By Endeavorance in News — Apr 3, 2023

Starbucks Really Hates Its Employees

Just a WHOLE LOT of blatant workers rights violations across the board. Also, RIP Sonic & E3, a torrent of dumb Twitter stuff, Iranian women are dope... and really all women are dope.

Starbucks fires union organizer because they hate the idea of their employees having a voice

After Starbucks head billionaire Howard Schultz (who prefers to not be called a billionaire) testified in front of congress because of his rampant union busting, Starbucks fired the person who was essentially "patient zero" for the Starbucks unionization efforts.

Starbucks claims that the employee was suddenly fired due to being routinely late. They were cited four times when they were late to work during their seven-year time at the company, two of which were times where she was late by one minute.

What's interesting here is the blatant disregard for the well-being and psychological safety of their employees. Starbucks seems to be quite interested in signaling that they do not give a single shit about their employees, and consider them less than dirt. This is possibly due to Starbucks not giving a single shit about their employees, and considering them less than dirt.

Sonic is literally dead

Among the myriad and mostly shitty April Fools jokes (mine notwithstanding), Sega put out a literal Sonic murder mystery visual novel. Like. For actually real. And for free.

The game is not considered canon, but Sonic is legit dead. The game is a train murder mystery in which the player has to solve the crime of Sonic's murder during what was supposed to be Amy's birthday party.

Amy is a character in the Sonic franchise. If you are not familiar with Amy, I recommend against Googling for generic search results on the character. Or any sonic character, really.

Just a lot of dumb Twitter bullshit that I'll wrap up real quick for you

Twitter is removing blue check marks from "legacy verified" accounts. So if a notable person or company was previously verified, their blue check mark will be going away unless they pay for Twitter Blue. And for companies, they can keep their gold check mark if they pay Musk $1,000 per month (except, apparently, for the most popular companies on the platform. weird, that).

Or rather, Twitter has said they're going to do that. In actuality, so far, they've just changed the description on blue check marks to not specify the difference between legacy verified accounts and paid Twitter Blue subscribers. This has left some legacy verified people pretty upset that they might be mistaken for a person who paid Elon Musk for a blue check mark.

However, the New York Times official account has lost its blue check mark, seemingly at the direction of Musk, who has also taken a few shots at them about it. Surely nothing bad will come of this.

Additionally, Twitters new API pricing is out and is still absurd. $100/mo just to dip your toe in. Tens of thousands of dollars per month to do anything realistic on the platform. Integration companies and Twitter apps are pulling out and shutting down left and right in response.

Hey, news companies? You do not need a Twitter account to syndicate your content, you know. If only there was some like… really simple syndication you could use otherwise.

RIP E3

The Electronic Entertainment Expo is almost assuredly dead. Like, for real this time. It has been cancelled a few times in the past few years, and has been cancelled for 2023. Notably, most major publishers and developers had already pulled out of the show, kinda defanging the whole thing to begin with.

E3 is infamous for its long history of wild-ass bizarro-world GAMER PRESS CONFERENCES giving us such classics as "599 US Dollars" and "My body is ready".

In fact, the ever-amazing Brian David Gilbert did an episode of his Unraveled series (rip) all about E3 press conferences. Absolutely worth a watch if you at all are nostalgic for E3 conferences.

Iranian women are still dealing with bullshit, still being way more badass than I'll ever be

Women in Iran have been out in public spaces without hijabs, much to the ire of the Iranian government and "morality police" in a widespread, ongoing protest against suppressive laws.

Recently, a video of two women being harassed over the matter in a store went viral. The owner of the store confronted the attacker, resulting in his shop being closed until he "explained himself."

The president of Iran reaffirmed that wearing a hijab is the law. Yet Iranian women are still out and about without them. This is because they are fucking righteous.

Speaking of women

A huge shout-out to Mercury Stardust and alluringskull did a fundraiser for Trans healthcare with a goal of $1,000,000. They absolute blasted past that goal and soared towards $2,000,000.

And yet again, women setting an example on how to bring more good to the world.