Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) has been in the media all day talking about the rail strikes and god what a great spokesperson he has been for them.

Here he is handling some ridiculous line of questioning from Kay Burley who is trying to suggest the union will be encouraging violence on the picket lines and referencing the 1980’s miners strikes, which is pretty absurd for a whole host of reasons:

Here he is calling Chris Philp, a Tory MP and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport a liar approximately 900 times for spouting nonsense on Newsnight (I can only post one vid so these will be links)

Here he is telling Richard Madeley he’s talking “twaddle” for asking him if he’s a Marxist, which tbh I think was polite because imo Richard Madeley is just a c u n t xx

And if you’ve any uncertainty as to why rail workers are striking, these two clips will be a good place to start

i love the extras of dungeon meshi in how it fleshes out the world because they make it so much more evident how race affects every part of the story while avoiding the zootopia racism problem. like obv a main theme of the story is like, humanity and desire, 'to eat is to live', etc, but since the majority of it takes place in the dungeon isolated from society and thru the lens of laios, the racial aspects play out more like shadows on a wall for most of the story.

then in the extras we get comics like this

which at a glance fleshes out the racial aspects via a character explaining the racial rules of universe - humans have x amount of bones, while orcs and kobolds have more. however, if u take it less straightforwardly, it points out how the concept of 'human' is a constructed concept in the world. the fact that there are different categories of human in different parts of the world based off of what types of humanoids occur there is already a demonstration of this. in response, the bones explanation seems to kabru and the characters as an objective way of measuring humans vs nonhumans.

but obv, when the culture was deciding what humanoids were humans and nonhumans, they weren't blindly analyzing skeletons and then deciding. just visually, one can glean that orcs and kobolds look less like the ingroup of tallmen, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. the bones explanation appears as a justification for that immediate prejudice under a scientific guise - I'm sure that one could come up with the same number of physical differences between a gnome and an elf that they would find between a tallman and an orc. it sounds a lot better to say 'well, an orc has 230 bones while a human has 206' then 'well, an orc looks ewwww yucky yucky to me while a human looks normal'.

and what i like abt the comic is that the characters take the explanation at face value for the most part. when a contradiction is brought up in the oni, kabru can neatly slot them into the predetermined number of bones framework. bc that's kinda how it works irl - there r cultural prejudices that we can posthumously justify, and if we find something outside of it, we can twist it to fit into our predetermined binary. however, since the reader does not live in a world where there are orcs and kobolds to be prejudiced against, we can see that flaw in the cultural logic. when the party encounters the orcs, the number of bones has no bearing on their humanity. They r shown to be cliquish and distrusting of outsiders, but not any more than the elves are later in the story.

tldr dungeon meshi worldbuilding is so good

percy as camp half bloods union representative was so real actually like he goes to the underworld, the literal place you go where you die and he's immediately talking to charon like. have you thought about organizing against the wealthy man controlling you 🤔 are your wages increasing to match inflation? and then he actually brings it up to hades. shrek they don't even have dental moment truly

ok folks time to start rallying for The Animation Guild union stuff

Nickelodeon Production Workers are asking for signatures on this petition to put more pressure lon employers regarding their unwillingness to negotiate further on long expired contract, which now includes the newly unionized Production Workers (previously only covered Artists).

Notice: The Balrogs have unionized.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Sunday warned of an “authoritarian expansion of power” by the Supreme Court after it released several controversial opinions in it’s last week of the term.

“The courts, if they were to proceed without any check on their power, without any balance on their power, then we will start to see an undemocratic and, frankly, dangerous authoritarian expansion of power in the Supreme Court,” Ocasio-Cortez said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“Which is what we are seeing now, from the overturning of abortion rights to the ruling that discrimination and, frankly, stripping the full personhood and dignity of LGBTQ people in the United States. … These are the types of rulings that signal a dangerous creep towards authoritarianism and centralization of power in the court,” the New York Democrat said.

The Supreme Court last week released opinions on several landmark decisions that included blows to affirmative action programs in college admissions, President Biden’s student debt relief program, and LGBTQ rights — rulings Republicans have largely lauded and Democrats have decried.

Ocasio-Cortez, a frequent critic of the conservative court, on Sunday argued that Justices “are expanding their role into acting as though they are Congress itself,” noting recent controversies surrounding ethics standards and arguing Justices’ power should be limited.

“And that, I believe, is an expansion of power that we really must be focusing on: the danger of this Court and the abuse of power in this Court, particularly … as it is related to the entanglements around conflicts of interest as well,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

How can I go about getting hired?

All of the details about our job vacancies are on our website, which is linked in our pinned post. Also, if you’re in London, feel free to drop by with your CV and Elias will hold a quick interview.

writing sounds hard i just want to clock in for a 12 hour shift of themes and motifs

ask yourself why you’re living paycheck to paycheck in 2022. ask yourself whose fault it is and look up at your bosses, at the shareholders, at the government. there is no fucking reason for anyone in Britain to be living in poverty in 2022. this is an active choice by the people in power, who refuse to tax effectively, who refuse to use the money from taxes effectively, who look down on you and laugh as they drink bottle after bottle of champagne, the grand total of which is equivalent to a month of your wages.

why isn’t your boss giving you a raise? they’re giving themself a bonus. ask who the ‘profit’ and ‘savings’ are going to, the ones that were announced a week after you were told that your wages were stagnating again. remember that you were denied a raise because of the increase in the cost of utilities for your workplace, the same increase in cost which is having you avoiding watching television and sitting in the dark.

our taxes have gone up. where is that money going? why are we paying more for a lesser quality of life? why are we denying ourselves social interaction, when politicians are building new swimming pools and going on multiple holidays. why is a single pint of milk over £1? why is filling up my car costing me £100? why is everything getting expensive and why is the quality only going down?

why are food banks a necessity for anyone in 2022?

Enough is Enough.

Evrart is a very intriguing character to me because on one hand he couldn't be shadier - he acts like a salesman trying to get you into his pyramid scheme, he's going to fund his syndicate through drug trafficking and he wants to start a war that will get many of his men killed - but on the other it makes you wonder... what if his plans work out and improve Martinaise. He asks you to open some guy's door and at first it seems suspicious but when you find out it belongs to Gary the Cryptofascist you don't feel as bad about it. The construction of the youth center is going to drive people away but at the same time it is a youth center in an incredibly impoverished area that has been forgotten by the Coalition. And even though he is the union leader, most if not all of the union members you see are fine with his behavior, willing to die for his ideas and proposals. Not to mention that, unlike Joyce and Wild Pines, the union is a force of good so it will always be preferable to support it than to defend a powerful capitalist company like Wild Pines. But, despite all that, he comes off as such a corrupt character, especially when compared to Joyce - who is so pleasant, cooperative and agreeable - that it makes you doubt and wonder if you're doing the right thing by siding with him.

please send love to my girlfriend she's been using her position as a union rep to talk about Palestine at work and she's been working on organizing a meeting at her workplace about Palestine+what unions can do in solidarity for weeks and management decided to ban it just the day before it was supposed to happen for bullshit reasons............... they have no legal ground but don't care as they are. management. and specifically management at a government agency with a very sionist and islamophobic manager lollllll they've been in constant legal battle since yesterday and now the union will probably have to cancel the meeting until they have time to prove they're legally allowed to do it GOD it sucks and she's feeling so sad and depressed about it all it just. is all so unfair how everything is a constant struggle. fuck this government btw!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what are your thoughts on hero of the people Evrart Claire? (he is helping me find my gun)

i have to be a ride or die union guy in disco elysium lest the ghosts of my steelworker and coal miner ancestors beat my ass but Evrart Claire is genuinely such an interesting character. Harry DuBois is like the LEAST qualified person to understand what’s going on but the mystery of whether Evrart (and Edgar, if he exists) is in it for himself or genuinely cares about the community is so compelling and i’m glad it never gets definitively solved. Like he’s obviously corrupt, but Martinaise is a place where playing by the rules just gets you beaten down by organizations like the RCM and the coalition and Wild Pines who don’t care about the rules. It’s clear that Evrart cares deeply about his vision for his community, and sees a lot of people (especially you, a cop) as chess pieces to achieve that goal. And he DOES! Starting the standoff-war with Wild Pines was a brilliant move, one that he also happens to benefit from immensely. Whether he is just a super corrupt union boss in it for himself or a communist playing 4d chess to start the revolution, we know one thing for sure: mr evrart is helping me find my gun.

The lawsuit arc will never fail to make me furious. FIREFIGHTERS HAVE UNIONS!!! If anything it would have been an issue mediated by the union!!