#can the global social collapse just get going already

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

Hello! I've been checking out your page, and I just love all the info we learn here! I'd like to know more about Word Lords since I find them to be very interesting from learning about them from one of your posts. Is there a way you can give me headcanons about them or more factual information? If so, thank you :]

Is there any more factual information about Word Lords?

Unfortunately, there's only so much factual information about them, which is mostly covered in this post, which I'm sure you've already read. In that is also a lovely hypothetical exploration of looming a Time Lord/Word Lord child.

There were a couple of extra things not originally covered in that post (which I'll add in now):

Word Lords gain power if somebody says their name. For example, if you were a Word Lord named 'Field', and someone said 'the field is very green', you would gain the ability to be able to turn very green at will. This has no limits - you could say, 'The field has a nuclear bomb', and guess what you could suddenly make appear?

Word Lords can be 'trapped' inside anything with words, like a book or a comic.

But other headcanons? Let's have some fun. 😃

What could be some headcanons about Word Lords?

All, of course, are made up based on their abilities.

🧠 Headcanon 1: Word Lords and Writers

Word Lords naturally have an affinity with writers, poets, and scholars. Some Word Lords could have secretly guided or influenced famous writers across time, subtly shaping narratives to fuel their own power. Maybe Shakespeare or Tolkien have a few hidden Word Lord fingerprints on them.

📝 Headcanon 2: Word Play Weaknesses

Since Word Lords are fueled by language, they might also be vulnerable to word games and tricks. A riddle or a pun might trap or confuse a Word Lord. Imagine defeating one by leading them into a linguistic trap, like a self-referential paradox that collapses their own existence within a sentence.

💬 Headcanon 3: Dangerous Conversations

The power of a Word Lord increases when their name is spoken, but imagine the chaos if one adopts a name that's a common word or phrase. For example, a Word Lord called Peace could get involved in every conversation about peace negotiations, world peace, or even personal well-being.

📡 Headcanon 4: Influence Over Broadcasting

Given their power over words, Word Lords could influence global communications, like TV, radio, and social media. Imagine one subtly altering news broadcasts, twisting the narrative to suit their needs. They might even use viral internet trends to gain power or manipulate public opinion on a planetary scale.

🔒 Headcanon 5: Locked in Ancient Texts

Ancient books or manuscripts hidden across the universe could act as prisons for particularly dangerous Word Lords. Reading these books aloud might accidentally release them, which explains why some texts are forbidden or lost. Perhaps some Word Lords have been trapped for millennia, waiting for an unsuspecting explorer to release them.

💥Headcanon 6: The Destruction of Language:

A Word Lord's power could be used to destroy a language. By manipulating a particular language's spoken and written word, they could make it so that nobody could remember or understand that language anymore, erasing it from existence, including non-verbal languages.

🏫 So …

There's definitely room to get creative when it comes to the Word Lords, and these are just a few ideas.

Related:

💬|🐾📕What is a Word Lord?: Describing the origins and biology of Word Lords.

📺|🧑📜Shakespeare's Post-Death Career

💬|🛸🌌Can a TARDIS be altered for travel in the multiverse?: How you might go about getting to the multiverse in your TARDIS.

Hope that helped! 😃

Any purple text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →😆Jokes |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired😴

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

So I’m 27 next month and I don’t know what to do. I had been studying at college/university in 2019 but dropped out due to my health, tried to get a job but failed, and then a family member died and the pandemic hit all in 2020, and then obviously there was all the lockdowns and I was forced into signing up for benefits here in the UK and it’s 2024, and I’m still unable to get back into work and I’m still seeing a psychologist and I just don’t know what to do anymore as I feel like my life is slipping past me and I’m not able to do anything about it, I know I’m not stupid and I know I’m capable and have career aspirations but also family aspirations. I’ve never had a boyfriend and while I want to have a good career I also want to get married and have children more so, I love kids and I feel like I’m never going to get either. I mean it’s three years until I’m thirty years old, and if I sign up to go back to university then it’s three or four years before I graduate and then years trying to build a career for myself.

Oh anon, I feel for you. I really do. I've several relatives who are (and were) similarly stuck - some of them were impacted by the pandemic years, and others were impacted by the 2008 global meltdown - so I know how hard you're feeling everything.

A few things to keep in mind first:

Everyone does life at their own pace. You are exactly where you're supposed to be because that's exactly where you're meant to be. You are doing just fine being right where you are. As long as you keep putting one foot in front of the other, you'll get to wherever you want to go, even if you take a few detours along the way.

When we judge ourselves by other people, we have a tendencey to compare our worst days to other people's best days because we're our own worst critic. (I blame social media for that - people only share the best things on social media which makes it look like everyone is happy little clams living picture-perfect lives while you're stuck down here in the muck trying to shovel out from two years' of rain.)

I think you'll find that there are more people who feel like you than people who'll say they're living their best life and they wouldn't change a thing.

27 is pretty young, and so is 30 for that matter. If you look at the whole scope of life, what is 'another 3 years' but a drop in the bucket, especially if it will make you happy? You may not have anything to lose if you go back to school now, if that's really what you want to do. But if your heart isn't it, or you'd be doing it because it's what you think you should do, then that may not be the right thing for you. And that's okay!

I don't know a whole lot about the UK in terms of career choices, higher education,a nd job opportunities so I don't know how practical or realistic some of my advice could be. But here goes.

Does it have to be a professional/academic program? Maybe there are trade schools or vocational programs you can look into instead. I think the UK might call it Further Education colleges? (We call it community college here in the US.)

And if you love children, what's stopping you from working with them now? You could become a nursery assistant or a midwife, a nanny or an au pair. You could volunteer with an organization that focuses on children or youth services, or maybe work for one as a receptionist?

One of the things I've learned from my cousins' experiences pulling out of the economic collapse or COVID-stasis is that sometimes the unconventional path is better, luckier, and more successful. So don't think you have to go for a professional degree. There are other options out there. They may be harder to find, but they're there.

I know you can do it, anon. You're already brilliant enough to ask for help, and trust me - that takes a ton of gut.

If anyone has any advice or wants to support our Hopeful Anon, please share in the comments or send in your suggestions! I will use the anon advice tag.

[sycamorality]

oh please bro anything about the ancients. i love learning about people's ancients its the best for real. whaddo they look like?? any societal norms or ideas on governing/social tiers??? and if youve thought about it or an event like this even fits into your headcanon events what do u think the mass ascension/disappearance of the ancients was like?

i've already rambled abunch about them; you can find them all here, a good 2.2k words worth of rambling.

they're a little creature to me. the best example i have is pearls collapsing within stained grounds, but they are an echo, and a kid, so they don't have their mask. digitigrade legs, tails, snouts (maybe even beak-like heads or even just beaks if i end up vibing with some more avian-esque designs), even wings in a few cases (though those would mostly be genemods - which also means yeah they could have feathers 'n fur 'n whatnot, but some wings could certainly be "natural"). they have funky patterns because i can so i will (and also because it's based off of this and this mural from in-game). think stripes, swirly stripes, rosettes, rings, y'name it. they probably have it. they also have lotsa colors, probably either darker or lighter and less saturated; some higher circle members probably have vibrant colors, depends. they can be little creature guys. as a treat. (except for you vigil you can like- get echoed a second time or something)

societal norms? docked tails, cropped ears, clipped wings (if applicable), unless you're higher circle or in a community that doesn't particularly care about it or are just a lucky lower/middle circle member. full masks always on for middle/higher circle in public and during important events. most higher circles probably had feeding tubes. speaking of social tiers, this post right here has my thoughts on them. can go into detail about anything if prompted; this goes for anything i've already said.

i think the mass ascension was by force, considering a majority (~99.5% for my own headcanon) lived atop iterator superstructures by now due to the lethal rains, and the higher circles Definently held the most power, which meant they got the say in it and it was agreed globally that "hey everybody's ascending". there were certainly outliers that didn't ascend (void knows i've got a few ocs like that, looking at you eclipse) due to a multitude of reasons. either because they were outcasts living on the ground, forgotten and left behind, or straight up hid to stay and not be force-ascended. most of the ones that didn't want to ascend did get caught and just- straight up dunked in a vat of void fluid by force, it was very strict and they made sure everybody ascended by checking id drones and wrote down records. though, if they only checked id drones, there's of course be the ones without any or ones that malfunction and weren't counted.

its 5am this might be a little incoherent and not make much sense oops

[johndragon29-blog]

I'm going to pen three short stories, each basically discussing how business goes astray using the basic template for a "magic contract" with different entities.

1. A small business that grows into a monster, starting in one place that hurts no one, feeding Cthulhu chickens that you raise in your backyard, to the Eldritch monster eventually wanting human flesh. (The American Business model that wants ***MORE*** every year despite already being a relative Monopoly with controlling market share.)

2. A Faustian bargain where with just buying in, you bring in new ideas with no idea how the "real game" works and the business implodes. (Hostile Takeovers/Stock Shenanigans/Corporate Overlords.)

3. A Fey deal where one simply can not stop the march of progress with the thing they created. (An A.I. allegory with technology that runs away from you/Globalism.)

The first story is a classical beginning sometime in the late '80s or if you only stopped, denying Cthulhu more than his chickens, everything would be fine. The second story is when the early 2000s' tech bubble caused all sorts of rapidly exploding markets where no one could really get a handle on the whole picture and it kept collapsing on itself. The last story is hopefully a warning for what the future can bring if we're not very careful, dooming all who are "mortal" to eventually die out.

These are my takes on the business version of the "Terror Nexus" we all so love to discuss. Remember that behind every decision and social engineering idea is someone wanted to make a profit.

(This is my first post so suggest some hashtags in the description.)

[winterpinetrees]

The Gap Years part 5

The road trip kids wake up on the first real day of their adventure. Plans are considered, elf society is rightfully mocked, but mostly I just infodump. :)

i am beating back the cringe emotions with a stick. this is the cringe website. let me post about my homegrown blorbos, brain.

June 11th 2019

Lakeport, California

The realization of where he is and what is going on hits Brian in waves.

He’s a good sleeper (he travels enough that he has to be), but this doesn’t seem to be his room. Brian lifts his head and his chest hurts, and it’s not a falling off of a dirt bike/surfboard into a tree/sandbar at a frighteningly fast velocity type of hurt either. He winces, and his arm hits something else.

Ah. The second realization. He’s sharing a bed. Contrary to popular belief, he does not do this very often. Light is already pouring in through the curtains, so it doesn’t take Brian long to realize that the other person is Clay. He still looks asleep. That makes sense. Brian has always been an early riser. He sits up in bed and looks around. Cheap curtains, beige walls, a blurry photo of a lake? They must be in a motel. Yes. He’s just graduated high school and now he’s going on a road trip with his friends. Brian swings his feet onto the ground and stands. He walks to the bathroom, but sees something else on the ground between the two twin beds. A pile of clothes? He approaches. It’s a person under a blanket. That’s when he remembers the magic, the sword slash, and the blood that might still be under his fingernails because he refused to spend half an hour washing it off like Lady Macbeth. The person on the floor is a prince. Brian is responsible for his safety and by extension the fate of the world. How the hell did he get here? (He enthusiastically volunteered, that’s how.)

Over the next few minutes, Brian cautiously wakes up both of his friends. They have some things to discuss that they don’t want Marin to overhear. They move to the other side of the small room and gather in an awkward huddle.

“We are harboring an alien prince,” Clay types out onto his cell phone. He guessed that elves had very good hearing, and convinced everyone else to do the same. “We need some plan for if he turns on us. He can control our minds”.

They’d asked Marin last night if there was any visible sign that someone had been charmed. He said yes, but only if the charmed person was aware of it, which never happened unless the attacker was overconfident or rushing. Not very reassuring.

“Like what? There’s very little we can do about that”. Sierra replies. She is typing on that infamous computer, and doing it very quickly.

“Maybe we agree to talk to each other and call out weird stuff? S, we've already been doing that“. The girl nods. Clay was taking forever to type anyway.

Brian understands. He's the only one who's trusted Marin at all. “So the plan is to be skeptical of everything”.

“That way we'll be aware of anything that is changed”. Clay wears glasses that are a little too big and stubbornly refuses to do anything with his long brown hair. He looks perfectly ordinary, a bit disheveled, and it’s entirely on purpose. He puts the phone down and starts speaking. Apparently, this bit isn’t classified. “What do we know so far?”

Among other things, they know that Prince Marin Sondaica is 86 years old, stuck in between physical adulthood at 81 and full social adulthood at 108. (Just like how they’re all old enough to vote and drive but not drink or be considered separate from their parents). The elf world is parallel to theirs, with the capital existing in the same place as San Francisco. It’s a single global dictatorship with two associations of noble families fighting for control. Marin's family was reasonable enough, but Gens Mercuralis did a coup and is trying to take over the world. They should have a year or two until elves become common knowledge and the status quo collapses.

Then Sierra adds what she knows from years of university lab internships and overheard conversations. If you see a flash of color, especially green, prepare to run or fight or die. Magic is enough like radiation that a modified geiger counter can tell you if danger is near. Elves seem to avoid fighting underground. They’re very careful to not get caught on camera.

Brian turns his head and sees a cat’s eye glow in the dark. Their new friend is awake. Sierra and Clay seem to think there isn’t anything special about Marin, but he knows better. Brian is very familiar with how people move, and Marin is just a bit too quick. More than that, he moves very quietly. It reminds him of how he’s heard friends talk about parkour (land quietly, work with your body, reduce the impact on your joints), and he wonders again just how fragile elves are.

The prince approaches the group and they talk. They need a plan to stay alive, and they’re kind of a mess. Marin explains that they shouldn’t be attacked unless they are either alone, or somewhere elves can plan an ambush and keep things secret. It’s counterintuitive, but they need a human shield. Marin also has some ideas about elven settlements in the human world that might be sympathetic to them. Elves who love wild humanity will probably oppose the new government’s plan. Unfortunately, that means that Ishtar has probably sent soldiers to subdue them. Every visit will be a gamble. They might find allies, but they could also very easily get killed. Maybe it would be better if they traveled on their own for a bit.

...

So they get in the car and drive again. They eat breakfast at the most crowded place they can find and drive towards a hardware store where Sierra can buy a geiger counter. They come up with a system. Brian drives, Clay rides shotgun with the concussion rifle under his seat, Sierra googles things and tinkers with the geiger counter, and Marin tries his best to cast a more permanent illusion over the car. They listen to music from whatever radio stations they’re driving by, pester Marin with questions about his past, and plot a jagged course up California.

“Who else was in the human world when the coup happened? If you can switch between worlds so easily, there must have been some other people who got away”. Brian is a student of history. He knows a bit about how coups go, but mostly he's just curious about the magical society next door.

Marin stares out the window at miles and miles of farmland. “I can’t be sure. Genus Sondaica had over twenty people in it before the coup, and four of them were about my age. Those are the ones that were most likely to escape. We’re old enough to defend ourselves, but not influential enough to be primary targets”. His voice is very level. “But our genus also has allies. Each of those has even more people, but there’s no way of knowing who’s… left.”

A few seconds pass before Sierra speaks. “Yeah, but who was here before the coup? You didn’t know anything had happened, remember? You just brainwashed us for fun. Who else would do that?”

“The only one I'm certain of is Zerada Adust, my betrothed”.

Woah. Hold on a second. Brian knows that the elves have a hereditary noble class, but his betrothed? “You're betrothed to someone?”

“Ah. That’s not a Western concept anymore, is it? Most of the high nobility are betrothed to someone. It is important for keeping the nobility strong”.

Brian blinks. “Arranging marriages to try and keep an elite class 'strong' has caused some pretty big problems on earth”. Like, the fall of several dynasties.

Sierra rolls her eyes. "Marin, if you're using how messed up your society is to avoid talking about your girlfriend, it's working".

He looks around at the car. “Magical power is mostly genetic,” he adds as if that makes the statement more acceptable instead of less.

“And that's eugenics. That is also not good. Clay, are you still in favor of the elves taking over the world?” Brian adds. He does not know what to do with this information.

She laughs. “And they’re a monarchy too, remember that?”

“I was under a lot of stress!” Clay replies. "Between that and proposing a quest, I think what I said was a lot more normal".

Brian laughs to clear the air, but it sounds fake. Despite his family history, He doesn't believe in taking the easy way out. There's nothing wrong with choosing to stay and fight. They can't afford to be fighting now though, so he lets the conversation continue and keeps his eyes on the road.

[achilleanfemme]

To Win Trans/Queer Freedom, There Are No Shortcuts

The clout chasing has already begun. After any mass tragedy, like yesterday’s shooting at Club Q, a queer nightclub in Colorado Spring, there’s a move to politicize the events from the liberal center of US-American politics. I would argue that amongst no marginalized community is this push towards liberal assimilation, and movement co-optation, worse than amongst LGBTQ people. I have already seen the tweets of liberal politicians asking for liberal LGBTQ “organizers” (campaign workers) to “drop their venmos/cash-apps/zelles/etc” so that “they can get paid in the wake of such a tragedy”. The level of unapologetic clout chasing is honestly galling. Bodies are not even in the ground and they’re already asking for people to give money to LGBTQ Democratic candidates. It’s disgusting. 

Liberal assimilationist forces in the LGBTQ movement have been around for a very long time. Timothy Stewart-Winter’s Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics well documents the neoliberal turn of white gay men in Chicago towards Democratic Party politics and away from street action and mass organizing, as a means of assimilating into the liberal status quo, instead of challenging it. This turn continues to contemporarely benefit a small minority of LGBTQ people, especially (but not exclusively) gays and lesbians, while the rest of us trans and queer people are hung out to dry. Civil rights victories like same-sex marriage, which itself represented an assimilationist turn in trans and queer politics, have not ushered in a wave of continued mass organizing for expanded civil and social rights for LGBTQ people. As many trans organizers and scholars have pointed out, the “marriage equality” victory in 2015 represented the collapse of organizing infrastructure and the end of lesbian and gay politics being done on a national scale.

Liberal politicians, social media influencers, and journalists, both queer and non-queer, love to point out that trans and queer people of color were the ones who “threw the first brick at Stonewall”. Every June there are endless articles about “10 Ways to Support Trans Women of Color” and “50 LGBTQ People that Lead the Way for Equality” yet the radical politics of folks like Sylvia Rivera and Lorraine Hansberry are rarely acknowledged, and the contemporary movement implications of their work are never acknowledged. This is because the forces of assimilation in LGBTQ liberalism would be called into question if these implications were put to the forefront of public discussions of politics amongst trans and queer people.

The contemporary radical implications of our queer ancestors and foreparents are clear. It is time for that we build a radical trans and queer movement in the United States of America rooted in Black feminism, PIC abolition, trans liberation, and economic justice. Events like yesterday’s mass killing at Club Q and the Trans Day of Rememberance are not going to become less frequent while trans and queer people hold no political power in society outside of the Democratic Party establishment. We need to organize to pass the Equality Act and fight beyond it. We need to fight to free all trans and queer immigrants and asylum seekers locked in cages for seeking safety outside of their countries of origin. We need to fight to free all trans and queer people from prison. We need to fight to end the prosecution of trans women of color for acting in self-defense against violent men. We need to fight for housing for all, trans-inclusive medicare for all, free abortion on demand without apology, jobs for all, food for all, and disability benefits that are easily accessible and paid at a thriveable level. We need to fight for a globally just, decolonial, anti-militarist Green New Deal that divests from death-making institutions and invests in live-giving institutions so that trans and queer peoples of the Global Majority have the ability to stay and thrive in their places of origin without fear of US-backed coups, imperial wars, or climate catastrophe destabilizing their countries of origin, leading to violence that harms them the most. 

The legacy of our trans and queer foreparents is a legacy of radical resistance to the World as it is and a radical reimagining of the World as it could be. If we continue to let liberal LGBTQ clout chasers who want to run for office, be social media influencers, or head non-profit organizations lead us down the path of assimilation, many more of us will die. If we let ultra-left anonymous twitter accounts lead us away from mass politics and towards focusing exclusively on armed self-defense and mutual aid, many more of us will die. To paraphrase Jane McAlevey, to win Trans/Queer freedom in our lifetimes, there are no shortcuts.

[barneyandthepoetrymuse]

Down mainstream…



Mainstream believer are you getting the facts…

They’ve tinted the windows fifty shades of black…

It’s you in the paper and it’s the news staring back…

It��s static on the wireless and dormant in the rags…

Shots in the dark, bulletins in your back…

Freedom of speech is under attack…

Where do you get your information and what does it lack…?

The state of the nation’s already been hacked…

Is the influencer in the sky really Murdock…?

Get your news on the sly with fox…

Resist taking a scoop as soon as it drops…

Tempting you with cookies, catching up on the box…

Sitting on your laps, held out in your hands…

Consumers in our cars, delivers in our vans…

Headlines on full beam lighting up your cans…

Spinning the real thing, the other side is banned…

3G in your spectacles, rubbish in your bins…

There’s isn’t world war and if there was we’d win…

It’s right there in front of you tattooed in print…

They’ll summon you when they care about what you think…!

Stay off the tube but get ready to Rumble…

Navigate the media, out there it’s a jungle…

The Legacy of media has got a body double…

It won’t lead you down rabbit holes, deeper into tunnels…

You’re all in your fish bowls, they’re in the tanks…

You’re paying the bill, they control the banks…

Don’t confuse global warming with warnings and facts…

The world is on fire due to explosions and impacts…

Keep your feet up, carry on eating your snacks…

Ignoring the battle plans drawn on their maps…

Flick through the channels your concentration’s lapsed…

See through the flannel, the system’s collapsed…

Take back your impartiality, do it on mass…

Don’t drink from the same bottle, sip from the flask…

Don’t be part of a the next unsavoury past…

Find your own way, choose your own path…

Roll up your sleeves, get prepared for the bomb…

You’re just on a ride they’re taking you on…

Your government lies, they’re the new lexicon…

It’s a web and it spies on the backside you’re sat on…

The circles go round but aren’t concentric…

You do the maths and challenge the metric…

The plates are shifting, the after shocks are seismic…

The missiles they’re firing are going ballistic…

Be part of the algorithm or be part of the fix…

You won’t find the answers on Amazon or Netflix…

Help build the divide or challenge the rhetorics…

Take down the walls and examine the bricks…

Sound the alarms but no need to panic…

We’re all divine Christian’s, they’re all satanic…

Information is war, propaganda the planet…

The world won’t be here soon or anyone to man it………

Pay up your licence fee, check your subscriptions….

Climb down the money tree you’re up for conscription…

Consent isn’t required and neither is permission..

We’re all in denial and we’re all in remission…

What they want you to know they’ll send out by pigeon…

Administer you drugs for social conditions…

They’ll separate the facts with a tiny incision…

And provide you the manual in its current edition…

[dritaphoto]

If the u s defaults on its debt

#If the u s defaults on its debt series

And (2) the leadership in place appears to have some bold plans in place to set America on a path to be more profitable, both internally, and on the international front. So, to come back around to the worrisome headline regarding the possibility of the government defaulting on their debts, I am inclined to think that (1) Inasmuch as it has never happened yet, no matter how bad things have gotten, it is not likely to happen now. Similarly, during a conversation with Yahoo Finance Live on Monday, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg laid out next steps once the "ink is dry" on the bill to get that money out, and how he's “making sure the American people see the most possible impact.” Diving into exactly what that means, Buttigieg gave people a sense of what to expect: “In practical terms, part of that means routing new dollars through old plumbing, so to speak.” The new $1T infrastructure legislation signed by President Biden on the 15th, sets aside $65 billion for America’s spotty broadband system, the culmination of a years-long effort to make changes to how Americans get online. The Bipartisan Policy Center is also keeping a close watch on this matter, as everyone recognizes that the matter is inextricably tied into the infrastructure investments that are desperately needed (and already earmarked) for the future of the US economy. But the transfer would count against the debt ceiling, as the funds would be invested in non-marketable Treasury securities. 15, a month after President Joe Biden's signing of a sweeping infrastructure bill on Monday. She said the Treasury would be able to make a $118 billion transfer to the Highway Trust Fund required on Dec. 3, giving Congress more time to raise the federal debt ceiling as lawmakers also consider a massive social spending and climate bill. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday extended a deadline for a potential U.S. dollar as a global unit of account.”ĭays after that, the BBC chimed in similarly: “No one really knows exactly what would happen, but the likelihood is that markets around the world would plunge and global interest rates would rise.” BUT - they added: “Has the US defaulted before?

#If the u s defaults on its debt series

default would set off a series of events, including a depreciating dollar and surging inflation, that I believe would likely lead to the abandonment of the U.S. economy would most likely sink back into recession… A U.S. The dollar’s value could collapse, and the U.S. Tens of millions of Americans and thousands of companies that depend on government support could suffer. Their worst case scenario goes like this: “Investors such as pension funds and banks holding U.S. They cited the instance of political ambitions between the two parties in August 2011 leading to “an unprecedented downgrade of the United States’ credit rating, which caused markets to plunge.” sovereign debt generally has been considered the safest and most liquid to own in the world, and all kinds of financial market products and processes have been pegged to the orderly functioning of the nearly $21 trillion Treasury market.”Ī mere week later, The Conversation chose to go with an alarmist headline: “If the US defaults on debt, expect the dollar to fall – and with it, Americans’ standard of living”. Treasury will run out of money to pay its bills, including bondholders, let alone what would happen next. Market Watch gave a solid response to these questions just two days before Forbes ruffled so many feathers: “It’s important to note that no one knows precisely when the U.S. So, it begs the questions: Can it really happen? When would it happen? And, what next? Some would blame the Democrats or Republicans, but all politics aside, “ the national debt has risen regardless of which party is in control.” Small business loans will become costlier as private lenders are forced to increase their interest rates.” Well, we all know that headlines can be a bit click-baity, so let’s begin by making sure we are all referencing the same dictionary here: running searches under “what would actually happen if the us defaulted on its debt”īack in October (yes, this has been going back and forth for a while) Forbes declared that it would be catastrophic for small businesses.įorbes offered the following as a very brief summary of what would really happen if the US government defaulted on its debt: “Defaulting on the debt would lead to an automatic downgrade of the country's credit rating, driving up interest rates for all Americans. Starting with the headline from Yahoo Finance 06:16, “US government could default ‘as soon as mid-December’ without action: Analysts”

[tonkitour]

Equation maker using points

#Equation maker using points series#

This logic undermines the elements that are most needed to survive disasters: care, social trust, and mutual aid. As the already vulnerable suffer from climate catastrophes, those who are protected and already powerful will increase their domination, especially if they do so under the guise of the “benevolent patriarch” that promises to protect us from disorder. Thus, the climate crisis is more likely to lead to the intensification of current power structures, globally and within nations. Drawing upon Iris Marion Young’s “logic of masculinist protection” I argue that the fear of social collapse tends to make us seek protection by giving more power to those in charge of the political system, while we lose trust in each other. The current climate crisis is terrifying, but what we should fear is not the collapse of social order as we know it but its continuation. This lecture argues that this fear might be misguided. Social collapse is also a prevalent theme in in contemporary culture and popular entertainment. For some scholars, the collapse of human civilisation and even human extinction are real possibilities. We are already seeing the disastrous consequences of the climate crisis around the planet, and as global carbon emissions keep rising the future is uncertain.

#Equation maker using points series#

Just enter you own examples above and they will be calculated immediately step-by-step.Ole Martin Sandberg is the first lecturer of the RIKK and GRÓ-GEST Lecture Series for Spring 2020 with a lecture entitled “Climate Crisis and “the Logic of Masculinist Protection.”” The lecture will be held Thursday 23 January, 12:00-13:00, at the Lecture Hall of the National Museum. To find the equation of the function, you have to insert a point and get an equation which gives the y-axis intercept. To calculate the slope m, use the formulaĪs we can see, the slope was calculated first. This means: You calculate the difference of the y-coordinates and divide it by the difference of the x-coordinates. How to calculate the equation of a linear function from two given points?įirst, we have to calculate the slope m by inserting the x- and y- coordinates of the points into the formula. Therefore, the equation of the function is General form of the linear function: f(x)=mx+b Here is an example: Lets assume we know that our function has slope and goes through (-2|5).Ĭalculate the y-axis intercept b by inserting: the one coordinate for x and the other one for f(x). You have to insert the point into the equation, i.e. How to calculate the equation of the line from a point and the slope? If you take a look on the function graphs, you see that intersects the y-axis at intersects the y-axis at. As the name says, it says where the function cuts the y-axis. The y-line intercept is the number at the end of the function. What is the y-line intercept of a linear function? This means whenever we go one square to the right, we have to go three squares down to be on the graph again. If we go one square to the right of any point on the graph, we have to go two squares up to be on the graph again.Īnother example, this time with negative slope: It says how may units you have to go up / down if you go one unit to the right. The slope of a linear function corresponds to the number in front of the x. The graph of a linear function is always a line.Ī similar word to linear function is linear correlation. Here is an example:ĭein Browser unterstützt den HTML-Canvas-Tag nicht. The general form of a linear function is, where m is the slope and b is the y-axis intercept. A linear function is a function whose graph is a line.

[orbmanson7]

Today I remember that I cried on election night in 2016

Because I knew this would happen and I knew how horrible it would be

I couldn't have imagined the amount of death that would occur in the meantime, the way that so few even cared about it, but I knew this day would come

I don't want to feel hopeless, but it's hard not to right now

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Taxes are for the little people

If you wanna do crimes, make them incredibly complicated and technical. Like the hustlers that came into the bookstore I worked at and spun these long-ass stories about why they needed money for a Greyhound ticket home.

Those guys shoulda studied the private equity sector.

Private equity's playbook is to borrow giant sums by putting up other peoples' companies as collateral (yes, really). Then they use that money to buy the company they mortgaged, and pay themselves a huge dividend.

Then they sell off the company's assets and pay themselves even more money. That leaves the company in a state of precarity - assets they once owned, like their buildings, they now rent. If the rent goes up, they have to find the money to cover it.

All of this forms a pretense for mass layoffs, defaulting on pension obligations, lowering product quality, stiffing suppliers and borrowing more money. If the company doesn't go bust, the PE looters can flip it to *another* PE company, that does it again.

Whenever you see something really terrible happening to a business that once offered useful products and services and paid decent wages, it's a safe bet that PE is behind it. Toys R Us, Sears, your local hospital - and that memestock favorite, AMC.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/12/mammon-worshippers/#silver-lake-partners

Private equity goons make their money in two ways: the first is by pocketing 20% of  these special dividends and other extractive policies that hollow out business.

This is money at PE managers get paid for spending their investors' money. It's a wage, in other words.

But thanks to the "carried interest" loophole (a hangover from 16th-century sea captains that has nothing to do with "interest" on loans), they get to treat these wages as "capital gains" and pay far less tax on them.

The fact that we give preferential tax treatment to capital gains (money derived from gambling), while taxing wages (money derived from doing useful work) at higher rates really tells you everything you need to know about our economic priorities.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

The carried interest loophole lets PE crooks treat their salaries as capital gains, are taxed at a much lower rate than the wages of the workers whose lives they're destroying.

On top of the 20% profit-share that PE bosses get every year, they also pocket a 2% "management fee" for all the "value" they add to the companies they've taken over.

This is *definitely* a wage. The 20% profit-share at least has an element of risk, but that 2% is guaranteed.

But PE bosses have spent more than a decade booking that 2% wage as a capital gain, using a tax-fraud tactic called "fee waivers." The details of how a fee waiver don't matter because it's all bullshit, like the tale of the needful Greyhound ticket.

All that matters is that a legal fiction allows people earning *eight- or nine-figure salaries* to treat *all* of those wages as capital gains and pay lower rates of tax on them than the janitors who clean their toilets or the workers whose jobs they will annihilate.

Now, the IRS knows all about this. Whistleblowers came forward in 2011 to warn them about it. The Treasury even struck a committee to come up with new rules to fix it.

But Obama failed to make those rules stick, and then Trump put a former tax-cheat enabler in charge of redrafting them. The cheater-friendly rules became law on Jan 5, and handed PE bosses hundreds of millions in savings every year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/12/business/private-equity-taxes.html

The New York Times report on "fee waivers" goes through the rulemaking history, the technical details of the scam, and the gutting of the IRS, which can no longer afford to audit rich people and now makes its quotas by preferentially auditing low earners who can't afford lawyers.

But former securities lawyer Jerri-Lynn Scofield's breakdown of the Times piece on Naked Capitalism really connects the dots:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/06/private-inequity-nyt-examines-how-the-private-equity-industry-avoids-taxes.html

As Scofield and Yves Smith point out, if Biden wanted to do one thing for tax justice, he could abolish preferential treatment for capital gains. If we want a society of makers and doers instead of owners and gamblers, we shouldn't penalize wages and reward rents.

There's an especial urgency to this right now. As the PE bosses themselves admit, they went on a buying spree during the pandemic (they call it "saving American businesses"). Larger and larger swathes of the productive economy are going into the PE meat-grinder.

Worse still, the PE industry has revived its most destructive tactic, the "club deal," whereby PE firms collaborate to take out whole economic sectors in one go:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

We're at an historic crossroads for tax justice. On the one hand, you have the blockbuster Propublica report on leaked IRS files that revealed that the net tax rate paid by America's billionaires is close to zero.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#eat-the-rich

This has left the Bootlicker-Industrial Complex in the bizarre position of arguing that anyone who suggests someone who amasses billions of dollars should pay more than $0 in tax is a radical socialist (so far, the go-to tactic is to make performative noises about privacy).

At the same time, the G7 has agreed to an historical tax deal that will see businesses taxed at least 15% on the revenue they make in each country, irrespective of the accounting fictions they use to claim that the profits are being earned in the middle of the Irish Sea.

That deal is historical, but the fact that it's being hailed as curbing corporate power reveals just how distorted our discourse about corporate taxes has become.

As Thomas Piketty writes, self-employed people pay 20-50% tax in countries that will tax the world's wealthiest companies a mere 15%: "For SMEs as well as for the working and middle classes, it is impossible to create a subsidiary to relocate its profits to a tax haven."

Piketty, like Gabriel Zucman, says that EU nations should charge multinationals a minimum of 25%, and like Zucman, he reminds us that the G7 deal does nothing to help the poorest countries in the Global South.

https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2021/06/15/the-g7-legalizes-the-right-to-defraud/

These countries and the EU have something in common: they aren't "monetarily sovereign" (that is, they don't issue their own currencies *and* borrow in the currencies they issue).

Sovereign currency issuers (US, UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, etc) don't need to tax in order to pay for programs - first they spend new money into the economy and then they tax it back out again.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/10/compton-cowboys/#the-deficit-myth

These countries can run out of stuff to buy in their currency, but they can't run out of the currency itself. Monetarily sovereign countries don't tax to fund their operations.

Rather, they tax to fight inflation (if you spend money into the economy every year but don't take some of it out again through taxation, more and more money will chase the same goods and services and prices will go up).

And just as importantly, monetary sovereigns tax to reduce the spending power - and hence the political power - of the wealthy. The fact that PE bosses had billions of tax-free dollars at their disposal let them spend millions to distort tax policy to legalize fee waivers.

Taxing the money - and hence the power - of wage earners at higher rates than gamblers creates politics that value gambling above work, because gamblers get to spend the winnings they retain on political influence, including campaigns to rig the casino in their favor.

This discredits the whole system, shatters social cohesion and makes it hard to even imagine that we can build a better world - or avert the climate-wracked dystopia on the horizon.

But for Eurozone countries (whose monetary supply is controlled by technocrats at the ECB) and countries of the Global South (whom the IMF has forced into massive debts owed in US dollars, which they can only get by selling their national products), tax is even more urgent.

The US could fund its infrastructure needs just by creating money at the central bank.

EU and post-colonial lands can only fund programs with taxes, so for them, billionaires don't just distort their priorities and corrupt their system - they also starve their societies.

But that doesn't mean that monetary sovereigns can tolerate billionaires and their policy distortions. The UK is monetarily sovereign, in the G7, and its finance minister is briefing to have the City of London's banks exempted from the new tax deal.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-08/u-k-pushes-for-city-of-london-exemption-from-global-tax-deal

Now, the City of London is one of the world's great financial crime-scenes, and its banks are responsible for an appreciable portion of the planet-destabilizing frauds of the past 100 years.

During the Great Financial Crisis AIG used its London subsidiary to commit crimes its US branch couldn't get away with. The City of London was the epicenter of the LIBOR fraud, the Greensill collapse - it's the Zelig of finance crime, the heart of every fraud.

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak claims banks are already paying high global tax and can't afford to be part of the G7 tax deal. If that was true, it wouldn't change the fact that these banks are too big to jail and anything that shrinks them is a net benefit.

But it's not true.

As the tax justice campaigner  Richard Murphy points out, the risk to banks like Barclays adds up to 0.8% of global turnover: "The big deal is that the 15% global minimum tax rate is much too low. Suinak has yet again spectacularly missed the point."

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2021/06/09/how-big-is-the-tax-hit-on-banks-from-the-g7-tax-deal-that-sunak-fears-really-going-to-be/

Image: Joshua Doubek (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IRS_Sign.JPG

CC BY-SA: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[cappucino-commie]

Isn't climate change irreversible? Even if we make drastic changes now, it's much too late. We as a species should've taken action decades ago, no?

What is true: we should have taken action decades ago

What is not true: it is "too late"

The latter is a very expensive lie brought to you by Exxon Mobile®. It is not too late to avert the suffering of millions of people, it is not too late to move towards sustainable, planned degrowth economies, it is not even too late to curb some of the warming we are already experiencing.

Even in the short term, pop-sci understanding of climate change perspective, there are direct actions we can take to avert the suffering of hundreds of millions of people. We can prepare for climate migrants, build climate-resistant & sustainable cities, adjust global crop systems to resist drought & heat waves, and embrace economic degrowth. At an individual level, you can get involved with socialist parties and help organize to make this happen, and participate in direct action to build material systems of support for folks.

But there is a longer term, more scientifically informed perspective on this as well to help reverse these "irreversible" changes.

Without getting too far into the scientific weeds, our planet does naturally change its temperature, mostly through a process known as the carbon cycle. Our planet has always had a warming blanket of carbon dioxide, which made the Earth warm enough for us to evolve, and the level of carbon in the atmosphere fluctuates- not just on a geologic timescale, but even seasonally with the bloom & death of plant life. This system can help us sequester carbon- and that is already happening! If the carbon cycle didn't exist, the amount of carbon we have emitted would have already baked us all to death. The existing system has some "slack" in it, meaning the majority of humanity's carbon emissions actually haven't ended up in the atmosphere.

Humanity is not separate from these ecological systems, and they can be turned to our benefit to curb the worst of these consequences and repair our planet. The work is not easy, but it can be done: Repairing damaged rainforests, coastal mangroves, ocean sea grass, and so on. By using thousands of years of ecological expertise and scientific knowledge, we can help these systems work to sequester carbon and curb some of the worst effects of these emissions. Eventually, in the timescale of just a few thousand years and with a lot of work, the planet can be returned to a preindustrial state.

That is not an excuse to procrastinate on change, but a reminder that our fate is not set in stone. Regardless of what we will do, there are consequences for our existing emissions, you can see them already. But it is not "too late" to make a difference. In fact, just going to carbon zero will allow these systems to begin absorbing atmospheric carbon and curbing some of the warming. The faster we do so, the more we can take advantage of these existing mechanisms.

This will require revolutionary change. It is easy to read "if we just go to carbon zero and live in harmony with nature, things will eventually be ok" and think it is idealist dreaming. But even if we do nothing, life will be radically different in a few decades. Our only real choice is changing for better (sustainable socialist economies) or worse (ecological fascism or collapse). We must believe this change is possible, we must have revolutionary faith & discipline as Marxists.

(And if you do not consider yourself a Marxist- you should reconsider it. It seems radical, and radical is needed. Socialism is the only path humanity has towards an ecologically sustainable, equitable future.)

[qqueenofhades]

So I’ve been thinking about the end of empires lately, the way they behave, the patterns that emerge, things like that. Yes, I know. What a lovely topic. Lol. My brain likes punishment. Shhh. Anyway, I was wondering what we have learned from past ended empires that could help us understand today’s world? Do you have thoughts? Any book refs on this? Thanks qqueen!

Aha, okay, I'll give this a crack. I'll try not to get bogged down in too much pedagogical woolgathering about how it is defined, determined, decided, or otherwise applied as an analytical concept, but we'll say that an "empire" is a geographical, political and territorial unit that comprises multiple countries/regions, is united under one relatively centralised administration, ruled either by one all-powerful figure or a small circle of powerful elites (usually technically answerable to the former), and held together by military, financial, and ideological methods. The basic model, as established by the Romans: take their sons to serve in the army, make them pay their taxes to you, and worship Roma, the patron goddess of the city, alongside their own preferred religion. Simple, straightforward, and lasted for five hundred years (almost a thousand if you count the Roman Republic which preceded it). We hear a lot in Western history classes about the "Fall of Rome," which is usually presented in popular narratives as the moment when everything went to pot before the "Dark Ages." Is this true? (No.) If so, did it happen because, as is often claimed, "barbarians/savages were attacking Rome and overthrew it?" (No.)

The collapse of the Western Roman Empire is way more than we can get into in the course of one ask, and there are other fallen empires to consider: for example, the Aztec, Ashanti, Russian, and British ones. It's a subject of debate as to whether modern-day America should be termed an empire: it fits most, if not all, of the historical criteria, but is an empire only an empire when it declares itself to be one? The long and sordid history of American imperialism, whether it's a rose by any other name or otherwise, is covered in American Empire: A Global History by A.G. Hopkins, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr, and A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn. All are worth looking into.

Overall, I think the basic similarities for what makes an empire fall would include:

it geographically overextends itself (Roman, British)

it is attacked by foreign rivals and internal enemies (Roman, Aztec, Ashanti)

it becomes massively financially indebted and deeply politically unstable (Roman, Russian)

it resorts to heavy-handed attempts to punish dissatisfaction among its people, spurring popular resistance (Aztec, Roman, British, Russian)

it is emerging from a period of long war internationally and internally that has strained it militarily (Roman, British, Russian)

it simply gets devastatingly unlucky thanks to a combination of unforeseeable external factors (Aztec, Ashanti)

And so on. Basically, the administrative bureaucracy gets too big to manage itself, the ever-increasing financial exactions can't pay for the necessary wars to maintain and expand its borders, people become dissatisfied both outside and inside the imperial system, and since no human institution or nation-state lasts forever, down it comes. However, I would caution against too much insistence on a total or categorical end of any of these societies. You've probably heard of Jared Diamond, who wrote uber-popular bestsellers including Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, focusing on how human societies survive, or not, from an eco-scientific perspective. However, Diamond is not a trained anthropologist, archaeologist, or historian, despite writing extensively about these subjects (he's a professor of geography at UCLA) and a whole bunch of eminent historians and anthropologists got together to write "You're Full of Shit, Jared Diamond," also known as Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire.

This book basically blasts Diamond (as he deserves, frankly) for removing all social/cultural factors from his analysis in Collapse and only focusing on ecology/science/environment. Geographical determinism can shed light on some things, but it's very far from being a total explanation for everything, completely divorced from the human societies that interact with these places. For example, did the Easter Island society of Rapa Nui collapse because the Polynesian people "recklessly" overexploited the environment (Diamond) or the impact of European diseases, colonialism, slave trade, and other direct crises, combined with the introduction of the non-native rat to the islands? (Spoiler alert: The latter. You simply can't write about these societies as if they're just places where things somehow happened thanks to natural processes, entirely outside of human agency and cultural/social/political needs.)

Anyway, the silver-lining upside, especially in an incredibly gloomy political milieu where the current American system was nearly overthrown by the last president and hordes of his fascist sympathisers (as they were talking about on Capitol Hill today, incidentally), is that the usual story of human societies is resilience rather than disappearance. None of the empires listed above, with the exception of the Aztecs (conquered by the Spanish, decimated by smallpox, and resisted by internal indigenous enemies) totally vanished. Their structures and ethos often just got a change of paint and name and carried on. For all the ballyhoo about the "Collapse of Rome," the Western Roman Empire had been an almost entirely ineffective political entity for years and the capital had already been transferred to Ravenna well before 476. There were outsider attacks, but Rome had weakened itself by a constant succession of military coups, palace intrigue, too-heavy taxes, and a simply too-vast area to effectively control. The Eastern Roman Empire, however (aka the Byzantine Empire) carried on being a major political player straight through the medieval period and only ended in 1453, with the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II's conquest of Constantinople.

Even the Ashanti Empire still exists today, as a small independent kingdom within the modern African country of Ghana. The Russian and British empires no longer exist under that name, but few would deny that those countries still retain considerable influence in similar ways. When people talk about the "collapse" of societies, especially non-Western societies, it also produces the impression that they did in fact just disappear into thin air, often as no fault of the invading Westerners. (Sidenote: I suggest reading "Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native" by Patrick Wolfe in the Journal of Genocide Research. The whole thing is online and free.) How many times have we heard that, say, the Mayans/Mayan Empire "vanished," when there are up to seven million Mayan speakers in modern Mexico? If you're insisting that they're gone, of course it's easier to act like they are.

Anyway. I think what I'm trying to say here is that in terms of lessons for the modern world:

empires always (always) fall;

this comes about as some combination of the above-mentioned factors;

however, the societies previously organised as empires almost never disappear, so the end of an empire does not necessarily mean the end of its attendant society, culture, countries, etc;

empires often re-organise as essentially similar political units with different names and can maintain most of their former status;

empire is an inherently unequal and exploitative system that often relies on taxonomies of race, gender, power, and class, with the usual suspects at the top and everyone else at the bottom;

empire is usually, though not always, related to active colonialism and military expansion, and as soon as it cannot sustain this model, it's in big trouble;

the idea that human societies just disappear solely as a result of inadequately correct economic choices and/or ecological determinism is a lot of shit;

And so on. The end of an empire isn't necessarily anything to fear, though it can, obviously, be incredibly disruptive for those living within the country/countries affected. And until we learn how to move, as a species, permanently away from political and ideological systems that give so many resources to so few people and nothing to so many others, we're going to continue to experience this cycle.

[marcias-meme-blog]

What are your thoughts on the Media bez wyboru ? People are having two different opinions, mostly "They wanna silence us!" or "Don't be an idiot it's just taxation not restriction!"

That’s one hardcore question to receive. 

From what I know, it’s a taxation imposed on ad income in all sorts of media, the internet, newspapers, radio and even cinemas. This means that a chunk of platforms’ income instead of going back towards fuelling those institutions will go to the government.

The main gripe imo is this: many platforms will simply not survive this.  The taxation will be a solid blow to the smaller, often independent/neutral platforms who rely on that money to continue operating. Ultimately they’ll either collapse because of the lack of income or have to start relying on other methods of staying afloat eg. paywalls (and I REALLY hope we’re all aware how paywalls and subscription models contribute to inaccessibility to goods, and specifically here news and articles, on a global scale).

While some might say “it is what it is, that’s how taxes work babey” we MUST consider all pieces on this board. Because you know who will not feel this blow? Who will not have to worry about putting their stuff behind paywalls? Who will not have to worry about staying afloat?

Government sponsored media.

I hope it’s clicking for everyone that that is literally the ABCs of propaganda,  a really short way to monopolise the market of information, and an indirect attempt (we can debate whether intended or unintended) to control the public opinion in the long run.

Government media is NOT objective or trying to stay neutral. It presents you with content & news filtered through a very specific, and in this case, very VERY conservative lense, that paints the ruling party in a holy light while smearing their opposition in shit. 

“Opposition“ may seem like an abstract political concept but here’s a quick rundown of topics that are in opposition to the agenda being pushed by the current political leaders and would effectively be dipped in shit:

- LGBT as a concept, - rights/suited medical help for trans people, - gay marriage, - abortion/planned parenthood, - sex education in schools, - immigrants, - climate change/global warming, - carbon footprint of the environmental destruction that is the mining industry and so on.

The current Polish leaders are IN LOVE with the status quo and the current division of the country. They are especially big fans of presenting everything as a us vs. them narrative. The gays are an attack on polish families and christian values. Abortion is an attack on polish children. Climate change is a made up propaganda to destroy the mining industry and put the good polish people out of their jobs. And immigrants? Oh boy.

And this narrative heavily speaks to the current generations of people of age 40+; the generations that still remember communism, generations intimately aware of our history as a country where the other, the oppressor came and destroyed everything that was us, taking Poland off of the maps for over a fucking century, and how long it took for us to stand on our two legs again as an independent nation.

And all the topics that I listed above? Are used to scare those people by the leading party. To reach deep within and push that emotional button, that knee-jerk reaction that something is waiting, again, to destroy us and who we are as people, as a nation. And this emotional manipulation with fear is very incredibly effective. And I in turn fear that the limited number of accessible journalistic platforms will only contribute to the exponential growth of this sad phenomenon. 

And you know what is the worst thing if all of this? The theatre of absurd that is the way the government is trying to pass these controversial laws. Because those laws are never a stand alone thing. They are always dressed up in a narrative, wrapped up in an entire cushy bill that is going towards something objectively good. They did that many times in the past: most recent thing that I can remember are bills that were supposed to help out single parents but they simultaneously had one or two anti-LGBT laws right next to them, in the same package.

So to put the issue simply, by opposing one aspect of the bill, you’re automatically seen as a shithead trying to prevent a major improvement to the country’s structure. And that goes back to the whole us vs. them narrative I talked about. It’s a circle.

The bill they’re trying to pass right now is not a “new taxation on Ads” bill - it’s marketed as a bill going towards the growth of NFZ (national healthcare), the preservation of Polish history & culture via NFOZ (mostly monuments, old historically important buildings and landmarks etc.) & the creation of a new institution: FWKDN  the goal of which would be the creation of projects and platforms focused on promoting polish heritage & culture in the digital age.

Those are objectively good things, especially rn money for national healthcare would be godsend.

So here comes the ultimate dilemma: Should we introduce the new tax, the money from which will in theory help the people of our country, even if it means sacrificing independent media platforms which effectively means the beginning of the government’s monopol on news and journalism?

And that is a very loaded problem with no easy solution.

Personally I am against that bill and I support the strike that’s going on. The money gathered via this tax will be but a droplet in the sea of needs when it comes to our public healthcare system. Whatever the money could accomplish (which assumes the government that I already don’t trust won’t put the money towards something completely different),  the long term social consequences of news platform reduction far outweigh the potential good, in my books anyway. I do believe there are other solutions to this problem, but we could talk about the changes to the national budget all day and not get anywhere. 

TL;DR: It’s a loaded issue, but having seen certain worrying patterns within the actions and motivations of the current political party I am unwilling to risk letting them take control of journalism nationwide. 

[fleurdumal117]

Barcelona, ecofeminism and me

CW: climate change, societal collapse, hipsters.

I went to Spain recently for a long weekend to visit some flatmates from years ago. Stefanie now lives in Stockholm and has a successful career at multinational conglomerate. Isa doesn’t work and squats in an abandoned building just outside of Barcelona with thirty other people. I’m the one that makes sure we get together at least once every four years. We’re a mismatched bunch.

Barcelona has always had a tough time with its cultural identity, but COVID-19 and the global rise of populism seem not to have helped much since the last time I visited the city in 2016. On this most recent visit, a general strike and various demonstrations were set to take place in protest against new draconian labour laws. Well, it was January and still a bit too cold for the beach, so we attended a couple of public lectures on various topical subjects. It seemed like the thing to do.

I looked around at the other audience members - edgy, young, covered head-to-toe in tattoos and piercings. There are some spaces where I can pass for ‘alternative’. Barcelona is not one of them.

We sat through a talk on ecofeminism by a woman from Andalucía who lived quasi off-the-grid. She began the talk by saying how, since we’d all sat and listened to academics for ages, she would begin her lecture by playing a short piece of music over the speakers and improvise an interpretative dance “to embody the concepts of eco-feminism and eco-socialism”. She invited the audience members to do the same if they wished.

The music played and the lecturer began to move her body freely before us. I noticed others in the audience stand up and start to move, too.

To my left, I hear Isa wanting to join in – “¿Y si nos ponemos de pie y nos cogemos de la mano?” – British and embarrassed, I complied. We three stood up, too, and held hands as a show of solidarity with… Feminism? Mother Earth? The talk hadn’t actually started yet, so I didn’t know.

The speaker continued her movements. Then all of a sudden she crouched down to her haunches and started screaming.

The talk itself that followed this strange interval was actually pretty good. I learnt that ecofeminism is a rich web of factions, all with competing ideas and priorities, but who ultimately all believe that unfettered capitalism steered by systemic patriarchy are Bad ThingsTM, and that women and the Earth are among those most negatively impacted. The proposed solutions? Economic ‘degrowth’, less consumption, and greater respect for natural resources. I’m sure I’m oversimplifying it, but that appeared to be the gist.

Oh, and the developed world is apparently headed towards some sort of mass societal collapse. Or rather, “estamos en ello” – it’s already started – which I heard again and again, and so it’s not a bad idea to start preparing for massive changes to our way of life. It was all quite alarming. The Russian invasion of Ukraine hadn’t happened yet, but the cost of living was already going up across Europe and it was clear how much Barcelona, long known for its booming tourism industry, was hurting from Covid.

What did it all mean? The dancing, the screaming, the discussing of the ways in which we would all adjust to el colapso? I think overall that “consume less of what you don’t need” is prudent advice, and that greedily harvesting the Earth’s finite resources was always going to bite us in the arse one day. But are we really headed towards global catastrophe?

Before COVID-19 happened, before Brexit, Trump and Russia-Ukraine, I think I would have been sceptical of that idea. But then again, I also wouldn’t have rated our society’s chances of weathering a global pandemic, either. And we did come through it… sort of. The quality of governmental responses to the crisis will be fuel for furious op-eds for generations to come (and rightly so). But as individuals I think that many of us were compelled to find a strength within us that we didn’t know we had.

Maybe that will happen again. Maybe geo-engineering will allow us to avoid the worst of climate change. Maybe Isa had it right and we should all hold hands and sing Kumbaya to defeat populism and late-stage capitalism and the creeping influence of fascism in the West.

I don’t know. And I’m scared of what’s coming. I hope we’re equal to it.

[frumfrumfroo]

Can "masculine" and "feminine" Fandom ever truly coexist or are they always destined for conflict? Everything I've seen indicates that even if it only happens in a passive-aggressive way,, they will always fight until one pushes out or marginalizes the other (and the creators will probably take sides).

I think they do co-exist all the time. For example Star Trek and DBZ both have huge fandoms of both temperaments, despite the common stereotype that they're ploty techy manly franchises for boys and only male nerds like them. TOS invented shipping fandom as we know it. Nor is there usually much tension between the two camps. It's just that the streams don't really cross; fic/meta/shipping fandom is over here and speculation/powerlevels/trivia fandom is over there. You can be in both, but you do them separately and usually one is way more 'mainstream' as the face of fans than the other. Doctor Who is the rare case where it's equally infamous for its no-romo anoraks and its die-hard shippers.

The fact that those are ancient, venerable fandoms is probably a factor, because fandom as a whole used to be more compartmentalised. You only hung out in the part that interested you and could engage for years without interacting with anything outside that bubble. Things like zines and webrings and livejournal groups were split up by topic. Although people say the days of mailing lists were more like now because it was a niche and everyone had to scroll past everything. I wasn't there, so these are speculations.

But what's definitely different now is that the fourth wall has been completely demolished and whining on SM can change the direction of multi-billion dollar franchises, so the old need to 'win' fandom and feel like the loudest voice has become something with real stakes. If bullying the 'wrong' audience out of fandom results in your faction being catered to, that incentivises aggressive gatekeeping. Which people already did even back when it was totally delusional to think the creators knew or cared what fandom thought, so having it actually work is going to make it ten thousand time worse. Franchise writing by angry twitter committee is probably going to continue and this will lead to many more pieces of Extruded Movie Product dreck while Disney and Amazon buy up the entire global entertainment industry until the inevitable collapse of mega-budget Branded Content which can’t come soon enough.

Do I expect shipping and emotional analysis fandom will continue to get the shorter end of the stick and be mocked for caring even as being a massive anorak who's memorised every meaningless stat in every issue of Captain Bland's Monotonous Adventure becomes ever more mainstream and acceptable? Yep. But this has never succeeded in pushing shipping out of fandom and while certain kinds of ‘nerdiness’ have become ‘cool’ (much like it’s socially acceptable to obsess about sports but not Magic: the Gathering tournaments), the genuine weirdos still have far more in common with people who write fanfic than they do with the casual audience who are the true target demographic of any big budget film. A lot of the pressure which causes fandom infighting is being exerted from outside and when trends change, the need to guard your terf so that senpai notices you lessens significantly.

Although I should probably take issue with the idea that it’s a ‘both sides’ thing, because I know of no example, ever, of a ‘feminine’ fandom rejecting or trying to drive out ‘masculine’ interests. If you want to talk about who would win in a fight in a shoujo manga or discuss the worldbuilding logic of Labyrinth from a non-metaphorical perspective, absolutely no one in the fandom will have a problem with that. I knew a guy who was super into the ‘lore’ and non-romance plot of Twilight (how? idk), and he got no shit whatsoever for ‘doing it wrong’ from the fans because they did not feel threatened by his perspective.

A lot of these ‘boys club’ fandoms do feel threatened by shippers or literary analysis (because icky lady cooties mostly) and that’s what it comes down to. Same with antis and any other ‘you’re doing fandom wrong!’ group. They are afraid of not being exclusively catered to if they aren’t the overwhelming majority. That’s the only reason there’s conflict. If they weren’t worried about not being the default and not having their worldview constantly validated, they wouldn’t care about us.