MrStalin

A video from FilmCow showcasing how horrible the US justice system is. It's... depressing, to put it mildly.

After 26 days of escalating actions, striking workers at the Catalonian paint manufacturer Acrylicos Vallejo have won significant victories at the negotiating table. Vallejo manufactures the Game Color and Model Color line paints that are most popularly used for miniatures and wargames. According to a post on the Catalonian labor organization CGT’s Bluesky page, a pre-agreement has been signed that would guarantee workers a salary increase, a parental aid package, new workplace harassment protocols, and occupational safety improvements.

As previously reported by Polygon, nearly all of the 85 workers had begun a 16-day partial work stoppage in late November before escalating to a full strike on Dec. 11 — a year after Vallejo had been purchased by investment firm ProA Capital for just under $53 million. In the days leading up to this announcement, CGT works council president Patricia Pérez described the alleged actions of Vallejo management over the last year in an article first published in Catalan by Poder Popular and commissioned for English translation by Rascal News.

According to Pérez, the alleged conditions at the Vallejo factory were not only dangerous, but not in compliance with Spanish law. In addition to a lack of employee showers (a requirement for companies which handle dangerous chemicals) and machinery in disrepair, Pérez claimed that panels from the factory ceiling were often broken and falling, allowing rain to fall on the factory floor. The translation describes an alleged “authoritarian” work environment, with unreasonable expectations for worker productivity that led to CGT filing a lawsuit against Vallejo management. Pérez also claimed that the company’s safety protocols are “biased” and portray “victim[s] of harassment as the perpetrator.” One employee, who filed a complaint against the company, was allegedly fired three days later on the grounds of “low productivity.”

Pérez told Poder Popular that the labor actions had pushed Vallejo management to “set aside any discussions of productivity” and begin “genuine negotiations.” Though those initial wage propositions were presented as “minimal” in the Poder Popular article, the final agreements announced in the CGT social post include: a salary increase of up to €3000 per year, a social paternity package of €500 for the birth of a child, with €200 education allowance for each child below 25 years of age — an amount which must be multiplied by 1.5 for single-parent families.

This victory follows multiple years of ongoing labor actions across sectors, including the currently ongoing SAG-AFTRA Voice Actors strike, the Amazon Teamsters strike, and the Starbucks Workers United strike.

Vallejo is a company that makes acrylic paint commonly used for hobby painting like warhammer miniatures and such.

seeing the workers win an agreement from a strike is always heartwarming to see

Vladimir Lenin, the Russian revolutionary and founding leader of the USSR, has long been rumored to have said, "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."

The quote has been the subject of numerous posts on social media sites including X, LinkedIn, Medium and Goodreads. On Reddit, it has made frequent appearances on quote-focused subreddits including r/quotes and r/QuotesPorn. It has also appeared in a range of print publications including Billy Idol's memoir "Dancing with Myself" and an editorial published in a 2013 issue of the Journal of Hepatology.

However, there is no evidence that Lenin ever spoke or wrote these words.

As the blog Quote Investigator pointed out in a 2020 article, the quote appears to have been first attributed to Lenin in 2001, 77 years after the Russian revolutionary's death, in a Guardian op-ed by British politician George Galloway.

Quote Investigator speculated that the misattribution may have come about due to confusion with a similar — but much wordier and less aphoristic — sentiment expressed in a 1918 pamphlet titled "The Chief Task of Our Day," which is securely attributable to Lenin. In the translation printed in "V. I. Lenin: Collected Works," a multivolume work published by Moscow's Progress Publishers in 1965, that quote reads,

In the space of a few days we destroyed one of the oldest, most powerful, barbarous and brutal of monarchies. In the space of a few months we passed through a number of stages of collaboration with the bourgeoisie and of shaking off petty-bourgeois illusions, for which other countries have required decades.

But where did the version that circulates today come from? The earliest appearance of a very similar version of the quote that Quote Investigator was able to find was a 1991 Christian Science Monitor article about Mexican poet Homero Aridjis, who is quoted as saying,

There are centuries in which nothing happens and years in which centuries pass.

That quote is a direct translation from the Spanish of two lines of Aridjis' poem "Sefarad, 1492," which was written in 1990 and included in Aridjis' 1991 poetry collection "Obra Poética: 1960–1990." In the original Spanish, the lines read:

Hay siglos en los que no pasa nada / y años en los que pásan siglos

Aridjis was not the first to use this turn of phrase or a close variant, however. By searching variations on phrases used in the quote (for example, "in which nothing happens" instead of "where nothing happens"), Snopes was able to track down earlier versions not included among Quote Investigator's findings.

In 1982, for example, fantasy author David Eddings included a close variant in his novel "Pawn of Prophecy." That version reads:

Centuries pass when nothing happens, and then in a few short years events of such importance take place that the world is never the same again.

An even earlier version — and one that more closely resembles the version in the claim — was published in 1908, during Lenin's lifetime, although there is still no evidence to link it to Lenin himself. This version was published in "The Devil," a novel by Dutch-American author Adriaan Schade van Westrum:

There are years, centuries, in which nothing happens, and there are days, like yesterday, into which a whole lifetime is compressed.

Van Westrum's novel was based on the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár's 1907 play of the same name (in the original Hungarian, "Az Ördög"). However, we've been unable to locate any variation on the phrase in Molnár's original Hungarian text, so it seems likely that its inclusion in the 1908 novel adaptation was a bit of artistic license on van Westrum's part.

Regardless of whether van Westrum invented the quote or read it elsewhere, there is no evidence that Lenin originated the version that has widely circulated under his name since 2001. For this reason, we rate this claim as "Misattributed."

This is a very interesting deep dive into how much wargaming has an influence on world politics.

Maybe I'm too cynical at this point, but the thing that most surprises me is the fact that other people are surprised at how deeply intertwined the game industry is with the military industrial complex.

https://archive.is/iMGxH

Endeavour Mining Plc and Lilium Mining have resolved their legal dispute over the sale of two gold mines in Africa, agreeing to transfer the assets to the Burkina Faso government.

The conflict arose after Lilium acquired the Wahgnion and Boungou projects in Burkina Faso last June, Bloomberg reported.

Endeavour had previously claimed that Lilium missed over $100 million in payments, while Lilium accused the London-listed gold producer of misrepresenting the "financial position and operating capabilities" of the mines.

As part of the settlement, Lilium will transfer ownership of the mines to the Burkina Faso government. In return, the government will pay Endeavour $60 million and a 3% royalty on up to 400,000 ounces of gold produced at the Wahgnion mine, according to a statement released on Tuesday.

Endeavour and Lilium “have agreed to cease the current legal proceedings against each other,” the statement said. The firms have been involved in an arbitration case in London since March.

Endeavour said “both parties would like to thank the Government of Burkina Faso for its mediation efforts”.

Lilium declined to comment on the matter. The company is a subsidiary of Lilium Capital, an investment firm founded by US-Burkinabe businessman Simon Tiemtore. Endeavour, meanwhile, continues to operate gold mines across Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso.

The nationalization of the mines by Ouagadougou marks a new chapter in a growing trend across Africa, where governments, particularly those under military regimes, are taking steps to assert greater control over their natural resources.

For instance, in June, Niger's military junta revoked the mining license of French state-owned company Orano at the Imouraren mine, which is one of the largest uranium mines in the world

The game is called Soulash 2, and the developer recently added a marriage system in an update, but refused to allow same-sex marriage options when asked by a player.

Dude makes a twitter post that is something else lmao https://x.com/ArturSmiarowski/status/1827386801310593108

My grandparents survived the nazis, my parents endured communism, I had to live through religious oppression since the age of 10, and now some spoiled brats think I'll bend my knee to their rainbow flag, or else they'll type some words.

I truly hate g*mers