i would eat an entire horse skeleton if it were brightly colored and peach-flavored
setfabulazerstomaximumcaptain:
Prison Labor Exposed: From Starbucks to Microsoft - A sampling of what US prisoners make & for whom
May 21, 2013Tens of thousands of US inmates are paid from pennies to minimum wage—minus fines and victim compensation—for everything from grunt work to firefighting to specialized labor.
The breaded chicken patty your child bites into at school may have been made by a worker earning twenty cents an hour, not in a faraway country, but by a member of an invisible American workforce: prisoners. At the UnionCorrectional Facility, a maximum security prison in Florida, inmates from a nearby lower-security prison manufacture tons of processed beef, chicken and pork for Prison Rehabilitative Industries and Diversified Enterprises (PRIDE), a privately held non-profit corporation that operates the state’s forty-one work programs. In addition to processed food, PRIDE’s website reveals an array of products for sale through contracts with private companies, from eyeglasses to office furniture, to be shipped from a distribution center in Florida to businesses across the US. PRIDE boasts that its work programs are “designed to provide vocational training, to improve prison security, to reduce the cost of state government, and to promote the rehabilitation of the state inmates.”
And Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens).Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup “entirely consistent with our mission statement.”
Texas inmates produce brooms and brushes, bedding and mattresses, toilets, sinks, showers, and bullwhips.
In Texas, prisoners make officers’ duty belts, handcuff cases, and prison-cell accessories. California convicts make gun containers, creepers (to peek under vehicles), and human-silhouette targets.
A stitch in time: California inmates sew their own garb. In the 1990s, subcontractor Third Generation hired 35 female South Carolina inmates to sew lingerie and leisure wear for Victoria’s Secret and JCPenney. In 1997, a California prison put two men in solitary for telling journalists they were ordered to replace “Made in Honduras” labels on garments with “Made in the usa.”
Open wide: At California’s prison dental laboratory, inmates produce a complete prosthesis selection, including custom trays, try-ins, bite blocks, and dentures.
Constructive criticism: Prisoners in for burglary, battery, drug and gun charges, and escape helped build a Wal-Mart distribution center in Wisconsin in 2005, until community uproar halted the program. (Company policy says, “Forced or prison labor will not be tolerated by Wal-Mart.”)
On call: Its inmate call centers are the “best kept secret in outsourcing,” Unicor boasts. In 1994, a contractor for gop congressional hopeful Jack Metcalf hired Washington state prisoners to call and remind voters he was pro-death penalty. Metcalf, who prevailed, said he never knew.
Federal Prison Industries, a.k.a. Unicor, says that in addition to soldiers’ uniforms, bedding, shoes, helmets, and flak vests, inmates have “produced missile cables (including those used on the Patriot missiles during the Gulf War)” and “wiring harnesses for jets and tanks.” In 1997, according to Prison Legal News, Boeing subcontractor MicroJet had prisoners cutting airplane components, paying $7 an hour for work that paid union wages of $30 on the outside.
AND THIS
IS WHY
THE WAR ON DRUGS
AND REAGAN
CAN FUCKING BURN FOREVER
FOR FUCKING EVER
and it is done. 16 days of beard, and my world still spins. femininity intact, fierceness solidified. #mermaidism #hairenvy #fatgirlvanity #mermaidqueenofneworleens
sneak peek
No. Fat people are ill.
Those two little black triangles on the right? Those are lungs. Those lungs are compressed to hell and back by all the fat surrounding them.
Compare those with the pair of beautiful, healthy lungs on the left.
Fat activists on tumblr always spout this shit how fat is healthy and how THEY are healthy. Yeah, no, they feel healthy now because they are young. Idiots like themselves do not understand how strong their bodies are. But, only because they are young. Youth means health, but what about 5 years down the line from now? 10 years? Yeah, it probably won’t go too well.
Also, when they quote sources, they cite other blogs that share their beliefs like they are some peer reviewed papers.
Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.
I gotta quote Regan on this one,
The VFHT: The Vague Future Health Threat.
It sounds like this “Well, you may be healthy now, but it will catch up to you someday”. They look triumphant because the VFHT is indefensible.
Now instead of completely quelling my rage and giving them the benefit of the doubt, I’m just fighting the urge to set this person on fire. It’s not just the person I’m talking to - it’s also that this is the the 10 zillionth time I’ve heard this over the past 13years. I’m still healthy and I’m starting to wonder if I’ll be 102 years old and still pressured to diet so that it doesn’t “catch up to me”.
I find this to be paternalist, ignorant, unsupported, and annoying for the following reasons:
1. Typically this person has already inaccurately assessed my current health (ie “Nobody can be healthy at your weight”) but now they want me to believe that they can accurately predict my future health.
2. What is this “it” that will catch up to me? I am not outrunning my fat – it’s all right here – I am not a thin woman covered in fat, I am a fat woman who is also a very fit athlete. So what’s going to catch up with me: my perfect blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose and triglycerides? My working out and eating healthy? My strength, stamina, and flexibility?
3. Everyone is going to die. There is a 100% chance. I just happen to live in a culture where it almost doesn’t matter why I die – someone will blame it on my fat. That doesn’t make it true. This “it will catch up to you” claim is just not supported by the available science, and of all the people who’ve VFHT’d me in my life, NOT ONE has accepted my invitation to cite his/her research (including doctors).
4. What if I changed the rules of the lottery so that if you lost, you had to pay the lottery money as a penalty? Now not only is your chance of winning infintesimmaly small, but there is a near 100% chance that you’ll end up with LESS money than you had after you bought the ticket. Would you play? Now imagine that this isn’t your money we’re talking about – it’s your long term health. There is not a single study that proves that any weight loss method is effective long term, but many studies indicate that weight cycling (yo-yo dieting) is less healthy than being obese. Since diets have such an abysmal failure rate over statistically significant sample sizes, if I go on just 2 diets where I lose weight and gain it back (and I have a very high chance of doing just that both times), then I’ve likely damaged my current good health and endangered my future health on a roll of the dice that was obviously a losing bet from the beginning. The person VFHTing me is asking that I do something they can’t prove is possible, for a reason they can’t prove is valid, with a very high percentage that I’ll end up less healthy at the end. I’ll pass.
So what do you say to the VFHT?
Here are some possible responses broken down by category. (As always, I never try to change someone else’s behavior. I ask for qualification and/or I set my boundaries and consequences. )
Quick and simple:
- I find it inappropriate for you to make guesses about my future health.
- My health is not your business. (If, at this point, they bring up tax payer dollars or health care costs, I ask them for an itemized list of things for which their local, state, and federal taxes pay, or health problems that people develop for which causation cannot be proven; broken down into categories of things they are happy to pay for, and things they don’t want to pay for. If they don’t happen to have that list on hand, I let them know that I’ll be happy to discuss it once they do.)
More detailed/scientific
- I don’t know of a single statistically significant, properly controlled scientific study that supports that statement. So, either cite your research or I’m going to assume that I know more about this than you do and you are just talking without actually knowing what you’re talking about. (Or “talking out of your ass”, depending on my mood).
- You have no way to know that. Cite your research or I will assume that you are putting my health at risk by talking about things for which you have no actual knowledge or qualifications. That is completely unacceptable to me.
The pointed response (feel free to mix and match questions/responses with boundary statements)
- How dare you make assumptions about my health? You may not discuss my health with me.
- I find you completely unqualified to make that statement. Please keep your opinions about my health to yourself.
- My health is not your business and you are not allowed to comment on it.
- You will immediately stop making guesses and assumptions about my future health or this conversation is over.
The snarky responses (I don’t actually recommend these because I prefer some kind of productive conversation if possible, but it’s fun to think about)
- I had no idea you could predict the future! Would you mind giving me tomorrow’s lottery numbers?
- Actually the fat doesn’t have to catch up with me – I keep it right here…unless you saw some back there that I lost?
- I totally forgot that being thin makes me immortal – thank god you told me or I might have died some day.
- I meant to tell you that I’m actually worried about you. I read on a website that we are about to experience another ice age and without fat stores to keep you alive and warm, you’re absolutely going to freeze to death. I know it sounds crazy but it was on the internet so you know it must be true and I’m going to tell everyone!
via danceswithfat
Teen’s invention could charge your phone in 20 seconds
(Photo: Intel)
Waiting hours for a cellphone to charge may become a thing of the past, thanks to an 18-year-old high-school student’s invention. She won a $50,000 prize Friday at an international science fair for creating an energy storage device that can be fully juiced in 20 to 30 seconds.
Everybody, remember this face.
Remember this name.
If this becomes a commonly used & highly lauded discovery, at some point a White guy is going to take credit, even if he has to word it like “Improved upon a previous…”
No no no
Remember this brown girl.
Remeeeemmmmmberrrrr
Reblogging for new commentary
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