#apologizes for the self promotion but in this economy?

[eaglesnick]

“He thought that the world would make more rapid progress without the burden of old people.” ― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

As early as the summer of 2021 everyone new that Boris Johnson was prepared to sacrifice the lives of Britain’s elderly for the sake of the economy.

“Covid: Boris Johnson resisted autumn lockdown as only over-80s dying -Dominic Cummings.” ( BBC News: 20/07/21)

The very next day in the House of Commons, Johnson was asked to apologise for his callous remarks.

“PMQs: Boris Johnson urged to apologise for 'over 80s' Covid comment.”  (BBC News: 21/07/21)

No apology was forthcoming and members of Johnson’s Tory government continued to give him their unqualified support, including Rishi Sunak, the then Chancellor.

We now know that Johnson’s total disregard for the lives of the elderly went much deeper than originally reported, and that he was prepared to sacrifice the lives of tens of thousands of elderly citizens for the sake of saving money.

It is said that Johnson:

“…asked why “destroy” the economy with lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic when people “will die anyway soon...”. (Huffpost: 30/10/23.)

For the self-serving, heartless, money  obsessed Johnson, the economy was more important than human life and initially the Johnson government's response to the pandemic was to let as many  people as possible become infected with COVID to promote herd immunity. The fact that this policy would kill tens of thousands of elderly citizens was justified by Johnson by claming it was:

“… natures way of dealing with old people." (Telegraph: 31/10/23)

and that he favoured:

"…older people accepting their fate.”  (Guardian: 31/10/23)

In short, Boris Johnson, while not actively seeking to end the lives of the sick, vulnerable and elderly, was prepared to let the COVID-19 virus do the job for him. In his twisted mind, the economy and making money was far more important than the lives of our elderly citizens and according to Johnson they should have been happy to die (or as he put it, "accept their fate” ) so he and his rich friends could go on making their millions.

The sad thing is we all knew what Johnson was like when we elected him Prime Minister. Many would say we got what we deserved.

[13thpythagoras]

Jack Dorsey’s “apology” for promoting genocide fails to even mention the word genocide or the fact that he paid into that economy and tax structure with his money going directly to the military committing that genocide, and that he promoted such actions to a platform where billions of people see it normalized like this wasn’t some private trip for him and him only he wanted the WORLD to know he did some enlightened stuff but also in the same stroke did something extremely deceitful and violent: 

“I’m aware of the human rights atrocities and suffering in Myanmar. I don’t view visiting, practicing, or talking with the people, as endorsement. I didn’t intend to diminish by not raising the issue, but could have acknowledged that I don’t know enough and need to learn more.”

It’s just proof that Jack’s trip was complete spiritual masturbation, and nothing to do with identifying the self as the universe or enlightenment, nothing to do with love or curiosity of the world around him, everything to do with clout, looking cool and going through the motions of trying to get laid by new agey chicks. Promoting the sponsors of genocide and belittling and minimizing the genocide is to participate IN IT. 

[neonjazzparty]

Ok I got a really sick request: Can you please draw Katie Killjoy but she's wearing the Reverse Bear Trap from SAW? It would so fit the style of the cartoon and I'd love to see if you could pull it off :O

This was actually tricky to draw but I think it turned out okay!

Reminder I have a kofi it would be super a appreciated:

[solarpearl]

what genshin boys would get cancelled on twitter for

a collab w @stellarpredator this is light-hearted please don’t cancel me too

zhongli: got cancelled by pet twt for putting his pet in a “too enclosed space”

childe: puts kpop fancams under tweets and tells people to stream his favourite group’s latest comeback when they start arguing with him

venti: got found out he’s guilty of identity theft

kaeya: drunk tweeted some shit about diluc and got cancelledby diluc fans

xiao: trauma dumps under irrelevant tweets

albedo: gets blasted for tweeting the weirdest shit at 3am.  ‘i wonder... if all the left handed people in the world were wiped out.. what then’

scaramouche: responded with “me too bitch you’re not special” to a tweet by a teenager that said “i want to cry”

diluc: gets exposed for leaving his dms on read and never responding. also has a callout thread by diona.

aether: took a phrase and made it his entire personality to the point of oversaturation “haha dilf” “dilf” “omg crepus is a dilf” “you look so dilfy today”

kazuha: gets cancelled for having moms who love him after posting something cute on mothers day. also gets cancelled for posting a picture of a leaf and saying “i saw a leaf today” and broke a world record for the most likes or smth.

razor: retweets a cute photo of some rabbits or something and comment under it ‘cute.’ then after the retweet makes another tweet saying ‘lrt i want to eat meat’

bennett: gets cancelled for defending razor’s heinous acts. got cancelled again for randoming rt-ing and rating people’s tweets ‘b+ i laughed, good effort!’. currently only writes notes app apologies and still gets cancelled ‘hey followers :( something happened today and i feel like you should hear it from me. just thinking about it makes me feel ashamed and i promise i will do better. i am so sorry to everyone i have disappointed and i totally understand if you don’t feel that you can support me anymore. what i did was a thing of the past, that i did in dark times, and i will never be that ‘bennett’ again. i stepped on an ant.’

chongyun: got cancelled for singlehandedly ruining the entire ice pop economy

xingqiu: self promoting under other people’s tweets. “banger tweet my liege, it has a similar vibe to my newest book LOOOL”

[aboveallarescuer]

Daenerys Targaryen in A Storm of Swords vs Game of Thrones - Episode 3.10: Mhysa (& 5 things to understand why Dany's character and storyline matter)

In this series of posts, I intend to analyze precisely how the show writers downplayed or erased several key aspects of Daenerys Targaryen’s characterization, even when they had the books to help them write her as the compelling, intelligent, compassionate, frugal, open-minded and self-critical character that GRRM created.

I want to make it clear that these posts are not primarily meant to offer a better alternative to what the show writers gave us. I understand that they had many constraints (e.g. other storylines to handle, a limited amount of time to write the scripts, budget, actors who may have asked for a certain number of lines, etc) working against them. However, considering how disrespectful the show’s ending was to Daenerys Targaryen and how the book material that they left out makes it even more ludicrous to think that she will also become a villain in A Song of Ice and Fire, I believe that these reviews are more than warranted. They are meant to dissect everything about Dany’s characterization that was lost in translation, with a lot of book evidence to corroborate my statements.

Since these reviews will dissect scene by scene, I recommend taking a look at this post because I will use its sequence to order Dany’s scenes.

This post is relevant in case you want to know which chapters were adapted in which GoT episodes (however, I didn’t make the list myself, all the information comes from the GoT Wiki, so I can’t guarantee that it’s 100% reliable).

In general, I will call the Dany from the books “Dany” and the Dany from the TV series “show!Dany”.

Because I'm about to review one of the most controversial scenes in show!Dany's journey, I think it's important to take a holistic look into her character and storyline first. So, before I start talking about what happens in the episode itself, I am going to address five key things that need to be understood in order to fully appreciate Dany's character and storyline in the books:

Dany's abolitionist crusade's humanitarian importance.

Dany's character motivations.

Dany's background and identity.

Dany's storyline's historical inspirations.

A holistic view of ASOIAF in order to avoid double standards against Dany.

Ultimately, the show writers didn't understand any of these points, which informs their mistakes in their adaptation of Dany's storyline in this episode and beyond.

1) Dany's abolitionist crusade's humanitarian importance

Time and again in the books (particularly in ASOS and ADWD), GRRM reinforces that slavery is wrong by displaying what became normalized during the thousands of years it persisted. Examples include:

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to say that the Unsullied aren't men and to take measures to dehumanize them.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to force five-year-old children to train every day from dawn to dusk, to the point of only one in three surviving such harsh conditions.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to force the Unsullied to stand for a day with no food or water to prove their discipline and strength.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to change the Unsullied's names every day so that they lose their sense of individuality.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to force the Unsullied to go to the slave marts to kill a baby before its mother's eyes to prove that they are not weak.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to make the Unsullied drink the wine of courage to feel less pain and endure any torture, such as having their nipples cut off.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to give the Unsullied puppies only to kill them a year later (and, if they don't, they are fed to the surviving dogs).

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to casually whip people when they mildly annoy them.

Astapori slavers thinking that it's okay to send a girl of nine to kill bulls and to send three small boys (one rolled in honey, the other in blood and the other in rotting fish) to confront a bear in the fighting pits.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to leave the Astapori starving, which led them to eat cats, rats and leather.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to hunt down the Astapori and burn the entire city.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to open a slave market.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to whip people until there is only "blood and raw meat" in their backs.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to command two dwarves to breed.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to force a teenage girl to be naked publicly so that they can sell her at a better price.

Yunkish slavers thinking that it's okay to actively spread the bloody flux through Meereen by throwing infected corpses.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to burn the fields and crucify one hundred and sixty-three children to intimidate Dany.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to target and murder freedmen to intimidate Dany.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to pay freedmen low wages and then complain a) about how there are too many beggars, thieves and whores in the city or b) about how the rights and customs of the craftsmen's guilds should be respected.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to reopen the fighting pits and abuse the freedmen for the nobility's entertainment.

Meereenese slavers thinking that it's okay to send two dwarfs to "fight" against a lion.

Meereenese nobles thinking that it's okay to scourge and rip out the tongues of people who disagree with or know something that it's convenient for them.

And this list only covers human rights abuses that take place in Slaver's Bay (which was the center of slave trade until Dany's arrival). Unfortunately, slavery is so widespread that it helped to build almost the entire continent's economy. The Dothraki and the corsairs of the Basilisk Isles enslave and sell people from different lands to Slaver's Bay. In Volantis, it's estimated that four of every five men are slaves. People from multiple places of Essos are sold into slavery, from Slaver's Bay itself to Qarth to the Dothraki Sea to Lhazar to the Free Cities.

In such an oppressive and devastating scenario, Dany's abolitionist campaign is essential to guarantee that people are no longer desensitized to and systematically allowed to dehumanize others. In-universe, that's why the vast majority of the former slaves love her and why later we get an entire storyline showing what the slavers would do if Dany chose not to be as forceful as she was in ASOS. Doylistically speaking, that's why her actions against the slavers are linked to her upcoming part in the War for the Dawn and to her messianic role as Azor Ahai (as this edit and its quotes excellently illustrate): Dany's war is one that should also involve all of humanity.

Are the show writers aware of this?

Nope.

They may have succeeded in depicting the amount of brutality and suffering that comes with the training of the Unsullied, but, in light of the show's ending, I think that was accomplished mostly because they were interested in shock value rather than in making the audience recognize that show!Dany's crusade was altruistic at its core. This was clear in their interviews: instead of focusing on how vital Dany's actions were to promoting human warfare, Benioff focused on her so-called ruthlessness and ambition when he talked about why she sought an army in Astapor and Weiss focused on her capacity for cruelty when he talked about her attack against the Astapori masters. I've already addressed in which ways these statements about Dany are inaccurate (and detrimental to the understanding of her storyline) in my reviews of episodes 3.3 and 3.4, so I won't belabor the point; instead, I'm only bringing them up here to emphasize that D&D were never (fully) aware of the humanitarian importance of Dany's crusade. That's why they didn't add the moment where Dany says she remembers what it was like to be sold and feel afraid. That's why they didn't show the Unsullied choosing not to side with the slavers when Dany gave them another option. That's why they didn't include the Astapori freedmen who chose to follow Dany in their adaptation. That's why they didn't remember that Dany's main problem prior to the battle of Yunkai was to find a way to take the city and spare freedmen's lives at the same time. That's why, on season four, they will only bother to depict political decisions that paint show!Dany in a negative light (and leave out all of her successful ones). That's why, on season five, they will make her storyline's lesson be about the need to conform to the Meereenese (i.e. slavers') traditions rather than about the need to carry on with her revolution like in the books. That's why, by the end of the show, they will say that Dany burning of King's Landing and its citizens was "a natural outcome of that [...] willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies" and how "her brand of revolution" stems from her "not seeing the cost". That's why they think there isn't any negative implication in arguing that burning slavers is a slippery slope to burning innocent people: they completely missed the point of her storyline and turned it into slavery apologism. Dany conquered these cities because there was no other way to free the slaves (as ADWD reinforces). Dany conquered these cities precisely because she saw the cost, even in the show (but then, they are such bad writers that they often misunderstand the implications of what they depicted).

And what I said above doesn't even take into account that they completely ignored (and I suspect probably never realized in the first place) the connection between her crusade in Slaver's Bay and her messianic destiny. It's no secret that they've always downplayed the magical elements of the books in the show as a whole. When it comes to Dany, that removal was particularly detrimental because the magic was used by GRRM to emphasize that Dany's actions were righteous. 

2) Dany's character motivations

Here, I want to explain why Dany a) fought against the Ghiscari slavers and b) will fight for the Iron Throne in Westeros. This will only cover what's necessary to make my point clear; for more on Dany's intentions, see here and here and here and here and here.

a) Why Dany fought against the Ghiscari slavers

I've argued before that Dany is an accident revolutionary for a couple of reasons. She went to Slaver's Bay because she wanted an army (something that her detractors often use to harshly criticize her), yes, but what was primarily driving Dany was not self-interest/ambition (and it wouldn't matter if it were in the grand scheme of things, considering what other Westerosi feudal lords have done in the name of power), but rather her previous experiences with poverty, which understandably enhanced her desire to have agency. Additionally (and perhaps most importantly), she didn't know how the slaves were being mistreated; if she did, she most likely wouldn't have chosen to turn to Astapor in the first place. But that's partly why her storyline resonates with so many readers: as she gathers more information about the world and its problems, her moral and political values change along the way too. In this case, after finally witnessing the Unsullied's training and being confronted with the dilemma of buying them or leaving them, Dany chose another option: freeing the Unsullied and fighting against the masters instead.

Afterwards, Dany stayed in Slaver's Bay solely because she wants to abolish slavery. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have questioned on what grounds should a monarch rule. If her intentions weren't selfless, she would have taken the Yunkish masters' wealth for herself rather than just demanded that the slaves were compensated for their unpaid labor. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have been so hard on herself for her mistakes on Astapor. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have given the nobility and the freedmen equal voice at court (and her desire for equality was pointed out by GRRM himself). If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't be so insistent on reforming Meereen (which is an expensive endeavor). If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have provided medical aid to the Astapori refugees. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have given food to the poor. If her intentions weren't selfless, she wouldn't have sacrificed her own personal happiness and bodily autonomy. And so on. Again, I'm not trying to be thorough here, I'm just offering key examples that prove that Dany's campaign is driven by genuine compassion.

b) Why Dany will fight for the Iron Throne

I've said before that Dany doesn't want power for its own sake, but rather because it's a mean to the ends that she actually desires: home and duty. These two essential goals aptly inform why she wants to take back the Seven Kingdoms.

Dany's sole aim that can be considered selfish (i.e. that only focuses on her own benefits) is her desire to find a home, be it somewhere to belong to or someone to rely on. Even then, though, that's more than understandable considering a) that she is an exile who never got to stay on one place or trust her caregiver, b) that everyone in the continent where she was born believes in birthright and c) that every feudal lord is willing to wage war to retain their influence and wealth (more on that in item 5).

Dany's duty, on the other hand, refers not only to her (self-imposed) duty to the helpless (already laid out above), but to her ancestors too. So, even if her upcoming war in Westeros won't be primarily motivated to help the underprivileged (though she still has them in mind), it is still largely self-sacrificing as well (and far from being enough to describe her as power hungry like her detractors do).

Are the show writers aware of this?

Nope.

When it comes to her fight against the Ghiscari masters, Weiss did say that Dany "is driven by a kind of a deep empathy, a much deeper empathy than probably anybody else in the show" back in season four. On the other hand, that statement is rendered moot by the fact that D&D dismiss her actions in Slaver's Bay as a "willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies" and as a "brand of revolution" that stems from her "not seeing the cost" by the end of the show. In other words, they a) made her anti-slavery crusade about her so-called ambition, b) downplayed her selfless goals and its humanitarian importance (failure in item 1) and c) turned her storyline into slavery apologism.

When it comes to her fight for the Iron Throne, there's never any interview where they focus on her desire for home and belonging or on her duty towards her ancestors, which also explains why these motivations were rarely shown onscreen. That they villainize her for pursuing the Seven Kingdoms displays their failure to understand item 5 (below).

3) Dany's background and identity

Dany isn't a typical queen. She is the only one who lived in poverty, began the story as a sex slave and then turned into a revolutionary thanks to her own choices. She is the only female character whose power isn't derived from her male relatives; in fact, she is specifically set apart for overcoming hardships that they didn't. She is the only queen whose political power is intertwined with her magical destiny (which is partly realized thanks to her actions). She is the only she-king/queen regnant/independent female ruler of the story. She is the only female ruler a) who received an arc that we got to see unfold through her perspective and b) who was depicted as politically savvy, despite having been thrown in the hardest political scenario of the series.

In relation to the Dothraki, Dany is not just a white woman among people of color. She was a child bride forcefully married to and raped by a Dothraki khal. She, like Irri and Jhiqui, was part of a family that was displaced, which led to their enslavement. She assimilated to Dothraki culture and was able to discern the good (the bond between bloodriders and a lifestyle that allows for a stronger sense of equality) and the bad (rape and human trafficking being normalized in their culture). She was the first example of female leadership to her bloodriders and khalasar and the one who set a precedent that men and women can be equals. She genuinely cares about her khalasar's well-being. She is poised to unite all the khalasars in the future. It's important to discern her character from GRRM's and D&D's writing (more on that in item 4).

In relation to the Ghiscari slavers (and not to the Westerosi nobles), Dany is viewed as a foreign monarch.

In relation to the freedmen, however, there's more to it. Like them, Dany is a former slave who was forcefully exiled from her homeland and now belongs nowhere. Unlike the slavers (who are united by Ghiscari heritage), the actual oppressed group come from many places and have different ethnicities and traveled extensively. Similarly, Dany was born in Westeros, grew up in the Free Cities, spent a significant time in the Dothraki sea and ruled in Slaver's Bay. Dany may be considered a foreigner by the slavers, but not by the freedmen, because they are all displaced people. Their connection (which the author emphasizes in both AGOT and ASOS) further shows that slavery in ASOIAF is not based on race and ethnicity (more on that in item 4).

The reasons above also explain why it is meaningful that Dany is AA/TPTWP/TSWMTW: many men (Aerys, Rhaegar, Aegon, Viserys, Drogo, Rhaego) had to die so she could become who she was meant to be, which further emphasizes that, as much as certain people want to pretend otherwise, Dany being the chosen one is not what the readership tends to expect.

I would argue that it's very important to have a basic understanding of various forms of oppression and acknowledge the multiple social groups that Dany belongs to in order to recognize her character's and storyline's significance. By being aware of them, one can understand, for example,

a) why Dany is not "too obvious" a glorified savior for her story not to have a twist by the end (That tends to happen because these detractors only see her as a white noblewoman, but, considering her identity as a whole, she is exactly someone who the readership wouldn't think of as the hero) or

b) why the story would be offensive on many levels if it ended with Dany going mad and/or becoming a villain (Why would GRRM do that to the one character who was exiled and enslaved and who, thanks to her own intelligence and compassion, got to fight against systemic oppression because she herself knows "how it felt to be afraid"?) or

c) why the theory that Dany burns King's Landing is offensive regardless of whether she does it accidentally or not (Why would GRRM have his sole queen regnant, i.e. the only woman whose power isn't derived from a man and who gets to make decisions concerning warfare like men usually do, be overly defined by violence in a way that his kings don't have to be? Why would he use her anti-slavery crusade as a device to make her care less about collateral damage and then be responsible for atrocities of such magnitude? It may still happen, but it definitely warrants criticism if it does)

Are the show writers aware of this?

Nope.

On the one hand, Weiss did previously acknowledge that Dany's past experiences inform her current attitude ("She's always been very negatively predisposed towards slavery because she knows what it feels like to be property, I mean, she was a very fancy slave for all intents and purposes, she was somebody who was sold to another man, taken against her will and I think that her feelings about slavery have started to really inform her reasons for wanting the Iron Throne").

On the other hand, if they really understood the significance of her background, they wouldn't have made the northmen hate her for being a foreigner and portrayed her being in the wrong. If they really understood the significance of her background, they wouldn't have thought that show!Arya killing the Night King (which wasn't supposed to have happened) or show!Sansa becoming queen (which made no sense since that would motivate other regions to demand independence from the crown as well) would be interchangeable with show!Dany's downfall and prevent them from receiving criticism regarding the misogyny in their writing.

4) Dany's storyline's historical inspirations

In the words of the author himself,

The Targaryens have heavily interbred, like the Ptolemys of Egypt. As any horse or dog breeder can tell you, interbreeding accentuates both flaws and virtues, and pushes a lineage toward the extremes. (x)

~

The Dothraki are partially based on the Huns and the Mongols, some extent the steppe tribes like the Alvars and Magyars. I put in a few elements of the Amerindian plains tribes and those peoples, and then I threw in some purely fantasy elements. It’s fantasy.

Are they barbaric? Yeah, but the Mongols were, too. Genghis Khan — I just saw an interesting movie about Ghengis Khan, recently. I’ve read books about Genghis Khan, and he’s one of history’s more fascinating, charismatic characters. The Mongols became very sophisticated at certain points, but they were certainly not sophisticated when they started out, and even at the height of their sophistication they were fond of doing things like giant piles of heads. “Surrender your city to me, or we will come in and kill all the men, rape all the women and make a giant pile of heads.” They did that a few times, and other cities said, “Surrender is good. We’ll surrender. We’ll pay the taxes. No pile of heads, please.” (x)

~

And meanwhile, you've got Daenerys visiting more Eurasian and Middle Eastern cultures.

And that has generated its controversy too. I answer that one to in my blog. I know some of the people who are coming at this from a political or racial angle just seem to completely disregard the logistics of the thing here. I talk about what's in the books. The books are what I write. What I’m responsible for.

Slavery in the ancient world, and slavery in the medieval world, was not race-based. You could lose a war if you were a Spartan, and if you lost a war you could end up a slave in Athens, or vice versa. You could get in debt, and wind up a slave. And that’s what I tried to depict, in my books, that kind of slavery. (x)

These interviews show that Dany's storyline's historical parallels are mainly ancient civilizations (which explains her parallels with Cleopatra or the Ghiscari pyramids' closeness to Egyptian pyramids or how the duels in the fighting pits resemble the Roman gladiatorial games or the similarities between the Unsullied's training with Sparta's training of young boys or why tokars are togas), which, in turn, prove that GRRM is not attempting to write a critique of white saviorism. Indeed, that he reduces the Dothraki and the Mongols to being "barbaric" and refuses to give any individuality to his Dothraki characters confirm that he's the racist one here. Even the parallels that he draws between Dany's storyline and the American Civil War and Reconstruction are non-racialized in nature.

Also, even if GRRM and D&D weren't racists, the racist imagery in Dany's storyline (especially show!Dany's) doesn't make Dany herself a white savior; as @yendany​ explained before, white saviorism is about:

a) glorifying whiteness/western culture or an individual white person at the expense of people of color. Neither version of Dany fulfill this requirement because Dany was raised in Essos and doesn't force Ghiscari people into adhering to Westerosi or Valyrian culture and slavery, again, isn't race-based (which is why the Dothraki are portrayed as oppressors). The show ending only reinforces the latter point (more on that later).

and/or

b) a white person providing help to people of color in order to serve their own interests. Neither version of Dany fulfill this requirement because their compassion and humanitarianism are genuine (and necessary), as shown in items 1 and 2 above.

Are the show writers aware of this?

For the most part, nope.

On the one hand, they were involved in the show's production, so they had to be aware of the obvious parallels between Dany's storyline and the Ancient Mediterranean world (though not enough to hire extras of multiple races and ethnicities or to let show!Dany wear togas). Also, Benioff once stated that "there always seemed to be this sense of manifest destiny with Dany", which implies that they were aware of the white savior criticism surrounding her character and storyline (though probably not enough to question its validity based on her characterization).

On the other hand, they never cared about making any improvements from the racism in the books, and the ending is clear proof of that. Before season eight, I'd seen many people argue that the Unsullied and the Dothraki were used as show!Dany's props to emphasize her "goodness". Instead, it's the other way around: they were never meant to be "good" on their own, in fact, they were only portrayed as "good" because of show!Dany; by the end, when show!Dany was villainized, they were as well. Indeed, people of color like show!Missandei and show!Grey Worm suddenly became more aggressive while the white men in show!Dany's team (show!Jon, show!Tyrion and show!Varys) were portrayed as the rational/pacifist ones, reinforcing that there was never any attempt to provide race-related social commentary in the show (or in the books, for that matter). If there had been an attempt (poor and offensive as it would still be), the Unsullied and the Dothraki would have been depicted as the Mad Queen's victims (which only the Westerosi smallfolk and the Lannister armies (i.e. white people) got to be) rather than the Mad Queen's evil army.

5) A holistic view of ASOIAF in order to avoid double standards against Dany

I could mention more double standards than the four below, but my intention here is not to be comprehensive, but rather to provide some of the key examples of double standards used to criticize Dany's eventual campaign in Westeros and to accuse her of white saviorism.

Yes, Dany wants to wage a war to take back her homeland, but so did Robb when Winterfell was taken. (Unfortunately, Stannis may do the dirty work for the Starks in TWOW.)

Yes, Dany wants to take the Seven Kingdoms and the Starks "only" want Winterfell, but what matters is not the size of the area they are claiming, but rather the fact that the system that they are all working under (i.e. pseudofeudal monarchy) rewards birthright, exploits the labor of the peasants, encourages wars for petty reasons and perpetuates social inequality.

Yes, Dany will eventually be willing to use dragonfire to accomplish her goals, but fire was used by several parties against their enemies. The Ghiscari slavers used it. Stannis Baratheon used it. Tyrion Lannister used it. Jon Snow used it. The brotherhood without banners used it. If they had dragons, you can bet that they would have used them (and probably would have been less reluctant about it than Dany).

Yes, Dany's storyline has racist elements, but so does the Starks' origin story and Tyrion's storyline and the Martells' creation. In fact, if we're talking about racism, it can't be overlooked that Dany is the only white main character who interacts with, cares about and fights for people of color, while the other white characters remain isolated in Westeros and ignorant of their struggles. It can't be overlooked that GRRM wishes he had made Dany (and none of the other main characters) a Black woman. That people of color aren't given more prominence in the narrative is GRRM's fault (see item 4), not Dany's.

When all's said and done, Dany is not doing anything that could be considered morally wrong that other people didn't do, but she is taking large-scale actions solely due to her compassion that no one else is. That's because GRRM chose to set her apart from the other claimants by placing her in a storyline where she gets to advocate for the oppressed and have larger concerns than her claim or how her family was wronged. Does that make her look "too good"? Well, you just have to look at Jon to see that that's not true; both are flawed and imperfect, but still compassionate, intelligent and, ultimately, not as morally grey as most of the other characters of the series.

Are the show writers aware of this?

Nope.

I would say that the root of the problem in the show writers' depiction of show!Dany stems from the fact that they don't look at the events from the perspective of the lowborn.

If they would look at her actions in Slaver's Bay from the point of view of a freedman, they would understand why they were righteous (failure to comprehend item 1); instead, they talk about how her cruelty "grows" because she hurt people who hadn't done anything to her personally (which shows how easily they empathize with the slavers) and focus on how she is becoming a threat.

If they would look at her actions in Westeros from the point of view of a peasant, they would understand that a) every single lord exploits their labor, b) that Dany is not doing anything that the the lords wouldn't do (which is why the kingdoms constantly warred with their neighbors before Aegon's Conquest) and c) that the lords never waged war specifically to protect the oppressed like Dany did (see items 1 and 2), which is why Northern independence (or Robert's Rebellion) is not morally superior to Dany's campaign for the Iron Throne.

Because they couldn't understand any of this, they portrayed show!Dany's war effort as worse than the other characters' and ended up villainizing her for her ambition and use of violence when they never did so with the other characters, which creates offensive double standards and highlights the misogyny (i.e. controlling and punishing women who challenge male dominance) in their writing.

Now I'm going to go to the scene itself in order to demonstrate how it particularly exemplifies the show writers' failure to understand these five key things about Dany's character and storyline.

Scene 13

BARRISTAN: They will come, Your Grace. When they’re ready.

DAENERYS: Perhaps they didn’t want to be conquered.

JORAH: You didn’t conquer them. You liberated them.

DAENERYS: People learn to love their chains.

In the books, there's never any suspense about whether the newly freedmen will come out or not:

On the morning of the third day, the city gates swung open and a line of slaves began to emerge. Dany mounted her silver to greet them. As they passed, little Missandei told them that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons.

“Mhysa!” a brown-skinned man shouted out at her. He had a child on his shoulder, a little girl, and she screamed the same word in her thin voice. “Mhysa! Mhysa!” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As we can see in the quote above, not only there's no suspense, Dany is mounted on her silver and doesn't have to make a speech to make sure that the former slaves can trust her and hail her as mhysa. Indeed, that's my biggest issue with the speech: it's built on the show writers' assumption that show!Dany needs to "[wait] to see if she is a conqueror or a liberator" in the eyes of the former slaves.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are people who dismiss Dany as a violent conqueror in the books. The Meereenese slavers (i.e., the ones who think they have the right to sell people and exploit their free labor and who suffered a major blow when Dany challenged their way of life, which doesn't exactly make them a reliable viewpoint in a storyline with something meaningful to say) do so:

“...When my people look at you, they see a conqueror from across the seas, come to murder us and make slaves of our children. A king could change that. A highborn king of pure Ghiscari blood could reconcile the city to your rule. Elsewise, I fear, your reign must end as it began, in blood and fire.” (ADWD Daenerys IV)

The Yunkish slavers (i.e., the ones who think they have the right to sell people and exploit their free labor and who suffered a major blow when Dany challenged their way of life, which doesn't exactly make them a reliable viewpoint in a storyline with something meaningful to say) do so:

“If even half the stories coming back from Slaver’s Bay are true, this child is a monster. They say that she is blood-thirsty, that those who speak against her are impaled on spikes to die lingering deaths. They say she is a sorceress who feeds her dragons on the flesh of newborn babes, an oathbreaker who mocks the gods, breaks truces, threatens envoys, and turns on those who have served her loyally. They say her lust cannot be sated, that she mates with men, women, eunuchs, even dogs and children, and woe betide the lover who fails to satisfy her. She gives her body to men to take their souls in thrall.” (ADWD Tyrion VI)

Dany herself (who, we shouldn't forget, has a tendency to be self-deprecating) also does so. It's the reason why she thinks it's her duty to stay and rule Meereen:

“Aegon the Conqueror brought fire and blood to Westeros, but afterward he gave them peace, prosperity, and justice. But all I have brought to Slaver’s Bay is death and ruin. I have been more khal than queen, smashing and plundering, then moving on.” (ASOS Daenerys VI)

However, the Yunkish envoy's vicious reaction (in both canons) to Dany's request that the Yunkish nobles free their slaves shows that Dany couldn't have freed the slaves (and become a liberator) if she hadn't taken the city (and become a conqueror). She is both conqueror and liberator and these titles don't contradict each other, they inform each other (just like mhysa and mother of dragons). That's something that the former slaves are aware of, because the vast majority of them do want freedom and are grateful that Dany intervened - we see it in Astapor, where the Unsullied chose not to obey their former masters while they were attacked because Dany gave them a choice to fight for their freedom, which they took (and the show didn't depict); we see it in Yunkai, where the former slaves embraced and hailed Dany as their mother right after they met her (and she didn't have to make a speech to prove that they should be freed because they themselves wanted to be freed); we see it in Meereen, where "the fighting slaves [...] led the uprising that won the city for her" and "cheering slaves lifted bloodstained hands to her as she went by"; we see it on Tyrion's POV, where many slaves doubt that Dany would make peace with the slavers and want her to smash the Yunkai'i. To portray them as gullible and dependent on show!Dany's speech in order to embrace freedom (when, again, that was never a question for them in the books) means:

Overlooking their motivations in the books.

Giving them less agency in comparison to the books.

Downplaying the level of human destruction that the slavers perpetrated (and which led the slaves to want to rebel), which shows their failure to understand item 1.

Equating show!Dany to the slavers as a foreign monarch in the former slaves' eyes when, in the books, she became a cult figure right from the first moment that they saw her. This also shows their failure to understand item 3; as I said above, she is not just a ruler, she is also a former slave who was banished from her homeland and doesn't belong anywhere. That makes it all the more meaningful that she, thanks to her own actions and principles, ended up becoming  a revolutionary. Failing to understand this is why the show writers felt that she had to make a speech so that she could "compensate" for her actions as a conqueror (which were righteous to begin with).

Now, one might argue that I'm being too nitpicky here, but I didn't make it a secret in the introduction to these books vs show reviews that they are being written with the hindsight knowledge that the show writers will attempt to vilify show!Dany. One way that they will do so is to turn the freedmen against her in the later seasons, which is something that never happens in the books (which is why I'm wary of how her speech here already indicates that her connection to the freedmen is being downplayed). As I just said above and will reiterate: the show writers never really grasped the humanitarian importance of her crusade (item 1) or why she's seeking the Iron Throne in the first place (item 2). The show writers never really understood that the former slaves weren't united by culture or race or nationality and that they still had a connection with Dany as exiles sold into slavery (item 3). This is why they thought it was okay to make her the final villain of their series.

*

JORAH: You didn’t conquer them. You liberated them.

DAENERYS: People learn to love their chains.

First, show!Jorah being the one shown explaining to show!Dany that she is a liberator is really annoying since she is the former sex slave who chose to become an abolitionist and he is a slaver himself who is an apologist even in show canon.

Second, there are different ways to interpret show!Dany's line above. @daenerys-targaryen​ interpreted it as show!Dany referring to herself and how she fell in love with Drogo while she was his slave. @queenaryastark​ interpreted it as a way to express Tyrion's thoughts about how it's easy to grow accustomed to being a slave in ADWD. These are all valid readings that can coexist with my own: that the show writers only added this line in order to make show!Dany's storyline "more complex" (in their eyes). We see show!Dany having to "[wait] to see if she is a conqueror or a liberator", after all, which is a question about her "internal struggle" (which, again, makes no sense to overfocus on since Dany wouldn't be a liberator if she weren't also a conqueror) that the show chooses to hammer home in comparison to the books (where it's made clear that most of the former slaves know that they want to be freed). This added question a) undermines how significant it is that Dany is an active hero who chose to fight for the slaves when she didn't have to in a time and place where no one else cared about their plea and there was no conception of universal human rights (failure to understand items 2 and 5), b) downplays the message that the use of violence can be morally righteous (because it creates a false dichotomy between conqueror and liberator, like the fandom does with mhysa and mother of dragons; unfortunately, both showrunners miss the point - Weiss thinks that show!Dany's empathy and cruelty grow in Astapor and Benioff focuses on how she's becoming a threat; failure to understand items 1 and 2) and c) equates show!Dany to the slavers as another foreign monarch in the slaves' perspective (failure to understand item 3), which, in turn, portrays slavery as if it was merely a typical cultural practice rather than a crime against humanity like how it's portrayed in the books (failure to understand item 1). Things are definitely going to get worse in the next seasons (e.g. "mhysa is a master", the addition of a prostitute who hates show!Dany because she's "ruining" Meereenese "traditions", etc), but the cracks were already apparent in season three, which is arguably show!Dany's best season.

*

MISSANDEI: This is Daenerys Targaryen, the Stormborn, the Unburnt, the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, the Mother of Dragons. It is to her you owe your freedom.

DAENERYS: No. You do not owe me your freedom. I cannot give it to you. Your freedom is not mine to give. It belongs to you and you alone. If you want it back, you must take it for yourselves. Each and every one of you.

This scene plays out differently in the books:

On the morning of the third day, the city gates swung open and a line of slaves began to emerge. Dany mounted her silver to greet them. As they passed, little Missandei told them that they owed their freedom to Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Mother of Dragons.

“Mhysa!” a brown-skinned man shouted out at her. He had a child on his shoulder, a little girl, and she screamed the same word in her thin voice. “Mhysa! Mhysa!” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As we can see, a) Dany is not shown correcting Missandei on what freedom entails like it happens in the show and b) Dany never has to give the former slaves a speech in the first place.

I'm of two minds about this speech. On the one hand, show!Dany's speech does highlight her humanitarian intentions in this endeavor: instead of seeing the freedmen as things to be sold like the slavers did, she views them as people who are able to make their own judgments and choices.

On the other hand, a number of issues were caused by the show writers' inability to be faithful to the books. The intentions behind this speech are distasteful since it seems like (the show writers think that) she needs to persuade the former slaves to follow her, which takes away their agency in comparison to the books (where, as I've repeated numerous times by now, they wanted to be freed; failure to understand item 1) and holds show!Dany to a higher standard than the other characters of the series (who, either in Westeros or Slaver's Bay, all believe in and live under an absolute monarchy, with the only difference being that their dominance over the lowborn became normalized over time in a way that show!Dany's didn't, which causes her to be judged by today's moral standards by the show writers; this failure to understand item 5 will only get worse over time, as we all know), which is particularly aggravating because it undercuts the fact that show!Dany is the only one who cares about and fights for the former slaves (failure to understand items 2, 3 and 5).

*

DAENERYS: No. You do not owe me your freedom. I cannot give it to you. Your freedom is not mine to give. It belongs to you and you alone. If you want it back, you must take it for yourselves. Each and every one of you.

Another thing that makes me bitter about this speech is that, despite portraying show!Dany positively, it will be used (alongside all of her other speeches), in retrospect, as evidence that she was always set up to burn thousands of innocents in King's Landing:

BENIOFF: What's interesting about it is that she's been making similar kinds of speeches for a long time and we've always been rooting for her and this is kind of a natural outcome of that philosophy and that willingness to go forth and conquer all your enemies and it's just not quite as fun anymore. (x)

Much has been said about how the show fell right into slavery apologism by supposing that burning slavers is a slippery slope to burning noncombatants (failure to understand items 1 and 2) and about how offensive it was that it villainized the one queen who had a particular place in the narrative due to being an exile, a former sex slave, a revolutionary and the only independent female ruler who wasn't depicted as evil (failure to understand item 3). I would also add that the vast majority of the evidence about show!Dany's "villainy" (which betrays a failure to understand item 5) was either exaggerated or invented. For example, aside from the speech that she gave to her khalasar in the first season, all of show!Dany's speeches were added by the show writers, including this one. In fact, it's ironic that, throughout the course of AFFC/ADWD, Dany was the only one of the three main political leaders who was not shown by GRRM giving speeches to the unprivileged:

Jon waited until the last echoes had faded, then spurred his palfrey forward where everyone could see him. “We’re feeding you as best we can, as much as we can spare. Apples, onions, neeps, carrots … there’s a long winter ahead for all of us, and our stores are not inexhaustible.”

“You crows eat good enough.” Halleck shoved forward.

For now. “We hold the Wall. The Wall protects the realm … and you now. You know the foe we face. You know what’s coming down on us. Some of you have faced them before. Wights and white walkers, dead things with blue eyes and black hands. I’ve seen them too, fought them, sent one to hell. They kill, then they send your dead against you. The giants were not able to stand against them, nor you Thenns, the ice-river clans, the Hornfoots, the free folk … and as the days grow shorter and the nights colder, they are growing stronger. You left your homes and came south in your hundreds and your thousands … why, but to escape them? To be safe. Well, it’s the Wall that keeps you safe. It’s us that keeps you safe, the black crows you despise.”

“Safe and starved,” said a squat woman with a windburned face, a spearwife by the look of her.

“You want more food?” asked Jon. “The food’s for fighters. Help us hold the Wall, and you’ll eat as well as any crow.” Or as poorly, when the food runs short. (ADWD Jon V)

~

“What is the meaning of this?” Cersei demanded of the crowd. “Do you mean to bury Blessed Baelor in a mountain of carrion?”

A one-legged man stepped forward, leaning on a wooden crutch. “Your Grace, these are the bones of holy men and women, murdered for their faith. Septons, septas, brothers brown and dun and green, sisters white and blue and grey. Some were hanged, some disemboweled. Septs have been despoiled, maidens and mothers raped by godless men and demon worshipers. Even silent sisters have been molested. The Mother Above cries out in her anguish. We have brought their bones here from all over the realm, to bear witness to the agony of the Holy Faith.”

Cersei could feel the weight of eyes upon her. “The king shall know of these atrocities,” she answered solemnly. “Tommen will share your outrage. This is the work of Stannis and his red witch, and the savage northmen who worship trees and wolves.” She raised her voice. “Good people, your dead shall be avenged!”

A few cheered, but only a few. “We ask no vengeance for our dead,” said the one-legged man, “only protection for the living. For the septs and holy places.” (AFFC Cersei VI)

In fact, the Dany of the books is never shown giving a speech after AGOT. This is not to say, of course, that making speeches on its own makes show!Dany "darker" (indeed, the show writers were often unaware of what they were writing) than Dany, I'm only pointing out that they never existed in the books.

*

DAENERYS: No. You do not owe me your freedom. I cannot give it to you. Your freedom is not mine to give. It belongs to you and you alone. If you want it back, you must take it for yourselves. Each and every one of you.

Mhysa!

DAENERYS: What does it mean?

MISSANDEI: It is old Ghiscari, Khaleesi. It means “mother.”

First, unlike in the show (where the freedmen only shout "mhysa!"), the freedmen of the books call Dany "mother" in lots of different languages:

“Mhysa!” they called. “Mhysa! MHYSA!” They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her. “Maela,” some called her, while others cried “Aelalla” or “Qathei” or “Tato,” but whatever the tongue it all meant the same thing. Mother. They are calling me Mother. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

It's only fitting that the freedmen of the books come from different places and have different races and ethnicities (which the scene above reinforces); not only that connects them to their mhysa (in that they are all people exiled from their homelands and forced into slavery), it is a culmination of Dany's tendency to culturally assimilate, which was already noticeable with the Dothraki. Unfortunately, this doesn't come across in the show because they hired local extras from Morocco (failure to understand/depict items 3 and 4).

Second, as @rainhadaenerys​ pointed out to me in a conversation, show!Dany makes a speech (which, again, was added by the show writers) in Valyrian in this scene and all the freedmen understand it, which can make sense since most modern Ghiscari continued to speak in the language of their conquerors and the former slaves all probably stayed in Yunkai long enough to learn the language. On the other hand, this will later be contradicted in episode 4.6 when show!Dany will need show!Missandei in order to communicate with a goatherd. In the books, she interacts directly with all of the freedmen, to give some examples:

In the afternoon a sculptor came, proposing to replace the head of the great bronze harpy in the Plaza of Purification with one cast in Dany’s image. She denied him with as much courtesy as she could muster. A pike of unprecedented size had been caught in the Skahazadhan, and the fisherman wished to give it to the queen. She admired the fish extravagantly, rewarded the fisherman with a purse of silver, and sent the pike to her kitchens. A coppersmith had fashioned her a suit of burnished rings to wear to war. She accepted it with fulsome thanks; it was lovely to behold, and all that burnished copper would flash prettily in the sun, though if actual battle threatened, she would sooner be clad in steel. (ADWD Daenerys I)

So, while here she and her people are at least connected by the fact that they understand what she is saying, even this will be undermined later (and they don't have the budget as an excuse for this one; failure to understand items 3 and 4).

Third, as I noted in episode 3.5, why the heck do they have show!Missandei call show!Dany "khaleesi"? It makes no sense since she's not familiar with Dothraki culture and never knew Dany when she was Khal Drogo's wife.

*

DAENERYS: It’s all right. These people won’t hurt me.

~

DAENERYS: Fly. Let me pass.

There are differences in the execution of Dany's meeting with the freedmen of Yunkai from books to show. She mounted her silver to meet them and the crowdsurfing never happens:

On the morning of the third day, the city gates swung open and a line of slaves began to emerge. Dany mounted her silver to greet them. [...]

The chant grew, spread, swelled. It swelled so loud that it frightened her horse, and the mare backed and shook her head and lashed her silver-grey tail. It swelled until it seemed to shake the yellow walls of Yunkai. More slaves were streaming from the gates every moment, and as they came they took up the call. They were running toward her now, pushing, stumbling, wanting to touch her hand, to stroke her horse’s mane, to kiss her feet. [...]

She laughed, put her heels into her horse, and rode to them, the bells in her hair ringing sweet victory. She trotted, then cantered, then broke into a gallop, her braid streaming behind. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

What we also miss onscreen is that, onpage, Dany sees the freedmen as her found family and realizes that the moment fulfills a prophecy that she saw in the House of the Undying. I'm going to talk more about this moment later in the section where I comment on D&D's Inside the Episode, though.

*

Now, we get to this moment, which was (and still is) heavily criticized due to its racism.

An in-depth discussion of the racism in Dany's storyline and in ASOIAF in general goes beyond the scope of this meta; I recommend that you read @yendany's metas instead. It must be acknowledged, of course, that this is a racist scene for employing Moroccan extras as former slaves in order to prop up a British woman and being completely insensitive to Africa's colonial history. However, that's the show's production's fault, which continued to be tone-deaf about race-related issues and diversity in general through the years.

That being said, my main purpose here is to address in which ways the TV series diverged from Dany's character in the books and, consequently, undermined show!Dany. So, instead of talking specifically about the racism in Dany's character and storyline (about which people have already discussed a lot elsewhere), I want to focus, instead, on the ways that the discussion centered around the racism in Dany's character and storyline tends to be uninterested in analyzing the merits of Dany's character and storyline. This reinforces that these detractors' problems most often relate to a) either GRRM and the show's writers and producers rather than to Dany's character herself or b) their own biases:

Dany's abolitionist crusade's humanitarian importance: Do they remember in which ways the slaves were being mistreated, exploited and dehumanized before Dany's interventions?

Dany's character motivations: Do they know that Dany conquered cities just so that she could end slavery rather than because she wanted to exploit Slaver's Bay in any way? Are they aware of the many sacrifices that Dany made in order to free the slaves and rule in Meereen? Do they know that Dany doesn't want the Iron Throne for its own sake, but rather that she wants it so that she can find a home and fulfill her duty towards her ancestors?

Dany's background and identity: Do they take into account that Dany is not just a white woman, but also a former sex slave and a refugee who was forced to culturally assimilate in order to survive and who now belongs nowhere just like the people that she's freed?

Dany's storyline's historical inspirations: Do they know that the slavery that GRRM wrote is primarily inspired by the ancient world and, therefore, is not race-based? Do they know that GRRM himself is tone-deaf about race-related issues and that this is apparent in all of his story?

A holistic view of ASOIAF in order to avoid double standards against Dany: Do they take prevailing cultural norms and other characters' actions into account when they judge Dany's ambition and use of violence negatively? Do they also take into account how Dany's selfless deeds compare to most of the other characters'? Do they also acknowledge and criticize the racism in other characters' storylines?

The vast majority of Dany's detractors (which include D&D) don't take these questions (which do not exhaustively cover all of the misconceptions surrounding her character by any means) into account and/or don't know the text well enough to answer them properly, which means that they are prone to grossly distorting her motivations and/or her storyline's thematic messages in order to address racial issues that should not be used to judge Dany's character because the author himself is unaware of them and does not intend for them to come across. As a result, people lose track of Dany's actual characterization and her storyline's intended social commentary and forget that she is a part of several marginalized groups herself, leading to pretty nonsensical takes in the fandom, such as "Rhaenys should have been Dany".

So, because a) the issue of racism in Dany's storyline was already well-covered elsewhere and b) fandom climate has proven that many people who talk about this issue tend to do so in bad faith, I consciously decided to focus on these five things that should also be remembered in this discussion (and that have more to do with the purpose of this meta anyway).

My comments on the Inside the Episode 3.10

Benioff: We see her get an army in episode four, and here in the finale you see her get her people, really, because she's got, she has her Dothraki followers that don't number very many, and she's got the people she's freed from the other cities, but now she is, it's not just - it's something even more, something almost even more religious about it than just a queen, I mean, she's the mother of these people.

Weiss: And it creates a whole new dynamic between her and the people that she's fighting for that she's gonna have to deal with in the future.

Benioff: The way they treat her, the way they lift her up and she is...  something that has its... A revelation from a prophecy and that glorious destiny is coming true.

Weiss: Here it seemed like it was really important to let us know just how many people were counting on her to see the full extent of, mostly, the full extent of her army and the tens of thousands of people who flooded out of these gates to pay tribute to her. And then, keeping the dragons in play because they're always such an important part of her identity, we just want to tie all of that together in one great shot.

There's a lot of wrong here, so let's unpack this statement by statement.

We see her get an army in episode four, and here in the finale you see her get her people, really,

As I already noted in episodes 3.4 and 3.5 and will repeat: the show writers seem to have forgotten that thousands of refugees from Astapor chose to follow her to Yunkai, so she had already "[gotten] her people":

Yet even so, tens of thousands preferred to follow her to Yunkai, rather than remain behind in Astapor. 

[...]  Dany could not bring herself to abandon them as Ser Jorah and her bloodriders urged. I told them they were free. I cannot tell them now they are not free to join me. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

Indeed, her main struggle during the battle of Yunkai was to find a way to take the city and free its slaves and prevent too many of her freedmen from becoming casualties:

Dany considered. The slaver host seemed small compared to her own numbers, but the sellswords were ahorse. She’d ridden too long with Dothraki not to have a healthy respect for what mounted warriors could do to foot. The Unsullied could withstand their charge, but my freedmen will be slaughtered. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

*

she's got, she has her Dothraki followers that don't number very many,

Dany still considers her Dothraki followers a khalasar in the books and finds their support invaluable despite its small number and what the show writers had her think in the S3 premiere (i.e. that she doesn't have a true khalasar):

Her khalasar was tiny, some thirty-odd mounted warriors, and most of them braidless boys and bentback old men. Yet they were all the horse she had, and she dared not go without them. The Unsullied might be the finest infantry in all the world, as Ser Jorah claimed, but she needed scouts and outriders as well. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

*

she is, it's not just - it's something even more, something almost even more religious about it than just a queen, I mean, she's the mother of these people.

And it creates a whole new dynamic between her and the people that she's fighting for that she's gonna have to deal with in the future.

Dany was already acting as mhysa way before she was considered one, which we saw from the way she cared about the Lhazareen women to her bloodriders to the slaves in Astapor:

“You heard my words,” she said. “Stop them.” She spoke to her khas in the harsh accents of Dothraki. “Jhogo, Quaro, you will aid Ser Jorah. I want no rape.” (AGOT Daenerys VII)

~

“Sheath your steel, blood of my blood,” said Dany, “this man comes to serve me. Belwas, you will accord all respect to my people, or you will leave my service sooner than you’d wish, and with more scars than when you came.” (ACOK Daenerys V)

~

“...Why do the gods make kings and queens, if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?”

“Some kings make themselves. Robert did.”

“He was no true king,” Dany said scornfully. “He did no justice. Justice ... that’s what kings are for.” (ASOS Daenerys III)

One might argue that this event strengthens the sense of responsibility that she already had for these people, but it's not true that there was a radical change in their dynamic after this moment... In the books, it was simply a culmination of what Dany was already doing the whole time.

*

The way they treat her, the way they lift her up and she is...  something that has its... A revelation from a prophecy and that glorious destiny is coming true.

The way that Benioff puts it makes it seem like show!Dany expected the devotion of these people (in a way that seems related to what they assume to be her self-interest and entitlement), which irks me in hindsight knowing that a) they will use this assumption to tear her apart in the last season (after all, one reason why they had show!Dany fall was that she found no love in the North)  and b) it's not accurate for her book counterpart.

Is it true that she notices that one prophecy was realized in this moment in the books? Yes.

Ten thousand slaves lifted bloodstained hands as she raced by on her silver, riding like the wind. “Mother!” they cried. “Mother, mother!” They were reaching for her, touching her, tugging at her cloak, the hem of her skirt, her foot, her leg, her breast. They wanted her, needed her, the fire, the life, and Dany gasped and opened her arms to give herself to them ... (ACOK Daenerys IV)

 ~

Ser Jorah urged her to go, but Dany remembered a dream she had dreamed in the House of the Undying. (ASOS Daenerys IV)

When it comes to Dany's motivations, though, one must take into account that a) Dany herself is not aware that she has a great destiny (nor does she want to have one) and b) the prophecies are most often intertwined with her desire to find a home, a family, companionship, belonging. This scene is no exception; before it happened, Dany had reflected on how her House would end with her due to her infertility:

She felt very lonely all of a sudden. Mirri Maz Duur had promised that she would never bear a living child. House Targaryen will end with me. That made her sad. “You must be my children,” she told the dragons, “my three fierce children. Arstan says dragons live longer than men, so you will go on after I am dead.” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

Fittingly, then, the chapter ends on a more positive note: her found family is now not only composed of dragons, but of thousands of people who she is delighted to meet:

“What are they shouting?”

“It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means ‘Mother.’”

Dany felt a lightness in her chest. I will never bear a living child, she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have, because the man grinned and shouted again, and others took up the cry. [...]

Ser Jorah urged her to go, but Dany remembered a dream she had dreamed in the House of the Undying. “They will not hurt me,” she told him. “They are my children, Jorah.” She laughed, put her heels into her horse, and rode to them, the bells in her hair ringing sweet victory. She trotted, then cantered, then broke into a gallop, her braid streaming behind. The freed slaves parted before her. “Mother,” they called from a hundred throats, a thousand, ten thousand. “Mother,” they sang, their fingers brushing her legs as she flew by. “Mother, Mother, Mother!” (ASOS Daenerys IV)

As I said before, this scene is interesting because it associates Dany's role as a queen to her role as a mother. This connection arguably not only relates to gender issues, but also to how Dany's empathy runs so deep that she goes as far as to consider all of the ones who can't protect themselves her children: because she knows what it is like to be in their position, she will be the one who, instead of focusing on heritage and feudal ties and lands, empowers them and keeps them safe as best as she can.

Unfortunately, the show writers never understood any of this because of a) their lack of knowledge of the source material and, in particular, Dany's character, and b) their misogynistic assumption that a powerful and revolutionary woman must be, deep down, vain, selfish, unhinged and reliant on the men around her (even while they're unable to depict her as one).

*

And then, keeping the dragons in play because they're always such an important part of her identity, we just want to tie all of that together in one great shot.

While it's not untrue that the dragons are an important part of Dany's identity, I can't help but look askance at this statement. D&D thought that it was important to portray show!Dany as helpless without her dragons in season two, after all:

Benioff: Dany is so defined by her dragons, they're so much a part at this point, they define her so much that when they're taken from her, it's almost like she reverts to the pre-dragon Daenerys, you know, everyone is a bit defined by who they were when they were an adolescent, you know, no matter how old you get, no matter how powerful you get, and Daenerys was a scared, timid, abused adolescent and I think when her dragons are taken for her, all those feelings, all those memories and emotions are triggered and come back and all the confidence that she's won over the last several months, it's as if that just evaporates and she's back to being a really frightened little girl. (x)

In the books, Dany doesn't need to be humbled by having her dragons taken from her. Her lesson is the opposite one: she learns that, despite having dragons (which are never taken from her), they are not going to be of help if she wants to gain people's loyalty. Instead, she is going to have to earn people's loyalty, which is why GRRM has Dany's perspective front and center in the books - she is the one who deeply empathizes with the slaves based on her past experiences, she is the one who chooses to start an anti-slavery campaign, she is the one who concocts the battle plans to conquer the cities, she is the one who decides to stay and rule Meereen and so on. The dragons served as the bait to deceive the Astapori masters, but her plan went way beyond the dragons, as well as the ones she made in Yunkai and Meereen.

On HBO, they think that show!Dany is "so defined by her dragons" and that "they're such an important part of her identity" to the point of portraying her as incompetent without them, which they will do again in seasons four and five with their poor adaptation of her ADWD arc (where the dragons were shown as a hindrance and Dany still held things together really well considering the huge problems that she was dealing with). And then, in the end, as we know, they will turn the draconic imagery that once meant freedom in the books (and arguably in this scene as well) into another sign of her villainy in a wing shot that, iconic as it has become, is as subtle as adding devil horns in her head.

Show!Dany's clothes

Does anyone know why is show!Dany using this accessory with her dress? I assume it's a chest pad, but I'm not sure. If anyone has any ideas, please share them with me.

[growingupautie]

StoryTime: The White Card Incident

(2,770 words but worth the read.)

In January of 2013, I was promoted from a part-time weekend job as a technology sales representative for Lenovo to the Marketing Development Manager for Lenovo in charge of half of my entire city of Houston. For a while, I felt like I was on top of the world. I loved my job and traveling through my city. I loved meeting all the people in the 50 plus stores I had to visit and started to memorize a lot of them and what we talked about.

I even made my route have me end up near Chinatown on some days so I could stop by and eat lunch there (and get some things from my favorite bakery.) But just as Kandace and I were planning on using this newfound position to get an apartment together, something terrible happened. In October of that year, we got on our weekly conference call as we always did, but the mood seemed somber and no one was talking or laughing like they used to.

When our boss came on, she also seemed upset and had trouble getting her words out. I could tell that everyone on the call, all 20 plus of us from across the United States just wanted her to say what was happening so we could rip the bandaid off. After a minute of praise that felt hollow given the tone of the call, someone finally asked if she could get to the news we were told to expect.

She said "sorry" and continued to tell us that the parent company we work for had lost the contract with Lenovo after failed negotiations and our positions were being terminated immediately. The call somehow fell more silent. Everyone had questions. Myself included. But in the end, we found out most of what we wanted to know. The Lenovo branded cars we drove were to be returned, (I had let my vehicle stay broken down as I didn't need it and it would be expensive to fix.)

The laptop we were provided was to be returned as well along with the phone, and hotspot device. But the most important bit of info came when someone asked if we would be allowed to apply for unemployment. "Of course we would be able to. We paid into it, we worked, we should be able to get that back." but to our surprise, the boss said something along the lines of "no don't do that! We could get in trouble! We haven't paid into that!" All of us were stunned. Someone asked how that was even possible.

It turns out the loophole in the law they had found was that because the company was in Akron Ohio, and we all worked and paid taxes in our various other cities somehow they managed to not pay into it. We didn't get bogged down into the why or how, but all that meant to us was suddenly we were without cars and a paycheck and would be denied unemployment. I was devastated. I really thought I had found a place to grow and could see myself making a career out of it.

We were about to sign papers on an apartment and suddenly I'm without a job, without a working car, and without any kind of financial assistance. Some issues happened around my family and after a short time, I got my car somewhat fixed and I moved out of the house into Dadaw's (grandmother's) house. I tried frantically to get another job. After all, I had just been in charge if half of Houston for a big company. Surely I would be offered another position somewhere soon.

But as time went by, nobody had called. I had very little money left, and very little outside help if any. Hope was dwindling, relationships were strained. I had spoken to at least 20 job placement agencies. After my mom informed me that I had been diagnosed as Autistic as a child, I had reconnected with D.A.R.S. (Department of Rehabilitative Services) who help people with disabilities get help with work and other things.

But they refuse to help me based on my other medical issues because they closed my case before, and they refused to help me as an Autistic until I got rediagnosed. They paid for me to be rediagnosed, I did so with no sleep, having skipped dinner and breakfast, and with a ridiculous amount of stress on my shoulders.

I aced their IQ test minus the memory portion, and after a while of convincing the doctor I was Autistic through old stories and experiences and the fact that I had been diagnosed, he agreed. That day, I went home with my heart sunk in my chest. I felt like a failure for needing this kind of help. I felt like a broken or incomplete person because I couldn't do it on my own.

And after months of their "help," working with a bunch of disability-based job agencies, the "help" of 20 plus other job placement agencies I had saught out, and filling out applications online myself, no matter what I tried, I couldn't get a job anywhere. I couldn't afford to eat, and I didn't want Dadaw to pay for me as she often couldn't afford much. A few people in my life suggested I get food stamps. Several people in my life told me I should apply food stamps. But the idea of that in itself was terrifying.

But after a while, between eating very little, my friends taking me out from time to time, and constant pestering from my family I felt I was left with no choice. I went to the food stamp office with my head down, the people around me had the same downtrodden demeanor. When they called me back, I felt a rush of emotions. Guilt, remorse, sorrow, anger that it came to this.

But most of all, I felt embarrassed. Growing up, food stamps had been used as an insult toward the people around me, I knew at one point my family had needed them and used them and I felt like as someone who had been constantly bullied growing up, I was opening myself up for more. I played through a million scenarios in my head as I walked back. Someone I know seeing me at the checkout counter, the cashier silently judging me, the people around me, me dropping the white card with the unmistakable logo in front of someone.

I snapped out of it and sat down in the interview room to answer questions to determine my eligibility. But it felt like a police interrogation to me. I felt like I was cheating the system. Like it wasn't for me, but someone else who deserved it. Someone else who needed it. I felt the eyes of the interviewer boring into me as if to say "why are you even here?" I spoke up about to break. "I...I don't even want to do this." Her face changed from accusatory and annoyed, to shock.

I let her know that I felt like I had no other choice, that I felt embarrassed. I explained my situation, and she looked at me almost begrudgingly endearing. "Son, if you need help, you need help." she said. "That's what it's here for." I felt somewhat relieved or at least a little better about not actually cheating the system. They accepted my application, and I was approved.

When I got the card, I was once again filled with dread. Replaying the simulations over and over in my head a million times. Finding a way to cheat the system in a way to avoid being bullied, I realized I could use the self-check-out. Then quickly realized if I get one of those "please remove items from cart" messages or something else regarding my card, someone would have to come up and help me anyway.

Still, I figured it was my best hope for avoiding confrontations, and I parked outside the grocery store. I checked my balance on the card and made sure everything was working, went in and got a basket, and started shopping while feeling like a spy. Like somehow I would get caught and it would be the end of the road for me. I'm honestly surprised nobody thought I was shoplifting as nervous as I was.

When I was done, I walked over to the self-check-out area doubling down on my earlier decision when a woman stopped me and said they were all closed for repairs. Panic set in. I didn't say anything. I just sort of smiled and walked away with my basket.

The 15 items or less line was almost empty but I had too many items. The next line had too many people. The next few lines had the same amount of people and items, and I started doing the math on which cashier was scanning and bagging faster vs how judgmental they look trying to get myself into the best possible situation.

Eventually, I found a line sandwiched between two closed lines with only one woman and her 2 kids in the basket with a few items. The cashier didn't seem to care much about anything and didn't seem like a gatekeeper or any other kind of threat. And the woman in front of me seemed sad and aloof as well so I felt like things were going to be ok. The woman smiled at me and apologized for having so many items. "It's not that much. It's fine." I responded with a smile.

But suddenly from behind me, I felt a high strung angry presence. Like a monster who's in a hurry and I'm in his path. As each item was scanned, he started saying "Oh God...." "Of course..." and "Just great..." in a demeaning and monstrous tone. The woman continued to hide her face with her back to him and sulked further into herself as he continued. "Cash or credit?" The cashier asked in a monotone voice. "I...uh...Here..." The woman said quietly and she tried to hand her..."A food stamp card..." I thought to myself.

I realized that I and the woman felt the same at that moment. In need of help, but afraid to seek it out, and even afraid to use it once that help had been provided. I started to piece the scene together realizing the kids had beat up shoes and clothes, and the woman did as well. They were clearly hungry and frightened by this angry rhino of a person and just wanted to get some food. I started to think of all the scenarios that could have put them in that situation. But then I realized it didn't matter.

Only a moment had passed while I thought through all of these things, the children were terrified of this man already and then he saw it..."OH GREAT! MY TAX DOLLARS AT WORK!" he screamed scaring the kids even more. He began to verbally narrate what he thought her situation was. accusing her of getting "knocked up" to "leech off the system." He said people like them were a "drain on the economy" all while using language inappropriate to use around her children.

At that moment after the initial shock wore off, I grasped my card in my pocket as anger built up inside of me. I knew what I was afraid of, I had built it up in my head, and this ignorant jerk was making it a reality for a down on their luck mom and her two scared children. I immediately pivoted. "What did you just say?" I told him with a face that said: "I dare you to repeat that." apparently too blustered to care, he said, "I SAID PEOPLE LIKE HER ARE A DRAIN ON THE ECONOMY!"

I whipped my card out and held it in-between two fingers right in his face. "And what about me?" I spoke out with an angry but in control tone. "I...Uh..." he said as it became clear to me, like most bullies, this one was only doing this because he thought his targets (this mom and her kids) would not be able to defend themselves. I yelled at him more, trying to control my voice so I didn't frighten the kids anymore "Well, you had all kinds of ignorant crap to say a minute ago!"

He snapped out of his shock bullies go into when someone stands up to them. "Wh...Why don't you mind your own business?! I WASN'T EVEN TALKING TO YOU! WHY DON'T YOU FIND ANOTHER LINE!" He started to build up steam again making the children huddle in the cart.

Having had enough of his nonsense I moved my card, leaned in with a scowl, got uncomfortably close to his face and angrily whispered: "Why don't YOU find another line before I find one for you..." a terrified look came across his face as he realized doubling down on his ignorance would not get the job done and after a pained audible gulp in the "big man's" throat he was frantically on his way spouting off "That's what I thought" and other face-saving phrases.

I timidly turned back to the family making sure I had dropped my "don't mess with me" persona (My Autistic folks know this one) so I didn't scare them. I asked them if they were ok. Her eyes were filled with tears, and so were the kids. She smiled at me and thanked me for stepping in. I told her kids that it was ok because he was gone now and offered to walk them to their car. She said she appreciated it but they would be fine.

The checkout woman handed her a receipt and obviously wanted to stay out of the situation. I saw the woman leave and she smiled at me on the way out. I had enough items that it took a good 5 minutes to check me out. I realized in that time I was no longer afraid of being seen with my card. Maybe it was the adrenaline of standing up to that bully, maybe it was outing myself to protect that family, after all, it would be silly to be afraid now that everyone had clearly seen it.

I paid, went outside, and on my windshield was a note on small lined paper that had been torn out of a planner of some sort that said: "You will be blessed all the days of your life." I don't know who left it, or if it was in response to what happened, or even how they found out which car was mine, but it was there.

The message here is two-fold. First, it is easy to get caught up in thinking you don't need help, or that even if you did it isn't for you. "It's for someone more deserving." sometimes it's just the fear of being bullied or ridiculed for accepting it. And because of this, a lot of people wait until they hit "the bottom" before they ever consider asking and even then they might not.

In a better world, we would destigmatize the need for help. Therapy, government assistance, shelters, these things are in place to help people, and if people need help, they should be able to get it without being berated to tears over it. The last thing someone who's questioning if they need help or not needs is some blowhard with their ignorant opinions of why they don't. Which brings me to the second message.

If you see something like this happening, and you have the power to step in whether you are personally affected or not, do it. This includes all forms of bullying. Bullies are cowards. They may double down, but once these types of people realize that we won't allow this anymore and there are actually people who will stand against them, they buckle under the pressure. If you see it, shut it down.

This has been another [Growing Up Aspie] Storytime. If you'd like to help me make more content more often, please consider supporting me at Paypal.me/growingupaspie or with a monthly pledge of $1 or more at patreon.com/irishwolfproductions. Thank you for your support.

-Nathan Alan McConnell

[warau-okami]

Japan's 'vanishing' Ainu will finally be recognized as indigenous people

A bill, which was passed on Friday, for the first time has officially recognized the Ainu of Hokkaido as an "indigenous" people of Japan. The bill also includes measures to make Japan a more inclusive society for the Ainu, strengthen their local economies and bring visibility to their culture.

Japanese land minister Keiichi Ishii told reporters Friday that it was important for the Ainu to maintain their ethnic dignity and pass on their culture to create a vibrant and diverse society.Yet some warn a new museum showcasing their culture risks turning the Ainu into a cultural exhibit and note the bill is missing one important thing -- an apology.

Ainu Moshir (Land of the Ainu)

The origins of the Ainu and their language remain unclear, though many theories exist.

They were early residents of northern Japan, in what is now the Hokkaido prefecture, and the Kuril Islands and Sakhalin, off the east coast of Russia. They revered bears and wolves, and worshiped gods embodied in the natural elements like water, fire and wind.

In the 15th century, the Japanese moved into territories held by various Ainu groups to trade. But conflicts soon erupted, with many battles fought between 1457 and 1789. After the 1789 Battle of Kunasiri-Menasi, the Japanese conquered the Ainu.

Japan's modernization in the mid-1800s was accompanied a growing sense of nationalism and, in 1899, the government sought to assimilate the Ainu by introducing the Hokkaido Former Aborigines Protection Act.

The act implemented Japan's compulsory national education system in Hokkaido and eliminated traditional systems of Ainu land rights and claims. Over time, the Ainu were forced to give up their land and adopt Japanese customs through a series of government initiatives.Today, there are only two native Ainu speakers worldwide, according to the Endangered Languages Project, a organization of indigenous groups and researchers aimed at protecting endangered languages.

High levels of poverty and unemployment currently hinder the Ainu's social progress. The percentage of Ainu who attend high school and university is far lower than the Hokkaido average.

The Ainu population also appears to have shrunk. Official figures put the number of Ainu in Hokkaido at 17,000 in 2013, accounting for around 2% of the prefecture's population. In 2017, the latest year on record, there were only about 13,000.

However, Gayman, the Ainu researcher, says that the number of Ainu could be up to ten times higher than official surveys suggest, because many have chosen not to identify as Ainu and others have forgotten -- or never known -- their origins.

Mark John Winchester, a Japan-based indigenous rights expert, calls the new bill a "small step forward" in terms of indigenous recognition and anti-discrimination, but says it falls short of truly empowering the Ainu people. "Self-determination, which should be the central pillar of indigenous policy-making, is not reflected in the law," says Winchester.

Winchester and Gayman also say the government failed to consult all Ainu groups when drafting the bill.

For the Ainu elder Shimizu, the new bill is missing an important part: atonement. "Why doesn't the government apologize? If the Japanese recognized what they did in the past, I think we could move forward," says Shimizu."The Japanese forcibly colonized us and annihilated our culture. Without even admitting to this, they want to turn us into a museum exhibit," Shimizu adds, referring to the 2019 bill's provision to open an Ainu culture museum in Hokkaido.

Both Shimizu and Kano say the new law grants too much power to Japan's central government, which requires Ainu groups to seek its approval for state-sponsored cultural projects. Furthermore, they say the bill should do more to promote education.

Currently, Ainu youth are eligible for scholarships and grants to study their own language and culture at a few select private universities. But Kano says government funding should extend beyond supporting Ainu heritage, to support the Ainu people."We need more Ainu to enter higher education and become Ainu lawyers, film directors and professors," he says. "If that doesn't happen, the Japanese will always control our culture."

@languagesandshootingstars

[midnight-circus]

bad girls go to vegas

At one of the largest green-flocked tables, one of the Seven Cat’s regulars is busy winning money he doesn’t need. It is his third casino of the night, and this time he intends on breaking big.

Poker, of course. He is briefly lured by the sweet simplicity of blackjack and wastes a little time at the polished handles of the bandits, but his talents lie in folds and flushes. He gambles his takings back into the game with no pause for thought, playing with an air of apologetic self-deprecation, as though he can hardly believe his own good fortune. He eases the sting of the losses and eschews his own wins with incredulity, vouching for himself as a poor player, really, the cards are just honouring him tonight, and it is in this manner that René Chevalier steady lines his temporary bank account.

He bids yet another player goodnight and thank you as they leave (empty hands, empty wallet), offering a last, effusive apology for his uncanny beginner’s luck, and the black Aces that line his pockets go unnoticed. It is a risky game to play – cheaters are vilified nowhere moreso than Las Vegas – but his singular situation means he has nothing to fear. What danger do large bouncers in black suits signify for a man in his position?

Four hundred years ago, he turned a hunting tactic into a gambling ruse, and he has enjoyed a comfortable life ever since. Foresight is terribly useful on the heels of panicked prey – predicting a left turn or a right could be the difference between blood and hunger – but as it happens, it’s also extremely handy when sitting opposite a croupier. He watches his opponents make their moves seconds before the thought has even occurred in their minds, and he manipulates his own (with the help of the cards in his pocket) to out-manoeuvre them.

Is it cheating?

René, as he slips an Ace into his royal flush with effortless sleight-of-hand, would posit it as strategy.

And really, he doesn’t feel any guilt. These people – draped in jewels and Rolexes and mulberry silks – can afford to lose a couple grand each to a handsome stranger who will take it from them with charming apologies, and besides, it’s not as though he keeps it all to himself. Some he gambles back in, and then the rest of it is spent on booze and snow and expensive accommodation, so it all ends up back in the economy one way or another anyway.

A Kitten sashays past the table, placing her hands on his shoulders as she goes and kissing his cheek; he plucks a cat-eared band off her head and slips it over his own dark, tousled curls, winking as she slaps his arm playfully and leaves him to it – if there’s one thing René does not need, its encouragement to spend more money.

So he wiles away the next few hours – the sun sets outside and the sky turns the dull, hazy yellow of an eternal Vegas twilight, lifting an arcing dome of light pollution above the city’s head. By the time he is finished, extracting himself from the game and walking away from the table in the wake of handshakes and good-natured ‘I’ll-get-you-next-time’ threats, he is almost fifty grand richer.

It won’t last for long, but perhaps he’ll hold onto it tonight.

He moves through the grand hall with graceful fluidity, wending his way through diamonds and furs, gently steering around patrons with a hand to their shoulder, their elbow, the small of their back. Many of them know him, and the ones that don’t assume he is worth knowing; the very same phenomenon that warns others of his ilk away from him lures humans close to his side, and it is more than just a wealth of charisma.

Yet another modified hunting technique, of course – pheromones drawing flesh and blood and beating hearts to him like moths to flames. It’s simpler to stalk a prey animal when it thinks it has nothing to fear, and even simpler when they come flocking like doves, but he is not hunting tonight. Hunger curls in his chest like a gaping wound, the sharp ache of starvation never far away, but he can forgo for a little while yet.

He only has three more marks left on his license, after all, and it is barely even July. He is expecting a busy summer.

So he leaves the crowds behind and steps into an elevator, manned by a silent, slick-haired man who glances at the sleek black card René produces between two fingers and nods his admittance; classic in build, lined with gilded mirrors and red flocking on the wall inside, but entirely modern in its silence and fluidity as it glides him a floor up and brings him to berth in an élite upstairs bar.

His name is on the VIP list at the Seven Cats – all seven of them, in fact, and that little black card in his pocket vouches silently for his worth. His own booth, free booze, a suite if he requires it, and any number of pleasant little perks that he need only ask for. The staff know him. The girls trust him. There are things he can get away with – the odd line here and there on a sleek black bar, for example, or a croupier who chooses to look the other way for one brief moment – that VIP allows for, and for that reason he is quite willing to spend enough to keep it.

So he sits now in gilded exclusivity – a mezzanine balcony lavishly decorated in a drench of red and gold and deep mahogany, providing a lofted view of the casino below, serviced with its own bar and sequestered from the noise of rabble by a vast glass window; the lights are soft and low, little haloes of amber around the heads of Edison bulbs fashionably scattered around the bar. He is nursing an exquisitely-made martini and pondering whether to top up the next with espresso; his Saint Laurent suit is carefully rumpled, the collar of his shirt open at his throat in an effective display of somnolent contentment. The Cats have the feel of the early 20th century with all the mod-cons of the 21st, and René submerges himself in it – of all the years and decades and centuries he has lived, he holds a special fondness for only a few, and he harks back to the 1920s with wistfulness.

By God, he misses jazz.

It is whilst he is dwelling on this swell of nostalgia that a ripple of blue silk and white furs cascades elegantly into the barstool beside him, settling itself into the icy milk-and-honey façade of a familiar face – Sylvia Rothschilde, socialite of unspecified age and (she insists each time he sees her) newfound debutante, draped in form-clinging charmeuse of a pale periwinkle.

René lights up a devastating smile.

“Mme. Rothschilde! My heart, my soul, my favourite.” He kisses the back of her silk glove; she tuts and bats him away.

“Don’t be a rogue,” she scolds. Her faux anger is belied by a vulpine, rouge-lipped smile. “And where have you been, René Chevalier? There you were last summer, promising to make an honest woman of me, and then right back to New Orleans you went! You made quite the little Daisy Buchanan out of me.” She waves a delicate hand at the bartender, who brings her a margarita without a word; she takes it and hides her smile in its salt-crusted rim. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Ah, Sylvie, you know me,” cajoles René, covering her hand with his. “I’ll say anything in the spotlight of a pretty face.”

“Oh, do shut up, you wastrel,” she scoffs. “Well, fortunately for you, it never would have worked anyway – alas, a girl just can’t get hold of two marriage certificates these days, and I’m afraid you did come in second place.” The frosted diamond on her ring finger glitters golden in the lamplight.

“Not to sound like a tourist, darling, but we are in Vegas.”

“Don’t remind me.” She rolls her blue eyes to the ceiling. “I was promised the Maldives this July, and yet here we are again. If we don’t go in September, I shall scream.”

“Say the word, Sylvie. You, me, a private jet -”

“And at least four other men, none of whom have an interest in me.” She licks a grain of salt from her lip. “I know you, sweetheart. A few more of those martinis and I pity that poor bartender.”

The bartender, polishing glasses behind them, allows himself a smile. The atmosphere is light and pleasant – for now, they are the only two patrons up here, and it is easy to imagine they are privately ensconced. René allows himself to lapse into a comfortable silence, and for a little while at least, he can try to forget the gnawing, aching, crushing hunger that roils ceaselessly in the pit of his stomach. Drowning it in alcohol does not work and never has, but it does help the time pass – it is whilst the bartender is filling his glass for the third time that Sylvia breaks the lull.

“Now then, René,” she says, nestling close to his side with a hand held to her diamond-studded neck and a teasing smile curling across her lips. “To business. Rumour tells me you quite cleared the tables down there tonight. I must say, you’ve been at the whim of ‘beginner’s luck’ for quite some time now. I’ve seen you up and down the strip since I started visiting, and when was that – three years ago now?” She tips him the shadow of a wink. “At what point are you going to confess?”

“Sylvie, mon cherie, a confession suggests I must have something terrible to confess, and it wounds me that you could think I’d hide things from you, my darling.” He swivels on the bar stool to face her, lifting his martini to touch the rim to her glass. “But alright, I admit – perhaps I should finally promote myself from beginner to amateur.”

Her laugh is like champagne on ice.

“You’re a wonderful liar, René,” she says, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “I have a little theory. You’re Louisiana’s household name in the professional game. Their secret weapon at the tables. You have a whole double life playing out in New Orleans, and you come here at the end of each season to make fools of the rabble with falsehoods about ‘beginner’s luck’. Tell me I’m wrong.”

René puts a hand to his heart, reeling back on his seat.

“Large fishes, small ponds, mademoiselle.” His wounded expression gives way to a dazzling smile. “You know I’m a terrible exhibitionist, and besides, the proprietor hasn’t had me thrown out yet.”

They chime glasses once again and sip in momentary silence, watching the casino roll beneath them; the singing of slot machines and the muffled roars of losses and wins batters at the far side of the glass. The bartender returns, a crisp white towelette slung over his starched shoulder, and he refills René’s glass yet again without question or comment. René mouths a thank you, and slips a $50 into his waistcoat pocket. It pays to keep people sweet.

“He’s floating around tonight, you know,” Sylvia says suddenly, gazing out at the crowd neatly partitioned from them. “Mr. Fairfax.” She says the name with a faux shiver, her voice skipping down an octave. The stem of the margarita glass rolls between her fingers. “You’ve met him, I assume?”

“Seen him,” says René, listening with new interest now. He has been trying to get on some sort of terms with the patron of the Cats for several months, without a great deal of success outside a brief glimpse or two. How much money must a man spend? “Haven’t had the pleasure of speaking yet. I assume pleasure is the right word?” He claps a hand to his chest again, as though struck by sudden horror. “Tell me he’s not another Trump, Sylvie, my heart couldn’t bear it.”

Sylvia smiles primly around the rim of her glass, suddenly coquettish. She tilts her slim wrist to regard the gilded face of a Tiffany watch, and pats René on the arm.

“Must go, sweetheart, Forrest arranged reservations for us at nine at Robuchon and I’m already ten minutes late.” She leans in once again, brushing Givenchy-painted lips against his cheek. “But I promise you, he’s certainly no Trump. Tata, darling.”

“Bonne nuit, chérie.” He watches her walk away, because to be fair she does it very deliberately, and then he returns his gaze to the grand hall below the curve of the window. It is a sea of black tuxedos, studded here and there with glittering jewel-toned dresses – this is not the common-or-garden Vegas of the tourist traps. Admittance to the Cats requires the level of financial security that renders carrying cash obsolete – here, the elite gamble directly out of offshore banks, and when they run dry there they wager assets and equity. René has neither – paper trails, you know – but for now until the end of summer he is a loyal customer of the Bank of Nevada; when the season is over, the account will close without comment, employees will forget his name and he will return to the bright swarm of Louisiana for the winter. In a way, it’s the same life he’s lived since his conception (when was that? He can’t remember now) – the world has updated around him, technology has taken leaps and bounds he could never had predicted, but he and his habits have remained greatly unchanged.

But he eats less now, though.

The hunger curls vice-like in his stomach, writhing and twisting like something living and dying all at once.

He swallows the last of his fifth martini, and asks for a bottle of absinthe.

[theliterateape]

Sorry, Mom, I Can't Make It To Christmas This Year

By J. L. Thurston

Dear Mom,

Thank you for the invitation to Christmas this year. The card is beautiful, I have it hanging up on the wall by the television so the rest of the family can see. I love the crazy sweater you put on Muffins, by the way.

The kids and I are doing great, and so is the husband. Same old same old. School, work and all that.

Anyway, I regret to decline the invitation to Christmas. I know that bums you out, but please pass on my regrets to Dad, if you can manage to speak to him without nagging at him to do the simple little tasks you can do yourself but you make him instead. And tell Dad that we all know he spikes his coffee with whiskey, we can smell it on his breath. I know he’s staring at the football game with his gut poking out of last years’ Christmas sweater, doing his best to pretend you aren’t home between his napping.

Pass my love on to Grandma, whose halitosis spreads across the dinner table like a cloud nearly as hateful as her criticisms of her children’s lives. I would like someone to remind her that her children and grandchildren all spawned from her, and perhaps if she didn’t drink so much while pregnant she might have given birth to rocket scientists instead of a gas station attendant, a self-proclaimed event planner, and a thrice-failed beautician.

Rub Cousin Melanie’s belly for me. I know she’s got to be pregnant again. Give her kids a pat on the head and remind them that Santa will still come see them even though their individual dads do not. I’m sure Melanie’s new man is a wonderment to behold. Sorry I won’t be there to meet this one, but I’m sure I’ll catch the next one at Easter if I can make it over.

Sorry I have to miss out on Uncle Bart’s famously burnt Christmas turkey, but I am grateful I will miss out on dodging his hands as he tries to grope every female family member under the age of fifty. Whoever he brings will be a real treat, I’m sure, because he’ll need a ride after his last D.U.I.

I’m sure sorry I won’t be there to see the way you and Dad argue about inconsequential things, eventually causing you to break down and cry until someone cracks open a bottle of spiked eggnog for you to drown yourself in. After your fourth glass, you’ll begin telling everyone what you really think. How I married the wrong guy and you hate that we don’t come around enough. You’ll pass out gifts that were purchased at an 80 year old’s garage sale that everyone re-gifts later. You’ll bicker at my siblings because they never wear the clothes you buy them, even though they are all wearing the clothes you bought them last year.

I apologize for losing out on this year’s Secret Santa exchange, and that I won’t be receiving a scented wax warmer for the fifth year in a row. I’m sorry to go this holiday season without Aunt Trish’s comments on all I do wrong as a mother, Cousin Marcus explaining to the children how Santa is just a lie made up by retailers to promote spending during a time when the economy should be at a low-swing, and my sister being congratulated for supposedly being drug-free this year.

If you decide to mail me any clothes, I am not a size six, and haven’t been since my sophomore year in high school. I don’t wear dresses. I have two boxes full of costume jewelry that you bought off the television for five payments of $29.99, so please restrain yourself this year. My kids don’t need any more socks or underwear. And they don’t need any more promise rings from the church; last year someone snuck in pamphlets on how abortion is wrong and I had to explain what a fetus is to my 5 year old.

In the spirit of the season, I’d like to be honest and let you know that this year we are thankful for missing out on all the psychotic fake smiles, the need for inebriation to be near one another and the lies we tell so that Grandma won’t pop an artery under the mistletoe.

I’m bailing on you all because we can’t just spend time together, being honest about ourselves without fear of retribution or causing offense. No, instead we observe Christmas as a time to overspend on gifts that go underappreciated, running ourselves ragged to make sure we see all the in-laws and extended family members so they know we still love them. We are sensitive more on December 25th than on any other day of the year, but we manage to hold any grudges made on that day for at least another 365 days.

I love everyone, even Uncle Bart, and I see them throughout the year for cookouts and birthdays, but I’m making a stand on Christmas. Christmas will be for family, and by family I don’t mean everyone on Earth who is possibly related to me. I mean me, my husband, and my children. We will curl up on the couch on Christmas Eve and watch movies until the kids pass out, then we’ll wake up to them shouting that Santa was here. We will stay in our pajamas all day, stuffing ourselves silly with cookies and fudge, and when the kids fall asleep with their new favorite toy cuddled in their arms, the husband and I will smoke some green and stare at the fireplace.

So, let everyone know they’re getting Walmart gift cards from me, and that I send them all my best! Have fun crying this year, and we’ll see you for brunch in a few weeks to make up for it.

Love,

Your Fed-Up Goddamn Daughter, the Wonderful Man She Married and Their Offspring.

[fycanadianpolitics]

Prime Minister Trudeau tweeted today in response to the recent decision by Kinder Morgan that “Canada is a country of the rule of law, and the federal government will act in the national interest. Access to world markets for Canadian resources is a core national interest. The Trans Mountain expansion will be built.” Many progressives will argue that the national interest is instead in protecting the country from the impacts of climate change. But arguing about what is in the national interest isn’t really getting us anywhere.  

What are we to do instead? Before we can discuss solutions to the problem of climate change, we need to ask how we got ourselves  into this mess in the first place. Sociologist Andreas Malm notes, “The spiral of climate change is set in motion by the act of identifying, digging up, and setting fire to fossil fuels: … For most of human history, the deposits were left untouched, safely locked out from the active carbon cycle. Then a qualitatively novel type of economy interrupted into them.” In the 19th century,  deposits of the resources were extracted on an unprecedented, massive scale by cheap labour commanded by an elite class of wealthy British landowners.

The first capitalists can be credited as the engineers of the climate crisis, but their extractivist nature was merely a reflection of their class interests; to acquire as much capital as possible regardless of the social and ecological consequence--something that has not remotely changed in the contemporary era (see former CEO of ExxonMobile and Secrectary of State, Rex Tillerson who says “My philosophy is to make money. If I can drill and make money, then that’s what I want to do.”). The British capitalists of the 19th century desperately sought out more coal to propel their steam boats to new, distant lands to acquire more land, where more resources could be extracted. However, much of this land was already occupied by indigenous peoples, who had to be violently dispossessed in order for their land to be acquired for further production of capital.

This is because the logic of capital is predicated on infinite growth and expansion.  The surplus profit generated by private firms is perpetually reinvested into new production, which requires more land, and land, historically, was acquired through any means necessary. This is why capitalism, colonialism, and climate change are inexorably bound up with one another: the three faces of a mutually reinforcing system of violence that is killing our planet. This continues in the  21st century through the violation of indigenous land rights as pipelines and other carbon infrastructure are created on ancestral lands without the consent of the first peoples. It is then fair to say that the climate crisis can be attributed to capitalism, an economic order that engenders imperialism and colonial land theft in pursuance of feeding the infinite appetite of the capitalist class.

It’s not uncommon to hear from self-professed liberals that “green capitalism,” can solve the climate crisis. That we can shop our way to a stable and clean environment, a prospect that appears to be increasingly untenable as the exponential increase in availability of “green” consumer goods has done little to prevent 2017 from being a record high year for global CO2 emissions. The reality is that the kind of radical, paradigm changing climate policy we need to protect the planet would also be a direct threat to the economic profits of corporations and the national GDP which politicians of every nation fetishize.

Capitalism, as it exists today, has no way of contending with the climate change crisis. World renowned climate scientist, Kevin Anderson, has spoken at length about how the economic growth imperative of capitalism is not compatible with reaching our Paris commitments. A recent study has stated that we have a 5% chance of reaching these goals under the economic statis quo. Anderson's research indicates that we must radically change our economic paradigm to save our existence on the planet. The mainstream economic orthodoxy of economic growth cannot be reconciled with the most up to date climate projections, which say, in very clear terms, that we are on course to rocket past our 2 degree Celsius commitment outlined in the Paris agreement and on towards 4 then 5 degrees, creating a very dire situation for humanity to say the least.

Our current economic situation has proven to be untenable in the long run. Global food insecurity is on the rise for the first time in decades due to climate change, global water pollution is steadily increasing, global air pollution is getting worse, there have been dramatic increases in exposure to toxic chemicals, the worlds slums are growing, there are record levels of coral bleaching, we are facing unprecedented levels of biodiversity loss. Pollution kills nearly 15 times more people than all the world's wars and violence combined, and is three times as deadly as AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis all put together.

The ruling class has decided that any threat to their economic hegemony is unacceptable, therefore it would be better to have the world become a scorched hell rather than to have their profits jeopardized. Even liberal leaders like Obama and Trudeau, who have paid plenty lip-service to climate change, only support climate initiatives insofar as they won’t disrupt the economic status quo, but sadly it is the economic status-quo that is  accelerating climate change to begin with. While the Republican party seems to deny the scientific reality of climate change, the liberal elite denies the economic and sociological realities of climate change. They want to have their cake and eat it too;  to advocate for environmental sustainability while also promoting economic growth and unregulated free trade, unaware or indifferent to the fact  that these things exist in contradiction. Neoliberalism and climate justice are mutually exclusive, as the former precludes the latter.

Here in Canada, the pseudo-progressiveness of Justin Trudeau is farcical; he puts on a great show of apologizing to various marginalized groups with teary eyes and feigned concern, while approving the construction of disastrous pipelines (Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain Pipeline, Enbridge Line 3) to the outrage of indigenous land defenders and environmentalists throughout the nation. Apologists for the Liberal party propagate the fairy tale that the government can still construct pipelines, and  “balance,” environmental goals with economic ones.

This appeal to moderation cannot be substantiated based on what we know about oil emissions. Many studies have shown (here and here) that constructing new carbon infrastructure is incompatible with reaching the  Paris accord commitments of 2 degrees C. Pipelines have lifespans of decades and we simply cannot afford to be pumping oil for decades. This is why Trudeau’s tweet today is so unsurprising. With Trudeau’s pipeline endeavours, he is merely continuing Canada’s long-held tradition, which started with John A. Macdonald, of appropriating indigenous land to consolidate Canada’s colonial power.

Trudeau's politics of reconciliation is incredibly deceptive, obscuring indigenous demands for land restitution with the spectacle of televised, performative repentance, which, in material terms, does nothing to address stolen land. The reality is that it doesn’t matter which empty suit any of the political parties puts forward; it doesn’t matter how sad or guilty they might seem about past national transgressions; they will always be subordinated to the logic of the colonial-capitalist state: dispossession, accumulation, and expansion. That “rule of law,” that Trudeau refers to, is the colonial legal framework that has been designed to facilitate the extraction of natural resources from stolen land. It is this framework that needs to be dismantled.

This is why reformism is entirely inadequate in addressing the climate crisis; it is the socio-economic structure itself that is producing climate change. Therefore the changes we need have to be systematic, sweeping, and ultimately anti-capitalist in nature. But how can we get there? Only mass social movements can challenge the hegemony of neoliberal governments and corporations. Only through mass organization and mobilization can we begin to bring about a society organised along ecological principles. While the statistics may seem grim, there are reasons to be hopeful.

In the last few decades there have been several awe-inspiring, grassroots movements that we can draw inspiration from moving forward. For instance, the Ogoni protests in the 90s are a stunning example of collective, direct action that kicked out Shell oil out of their country. In collusion with the Nigerian government, Shell oil was responsible for the displacements of tens of thousands of Ogoni people, which gave birth to the Ogoni Peoples Movement, a grassroots social movements that succeeded in dismantling Shell’s corporate stranglehold over the region. Without receiving any help from their  failing and corrupt government, the Ogoni people used militant, non-violent direct action to shut down oil operations. The movement continues to battle a corrupt government while facing the environmental catastrophe of degraded and leaking carbon infrastructure left in Shell’s wake, and although their struggle continues, there is a commendable victory here.

Like the Ogoni, Indigenous people all over the world have been at the forefront of environmental protection. This was seen with the recent Dakota Access Pipeline protests, where the Standing Rock Tribe and other indigenous groups came together to protect water and ancestral burial grounds. This was perhaps the single most monumental environmental social movement in recent history, dominating the headlines at the time.  In October 2017, several energy activists dubbed the “valve turners,” shut down five separate pipeline in a coordinated act of fossil fuel resistance, a sophisticated and flawlessly executed example of the kind of direct action we need on an even larger scale.

It is necessary that we build upon these movements and work together in creating the kind of mass social movement that can challenge the capitalist system itself and replace it with a new kind of economic arrangement that is based on ecological sustainability and social equity, not private profit.  Without system change, climate change will continue to ravage our planet.

[toomanysinks]

The responsibility for a sustainable digital future

Mounir Mahjoubi Contributor

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Mounir Mahjoubi is the French Secretary of State for Digital Affairs.

On March 12, 2019, we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the “World Wide Web”, Tim Berners-Lee’s ground-breaking invention.

In just thirty years, this flagship application of the Internet has forever changed our lives, our habits, our way of thinking and seeing the world. Yet, this anniversary leaves a bittersweet taste in our mouth: the initial decentralized and open version of the Web, which was meant to allow users to connect with each other, has gradually evolved to a very different version, centralized in the hands of giants who capture our data and impose their standards.

We have poured our work, our hearts and a lot of our lives out on the internet. For better or for worse. Beyond business uses for Big Tech, our data has become an incredible resource for malicious actors, who use this windfall to hack, steal and threaten. Citizens, small and large companies, governments: online predators spare no one. This initial mine of information and knowledge has provided fertile ground for dangerous abuse: hate speech, cyber-bullying, manipulation of information or apology for terrorism – all of them amplified, relayed and disseminated across borders.

Laissez-faire or control: between Scylla and Charybdis

Faced with these excesses, some countries have decided to regain control over the Web and the Internet in general: by filtering information and communications, controlling the flow of data, using digital instruments for the sake of sovereignty and security. The outcome of this approach is widespread censorship and surveillance. A major threat to our values ​​and our vision of society, this project of “cyber-sovereignty” is also the antithesis of the initial purpose of the Web, which was built in a spirit of openness and emancipation. Imposing cyber-borders and permanent supervision would be fatal to the Web.

To avoid such an outcome, many democracies have favored laissez-faire and minimal intervention, preserving the virtuous circle of profit and innovation. Negative externalities remain, with self-regulation as the only barrier. But laissez-faire is no longer the best option to foster innovation: ​​data is monopolized by giants that have become systemic, users’ freedom of choice is limited by vertical integration and lack of interoperability. Ineffective competition threatens our economies’ ability to innovate.

In addition, laissez-faire means being vulnerable to those who have chosen a more interventionist or hostile stance. This question is particularly acute today for infrastructures: should we continue to remain agnostic, open and to choose a solution only based on its economic competitiveness? Or should we affirm the need to preserve our technological sovereignty and our security?

Photo courtesy of Getty Images/chombosan

Paving a third way

To avoid these pitfalls, France, Europe and all democratic countries must take control of their digital future. This age of digital maturity involves both smart digital regulation and enhanced technological sovereignty.

Holding large actors accountable is a legitimate and necessary first step: “with great power comes great responsibility”.

Platforms that relay and amplify the audience of dangerous content must assume a stronger role in information and prevention. The same goes for e-commerce, when consumers’ health and safety is undermined by dangerous or counterfeit products, made available to them with one click. We should apply the same focus on systemic players in the field of competition: vertical integration should not hinder users’ choice of goods, services or content.

But for our action to be effective and leave room for innovation, we must design a “smart regulation”. Of course, our goal is not to impose on all digital actors an indiscriminate and disproportionate normative burden.

Rather, “smart regulation” relies on transparency, auditability and accountability of the largest players, in the framework of a close dialogue with public authorities. With this is mind, France has launched a six-month experiment with Facebook on the subject of hate content, the results of which will contribute to current and upcoming legislative work on this topic.

In the meantime, in order to maintain our influence and promote this vision, we will need to strengthen our technological sovereignty. In Europe, this sovereignty is already undermined by the prevalence of American and Asian actors. As our economies and societies become increasingly connected, the question becomes more urgent.

Investments in the most strategic disruptive technologies, construction of an innovative normative framework for the sharing of data of general interest: we have leverage to encourage the emergence of reliable and effective solutions. But we will not be able to avoid protective measures when the security of our infrastructure is likely to be endangered.

To build this sustainable digital future together, I invite my G7 counterparts to join me in Paris on May 16th. On the agenda, three priorities: the fight against online hate, a human-centric artificial intelligence, and ensuring trust in our digital economy, with the specific topics of 5G and data sharing.

Our goal? To take responsibility. Gone are the days when we could afford to wait and see.

Our leverage? If we join our wills and forces, our values can prevail.

We all have the responsibility to design a World Wide Web of Trust. It is still within our reach but the time has come to act.

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/the-responsibility-for-a-sustainable-digital-future/

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

NPR: “That decades-long reign of service ended Thursday, when Queen Elizabeth II died at her Balmoral estate in Scotland, at age 96.”

RIP.

Six Colors: “Then there’s the Dynamic Island, a stark reminder about the limits of rumors emerging from Apple’s hardware supply chain. Everyone who reported on the size and shape of the new cutouts on the iPhone 14 Pro models was absolutely right—and yet couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The cutouts were only the start of the story.”

I was only able to see a small portion of the event but it happened to be the new iPhone introduction.

They’re not too different, with one extremely cool exception. The notch has become a smaller cutout at the top of the phone and that allowed Apple to blend it into user experience. It’s called Dynamic Island and I’m trying to find an excuse to use it in my apps. 😁

Robert Reich: “I have a serious question for people who have power in America and who continue to deny the outcome of the 2020 election and enable Trump’s Big Lie: What are you saying to yourself in private? How are you justifying yourself in your own mind?”

I ask this question all the time and I think it’s because some of them actually believe it. Others are just so hungry for power and destroying our democracy they’ll do anything to make it happen.

They’re part of a cult.

LAist: “Despite calls to conserve power, California’s energy demands were at an all-time high Tuesday.”

California is a beautiful state, arguably the best state in the nation. It has a powerhouse economy, it’s the home of tech, it has beautiful cities, mountains, beaches, you name it, California’s got it.

But it also has big problems to go along with the rest. Fires rage out of control every summer, water is hard to come by, and with our new climate reality extreme heat puts huge strain on the power grid.

I miss California but I don’t miss these problems. 🧡

I love how Spotify calls their locked-up "podcast" platform "https://t.co/G4bfRixW8a" – it's the way Machiavelli would do it. If you're closed, say you're open – and let everyone debate whether you're scum or just an opportunist.

— Dave Winer (@davewiner) September 3, 2022

A lot of us believe folks like Spotify, with proprietary systems, should give their podcast like audio a different name. They’re clearly not open, don’t have an RSS feed, so they’re not podcasts.

Fast Company: “The overarching issue here is that Mastodon is trying to be too much like Twitter when it really ought to be more like Reddit.”

This is an interesting take but I don’t see it. Mastodon is a great Twitter like experience and I love having my own instance.

I’d love to see Twitter’s Blue Sky effort bring federation to the system so systems like Mastodon could join it. 🤞🏼

The Washington Post: _“The insurrectionists of Jan. 6 busted into the Capitol, hit police with fire extinguishers, flagpoles, bats, stun guns and pepper spray; they threatened to kill the vice president and tried to overthrow the 2020 election. And now, they want an apology.”_

Each and every one of the insurrectionists needs to pay a price. They tried to overthrow the will of the people. That includes Donald J. Trump. At a minimum he should be banned from holding any state or federal office. He also deserves some jail time. Regardless, he’s a horrible person.

Rukshan: “RSS is a great piece of technology that people who use the internet today are unaware of or not using. There has not been any significant development in RSS for the last 10 years, and that’s fine.”

This is a nice little piece on RSS, one persons journey back to it, and how it makes consuming articles better.

If you need an iOS Feed Reader, give my app Stream a try. It’s completely free to use and offers a tip system if you find it useful. Yes, shameless self promotion. 😃

Teen Vogue: “By that summer, Starbucks, a multibillion-dollar company, was reporting record-breaking sales, while many of us couldn’t afford to pay rent and buy groceries in the same week. It was at this point we realized we needed to take things into our own hands if we wanted anything to change.”

When I can’t find a good local coffee shop I’ll seek out a Starbucks. I wouldn’t classify it as the best coffee I’ve ever had but it’s good and satisfies. I think of them as the McDonalds of coffee, you know you’ll get a consistent cup.

Anywho, they’ve been real jerks to their workers over the course of the pandemic, as have many other places.

As a place known for great benefits prior to the pandemic it would be really nice if they could reevaluate everything they do and make Starbucks the best place in the country to work. If you want to stop unions, take excellent care of your partners.

Barn Finds: “Dodge released its B-Series range of commercial vehicles in 1948, and our feature Pickup is from the first year of production.”

It never fails to amaze me how many beautiful old cars and trucks are sitting in barns or fields rotting away. It also makes me wish I had tons of money to spend. I would become a collector. A collector and restorer of old, beautiful, cars and trucks.

I love Barn Finds.

[angelia-dark]

I think one of the most important things a youngblood fanfic writer can learn is that you DON'T need to apologize for or A/N a break in writing, PERIOD. Whether it's for going on vacation for a week or losing interest in a story for two years. This is shit we do for free, and real life comes before all of this. Because it's more disappointing to see a notification for a new chapter only for it to be an A/N rather than seeing nothing at all, for one, and for two, I feel it sort of started the little bit of entitlement that non-creator consumers have regarding what they consume.

I never used to see the passive-aggressive 'it's been two months, guess this story is abandoned now' or 'it's been over six months, update!' comments when I was younger. It takes everything I have to not comment back 'well with that my inspiration died a little more, and thanks to you that's another couple months'.

You want some more constant updates, pay with a commission to your writer, or find out if they have a tip jar. Money is a helluva motivator in this economy, and one stunning endorsement of appreciation.

Obligatory self-promotion for my commissions here

I'm serious, tip your writers and artists, don't be a fandom Karen and Mark.

[johneverar]

The Passion of the Neighbors of "Longquan Temple"

When the Longquan Temple in Luyuan Township, New York State was first built, it was welcomed by the residents of the town. Such a large-scale Chinese-style pavilion should be a tourist attraction with a Chinese concept. This will not only promote the development of the local tourism economy, but also facilitate local residents to experience Chinese culture at close range. Residents of Luyuan Town are looking forward to the completion of Longquan Temple. After the completion, the gate of Longquan Temple was closed, armed security personnel patrolled back and forth with AK47 machine guns, surrounded by surveillance cameras, and outsiders were not allowed to enter. Over time, the residents knew that this was a "Buddhist" company and the headquarters of the cult known as "Falun Gong". Believers who are obsessed with this "Buddhism" come from all over the world, abandon their families, and study "Buddhism". In the temple, people are not allowed to connect to the Internet, and the marriage relationship is also arranged artificially. When people get sick, it is not traditional medical treatment or medicine, but self-healing by "practising Falun". Longquan Temple has also established the "Shen Yun" art troupe, which performs performances all over the United States and spreads traditional Chinese culture. After watching, some viewers who did not know the truth found that the party was constantly spreading the message that "Falun Gong is good, but the Chinese government is not good." Neighbors no longer expect Longquan Temple to promote local economic development. It is enough for everyone not to disturb each other.

But it backfired. In order to build the "Holy Land" of Falun, Longquan Temple ignored the laws and regulations of the town. During the expansion, heavy construction vehicles crushed the township roads, and the maintenance costs were paid by the town residents; the width of the constructed roads did not meet the requirements and was incompatible with the narrow roads in the town; the fire prevention facilities of the internal buildings were not standardized, and the Local fire hazard. The expansion of Longquan Temple also led to a large number of Falun Gong practitioners pouring into Longquan Temple and surrounding towns. Many Falun Gong practitioners took pictures of other people's houses without permission and tried to buy them. Cars come and go, but the residents don't know what they are doing. These illegal and bizarre behaviors make the "neighbors" uneasy, and also prompted Luyuan Town to issue the "Amendment to the Law on Mass Gatherings", which stipulates that unless the town committee is approved With written permission, no one may hold or initiate mass gatherings of more than 500 people.

What makes residents even more angry is that many expansion projects of Longquan Temple were started without permission, which greatly damaged the natural environment of the town. An existing sewage treatment plant in Longquan Temple with a daily processing capacity of 18,400 gallons directly discharges the treated sewage into the local rivers of Bashekir Creek and Neversink River, threatening the surrounding water system environment, and this sewage The treatment plant was built without any permits and audits issued by the town government. His sewage treatment system was also punished by the New York State Department of Environmental Protection with a daily penalty of up to Longquan Temple ignored the $37,500 fine, neither paying the fine nor making corrections. In 2018, Longquan Temple still plans to build a sewage treatment station that can process up to 100,000 gallons per day, but this continuous expansion and damage to the environment naturally met with strong opposition from "neighbors" and the plan was shelved. Unexpectedly, in 2021, Longquan Temple will secretly start illegal expansion construction despite the opposition of residents.

Longquan Temple's unreasonable behavior of "expansion first, then apology" ignores the priority of "neighbors" and destroys the local natural environment and living environment. His existence has broken the once peaceful and harmonious life of the town. Seen as a threat by "neighbors". In January this year, the residents of the town and the New York State Environmental Protection Organization filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court against the Longquan Temple polluting the river in the area. Now the "neighbors" are working together to drive away the impolite visitor, hoping to restore the town's former tranquility.

[newstfionline]

Saturday, September 18, 2021

Americans have little trust in online security: AP-NORC poll (AP) Most Americans don’t believe their personal information is secure online and aren’t satisfied with the federal government’s efforts to protect it, according to a poll. The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MeriTalk shows that 64% of Americans say their social media activity is not very or not at all secure. About as many have the same security doubts about online information revealing their physical location. Half of Americans believe their private text conversations lack security. And they’re not just concerned. They want something done about it. Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they support establishing national standards for how companies can collect, process and share personal data. But after years of stalled efforts toward stricter data privacy laws that could hold big companies accountable for all the personal data they collect and share, the poll also indicates that Americans don’t have much trust in the government to fix it.

COVID-19 surge forces health care rationing in parts of West (AP) In another ominous sign about the spread of the delta variant, Idaho public health leaders on Thursday expanded health care rationing statewide and individual hospital systems in Alaska and Montana have enacted similar crisis standards amid a spike in the number of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients requiring hospitalization. The decisions marked an escalation of the pandemic in several Western states.

Security fencing, barriers go back up at Capitol (The Hill) Security fencing and barriers began going back up around the Capitol late Wednesday ahead of a rally planned for Saturday in support of the Jan. 6 rioters. Authorities are going on high alert for the “Justice for J6” rally, which is meant to protest the criminal charges those who stormed the Capitol while Congress was certifying the results of the presidential election are facing. Around 600 people are currently charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection. Roughly 700 people are expected to attend the pro-Trump rally, an official at the Department of Homeland Security said earlier this week. The agency also expects that a number of demonstrators connected to the groups that stormed the Capitol will return for Saturday’s event.

Del Rio migrant buildup (Washington Post) Thousands of Haitian migrants who have crossed the Rio Grande in recent days are sleeping outdoors under a border bridge in South Texas, creating a humanitarian emergency and a logistical challenge U.S. agents describe as unprecedented. Authorities in Del Rio say more than 10,000 migrants have arrived at the impromptu camp, and they are expecting more in the coming days. The migrants arriving to Del Rio appear to be part of a larger wave of Haitians heading northward, many of whom arrived in Brazil and other South American nations after the 2010 earthquake. They are on the move again, embarking on a grueling, dangerous journey to the United States.

Havoc in Haiti (Foreign Policy) Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry fired the country’s top prosecutor and its justice minister on Monday, ordering the terminations just before the prosecutor filed to summon Henry for questioning about the July assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse. The prosecutor had attempted to bar Henry from leaving the country. A key suspect in the killing, Joseph Felix Badio, called Henry two times a few hours after the crime, according to a police investigation. The prosecutor claimed this was grounds for further probing.

Dictionary drama (Foreign Policy) Former Colombian Information and Communications Technology Minister Karen Abudinen resigned last week after a scandal over the misuse of funds meant for rural schools. Soon after, she had a public spat with an unlikely adversary: the Real Academia Española (RAE), the linguistic organization behind the preeminent Spanish-language dictionary. In response to a Twitter user’s query, the RAE Twitter account had stated that the verb “to Abudinen,” or abudinear, had recently been used on social media to mean “to steal.” After Abudinen objected and demanded a retraction, RAE said that documentation of the slang term does not mean it has been added to the dictionary.

Italy to Impose Strict Covid-19 Health Pass for All Workers (WSJ) Italy is making Covid-19 health passes mandatory for all workers in the private and public sectors, in one of the toughest vaccine-promoting measures adopted by any major Western country. Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government passed a decree Thursday requiring workers, including those who are self-employed, to have a digital certificate known as a green pass. This shows a person has been fully vaccinated, has recently recovered from Covid-19 or has freshly tested negative for the virus. The step reflects the government’s belief that Italy’s fragile economy can’t afford another winter of resurgent coronavirus contagion that forces a return to lockdowns.

Russia votes in parliament election without main opposition (AP) After a few weeks of desultory campaigning but months of relentless official moves to shut down significant opposition, Russia began three days of voting early Friday in a parliamentary election that is unlikely to change the country’s political complexion. There’s no expectation that United Russia, the party devoted to President Vladimir Putin, will lose its dominance of the State Duma, the elected lower house of parliament. The main questions to be answered are whether the party will retain its current two-thirds majority that allows it to amend the constitution; whether anemic turnout will dull the party’s prestige; and whether imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative proves to be a viable strategy against it. “There is very little intrigue in these elections … and in fact they will not leave a special trace in political history,” Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told The Associated Press.

Pentagon reverses itself, calls deadly Kabul strike an error (AP) The Pentagon retreated from its defense of a drone strike that killed multiple civilians in Afghanistan last month, announcing Friday that a review revealed that only civilians were killed in the attack, not an Islamic State extremist as first believed. “The strike was a tragic mistake,” Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon news conference. McKenzie apologized for the error and said the United States is considering making reparation payments to the family of the victims. He said the decision to strike a white Toyota Corolla sedan, after having tracked it for about eight hours, was made in an “earnest belief”—based on a standard of “reasonable certainty”—that it posed an imminent threat to American forces at Kabul airport. The car was believed to have been carrying explosives in its trunk, he said. For days after the Aug. 29 strike, Pentagon officials asserted that it had been conducted correctly, despite 10 civilians being killed, including seven children. News organizations later raised doubts about that version of events, reporting that the driver of the targeted vehicle was a longtime employee at an American humanitarian organization and citing an absence of evidence to support the Pentagon’s assertion that the vehicle contained explosives.

A Chinese property giant is a $300 billion time bomb for Beijing (Quartz) For decades, the Chinese developer Evergrande Group was an embodiment of the success of the rapidly growing Chinese economy. Increasing disposable personal income fueled a growing passion for purchasing property which in turned propelled the rise of Evergrande, as well as its billionaire founder Xu Jiayin. But ever since the Chinese government tightened rules on property companies’ borrowings last year as demand for real estate appeared to weaken, developers like Evergrande have been under greater pressure to repay the piles of debt they took on to fund their expansion across sectors. Evergrande is a bellwether for the sector, given its gigantic footprint across the country of more than 1,000 projects. But given that it owes over $300 billion, analysts expect the company to enter restructuring, and for investors in the company’s dollar-denominated debt to take a 70% haircut. The company’s share price has fallen roughly 80% this year as investors lose confidence.

France recalls ambassadors to US, Australia over sub deal (AP) France said late Friday it was immediately recalling its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia after Australia scrapped a big French conventional submarine purchase in favor of nuclear subs built with U.S. technology. It was the first time ever France has recalled its ambassador to the U.S., according to the French foreign ministry. Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a written statement that the French decision, on request from President Emmanuel Macron, “is justified by the exceptional seriousness of the announcements” made by Australia and the United States. He said Wednesday’s announcement of Australia’s submarine deal with the U.S. is “unacceptable behavior between allies and partners.” France will lose a nearly $100 billion deal to build diesel submarines for Australia under the terms of the US initiative.

China accuses new U.S.-Australian submarine deal of stoking arms race, threatening regional peace (Washington Post) China on Thursday slammed a decision by the United States and Britain to share sensitive nuclear submarine technology with Australia, a move seen as a direct challenge to Beijing and its growing military ambitions. After President Biden’s announcement on Wednesday of a new defense alliance, to be known as AUKUS, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian described the agreement as “extremely irresponsible” while Chinese state media warned Australia that it was now an “adversary” of China and should “prepare for the worst.” At a regular news briefing in Beijing, Zhao said the alliance “seriously undermined regional peace and stability, aggravated the arms race and hurt international nonproliferation efforts.” He accused the United States and Britain of “double standards” and using nuclear exports as a “tool in their geopolitical games,” as he admonished them to “abandon their outdated Cold War mentality”—a common refrain from ministry spokespeople. While Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison did not mention China in their remarks on Wednesday, the pact is widely seen as a response to China’s expanding economic power, military reach and diplomatic influence. China is believed to have six nuclear attack submarines, with plans to increase the fleet in the next decade.

At 101, she’s still hauling lobsters with no plans to stop (AP) When Virginia Oliver started trapping lobster off Maine’s rocky coast, World War II was more than a decade in the future, the electronic traffic signal was a recent invention and few women were harvesting lobsters. Nearly a century later, at age 101, she’s still doing it. The oldest lobster fisher in the state and possibly the oldest one in the world, Oliver still faithfully tends to her traps off Rockland, Maine, with her 78-year-old son Max. Oliver started trapping lobsters at age 8, and these days she catches them using a boat that once belonged to her late husband and bears her own name, the “Virginia.” She said she has no intention to stop. “I’ve done it all my life, so I might as well keep doing it,” Oliver said. “I like doing it, I like being along the water,” she said. “And so I’m going to keep on doing it just as long as I can.”

[chrishansler]

Witness

“I am the light of the world.” - Jesus, of Himself - John 8:12

“You are the light of the world.” - Jesus, of His followers - Matthew 5:14

The very first thing we learn about humanity in the bible is that we are created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26). Our assignment was to partner with Him in the creative work He had begun. We are his image-bearers; his representatives; we take on His name. As such, we are not to make an image of God (Ex. 20:4) - because we are that image, and we are not to take his name in vain (Ex. 20:7). In other words, as his name-bearers, don’t live in such a way that we bear that name carelessly. This is a high calling. Jesus in his life on earth showed us what it meant to live as “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). And He told us, “as the Father has sent me, so I am sending you” (John 20:21). Our role as Jesus-people and as the church is to be a blessing, an ambassador, a light. 

I love the church. I believe that the church is God’s plan A to communicate His love to the world. What is more important to me than our country, than the constitution, than the condition of our economy, than Supreme Court justices and than my religious freedoms is the witness of the church. What happened at the Capitol on January 6th was an exclamation point on what has been my concern since the summer of 2016. Just yesterday I stumbled upon my journal entry from Jan 20, 2017. It was titled, “Inauguration Day.” Part of it read, “Today, Donald Trump becomes our president. It is hard to wrap my head around this...the glimpses into his exclusionary worldview and his petulance are a cause for deep concern. I find myself without a place...The seeming willingness to excuse or at best overlook Trump’s indiscretions seems inconsistent with the values of the church I know and the way of Jesus...And I’m concerned for the witness of the church.” My concern was that if the evangelical church ties herself to Donald Trump her witness to the world outside of that church will be terribly damaged. And here we are. Ask people - especially young people - about their perception of the conservative evangelical church. Our credibility, moral authority, witness has never been more damaged. And we can try to rationalize by using the words of Jesus in John 15:18 "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” But they don’t hate us because of our commitment to Jesus. They actually like Jesus. They just don’t like us because we’ve compromised our testimony in a desperate grasp for earthly, political power.  I don’t even necessarily blame Donald Trump for what has happened. This is who he is and it is who he has always been. He thrives on a fight. Like a bully on a playground, he intentionally provokes and demeans to get attention. Then he points the finger and cries, “well they started it!”

But on that Wednesday of the insurrection, after far too many Christians had for months swallowed and promoted what proved by every court and legal process to be baseless and unfounded conspiracy theories which sullied the reputation of the church even further, we saw flags, some bearing the name of Jesus breaking into the Capitol building. This is not Jesus. This is taking his name in vain. In a violent attempted takeover people were threatened and lives were lost. And even since that day, though many have condemned the violence, too many are still deflecting (”censorship!”), rationalizing (”what about the riots last summer!”) and justifying. I don’t necessarily believe that conservative evangelicals (I am one, by the way) were or are in support of what happened on January 6th. But too many in the evangelical community, and certainly too many very public, conservative, evangelical leaders have, by their rhetoric and by their seemingly unbreakable link with hard-right republicans, emboldened those (like the man in this video) that stormed the Capitol. 

“What were we to do?” some have asked, “we couldn’t vote for the Democratic platform.” I understand those who believe it is a practical, binary choice. And I’m not suggesting there is anymore virtue on either side of the political aisle. The system is broken. But has the unholy marriage between white conservative evangelicals and the Republicans helped the church’s witness to the world? No. We are more marginalized and less trusted than ever before. We have bought the lie that the ends (maintaining the church’s privileged position of comfort and power in the American society, securing Supreme Court Justices, etc.) justify the means (an alliance with an immoral, broken political ideology.) That failure has been a growing crack in the foundation of our witness and in many ways that crack led to crumbling on January 6th at the insurrection at the Capitol and the ensuing response. And now I hear evangelicals calling for unity. I understand the need for unity and there is a time for that call. But I agree with Beth Moore when she said in this tweet, “ calls to unity without serious regard for what broke us to pieces is like pouring fresh concrete over a collapsed bridge.” Our call in this moment should not be for unity; we need to apologize and repent as the conservative evangelical church for any part we have played in creating a culture that would buy into unfounded conspiracies that have led to damaged credibility and a broken witness for Jesus. 

We often say, “our Kingdom is not of this world,” which is absolutely true. But our behavior belies that statement. We have been trying to use worldly means to achieve Kingdom realities but those will never take us there, and they will certainly never point people to Jesus. I watch as the church continues to demand that the government pass laws that conform to specific biblical values. But this question doesn’t seem to cross our minds: why would a secular governmental system pass those laws?  Is it just because we are a powerful voting block, or is it because the church has been so effective in communicating the message of Jesus that hearts and minds have been shaped by the Gospel? If it is the former we are simply wielding worldly power for our own selfish privilege. The latter is the work of the church. When we truly carry the banner of Jesus what people should see is the light of the world;  the counter-cultural revolution that Jesus displayed for us: humility, servanthood, self-sacrifice, yielding our rights for the benefit of others, generous grace, healing, honor, dignity, truth, love. We have work to do. We need the Holy Spirit to convict us and to empower us back to our originally calling: to be God’s image-bearers, His representatives, partners in His ongoing work of life and love in the world. 

Jesus, forgive us, and heal our witness that we may in fact be the light of the world.