Well, Folks, I'm Starting To Realize That Maybe Bartleby The Scrivener Might Not Have Been The Best Role

m-a-a-a-a-h

Happy Yule! by Abigail Larson

the Guardian

US farms are forcing workers to buy inedible, expensive meals: ‘It makes you feel enslaved’

Employers hiring migrant workers through a federal program must provide food or cooking facilities. But many of those picking our fresh food

On an August afternoon, Pablo stared down at a foam plate sloshing with flavorless pinto beans and a particularly bad version of huevos a la Mexicana. The simple, usually delicious scramble of eggs, tomatoes, onions and jalapeños is difficult to mess up. But if anyone can find a way to make it unpalatable, it’s the cook at his labor camp. Soupy eggs are the last thing the 42-year-old from western Mexico wants to eat. But after a 12-hour day harvesting tobacco in the brutal and sometimes deadly summer heat, he must eat – and this was far from the worst meal he’s been given. A few weeks ago, fellow farm workers got sick due to raw and moldy food they were forced to purchase. On days like this, Pablo can’t decide which is worse: that he’s forced to pay $80 a week for this slop, or that everything about what he eats, when he eats and how much he eats is tightly controlled by his employer. Pablo, who is using a pseudonym due to fear of retaliation, is one of more than 35,000 migrant workers in North Carolina this year as part of the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker Program, a guest visa program overseen by the US Department of Labor (DoL). The program enables American employers to hire foreign workers to perform seasonal agricultural work. Employers in the program frequently exploit their migrant employees, and the structure of the program makes easy work of it. Visas are tied to a single employer who must also provide housing, transportation and access to food, creating a crushing power imbalance between American employers and migrant H-2A workers.

Being German-American, I don't much like the stereotype of Germans as excessively regimented and organized. So I prefer to believe that Liesl's extensive lists and spreadsheets are actually a carefully-crafted manipulation technique, designed to leverage that stereotype into a way to demoralize any opposition to her plans. It's her version of "I can do this all day."

Liesl isn't, actually, an organization freak. If you pay close attention, she turns out to be an adept at retaining facts and knowledge, extrapolating from observational data, and determining optimal solutions. She's a theorycrafter and a logician.

Except for her own personal goal, of course. She's not entirely sane about that, but understandably so.

Let's thank our villainous voice actors!

Everyone say "Thank you!" to Georgina Leahy, the voice actor who brought to life Stella, this horrible lady-demon-bird-thing whom it feels so good to hate!

Anyone can chew scenery, but to really make a character feel odious in a way that makes it feel cathartic to hate them… that takes talent and hard work.

And the way Leahy voices Stella just a little lower and hoarser than her natural voice… that isn't something you can do all day without risking permanent consequences.

~@~

Let's also remember to thank Jason LaShea, the voice actor who brought to life Andreaplhus, the most punchable conniving bastard in web animation!

Sneering isn't a talent, but building a lawful evil antagonist with just the right balance of arrogance and sliminess, while matching the physical appearance and mannerisms of an animated character, is very much a talent, and also requires a lot of hard work!

So, as we wait for Season 3 and dream of wringing these characters' scrawny little bird necks, let's remember to show some love for the humans behind our villains, yeah?

I wonder if, after Azeroth's Second War, some of the humans running the internment camps for the orcs were frustrated by how placid the orcs had suddenly become... if, perhaps, their lack of aggression or hostility deprived them of their justification for keeping sapient beings in prison camps, and subjecting them to enslavement and abuse.

best trope is when the Really Important Character falls to pieces when they try to do a regular task. she’s the Slayer of Nine Worlds, Mistress of Darkness, Daughter of the Blade of Heaven but she can’t tie her shoelaces. he is the only one who can wield the Sword of Time but he’s useless at starting a fire. they’re the most powerful mage in six generations but they’ve been reading the map upside down the whole time. god’s specialest little guys

nosferatu? non. VOSferatu. c'est pas mon problème

The nuclear war happened so fast, and destroyed so much, that nobody knows, nobody ever knew, whether it was the Russians, the Israelis, President Moncrieff, or Elon Musk who launched the first missiles. And while people may still argue about it, it doesn't matter. The world's irrevocably doomed.

Now that we've discovered the First-Ever Complaint Letter, perhaps we will discover other firsts among ancient cuneiform tablets baked in long-long-ago city fires. Like, oh, I don't know... How about the First-Recorded Karen?

"O, Tara-Nuwusu, since your father's death, you are the head of your household, and as such, we, the elders of the town, implore you to curb your venerable mother's behavior. Her sharp tongue and endless demands are an affliction to us all. Day after day, she lurks at the gate of the town, seeking those with whom she may take offense and make undignified scenes. Please, Tara-Nuwusu, [...] diligently, for the sake of your name and lineage, and speak to your mother, and [...] to her that she cannot insist on [?receiving] goods without price, as compensation for ill-treatment she has [?imagined/?alleged], nor may she overturn the stalls of vendors who refuse her demands. O, Tara-Nuwusu, we do not wish to bind and confine your venerable mother, but she daily [...] peace of the city with her behavior, and if you cannot control her, we must regretfully subject you and your family to [?humiliation]."

rudolph the red nosed reindeer