people seem to have trouble understanding why i’m an anti-capitalist, so i’m going to try and put it into simple, real-life terms.
i work at a restaurant. i make $12 an hour, plus tips. minimum wage where i live is relatively high for my country - the national minimum wage is $7.25/hr, and has not been raised since 2009. before taxes, working full time, my yearly income is about $22,000 a year. ($25,000 if you count tips)
at my job, we sell various dishes, with an average price of about $10-$15. we get printouts every week detailing how much money we made that week; in one week, our restaurant makes about $30,000. (one of our other locations actually makes this much on a daily basis!)
i’m not going to go into details, but after the costs of production
(payroll for employees, rent for the building, maintenance, and wholesale food purchasing) are accounted for, the restaurant makes an estimated profit of $20,000 per week.
this profit goes directly to the owner, who does not work at this location. the owner of my restaurant has actually been on vacation for a few months, but still profits from the restaurant, because they own it. i have met the owner exactly twice in my year of working here.
to put this into perspective, the owner of this restaurant earns in 2 days what they pay me in one year. and that’s just from this single location - the owner has several other restaurants, all of which make more money than the one i work at. this ends up resulting in the owner having an estimated net worth of tens of millions of dollars, even after accounting for the payroll for every single worker in their employ.
now, i have to ask you: does the owner of my restaurant deserve this income? did they earn it? did their labor result in this value being created?
the naive answer would be “yes”; the owner purchased the location and arranged for the raw ingredients to be delivered, did they not?
the actual answer is “no”. the owner may have used their initial capital to start the location, but the profit is a result of my labor, and the labor of my co-workers.
the owner purchases rice at a very low bulk price of about 25 cents a pound. i cook the rice, and within a few minutes, that pound of rice is suddenly worth about $30. the owner did not create this value, i did. the owner simply provided the initial capital investment required to start the process.
what needs to be understood here is that capitalists do not create value. they use the labor of their employees to create value, and then take the excess profit and keep it.
what needs to be understood is that capitalists accrue income by already HAVING money. the owner of my restaurant was only able to get this far because they started off, from the very beginning, with enough money to purchase a building, purchase food in bulk, and hire hundreds of employees.
that is to say: the rich get richer, and they do so by exploiting the labor of the poor.
the owner of my restaurant could afford to triple the income of every single person in their employee if they felt like it, but this would mean that they were generating less profit for themselves, so they do not.
the owner of my restaurant pays me the current minimum wage of my area, because to them, i am not a person. i am an investment. i am an asset. i am a means to create more money.
when you are paid minimum wage, the message your boss is sending you is this: “legally, if i could pay you less, i would.”
every capitalist on the planet exploits their workers for their own gain. every capitalist, even the small business owners, forces people to stay in poverty so that the capitalist can profit.
Sometimes I’m just sitting here minding my own business and then I remember that Thor specifically entrusted Loki with placing Surtur’s crown on the fire to initiate Ragnarok and I tear up a little bit because that’s how you love and support your chaotic neutral sibling.
Thor: I know what’ll cheer you up. :) Loki: What’s that? Thor: You wanna trigger the apocalypse with me for the good of Asgard? Loki: !!!!!!!!
my favorite part is that nobody questioned Loki surviving that experience. Thor sent him in there with the comfortable confidence of Loki’s cockroach-like ability to cause the apocalypse and sneak out before it got bad, Loki didn’t try to pretend that this was dangerous, absolutely nobody ever commented…
listen, hes the god of mischif. And theres nothing more mischievous and a bigger power move than getting the bigger bully to beat up your bully older sister.
the grass in the original shrek movie is not grass. its hair. they used hair textures for the grass bc the actual grass for some reason in their computer modelling programs would not behave like grass so they used hair textures colored green.
elvis presley was a registered DEA officer who asked nixon for the title and was awarded it.
What else?
the great escape artist houdini was living in a time period where mysticism, fortune telling, ouija boards, seances and etc were becoming very common place and trendy. and he fucking hated it so much. so much that he would go to seances in disguise and make some bullshit off the wall shit like “my son died last year can you let me talk to him” and the seance person would be like ‘THIS IS YOUR SON HELLO FATHER’ then he’d rip off his disguise and be like YOU FRAUD I HAVE NO CHILDREN.
He died on Halloween night in detroit and as far as i know every year they hold seances on halloween trying to get in contact with his spirit. If seances work i bet his ghost is just pissed off and not responding out of raw spite.
foxes cant snarl like dogs and wolves cus the muscles in their muzzle dont allowe it so they just drop their jaws and scream.
i don’t remember where i read this so take it with a grain of salt, but i remember reading about Retro Studios talking with Nintendo during the development of Metroid Prime and Retro asked if Samus could actually do some bounty hunting for once
and Nintendo was like “what do you mean?”
and Retro was like “You know. Accept money to hunt down wanted people.”
and nintendo was just like “what??? what?! no! no she can’t do that! why would you even ask!”
and Retro had to explain to Nintendo what a bounty hunter was, because evidently they thought the phrase “bounty hunter” meant “cool space explorer” and not “person who accepts money to hunt people”
Headcanon accepted: Samus became a bounty hunter because she thought it just meant cool space explorer
like, heimdall saw that shit right? odin comes back through the bifrost and heimdall is just “…………….”
heimdall: that’s a baby
odin: yes! he’s my son! ………..loki. i’m going to dress him in green and black, because that worked great last time
or odin comes back and is trying to figure out, how to play it, and heimdall and frigga are just waiting for him and completely deadpan
frigga: ah, husband! you have returned from war in time to meet your newborn son. who i had. after being pregnant. secretly.
odin: what
frigga:
heimdall:
loki: *baby noises*
odin: right
honestly, i just need heimdall going up to frigga like “you won’t believe what your husband just did”
odin: he’s a replacement for the child I had to lock away in the shadow realm.
heimdall:
odin: I’ll do better by this one. I know I will.
heimdall:
heimdall: You mean Frigga will.
Odin: Please can we keep it? It’s cute and changes colours and smiles at my empty eye socket. I promise I’ll take care of it I’ll feed it every week and I’ll dress it in green and black and I’ll teach it to throw knives and it will be great!
Heimdall: Frigga, he stole a baby. Say something.
THIS IS THE BEST THING
Frigga and Heimdall were probably going to make him give Loki back but then before they could intervene, Thor saw his BABY BROTHER OMG DAD YOU BROUGHT ME A BROTHER THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER and Odin looked at Frigga like, “So you want to be the one who rips his infant brother from his arms?”
Aktos the Ineffable: My phylactery is a small pebble I tossed into the deepest depths of the ocean. Sure, if my body destroys I gotta walk back to the shore, but the inconvenience is worth the security. How about you guys?
Zorak the Malevolent: I have an arrangement with a powerful dragon, a coin near the bottom of his hoard. I simply pay him rent for the privilege and can be assured it will either remain secure, or in the unlikely event of his death be looted rather than destroyed allowing me to make new arrangements.
Tessarius the Inconcievable: I folded up a pocket dimension on the astral plane. Can’t get in if you ain’t got the key and the password, but I can leave whenever I feel like once I regenerate there.
Kolok, Scourge of Nine Blasphemies: Actually… Same as Aktos. Remember how we met on the walk back last time?
Aktos: Oh yes. It was Kraken mating season if I recall correctly.
Kolok: Yes, had to walk ten leagues to go around their territory. Very inconvenient. How about you Phil?
Necrotic Phil: Condom.
Kolok: I’m sorry?
Phil: Well, ain’t nobody gonna think too hard about a condom they found in a lich’s pocket, are they?
That thing about how cats think humans are big kittens is a myth, y’know.
It’s basically born of false assumptions; folks were trying to explain how a naturally solitary animal could form such complex social bonds with humans, and the explanation they settled on is “it’s a displaced parent/child bond”.
The trouble is, cats aren’t naturally solitary. We just assumed they were based on observations of European wildcats - but housecats aren’t descended from European wildcats. They’re descended from African wildcats, which are known to hunt in bonded pairs and family groupings, and that social tendency is even stronger in their domesticated relatives. The natural social unit of the housecat is a colony: a loose affiliation of cats centred around a shared territory held by alliance of dominant females, who raise all of the colony’s kittens communally.
It’s often remarked that dogs understand that humans are different, while cats just think humans are big, clumsy cats, and that’s totally true - but they regard us as adult colonymates, not as kittens, and all of their social behaviour toward us makes a lot more sense through that lens.
They like to cuddle because communal grooming is how cats bond with colonymates - it establishes a shared scent-identity for the colony and helps clean spots that they can’t easily reach on their own.
They bring us dead animals because cats transport surplus kills back to the colony’s shared territory for consumption by pregnant, nursing, or sick colonymates who can’t easily hunt on their own. Indeed, that’s why they kill so much more than they individually need - it’s not for fun, but to generate enough surplus kills to sustain the colony’s non-hunting members.
They’re okay with us messing with their kittens because communal parenting is the norm in a colony setting, and us being colonymates in their minds automatically makes us co-parents.
It’s even why many cats are so much more tolerant toward very small children, as long as those children are related to one of their regular humans: they can tell the difference between human adults and human “kittens”, and your kittens are their kittens.
Basically, you’re going to have a much easier time getting a handle on why your cat does why your cat does if you remember that the natural mode of social organisation for cats is not as isolated solitary hunters, but as a big communal catpile - and for that purpose, you count as a cat.
