#Utilities and Corporate Services

[legalfirmindia]

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[delicatelysublimeforester]

Green Horizon: Saskatoon's Afforestation Areas in the Spotlight

[fratboykate]

I'm totally in support of the writers in theory but I'm trying to understand more of what you're fighting for because I've seen some people on twitter claim writers make more money a week than most of us make in a month so I'm trying to understand what the issue is. Also if that info is accurate. This is a genuine question. Not trying to have a "gotcha moment". I really want to hear from a writer.

people have always had wild misconceptions about how much a writer earns because of their lack of understanding of how the industry actually works. there's so many posts about how "you guys make 5k a week. what more do you want?!" yeah...let's do some math on that.

5k a week for 14 weeks (and that's a long room. a lot of rooms these days are 8-10 weeks. those are the dreaded mini-rooms we're trying to kill) is $70,000. for roughly three months of work. you'd think we're cooking with gas...BUT HOLD UP. that's gross! let's see everything that has to come out of that check:

10% to our agent

10% to our manager

5% to our entertainment attorney

5% to our business manager (not everyone has one but a lot of us do. i do, so that's literally 30% immediately off the top of every check)

most of these breakdowns ive seen downplay taxes severely. someone made one that says writers pay 5% in taxes and i would like to ask them "in what universe?". that doesn't even cover state taxes. the way taxes work in the industry is really complicated, but the short of it is most of us have companies for tax reasons so we aren't taxed like people on w2s/1099. if we did we'd be even more fucked. basically every production hires a writer's company instead of the writer as an individual. so they engage our companies for our services and then at the end of the year we (the company) pay taxes as corporations or llcs (depending on what the writer chose to go with). my company is registered as a "corporation" so let's go with those rates. california's corporate rate is 9% and the federal corporate tax rate is 21%. there's other expenses with running a business like fees and other shit so my business managers/accountants/bookkeepers have recommended i save between 35-40% of everything i make for when tax season comes.

you see where the math is at already??? 25-30% in commissions and then 35-40% in taxes. on the lower end you're at THE VERY LEAST looking at 60% of that check gone. 70% worst case scenario. suddenly those $70,000 people claim we make are actually down to $28,000 as the take home pay. and that's if you're only losing 60%. it goes down to $21,000 if it's 70%.

lets pretend you worked a long 14 week room (that's the longest room ive ever worked btw) and let's also be generous and say you only have 60% in expenses so the take home is $28,000. average rent in los angeles is around $2,800-$3,000. if you're paying $2,800 in rent that means you need AT LEAST $4,000 a month to have a semi decent life since you need to also cover groceries, gas, medical expenses, toiletries, phone, internet, utilities, rental and car insurances, car payments, student loan payments, etc etc etc. and again, this is los angeles. everything is more expensive so you're living BARE BONES on 4k. and these are numbers as a single person. im not even taking having children into account. so those $28,000 you take home might cover your life for 6-7 months. 3 of which you're in the room working. the reality is that once that room ends, you might not work in a room again for 6-9-12 months (i have friends whose last jobs were over 18 months ago) and you now only have about 3 months left of savings to hold you over. we have to make that money stretch while we do all the endless free development we do for studios and until we get our next paying job. so...3 months left of enough money to cover your expenses -> possible 9 months of not having a job. this is how writers end up on food stamps or applying to work at target.

this is why we're fighting for better rates and better residuals. residuals were a thing writers used to rely on to get them through the unemployment periods. residual checks have gone down from 20k to $0.03 cents. im not joking.

they've decimated our regular pay and then destroyed residuals. we have nothing left. so don't believe it when they tell you writers are being greedy. writers are simply fighting to be able to make a middle class living. we're not asking them to become poor for our sake. we're asking for raises that amount to 2% of their profit. TWO PERCENT. this is a fight for writing even being a career in five years instead of something you do on the side while you work retail to pay your bills. if you think shows are bad now imagine when your writer has to do it as a hobby because they need a real job to pay their bills and support a family. (which none of us can currently afford to have btw)

support writers. stop being bootlickers for billion dollar corporations. stop caring about fictional people more than you care about the real people that write them. if we don't win this fight it truly is game over. the industry as you know it is gone.

[prokopetz]

One of the more frequent anecdotes you'll hear from Dungeons & Dragons podcasters is that any time they switch to a system other than D&D, even for a one-off arc, they immediately experience a large drop in listenership – sometimes up to eighty percent! – only to see most of those listeners come back once they switch back to D&D.

What's interesting about this is that the greater part of D&D podcast listeners do not play Dungeons & Dragons. They might have a general idea of what the game's rules look like based on what they've been able to passively absorb from listening to the podcast, but they don't have regular groups, they don't own the rulebooks or maintain subscriptions to the e-book service, and many of them have never rolled a d20 in their lives.

How, then, do we account for that sudden drop in listenership? Why does which system a tabletop roleplaying podcast is using matter so much if most listeners neither know nor care about the rules?

The answer is, unfortunately, quite simple.

In many ways, advocacy for indie RPGs has never moved past Ron Edwards' infamous argument that playing Dungeons & Dragons causes actual, physical brain damage. Deep down, a lot of indie RPG advocacy seems to believe there's something sinister in the structure of D&D that's responsible for what they regard as its unaccountable popularity. You can see this in everything from the casual assumption that D&D players aren't "really" having fun (and all that's needed to convert them to other systems is to show them they've been tricked into falsely believing they're enjoying an objectively un-fun activity), to the rambling thinkpieces that talk about getting folks to try other games like they're liberating people from the fucking Matrix.

Yet we come back to the same problem: how can the mechanical structure of D&D be implicated for its culturally dominant position in the minds of those who've never picked up a twenty-sided die?

The truth is that Dungeons & Dragons enjoys cultural dominance, both within the hobby and elsewhere, because it's owned by the same multinational corporation that owns Monopoly and My Little Pony, and benefits from all the marketing strength its owner can bring to bear. The problem, in brief, is brand loyalty. The aforementioned podcasts lose listeners in droves whenever they give a non-D&D system a spin because all most of those departing listeners care about is whether the thing that they're listening to is called "Dungeons & Dragons". The structural particulars of the mechanics are irrelevant.

The bitter pill we've got to swallow as indie RPG authors is that we can't fix brand loyalty in tabletop RPGs by fucking around with the shape of the dice. There are lots of productive causes we can support to help address the problem, but they mostly have do to with intellectual property and antitrust regulations and such, which are areas where our finely honed ability to debate the correct way to pretend to be an elf is of very limited utility.

Like, I enjoy an abstruse argument about the ideology of dice-rolling as much as the next nerd, but let's not fool ourselves that we're speaking truth to power here. The gamer who just wants to roll dice to hit the dragon with their sword is not your enemy.

[rnelodyy]

The Owl House And Restorative Justice

At the end of Season 1 of The Owl House, it is revealed that Lilith, the main overarching antagonist of that season, was the one to curse her sister Eda, one of the protagonists, to win a tournament when they were teenagers. This information causes Eda to fly into a screaming rage and attack Lilith, and understandably so.

Eda’s curse is essentially a chronic illness, one that, in Eda’s own words, has ruined her life, being the reason she’s considered a social outcast and why, before meeting King and Luz, she hadn’t gotten close to anyone in years. In season 2, it’s revealed that the curse is why she pushed away her partner Raine to the point that they broke it off with her, and that during a particularly bad flareup, she accidentally maimed her own father, leaving him half blind and with permanent nerve damage to his hands, making him unable to continue working as a Palisman carver. The curse has ruled Eda’s life for decades now, so to Eda, this is the ultimate betrayal.

In the first episode of Season 2, Lilith has defected from the Emperor’s Coven, split the curse between Eda and herself to mitigate the symptoms for her sister, and has moved in with Eda at the Owl House. While Lilith herself still feels guilty and feels she has to make it up to Eda, everyone else, Eda included, has seemingly either forgiven her or chosen to look past it. Eda even makes fun of her for feeling bad about cursing her, and Lilith’s guilt is seemingly absent for the rest of the series. 

The response to this was… Less than stellar, shall we say. A lot of people were angry, saying Lilith got away with her crimes without even a slap on the wrist, and that Eda’s forgiveness of her was far too sudden.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of critique. Amity spent years bullying Willow after her parents forced her to break off their friendship, and when she began trying to mend that relationship, the response from fans was that Willow should have been a lot more angry at Amity, and that they went back to being besties far too soon. I’ve even seen this criticism leveled at Hunter for the things he did while working for Belos, at Vee for impersonating Luz for months to trick her mother, and at Luz for hiding the fact that she helped Philip find the Collector from her friends. And it does seem strange for the show to keep tripping on this same point again and again.

Except, it’s not really. Because I think that, when viewing this show from a different angle, those supposed flaws are actually symptoms of something very important to understand – The Owl House operates on a system of crime and punishment that is very different from our world’s.

More specifically, our world mostly utilizes retributive justice. The world of The Owl House utilizes restorative justice.

So first, what do those terms mean? Broadly, they’re two different forms of handling interpersonal disputes, or dealing with crime. 

Retributive justice is the one our current justice system uses, where the focus is primarily on punishing the perpetrator. Retributive justice can mean detention, suspension, expulsion, jail time, monetary fines, some kinds of community service, exile, or in more severe cases, corporal punishment or the death penalty. It’s the lens most people view the world through, where if someone hurts you, hurting them back is the correct response.

Restorative justice is a very different approach, where you instead focus on helping the victim recover from what happened, and rehabilitating the perpetrator to prevent this from happening again. Restorative justice can look like verbal or written apologies, monetary compensation for costs and trauma, therapy for both victim and perpetrator, education for the perpetrator, mediation between victim and perpetrator, a restraining order, etc. 

When viewed through a retributive lens, The Owl House lets its characters get away with a lot of shit. Lilith cursing Eda, Hunter rounding up Palismen knowing they’ll be killed, Amity tormenting Willow for years, it’s all stuff that, in a retributive environment, they should be punished for, and they’re just not. Eda is only genuinely angry at Lilith for two scenes, Amity and Willow fix their relationship very quickly once Amity starts making amends, and Hunter isn’t punished at all. 

However, I believe the story of The Owl House is best viewed not through a retributive lens, but through a restorative lens.

Let’s look at the Lilith-example again. Lilith’s offense was cursing Eda, which she did because she wanted to win a spot in the Emperor’s Coven. Knowing Eda was better than her, she cast a curse on her, thinking it would only last for a day. But when the time came, Eda forfeited the match, soon after which she transformed into the Owl Beast and was pelted with rocks until she ran. The curse turned out to be very permanent, and Lilith spent the next 20 years trying to fix her mistake by working for Belos to try to capture Eda, since he promised to heal her curse. 

However, when she finally succeeded, Belos went back on his promise. Instead of healing Eda, he ordered her to be publicly executed. When Lilith protested, Belos essentially told her to shut up, that it was the Titan’s will, and left her there. 

So, having realized her method of fixing her mistake has gone real bad, Lilith sneaks down to the Conformatorium to free Eda herself, but arrives too late and finds Luz instead. After a brief fight they end up teaming up, and Lilith leads Luz to the elevator, but they are captured by Belos and Lilith is thrown into the cage with Eda. There, she restores Eda’s partially petrified body, and after fleeing with her, Luz and King, uses a spell to split Eda’s curse evenly between their two bodies.

From a restorative justice point of view, Lilith has done pretty much everything she reasonably could do to fix things. She’s denounced the Emperor’s Coven, returned Owlbert to Luz, helped Luz find the elevator to the execution platform, saved Eda from petrification, apologized to Eda, and while there’s no way for her to cure Eda’s curse entirely, she took on half of the curse at great expense to her own health, in order to ease Eda’s symptoms. 

Eda isn’t angry anymore because in her eyes, Lilith has already fixed things with her. Punishing her more at this point is pointless. What more could Lilith do, really? What other lessons could she learn? The only thing that punishment would bring at this point would be more suffering. 

Let’s look at another example: Amity and Willow.

Amity’s offense was breaking off her friendship with Willow because she was a late-bloomer, bullying her for years, and allowing her friends to do so too. Willow is left with horrible self-esteem issues because of this, and combined with her failing grades, turned her into a horribly shy and withdrawn wallflower (no pun intended). After she’s moved to the plant track she starts actually getting better, but Amity and Boscha especially continue to torment her. While Amity’s bullying of Willow does peter out over time, Willow is clearly still extremely resentful of her. In an attempt to make Willow forget their friendship, Amity accidentally sets most of Willow’s memories on fire, leaving her confused, amnesiac, and unable to grasp basic concepts like that chairs are for sitting in.

Luz pushed Amity into fixing Willow’s brain by going into her mind together and piecing her memories back together. There, the Inner Willow revealed what happened to Luz and the audience.

At this point, Amity shows her that her parents were actually the ones who forced her to end the friendship because they didn’t think Willow was a suitably powerful or influential friend, threatening to make sure Willow would never get accepted into Hexside if Amity didn’t force her to leave. Amity then apologizes to Willow for going along with it, and for the bullying, and vows to make sure her friends never mess with Willow again. 

Willow accepts her apology, but also makes it clear that, while it’s a start, she’s not yet ready to accept Amity in her life again. Restorative justice has not been fully attained, because to Willow, Amity hasn’t fixed everything – Boscha and her squad are still bullying her, and still consider Amity one of them. This changes two episodes later, when Amity tells Boscha to grow the fuck up when she starts bullying Willow again, and joins her and Luz’s Grudgby team despite her personal issues to get Boscha to back off. Willow doesn’t make a grand gesture of forgiveness in this episode, but it is after this point where the two become comfortable around eachother again. 

Did Willow forgive Amity too quickly for years of trauma? Maybe. If she had chosen to continue keeping Amity at a distance I certainly wouldn’t have blamed her. But in the end, Amity fixed the mess she caused as best she could, and has proven herself to want to be a better person, to want to be Willow’s friend again. She worked hard to prove herself to be a person worth trusting, and Willow decided to give that trust a chance again.

And while they did become friends again, that friendship was clearly still affected by what happened, which led to bumps that the two of them had to work through. Like in Labyrinth Runners, where Amity’s overprotectiveness over Willow makes Willow feel like Amity thinks she’s incompetent, and still only sees her as the helpless person she used to be. 

Willow continuing to be mad at Amity and punishing her for what she did wouldn’t be an unreasonable reaction, but it wouldn’t have fixed anything. It would certainly have an impact on Amity, seeing her former best friend rejecting her attempts to make up for what she did, but the hurt on both sides would have continued festering, because deep down, Willow missed Amity too. 

In Hunter’s case, there’s the question of whether he can even be held responsible for his actions. The Palisman-kidnapping in specific was explicitly done under duress – if he failed he would face verbal and physical abuse, and be threatened with his nightmare scenario: getting thrown out of the Emperor’s Coven. 

And that’s not an empty threat either. Hunter has no magic, and Belos has drilled it into him that witches without magic have no future. Without the Emperor’s Coven, his only future prospects would be starving to death on the streets or wasting away in prison. Either way, Hunter would be alone, without family or friends, without a job or job prospects, without anyone to turn to for help. Any child would be terrified of that. Hunter wasn’t always acting on direct orders – in fact he defied direct orders to stay in his room in Eclipse Lake to go look for Titan’s Blood, and then again in Hollow Mind to arrest the rebels. But he made those choices based on the idea that Belos wouldn’t want him if he was a failure, and that he needed a chance to prove that he could still be useful.

And contrary to popular belief, Hunter does know right from wrong. He has a very strong moral compass, he’s just been forced to ignore it in favor of doing whatever the Emperor wants. To shut up that little voice telling him he’s doing the wrong thing, he uses what’s called a thought-terminating cliche, a statement that feels so fundamentally true that the argument need not continue. In Hunter’s case, that statement is “It’s for the greater good.” Sure, kidnapping his new friends and abducting Palismen to feed to the Emperor and threatening someone who’s been nothing but kind to him to take the portal key from her girlfriend and justifying terrorism makes his stomach feel like he swallowed a cactus and saying it out loud makes him sound like a horrible person – but it’s for the greater good. He’s doing it to serve Belos, and Belos knows what’s best. 

So by the time Hunter is out of active danger and able to rest and recover from what happened to him… what would further punishment accomplish? He already knows that he did fucked up shit while working for the EC, and he’s proven time and time again that while he’s not fighting for Belos’s approval, he’s actually a genuinely kind-hearted kid. Punishing him now would likely cause him to react very poorly, because he’s been at the wrong end of that stick so often that he’s developed severe PTSD because of it.

And if you think restorative justice is still in order – Hunter is currently hyperfixated on making sure Belos can never hurt anyone again, and for the long term, he has expressed that he wants to become a Palisman carver when he grows up. While it won’t bring back the Palismen that were killed, it will help the current Palisman population recover and reintroduce Palismen to witches who may have had to give up theirs. 

When viewed through this lens, the writing of The Owl House starts to make more sense. As a show, it is extremely forgiving towards its characters – they’re still held accountable for their actions, but as long as they’re willing to grow and learn and fix the damage they caused, they are very quickly forgiven. 

However, I do understand why these writing choices can be… controversial, so to say. Because it doesn’t feel very satisfying, does it? When someone hurts you on purpose, your first impulse would be to try to hurt them back, that’s just how people work. 

That’s the hardest thing to come to terms with when you become an advocate for prison abolition for example – you’re not just arguing for freeing a guy who got 5 years because a cop found weed in his pockets, you’re arguing for the release, and most importantly, the humanity of some of the most vile, disgusting people this planet has ever produced. Even now, when someone commits a truly awful crime and gets sent to prison for life, my first thought is “Good, I hope they rot in there.” But that’s not justice. That’s just revenge. And revenge is not something we as a society should want to build our justice system on.

It’s not satisfying to see Lilith go from using Luz as a human shield in her fight against Eda to sleeping on the couch in Eda’s house within 2 episodes. It’s not satisfying to see Willow let Amity back into her life when Amity has hurt her so badly before, or to see Hunter become romantically involved with Willow after he literally abducted her the first time they met. But that satisfaction isn’t really the point. Revenge is satisfying in the moment, but an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, and if someone shows a genuine willingness to change, it’s often better to give them a chance to.

However, my final point is about what happens when this approach fails. Because not everyone is willing to change. Some people, when faced with the consequences of their actions, decide to dig their heels in and refuse to admit fault, or blame the victim(s), or use those same thought-terminating cliches that Hunter used to justify their actions, “I was just following orders” being a big one.

And thus, we come to Belos.

If Belos showed a willingness to change, a genuine one, not an attempt at manipulation, should he be given the chance to? That vengeful part of me is VERY empathetically saying no. But logically, reasonably, he should be given that chance, if only because he’s a human being and no human being deserves to be mistreated. That doesn’t mean his victims are obligated to forgive him or be around him again, in fact I think that, for the sake of Hunter’s mental health, Belos should stay as far away from him as humanly possible. But he should be given the chance to start over, to truly better himself and do something good with the rest of his life.

But Belos isn’t willing to change. 

Belos is a product of a bad environment and grew up with a cult-like mentality and hatred for witches that he had to adopt for his own safety. It’s hard to break out of that mentality, but not impossible. Case in point: Caleb. The tragedy of Belos’s character to me is that he had so many chances to change, so many people to help him make that leap, but all of the people who offered him that help ended up dead by his hands because he couldn’t handle the idea that he may have been wrong.

At this point, Belos is stuck. Changing would mean not only giving up on his life’s work, but acknowledging to himself that everything he’s done, mutilating his body, killing his brother, slaughtering thousands and installing himself as God-Emperor of a population he despises more than anything in order to facilitate a genocide, was completely pointless.

He can’t admit that to himself. Especially the thing about Caleb’s death. He’s sunk-cost-fallacied himself so far into a corner that all he can really do when faced with opposing viewpoints is dig his heels in even deeper and lash out in a rage at anyone who challenges him. Even now, when his body is literally falling apart at the seams, he’s still trying to commit witch-genocide, because it’s all he has. 

Restorative justice doesn’t work in this case, because the perpetrator needs to be receptive to it. Logically you would assume the show would default to retributive justice, and characters like Willow and Camila do take a very vengeful glee in imagining themselves beating the snot out of Belos. But right now, the primary motivation of the Hexsquad and Hunter in particular when it comes to Belos is to end the threat he poses. As long as Belos is alive and free, he will continue to hurt and kill people, and if he can’t be talked down, he needs to be either contained or killed to prevent him from causing more harm.

The Owl House provides, in my opinion, a very nuanced take on restorative justice. It shows how it works in action, how different situations impact what it looks like, and what happens when it’s simply not an option. It’s not the most satisfying story to tell your audience, because when someone hurts our babies we want them to suffer, no matter how sorry they say they are. But in this case, I think that sacrificing that bit of audience comfort is worth it to tell the story like this.

[decolonize-the-left]

When 3 in 4 (74%) adults in the U.S. connected the gas, electricity, phone or internet in a new home, ICE was able to automatically learn their new address. Almost all of that has been done warrantlessly and in secret.

Dated May, 10, 2022 a report published by Georgetown Law showed how invasive ICE reaches. Obtained through 200 FOIA requests, the reports says ICE has tracked civilians using utilities, drivers licenses, facial recognition, and even used vulnerable unaccompanied minors being held in detention to find more leads (specifically, searching for more of their family members without documentation) . And they do so without warrants or even informing state legislators. Even companies and corporations have shared info with with ICE without their knowledge or consent.

"Most congressional leaders did not learn about ICE face recognition scans of DMV photos until The Washington Post ran an exposé on the practice, reporting on records obtained by the Center on Privacy & Technology. This exposé ran in 2019, over a decade after ICE penned its first known face recognition contract in 2008 for access to the Rhode Island driver database.

The fact that ICE was conducting face recognition scans on driver’s license photos came as a shock to senior lawmakers – even those with the greatest insight into DHS activities. On learning of the face scans, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the longtime chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, denounced the practice as “a massive, unwarranted intrusion into the privacy rights of Americans by the federal government, done secretly and without authorization by law.” ICE’s surveillance initiatives have regularly flown under Congress’ radar. While a few political leaders have pressed ICE in oversight letters and used appropriations riders to end the most aggressive of ICE’s actions, to date there has not been one full congressional hearing or Government Accountability Office (GAO) report focused on ICE surveillance."

Further, even when states become aware and make moves to block ICE from having this kind of access they just use a different door.

 In Washington, Governor Jay Inslee enacted a statewide policy to limit state agency cooperation with ICE only to discover that state licensing officials were routinely violating that policy. When state officials cut off ICE’s access to a state-run driver database, previously unseen records show that DHS searches of a separate network of driver data – one not operated by the state – nearly doubled. In Oregon, soon after lawmakers passed a law cutting off state data disclosures to ICE, the Oregon DMV signed agreements to sell its driver’s license records to Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the two primary data brokers that sell ICE access to driver information."

This is a HUGE breach of privacy and goes as far back as 2008 when ICE used facial recognition in Rhode Island under the Bush administration.

The article also discusses the potential danger this has to cause such a deep mistrust in government that it could cause folks to deny or reject state services to avoid being put in an ICE database or otherwise have their data used without knowledge or consent.

Likewise the report also has a section that advises how this privacy could be restored and corrected by Congress. Which means signal boost this. Congress was made aware of these breaches in 2019 and as of yet have done nothing to stop ICE or hold them accountable.

Which means it's on us to hold them accountable because once again the folks in Congress have shown they lack the ambition and initiative.

[kp777]

By Jessica Corbett

Common Dreams

Sept. 26, 2023

Open internet advocates across the United States celebrated on Tuesday as Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel announced her highly anticipated proposal to reestablish FCC oversight of broadband and restore net neutrality rules.

"We thank the FCC for moving swiftly to begin the process of reinstating net neutrality regulations," said ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff. "The internet is our nation's primary marketplace of ideas—and it's critical that access to that marketplace is not controlled by the profit-seeking whims of powerful telecommunications giants."

Rosenworcel—appointed to lead the commission by President Joe Biden—discussed the history of net neutrality and her new plan to treat broadband as a public utility in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., which came on the heels of the U.S. Senate's recent confirmation of Anna Gomez to a long-vacant FCC seat.

Back in 2005, "the agency made clear that when it came to net neutrality, consumers should expect that their broadband providers would not block, throttle, or engage in paid prioritization of lawful internet traffic," she recalled. "In other words, your broadband provider had no business cutting off access to websites, slowing down internet services, and censoring online speech."

"Giant corporations and their lobbyists... will try every trick to block or delay the agency from restoring net neutrality."

After a decade of policymaking and litigation, net neutrality rules were finalized in 2015. However, a few years later—under former FCC Chair Ajit Pai, an appointee of ex-President Donald Trump—the commission caved to industry pressure and repealed them.

"The public backlash was overwhelming. People lit up our phone lines, clogged our email inboxes, and jammed our online comment system to express their disapproval," noted Rosenworcel, who was a commissioner at the time and opposed the repeal. "So today we begin a process to make this right."

The chair is proposing to reclassify broadband under Title II of the Communications Act, which "is the part of the law that gives the FCC clear authority to serve as a watchdog over the communications marketplace and look out for the public interest," she explained. "Title II took on special importance in the net neutrality debate because the courts have ruled that the FCC has clear authority to enforce open internet policies if broadband internet is classified as a Title II service."

"On issue after issue, reclassifying broadband as a Title II service would help the FCC serve the public interest more efficiently and effectively," she pointed out, detailing how it relates to public safety, national security, cybersecurity, network resilience and reliability, privacy, broadband deployment, and robotexts.

Rosenworcel intends to release the full text of the proposal on Thursday and hold a vote regarding whether to kick off rulemaking on October 19. While Brendan Carr, one of the two Republican commissioners, signaled his opposition to the Title II approach on Tuesday, Gomez's confirmation earlier this month gives Democrats a 3-2 majority at the FCC.

"Giant corporations and their lobbyists blocked President Biden from filling the final FCC seat for more than two years, and they will try every trick to block or delay the agency from restoring net neutrality now," Demand Progress communications director Maria Langholz warned Tuesday. "The commission must remain resolute and fully restore free and open internet protections to ensure broadband service providers like Comcast and Verizon treat all content equally."

"Americans' internet experience should not be at the whims of corporate executives whose primary concerns are the pockets of their stakeholders and the corporations' bottom line," she added, also applauding the chair.

Free Press co-CEO Jessica J. González similarly praised Rosenworcel and stressed that "without Title II, broadband users are left vulnerable to discrimination, content throttling, dwindling competition, extortionate and monopolistic prices, billing fraud, and other shady behavior."

"As this proceeding gets under way, we will hear all manner of lies from the lobbyists and lawyers representing big phone and cable companies," she predicted. "They'll say anything and everything to avoid being held accountable. But broadband providers and their spin doctors are deeply out of touch with people across the political spectrum, who are fed up with high prices and unreliable services. These people demand a referee on the field to call fouls and issue penalties when broadband companies are being unfair."

Like Rosenworcel, in her Tuesday speech, González also highlighted that "one thing we learned from the Covid-19 pandemic is that broadband is essential infrastructure—it enables us to access education, employment, healthcare, and more."

That "more" includes civic engagement, as leaders at Common Cause noted Tuesday. Ishan Mehta, who directs the group's Media and Democracy Program, said that "the internet has fundamentally changed how people are civically engaged and is critical to participating in society today. It is the primary communications platform, a virtual public square, and has been a powerful organizing tool, allowing social justice movements to gain momentum and widespread support."

After the Trump-era repeal, Mehta explained, "we saw broadband providers throttle popular video streaming services, degrade video quality, forcing customers to pay higher prices for improved quality, offer service plans that favor their own services over competitors, and make hollow, voluntary, and unenforceable promises not to disconnect their customers during the pandemic."

Given how broadband providers have behaved, Michael Copps, a Common Cause special adviser and former FCC commissioner, said that "to allow a handful of monopoly-aspiring gatekeepers to control access to the internet is a direct threat to our democracy."

Rosenworcel's speech came a day after U.S. Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) led over two dozen of their colleagues in sending a letter calling for the restoration of net neutrality protections. The pair said in a statement Tuesday that "broadband is not a luxury. It is an essential utility and it is imperative that the FCC's authority reflects the necessary nature of the internet in Americans' lives today."

"We need net neutrality so that small businesses are not shoved into online slow lanes, so that powerful social media companies cannot stifle competition, and so that users can always freely speak their minds on social media and advocate for the issues that are most important to them," they said. "We applaud Chairwoman Rosenworcel for her leadership and look forward to working with the FCC to ensure a just broadband future for everyone."

[theliterarywolf]

With regards to the strike, what do you say to the people who contend that modern writing for TV and movies already feels like it's being generated by AI in terms of how bland, generic, and lacking in quality it is?

That a good chunk of the issues plaguing television and film can all be threaded back to Corporate Mishandling and Greed.

Think about it:

Plenty of writers with fresh, original ideas in Hollywood + Studios/Streaming Services not wanting to take chances on anything new and keep regurgitating the same 5 core ideas = Stagnant Writing

'Hey, I have an idea for a new fantasy/scifi series!' + 'Perfect! We're going to skin it alive and stitch the skin of this recently acquired classic IP onto it' = Shitty 'adaptations' that reek of originally being completely different scripts.

'Hey--' + 'Great, cool, wonderful..! Does it fall into the tropes and tone of the last four mega-hit shows? No? Well, how about you just... whittle things down until it falls into the tropes and tone of the last four mega-hit shows?' = TV shows with damn-near derivative scripts.

'I don't... feel like my skills and talent are being utilized here. Also, I'd kiiind of like to make rent this month?' + 'Well, I have several Nepotism Babies still suckling on the teats of their rich parents who are willing to follow my lead and take my shitty pay, so... Bye~!' = Our current situation.

The reason why all these Studios/Streaming Services feel like they can get away with the threat of 'we'll just use AI instead' is because they think that audiences as a whole are okay with a steady stream of slop as long as it falls into a series of tropes and plots that AI can reproduce.

However, as many have pointed out and actually tried... It doesn't do it well enough to create engaging narratives.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Since we're heading into winter...

The Supreme Court of Texas narrowly decided Friday that sovereign immunity, which largely shields government agencies from civil lawsuits, also protects the operator of the Texas electric grid.

The 5-4 opinion will likely free the nonprofit corporation from lawsuits filed by thousands of Texans for deaths, injuries and damages following the deadly 2021 winter storm, unless lawyers find another way forward.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the power supply for most of Texas, qualifies for immunity because it “provides an essential governmental service,” Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote in the majority opinion. State law intended for ERCOT to have the power of an “arm of the State government,” Hecht wrote. If anyone is going to hold ERCOT accountable for its actions, Hecht wrote, it should be state regulators or the Legislature, not the courts.

Freezing temperatures gripped the state during the 2021 winter storm, straining the power supply so much that ERCOT called for cutting power to millions of homes and businesses to prevent the grid’s collapse. More than 200 people died. Experts estimated afterward that financial losses totaled between $80 billion and $130 billion, including physical damage and missed economic opportunity.

Thousands of residents accused ERCOT, power companies and distribution companies of failing to prepare for the freezing weather.

Lawyers expect the high court’s decision will allow ERCOT to be dismissed from the litigation, although it does not shield other defendants.

Attorney Mia Lorick, who represents some of those plaintiffs, said she sees only a slim possibility that lawyers could keep claims against ERCOT alive by arguing that their cases have differences that somehow skirt the sovereign immunity finding.

Majed Nachawati, whose firm is representing other plaintiffs in the related cases said, “The Texas Supreme Court’s decision is disappointing to say the least. People lost their lives and the only recourse to the citizens of Texas is to be able to go through the judicial process, and the judicial system, to try to remedy or right the wrong that occurred in this case. And if you can’t count on our judiciary to protect its citizens, I think we’re in a lot of trouble.”

Justices Jeff Boyd and John Devine, along with two others, disagreed that ERCOT has sovereign immunity. Purely private entities are clearly not sovereign, and making them so undermines the public trust, they wrote. The justices argued that “no statute designates ERCOT as a part of the government” and that courts should not be barred from hearing claims against it.

The ruling sprang from two cases filed against ERCOT. San Antonio’s municipally owned utility, CPS Energy, alleged that ERCOT mishandled the soaring price of power during the 2021 winter storm. And private equity investors at Panda Power Funds alleged that 10 years earlier ERCOT issued reports that misled them about how much power the grid needed.

ERCOT spokespersons issued a statement saying that the organization was pleased with the decision. CPS Energy said in a statement that it was disappointed but thankful that four justices agreed with the utility as it sought relief for customers. The utility said the litigation still led to “critical discussions at the highest levels that are necessary to improve our power grid and energy market.”

[socialistexan]

I think there might be some mistaken beliefs around DeSantis attacks on Disney.

Fascist anti-capitalism is fully selective. They will attack those that do not align with their ideological goals and those they see as supporting the Enemy or outgroup. They don't actually act in the favor of any kind of pro-worker or even really anti-capitalist and especially anti-corporate way, unless it's to punish anyone that steps out of line.

Was the Reedy Creek Improvement District a weird over reach of corporate control over a government structure? Absolutely, yeah. But the fact that it:

Only affected the land the parks resided on (cities like Celebration had their own governments exempt from RCID control)

Existed essentially so that the Disney corporation could build up utilities for the parks when the state hadn't - and seemingly didn't want to - build in that area and did so through direct funding from the corporation rather than increased state taxes (the "taxes" RCID raised were paid by one single entity, Disney)

Was essentially the fever dream of a man dying of cancer

Meant that it existing in the first place wasn't the dystopian nightmare that a corporation controlling governance over land could have been (thank g-d Walt died before it came to reality though, look into the original Epcot, it's a real nightmare)

I'd rather a neoliberal corporation that gives lip service to Us Gays over a neofascist that wants to eliminate homosexuality and transgenderism from public life, y'know?

I think any leftist that supports DeSantis on this because he's being "anti-capitalist" or "anti-corporate" is absolutely fooling themselves and are prime targets for Taibbi- and Gabbard-style right-wing grifts.

[netherworldpost]

AI art predictions with a laundry list

This is a very long post, so as an advertisement to entice you to read it, let’s start off with my proof points. It ends with advice on what to do if you make things and/or want to make things and are concerned.

I remember when royalty-free microstock ($1/photo) began. It fundamentally changed stock photography, ending a significant number of careers, creating a significantly larger number of photographers -- as well as graphic designers AND illustrators who now had floods of reference photos they could not access before.

I remember when boilerplate WordPress starter themes began. They largely are a “paint by numbers” kit of parts. A lot of web developers rallied against it, claiming they would go out of business. Some did, most did not, a great number went into business using them as tools.

Hell, I remember when WordPress started. Similar story to above.

I remember when Adobe created built-in color palette tools. These are, essentially, color wheels. There were a lot of designers and illustrators who claimed this would give the public and/or low skill designers too much power.

I remember when free logo generators started. See above notes.

I remember when ultra cheap graphic design freelance services began. Fiverr and Upwork, etc. See above notes.

Hell I remember when digital printers started gaining a neck grip on small scale commercial printing. Bad time to be a 1 and 2 color press shop.

Tech bros and their priests will continue to throw money and other resources at it from about mid 2022 until early 2024

A combination of boredom, other opportunities (good, bad, and neutral), lawsuits, and the inescapable physics of what is required to create new AI art will taper off interest around early to mid 2024

The arc of interest will diminish far sooner but will occasionally be spiked back up by a combination of:

^- click-bait news articles and new breakthroughs in tech

^- click-bait news articles that claim there is a new breakthrough because the reporter/outlet is just catching on to existing things

^- tech bros claiming a new breakthrough (that isn’t new) because they have reinvented existing tech and/or are outright stealing from existing tech

Some levels of AI will continue forever with varying degrees of aesthetic attraction

On some level, the continuation will be because some tech bros and their priests are interested in pursuing the tech and are uninterested in the benefits/costs

On another level, it will continue as a weapon against artists (at large) because all tech invented is utilized as a weapon by bad actors against specific groups people

On yet another level, it will continue as a weapon against specific artists because all tech invented is utilized as a weapon by bad actors against specific people

Some (a moderate sample size) artists will lose everything for a little while but ultimately adapt, a smaller sample size everything permanently and leave the art profession

The public at large will begin in earnest interest as a “we can create stuff too!” but then lose interest over time because quality (as measured by uniqueness) and accessibility (as measured as “free vs. paid”) will steadily decrease

The decrease of interest will spike tech bros desperate to reclaim their throne into accelerating outright theft and abuse because at the nature these specific tech bros are parasites and have nothing positive to offer either the tech or art ecosystems

Corporate interests will both utilize AI art for their own interests while suing to stop their own direct properties from being used. These lawsuits will generate attention-grabbing headlines but almost exclusively be settled out of court and/or the AI companies will simply be bought to bring the tech/people into the fold/shut down

Artists (at large) will engage in the various platforms. There will be generalized outrage for 1 - 5 years as a combination of acceptance, resignation, and useful labor-saving tools are built

^- schisms will enter the art community. Some points will be made as legitimate discourse, most will be stated as individual artists use this as the point-of-the-day to prove themselves better than everyone else.

Ultimately:

Tech will continue building what they can, scraping every resources available at the lowest cost possible and often through piracy, until it becomes untenable via cost and boredom

Artists will continue to create, adapt, and evolve. Some unfortunately will legitimately lose everything and drop out of the career for a period of years, some forever.

There will be a convergence point then the two will separate out slowly. The path will be painful for artists. The public will vastly be ignorant, those who know mostly won’t care, some will passionately rally for artists.

Advice for people who make things:

Keep making things. Despair is an automated weapon that targets you, the more you feed it, the stronger it grows.

Do not personalized despair. It is easy to give into the thought of a conspiracy theory against you, or your industry. I view the accuracy more as “people/institutions who do not know, or care, about your existence are building their own empire. Sometimes you’re a tree line of border protection against wind, sometimes you’re lumber. Either way you’re not considered in any instance except when you’re useful, and never as an individual.”

Protect yourself as possible (file copyright takedown notices, keep an eye on prices to keep yourself in business, do not actively participate in contests that scrape AI, block people onsite who advocate for AI art if you yourself do not)

Protect your business funds as possible (multiple streams of income where possible, keep an eye on costs -- is fancy packaging actually necessary, from a business perspective, or are you making it fancy because you’re an artist)

Build a community as you can, everywhere you can. There is an absolute effort-to-cost ratio that must be watched -- you can, as of writing, literally sign up for a MySpace if you want. I wouldn’t recommend trying to build a network there.

And to repeat: keep making things. There are tools you used to get started, there are tools you USE RIGHT NOW, I promise you, that were once heralded as “the thing that will kill art.” It didn’t, except where it did, and in both instances everything evolved to whatever our current state is.

[katchwreck]

This text below was written by the professor and author Jason Hickel and can be found here.

“People often assume there is a natural connection between capitalism and democracy. Sometimes the two concepts are virtually fused together.

I always find this odd, because I value democracy. But there is nothing democratic about capitalism.

Under capitalism, decisions about what to produce, how to utilize the labour and resources of the nation, and what to do with the surplus that we generate—all of this is controlled overwhelmingly by the 1% who own the majority of corporate shares and pick the directors of firms.

This is pretty wild, when you think about it. Yes, we have national elections. But when it comes to the economic system, which affects all of our lives and determines our common destiny, it is totally undemocratic. In fact it is literally a plutocracy.

When you govern a system like this, it means that production is likely to be organized *not* around meeting human needs, or ecological regeneration, but around maximizing the profits and power of the 1%.

Not surprisingly, this leads to perverse results. We have an economy with extraordinary productive capacity, that massively overuses resources, but still fails to ensure that everyone has access to basic goods and services like healthcare, housing, transit and so on.

What is more, those who control this system then leverage their profits to manipulate national elections, through campaign finance and advertising, or through outright control over media outlets. Democracy cannot function under these conditions.

It doesn't have to be this way. We know, empirically, that when people have democratic control over production, they manage resources more sustainably, meet human needs more efficiently, and distribute surplus more fairly.

Decisions about what to produce and how to use our collective surplus should be democratically determined, rather than controlled by and for the interests of capitalists. The path out of capitalism is economic democracy.”

[unexpectedbrickattack]

You know, a bonus to designing the oc is that other people will drawn them in the scenarios you share! I know your lore really made me excited to see your little fella ^^) it's so nice to encounter someone eho likes SDV in the wild and your world building makes me want to boot up my computer and deal with the lag to see everyone again. I do have to wonder though, what's your take on how the valley feels about JojaMart? It seems like it replaces extensions on the Vally's magic if you fund it.

TRUE…U ARE SO RIGHT!!! Luckily I have a small little ref sheet for him already made heehee. But ill post it on my sdv blog (when i make it). I can put it here too but ill do that under a readmore 😌

Also. U are so sweet 😭 I am so sorry ur game is too laggy to play but i am touched that my little bit of lore is enough for u to want to brave through that mess anyway LMAO

FIRST OF ALL….here is my boy….

His name is June and ive since tweaked some stuff about him. You dont need to know much about him, just that hes a bit of a cryptid among the town for almost two years before townspeople start interacting w him on their own volition. His best friends are Marnie, Kent, and Caroline, and he is really cool w Willy, Linus, and Marlon (old men gang rise up). Also romances Shane which is funny to Me bc whenever shane gets a male farmer to romance i am constantly rotating this image of vincent getting upset and saying ‘gee jas how come YOU get two cool godfathers’

To answer ur question about Jojamart; i feel like it truly wouldnt mess with the balance of magic in the valley. Magic is powerful BUT. It is adaptive. The Junimos harness the magic of the valley to fix things in the broken down community center, but if someone else came along and fixed it for them, well thats one less thing the magic of the valley is used for. Theres plenty of talented people in the valley that dont need magic to get things done 😉 (Robin my beloved)

But i do think jojamart is a big indicator that something is amiss with the town. I think it is a common idea to believe that jojamart is like. Evil. And like. Its totally a soulless corporation, but i think its filling a very specific Need of this town. Pelican town has some very skilled laborers that sell their work and services to help provide not just for themselves, but FOR pelican town; if that still leaves people unable to pay rent/mortgage or groceries, then people will absolutely swoop in and offer ‘solutions’.

I have more Thots but basically……magic is powerful, but it cant do anything on its own. Its utilized by magical beings to make tangible change in the world. But humans are capable of making real and tangible change without the use of magic. Jojamart says ‘here, give me money and time and ill fix this stuff 😉’ and that is not anymore different than Robin, Clint, the junimos, etc saying ‘give me some money and time and i can do this thing for u 😉’. Jojamart is like. Bad. But bad in the same way Pierre owning the only grocery store in town wo employing anyone is bad, and how Lewis is okay with all of this Mess. Its indicative of a bigger problem in the valley that magic cant really fix

[slopmaster9000]

economic inflation is defined as the general rise in prices over time. most people really only look at it as increasing cost of consumer goods, but there is also the cost of labor (i.e. wages). if what is happening in america right now is to be called "inflation," the cost of labor must also increase (i.e. wages have to go up) as well as the cost of goods. however, instead wages have largely stagnated while rent prices, gas prices, utility prices, and the overall cost of living have increased tremendously. thus, the current "inflation" in america isn't really inflation but instead simply price gouging on the part of companies for the sake of profit.

despite the pervasive use of passive voice among economists, prices rise in response to the desire for profit, not the increase in demand. companies jacking up prices on a scale like this does not come from high demand from consumers (especially considering how the average consumer can barely afford goods as it is now), but simply from the need to make the numbers go up.

demand higher wages. demand price caps on all goods and services. take back the value you create with your labor. the "invisible" hand of the free market is opaque and it's suspiciously shaped like corporations.

[vintagerpg]

The other line of comic book-sized GURPS Traveller sourcebooks were Planetary Surveys. This is the first of them and there are five more, which feels like a pretty good run. This one details the vacation planet Kamsii (2001).

Kamsii is a little unusual for Traveller, as it is in the Galactic Core rather than the frontier, and it represents a rich, stable planet thoroughly controlled by a corporate interest. As the subtitle indicates, Kamsii is a destination for tourists and pleasure seekers and is arranged around the safety and enjoyment of its guests. I feel like the playground planet is a pretty standard science fiction trope that often gets deployed without deeper evaluation. Not so here — while the fun bits are presented as fun (and are sights and services on offer are more robust than I expected considering the book’s brevity), behind the scenes Kamsii is downright dystopic: a whole planet under micromanaged corporate control, where all the residents are employees and where safety, or the appearance of safety, is of paramount importance. And that’s the neutral version — there are three other versions on offer, as well, one where the planet really is the happiest place in the galaxy (which is unsettling in a completely different way), one where it is old and dangerous (a la Action Park) and one where all the insidious rumors are true (which is downright terrifying).

There is, I think, some clear commentary on Disney here, or at least Disney provided a logical jumping off point. It is well before its time, too — the similarly themed film Escape from Tomorrow came out in 2013 and the weird fallout of Disney owning or subsidizing the utilities of whole towns was only just revealed in the real world a couple years ago.

[decolonize-the-left]

"Note: 

There may be some resistance & discomfort when I say “we need to dismantle self-care”. The concept is prominent in leftist spaces & hailed as a radical form resistance. However, it is rarely understood in its original context with the necessary caveats which I’ll elaborate on below. It has also been sanitized, manipulated & co-opted for profit. As a result, it’s become bigger than what it was intended to be. People look to self-care now as a revolutionary “solution” to our collective problems (which it is not). Given that we live under capitalist, colonial systems that breed individualism, narcissism & self-centeredness, I think it’s important for us to rethink the utility of this concept today. In this piece, bringing in the knowledge of collectivist, land-based cultures, I’ll explain why it is urgent & critical for us to practice + embody COMMUNITY care which is a more complete framework that creates conditions of liberation needed for us to survive & thrive as we fight for the land & against the ecological destruction of our planet.

So even if you feel some discomfort arise, take a deep breath & hear me out."

- Ayesha Khan, Ph.D

Some quotes to consider:

The most prominent origins of the concept may be traced to Audre Lorde[...] She wrote about how cancer pushed her to realize that we all needed to slow down, pull back from oppressive systems, refuse to operate according to their values or accelerated “productivity” benchmarks when we can & that this divestment from a profit-driven system was critical for us to even begin to think about what collective “health” & healing means. It is an important first step in one’s political radicalization journey. It’s not everything & it wasn’t meant to be.

Self-care today is often reduced to: i) consumption of products, ii) neglect of community & erasure of the contributions of other beings who enable our care, and iii) one-sided, transactional extraction of care with a sense of entitlement to receive care without reciprocity or without focusing on daily practices of giving care in community. What does self-care look like in practice today?

Is there anything you do that doesn’t directly or indirectly involve the contribution of other beings? Even when we rest, there are conditions of some level of safety or security that have to be enabled for us to truly rest. So let’s take a moment to sit with how the beings at the other end of the “care products” we consume are being treated.

On the other hand, what does “self-care” that actively harms the collective look like? Relax at home alone with a sheet mask while ignoring a friend who reached out to connect because “you don’t owe anyone anything”, purchase care products & services from violent corporations killing our planet as a form of “self-love” while deprioritizing community building thinking it will heal you

Mainstream self-care has created NEW forms of oppression, extraction & exploitation. 

The perspectives I offer in my community care work are not MY novel findings but a responsibility I bear as part of my ancestral/ community teachings & traditions. These perspectives are sorely missing in leftist spaces. I write this piece to honor our collectivist traditions & to affirm the many global communities who find the concept of “self-care” reductive, confusing or fundamentally indecipherable. Our cultures are rooted in caring for each other & the land that sustains us all— I’m slowly learning to carry & embody these values by any means necessary.