston with one arm. Winning, the physical part, the mayhem, finding the line between insanity and sanity, that’s the exact reason why you play. That’s the reason fans like football in the first place.

A guy like James Harrison, he’s possessed, and that’s the guy you love to play with, love to watch. He doesn’t need to be babied."

Protection from permanent brain damage & trauma, fans bloodlust, coaches unreasonable demands, neurological disorders & conditions, neurological symptoms including suicidality, depression, memory loss, confusion, irritability, volatility, aggression, amnesia, mental incapicitation, deteroriation & decline is being "babied"??????????

Article:

"The N.F.L. is too big to fail. If that happened, it would be a slow death. It’s still the ultimate game. For us, it’s like legal prison rules. You have to protect your manhood, your well-being. You’re going to be challenged. You’re going to be tested."

"You have to protect your manhood."

Protect The Shield.

Brainwashed into the cult of American masculinity.

Just like all the other 2.6 million young boys & adolescents playing youth football.

Another million playing in high school.

100k playing in NCAA college football.

1600 play in the NFL.

All brainwashed into the cult of masculinity.

Millions of young boys and teenagers sacrificed on the altar of tackle football, Americas true religion.

Article:

"There aren’t too many places a 400-pound guy with an attitude can go and beat the crap out of somebody and not get locked up for it. I have a violent streak. I have to fight it out of my system. We signed up for it. All of it. We’re not trying to be sane or rational."

What does an 8 year old playing tackle football for Pop Warner sign up for?

Tradition, rigid authoritarianism, toxic masculinity, ideals of manhood worth sacrificing your body, mind, memories, personality, self and literal life for.

A 13 year old football player committed suicide after an egregious hit and post concussion symptoms that lasted for over a year in 2018.

He played through the hit and practiced in pads the very next day — think that might have made his concussion worse?

Prior to the hit, he was a straight A student, a voracious reader, erudite, sociable & well-liked.

After the hit, he became withdrawn.

He lost vision in one eye. He lost his balance frequently.

He was unable to read for more than a few minutes at a time.

He started tackle football at 9.

He played two ways as a linebacker and running back and was known as a ferocious hitter who never complained of pain.

He attempted suicide, was hospitalized, seemed to be improving, then the second suicide attempt was tragically successful.

Dead at 13 for the sport of football.

When is enough enough?

Football is a game, it's a magical talisman, it's a sport, it's a crucible, it's a maker of men, it's the distillation of manhood and masculinity, it's what being a man is.

It's worth bashing and battering your brains repeatedly.

It's worth your mind.

It's worth not knowing who you are at 50.

It's worth you committing suicide.

Just remember to shoot yourself in the chest so your brain can be donated and studied.

[gotham-response]

[dramioneasks]

Secrets and Signets - reading_reverie - M, WIP - Hermione Granger had just woken up alone in a muggle hospital. According to the doctors, she was lucky to be alive after being viciously attacked by a mysterious animal, but she had no memory of being attacked. In fact, she had no memory of the previous year. All she knew was that the nurse gave her an unfamiliar pureblood signet ring that had supposedly been clenched in her fist when she had been rushed in. Her career as an evidence analyst in the DMLE should help her uncover the mystery surrounding her life right now, but first she needed to get her hands on a wand, and get the hell out of Scotland.

[pencilgutz]

Photos taken moments before disaster

[macabre-discotheque]

WOOO i made a reference for my poppy playtime oc or wahtever they don't know the horrors that will come from this adventure <3 and then BOOM TRAIN CRASH, BRUISES, BROKEN RIBS, WEEEE

I will draw them talking with the rest of the cast eventually <3

also bonus doodle from a conversation with a friend of mine

[the-lady-maddy]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Filastiniyat - فلسطينيات (@filastinyat)

[luckycl0ve]

i think that when i post the final version of this WIP it will get flagged 🤔

[oliversmith1]

Why You Need a Workers Compensation Lawyer

Are you a victim of carelessness on the part of your employer? How can you go to deal with your own clinical costs alongside your family's future? In this grave circumstance you and your family needs support, both intellectually and monetarily. During their disability, not everyone is capable of covering their own costs. Will you allow your responsible side to get away with it, even if you have enough money to take care of yourself? If you answered "no," you need to fight for your rights and get your employer to pay workers' compensation. Cases involving workers' compensation can be extremely challenging. It is crucial available a particular legal counselor who can unravel the legitimate bunches and assist you with obtain an effective result.

There are a few questions that many people are unable to answer when it comes to hiring a workers compensation lawyer Boston. The most frequently asked questions and their responses will assist you in understanding your rights:

If my employers refuse to compensate me, what should I do?

Inquire about financial compensation and inform your employers of the incident. Get written medical records from a doctor. A workers' compensation attorney should be consulted as soon as possible if your employers refuse to cover your medical costs or if they delay payment for an extended period of time. Only by doing this can you protect your rights and get enough money for your medical bills.

If I file a lawsuit against my employers, will I be fired?

No, you cannot be fired by your employers for asking for what you deserve. However, once you have completed your disability period, it is in your best interest to look for a new job. Assuming you keep doing likewise work, you might deal with a few issues. Because you have filed a lawsuit against them, your employers won't like you, so it's better to start over.

How can I locate a competent attorney?

You can get recommendations from your neighbors, coworkers, or friends. You can also search the internet online. After finding a lot of names, think about each one separately. Choosing a lawyer who has successfully handled a large number of workers' compensation cases is crucial. Make sure you hire the right attorney by looking at his credentials and reputation.

Therefore, do not allow your employer or insurance provider to deprive you of the benefits you are entitled to. Find a lawyer who will fight for your rights and assist you in obtaining financial support. You can find a lot of lawyers in Iowa City (IA) if you want to file for workers' compensation. However, ensure that the attorney you hire has experience handling cases involving workers' compensation.

Workers' compensation Boston: As a result, this is the best option for you if you're looking for skilled and seasoned lawyers who specialize in workers' compensation. To provide you with high-quality services, Bellotti Law Group, P.C. has lawyers who are highly skilled, knowledgeable, and trained.

What law governs worker's compensation?

On a construction site, a worker might get hurt. This could be because of anything. The worker's inattention or the office staff's or employers' negligence could be to blame for the injury. Workers who suffer injuries as a result of employers' carelessness may be eligible for financial compensation to cover some or all of their losses.

Where are the injured workers?

There are some jobs that are referred to as high-risk jobs. In these positions, high possibilities of the laborers are being harmed. For instance, there is a possibility of physical harm if the worker is required to work in a mine or in high-temperature areas like a furnace. Even death may occur. Workers' families may seek financial compensation from the business in these instances.

Who are lawyers for workers' compensation?

Laws and a lawyer: People who are familiar with the specifics of a state's worker's compensation laws are called worker compensation lawyers. A worker's compensation attorney can be consulted in the event of an injury to a company employee. The regulations vary from state to state. The specialist pay legal advisor knows the standard which is pervasive in the state and can recover the expected measure of cash from the business in the event of injury brought about by manager's carelessness.

A lawyer's assistance and company guidelines: He can also provide you with information regarding worker's injury compensation if you consult your company's worker's guidelines. Even if you are unaware of the differences in compensation between businesses, a lawyer can advise you on how to determine the correct amount. The consultation with the attorney is very important because in some cases, you might only be able to get some of the money back. You can get the full amount of compensation if the personal injury attorney helps you.

Laborers Remuneration is a type of protection that is given by organizations and proposed to workers as a type of clinical consideration pay. Employees who sustain workplace injuries are offered this sum of money. The employee forfeits the right to sue the employer by accepting compensation from the company.

Examples of fraud by employers: There may be instances of fraud by employers. The employer refuses to pay the sum in this instance. If the employer still refuses to pay, the worker compensation lawyer talks to him or her and drags him or her to court. When requesting compensation, the employee's payroll and the position performed are all taken into consideration.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

For the third time in five weeks, a 16-year-old boy has died after sustaining on-the-job injuries at an industrial site, as lawmakers in several states advocate loosening child labor laws that protect minors from hazardous work.

The latest teen death was Friday night at the Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, authorities said. It’s the third worker death at the plant since December 2020.

Duvan Tomas Perez, who NBC News reported moved to the U.S. from Guatemala six years ago, was cleaning machinery as part of a sanitation crew when he became trapped in equipment on a conveyor belt. He died at the scene, police and the poultry company said.

The company said that it appears that the child “should not have been hired” and that his age and identity were misrepresented on his hiring paperwork with an outside staffing company.

“We are devastated at the loss of life and deeply regret that an underage individual was hired without our knowledge. The company is undertaking a thorough audit with the staffing companies to ensure that this kind of error never happens again,” it said in a statement Thursday to HuffPost.

His death follows two other teens’ deaths in Wisconsin and Missouri.

Michael Schuls, 16, died on June 29 after sustaining injuries at the Florence Hardwoods logging company in Florence, Wisconsin. Michael was attempting to unjam a wood-stacking machine when he became pinned under machinery on a conveyor belt, resulting in what the coroner identified as traumatic asphyxiation, The Associated Press reported.

Will Hampton, 16, died on June 8 in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, after becoming injured while working at the Lee’s Summit Resource Recovery Park landfill. The high school sophomore became pinned between a tractor-trailer rig and its trailer, resulting in his death, police said in a statement.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is investigating all three deaths, a Labor Department spokesperson confirmed to HuffPost.

OSHA has also made a referral to the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division for possible child labor violations concerning hazardous occupations in the Wisconsin case and a separate referral in the Missouri case to determine if the child was legally employed.

Federal labor laws allow children 16 and older to be employed in all occupations as long as the jobs are not declared hazardous by the Secretary of Labor. The Labor Department’s website features a list of such hazardous occupations and specifies that “most jobs” in meat and poultry plants ― including equipment cleaning ― are banned.

Minors are also prohibited from being employed “inside and outside of places of businesses that use machinery to process wood products,” with a few exceptions, including if an adult relative supervises the child.

The Wisconsin teen’s father also worked at the sawmill and was at the site that day, Green Bay station WBAY reported, though the child was alone in the building when the incident happened, and he wasn’t found until 17 minutes later, The AP reported.

In the case of the Mississippi teen killed, the child wasn’t working directly for Mar-Jac Poultry as he had been hired by an outside agency. “These hiring companies often aren’t the most reliable when it comes to finding qualified, legal workers,” said Jordan Barab, former deputy assistant secretary of labor at OSHA from 2009 to 2017.

“These temp agencies don’t have any scruples at all. They don’t have any national reputation to uphold. They’re just trying to sell workers, basically,” he told HuffPost. “And then the main company claims they had no idea, the temp agency [says it] was ‘fooled by false certifications.’ Well, obviously this kid did not look 18.”

OSHA has been going after this “to a certain extent,” he said, with the administration citing both the place of employment and the hiring company when a regulation is broken.

Barab partially blamed the nation’s ongoing shortage of labor for the hiring of children because employers are trying to avoid paying more for qualified workers.

“You have some employers who are basically going after the most vulnerable workers, the workers with the least ability to fight back or question anything. Who could be more vulnerable than (A) children and (B) immigrant children?” Barab said.

The COVID-19 pandemic, affordable child care, a rise in remote work and retiring workers are among the reasons cited for the labor shortage.

Regardless of the risks, lawmakers in several states have proposed weakening child labor protections in a bid to expand the workforce with low-paying labor.

In Wisconsin, where one of the three children died, lawmakers are advocating for lowering the age to serve alcohol in bars and restaurants to 14. It would be a nationwide first if approved, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Another bill introduced in Minnesota proposes allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to work in or around construction sites.

In Iowa, the state Senate in April passed a bill that would allow children to work more days and longer hours, but in conflict with the current limits set by federal law, as Iowa State Daily reported.

The Biden administration back in April urged U.S. meat companies to ensure they are not unknowingly or knowingly hiring children illegally. This followed revelations that more than 100 children were working for a company that cleans slaughterhouses. The children’s work included handling hazardous equipment, like razor-sharp bone saws.

An estimated 160,000 children are injured annually in the U.S. while working. Of these injuries, 54,800 warrant emergency room treatment, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

The number of minors employed in violation of child labor laws has increased by 37% within the last year, according to a March report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. The report identified 10 states that have introduced or passed bills within the last two years that would weaken child labor standards.

[petalburg-pokemon-husbandry]

Oh, and while I'm at it, stop bringing your pokemon into pokemon centers and then getting upset when the quick-healing machines don't fully cure your massively overworked pokemon's severe battle injuries. Those machines are to cure exhaustion and minor injuries, not the internal bleeding your breloom is suffering after taking 400 bullet seeds. Maybe in the time we're making you wait for us to finish operating, you can think about your god damn actions.

[awesomecooperlove]

🧑🏽‍⚕️👩🏼‍⚕️👨🏼‍⚕️

[monstromax]

Happy May Day! (The original labour day)

May this May Day, the international workers day, inspire us more than ever to continue the struggle for the liberty of workers everywhere, especially for the abolition of colonialism, imperialism and systems of exploitation that harm the working class around the world.

Solidarity especially to the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, and to those in the West mobilizing against Israeli bombardment and occupation. As I write this, students at Columbia University have been violently forced off campus after non-violent organized protesting, but organizing continues both in that community and on other university campuses. Stay strong and hold the line!

An injury to one is an injury to all. Keep organizing, in the workplace and in the streets.