#Objectives of Corporate Communication

[marchisred]

A self indulgent experimental comic

I really love both CFMOT and Lobotomy Corp, so I made 2 AUs combining them in different ways, and this is one of them.

It's a lot more laid back in comparison to the first one I made and it's about just placing all of the characters in agents roles.

I'm still working on making all of them in game, but here's the one's that are already made:

(Those are some re-skinned agents with a mod btw)

[renegadeer]

We need communism in the OSC

I know this sounds controversial, but I think that a communist approach to the community would do good for it.

I want communism because shit like "jacknjellify LLC" and "adamations Inc." should NOT exist.

The OSC is a community of creators, artists, creative minds, not pseudo-corporate slop that queerbait, scam, take advantage of the gullibility of the viewers (mostly MINORS. KIDS.) and get away with ableism, racism, transphobia, ZIONISM (YES, ZIONISM.) because a horde of brainless manchildren will defend them because they want their consumer product. These motherfuckers are turning what used to be a community of free creators into a cesspool of useless competition in which the ones who capitalize win and take advantage of their "popularity".

Jacknjellify and Adamations make THOUSANDS of dollars through their mediocre, ableist, queerbaity, soulless corporate shitty ass shows and low-quality merch that, by the way, is manufactured by exploited children in factories with POOR LIFE CONDITIONS. And that's also how it relates to the real-life horrors of capitalism.

What do most of OSC creators get from their shows? NOTHING. NOTHING. While these ableist greedy zionist leeches capitalize and exploit children, both in a psychological and physical way although indirectly, honest creators get NOTHING.

And don't get me started on the meetups. The meetups, the most soulless, corporate, CLASSIST thing that came out of this "OSC elite". Screening episodes to only a selected, privileged part of the community, episodes that 95% of the OSC have been waiting for months - no, YEARS. And screening them in only one country, ignoring how most of the OSC either cannot afford to buy tickets for a screening or lives on the totally different side of the earth. This is CLASSISM, by definition. This is why I also thank the leakers who gave us the episodes we've been waiting for that are being kept from the masses in favor of a privileged elite.

These companies are turning into Disney, and I do not say this with a positive connotation. The OSC is made of people, not consumers, and it's time everyone learns it. In a matter of years they're going to come after you, small creators who make a heartfelt show to get nothing in return, and you, viewers who yet do not realize these companies are taking your money and taking advantage of your gullibility.

We DO need communism in the OSC because class war is everywhere, even where you least expect it, even in a small Internet community. We DO need communism in the OSC because our art is not a tool of capitalism and it should not be used as such.

Hey Quick Question have you Ever Taken an economics class? Actually, scratch that. Have you Ever Taken a Step Outside?

[unluckyoscthoughts]

Tacophy sweeps ur favs

[forkflinger]

my biggest complaint about the murderbot show is making the survey crew hippies. like, I always interpreted it as murderbot calling them hippies because they had radical ideas like “lives are worth more than equipment” and “sapient beings shouldn’t be treated as objects” and “slavery is bad” i.e. modern ideas of basic human rights, in contrast to the usual morality of the corporation ring. like, they’re not holding hands and chanting kumbaya and making flower crowns, but their ideals are so far from what murderbot is used to that it’s like pfft, hippies. pushing them further towards what we would call hippies softens the callous capitalist dystopia of the corporation ring. standing in a circle holding hands in silence to commune before making a business deal is weird (to us). they shouldn’t be weird. they should be normal (to us) so that when murderbot goes “they’re weird” we go “no they’re not, what kind of standard of living are you used to that this seems weird?” they’re weird for caring if their secunit lives and treating it like a person. they’re weird for going “ratthi don’t go get the equipment you’ll die.” they’re weird for being normal (to us).

[tanoraqui]

me, sternly, at me: you gotta apply to more than 6 jobs, and wait more than a single week, before you start being depressed and/or stressed that none of them have replied.

also me: but what if it's because they all HATE me?? what if they think I'm TRASH?!

me: you are objectively qualified for these jobs. this isn't even Mediocre White Man Confidence; we literally haven't applied for anything with a required-experience of over 5 years, and we have 6.

third me: hey that was an interesting shift in pronoun usage, 'you' to 'we'. Is it weird that the talking-to-myself developed into two distinct voices which are implicitly facets of a whole, or at least, a team? who am I? ooh, am I the Third Thoughts from the Tiffany Aching books? am I (whole) a witch?

first me: yes!!

second me, tired: by that definition, yes; we've been over this like 500 times since middle school. now, everyone stop procrastinating/practicing escapism by thinking about fiction. the real essence of witchhood is community management and support, which is why we need to finish this job application, and then do more, at non-profits or at least non-evil corporations.

third thoughts, mocking: 'community management' - someone's been reading too many job descriptions.

Fourth Voice, coming in swinging with a stick: GET OFF TUMBLR

[specialagentartemis]

I’ve increasingly seen the take that Gurathin, being the only one of the PresAux group originally from the CR, understands SecUnits better than the others and understands corporate greed and underhandedness and violence better than his idealist space socialist leftist colleagues… which always rings odd to me, because it’s well established that Mensah and Pin-Lee understand what they’re dealing with as intelligent, savvy professionals!

Mensah is the Planetary Administrator of Preservation; she is very nearly the President of the Whole Planet. It’s hard to believe she could get there and be regarded as a good leader of a small planet with neither military nor economic power in the galaxy and remain unaware of how the Corporation Rim works and how to deal with them to keep her polity safe. The company executives presented Murderbot to Mensah directly in their pitch for why the team needed to take a SecUnit; her multiple objections to this indicate that she does, in fact, know how unethical (and likely dangerous) SecUnits are.

Pin-Lee, meanwhile, is a corporate lawyer; she’s described as CombatUnit-like, and based on the fact that she went not only with this scientific survey but also with Mensah at the end of Network Effect on this short-notice and desperate chase across the galaxy, seems to be the go-to person to deal with off-world legal issues. Murderbot notes early on that being under the Company’s surveillance seemed to affect her more than the others. It’s pretty reasonable to assume that’s because she knows what shit companies put in their contracts, and what they do.

They aren’t naïve leftists who don’t understand how the Real World works, they are well-too-aware of the abuses and surveillance and callousness of companies!

(Ratthi watches Sanctuary Moon, evidently a CR production—Preservation aren’t isolationists. The whole Preservation backstory is of a community’s escape from callous, profit-driven corporate abandonment of their grandparents’ generation to die. I would think Preservation people would be, as a society, aware and very wary of CR corporations.)

Their trust they place in Murderbot in All System Red is very likely influenced by Preservation’s cultural values of dignity, support, freedom, responsibility to each other, bot citizenship, all that good stuff—but it’s certainly not blindly, naïvely unaware of alternative possible perspectives. And that’s why it’s powerful: they’re making a conscious choice, measuring its actions and its rights as a person against the propaganda and fear, that Murderbot deserves that respect and dignity and freedom and trust as a person and not just as an arm of untrustworthy corporations.

(And like. Also the fact that “Gurathin is from the CR” is not explicitly canon, either. We don’t know where he’s from originally; the CR is a reasonable interpretation, certainly, it fits the facts, but it’s still an interpretation that fans have to make rather than actually being text. And I think in these discussions that ought to be remembered too. )

[marimoscorner]

Consumerism & Witchcraft

Written by Marimo (he/they)🌿

I’ve seen a turn for the better in some witchy spaces regarding consumerism in the past few years, but overall it still tends to be an issue for us as a community. I’ve decided to try and breakdown the pitfalls I’ve noticed in my own journey, in the hopes that it will inspire and assist others. I’ve also provided alternatives and ideas on how to make small changes in our practice to help us better protect the Earth, stick it to the failing system and still acquire our bits and bobs we love so dearly.

As always, I am no authority on any subject nor am I perfect—but we’re all learning as we go, so let��s dive right in 🌿

A Preface

There are some things that should be made entirely clear before we begin:

You are not a bad person for wanting an aesthetic

You are not a bad person for unknowingly falling into pitfalls. Only if you continue to purposefully do so after knowing better

You are not a bad person for consuming content/objects or for not always making the most sustainable decisions. At the end of the day, we can only control our small part of environmental impact, while the rest is left up to the major corporations that make more pollution than any of us ever will

You are only human. Show yourself some grace and understanding that the internet so lacks.

My Experience in Consumerist Hell

I have fallen victim many times to consumerism in witchcraft. Starting my journey at the ripe age of about ten years old and heavily in the broom closet, I was quickly drawn in by the shiny rocks, the brand new candles and scents, the promise of new tarot decks and pendulums and other fancy, shiny new equipment. I was consuming an online aesthetic along with my ideals, and it distracted me from starting my journey by learning well.

I began to spend my birthday and holiday money on the aesthetic of things. While, granted, I still did buy a few literary resources now and again from my local secondhand bookstore—I was stubbornly ignoring the sage advice to learn and understand first before diving in headfirst.

I purchased statues, crystals, too many tarot decks to use. I purchased osteomancy bones I later returned to the earth, for I had not done enough research to know that that animal was mine to practice with. I had a tankard full of incense sticks, and even a growing pile of books that would not be read. While I liked to consider myself crafty with my homemade Maypole and various hand-bound Grimoires, something was becoming apparent: this was all a distraction.

The aesthetic I was partaking in was providing me with a false sense of progress and practicality.

When I’d go to do a tarot reading, I’d become far too overwhelmed with choosing a deck to read in the first place. When making an offering to a deity, I’d feel pressured to also bolster the altars of all the other deities I’d set up, and with my wide pool, the connections felt muddy. Often times I’d be off-put on a project or spell because I knew I needed to film it and it needed to look nice.

In the long term, I don’t have many of these items today. I’ve sold and donated a vast breadth of them. Feeling overwhelmed costed me a few years retreat from my craft to recuperate. However, what has stuck with me is the knowledge I picked up along the way.

So, What’s the Issue? TL;DR

I’ve noticed a few issues here in making these mistakes myself.

Consumerism absolutely distracts you from learning and your craft

Overconsumption leads to environmental damage. If everyone hoarded supplies, there would not be enough to go around. And with what gets thrown away every year…it paints an ugly wound on the Earth

We damage our learning abilities by not allowing ourselves to be anything less than perfect

The need for aesthetic creates barriers to entry within the community and creates a divide of haves and have-nots

You won’t be able to truly follow your individual path if you are only consuming and not creating for yourself

Consumerist culture promotes appropriation. Metaphysical stores carry items from closed practices (such as white sage and palo santo, or coyote bones) because someone is buying them. Don’t be that person, and find alternatives relating to your own culture instead

Consumerism can influence your spiritual decisions based upon monetary inclinations (where some may sacrifice a quality ingredient over a higher quantity of a lower quality ingredient)

So, what can we do?

Firstly, I want to clarify that I am not against collecting, nor am I against maximalism or the beautiful visual aesthetic we carry as a community.

I am an artist a very visual person and understand the longing for a beautiful home and workspace. However, this aesthetic shouldn’t come at the cost of irresponsibly harming the Earth or another community.

Thus, I’ve compiled a list of small things that I will be incorporating into my practice to make it more mindful and sustainable. I hope that you’ll join me in a few of them.

Minimize Supplies. While I used to have a huge selection of stationary for my Grimoire, I now limit myself to a simple pencil and watercolor set if I’m feeling artistic. This helps me actually use my Grimoire for study, rather than to keep perfect. It’s also friendlier on my wallet!

Thrift Supplies. There are plenty of perfectly good items that get donated daily. You can get high-quality candles and holders, old crystal bowls for altar offerings, spare crafting supplies, fabric for alter cloths and even clothing if you so wish—all for a fraction of the cost new and while saving the planet just a little bit more. Hell, you can sometimes even find good silver!

Share Supplies with your Community. You can create a sort of barter system with other witches in your area. Perhaps you create a sigil for them, and they provide you with a candle spell. Play to your strengths and grow together!

Look for Creative Outlets. Do you really need to go buy an altar statue that’s been mass-produced? Or can you give your deity the personal gift of a drawing, painting or even hand-modeled or hand-carved rendition? This will also deepen your connection to your craft and your magic, and make it more meaningful and stronger. If you really like something, though, go for it!

If you aren’t the artistic sort, consider supporting an artist before going to a large company. While I haven’t purchased from them myself, Blagowood on Etsy has beautiful deity statues carved from wood by their small team in Ukraine for a comparable cost to the standard mass produced metal statues. I consider this extra labor of love going into these pieces and those of similar small companies to be much better energy for my practice. I myself may put out some art prints and other handmade supplies in the future, but I will likely spread them around my community first.

Try Secondhand Books. While not available in every area and further still not as available for witchcraft and occult books, you may strike luck! Not only are secondhand books less expensive, but you’ll be supporting a local business. That’s not to say you can’t buy firsthand books, but some searching around may be beneficial to the earth and to your wallet in the long run.

Be mindful of where you source supplies and decor. If you are a fan of taxidermy decor, make sure that you source cruelty free. Bats can practically never be sourced without cruelty, so if a shop carries them, I’d be mindful of their other specimens. The same goes for if a shop decides to forgo a culture’s wishes and carry supplies sacred to them, such as white sage or dreamcatchers. Supporting folks who turn a profit off of others’ suffering is not something many would wish to include energetically in their craft.

Search the Wild for Tools. Find sticks, flowers and other plants out in the forest. Learn how to rockhound in your area for crystals. Your craft will be more powerful the more connected it is to the land you are surrounded by. Be sure to reference guides for safety and legality!

Get Creative with Purposes. If you are having difficulty finding exactly what you need by thrifting or searching, make another tool multipurpose if it would do the job good enough. Find supplies that are easy to source and work as substitutes for other ingredients (ex. Quartz as a stand in for other stones)

Spend more time Doing. Go out into the woods (safely) and advance your connection to the earth instead of worrying over the perfect item for your collection. Your craft will benefit

At the end of the day, all of this is your decision. Take what you like, and leave what you don’t. Even if we don’t agree, I thank you for your time and open mind. I will continue updating about how I incorporate these steps, and I will also hopefully post more on witchy crafting in the future.

I wish you well, and hope you’ll decide to follow along on our journey!

[hypodermicfroggy]

= PROJECT MOON LORE GUIDE =

(I've posted a guide like this on Steam, but I figure it couldn't hurt to put an updated version on Tumblr, too. Also, a warning: This post is going to be very, *very* long.)

Hello, current Project Moon fandom and future/want-to-be fans!

Do you enjoy Limbus Company but don't know how to get into the other games and media to appreciate the greater lore of the series? Do you not actually have the money, time, or patience to endure a brutally punishing (and sometimes even janky) roguelike management sim, deckbuilder, or gacha game because we live in a capitalistic hellworld like the one this very series criticizes? Struggle with getting access to supplementary materials due to controversies and language barriers?

(Pictured: PM Twitter and the Limbus Steam Forums, on any given day. Seriously, what is wrong with some of you people.)

And especially important: hate how Reddit and Steam are full of dudebro coomers who are openly hostile to F2P, non-day one players who might grapple with all the previous issues on top of being more invested in story than waifus?

Then read on under the cut!

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This guide contains a comprehensive list of resources for you to be able to enjoy the Project Moon series to its fullest, including links to wikis, playlists, and more. Even if you can't play the games, I personally think those who can actually appreciate the series shouldn't be gatekept from the truly fantastic story and world that the games hold. Except Canto 6, we don't talk about Canto 6.

AND AN IMPORTANT REMINDER: THERE WILL BE SOME SPOILERS FOR CERTAIN PARTS OF THE SERIES, AND PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THE CONTENT WARNINGS BEFORE YOU GET INTO ANYTHING HERE! This is a very dark series that tackles and shows very heavy topics and content!

For those who can't read the text on the image, some of the common trigger warnings for this series includes:

Animal Cruelty

Drug Use

References to Alcohol and Tobacco

Injury and Dismemberment

Homicide and Suicide

Violence and Torture

Cannibalism

Kidnapping, Abduction, and Captivity

Psychosis

Diseases, Seizure, and Dyspnoea (aka shortness of breath)

Familial Homicide and Domestic Violence

Reference to Clowns (Coulrophobia)

Themes of Occultism and Spiritualism

Audiovisual Depictions of Gore

Uses of Sharp and Pointed Objects

Hospital and Medical References

References to Gaslighting and Bullying

Body Modification and/or Deformation

Flashing Lights (Photosensitivity)

Disorientation Induced by a Shaking Camera

Strong Language and Demeaning Words

Reference to Traffic Accidents

Uses of Guns and Instruments of Violence

Discriminatory Violence

Religious Torture and Violence

Enforced Ideology and/or Actions

War and Mass Conflict

Anyway, if all that didn't scare you off, on to the guide!

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=WIKIS:

When in doubt, there's always the wikis for being references and useful sources, from gameplay to story elements!

>>Cogitopedia - A WIP wiki run by members of the community, working on adding in-depth content for all of the games and supplementary materials.

>>LobCorp Wiki - Has data on every abnormality, including inaccessible ones and cut ones (such as Price of Silence).

>>Library of Ruina Wiki - Has the lore from key pages, and also has cut content like the CGs from the original planned ending.

>>Limbus Wiki.gg - Has ID Uptie stories and info about Mirror Dungeon encounters. (DO NOT USE THE LIMBUS FANDOM WIKI, IT HAS BEEN ABANDONED/VANDALIZED.)

>>Library of Project Moon - A WIP fan blog whose purpose is to consolidate translations of the literary source novels and related works for Limbus Company and the PM games as a whole.

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=LOBOTOMY CORPORATION:

Summary: Lobotomy Corporation is the first game in the series. It is a roguelike management sim where you play as "Manager X", tasked with handling employees and various monsters known as Abnormalities in order to generate daily quotas of a power source substance known as Enkephalin and a mysterious "Seed of Light" project. You are aided by an alleged team of AIs known as the Sephirot, and your very own personal assistant AI, Angela. It's often been likened to "anime SCP Foundation."

This is the game where everything begins, and without it, we wouldn't have the plot of Limbus (or anything else for that matter). This is where the Golden Boughs come from, this is where Abnormalities come from, this is even where Distortions come from - but we're getting ahead of ourselves on that front.

>>This playlist will allow you to watch all the cutscenes from the game, in order, for the canon ending.

>>This video also has the cutscenes, albeit not in order, HOWEVER, it does have the alternate, non-canon endings A and B (which are timestamped in the link for convenience).

>>WordsmithVids (also on YouTube) also has what is generally considered to be the most popular summary of the game.

(NOTE: Some people disagree with WordsmithVids and his interpretations of some of the characters as well as his content being "meme-y," so I advise you to watch at your own discretion and draw your own conclusions. That being said, if people have better recommendations, please send them to me instead of just complaining and bitching without offering solutions like that one guy on Steam did, thank you.)

>>This site contains transcripts/text of the entire game, albeit not in order like the cutscene playlist. It also has WIP sections for EGO weapons, gear, and other useful info.

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=WONDERLAB:

Summary: Wonderlab was a webcomic by the artist MIMI/Whitezombies, originally posted on the Project Moon Postype account. It follows the adventures of several employees - often called "nuggets" in fan parlance - Catt, Taii, and Rose, in a Lobotomy Corporation branch facility as they go about their day to day activities.

This webcomic was taken down after the Summer 2023 Incel Controversy, when incels stormed the Project Moon office in Korea and made enough credible threats that the former Limbus CG artist known as Vellmori was fired, and it is currently part of a second conflict over copyright. However, primarily for archival and personal reference purposes, the comic has been saved and rehosted in several forms.

>>Internet Archive version. This has just the comic in an on-site readable format.

>>A backup archive on Google Drive. This features the individual pages, a downloadable .zip of the archive, and a readable Google Docs version.

For those who may have ethical concerns about downloading a webcomic that was pulled due to controversy (understandable), once again, >>WordsmithVids has a summary.

(NOTE: This is NOT the place to discuss either the Summer 2023 incel controversy *or* the current (Summer 2024) copyright conflict. There are far better places to do that with people who are far better informed on the topic than I am. This post is solely for providing references and archives of lore material to help guide people into this series. DO NOT attempt to bring up the controversies here, I will not be acknowledging them outside of mentioning why certain supplementary materials may have been pulled and have had to be mirrored. I am just an archivist, not a lawyer or discourser.)

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=LIBRARY OF RUINA:

Summary: Library of Ruina takes place some months after the events of Lobotomy Corporation. A "Grade 9 Fixer" known as Roland finds his way into the mysterious, tower-like Library that has sprung up in place of the former main facility of L Corp, where he encounters Angela and the other Sephirot (all now Librarians). He begins assisting her in finding "the perfect book", which involves enticing people to come to the library through the sending out of curious invitations.

Now, unfortunately, there is not a playlist that splits up the cutscenes or puts them in order for Ruina.

>>These two videos have them all in compilation.

HOWEVER. A wonderful and dear friend of mine (@citroncynique <3) has allowed the guide they sent me to be reproduced/copied.

>>As such, there is a guide on how to watch the cutscenes in the order that makes the most sense, utilizing the timestamps of the previous two videos. It is not a perfect system, but it works at least.

>>There is also a written transcript archive for Ruina, by the same person who did the one for LobCorp, which also includes useful info regarding things like cards and keypages as well.

>>WordsmithVids also has at least two summary vids out.

However, due to financial issues at last update, he has not been able to continue his summary of Ruina. I am including them regardless. >>As well as his Patreon in case people want to support him in hopes of making it easier for him to work on the vids again.

>>There is also an almost FOUR HOUR LONG video essay that delves into Angela's character specifically after the events of LobCorp and Ruina. It is not required viewing like the rest of the materials here, however, I think it still deserves a mention just for the amount of effort and care that went into it.

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=DISTORTION DETECTIVE:

Summary: Taking place at roughly the same time as Library of Ruina, two Fixers known as Ezra and Moses and an N Corp. Taboo Hunter known as Vespa investigate the Distortion Phenomenon that is rapidly starting to spread across the City after the events of the previous games.

Originally released as a webnovel on Project Moon's Postype, Distortion Detective has 42 chapters and is technically incomplete/on hiatus. Project Moon, surprised at how popular the webnovel was, decided they wanted to potentially make an entire game based on the story. As of this writing, that has not happened (yet) but at least one character from the novel has appeared in Limbus Company, so there is still hope yet.

>>The DD series in its original form on Postype. This version was posted chapter-by-chapter, on Project Moon's Postype account and is (as of this writing, at least) still readable there.

>>A backup archive on Google Drive. This has the entire webnovel in a single document format (both Docs and downloadable PDF) featuring NishikujiC's official chapter illustrations up to Ch. 26, and includes the now-cut comic adaption of Ch. 19 by the artist Monggeu/koug99.

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=LEVIATHAN:

(Lord, this one. Like it wasn't a big enough pain in the ass already.)

Summary: After the events of Library of Ruina, and operating as a direct prequel to Limbus Company, Leviathan follows the Color Fixer Vergilius (aka the Red Gaze) as he grapples with his own personal traumas and comes into conflict with the Ring Syndicate, before being recruited as a guide for the LCB.

Leviathan originally started as a webcomic by Monggeu/koug99. Health issues with the artist resulted in the comic being discontinued and turned into a webnovel, whose translation was never completed and had to later be finished by fans. The comic portion has since been taken down as of the Summer 2024 copyright conflict and controversy, much like Wonderlab was. Once again, however, this has been mirrored for archival and reference purposes.

>>Original source of Leviathan on Postype. Due to the copyright conflict and the translation hiatus, the only chapters available are Ch. 12-15. The link is still included for posterity reasons and just in case the copyright conflict results in the chapters being restored.

>>A backup archive on Google Drive. This link includes the comic chapters, as well as the SnakeskinFS English fan translations for the last five chapters that were never completed, all in PDF form.

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=LIMBUS COMPANY:

Summary: After all the events of the previous games, a mysterious up and coming business known as Limbus Company has taken it upon themselves to send a group composed of 12 "Sinners" and their mysterious clock-headed Manager Dante to delve into the now-abandoned L Corp facilities in search of mysterious artifacts known as Golden Boughs.

Finally we come to the end of the shrubbery maze. Limbus Company is the latest chapter in the currently unfolding story of Project Moon and the City, a gacha game being used to fund other projects under the company umbrella.

Many people, once again, have ethical concerns about patronizing a gacha game. I for one agree with them, even as one of those patrons.

>>This playlist features all of the cutscenes for each part of the game story released so far (up to Intervallo 6.5-2/Murder on the WARP Express as of this writing).

>>There is also this site, which operates as a pure datamined text archive of all the story content.

>>And this site, which has all the in-game Observation logs as told by the Sinners, about the Abnormalities and enemies encountered in-game.

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=BONUS/SUPPLEMENTARY:

This section, liable to be updated at any given time, is for links to materials or fan-creations that don't necessarily fit with the strictly canonical story materials found in the games and webnovels themselves but which otherwise provide useful resources or analysis. Note that the vast majority of material here is supplementary and not required, but recommended.

(Except the literary sources. You will read those, and that is a threat. I can't take another Wings-forsaken illiterate opinion on Canto 6, I'm going to start Distorting and biting people if YOU PEOPLE DON'T READ THE DAMN SOURCE NOVELS.)

YouTubers and Video Essayists:

Frey Chaqma - Frey has done lots of work for the PM community, such as spearheading the Absolute Pride Resonance charity event for Pride Month 2024 as well as discussing the lore of the games and the City as a whole.

Tsunul - Another YouTuber who discusses lore but who also often delves into more interpersonal matters relating to the fandom and controversies that can affect the game community as a whole.

Esgoo - Although Esgoo does not necessarily get into lore so much, they are often tauted as one of the biggest names in the fandom for, if nothing else, their meta-analysis and basic gameplay/strategy material, as well as their community involvement.

DMrLeeds - Although some of his videos are (comparitively) quite old, it can still provide a good jumping off point for anyone who is utterly lost on what's going on in Limbus.

hydrojoy's essay on Benjamin - In addition to Angela, hydrojoy also did an in-depth analysis on Benjamin, aka B, aka Hokma, from Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina and their impact on the story.

MetiNotTheBadGuy's PM Character Essays - Meti has done several excellent character breakdown videos on some of PM's most notable villains/characters, including Roland, Kromer, and Dongrang.

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=ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Citroncynique. For being a truly amazing artist, putting in the effort of making a watch guide for Ruina's cutscenes, and getting me into this series and ruining my life forever by jingling a bugman with PTSD in front of me (<3).

MIMI/Whitezombies, Monggeu/koug99, NishikujiC, and Vellmori. Although several of these artists have left PM and the community on bad terms, I still think their efforts should be appreciated and supported, now more than ever.

SnakeskinFS. For finishing Leviathan's English translation.

Folex, Bek, WordsmithVids, hydrojoy, and the Lobotomy Corporation Archive. For posting their cutscene and summary/analysis videos.

NeedsMoreDoge. The Steam user who provided the original guide and backup on how to read Leviathan that I myself utilized.

The less than pleasant members of the community who spurred me into making this guide in the first place, out of pure spite.

And of course, readers like you and those members of the community who make me so happy to be here and be a part of this fandom. Genuinely, thank you all, I have never felt as welcomed as I do in the Project Moon circles I run in.

In addition to the references included here, I recommend you get involved in your PM community as well! Join communities and Discords, support content creators on social sites, help contribute where it's needed and in whatever way you can! The best way to counteract the worst elements of any fandom is to be a guiding and helpful element in your own right.

Thank you all for reading, and I hope this guide helps you out!

[covid-safer-hotties]

What would an adequate COVID response look like? - Sept 05, 2024

By: Julia Doubleday

Ok, COVID is a problem. What can we do about it anyway?

The problem is stark: we have unmitigated transmission of a deadly and disabling virus, in all public spaces, with zero plan to bring it under control.

We’re seeing millions of infections in each wave, and multiple waves a year; an unsustainable health burden on an already strained healthcare system.

We’ve got a student absence crisis, record worker sick days, rapidly rising disability, and the expulsion of high-risk people from public spaces.

And unfortunately, we have a public that is largely uneducated about and unaware of the problem, thanks to the tireless efforts of our political leaders and corporate media outlets who pushed for a “new normal” of forever COVID reinfections.

The first hurdle is making people aware of the problem. But beyond that, a second hurdle; often, once the risks of recurrent COVID infections are conveyed, the next objection is: but what can we do about it anyway? Surely you don’t want a permanent forever lockdown?

Well, I don’t. So what, in my wildest dreams, would competent public health bodies be doing to mitigate transmission of COVID, even years into a botched response with millions of people negatively polarized against collective measures?

Start from the top: acknowledge that COVID is airborne. Loudly.

Educate the public about airborne mitigation measures and model them.

On April 30, 2021, the WHO officially acknowledged that SARS-COV-2 is a fully airborne virus. They did so quietly, without fanfare, on their website, without a well-publicized apology for the year they spent loudly claiming otherwise.

The embarrassment of this early mistake- costly and deadly as it was- has doubtless played a role in the subsequent inadequacy of communications around SARS-COV-2’s actual mode of transmission.

Droplet measures like surgical masks and social distancing were inadequate to prevent the transmission of COVID; both can reduce, but not eliminate, risk. Has the public been made aware of this? Have medical practitioners?

Official communications from representatives of the WHO and CDC tend to avoid mention of high-quality respirator masks entirely, if masks are mentioned at all. The importance of ventilation and filtration have never been properly explained to the public, certainly not by our politicians who continue to do nothing but repeat their treasured talking point, “COVID no longer controls our lives” while a thousand Americans lose those very lives to the virus each week.

In public, operatives from public health bodies do not mask, nor speak about airborne disease mitigation. Politicians certainly do not mask, even elected officials who quite clearly fall into high-risk categories, belying their claim that people are simply adopting the libertarian “personal risk assessment” approach to COVID. This refusal to mask, no matter the case numbers, no matter the risk factors, is a political choice designed to encourage the public to accept a lack of airborne disease mitigation. It pushes people to believe the virus is harmless, even as scientific research fails to support this claim, and while the CDC puts out conflicting guidance that large swathes of the public are high-risk.

Refusal to directly communicate 1) how COVID spreads 2) that it can be avoided 3) how it can be avoided while modeling mitigation, makes pandemic communications much more difficult for vulnerable people, activists and marginalized groups attempting to reduce disease burden in their communities. We should not be swimming against the current of public health officials’ poor pandemic hygiene.

Mandate airborne infection control in all healthcare settings

Of course, COVID is an international problem, and it’s critical that measures like indoor clean air and airborne infection control in healthcare are implemented globally. WHO has no legal authority to issue such a mandate; it can do little more than make recommendations. However, those recommendations have power, and as of now, it has failed to make them. Recommendations from WHO often form the basis of directives from regulatory bodies like the CDC.

The decision to claim that SARS-COV-2 was not airborne was politically motivated. There was no data to support this claim, only decades of bad physics in medicine and very strong financial and legal incentives to assume that COVID was not spreading through the air. It all comes down to the cost of rethinking medical care entirely, with an eye to airborne infection control.

I already wrote about the WHO’s recent attempt to both acknowledge COVID’s airborne nature while walking back their early-pandemic claims that, were COVID airborne, of course they would recommend proper airborne infection control measures.

Specifically, WHO Health Operations, Infection Prevention and Control Technical Team wrote in an April 2020 email to a group advocating for airborne precautions:

"Would there be evidence of significant spread of SARS-CoV-2 as an airborne pathogen outside of the context of AGPs [aerosol generating procedures], WHO would immediately revise its guidance and extend the recommendation of airborne precautions accordingly"

Well, COVID is airborne, and they have not immediately revised their guidance.

This continues to cost the lives of hospitalized vulnerable people every day.

It also contributes to public confusion about how COVID transmits, including among healthcare workers. Doctors and nurses are well aware that there is no airborne infection control in medical settings; their personal justifications tend to be either “because COVID must be mild” or “because COVID can’t spread that way.”

This is an understandable psychological response to watching their employers- hospitals and medical facilities- fail to implement measures to control the spread of airborne disease in a hospital. Either COVID must not be spreading that way, or COVID must be no big deal.

Education and mitigation practices coming from the top will speed the process of normalizing disease control and bringing down cases at an institutional level.

Like seeing public health officials masked, seeing doctors and nurses masked in hospitals with well-fitting respirators will also help educate the public about how SARS-COV-2 spreads, and confirm that indeed, COVID is still with us.

While there is no previous legal framework for patients to rely on, what medical institutions are doing is highly immoral if not explicitly illegal. They are failing to even attempt to provide proper infection control in hospitals.

Public health bodies should properly educate medical professionals about airborne infection control and mandate upgrades to hospital infrastructure that accommodate the existence of SARS-COV-2. Set the expectation that healthcare settings will be held responsible for healthcare acquired infections.

Legal and financial consequences for healthcare acquired infections

Currently in the US, many HAIs have to be reported to the CDC; that COVID does not, is a choice based on the reality that they are allowing it to spread freely.

From the CDC website on Healthcare Acquired Infections and the 2022 HAI Progress Report:

"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is committed to protecting patients and healthcare personnel from adverse healthcare events and promoting safety, quality, and value in healthcare delivery. Preventing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) is a top priority for CDC and its partners in public health and healthcare….The 2022 National and State HAI Progress Report provides data on central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), ventilator-associated events (VAEs), surgical site infections (SSIs), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bloodstream events, and Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) events."

The CDC itself states that preventing HAIs is a top priority, and it collects reems of data around other, more easily controlled infections. HICPAC, the CDC advisory body that recommends infection control measures has repeatedly come under fire from activists over the past several years as they attempt to shove through a new set of recommendations that incorrectly equates N-95 respirator protection with surgical masks and otherwise ignores airborne transmission of viruses.

HICPAC’s strategy for dealing with the entirely new paradigm uncovered by engineers and aerosol experts in 2021- because, bear in mind, the work of scientists like Linsey Marr showed that no viruses are spreading via “droplet” alone, the way scientists formerly conceptualized their transmission- is utter denial.

It would be too disruptive to decades of infection control norms to acknowledge that SARS-COV-2 came in like a wrecking ball to previous guidance; thus, HICPAC members are pretending they’ve never even heard of COVID. Watching their public facing meetings is bizarre; hours of academic debates where the pandemic isn’t mentioned, followed by 45 minutes of activists explaining that they are unable to access medical care, or that their loved ones caught COVID in the hospital and died. HICPAC members remain utterly stone-faced throughout these sessions and fail to acknowledge the comments at their next session.

Currently, Medicare has a program that reduces funding to hospitals with higher rates of acquired infections; COVID is not one of those targeted. Change this and watch how quickly hospital management goes from not understanding, to indeed understanding, airborne infection control. This is all a matter of financial incentives to hospital management, and those incentives must change.

Since 2020, incentives have stubbornly pushed healthcare institutions to ignore COVID to save the money it would cost to dramatically reimagine healthcare with top-to-bottom airborne infection control. How do you properly segregate COVID+ patients? When do you test them? How often do you test staff? Do you send COVID+ staff home? (Yes, you should, but currently the hospital saves money by not doing this).

We need to pivot from the early pandemic model of mandating individual behaviors (masks, distancing) to mandating outcomes (lack of viral spread in public spaces). That doesn’t mean a public space can never mandate masks, it means that masks must be part of a coherent strategy to prevent infections; this should also eliminate irrational mask rules (mask only before you sit down) and incentivize mask hygiene, education, and distribution. If a hospital loses money because of hospital acquired COVID, it is not merely incentivized to mandate masks. It is incentivized to mandate proper respirator masks, educate staff as to proper mask wearing, fit test masks, properly ventilate and filtrate, ensure that masks aren’t being worn on chins, test staff and patients, send sick staff home, ensure that meals can be eaten in a COVID-free, low-CO2 area, etc.

Legal and financial consequences for infections acquired in congregate settings, prisons, workplaces and schools

Continuing this theme; there is nothing particularly radical about the idea of legal repercussions for infectious disease via negligence in a workplace, school or congregate setting.

You can sue your workplace for infecting you with a foodborne illness if it was not following proper public health regulations. You can sue a school that doesn’t get your kid his epi pen in a timely manner. You could sue a retirement home with cholera in the water.

Therefore, world governments need to set indoor clear air standards, as well as assign culpability for the containment of outbreaks to employers, schools, prisons, etc., with government money available for infrastructure upgrades and a timeline for their achievement. If disease transmission occurs because indoor CO2 is high, because air filters weren’t turned on, because sick people were forced to work, that should be legally actionable the way dirty water and poorly handled food is.

All institutions- schools, workplaces, retirement homes, prisons- must have not only baseline protections like clean air, but outbreak plans. What happens in the event of a positive case? How is that handled, how is spread prevented? Government money, guidance and resources must be available to ease the development of this process.

Before Biden was elected, he promised to implement a new OSHA standard to protect workers from COVID infections. On January 21, 2021, the day after his Inauguration, he issued an Executive Order asking OSHA for revised guidance to protect workers from COVID-19. What resulted was both grossly inadequate and temporary. In June of 2021, OSHA issued an ETS - Emergency Temporary Standard- for healthcare workers only. It included guidance about social distancing, AGPs, solid barriers, and surface disinfection, though it was issued over a month after the WHO updated its website to affirm that COVID was not droplet spread.

It did, however, contain good guidance including screening for healthcare workers, sending positive workers home, reference to respirator masks, reference to HVAC and MERV-13 filters, but it has since expired. In the years since, OSHA has dragged its feet as workers’ groups like the National Nurses Union (NNU) lobbies for protections and industry groups like the American Hospital Association (AHA) lobby against them. If “COVID is here to stay” and “we have to learn to live with COVID”, why would worker protections from infection be temporary?

On the whole, workers were forced back into COVID-riddled workplaces with no new protections. A new OSHA standard should acknowledge the threat of airborne disease, make use of the many technological solutions for mitigating airborne disease, and outline the responsibilities of employers to both utilize available technologies, promote mitigation, and send sick workers home.

Comprehensive indoor clean air laws with specifications for upgraded ventilation, filtration, and other tools like Far UVC

I’ve already written about this in detail. The CDC has decent guidance, updated in May of 2023, about ventilation and filtration, here. However, none of this is enforceable without new legislation, nor does our current infrastructure meet these standards.

Ventilation norms and requirements must be overhauled. Currently, hotels and schools often have windows sealed shut; this is inappropriate for disease control and leads to dangerous levels of CO2 accumulation. All public buildings must be able to guarantee air changes per hour (ACH) deemed appropriate by aerosol experts, keeping CO2 as low as possible. Only MERV-13 or higher (HEPA filtration) effectively filters airborne virus from the air, so these must be standard.

I have only the basic knowledge of a layman; to learn more, you can check out this roadmap for national IAQ standards written by dozens of experts and published in Science.

Far UVC is another promising tool, and engineers should be consulted as to the appropriateness of implementing it in public spaces, particularly in schools, airports, hospitals, and crowded venues.

Work from home should be encouraged, conferences should be virtual where possible, flights should be tested.

Unwinding WFH in the midst of wave after wave of COVID was anti-science and self-defeating. Increasing the severity of waves and worsening spread in the community creates less productivity and more worker absence. Additionally, lessening the environmental impact of commuting and converting commercial real estate to residential should be priorities.

Governments, instead of pushing people back into the office, should be pushing in the opposite direction, for a sustainable approach to long-term remote work. This lessens community spread, environmental pollution, and local traffic, while creating more accessible jobs. Conferences should always have virtual options if they can’t be fully virtual. The carbon footprint of professional conferences is something I do think about a lot, but I digress.

Relatedly, yes, I believe people should have a negative PCR to fly. You do not have the right to get in a tube with a bunch of other people while positive for COVID, period. People need paperwork to fly. They need an ID to fly. They need a passport to fly internationally. It is expensive to fly. There should be on site, cheap, fast PCR or PCR-accurate testing at the airport, and you should need the negative to fly, like you need your ID and ticket. PlusLife tests are 5 Euros.

I had to PCR test to board flights to Mexico, Chile, Brazil, and Argentina in 2022 and nobody died. As a disabled person, it was the last time I was able to fly internationally, because I wasn’t forced to risk exposure. Testing has the added benefit of encouraging pro-social mitigation behaviors when people know they will have to test before flying.

Free masks, free tests, free vaccines, free Paxlovid, universal paid sick leave, and negative tests to exit quarantine

Expense should never be a barrier to practicing disease control. As usual, our governments continue to be penny-wise and pound-foolish, depriving people of the tools to keep themselves safe and incurring much, much higher expenses to the economy in terms of long-term health loss of workers.

As of now, volunteer-led radical mask blocs are attempting to fill in the gaps by offering free masks and tests to locals in need, but there is only so much that small groups of (often disabled and multiply marginalized) citizens can do.

We need free distribution of proper KN95 and N95 respirator masks, as well as tests; ideally tests that work well. Currently, the government sends out the odd packet of 2-4 rapid tests; RAT tests are 28% accurate on day 1 of symptoms. We need to get more tests and more accurate tests into the hands of the public, for free. Then we need to allow people to stay home until they test negative.

The CDC has unscientifically reduced the COVID quarantine several times until it has become functionally non-existent; this was done not to effectively control disease, but to appease employers. People with COVID-19 should leave quarantine when they have tested negative on two tests, 24 hours apart. Period. Not before. A positive test = viral load = contagion.

OSHA standards that penalize employers for spread between employees would incentivize the provision of proper sick leave. I do understand that the government, after failing to control COVID for so long, cannot shift the burden of disease control overnight to individual business owners. There needs to be a long period of infrastructure upgrade, education, resource distribution, perhaps even tax incentives for proper pandemic management and airborne infection control. But overall, incentives must align to push individual institutions toward infection control and away from infection maximization. The government must continue to provide support, resources, and education, while building a framework for regulation and financial disincentive as well.

Vaccines must be free. Paxlovid must be free. And in an ideal world, in a world that truly wants to end this pandemic, and all pandemics, healthcare must be free.

Education

Education can take many forms; even the implementation of proper airborne infection control in hospitals is a form of education. It educates the public “here is how you halt the spread of COVID” and “yes COVID is still here” and “yes we take it seriously because it can kill”. Currently, hospitals and medical professionals, at the behest of the WHO and CDC, are communicating the opposite.

But in addition to the education provided by modeling airborne infection control, wearing masks, instituting infection control, implementing legal consequences for infections, setting a new OSHA standard for workers, etc., the public needs direct, honest communication about the health risks of COVID.

This means talking about the risk of Long COVID that accompanies each infection without purposely undercutting that messaging by then loudly reassuring people “but it probably won’t happen to you.” It means explaining COVID is a multi-systemic disease, not just a respiratory virus. It means explaining that COVID carries long-term health risks that outlast the acute infection. It means explaining that COVID variants are excellent at evading immunity, meaning they learn to outsmart our body’s protection via vaccine or previous infection; that’s why you must get boosted and layer your precautions.

Of course, the above is only an overview of prevention. We need another coordinated, funded, communications and research campaign to handle the Long COVID crisis.

In the fantasy world where tomorrow, we can build an ideal pandemic response from the ground up, I see several major switches that would need to flip.

The first is that the culture of silence and denial among leadership would have to change to one of education and communication. Right now, state representatives are deliberately avoiding mention of COVID, while propagandizing the safety of infection and/or the end of the pandemic by refusing to mask. It is hard to imagine how successful a pandemic response might be if public officials were actually trying to end the pandemic. We quite literally have public health and political and media figures working to hide three pieces of critical information: public knowledge of the virus, public knowledge of mitigation measures that would reduce viral spread, and public knowledge of the severity of the virus (which would motivate desire to reduce viral spread).

On the one hand, that is a terrible and depressing place to be. On the other hand, it tells us that we might better control COVID through public behavior alone, if the public were given information and tools instead of purposely obstructed from accessing either. We have a lot of room to grow.

The second would be the construction of physical infrastructure to deal with the existence of very contagious, very common, highly disabling airborne virus that is currently circulating in all public spaces. If we have to “learn to live with” COVID, let’s learn to live with an airborne virus by cleaning the air.

The third would be building the legal infrastructure to enforce and hold accountable a failure to implement said physical infrastructure, along with other disease control measures. Patients should not be infected in hospitals. Workers should not be forcibly infected at work. Prisoners should not be forcibly infected in prisons. Kids should not be forcibly infected in schools. Let’s drill down and prevent transmission in congregate settings, with accountability.

COVID control essentially came to an utter halt because our system was not designed to control airborne disease. Our governments did not want to pay to do it. Our governments did not want to explain that they did not want to pay to do it. But this is 2024. We have technology we haven’t even begun to deploy in the fight against COVID, all because we’re too proud to admit we’re still fighting. We have not even scratched the surface of what would a pandemic response that acknowledges the airborne nature of COVID could achieve.

The introduction of the vaccines in early 2021 appeared to our governments like a “get out of jail free” card. They thought they could grab onto it, induce broad herd immunity, and get back to normal without ever acknowledging or paying for clean air. But that isn’t what happened, and now, our lack of mitigations continues to rapidly produce new variants that harm the efficacy of our vaccines.

It would’ve been nice if the vaccines were all that were needed to end the SARS-COV-2 crisis. Since it isn’t, we need our leaders to stop doubling down on their failed strategy, accept reality, and start building a long-term approach to ending this airborne pandemic, as well as avoiding future ones.

The problem underlying all the current failures is that, quite simply, our government is not trying to end this pandemic. It is trying to hide this pandemic. And you’re not going to solve a problem you won’t acknowledge.

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Things Inupiaq culture doesn't traditionally have:

Kings/royalty (requiring tribute from the people you lead is seen as tyranical and tyrants are killed when possible)

A cash economy (dentallium shells were valued by many other cultures and sometimes were used as money in international trade, but not among fellow Inupiat)

Agriculture (we are traditionally a hunter-gatherer people seasonally following the herds, fish, and ripening greens and berries)

Corporal punishment (you aren't even supposed to yell at people or even scold children)

Slavery (you could argue this one since women were sometimes captured and taken as wives; but this is typically regarded as an ancient and morally questionable practice. The Inupiat didn't believe in owning people or their labor, only at best associating through marriage, blood relation, or wife-exchange)

Primogeniture as a hard-fast rule (Inupiat culture was traditionally patriarchal so a son may inherit his father's status as a family patriarch if he is already a father at this time, but material inheritence was not guaranteed to work that way)

A written language (historians were assigned to memorize records, family trees, and the like)

Human or animal sacrifices (would be considered cruel and wasteful)

Formal vs informal language (socio-economic class is mutable and does not affect language)

Gendered pronouns (our language uses pronouns to indicate tone of a sentence the way many languages use pronunciation, as well as relationship between subject and object in complex sentences and in all cases whether the subject is singular, dual, or plural and if the sentence is in first, second, or third person. An absolute fuckton of pronouns and none of them are gendered)

Raw meat taboo (except in the case of pregnancy; the arctic climate means the weather was not too far off from refrigerator or freezer temperatures, if not colder, and underground storage was often placed around frozen methane deposits known as permafrost)

Dog meat taboo (dogs were helpful as beasts of burden or sometimes hunting companions but when there's a famine you gotta eat what you can)

Many ceremonies taken for granted (for example, if a man and woman mutually agreed they were married, that was the only wedding required. We had big celebrations for survival, and women got incredible face tattoos for coming of age, but many lifestages were celebrated more low-key with little pomp and circumstance)

Shirts (you didn't wear anything underneath your atigi, and if it was too warm for it, you took it off. Yes, even women. Presbyterian missionaries thought we were godless sluts for our tits out ways)

Virginity marriage requirement (it was best if a woman hadn't had sex before but only because we lived in small communities and you have to keep track of bloodlines. Having sex didn't make girls unclean or impure and unwed mothers were taken care of by their families and weren't stigmatized)

Required monogomy (men could have multiple wives and women could have multiple husbands, wife exchange was a means of fostering allegiance, and the main problem with cheating is that it involved lying and prioritizing pleasure over duties like making sure your husband doesn't fall to his death while hunting. In stories about cheating and revenge, the cheater and retaliating jealous partner are both depicted as in the wrong)

There are more, but these i feel provide a pretty good basic idea of the culture. You can use these bits of info as Water Tribe worldbuilding inspo if you want, but i won't pester you into it. I just think my culture is neat and wanted to share ^-^

[my-darling-boy]

It’s horrible how my design course has killed my enjoyment in creativity because all they want is finished pieces founded in nothing but a spontaneous mark just to hang at some concrete art gallery or to sell to some “join our revolution” comfy business-casual company with a prison cell wellness room. I’m not saying that it’s “not art” —cos that’s a different post altogether— it’s that the ethos behind this particular formula for art education is ruining the way we think about creation.

Design courses (and other art courses I’ve heard?) are no longer teaching artists or designers techniques, drawing skills, art fundamentals and allowing them to find their own voice so much as they are only instructing how to tic boxes alongside pushing corporate and classist motivated style/methodology bias aimed at producing workers, not creatives, not to mention providing Adobe with endless funds for their despicable scam programs. That’s it. My creativity is only a means to money for them, and if they can extract the process of creation from me without the complex creative intimacy involved in it, they know they can churn out products and services faster and it’s concerning some lecturers don’t seem to be aware this is what they’re teaching? Like they’re buying into industry propaganda?

And the whole time it’s sold to you like you can be some trailblazer when the irony is they’re usually either prepping you for cubicle work or for some misguided high horse creative team pumping out design solutions completely divorced from the reality. I’m tired of all the talks about sustainability in a vacuum with no conversation about nuanced designs that factor in broader social and economic perspectives which lack thereof is leading to sustainable products being sold at a price only able to be afforded by wealthier people who are causing said economic and social problems and contributing to the rapid obsoletion of trades and crafts. Lecturers and speakers don’t seem to think that’s any of our concern and should just worry about producing the design for the hypothetical Bluetooth powered organic hairbrush or using the twigs to make the pattern for the £85 fabric square.

Like? Can I please make something that actually resonates with people outside the circle jerk of egotistical creatives and corporations? Something charming and maybe idk something that doesn’t make me want to tear my miserable portfolio in half with my teeth? And they’re like Mm nope sorry it has to be an extreme close up of a mark making abstract leaf you made from a recycled trash bag inspired by a stalled urban space which we will force you to price at £100 during your exhibition 5 people will bother to attend and no you’re not allowed any other style cos this isn’t the Dark Ages :///

I think the worst thing my lecturer ever said was, while looking around the room of our class work reduced down to a series of cubes and splatters and abstract typography, “Wow, I love how you can’t tell what anyone’s [main artist discipline] is!” Like awww conformity at the expense of a person’s individuality to make pieces for airport hallways and rich people’s living rooms wow so cool heehee like girl that’s not good?? Why on Earth are you complimenting us for that? Like I get it, I thought this course would boost skillset as an illustrator (as we were told), turns out the degree is really not for me, fair enough to anyone thinking that, but forcing students to produce modern abstract art because you think it’s the ONLY Logical Pathway for the future of design, judging them intensely for doing a different style, and thinking producing financially inaccessible art + design is the solution to things like climate change and community severance is an objectively bad take.

[maplewoodstreet]

CONTENT WARNING: police, violence

Some Stop Cop City TikToks caught my attention

and got me interested in learning more about Cop City. I thought I would share some of the information I found.

from Police Foundations. These are not necessarily corporations that donated to Cop City, but they are to show that donating to police is something corporations regularly do.

Cop City is another name for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Funded with $90,000,000 in taxes and donations.

Largest police training facility in the United States.

Located in the densest black populated area in Georgia.

Cop City is being built in one of Atlanta’s last forests.

Stop Cop City protester and environmentalist activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán was shot “12 or 13” times by a police officer despite Terán not firing at the police. The cop did not face charges because the killing was “objectively reasonable under the circumstances of this case”.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr described Defend Atlanta Forest as “an anarchist, anti-police, and anti-business extremist organization” and 61 activists have been charged with domestic terrorism.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) directly shares strategies with the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE). “The Atlanta Police Department and Fulton County SWAT teams had conducted training exercises in an abandoned hotel to remove “Hamas terrorists’.”

Corporations like Dunkin Donuts parent corporation Inspire Brands, Coca-Cola, Chic-Fil-A, Bank of America, UPS, Norfolk Southern, and more help fund Cop City with multimillion-dollar donations. Coca-Cola, UPS, Chic-Fil-A, and more made statements during the murder of George Floyd with things like “…end the cycle of systemic racism”, “creating social impact, advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion”, and “building stronger communities.” Corporations often donate to police foundations.

Articles sourced:

https://prismreports.org/2023/11/14/stop-cop-city-gilee-palestinian-genocide/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2023/03/14/cops-and-donuts-go-together-more-than-you-thought-the-corporations-funding-cop-city-in-atlanta/ 

I’m not a professional or even a hobbyist journalist, so if I have wrong information here, please let me know.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

There’s no such thing as “shareholder supremacy”

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

Here's a cheap trick: claim that your opponents' goals are so squishy and qualitative that no one will ever be able to say whether they've been succeeded or failed, and then declare that your goals can be evaluated using crisp, objective criteria.

This is the whole project of "economism," the idea that politics, with its emphasis on "fairness" and other intangibles, should be replaced with a mathematical form of economics, where every policy question can be reduced to an equation…and then "solved":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/28/imagine-a-horse/#perfectly-spherical-cows-of-uniform-density-on-a-frictionless-plane

Before the rise of economism, it was common to speak of its subjects as "political economy" or even "moral philosophy" (Adam Smith, the godfather of capitalism, considered himself a "moral philosopher"). "Political economy" implicitly recognizes that every policy has squishy, subjective, qualitative dimensions that don't readily boil down to math.

For example, if you're asking about whether people should have the "freedom" to enter into contracts, it might be useful to ask yourself how desperate your "free" subject might be, and whether the entity on the other side of that contract is very powerful. Otherwise you'll get "free contracts" like "I'll sell you my kidneys if you promise to evacuate my kid from the path of this wildfire."

The problem is that power is hard to represent faithfully in quantitative models. This may seem like a good reason to you to be skeptical of modeling, but for economism, it's a reason to pretend that the qualitative doesn't exist. The method is to incinerate those qualitative factors to produce a dubious quantitative residue and do math on that:

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

Hence the famous Ely Devons quote: "If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’"

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

The neoliberal revolution was a triumph for economism. Neoliberal theorists like Milton Friedman replaced "political economy" with "law and economics," the idea that we should turn every one of our complicated, nuanced, contingent qualitative goals into a crispy defined "objective" criteria. Friedman and his merry band of Chicago School economists replaced traditional antitrust (which sought to curtail the corrupting power of large corporations) with a theory called "consumer welfare" that used mathematics to decide which monopolies were "efficient" and therefore good (spoiler: monopolists who paid Friedman's pals to do this mathematical analysis always turned out to be running "efficient" monopolies):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

One of Friedman's signal achievements was the theory of "shareholder supremacy." In 1970, the New York Times published Friedman's editorial "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits":

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctrine-the-social-responsibility-of-business-is-to.html

In it, Friedman argued that corporate managers had exactly one job: to increase profits for shareholders. All other considerations – improving the community, making workers' lives better, donating to worthy causes or sponsoring a little league team – were out of bounds. Managers who wanted to improve the world should fund their causes out of their paychecks, not the corporate treasury.

Friedman cloaked his hymn to sociopathic greed in the mantle of objectivism. For capitalism to work, corporations have to solve the "principal-agent" problem, the notoriously thorny dilemma created when one person (the principal) asks another person (the agent) to act on their behalf, given the fact that the agent might find a way to line their own pockets at the principal's expense (for example, a restaurant server might get a bigger tip by offering to discount diners' meals).

Any company that is owned by stockholders and managed by a CEO and other top brass has a huge principal-agent problem, and yet, the limited liability, joint-stock company had produced untold riches, and was considered the ideal organization for "capital formation" by Friedman et al. In true economismist form, Friedman treated all the qualitative questions about the duty of a company as noise and edited them out of the equation, leaving behind a single, elegant formulation: "a manager is doing their job if they are trying to make as much money as possible for their shareholders."

Friedman's formulation was a hit. The business community ran wild with it. Investors mistook an editorial in the New York Times for an SEC rulemaking and sued corporate managers on the theory that they had a "fiduciary duty" to "maximize shareholder value" – and what's more, the courts bought it. Slowly and piecemeal at first, but bit by bit, the idea that rapacious greed was a legal obligation turned into an edifice of legal precedent. Business schools taught it, movies were made about it, and even critics absorbed the message, insisting that we needed to "repeal the law" that said that corporations had to elevate profit over all other consideration (not realizing that no such law existed).

It's easy to see why shareholder supremacy was so attractive for investors and their C-suite Renfields: it created a kind of moral crumple-zone. Whenever people got angry at you for being a greedy asshole, you could shrug and say, "My hands are tied: the law requires me to run the business this way – if you don't believe me, just ask my critics, who insist that we must get rid of this law!"

In a long feature for The American Prospect, Adam M Lowenstein tells the story of how shareholder supremacy eventually came into such wide disrepute that the business lobby felt that it had to do something about it:

https://prospect.org/power/2024-09-17-ponzi-scheme-of-promises/

It starts in 2018, when Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett decried the short-term, quarterly thinking in corporate management as bad for business's long-term health. When Washington Post columnist Steve Pearlstein wrote a column agreeing with them and arguing that even moreso, businesses should think about equities other than shareholder returns, Jamie Dimon lost his shit and called Pearlstein to call it "the stupidest fucking column I’ve ever read":

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/07/will-ending-quarterly-earnings-guidance-free-ceos-to-think-long-term/

But the dam had broken. In the months and years that followed, the Business Roundtable would adopt a series of statements that repudiated shareholder supremacy, though of course they didn't admit it. Rather, they insisted that they were clarifying that they'd always thought that sometimes not being a greedy asshole could be good for business, too. Though these statements were nonbinding, and though the CEOs who signed them did so in their personal capacity and not on behalf of their companies, capitalism's most rabid stans treated this as an existential crisis.

Lowenstein identifies this as the forerunner to today's panic over "woke corporations" and "DEI," and – just as with "woke capitalism" – the whole thing amounted to a a PR exercise. Lowenstein links to several studies that found that the CEOs who signed onto statements endorsing "stakeholder capitalism" were "more likely to lay off employees during COVID-19, were less inclined to contribute to pandemic relief efforts, had 'higher rates of environmental and labor-related compliance violations,”' emitted more carbon into the atmosphere, and spent more money on dividends and buybacks."

One researcher concluded that "signing this statement had zero positive effect":

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/companies-stand-solidarity-are-licensing-themselves-discriminate/614947

So shareholder supremacy isn't a legal obligation, and statements repudiating shareholder supremacy don't make companies act any better.

But there's an even more fundamental flaw in the argument for the shareholder supremacy rule: it's impossible to know if the rule has been broken.

The shareholder supremacy rule is an unfalsifiable proposition. A CEO can cut wages and lay off workers and claim that it's good for profits because the retained earnings can be paid as a dividend. A CEO can raise wages and hire more people and claim it's good for profits because it will stop important employees from defecting and attract the talent needed to win market share and spin up new products.

A CEO can spend less on marketing and claim it's a cost-savings. A CEO can spend more on marketing and claim it's an investment. A CEO can eliminate products and call it a savings. A CEO can add products and claim they're expansions into new segments. A CEO can settle a lawsuit and claim they're saving money on court fees. A CEO can fight a lawsuit through to the final appeal and claim that they're doing it to scare vexatious litigants away by demonstrating their mettle.

CEOs can use cheaper, inferior materials and claim it's a savings. They can use premium materials and claim it's a competitive advantage that will produce new profits. Everything a company does can be colorably claimed as an attempt to save or make money, from sponsoring the local little league softball team to treating effluent to handing ownership of corporate landholdings to perpetual trusts that designate them as wildlife sanctuaries.

Bribes, campaign contributions, onshoring, offshoring, criminal conspiracies and conference sponsorships – there's a business case for all of these being in line with shareholder supremacy.

Take Boeing: when the company smashed its unions and relocated key production to scab plants in red states, when it forced out whistleblowers and senior engineers who cared about quality, when it outsourced design and production to shops around the world, it realized a savings. Today, between strikes, fines, lawsuits, and a mountain of self-inflicted reputational harm, the company is on the brink of ruin. Was Boeing good to its shareholders? Well, sure – the shareholders who cashed out before all the shit hit the fan made out well. Shareholders with a buy-and-hold posture (like the index funds that can't sell their Boeing holdings so long as the company is in the S&P500) got screwed.

Right wing economists criticize the left for caring too much about "how big a slice of the pie they're getting" rather than focusing on "growing the pie." But that's exactly what Boeing management did – while claiming to be slaves to Friedman's shareholder supremacy. They focused on getting a bigger slice of the pie, screwing their workers, suppliers and customers in the process, and, in so doing, they made the pie so much smaller that it's in danger of disappearing altogether.

Here's the principal-agent problem in action: Boeing management earned bonuses by engaging in corporate autophagia, devouring the company from within. Now, long-term shareholders are paying the price. Far from solving the principal-agent problem with a clean, bright-line rule about how managers should behave, shareholder supremacy is a charter for doing whatever the fuck a CEO feels like doing. It's the squishiest rule imaginable: if someone calls you cruel, you can blame the rule and say you had no choice. If someone calls you feckless, you can blame the rule and say you had no choice. It's an excuse for every season.

The idea that you can reduce complex political questions – like whether workers should get a raise or whether shareholders should get a dividend – to a mathematical rule is a cheap sleight of hand. The trick is an obvious one: the stuff I want to do is empirically justified, while the things you want are based in impossible-to-pin-down appeals to emotion and its handmaiden, ethics. Facts don't care about your feelings, man.

But it's feelings all the way down. Milton Friedman's idol-worshiping cult of shareholder supremacy was never about empiricism and objectivity. It's merely a gimmick to make greed seem scientifically optimal.

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/18/falsifiability/#figleaves-not-rubrics/a>

[lonestarflight]

Cancelled Missions/Station: Manned Orbital Research Laboratory (MORL)

This was a study initiated in 1962 for space stations designs using the Gemini Spacecraft and later on the Apollo CSM. Boeing and Douglas received Phase I contracts in June 1964.

MORL/S-IVB Concept

"A 5 metric ton 'dry' space station, launched by Saturn IB, with Gemini or Apollo being used for crew rotation. The 6.5 meter diameter and 12.6 meter long station included a docking adapter, hangar section, airlock, and a dual-place centrifuge. Douglas was selected by NASA LaRC for further Phase 2 and 3 studies in 1963 to 1966. Although MORL was NASA's 'baseline station' during this period, it was dropped by the late 1960's in preference to the more capable station that would become Skylab.

Different docking concepts studied.

The Manned Orbital Research Laboratory was the brainchild of Carl M Houson and Allen C. Gilbert, two engineers at Douglas. In 1963 they proposed a Mini Space Station using existing hardware, to be launched by 1965. A Titan II or Atlas would be launched with a payload of control system, docking adapter and hangar module. The visiting crew would use the payload to transform the empty fuel tank of the last stage of the rocket into pressurized habitat (a so-called 'wet' space station). Provisions were available for 4 astronauts for a 100 day stay. Crew members would arrive two at a time aboard Gemini spacecraft. Equipment included a two-place centrifuge for the astronauts to readapt to gravity before their return to earth.

An early MORL concert. Artwork by Gordon Phillips.

In June 1964 Boeing and Douglas received Phase I contracts for further refinement of MORL station designs. The recommended concept was now for a 13.5 metric ton 'dry' space station, launched by Saturn IB, with Gemini or Apollo being used for crew rotation. The 6.5 meter diameter and 12.6 meter long station included a docking adapter, Hangar section, airlock, and a dual-place centrifuge.

"Medium-sized orbiting lab is this Manned Orbital Research Laboratory (MORL) developed for NASA's Langley Lab by Douglas Missiles & Spacecraft Division. The lab which weighs about 35,000 pounds, could maintain 3 to 6 men in orbit for a year.

Orbiting Stations: Stopovers to Space Travel by Irwin Stambler, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1965."

Douglas was selected by NASA LaRC for further Phase 2 and 3 studies in 1963 to 1966. The major system elements of the baseline that emerged included:

A 660-cm-diameter laboratory launched by the Saturn IB into a 370-km orbit inclined at 28.72 degrees to the equator

A Saturn IB launched Apollo logistics vehicle, consisting of a modified Apollo command module, a service pack for rendezvous and re-entry propulsion, and a multi-mission module for cargo, experiments, laboratory facility modification, or a spacecraft excursion propulsion system.

Supporting ground systems.

MORL Phase IIb examined the utilization of the MORL for space research in the 1970s. Subcontractors included:

Eclipse-Pioneer Division of Bendix, stabilization and control

Federal Systems Division of IBM, communications, data management, and ground support systems

Hamilton Standard Division of the United Aircraft Corporation, environmental control/life support

Stanford Research Institute, priority analysis of space- related objectives

Bissett-Berman, oceanography

Marine Advisors, oceanography

Aero Services, cartography and photogrammetry

Marquardt, orientation propulsion

TRW, main engine propulsion.

The original MORL program envisioned one or two Saturn IB and three Titan II launches. Crew would be 6 to 9 Astronauts. After each Gemini docked to the MORL at the nose of the adapter, the crew would shut down the Gemini systems, put the spacecraft into hibernation, and transfer by EVA to the MORL airlock. The Gemini would then be moved by a small manipulator to side of the station to clear docking adapter for arrival of the next crew."

"Docking was to have 3 ports, all Nose Dock config, with spacecraft modifications totaling +405 lbs over the baseline Gemini spacecraft (structure beef-up, dock provisions, added retro-rockets, batteries, a data link for rendezvous, temp. control equip. for long-term, unoccupied Gemini storage on-orbit and removal of R&D instruments)."

"Later concepts including docking a Saturn-IB launched space telescope to MORL. At 4 meter diameter and 15 meter long, this would be the same size as the later Hubble Space Telescope. The crew would have to make EVA's to recover the film from the camera.

In 1965 Robert Sohn, head of the Technical Requirements Staff, TRW Space Technology Laboratories, proposed a detailed plan for early manned flight to Mars using MORL. The enlarged MORL-derived mission module would house six to eight men and be hurled on a Mars flyby by a single Saturn MLV-V-1 launch. MORL-derived Mars mission modules cropped up in other Douglas Mars studies until superseded by the 10-m diameter Planetary Mission Module in 1969.

MORL/Space Telescope

Why was MORL never launched ?

NASA had a need for a Space Station and MORL was little, easy and cheap. But NASA had more ambitious plans, embodied in the Apollo Applications Orbital Workshop (later called Skylab)."

-information from astronautix.com: link

source, source, source

NARA: 6375661, S66-17592

Posted on Flickr by Numbers Station: link

[useless-catalanfacts]

Now it's been a week since the floods, but we must remember that the damage is not nearly over. It will take months and years for the affected families to recover. And that's not counting that 215 people have died and 78 are still missing. Many homes, streets, fields, schools, etc are destroyed. I'm glad for all the solidarity we've seen this first week, but they are going to be needing help for a long time to recover.

All the local organizations are thankful but for some days have been asking for people to stop sending them objects (tools, clothes, food, etc) because the collection points have so many that they can't manage them and they don't even need so many of some things being sent, for this reason there are storehouses full of materials that they don't need but people keep sending and some volunteers are having to stay there to coordinate the stuff that arrives instead of being where they're needed. So, please, don't send any more things unless you are coordinated directly with a local association there that asked for a specific thing. They say that the most useful donations now are money and not any more food nor second-hand objects. (Again, thank you very much because this overwhelming response speaks of the goodness and solidarity of everyone who immediately reacted by sending things! but let's do it in a coordinated way with the affected people to make sure it's useful).

Also, recently some well-meaning people have been sharing fundraisers to help the victims, but some of these posts seem to be made by outsiders compiling what they found on Twitter, which ended up spreading fundraisers that belong to far right-wing groups, the Catholic Church, and to associations that aren't well known in the area.

If you can make an economical donation to help these people who have lost everything in a day, these are some trustworthy associations:

Fundraiser by Fundació Horta Sud. This is a foundation created by many local associations of the Horta Sud area, one of the areas that has been the most impacted by the catastrophe. It's a well-known foundation that brings together many local associations. This and the next one are the fundraising that is most recommended by people on the ground working on immediate needs.

Casals i Ateneus dels Països Catalans (federation of social centres of the Catalan Countries) has many social centres in the affected areas and is coordinated with trade unions to provide immediate needs. The bank number for donations is ES74 3025 0002 4614 3344 7057.

Fundraiser to help small family-owned farmers (farmers are one of the poorest segments of population in our country, families own a small plot of land and they're very threatened by big corporations, they're at the forefront of fighting for climate and the rural communities' traditional way of living with nature). The fundraiser is created by the International Centre of Rural and Agriculture Studies (Centro de Estudios Rurales y de Agricultura Internacional). This is the fundraiser shared by trustworthy Valencian associations that work in favour of rural communities and traditional cuisine, such as Tasta'l d'ací.

Fundraiser for the grass-roots cultural associations and cultural heritage guardians, organized by the Federation of Local Studies Institutes of the Valencian Country, the Coordinator of Local Studies Centres of the Catalan-Speaking Countries, the Federation of "Ateneus" of Catalonia, and the Ramon Muntaner Institute. Many local archives, centres of local studies, "ateneus" (social and cultural centres with an important task as a library for the community and as historians of the area, among other cultural activities) and other cultural associations headquarters have been destroyed. They are very important for the memory, history and culture of small areas. To write articles about the history and legends for this blog, I very often use work published by these local study groups, because most of the time they are the only ones working in detail on the historical and cultural heritage of their hometown. Here is the information on how to donate, as shared by the organizers:

Translation: Let's help the Valencian cultural and heritage associations affected by the 2024 floods. You can send your donations to [the bank number] ES98 3159 0066 91 3048828523 Or the BIZUM code 10586 (starting on 7th November 2024). You can send the receipt of your donation to: solidaritatcultura@fedinespv.org.

You can find more associations that are collecting donations in this document by Suport Mutu DANA València.

Thank you very much for caring.