crystalau-em

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date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.

#fiction #mythology #remix #omg this is perf #so wholesome

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very cute QUAIL making QUAIL NOISES

#eargasm #quail #bird

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Neat shadows

#parallax #stark #light and shadow

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Sometimes they were almost beautiful, if you didn’t think about the repercussions of their collective presence, about how they were just one big walking signpost that read “it has all gone to shit, and nothing can be good again”.

#existential horror #grainy #bright

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Rauðisandur, Iceland ph. by Tony Prower

#nature #blur

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I don't have this job anymore, and it may have changed since I worked there, but the best job I ever had along the lines you are describing was a warehouse receiver.

The most demeaning thing is the security checkpoint entering and leaving the warehouse at the start and end of each shift. The most frustrating thing is the strict adherence to schedules and use of time clocks.

Second most painful for me was mandatory overtime during the holiday season up to 64 hours per week spread over 7 days, and the 1.5 hour commute each way.

Job consists of large pallets of merchandise set at your station which you then unpack, check to make sure the number of items in each box is correct, that they are the correct items, weighing and measuring a sampling, making sure they are all properly secured in plastic bags, then assigning them a physical location for storage or sending them off to the troubleshooting division, then passing off your completed racks of merchandise to the putting-things-away division.

You have to punch the electronic clock for what company's merch you're working with and the task subset you're working on to determine your quotas.

As long as you meet your quota of items processed per hour, the management doesn't care what you do or how you do it. I was literally told by the management team as a whole on day one "The less we have to see of each other, the more we are going to like you."

The trainers deliberately teach you a long-form method of working through the computer system to complete your tasks as a test to see who manages to figure out how to be more efficient. When you start you will feel like you can't possibly keep up, but once you've discovered all the shortcuts you can usually be over your quota halfway through a shift at which point you get paid by the hour to amuse yourself as long as you somehow look like you're still working.

You are allowed to go to the bathroom whenever you want. You are allowed to dance and stim and hum quietly. You are allowed to listen to audio of your choice in 1 ear. If you wanna be left alone you will be left alone. The management only interrupts your flow for actually important reasons.

Most of your time is spent lifting and counting and sorting, sometimes folding and bagging, and very occasionally cognitive troubleshooting or social and emotional labor to resolve an issue quickly and return to blessed isolation. Oh, and the daily mandatory scheduled breaks and lunches everyone has to take together and therefore be social.

Whenever you see the merch you've worked on out in public you get the satisfaction of knowing there is a relatively high likelyhood that it passed through your hands on it's way to that place or person. You get to interact with a portion the internal processes that allow a global distribution system to function.

Once every couple months there is a big meeting where cash prizes are awarded to people who excelled at particular aspects of the job, like attendance, %over quota, etc. You are never pressured into trying for these prizes, they are purely a surprise incentive. People don't discuss them and aren't competitive about them. You aren't even told of their existence until you attend the first of these meetings.

They new hire only seasonal workers through temp agencies in the fall, have lay-offs in spring, then offer full time to their favorite re-hires as steady demand increases and positions open up.

When I talk about wanting a job where I’ll be hired to do discreet tasks, I’m only illustrating this as an MVP. This is an example of a job where I could 1) create a lot of value for someone, and 2) not be miserable.

However, there are lots of potential styles of employment that I could do without being miserable! “Not being miserable” is my only condition. I don’t mind having a low salary since I live cheaply. I wouldn’t mind a lot of hours conditional on me not being miserable during them.

But being miserable at work is no better (and in many ways worse) than being miserable at home, so “Just go be miserable at work instead” is not a viable solution to my situation. If every day I broke down at the thought of going to work, I’d be hooked on drugs and destroying the life I so carefully built in no time.

Back when I wanted to die every day that I was forced to go to school, I definitely would have gotten hooked on drugs given the chance, and in the absence of that I found myriad ways to hurt myself so I could be “sick enough” to not get marched off there. I feel like I at least owe it to a potential employer to not bait and switch by showing up bright eyed and bushy tailed, only to leave them with a suicidal shell of a person a few months in.

But it’s reasonably easy to define what not being miserable at work would mean. It would mean flexibility. That’s it. That’s the only thing I’d need. Specifically, the flexibility to act differently when I am different. To solve problems as I am best suited to on that day given the circumstances of the day. To not be forced to pretend a particular set of emotions all day. To be able to talk to the boss about how to do something differently. To be trusted to use the bathroom without asking for permission.

I really liked the story of the office that held a funeral for a coworker’s fish. On the one hand, I would never ask my coworkers to hold a funeral for my pet. On the other hand, the fact that they were willing to is evidence of flexibility beyond anything I would ask for. So if I were in such an office, I would feel constantly relaxed, because I would know I had more leeway than I would ever need.

I want a job where I can relax. That is the entirety of it. It’s not about the money or the prestige or what specific role I’d perform in. I could do a decent job of just about anything. The only thing I care about is that, when I’m at work, I can breath easily. That even if I disagree with my boss, there will be enough time and space to come to an agreement without being yelled at. (And I’m not even interested in being demanding! By “come to an agreement” I mean “be allowed to do the work slightly differently; on the order of using more comfortable gloves”.)

So far, I haven’t been able to figure out where to find a job that will let me use more comfortable gloves. Which is baffling because, coming from the third world, my background is “all of them”. Sure, a lot of things about working in the Caribbean suck, but the specific problem of There Are Rules Here was pretty minor outside of the government. Here it’s like people can’t possibly believe you might do the right thing if you don’t do it EXACTLY the same way they would, while having the right emotions throughout.

Except maybe there are jobs that don’t do this! But I’m not sure where to look. The obvious places seem to be gig economy apps (which generally find other ways to screw you through platform inflexibility) and software (where the two tracks are spending money I don’t have to get accredited to be hired by a real company, or working for a tiny one with poor management practices for 80 hours a week).

The other Real Jobs I’ve looked at have generally required extensive emotional labour, micromanagement, absence of trust, and a general disposition toward creating alcoholics. Having looked at the research, I know that having a job with an absence of feeling control/self-direction is as bad for my health (physical and mental) as unemployment. What I’d really like is to go back to being a librarian - except in America you need a ~masters in library science~.

So, that’s the thing. That’s my criteria. “Not being miserable”, which cashes out to having the flexibility to act slightly differently from day to day as long as I get all of my work done. If anyone knows of any companies or industries that are more interested in employees getting the work done than in how many ways they can distrust and degrade them, please let me know. I will happily walk miles handing out resumes for the opportunity to both work and breath in the same place.

#rambling #advice #past me's favorite job #prolly too much detail

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I really wish there was an easy way for me to automatically isolate vocals for every piece of media I consume to be played immediately afterward. This is so helpful to my processing issues! Like, I can do it in my head by playing the thing over and over filtering out all but specific parts, but the process takes forever and is very lossy and this hack would decrease my cognitive load enough to allow me to explore much faster. There us so much good stuff being made all the time that I am missing out on by being slow to find it.

Killer Queen - Queen (Isolated Vocals)

fuck. fuck.

#isolation #clarity #audio processing issues #language processing issues #explore vs exploit #brain hacking

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#transience #long term projects #patience #coordination porn

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Falcao Lucas:  New Work

Cross Connect favorites Tânia Falcão and Avelar Lucas are a married couple from Portugal who, as they describe it “draw and animate stuff”.  In addition to much high profile commercial work, their animations have been featured in a Maroon 5 music video and their short film ‘Ontem’ is being shown at many film festivals around the world.  You can find links at http://falcaolucas.com/

More unique art on Cross Connect Magazine: Twitter || Facebook|| Instagram Posted by David 

#transformation #recursion #infinities #first three are okay #the rest are wonderful! #just my opinion

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music political compass 2.0

#confusion #apparently I'm a little bit all over the place #but mostly left #like usual

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wait for it, i promise it’s worth it

#gorgeous #vaporwave #nature

[crystalau-em]

saw a video of a peacock flying and realized I had never seen that before I thought all they did was flex

#mental imagery #metaphor

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NASA has released new images of Jupiter, taken by the Juno Spacecraft.

#jupiter #planets #awe #flowing

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THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS THE UNCANNY VALLEY

YOU GUYS ARE JUST NEED TO DO MORE PRACTICE SEEING THEM AS CUTE

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#our song #i really really needed this in my life #that's the first time #in over a decade #i've been able to listen #to anything even resembling #evanescence #when your girlfriend #wants this to be #run #remix #gregorian #music

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Sunset Fire Opal, The following is a Mexican fire opal. When illuminated just right, it looks like a sunset above the clouds. This picture was taken by Jeff Schultz. 

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防人     -     https://twitter.com/sakimori_st30