#Co-ops

[hometoursandotherstuff]

If you like moody decor, you'll love "The Bakery," a 1bd, 1ba, co-op in New York City (Midtown, Manhattan). It's in a converted former bakery, so it's got a great industrial look, too. $1.275M + $2,061mo. maintenance fee.

There's a large living space with a great fireplace.

The fireplace is beautiful. I like the stone they chose.

There's a generous space for dining. I'm surprised that it's a pretty large unit for only a 1 bd. in Midtown.

The small kitchen is high end.

I wonder if, when they converted it, they painted the bricks black, and chose the dark colors, or if the current owners did.

It says that there's just one bedroom, but there's also this flex space that could be an office, guest room, or den.

Actually, the primary bedroom isn't very big. I wonder if the mirror is a closet or just an illusion.

Aren't the hallway walls unusual?

The bathroom is so full of mirrors plus a sink and large shower.

[anti-workshop]

So, there's a wonderful food co-op in our neighborhood that is really struggling right now. They've been a cornerstone of the community for decades and they're in danger of closing.

Their motto is "Food for people, not profit."

If that vibes with you, and you have a buck to spare, or share this post, it would be awesome. Thanks y'all.

[somethingmissingthiswaycomes]

The @indiesellersguild has printed merch now and ✨I want a tote bag ✨

I can maybe do that for myself after Christmas, idk.

[mysillycomics]

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[soapbbox]

Ooough I just know op is gonna take Meg to everyone else and elita is gonna be pissed while bee is just OMG HIIII ITS SO NICE TO SEE YOU!!! Bc that's his friend even if he is evil

That’s one of his first ever friends, of course he’s happy to see him!! Continuing from this comic.

[reasonsforhope]

"The existence and consumption of coffee has many advantages in human society, but perhaps the lesser reported advantage is what it can offer the environment.

There is arguably no other monocrop so capable of thriving in an intact, natural ecosystem, and in Ethiopia, where coffee is a major export, the adoption of climate-compatible and conservation strategies among coffee growers recently proved a major success, with over 5,000 acres of land reforested, 45% increases in household income, and a 70% increase in exported coffee.

Coffee is a major lifeblood of Ethiopia’s economy (we’re talking about a quarter of the whole), accounting for around half of the livelihood of 15 million people, 95% of whom are small landholding growers.

In the ecologically critical Ilu Ababor Zone of nation’s western region of Oromia, where Coffea arabica is native, Farm Africa led a project on sustainable agriculture among coffee growers inside 19 local forest management cooperatives totaling around 4,000 people between 2021 and 2024.

The results were better than a hot cup of coffee on a cold early morning, as the residents took to the skills, incentives, and even stakeholder meetings with great interest and dedication according to a report on the project entitled Coffee for Conservation.

Of the project aims regarding forest management and conservation, the objective was to instruct the landholders and growers in ways to get everything they needed from their forest homes without felling too many native trees.

For example, locals were shown how to cultivate fast-growing trees optimal for firewood in small plots, as well as methods on how to maximize the growth cycle of these fuel trees. Six tree nurseries were opened and staffed by around 60 people taught to sell seedlings for reforestation of native woodland in the area.

By the end of the project, over 300,000 seedlings had been planted over 5,000 acres of forest, and they enjoyed a five-year survival rate of 85%. Climate-smart practices such as cultivating bamboo for making the mats on which the coffee beans are dried, removed the need to truck in bamboo from other regions, while 66% of homes were able to be convinced to switch to energy-efficient wood stoves to reduce fuel consumption.

Most of the landholders growing coffee or managing the forest had plots for vegetable and fruit production to feed their families and those of their communities through trade. Percentages of these Ethiopians who adopted climate-smart farming techniques increased from 49% to 76%, while 10% more began growing fruit and vegetables. Income generated from the increased production amounted to around 280% more than what was made before the project, adjusted for inflation.

Coffee production, marketing, and returns, have all improved. 73% more coffee from the Ilu Ababor region is now export-quality than in 2021, and 44% meets the standards for specialty grade, which is up by 20% from 2021.

Connections with national financing intuitions have allowed some of the co-ops to buy proper equipment for drying and storage, as well as support by city marketing agencies who could work directly on behalf of the Ilu Ababor growers to carve out a space in the national and international markets.

“Prior to the project, our limited knowledge meant we had to sell our coffee to local traders at lower prices,” said Abde Musa, a member of the Abdi Bori forest management cooperative. “Now we’ve taken control and are the ones negotiating and determining the coffee prices.”

Co-op leaders received training in business management, quality control, and certification processes, which majorly improved their incomes. One of the 19 co-ops in particular grossed $58,500 on their coffee sales.

Project wide, incomes and access to financial services almost doubled, with the latter now reaching almost 100% of the community.

Lastly, deforestation plummeted in the area to just 0.08 acres a year.

There’s so much good news to read in the report on the project’s success beyond the headline data, like the Abdi Bori co-op’s incredible rise which saw coffee revenue increase by a multiple of 20 from 2018 to 2023, or Solomon Mekonnen’s story of turning his land into a forest farm that produces export-grade coffee, firewood, and organic honey, or the tremendous involvement of women at all levels of the education and participation.

It’s a document that captures the very real phenomenon that African problems are best solved with African solutions."

-via Good News Network, May 17, 2025

[lokh]

(not) recognising the self in the other...

[genericpuff]

Tbh at this point you should just make your own webcomic app/website because it would probably be 100 times better than whatever going on with webtoon right now.

hahaha it wouldn't tho, sorry 💀

Here's the fundamental issue with webcomic platforms that a lot of people just don't realize (and why they're so difficult to run successfully):

Storage costs are incredibly expensive, it's why so many sites have limitations on file sizes / page sizes / etc. because all of those images and site info have to be stored somewhere, which costs $$$.

Maintenance costs are expensive and get more so as you grow, you need people who are capable of fixing bugs ASAP and managing the servers and site itself

Financially speaking, webcomics are in a state of high supply, low demand. Loads of artists are willing to create their passion projects, but getting people to read them and pay for them is a whole other issue. Demand is high in the general sense that once people get attached to a webtoon they'll demand more, but many people aren't actually willing to go looking for new stuff to read and depend more on what sites feed them (and what they already like). There are a lot of comics to go around and thus a lot of competition with a limited audience of people willing to actually pay for them.

Trying to build a new platform from the ground up is incredibly difficult and a majority of sites fail within their first year. Not only do you have to convince artists to take a chance on your platform, you have to convince readers to come. Readers won't come if there isn't work on the platform to read, but artists won't come if they don't think the site will be worth it due to low traffic numbers. This is why the artists with large followings who are willing to take chances on the smaller sites are crucial, but that's only if you can convince them to use the site in favor of (or alongside) whatever platform they're using already where the majority of their audience lies. For many creators it's just not worth the time, energy, or risk.

Even if you find short-term success, in the long-term there are always going to be profit margins to maintain. The more users you pull in, the more storage is used by incoming artists, the more you have to spend on storage and server maintenance costs, and that means either taking the risk at crowdfunding (ex. ComicFury) or having to resort to outsider investments (ex. Tapas). Look at SmackJeeves, it used to be a titan in the independent webcomic hosting community, until it folded over to a buyout by NHN and then was pretty much immediately shuttered due to NHN basically turning it into a manwha scanlation site and driving away its entire userbase. And if you don't get bought out and try your hand at crowdfunding, you may just wind up living on a lifeline that could cut out at any moment, like what happened to Inkblazers (fun fact, the death of Inkblazers was what kicked off the cultural shift in Tapas around 2015-16 when all of IB's users migrated over and brought their work with them which was more aimed towards the BL and romancee drama community, rather than the comedy / gag-a-day culture that Tapas had made itself known for... now you deadass can't tell Tapas apart from a lot of scanlation sites because it got bought out by Kakao and kept putting all of its eggs into the isekai/romance drama basket.)

Right now the mindset in which artists and readers are operating is that they're trying way, way too hard to find a "one size fits all" site. Readers want a place where they can find all their favorite webtoons without much effort, artists wants a place where they can post to an audience of thousands, and both sides want a community that will feel tight-knit. But the reality is that you can't really have all three of those things, not on one site. Something always winds up having to be sacrificed - if a site grows big enough, it'll have to start seeking more funding while also cutting costs which will result in features becoming paywall'd, intrusive ads, creators losing their freedom, and/or outsider support which often results in the platform losing its core identity and alienating its tight-knit community.

If I had to describe what I'm talking about in a "pick one" graphic, it would look something like this:

(*note: this is mostly based on my own observations from using all of these sites at some point or another, they're not necessarily entirely accurate to the statistical performance of each site, I can only glean so much from experience and traffic trackers LMAO that said I did ask some comic pals for input and they were very helpful in helping me adjust it with their own takes <3).

The homogenization of the Internet has really whipped people into submission for the "big sites" that offer "everything", but that's never been the Internet, it relies on being multi-faceted and offering different spaces for different purposes. And we're seeing that ideology falter through the enshittification of sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. where users are at odds with the platforms because the platforms are gutting features in an attempt to satisfy shareholders whom without the platforms would not exist. Like, most of us aren't paying money to use social media sites / comic platform sites, so where else are they gonna make the necessary funds to keep these sites running? Selling ad space and locking features behind paywalls.

And this is especially true for a lot of budding sites that don't have the audience to support them via crowdfunding but also don't have the leverage to ask for investments - so unless they get really REALLY lucky in EITHER of those departments, they're gonna be operating at a loss, and even once they do achieve either of those things there are gonna be issues in the site's longevity, whether it be dying from lack of growing crowdfunding support or dying from shareholder meddling.

So what can we do?

We can learn how to take our independence back. We don't have to stop using these big platforms altogether as they do have things to offer in their own way, particularly their large audience sizes and dipping into other demographics that might not be reachable from certain sites - but we gotta learn that no single site is going to satisfy every wish we have and we have to be willing to learn the skills necessary to running our own spaces again. Pick up HTML/CSS, get to know other people who know HTML/CSS if you can't grasp it (it's me, I can't grasp it LOL), be willing to take a chance on those "smaller sites" and don't write them off entirely as spaces that can be beneficial to you just because they don't have large numbers or because they don't offer rewards programs. And if you have a really polished piece of work in your hands, look into agencies and publishing houses that specialize in indie comics / graphic novels, don't settle for the first Originals contract that gets sent your way.

For the last decade corporations have been convincing us that our worth is tied to the eyes we can bring to them. Instead of serving ourselves, we've begun serving the big guys, insisting that it has to be worth something eventually and that it'll "payoff" simply by the virtue of gambler's fallacy. Ask yourself what site is right for you and your work rather than asking yourself if your work is good enough for them. Most of us are broke trying to make it work on these sites anyways, may as well be broke and fulfilled by posting in places that actually suit us and our work if we can. Don't define your success by what sites like Webtoons are enforcing - that definition only benefits them, not you.

[pillowspace]

(Unreality:) Hey, has anyone here ever played that co-op game In Stars and Prologue? I need some help. My partner recently got a bug in which they've been stuck on the third floor and neither of us know how to get rid of it. I also think this game wasn't really built well for co-op because the rest of the party seems to only be able to process one Siffrin at a time, even when it's really obvious there's two? Which? Is weird because it's a two player game, why didn't the developer bother to account for two Siffrins???

[kropotkindersurprise]

June 27, 2025 - Giant food retailers in the UK and Italy — the Co-op Group and Coop Alleanza 3.0 — announced they will stop sourcing and selling Israeli products in their supermarkets. [link]

[busket]

weird and wild takes coming out of the new dungeon meshi fandom

if you can read all of dungeon meshi and see how it revels in the eroticism of consumption and plays with themes about base instinct, overwhelming desire, loving something so much you want to take it inside you and keep it there forever...if you can read all that and think that the author would be against people sexualizing her characters then I don't know what to tell you. dungeon meshi isn't horny in the way most fantasy animes are horny, but it's a huge fault to think that means it's not horny at all in a more complex and allegorical way. sex is a huge part of human instinct, just like eating, and the wires often get crossed. its that's not a bad thing because sex isn't a bad thing, lol

[socpens]

TOMORROW'S THE DAY!! tomorrow we start co-op gaming. all weekend. wayner is officially in montreal. i am force feeding him pizzaghetti and poutine. here is a glimpse of the discs we'll be playing, along with a full schedule breakdown over at https://sfac.poargu.com/ see you TOMORROW!!!

sunday is for secrets.

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[thebibliosphere]

Oooh, who’s bright idea was it to meal prep 25lbs of potatoes into frozen hash browns. (Mine, it was my bright idea but I’m still going to bitch about it.)