I live in NYC and I see homeless people every day, and I don’t know what lawmakers expect from them. Our lawmakers make legislation that essentially criminalizes being homeless, but being put behind bars repeatedly for small infractions makes it impossible for them to hold down a minimum wage job. Consider this scenario.
Jane has been living paycheck to paycheck and is behind on her rent when her employer downsizes and she’s out of a job. She misses a paycheck and is evicted from her apartment because the landlord feels she’s fallen too far behind to ever catch up. Now Jane is homeless and looking for a new job. Shelters have waiting lists, and the better/safer the shelter, the longer the list. Rolling the dice and running the risk of being assaulted or robbed in an unsafe shelter is an option, but the weather is decent, so Jane decides to take a chance on the street. She uses a friend’s address on her job applications and lands an interview which leads to a new minimum wage job. She needs to save up a few paychecks before she can afford the first month, last month, and security deposit, but she’s getting by, hitting the local soup kitchens and dumpster diving for food while sleeping on the subway, on bus stop benches, in the park, etc.
The police fine Jane for sleeping on a park bench — $250 for being in the park after closing time. She obviously can’t pay it because she’s saving up for a place to live, and then Jane gets another ticket elsewhere in the city for sleeping on the subway or peeing in an alley, but this time there’s a warrant for her arrest since she failed to pay her first fine. She’s taken to jail and can’t post bond and has to wait until her case is heard in front of a judge. Meanwhile, she loses her job and has $750 in fines and court costs to cover once she’s free again.
How exactly do we expect Jane to get on her feet without major assistance from social programs who see their budgets slashed every year by the federal government?
The government finds creative ways to cut funding for shelters and welfare programs every year. There are always more homeless than there are beds in shelters and lawmakers want to give fewer and fewer funds to support the less fortunate with every budget discussion. It costs taxpayers less money to provide food, shelter, healthcare, and job training to homeless people than it costs to continuously cycle them through the judicial and penal system, but we’d rather punish people for being homeless than “give a handout” to people who desperately need help.
But how exactly do we expect homeless people to just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and make a better life? It’s hard to get a job without a place to live and you can’t pay for a place to live without a job. People have to sleep, eat, and relieve themselves in order to live, but when you have no money to afford a place to do that, those functions are criminalized. The natural processes of your body are illegal because you don’t have enough money to afford to do them.
I’m a liberal socialist because this makes no sense to me. I see homeless people sleeping over subway grates in some of the wealthiest zip codes in the country. People who routinely spend $35 for one lunch draft legislation to cut budgets for soup kitchens that can feed fifty people for less money than that. Your worth as a person should not be contingent upon your credit score, bank account, or 401K, and America has bought into this lie that rich people deserve to be rich, which means poor people deserve to be poor. And homeless people deserve to be homeless because of some character defect or flaw in their moral fiber which has forced them into homelessness, and their inability to rise above is confirmation of what terrible people they must be.
Most of the people in this country are less than three missed paychecks away from homelessness. Every homeless person you pass on the street *could be you* if the perfect set of financial catastrophes befell your life in quick succession. Think about the kind of safety net you’d wish existed if that were you begging for change, and keep those wishes in mind when you’re deciding which candidates to support for office.
Two corn cakes for a loaf of bread. A liter of oats for an avocado and a bag of beans. An hour with a traditional healer for an hour of plumbing work. Ten mixiuhcas—the market’s currency of choice—for a jar of pickled carrots. Not a single peso in sight.
Vendors and buyers have gathered today in one of the city’s small urban gardens for this month’s Feria Multitrueke, an alternative economy and bartering market. Hipsters pushing organic quelite seeds mix with elders standing over steaming vats of hot chocolate and tamales. Women in aprons dole out tacos while their kids dart between stands. Shirts woven by a Mazahua indigenous women’s cooperative are displayed next to copies of the translated Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg.
The air is alive with voices laughing, bartering and making sales. But these vendors aren’t ordinary vendors, and their buyers aren’t just customers, either. “We are all prosumidores here,” says Joaquina Flores, a member of the mixiuhca network. Prosumidor is a combination of the Spanish words for producer and consumer, highlighting the reciprocal nature of the market. “It’s solidarity,” Flores says. “This is about meeting needs, not generating wealth.”
Petition to refer to TERFs as FARTs, which stands for Feminist Appropiating Reactionary Tranaphobe
“Trans-Exclusionary-Radical-Feminist,” when you think about it, is a VERY kind term. To be called a TERF is for the person to admit that they still consider you a feminist.
But what kind of feminist excludes so many women from their movement? If you hate so many women for what they are, you really don’t deserve to be called any kind of feminist, radical or otherwise.
Anti-trans people: Stop calling us terfs it’s insulting
Worked on this girl for 9 months. Now this new music video comes out and she’s immensely popular, arguably one of the most popular characters in the LoL universe.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m really glad she’s a huge hit, it’s super exciting to see so many people love the character design and the gameplay, and know that I contributed directly and significantly to the behind-the-scenes engineering that makes it all work. It’s validating.
But it’s also so fucking melancholy to know I did so much work and put in so much time for such a shitty company, run by shitty people, and the reward I got for it was unemployment.
I threw a lot into this character. I cried at work. I started getting panic attacks, which I’ve never gotten before. I developed persistent heart palpitations from the daily overwhelming stress and had to go to the hospital (this is true, seriously.) I basically dropped all my friends outside of work. My manager (and his manager!) lied to me constantly to keep me working. They said I was doing a great job but to keep it up. Don’t worry, it’s going to turn out great, and it’ll all be worth it in the end – recognition, a raise, probably a promotion in short order. They promised me the world. When she was finally finished, I didn’t even get to go to the release party, they just walked me out.
I remember a quote from my last day, it sticks out in my mind: “I know you realize this is really hard for me,” my manager said. Yes, in the end, when he awkwardly informed me I didn’t have my dream job anymore – or any job at all – and then stared back at my shell-shocked face, my thousand-yard stare, the only thing he felt was sorry for himself.
She launched with no major bugs and was considered a technical success. Doesn’t matter. Get the fuck out.
I don’t know how I feel. A weird sensation of pride and intense bitterness. I did a good job; at least, I think I did. Unfortunately, internal validation is the only kind I’m going to get.
Everyone reposting KDA should see this. Riot has successfully distracted everyone into forgetting their culture of sexism,exploitation, and toxicity mere months after it was all revealed.
Look, I get it. Akali is EXTREMELY my type. It’s obvious how much love and care was put into her development. But it makes me furious to see all the free advertising that Riot is getting from people who I thought would know better.
And now? One of the people who is arguably responsible for all that free advertising? Who’s work is undoubtedly making Riot hundreds of thousands of dollars a day? Who was overworked to the point of near breaking? They get nothing. WORSE than the scant bit of credit that most devs can get in a big company like Riot. They got let go.
Fuck Riot Games.
One thing that I thought really sucked a lot is that the production company who made the KDA video isn’t even credited. They credit a lot of other people on their videos, usually, but the actual animators of the video are hidden; almost a lie by omission. At best it’s a honest mistake, at worst it’s sneakily trying to pass off the video as something made in-house when it’s not. 😦
Let’s say it’s 6.15pm and you’re going home (alone of course), after an unusually hard day on the job. You’re really tired, upset and frustrated. Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to drag out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home. Unfortunately you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far. You have been trained in CPR, but the guy that taught the course did not tell you how to perform it on yourself..!!
NOW HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE…
Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, without help, the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness.
However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously.
A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest.
A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again.
Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating.
The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can perhaps buy precious time to get themselves to a phone and dial 911.
Rather than sharing another joke please contribute by broadcasting this which can save a person’s life!
you know i hate tumblrs “i hope they do something problematic” shit so much? its not only with people like thomas sanders or john mulaney or that comic guy with the bike, but with whole ass shows and projects? like nobody ever said b99 is cop propaganda. nobody was saying that until one single person mentioned it and suddenly its the worst show you could watch because of one aspect of their show, while ignoring the shows diversity and political stances.
same happened to dream daddy, like you cant deny that that game was groundbreaking for the lgbt society, but suddlenly some people started shit like ‘uhhh but 5 years ago the game grumps made transphobic jokes’ and ‘you know that joesph is actually a satanist, right?’ and suddenly no one talked about the game anymore?
everytime someone tries their fucking best to be inclusive, diverse etc. people are digging through everything they can find just to justify that they dont like it? overwatch recently hosted a huge event to raise money for breast cancer research in association with the BCRF and without even doing one second of research people accused them of working with the susan g. komen foundation (which wasnt true) and tried to boycott a fucking charity event?
what im saying is, dont let tumblr ruin everything you love because they are bitter
ugh 