The premise of minimum wage, when it was introduced, was that a single wage earner should be able to own a home and support a family. That was what it was based on; a full time job, any job, should be able to accomplish this.
The fact people scoff at this idea if presented nowadays, as though the people that ring up your groceries or hand you your burgers don’t deserve the luxury of a home and a family, is disgusting.
Also if a livable wage breaks the system then the system deserves to be broken.
To any trans women and transfeminine followers of mine, did you know there’s a pretty huge Etsy store which does gaff underwear and swimsuits specifically designed for trans people amongst its products? They go in a pretty decent range of sizes, including sizes for young girls, and while I do not personally know anyone who has used them, there’s a fuckton of positive reviews on the Etsy store. They have a ton of colours to choose from, different fabric choices, the works.
And for once they’re not marked “for crossdressers” too, they actually under “transgender”, so that’s (depressingly) unusual.
I’m mostly posting this because I’ve seen a lot of younger people recently in particular saying they never knew what gaffs were… a lot of people find them WAY MORE comfortable and convenient than tucking, so I would recommend looking into them if you’ve never done so before!
And even if you yourself don’t use or need this stuff, do pass this kind of info on to any friends of yours that might, guys! There’s always like a million more PSAs about transmasc stuff as opposed to transfem stuf tbh…
Remember Unfriended? The horror movie that came out a couple years ago that had ads all over Youtube featuring unskippable jump scares?
Well, it’s back with a vengeance – or actually, a sequel: “Unfriended: Dark Web”
And as you can imagine, the ads are just as bad and anxiety-inducing as before. I’ve come across two separate ads already (one of which was in the middle of a video and happened while I was on fullscreen) so here’s what you need to watch out for:
TRAILER #1 begins with a logo for a chatroom and within the first few seconds you’ll see a guy’s face pop up on a skype-like screen. Don’t worry – THIS IS NOT THE JUMP SCARE, it’s just a normal-looking chat screen. During this time you’ll want to exit full screen if you’re in it, and then scroll down until all that’s visible is the “Skip Ad” Countdown and about an inch of the bottom half of the video. Then wait and press Skip when you’re able.
This ad DOES NOT have a pre-skip jumpscare, so you’re okay to wait. (Unless your screen shows a “video will play after ad” note instead of a skip function, in which you’ll want to scroll until you can barely see the video and hit mute.)
TRAILER #2 is the one you need to be wary of. It begins with about 3 seconds of a black screen and faint, eerie music. If you’re in fullscreen and you see this – COVER THE SCREEN, EXIT, AND SCROLL DOWN QUICKLY. I’ll be honest, I did not see what the image that showed up was (because I followed the aforementioned procedure), but judging by the accompanying sounds and the dialogue that followed: “Dude, that looked way too real.” “I think it was real.”
…I’m pretty sure it’s fair to assume that it’s not something you want to be caught off-guard by.
Again, scroll so that you can only see the bottom of the screen and wait for the Skip button to load. Then skip immediately.
There might be other ads going around, but these are the only ones I’ve come across so far.
If you want to play it safe: Every time slot for an ad on a youtube video is marked by a small yellow square on the time bar (not sure if that’s the official name, but that’s what I’m calling it.) At the beginning of every video and any time you see one of those yellow squares coming up, exit fullscreen and scroll down before it plays. You can also usually see what’s being advertised in the box above the recommendations section.
If you see other ads going around that you feel people should be wary of – or if you have any specific warnings to issue regarding the two I mentioned – please feel free to ad them to this post!
STAY CALM, BE SAFE, AND BROWSE WISELY, GUYS!!
Yeah, so-
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
Not long after posting this, guess what ad showed up on my dash as one of those “Sponsored” posts?
Be careful scrolling, guys. If you see the word “Sponsored” in grey at the top of a post, slow down and scroll carefully to see what it is. If you see flashing, glitching, a black screen, or what looks like a Skype chat – scroll back up and refresh.
Or just scroll very quickly down, but be very careful in doing so.
I’m getting bombarded with these things, so keep an eye out and spread the word to make sure everybody’s aware.
Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.
The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.
Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.
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Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.
Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.
Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.
Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.
The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.
Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.
Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.
Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.
Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.
Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.
TEXTBOOKS
Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.
Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.
Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.
Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.
Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.
Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.
CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.
Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.
HISTORY AND CULTURE
LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.
The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.
Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.
Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.
Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.
RARE BOOKS
Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.
Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.
Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.
2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.
Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.
Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.
Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.
Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.
MYSTERY
MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.
TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.
Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.
POETRY
The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.
Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”
Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.
Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.
Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.
QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.
CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.
PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.
MISC
Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.
World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.
DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.
Oh boy if you’re mad about the US separating children from their parents, putting people in camps, and having a zero tolerance policy towards asylum seekers that has led to deliberate extensive cruelty as a futile deterrent wait until you hear about Australia.
…what’s going on in Australia?
Buddy! Strap in because there are two parts to this:
The past 100+ years of ripping kids from their families, racism, and attempted genocide
The past 20+ years of racism, but now island torture prisons! LEVEL UP!
Australia has had a long history of separating children from their parents. The government decided that mixed raced children of Indigenous Australians were not OK so literally kidnapped them and raised them to assimilate into white society and “breed the colour out.” This started about 1905 and ended about 1970. We call them the Stolen Generations. This has had long lasting negative effects on Indigenous Australians as it was a decades long attempt to absolutely destroy their culture and commit genocide. “But that was the past?” Surprise! By “ended in 1970″ I mean “the reasons in which we en masse tear children away from their families now has a different reason” and Indigenous children are now being taken away at even higher rates than during the stolen generations. Australia saw its Indigenous population, thought “how do we destroy their culture?” and when we were done thought “gee, how do we blame them for having all these issues in their communities?”
BUT THAT’S JUST THE BEGINNING!
Fast forward to now: Trump is using kids as political leverage to stop people from coming to the US right? Buddy he’s ripping Australia off. Scott Morrison, Minister for Immigration at the time once did that.
OK so for context: when people try to come to Australia via boat seeking asylum because they’re fleeing war/persecution we do either 2 things: turn them back and let them just… die elsewhere… Or we lock them up in detention centres on Manus/Nauru Island. That’s where we keep them indefinitely in bad conditions, give them dodgy medical care, smear them in the press, and react indifferently when they die from suicide/negligence/assault… and cover up sexual assaults from guards and the incredibly high rate of self harm and depression even in children. The entire idea is to be as cruel as possible so other people hear about it and go “geez, let’s not go to Australia. They’ll literally torture us before they give us a protective visa.” And when I say indefinitely I mean indefinitely. Some refugees have spent 5 years wasting away in these prisons. Some children have spent their entire life in these prisons. And the government openly admits that they’re genuine refugees. They’ve been rigorously vetted and known to be safe people with no intention of harming us but it’s the zero tolerance principle. You tried to come here via boat? You go jail but we call it “detention.”
The main line of attack against refugees: “they’re just coming here to take advantage of our welfare.” Oh no! It’ll cost the taxpayer money to subsidise a refugee to live in a safe country! So instead of having them “rip off” the taxpayer with a couple hundred a fortnight we’ll just lock them up on an island where it costs $1 million per person on average over the past 4 years and operational costs have wasted $5 billion in 4 years. Why help someone for barely enough money to survive when you can torture them and keep them imprisoned for several times more!
Scott Morrison, or Sco-Mo as we kids call them, loved the US’s Muslim Ban idea by the way. He said it was proof that the rest of the world was “catching up to Australia.” Yeah. Geez guys. What took you so long to be as bad as Australia?
Mandatory detention has had bipartisan support from the two major parties since its creation by the Keating government in 1992. We have been keeping people in prison for seeking asylum for 26 years.
We also don’t want to get rid of them. There was a deal under the Obama administration to take some of these refugees but this process has carried on into the Trump administration. He was livid the idea that he should uphold this deal because 1) OooOBaMaaaa!! 2) REFUGEES?? In America??? So that’s currently going nowhere. Meanwhile New Zealand, our good ally and close neighbour, has said “I’ll take some of them” and the current PM (Turnbull) has said no. His excuse? We have a deal with the US. We should see where that goes. It’s going nowhere. So he conveniently can just pretend his hands are tied and let refugees continue to be tortured and die under his care.
(And he hasn’t said it but I bet he’ll never let refugees settle in New Zealand because if they become NZ citizens they’ll have travel rights to come to Australia without the same visa restrictions as other countries AND THEN THE REFUGEES WOULD WIN).
So let’s top this all off with the icing on the cake: a phone call between Trump and Turnbull when Trump was getting acquainted with all the world leaders last year. Turnbull explained our zero tolerance refugee policy and the cruelty as a deterrent that is employed and Trump said “That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am.”
“That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am.”
Let that sink in.
And that’s where we’re up to now in modern history. See everyone likes to go to the obvious big example we have of the Nazis and their camps but the truth is… this never stopped. There are similar examples of this abhorrent behaviour happening right now and have been for decades. Governments have been putting people in camps and trying to destroy cultures, or ethnicities, or deny people safe havens from wars, and be utterly heartless and deliberately cruel since forever. This is the ongoing drive of conservatism: keep people out, keep people a certain way, and the current example in the US is just that bubbling over the horribly inescapable surface. We are deluded to think that this cruelty took a 70 year respite when WW2 ended and it’s taken this long to get this strong.
The world has always been racist. Trump just doesn’t bother to filter it. And Australia just wants to keep it on an island so no one can see it.
willowfoot 