“In the instance an employer makes an illegal request for a photograph as part of a job application, you may submit a complaint to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.” Successful violation fee collections are paid partially to the one who suffered the violation, which in many cases exceeds a year of work at these shit jobs. There’s only two weak points to a corporation, and those are in the budget and in the supply chain. Hit them where it hurts.
Fucking word.
Learn your rights!
AUTO REBLOG IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS THE 1ST TIME AROUND. It is important to KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.
I was interested in this because as a new U.S. resident I had many companies ask for proof of residency/citizenship *and* age in phone screen which are both illegal practices, so I did some research. Here’s some important info:
Some states have their own anti-discrimination laws and agencies, but you’re always covered by federal level by EEOC. You don’t need to submit info to both fed or state, submit with either and they will open relevant case with the other.
They’re very strict on timing. Some states require you to file within 180 days of the discrimination happening (Some states allow up to 300 days).
Multiple things have to happen within those 180 days: start the process by submitting an inquiry online and after that there will be an in-person interview at your local EEOC field office, after which you can submit an actual charge of discrimination.
EEOC will help expedite those things if you have 30 days or less in that timeline.
EEOC collected $404 million for discrimination victims in 2010 over a record of almost 100,000 individual cases (average of $4,000 per case — so some cases will receive less than this).
having cash is like having secret money. like whos gonna find out i’m buying tacos with this crisp $20 bill??? not my bank account, that’s for sure
That’s literally why the government wants to stop it
Defend cash. The existence of a cash economy is so so necessary for the survival of every population that the government wants to kill. Homeless people, sex workers, undocumented people, addicts. They all need cash to survive.
Right now, you have to be a team player. You cannot complain about AI being used to fuck over your industry and then turn around and use it on somebody else’s industry.
No AI book covers. No making funny little videos using deepfakes to make an actor say stuff they never did. No AI translation of your book. No AI audiobooks. No AI generated moodboards or fancasts or any of that shit. No feeding someone else’s unfinished work into Chat GPT “because you just want to know how it ends*” (what the fuck is wrong with you?). No playing around with AI generated 3D assets you can’t ascertain the origin of. None of it. And stop using AI filters on your selfies or ESPECIALLY using AI on somebody else’s photo or artwork.
We are at a crossroad and at a time of historically shitty conditions for working artists across ALL creative fields, and we gotta stick together. And you know what? Not only is standing up for other artists against exploitation and theft the morally correct thing to do, it’s also the professionally smartest thing to do, too. Because the corporations will fuck you over too, and then they do it’s your peers that will hold you up. And we have a long memory.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking “your peers” are only the people in your own industry. Writers can’t succeed without artists, editors, translators, etc making their books a reality. Illustrators depend on writers and editors for work. Video creators co-exist with voice actors and animators and people who do 3D rendering etc. If you piss off everyone else but the ones who do the exact same job you do, congratulations! You’ve just sunk your career.
Always remember: the artists who succeed in this career path, the ones who get hired or are sought after for commissions or collaboration, they aren’t the super talented “fuck you I got mine” types. They’re the one who show up to do the work and are easy to get along with.
And they especially are not scabs.
*that’s not even how it ends that’s a statistically likely and creatively boring way for it to end. Why would you even want to read that.
embracing the patterned ambiguity of gender and sex as more or less social constructs can grant you so much more precision in thinking about so many concepts in science.
like, if there was a study (and I’m just making this up as an example) showing women suffer from mosquito bites more than men do
you could do the ~“Gender Critical”~ thing and go “see!? mosquitoes get it!!”
OR
you could go “that’s interesting” and start asking more questions, like:
is this data self-reported? controlled?
were they studying the women or the mosquitoes?
did the study use methods that would let you tell the difference between “being bitten more often” and “noticing bites more often”?
did the study include any trans people and were their results any different? if yes were they on HRT or not?
how similar were the men and women in aspects other than gender? do we know their social class, jobs, diets, blood types?
because in fact the study i made up just then could lead to a huge variety of conclusions. from my description above you can’t tell the difference between studies that show:
mosquitoes are attracted to people with higher estrogen levels
mosquitoes are opportunistic and women spend more time near mosquito habitats for sociocultural reasons
every gender gets bitten about the same amount but men are socialised to pay less attention to physical discomfort so more of them don’t notice minor bites compared to women (and by more we mean like 60-40, this is a bell curve thing)
we accidentally got heaps of women in the study that have the mosquito’s favourite blood type and not so for the men, oops
mosquitoes are attracted to people with more x and y in their diets, which is currently mostly women for, again, largely sociocultural reasons
etc etc etc
you’re just not going to understand actual Gender Science, and therefore reality, if you can’t put “hmm, but what do they mean by woman this time” in your mental toolkit in a relatively neutral way.
Honestly this is a great way of presenting the kind of scientific literacy that is needed in an era of clickbait headlines and sound bites and facts that turn into memes; so much science “news” as reported by mass media distills nuanced studies into easily quotable and shocking one-liners that generally ignore the context behind the statistic.
seeing everyone just mindlessly sign up for threads despite all the clear warning signs feels like I’m living in Sailor Moon or a magical girl anime episode where the Monster of the Day just set up shop over night and their product is literally draining your lifeforce for the Dark Kingdom but people keep going there
Gee, Tumblr would probably really hate it if you shared and spread this damning article … To the surprise of absolutely none of Tumblr’s LGBTQ users, it turns out the independent NYC human rights agency Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) found that Tumblr’s ham-fisted adult content ban in December 2018 disproportionately targeted LGBTQ users. The CCHR’s investigation revealed Tumbler’s moderation algorithms is demonstrably biased against queer content. As part of the settlement, Tumblr was obligated to review their prejudicial anti-gay moderation policies. Even more mortifyingly, they’ve also had to hire an expert on sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) issues and provide unconscious bias training to their moderators. I frankly doubt Tumblr has learned a thing from this humbling experience. Just recently the Tumblr algorithm flagged three ancient posts of mine as violating their terms. All three “offenders” were vintage homoerotic beefcake images (softcore by modern standards) roughly 50 – 65-years-old by Bruce of Los Angeles, Bob Mizer and Tom of Finland. (These are of course pioneering queer artists who routinely faced censorship and imprisonment in the fifties and sixties. Plus ca change!). They’ve been visible on my page - corrupting viewers - for years at this point. I appealed all three immediately. Only the Tom of Finland one was approved. The other two are now hidden. So, they haven’t learned much. Apparently, Tumblr – who loves to declare how hip, youthful, inclusive and progressive their values are - wants to restore trust with their queer users. I’d recommend we remember their hypocrisy when Pride rolls around and Tumblr splashes rainbow flags everywhere and attempts to pink wash their image.
In honour of Pride Month, this is worth a reblog! Don’t buy into Tumblr’s hypocritical “pink washing.”
I think this article should be shared. But don’t overlook this part:
The deal appears to have happened largely because of WordPress.com owner Automattic, which acquired Tumblr from Verizon in 2019 and apparently cooperated closely with the CCHR. “I think that was a turning point in the investigation,” says CCHR attorney Alberto Rodriguez. Automattic had revised the original system to add more human oversight even before the settlement. Under its ownership, Tumblr has also attempted to reconcile with LGBTQ users that departed as part of a larger community exodus.
Automattic bought tumblr, and immediately started to try to undo the mistakes of the past but are blocked by a sex-negative and LGBT-hating world.
DDoS Attack Against AO3: Correcting Misinformation
Normally I don’t make any posts like this, but I have an interest in cybersecurity and sadly I’ve seen people are being really ignorant about this recent DDoS attack against the site AO3 (Archive of Our Own), so I thought I’d remind people of a few things:
Anonymous Sudan appears to have no actual link to Sudan at all, or to any previous hacktivist groups that once operated there. This masquerade is probably based in anti-immigration and other racist sentiments, and utilizing those sentiments in other people to scare people and set up Muslims and Sudanese people as a target. This should be obvious from the language used in their note, but this was already known prior to this particular attack.
This so-called Anonymous Sudan has actually been very active recently—remember that they claimed to attack Reddit, Flickr, Riot Games, a huge number of Microsoft web portals like OneDrive and Outlook, etc. before AO3, so AO3 was totally a logical target for them since they’ve gone after smaller entities before. DDoS attacks like this are easy for any script kiddie to set up, so it’s not weird that they’d go for a smaller target like this.
Honestly this group of posers probably just wants money, everybody. They sent AO3 a ransom note asking for Bitcoin (and just in case people don’t know, do not pay a ransom if at all possible if this ever happens to you).
My advice to people who’ve noticed this attack is two-fold: calm down since this is part of a larger pattern that has literally resulted in basically no loss for the end-user of any of the sites, and… I don’t really know a better way to put this, but don’t believe everything you read. A religiously-motivated hate group wouldn’t use terms like “LGBTQ+” and “smuts,” and it’s so blatantly obvious that the timing of every single one of these attacks is being used to smear Muslims and Sudanese people if you think about current events for like. One second. And if you look up Anonymous Sudan, you’ll see their string of attacks and how all experts know that they have nothing to do with Sudan at all. Even AO3 itself told everybody that the group is lying about their motivations… though I think I’d go further than that personally because even their name itself is almost certainly a total sham.
To be clear: this post isn’t targeted at anyone in particular. I’ve just seen a lot of people falling for this overall or not realizing this is part of a pattern, and I also wanted to remind everyone that this isn’t anything to be concerned about. What is something to be concerned about is not doing research or thinking critically and then unwittingly spreading racist ideas.
