#Home Automation Benefits

[smartdisabilityhome]

Smart Home Automation Benefits for People with Disabilities

Smart home automation offers life-changing benefits for people with disabilities, promoting independence and enhancing quality of life. Discover how technologies like voice-activated devices, smart security systems, and automated lighting can be customized to meet the unique needs of individuals with mobility, hearing, visual, and cognitive impairments. Dive into our comprehensive guide on Smart Disability Home to learn how these innovations can make daily living safer and more convenient.

Learn more: https://smartdisabilityhome.com/smart-home-automation-benefits-disabilities/

[john-carle123]

How IoT-Based Smart Security And Home Automation Systems Are Beneficial?

In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) craze has highly rocketed the technological world with its introduction. Leading to the surging demand for IoT based smart security systems and home automation systems.   

People nowadays want advanced and high-tech systems around them that are multi-functional and, therefore they seek an all-in-one system to solve all their problems.  

Keep reading to know more about IoT and its role and benefits of IOT in smart home security and automation systems.  

The Role of IoT  

With multiple devices in our smart home, we can connect them through the internet of things and manage their functions remotely just with one touch on the mobile phone. 

IoT devices manage the surveillance of the house like AC, door locks, lights, fan switches, refrigerators, lamps, windows, etc. Things connected to the internet simplify and improve our day-to-day life and support a better living by automating, adding comfort and convenience to our homes. 

The best real-life example is a fan and lighting control system in homes like Siri, Alexa, Google Mini, etc. You can see these devices in most of the houses today.   

5 Key Benefits of IoT in Making Homes Smarter  

As IoT has revolutionized the tech industry, here are some key benefits of IoT in smart home automation systems. 

Safety and Security 

IoT-enabled devices provide the capability to monitor light and AC switches. When you forget to put them off before leaving and only remember upon arriving at the office, you can conveniently use the smartphone to remotely deactivate them.   

Likewise, if you realize that you haven’t locked the main door of your house before leaving, with the help of an IoT security system that comes with an in-built alarm system and motion sensor, you will get alerts on your phone of any intruder’s activity, this will keep your home safe and secure from attackers or theft. 

Energy & Cost Saving System 

With IoT systems, you have access to all the smart appliances of your home. You will receive the power consumption of each appliance individually therefore you can optimize the usage by turning off the devices you don’t require any longer.  

This will help you save your electricity and power consumption, leading to cost savings with low electricity bills.   

Customized Home 

One of the benefits is that you can easily customize your home as per your requirement. For instance, you can adjust lights to bright, dim, or colorful as per your needs, that too just with a voice command or just with a click from your phone. 

You can even customize your music and television system with whatever music or show you want to play or watch.  

Kids Friendly 

It is easy to manage the devices for your kids’ usage. You can set a screen time or limit the content they are watching on your smart TV to restrict them from adult or prohibited content. With voice assistance, even kids can ask questions and listen to stories through smart devices for interactive experience and entertainment.  

Adds Value to Property 

Smart home automation & security make your home smarter, more valuable, and modernize by adding value to your property. By making your home unique and advanced, IoT-based systems differentiate your property from others in terms of worth and value. 

Winding it up! 

The Internet of Things has taken over traditional homes by making them automated, modern, and intelligent. With its introduction, now people can experience hassle-free control, convenience, and management of their devices remotely. This led to less consumption of power and saves the cost of living. 

With IoT, you will get better control of things around you as it will let technology do the heavy lifting. Though the pricing is high for the installation of IoT systems, with the increasing demand in the market there will be a decline in the expenses soon. 

Apart from devices, there is a need to make the IoT apps to excel more so that the systems can work fluently and automate multiple tasks. 

[homeimprovementrefferal]

Home Automation And Smart Home Technology

Home Automation And Smart Home Technology - #homeimprovementreferral #HomeImprovement, #HomeSecurity, #SmartHome, #Tips - https://www.homeimprovementreferral.com/home-automation-and-smart-home-technology-2023-07/

[newkiqx]

Don't use any home automation if it's not local, kids. If it has an app, it's probably not the device you want.

Not just because of the security risks, but a lot of these will stop working when support stops or when, for example, your amazon delivery driver thinks your doorbell said something racist, or if you're Louis Rossman and you call them out on it.

Anyway fuck big tech and fuck cloud services and fuck always online products and fuck devices you bought not being yours and fuck planned obsolescence and fuck subscription based ownership

[it-la-technical-support]

Introduction The advent of home automation systems has transformed our living spaces into dynamic environments that adapt to our needs. The rise of smart home automation has made our daily routines more streamlined, energy-conscious, and secure. But with a myriad of choices out there, how do you craft the ideal smart home system that caters to your unique needs? Let's navigate the fascinating world of home control and automation to help you make an enlightened choice. Decoding Home Automation Systems At its essence, a home automation system empowers you to control various aspects of your home environment - from lighting and temperature to security systems and appliances - all through a unified interface. This could be a dedicated panel mounted on your wall, a smartphone app, or even voice commands via devices like Amazon Alexa or Google Home. The Advantages of Smart Home Automation The benefits of smart home automation are extensive. For starters, it offers unmatched convenience. Picture adjusting the temperature, dimming the lights, or monitoring your security cameras, all without having to move an inch. Furthermore, home automation systems can significantly boost your home's energy efficiency. With features like automated lighting, intelligent thermostats, and energy-efficient appliances, you can cut down on energy usage and reduce your utility bills. Crafting the Ideal Smart Home System When it comes to crafting the ideal smart home system, it's crucial to consider your specific needs and lifestyle. Are you looking to focus on security, energy efficiency, convenience, or a blend of these? Begin by selecting a reliable and user-friendly home control interface. This could be a smartphone app, a voice assistant, or a wall-mounted panel. Next, choose the devices and systems you wish to automate. These could range from lighting and HVAC systems to security cameras and smart locks. Remember, the ideal smart home system is one that integrates seamlessly with your lifestyle, enhances your comfort, and caters to your specific needs. Conclusion In the age of intelligent technology, home automation systems are not just a luxury but a valuable asset for enhancing our daily lives. By understanding your needs and exploring the available options, you can craft the ideal smart home system that offers convenience, security, and energy efficiency. Welcome to the future of home living.

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: Home.

Pairing: Yandere!Miguel O'Hara x Reader (Spiderverse).

Word Count: 3.0k.

TW: Spiderverse Spoilers, Non///Con, Kidnapping, Prolonged Imprisonment, Nonconsensual Touching, Emotional Manipulation, Unhealthy Relationships, and Blood.

A Spiritual Continuation To This Drabble.

You were probably starting to blister.

It was hard to tell. Your body felt strange, your head filled with cotton and your thoughts still blurred into one foggy, vaguely panicked haze. You were numb, and aching, and wide awake, and waiting for the moment you could lie down on a cold, hard surface and curl up until you felt like yourself, again. That man – Miguel, you reminded yourself, the desperation in his voice as he’d muttered it to you still echoing in your mind – said it was a side-effect of traveling between dimensions, that you’d be fine as long as you didn’t mess with the ring of metal around your wrist, but you couldn’t seem to tightness in your throat, couldn’t seem to forget the glimpse of a bruising puncture mark you’d caught before forcing yourself to turn away from the bathroom’s only mirror.

You’d lost track of how long you’d been there, slumped against the tiled wall of a stranger’s shower stall, trying to make sense of what little you’d learned. It had to have been an hour, if not more, but the water was still as hot as it had been when you’d half-consciously gotten in, when you decided you could burn yourself out of this situation. A benefit of being dragged into the future against your will, you guessed. At least you’d never run out of hot water, while you were trapped here.

You sighed, letting your head lull forward, but you didn’t have much time to wallow in your self-pity. You heard the automated door slide open (there wasn’t a lock, you’d checked, and then checked again, and then checked again), and snapped up just in time to see Miguel stepping past the threshold, still wearing that strained, manic grin. It looked unnatural. If you hadn’t been so scared, if you didn’t already feel so vulnerable, you might’ve asked him to stop.

Reflectively, you scrambled for a towel before remembering that you weren’t in your own bathroom, that you weren’t even in your own dimension, and shrinking into yourself, doing what you could to hide yourself away from him without the aid of a proper barrier. “I— I’m not done, just give me—”

“Relax.” His tone was calm, but strict, only slightly muffled by the shirt he was already pulling over his head. You caught the edge of a jagged scar, an expanse of tan skin, before jerking away and training your eyes on the floor. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before. We’re married, remember?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before stepping in front of you, momentarily cutting off your supply of scalding water. Unlike you, he seemed to want you to see him - standing just a little too close, holding himself just a little too tall, revealing just a little too much a little too quickly. You made a point of keeping your eyes on his face – or, as much as his face as you could see, anyway. The room you’d woken up in (his bedroom, you figured, despite how blank it’d been, how uncomfortable its bare walls and empty shelves had made you) had been dark, and his bathroom was no better. The lights had been dimmed to the point of near-total darkness, and you were starting to miss your apartment’s constantly flickering lights, your office’s blinding phosphorescents. You could only hope the rest of his dimension wouldn’t be so dark. You didn’t know what you would do if you had to spend the rest of your life stumbling around in the dark.

“We were married, you mean,” you mumbled, then shook your head. “Or, you were married to another version of me, I think? I’m sorry, I’m having a little trouble wrapping my head around…” You paused, gesturing to your meager surroundings. “…around this.”

His smile took on a softer lull. “In another world, a version of me was married to a version of you. When that version of me died, I did what I could to fill the gap. It didn’t work out, but…” A hand on your shoulder, then your jaw. You flinched at the unearned contact, but he didn’t pull away. “It was good, for a while. We had a daughter, Gabriella, and we took care of each other.”

You managed a weak laugh. “It’s hard to believe I’d take meeting my husband’s doppelganger that well.”

“Yeah, it is.”

There was a short lapse of silence. You chose to ignore the bluntness of his response, the bitter taste that spread over your tongue. “Maybe I’ll meet my own version of you when I get back home. It seems like we can’t stop running into each other.” And then, with more than a note of genuine excitement. “I will be able to go back to my own dimension, right? No offense, but I’m already starting to feel a little homesick.”

“Eventually. We’re looking for another solution as quickly as we can, but for now, it’s important that you stay where you are.” The pad of his thumb ran over your cheek. “Just your presence here is saving millions of lives.”

With no small amount of hesitation and a pained smile of your own, you reached up, taking him by the wrist and pushing his hand back down to his side. In his defense, he didn’t put up a fight. You could’ve missed the way his grin wavered, the carnal shade of scarlet that flashed across his eyes, if not for the way the shadows flickered at the slightest disturbance. “But I’ll be able to go home when you’re done?”

“Eventually,” he reiterated. “I’ll be taking care of you, in the meantime.”

Slowly, reluctantly, you nodded, letting out a shaky breath.

It wasn’t like there was anything else you could do, right?

~

You felt like you were going blind.

Miguel had been paranoid – making excuses, offering half-baked explanations, changing the topic every time you found the confidence to push – but even he couldn’t keep you in his dark, empty bedroom forever, lest you grow bored enough to throw the fate of the multi-verse aside and start messing with the bolt of silver latched onto your wrist. You could see why he’d wanted to keep you locked up. The rest of his society (organization? foundation? glorified playground for anyone with a spider-aesthetic and a seemingly endless supply of bad one-liners?), unlike its founder, was a beacon of color and noise, of friendly faces and helpful people. You could see why it might’ve made the thought of going home that much more difficult, for someone who’d had a much gentler introduction to it than you.

You could see how it made the time you spent alone with Miguel seem that much darker, in comparison.

Currently, you were in a room you’d once heard one of the more brash Peter Parkers’ refer to as ‘Miguel’s Cave’ – the makeshift lab where he spent most of his time leering over holographic screens and growling at constantly malfunctioning technology you couldn’t so much as pretend to understand, sitting cross-legged next to a collection of well-beaten consoles, squinting at a book you could hardly make out in the dim light. You didn’t know much about him or his society, every detail pried out through either sheer force of will or gleaned from a combination of different half-explanations, but he seemed to be the default leader, the one responsible for making sure this operation didn’t fall apart at the seams. He was stressed, obviously, but you couldn’t seem to find it in yourself to feel bad for him, not when every new setback led to a new hole in the wall, another chair broken over his knee (hence why you were sitting on the floor). It was hard to feel pity for a man who could snap your neck with a flick of his wrist, no matter how often he promised he wasn’t going to hurt you.

When your vision started to blur and the knot of tension in the back of your skull turned from uncomfortable to aching, you let your attention drift to his constantly revolving screens, all showing another incomprehensible piece of another incomprehensible dimension. For a moment, your gaze caught on a scene that seemed out of place, featuring a girl no older than ten running happily toward whoever was holding the camera, but you moved on quickly. You’d already seen a few preteen spider-people, around the society. You wouldn’t be surprised if Miguel had a way of watching them after they’d returned to their own dimensions.

Your eyes fell on Miguel, next. He was in the state he seemed to revert to whenever he thought your back was turned – shoulders squared, eyes set into a stern glare, the points of his fangs just barely visible against his bottom lip. He looked angry, but then again, he always looked a little angry. You could only assume that whatever spider he’d gotten his powers from didn’t have a sense of humor, either.

Eventually, he glanced in your direction, his scowl immediately fading. You didn’t try to look away. You caught him staring at you often enough. If you were lucky, he’d realize how awful it could feel to know you were always being watched. “Need something?”

You shrugged, letting your head lull to the side. “Just wondering if you’ve made any progress.”

“Depends on what you want to call ‘progress’. Technically, we’re bringing in another dozen requites every day, but I don’t see the point in handing a watch to every—”

“Progress in my case, I mean,” you cut in, trying to keep your tone light. “Not that I don’t like it here! I’m just… a little anxious to get home, I guess. I’d just like to be able to check in – preferably without the multi-verse collapsing.”

It was quick, but you caught it. A quirk of his lips, a glint of annoyance quickly drowned out by schooled stoicism. He didn’t like it when you brought up leaving, but then again, he didn’t seem to like anything.

Rather than answer you, he sighed, pushing himself away from his consoles. He gestured for you to stand and, somewhat reluctantly, you pushed yourself to your feet, taking a tentative step close to him before a strong arm lashed out, wrapping around your waist and hauling you into his lap. You chuckled, shoving playfully at his shoulder, but when he didn’t relent, you didn’t tell him to let you go. It was just a habit, you told yourself, doing your best to brush it off. It was just a holdover from a past life, from the time he spent with another version of you. It was the least you could do to let him live out a few old, relatively innocent fantasies.

He moved to touch your cheek, but managed to hold himself back, opting to toy with the fabric of your collar, instead. “Have you ever thought about kids?”

You did what you could not to look at him, but when he was so close, when he’d made himself such an unignorable part of your now-limited world, it was hard to find a way past him. “Not really, no. Never had the time for it, and I was never in the right place.”

“That’s how I felt, before I met you.” His lips against your forehead, then the curve of your jaw. It was just a habit, you reminded yourself, more forcefully than you really had to. He wasn’t trying to make you this uncomfortable. “I never thought I’d stay up until sunrise icing cupcakes for a third grader’s birthday party either, but you made me want that kind of life. I would’ve gone to a million soccer games just to see you and Gabriella smile like that again. To me, you were always home.”

“Your version of me, you mean.” This time, you couldn’t make yourself sound anything but irritated. “You might’ve changed your mind, but I’m really not the little league type.”

You heard him mutter something in Spanish, low and throaty and entirely incomprehensible to you. There was sharp nip to the curve of your throat, a broad chest pressed against yours, and then, he was kissing you, his mouth crashing into yours before you could even try to protest. You tried to scream, to pull his hair and pry him off of you, but he only groaned in response, only forced himself closer – his tongue forcing its way past your and his hand wrapping around your neck as you thrashed against him. Frantically, desperate to just get him away from you, you lashed out blindly, racking your nails across his check with enough force to break the skin, to draw blood. That earned a reaction, but not the one you were looking for. Rather than release you, his hold on your throat only grew tighter, his breathing more ragged he picked you up and slammed you against his console, a dozen golden screens shuttering under the force of the collision. It wasn’t a groan, now, but a growl, deep and throaty and wanting. His fangs pierced your lips, the taste of metal and rust spilling over your tongue as—

“Miguel.”

Finally, he tore himself away from you, baring his teeth at Jesse where she stood in the lab’s doorway. She didn’t flinch, only crossing her arms over her chest and meeting his aggression with a deadpan stare. “There’s a situation on Earth-241.”

Blunt, snipped, pointed. Miguel’s response was no better. “Why didn’t you have Lyla alert me?”

“She couldn’t. Apparently, she’s been ordered not to bother you when you’re with (Y/n).” Her attention drifted to you, panting and bleeding and still pinned underneath Miguel. Jesse stiffened, then went on. “You sure this is safe, man?”

“Trust me. I’ve run the simulations, done the math, taken all the necessary precautions. The canon won’t be affected.”

“The canon’s not what I’m worried about.”

She didn’t offer any further explanation, exiting as abruptly as she’d appeared. Miguel waited until she was out of sight, out of earshot before sighing and letting go of your neck. With no strength left to hold yourself up, you sank to the floor, fighting the urge to tremble, to shrink into yourself, to cry until you weren’t choking on the taste of your own blood. Miguel only sighed, running his fingers over the red lines you’d carved into his cheek before typing something into his watch. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he said, a kaleidoscope of bursting color and blinding light spiraling into existence in front of him. A portal, one you’d see him disappear into a hundred times. A portal that could that you home, if you ever dredged up the courage to throw yourself into it. “Stay out of trouble until I get back.”

Blearily, as if in a daze, you watched from a distance as he stepped out of this dimension and into another, the portal spiraling shut a moment later. When he was gone and the lab had gone dark, you lowered yourself to the ground, curled into yourself, and shut your eyes, willing your heart to stop beating so quickly before it stopped beating altogether.

It was pathetic, but you couldn’t seem to think of anything else to do.

~

For the first time in as long as you could remember, you couldn’t feel anything at all.

You weren’t numb, because numbness would’ve meant there was still a tether between your mind and your body, a link between spirit and flesh. It didn’t feel like you were floating on air, or consumed by static, because it felt like nothing. The void was all-consuming, swallowing you whole and keeping you suspended in that space of unliving consciousness, awake but inactive, aware but unable to do anything more than lie there, breathe, and wait for it to be over. You felt nothing. You never wanted to feel anything again.

Except, Miguel’s venom wasn’t so merciful as to leave in that void permanently. You could already make out a bruising soreness in the side of your neck, the harsh sting of his nails burrowing into your thigh, the seating heat of his body against yours as he rutted into you like a wild animal, like a man crazed. Your body had been bent in on itself, your knees pressed into your chest and your ankles thrown over his shoulders – anything that might’ve stopped him from thrusting as deeply, as harshly as he wanted to forced and manhandled out of his way. Somewhere in the back of your mind, the words ‘mating press’ resurfaced, but you buried them as quickly as you could. You didn’t want to think about that. You didn’t want to think about anything.

But, you didn’t have a choice. He was talking again – in Spanish, at first, a breathy string of curses you’d picked up during your time with him, then your name, low and drawn out, distorted by low growls until it’d been reduced to a near-incoherent mantra that would only be broken when his breath hitched, catching as his cock twitched and throbbed inside of you. One of his hands fell away from your thigh, landing next to his head and supporting his weight as he brought himself that much closer to you, as his mouth found yours in a clumsy, messy kiss. You could taste your own blood on his tongue, his fangs. You could taste the venom that’d left you so vulnerable to him. It burnt more than it should’ve.

“Mi cielo.” The words were muffled, spoken against your as he fell lower – to your collarbone, struggling to speak between haphazard love-bites to your chest. “My love, my light, my—” A sharp breath, a violent thrust. “I love you. We— We’re going to be happy together, this time.”

It was all you could do to lift your head, to force your lips to move against the weight of his waning paralysis. Your voice was barely audible, cracked and fractured in all the worst ways, but it was clear. Even against the sound of his skin crashing against yours, against the screaming agony of your own violation, it was clear.

“Am… am I ever going home?”

For a moment, Miguel paused, his eyes flickering towards you.

Then, you felt him smile against your skin and, the first time, it didn’t seem quite so pained. “You are,” he muttered, straightening his back. “And you’re never leaving again.”

Then, without hesitation, without mercy, he drove his fangs into your throat. You tried, weakly but desperately, to dislodge him, to claw at his back, to dig your nails into whatever you could reach and tear, but it was futile. His venom was already in your blood, coursing through your veins, rendering you as helpless as you’d always felt, around him. Soon enough, your arms were limp and useless around where they’d been strung around his neck, and you were pulled back into that unmoving, unfeeling, uncaring state. You didn’t try to resist it, this time.

It wasn’t like there had ever been anything you could do to save yourself from Miguel, anyway.

[spiribia]

Part of the charm for Minecraft animals for me, especially some of the later beasts with more unique behaviors, is honestly just that, that for things like bees and foxes they’re not employed by you and they have their particular desires, and if you’re crafty you can find ways to benefit from their behaviors, but otherwise they are just a moving part of the world. A bee will leave the hive to find flowers and then return home, shedding pollen that accelerates the growth rate of the plants it lands on. It does this because it’s a bee, and that’s what a bee wants to do. You can build your wheat field around a bee hive and then border the field with flowers so that bees will inevitably get pollen on your wheat any which way they go home. Or take a fox, it eats berries from bushes. During day it will seek out a dark enough spot to curl up and sleep, but if there are other mobs like your dogs nearby, it won’t sleep until it establishes enough distance. What does this do for you, really? I’m sure you could have some application for fox’s nocturnality, ex. you could probably make just one spot of your fox enclosure dark enough for it to seek out and sleep in during the daytime and put a redstone sensor in that spot like a pressure plate it sleeps on to day / night automate something, maybe lamps. A fox will pick up and carry items in its mouth, and eventually eat them if they’re food. It can jump fences to eat chickens. Are you listening to me.

[lastoneout]

I was too high last night to formulate this into proper words but something plagiarists(and by extension AI techbros) don't get about people who make things out of a love for that thing is that they are, consciously or not, doing it because they enjoy the process itself. Yes, it is easier to have a machine make a mug or painting or essay for you, or to steal someone else's, but again, people who actually like making stuff don't want someone else to do it for us because you have fully removed the thing we enjoy: the process of making a thing.

Like sure it would be nice to have a finished Gundam model or a trainset, but people who build gunpla kits and trainsets don't WANT someone else to do it for them, they want to do it. The sculptor or painter doesn't want a machine to just give them finished works of art, they want to MAKE that art themselves. The home gardner can just buy fresh food at the store, the tailor or knitter can buy a finished shirt or sweater whenever they want, but they don't because the act of gardening and sewing and knitting itself is what they enjoy.

Plagarists and AI techbros don't get that because they do not enjoy these processes. They enjoy making money and having social clout, and so they are perfectly happy stealing and automating things so that they don't have to do an ounce of real work while still getting all of the benefits of having created something. It really is all about finding the fastest and easiest way to get someone to hand you money or elect you god-king of the internet.

And the reason these two groups have such a hard time understanding each other is because of that fundamental disconnect. People who create things can never understand someone just wanting to press a button or copy-paste their way to having art because we want to indulge in the joy of creation itself, and those plagarists and AI dudes can't understand artists because to them it's just a means to an end so ofc it's in their best interest to make it as easy as possible. They don't get why someone would do this, or anything, if not for the social capital and/or actual capital it brings. Ofc it's better to automate it or steal it from someone else, that means you can make money faster and spend your time enjoying actual meaningful things like being wealthy and looked up to or w/e.

Plus creators(for lack of a better word) know keenly what it's like to BE stolen from or at least know people it has happened to, and so we are generally anti-plagarism by default.

Anyway yeah thats why to anyone who creates the other group seems so soulless and empty. It's because they kinda are. Because they don't value art or artists or care about creating things, and they certainly don't have any ammount of respect for the people they're hurting, they just want money and for "lesser" people to bow down as they walk by, and they are perfectly fine stealing to get there. It's the same mentality you get from people who pressure you to monetize your hobbies, they only see skills as an opportunity to make money. And it's really fucking sad.

[seoulmatez]

꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ 𝒟𝐼𝒩𝒩𝐸𝑅 𝒯𝐼𝑀𝐸

info ⭑ haitani ran x f!reader. 1.7k wc. nsfw (minors do not interact) ﾉ established relationship ﾉ teasing ﾉ fingering ﾉ oral (f!receiving) ﾉ mentions of creampie  

if you were in your old apartment, one of your neighbors would have been banging on your door with a noise complaint by now. it’s one of the many perks of living with bonten’s haitani ran; his penthouse allows you to live without the concern of angry neighbors berating you for attempting to find joy in your daily tasks. you would make a list of all the other benefits if you weren’t too busy sliding around the kitchen in your socks and using the spatula as a makeshift microphone.

the bluetooth speaker sitting on the edge of the counter farthest from the food you’re cooking blares a song from the random playlist you had put on some time ago when you began to prepare dinner. as much as you love your new home, you have to admit; the silence that blankets the apartment while ran is away can be suffocating. you’d much rather have him home with you but your musical performances can tide you over until he finishes things up at work.

a lyric you can never resist singing approaches, gluing your feet to the spot in front of the stove as you ready to belt it out. you’re in the middle of hitting a note when a pair of arms wrap around your waist and pull you back so that you’re flush with his chest. you don’t have to turn your head to tell it’s ran. “you, my dear, have the voice of an angel.”

“someone’s out for brownie points,” you joke through a giggle. even though you haven’t faced any complaints regarding your loud music, maybe you should consider lowering the volume just a bit. you didn’t hear the automated ring of the lock signaling ran’s arrival. hell, you couldn’t even hear him coming towards you.

“me? never.” he shakes his head but a knowing smirk pulls at the corner of his lips. his chin comes to rest on your shoulder and you can see the two tones of his short, styled hair. it was neatly gelled this morning but now, a few strands stray from the coiffed majority. he must have been running his hands through it all day. 

a deep, thoughtful hum vibrates the junction between your neck and shoulder, effectively gaining your attention. “what’s with all the clothes under this apron?”

you snort. what he’s getting at is clear but you feel the need to kid with him first. “that’s kind of the point of an apron—to protect the clothes you’re wearing beneath it.”

“i suppose,” he sighs, the breath of air wafting past your ear and sending a chill down your spine. “although, i do think you’d look a lot better without these.” he tugs on the hem of your cropped top and waistband of your thin lounge shorts. they slap against your skin with a resounding snap, pulling a surprised squeak up from your throat.

you’d be lying if you said ran’s ministrations and sugared words didn’t turn you on, but he could wait until after dinner was ready if his plan was to get you all hot and bothered. “you’re so shameless.”

“don’t worry, though,” he continues, ignoring your statement. you feel the neat bow tied behind your back significantly loosen. the strings of your apron brush against the bare skin of your legs as heavy hands find a home on your hips to spin you around. ran smiles and the corners of his violet eyes crinkle. “we can fix that easily.”

he pulls the apron over your head, discarding it on the island behind him. in one fluid movement, his hands grip your thighs to lift you onto the counter. the surface is cool beneath your skin and you fail to hold back a gasp at the contact. your parted lips give him the perfect opportunity to lean forward and capture them in a kiss. it’s a hungry clash of teeth and mingling of tongues that sends heat directly down to your core. even when ran pulls away, a string of saliva keeps the two of you connected. “mm, i’ve been thinking about kissing those pretty lips all day.”

you grin at the thought of being on his mind when you’re apart from each other. a sense of pride swells in your heart knowing that you mean so much to him. you’re not able to appreciate it for long before his mouth is on yours again. wandering hands make their way up to grope at your breasts. nimble fingers sneak their way under the hem of your top, pinching and tugging at your hardened peaks. the rough sensation draws a whimper up from your throat. ran’s chuckle rumbles against your lips.

“alright, alright, i’ll stop teasing.” his voice is breathy as he pulls away from you. heavy hands fall from your tits but he makes no move to pull your shirt back into place—he’d rather leave them out on display. instead, his hands bunch up the smooth fabric of your shorts. ran’s thumb taps at your thigh. “lift your hips up for me, yeah?”

you follow his command, steadying yourself on the counter before raising your pelvis. he smiles at your quick obedience, dragging both your satin shorts and panties down the length of your legs and casting them away to a pile on the floor. he, too, lowers to the floor, propping himself up on his knees.

from this position, he’s got the perfect view of your pussy. he licks his lips and whispers, “gorgeous.” his lips curl up in a smirk, eyes still trained on your cunt. “and so wet. you must have been thinking about me, too, huh?”

you nod, exhaling a heavy breath as deft fingers run up and down the slit of your puffy folds. his movements are deliberate, slow and calculated. it’s only when he’s ready that you feel one finger prodding at your entrance, ever so slowly sinking deeper and deeper into you until you can feel the cold metal of his ring against your heat. he doesn’t give you time to adjust to the chill before he’s dragging his finger out of your gummy walls just as leisurely as it entered. the lazy pumping continues and you’re sure he’s enjoying himself; if the smile tugging at his lips is any evidence. you, however, are frustrated. you try your best not to squirm as you speak. “more.”

“hm? more what?” he finally looks up to meet your eyes. there’s a teasing sparkle in his lilac irises, one that urges you to elaborate. and you know you should, otherwise, you’ll never get what you want.

“another finger,” you whine. “‘n faster, please.”

he huffs out a laugh through his nose. “as you wish.”

ran’s a man of his word, plunging another lithe finger into the warmth of your cunt. you suck in a shaky gasp at the uncharacteristically fast intrusion—although it satisfies you, fills you up like you had hoped it would. and, just as he promised, ran picks up the pace. the relaxed speed becomes one that’s more erratic, desperate even. with the curl of his fingers, he reaches the spot he was just short of hitting earlier, the one he knows works you up.

“f-fuck!” you choke out. your exclamation brings a grin to ran’s face. you never fail to give him the exact reaction he’s looking for. but—and he’s not afraid to admit this—he’s greedy. he wants, no, needs more. he’s sure you’re willing to give and he’s more than happy to take.

still knuckles-deep in your cunt, ran dips his head down to leave a soft kiss on the bud of nerves settled at your apex. you twitch beneath his lips and the man takes it as a sign to continue. his tongue pokes out, wet and pointed, to circle the sensitive pearl. your thighs tense tighter and tighter with each swirl and the knot in your tummy grows taut, threatening to snap at any moment.

ran easily takes notice of your impending orgasm. one final push is all it will take to send you over the edge and he knows exactly what will do the trick. you’ve done so well for him, of course he’ll reward you for being good. he bites back a laugh before wrapping his lips around your swollen clit to suck at it—once, twice, thrice, until your back is arching and your eyes are rolling into your skull.

a wave of pure bliss washes over you but your cries of pleasure are overpowered by the jolting blare of the fire alarm. you don’t have a single second to wind down from your orgasm before ran pulls away from you, drags his fingers out of you, to deal with the situation on the stove. you’re left a shaking, sweaty mess perched atop the granite counters.

with his clean hand, ran easily turns off the burner and removes the pan of ruined food from the heat. the fingers covered in your essence make their way up to his mouth while he examines what was meant to be tonight’s meal. you watch as he casually cleans the indication of your arousal off of his hand. “well,” he pulls his fingers out with an exaggerated pop, “that’s beyond help.”

his show sends yet another wave of excitement straight to your core. the bulge pressing against the front of his tailored pants is no help either, creating an outline that’s practically screaming ’look at me!’. all you can think about is ran between your legs, his cock buried in you, and the warmth of his release painting your walls. you tilt your head back and let out a breathy sigh. “shit.”

“no need to fret,” ran assures you with a knowing smile. “i’m sure that restaurant you like can fit me in for a last-minute reservation.”

the veiled innuendo is cause for a pout. you and him both know that dinner is the last thing on your mind.

heyoooo, it's sua :3 thank you for giving this a read! if you enjoyed, please consider reblogging and/or leaving a comment! much love from me to you ❤︎

[femmefatalevibe]

Femme Fatale Guide: How To Gain Motivation & Get Out of A Rut

Spontaneous motivation is possible but rare. However, learning how to jumpstart this valuable energy to gain the initial momentum you need to create consistent habits and routines necessary to help you achieve your goals. Here are some tips and tricks to get out of a rut and jumpstart motivation.

Create specific goals: Use qualifying and quantifying details (e.g. I intend to stay at the Ritz Paris hotel; I will save $50K by the end of this year, etc.; I'm cultivating a Scandinavian aesthetic; I will eat 3 healthy meals daily during the workweek, etc.)

Organize your goals into different areas of life: Try not to have more than 1-2 goals per life arena at a time (career, finances, health, relationships, self-development, etc.)

Write a short list of 3-5 things you can do to get closer to each of your goals: These can be habits or one-time tasks (e.g. take a walk every day, automate "X" amount of my paycheck into my investment accounts, etc.). Consider this bullet-point list as your high-level action plan. It gives you a roadmap that's simple enough to help you get started without overwhelming your mind with details or complexities. Success is born from simple, consistent habits.

Create a vision board for each goal: Envisioning yourself achieving the goal can spark some initial excitement and motivation. Everything gets clearer when you can see the end in sight.

Write out a "pros" and "cons" list for each goal: Consider the benefits of working towards each goal vs. the downsides. A little fear-based motivation can be healthy as a catalyst to gain some inspiration and momentum.

Get mapping & mathing: Create a mockup of your ideal wardrobe, healthy meals you want to eat, design a mockup of your dream project live on a billboard, all of the places you want to visit in a foreign country, every aspect of your dream date night, etc. Do some quick projections on how much you could be saving with your budgeting goals, and entrepreneurial pursuits, or run the numbers regarding health goals you can work towards (whether it's weight or strength related)

Create a weekly self-accountability goal: Choose one task per goal that you want to accomplish each day (or a few times a week) to get you moving in the direction you desire. Keeping promises to yourself is the simplest way to stay on track.

Track your progress: Make a log of your hours spent reading, working out, check off the days you've had a healthy meal, how many pitch emails you've sent out, any additions or removals from your current wardrobe and environment, etc.

Give yourself a rewarding incentive: Be enough of an adult to use your childlike tendencies to your advantage. Create "if-then" compromises with yourself to ensure you stay on track. E.g: If I make a healthy meal at home for dinner during the week then, I can eat it while watching an episode of my favorite show. If I order-in an unhealthy meal, then I cannot watch my favorite show that night. Savage, I know!

Join supportive online communities & spaces: Find communities on Tumblr, TikTok, Instagram, Reddit, Facebook groups, etc. to find people with similar goals and life outlooks. Read books by authors who have achieved your desired goal, and listen to podcasts on your same wavelength. Find digital ways to cultivate a tribe.

Keep a "Winning" Journal: A notebook that you can write in daily, a few times a week, or weekly to share all of your accomplishments. This method allows you to feel like you can brag and show off a bit, so you get the social validation (even if done in private) while still moving in silence and refraining from appearing arrogant.

[wolfliving]

It starts with him

What was once a promise of technology to allow us to automate and analyze the environments in our physical spaces is now a heap of broken ideas and broken products. Technology products have been deployed en masse, our personal data collected and sold without our consent, and then abandoned as soon as companies strip mined all the profit they thought they could wring out. And why not? They already have our money.

The Philips Hue, poster child of the smart home, used to work entirely on your local network. After all, do you really need to connect to the Internet to control the lights in your own house?  Well you do now!Philips has announced it will require cloud accounts for all users—including users who had already purchased the hardware thinking they wouldn’t need an account (and the inevitable security breaches that come with it) to use their lights.

Will you really trust any promises from a company that unilaterally forces a change like this on you? Does the user actually benefit from any of this?

Matter in its current version … doesn’t really help resolve the key issue of the smart home, namely that most companies view smart homes as a way to sell more individual devices and generate recurring revenue.

It keeps happening. Stuff you bought isn’t yours because the company you bought it from can take away features and force you to do things you don’t want or need to do—ultimately because they want to make more money off of you. It’s frustrating, it’s exhausting, and it’s discouraging.

And it has stopped IoT for the rest of us in its tracks. Industrial IoT is doing great—data collection is the point for the customer. But the consumer electronics business model does not mesh with the expected lifespan of home products, and so enshittification began as soon as those first warranties ran out.

How can we reset the expectations we have of connected devices, so that they are again worthy of our trust and money? Before we can bring the promise back, we must deweaponize the technology.

Guidelines for the hardware producer

What we can do as engineers and business owners is make sure the stuff we’re building can’t be wielded as a lever against our own customers, and to show consumers how things could be. These are things we want consumers to expect and demand of manufacturers.

Control

Think local

Decouple

Open interfaces

Be a good citizen

1) Control over firmware updates.

You scream, “What about security updates!” But a company taking away a feature you use or requiring personal data for no reason is arguably a security flaw. 

We were once outraged when intangible software products went from something that remained unchanging on your computer, to a cloud service, with all the ephemerality that term promises. Now they’re coming for our tangible possessions.

No one should be able to do this with hardware that you own. Breaking functionality is entirely what security updates are supposed to prevent! A better checklist for firmware updates:

Allow users to control when and what updates they want to apply. 

Be thorough and clear as to what the update does and provide the ability to downgrade if needed. 

Separate security updates from feature additions or changes. 

Never force an update unless you are sure you want to accept (financial) responsibility for whatever you inadvertently break. 

Consider that you are sending software updates to other people’s hardware. Ask them for permission (which includes respecting “no”) before touching their stuff!

2) Do less on the Internet.

A large part of the security issues with IoT products stem from the Internet connectivity itself. Any server in the cloud has an attack surface, and now that means your physical devices do.

The solution here is “do less”. All functionality should be local-only unless it has a really good reason to use the Internet. Remotely controlling your lights while in your own house does not require the cloud and certainly does not require an account with your personal information attached to it. Limit the use of the cloud to only the functions that cannot work without it.

As a bonus, less networked functionality means fewer maintenance costs for you.

3) Decouple products and services.

It’s fine to need a cloud service. But making a product that requires a specific cloud service is a guarantee that it can be enshittified at any point later on, with no alternative for the user owner. 

Design products to be able to interact with other servers. You have sold someone hardware and now they own it, not you. They have a right to keep using it even if you shut down or break your servers. Allow them the ability to point their devices to another service. If you want them to use your service, make it worthwhile enough for them to choose you.

Finally, if your product has a heavy reliance on the cloud to work, consider enabling your users to self-host their own cloud tooling if they so desire. A lot of people are perfectly capable of doing this on their own and can help others do the same.

4) Use open and standard protocols and interfaces.

Most networked devices have no reason to use proprietary protocols, interfaces, and data formats. There are open standards with communities and software available for almost anything you could want to do. Re-inventing the wheel just wastes resources and makes it harder for users to keep using their stuff after you’re long gone. We did this with Twine, creating an encrypted protocol that minimized chatter, because we needed to squeeze battery life out of WiFi back when there weren’t good options.

If you do have a need for a proprietary protocol (and there are valid reasons to do so):

Document it. 

If possible, have a fallback option that uses an open standard. 

Provide tooling and software to interact with your custom protocols, at the very least enough for open source developers to be able to work with it. This goes for physical interfaces as much as it does for cloud protocols.

If the interface requires a custom-made, expensive, and/or hard-to-find tool to use, then consider using something else that is commonly available and off the shelf instead.

5) Be a good citizen.

Breaking paid-for functionality on other people’s stuff is inherently unethical. Consider not doing this! Enshittification is not a technical problem, it is a behavioral one. Offer better products that are designed to resist enshittification, and resist it yourself in everything you do.

Nothing forced Philips to do what they are doing: a human made a decision to do it. They could have just as easily chosen not to. With Twine’s server lock-in, at least we chose to keep it running, for 12 years now. Consider that you can still make a decent living by being honest and ethical towards the people who are, by purchasing your products, paying for your lifestyle. 

We didn’t get here by accident. Humans made choices that brought us to this point, and we can’t blame anyone for being turned off by it. But we can choose to do better. We can design better stuff. And we can choose not to mess things up after the fact.

We’re putting this into practice with Pickup. (We also think that part of an IoT reset is giving users the creative freedom of a general-purpose device.) If you’re looking for something better and our product can fill a need you have, consider backing us. We cannot claim to be perfect or have all of the answers, but we are absolutely going to try. The status quo sucks. Let’s do something about it.

Published October 15, 2023 By Jeremy Billheimer

[deramin2]

All Clothes Are Handmade

As a sewist with access to a lot of fancy commercial-grade equipment, I think about this a lot. People have this idea that there's a lot of automation in making clothes, that robots do most of the work. They do not. Very low-wage humans do.

The machines can make fancy stitches, but they can't guide them. Cloth takes fine dexterity and constant adjustments to work with. Any sewist who's tried to sew a straight line but had their thoughts stray know how fast it goes tits up. The 2+ pieces need to be carefully pinned together (expert sewists can use very few pins, but still need some), and then carefully guided and managed so they stay exactly together as the same tension without wrinkles. And if there's any kind of curve, it takes great skill to do all of that while turning at precisely the right angle at the right time while keeping everything together. And then a human has to detect the end and change the stitch appropriately to secure the ends.

And then there's fabric management. A the front the fabric bunches in your lap and tries to fall down at weird angles. At the back in bunches up and tries to pull at weird angles. So you're constantly having to manage where all that fabric is going that you aren't currently sewing. And if you're sewing in the round (like putting on a sleeve), you have to manage bringing the back around to the front. All of this twists the entire garment, which has to be managed even when most of it is sitting next to you. In home sewing this is sometimes a 2-person job.

A machine cannot do any of that that. Automating clothing manufacturing is a holy grail people have been working on for a couple hundred years and are nowhere close to achieving. It takes the kind of very precise and constant adjustment with a sharp mind and keen eye that humans are very good at and machines are very bad at. Machines only sew in straight lines.

But people look at fast fashion prices and assume robots must be making their clothes. But they aren't. Highly skilled human beings in horrific work conditions at breakneck speed and brutal hours are being paid pennies to make even the cheapest and most low-quality garment. The entire commercial and consumer chain has simply dehumanized them into "must be robots."

This red swimsuit is selling for $10.99 from Walmart. It probably cost $2-$3 to produce.

This striped swimsuit is selling for Beefcake Swimwear for $99. This is the fair price for a swimsuit made with ethical labor.

Beefcake is a small Portland, Oregon company that uses local labor, local materials, and doesn't have a high markup. They cost $49 to manufacture (maybe more now with inflation). (With business expenses, trust me that margin is really slim.) Beefcake talks about "The real cost of American-made swimwear." Half the cost to produce is labor costs. I'd wager half the cost of the fabric is also labor costs. This is why clothing isn't typically made in the US, except using prison labor that's pretty literally slavery.

This is the true cost of a product that attempts to not exploit its workers. It's a luxury most people can't afford because the entire labor market exploits workers to the point of being unable to afford anything but exploitative goods and services. Fast fashion has convinced people they greatly benefit from supporting the worst of that exploitation.

These swimsuits were made on similar machines with similar materials by people with similar skill. The same degree of automation went into both of them. But the Walmart manufacturer sewists got paid less than a dollar to make that one and live in abject poverty, and the Beefcake sewists got paid $22, which is livable.

But robots didn't make either of these. human hands did. Human hands made every single piece of clothing in your closet. Think of how to cherish and care for their work.

[aloeverawrites]

I have the controversial take that if someone doesn’t want to do paid work, fine dude. Like in an ideal society that’s literally fine.

Just chill. I don’t care. And quite frankly if you really and truly just want to sit around all day you probably need to, most people have some interests and things they want to go out and do. If the brain is saying to chill just chill dude.

In the future we’ll be able to automate even more tasks then now and in a good future everyday joes will be the ones benefiting from that not billionaires.

Plus people who stay at home do important unpaid work.

I feel like if you just want to volunteer and paint for the rest of your life you should be able to and still get food, money and a house.

People don’t exist to work, people just exist to live and they should be able to spend that existence how they like.

I like the work I’m doing so I’m happy to work and pay taxes so you can exist how you like. I just want people to be happy, you don’t have to live like me. Just be happy

[wickedsnack-art]

Can I ask about your online selling experience? I know you're moving away from Etsy (and I don't blame you!) but just curious about what's worked/what hasn't. Trying to help my mom sell her art but like. She's older and I have never sold art online and can't give her any advice.

Please feel free to tag other artists selling their work as well! Thank you 🙏

Oh I have to be honest I am probably not the best person to ask about this as it's something I've definitely struggled with myself! I will say for what it's worth that I've been seeing a lot of artists struggling lately; no matter how "popular" an artist is, many seem to be reporting sales that are lower than expected even if market research/interest checks/preorders were done.

Everyone is struggling financially right now---it's been this way for YEARS---and art is one of the first luxuries to go.

That said, Etsy worked well for me for a long time. If your mom isn't doing fanart, she should be fine, because my biggest issue with them arose about the fact that I was selling fanart. Some tips I have;

USE EVERY TAG. Etsy has, if I recall correctly, 13 tags you can put on an individual item. Use all 13. Use them for alternative words for what you're selling (if it's a sticker, tag it as a decal, if it's a print, tag it as a poster). Think about who you think would buy this and what weird search terms they may use to try to find it, and think about alternative uses for the item (a trinket dish might also be an ashtray).

HAVE DESCRIPTIVE TITLES. Put the most important words first so people can see what they're getting right away, but don't be afraid of slightly longer titles. Honestly my titles could've and should've been longer, like Sailor Moon Art Nouveau Digital Art Poster Print Multiple Sizes or something.

RUN SALES OFTEN. Even if it's just 10-15% off people will buy something they've been eying for a while when there's a sale, or they'll feel more eager to buy something they've just found if it's on sale.

USE ETSY'S AUTOMATED DISCOUNT OFFERS. Etsy can automatically send a discount code to people who have interacted with your shop, use it. I made more sales from the automated 10% off code sent to people who favorited items than my monthly Patreon discount.

USE ETSY FREE SHIPPING. Shipping via Etsy is pretty cheap, and activating the "free shipping on orders over $35" will boost your spot in the algorithm, will boost the likelihood that people will order from you, and will boost the average cart size of people that order from you.

I RECOMMEND PRINTFUL. I used Printful for selling my larger prints, but they also offer other items if you want to branch out. If you don't want to get in trouble with Etsy, make sure you register it as a manufacturing partner and assign every item that Printful makes for you. Dropshipping on Etsy is a problem, but the problem is people who steal art or use AI to generate images to sell. I don't personally see a problem with someone who makes their art themselves going through a print shop to sell products they don't have the means to create at home. If you don't want to do that, you can check out inprnt. I haven't used them, but many other people have and seem to like it well enough.

SHIP THROUGH ETSY. It doesn't take very long to set up a shipping profile for your items, and it makes shipping easier and cheaper. As long as you get your items out on time, you'll get their shipping star or whatever very quickly and easily and maintain it without problem. It also has the benefit that if a buyer ever has an issue with the shipping, Etsy is more likely to have your back. If for any reason you can't ship through Etsy, I recommend pirateship. Also!! Be more careful about international shipping than you think you should be. There are a lot of confusing international laws regarding sending items as a corporation to those countries that you may not expect, so before you agree to selling something to a foreign country, make sure you check their laws.

I have also tried having an Instagram shop and I'll be fully honest I don't do what I should do with my Instagram. Maybe other people have more successful Instagram shops, but the process it took for me to get it started compared to how many sales I've made as a result of it (literally ZERO), I would not recommend it.

Shopify is good if you have a following somewhere, because you have to bring all the traffic there yourself. That's the benefit of Etsy and Instagram; they are able to make traffic for you. I've never had a following large enough anywhere to feel like I could run a Shopify of my art. Maybe one day.

I don't personally know a lot of artists who sell online successfully, so if you see this and you fall under that category PLEASE SHARE TIPS!!

[max1461]

Scattered thoughts on "let's have a universal language for the economic benefits".

So like, ok, some object level considerations: languages are not dying out (mostly) in favor of English. Like, English is not naturally becoming a universal language. Languages die out in favor of local majority languages, and there's hundreds of those. I feel pretty confident in saying that the only way to achieve a universal language within a couple of centuries would be some sort of highly authoritarian set of language policies that I think everyone in this discussion is against. So we're not getting a universal language naturally any time soon—in particular, not within the present technological horizon.

I think once we look outside the present technological horizon the issue is probably mostly moot. Like, machine translation is already getting very good. I suspect it will be within my lifetime that the job of real-time interpreters can basically be totally automated, at least outside of particularly high stakes contexts. And maybe in the far future we'll all be a hive mind or some shit, I don't know.

So anyway, I don't think "we're going to get a universal language naturally soon, and that's something that will have large economic benefits" actually stands up very well to scrutiny on the object level. I would bet against this.

Worth noting also that I don't think that at present language barriers are a large source of economic friction in the industrialized world. Like from naive observation that just doesn't seem to be the case. Maybe it is, I don't know. It would be cool if someone had stats on this.

Anyway, I think the large-scale "linguistic homogenization will be really good" thing is probably not likely.

The more thorny issues are local (in both time and space). Being a member of a minority speech community has various economic downsides, and in exchange speakers often report intangible benefits like a sense of pride, a feeling of connection to ancestors, access to works (such as oral or written literature) that are composed in the language, etc.

Obviously I'm a big fan of vague intangible benefits because I'm one of those Gender Havers, and the idea of sacrificing some practical utility in exchange for like, achieving my desired expression is very close to home for me. So I'm always big on defending the value of intangible benefits.

Of course not all members of minority speech communities report intangible benefits. I think this correlates a lot with, you know, ideology, just like gender stuff does. The point is that people have complicated feelings about their relationship with language and you can't always predict what they will be. This is why I compared the ethics of minority language immersion schooling to population ethics questions about ending autism. See that post for elaboration.

Anyway, you could probably predict I was going to say this, but the point I keep coming back to is "languages matter a lot to people, and once they die you can't get them back, so you probably should not throw them away lightly". And when I say that languages matter a lot to people, I don't mean to linguists. I mean like... if you ever listen to someone from a moribund speech community, here in the states at least, the relationship between language and personal identity is something you'll hear about immediately. I've heard some version of "when a people loses their language, they've lost everything" about a thousand times. And like, sure, the concept of identifying with "a people" might not hold much stock for you, but the concept of identifying with a gender doesn't hold much stock for a lot of people. I think it's important to take people's word for the intangible benefits they say they derive from stuff.

So like, I guess the upshot is:

My strong hope is that within my lifetime, redistributive economic policy and the advancement of machine translation will make all ethical debates around language policy absolutely trivial. In the meantime I think it's worth supporting policies that support the existence and continued use of minority languages. Obviously not if it impinges on individual rights—you know, I'm not saying anybody should be forced to speak their parents' language, that's fantastically beside the point.

I'm not just saying this because I'm a linguist and, clearly, find language to have aesthetic value in themselves. Although, you know, I do think that. It's just not the most salient fact here.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this press release from the Department of the Interior:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is awarding more than $6.4 million to federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native Tribes to benefit fish and wildlife resources and their habitats. This year’s funding will support 35 Tribes for conservation projects across 15 states, benefiting a wide range of wildlife and habitat, including species of cultural or traditional importance to Indigenous communities. 

Examples of projects approved this year include:

Sitka Tribe of Alaska (Artificial Intelligence for Subsistence Salmon Monitoring and Management) - $200,000 to install artificial intelligence enabled video that will produce automated real-time counts of Redoubt Lake sockeye salmon, reducing real-time monitoring costs.

Navajo Nation (within Arizona, New Mexico and Utah)(Estimating Abundance, Preserving Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Resolving Human-Bear Conflict of Black Bears on the Navajo Nation) - $100,000 to assess black bear population on Navajo Nation lands, preserve Traditional Ecological Knowledge in effective habitat management and minimize human-bear conflicts. 

Mooretown Rancheria of Maidu Indians of California (Tribal Wildlife and Postfire Restoration for Habitat Connectivity, Pollinator Species and Traditional Ecological Knowledge Plants around Feather Falls) - $197,300 to restore and manage ancestral lands which were devasted by the 2020 North Complex fire, including hiring staff, expanding the Tribal youth program and developing a restoration plan that incorporates Traditional Ecological Knowledge to prioritize culturally significant and endangered species such as the California spotted owl, bald eagle, Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog and California red-legged frog.

Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians (within Minnesota) (Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians White-tailed Deer and Golden-winged Warbler Critical Habitat Restoration Project: Setting Back Forest Succession to Promote Early Successional Wildlife Species) - $199,872 to create 350 acres of early successional forest habitat, supporting deer population recovery and increasing habitat for golden-winged warblers during breeding season.

Omaha Tribe of Nebraska (Tallgrass Prairie Resource Management) - $199,965 to hire staff to restore, maintain, and enhance habitat for ecologically and culturally significant wildlife species within the Omaha Tribe of Nebraska reservation, including invasive species removal and buffalo management.

Seneca Nation of Indians (within New York) (Seneca Nation Wood Turtle Survey) - $42,713 to tag wood turtles, a culturally important species, with GPS transmitters to track and map home areas and nesting grounds. 

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (within North Carolina)(Leveraging DNA Sampling to Understand and Manage Resources) - $200,000 to continue cutting-edge non-invasive resource management techniques and use environmental DNA (eDNA) and a variety of non-invasive methods (camera, trapping, acoustics, etc.) to evaluate and manage bear populations, sicklefin redhorse, native brook trout, bats, otters, fish, aquatic communities, birds, and amphibians.

Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe (within Washington) (ESA Species Critical Coastal Habitat and Traditional Fisheries Restoration and Monitoring) - $198,928 to continue improving the conservation status of the western snowy plover and streaked horned lark and implement essential fish habitat assessments, eDNA and visual monitoring and restoration actions to support climate resilience and adaptive capacity of these species on Tribal lands.