leftistcrap

[leftistcrap]

Two ongoing digital games bundles are offering more than 200 tabletop RPGs (among video games, soundtracks, books and other goodies) in order to raise money in support of the Palestine Children’s Relief Funds. The Palestinian Relief Bundle is being hosted on Itch.io, while the separate TTRPGs for Palestine Charity Bundle is taking place on Tiltify. For $8, the Palestinian Relief Bundle is offering nearly 400 total items, 103 of which are tabletop RPG systems, supplements and adventures. Mapmaking game Ex Novo is joined by the paranormal gunslinging satire FIST: Ultra Edition, along with Takuma Okada’s celebrated solo journaling game Alone on a Journey. Weird and dirty iconoclast game about money, the mind and everything else, Greed by Gormenghast is also on this list and is well worth a look. And if you’d rather keep it cosy and introspective, Cassi Mothwin’s Clean Spirit will get the whole group taking care of their domestic homes. The TTRPGs for Palestine Charity Bundle focuses solely on analogue games, providing nearly 200 tabletop games for $15. A full spreadsheet of the included titles can be viewed here and includes Nevyn Holme’s Gun&Slinger, where one player embodies an occult cowboy while the second plays their sentient, magical gun. Wendi Yu’s Here, There, Be Monsters! approaches monster hunting media from the other side of the camera with a decidedly queer lens and unapologetic politics. Makapatag’s Gubat Banwa is a lush and dynamic collision of wuxia media, fiercely romantic and tragic melodrama all set against the backdrop and folklore of The Philippines.

#signal boost

[leftistcrap]

Academics and scholars have vowed to boycott Columbia University over its repressive policies against protesting students in shocking scenes that have sparked a wider student movement for Palestine across the US.

Over the past 24 hours, student encampments have mushroomed in colleges - on the east coast, in particular - with more anticipated to begin over the next few days. Middle East Eye is aware of at least two other universities that are planning similar encampments which have not been announced yet.

Student encampments demanding divestment from companies involved in Israel's occupation of Palestinian land and "genocide" in Gaza have popped up at the Massachusetts Insitute of Technology (MIT); Tufts and Emerson in Boston; New York University and The New School in New York City; Vanderbilt in Nashville, Tennessee; Yale University in Connecticut; University of California-Berkeley; The University of Michigan; Washington University in St Louis; and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.[...]

The targeting of students, the attacks on academic freedom and the policing of speech at the university from administrators has also drawn condemnation from several academics and scholars with ties with Columbia.

On Monday, academic Marc Lamont Hill, presidential professor at CUNY, said he would be pulling out of his scheduled lecture from Columbia over the ongoing repression at the university.

Faculty at Columbia and Barnard College on Monday staged a walkout in support of students.

Hours earlier, the Graduate Center Program in English announced a full academic boycott of Columbia and Barnard College "until they reinstate suspended students and respond to their demands: transparency, divestment, liberation".

Several others have released public statements cutting ties with the prestigious university.

22 Apr 24

#united states #palestine #israel #zionism #colonialism #imperialism #racism #genocide #censorship #solidarity

[leftistcrap]

direct action means someone actually DOES the thing and accomplishes the goal themselves

so like, if your goal is to shut down a prison, doing actions, however bold or strategic or successful, to pressure the government to shut it down, is definitionally not direct action.

It's indirect—your group didn't shut it down directly, you did something to get the government shut it down.

in this example, direct action would be storming the prison and releasing the prisoners. that's you actually directly achieving your goal.

sometimes indirect actions are the smart play! they may be the most effective thing you can do in your specific circumstances with your specific resources.

that does not make them "direct action" though.

[leftistcrap]

"We heard from employees who, because of noncompetes, were stuck in abusive workplaces," she said. "One person noted when an employer merged with an organization whose religious principles conflicted with their own, a noncompete kept the worker locked in place and unable to freely switch to a job that didn't conflict with their religious practices."

These accounts, she said, "pointed to the basic reality of how robbing people of their economic liberty also robs them of all sorts of other freedoms." The FTC estimates about 30 million people, or one in five American workers, from minimum wage earners to CEOs, are bound by noncompetes. It says the policy change could lead to increased wages totaling nearly $300 billion per year by encouraging people to swap jobs freely.

The ban, which will take effect later this year, carves out an exception for existing noncompetes that companies have given their senior executives, on the grounds that these agreements are more likely to have been negotiated. The FTC says employers should not enforce other existing noncompete agreements.

The vote was 3 to 2 along party lines. The dissenting commissioners, Melissa Holyoke and Andrew Ferguson, argued that the FTC was overstepping the boundaries of its power. Holyoke predicted the ban would be challenged in court and eventually struck down.

Shortly after the vote, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it would sue the FTC to block the rule, calling it unnecessary, unlawful and a blatant power grab.

Huh [23 Apr 24]

#united states #labor rights

[leftistcrap]

Another month another set of hollow promises about having our rent covered from people that could do so easily. I'm gonna delete my other fundraising post because its more important that we get rent covered. We're two disabled trans women (and a silly cat) building a new internet, please help us survive

Venmo: agief

Cashapp: $cmder

Paypal: https://paypal.me/agieocean

$0/$1750 raised

#signal boost

[leftistcrap]

New post, old one lost traction.

I'm a trans woman in rural oregon, and my partner and I just recently (april 4) had a baby in a way that was stressful, expensive, and a bit earlier than we were expecting due to a sudden health crisis. I have recently started a new job but it is unfortunately paid monthly and I won't get my first check until May 5. My partner had to begin leave early and although Oregon does have paid leave through the state the system to actually get that process going is extremely dysfunctional and we arent expecting to be paid through that system until sometime after their leave is already over.

We're mostly doing ok and yall have helped us so much, but we did burn a few hundred dollars in gas going to 3 different hospitals in under a week, not to mention incidental expenses we dont usually accrue like takeout food and whatnot while they were hospitalized.

We're extremely grateful for everyone who has helped us thus far and please, if you've already helped us out dont feel obligated to do so again, but we are stretched fairly thin for April due to these circumstances, so any financial assistance possible would be incredible.

Thanks so much everyone, love y'all.

paypal.me/daveigh

Venmo: @ v0id-queen (with a zero)

#signal boost

[leftistcrap]

Lindt, Mondelēz, and Nestlé together raked in nearly $4 billion in profits from chocolate sales in 2023. Hershey’s confectionary profits totaled $2 billion last year. The four corporations paid out on average 97 percent of their total net profits to shareholders in 2023. The collective fortunes of the Ferrero and Mars families, who own the two biggest private chocolate corporations, surged to $160.9 billion during the same period. This is more than the combined GDPs of Ghana and Ivory Coast, which supply most cocoa beans. Decades of low prices have made farmers poorer and hampered their ability to hire workers or invest in their farms, limiting bean yield. Old cocoa trees are particularly vulnerable to disease and extreme weather. Many farmers are abandoning cocoa for other crops, or selling their land to illegal miners.

#ghana #ivory coast #united states #italy #switzerland #colonialism #imperialism #capitalism

[leftistcrap]

The months since October 7 have aggravated the most extreme campus panic I have witnessed. To judge by the American mass media, the campus is the most urgent scene of political struggle in the world. What is happening “on campus” often seems of greater concern than what is happening in Gaza, where every single university campus has been razed by the IDF. When all the Palestinian dead have been counted, it seems likely that these months will be recorded as having inflamed a campus panic no less intense than the one that accompanied the Vietnam War. The correspondences between that moment and this one were unmistakable to those of us who watched, in person or through screens, as the NYPD hauled 108 Columbia University students off of their institution’s campus on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Like the campus panic of the 1960s–70s, this one is aroused by the spectacle of young people speaking out against the inhumane actions of the US and its imperial client states, as well as against the complacency and complicity of their own educational institutions. Now, as then, the act of protesting against injustice undergoes a curious transfiguration in the media, which refashions this action into the object of frantic scrutiny, surveillance, and suppression.

Harvard University professor Walter Johnson, in an essay about experience of working at Harvard since October 7 titled “Living Inside a Psyop”—the psyop being, precisely, “the campus”—calls this the “two-step maneuver” of campus panic: (1) Look over here, (2) Do not look over there. Overreact to this, overlook that.[1] Look at the US, not at Palestine. Look up at what is happening in the clouds over Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a plane trails a banner declaring, “HARVARD HATES JEWS”; do not look at what is happening on the ground in Gaza, do not look at the masses of the displaced, the bereaved, the starving, the wounded, the sick, the dying, and certainly do not look at the dead, murdered with artillery supplied by the US government and funded by American citizens’ taxes. When student protestors chant, “From the river to the sea,” hear a speculative antisemitic canard; do not hear a reference to an actual river, an actual sea, an actual and ongoing history of dispossession and occupation.

#united states #palestine #israel #zionism #colonialism #imperialism #racism #genocide

[leftistcrap]

i got cut off my health insurance without warning yesterday. there are meds i can't go without while i'm trying to get back on it. so things are going to get very expensive.

if you like my art and wouldn't mind helpin out with that a bit, here's my ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/neonbuck

#signal boost

[leftistcrap]

Three Barnard College students, including US lawmaker Ilhan Omar's daughter Isra Hirsi, have been suspended for participating in a Gaza solidarity protest encampment at Columbia University in New York City. The suspension of the three students came as university administrators called on the New York Police Department (NYPD) to dismantle the tents that had been set up earlier on Wednesday. Several students told MEE that heavily armed police dressed in riot gear entered the university lawns on Thursday to tear down the 50-plus tents. By late Thursday afternoon, the camps were gone and at least 108 students were arrested, including Hirsi.

Continue Reading.

#united states #palestine #israel #zionism #colonialism #imperialism #racism #genocide #censorship

[leftistcrap]

Don Wilson:

"I have noticed a significant increase in general laxity about PPE since COVID masking has been dropped. A significant % of OR staff (esp anesthesia & RTs) not bothering to mask inside actual OR even when sterile fields are open & set up.

Nurses inside OR generally much more consistent (they directly handle & set up sterile equipment).

I’ve seen unmasked anesthesiologists & RTs for emergency CS & gyne cases… I don’t get it. We mask to prevent contamination of open surgical wounds. Just because COVID mask mandates are over doesn’t mean INSIDE an operating room is a mask free zone.

Used to be that it was unthinkable to be unmasked inside an active OR. Even in the hallways during active OR time. It’s a sad commentary on the impact of the antimask stupidity spilling over to areas where it can impact quality & safety of the patient care environment.

I’m just one person who chooses to be fastidious about masking inside the hospital, I can’t take on the entire system. But it’s discouraging to see & I wonder how many patients go on to have nosocomial surgical infections because of relaxed cultures around masking now."

https://x.com/heiltsuk_paleo/status/1780326358314614784

#united states #covid

[leftistcrap]

#united states #palestine #israel #zionism #racism #nazism #antisemitism #colonialism #imperialism #genocide

[leftistcrap]

Hello guys i have good news and bad news.

The good news that I'm finally in Egypt now with my youngest brother and the bad news is my mother and my other brother with his wife still in Rafah waiting to evacute to Egypt.

I feel so sad and depressed for leaving them i should stayed and get out together.

#signal boost

[leftistcrap]

there's a public consultation on sunak's stupid ''no more sick leave work yourselves to death'' idea which closes 8th July 2024.

uk people you know the drill: polite but firm about how this is economically and socially a stupid fucking idea

non uk people please share for visibility

#united kingdom #ableism #capitalism #signal boost

[leftistcrap]

To fast-track the bipartisan legislation, House Speaker Mike Johnson combined it with a bill to allow the US to confiscate Russian assets, then bundled it into a package containing aid bills for Taiwain, Israel, and Ukraine, which have all been delayed for months amid congressional infighting.

20 Apr 24

#united states #china #censorship #capitalism #sinophobia

[leftistcrap]

I suppose there's just no getting around the e-begging - I had to go to the emergency room on Monday because I was, for good reason, under the impression that I was experiencing a life-or-death medical emergency. This turned out to not be the case, and what I was dealing with ended up being unpleasant but not life-threatening, but now I have to pay for hospital fees and a litany of tests!

Any financial help at all would be massively helpful as I deal with paying off what is going to be, conservatively, two to three months of my current income for the crime of not wanting to die if I can help it.

[paypal.me]

#signal boost

[leftistcrap]

i wrote this in the notes of another post originally and am copy + pasting it here because im right but "tell the cops nothing, tell the doctors everything" is such a stupid ass fucking abled take. doctors engage in policing idk how to explain to yall that some people cannot in fact just tell doctors everything without it putting them at risk

like im not gonna go into the myriad of ways this is bs but like a quick example is i cant tell my doctors about my substance use issues because if i get that listed on my medical records it will actively endanger me. It will impact how I'm treated in emergency situations and will get me labeled as "drug seeking" when i try to get other issues dealt with.

i dont say this to scare people but because this is actually important information for people to have. if a medical professional claims this isnt an issue, they are NOT "one of the good ones". they are either straight up lying or theyre utterly unaware, which is frankly not better. doctors are cops. never forget it

like YES tell ur doctor abt being sexually active but stop saying "tell the cops nothing and the doctor everything" before i start killing in cold blood

#ableism #united states