i keep seeing soooo many ppl saying the canada post workers are selfish for striking right around christmas time and that they shouldve waited until january or whatever like omfg that is the point are you stupid!!!
When workers strike this is fault of the employer. The employer could choose to meet their demands and end the strike. Striking workers are reminding their employer and the public how important and valuable they are. The employer is being selfish for not giving workers what they need during the season when they most demonstrate how valuable they are. If the precious holiday mail is delayed that’s on the employer not the workers- the employer is choosing to force a strike, they could make a different choice, the striking workers are only responding to what they are forced to do to get their needs met. If you want the strike to end, pressure the employer, not the workers.
Warehouse workers for one of the two lead grocery chains were on strike in Australia recently, and everyone was having a freakout about whether or not there would be any groceries on the shelves of that store for Christmas.
Now this was just one grocery chains affected. The other lead grocery chain was completely unaffected by the strikes, as were all smaller/independent/etc grocery stores. Meaning people were still perfectly able to get their groceries elsewhere. But the threat of limited stock over the Christmas period had the grocery chain SWEATING.
They lost something like 50 million bucks in a few days because of the strikes, and they kept trying to push the “if the workers don’t capitulate then you, shopper, won’t be able to buy your Christmas ham!!!!” But i don’t know anyone who was like “Yeah those damn workers, threatening my Christmas.” Everyone I know was saying “There’s an easy solution to this. Woolworths should just pay their staff and agree to their safety demands.”
Some stores even had messages of support from customers appearing on the empty shelves:
Anyway despite the best efforts of the media, general public sentiment remained on the side of the striking workers, and today, news broke that Woolworths has reached a deal with their workers. The threat of having no stock over Christmas gave the workers the extra impact that they needed to drag Woolworths back to the negotiation table.
The people striking in the lead-up/over Christmas are not your enemy.
The corporations who hold Christmas hostage as they refuse to give their employees safe working conditions absolutely a liable wage are your enemy.
Remember that.
Just as a cherry on this one, the Woolworths strike was successful even though Woolworths went to Fair Work and got them to declare the picketing unlawful and prevent the union from stopping scabs getting into the warehouses.
…so private citizens picketed instead.
Woolies withstood maybe three days of this before giving in, presumably because they can’t ask Fair Work to unilaterally criminalize people standing on public land.
The first victim could not have been recorded, for there was no written language to record it. They were someone’s daughter, or son, and someone’s friend, and they were loved by those around them. And they were in pain, covered in rashes, confused, scared, not knowing why this was happening to them or what they could do about it – victim of a mad, inhuman god. There was nothing to be done – humanity was not strong enough, not aware enough, not knowledgeable enough, to fight back against a monster that could not be seen.
It was in Ancient Egypt, where it attacked slave and pharaoh alike. In Rome, it effortlessly decimated armies. It killed in Syria. It killed in Moscow. In India, five million dead. It killed a thousand Europeans every day in the 18th century. It killed more than fifty million Native Americans. From the Peloponnesian War to the Civil War, it slew more soldiers and civilians than any weapon, any soldier, any army (Not that this stopped the most foolish and empty souls from attempting to harness the demon as a weapon against their enemies).
Cultures grew and faltered, and it remained. Empires rose and fell, and it thrived. Ideologies waxed and waned, but it did not care. Kill. Maim. Spread. An ancient, mad god, hidden from view, that could not be fought, could not be confronted, could not even be comprehended. Not the only one of its kind, but the most devastating.
For a long time, there was no hope – only the bitter, hollow endurance of survivors.
In China, in the 10th century, humanity began to fight back.
It was observed that survivors of the mad god’s curse would never be touched again: they had taken a portion of that power into themselves, and were so protected from it. Not only that, but this power could be shared by consuming a remnant of the wounds. There was a price, for you could not take the god’s power without first defeating it – but a smaller battle, on humanity’s terms. By the 16th century, the technique spread, to India, across Asia, the Ottoman Empire and, in the 18th century, Europe. In 1796, a more powerful technique was discovered by Edward Jenner.
An idea began to take hold: Perhaps the ancient god could be killed.
A whisper became a voice; a voice became a call; a call became a battle cry, sweeping across villages, cities, nations. Humanity began to cooperate, spreading the protective power across the globe, dispatching masters of the craft to protect whole populations. People who had once been sworn enemies joined in common cause for this one battle. Governments mandated that all citizens protect themselves, for giving the ancient enemy a single life would put millions in danger.
And, inch by inch, humanity drove its enemy back. Fewer friends wept; Fewer neighbors were crippled; Fewer parents had to bury their children.
At the dawn of the 20th century, for the first time, humanity banished the enemy from entire regions of the world. Humanity faltered many times in its efforts, but there individuals who never gave up, who fought for the dream of a world where no child or loved one would ever fear the demon ever again. Viktor Zhdanov, who called for humanity to unite in a final push against the demon; The great tactician Karel Raška, who conceived of a strategy to annihilate the enemy; Donald Henderson, who led the efforts of those final days.
The enemy grew weaker. Millions became thousands, thousands became dozens. And then, when the enemy did strike, scores of humans came forth to defy it, protecting all those whom it might endanger.
The enemy’s last attack in the wild was on Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977. For months afterwards, dedicated humans swept the surrounding area, seeking out any last, desperate hiding place where the enemy might yet remain.
They found none.
35 years ago, on December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory.
This one evil, the horror from beyond memory, the monster that took 500 million people from this world – was destroyed.
You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of, when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in the world.
sometimes I think too hard about like. how the ability to record audio fundamentally changed how humans interact with music. can you imagine if the only time you ever heard music in your whole life was when you or another human being in your actual physical presence decided to create it. and 99.99% of the time that person was not a professional but just like your wife or your dad or your co-worker or church choir singing or playing whatever they happened to know. i honestly don’t think we can fathom it
A 5200-year-old pottery bowl from Shahr-e Sukhteh bearing what could possibly be the world’s oldest example of animation. It shows 5 images of a wild goat leaping, and if you put them in a sequence (like a flip book), the wild goat leaps to nip leaves off a tree. Museum of Ancient Iran
Need y’all to know that in the 1970’s a letter to the editor was published in Daily Telegraph where the author offhandedly used the phrase “Tolkien-like gloom” to describe an area with barren trees and JRRT himself wrote back an incensed rebuttal at the use of his name in a context that suggested anything negative about trees.
“I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying ‘gloom’, especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies”
He was like how dare you sir I am the biggest tree fan out there
A tree tried to eat the hobbits. Tom Bombadil had to save them. There’s Mirkwood, “The Forest of Great Fear.” I’m on the side of the writer of the letter to the editor.
Because Tolkien is Tolkien, he actually directly defended the actions of all his forests and trees in this same letter I’m referencing
This is the best thing in the entire world. Here is a transcript:
Beautiful place because trees are loved From Prof. J.R.R. TOLKIEN SIR—with reference to your leader of June 29, I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying “gloom,” especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies. Lothlorien is beautiful because there the trees were loved; elsewhere forests are represented as awakening to consciousness of themselves. The Old Forest was hostile to two-legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries. Fangorn Forest was old and beautiful, but at the time of the story tense with hostility because it was threatened by a machine-loving enemy. Mirkwood had fallen under the domination of a Power that hated all living things, but it was restored to beauty and became Greenwood the Great before the end of the story. It would be unfair to compare the Forestry Commission with Sauron because, as you observe, it is capable of repentance; but nothing it has done that is stupid compares with the destruction, torture and murder of trees perpetrated by private individuals and minor official bodies. This savage sound of the electric saw is never silent wherever trees are still found growing. J.R.R. TOLKIEN Merton College, Oxford
amhrancas 