Melissa Em

Melissa Em

@meowwwls.bsky.social

she/her πŸ–Œ part-time #illustrator πŸ‘©πŸ»β€πŸ’» part-time front-end developer πŸ§˜πŸ»β€β™€οΈ full-time worrier πŸ“ Chicago

1,836 Followers 584 Following 253 Posts Joined Aug 2023
6 days ago

my ideal future is not one where tech makes everyone go faster but one where everyone has the freedom to slow down

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6 days ago

The NBA: We cannot allow our teams to celebrate vices, like our cities' premier strip clubs.

Also, the NBA: Brought to you by gambling companies DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, and Fanatics Sportsbooks

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6 days ago

This ALSO feels like a good day to announce that I am launching a pet end-of-life care advice column in April! Please a) sign up and b) send advice questions to advice at allmydeadcats dot com

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6 days ago

You need to call your reps and demand that they OPPOSE:

-the KIDS Act
-KOSA
-the Screen Act
-Sammy's Law
-the App Store Accountability Act

And additionally, oppose:

-reforming/sunsetting Section 230
-online age verification/ID laws

www.congress.gov/members/find...

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1 week ago

Enlightened with Laura Dern and Diane Ladd. Their relationship is huge part of the show and why Dern's character is the way she is.

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1 week ago

Especially when it's for Senate or Congress and the person elected suddenly gets to vote on issues that affect *everyone*

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1 week ago

Well, gas is expensive, and food is expensive, and we’re doing a war nobody wants, but at least there are no jobs

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1 week ago

For most people, stable employment is disappearing and being replaced by precarious, low-paid work. Stability is a thing of the past now. Over 2 billion workers worldwide have no job security or benefits.

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1 week ago

I promise you it's actually okay and good to say " I made choices I would not make again because now I understand things differently."

It's a sign of continued political education and a growing commitment and consciousness.

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1 week ago

The growth and realization is the important part! (I lucked into my mom exposing me to what she did; I could have ended up with the opposite experience). It's surreal to me with how much recent history we have with this sort of thing, that the OP could be shocked Pikachu about what we've just done.

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1 week ago

I'm starting to realize that not every teenager spent lunchtime with their mom watching Amy Goodman covering civilian deaths in Iraq on a daily basis like I did

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1 week ago

Yes! Also, not being willing to put in the time and work to get decent at a craft makes it easy to devalue those who do, and justify denying them a way to make a living.

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1 week ago

The same feeling for making any sort of art. How can you be proud of the outcome when you didn't earn the result? I get so much joy from the end result of whatever it is I'm making when I look at everything it took to get there. I feel pride these people cannot possibly experience.

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1 week ago

Theft aside (which is horrid), the economic impact (data centers driving electricity costs for everyone through the roof, eliminating jobs), let alone the environmental impact is a dealbreaker for this tech. Not one "pro" can possibly outweigh the cons, and we can't accept this as an inevitability.

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1 week ago

I have a small rainbow macaron one, which I *love*, and have a more-than-slight panic over when I've misplaced her.

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1 week ago

β€œTo believe in laws over belief in people is to be colonized.”

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1 week ago

Well at least I have an excuse to stop my half-assed attempt to switch to Proton now

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1 week ago

Hello internet friends! I am working on a feature about the people making whistles and popup leftist supply depots and looking for people to talk to; sometimes casting a wide net yields people I haven't found yet! I am in touch with Bree and Courtney, but if YOU are a whistle logistician...

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1 week ago

Never become the kind of person who no one cares about enough to make sure you don't embarrass yourself this way. My phone would have been blowing up before I hit the podium.

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1 week ago

Automation as a matter of personal human convenience is absolutely a positive goal to pursue, but pursuing it at the expense of human health and lives, of our planet, of political instability and violence, is categorically wrong and always will be.

Move slow and fix things. We'll get there.

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1 week ago

Hello internet friends and friendly internet strangers.

Things are rough out there and we gotta pay bills, so here's a thread of tech for good* roles for all y'all looking for work right now.

*or just less evil, I hope!

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1 week ago

Really proud of this piece and so thankful to all the sex workers who talked with me while I was researching! I don’t often see this framed as a speech and artistic expression issue but it is: Visa/MC are effectively crowning themselves art directors as they rip sex workers off.

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1 week ago

This is so timely after our discussion about this. Free the nipple, but also glad rommy's clever censoring gets to see the light of day to highlight the absurdity of this.

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1 week ago
Preview
Sex Workers Versus the Algorithm No seriously, fuck the algorithm.

HAPPY FLYTRAP TUESDAY!! This week, @sesmith.lol writes about the "algorithmic violence" navigated by sex workers across platforms, how it robs SW of their time, creativity, and (most importantly) their money.

READ BELOW:

www.theflytrapmedia.com/sex-wor/

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1 week ago

But it's not just low wages. Work itselfβ€”increasingly gigified or contracted out, and stripped of basic benefitsβ€”has become more precarious than ever.

For many, the real threat isn't job loss. It's that their job will never pay enough, never provide enough hours or stability to keep them housed.

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1 week ago

It was such an honor to illustrate @sesmith.lol's important piece for @theflytrapmedia.com this week!

Fuck the algorithm

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1 week ago

I'm getting so much anxiety just reading them, let alone thinking about someone actually asking me these questions

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2 weeks ago

I know that I sound like a broken record but I think once this society was ok with accepting mass covid deaths just to be able to eat at Applebees then all bets were off.

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2 weeks ago

We've had to lower the bar so much and I guess even that was too high for people to clear, so having a bar at all has been equated to a purity test and my brain is melting and oozing out of my ears send help

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2 weeks ago

It's complete BS logic and making me angry enough to spit fire. Evil people who want to do evil things are doing evil things, and it really works to minimize the severity of the evil things they're doing when people keep claiming it's all a ~distraction~.

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