#Budget 2022 Speech

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tesla's Dieselgate

Elon Musk lies a lot. He lies about being a “utopian socialist.” He lies about being a “free speech absolutist.” He lies about which companies he founded:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2 He lies about being the “chief engineer” of those companies:

https://www.quora.com/Was-Elon-Musk-the-actual-engineer-behind-SpaceX-and-Tesla

He lies about really stupid stuff, like claiming that comsats that share the same spectrum will deliver steady broadband speeds as they add more users who each get a narrower slice of that spectrum:

https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband

The fundamental laws of physics don’t care about this bullshit, but people do. The comsat lie convinced a bunch of people that pulling fiber to all our homes is literally impossible — as though the electrical and phone lines that come to our homes now were installed by an ancient, lost civilization. Pulling new cabling isn’t a mysterious art, like embalming pharaohs. We do it all the time. One of the poorest places in America installed universal fiber with a mule named “Ole Bub”:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Previous tech barons had “reality distortion fields,” but Musk just blithely contradicts himself and pretends he isn’t doing so, like a budget Steve Jobs. There’s an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk’s public lies:

https://elonmusk.today/

But while Musk lacks the charm of earlier Silicon Valley grifters, he’s much better than they ever were at running a long con. For years, he’s been promising “full self driving…next year.”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

He’s hasn’t delivered, but he keeps claiming he has, making Teslas some of the deadliest cars on the road:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn’t its cars, it’s Tesla’s business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

Once you start unpacking Tesla’s balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

But even with all those financial shenanigans, Tesla’s got an absurdly high valuation, soaring at times to 1600x its profitability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoover-calling/#intangibles

That valuation represents a bet on Tesla’s ability to extract ever-higher rents from its customers. Take Tesla’s batteries: you pay for the battery when you buy your car, but you don’t own that battery. You have to rent the right to use its full capacity, with Tesla reserving the right to reduce how far you go on a charge based on your willingness to pay:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/10/teslas-demon-haunted-cars-in-irmas-path-get-a-temporary-battery-life-boost/

That’s just one of the many rent-a-features that Tesla drivers have to shell out for. You don’t own your car at all: when you sell it as a used vehicle, Tesla strips out these features you paid for and makes the next driver pay again, reducing the value of your used car and transfering it to Tesla’s shareholders:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update

To maintain this rent-extraction racket, Tesla uses DRM that makes it a felony to alter your own car’s software without Tesla’s permission. This is the root of all autoenshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is technofeudalism. Whereas capitalists seek profits (income from selling things), feudalists seek rents (income from owning the things other people use). If Telsa were a capitalist enterprise, then entrepreneurs could enter the market and sell mods that let you unlock the functionality in your own car:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/11/1-in-3/#boost-50

But because Tesla is a feudal enterprise, capitalists must first secure permission from the fief, Elon Musk, who decides which companies are allowed to compete with him, and how.

Once a company owns the right to decide which software you can run, there’s no limit to the ways it can extract rent from you. Blocking you from changing your device’s software lets a company run overt scams on you. For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.

But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legitimate purposes. That means that your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how that surveillance works, the manufacturer can be incredibly sloppy with all the personal info they gather:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html

All kinds of hidden anti-features can lurk in your DRM-locked car, protected from discovery, analysis and criticism by the illegality of bypassing the DRM. For example, Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away if you have a dispute about a late payment:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

DRM is a gun on the mantlepiece in Act I, and by Act III, it goes off, revealing some kind of ugly and often dangerous scam. Remember Dieselgate? Volkswagen created a line of demon-haunted cars: if they thought they were being scrutinized (by regulators measuring their emissions), they switched into a mode that traded performance for low emissions. But when they believed themselves to be unobserved, they reversed this, emitting deadly levels of NOX but delivering superior mileage.

The conversion of the VW diesel fleet into mobile gas-chambers wouldn’t have been possible without DRM. DRM adds a layer of serious criminal jeopardy to anyone attempting to reverse-engineer and study any device, from a phone to a car. DRM let Apple claim to be a champion of its users’ privacy even as it spied on them from asshole to appetite:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/

The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can’t attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded.

But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you’d immediately figure something was up. So your Telsa tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles.

But again, if the car continued to tell you it has 203 miles of range when it was about to run out of charge, you’d figure something was up pretty quick — like, the first time your car ran out of battery while the dashboard cheerily informed you that you had 203 miles of range left.

So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren’t getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue.

But there’s a new problem: drivers whose cars are rated for 353 miles but can’t go anything like that far on a full charge naturally assume that something is wrong with their cars, so they start calling Tesla service and asking to have the car checked over.

This creates a problem for Tesla: those service calls can cost the company $1,000, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s performing exactly as designed. So Tesla created its boldest fraud yet: a boiler-room full of anti-salespeople charged with convincing people that their cars weren’t broken.

This new unit — the “diversion team” — was headquartered in a Nevada satellite office, which was equipped with a metal xylophone that would be rung in triumph every time a Tesla owner was successfully conned into thinking that their car wasn’t defrauding them.

When a Tesla owner called this boiler room, the diverter would run remote diagnostics on their car, then pronounce it fine, and chide the driver for having energy-hungry driving habits (shades of Steve Jobs’s “You’re holding it wrong”):

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

The drivers who called the Diversion Team weren’t just lied to, they were also punished. The Tesla app was silently altered so that anyone who filed a complaint about their car’s range was no longer able to book a service appointment for any reason. If their car malfunctioned, they’d have to request a callback, which could take several days.

Meanwhile, the diverters on the diversion team were instructed not to inform drivers if the remote diagnostics they performed detected any other defects in the cars.

The diversion team had a 750 complaint/week quota: to juke this stat, diverters would close the case for any driver who failed to answer the phone when they were eventually called back. The center received 2,000+ calls every week. Diverters were ordered to keep calls to five minutes or less.

Eventually, diverters were ordered to cease performing any remote diagnostics on drivers’ cars: a source told Reuters that “Thousands of customers were told there is nothing wrong with their car” without any diagnostics being performed.

Predicting EV range is an inexact science as many factors can affect battery life, notably whether a journey is uphill or downhill. Every EV automaker has to come up with a figure that represents some kind of best guess under a mix of conditions. But while other manufacturers err on the side of caution, Tesla has the most inaccurate mileage estimates in the industry, double the industry average.

Other countries’ regulators have taken note. In Korea, Tesla was fined millions and Elon Musk was personally required to state that he had deceived Tesla buyers. The Korean regulator found that the true range of Teslas under normal winter conditions was less than half of the claimed range.

Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively — think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn’t merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being — but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren’t just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed — they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

Image ID [A scene out of an 11th century tome on demon-summoning called 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.' It depicts a demon tormenting two unlucky would-be demon-summoners who have dug up a grave in a graveyard. One summoner is held aloft by his hair, screaming; the other screams from inside the grave he is digging up. The scene has been altered to remove the demon's prominent, urinating penis, to add in a Tesla supercharger, and a red Tesla Model S nosing into the scene.]

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[worstjourney]

The Millennials' Polar Expedition

A year ago today (23 Nov 2022), I launched Worst Journey Vol.1 at the Scott Polar Research Institute. This is the text of the speech I gave to the lovely people who turned up to celebrate.

As many of you know, my interest in the Terra Nova Expedition was sparked by Radio 4’s dramatisation of The Worst Journey in the World, now 14 years ago.  The story is an incredible story, and it got its claws into me, but what kept me coming back again and again were the people.  I couldn’t believe anyone so wonderful had ever really existed.  So when I finally succumbed to obsession and started reading all the books, it was the expedition members’ own words which I most cherished.  These were not always easy to come by, though, so plenty of popular histories were consumed as well.  Reading both in tandem, it soon became clear that, while there were some good books out there, there was a lot of sloppy research in the polar echo chamber as well.

I also discovered that no adaptation had attempted to get across the full scope of the expedition.  There has never been a full and fair dramatic retelling, all having been limited by time, budget, or ideology from telling the whole story truthfully.  I was determined that my adaptation would be both complete and accurate, and be as accountable as possible to those precious primary documents and the people who wrote them.

So the years of research began.  I moved to Cambridge to be able to drop in at SPRI and make the most of the archives.  Getting to Antarctica seemed impossible, but I went to New Zealand to get at least that much right, and on the way back stayed with relatives in Alberta, the most Antarctic place I could realistically visit.  I gathered reference for objects wherever I could.  Because Vol.1 takes place mainly on the Terra Nova, which is now a patch of sludge on the seabed off Greenland, I cobbled together a Franken-Nova in my mind, between the Discovery up in Dundee and the Star of India in San Diego.  I spent a week on a Jubilee Sailing Trust ship in order to depict tall-ship sailing correctly.  I’m sure I’ve still got loads of things wrong, but I did all I could, to get as much as I could, right.

But still, everyone I met who had been to Antarctica said, “you can’t understand Antarctica until you’ve been there, and you can’t tell the story without understanding Antarctica; you have to go.”  So I applied to the USAP’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, with faint hope, as they do “Ahrt” and I draw cartoons.  But I must have blagged a good grant proposal, because a year after applying, I was stepping out of a C-17 onto the Ross Ice Shelf.  The whole trip would have been worth it just to stand there, turn in a circle, and see how all the familiar photographs fit together.  But the USAP’s generosity didn’t stop there, and in the next month I saw Hut Point, Arrival Heights, the Beardmore Glacier (including the moraine on which the Polar Party stopped to “geologise”), and Cape Crozier, and made three visits to the Cape Evans hut.  Three!  On top of the visual reference I got priceless qualitative data.  The hardness of the sound.  The surprising warmth of the sun. The sugary texture of the snow.  The keen edge on a slight breeze.  The way your fingertips and toes can start to go when the rest of you is perfectly warm.  The SHEER INSANITY of Cape Crozier.  The veterans were right – I couldn’t have drawn it without having been there, but now I have, and can, and I am more grateful than I can ever adequately express.  With all these resources laid so copiously at my feet, all I had to do was sit down and draw the darn thing.  Luckily I have some very sound training to back me up on that.

Now, this is all very well for the how of making the book, and, I hope, interesting enough. But why?  Why am I putting so much effort into telling this story, and why now?

Well, it means a lot to me personally.  To begin to understand why, you need to know that I grew up in the 80s and 90s, at the height of individualist, goal-oriented, success-driven, dog-eat-dog, devil-take-the-hindmost neoliberalism.  It was just assumed that humans, when you get right down to it, were basically self-interested jerks, and I saw plenty of them around so I had no reason to question this assumption.  The idea was that if you did everything right, and worked really hard, you could retire at 45 to a yacht in the Bahamas, and if you didn’t retire to a yacht, well, you just hadn’t tried hard enough.  Character, in the sense of rigorous personal virtue, was for schmucks.  What mattered was success.  Even as my politics evolved, I still took it as a given that this was how the world worked, and that was how people generally were – after all, there was no lack of corroborating evidence.  So: I worked really hard.  I single-mindedly pursued my self-interest.  I made sacrifices, and put in the time, and fought my way into my dream job and all the success I could have asked for.

And then I met the Terra Nova guys.

What struck me most about them was that even when everything was going wrong, when their expectations were shattered and they had to face the cruellest reality, they were still kind.  Not backbiting, recriminating, blame-throwing, defensive, or mean, as one would expect – they were lovely to each other, patient, supportive, self-sacrificing; in fact the worse things got, the better they were.  They still treated each other as friends even when it wasn’t in their self-interest, was even contrary to their self-interest.  I didn’t know people could be like that.  But there they were, in plain writing, being thoroughly, bafflingly, decent.  Not just the Polar Party – everyone had to face their own brutal realities at some point, and they all did so with a grace I never thought possible.

It presented a very important question:

When everything goes belly-up, and you’re facing the worst, what sort of person will you be?

Or perhaps more acutely: What sort of person would you rather be with?

It was so contrary to the world I lived in, to the reality I knew – it was a peek into an alternate dimension, populated entirely with lovely, lovely people, who really, genuinely believed that “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game,” and behaved accordingly.  It couldn’t be real.  There had to be a deeper, unpleasant truth: that was how the world worked, after all.  I kept digging, expecting to hit bottom at some point, but I only found more gold, all the way down.  How could I not spend my life on this?

Mythology exists to pass on a culture’s values, moral code, and survival information – how to face challenges and prevail.  Scott’s story entered the British mythology, and had staying power, because it exemplified those things so profoundly for the culture that created and received it.  But the culture changed, and there were new values; Scott’s legacy was first inverted and then cast aside.  The new culture needed a new epic hero.  You’d think it would be Amundsen, the epitome of ruthless success, but “Make Plan – Execute Plan – Go Home” has no mythic value, so he didn’t stick.  The hero needed challenges, he needed setbacks, and he needed to win, on our terms.

Shackleton!  Shackleton was a winner!  Shackleton told us what we knew to be true and wanted to hear at epic volume: that if you want something badly enough, and try really hard, you will succeed!  (Especially if you can control the narrative.)  Scott, on the other hand, tells us that if you want something badly enough, and try really hard . . . you may nevertheless die horribly in the snow.  Nobody wants to hear that!  What a downer!  I think it’s no coincidence that Shackleton exploded into popular culture in the late 90s and has dominated it ever since: he is the mythic hero of the zeitgeist. I am always being asked if I’ll be doing Shackleton next.  He has six graphic novels already!  That is plenty!  But people still want to tell and be told his story, because it’s a heroic myth that validates our worldview.

That’s why I am so determined to tell the Scott story, because Scott is who we don’t realise we need right now – and Wilson, and Bowers, and Cherry, and Atch, and all the rest.  The Terra Nova Expedition is the Millennials’ polar expedition.  We’ve worked really hard, we’ve done everything we were supposed to, we made what appeared to be the right decisions at the time, and we’re still losing.  Nothing in the mythology we’ve been fed has prepared us for this.  No amount of positive attitude is going to change it.  We have all the aphorisms in the world, but what we need is an example of how to behave when the chips are down, when the Boss is not sailing into the tempest to rescue us, when the Yelcho is not on the horizon.  When circumstances are beyond your power to change, how do you make the best of your bad situation?  What does that look like? Even if you can’t fix anything, how do you make it better for the people around you – or at the very least, not worse?  Scott tells us: you can be patient, supportive, and humble; see who needs help and offer it; be realistic but don’t give in to despair; and if you’re up against a wall with no hope of rescue, go out in a blaze of kindness.  We learn by imitation: it’s easy to say these things, but to see them in action, in much harder circumstances than we will ever face, is a far greater help.  And to see them exemplified by real, flawed, complicated people like us is better still; they are not fairy-tale ideals, they are achievable. Real people achieved them.

My upbringing in the 80s milieu of selfishness, which set me up to receive the Scott story so gratefully, is hardly unique.  There are millions of us who are hungry for a counter-narrative.  My generation is desperate for demonstrations of caring, whether it’s activism or social justice or government policies that don’t abandon the vulnerable.  We’ve seen selfishness poison the world, and we want an alternative.  The time for competition is past; we must cooperate or perish, but we don’t know how to do it because our mythology is founded on competition.  The Scott story, if told properly, explodes the Just World Fallacy, and liberates us from the lie that has ruled our lives: that you make your own luck.  What happens, happens: what matters is how you respond to it.  My obsession with accuracy is in part to honour the men, and in part because Cherry was the ultimate stickler and he’d give me a hard time if I didn’t, but also because, if I’m telling the story to a new generation, I’m damn well going to make sure we get that much RIGHT.  It’s been really interesting to see, online, how my generation and the next have glommed onto polar exploration narratives, not as thrilling feats of derring-do, but as emotional explorations of found family and cooperative resilience.  We love them because they love each other, and loving each other helps get them through, and we want – we need – to see how that’s done.  It’s time to give them the Terra Nova story, and to tell it fully, fairly, and honestly, in all its complexity, because that is how their example is most useful to us.  Not as gods, and not as fools, but as real human beings who were excellent to each other in the face of disaster.  I only hope that I, a latecomer to their ways, can do them justice.

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Bill Forsyth the Scottish film director and screenwriter.

Born in Glasgow July 29th 1946 and educated at Knightswood School. On leaving aged 17, he answered an advertisement for a “Lad required for film company” and spent the next eight years helping make short documentary films.

Leaving documentary production in 1977, Forsyth wrote the scripts for Gregory’s Girl and That Sinking Feeling in the hope of breaking into feature films.

Obtaining finance, however, proved frustrating and problematic. The BFI Production Board rejected Gregory’s Girl three times. Forsyth later said, “I remember one torment of a meeting when I tried to explain that Gregory’s Girl was really a structuralist comedy… I suspect my script was too conventional although nobody actually told me as much.”.

That Sinking Feeling was eventually made in 1979 with amateur actors from the Glasgow Youth Theatre, including John Gordon Sinclair (who later took the lead in Gregory’s Girl , its tiny £5,000 budget was raised from a variety of sources.

Forsyth’s distinctive voice as writer-director is already apparent in this tale of a robbery of stainless steel sinks by a gang of unemployed Glasgow teenagers - intensely humanistic and humorous yet with an underlying seriousness of purpose. This ability to create a self-contained yet believable world with a keen sense of the absurd and bizarre in the everyday is perhaps only rivalled by the work of British television writer Alan Plater. The film opened to great popular and critical success at the Edinburgh and London Film Festivals but was unable to secure more widespread distribution.

Gregory’s Girl was Forsyth’s breakthrough film. This acutely observed story of adolescence and first love set in a Scottish new town was rapturously received by both critics and public alike. Forsyth’s reputation seemed to be secured by the success of his next venture, Local Hero, a first collaboration with producer David Puttnam.

In 1999 he made Gregory’s Two Girls as a sequel to Gregory’s Girl, with John Gordon Sinclair playing the same character, but it received mixed reviews.

Gregory's Girl, to me, is still a very funny film, but it feels dated, that's not to say that it hasn't stood the test of time with some folk, indeed The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) showed a 4k version of the 1980 cult classic last August 1which was followed by a Q&A session with some of the cast including Gordon Sinclair(Gregory), Clare Grogan.

In 2022 the popular Scottish actor Peter Capaldi spoke of how Bill Forsyth saved him from living off pakora and lager after featuring him in Local Hero. The Doctor Who and The Thick Of It star praised the Scots film director in an acceptance speech after receiving a Bafta Scotland Award for Outstanding Contribution to Film & Television.

I love Capaldi's affection for our country, speaking to the audience while holding his Bafta, Capaldi said the award was “for getting lucky, and for being lucky enough to be born in Scotland”.

He said: “Forty years ago I was just up here (in Glasgow) as an art student, living off pakora and lager for breakfast.

“Bill Forsyth scooped me up and put me in Local Hero.

“It was an act of kindness and confidence that baffled me and much of the industry to this day, but I wouldn’t be here without him and nor would a lot of others.”

Capaldi landed this breakthrough film role aged 24 playing Danny Oldsen, a naive young oil industry executive, in the film.

A number of actors, including Dee Hepburn, will be a part of a celebration of the films of Bill Forsyth at the Outwith Festival of music and arts which takes place in Dunfermline from September 3-8. It will also screen That Sinking Feeling and Local Hero at the city’s Carnegie Theatre.

[follow-up-news]

The IRS has collected $1.3 billion from high wealth tax dodgers since last fall, the agency announced Friday, crediting spending that has ramped up collection enforcement through President Joe Biden’s signature climate, health care and tax package signed into law in 2022. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel traveled to Austin, Texas, to tour an IRS campus and announce the latest milestone in tax collections as Republicans warn of big future budget cuts for the tax agency if they take over the White House and Congress. Yellen, in a planned speech in Austin, will say that in 2019, the top one percent of wealthy Americans owed more than one-fifth of all unpaid taxes, “leaving ordinary Americans to shoulder the burden. ” “To fix this, we’ve channeled IRS funding toward significant investments to combat tax evasion,” she says. In 2023 and 2024 the IRS launched a series of initiatives aimed at pursuing high-wealth individuals who have failed to pay their tax debts. The IRS says the campaign is focused on taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt.

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

Can the author of this article dated 1st September provide information on what, where and when Sam Heughan has demanded and spoken about the closure of a vital Creative Scotland fund for artists and urged the SNP (Scottish Government) to reverse budget cuts in the arts? The writing is not detailed enough, readers may lose interest.

Professors of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) have written to First Minister John Swinney and Angus Robertson, Cabinet Secretary for Constitution, External Affairs, and Culture expressing concerns about funding from Creative Scotland. Alan Cumming also voiced his concerns about the arts cuts in a video message on his Instagram.

As much as we want to believe in the sentiment cited in the text by the Arts Correspondent, we don't think Sam spoke out or discussed the fund's problems with the guest of honour, Culture Secretary Angus Robertson, at the MPC party (coincidentally Heughan's birthday party), as the Scottish government announcement is recent.

If Heughan has any opinion on the budget cuts announced by the Scottish Government, why not express his opinion and post a video on his Instagram instead of reposting an article of his friend?

We have not seen him express their opinion regarding the budget cuts, as claimed by Brian Ferguson, the Arts Correspondent in this article. It's possible was a private conversation with the Correspondent, or perhaps the publication is aimed at boosting Sam Heughan's image and keeping him relevant. it wouldn't be the first time. If the author's purpose was to persuade readers about Sam's activities, it seems to have been unsuccessful.

The article is getting the attention it deserves 👀

Posted 2nd September 2024

@greatcloudphilosopher - If it was a call, the information was not off the record, the name of the source is attributable and, in the public interest, the direct means of the evidence obtained. If he asked to RCS alumni, was SH the only one who responded? What happened to the rest of the graduates? Did they not give precise answers? The reporter inflated SH's name starting with the title of the article.

@greatcloudphilosopher - I don't think SH is leading any campaign or has good contacts in the Scottish government. He hasn't appeared in any Scottish campaign since the 2014 Scottish independence referendum (when Outlander started), after which he hasn't been seen at any Marche. It's his pals in the Scots media who inflate his resume and ego. Jack Lowden has been insisting and asking for funding for the arts for years, including at the BAFTA-Scotland 2022, when he won the award for best actor; his speech refers to this problem.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jonathan Nicholson at HuffPost:

Vice President Kamala Harris, in her first major economic policy address since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, unveiled Friday proposals to ease the costs of housing and food as part of a larger effort to create “an opportunity economy.” The speech in Raleigh, N.C., which had been widely anticipated to fill in some details of broader themes Harris has hit in her public appearances, also took a few jabs at rival GOP nominee Donald Trump and his proposals. Harris defined an “opportunity economy” as one “where everyone can compete and have a real chance to succeed. Everyone, regardless of who they are or where they start, has an opportunity to build wealth for themselves and their children.” The economy, and specifically inflation, is seen as one of Harris’ biggest weak spots, even as it has quickly recovered from the short but sharp downturn caused by the 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. While joblessness has remained below 4% for much of Harris’ term as vice president, inflation on a 12-month basis hit a four-decade high in 2022 and voters remain concerned about how high prices have remained. Harris’ proposals laid out Friday looked to assuage some of that concern and give voters a new target for their ire: greedy corporations. “When I am elected president, I will make it a top priority to bring down costs and increase economic security for all Americans. As president, I will take on the high costs that matter most to most Americans like the cost of food,” Harris said.

“I know most businesses are creating jobs, contributing to our economy and playing by the rules, but some are not and that’s just not right and we need to take action when that is the case,” she said. She cited proposals to penalize “opportunistic companies that exploit crises” to price gouge and to boost competition in the food industry. On housing, Harris said she will “take down barriers and cut red tape” to increase the supply of housing, with a target of 3 million new homes available for purchase or rental by the end of her first term. She also said she’d fight for a law to prevent corporations that own rental properties from colluding to fix prices and backed helping first-time homebuyers with their purchases by providing a $25,000 government payment toward their homes. Harris also said her proposals, which she did not put a price tag on, would be accomplished while reducing the government’s budget deficit. She did not provide details on how they would be paid for.

This afternoon, Vice President and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris delivered a brilliant speech on her economic plans, especially in regards to fixing the housing crisis and combatting price-gouging.

#HarrisWalz2024

See Also:

HuffPost: Kamala Harris’ Big Economic Speech Breaks With Biden And Continues His Legacy

[eretzyisrael]

by Stacy Gittleman

Tlaib repeatedly used the term genocide — a term originally coined to describe the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust — when describing the tragic deaths of Gazan civilians. All casualty figures from the now eight-month war come from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Ministry of Health. Leading urban war experts, including West Point’s John Spencer, repeatedly stated that the precautions Israel has taken to prevent civilian harm during this war not only surpasses that of any military in history, including the United States, but also go above and beyond what is required by international law, according to reporting from Tablet magazine.

According to reports from the Israel Defense Forces, 12,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed and most of these are men.

Tlaib also repeatedly delivered a message that providing Israel with military aid takes away from funding social issues that are important to her progressive constituents. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the federal government allocated about 1% of total spending to foreign aid. This is consistent with trends over the past 20 years.

According to the Congressional Research Service, the United States committed over $3.3 billion in foreign assistance to Israel in 2022, with $8.8 million allocated to the country’s economy and the rest toward the Israeli military.

All current military aid to Israel is part of the 10-year, $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding signed with the U.S. in 2016. The MOU supports updating the Israeli aircraft fleet and maintaining the country’s missile defense system. The agreement commits $500 million in missile defense funding and $3.3 billion in other military funding each year from 2019 to 2028.

In February, Congress passed an emergency package of military aid to Israel to the tune of $14 billion. To this, Tlaib decried the decision as “funding genocide.”

To the responses of “shame” from the audience, Tlaib said: “I watched my colleagues, one by one voting yes to send $14 billion to the apartheid regime. All I kept thinking is that the United States is the primary investor and funder of genocide. We are literally co-conspirators.”

Getting it wrong

Of local interest was Tlaib’s misleading claim that there is currently no lead-free drinking water for Detroit’s schoolchildren.

In 2018, lead and copper were detected in water from drinking fountains in many Detroit Public Schools Community District buildings. All drinking fountains were disabled and covered with garbage bags.

In 2019, according to Chalk-beat, over 500 water hydration stations were installed at every district school with built-in filters to purify the water from any lead or copper. The project was made possible by $3 million in donations from companies, foundations, organizations and individual donors. No taxpayer money was on the project.

Additional funding signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in February 2024 provided $50 million in state funding to install lead-reducing water stations at schools and childcare centers throughout the state.

All state public schools and childcare centers must test their drinking water every two years, according to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.

[jasper-is-autistic-old-blog]

howdy! today i wanna talk about the aac system i use and go over how i use it

im currently using the app Coughdrop on an Amazon Kindle Fire 7. the version from 2022 i believe, which i think is the most recent. it was the least expensive new tablet i could get.

it's in a foam case that looks like Spiderman! i chose all black because it's unobtrusive and goes with my aesthetic but it was also available in red with black eyes and some other colors

i currently use a board called vocal flair 112. i previously used quick core 112 and this is similar, but has a built in on screen keyboard. which means i get less buttons on the home page but it's fine because i found myself pulling up the keyboard frequently to fill in the gaps even with that many buttons.

here's a screenshot, i haven't edited this page, i just use it as the default:

i don't actually make it speak aloud often when im out in public. the person with me who's supporting me (usually my mom) reads my screen if i need to talk to someone else. this is almost purely out of anxiety. the fear that someone will not hear me the first time, that they wont listen or won't understand, that someone will overhear a robotic voice and stare, etc. but it's an improvement over my previous method of texting my mom, pointing at menus, and mumbling or whispering until i either gave up or she finally managed to hear me.

i use this feature in coughdrop to have her read the screen:

it's found under the "repeats" section. it makes a large button you can press to voice the selection or you can have someone else read it.

i also quickly wanted to show my two "advocacy" boards. one is a premade board that ive edited and the second is made by me from scratch. i think im going to combine them eventually, but ive been lazy about it

these don't reflect my current "public use" pronouns, but that's fine.

my speech has always been pretty intermittent and unreliable in some situations, but more recently ive experienced some skill regression that makes it harder than ever to use verbal speech. even when relaxed and comfortable, typing or using aac is easier for me. and when even slightly stressed or overwhelmed or even overly happy or excited, it's very hard to impossible to get any words out.

im hoping to get better about actually using the voice feature instead of showing people my screen. the only time ive ever actually used aac to communicate with a stranger i showed them my screen. i have a lot of anxiety about not being heard which im sure comes from the fact that my voice doesn't always work and that's pretty scary at times. it seems im both afraid of not being heard and being heard but being made fun of or dismissed. im not sure what would be worse.

anyway, sorry for the anxiety tangent.

im hoping to get a strap for the case soon so it's easier to carry around. i tend to have several things with me at all times, my phone, talker, Nintendo switch, my small backpack, and a stim toy or comfort item. it's nice when i manage to cut back on what im carrying and it works out well, but sometimes i just need all those things to get through a situation.

i don't actually own the coughdrop app. im using a free version. it times out after about 15 minutes and you have to exit and enter again, as well as other premium features not being available. i was hoping to eventually save up for it but the price has increased recently to the point where it is out of my budget. maybe if i get a job eventually? even then im not sure if i can justify the cost. the monthly price also went up, which sucks. c'est la vie.

if you have any questions at all, im happy to try to answer! inbox or ask box or reblogs or anything works.

thanks for reading!

[southeastasianists]

In February 2023, a few months after I departed from my field site in Singapore, the Deputy Prime Minister announced significant changes to Singapore’s housing policies. In his eagerly anticipated budget speech for 2023, Lawrence Wong reaffirmed Singapore’s commitment to nurturing familial aspirations among Singaporeans and proceeded to outline measures aimed at reducing the uncertainties faced by (heterosexual) couples in their housing journeys. Chief among these measures was the granting of extra balloting chances to families with children and young married couples aged 40 and below (Ong, 2023). 1 Previously, both engaged and married couples received two ballot chances each, whereas now legally married couples and married couples with children would receive three balloting chances.

This announcement and its implications must be understood within context. Approximately 80% of Singaporeans reside in public housing flats (Lin, 2022), 2 representing some of the highest flat ownership rates in Asia and underscoring the success of Singapore’s public housing model—a model that Singaporeans and its leaders rightly take pride in. However, this success comes with a caveat. In Singapore, flat ownership is contingent upon adhering to and staying on a particular life path.

In brief, there are several pathways to acquiring a public flat. Among them, the Build-to-Order (BTO) housing program, known locally as “BTO,” is the most affordable and accessible route for Singaporean citizens to own a public flat. Eligibility to apply for a BTO before the age of 35 hinges on the formation of—or in the case of engaged couples, the intention to form—a conventional family nucleus. 3 (Singles may participate after 35.) 4 Eligible couples or families submit an online application, which is then entered into a computer-generated ballot. This ballot, occurring four times a year, can induce significant anxiety, as couples may succeed on their first attempt or as late as their 13th try. 5

It is this anxiety and uncertainty that the Deputy Prime Minister sought to alleviate by offering married couples more balloting chances. Returning to the formalities of the BTO process, couples must then wait 3 to 6 years for the flat to be built, and they risk losing their down payment (an amount that can be as high as 20,000 Singapore dollars) 6 if they separate or divorce during this period. Subsequently, after moving into the flat, they must fulfil what is termed a Minimum Occupation Period. For those who balloted as a married or engaged couples this typically entails remaining married and residing in the flat for a period of five to ten years, depending on the location of the flat. In other words, access to a subsidized flat in Singapore before the age of 35 is heavily contingent upon coupling and maintaining that union.

During my PhD fieldwork, I began to realize that what I was studying was not merely housing policy, but rather people’s endeavours to live together, and the various modes of romantic labour they engage in to synchronize their relational lives with grant, balloting, and flat building cycles. Particularly, I observed my interlocutors, many of whom were still in university, attempting to pre-empt uncertainties in balloting and long wait times by committing to serious relationships early. The idea was that finding a partner early would enable them to wait out multiple balloting attempts and access optimal grant opportunities. Often, they disclosed to me that their BTO partner was also their first romantic partner.

To facilitate this accelerated romantic trajectory, my interlocutors often adopted a decidedly pragmatic attitude toward romance. They sought not necessarily passion or love, but rather what Adely (2016) 7 termed compatibility when writing about marriage in Jordan. Compatibility, for Adely and for my interlocutors as well, referred to “more practical issues of financial security, the ability of a couple’s families to get along, as well as shared expectations of married life” (103). When one girl realized that her then-partner was not aligned with her romantic schedule, she reached out to her friends to ask if she should “leave now and cut my losses”. In a departure from conventional romantic timelines, I observed my interlocutors transitioning courtship to the period after they had already made a down payment for a flat but before the flat was ready. In essence, they committed to purchasing a flat together (and indirectly, to marriage), and then sought to determine or mold each other into the right marital or cohabiting partner. The implication seemed to be that, as one interlocutor expressed, a “person can be made right”. Another stated that the interim wait for the flat was a “rehearsal” for marriage. Yet, despite their best efforts, I also witnessed relationships fail. Ironically, they failed not despite, but often because of, attempting to fit their romantic lives onto a narrow path.

When one of my primary interlocutors, a 23-year-old Chinese-Singaporean woman named Grace, broke up with her boyfriend of a few years in the middle of my fieldwork, it came as a shock to both of us. They had already selected a unit and made their first down payment for the flat. She had diligently assessed their compatibility and conducted due diligence with extreme care. In fact, when they first got together, she asked him a list of questions about how he would handle familial conflict, his approach to finances, and his views on children. Satisfied that he was a stable partner who could be trusted for the long term, they agreed to ballot together. The irony was that when they broke up, the reasons she pointed to had nothing to do with their life goals or finances. Instead, she said she felt that he was almost too stable for her – “attraction mounts for him the more stable our relationship is, but I realize that it doesn’t work for me this way.” She had simply fallen out of love, and consequently lost her down payment. She was not alone. While some of my interlocutors managed to devise ingenious kinship solutions to circumvent flat restrictions, many realized that the romantic arrangements they sought in their schooling years or early twenties were not what worked best for them. In other words, paradoxically, the pursuit of the stability incentivized by the BTO generated more modes of romantic and financial uncertainties.

This is why I was uncertain about how to interpret the announcement regarding married couples receiving more balloting chances. A starting point could be to bemoan the continued lack of attention paid to the needs of those whose life trajectories differ from statist reproductive visions—such as single mothers, queer couples, and others. However, even among the group explicitly prioritized by the BTO, there appears to be a romantic hierarchy in effect. The recent change evidently favors married couples over engaged couples. In a Today article (Ong, 2023), 8 an interviewee is quoted as saying that the change would offer “some safety net so that if the timeline does not fit and we get married, after we get married, we’ll at least have some advantage.” In theory, I understand how this change could potentially alleviate some of the pressure to enter into relationships early. Couples could initially ballot multiple times as an engaged couple, and when they are ready to commit, they could then marry and ballot for a flat together. With increased balloting chances, they are now more likely to secure a flat. This, theoretically, should reduce the uncertainty that couples feel about obtaining a flat, a factor that supposedly drives young couples to rush into the ballot. However, I remain cautious. If housing supplies do not increase significantly, 9 this would imply that it would become more difficult for engaged couples to secure flats, while marginally easier for married couples. In other words, it would extend an already exclusionary criterion – between singles and normatively coupled individuals – to the differentiation between engaged and legally married couples.

While couples enter the BTO with the expectation and hope of eventual marriage, they also understand the inherent risks involved. For my interlocutors, expediting marriage closer to key collection was a strategy to limit potential entanglements in the event of a relationship breakdown. This remains a relevant concern considering the need to meet grant deadlines and the wait for a flat, which means the need to start finding a partner young might not change significantly. I worry that what has changed now is that some couples might feel that instead of using the waiting time as a “rehearsal,” a prelude to marriage, they might now feel incentivized to simply get married. This timeline, at least in the iteration that I found in the field, leaves little room for young people to evolve, to experiment, and to figure out who they are and what they want in a romantic relationship and marriage. We talk a lot about aspirations in Singapore �� aspirations for a flat, for children, for marriage – that we seem to forget that desire, and the different but often messy paths through which people discover themselves and their needs, are also part of the calculus of life. Forgetting this ironically produces more, not less, romantic and, if one were to count the potential loss of a down payment, financial instability.

Joy Xin Yuan Wang Joy is a PhD Candidate at the University of Cambridge, Department of Social Anthropology.

Notes:

Ong, Justin . 2023. “Additional BTO Ballot Chance for ‘Prioritised First-Timers’ a Fairer Move than Reserving More Flats for Them: Analysts.” TODAY. February 16, 2023. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/prioritised-first-timers-hdb-bto-flats-2109006#:~:text=the%20previous%20day ↩

Lin, Chen. 2022. “Singapore Sees the Rise of Million-Dollar Public Housing.” Reuters, August 31, 2022, sec. Asian Markets. https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/singapore-sees-rise-million-dollar-public-housing-2022-08-31/ ↩

In brief, an official family nucleus in Singapore is generally defined as

a) If you are married, you, your spouse, and your children (if any). b) If you are single: you and your parents. c) If you are widowed/divorced/separated: you and your children under your custody. d) Fiancé and fiancée e) Orphaned siblings

Marriage is central to the eligibility criteria because four out of the five officially endorsed pathways to forming a family nucleus flow from marriage. Note, for example, that option C does not account for mothers and fathers who have children out of wedlock. ↩

n August 2023, after this essay was written, the government announced greater changes to housing in Singapore. Two major changes included the recategorization of mature and non-mature estates into three categories- Standard, Plus, Prime. Prior to this change singles looking to purchase to BTO flats could only purchase 2-room flats in non-mature estates. While Singles continue to be limited in the size of BTO flat they can purchase (only 2-bedroom flats), they are now allowed to purchase flats from any location. (See this article for the details of the new changes https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/national-day-rally-2023-hdb-flats-singles-prime-bto-resale-3711471) ↩

In the field I met couples who only succeeded on the 11th time. This rice media article suggests that it is possible to fail 13 times at the ballot: https://www.ricemedia.co/bto-hdb-singapore/ ↩

Fong, Kenneth . 2021. “Planning to Break-up after You BTO-Ed? You Might Lose about $40,000!” Blog.seedly.sg. September 25, 2021. https://blog.seedly.sg/break-up-bto-hdb-application/ ↩

Adely, Fida. “A different kind of love: compatibility (Insijam) and marriage in Jordan” The Arab Studies Journal, Vol. 24, no. 2, 2016, pp. 102–27. ↩

Ong, Justin . 2023. “Additional BTO Ballot Chance for ‘Prioritised First-Timers’ a Fairer Move than Reserving More Flats for Them: Analysts.” TODAY. February 16, 2023. https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/prioritised-first-timers-hdb-bto-flats-2109006#:~:text=the%20previous%20day ↩

The government has made promises and proposed measures to increase the supply of BTO flats. The most recent signs in February 2024 appear promising, with some flats promised to be delivered in a timeframe of within three years (https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/housing/19600-bto-flats-to-go-on-sale-in-2024-over-three-exercises-instead-of-four-desmond-lee). However, how this will play out and how the acceleration of flat delivery will affect romantic timelines and decisions is yet to be seen. ↩

[nevertheless-moving]

I posted 162 times in 2022

66 posts created (41%)

96 posts reblogged (59%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@nevertheless-moving

@phoenixyfriend

@willowcrowned

@lullabyknell

@twinterrors29

I tagged 139 of my posts in 2022

Only 14% of my posts had no tags

#star wars - 68 posts

#murderbot - 21 posts

#nevertheless meta - 17 posts

#my au - 13 posts

#kenobi spoilers - 12 posts

#kenobi - 11 posts

#murderbot diaries - 11 posts

#tbobf - 10 posts

#stone soup - 9 posts

#ask - 9 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#if you ever feel like singing or danceing or drawing or any of the things you really truly dont have to be good at them for it to be fun

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

1,026 notes - Posted February 14, 2022

#4

today we celebrate Esther for being nasty hot and sleeping with the right dude. thank u for risking your sugar daddy and also your life. from the bottom of my heart, you fucking rock. now, please join me in doing a shot in her honor.

1,178 notes - Posted March 16, 2022

#3

sorry not sorry but murderbot dropping ‘i was going to kill all humans until i saw sanctuary moon and then i decided i’d rather watch that instead’ on the sanctuary moon team like a space future atom bomb is exquisite.

assistant sound director going home like ‘yeah your other son might be a doctor but guess who stopped a mass murder?’ a couple lead actors developing even worse diva/god complexes than they already had. the insane stress on the production team ‘if we don’t get the next season out when we promised it might snap and kill thousands of innocent people. it probably won’t. but it might.’ the overwhelming preening desire to work it into ad campaigns, acceptance speeches, casual brunches, etc, balanced out by marketing weeping ‘people do not like SecUnits! we can NOT advertise ourselves as the preferred serial for serial killers!’ crossed with that one extremely paranoid dude in accounting going ‘shutupshutup it can and will hear you and it can and will find you and it can and will kill you stoptalkingaboutit.’ the studio allocating a 5% budget increase for next season instead of the planned 5% budget decrease just—just in case. the odd relief the secondary love interest’s actor feels: ‘well when the robot revolution comes i’ll be one of the last to die’. the odd nervousness the primary antagonist actress feels: ‘it knows this is fiction right? it’s not mad at me, right?’ One of the writers who had been increasingly phoning it in over the last few years suddenly quitting drinking and turning their life around because their work has meaning dammit their work has MEANING.

1,898 notes - Posted February 7, 2022

#2

alright so people learn to express themselves through observation, right? it’s one of the reasons facial expressions and perception there of vary country to country, why people might end up more expressive/stoic depending on your parents/guardians pattern of behavior. and murderbot didn’t acculturate itself watching people around it, it hates watching real people. murderbot developed it’s sense of self watching soap operas. tens of thousands of hours of soap operas. We already know it’s face is painfully easy to read, and while murderbot attributes it to not having practice controlling it’s expression without the benefit of armor:

Then she added, “You know, you can stay here in the crew area if you want. Would you like that?” They all looked at me, most of them smiling. One disadvantage in wearing the armor is that I get used to opaquing the faceplate. I’m out of practice at controlling my expression. Right now I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in the region of stunned horror, or maybe appalled horror.  Mensah sat up, startled. She said hurriedly, “Or not, you know, whatever you like.”  I said, “I need to check the perimeter,” and managed to turn and leave the crew area in a totally normal way and not like I was fleeing from a bunch of giant hostiles.

I would argue that it’s not just lack of practice being neutral—due to it’s particular set of formative experiences, it’s default facial expressions are, in human terms, almost absurdly overexaggerarated. That look of horror is the same one the sanctuary moon terraforming supervisor had when she discovered her twin sister was sleeping with her second husband, and they were both planning on framing her for the death of the colony representative.

2,308 notes - Posted February 25, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

There is — god I don’t know how to put this — there is something profound and tragic and senseless in the fact that the disappointment I feel in JK Rowling so closely mirrors the disappointment Harry and the rest of us felt for his role models. Dumbledore saved the world, Dumbledore was manipulative. Snape was cruel, Snape protected Harry. The Marauders bullied, the Marauders loved. 

Rowling’s failure of empathy and the hurt she’s inflicting cuts so deep because I feel immense, inescapable love for the world she gave us all. How can I still love what comes from someone hateful? How can I stop? If I continue to sing praises of her art does that make me hateful?

Stories are important, especially the stories we’re told as children. They shape our character, they form the framework of how we understand the world, they do. And Harry Potter was the story, it can not be understated, and those of you who feel the same don’t need me to explain. And now when I lean on that to understand this sorrow I’m left with a recursive sort of remorse.

It’s a very raw and painful feeling.

3,052 notes - Posted January 1, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[mariacallous]

This month marks 10 years since Meduza’s launch. We know a decade may not seem like a long time for a media outlet — after all, some of you still read the same newspapers your grandparents did. These publications are a part of your identity and something you can always count on. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury in Russia (though we hope we will one day). For us, 10 years — all while in exile and under relentless pressure from the Kremlin — is an enormous milestone.

And if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here: without your attention, trust, and support, we would never have made it to 10 years. And we don’t mean that in an abstract sense. In 2022, after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities blocked our website for reporting the truth about the war, and international sanctions caused us to lose most of our donations from Russian readers. We weren’t sure we’d survive, but we turned to our international audience — and you saved us.

A year later, the Kremlin banned our work entirely, making it a crime to work for us or even share links to our stories. Despite this, we currently have millions of readers inside the country. Time and time again, the Russian authorities have tried to shut Meduza down — and each time, we’ve remained standing thanks to your unwavering support. This milestone belongs as much to you as it does to us.

Since the Russian authorities labeled Meduza an “undesirable organization” in 2023, anyone in the country who donates to us risks facing felony charges. That’s why we rely on our readers abroad for support. Please help us keep delivering the truth to the millions who depend on us.

If you’d like to celebrate our anniversary with us, here are a few items from our wishlist.

Wish No. 1

First and foremost, we want to keep working. We don’t use paywalls, and our correspondents risk their freedom to provide crucial on-the-ground reporting. Our site faces relentless digital attacks, which cost our assailants hundreds of thousands of dollars. But we refuse to give up. You can help us remain standing by signing up for a monthly donation. A recurring contribution will provide the most effective support, making it possible for us to plan our budget and stay resilient.

And please remember: freedom of speech is as vital as it is fragile. The ability to publish the truth without fear is easy to take for granted, but it’s also easy to lose. We’ll keep fighting for it as long as we can.

Wish No. 2

Tell at least one person about Meduza and explain why our work matters — first of all, to you personally!

You can also show your friends some messages we’ve received from our readers. For people in Russia, our work is essential — just take it from them:

Anonymous

Russia 

I wish for you all to keep working no matter what. Thanks for doing what you do! In a world of total propaganda, access to independent journalism is vital. And without you, breaking through this information bubble would be a lot harder. Hang in there, and we’ll do the same.

Milena

Moscow

I wish you the resilience to overcome all the hardships of the times we’re in, endure it all, and witness Russia become a free, democratic country. I’m not confident that it’ll happen quickly, but hey, you guys are only 10 years old :) I have hope that you’ll be around to see better days and to write about them.

Tatyana

St. Peterburg

Please don’t stop. Every day when I open Meduza, I not only read the news (and truthful, reliable news at that), but I also see that there are people using their talents to make the world better and more truthful, rather than selling their talents to anyone willing to pay. This helps me stay hopeful that the world isn’t as bad as it seems today.

Polina

Russia

I’ve only been with you since 2022, but you help me to keep going and stay sane in this world. Keep living, keep writing, and keep finding joy no matter what! And we’ll continue sharing that joy with you.

Sergey

Volgograd

Meduza provides reliable information, helps me understand the meaning of current events, reassures me that I’m not alone, and helps me not lose my faith in humanity and my belief that we’re in this together, moving in the right direction.

Alexey

Moscow

Please just hold on and persevere through these terrible times. Thank you for all you do — it’s an invaluable contribution to the future we’re all striving for.

Alexey

From Russia, currently living in Los Angeles

Another year has flown by, and you continue to remind us that the truth can be sharp and uncomfortable. May your tentacles reach even deeper into the dark thickets of political intrigue and social upheaval, delivering news that may not always be pleasant but that’s so necessary. I wish for you to remain a beacon shining into the darkest abyss, even when everyone else would rather turn a blind eye. And may every new day be a reminder: Meduza sees everything.

Ivan

Karelia

Please hang in there, guys. With all your remaining strength — even when you feel like there’s none left. I know you can do it. I’ve been with you and I’ll stay with you. You guys are doing an amazing job — you’re an example and an inspiration to me.

Svetlana

From Moscow, currently living in the U.S.

Congratulations! I read you and listen to you every day. You provide me with daily confirmation that there are many of us, and yes, you give me hope. But most importantly, you’re documenting history, making a record of every day of this rogue regime.

Natalya

Moscow

Thank you guys! I read your work every morning and every evening. In addition to the news, it’s crucial to know that there are like-minded people in the world, that many see things the way I do, and that not everyone is claiming that black is white. And that there’s a place where I can find a clear reflection of what’s happening, insightful articles, updates on the world of culture, and even practical advice (like how to put together a first aid kit, etc.). Thank you so much! I wish you prosperity, each and every one of you. And please, keep doing what you’re doing!

Galina

St. Petersburg 

In the Tarkovsky film “The Sacrifice,” a young boy persistently waters a barren tree. And it flourishes. Maybe, one day, Russia will be free. It may take a tremendous amount of time. Thank you for giving us hope. Thank you for being there. Let’s fight against evil together.

You can also challenge your friends to test their knowledge of Russia with this quiz we created to mark our anniversary. After they take it, let them know how Meduza’s work gives you a better understanding of what’s really happening in Russia — and how events there affect the rest of the world.

Wish No. 3

Subscribe to our YouTube channel! We launched it quite recently, and it currently contains episodes of our podcast, The Naked Pravda. But stay tuned — we’ll soon be sharing videos on the most significant developments in Russia. Your subscription and feedback will help support this project.

Don’t have a YouTube account? No problem! Sign up for our newsletters:

Meduza’s daily newsletter: Stay updated on the latest developments in Russia and the most important stories from the Russian-language media.

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Bringing you the truth about what’s happening every day in Russia is our honor — and a job we don’t take lightly. Thank you for sharing our stories and donating to our work so we can continue our vital reporting.

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Meduza

[catgirltoes]

The state of tribal children in these traumatic residential schools is worse. The truth is that students in these schools are being stripped off their identities, and even after multiple exposés on deaths and sexual abuse cases in government-run residential tribal schools in Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Assam, no concrete measures are being taken. Instead, the government plans to set up more residential schools by 2022 under the garb of tribal education and development. Every block with more than 50% ST population and at least 20,000 tribal persons will have an Ekalavya Model Residential School, said the finance minister in his budget speech this February.

India has never evaluated the dangers, purpose and politics of setting up these residential model schools for tribal children. Since the mid 1990s, post liberalisation, many corporations have started operating residential tribal schools as a part of their CSR policies. These companies have a strategic interest in the lands that tribal communities inhabit. Most private-run residential schools in India receive large amounts of funds from companies which wrest control over tribal lands. In fact, residential schools have become a new-age displacement mechanism, under the pretence of an assimilationist education system.

This seems extremely similar to the explicitly genocidal Indian Residential Schools in Canada.

[horoscope1726]

How will Sani Sade Sati be for a Mesha Rasi Virgo ascendant Saturn in the 2nd house Libra?

For a Virgo ascendant (Mesha Rasi) with Saturn (Sani) transiting through the 2nd house (Libra) during Sade Sati, here are five key points to consider:

Financial and Material Challenges: The 2nd house represents finances, resources, and values. During Sade Sati, Saturn's transit through this house can bring increased responsibility and potential challenges related to money and possessions. You might face financial constraints or the need to reassess your spending habits and savings.

Focus on Values and Self-Worth: Saturn's influence can prompt you to evaluate your values and sense of self-worth. This period may lead to a deeper understanding of what is truly important to you and encourage you to establish more meaningful and practical goals related to personal and financial security.

Family and Speech: The 2nd house also relates to family and speech. Saturn's transit may bring more serious or restrained interactions with family members. You might also become more aware of the impact of your words, leading to more thoughtful and controlled communication.

Increased Responsibility: You may experience a heightened sense of responsibility regarding your financial and material resources. This period often calls for disciplined management of money, careful budgeting, and a long-term approach to securing your assets.

If you want to know on the basis of your horoscope, then you can take the help of Kundli Chakra Professional 2022 software. Which can give you a better answer. And you can also connect (918595675042) with us for more information.

[deramin2]

People calling any queer death "Bury Your Gays" is so funny/maddening to me because it shows they do not engage with queer media. They only engage in straight media that grudgingly has queer characters that can easily be gotten rid of and so live in constant hypervigilence over it. Or they've just been part of queering straight media where they're introducing queerness to the story themselves and always under threat of that being explicitly not true (or superhell).

But if you actually watch queer media by queer people you'd know there's no taboo on death in queer media at all. It's a frequent subject actually. What makes a good death, what we learn from those dying, how we hold onto and honor the dead while moving on. Films like Spoiler Alert (2022), Philadelphia (1993), Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997), or shows like Rūrangi (2020-) and Angels in America (2003) introduce queer death or the inevitability of it right at the start and then grapple with how it ripples out.

To act like a community that's faced genocide by disease, hate crimes, and high suicide rates on top of the mundanity of death that they should never talk about death is deeply offensive. It's anti-queer because it denies us talking about our biggest struggles. Including death in dangerous jobs or lifestyles we were pushed into to find freedom while marginalized. If we're not allowed to talk about death then we're not allowed to talk about reality.

I want people who want only soft kids shows to go back to watching soft kids shows and leave the rest of us the hell alone to make meaningful art about reality. I want people to stop using "representation" and social justice language to stifle and oppress queer speech. I want people to shut the fuckup about wanting queer media if they refuse to engage with our actual industry and traditions, most of which is independent. Instead of complaining nothing's out there because it wasn't advertised to them with a big budget and was too human when they did notice it.

I used to think I hated romcoms. Turns out I hate straight romcoms. Queer romcoms are all about deconstructing three tropes and norms I hated and they're great. Some of the best and funniest and most relatable films I've seen, even as an aroace person. Even the sex scenes are so much more meaningful they don't annoy me or feel awkward. (Riotously laughing at the sex scenes in Bros (2022). Peak comedy.)

I want to chew the furniture because 3 years ago I switched to watching mostly queer media and very little straight media. There's so much more out there for me to watch still, and they're done of the mist diverse and thoughtful and real stories I've ever had the pleasure to watch. We have such a rich and brave media tradition. And people just blow all of it off to complain about anything breaking into the mainstream actually being part of those traditions. Including traditions of challenging and complicated relationships that lack definite resolution. And including death. So many of our best films include death as an inevitable part of life. Death as the contrast that reminds us to live and love every day. To honor our elders (and those who became elders at 20 taking their last breathes too soon).

I'm taking "Bury Your Gays" away from people as a concept until they learn what it actually means and properly engage with real queer media culture through more than fandom discourse. You've all lost privileges through your rampant ignorance. Come back when you've learned to be a grown up.

[girlwithnosense]

ASSAM FLOODS – DISASTER AMID NATURE

Assam, a renowned state with picturesque landscapes, is known for its natural beauty and rich culture. It is home to various hills and mountain ranges, from the Patkai Range to the Khasi Hills, adding to its beauty. The state is also home to the Brahmaputra, one of the largest rivers in the country, popularly known as the "Sorrow of Assam." Describing the river in such a vague term carries significant meaning for many people that most of us tend to overlook. The beauty of the Brahmaputra also brings with it a never-ending array of destruction and sorrow. Each year, the river swells and overflows, leading to widespread floods that wreak havoc across Assam. The floodwaters submerge villages, farmlands, and wildlife sanctuaries, displacing thousands of people and animals. The relentless floods result in the loss of lives, homes, crops, and livestock, leaving behind a trail of devastation.

The human toll of the Assam floods is immense. Thousands of families are forced to evacuate their homes and take refuge in relief camps. The loss of shelter and livelihood plunges them into uncertainty and despair. The floods also disrupt access to clean water, food, and healthcare, exacerbating the suffering of the affected communities. Moreover, it also results in the closing of schools and colleges as they either submerge or are converted into shelters for affected people.

Addressing the issue of Assam floods requires a multifaceted approach. Improving infrastructure, such as building more robust embankments and dams, is crucial. Additionally, implementing effective early warning systems and emergency response plans can help minimize the impact of floods. Sustainable land and water management practices, along with reforestation efforts, can also play a significant role in mitigating the effects of floods.

I cannot say that a lot has been done, but I can surely say that the government can do a lot or has to be done. Both the central and state governments need to take action at the moment to save the beautiful landscape from drowning in the hands of nature. Most of the dams are poorly built, and even though the Chief Minister belongs to the ruling party, the state lacks proper infrastructure in flood-affected areas, with muddy roads and bamboo bridges that fail to stand before the deadly floods.

To quote the 2024 budget, the total receipts other than borrowings and the total expenditure are estimated at ₹32.07 lakh crore and ₹48.21 lakh crore, respectively.  The finance Minister announced a comprehensive financial package worth Rs 11,500 crore to bolster flood management initiatives and irrigation projects in various flood-affected states across the nation. We have to wait and see how much of this money actually goes for flood management practices and how much of it goes in the hands of greedy politicians and contractors.“Assam grapples with floods every year by the Brahmaputra River and its tributaries, originating outside India. We will assist Assam in flood management and related projects,” Sitharaman said in her Budget speech in Lok Sabha. The death of thousands is reduced to a mere sentence. Are they being oblivious? They can’t be if we are together.

There are divergent paths that can be taken by the government as well as by people to tackle this age-old problem. The first would be the development of the infrastructure by constructing embankments and dykes. Community preparedness would be a secondary choice if the state had basic infrastructural facilities. The government should also develop and regularly practice community evacuation plans, ensuring everyone knows the safest routes and emergency shelters. For example, in 2022, the Assam State Disaster Management Authority (ASDMA) introduced the "Flood Preparedness Index" to enhance flood management. This tool involves creating scorecards for each district to evaluate disaster preparedness. District disaster management officers manually answer a series of "yes/no" questions to assess administrative compliance with predefined actions required before the monsoon season. While these parameters are essential, they only measure preparedness and do not account for comprehensive data on losses, needs, or vulnerabilities, nor do they consider how these factors vary across districts or contexts or what actions are necessary to mitigate the worst impacts of floods on people.

The Flood Report as of 03-07-2022 stated that 26 districts were affected: Bajali, Barpeta, Biswanath, Cachar, Chirang, Darrang, Dhemaji, Dibrugarh, Dima-Hasao, Goalpara, Golaghat, Hailakandi, Hojai, Kamrup, Kamrup (M), Karimganj, Lakhimpur, Majuli, Morigaon, Nagaon, Nalbari, Sivasagar, Sonitpur, Tamulpur, Tinsukia, Udalguri, Dibrugarh. Rivers flowing above the danger level included Kopili (Dharamtul), Disang (Nanglamuraghat), Burhidihing (Chenimari(Khowang)), and Brahmaputra (Dhubri; Tezpur; Neamatigha). The Assam Flood Report as of 05-08-2024 stated that only three districts – Sivasagar, Golaghat, and Dhemaji – were affected. But in reality, more than three were affected, as there was no mention of my home district, Nagaon, where many old artificial mounds were broken, leading to loss of lives and property.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) observed in the first installment of its Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) that was released on 9 August 2021 that “…the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events have increased since the 1950s over most land areas” and that “human-induced climate change is likely the main driver.” Thus, as climate change tips toward a full-blown crisis, northeast India faces the prospect of more extreme rainfall. The ongoing floods in Assam should be seen as a wake-up call that finally galvanizes action on adaptation. Although engineering solutions such as embankments still have a role to play in mitigating floods, they are no longer sufficient. Nature-based solutions, therefore, have an obvious place in Assam’s flood defense toolbox and provide a powerful complement (or alternative) to engineering solutions. Working alongside engineering solutions, nature-based solutions will boost the overall resilience at all levels of flooding.

The floods of Assam highlight the fragile balance between nature’s beauty and its devastating power. It shows how nature can quench your thirst and drown you simultaneously. Addressing this requires more than just infrastructure; it calls for innovative flood management and community preparedness as well as the voices of the people of this land. As climate change intensifies the challenge, urgent and collaborative action is needed to protect Assam's people and preserve its rich heritage.

[beardedmrbean]

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Monday that 23 of its 32 member states were expected to meet the alliance's defense spending commitments this year. That is 13 countries more compared to last year's data, and five more than an earlier estimate in February.

"This is good for Europe and good for America," Stoltenberg said in a speech unveiling the newest numbers in Washington, "especially since much of this extra money is spent here in the United States."

The NATO defense investment target was agreed upon in 2014. The goal of the pledge was for members of the alliance to spend 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on national and joint defense, and to put 20% of annual defense expenditures toward new equipment. Much to the dismay of the US, the alliance's largest military power, only 10 countries had met this target last year.

At the 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius, member states agreed to make 2% of national GDP the minimal defense spending commitment rather than the highest target to aim for. This commitment, coupled with the impression of Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine, appears to have had an effect, as NATO's most recent defense expenditure report shows. Across the alliance, all member states aside from Slovenia and Italy have upped their defense budget.

Germany and France increase spending

The leading three country countries spending the highest percentage of national GDP on defense are Poland (4.12%), Estonia (3.43%), and the US (3.38%). Among the countries who have stepped up their defense spending most noticeably are European powers Germany and France.

This year, Germany met the 2% defense target for the first time since the early 1990s, a defense ministry spokespersonsaid in February. Germanramped up its military spending in response to Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to NATO, Germany is gearing up to spend €90.5 billion ($97.2 billion) on defense this year.

The Netherlands, whose outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte iseyeing to become NATO's next Secretary,General, is also expected to fulfill the defense spending target.

Rutte is still missing approval from one country to get the job: Romania are yet to publicly back him. Like Rutte, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis is running to be the next NATO leader. But there is still time to iron out the vote, as Stoltenberg's term ends in October. 

The new list of countries expected to make the minimum target includes Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Romania.

Turkey, the Czech Repulic, Slovakia, the newest alliance member Sweden as well as their neighbor Norway are all also expected fulfill the 2% target. 

Greater investment in military equipment

Speaking to DW, Davis Ellison, a strategic analyst from the Hague Center for Strategic Studies, said that the collective recognition of NATO targets is especially noticeable when examining how much defense spending is now dedicated to new equipment.

"In the past, you had a lot of focus on personnel costs, which ranges everything from pension to health care and everything else," Ellison explained. "But now you have a much greater collective investment in equipment, which is more to meet NATO targets than anything else." The security expert pointed out that this extra spending compounded NATO's military might.

Of NATO's 32 member states, onlyCanadaandBelgiumare not expected to meet the NATO guideline of 20% defense spending going to equipment.  Iceland is also expected to fall short of the target, albeit because the country does not have a standing military at all.

Countries including Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, and Spain will not reach the NATO minimum defense spending goal.

Trump and Russia worries

Former US President Donald Trump, who is hoping to return to the White House after the November elections, rattled the alliance in February saying that he would "encourage" Russia to attack members of NATO who had not met their financial commitments.

"I would not protect [NATO members]," Trump said to supporters at a rally. "In fact, I would encourage [Russia] to do whatever ... they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills." This promted a strong responsefrom the White House, condemning Trump's statement as "appalling and unhinged." NATO chief Stoltenberg pointed out that the suggestion that "allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security."

Ellison believes that uncertainty about the future was prompting so many countries to increase their defense spending to meet NATO's targets. 

"There's always a little bit of that specter behind the scenes of what happens. If Donald Trump wins again, then there is significant reduction in US support to Europe," he said. "At the same time, I think it is just part of a collective recognition amongst many of the other NATO members, that there is a significant threat from Russia."

Ellison also believes that member states will reaffirm their defense spending commitments at the upcoming NATO summit in Washington ahead of the US elections in November.

"The real watershed for whether or not that sticks around would be the summit in the Netherlands next year, depending on what the administration is," he added. "But even beyond the US administration, I think there's a bit of a rush to get this, because you're also going to have the elections in the UK and France. This is a very election-heavy year."

The NATO summit hosted by the United States in Washington will take place from July 9-11.