Writers on ao3 literally be like “My sincere apologies for any errors I’ve made, my mother tongue is not english, enjoy!” and then it’s a piece of literature that should be preserved for all eternity for future generations to learn from.
oh. my god I was just writing a fic and I was about to say "he grimaced as if he'd bitten into a lemon" when it occurred to me, hang on, are there lemons in Star Wars? Or are they called something else? Despite the fact that it literally does not matter sksjs I went to google it and I typed in "Star Wars lemons" FORGETTING, in my brief naivety WHAT LEMONS USED TO MEAN
so you can imagine what came up
companies really have got to be okay with stagnant profits. what is wrong with earning the same amount every year? why does it always have to be more? it's not sustainable. there are only so many people on the planet you can profit from 😭
This is the thing. If there are only so many people they can profit from, and they demand to see profits go up every year, they will have to steal more out of the pockets of the little people each year, either by paying less, or by charging more. And that is the problem. Because that is exactly what is happening. And the rich get richer. And the poor are getting so poor that it is coming to a crisis point. They seem to have forgotten what happens at the crisis point though: people who have nothing to lose, will rise up and fight.
Cancer: a malignant tumor of potentially unlimited growth that expands locally by invasion and systemically (Merriam Webster)
See also: Capitalism
But also, “increasing profits every quarter” is a relatively recent thing. It’s new since the 1980s! In the 1980s, Reagan heavily promoted the economic theories connected with the Chicago school of economics. (“Reaganomics” is basically the Chicago school ideas dumbed down to fit in soundbites.) The Chicago school is, among other things, responsible for such wonders as “all regulation in the marketplace is always bad” “monopoly is good because it’s efficient” and “trickle-down economics.” When those ideas became mainstream, and were adopted wholeheartedly by Wall Street, they spawned the idea that the most important measure of a company was its stock increasing in value. Not how much business it was doing, not how well its customers liked and valued it, not how stable it was for the long-term. Is its stock increasing is the only measure of value.
Prior to that point, a business--even large corporations!--were valued more on how reliable they are. If I invest in this business, will it still be there five, ten, fifteen, twenty years from now? Businesses were good if they were profitable and stable. Increasing profits was wonderful! But they understood that that is not infinitely sustainable, and that if you wanted to maximize long-term profits for individual investors and for the economy as a whole, you did not want flash-in-the-pan trendiness, and you didn’t want a business cannibalizing itself, you wanted a business that was stable and took good care of its customers so they’d keep coming back.
#the economists who came up with that shit should face legal action
They’re dead.
The group that really established the ideas and basic principles and turned them into The Established Orthodox Way We Do Things (Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and Ronald Coase) have all been dead for years. The system of thought they put in place is still going strong and the economics department of the University of Chicago is still building on and expanding their work, but the people who came up with it to begin with are all dead.
Hey, if you're wanting to make some changes to how you eat, remember- it's much easier, healthier, and more sustainable to ADD foods that make you feel good than it is to REMOVE foods.
If you feel like you don't drink enough non-sugary fluids, it makes more sense to try drinking more tea and sparkling water than it does to just avoid soda. You gotta add in the good (and remember, that the only value food has is how it makes YOU feel. Food is morally nuetral and should be enjoyed.)
Try:
- Adding a handful of easy produce to lunch and dinner- baby carrots or cherry tomatoes, something 0 prep. And yes, you are allowed to dip it in dressing! (The fats can make it easier for your body to absorb the vitamins in the veggies)
- Adding a cheese stick or yogurt to breakfast. The protein is good and can help you wake up faster.
- Adding some roasted nuts to your afternoon snack. (ADD, not replace.) That variety and little protein boost will do you good!
- Have a glass of tea, sparkling water, or juice each time you have food. Let's be honest- you aren't hydrated enough. Go buy yourself some Kool Aide mix if that'll make you drink more water! Really!
- If you struggle with binge eating sugary foods and it makes you feel yuck when the sugar crash comes- eat 1 or 2 pieces of chocolate with lunch and dinner. Every day. Really. Make it not a big deal. Make it not special. Make it something you can expect, instead of crave. Let yourself enjoy it without guilt.
Remember- food is a gift. It should bring you joy, not stress. Trust your body. Enjoy the cookie. Drink something tasty.
hot take but none of you are allowed to use deer/antler imagery when working with cannibalistic themes anymore. you need to be honest with yallselves on WHY you're associating deer/antler imagery with cannibalism. just because you aren't naming the name doesn't mean that the original anti-indigenous racism isn't still inherent to what you're doing.
For those who need more explanation, a well known (but often misunderstood) figure in Algonquin and Aanishinabe culture is the wend*go.
No, I'm not fully typing out the name cause we don't say that name and don't want to attract its attention. Yes, all of this is taken very seriously by us Natives.
The problem is that this very serious figure isn't taken seriously at all by non-Natives and, instead of respecting our culture and the fact we don't even say its name, its perceived as this cool monster to add to movies, video games and cool edgy OCs.
And, as with all thing Native being used and abused, misunderstood, and transformed by non-Natives, we are tired of that. It's not okay, it's not respectful.
You want a people eating monster in a story? Use anything else.
As someone who's absolutely guilty of this shite on this account...yeah you have the right to spitroast me for that. Fair is fair.
I do hope we can use creepy deer aesthetics on and about other mythological/fiction monster villains tho. As someone who had a deer almost kill their dog, I just find deer creepy and unsettling regardless.
first off: You are the single person who has responded to this post admitting some variant of having done this that actually listened to what was being said, acknowledged that you did such things while you didn't know any better, expressed an intent to never do it again, and asked for clarification on whether or not "creepy deer aesthetic" is completely off-limits with that in mind. So with that said, I want you to know that you're one of the very few folks in this post I respect sincerely.
To that end: While obviously I can't speak for Native America as a monolith, it would be my opinion that no, creepy deer aesthetics as a concept are fine. Deer can be fucked up and weird. There is a fundamental lure to the idea of a large prey animal behaving as a predator or in ways anathema to our understanding of prey. That juxtaposition and irony has a lot of narrative potential and for good reason--it fucks severely! I don't want to see it go away! It fucks hard, for Christ's sake!
But it is my opinion that the use of deer aesthetics within the specific context of cannibal themes isn't able to be used anymore. The well has been poisoned too deeply. I never said once the specific being I was referring to in nearly any of my responses, but everyone knew exactly what I meant. Even trying to purposefully distance the racism from the imagery would be useless, since the racism is baked in to the assumptions by now. Reclamation may be able to happen in the future, but first we need to accept that setting it down completely is the right play for a while. You can distance racism from creepy deer stuff by purposefully and actively distancing it from Native America and cannibalism--if it becomes a recurring imagery on its own throughout multiple types of horror, rather than being innately tied by implication to the winter hunger, that's when we could maybe begin talking about whether or not to start re-examining our relationship with it.
My brother is a librarian, and his library is one of the ones that hosts Drag Queen Story Time.
He is also 6'3", 300 lbs of Heavy Weapons Librarian.
This week, some karen showed up to take video of said storytime. She was unmoved by the director of the library telling her their policy against taking video in the children's room.
My brother was also unmoved. Specifically, he was unmoved from his position directly in the line of karen's cellphone. She got video of an acre of blue broadcloth shirt, and that's it.
Other people who showed up to scowl at the drag queen decided they had other things to do that day when my brother scowled at them. He inherited our Mama's scowl, and it's a good one.
Sometimes, an ally looks like a big fat bald white guy. Sometimes, an ally looks like a wall.
A Cut Above
[ID: Image one is a comic featuring two Japanese swordswmen, one in red and one in blue. The one in red is standing and the one in blue is kneeling by a tree, drinking tea. Panel 1: The one in red says “You’re that famous swordsman, aren’t you?” The one in blue says, “I don’t want to fight.”
Panel 2: Both swordmen put their hands on their swords. The one in red says, “I bet you’re not so tough.”
Panel 3: A closeup of both men’s faces. The one in red says, “Let’s see who really has” but is cut off as the one in blue one slashing diagonally across the panel.
Panel 4: The panel has been sliced in half. The one in blue returns to peacefully drinking his tea while his part of the panel falls away from the one in red. The one in red stares in disbelief, saying “Hey! You can’t do that! Get back here”, but he is again cut off by the divided panel.
Image two is a black and white noir comic. A figure with a shadowy face fires a gun downwards with a “bang,” and another figure with glinting glasses says, “Wasting the last bullet on the ground. You’re just insane just as I’d heard.”
They turn around and say, “Unfortunately I’m out of ammo too. See you later, my friend.” The bullet’s white path cuts through the panels before violently landing on and killing the second person. The first figure watches from within a beam of light and thinks, “Should’ve watched your previous frame. idiot.” End ID]
Something I need y’all youngins to understand growing up in the age of crypto and streaming is that digital ownership is not ownership. Digital ownership is renting.
If you have, say, House (2022) on Netflix. That new stop motion movie. You don’t own that movie. You pay to have access, to that movie, but you don’t physically own it. It isn’t yours to take with you or put in a blu ray player. You’re paying to maybe watch it.
The movie is something you can access so long as Netflix is active and you pay for access. If one of those things changes you no longer can see that movie. If the movie goes to a different streaming service it is gone. (You should buy any movie you want to see again or would be sad if it left streaming).
Same with digital video games. Silent Hills PT is a playable trailer that, because of the Kojima/Konami dispute, was pulled from PSN. You cannot download it anymore. A physical disc cannot be taken from you, it can always be put in your console and played. Having the physical game is owning it having the downloaded game is renting it.
You’re promised these things forever but you only have access to rented digital goods for as long as the site supports it. And eventually that will change. You can pop in a Mario 64 cartridge into your N64 anytime you want and play. You cannot download a digital copy of Halo 2 to an original xbox because that support has been shut down (and modern consoles don’t let you carry your entire library on your system storage). If you have a disc of Horizon Zero Dawn you can always play it. If you have a digital copy that will go away given enough time.
Same with digital card games. Magic the Gathering has had multiple online formats. When they close one to make another your entire collection is gone. They offer you the idea of collecting but it only means anything if the servers are active. Physical cards can always be used and can even be used in inventive ways like horde mode. That’s how commander/EDH got its start.
Spotify is great for music exploration but download music you like. Go to the library and check out cd’s to put on your computer or go to bandcamp and get albums DRM free. My family switched itunes email accounts in 2011 and its junked up 3 years of purchases requiring us to rebuy them.
As much as NFT bros want you to believe it digital ownership is NOT ownership. The concept of digital ownership relies on false scarcity (minting a limited number of NFT’s when more could have been made) and a few clever words to make you think the netflix library is YOUR movie library. Its really fucking convenient for big businesses who can squeeze every drop of money out of you without giving anything tangible in return.
Digital ownership is NOT ownership.
I think the next big cool trend should be everybody gets a VCR again and everybody pirates all the digital media to vhs tapes. that's what I think ought. The video games we can figure out different.
Digital ownership is a perfectly acceptable form of ownership when you have a file in your actual file directory that you can manipulate normally and not i.e. access only through one specific proprietary app, and at least one backup copy in a non-networked device. You own that. You do.
You don't own a film you're accessing on Netflix any more than you owned a video rental, but Netflix isn't claiming you do, they're just trying to persuade you that's fine, and you don't need to own things anyway.
(E-book companies that sell you a book and then take it away when it's pulled or remotely edit the copy in your device and things like that are misrepresenting your ownership status, and that's a whole problem, but for all Netflix's crimes I don't think it ever says you're buying the content, just access.)
It's not an object per se, but the thumb drive full of movies is a data recording in your possession, just as much as a VHS tape is. And it's easier to make copies, so if I'm really hung up on a particular film I can own it 11 times with fairly little effort and potentially no extra cost, if I had the extra storage devices around anyway.
It's not the digital nature of the thing that's the problem, it's the arbitrary constructs capitalism keeps constructing to maintain control over access to their IP.
It's the copyright holders whose ability to securely 'own' digital media in a meaningful way is slippery. So they're doing their best to make sure no one else ever actually has a copy of their own.
Monetizing Accessibility
I wrote a review awhile ago for an app that I heavily relied on due to my dyslexia and TBI— Speechify. Its a text-to-speech reader that I can take photos of text books or signs and have them read to me. I used it plenty. You can take as many photos as you want, upload them, and have it read to you. Well..... thats what you used to be able to do. Then I updated the app and tah dah the main feature is behind a paywall!!! I can upload 3 files (photo/photoset) only! And if I want more I have to pay THIS fucking much:
So I updated my app review from 5 stars to 1
Then a long time later I got this email:
"One time discount" on something that was fucking free. Its the most basic feature. There were plenty of additional features to pay for and ads prior. Now the ENTIER goddamn app, including the absolute most basic function, above 3 files is behind a $140 paywall. I don't want 90% of the features just keeping files like I could before. Its not even a one time fee; its a subscription. As if my TBI and dyslexia only lasts a year. Not to mention I already deleted my entire library.
I fucking hate how goddamn expensive being disabled it is. The email is an insult.
[Image Description:
First Image: A screenshot of two payment plans. The first plan is for Text Reader Premium, and costs $139.99/yr ($11.67/mo). Below it, the following features are listed: power through any reading, unlimited listening, 50+ premium voices, and no ads, ever. The second plan is Speechify Premium Pro Text Reader Premium and costs $249.99/yr ($20.83/mo). Below it, the features from the previous plan are listed as well as "Audiobooks Premium" which includes 12 credits for any 100K+ titles, actor-narrated audiobooks, and access to 100,000+ titles.
Second Image: A screenshot of a one-star review titled "Upgrade destroyed the app." It reads: "I've been using the app for a long time since I have dyslexia, the app focused on helping people when I first downloaded. They have added a lot of features ….but they just put the most BASIC feature of uploading files to be read to you (which is how you have to handle print books) behind a giant subscription based paywall. I had an entire library and had to delete it all just so I could get another file. The app isn't for helping people anymore, not at the price tag. Wish I never updated the app. I'll be looking at better options."
Third image: A screenshot of a response from the Speechify Text to Speech Audio (Speechify Inc.) developer reading: "Hi, I can understand the price concern. I would like to support you with one time discount. Please reach out to us at help@speechify.com."
End Image Description.]
lmao tumblr letting their users choose whether or not they want their likes to be public but then pulling a twitter 2.0 and showing your likes on your followers’ dashboards and specially saying who liked the posts in their new update, without the users’ consent or a way to turn it off, is actually pretty insane.
like how many times to we — the users — have to tell them we don’t want tumblr to be like any other social media platforms and that tumblr’s being different than twitter, instagram, tiktok is actually what makes us stay on this silly little site.
respectfully @staff you’re driving your users away. stop trying to “fix” things that are good and don’t need to be fixed. we want tumblr to be tumblr. we don’t want the site to be twitter or instagram 2.0
edit: so at first I was under the impression that you could turn off the “posts liked by blogs you follow” in your dashboard preferences, but couldn’t control how your own likes showed up on the dashboards of your followers, after I saw several posts claiming that this was the case. — however, now I think I might be wrong and it thankfully does look like as long as you have your likes set to private, they will stay private and will not be showing up in your followers’ dashboards. apologize for any misunderstanding this may have caused.
* from my understanding now, you can choose not to see other people’s likes by going to your dashboard preferences in the setting and turning off the “posts liked by blogs you follow” option, and if you have your own likes set to private, they won’t be showing up on your followers’ dashboards.
I do not want tumblr to look, behave, act like tiktok twitter instagram
I do not want tumblr to look, behave, act like tiktok twitter instagram
I do not want tumblr to look, behave, act like tiktok twitter instagram
Anonymous asked:
What is your religion?
drdemonprince answered:
People who are far better read in theology than me have convinced me that even the category of “religion” is unhelpful for understanding the wide variety of cultural practices and relationships to spirituality that exist in the world.
When we call something a “religion” we are more often than not transposing a Christian and imperialist idea of what faith is onto completely different practices, beliefs, cultural norms, traditions, and personal experiences. This can happen even if we are not personally Christian or even Christian in our background, again because of imperialism and just how strongly American & European Christian culture has been forced onto the whole rest of the world, and along with it, many of our words and concepts.
Put another way, it really makes no sense to put Shintoism, for example, in the same categorical bucket as Christianity. Doing so actually makes it harder for someone who has a Christian reference point for what a “religion” is to understand Shintoism than if they were considered as their own distinct things.
years of working for various Catholic and Christian organizations has left me with no interest in and little respect for organized Christianity. When I was a child in Sunday School I developed the strange belief that God actively wanted me to be an atheist. And that’s about all I can say on the subject.
shinto is such a fantastic example case to choose though op, because so much of the cultural heritage that shinto represents was lost forever over the course of the decades the Japanese government spent trying to hammer 'Shintoism' into the mold of a centrally organized Religion that could perform the same societal functions as Christianity for imperial identity-shaping goals, a purpose for which it was by nature wildly unsuited
Implicit storytelling in two tweets:
Yeah. They did that. I bet the ‘clarification’ came as a result of some strong legal threats.
So be aware in the coming weeks that if your favorite actor reportedly says something shitty about the strike that makes your blood boil? Check the sources. There’s going to be a lot of uh, spin in the news.
It’s not quite a lie. If you watch the whole interview, he does say (briefly) that it will be hard for his production company and for actors in the short term, before pivoting to “but it’s important and will help actors in the long run and that’s more important.
It’s just taking things he actually said enough out of context that it contradicts the whole statement he gave.
Image description: it's a drawing of Captain Rex from Star Wars in a semi-realistic painting style. He's standing on a white background with the sketch of a medical droid behind him. He's holding up his blaster, which has smoke coming out of it. He's frowning at the camera with a serious expression. One of his eyes has a teary shine to it. The painting is inspired by the moment in The Clone Wars when Order 66 took place. Under the original drawing is a close up of Rex's face. End of description.
This list includes doctors in the United States, Australia, Canada, and Europe!
Even if you're not the target demographic, please share for any of your friends who may be.
And if you or someone you know would like to be added to the list, there's a place for that!