Hey, Still E, Still alive as of 3/24/2021. They/Them pronouns plz n thnx, NB, 35 in MN, tech support bitch just trying to survive in a pandemic or whatever.
• Ask me anything Path yet to be determined.
people seem to have trouble understanding why i’m an anti-capitalist, so i’m going to try and put it into simple, real-life terms.
i work at a restaurant. i make $12 an hour, plus tips. minimum wage where i live is relatively high for my country - the national minimum wage is $7.25/hr, and has not been raised since 2009. before taxes, working full time, my yearly income is about $22,000 a year. ($25,000 if you count tips)
at my job, we sell various dishes, with an average price of about $10-$15. we get printouts every week detailing how much money we made that week; in one week, our restaurant makes about $30,000. (one of our other locations actually makes this much on a daily basis!)
i’m not going to go into details, but after the costs of production
(payroll for employees, rent for the building, maintenance, and wholesale food purchasing) are accounted for, the restaurant makes an estimated profit of $20,000 per week.
this profit goes directly to the owner, who does not work at this location. the owner of my restaurant has actually been on vacation for a few months, but still profits from the restaurant, because they own it. i have met the owner exactly twice in my year of working here.
to put this into perspective, the owner of this restaurant earns in 2 days what they pay me in one year. and that’s just from this single location - the owner has several other restaurants, all of which make more money than the one i work at. this ends up resulting in the owner having an estimated net worth of tens of millions of dollars, even after accounting for the payroll for every single worker in their employ.
now, i have to ask you: does the owner of my restaurant deserve this income? did they earn it? did their labor result in this value being created?
the naive answer would be “yes”; the owner purchased the location and arranged for the raw ingredients to be delivered, did they not?
the actual answer is “no”. the owner may have used their initial capital to start the location, but the profit is a result of my labor, and the labor of my co-workers.
the owner purchases rice at a very low bulk price of about 25 cents a pound. i cook the rice, and within a few minutes, that pound of rice is suddenly worth about $30. the owner did not create this value, i did. the owner simply provided the initial capital investment required to start the process.
what needs to be understood here is that capitalists do not create value. they use the labor of their employees to create value, and then take the excess profit and keep it.
what needs to be understood is that capitalists accrue income by already HAVING money. the owner of my restaurant was only able to get this far because they started off, from the very beginning, with enough money to purchase a building, purchase food in bulk, and hire hundreds of employees.
that is to say: the rich get richer, and they do so by exploiting the labor of the poor.
the owner of my restaurant could afford to triple the income of every single person in their employee if they felt like it, but this would mean that they were generating less profit for themselves, so they do not.
the owner of my restaurant pays me the current minimum wage of my area, because to them, i am not a person. i am an investment. i am an asset. i am a means to create more money.
when you are paid minimum wage, the message your boss is sending you is this: “legally, if i could pay you less, i would.”
every capitalist on the planet exploits their workers for their own gain. every capitalist, even the small business owners, forces people to stay in poverty so that the capitalist can profit.
Sooooo. I was mindlessly scrolling on facebook and reading various bullshit about things related to the Bachelor franchise… I got into this show several years ago when my mom made me watch some while she visited me on a vacation or whatever.. and now it’s just our thing even though the past few years the quality has been shit and it’s soooo problematic in so many ways..
But anyways.. one of the things I clicked took me to a Twitter thing and then I noticed my Twitter was already logged in even though I haven’t used Twitter in ages… so I clicked my profile and saw that the bio type info was so off… very wrong age.. still listed me as a “Fanson for life” (I cancelled Hanson some time in the last year cuz Zac who was going to be my future husband when I was 10 years old is a big ol fuckin bigot)…
So I go to edit my Twitter bio and noticed there was a spot for a website link and it had my fucking tumblr in it which I had not been to in ages.. so for funsies I decided to go to the url and see if my page still existed.. and it DID and then I was like… well lemme see if I can login to this shiz… and then I did that relatively easily… and then I scrolled.. like a lot..
Now I just don’t know what to do with myself lol. I *might* download the phone app again and shitpost about feelings and stuff. It’s been a really rough couple of years and especially this year with the pandemic and isolation I have not had an easy time.. and like Facebook is where my family lives and I don’t want to worry them so I internalize things a lot but maybe it will help to get a bit of -blah- out here.
I’m kind of sad at how much I don’t remember how to use this site and also at how I don’t recognize the people anymore.. IDK if people changed URLS a bunch (and avatars) or if I just have the worst memory. but yeah. it’s weird being here.
Lynne Cox is an accomplished American open water swimmer. Twice, she held the record for the fastest crossing of the English Channel. Cox was the first woman to swim the Cook Strait and the first to swim the Straits of Magellan and around the Cape of Good Hope. Cox swam the Bering Strait from American soil to Soviet soil in 1987, at the height of the Cold War.
Look at her.
I know open water swimming isn’t really glamorous, but Lynne Cox is arguably one of the greatest overlooked athletes of the 20th century.
And quite possibly a mutant.
She can withstand water temperatures that you or I would die from because of her training and her body’s unique reaction to cold (you know how the blood will leave your fingers and toes when it’s cold, to preserve heat? her whole body does that, pooling her blood in her core and insuring her body temperature stays toasty where it counts).
She funded the Bering Strait swim herself, clearing out her bank account when she couldn’t get corporate sponsors. After she succeeded (to almost everyone’s surprise: if you get in the Bering Sea without serious gear you generally just die) Gorbachev mentioned her during treaty talks with Nixon: “Last summer it took one brave American by the name of Lynne Cox just two hours to swim from one of our countries to the other. We saw on television how sincere and friendly the meeting was between our people and the Americans when she stepped onto the Soviet shore. She proved by her courage how close to each other our peoples live.“
She wasn’t just the first woman to swim the Strait of Magellan. She was the first person to make it across.
On top of setting multiple world records, she swam a mile+ to the coast of Antarctica, in just a bathing suit, and did not die.
She’s swum over 50,000 miles.
And look at her. This is a photo from when she was young, at the peak of her career and setting records all over the world. She is a great athlete. She is a human who can do things most humans would die trying. I’m sitting here at 1 AM getting all teary eyed because this is the first time I’ve looked up a photo of her and I am so surprised, so gratified, so overwhelmed to find out that this world record setter, this literal superhuman, has nearly the same body type as me.
Since they wouldn’t let her be a fantasy creature in a video game, she just did it in real life, I guess.
Anyone who thinks there is just one athletic body type isn’t paying attention during the Olympics opening ceremonies.
Her body type is optimized for her sport. The shape of her body and the presence of fat both provide insulation to keep her core warm while she swims.
A lot of open water swimmers aren’t this chunky, but that’s because most of them are actually triathletes, and their body type is a compromise between the ideals for the different sports.
There really is no one way to be fit and athletic. For some reason, we tend to get ourselves hung up on the body type of track and field athletes, especially that of marathon runners (who tend to carry almost no extra fat) as the ideal.
Dude HOLY FUCK she’s a badass.
When Lynn Cox was training to swim the English Channel at 14, her practice regimen had her swimming off Long Beach pier from 3am-6am each morning and then going to high school. Her coach asked that she be excused from morning gym so that she could have extra time to shower and do homework. Her gym teacher refused to allow it because she believed that Lynn Cox was too chubby and too clumsy to be missing 9th grade gym.
And here’s a joyful, more recent photo of this tremendous athlete.
it’s almost like human body fat isn’t evil and is actually an evolutionary advantage…
Man, B99 did Holt so right. He’s not just gay as lip service, he’s visibly gay. We see acknowledgement and dealing with homophobia and racism, and his success despite it. We see him advocating and supporting other queer black officers. We meet his husband, not just as a “here he is” but as an actual relationship. Kevin isn’t just a carbon copy of Raymond nor is he a comical opposite. They are similiar enough that you understand how they fell in love, but they are unique personalities. They have troubles and arguments, but stay together and support each other. Honestly they are one of the best on screen couples I’ve seen period, let alone a gay one. He’s also a stoic character who remains stoic while still warming up and having humour and connection with others, without changing his personality to make it easier for the writers. He’s an enjoyable character, and respectfully treated, and I love him and the writers and the actor.
The only robin hood movie since 1993 thats worth anything is princess of thieves starring keira knightly and only bc we got to see her shoot a bunch of arrows and beat up a bunch of men whilst in full medieval butch top regalia
Tell me she doesnt look 100% ready and willing to ravage the beds of each maiden in nottingham before reluctantly leaving them at daybreak because she knows they deserve better than a life on the run in the shadows and she can never give them more than a pleasurable night that theyll dream about each time their inevitably disappointing husband cant make them orgasm
