Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
the utter hypocrisy of governor walz implementing a curfew then sending out the largest police force in minnesota history to shoot tear gas into brooklyn center apartment complexes filled with families who are not allowed to leave their homes
I love this because if you know a lot of actual children you know that “people’s age correlates exactly to their height” is one of the things kindergarten-aged children commonly think, like they’ll be absolutely mind blown about learning that their taller teacher is actually younger than the shorter teacher. this is a literally kindergarten level analysis of people
I keep seeing this account being posted, but it’s not real, it’s litterally just bait, the owner pretends to be asexual and says obnoxious shit and then spams about asexuality and being nonbinary and then uses their main blog to quote retweet it as proof that asexual/nobinary people are bad, they demand that everyone post their designated at birth gender to “make sure no men are writing women characters” it’s literally a terf exclusionist sock puppet, it was never trying to give real advice, just stir up shit and start drama, report for spam and move on
Quelling the rampaging coronavirus clearly demands the best resources our country has to offer. But when it came to selling goods and services to the federal government to address the crisis in 2020, vendors were far more likely to be chosen if they supplemented their offers of assistance with visits from their lobbyists.
In 2020, the federal government awarded more than $36 billion in contracts to more than 6,300 companies to combat the pandemic. Just 6 percent of these companies (around 400 in total) reported that they lobbied the federal government in 2020. These relatively few companies were awarded more than half – $19.4 billion – of the COVID contract money doled out.
For a narrower slice of COVID contractors that lobbied the government, consider these figures: Just 2 percent of all COVID contractors (142 in total) disclosed that they lobbied the Trump White House and/or the agency that awarded them a contract on issues directly related to the pandemic. These 2 percent of contractors received 37 percent – $13.4 billion – of all the contract money awarded.
Overall, the federal lobbying industry’s revenue declined slightly in 2020,[1] which would be expected amid months of shutdowns and social distancing restrictions. Companies that received COVID contracts also spent slightly less on lobbying than in the previous year. But the contract recipients who lobbied the White House or an awarding agency on COVID issues actually increased the number of lobbyists at their disposal. They deployed 3,559 lobbyists in 2020, an increase of more than 150 compared to 2019.[2]
Lobbyists for COVID contractors stampeded the White House, including the office of Vice President Mike Pence, who acted as the coordinator of the COVID task force. Of the 142 companies that lobbied either the White House or their awarding agency on COVID issues, 107 lobbied the White House. More than a quarter of the 107 had not previously lobbied the Trump White House.
The lobbyists’ outreach to lawmakers and executive branch officials was supplemented with campaign contributions. The 142 companies awarded COVID contracts that either lobbied the White House and / or their awarding agency on COVID issues contributed $313 million to Trump, members of Congress, and party committees from the 2016 election cycle through the 2020 election cycles, including $130 million in the 2020 cycle.
Among our findings about specific contracts:
A recipient of $390 million in contracts for ventilators lobbied for the first time ever in 2020. A separate recipient of $80 million in ventilator contracts lobbied in 2020 for the first time since 2015;
Among suppliers of COVID testing supplies, at least three contractors (receiving $34 million, $14 million and $5.8 million) lobbied for the first time ever in 2020;
ppl with tumblr blogs older than 7 yrs old have been getting deleted randomly in the epitome of Functional Website so given this blog is from 2012 if i disappear suddenly, know i did not purposefully delete
For folks with older blogs, might be a good idea to job down Tumblr’s direct support email address now:
support@tumblr.zendesk.com
(That’s what I’ve corresponded with in the past.)
I know someone whose partner’s blog got axed yesterday, but he had it back in a couple of hours after corresponding with Tumblr support.
Here’s hoping they figure out what’s causing this and FIX IT SOON.
Those lovely blossoms known as dandelions to us. Whole thing is edible, though better when its young. There are a few other plants like that where the entire thing is edible. Well, she was a botanist, not that she let her family, or the deregger, government knew she’d become so well educated. A well-educated young woman there? They’d kill her for being too smart and her family followed the CEO’s like they were gods.
Everyone thought her too simple to be of any use, and the bawdy houses were closed down because the current CEO, unlike his father and grandfather, thought them vile pits of sin that distracted the workers. So, since she was considered useless, and there were no bawdies to stick her in, her family let her sit for hours in the field all alone with the odd yellow weeds that the outworlder had given her to play with. People in their world were starving, at least the poorest ones were, but was it not odd, those yellow weeds… now seemed to be everywhere. – Fighting Fit
Sometimes, the best way to be smart is to play stupid. Orchid learned this as part of the Free Alliance Schooling on Tradeside Station. Her parents sent her because it was free, and because all the best people got an education from Alliance schools. Those “best people” got an education from Deregger establishments that was more akin to deprogramming, but that point was lost on her parents. Thank whatever deities that had decided to interfere in her destiny.
The CEO if Tradeside Station also managed to miss the memo, and his heir had a dim view of the bawdies, and shut them down as mercifully as possible when he took the reins. Also thank those deities. Orchid had learned her lesson and pretended to be very dim in order to please the old guard. As long as she was silly and frivolous, and scrubbed up well, she was not a threat, and therefore not in danger.
Her parents never understood her fascination with botany. Specifically, old Terran plants that could grow anywhere and frequently did. Some had been gengineered for specific purposes, but had become weeds in the modern era. Sunflowers, Tukkatukka, Kudzu, and Dandelions.
the utter hypocrisy of governor walz implementing a curfew then sending out the largest police force in minnesota history to shoot tear gas into brooklyn center apartment complexes filled with families who are not allowed to leave their homes
people that act like Britain’s colonial past is ancient history, here are some facts:
Afghanistan’s independence was in 1919.
Egypt was in 1922.
Iraq was in 1932.
Jordan was in 1946.
India and Pakistan were in 1947.
Myanmar and Sri Lanka were in 1948.
Libya and Oman were in 1951.
Sudan was in 1956.
Ghana and Malaysia were in 1957.
Singapore was in 1959.
Cyprus and Nigeria were in 1960.
Cameroon, Kuwait, Tanzania, and Sierra Leone were in 1961.
Jamaica, Uganda, and Trinidad and Tobago were in 1962.
Kenya was in 1963.
Malawi, Malta, and Zambia were in 1964.
The Gambia and the Maldives were in 1965.
Barbados, Botswana, Lesotho, and Guyana were in 1966.
Yemen was in 1967.
Eswartini (Swaziland), Nauru, and Mauritius were in 1968.
Fiji and Tonga were in 1970.
Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates were in 1971.
The Bahamas was in 1973.
Grenada was in 1974
Seychelles was in 1976.
Dominica, Tuvalu, and the Solomon Islands were in 1978.
Kiribati and Saint Lucia were in 1979.
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines were in 1979.
Vanuatu and Zimbabwe were in 1980.
Antigua and Barbuda and Belize were in 1981.
Saint Kitts was in 1983.
Brunei was in 1984.
In addition to that: Northern Ireland is still a British territory. So are the Falkland Islands and Bermuda.
This is in the lifetime of ancestors we have that are still alive. Many of these countries were left in financial ruination after colonization with their resources drained. Many of these countries have been repeatedly bombed by the UK and their allies since independence as well. The very act of independence often resulted in massive loss of life (see the partition of India and Pakistan which resulted in 2 million people dead, 20 million people displaced, and countless others never recovered). Calling it ancient history or underplaying the sheer cruelty of what the British empire did is such a slap in the face to the people who suffered for centuries.
