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fatehbaz · 5 months ago

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Recent Chicago peice reminded me of the way Chicago north suburbs use military bases to divide and segregate in a manner that similarly matches connects to colonial actions. You always compile interesting stuff thank you.

Thank you for the kindness and support. I'm gonna riff on this a little bit. I'm sorry, I don't mean to distract from what you specifically brought up here.

Yea, we can add federal military base sites to the list of significant "innovations" Chicago has made in race-based labor segregation in service of wealth extraction. (For anyone following along, the article/essay we're discussing explores racism and white anxiety in Chicago, the fear and "anticipation" of Black migration from the South during Reconstruction and the Great Migration, and how between 1880-ish and 1910-ish Chicago then became a center of surveillance and policing beliefs and practices in response to this racial anxiety, refined to such an extent that Chicago's police/surveillance practices were then "exported" and employed across the US and also in the colonial plantations of the Philippines under US military occupation. By Jolen Martinez, in 2024, "Plantation Anticipation: Apprehension in Chicago from Reconstruction America to the Plantocratic Philippines".)

So Chicago is a wealth funnel, right? The node. The center of transportation networks. Extracted wealth channeled by the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence River waterway, channeled by the Mississippi River corridor, channeled by the railroads acting as tendrils reaching out into westward into "the frontier". For the United States, Chicago was the gateway to "the West". Over the course of the past two centuries: Furs from trapped mammals in Canadian boreal forest shipped through the lakes to French benefactors, mined metals from the Iron Ranges shipped through the ports, timber from Minnesota shipped through the waterway, cattle from Texas rangeland shipped to massive Chicago meat processing facilities, corn products from the tallgrass prairie ecoregion shipped to Chicago. And people, too. People diminished. People seen as mere resources. People as labor. People shipped to Chicago to work the processing centers, the docks, the restauraunt dish-pits. And so Chicago becomes a hub of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. And because Chicago was a hub of labor unions and Black migration, it also becomes a hub of policing.

Chicago achieves the pinnacle of its spectacular reputation with its image as a glistening modernist metropolis after the construction of the railroad networks. But even before the city itself was formally established, the wetlands where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan were kinda located in this general region that acts as a sort of bridge for French wealth, being both near the inland terminus of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence route while simultaneously also sitting near a sort of terminus of the Mississippi River route (uniting French Canadian fur trade and Ontario/Quebec settlement with French "Caribbean" plantations and settlement via New Orleans).

I think about how suburbanization, and its attendant racial segregation, is especially blatant in something I kinda think of as "the southern Great Lakes industrial corridor and its economically, ecologically, culturally similar satellites" (Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Omaha, etc.). Some writing that I enjoy about this, which you might enjoy checking out if you haven't yet, is Phil Neel's work, particularly the book Hinterland (2018). Neel's book is largely about suburbs/suburbanization; the environmental construction of Midwestern cities as hubs of industrial extraction and racial segregation; and how these Chicago-esque traditions of designing physical space (whether it's residential, "rural", "urban", whatever) to best isolate/subdue people for extraction are now widespread and typical of US space in general. As another example, Neel discusses how the "revitalized urban core" of Seattle's utopian "infotech metropolis" of tech companies is actually dependent on the corridor extending southward towards and past Tacoma, "this logistics empire" of "warehouses, food processing facilities, container trucks, rail yards, and industrial parks" while "the poor have been priced out" and "can also be found staffing the airport and the rail yards [...], loading boxes in warehouses [...]." So that the power of such a major city does not end at the technical city limit boundary, but extends beyond into the "rural" hinterland. (You can see this when looking up an "urban megaregion map".) This is of course pretty obvious with the Great Lakes cities, if you consider all of the corn fields, the farms, the Rust Belt manufacturing sites, many of which use railroad and/or highway corridors to funnel that wealth ultimately to a place like Chicago. And Chicago, in many ways, was a sort of "pioneer" of these techniques of organizing space with racially-segregated labor compartmentalization.

So perhaps unsurprisingly, urban/neighborhood segregation is very ingrained/formalized in the Great Lakes cities. Chicago's Lake Michigan-based sibling Milwaukee is especially notorious (2018 research found Milwaukee had the most extreme Black-white segregation of any US city with a million or more people). Including banking, home-loan denial, insurance practices engineered specifically and efficiently to isolate/segregate/prey upon Black people (all kinds of academic research on on these practices). Redlining ("other side of the tracks"), especially 1930s-1940s, made use of the region's many railroad tracks as physical barriers and hostile environments.

And part of why I liked Martinez's take on it was that we can see more evidence that Chicago's techniques of organizing space/life did not just establish ways of being in the Midwest, but also established ways of being across the United States. And we can kinda see that this power is not just physical/material.

I think Chicago is interesting, especially in the time period of the research we're talking about (1880-1910), because this Gilded Age, Edwardian era, turn-of-the-century-opulence kinda moment is sort of singularly important for (European) empire-building. British imperial power being exercised in Southeast and South Asia. The Scramble for Africa. French Algeria. European power reaching outwards. But it also corresponds to United States empire-building both domestically and globally. 1889/1890: Wounded Knee and "the closing of the frontier", the West has been won, from sea to shining sea, now the US thinks it owns the continent or whatever. And the US didn't waste any time. Immediately, the US moves on to Cuba, to the Philippines, etc. And it's like, at first, to target Indigenous people and the Wild West, there are obvious physical/material reasons why Chicago (geographically, as a railroad and telegraph hub, as shipping hub, as the destination of Great Migration) is like a homebase or an epicenter for westward expansion and domestic empire-building. And with Martinez's writing, we can see Chicago is not geographically a convenient hub of colonization abroad in Central America or the Philippines (it's not close to those locations, the railroads of Chicago don't reach Manila, etc.). And yet in a very scary way Chicago still actually did function as a hub of empire-building across the globe due to Chicago's ideas, imaginaries, beliefs. Chicago's imagination itself. Chicago's racism, channeling the earlier racial hierarchy of the antebellum South, reached out across the planet. Chicago authority figures trained police and administrators from elsewhere. Chicago-style police data-collection and record-keeping inspired surveillance approaches across the United States. The ideologies, the "personality types", the filing cabinets, the "intelligence cards", were adopted elsewhere. What white Southerners believed and practiced in antebellum Louisiana, would carry over into Gilded Age Chicago, would influence twentieth century US domestic surveillance, and would then affect the rest of the planet. The beliefs, practices, the very emotions of white US residents could transform plantations in the Philippines. Disturbing.

#sorry #tidalectics #ecologies #ongoing chicago discussion

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generic-sonic-fan · 10 months ago

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Team Dark Week: Night

Summary: One member of Team Dark gets tired more predictably than the others. For @teamdarkweek

2,366 words, no content warnings

---

Shadow wasn’t nocturnal.

The ARK was on a set clock, synced with a time zone called “Central Time”, with red-lighted digital clock faces in every major room aboard. Constantly blinking and changing. The one in the research lab was used to time the experiments. He still remembered the day where he’d run faster than that clock, the day that Gerald had hoisted him up on his shoulders to parade him around and-

In Maria’s room there was a peculiar object. Small, white, and round. Twelve digits spread around a circular face. A small, wide arrow that moved slowly, and a thinner arrow that quivered with every pulse of his heart.

“It’s not an electronic clock. I think the word is. . . hmm. . . analog,” Maria had explained. “I’ve always had it. It’s probably from Earth!”

She slept with the clock beside her bed. He and she could count along with it to keep their minds off of the day to come.

Only these days, staring up at the ceiling while bound by Earth’s gravity, all was silent.

Shadow wasn’t nocturnal.

—

Rouge wasn’t nocturnal. Frustratingly so. GUN was a human organization, and human organizations worked with the sun, so she worked with the sun.

It’s not like she hated the sun. The big ball of burning space gas wasn’t the top of her priorities by any means. She had much better things to hate in a much nearer proximity. But that didn’t mean she liked it. She was always, always sleepy while the rest of the humans seemed as bright and as chipper as ever. And of course, humans tended to relate more and thus spill more to those familiar to them, so she had to become just as alert as they were to do her job most effectively during the times that night missions were few.

She’d gotten good at it by now. This was her world by choice. There was no higher-paying client in the business. Humans loved things like information and secrets on each other almost as much as she loved gems, which was saying something. She knew where she was most valuable, and it was here.

So Rouge wasn’t nocturnal. Simple as that.

Rouge wasn’t nocturnal.

—

Omega’s sensors registered motion in the hallway outside of his designated recharge room. His base programming ran through a pre-prepared checklist of possible sources of this motion, and determined the most likely cause to be either one of his organic teammates attending to their bodily functions.

Omega’s sensors registered more motion in the hallways outside of his designated recharge room. His base programming ran through a pre-prepared checklist of possible sources of this motion, and determined the most likely cause to be either one of his organic teammates returning to their rooms after attending to their bodily functions.

Omega’s sensors registered voices in an indeterminate location outside of his designated recharge room. His base programming could not match this stimuli to any of the conditions on the pre-prepared checklist. This instigated the reboot of his short-term adaptive processing.

Omega exited standby mode. As he unplugged himself from his power cord, a notification popped up- energy reserves were still at a mere 14%. He looked at his power cord, the measly, pathetic, “UL-Rated” cord approved for use in civilian housing infrastructure, and imagined ripping it apart and demanding to be supplied with a more suitable industrial cord.

His attention shifted when he identified Shadow and Rouge’s voices in the living room. He was too distant for his language programs to make much out of the vocals. He opened his door and traveled to the living room.

His teammates’ voices went silent as he arrived.

“WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE FOR AWAKENING AT 12:47 AM?” He asked.

Shadow looked at Rouge. Rouge shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“ORGANIC BEINGS REQUIRE A MINIMUM OF EIGHT HOURS OF REST TO FUNCTION. RETURN TO YOUR ROOMS.”

“No.” Shadow replied. “Go back to bed. This doesn't concern you.”

“THIS DOES, IN FACT, CONCERN ME. I REQUIRE MY TEAMMATES TO OPERATE AT MAXIMUM EFFICIENCY. THIS REQUIRES THAT YOU REST.”

“Oh shut up, would you?” Rouge crossed her arms. “Shadow and I are going out for a little night out and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“TRY ME.”

“Sure!”

“No fighting in the apartment.” Shadow parroted Rouge’s oft-cited rule. “Come on, let’s just go.”

“YOU WILL NOT LEAVE ME BEHIND!”

“Fine.” Shadow said.

“Only as long as you keep it quiet and don’t complain about ‘organic sleep schedules’, alright?” Rouge added.

“AFFIRMATIVE.”

Rouge grabbed her keys, Shadow grabbed his jacket, and they left the apartment in short order. Their movement was normal as they descended down the stairs, but once they reached the pavement of the sidewalk, Shadow ignited his rocket footwear and Rouge took off from the ground. They grinned at each other before taking off down the empty streets. Omega wasted no time in activating his own rocket boosters to follow.

As they raced through the suburbs and onto the 76 freeway, Shadow’s speeds crept further and further towards the sound barrier. His vitals were still within that of mild aerobic activity, whereas Rouge’s heart rate and rate of respiration increased rapidly. This strange, nonverbal race was pushing her limits.

Building lights faded into the light of individual warehouses as they neared the edge of the city. Upon crossing the last city limit, Shadow gave a single audible laugh, before breaking the sound barrier, shooting off ahead of them into the patchwork of rural roads.

Rouge shook her head and slowed, but Omega would not let himself be beaten. He increased power to his boosters and gave his own verbal “HA” as he caught the hedgehog, who’d stopped a mere twenty miles out.

“I won.” Shadow smiled.

“YOU DID NOT INSTIGATE A FORMAL RACE.” Omega replied.

Rouge arrived moments later, huffing and puffing as she landed beside them.

“Good pace.” Shadow said to her.

He sat down in the middle of the gravel road, looking up towards the stars. Rouge joined beside him, her wings draped over her shoulders.

Omega stood behind them. He did not need to rest. His rocket boosters did not get worn out and would not get sore. Such was the superiority of the Ultimate Robo-

An error warning popped up in front of his vision. Energy reserves at 7%.

This was only enough for another forty minutes of operation. Less, if he were to activate his rocket boosters again.

“Nice night.” Shadow said.

“Yeah.” Rouge concurred.

Omega queried his auxiliary power cells, only to find them empty. His memory banks not-so-helpfully reminded him that he’d spent them to get an extra boost of speed to pursue a fleeing Badnik three days ago, and he had yet to recharge them.

“I’ve been learning the constellations.” Shadow whispered.

“Really?”

“What do you mean ‘really’?”

“No, not that I think it’s weird, hun.” Rouge said. “Just that, don’t you come from space?”

Shadow laughed quietly. “We couldn’t see the stars very well from the windows.”

“Why not?”

“The light from the planet was too bright.”

“What light?”

“I’m not sure. I remember hearing something about how even the planet reflects the sun’s light.” Shadow picked up a chunk of gravel from the road, admiring it in his hand. “Or perhaps it was just the brightness of the solar panels. Either way, it blocked out the light from the stars.”

“Just like city lights.” Rouge concurred.

Omega engaged in a line of rationale that he never had to before- one that made his rage spike in his processor. He needed to preserve power for the flight back to the apartment. Every power-saving measure, no matter how humiliating, would help.

He lowered himself to the ground and began offlining auxiliary systems. He reduced power to those that weren’t absolutely vital to his targeting and weapons operation, such as his optics, tactile, and audial sensors. Shadow and Rouge’s voices became muffled and the road ahead became shadowy.

“That one’s. . . Cassiopea, I believe.” Shadow lifted his arm toward the sky, but Omega couldn’t make out much else in his motion.

“Looks like a ‘W’.” Rouge replied. “Seems a little fancy.”

“I didn’t name it.”

“Of course not. And I’m not one to scoff at sentimentality.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Okay, maybe a little.”

Omega’s rage flared up even further when he received another emergency popup. Energy reserves at 6%.

He tore through his own processor, searching for whatever errant function could’ve caused such a drastic power drain in a matter of minutes. He paused, however, when he found that the function consuming the most power was his own processing, followed closely by his cooling fans.

He was going to think himself into shut down! How imbecilic! He needed to cease this processing immediately.

“What are some other ones?” Rouge asked.

“That one is a star cluster.” Shadow replied. “They’re called the Pleiades.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s what humans call them.”

“Know any more?”

A pause. “No.”

Rouge laughed. Shadow made some motion towards her that Omega’s limited vision could not determine.

“Sounds like you need to get out more when you can’t sleep.” Rouge said.

“I don’t think someone would like that.”

There was a pause in conversation. Good. The less Omega processed, the better to preserve power with. The fact that he’d let himself get this underpowered was a vital mistake. To use the appropriate vulgar terminology: fuck that power cable. It was imperative that he retrieve a new one!

“Guess he’s also enjoying the stars.” Rouge said.

Energy reserves at 5%.

Omega’s rage exploded within him. He simulated blowing apart the popup with his missiles, then tearing apart the cord with his claws. Of course, this simulation only consumed more power.

“Omega?” Shadow asked.

“SYSTEMS NOMINAL.” He snapped back, before diving back into the process of trying to reduce his rage.

A futile strategy, Omega admitted to himself.

“What’s on your mind?” Rouge asked. “Your cooling fans are going crazy.”

“SYSTEMS NOMINAL. LET US DEPART THIS LOCATION.” He instructed his legs to resume a standing position.

However, his knee joints slowed, his motors whining from lack of power.

“Something’s wrong.” Shadow hissed.

“Don’t look at me.” Rouge replied.

Omega turned and began walking down the road, only for his steps to sway. Locomotion protocols were among those he’d limited power to.

“Omega! Answer me!” Shadow said. .

It was time to retreat from this location, now. It was approximately fifty miles back to the apartment. He would have to fire his rocket boosters. . . slower, to have enough power to stay online at least. . . some of the way there. Even precise calculations were slipping form his awareness.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you tired?” Rouge asked.

“I DO NOT GET TIRED!” Omega replied.

Something landed in front of him, a blob of pixels lighter than the darkness behind it. “You’re walking like you’ve had one too many at the club. We didn’t wake you up from your much-needed beauty sleep, did we?”

“SILENCE!”

“What are your power levels at?” Shadow’s blob joined beside her.

Omega lowered himself to the ground so he could shift enough power to his optics to make out their facial expressions.

“You’re already weakened.” Shadow frowned. “Your attempts at hiding that have failed. Tell us what’s going on so we can help.”

A second of concern slipped onto Rouge’s expression, but she didn’t say anything.

“POWER RESERVES AT 5%.” Omega divulged.

She regained her smile. “So you are sleepy.”

“I AM NOT ‘SLEEPY’! I AM ON THE VERGE OF IMMINENT SHUTDOWN!”

“Mhmm. We’ve all been there.” Rouge replied. “Could almost fall asleep standing up if you’re in a meeting with information ops. I don’t recommend trying it for yourself, though.”

“He needs to get back.” Shadow said.

“Of course. I’ll carry him.”

“You shouldn’t have come with us if you were this low on energy.” Shadow stared at him.

Omega couldn’t generate anything to reply with.

“Alright, up you go, big boy.”

Rouge grabbed his arms and took to the sky. With the landscape passing by beneath them without the need for his own locomotion, Omega entered standby mode to conserve power.

—

He awakened from standby mode with his power reserves at 100%. His auxiliary power cells were even 33% restored.

The first thing his optics registered was sunlight streaming through his window. He checked his chronometer. The time was 11:00 AM. Noise emanated from the kitchen of the apartment.

Omega stormed out of his room to find Rouge gathering components for pancakes and Shadow crunching on beans from the Coffea Arabica plant.

“Someone’s bright and chipper this morning.” Rouge pouted before rubbing her eyes. “Keep it down, would you?”

“I already offered to make you coffee.” Shadow said.

“Oh shut up, you.”

“YOU DID NOT WAKE ME WHEN YOU RETURNED ME TO THIS LOCATION.”

“Figured you needed the rest. Or, hmm, the power down?” Rouge replied.

Omega’s processor, now operating at full capacity, generated seventeen different insults to deny her charge with. However, none of them were persuasive enough to combat the strength of evidence she had to the contrary.

“POWER PRESERVATION WAS INDEED NECESSARY.”

“Next time, tell us when you’re low on power, alright?”

“UNNECESSARY.”

“You insist on telling us whenever we do something against the best interest of our health. Allow us to return the favor.” Shadow added.

“I DO NOT HAVE ‘HEALTH’.”

“Fine!” Shadow tossed the bag down, spilling the beans across the counter. “Allow me to put it even more simply: tell us when you can’t operate to your fullest potential. You’d expect nothing less from us, correct?”

A brief search of his memory banks did confirm that he’d made Shadow and Rouge promise to disclose any organic weaknesses. Omega crossed his arms. “CORRECT.”

“Good. That’s that.”

“Pick up your coffee.” Rouge flicked a bean into Shadow’s lap.

Shadow scowled at her, but said nothing more.

“We’ll make sure you’re able to get the time you need to recharge from now on, alright?” She turned to Omega. “Believe it or not, we want you feeling your best, too.”

—

After four hours of researching Mobian sleep cycles, Omega finally interpreted her meaning.

He was not nocturnal.

#teamdarkweek #Team Dark #shadow the hedgehog #rouge the bat #e-123 omega #e123 omega #so excited for this week!!

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brian-in-finance · 5 months ago

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Forget Me Not is not just a gin…

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Literature, visual and performance art touches our lives daily. Sadly, arts funding everywhere has been cut over the past decade, affecting many artists at the outset of their careers. We want to help plug the funding gap so that tomorrow’s important artists get the support they need to reach their full potential.

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Caitríona Balfe x

Our Projects

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Amanda Seibæk

Amanda Seibæk is a Danish artist who works across painting and printmaking.

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Materially, Seibæk connects the mediums of painting and printmaking. She sees colours in layers and with colours she shapes her figures. When connecting print and paint she tries to develop a language where print is not locked, but rather freed by the brush as a playful tool to make sense of something intuitive.

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Botanical ingredients:

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mariacallous · 1 month ago

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The Middle East teeters on the brink of a regional war, and Israel’s conflict with Hamas hit the one-year mark on Oct 7. The longer that such wars—particularly when they are centered around long-standing geopolitical hot spots—go on, the greater their potential to spread—not just militarily, but also into the tangled domains of hybrid warfare, where political, strategic, and economic demands meet. Russia’s war in Ukraine offers a telling set of examples of what might be to come in the Middle East.

While the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought global attention to the conflict, the war was already long underway. Its start came with the Euromaidan revolution in Kyiv in 2014 and Russia’s subsequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, which was followed by Russian support of pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine during the ensuing years. Attempts at international mediation and negotiations over a cease-fire ultimately proved unsuccessful, leading to a gradual escalation of tensions between Russia and Ukraine that exploded into full-scale war nearly a decade later.

The hybrid dimension of the conflict has emerged as a pivotal component of the war. This spans everything from sanctions to cyberattacks to proxy conflicts between Moscow and Kyiv that go far beyond the front lines in Eastern Europe. And it’s played nearly as critical a role as the battlefield in shaping the course of the war.

Sanctions and other forms of economic restrictions have been some of the most actively used tools by Western states to pressure and weaken Moscow without having to get militarily involved in the conflict directly. The United States and European Union have levied thousands of sanctions against Russia, including against individuals, companies, and entire sectors such as banking and energy. For Washington, this has also included the use of secondary sanctions, which are designed to punish or dissuade non-Russian countries or companies from engaging with those sanctioned entities.

These strategies have been applied to various countries—from China to India to the United Arab Emirates—and reshaped global trade and financial flows while also spurring such countries to seek out loopholes and workarounds in order to mitigate their economic impact.

One case in point is the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan. One of the country’s largest banks—MBank, owned by former Prime Minister Omurbek Babanov—is reported by the Kyiv Independent to be working with Russia’s Sberbank, which has been sanctioned by the EU and United States. One of the mechanisms allegedly used by MBank to bypass sanctions involves a partnership with Bank 131, a Sberbank subsidiary that facilitates international payments.

Through a Singapore-based financial technology company called Thunes, MBank has reportedly reestablished payment channels linked to Sberbank, allowing it to conduct transactions in clear violation of the sanctions. Babanov himself is reportedly facing potential sanctions due to allegations that his company, Asia Cement, is linked to Russia’s nuclear industry.

MBank is not alone in this scrutiny. Other major Kyrgyz banks, including RSK and Keremet, are also under the spotlight for potentially bypassing anti-Kremlin sanctions. Both institutions rely on services from the KartStandard processing center and a local affiliate, CSI, which are effectively subsidiaries of Russia’s CFT Group, a company sanctioned by the United States in August.

If MBank and other Kyrgyz businesses continue their apparent engagement with sanctioned Russian companies, they may face secondary sanctions from Washington and the EU, which could in turn lead to Kyrgyzstan’s financial isolation, loss of access to international markets, and diminished foreign investment. Sanctions have been a potent tool for the West—and one that can affect countries far beyond the front lines.

Another key area is the cybersphere. Cyberattacks are, of course, not a new phenomenon, but they have been increasingly used by Kyiv and Moscow against a growing list of targets, including military sites, government agencies, and critical infrastructure such as energy grids and power plants. Russia has also employed cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns against Ukraine’s Western backers, most notably during its efforts to interfere with U.S. elections in 2016, and has shown no signs of abating such practices in the current election cycle.

A third arena in the hybrid sphere of the Russia-Ukraine war has taken the form of proxy conflicts, with the Middle East and Africa serving as key theaters. In the case of the Middle East, Russia has ramped up its support for anti-Western regimes since 2014, from intervening in the Syrian civil war in support of Bashar al-Assad in 2015 to beefing up cooperation with Iran.

Escalating tensions in the Middle East more recently have not deterred Moscow from providing such support, with Russia increasing economic and security ties with Iran, while the two countries reportedly plan to sign a strategic partnership agreement at the upcoming summit of the BRICS bloc (comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and several recently added members) in late October.

In Africa, the Russia-Ukraine proxy war has taken on a more direct dimension, particularly in the Sahel region. Russia and Ukraine back rival sides of the Sudan conflict, with Russian Wagner Group mercenaries supporting the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces while Kyiv backs the Sudanese Armed Forces. Ukrainian special forces have reportedly participated in drone strikes against Wagner forces in Sudan, and Ukraine also was accused of providing intelligence to rebels in Mali for an attack on Wagner forces operating there. Such a move prompted Mali and Niger to cut diplomatic ties with Ukraine, while Moscow accused Kyiv of opening a “second front” in their war.

The multidimensional nature of the war has complicated efforts to resolve the it diplomatically, given the sheer number of players pulled into the conflict and their complicated web of competing interests.

The Middle East could see similar hybrid dynamics emerge or strengthen in parallel to the military component of the conflict. This could include everything from the economic spread of anti-Israel boycotts to the politicization of the conflict in countries throughout the Muslim world to the growing use of cyberwarfare both within the region and outside of it.

After all, the war in Ukraine has shown no bounds when it comes to hybrid implications, with various aspects of connectivity between those involved—from energy to grain to telecommunications—being weaponized in the conflict.

This should serve as a cautionary tale for the Middle East. The longer that conflict drags on, the more players that it is likely to pull in (whether directly or indirectly) and the greater the consequences will be. Without a concerted effort to resolve or at least mitigate the conflict diplomatically, the hybrid components of the Russia-Ukraine conflict could be a sign for what’s to come in the Middle East—and far beyond.

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probablyasocialecologist · 1 year ago

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At a societal level, most people grasp the importance of plants to their lives and the ecosystems they inhabit. The success of humans as a species is inextricably interwoven with the success of plant life on Earth. Without the growth of ancient forests, the biosphere in which we live would not have enough oxygen-rich air for humans to have evolved. Without the cultivation of plants for food, humans could not have settled, built shelters and developed rich and diverse cultures. In practical terms, too, building with plants makes a lot of sense. They grow back and are relatively easy to cultivate, harvest and process into useful materials. Their inherent fibrous structures give our buildings integrity. Trees, processed into timber, work extremely well in both compression and tension. Hollow straws and grasses hold air within them, making them great insulators. The lignin in many different plants can act as a natural binder when heated, meaning that you can essentially squash them, heat them and they stick together into useful sheet materials. Mixed with different binders like clay and lime, they can be given resistance to fire, insects and mould. Bio-based materials are also hygroscopic – meaning that they hold and release moisture. The fact that they can absorb humidity from a room helps to regulate damp and prevent mould from growing. That they are moisture permeable means that water vapour trapped in walls, from rain ingress or generated through leaks, always has somewhere to go. Contemporary buildings, on the other hand, are essentially wrapped in plastic sheets, trapping in moisture and resulting in poor indoor air quality.

Some of the best examples of bio-based buildings are hiding in plain sight in villages, towns and cities across the globe, having withstood decades, sometimes centuries of wear and tear. Timber-framed barns, reinforced with hazel wattle and clay daub can be found dotted across the British countryside. The technique of cob building, using loadbearing clay and straw, was very commonly used in the south-west of England in the 19th century, and many of those cob buildings still stand in Devon and Cornwall today. They are finished in a lime render and look from the outside like any other stone or brick building.

That these techniques have not become more widespread is, at first glance, surprising. The local materials and skills used to build with them were relatively low cost, and when well maintained, extremely durable. The critical thing about these materials, however, is how they were intrinsically linked to land, and specific geographies or bioregions. Industrialisation brought with it a change in agricultural practices and land ownership. Bio-based materials were conventionally derived from agricultural waste; long wheat straw was for example used for thatching, until modern chemical fertilisers that help the wheat grow more quickly weakened the structure of the straw, making it too brittle. Water reed, also used in thatching and as a render substrate, was once abundant in wetlands, but these were drained over the course of the 19th century to develop more arable farmland, cutting by approximately 90 per cent the amount of land on which the reed could grow.

Industrialisation also brought about the development of contemporary insulations, designed initially to prevent energy loss from high-energy machinery and factory spaces. Materials such as concrete and steel, which enabled the quick assembly of spaces of production, ultimately sought markets in domestic construction too. These materials were produced at an unprecedented scale and advertised as technologically advanced, in need of little or no maintenance: symbols of a bright future in which being cold, damp and living with fire risk were a thing of the past. And as these materials became more and more popular, regulatory frameworks began to be designed around them, with lawmakers falling victim to aggressive lobbying and marketing campaigns. Today, testing and certification, mortgages and insurances in the UK and beyond are generally designed around contemporary building systems, and materials which have proven their efficacy over decades of service are considered risky, fringe and ultimately more costly.

The petrochemical and mineral materials we have been building with since the Industrial Revolution require an enormous amount of energy to be extracted and processed. The cement industry, for example, is responsible for about eight per cent of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions – far more than global carbon emissions from aviation. We cannot continue to build using materials that generate enormous outflows of emissions and have to be shipped across great distances. We need to use materials that are lower in embodied carbon: bio-based materials, derived from plants which can regenerate sustainably and sequester carbon into our buildings.

#building #construction #architecture #solarpunk

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cy-lindric · 2 years ago

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Hello! I tried looking it up on google but i didnt quite understand, could you explain what you do as an layout artist? Thanks :)))

Hello ! Sorry it took me a while to get around to this reply, and sorry that it's so long !

First off, keep in mind that I'll be talking about 2D traditional animation. "Layout" for CG productions is a different job entirely, and puppet based animation works in a different way as well. The layout step in animation is not universal throughout the world's various industries. It's quite prevalent in France and in Europe in general, and it exists in Japan under other forms, but from what I've heard it's not super common to work that way in the US. So keep in mind that working roles and pipelines are different depending on the country and production.

In my industry, "layout posing" or Character Layout comes after the storyboard and background design process and before the animation process. Layout artists create a few clean poses, sometimes just one per shot, sometimes all key poses depending on the needs of the shot. The idea is to give the animator a solid, on model, well composed and cleaned up (to a degree) base to work off and ensure the consistency of the design and artistic intent throughout. I'm a character designer as well as a layout artist, so I often do both, which helps a lot with model and design consistency, esp on smaller projects where I'm sometimes to only designer and layout artist.

Layout is more design-adjacent than animation because it's the step where various interpretation of model are decided depending on angles, framing, etc. Not every possibly base can be covered in model sheets and the layout artist often has to determine how to stylize certain things, detail level, pose clarity, etc. They also give pointers for acting, emotional cues, timing, although of course those things are also determined by storyboard artists before and animators afterwards. It kind of depends on how detailed the storyboard is and what the needs of the animation team are.

From what I gather, in the US the function of Storyboard Cleanup Artist or Storyboard Revisionnist is quite prevalent and tends to bridge the gap between storyboard artists and animators. Animators do their own layouts, and model revision is handled by supervisors. In Japan, character layouts are done at the same time as background layouts, usually by the animator themselves, but not always.

The character layout step is not included in every prod and can be bridged in other ways, but it's quite helpful in fully animated, more realistic-looking productions where models are demanding and difficult to hold (which I believe is why it's still so prevalent in Japan and France where those styles are popular). It helps the animators get a consistent base so they can focus on movement, timing and emotion, rather than losing precious time in retaining a model to the detriment of the energy or subtlety of the animation. That absolutely doesn't mean animators are not capable of doing this themselves (indeed layout artists often are animators as well), but having a dedicated step of the production to setup clean poses and solid models definitely streamlines the process and allows less experienced animators to be able work on more difficult models as well.

#replies #animation industry #layout posing #rrancodan

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preservationofnormalcy · 1 year ago

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How long have glamours been a fixture of the extranormal community, and how accessible are they for the average extranormal person?

If they've only recently become accessible to a broader portion of the community, how has that affected the extranormal community's relations with the mundane world*? I'd imagine that being able to interact with baseline humans* without causing injury to them would be a game-changer. That, and being able to go out into public without causing a ruckus. Although, I do hope that we can work towards a world where those who don't need a glamour for safety reasons can just be themselves.

(*Are these the correct terms?)

Technically, glamours have been a staple for centuries, but for the first couple centuries only for fae. Starting in about the 1800s, coinciding not entirely accidentally with the Industrial Revolution, the techniques began to filter to other populations. In the process they became somewhat standardized and varied based on the population they’re tailored for. They’re now quite accessible, depending on price range. A “decent” one is probably a few hundred dollars, depending on who does it. “Bespoke” or “designer” glamours from studios like Imaginaerie can go for thousands or even tens of thousands. Then there’s places like Drezzik’s Discount Gremlin Glamours that are, uh. Notorious.

As for how it’s effected things, you really can’t overstate the importance of glamours to the extranormal community. Some groups, like demons, had developed their own techniques similar to a glamour, but they adopted the fae-based techniques and mixed it with their own. Other groups had no way of mimicking them and the advent of widespread glamours allowed them to live normal lives. Folks like werewolves often don’t use them (for a lot of cultural reasons) but it still helps them when they need to go “full formal.”

I realized partway through that I needed to explain that, so I turned to my favorite doodle artist Ambrose. We used our coworker Yelnax, Herald of Flame as a model. Thanks, Yelnax!

Nowadays, glamours will often have three “settings”: off, business casual, and full formal. You can see the three settings here in this doodle. Glamours often require a very small amount of concentration or “energy”, and the different settings will require greater or lesser amounts.

Office dress policy is to remain in business casual, it’s a good trade off.

There’s special cases, of course - dragons are intensely magical so their glamours are incredibly powerful by nature, while most types of extraterrestrials struggle to maintain a glamour.

#office for the preservation of normalcy #ask #advice #ooc: enjoy my lunchtime doodle

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dailyanarchistposts · 6 months ago

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A.3.9 What is anarcho-primitivism?

As discussed in section A.3.3, most anarchists would agree with Situationist Ken Knabb in arguing that “in a liberated world computers and other modern technologies could be used to eliminate dangerous or boring tasks, freeing everyone to concentrate on more interesting activities.” Obviously ”[c]ertain technologies — nuclear power is the most obvious example — are indeed so insanely dangerous that they will no doubt be brought to a prompt halt. Many other industries which produce absurd, obsolete or superfluous commodities will, of course, cease automatically with the disappearance of their commercial rationales. But many technologies …, however they may presently be misused, have few if any inherent drawbacks. It’s simply a matter of using them more sensibly, bringing them under popular control, introducing a few ecological improvements, and redesigning them for human rather than capitalistic ends.” [Public Secrets, p. 79 and p. 80] Thus most eco-anarchists see the use of appropriate technology as the means of creating a society which lives in balance with nature.

However, a small but vocal minority of self-proclaimed Green anarchists disagree. Writers such as John Zerzan, John Moore and David Watson have expounded a vision of anarchism which, they claim, aims to critique every form of power and oppression. This is often called “anarcho-primitivism,” which according to Moore, is simply “a shorthand term for a radical current that critiques the totality of civilisation from an anarchist perspective, and seeks to initiate a comprehensive transformation of human life.” [Primitivist Primer]

How this current expresses itself is diverse, with the most extreme elements seeking the end of all forms of technology, division of labour, domestication, “Progress”, industrialism, what they call “mass society” and, for some, even symbolic culture (i.e. numbers, language, time and art). They tend to call any system which includes these features “civilisation” and, consequently, aim for “the destruction of civilisation”. How far back they wish to go is a moot point. Some see the technological level that existed before the Industrial Revolution as acceptable, many go further and reject agriculture and all forms of technology beyond the most basic. For them, a return to the wild, to a hunter-gatherer mode of life, is the only way for anarchy is exist and dismiss out of hand the idea that appropriate technology can be used to create an anarchist society based on industrial production which minimises its impact on ecosystems.

Thus we find the primitivist magazine “Green Anarchy” arguing that those, like themselves, “who prioritise the values of personal autonomy or wild existence have reason to oppose and reject all large-scale organisations and societies on the grounds that they necessitate imperialism, slavery and hierarchy, regardless of the purposes they may be designed for.” They oppose capitalism as it is “civilisation’s current dominant manifestation.” However, they stress that it is “Civilisation, not capitalism per se, was the genesis of systemic authoritarianism, compulsory servitude and social isolation. Hence, an attack upon capitalism that fails to target civilisation can never abolish the institutionalised coercion that fuels society. To attempt to collectivise industry for the purpose of democratising it is to fail to recognise that all large-scale organisations adopt a direction and form that is independent of its members’ intentions.” Thus, they argue, genuine anarchists must oppose industry and technology for ”[h]ierarchical institutions, territorial expansion, and the mechanisation of life are all required for the administration and process of mass production to occur.” For primitivists, ”[o]nly small communities of self-sufficient individuals can coexist with other beings, human or not, without imposing their authority upon them.” Such communities would share essential features with tribal societies, ”[f]or over 99% of human history, humans lived within small and egalitarian extended family arrangements, while drawing their subsistence directly from the land.” [Against Mass Society]

While such tribal communities, which lived in harmony with nature and had little or no hierarchies, are seen as inspirational, primitivists look (to use the title of a John Zerzan book) forward to seeing the “Future Primitive.” As John Moore puts it, “the future envisioned by anarcho-primitivism … is without precedent. Although primitive cultures provide intimations of the future, and that future may well incorporate elements derived from those cultures, an anarcho-primitivist world would likely be quite different from previous forms of anarchy.” [Op. Cit.]

For the primitivist, other forms of anarchism are simply self-managed alienation within essentially the same basic system we now endure. Hence Moore’s comment that “classical anarchism” wants “to take over civilisation, rework its structures to some degree, and remove its worst abuses and oppressions. However, 99% of life in civilisation remains unchanged in their future scenarios, precisely because the aspects of civilisation they question are minimal … overall life patterns wouldn’t change too much.” Thus ”[f]rom the perspective of anarcho-primitivism, all other forms of radicalism appear as reformist, whether or not they regard themselves as revolutionary.” [Op. Cit.]

In reply, “classical anarchists” point out three things. Firstly, to claim that the “worst abuses and oppressions” account for 1% of capitalist society is simply nonsense and, moreover, something an apologist of that system would happily agree with. Secondly, it is obvious from reading any “classical” anarchist text that Moore’s assertions are nonsense. “Classical” anarchism aims to transform society radically from top to bottom, not tinker with minor aspects of it. Do primitivists really think that people who went to the effort to abolish capitalism would simply continue doing 99% of the same things they did before hand? Of course not. In other words, it is not enough to get rid of the boss, although this is a necessary first step! Thirdly, and most importantly, Moore’s argument ensures that his new society would be impossible to reach.

So, as can be seen, primitivism has little or no bearing to the traditional anarchist movement and its ideas. The visions of both are simply incompatible, with the ideas of the latter dismissed as authoritarian by the former and anarchists questioning whether primitivism is practical in the short term or even desirable in the long. While supporters of primitivism like to portray it as the most advanced and radical form of anarchism, others are less convinced. They consider it as a confused ideology which draws its followers into absurd positions and, moreover, is utterly impractical. They would agree with Ken Knabb that primitivism is rooted in “fantasies [which] contain so many obvious self-contradictions that it is hardly necessary to criticise them in any detail. They have questionable relevance to actual past societies and virtually no relevance to present possibilities. Even supposing that life was better in one or another previous era, we have to begin from where we are now. Modern technology is so interwoven with all aspects of our life that it could not be abruptly discontinued without causing a global chaos that would wipe out billions of people.” [Op. Cit., p. 79]

The reason for this is simply that we live in a highly industrialised and interconnected system in which most people do not have the skills required to live in a hunter-gatherer or even agricultural society. Moreover, it is extremely doubtful that six billion people could survive as hunter-gatherers even if they had the necessary skills. As Brian Morris notes, ”[t]he future we are told is ‘primitive.’ How this is to be achieved in a world that presently sustains almost six billion people (for evidence suggests that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is only able to support 1 or 2 people per sq. mile)” primitivists like Zerzan do not tell us. [“Anthropology and Anarchism,” pp. 35–41, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, no. 45, p. 38] Most anarchists, therefore, agree with Chomsky’s summation that “I do not think that they are realising that what they are calling for is the mass genocide of millions of people because of the way society is now structured and organised … If you eliminate these structures everybody dies … And, unless one thinks through these things, it’s not really serious.” [Chomsky on Anarchism, p. 226]

Somewhat ironically, many proponents of primitivsm agree with its critics that the earth would be unable to support six billion living as a hunter-gatherers. This, critics argue, gives primitivism a key problem in that population levels will take time to fall and so any “primitivist” rebellion faces two options. Either it comes about via some kind of collapse of “civilisation” or it involves a lengthy transition period during which “civilisation” and its industrial legacies are decommissioned safely, population levels drop naturally to an appropriate level and people gain the necessary skills required for their new existence.

The problems with the first option should be obvious but, sadly, it is implied by many primitivist writers. Moore, for example, talks about “when civilisation collapses” (“through its own volition, through our efforts, or a combination of the two”). This implies an extremely speedy process which is confirmed when he talks about the need for “positive alternatives” to be built now as “the social disruption caused by collapse could easily create the psychological insecurity and social vacuum in which fascism and other totalitarian dictatorships could flourish.” [Op. Cit.] Social change based on “collapse,” “insecurity” and “social disruption” does not sound like a recipe for a successful revolution.

Then there are the anti-organisation dogmas expounded by primitivism. Moore is typical, asserting that ”[o]rganisations, for anarcho-primitivists, are just rackets, gangs for putting a particular ideology in power” and reiterates the point by saying primitivists stand for “the abolition of all power relations, including the State . .. and any kind of party or organisation.” [Op. Cit.] Yet without organisation, no modern society could function. There would be a total and instant collapse which would see not only mass starvation but also ecological destruction as nuclear power stations meltdown, industrial waste seeps into the surrounding environment, cities and towns decay and hordes of starving people fighting over what vegetables, fruits and animals they could find in the countryside. Clearly an anti-organisation dogma can only be reconciled with the idea of a near overnight “collapse” of civilisation, not with a steady progress towards a long term goal. Equally, how many “positive alternatives” could exist without organisation?

Moore dismissed any critique that points out that a collapse would cause mass destruction as “just smear tactics,” “weird fantasies spread by some commentators hostile to anarcho-primitivism who suggest that the population levels envisaged by anarcho-primitivists would have to be achieved by mass die-offs or nazi-style death camps.” The “commitment of anarcho-primitivists to the abolition of all power relations … means that such orchestrated slaughter remains an impossibility as well as just plain horrendous.” [Op. Cit.] Yet no critic is suggesting that primitivists desire such a die-off or seek to organise it. They simply point out that the collapse of civilisation would result in a mass die-off due to the fact that most people do not have the skills necessary to survive it nor could the Earth provide enough food for six billion people trying to live in a primitivist manner. Other primitivists have asserted that it can, stating ”[i]t is not possible for all six billion of the planet’s current inhabitants to survive as hunter-gatherers, but it is possible for those who can’t to grow their own food in significantly smaller spaces … as has been demonstrated by permaculture, organic gardening, and indigenous horticulture techniques.” [Against Mass Society] Unfortunately no evidence was provided to show the truth of this assertion nor that people could develop the necessary skills in time even if it were. It seems a slim hope to place the fate of billions on, so that humanity can be “wild” and free from such tyrannies as hospitals, books and electricity.

Faced with the horrors that such a “collapse” would entail, those primitivists who have thought the issue through end up accepting the need for a transition period. John Zerzan, for example, argues that it “seems evident that industrialisation and the factories could not be gotten rid of instantly, but equally clear that their liquidation must be pursued with all the vigour behind the rush of break-out.” Even the existence of cities is accepted, for ”[c]ultivation within the cities is another aspect of practical transition.” [On the Transition: Postscript to Future Primitive]

However, to accept the necessity of a transition period does little more than expose the contradictions within primitivism. Zerzan notes that “the means of reproducing the prevailing Death Ship (e.g. its technology) cannot be used to fashion a liberated world.” He ponders: “What would we keep? ‘Labour-saving devices?’ Unless they involve no division of labour (e.g. a lever or incline), this concept is a fiction; behind the ‘saving’ is hidden the congealed drudgery of many and the despoliation of the natural world.” How this is compatible with maintaining “industrialisation and the factories” for a (non-specified) period is unclear. Similarly, he argues that ”[i]nstead of the coercion of work — and how much of the present could continue without precisely that coercion? — an existence without constraints is an immediate, central objective.” [Op. Cit.] How that is compatible with the arguing that industry would be maintained for a time is left unasked, never mind unanswered. And if “work” continues, how is this compatible with the typical primitivist dismissal of “traditional” anarchism, namely that self-management is managing your own alienation and that no one will want to work in a factory or in a mine and, therefore, coercion will have to be used to make them do so? Does working in a self-managed workplace somehow become less alienating and authoritarian during a primitivist transition?

It is an obvious fact that the human population size cannot be reduced significantly by voluntary means in a short period of time. For primitivism to be viable, world population levels need to drop by something like 90%. This implies a drastic reduction of population will take decades, if not centuries, to achieve voluntarily. Given that it is unlikely that (almost) everyone on the planet will decide not to have children, this time scale will almost certainly be centuries and so agriculture and most industries will have to continue (and an exodus from the cities would be impossible immediately). Likewise, reliable contraceptives are a product of modern technology and, consequently, the means of producing them would have to maintained over that time — unless primitivists argue that along with refusing to have children, people will also refuse to have sex.

Then there is the legacy of industrial society, which simply cannot be left to decay on its own. To take just one obvious example, leaving nuclear power plants to melt down would hardly be eco-friendly. Moreover, it is doubtful that the ruling elite will just surrender its power without resistance and, consequently, any social revolution would need to defend itself against attempts to reintroduce hierarchy. Needless to say, a revolution which shunned all organisation and industry as inherently authoritarian would not be able to do this (it would have been impossible to produce the necessary military supplies to fight Franco’s fascist forces during the Spanish Revolution if the workers had not converted and used their workplaces to do so, to note another obvious example).

Then there is another, key, contradiction. For if you accept that there is a need for a transition from ‘here’ to ‘there’ then primitivism automatically excludes itself from the anarchist tradition. The reason is simple. Moore asserts that “mass society” involves “people working, living in artificial, technologised environments, and [being] subject to forms of coercion and control.” [Op. Cit.] So if what primitivists argue about technology, industry and mass society are all true, then any primitivist transition would, by definition, not be libertarian. This is because “mass society” will have to remain for some time (at the very least decades, more likely centuries) after a successful revolution and, consequently from a primitivist perspective, be based on “forms of coercion and control.” There is an ideology which proclaims the need for a transitional system which will be based on coercion, control and hierarchy which will, in time, disappear into a stateless society. It also, like primitivism, stresses that industry and large scale organisation is impossible without hierarchy and authority. That ideology is Marxism. Thus it seems ironic to “classical” anarchists to hear self-proclaimed anarchists repeating Engels arguments against Bakunin as arguments for “anarchy” (see section H.4 for a discussion of Engels claims that industry excludes autonomy).

So if, as seems likely, any transition will take centuries to achieve then the primivitist critique of “traditional” anarchism becomes little more than a joke — and a hindrance to meaningful anarchist practice and social change. It shows the contradiction at the heart of primitivism. While its advocates attack other anarchists for supporting technology, organisation, self-management of work, industrialisation and so on, they are themselves are dependent on the things they oppose as part of any humane transition to a primitivist society. And given the passion with which they attack other anarchists on these matters, unsurprisingly the whole notion of a primitivist transition period seems impossible to other anarchists. To denounce technology and industrialism as inherently authoritarian and then turn round and advocate their use after a revolution simply does not make sense from a logical or libertarian perspective.

Thus the key problem with primitivism can be seen. It offers no practical means of achieving its goals in a libertarian manner. As Knabb summarises, ”[w]hat begins as a valid questioning of excessive faith in science and technology ends up as a desperate and even less justified faith in the return of a primeval paradise, accompanied by a failure to engage the present system in any but an abstract, apocalyptical way.” To avoid this, it is necessary to take into account where we are now and, consequently, we will have to “seriously consider how we will deal with all the practical problems that will be posed in the interim.” [Op. Cit., p. 80 and p. 79] Sadly, primitivist ideology excludes this possibility by dismissing the starting point any real revolution would begin from as being inherently authoritarian. Moreover, they are blocking genuine social change by ensuring that no mass movement would ever be revolutionary enough to satisfy their criteria:

“Those who proudly proclaim their ‘total opposition’ to all compromise, all authority, all organisation, all theory, all technology, etc., usually turn out to have no revolutionary perspective whatsoever — no practical conception of how the present system might be overthrown or how a post-revolutionary society might work. Some even attempt to justify this lack by declaring that a mere revolution could never be radical enough to satisfy their eternal ontological rebelliousness. Such all-or-nothing bombast may temporarily impress a few spectators, but its ultimate effect is simply to make people blasé.” [Knabb, Op. Cit., pp. 31–32]

Then there is the question of the means suggested for achieving primitivism. Moore argues that the “kind of world envisaged by anarcho-primitivism is one unprecedented in human experience in terms of the degree and types of freedom anticipated ... so there can’t be any limits on the forms of resistance and insurgency that might develop.” [Op. Cit.] Non-primitivists reply by saying that this implies primitivists don’t know what they want nor how to get there. Equally, they stress that there must be limits on what are considered acceptable forms of resistance. This is because means shape the ends created and so authoritarian means will result in authoritarian ends. Tactics are not neutral and support for certain tactics betray an authoritarian perspective.

This can be seen from the UK magazine “Green Anarchist,” part of the extreme end of “Primitivism.” Due to its inherent unattractiveness for most people, it could never come about by libertarian means (i.e. by the free choice of individuals who create it by their own acts) and so cannot be anarchist as very few people would actually voluntarily embrace such a situation. This led to “Green Anarchist” developing a form of eco-vanguardism in order, to use Rousseau’s expression, to “force people to be free.” This was expressed when the magazine supported the actions and ideas of the (non-anarchist) Unabomber and published an article (“The Irrationalists”) by one its editors stating that “the Oklahoma bombers had the right idea. The pity was that they did not blast any more government offices … The Tokyo sarin cult had the right idea. The pity was that in testing the gas a year prior to the attack they gave themselves away.” [Green Anarchist, no. 51, p. 11] A defence of these remarks was published in the next issue and a subsequent exchange of letters in the US-based Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed magazine (numbers 48 to 52) saw the other editor justify this sick, authoritarian nonsense as simply examples of “unmediated resistance” conducted “under conditions of extreme repression.” Whatever happened to the anarchist principle that means shape the ends? This means there are “limits” on tactics, as some tactics are not and can never be libertarian.

However, few primitivists take such an extreme position. Most “primitivist” anarchists rather than being anti-technology and anti-civilisation as such instead (to use David Watson’s expression) believe it is a case of the “affirmation of aboriginal lifeways” and of taking a far more critical approach to issues such as technology, rationality and progress than that associated with Social Ecology. These eco-anarchists reject “a dogmatic primitivism which claims we can return in some linear way to our primordial roots” just as much as the idea of “progress,” ”superseding both Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment” ideas and traditions. For them, Primitivism “reflects not only a glimpse at life before the rise of the state, but also a legitimate response to real conditions of life under civilisation” and so we should respect and learn from “palaeolithic and neolithic wisdom traditions” (such as those associated with Native American tribes and other aboriginal peoples). While we “cannot, and would not want to abandon secular modes of thinking and experiencing the world… we cannot reduce the experience of life, and the fundamental, inescapable questions why we live, and how we live, to secular terms… Moreover, the boundary between the spiritual and the secular is not so clear. A dialectical understanding that we are our history would affirm an inspirited reason that honours not only atheistic Spanish revolutionaries who died for el ideal, but also religious pacifist prisoners of conscience, Lakota ghost dancers, taoist hermits and executed sufi mystics.” [David Watson, Beyond Bookchin: Preface for a future social ecology, p. 240, p. 103, p. 240 and pp. 66–67]

Such “primitivist” anarchism is associated with a range of magazines, mostly US-based, like Fifth Estate. For example, on the question of technology, they argue that ”[w]hile market capitalism was a spark that set the fire, and remains at the centre of the complex, it is only part of something larger: the forced adaptation of organic human societies to an economic-instrumental civilisation and its mass technics, which are not only hierarchical and external but increasingly ‘cellular’ and internal. It makes no sense to layer the various elements of this process in a mechanistic hierarchy of first cause and secondary effects.” [Watson, Op. Cit., pp. 127–8] For this reason primitivists are more critical of all aspects of technology, including calls by social ecologists for the use of appropriate technology essential in order to liberate humanity and the planet:

“To speak of technological society is in fact to refer to the technics generated within capitalism, which in turn generate new forms of capital. The notion of a distinct realm of social relations that determine this technology is not only ahistorical and undialectical, it reflects a kind of simplistic base/superstructure schema.” [Watson, Op. Cit., p. 124]

Thus it is not a case of who uses technology which determines its effects, rather the effects of technology are determined to a large degree by the society that creates it. In other words, technology is selected which tends to re-enforce hierarchical power as it is those in power who generally select which technology is introduced within society (saying that, oppressed people have this excellent habit of turning technology against the powerful and technological change and social struggle are inter-related — see section D.10). Thus even the use of appropriate technology involves more than selecting from the range of available technology at hand, as these technologies have certain effects regardless of who uses them. Rather it is a question of critically evaluating all aspects of technology and modifying and rejecting it as required to maximise individual freedom, empowerment and happiness. Few Social Ecologists would disagree with this approach, though, and differences are usually a question of emphasis rather than a deep political point.

However, few anarchists are convinced by an ideology which, as Brian Morris notes, dismisses the “last eight thousand years or so of human history” as little more than a source “of tyranny, hierarchical control, mechanised routine devoid of any spontaneity. All those products of the human creative imagination — farming, art, philosophy, technology, science, urban living, symbolic culture — are viewed negatively by Zerzan — in a monolithic sense.” While there is no reason to worship progress, there is just as little need to dismiss all change and development out of hand as oppressive. Nor are they convinced by Zerzan’s “selective culling of the anthropological literature.” [Op. Cit., p. 38] Most anarchists would concurr with Murray Bookchin:

“The ecology movement will never gain any real influence or have any significant impact on society if it advances a message of despair rather than hope, of a regressive and impossible return to primordial human cultures, rather than a commitment to human progress and to a unique human empathy for life as a whole … We must recover the utopian impulses, the hopefulness, the appreciation of what is good, what is worth rescuing in yumn civilisation, as well as what must be rejected, if the ecology movement is to play a transformative and creative role in human affairs. For without changing society, we will not change the diastrous ecological direction in which capitalism is moving.” [The Ecology of Freedom, p. 63]

In addition, a position of “turning back the clock” is deeply flawed, for while some aboriginal societies are very anarchistic, not all are. As anarchist anthropologist David Graeber points out, “we know almost nothing about like in Palaeolithic, other than the sort of thing that can be gleaned from studying very old skulls … But what we see in the more recent ethnographic records is endless variety. There were hunter-gatherer societies with nobles and slaves, there are agrarian societies that are fiercely egalitarian. Even in … Amazonia, one finds some groups who can justly be described as anarchists, like the Piaroa, living alongside others (say, the warlike Sherentre, who are clearly anything but.” [Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, pp. 53–4] Even if we speculate, like Zerzan, that if we go back far enough we would find all of humanity in anarchistic tribes, the fact remains that certain of these societies did develop into statist, propertarian ones implying that a future anarchist society that is predominantly inspired by and seek to reproduce key elements of prehistoric forms of anarchy is not the answer as “civilisation” may develop again due to the same social or environmental factors.

Primitivism confuses two radically different positions, namely support for a literal return to primitive lifeways and the use of examples from primitive life as a tool for social critique. Few anarchists would disagree with the second position as they recognise that current does not equal better and, consequently, past cultures and societies can have positive (as well as negative) aspects to them which can shed light on what a genuinely human society can be like. Similarly if “primitivism” simply involved questioning technology along with authority, few would disagree. However, this sensible position is, in the main, subsumed within the first one, the idea that an anarchist society would be a literal return to hunter-gatherer society. That this is the case can be seen from primitivist writings (some primitivists say that they are not suggesting the Stone Age as a model for their desired society nor a return to gathering and hunting, yet they seem to exclude any other options by their critique).

So to suggest that primitivism is simply a critique or some sort of “anarchist speculation” (to use John Moore’s term) seems incredulous. If you demonise technology, organisation, “mass society” and “civilisation” as inherently authoritarian, you cannot turn round and advocate their use in a transition period or even in a free society. As such, the critique points to a mode of action and a vision of a free society and to suggest otherwise is simply incredulous. Equally, if you praise foraging bands and shifting horticultural communities of past and present as examples of anarchy then critics are entitled to conclude that primitivists desire a similar system for the future. This is reinforced by the critiques of industry, technology, “mass society” and agriculture.

Until such time as “primitivists” clearly state which of the two forms of primitivism they subscribe to, other anarchists will not take their ideas that seriously. Given that they fail to answer such basic questions of how they plan to deactivate industry safely and avoid mass starvation without the workers’ control, international links and federal organisation they habitually dismiss out of hand as new forms of “governance,” other anarchists do not hold much hope that it will happen soon. Ultimately, we are faced with the fact that a revolution will start in society as it is. Anarchism recognises this and suggests a means of transforming it. Primitivism shies away from such minor problems and, consequently, has little to recommend it in most anarchists’ eyes.

This is not to suggest, of course, that non-primitivist anarchists think that everyone in a free society must have the same level of technology. Far from it. An anarchist society would be based on free experimentation. Different individuals and groups will pick the way of life that best suits them. Those who seek less technological ways of living will be free to do so as will those who want to apply the benefits of (appropriate) technologies. Similarly, all anarchists support the struggles of those in the developing world against the onslaught of (capitalist) civilisation and the demands of (capitalist) progress.

For more on “primitivist” anarchism see John Zerzan’s Future Primitive as well as David Watson’s Beyond Bookchin and Against the Mega-Machine. Ken Knabb’s essay The Poverty of Primitivism is an excellent critique of primitivism as is Brian Oliver Sheppard’s Anarchism vs. Primitivism.

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maximumwobblerbanditdonut · 6 months ago

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Origin, origin and more origin: that's what it's all about. The provenance of The Sassenach Wild Scottish Gin comes from Crafty Distillery.

Crafty Distillery is located on the outskirts of Newton Stewart, it is a modern grain to glass distillery producing spirits and offering panoramic views of the Galloway Hills. It's a self-distilled approach, making their own spirits with selected botanicals to create their own Hills & Harbour gin, or a fruity Smokey & Citrus liqueur or the limited edition Galloway Gin, SH's approach to his Gin.

The use of local ingredients such as crab apples 🍏 noble fir, and course Scottish water and the transparency of the process to create a gin is Master Distiller Craig Rankin’s little secret at Crafty. An example for the current gin culture in which consumers are often charged with expensive prices, but everything is made with industrial and characterless base alcohol.

An award-winning Galloway gin distillery is a place of The Sassenach Wild Scottish Gin. Newton Stewart's Crafty Distillery and his Master Distiller Craig Rankin create Scottish gins, Hills and Harbour Gin and GALLOWAY GIN smooth base spirit, along with local Juniper, Crab Apples, Crafty Estate Elderberry, Pepper Dulse, Damsons & Brambles.

That reflects the local area's botanical garden along with several botanicals and Crab apples 🍏🍎in abundance in Dumfries and Galloway.

Crafty Distillery - Hills & Harbour Gin and GALLOWAY GIN

When you say Scotland, you say whisky, right? Wrong! Because a lot of beautiful GINS are also made in Scotland! Crafty Distillery (Hills & Harbour Gin and GALLOWAY GIN) in Newton Stewart in the south of Scotland is an example to see what makes this small distillery so special.

Craig Rankin is the Gin Distillery Master and also the Distillery Manager at Crafty Distillery. It takes about two hours to drive from Glasgow to get here, so you might be feeling hungry. Luckily, Crafty's tasting room has a full refrigerator stocked with delicious local products from local entrepreneurs. They also offer the Galloway Picnic, which showcases some of the most beautiful products in Scotland. I assure you, it's all delicious! However, if you're not here to eat, you probably want to hear all about Hills & Harbour Gin, Galloway Gin and more.

Craig Rankin, The Master Distiller creates their own recipes. In other cases, they are hired for their experience and expertise to continue the legacy of a recipe.

In 2013, owner Graham Taylor started to get a little itchy. As a lover of good gins, he found it annoying that so many distilleries simply buy their base alcohol from a wholesaler, instead of distilling it themselves. After a lot of planning with his brother Stephen and his father Billy, looking for the perfect location, raising all the money and designing a distillation installation, the first Hills & Harbour Gin flowed from the boilers in 2017.

Vision & Botanicals

Their vision is simple: Craig creates tasty honest spirits for everyone who likes a tipple '. To achieve this, He created more than 90 gin recipes in 14 months to arrive at the final blend that they are today called Hills & Harbour Gin. All five basic flavours 3 are hit with their botanicals. The element of sweet comes from the dried mango, sour from the peel of orange, bitter from the noble fir and salt/umami from the bladderwrack seaweed. He also created a special sensation by using green Sichuan peppercorns and bay leaf. And their last ingredient was also very important: the audience!

While they were still in the testing phase, Graig made and sent 100 packages with miniatures of their first gins, to see what people thought! This is how he created the Hills & Harbour Gin together with gin lovers.

The noble fir, also called red fir is known as a Christmas tree 🌲 You can see in Galloway Forest Park pine trees profiled by distant lakes and peaks.

Origin, origin and more origin

The provenance of Crafty Distillery; that's what it's all about. Not only the use of local ingredients such as noble fir, bladderwrack seaweed and of course Scottish water are important; Transparency of the process to create a gin is also important. There is little secret here at Crafty. An example for the current gin culture in which consumers are often charged with expensive prices, but everything is made with industrial and characterless base alcohol.

Smokey & Citrus Distilled Cocktail

The latest product from the Crafty Distillery stills is the Smokey & Citrus Distilled Cocktail. Made from smoked pineapple and burnt orange. It may not sound very tasty when you read it like this, but trust me , you want to taste this! The fruit is smoked and roasted, then pressed and the juice is distilled. This is then mixed with the Hills & Harbour Gin to form a special cocktail in a bottle.

This is the location for the Wild Scottish Gin blend. The yellow line on the ground, next to the container with rhubarb and blaeberry, marks the interior of the Crafty Distillery responsible for producing SH’s gin. The Sassenach Wild Scottish Gin a distilled alcoholic drink flavoured with Scottish juniper, rhubarb, heather, Scots Pine resin, bramble leaf, blaeberry, crab apple and toasted oats,

Crafty Distillery was awarded the Scottish Gin Distillery of the Year 2022 at the Gin Cooperative Awards, where SH was a member of the judging panel. Craig Rankin is the Master Distiller behind SH’s Wild Scottish Gin, he created his gin. The production and distillation process takes place at Crafty Distillery in Newton Stewart in Dumfries and Galloway. The process involves pureeing, macerating, and straining pre-distillation to ensure the notes in SH’s gin.

Master Distiller Graig Rankin plays a multifaceted role at the Crafty Distillery, encompassing expertise in distillation techniques, sensory evaluation, recipe formulation, and quality control. However, he or the Crafty Distillery is rarely mentioned by SH, aiming to give the impression that SH is the sole force behind Sassenach Wild Scottish Gin.

Scottish Gin Award Winner 2022

SH attended the 6th annual Scottish Gin Awards in November 2022 as a judge on the panel. He was especially delighted to sample the wide variety of Scottish gins that were sent for his consideration to his door, especially with the increasing number of gins and distilleries entering the competition across different categories. The same miniature gin samples that carried with him on his trips to America, preparing Gin Tonics in the hotels where he stayed, not behind the hotel bar. A player who appeared to be having fun as he was put through its pace by his new business.

It can be challenging to keep track of all the growing gin distilleries in Scotland, but this event was a great opportunity for him. With the Scottish Gin Cooperative’s help and support, He was able to identify potential future gin and distillery opportunities among the gold medal winners announced on August 29th of the same year. In this way, SH launched 🚀 his Wild Scottish Gin in 2023. It's clear that Sassenach Gin benefited greatly from this event of the Scottish Gin Cooperative and It's all quite not a coincidence when you connect the dots!

The Wild Scottish Gin is a type of London-style gin, and any brand of Distilled Gin follows the London Dry guidelines almost exactly. The Regulations establish the necessary minimum requirements, but producers are free to set the bar higher. The predominant flavour is juniper, and all other flavours must come from natural plants and fruits, so nothing synthetic can be added. Additionally, nothing can be added to the gin after distillation except for water and a small amount of sugar. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 So, The Sassenach Wild Scottish Gin isn't particularly innovative, as it follows the same process as a London Dry style.

The range includes London Dry gins from all over Scotland, many of which are made using hand-foraged botanicals which can be found close to the distillery. London Dry gins do not have to be made in London and the term 'London Dry' more refers to the process as opposed to the flavour or the location. To be classed as a 'London Dry', the base spirit must be distilled to a completely neutral spirit of 96% ABV, and all of the flavours must be added through the distillation.

There are excellent distilled gins and truly awful London Dry gins. However, It’s important to mention that if you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong and the sign of sheer incompetence impossible to ignore has been the information at the American Spirit Council of Tasters’ Awards where SH’s brand, and Great Glen Company or The Sassenach Wild Scottish Gin are not part of Loch Lomond’s group portfolio.

Anyway….If you have an interest in knowing where SH’s Wild Scottish Gin comes from, Crafty Distillery is open to Visit yourself. The Sassenach Wild Scottish Gin is not available for sale or tasting at Crafty Distillery. The distillery offers its brand of Gins, such as GALLOWAY GIN, which serves as the base for SH’s Wild Scottish Gin. You won't notice the difference and will still enjoy your visit.

Posted 12th June 2024

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darkmaga-returns · 19 hours ago

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Transcript by Aussie17

Hello, my name is Dr. Mike Yeadon, and in the next 15 minutes or so, I would like to address those of you who've been vaccine injured or bereaved, and also those of you who are involved in the political process in Northern Ireland, as well as anywhere else in the world who might hear me. At the end of this process, I hope you will believe what I'm going to tell you, which, shockingly, is that the materials masquerading as vaccines were designed intentionally to harm the people who received them. I'm probably the most qualified former pharmaceutical company research executive in the world speaking out on this matter, and since I spent my entire career in the business of working with teams designing molecules to be new potential medicines, I think I am qualified to comment on it, and that is my shocking judgement that has been only reinforced over the last almost four years since I first said it.

I'll also have some suggestions for what we can do together to fight against the global crime which is ongoing. So, just a little bit about me so you can decide whether or not to believe me. So, I'm a career-long research scientist.

I've worked all of my life in the pharmaceutical industry and in biotech. My first degree included a training in toxicology, so that's an understanding of how materials can injure human beings at a molecular level, and what the relationship is between the structure of them and the toxicity. In my second degree, a PhD, I did research in respiratory pharmacology, control of breathing and control of respiratory reflexes.

So, and then after that, I joined the pharmaceutical industry in 1988, and I worked until very recently on new medicines for allergic and respiratory diseases. In my corporate career, I was for a long time responsible at Pfizer, then the biggest research-based drug company in the world, for everything to do with allergic and respiratory diseases in the research field. So, that was my responsibility.

And in the last 10 years, after leaving in 2011, I was an independent and I became the founder and CEO of a biotech company, which was eventually acquired by Novartis, which was then the biggest drug company in the world. So, I have had a good career, and I was well regarded in the industry for my scientific acumen and judgments, until, of course, I started speaking out against the nonsense, the COVID pandemic, and especially the so-called vaccines. I've become persona non grata.

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rawliverandgoronspice · 1 year ago

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Hello.

You and gay-jesus-probably have successfully made me question everything with your view that Tears of the Kingdom is imperialist propaganda, so that's been fun.

Anyway, I decided to share this discussion with the Zelda fans on reddit, and perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of them disagreed. Here is what they said (I'm Alarming_Afternoon44):

So what do you think? Have I and all these other people just been duped by the game's manipulative framing? Or do they actually have a point?

And if you'd rather not answer this, or would prefer if I censored the usernames, just tell me and I'll delete this.

Hey! Thanks a lot for reaching out, and I'm glad it made you think stuff through!!

Honestly, as I mentioned in this post, I am not super interested about in-world conversations about who oppresses who, because what can be assessed from the game is super vague and more vibes-based than evidence-based. Within the text, of course that the Good Zonais are good and the Bad Ganondorf is bad! But that's my whole point! The narrative has been deliberately crafted so that the zonais and Rauru (and Hyrule) are as blameless as possible (and it's not doing a great job at it overall to be frank; we would not be having these conversations about how offputting it all feels for a non-zero number of people if it did do a great job). More importantly, I want to focus on what sort of real-life narrative it all parallels. Because people make stories, and people live in the real world.

Not going after everyone's throat here, gamedev is hard and the hydras that are AAA game production do end up doing super weird stuff, especially since the thematic ramifications are absolutely never prioritized (and it's also always the same kind of people who make the final calls and push out what can and can't be talked about also). And as fans, we tend to have trouble stepping outside the lens of lore and take a look at the bigger picture sometimes; not as an attack on any individual part of that decision-making process but to just pause, stop, and question our standards, our priorities and the kind of reality (or skewing of reality) the stories we tell each other reflect.

Again: do we want to take videogames seriously or not? If we do, then we need to accept they are a vehicle for ideology, just like any other artform. And sometimes, you push out questionable ideology, sometimes without meaning to, because you didn't unpack your own biases as you did. And it's even fine to do it, nobody is perfect, a 300+ people team spread over 6 years certainly will not be that. But that it wasn't prioritized is, in my opinion, a problem. As a narrative designer, I want games (at least the narrative side) to be held to a higher standard than this. It's literally my job to work with the industry so it can hold itself to higher standards of quality --so the whole TotK situation is quite frustrating to witness from a very pragmatic, work perspective where I already spend my days trying to convince people that things mean things. I have a vested interest here in not having the companies I work for being given a free pass by gamers to do literally whatever as long as it's fun, especially when we're talking about a billion-dollars company suing its own fans left and right for any perceived slight. Nintendo are not underdogs here. It's fine to point out they cut corners and maybe promoted messy ideologies, voluntarily or not.

So long story short: no I don't believe anyone here has a point in regards to what I think is actually important, which is why these choices were made in the first place. If you look at an imperialist text expecting the text to tell you that it's imperialist instead of recognizing a framing used for propaganda by yourself, you're never gonna find any imperialist text ever, obviously not!! I'm sorry if I sound a little gngngn here, but I don't know why audiences have, at large, this feeling that lore and story beat decisions materialize themselves already formed and without any human bias, meddling, intervention, internal politics or approximations (it seems that people can only conceptualize this part if they have actual names to attach to the story, but without clear authors it's like there are no authors and so no bias, which is... a very strange bias in itself). I can promise you that it does not work that way in practice: every narrative department on every big game is a battlefield --some nicer than others, but all of them very emotionally draining either way.

So yeah, I guess that on these grounds, I disagree with every point raised here. Sorry Reddit :/

But thank you for the ask and sorry if I didn't go more into details as to why. The big Why I Dislike Rauru Post and the Gerudo Post might have some more specific rebuttals, but I am not super interested in debating small detail stuff tbh. I feel like it's no use if the frame of reference isn't being understood in the first place.

#totk spoilers #totk #totk critical #thoughts #asks #yeah I just disagree with a lot of these in general but I just don't feel like going through them one by one sorry ;_;#feel like I'm starting to repeat myself #especially for a game I liked okay but will definitively not revisit in the long run #tho @ the last redditor: yes thank you for proving my point because do you actually know about afghanistan's recent history :))#like... who funded the mujahideens' war not so long ago :))))) and for what purpose :)))))))))#everything said by that redditor is 100% far right propaganda it's not even a little bit anything else it's textbook applied imperialism #it's.... yeah how do you want to have these sorts of conversations when the real life parallels are unackowledged #I don't know it's just.... so frustrating to me that so many people have such a hard time to unpack external influences in media #or do not know how to pull apart thematic framings from in-world fluff #sorry if I sound a little dry but it's just... it's all a bit tiring honestly #I'm glad this made you reconsider things! or that you took the time to read stuff through even!! thank you!!!#and thanks for compiling the whole thing!!#I feel like it's a good way of showcasing well... the narrative doing a good job at defending itself #but not disputing that the entire framing is deeply flawed #at least in my opinion

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microsoftdynamicscrm · 1 month ago

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