Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]

  • 29 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
Cake day: September 4th, 2022
  • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.nettochapotraphouse@hexbear.net•[Insert Steinbeck's quote]English
    50·
    22 hours ago

    say-the-line-bart-2 say-the-line-bart-1

    The Line

    The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit—and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains.

    And the smell of rot fills the country.

    Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

    There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates—died of malnutrition—because the food must rot, must be forced to rot.

    The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

    Edit: Pasted the actual section from the text [Penguin Classics e-book edition from 2000]; serves me right for grabbing someone’s half-assed transcription

  • Findom_DeLuise [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.nettotechnology@hexbear.net•LMAO, trust the AI.English
    8·
    1 day ago

    Field reliability call center workers will be replaced with IVR systems integrated with generative text-to-speech prompts. Some numbnuts telecom sub-subcontractor is going to call in a line locate, get a complete gibberish answer from the bazinga machine, and start boring right into a gas main, thus sending everything in a three-block radius to Valhalla. But the energy corporations’ CEOs will get to line their own pockets with some investment money in the meantime, as hedgies salivate over power and gas stonks getting in on the AI hype train. The C-suite goons will get golden parachutes while the workers shoulder the blame for upper management’s shitty decisions.