Asking as a tired Australian, why do Americans get so weird about ugg boots? “but like, are they REAL uggs?” they’re hideous and they’re made of sheep, Tiffany, just wear the things and be quiet
I did some digging and it turns out the answer is stranger than I thought.
Uggs were originally Australian in make and design, and the word “ugg” just refers to the style of boot here. Then some Australian fucker trademarked it in America and sold it to a massive American company in the 80s. Thus UGG became a brand. Americans recognise Ugg as a brand, and think it’s fashionable and cool to wear name-brand boots, while Australians just call every style of boot like that an Ugg and (as long as it’s real sheepskin) don’t tend to discriminate much.
Now that answers why Americans are so keen on the brand name, but there’s more.
What American law did was basically steal a generic term and style of shoe that had been used in Australia for decades, and then make it illegal for their competitors to use it as their own.
So their trademark means Australians cannot sell (Australian-made!) Uggs into the US. And there are legal battles occurring over the use of the term ‘ugg’. A delightful origin story of the term runs thus:
Australians have been making Ugg boots for half a century.
Graeme Spencer, who runs Huggy’s Ugg boot in South Australia, said it was his father Charlie Spencer who made the first Ugg boots and came up with the word Ugg.
“A customer of his came in and said they are the ugliest boots she had ever seen … And he just came up with U-G-G,” Mr Spencer said.
Australian senators are calling for the term ‘Ugg’ to be recognised as what it always has been - a generic term for footwear and not a brand name - because it bullies Australian manufacturers out of making their own product. Deckers, the brand owner, shuts down thousands of listings and chases out any trace of ‘counterfeit’ uggs (lmao). Even odder, in their war on ‘counterfeits’, Deckers tries to convince people that buying fake uggs basically equals supporting terrorism.
Australian Leather owner Eddie Oygur is seeking a separate ruling in Australia that Deckers is guilty of deceptive conduct, by trading under the name Ugg Australia when the company is based in California and its Ugg boots are made in China.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is considering the matter.
Mr Oygur has also asked the ACCC to investigate the Deckers’ website which warns consumers who buy so-called “fake” Ugg boots, not made by Deckers, that they could be supporting terrorism, mobsters or gangs.
The Ugg website states that “infamous terrorist groups, organised crime rings, and gangs such as the … Camorra … Chinese triads .. Russian mafia, Al Qaeda and Hezbullah finance their operations — including terrorism, drug, sex, and arms trafficking — through the sale and trafficking of counterfeits”.
I’ve met the horrible, nasty people who make counterfeit uggs. Her name’s Barb and she works at the local market. Her husband sews the Australian sheepskin himself, and she attaches the soles. These evil counterfeiters are mostly just Australians making and selling footwear like they always did.
So the American obsession with “real uggs” that I mocked so unthinkingly is actually the story of how a huge American company took something generic from Australia, then trademarked the brand, sued the pants off anyone who tried to use the word they’d been using for years, then further branded themselves as Ugg Australia even though it’s based in California and made in China, and started scaremongering to make people believe that ‘counterfeit uggs’ are evil, as if non-brand name sheep boots are on the same level as triads and the mafia, when it’s just Barb’s husband sewing in a shed.
the best joke scp is the one where the scp itself is just typical mediocre normal scp fare (dark matter bracelet that kills people) but the joke is that the scientists behave like scp community members instead of actual scientists
Aliens have invaded and are taking over. Their technology, intelligence, and power is unstoppable. They just didnt plan on one thing: The old gods returning.
When they first arrived, we were overjoyed. Proof that we weren’t alone
in the universe, that there were other races to share and exchange technologies
with! Their arrival brought about world peace - with other life forms out
there, we needed to present a united front. World hunger and poverty was solved
within a decade, a demonstration to our new friends that we were worthy of the
responsibility of exploring the galaxy.
They disagreed.
They accessed our histories, they saw everything, and they recoiled in
horror. They could not fathom the world we had created, and the solutions we
had brought about not because it was the right thing to do, but to impress
them.
They were not impressed. They told us, regret tinging the translators,
that we could not be trusted as keepers of this world. The damage we had done
was coming close to being irreparable, and for our own good they’d need to take
over.
I have to say, I agreed – humans are terrible. But the funny thing
about humanity is, even if something is right, if it means giving up our
control, it is wrong.
We fought back.
At first we fought back democratically. This race that had descended
from the stars was peaceful, never seeming to favour violence. We didn’t think
they’d start killing indiscriminately. We didn’t think they’d take inspiration
from our own history books.
As with so many other things, we were wrong.
An extreme group of humans succeeded in ambushing and killing several
of their high-ranking Xenos. Human lives were lost in the process, but the
extremists saw that as a necessary sacrifice, a means to an end. The Xenos had
been shown that we wouldn’t tolerate their kind here, that they should leave
and let us get on with things how we always have.
Within days, war had been declared, and we learned why we should have
tried harder. Had they decided to simply fight the moment they touched down, to
systematically advance and wipe out every human life they came across, we
wouldn’t have stood a chance. Their weapons, armour, tactics, the sheer
firepower and the size of their armies were beyond comprehension. Out of rage
and grief, they marched over us, and began the slow process of wiping us out.
Bullets couldn’t pierce their armour and shields, rockets fell to the ground
lifeless, and even nuclear devices were somehow disabled mid-flight.
Still we fought back. Humans never have figured out how to give up when
all hope is lost.
There was no formal resistance of rebellion, we simply gathered,
fought, and survived where we could. When something new happened, it took
weeks, months, to reach every last survivor.
And then, something unbelievable happened.
Stories started filtering through to the pockets of us in hiding, strange
stories – a freak electrical storm in Greece that appeared from a clear blue
sky and wiped out a thousand of them in less than 15 minutes; Xenos impaled on
braches of rare trees, some kind of grisly warning that we chalked up to particularly
violent survivors in that area; whole armies frozen to death because the
temperature around them had dropped too quickly for their environmental suits
to keep up with. Freak weather patterns that worked in our favour, violent
survivors, terrain they couldn’t navigate. That’s what we told ourselves when
the stories filtered through.
But then they got weirder. There were stories of Xenos being swallowed
by the ground itself. A pack of wolves, larger than anything ever before seen
appeared from a crack in a mountain range to storm through an encampment and
kill every last Xenos. There was a massive surge in the number of corvids
around the world, and they always seemed to congregate where the Xenos were
thickest… days before something killed everything. Then they’d vanish, and more
corvids would appear somewhere else. Harbingers, just like the old tales.
One day a massive seafaring vessel chasing a fishing trawler was pulled
under the water – no reefs or icebergs in the area, and the sea mines had long
been disarmed and deactivated. I spoke to a man who had been in the sloop
running from the Xenos ship, and he swore blind the Kraken had got it, the
tentacles alone bigger than the tiny boat he’d been huddled on. He shuddered
and drank too much, and I put it down to hallucinations caused by a bad batch
of moonshine. There was no such thing as monsters.
Then we heard about warriors. We heard about chariots, of all things,
chasing down whole platoons of Xenos in Egypt, chariots so bright it felt like
staring into the sun; a huge hound with three heads was spotted in Greece, a
man in shadows and a woman of light removing the leash as Xenos advanced on
them; a woman showed up in Iceland standing head and shoulders above the
tallest man there, with an army of her own. They didn’t seem to fall in battle,
and pushed the Xenos back, fighting with sword and shield and spear, a fury
that our alien invaders couldn’t match.
Humanoid creatures with eyes of fire supposedly began granting wishes
over in Syria, as long as your wish was for them to kill your enemies. There
were sightings in Ireland of pure white horses, horses that once ridden wouldn’t
let you off, that dragged people into bogs and rivers. Tales came out of brazil of monstrously large snakes, sometimes
with the faces of women, dragging aliens into the gloom of the rivers and
rainforests.
But there’s no such thing as monsters.
I finally believed when I saw three women facing down the largest army
of Xenos I’d ever come across – at least twelve thousand by my counting. I’d
been running from a scouting party, and when I stumbled out of the treeline onto
a road I realised they’d chased me right into the path of the oncoming horde.
The moment you face your death is a strange one. Everything felt calm
except the thundering of my pulse in my ears, and the crows that seemed to come
from nowhere to blot out the sun.
Then three women strolled into the road in front of me, placing
themselves between me and the advancing army. A young woman, barely out of
girlhood; someone who could have easily been my mother; and a woman so old she
was almost bent double. It was the oldest who strode towards the mass of Xenos
without any fear, leading the other two towards their deaths, and the din of
the crows got louder.
The youngest one glanced my way and smiled playfully, and something
from my grandmother’s tales made me flatten myself to the ground, hands clamped
firmly over my ears.
The scream started low, in the back of the old woman’s throat,
travelling through the ground and making every bone in my body shudder with the
vibration. Realisation began to dawn on me as Maiden and Mother joined in with
their Crone, and the scream climbed to a crescendo that could have shattered glass.
Even with my hands tight over my ears it pierced me to my core, a screaming
agony that made me want to curl in on myself and die.
I survived because it wasn’t meant for me.
The Xenos, however, felt the full force of the rage these women contained.
An entire planet’s worth of grieving poured out of them in this shriek, rooting
their enemies to the ground with the difference in tone and pitch between these
three women telling their stories.
The mother stood tall and resolute, screaming her grief at these
invaders, a mother mourning all of her children.
The crone’s low snarl was that of war. Weary of the fighting but always
ready to defend what’s hers, she growled her challenge, and the Xenos couldn’t
stand against it.
The maiden was hope, the only act of defiance in a world on the edge of
ruin. When everything was dust, when the last stragglers of humanity were
contemplating giving up, she was the hope that kept them fighting.
Part of me wondered how many shirts they’d washed, how many rivers they’d
wept together, before standing up and saying “no more.”
The scream stopped abruptly, leaving me feeling like the breath had all
been sucked out of me, a void in the air around me that rushed back in and
filled my lungs with a long, shuddering gasp.
I opened my eyes to carnage. The Xenos had died where they’d stood,
their organs haemorrhaging, what passed for blood pouring from every orifice,
their eyes turning to liquid in their skulls. Bodies were everywhere, and the
crows circling overhead had fallen silent, uninterested in the feast this must
have surely been for them.
The Morrigan was one woman now, ageless and terrifying.
“Get up, child.” She commanded, and I had no choice but to obey,
trembling legs pushing me to my feet. She reached out a hand, and gently wiped a
trail of blood away from my ear. “Did you really think we’d abandoned you?” She
murmured, and the crows descended, carrying her to the next battle.
Monsters are real, and some of them look like people. But the Gods are
also real, and they still believe in us.
So I’m still fighting, and my battle cry is full of hope.
You can’t be serious… that shit is soooooo unsafe for the patient and taxing on nurse 😩
As a nursing major this hurts me. It’s already hard enough taking care of someone who cannot take care of themselves but NOW we don’t have the materials needed to administer care. This pisses me off 😒
Man what the fuck
He’s telling the truth, I currently work at a hospital and there is a nationwide shortage of IV fluid bags. So bad that they’re referring to alternative methods like medications that can be administered orally or like the post above. Smh
Not to mention the shortage of antibiotics
WTF??
Some 40% of drugs and supplies used in the US were manufactured in PR. Drug shortages were predicted after the hurricane and now they are starting to happen. Since PR doesn’t seem to be considered to be part of the US by this administration, help to fix it has been short and late in coming, which means that drug shortages will only get worse.
Are we great yet?
in the children’s hospital i was rotating at we weren’t changing central line tubing (lines that go.. directly to your heart, as in, not something you want infected) for six days instead of 3 due to shortages
what the fuck
this is sort of horrifying
More than half of my clients have had to have their entire medication regimens reworked. Medication regimens that they had been stable and supported on for months or years. Medication regimens that had helped them steadily improve and progress in their lives had to be thrown out the window and completely started over by trial and error again because their medications are no longer available.
People are dying in Puerto Rico and people are going to die on the continental US as well.
Merck’s main manufacturing facility is in PR, if you want a name.
The FDA actually put out a press release on this today. Apparently it’s not just the IV bags, but the fluids as well that are in short supply. There’s a (worryingly long) list of drugs and related paraphenelia experiencing shortages [here].
ive been sitting on a phone call with a guy from microsoft for an hour now after my computer crashed so he can help me re-upgrade to win10 and 99% of it has been pure silence but 5 mins ago he asked me if he can go pee.
i told him bro u been sittin here watching my slow ass computer install windows 10 for over 50 minutes you can go make yourself a cup of tea and a sandwich if you want.
he came back and apologised for making me wait for him but he said he made a sandwich and a coffee and now he’s chilling at his desk having a bite to eat and we’re just hanging out watching my percentage climb.
im getting jack of the silence so i asked him where he’s from bc he has an accent and theres a slight delay and he said he’s in the philippines so now we’re talking about the girl who won silver in the weightlifting at rio and he’s so proud of her its adorable.
apparently it’s the first medal the philippines has won since the olympics in 1996 so this woman is a hero over there rn. i love hearing underdog stories i want to hear more.
shit boy now we’re talking about how countries like the US and australia are disappointed when they dont win gold medals but athletes from countries like the philippines are the pride of the nation if they even place and how it suggestive of the values of first world countries
BOY THIS IS GETTING DEEP
we’re two hours in and i asked him what his record was for the longest phone call and he said five and a half.
bRO. FIVE HOURS ON THE DAMN PHONE HOW DOES A MOFO DEAL WITH THAT.
im on hold again bc his supervisor wants something but apparently the five and a half hour phone call was because a guy was mad that he couldn’t figure out how to work windows 8 when he got a new computer so my tech guy spent nearly six hours teaching him how to use a fucking operating system.
this guy has the patience of a damn saint can we give him a medal or something like lets give the philippines their second medal in 20 years pleASE.
my computer finally entered its boot-reboot stage after installation and he asked me in the most polite way humanely possible if we could perhaps end the call and he will call me back tomorrow to make sure the upgrade finished properly.
this guy just spent over two hours chilling on the phone with me and he’s still gonna call me back tomorrow just to check that everything is ok.
i feel like ive entered a new plane of existence.
UPDATE
he called me back like he promised he would and asked whether everything was okay, and i told him it was and that ive reinstalled everything.
he said he was so happy that my computer is working again and that he was so glad that i was his customer because he’s not used to being able to chat and talk with the people on the other end just for the hell of it and it made his day yesterday.
his supervisor got on the phone and i gave him a glowing review, she said shes going to email me a survey so i can put it all on paper so he has the physical feedback to his name.
honestly that just made the whole stress of my computer crashing its pants so much better.
I don’t care if I lose a thousand followers overnight, but if you think “tranny” or “shemale” are remotely acceptable ways to refer to a transgender person, please unfollow me.
The number of notes on this pleases both my ego and my fragile faith in humanity.
Adding on, “extra hole boy”, or “pussy boy” are equally abominable ways to refer to trans men.
Dont use Shim, shehe/heshe, chick with a dick d*ckgirl or c*ntboy either
and if you use “it” to dehumanize any trans person i will personally come to your house, break down your door, and piss on everything you own
‘Sissy’ and ‘trap’ are also utterly reprehensible…
Also if you call a trans woman futa I will kick your fucking teeth in
Please yes, im fucking sick of people looking at and consuming futinari culture and think that’s what we are
is it okay for a person who is not trans to reblog this?
Given the fact this is a legit list of words that trans people don’t want to be called/don’t want to hear, I hereby decree this post may be reblogged by everyone who wants to spread the word that these words are NOT ACCEPTABLE.
ngl having been called a transvestite to my face not real sure I like that one either.
Transvestite or transexual
Also if you call yourself “TRANSROMANTIC” i hate you and you’re trash
Signed.
NB: Older trans folks are very likely to call themselves transsexual. These are our elders, and they deserve our gratitude and respect. We should not question the words they use to refer to themselves. We love and support them, and we cherish the gift of their wisdom and give thanks for the gift of their survival.
Knowing that trans women of color started the movement in the united states and were literally immediately erased and excluded from what they started is the most deeply jading knowledge.
It is the original sin of the so-called queer community and it damns it from the cradle.
no white gay boy will ever reblog this, watch:
no white gay will reblog this
no white lgb person will reblog this
Without Stonewall, without the efforts of Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, the LGBTQ Community wouldn’t be where it is today. Don’t forget the roots, don’t forget the catalyst.
and then TERFs wanna be like, “hmm well the LGBT community existed before Stonewall!”
but like…Becky, of course LGBTQ+ people existed before Stonewall. We’ve all existed since the beginning of time. But the movement got a shock to its senses, a jump-start, a rocket-into-space when that glass shattered via Marsha P. Johnson, and when Sylvia Rivera was up on-stage protesting guess who was on the sidelines heckling her?
The same fuckers who won’t ever reblog or acknowledge this
My apologies to the original poster as I photo captured this post to add to the thread-I reposted this last year for pride and expect to repost it every year I have left-it’s our history people.
