nothingisliteral

[nothingisliteral]

Why are you fat?

cause everytime i fuck your dad he makes me a sandwich

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men aren’t real. they were invented to sell more uquiz

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#YEAH

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“When I was 26, I went to Indonesia and the Philippines to do research for my first book, No Logo. I had a simple goal: to meet the workers making the clothes and electronics that my friends and I purchased. And I did. I spent evenings on concrete floors in squalid dorm rooms where teenage girls—sweet and giggly—spent their scarce nonworking hours. Eight or even 10 to a room. They told me stories about not being able to leave their machines to pee. About bosses who hit. About not having enough money to buy dried fish to go with their rice.

They knew they were being badly exploited—that the garments they were making were being sold for more than they would make in a month. One 17-year-old said to me: “We make computers, but we don’t know how to use them.”

So one thing I found slightly jarring was that some of these same workers wore clothing festooned with knockoff trademarks of the very multinationals that were responsible for these conditions: Disney characters or Nike check marks. At one point, I asked a local labor organizer about this. Wasn’t it strange—a contradiction?

It took a very long time for him to understand the question. When he finally did, he looked at me like I was nuts. You see, for him and his colleagues, individual consumption wasn’t considered to be in the realm of politics at all. Power rested not in what you did as one person, but what you did as many people, as one part of a large, organized, and focused movement. For him, this meant organizing workers to go on strike for better conditions, and eventually it meant winning the right to unionize. What you ate for lunch or happened to be wearing was of absolutely no concern whatsoever.

This was striking to me, because it was the mirror opposite of my culture back home in Canada. Where I came from, you expressed your political beliefs—firstly and very often lastly—through personal lifestyle choices. By loudly proclaiming your vegetarianism. By shopping fair trade and local and boycotting big, evil brands.

These very different understandings of social change came up again and again a couple of years later, once my book came out. I would give talks about the need for international protections for the right to unionize. About the need to change our global trading system so it didn’t encourage a race to the bottom. And yet at the end of those talks, the first question from the audience was: “What kind of sneakers are OK to buy?” “What brands are ethical?” “Where do you buy your clothes?” “What can I do, as an individual, to change the world?”

Fifteen years after I published No Logo, I still find myself facing very similar questions. These days, I give talks about how the same economic model that superpowered multinationals to seek out cheap labor in Indonesia and China also supercharged global greenhouse-gas emissions. And, invariably, the hand goes up: “Tell me what I can do as an individual.” Or maybe “as a business owner.”

The hard truth is that the answer to the question “What can I, as an individual, do to stop climate change?” is: nothing. You can’t do anything. In fact, the very idea that we—as atomized individuals, even lots of atomized individuals—could play a significant part in stabilizing the planet’s climate system, or changing the global economy, is objectively nuts. We can only meet this tremendous challenge together. As part of a massive and organized global movement.

The irony is that people with relatively little power tend to understand this far better than those with a great deal more power. The workers I met in Indonesia and the Philippines knew all too well that governments and corporations did not value their voice or even their lives as individuals. And because of this, they were driven to act not only together, but to act on a rather large political canvas. To try to change the policies in factories that employ thousands of workers, or in export zones that employ tens of thousands. Or the labor laws in an entire country of millions. Their sense of individual powerlessness pushed them to be politically ambitious, to demand structural changes.

In contrast, here in wealthy countries, we are told how powerful we are as individuals all the time. As consumers. Even individual activists. And the result is that, despite our power and privilege, we often end up acting on canvases that are unnecessarily small—the canvas of our own lifestyle, or maybe our neighborhood or town. Meanwhile, we abandon the structural changes—the policy and legal work— to others.”

- Naomi Klein

[nothingisliteral]

i truly cannot believe someone accused mitski of keeping them as a child sex slave (that her dad BOUGHT FOR HER AS A HS GRADUATION GIFT) in her SUNY purchase dorm as like a 19 year old and not only did y’all buy that shit but also had the fucking nerve to lecture people for “celebrity worship” as though this moderately famous indie singer was kylie jenner or something all the while said person keep creating a more and more fucking ridiculous story which included a claim of suffering from stroke-level brain damage and memory loss from being pistol whipped and assassination attempts from their family members AND working with the FBI to expose their parents.....and then deleted and y’all were like “well leave them alone this is a normal response to some other trauma” ???????????????????????

#no no do go on #i need more information

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ladies! is there honestly anything sexier than

bread

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Not really related to my struggle with mental health but appreciated

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ya know. maybe i should just. write fanfic.

#i speak

[nothingisliteral]

is it just bc im a writeblr Veteran of sorts or is writeblr like. boring now?? everyone just does the same stuff. not that there’s anything wrong with trends but its like holy shit yall how is this a community *based* on creativity and we all just do the same exact stuff like please i’m begging yall. you don’t need a chapbook. you don’t need to make graphic based poetry like ur #fav. just do what feels right instead of copying everyone else I’M BEGGING YALL use the brain of creative juices that I KNOW YOU HAVE!!!! MAKE YOUR OWN TRENDS. BE THE BLUEPRINT. STOP WRITEBLR BANDWAGON 2020

#hahaha now its writeblr bandwagon 2021 #you cant stop me

[nothingisliteral]

apparetly it's available on a couple services! all cost money tho sadly. i know it used to be available on netflix but it must've gotten thrown out because of unpopularity :((

Comfort Films Tag Game

@ashen-crest tagged me to post 7 comfort films and then tag 7 people. Since the blog she tagged is my writing blog, I’ll be posting it here. ^_^

Ahead of time, my 7 people I’m tagging are @lordkingsmith @jade-island-lives @maxgraybooks @wyldlynxx @mrs-raven-writes @books-of-lunacy @nothingisliteral @missionkitty

My films are:

Brave

The Martian Child

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

My Idiot Brother

Mystery Men

pretty much any Marvel movie

the animated Flashpoint Paradox movie

#just chatting #isabellaspeaks

[nothingisliteral]

thanks for tagging me <3

picking my top 7 is... really hard lol, but here goes, in no certain order.

The Half of it

The Help

The Princess Bride

Ella Enchanted

The Princess and the Frog

Spiderman: Homecoming

Dolly Parton: Here I Am

and for tags... @aelenko @adaparkwrites @lanawritesalittle @magic-is-something-we-create

Comfort Films Tag Game

@ashen-crest tagged me to post 7 comfort films and then tag 7 people. Since the blog she tagged is my writing blog, I’ll be posting it here. ^_^

Ahead of time, my 7 people I’m tagging are @lordkingsmith @jade-island-lives @maxgraybooks @wyldlynxx @mrs-raven-writes @books-of-lunacy @nothingisliteral @missionkitty

My films are:

Brave

The Martian Child

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies

My Idiot Brother

Mystery Men

pretty much any Marvel movie

the animated Flashpoint Paradox movie

#tag game

[nothingisliteral]

this is my first time on tumblr desktop and... boy is it different than mobile

#isabellaspeaks

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YES!!!!! i love being mentally ill *starts barking*

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Pretty fucked up that shrimps can see all those colors and they dont even bother to draw anime fanart