17stars
Online Portfolio @ skeleton-fingers.org
3,500 FOLLOWER GIVEAWAY
I recently passed 3,500 followers, and thought I’d do a giveaway just as a little thanks. <3
- First prize!:
- 1 poster print (roughly 15x24”) from my gallery of your choosing
- 1 large print (roughly 11x17”) from my gallery of your choosing
- 5 small 5x7” prints of a random assortment (I’ll be sure to not duplicate your larger picks)
- All daruma pins, ghost-girl and monster-girl stickers shown above
- Your pick of 5 other stickers
- A copy of GoreBook, Little White & Little Dark, and pair of Shy and Coey sketchbooks
- A set of my 4 Unfriendly Things charms
- Second prize!:
- 1 large print of your choosing
- 4 small random prints
- All daruma pins, ghost-girl and monster-girl stickers shown above
- 2 other random stickers
- A web-size PDF of my sketchbook
- 2 random Unfriendly Things charms
- Twitter prize!:
- Retweet this for a chance to win:
- 5 small random prints
- 2 other random stickers
- A web-size PDF of my sketchbook
All prints and books will be signed by me (and Coey will sign the books applying to him). I’m happy to ship worldwide!
Reblog up to three times! (Likes don’t count!)
Winner will be randomly selected 2pm EST, June 2nd!
A 7-year-old white tiger sits with one of her cubs at Tobu Zoo in Miyashiro, near Tokyo. Four newborn white tiger cubs made their first public appearance at the zoo. Picture: AP
(via subjectoftowels)
Since the dawn of man (or, perhaps capitalism), workers and management have disagreed on the impact of raising wages. For workers making less than $10 an hour, a few extra bucks a week can make a huge difference in terms of quality of life. Management, on the other hand, predictably suggests that raising wages kills jobs and inhibits hiring and man hours.
Despite the perception that minimum wage jobs are often held by teenage workers entering the job market, numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) indicate that 49 percent of minimum wage workers are adult women, many of whom have children.
With this as the backdrop, the National Employment Law Center (NELP) has published a list of the 50 U.S. companies who have the most low wage workers. While not all of these companies pay the exact minimum wage they all pay very close to the wage floor. As you can see by the list, the companies listed also share a common trait of being massive, successful companies making major profits. Perhaps their universally low labor costs have something to do with that trend?
As expected, America’s largest employer, Wal-Mart, tops the list. NELP’s study looks into the genetic makeup of this dishonorable mention, and notes the majority (66 percent) of low‐wage workers are not employed by small businesses, but rather by large corporations where top executive compensation averaged $9.4 million.
The 50 largest employers of low‐wage workers have largely recovered from the recession and most are in strong financial positions: 92 percent were profitable last year; 78 percent have been profitable for the last three years; 75 percent have higher revenues now than before the recession; 73 percent have higher cash holdings; and 63 percent have higher operating margins(a measure of profitability).
$174.8 billion to shareholders in dividends or share buybacks over the past five years.
The largest companies in America have, for the most part, recovered from the recession while their workers are still feeling its entire effects. It is safe to say that we should soundly reject the argument that raising the minimum wage would harm large corporations. They don’t know harm well enough to claim it.
Via Making Change At Walmart: “According to a 2011 report (PDF), if Walmart started paying a $12/hour minimum wage, its workers currently earning less than $9 per hour could each earn $3,250 to $6,500 more per year before taxes. If Walmart were to pass this cost directly to shoppers, the average consumer would need to pay only 46 cents more per shopping trip, or $12.50 per year.”
Walmart could pay all of their employees a living wage (or close to it, at least) without losing a dime. Oh, and it would help out the federal budget a bit: roughly 80% of Walmart employees are on food stamps because they’re paid so little. Walmart is taking advantage of government-funded social programs to make up for what they choose not to pay their employees.
Obama and Pelosi need to bring back the minimum wage increase proposals, stat.
CISPA Is Not Dead
Visit Fight For The Future and CISPA Is Back for an overview and actions you can take, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for background on the bill since it passed the House and what happens next as it moves to the Senate.
Meantime, the White House responded to an anti-CISPA petition signed by over 100,000 people with — in part — the following:
The White House issued a veto threat for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) on April 16, because the legislation did not fully address our core concerns (especially the protection of privacy). Even though a bill went on to pass the House of Representatives and includes some important improvements over previous versions, this legislation still doesn’t adequately address our fundamental concerns…
…There is broad consensus on the need for more threat-related information sharing — including among the leading privacy advocates we regularly engage on the issue. The essential question on which people across the spectrum disagree isn’t if we can share cybersecurity information and preserve the principles of privacy and liberty that make the United States a free and open society — but how.
Related: Here’s something to chew on, via Wired:
A secretive federal court last year approved all of the 1,856 requests to search or electronically surveil people within the United States “for foreign intelligence purposes,” the Justice Department reported this week.
The report, released Tuesday to Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader from Nevada, provides a brief glimpse into the caseload of what is known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. None of its decisions are public.
The 2012 figures represent a 5 percent bump from the prior year, when no requests were denied either.
Image: Via CISPA Is Back. Select to embiggen.
Fear gave rise to fear, and soon they became a shadow, dark beyond human understanding.
(via aretama)
art by Victoria Ying
Petition the Obama Administration to mandate education about sexual assault and rape in schools
The last petition we were pushing did not obtain enough votes, we will not stop until this is mandated. Please vote on the WHITEHOUSE.GOV website, it takes 2 seconds and they never send you emails.
Good Idea
I support this 100%
wow signal fucking boost
This has more notes than signatures. Get on that, everybody.
(via complicatedtriangulated)
Yo if you haven’t seen Dennou Coil, you should really watch Dennou Coil. It’s about how children interact with Augmented Reality technology and if that doesn’t sell you then we are very different people.
It never really got licensed over here so it’s pretty easy to find torrents of it or whatnot.
I just… I get lonely sometimes……
HELLO DENNOU COIL IS MY FAVOURITE ANIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
DENSUKE :(((((((
also pixels arts of dennou coil i made!
(via lizgiggblogs)
See this picture? This comes from a town in Canada where a 24 pack of water bottles is 104 dollars and formula milk for a baby is priced at 55 dollars a pack. What’s more, a pack of diapers is 95 dollars and one head of lettuce is 26 dollars. Inuit people are starving in a country known for it’s generosity.
If you don’t believe this is true, you can find more images like this here. This is the only grocery store these people have in their small towns, and many people are going hungry & elderly are dying faster.
You’ll send aid to foreign children that are starving, so why won’t you pay a little extra to feed the people in your own country who work hard & still can’t afford the prices for healthy food for their families?
Please reblog this photo to raise awareness that even in our own countries people are starving, join the movement and show the government that we won’t sit by and watch people starve.
Children in a first world country are getting sick & starving, and nobody is even aware it’s happening. You can let people know by reblogging and showing you care. People I am close to, my friends and future in-laws are going through this.
Love how little attention this post gets from my beach blog followers.
Signal boost.
A Huffington Post article on the issue here.
(via rcmclachlan)
Do you remember SOPA? The bill that would give government the right to spy on internet activity without warrant, and let them censor “unwanted” sites by blocking people’s access to them?
Meet its twin. But this time it’s all the more frightening; the House has passed it despite Obama’s threats to veto. And by an alarmingly large margin, at that. CISPA threatens the US constitution’s guarantees of due privacy and free speech, permitting any government agency to access and transfer of vast amounts of data- from internet records to even the content of personal e-mails, and all without obtaining a warrant.
What’s even more disgusting than this bill actually making through the House is some of the arguments used to help it’s passage, and comments made by one of the bill’s biggest supporters admitting the bill helps big business while insulting opposers (whose is also speculated to have personal reasons for wanting CISPA made into law).
This threatens every element of your online presence. From personal emails to general activity, any government agency will have the ability to go fishing without consequence.
Please, PLEASE, sign the following petitions. You don’t even have to be a US citizen to sign most of them or act against CISPA, and please keep in mind that if this shit flies in America, who knows what country might use its example to do it, too.
Petition: Avaaz: Save the Internet from the US
(you don’t have to be a US citizen to sign this)Petition: Sites Not Spies
(you don’t have to be a US citizen to sign this)Petition: CISPA is Back: Write Congress
Petition: Tell Mike Rogers more that 14-year-olds oppose CISPA
(you don’t have to be a US citizen to sign this)Twitter: Tweet @RepMikeRogers with your age
Twitter: Tweet @BarackObama and tell him to veto CISPA
Twitter: Tweet reps like @RepDelBene, @GovHankJohnson, @KeithEllison and @GovGaryJohnson and thanks them for acting against CISPA. Look for other reps that have spoken against it, and thank them.Call your reps: and tell them you strongly oppose the bill. You can look up your reps using the form on the lower portion of this page.
Resource: Fight for the Future
Reblog: This and other posts like it to raise awareness of this threat to internet freedom and privacy.
I will be posting more petitions and resources as I become aware of them.
I know I have been posting a lot of stuff about CISPA but this is a more comprehensive list of info.
(via complicatedtriangulated)
Well that’s obnoxious. Apparently it just passed in the House today.
When are they gonna learn.
UPDATE: President Obama just threatened to veto CISPA! He echoes our privacy concerns, saying legislation must “(1) carefully safeguard privacy and civil liberties; (2) preserve the long-standing, respective roles and missions of civilian and intelligence agencies”.
Meanwhile, here’s what the bill’s sponsor is saying about the opposition, according to Hill reporter Brendan Sasso:
@BrendanSasso: Rogers says Silicon Valley CEOs support #CISPA.
** Describes opposition as 14 year olds in their basement. **
Demand Progress members have sent more than 150,000 emails to policy makers in opposition to CISPA this year — and it’s starting to work. But voting in the House of Representatives is still set to start (Wednesday).
In anticipation of a full House vote in the House on Wednesday, industry giant IBM has sent nearly 200 senior execs to Washington to lobby in support of CISPA.
And their intentions couldn’t be more clear. CISPA would empower them to share your private data with the military without a warrant — and they wouldn’t hesitate to do so.
Chris Padilla, IBM’s VP of governmental affairs told TheHill.com that IBM and other corporations ”should be able to work directly and share information directly” with the National Security Agency “because that’s where the expertise is.“
On Wednesday, CISPA 2.0 is up for a full vote in the House of Representatives. Please email your lawmakers to tell them to VOTE NO!
(This information comes from an email from “Demand Progress”.)
(via stfuconservatives)
