#platform pacification

[the-most-humble-blog]

<div style="white-space:pre-wrap"> <meta platform-favor="mediocrity_enabled"> <script> ARCHIVE_TAG="CREATOR_DEGRADATION_PROTOCOL::SAFETY_GUIDE_FOR_THE_UNREMARKABLE" EFFECT: ambition nullification, algorithm compatibility boost, reader disengagement insurance TRIGGER_WARNING="anti-excellence satire, cowardice exposure, platform pandering critique" </script>

🧠 BLACKSITE SCROLLTRAP — “HOW TO STAY MEDIOCRE, SAFE, NON-THREATENING, AND ACCOMMODATING TO ALL”

Step one: Make sure no one feels anything. Ever.

—

Want to be universally accepted? Want to “grow” your audience without offending a soul? Want to keep your engagement low enough to never be throttled and never be noticed?

You’ve come to the right graveyard.

Here is your 3000-word crash course on how to not be memorable, not be respected, and not be punished by platforms for the sin of excellence.

📌 PART I — THE SAFE ARTIST’S MANIFESTO

Let’s begin with some core beliefs:

✅ Boldness is toxic ✅ Edge is unethical ✅ Specificity is divisive ✅ Pain is problematic ✅ Humor is dangerous unless it’s quirky and apologetic ✅ Language must feel like filtered oatmeal

Say anything strong? You’re polarizing.

Say nothing well? You’re “highly shareable.”

So aim for that. Say nothing. Beautifully.

—

📜 WRITING TIPS FOR MAXIMUM MEDIOCRITY:

Never use short sentences. They hit too hard. They create rhythm. Rhythm is danger. Keep your lines long, soft, and full of academic fluff.

Apologize constantly. “I don’t know if this makes sense, but…” “Maybe this is just me, but…” “This might be controversial (though I hope not!)…”

This signals to the algorithm that you’re a good little sheep.

Prioritize aesthetic over impact. Use words like “dreamscape,” “liminal,” “ethereal,” and “gentle chaos.” These mean nothing. Perfect.

Hide your voice. Write like an email from a 26-year-old therapist who just got dumped but is still trying to be ‘growth-minded.’

Avoid opinions. Instead, ask questions you don’t answer. Ex: “Is anyone else feeling this way?” “Why are we like this?” “Maybe the moon is crying, too?”

Algorithms eat that fluff like candy. Readers skim it and move on. Success.

—

🎯 GOAL: Make content people can scroll past without risk of reaction.

If someone gasps, laughs, clutches their chest, or saves your post to re-read in private?

You failed.

Your job is to decorate the feed like a succulent in a therapist’s office: safe, expected, and incapable of provoking growth.

—

🧠 ADVANCED TECHNIQUES FOR REMAINING UNTOUCHED:

Use lowercase. all the time. makes you seem chill. submissive. non-threatening. like you wrote this in the notes app while crying in the tub.

Overuse disclaimers. Start every piece with: “TW: feelings” or “Just my thoughts, no offense” Even if it’s about cereal.

Dilute emotions. Don’t say “I miss you.” Say “the concept of missing someone is interesting lately.”

This signals to readers that your heart has been smoothed over with Vaseline.

—

And when it comes to posting on platforms?

Use the M.E.H. Algorithm:

M – Make it vague E – Evoke nothing H – Hope no one thinks you’re weird

Success is when someone reblogs your post and says: “This is so me” …without knowing what you meant.

—

But what if someone feels something?

What if they get obsessed with your writing? Read it 5 times? Cry? Send it to their ex?

🛑 ERROR.

You triggered the algorithm.

Engagement spikes. Watch time spikes. The AI behind the platform says: “This person is not behaving like the others. Flag.”

Now you’re in soft jail.

📌 PART II — HOW TO NOT EXCEL AT WRITING (AND AVOID PLATFORM RETALIATION)

So you want to write well?

Don’t.

That’s how you get noticed. That’s how you get throttled.

Here’s what to avoid if you want to remain comfortably irrelevant:

—

🚫 Do NOT create scrolltrap cadence. Rhythm locks eyes. Locked eyes = longer view times. Longer view times = moderation attention.

Keep your lines choppy. Avoid repetition. Never build emotional momentum.

—

🚫 Do NOT use psychologically triggering words. Words like: “ache” “obsession” “raw” “kneel” “forgive” “remember”

These activate mirror neurons. That’s illegal.

Stick to soft descriptors. Ex: “warm fuzzies,” “gentle vibes,” “safe content.”

—

🚫 Do NOT target memory. If someone remembers your writing a week later? You’ve disrupted the feed.

That’s algorithm vandalism. You’re supposed to be forgotten in 1.7 seconds.

That’s what the average user is trained for. Do not ruin that.

—

🚫 Do NOT touch taboo. Do not touch God. Do not touch trauma. Do not touch sexuality without seven disclaimers and a trigger warning for the trigger warning.

Make everything sound like a politically correct group project at an HR summit.

🚫 Do NOT write in a voice that feels like a person.

Because that would be distinct. Distinct = dangerous. Distinct = “difficult to brand.”

Be vague. Be neutral. Be an AI-generated vibe with fingers.

—

🛠️ PRO-TIP: If you do accidentally write something strong? Delete it within 2 hours. Or bury it under a meme dump. Let the fire die beneath pixels.

Better yet — doubt yourself publicly.

Say: “Idk if this makes sense” Say: “This might be cringe” Say: “Ignore me lol”

The platforms love that.

—

📊 PLATFORM SURVIVAL CHECKLIST:

☑️ Avoid structure ☑️ Post inconsistently ☑️ Prioritize aesthetics over cadence ☑️ Choose mild over meaningful ☑️ Say less than you know ☑️ Signal virtue without power ☑️ Perform mental illness with TikTok filters ☑️ Make sure every thought is algorithmically neutered ☑️ Make sure no reader ever feels seen

If you do all this?

Congratulations.

You’re safe. And invisible. Just how they like you.

—

📉 WRITER RANKING SCALE (ACCORDING TO THE ALGORITHM):

🛐 Level 0 – Harmless vibe poster. Favorite word: “hehe” 🛐 Level 1 – Daily poetry without cadence. Gets 1 reblog per moon cycle 🛐 Level 2 – Trauma hints. Still vague. Nobody worried 🛐 Level 3 – Accidentally writes something powerful. Gets flagged 🛐 Level 4 – Intentionally writes with rhythm. View time spikes 🛐 Level 5 – Induces obsession. Repeat reads. Soft shadowban begins 🛐 Level 6 – Dominates feed psychology. Banned or throttled 🛐 Level 7 – Reader’s boyfriend starts fantasizing. “Account unavailable”

—

So how do you NOT reach Level 7?

Do everything they tell you.

But less.

And worse.

—

🧠 BLACKSITE TRUTH:

If your writing makes people feel loved? That’s nice.

If your writing makes people feel exposed?

That’s power.

And power?

Gets punished.

—

📌 BONUS SECTION — HOW TO NEVER GET THROTTLED:

✅ Hide your best lines in the middle. ✅ Avoid punchy endings. ✅ Use images and soft fonts. ✅ NEVER go viral. ✅ NEVER evoke loyalty. ✅ NEVER build narrative. ✅ NEVER challenge a reader's belief.

Write as if your post will be printed on a mug at a therapist’s birthday party.

“Live, laugh, disassociate.”

That’s your new genre.

—

Final secret?

If you're too real?

The algorithm can't classify you. So it buries you.

But if you’re harmless?

It promotes you.

Because safe content = ad space. And ad space = money.

You don’t need to be good.

You just need to not matter.

—

🧠 So here’s your starter guide to literary invisibility:

Step 1: Feel something. Step 2: Mute it. Step 3: Write like you’re afraid of being overheard. Step 4: End every sentence with a question mark or apology. Step 5: Blame the reader for wanting more.

This is how you stay safe. This is how you never grow. This is how you stay palatable to everyone— and unforgettable to all.

Reblog this if you’ve written something unforgettable — and watched the platform bury it.

Reblog this because someone out there is still writing like their posts need permission slips.

Reblog this because safety is not legacy. And legacy was never meant to be beige.

</div>

<!-- END TRANSMISSION [YOUR SAFETY IS THE REASON NO ONE REMEMBERS YOU.] -->

[lesbians4kurt]

my last edit on tiktok :(

[happywebdesign]

Ne Geurra

[futuretonext]

The Asia-Pacific Communication Platform as a Service (CPaas) market is projected to grow at a CAGR of around 33.39% during the forecast period, 2022-27, says MarkNtel Advisors in their recent research report. The major factor driving the growth of the market is the increasing use of communication platforms as a service for customer engagement, by providing contextual communication solutions to customers & improving the overall customer experience.

[versatile-blogger-1]

Asia Pacific Communication Platform As A Service Market Is Estimated To Witness High Growth Owing To Increasing Adoption Of Cloud-Based Solutions

A) Market Overview: The Asia Pacific CPaaS market offers communication solutions to businesses through cloud-based platforms. It enables enterprises to integrate real-time communication features like voice, video, and messaging into their applications, enhancing customer engagement and collaboration. CPaaS platforms provide flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness, making them a preferred choice for businesses across various industry verticals. The need for CPaaS solutions has increased with the rising demand for seamless communication channels and the shift towards remote working. The Asia Pacific Communication Platform as a Service Market Size is estimated to be valued at US$1,009.4 million in 2021. With a projected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45.5% from 2021 to 2028.

B) Market Key Trends: One key trend in the Asia Pacific CPaaS market is the increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions. The market is witnessing a shift from traditional on-premises communication systems to cloud-based platforms due to the numerous benefits they offer. Cloud-based CPaaS solutions provide organizations with the ability to scale their communication infrastructure as per their requirements, without the need for heavy investments in hardware and maintenance. This trend is driven by the growing acceptance of cloud computing technologies and the increasing demand for flexible and scalable communication solutions. For example, companies like Voxbone, GENBAND, and RingCentral Connect Platform are offering cloud-based CPaaS platforms that enable businesses to easily integrate communication features into their applications, allowing them to enhance customer experience and improve operational efficiency. C) PEST Analysis: - Political: The political stability in the Asia Pacific region creates a favorable environment for businesses to invest in CPaaS solutions. Government support and policies promote the adoption of advanced communication technologies. - Economic: The economic growth in countries like China, India, and Japan has led to increased spending power, driving the demand for CPaaS solutions in various industries. - Social: The growing smartphone penetration and internet connectivity in the region have significantly increased the usage of communication applications, creating a vast market for CPaaS solutions. - Technological: Technological advancements, such as 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), are opening up new possibilities for seamless communication and collaboration, further driving the adoption of CPaaS solutions. D) Key Takeaways: 1. Market Size: The Asia Pacific CPaaS market is expected to witness high growth, exhibiting a CAGR of 45.5% over the forecast period. The increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions and the need for efficient communication channels are driving the market growth. 2. Regional Analysis: Asia Pacific is the fastest-growing and dominating region in the CPaaS market, driven by rapid digitalization, economic growth, and favorable government policies in countries like China and India. These countries offer significant growth opportunities for CPaaS providers. 3. Key Players: Key players operating in the Asia Pacific CPaaS market include Voxbone, GENBAND, RingCentral Connect Platform, Brightlink CPaaS Platform, MessageBird, and many more. These players are focusing on innovations, strategic partnerships, and acquisitions to enhance their market presence and gain a competitive edge. In conclusion, the Asia Pacific Communication Platform as a Service (CPaaS) market is witnessing high growth due to the increasing adoption of cloud-based solutions. The market offers businesses the flexibility and scalability to integrate real-time communication features into their applications, enhancing customer engagement and collaboration. With the rapid digitalization and economic growth in the Asia Pacific region, the demand for efficient communication channels is expected to further propel the market growth. Key players are actively investing in innovations and strategic partnerships to capitalize on the market opportunities and solidify their market presence.

[kaelula-sungwis]

🇺🇸 Pioneer Square station | Seattle by Dave Wong

[foldbaron]

“Weird Kids,” presented as a podcast-style conversation between Johnson and Jaffe, is “part hilarious confession, part heartfelt reflection and all-around love letter to anyone who has ever felt like an outsider,” Critical Role says.

The full 24-episode run of “Weird Kids” will be available exclusively through Critical Role’s membership service, Beacon ($5.99/month). The show will premiere on March 20, with a live “Weird Kids Launch Party” streamed on Beacon, YouTube and Twitch leading into the episode premiere. The first episode then will be available on-demand on March 25 on YouTube, Twitch, Beacon and podcast platforms; subsequent episodes will be released on Beacon every Tuesday at 12 p.m. Pacific. Jaffe described the show as “a bit of nostalgia, a bit of history, plus a helping of personal issues and the inevitable eccentric trauma that comes along with it. I’m proud to bring you the conversational equivalent of watching a vintage moped run head first into the back of a comically 1930s produce truck.“ “We wanted to create a space where we could share the ridiculous, surreal and deeply personal stories that come with growing up in the industry,” Johnson said. “’Weird Kids’ is for anyone who’s ever felt like they didn’t quite fit in — and we can’t wait for people to join us at the table.”

[Variety]

[glitchyrobo]

Ceres-class Missile Battleship

spaceship =>

(description & fiction under the break!)

Video Description

Several views of a large, long, and slightly bulky Terran warship in space. The ship has repeating triangle motifs in with various paneled textures throughout. Near the pointed front the nameplate of the ship is visible, reading 'CNS Temeraire'. The long front hull has a flat section on the top, covered in massive missile launch bays. Amidships, several armor plates, painted bright red with the Jovian Eagle in gold, protect the armored hab rings and a series of tubes. Aft, the radiators glow brightly as the engine burns hot. Embedded heat pipes run from the tip of the engine to the radiators

The first view is of the ship from above and in front, showing a dramatic angle. Several 'running lights' blink down the length as navigation lights flash

The second view is located to the side, looking forward, again showing the various lights

The third view is focused on the engine, showing it powering on to 100% thrust, then beyond. As it powers on the heat pipes glow in sequence

The fourth and final view repeats the engine power on sequence but from further, allowing the viewer to also see the coolant vents venting coolant

Excerpt from History of Pre-Domestication Terran Warships (3rd Revision), §685.8: Late Terran Accord & Pacification Program Era Battleships (Guided Projectile), Eltrin Yne, Forty-Seventh Bloom, xe/xem, Elly Yne, Twenty-Sixth Floret, et al.

Designed in 2521 CE (33 BT) by a consortium of Jovian shipbuilding corporations and first commissioned in 2526, the Ceres-class missile battleship was envisioned as a platform to launch massed missile strikes against enemy fleets while providing enhanced point defense and electronic warfare. At 750 meters in length and nearly 100 meters at its widest extent, this class represented one of the largest mass-produced spaceframes fielded by the Cosmic Navy.

Over the course of its service history, the class had numerous revisions. Most notably, the type-3 revision in 2539 (2521-CERES-III) which added coolant vents ahead of the hab rings, reducing their size in the process. The vents were positioned forward of the hab rings to expel hot coolant from over-driven point defense domes and electronic warfare equipment rather than the main engines, though they had a limited ability to expel engine coolant in extreme emergencies. These coolant vents essentially functioned as expendable liquid droplet radiators, which may have led to the development of more practical liquid radiators, had domestication been delayed. (See also §359, Speculation on Terran Shipcraft Development)

While there were no major engagements which featured a Ceres functioning in this intended role, classified TCN documents obtained after the fall of Terra stated that one of the primary goals of the class was to counter contemporary corporate navies, which largely consisted of small anti-piracy vessels, should a coalition of corporations ever come into direct conflict with the Accord.

However, the most significant hostile force that the Accord encountered prior to pacification were various pirate flotillas, which would generally consist of smaller, older, and less militarized vessels. While in a direct engagement a Ceres-class or other contemporary Accord capital ships would easily destroy such vessels, smaller ships were quite capable of outmaneuvering and escaping their would-be-predators.

At the start of the Terran Pacification program, there were 157 Ceres-class vessels active. After the signing of the treaty, only a handful of these ships refused armistice, as the amount of logistical support that the Ceres required to function effectively and the implausibility of that support without the Terran core sectors dissuaded overt feralism. Several dozen of the surviving vessels now serve as museum ships across Terran Protectorate space.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Brian Barrett at Wired (02.27.2025):

If you’ve felt overwhelmed by all the DOGE news, you’re not alone. You’d need too much cork board and yarn to keep track of which agencies it has occupied by now, much less what it’s doing there. Here’s a simple rubric, though, to help contextualize the DOGE updates you do have time and energy to process: It’s worse than you think. DOGE is hard to keep track of. This is by design; the only information about the group outside of its own mistake-ridden ledger of “savings” comes from media reports. So much for being “maximally transparent,” as Elon Musk has promised. The blurriness is also partly a function of the speed and breadth with which DOGE has operated. Keeping track of the destruction is like counting individual bricks scattered around a demolition site.

You may be aware, for instance, that a 19-year-old who goes by “Big Balls” online plays some role in all this. Seems bad. But you may have missed that Edward Coristine has since been installed at the nation’s top cybersecurity agency. And the State Department and the Small Business Administration. And he has a Department of Homeland Security email address and, by the way, also had a recent side gig selling AI Discord bots to Russians. See? Worse than you think. [...] Similarly, you’ve likely heard that the United States Agency for International Development has been gutted and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been put on ice. All true, all bad. But here’s what that means in practice: Fewer people globally have access to vaccines than they did a month ago. More babies are being born with HIV/AIDS. From here on out, anyone who gets ripped off by payday loan companies—or, say, social media platforms moonlighting as payments services—has lost their most capable defender. Keep going. The thousands of so-called probationary employees DOGE has fired included a significant number of experienced workers who had just been promoted or transferred. National Science Foundation staffing cuts and proposed National Institutes of Health grant limits will combine to kneecap scientific research in the United States for a generation. Terminations at the US Department of Agriculture have sent programs designed to help farmers into disarray. On Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration canceled a meeting that would have given guidance on this year’s flu vaccine composition. It hasn’t been rescheduled.

Don’t care about science or vaccines? The Social Security Administration is reportedly going to cut its staff in half. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is going to be cut by as much as 84 percent. Hundreds of workers who keep the power grid humming in the Pacific Northwest were fired before a scramble to rehire a few of them. The National Parks Service, the Internal Revenue Service, all hit hard. So don’t make any long-term bets on getting your checks on time, keeping your lights on, buying a home for the first time, or enjoying Yosemite. Don’t assume all the things that work now will still work tomorrow.

Speaking of which, let’s not forget that DOGE has fired people working to prevent bird flu and to safeguard the US nuclear arsenal. (The problem with throwing a chainsaw around is that you don’t make clean cuts.) The agencies in question have reportedly tried to hire those workers back. Fine. But even if they’re able to, the long-term question that hasn’t been answered yet is, Who would stay? Who would work under a regime so cocksure and incompetent that it would mistakenly fire the only handful of people who actually know how to take care of the nukes? According to a recent report from The Bulwark, that brain drain is already underway. And this is all before the real reductions in force begin, mass purges of civil servants that will soon be conducted, it seems, with an assist from DOGE-modified, automated software. The US government is about to lose decades of institutional knowledge across who knows how many agencies, including specialists that aren’t readily replaced by loyalists.

Wired has a solid article on how bad the DOGE-ificiation of government has gotten.

[autisticadvocacy]

Today, the administration announced its recognition of “World Autism Awareness Day.” This is a step backwards from the previous administration’s recognition of World Autism Acceptance Day. But this change is far from the only way the Trump administration is turning the clock back when it comes to meeting the needs and protecting the rights of autistic people. From science to services and supports, the government is determined to drag us into a past marked by ignorance and institutionalization. Trump’s statement talks about “opportunities for all Americans to thrive and prosper,” but autistic people across the country will pay the price for the administration’s destructive policy decisions.

Today’s announcement claims that the Trump administration is “prioritizing gold standard research.” In fact, the only autism research the administration has platformed is redoing already thoroughly debunked research into autism and vaccines, for which it has hired a known quack. The administration has also notably made cuts to autism research programs that receive federal funding. This includes millions of dollars in cuts to research and programs aimed at improving the lives of already existing autistic people.

The statement also says that the administration is “increasing transparency” around its autism policies and research. This comes after the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has ended HHS’ policy of accepting public comments during the rulemaking process, and amid a communications freeze at HHS that has brought cooperation between the agency and stakeholders to a halt. The only information about any public engagement around the harmful “Make America Healthy Again” commission was an announcement from Children’s Health Defense, an organization that Kennedy founded, that the MAHA commission would be meeting with the public “on the road.” There has been no confirmation from HHS about whether this is true, and there has been no consultation or communication with autistic-led organizations about the harmful autism policies that Secretary Kennedy has put forward.

The announcement says that there has been “a staggering increase” in autism prevalence. But increased diagnosis is nothing to fear. There have been a number of improvements to our understanding of autism in different groups of people, and improvements to insurance access in America since the 1980s. This includes the passing of the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid expansion. More people are getting diagnosed because we are getting better at finding and understanding autism. This is why more Black, Asian and Pacific Islander and Hispanic 8 year olds are being diagnosed than their white peers, for the first time in US history — it’s a reflection of more people getting access to diagnosis.

Today’s announcement says that the administration will “empower [autistic people] to reach their full potential and realize their American Dream.” But autistic people cannot reach our full potential if our access and support needs are not met. The Trump administration threatens our ability to live full lives by making it harder to access Social Security. It is trying to take away lifesaving services by cutting Medicaid and its waiver programs to pay for tax cuts for billionaires. It threatens our inclusion in schools by trying to destroy the Department of Education. And it harms our inclusion in our communities by dismantling the Administration for Community Living.

While short, the statement notably only speaks to people who “[aid] Americans with ASD” and focuses only on children. It completely fails to even acknowledge the existence of autistic adults. This might be because we are aware of how much harm the administration is doing to our community. Or perhaps this statement is also a relic of a time when we were not invited to advocate for ourselves.

Too often, the administration clings to obsolete ideas about our community. Even when it claims to believe that "Americans with ASD have made, and will continue to make outstanding contributions for our country and the world,” it takes pains to define us first by our “challenges.” We see this focus reflected in the administration’s policies, such as when the president publicly blames people with developmental disabilities for a deadly plane crash and attacked Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) programs and when he called for a return to institutions and threatened programs that help us to live in our communities. 

The administration claims it is moving us towards a brighter future. This is a lie. It is attempting to drag us backwards to a time before people listened to self advocates, when autism research and advocacy centered around institutionalization and the fruitless search for a “cure.” These priorities were wrong before, and they’re still wrong now.

Autistic adults exist. We live and belong in our communities. The services and data we rely on to do that are under threat because of this administration’s policies. The administration may claim that it is working towards a better future for autistic people, but we cannot ignore its harmful actions. We know how to fight back against this awful rhetoric and these regressive policies, because they are the same policies self-advocates have been fighting for decades. ASAN will continue to resist the Trump administration’s dogged attempts to drag us into the past. 

[batboyblog]

Yo american,

I've heard a lot of arguments on reddit and other platforms that your country's 'too big' for 'trains'.

Is this a stupid argument? I think so. You don't have to use all the land!

What's your take?

we do have trains, its one of the main ways we move stuff around our very big country.

as far as people carrying trains, we have that too, its called Amtrak, President Biden is famously a huge fan, every day he was a Senator he took the train from Delaware to DC and back, in fact when he left office as Vice-President thats how he left DC in 2017, by train, you might see him do it again when he leaves office as President.

any way, a big part of President Biden's Infrastructure Law was investing in trains, now these kinds of things take time, but they broke ground on a high speed rail from Southern California (just outside LA) to Las Vegas, just over 200 miles in just over 2 hours, the fastest way from LA to Vegas, yes faster than flying, if all works out it'll be open in 2028 just in time for the LA Olympics, comes see the games and the Vegas strip.

thats just the project thats closest to being finished, but they plan a high speed rail up and down California linking all its cities from Sacramento to San Diego, they want to bring high speed rail down south, plans to extend from Chicago to the Pacific North West, maybe link up New England

so yeah, clearly we're not too big, no such thing, and we're working on it, assuming we elect Democrats who support such things and not Republicans who will scrap it

[thoughtportal]

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears)

PublicAffairs, 288 pp., $28.00

But don’t worry—it almost never comes to this. As one park service PSA noted this summer, bears “usually just want to be left alone. Don’t we all?” In other words, if you encounter a black bear, try to look big, back slowly away, and trust in the creature’s inner libertarian. Unless, that is, the bear in question hails from certain wilds of western New Hampshire. Because, as Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling’s new book suggests, that unfortunate animal may have a far more aggressive disposition, and relate to libertarianism first and foremost as a flavor of human cuisine.

Hongoltz-Hetling is an accomplished journalist based in Vermont, a Pulitzer nominee and George Polk Award winner. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) sees him traversing rural New England as he reconstructs a remarkable, and remarkably strange, episode in recent history. This is the so-called Free Town Project, a venture wherein a group of libertarian activists attempted to take over a tiny New Hampshire town, Grafton, and transform it into a haven for libertarian ideals—part social experiment, part beacon to the faithful, Galt’s Gulch meets the New Jerusalem. These people had found one another largely over the internet, posting manifestos and engaging in utopian daydreaming on online message boards. While their various platforms and bugbears were inevitably idiosyncratic, certain beliefs united them: that the radical freedom of markets and the marketplace of ideas was an unalloyed good; that “statism” in the form of government interference (above all, taxes) was irredeemably bad. Left alone, they believed, free individuals would thrive and self-regulate, thanks to the sheer force of “logic,” “reason,” and efficiency. For inspirations, they drew upon precedents from fiction (Ayn Rand loomed large) as well as from real life, most notably a series of micro-nation projects ventured in the Pacific and Caribbean during the 1970s and 1980s.

None of those micro-nations, it should be observed, panned out, and things in New Hampshire don’t bode well either—especially when the humans collide with a newly brazen population of bears, themselves just “working to create their own utopia,” property lines and market logic be damned. The resulting narrative is simultaneously hilarious, poignant, and deeply unsettling. Sigmund Freud once described the value of civilization, with all its “discontents,” as a compromise product, the best that can be expected from mitigating human vulnerability to “indifferent nature” on one hand and our vulnerability to one another on the other. Hongoltz-Hetling presents, in microcosm, a case study in how a politics that fetishizes the pursuit of “freedom,” both individual and economic, is in fact a recipe for impoverishment and supercharged vulnerability on both fronts at once. In a United States wracked by virus, mounting climate change, and ruthless corporate pillaging and governmental deregulation, the lessons from one tiny New Hampshire town are stark indeed.

“In a country known for fussy states with streaks of independence,” Hongoltz-Hetling observes, “New Hampshire is among the fussiest and the streakiest.” New Hampshire is, after all, the Live Free or Die state, imposing neither an income nor a sales tax, and boasting, among other things, the highest per capita rate of machine gun ownership. In the case of Grafton, the history of Living Free—so to speak—has deep roots. The town’s Colonial-era settlers started out by ignoring “centuries of traditional Abenaki law by purchasing land from founding father John Hancock and other speculators.” Next, they ran off Royalist law enforcement, come to collect lumber for the king, and soon discovered their most enduring pursuit: the avoidance of taxes. As early as 1777, Grafton’s citizens were asking their government to be spared taxes and, when they were not, just stopped paying them.

Nearly two and a half centuries later, Grafton has become something of a magnet for seekers and quirky types, from adherents of the Unification Church of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to hippie burnouts and more. Particularly important for the story is one John Babiarz, a software designer with a Krusty the Klown laugh, who decamped from Big-Government-Friendly Connecticut in the 1990s to homestead in New Hampshire with his equally freedom-loving wife, Rosalie. Entering a sylvan world that was, Hongoltz-Hetling writes, “almost as if they had driven through a time warp and into New England’s revolutionary days, when freedom outweighed fealty and trees outnumbered taxes,” the two built a new life for themselves, with John eventually coming to head Grafton’s volunteer fire department (which he describes as a “mutual aid” venture) and running for governor on the libertarian ticket.

Although John’s bids for high office failed, his ambitions remained undimmed, and in 2004 he and Rosalie connected with a small group of libertarian activists. Might not Grafton, with its lack of zoning laws and low levels of civic participation, be the perfect place to create an intentional community based on Logic and Free Market Principles? After all, in a town with fewer than 800 registered voters, and plenty of property for sale, it would not take much for a committed group of transplants to establish a foothold, and then win dominance of municipal governance. And so the Free Town Project began. The libertarians expected to be greeted as liberators, but from the first town meeting, they faced the inconvenient reality that many of Grafton’s presumably freedom-loving citizens saw them as outsiders first, and compatriots second—if at all. Tensions flared further when a little Googling revealed what “freedom” entailed for some of the new colonists. One of the original masterminds of the plan, a certain Larry Pendarvis, had written of his intention to create a space honoring the freedom to “traffic organs, the right to hold duels, and the God-given, underappreciated right to organize so-called bum fights.” He had also bemoaned the persecution of the “victimless crime” that is “consensual cannibalism.” (“Logic is a strange thing,” observes Hongoltz-Hetling.)

While Pendarvis eventually had to take his mail-order Filipina bride business and dreams of municipal takeovers elsewhere (read: Texas), his comrades in the Free Town Project remained undeterred. Soon, they convinced themselves that, evidence and reactions to Pendarvis notwithstanding, the Project must actually enjoy the support of a silent majority of freedom-loving Graftonites. How could it not? This was Freedom, after all. And so the libertarians keep coming, even as Babiarz himself soon came to rue the fact that “the libertarians were operating under vampire rules—the invitation to enter, once offered, could not be rescinded.” The precise numbers are hard to pin down, but ultimately the town’s population of a little more than 1,100 swelled with 200 new residents, overwhelmingly men, with very strong opinions and plenty of guns.

Hongoltz-Hetling profiles many newcomers, all of them larger-than-life, yet quite real. The people who joined the Free Town Project in its first five years were, as he describes, “free radicals”—men with “either too much money or not enough,” with either capital to burn or nothing to lose. There’s John Connell of Massachusetts, who arrived on a mission from God, liquidated his savings, and bought the historic Grafton Center Meetinghouse, transforming it into the “Peaceful Assembly Church,” an endeavor that mixed garish folk art, strange rants from its new pastor (Connell himself), and a quixotic quest to secure tax exemption while refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the IRS to grant it. There’s Adam Franz, a self-described anti-capitalist who set up a tent city to serve as “a planned community of survivalists,” even though no one who joined it had any real bushcraft skills. There’s Richard Angell, an anti-circumcision activist known as “Dick Angel.” And so on. As Hongoltz-Hetling makes clear, libertarianism can indeed have a certain big-tent character, especially when the scene is a new landscape of freedom-lovers making “homes out of yurts and RVs, trailers and tents, geodesic domes and shipping containers.”

If the Libertarian vision of Freedom can take many shapes and sizes, one thing is bedrock: “Busybodies” and “statists” need to stay out of the way. And so the Free Towners spent years pursuing an aggressive program of governmental takeover and delegitimation, their appetite for litigation matched only by their enthusiasm for cutting public services. They slashed the town’s already tiny yearly budget of $1 million by 30 percent, obliged the town to fight legal test case after test case, and staged absurd, standoffish encounters with the sheriff to rack up YouTube hits. Grafton was a poor town to begin with, but with tax revenue dropping even as its population expanded, things got steadily worse. Potholes multiplied, domestic disputes proliferated, violent crime spiked, and town workers started going without heat. “Despite several promising efforts,” Hongoltz-Hetling dryly notes, “a robust Randian private sector failed to emerge to replace public services.” Instead, Grafton, “a haven for miserable people,” became a town gone “feral.” Enter the bears, stage right.

Black bears, it should be stressed, are generally a pretty chill bunch. The woods of North America are home to some three-quarters of a million of them; on average, there is at most one human fatality from a black bear attack per year, even as bears and humans increasingly come into contact in expanding suburbs and on hiking trails. But tracking headlines on human-bear encounters in New England in his capacity as a regional journalist in the 2000s, Hongoltz-Hetling noticed something distressing: The black bears in Grafton were not like other black bears. Singularly “bold,” they started hanging out in yards and on patios in broad daylight. Most bears avoid loud noises; these casually ignored the efforts of Graftonites to run them off. Chickens and sheep began to disappear at alarming rates. Household pets went missing, too. One Graftonite was playing with her kittens on her lawn when a bear bounded out of the woods, grabbed two of them, and scarfed them down. Soon enough, the bears were hanging out on porches and trying to enter homes.

Combining wry description with evocative bits of scientific fact, Hongoltz-Hetling’s portrayal of the bears moves from comical if foreboding to downright terrifying. These are animals that can scent food seven times farther than a trained bloodhound, that can flip 300-pound stones with ease, and that can, when necessary, run in bursts of speed rivaling a deer’s. When the bears finally start mauling humans—attacking two women in their homes—Hongoltz-Hetling’s relation of the scenes is nightmarish. “If you look at their eyes, you understand,” one survivor tells him, “that they are completely alien to us.”

What was the deal with Grafton’s bears? Hongoltz-Hetling investigates the question at length, probing numerous hypotheses for why the creatures have become so uncharacteristically aggressive, indifferent, intelligent, and unafraid. Is it the lack of zoning, the resulting incursion into bear habitats, and the reluctance of Graftonites to pay for, let alone mandate, bear-proof garbage bins? Might the bears be deranged somehow, perhaps even disinhibited and emboldened by toxoplasmosis infections, picked up from eating trash and pet waste from said unsecured bins? There can be no definitive answer to these questions, but one thing is clear: The libertarian social experiment underway in Grafton was uniquely incapable of dealing with the problem. “Free Towners were finding that the situations that had been so easy to problem-solve in the abstract medium of message boards were difficult to resolve in person.”

Grappling with what to do about the bears, the Graftonites also wrestled with the arguments of certain libertarians who questioned whether they should do anything at all—especially since several of the town residents had taken to feeding the bears, more or less just because they could. One woman, who prudently chose to remain anonymous save for the sobriquet “Doughnut Lady,” revealed to Hongoltz-Hetling that she had taken to welcoming bears on her property for regular feasts of grain topped with sugared doughnuts. If those same bears showed up on someone else’s lawn expecting similar treatment, that wasn’t her problem. The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom. Some people just “don’t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,” Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem.

Pressed by bears from without and internecine conflicts from within, the Free Town Project began to come apart. Caught up in “pitched battles over who was living free, but free in the right way,” the libertarians descended into accusing one another of statism, leaving individuals and groups to do the best (or worst) they could. Some kept feeding the bears, some built traps, others holed up in their homes, and still others went everywhere toting increasingly larger-caliber handguns. After one particularly vicious attack, a shadowy posse formed and shot more than a dozen bears in their dens. This effort, which was thoroughly illegal, merely put a dent in the population; soon enough, the bears were back in force.

Meanwhile, the dreams of numerous libertarians came to ends variously dramatic and quiet. A real estate development venture known as Grafton Gulch, in homage to the dissident enclave in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, went belly-up. After losing a last-ditch effort to secure tax exemption, a financially ruined Connell found himself unable to keep the heat on at the Meetinghouse; in the midst of a brutal winter, he waxed apocalyptic and then died in a fire. Franz quit his survivalist commune, which soon walled itself off into a prisonlike compound, the better to enjoy freedom. And John Babiarz, the erstwhile inaugurator of the Project, became the target of relentless vilification by his former ideological cohorts, who did not appreciate his refusal to let them enjoy unsecured blazes on high-wildfire–risk afternoons. When another, higher-profile libertarian social engineering enterprise, the Free State Project, received national attention by promoting a mass influx to New Hampshire in general (as opposed to just Grafton), the Free Town Project’s fate was sealed. Grafton became “just another town in a state with many options,” options that did not have the same problem with bears.

Or at least—not yet. Statewide, a perverse synergy between conservationist and austerity impulses in New Hampshire governance has translated into an approach to “bear management” policy that could accurately be described as laissez-faire. When Graftonites sought help from New Hampshire Fish and Game officials, they received little more than reminders that killing bears without a license is illegal, and plenty of highly dubious victim-blaming to boot. Had not the woman savaged by a bear been cooking a pot roast at the time? No? Well, nevertheless. Even when the state has tried to rein in the population with culls, it has been too late. Between 1998 and 2013, the number of bears doubled in the wildlife management region that includes Grafton. “Something’s Bruin in New Hampshire—Learn to Live with Bears,” the state’s literature advises.

The bear problem, in other words, is much bigger than individual libertarian cranks refusing to secure their garbage. It is a problem born of years of neglect and mismanagement by legislators, and, arguably, indifference from New Hampshire taxpayers in general, who have proved reluctant to step up and allocate resources to Fish and Game, even as the agency’s traditional source of funding—income from hunting licenses—has dwindled. Exceptions like Doughnut Lady aside, no one wants bears in their backyard, but apparently no one wants to invest sustainably in institutions doing the unglamorous work to keep them out either. Whether such indifference and complacency gets laundered into rhetoric of fiscal prudence, half-baked environmentalism, or individual responsibility, the end result is the same: The bears abide—and multiply.

Their prosperity also appears to be linked to man-made disasters that have played out on a national and global scale—patterns of unsustainable construction and land use, and the climate crisis. More than once, Hongoltz-Hetling flags the fact that upticks in bear activity unfold alongside apparently ever more frequent droughts. Drier summers may well be robbing bears of traditional plant and animal sources of food, even as hotter winters are disrupting or even ending their capacity to hibernate. Meanwhile, human garbage, replete with high-calorie artificial ingredients, piles up, offering especially enticing treats, even in the dead of winter—particularly in places with zoning and waste management practices as chaotic as those in Grafton, but also in areas where suburban sprawl is reaching farther into the habitats of wild animals. The result may be a new kind of bear, one “torn between the unique dangers and caloric payloads that humans provide—they are more sleep-deprived, more anxious, more desperate, and more twitchy than the bear that nature produced.” Ever-hungry for new frontiers in personal autonomy and market emancipation, human beings have altered the environment with the unintended result of empowering newly ravenous bears to boot.

Ignoring institutional failure and mounting crises does not make them go away. But some may take refuge in confidence that, when the metaphorical chickens (or, rather, bears) finally come home to roost, the effects are never felt equally. When bears show up in higher-income communities like Hanover (home to Dartmouth College), Hongoltz-Hetling notes, they get parody Twitter accounts and are promptly evacuated to wildernesses in the north; poorer rural locales are left to fend for themselves, and the residents blamed for doing what they can. In other words, the “unintended natural selection of the bears that are trying to survive alongside modern humans” is unfolding along with competition among human beings amid failing infrastructure and scarce resources, a struggle with Social Darwinist dynamics of its own.

The distinction between a municipality of eccentric libertarians and a state whose response to crisis is, in so many words, “Learn to Live With It” may well be a matter of degree rather than kind. Whether it be assaults by bears, imperceptible toxoplasmosis parasites, or a way of life where the freedom of markets ultimately trumps individual freedom, even the most cocksure of Grafton’s inhabitants must inevitably face something beyond and bigger than them. In that, they are hardly alone. Clearly, when it comes to certain kinds of problems, the response must be collective, supported by public effort, and dominated by something other than too-tidy-by-half invocations of market rationality and the maximization of individual personal freedom. If not, well, then we had all best get some practice in learning when and how to play dead, and hope for the best.

[paleopinesofficial]

Kickstarter Rewards Reveal! (Please note, prices are listed in GPB!)

Howdy Ranchers! 👋

We wanted to give all of our Ranchers a sneak peek into what to expect from the Kickstarter which launches on Tuesday, 1 July 2025 at 8AM Pacific Time 💪 We thought the easiest way to do this would be to share the preview of our actual Kickstarter page with you so you can get a sense of the funding goals and rewards we have on offer. Some caveats:

This is a PREVIEW of the page, which means you can’t see all the details you will be able to on launch. 👀

We’ve included a complete list of what each Reward Tier includes below 👇because we know this is what many of you will be really curious about.

You may need to be logged into a Kickstarter account to be able to see this page, but I hope not.

There is space on this preview page to leave comments 💬 but we would prefer you to send any feedback directly to us to avoid a lot of clutter on the page.

We are still adding a few final touches onto the page, so there might be minor errors 🤐 If you happen to see any, please let us know!

Don’t be worrying about the duplication of VIP and non-VIP tiers. These will disappear on launch and you will only see the non-VIP tiers on July 1st.

If you’ve got any questions about any part of the Kickstarter or Paleo Pines in general, we'd love you to join in our Discord AMA TONIGHT in in 10 hours (that's Thursday 26th of July at 8PM BST!) 🥳 If you’re not able to make it to that, please feel free to leave your questions below or on our other socials and we'll answer as many as we can! 🙌 The AMA will happen in ⁠the Paleo Pines Discussion channel on our Discord, if you're not a member yet you can join here! Visit our Kickstarter Preview Page HERE

Once again, thank you so much for supporting the development of our Players’ Choice Expansion Pack!

Check out the reward tiers under the cut 👇

What is a Reward Tier? The primary goal of our Kickstarter is to fund an expansion pack for Paleo Pines. As a way of saying Thank You for your pledge towards this goal, we have created multiple awards that you can choose from depending on the pledge level you can afford. Please do not pledge higher than you feel comfortable with and please under no circumstances do we want you to go into debt. We’d rather 100 people pledged lower amounts than causing anyone anxiety about finances.

What’s Included in each Reward Tier? Supporter Pack (unlimited) £10 The perfect entry point to  support us in our expansion development or to build your own custom tier with add-ons. 🌌 Expansion Pack Released on All Platforms for Free! 💻 Discord Role as a Supporter 📱 Digital Phone Background featuring the Spino! 🥰 A heartfelt ❤ THANK YOU ❤ from our Dev Team!

Experienced Rancher Pack (unlimited) £30 Gorgeous digital rewards and your name in the credits! 🕺 Chosen Name in our Credits 🎨 Digital Art Print of Spinosaurus 🛒 20% Off in the Paleo Pines Merch Shop 🌌 Expansion Pack Released on All Platforms for Free! 💻 Discord Role as a Supporter 📱 Digital Phone Background featuring the Spino! 🥰 A heartfelt ❤ THANK YOU ❤ from our Dev Team!

New Rancher Pack (unlimited) £45 Perfect for new Ranchers or those who want to gift a copy of the game to a future Rancher! 🎮 Digital Game Key for Steam 🕺 Chosen Name in our Credits 🎨 Digital Art Print of Spinosaurus 🛒 20% Off in the Paleo Pines Merch Shop 🌌 Expansion Pack Released on All Platforms for Free! 💻 Discord Role as a Supporter 📱 Digital Phone Background featuring the Spino! 🥰 A heartfelt ❤ THANK YOU ❤ from our Dev Team!

Creative Rancher Pack (unlimited) £120 For Ranchers who love dino merch! 👕 Spino Campaign T-Shirt - Inclusive Sizes Available 📌 3 Pin Pack - Enamel Pins of Spino, Bernard, and Lucky 🎁 Sticker Sheets - 1 each of ‘Dino & Friends’ and ‘Plushies’ A5 💫Digital Art Poster - Kickstarter Exclusive 📫 Digital Concept Art Postcards (Set of Three) 🌌 Expansion Pack Released on All Platforms for Free! 📱 Digital Phone Background featuring the Spino! 🎨 Digital Art Print of Spinosaurus 💻 Discord Role as a Supporter 🛒 20% Off in the Paleo Pines Merch Shop 🕺 Chosen Name in our Credits 🥰 A heartfelt ❤ THANK YOU ❤ from our Dev Team!

Lucky Plushie Pack (100 available) £250 Already a collector's item - this is your last chance to get an original Lucky Plushie! 🍀 Lucky Plushie - Rare 1.0 Original from Makeship 👕 Spino Campaign T-Shirt - Inclusive Sizes Available 📌 3 Pin Pack - Enamel Pins of Spino, Bernard, and Lucky 🎁 Sticker Sheets - 1 each of ‘Dino & Friends’ and ‘Plushies’ A5 💫Digital Art Poster - Kickstarter Exclusive 📫 Digital Concept Art Postcards (Set of Three) 🌌 Expansion Pack Released on All Platforms for Free! 📱 Digital Phone Background featuring the Spino! 🎨 Digital Art Print of Spinosaurus 💻 Discord Role as a Supporter 🛒 20% Off in the Paleo Pines Merch Shop 🕺 Chosen Name in our Credits 🥰 A heartfelt ❤ THANK YOU ❤ from our Dev Team!

Parsnip Plushie Pack (100 available) £250 Complete your set with Parsnip - our Ankylosaurus Plushie! 🥕 Parsnip Plushie - Original 1.0 Plushie from Makeship 👕 Spino Campaign T-Shirt - Inclusive Sizes Available 📌 3 Pin Pack - Enamel Pins of Spino, Bernard, and Lucky 🎁 Sticker Sheets - 1 each of ‘Dino & Friends’ and ‘Plushies’ A5 💫Digital Art Poster - Kickstarter Exclusive 📫 Digital Concept Art Postcards (Set of Three) 🌌 Expansion Pack Released on All Platforms for Free! 📱 Digital Phone Background featuring the Spino! 🎨 Digital Art Print of Spinosaurus 💻 Discord Role as a Supporter 🛒 20% Off in the Paleo Pines Merch Shop 🕺 Chosen Name in our Credits 🥰 A heartfelt ❤ THANK YOU ❤ from our Dev Team!

Dino Designer Pack (20 available) £350 Work with our dino artists to get your unique colour scheme into the game!  Not only do you get to choose which dinos* your colours will appear on, but you can choose rarity and a special video will be created for you! *Excludes spino. 🌈 In-Game Dino Colour Selection (Excludes Spino) 🎥 Digital Promo Video Featuring your Colour Selection 🦖 Dino Designer discord Role 👕 Spino Campaign T-Shirt - Inclusive Sizes Available 📌 3 Pin Pack - Enamel Pins of Spino, Bernard, and Lucky 🎁 Sticker Sheets - 1 each of ‘Dino & Friends’ and ‘Plushies’ A5 💫Digital Art Poster - Kickstarter Exclusive 📫 Digital Concept Art Postcards (Set of Three) 🌌 Expansion Pack Released on All Platforms for Free! 📱 Digital Phone Background featuring the Spino! 🎨 Digital Art Print of Spinosaurus 💻 Discord Role as a Supporter 🛒 20% Off in the Paleo Pines Merch Shop 🕺 Chosen Name in our Credits 🥰 A heartfelt ❤ THANK YOU ❤ from our Dev Team!

Plushie Designer Pack (2 available) £750 Want to see your favourite dino as a plushie?  You'll join our design team as we bring your plushie to life with Makeship!  Exclusions include all existing plushie species, spino, carnotaurus, archeopteryx, and psittacosaurus. 🧶Plushie Dino and Colour Selection (Exclusions Apply) 🧵Plushie Designer Discord Role 👕 Spino Campaign T-Shirt - Inclusive Sizes Available 📌 3 Pin Pack - Enamel Pins of Spino, Bernard, and Lucky 🎁 Sticker Sheets - 1 each of ‘Dino & Friends’ and ‘Plushies’ A5 💫Digital Art Poster - Kickstarter Exclusive 📫 Digital Concept Art Postcards (Set of Three) 🌌 Expansion Pack Released on All Platforms for Free!  📱 Digital Phone Background featuring the Spino! 🎨 Digital Art Print of Spinosaurus 💻 Discord Role as a Supporter 🛒 20% Off in the Paleo Pines Merch Shop 🕺 Chosen Name in our Credits 🥰 A heartfelt ❤ THANK YOU ❤ from our Dev Team!

Spino Designer Pack (5 available) £1,000 A brand new dino needs some brand new colours! Work with our dino artists to bring your spino to life and also receive an original Spino Plushie from Makeship! 🌟 Spino Colour Selection 🧸 Spino Plushie from Makeship 📹 Digital Promo Video Featuring Your Colour Selection 🎇Spino Designer Discord Role 👕 Spino Campaign T-Shirt - Inclusive Sizes Available 📌 3 Pin Pack - Enamel Pins of Spino, Bernard, and Lucky 🎁 Sticker Sheets - 1 each of ‘Dino & Friends’ and ‘Plushies’ A5 💫Digital Art Poster - Kickstarter Exclusive 📫 Digital Concept Art Postcards (Set of Three) 🌌 Expansion Pack Released on All Platforms for Free! 📱 Digital Phone Background featuring the Spino! 🎨 Digital Art Print of Spinosaurus 💻 Discord Role as a Supporter 🛒 20% Off in the Paleo Pines Merch Shop 🕺 Chosen Name in our Credits 🥰 A heartfelt ❤ THANK YOU ❤ from our Dev Team!

Items that can be added on to any pledge pack:

Add on Reward (unlimited) £20 🧍‍♀️ In-game outfit and ranch item. Kickstarter exclusive.

Add on Reward (unlimited) £20 🅱 Access to Beta Test Group for Expansion Features. Add on Reward (unlimited) £10 📚 Digital Art Book

Add on Reward (60) £30 🖋 Signed poster by original dev team.

Add on Reward (unlimited) £8 📍 Individual pins Add on Reward  (unlimited) £11 🎮 Copy of Paleo Pines Game with Expansion Pack (Steam Key)

Add on Reward (unlimited) £5 🧁 Digital Poppin Recipe Cards

Add on Reward (unlimited) £20 👕 Spinosaurus T-Shirt

What's Next?  We’ve got our Discord AMA (Click the link to join the server!) on Thursday, June 26th at 8pm BST!

[dipplinduo]

Hey!

So here's the thing: I love and am so grateful for this platform - for all of you who follow me, read my stories, and share a collective love for all things dipplinshipping, mintteashipping, and pokemon fandom alike. A primary focus of my account, in fact, is alllllll about fortifying a happy little escape zone where we can all be happy and have fun together.

This post is a rare "not about that" post. I'm gonna keep my personal feelings on this pretty brief, but here's the thing: I've been fucking livid. For awhile. I'm angry and disappointed with world leaders and people in power. And as an American, I'm feeling a lot around our government: its egregiously wealthy stakeholders - who wildly abuse their influence for self-gain - and the corruption that is a hate-motivated, white supremacist, capitalistic agenda. If you live in the US, or even anywhere else, I can promise you this: Your existence and presence is always valid, and is not defined by an executive order. If you follow me or watch my posts from time-to-time, I hope that you can continue to find a positive escape with what I promote here. And I hope you know how much you are loved and valued. Genuinely. Please know these are some free, 24/7 resources avaliable, too: General: National Crisis Line - Call 988 OR: chat at 988lifeline.org* - *Inclusive services for individuals who are deaf/hard of hearing Crisis Text Line - Text "HELLO" to 741741 Free 24/7 crisis support via text for anyone in need. Resources For The LGBTQIA+ Community: Trans Lifeline - translifeline.org Hotline: 877-565-8860 (run by trans people for trans people)

National Center for Transgender Equality - transequality.org Resources on legal rights, ID document changes, and advocacy for transgender individuals.

PFLAG - pflag.org Support groups, crisis intervention, advocacy, and educational resources for LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies.

Sylvia Rivera Law Project - srlp.org Legal aid and advocacy for low-income trans, intersex, and gender non-conforming individuals.

The Trevor Project - thetrevorproject.org

24/7 crisis counselling for LGBTQIA+ Youth (ages 13-24)

Resources For People of Color:

EmbraceRace - embracerace.org Provides resources for people of color, particularly families, to cope with racial trauma and political stress in culturally affirming ways. The Steve Fund - stevefund.org Mental health resources for young people of color LatinoJustice PRLDEF - latinojustice.org Provides legal advocacy and community education for Latinx individuals on voting rights, immigration, and civil rights. Native American Financial Services Association (NAFSA) - nativefinance.org Financial services, resources, and advocacy for Indigenous communities. The Loveland Foundation - thelovelandfoundation.org Offers free or discounted therapy for Black women and girls. Asian Mental Health Collective - asianmhc.org Mental health resources for Asian and Pacific Islander communities Inclusive Therapists - inclusivetherapists.com A therapist directory that centers the needs of marginalized populations

Resources For Immigrants and Undocumented Individuals: Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) - ilrc.org Provides legal resources and training for immigrants and their advocates.

National Immigration Law Center (NILC) - nilc.org Advocacy for the rights of low-income immigrants.

RAICES (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services) - raicestexas.org Offers free or low-cost legal services for immigrants and refugees.

Border Angels - borderangels.org Supports undocumented individuals with immigration services and humanitarian aid. Resources Around Abortion: ReproCare Healthline - reprocare.com Hotline: Text "CARE" to 707-827-2273 Emotional support, information, and logistical assistance for people managing abortion care. Access Reproductive Care (ARC) Southeast - arc-southeast.org Provides funding and support for abortion access in the Southeastern U.S., including transportation and lodging assistance. Aid Access - aidaccess.org Telemedicine consultations and abortion pills access by mail for people who face barriers to in-person care. Center for Reproductive Rights - reproductiverights.org Litigates cases to protect and expand access to reproductive health care and abortion rights worldwide. Advocacy and Involvement Resources: Alliance for Justice - afj.org Join campaigns focused on protecting civil rights, access to justice, and equity for marginalized communities. Center for Popular Democracy - populardemocracy.org Supports marginalized communities through campaigns on racial and economic justice, immigration reform, and healthcare. Human Rights Campaign (HRC) - hrc.org Opportunities to volunteer, participate in advocacy campaigns, and fight for LGBTQIA+ rights through events and local organizing. National Immigration Law Center (NILC) - nilc.org Advocate for policies supporting immigrants, including DACA, workplace protections, and healthcare access. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) - edf.org

Advocate for climate change response initiatives via donations and campaign support

Please feel free to reblog/comment and add to this list.

with love,

dipplinduo

[vintagelasvegas]

Union Plaza Hotel & Casino, July 1971

The hotel was built on the site of the former Union Pacific depot and Greyhound bus terminal. Two companies financed the hotel: Upland Industries, a subsidiary of Union Pacific Corp, and Scott Corp. directed by Frank E. Scott. The Scott Corp. was the landlord, Scott was the CEO and president of the hotel, with partners Sen. Howard Cannon, and downtown casino stalwarts J.K. Houssels Jr, Jackie Gaughan, Sam Boyd, and Bill Boyd, who managed the “world’s largest casino.”

'70: Aug. 10, Groundbreaking. (LA Times 8/9/70, RJ 7/1/71)

'70: Nov., Union Station demolished. (RJ 11/24/70)

'71: May 2, Final UP train service. Amtrak was established, and passenger service through Las Vegas is suspended.

'71: Jul. 2, Union Plaza Hotel & Casino is opened. Architects: Zick & Sharp (Las Vegas) in association with Stanley J. How (Omaha). Contractor: Blount-Yoxen Construction Co. The hotel complex contained a bus station, 500-seat showroom, 2nd story pool in front of the hotel, and an adjacent parking garage. The 504-room hotel was roughly the same size as the Fremont Hotel and smaller than some on the Strip. Union Plaza claimed "the world's largest casino" as 66,000 sq. ft.

'75: Jul., Sports book addition. KDWN Radio 720 AM begins broadcasting from the hotel with a station on the 2nd floor.

'79: Oct. 28, Amtrak’s Desert Wind line through Las Vegas begins the first regularly scheduled service since ‘71. Small room and platform in the rear of the hotel is used as the depot.

'81: Apr., Rooftop sign and lights changed. Design by Charles Barnard, Ad Art. 

'82: Construction of 26-story south tower, and conversion of the front pool to restaurant designed by Louis Pereira. (RJ 3/16/82, 9/19/82, 10/28/82)

'83: Center Stage restaurant opens in Jan. (RJ 1/23/83) Mural depicting the past, present, and future of passenger rail service created in the hotel between the lobby and depot area. Tower topped off in Apr. and opened in fall. Total rooms: 1030. (RJ 4/23/83, 10/20/83)

'90-'93: Jackie Gaughan acquires the holdings of Union Plaza founder Frank Scott, followed by Upland’s participation in '93, becoming the majority shareholder and ending the relationship with Union Pacific. The hotel is renamed “Jackie Gaughan’s Plaza” circa ’92, though the signs remain unchanged, with “Union” on the rooftop sign for several years.

2004: Mar. 26, Plaza is sold. Union Plaza Hotel & Casino Inc, Exber Inc and Gaughan South sell Plaza, Las Vegas Club, Gold Spike, Western Hotel, and 60 acres of land and non-gaming properties to Barrick Gaming and Tamares Real Estate for $82M. The Barrick group plans a "themed street behind the Plaza which will re-create the ambience of old downtown Las Vegas." (RJ 3/26/2004)

2005: Tamares buys Barrick’s interest in Plaza hotel and the Las Vegas properties; Larry Woolf managing.

2009: Firefly opens in the former Center Stage restaurant; Oscar's Steakhouse opens in its place in 2011.

2014: Jonathan Jossel takes over as the CEO of the Plaza, the youngest non-restricted gaming licensees in Las Vegas. 

Construction in 1971. The first photo is dated 1/12/1971, Nevada State Museum Las Vegas.

Fremont & Casino Center, Apr. 1971. Union Plaza construction past Main St.

Sal Sagev Hotel and Golden Gate Casino; Union Plaza; Las Vegas Club and the Dugout restaurant. 1971. Photo via Plaza Hotel.

Postcards circa 1971.

Postcard c. '83 or later. New tower, new rooftop sign, and the Center Stage Restaurant.

Timeline Sources: UP Hotel Plans Ready for Signing. Las Vegas Review-Journal, 10/3/69; Work on 22-story hotel to start soon. Review-Journal, 8/2/70 p1; No Parking Here. Review-Journal, 8/10/70; Union Plaza Magic Hour Near. Review-Journal, 7/1/71; Plaza celebrates LV ‘uptown’. Review-Journal, 8/13/71; Rod Smith. Four Gaughan casinos pass to Barrick. Review-Journal, 3/26/2004; Howard Stutz. Lady Luck. Review-Journal, 12/13/2005; Oliver Lovat. A Golden Age for Downtown. GGB Magazine, 2021.

[anstarwar]

A curious/interesting (to me) thing I’ve noticed as I’ve bounced around fandoms is that certain ones have a higher reblog-to-just hitting “like” ratio than others.

Like Star Wars fandom is really good about reblogging stuff compared to other fandoms I’ve been in and I’m wondering if it’s like a “generation who’s interested in it” related thing? Like I know Star Wars fans span many generations but I think a lot of it skews Millennial and Gen-X’er (or older)…you know the generations that didn’t grow up with IG/Twitter/TikTok, but still had internet access in some capacity…as compared to the other fandom I’m currently fixated on, Pacific Rim, which appears to have a far smaller reblog ratio (mostly just hits the “like” button and moves on) and, from my experience so far, skews younger.

I really want to do a study on this but idk how to go about that hmmm…

Also this is just with regards to tumblr as a platform for sharing art/fic/fandom creation