#appropriative rights

[the-shades-of-night-descend]

...this excellent overview from a climate scientist at Union of Concerned Scientists who themselves include links to several indigenous people and organizations who have been on this beat for decades.

That's an important perspective because the topic of water rights in California dates back to the colonization of the state and the invention of Appropriative Rights on the East Coast colonizers used Reparative Rights, meaning that the white guy who owned the property that bordered the river also owned the rights to use that river for whatever purposes he wanted, but Appropriative Rights granted people the right to nail a sign to a tree next to a river saying "Hey, that water is mine now" and then they could funnel it several miles inland to water their own crops. The first person or the first US citizen, which did not include indigenous people at first, to nail up that sign got the rights to the water, provided that they continued to use it.

It's (...) 150 years or so since those rights were established and I encourage you to read up on it if you're interested, but the end result is now a system in which more than a million Californians do not have access to safe drinking water while billionaires own agricultural conglomerates that can continue to grow water heavy crops like almonds and pistachios even when the state is in a severe drought. And to be clear these private corporations are using public resources to make their billions of dollars, as even Forbes has noted back in the 90s the residents engaged in secret meetings with officials to acquire public land for its water rights eventually resulting in them owning a majority stake in the Kern County water bank which is an underground water storage facility that was set up originally with $73 million in taxpayer money as a protective measure against droughts. Now it is used to grow pistachios for billionaires.

So this isn't about the availability of water to fight fires, it is about the availability of water for people to drink or the water available to our fellow friends in the food system like salmon, which require rivers to spawn and thrive and feed us. When you drive through the Central Valley you see loads of signs the billionaires put up on their farms claiming that they need the water to feed us, but unlike those salmon, the nuts they're growing are mostly being shipped out of the country. (...)

[inkskinned]

idaho is already moving to repeal same-sex marriage. they say it's an overreach of the governmental power, and that the law should be determined by "state's rights".

trump is expected to sign an executive order banning trans women in women's sports. in the article i've linked there, he notes that the "biggest hand" (most applause) he gets is when he attacks trans women. isn't that interesting.

i know my own father voted for him. my own father, radicalized by podcasts and bad youtube, voted for this; felt smug about it. he genuinely believes the dems want to "put christians in camps." as if the dems could ever get off their silken asscheeks and actually do anything. i wish they had strong enough messaging to be misattributed like this.

my girlfriend and i worked the polls on election day, counting ballots. my father was eating noisily beside us. "see? you're freaked out about nothing." after all, i live in massachusetts: beautiful, expensive, no-working-transportation MA. the only state to go all-blue.

"if it's state's rights, you'll be fine," he said. i'd been sworn at a few days before this. a year ago almost to the day, i got hit in the head with an empty beer bottle. he said i was being dramatic. after all, first-adopter "the gay state" Massachusetts would rather explode than get rid of same-sex marriage. so what should i care, after all.

this man is a deacon. i guess he expects me not to get out of the car in any red state. i guess he thinks my relationship dissolves across certain borders. he doesn't see why it's concerning that i can't leave, because why would i want to. who wants to go to idaho? who cares about the real, living, breathing people in idaho.

(but then again: who cares about the real, living, breathing humans on deportation planes. they're not us. after all, my father came here legally. i am an american citizen because of birthright citizenship. i am even debating this because he immigrated.)

i texted my mom about it. i feel sick. no matter how much activism and research and outreach i do: it's always shocking to see a room full of people who hate you so much that they take legal action against you. on my small ex-work-laptop, i watch the shaking hands of people in idaho begging their representatives to reconsider. the fear in their voice is palpable. no person should have their relationship threatened this way. the motion still passes, 46-24.

it's all just happening so fast. i feel i am pushing my hands through glass pieces, watching the cuts before i feel them.

people often reference "first they came for..." when stuff like this happens, and while that's fair - there's a very quiet part of me that always says they're already at your door, you complete idiot. the same force that governs trans women's bodies will also be used against cis women. the censorship about supposed "DEI terms" will also be used to stifle science in general.

it won't just be idaho.

[thatnununguy]

Rosecat (she doesn't like being held)

[umblrspectrum]

happy solvermas

[ratbastarddotfuck]

if you're a white person taking pleasure in the idea that Trump voters of colour are experiencing racist violence from white trumpers because "they got what's coming to them" I don't think you're anti-racist at all, I think you were just waiting for an acceptable target, and you're also fucking weird.

Bad Person Deserves Punishment For Their Sins give me a fucking break and get yourself out of the fucking catholic church. you're all prison abolitionists until you see someone you don't like.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

i am thinking how much poorer, how much less colorful the world would be if art was only made by "professionals." if all the music, all the stories, all the sketches & paintings & craftwork of the world was created only by the small category of people able to make a decent living from their art. imagine if the only people allowed to create were the experts & the renowned & those aspiring to the top. what a grey world that would be. how much joy would be bleached away! i love you people who create for the sake of creating, i love you artists who do art for tiny audiences, i love you people who make things even just for one person, even just for themselves, even if no one's watching, thank you thank you thank you for decorating the world in which we all exist

[laniidae-passerine]

There’s a very easy way to get around the fact that Assad is unable to pass for a teeenager if the show wants to adapt TVA and that’s to rely on the theme of unreliable narration. Armand begins retelling his history and according to him, he looked like he was in his early adulthood. No older than twenty four, for sure, but also not any younger than twenty. And then, just when the audience has bought it, just when this version of events has been presented as the truth for long enough, someone questions it. Asks if he really looked like that. Asks if he’s being honest with himself. And for the briefest moment, we flashback to Amadeo, the age he was when Marius first saw him. Beaten, shackled, afraid. And undeniably a child.

[katabay]

THERE AIN'T NO ATLAS, KID. NEVER WAS.

if you peel him back far enough, there's nothing but a pile of theater masks

like, it's really fun how fontaine starts spiralling out the closer jack gets to him in the final arc of the game and returns to appropriating the image of family (the fake family in the beginning, the flawed father position later) to try and appeal to jack in some way but it's like. buddy. baby. you already took off your mask. anything you try and put on after this is going to come across as cheap and desperate. the magic is gone! and personally? I'm hooting and hollering

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / insta

[zarla-s]

the instincts remain...

[index] [patreon]

[mythalism]

genuinely curious how the writers and larger dragon age audience would treat thom rainier if instead of being appropriately* repentant and putting himself in prison he blew up a major orlesian government building to instigate a chevalier rebellion or tried to have someone do some necromantic blood magic ritual involving uncertain danger and possible sacrifices to bring the innocent children he ordered killed back to life

[yourlocalabomination]

SLEEZE SWEEP!!!

[rattsin]

Fury made Alanna gasp for breath. How could anyone get well in a menagerie? How could Jonathan breathe? This went against all the commonsense rules Maude had taught her for healing: clean air, quiet, absolute cleanliness, calm and reassuring voices. Didn't these people know anything?

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[ominouspuff]

Son of Dathomir

——

My sister, looking upon the first Maul of my career, quoth “he look lika chicken”

[rin-rin-kururin]

amirite?

original template can be found here

[cairoscene]

Brian David Gilbert on Sad Boyz

feels fandom relevant.

[ID: A series of screen captures of Brian David Gilbert speaking on a podcast: "The thing that you invest your time in can feel so important to your identity that occasionally you feel, like, you need to close it off from other people in order to keep it safe. And I think that's where a lot of nerd culture, all that gatekeeping stuff, all of the toxicity stems from that thing where it's like, "In high school I didn't have a lot of friends or connect with a lot of people, but I did have this comic book, and now this comic book is super popular, but these people don't like me. That must be because they're not real fans."" End ID]