#both industry people in general and Specific Individuals

[robertreich]

How Wall Street Priced You Out of a Home

Rent is skyrocketing and home buying is out of reach for millions. One big reason why? Wall Street.

Hedge funds and private equity firms have been buying up hundreds of thousands of homes that would otherwise be purchased by people. Wall Street’s appetite for housing ramped up after the 2008 financial crisis. As you’ll recall, the Street’s excessive greed created a housing bubble that burst. Millions of people lost their homes to foreclosure.

Did the Street learn a lesson? Of course not. It got bailed out. Then it began picking off the scraps of the housing market it had just destroyed, gobbling up foreclosed homes at fire-sale prices — which it then sold or rented for big profits.

Investor purchases hit their peak in 2022, accounting for around 28% of all home sales in America.

Home buyers frequently reported being outbid by cash offers made by investors. So called “iBuyers” used algorithms to instantly buy homes before offers could even be made by actual humans.

If the present trend continues, by 2030, Wall Street investors may control 40% of U.S. single-family rental homes.

Partly as a result, homeownership — a cornerstone of generational wealth and a big part of the American dream — is increasingly out of reach for a large number of Americans, especially young people.

Now, Wall Street’s feasting has slowed recently due to rising home prices — even the wolves of Wall Street are falling victim to sticker shock. But that hasn’t stopped them from specifically targeting more modestly priced homes — buying up a record share of the country’s most affordable homes at the end of 2023.

They’ve also been most active in bigger cities, particularly in the Sun Belt, which has become an increasingly expensive place to live. And they’re pointedly going after neighborhoods that are home to communities of color.

For example, in one diverse neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, Wall Street-backed investors bought half of the homes that sold in 2021 and 2022. On a single block, investors bought every house but one, and turned them into rentals.

Folks, it’s a vicious cycle: First you’re outbid by investors, then you may be stuck renting from them at excessive prices that leave you with even less money to put up for a new home. Rinse. Repeat.

Now I want to be clear: This is just one part of the problem with housing in America. The lack of supply is considered the biggest reason why home prices and rents have soared — and are outpacing recent wage gains. But Wall Street sinking its teeth into whatever is left on the market is making the supply problem even worse.

So what can we do about this? Start by getting Wall Street out of our homes.

Democrats have introduced a bill in both houses of Congress to ban hedge funds and private equity firms from buying or owning single-family homes.

If signed into law, this could increase the supply of homes available to individual buyers — thereby making housing more affordable.

President Biden has also made it a priority to tackle the housing crisis, proposing billions in funding to increase the supply of homes and tax credits to help actual people buy them.

Now I have no delusions that any of this will be easy to get done. But these plans provide a roadmap of where the country could head — under the right leadership.

So many Americans I meet these days are cynical about the country. I understand their cynicism. But cynicism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if it means giving up the fight.

The captains of American industry and Wall Street would like nothing better than for the rest of us to give up that fight, so they can take it all.

I say we keep fighting.

[hms-no-fun]

Hi! I just read your post about your opinion on "AI" and I really liked it. If it's no bother, what's your opinion on people who use it for studying? Like writing essays, solving problems and stuff like that?

I haven't been a fan of AI from the beginning and I've heard that you shouldn't ask it for anything because then you help it develop. But I don't know how to explain that to friends and classmates or even if it's true anymore. Because I've seen some of the prompts it can come up with and they're not bad and I've heard people say that the summaries AI makes are really good and I just... I dunno. I'm at a loss

Sorry if this is a lot or something you simply don't want to reply to. You made really good points when talking about AI and I really liked it and this has been weighing on me for a while :)

on a base level, i don't really have a strongly articulated opinion on the subject because i don't use AI, and i'm 35 so i'm not in school anymore and i don't have a ton of college-aged friends either. i have little exposure to the people who use AI in this way nor to the people who have to deal with AI being used in this way, so my perspective here is totally hypothetical and unscientific.

what i was getting at in my original AI post was a general macroeconomic point about how all of the supposed efficiency gains of AI are an extension of the tech CEO's dislike of paying and/or giving credit to anyone they deem less skilled or intelligent than them. that it's conspicuous how AI conveniently falls into place after many decades of devaluing and deskilling creative/artistic labor industries. historically, for a lot of artists the most frequently available & highest paying gigs were in advertising. i can't speak to the specifics when it comes to visual art or written copy, but i *can* say that when i worked in the oklahoma film industry, the most coveted jobs were always the commercials. great pay for relatively less work, with none of the complications that often arise working on amateur productions. not to mention they were union gigs, a rare enough thing in a right to work state, so anyone trying to make a career out of film work wanting to bank their union hours to qualify for IATSE membership always had their ears to the ground for an opening. which didn't come often because, as you might expect, anyone who *got* one of those jobs aimed to keep it as long as possible. who could blame em, either? one person i met who managed to get consistent ad work said they could afford to work all of two or three months a year, so they could spend the rest of their time doing low-budget productions and (occasionally) student films.

there was a time when this was the standard for the film industry, even in LA; you expected to work 3 to 5 shows a year (exact number's hard to estimate because production schedules vary wildly between ads, films, and tv shows) for six to eight months if not less, so you'd have your bills well covered through the lean periods and be able to recover from what is an enormously taxing job both physically and emotionally. this was never true for EVERYONE, film work's always been a hustle and making a career of it is often a luck-based crapshoot, but generally that was the model and for a lot of folks it worked. it meant more time to practice their skills on the job, sustainably building expertise and domain knowledge that they could then pass down to future newcomers. anything that removes such opportunities decreases the amount of practice workers get, and any increased demand on their time makes them significantly more likely to burn out of the industry early. lower pay, shorter shoots, busier schedules, these aren't just bad for individual workers but for the entire industry, and that includes the robust and well-funded advertising industry.

well, anyway, this year's coca-cola christmas ad was made with AI. they had maybe one person on quality control using an adobe aftereffects mask to add in the coke branding. this is the ultimate intended use-case for AI. it required the expertise of zero unionized labor, and worst of all the end result is largely indistinguishable from the alternative. you'll often see folks despair at this verisimilitude, particularly when a study comes out that shows (for instance) people can't tell the difference between real poetry and chat gpt generated poetry. i despair as well, but for different reasons. i despair that production of ads is a better source of income and experience for film workers than traditional movies or television. i despair that this technology is fulfilling an age-old promise about the disposability of artistic labor. poetry is not particularly valued by our society, is rarely taught to people beyond a beginner's gloss on meter and rhyme. "my name is sarah zedig and i'm here to say, i'm sick of this AI in a major way" type shit. end a post with the line "i so just wish that it would go away and never come back again!" and then the haiku bot swoops in and says, oh, 5/7/5 you say? that is technically a haiku! and then you put a haiku-making minigame in your crowd-pleasing japanese nationalist open world chanbara simulator, because making a haiku is basically a matter of selecting one from 27 possible phrase combinations. wait, what do you mean the actual rules of haiku are more elastic and subjective than that? that's not what my english teacher said in sixth grade!

AI is able to slip in and surprise us with its ability to mimic human-produced art because we already treat most human-produced art like mechanical surplus of little to no value. ours is a culture of wikipedia-level knowledge, where you have every incentive to learn a lot of facts about something so that you can sufficiently pretend to have actually experienced it. but this is not to say that humans would be better able to tell the difference between human produced and AI produced poetry if they were more educated about poetry! the primary disconnect here is economic. Poets already couldn't make a fucking living making poetry, and now any old schmuck can plug a prompt into chatgpt and say they wrote a sonnet. even though they always had the ability to sit down and write a sonnet!

boosters love to make hay about "deskilling" and "democratizing" and "making accessible" these supposedly gatekept realms of supposedly bourgeois expression, but what they're really saying (whether they know it or not) is that skill and training have no value anymore. and they have been saying this since long before AI as we know it now existed! creative labor is the backbone of so much of our world, and yet it is commonly accepted as a poverty profession. i grew up reading books and watching movies based on books and hearing endless conversation about books and yet when i told my family "i want to be a writer" they said "that's a great way to die homeless." like, this is where the conversation about AI's impact starts. we already have a culture that simultaneously NEEDS the products of artistic labor, yet vilifies and denigrates the workers who perform that labor. folks see a comic panel or a corporate logo or a modern art piece and say "my kid could do that," because they don't perceive the decades of training, practice, networking, and experimentation that resulted in the finished product. these folks do not understand that just because the labor of art is often invisible doesn't mean it isn't work.

i think this entire conversation is backwards. in an ideal world, none of this matters. human labor should not be valued over machine labor because it inherently possesses an aura of human-ness. art made by humans isn't better than AI generated art on qualitative grounds. art is subjective. you're not wrong to find beauty in an AI image if the image is beautiful. to my mind, the value of human artistic labor comes down to the simple fact that the world is better when human beings make art. the world is better when we have the time and freedom to experiment, to play, to practice, to develop and refine our skills to no particular end except whatever arbitrary goal we set for ourselves. the world is better when people collaborate on a film set to solve problems that arise organically out of the conditions of shooting on a live location. what i see AI being used for is removing as many opportunities for human creativity as possible and replacing them with statistical averages of prior human creativity. this passes muster because art is a product that exists to turn a profit. because publicly traded companies have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to take every opportunity to turn a profit regardless of how obviously bad for people those opportunities might be.

that common sense says writing poetry, writing prose, writing anything is primarily about reaching the end of the line, about having written something, IS the problem. i've been going through the many unfinished novels i wrote in high school lately, literally hundreds of thousands of words that i shared with maybe a dozen people and probably never will again. what value do those words have? was writing them a waste of time since i never posted them, never finished them, never turned a profit off them? no! what i've learned going back through those old drafts is that i'm only the writer i am today BECAUSE i put so many hours into writing generic grimdark fantasy stories and bizarrely complicated werewolf mythologies.

you know i used to do open mics? we had a poetry group that met once a month at a local cafe in college. each night we'd start by asking five words from the audience, then inviting everyone to compose a poem using those words in 10 to 15 minutes. whoever wanted to could read their poem, and whoever got the most applause won a free drink from the cafe. then we'd spend the rest of the night having folks sign up to come and read whatever. sometimes you'd get heartfelt poems about personal experiences, sometimes you'd get ambitious soundcloud rappers, sometimes you'd get a frat guy taking the piss, sometimes you'd get a mousy autist just doing their best. i don't know that any of the poetry i wrote back then has particular value today, but i don't really care. the point of it was the experience in that moment. the experience of composing something on the fly, or having something you wrote a couple days ago, then standing up and reading it. the value was in the performance itself, in the momentary synthesis between me and the audience. i found out then that i was pretty good at making people cry, and i could not have had that experience in any other venue. i could not have felt it so viscerally had i just posted it online. and i cannot wrap up that experience and give it to you, because it only existed then.

i think more people would write poetry if they had more hours in a day to spare for frivolities, if there existed more spaces where small groups could organize open mics, if transit made those spaces more widely accessible, if everyone made enough money that they weren't burned the fuck out and not in the mood to go to an open mic tonight, if we saw poetry as a mode of personal reflection which was as much about the experience of having written it as anything else. this is the case for all the arts. right now, the only people who can afford to make a living doing art are already wealthy, because art doesn't pay well. this leads to brain drain and overall lowering quality standards, because the suburban petty bouge middle class largely do not experience the world as it materially exists for the rest of us. i often feel that many tech CEOs want to be remembered the way andy warhol is remembered. they want to be loved and worshipped not just for business acumen but for aesthetic value, they want to get the kind of credit that artists get-- because despite the fact that artists don't get paid shit, they also frequently get told by people "your work changed my life." how is it that a working class person with little to no education can write a story that isn't just liked but celebrated, that hundreds or thousands of people imprint on, that leaves a mark on culture you can't quantify or predict or recreate? this is AI's primary use-case, to "democratize" art in such a way that hacks no longer have to work as hard to pretend to be good at what they do. i mean, hell, i have to imagine every rich person with an autobiography in the works is absolutely THRILLED that they no longer have to pay a ghost writer!

so, circling back around to the meat of your question. as far as telling people not to use AI because "you're just helping to train it," that ship has long since sailed. getting mad at individuals for using AI right now is about as futile as getting mad at individuals for not masking-- yes, obviously they should wear a mask and write their own essays, but to say this is simply a matter of millions of individuals making the same bad but unrelated choice over and over is neoliberal hogwash. people stopped masking because they were told to stop masking by a government in league with corporate interests which had every incentive to break every avenue of solidarity that emerged in 2020. they politicized masks, calling them "the scarlet letter of [the] pandemic". biden himself insisted this was "a pandemic of the unvaccinated", helpfully communicating to the public that if you're vaccinated, you don't need to mask. all those high case numbers and death counts? those only happen to the bad people.

now you have CEOs and politicians and credulous media outlets and droves of grift-hungry influencers hard selling the benefits of AI in everything everywhere all the time. companies have bent over backwards to incorporate AI despite ethics and security worries because they have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders, and everyone with money is calling this the next big thing. in short, companies are following the money, because that's what companies do. they, in turn, are telling their customers what tools to use and how. so of course lots of people are using AI for things they probably shouldn't. why wouldn't they? "the high school/college essay" as such has been quantized and stripmined by an education system dominated by test scores over comprehension. it is SUPPOSED to be an exercise in articulating ideas, to teach the student how to argue persuasively. the final work has little to no value, because the point is the process. but when you've got a system that lives and dies by its grades, within which teachers are given increasingly more work to do, less time to do it in, and a much worse paycheck for their trouble, the essay increasingly becomes a simple pass/fail gauntlet to match the expected pace set by the simple, clean, readily gradable multiple choice quiz. in an education system where the stakes for students are higher than they've ever been, within which you are increasingly expected to do more work in less time with lower-quality guidance from your overworked teachers, there is every incentive to get chatgpt to write your essay for you.

do you see what i'm saying? we can argue all day about the shoulds here. of course i think it's better when people write their own essays, do their own research, personally read the assigned readings. but cheating has always been a problem. a lot of these same fears were aired over the rising popularity of cliffs notes in the 90s and 2000s! the real problem here is systemic. it's economic. i would have very little issue with the output of AI if existing conditions were not already so precarious. but then, if the conditions were different, AI as we know it likely would not exist. it emerges today as the last gasp of a tech industry that has been floundering for a reason to exist ever since the smart phone dominated the market. they tried crypto. they tried the metaverse. now they're going all-in on AI because it's a perfect storm of shareholder-friendly buzzwords and the unscientific technomythology that's been sold to laymen by credulous press sycophants for decades. It slots right into this niche where the last of our vestigial respect for "the artist" once existed. it is the ultimate expression of capitalist realism, finally at long last doing away with the notion that the suits at disney could never in their wildest dreams come up with something half as cool as the average queer fanfic writer. now they've got a program that can plagiarize that fanfic (along with a dozen others) for them, laundering the theft through a layer of transformation which perhaps mirrors how the tech industry often exploits open source software to the detriment of the open source community. the catastrophe of AI is that it's the fulfillment of a promise that certainly predates computers at the very least.

so, i don't really know what to tell someone who uses AI for their work. if i was talking to a student, i'd say that relying chatgpt is really gonna screw you over when it comes time take the SAT or ACT, and you have to write an essay from scratch by hand in a monitored environment-- but like, i also think the ACT and SAT and probably all the other standardized tests shouldn't exist? or at the very least ought to be severely devalued, since prep for those tests often sabotages the integrity of actual classroom education. although, i guess at this point the only way forward for education (that isn't getting on both knees and deep-throating big tech) is more real-time in-class monitored essay writing, which honestly might be better for all parties anyway. of course that does nothing to address research essays you can't write in a single class session. to someone who uses AI for research, i'd probably say the same thing as i would to someone who uses wikipedia: it's a fine enough place to start, but don't cite it. click through links, find sources, make sure what you're reading is real, don't rely on someone else's generalization. know that chatgpt is likely not pulling information from a discrete database of individual files that it compartmentalizes the way you might expect, but rather is a statistical average of a broad dataset about which it cannot have an opinion or interpretation. sometimes it will link you to real information, but just as often it will invent information from whole cloth. honestly, the more i talk it out, the more i realize all this advice is basically identical to the advice adults were giving me in the early 2000s.

which really does cement for me that the crisis AI is causing in education isn't new and did not come from nowhere. before chatgpt, students were hiring freelancers on fiverr. i already mentioned cliffs notes. i never used any of these in college, but i'll also freely admit that i rarely did all my assigned reading. i was the "always raises her hand" bitch, and every once in a while i'd get other students who were always dead silent in class asking me how i found the time to get the reading done. i'd tell them, i don't. i read the beginning, i read the ending, and then i skim the middle. whenever a word or phrase jumps out at me, i make a note of it. that way, when the professor asks a question in class, i have exactly enough specific pieces of information at hand to give the impression of having done the reading. and then i told them that i learned how to do this from the very same professor that was teaching that class. the thing is, it's not like i learned nothing from this process. i retained quite a lot of information from those readings! this is, broadly, a skill that emerges from years of writing and reading essays. but then you take a step back and remember that for most college students (who are not pursuing any kind of arts degree), this skillset is relevant to an astonishingly minimal proportion of their overall course load. college as it exists right now is treated as a jobs training program, within which "the essay" is a relic of an outdated institution that highly valued a generalist liberal education where today absolute specialization seems more the norm. so AI comes in as the coup de gras to that old institution. artists like myself may not have the constitution for the kind of work that colleges now exist to funnel you into, but those folks who've never put a day's thought into the work of making art can now have a computer generate something at least as good at a glance as basically anything i could make. as far as the market is concerned, that's all that matters. the contents of an artwork, what it means to its creator, the historic currents it emerges out of, these are all technicalities that the broad public has been well trained not to give a shit about most of the time. what matters is the commodity and the economic activity it exists to generate.

but i think at the end of the day, folks largely want to pay for art made by human beings. that it's so hard for a human being to make a living creating and selling art is a question far older than AI, and whose answer hasn't changed. pay workers more. drastically lower rents. build more affordable housing. make healthcare free. make education free. massively expand public transit. it is simply impossible to overstate how much these things alone would change the conversation about AI, because it would change the conversation about everything. SO MUCH of the dominance of capital in our lives comes down to our reliance on cars for transit (time to get a loan and pay for insurance), our reliance on jobs for health insurance (can't quit for moral reasons if it's paying for your insulin), etc etc etc. many of AI's uses are borne out of economic precarity and a ruling class desperate to vacuum up every loose penny they can find. all those billionaires running around making awful choices for the rest of us? they stole those billions. that is where our security went. that is why everything is falling apart, because the only option remaining to *every* institutional element of society is to go all-in on the profit motive. tax these motherfuckers and re-institute public arts funding. hey, did you know the us government used to give out grants to artists? did you know we used to have public broadcast networks where you could make programs that were shown to your local community? why the hell aren't there public youtube clones? why aren't there public transit apps? why aren't we CONSTANTLY talking about nationalizing these abusive fucking industries that are falling over themselves to integrate AI because their entire modus operandi is increasing profits regardless of product quality?

these are the questions i ask myself when i think about solutions to the AI problem. tech needs to be regulated, the monopolies need breaking up, but that's not enough. AI is a symptom of a much deeper illness whose treatment requires systemic solutions. and while i'm frustrated when i see people rely on AI for their work, or otherwise denigrate artists who feel AI has devalued their field, on some level i can't blame them. they are only doing what they've been told to do. all of which merely strengthens my belief in the necessity of an equitable socialist future (itself barely step zero in the long path towards a communist future, and even that would only be a few steps on the even longer path to a properly anarchist future). improve the material conditions and you weaken the dominance of capitalist realism, however minutely. and while there are plenty of reasons to despair at the likelihood of such a future given a second trump presidency, i always try to remember that socialist policies are very popular and a *lot* of that popularity emerged during the first trump administration. the only wrong answer here is to assume that losing an election is the same thing as losing a war, that our inability to put the genie back in its bottle means we can't see our own wishes granted.

i dunno if i answered your question but i sure did say a lot of stuff, didn't i?

[thedansemacabres]

Introduction To Supporting Sustainable Agriculture For Witches and Pagans

[ID: An image of yellow grain stocks, soon to be harvested. The several stocks reach towards a blurred open sky, focusing the camera on he grains themselves. The leaves of the grains are green and the cereals are exposed].

PAGANISM AND WITCHCRAFT ARE MOVEMENTS WITHIN A SELF-DESTRUCTIVE CAPITALIST SOCIETY. As the world becomes more aware of the importance of sustainability, so does the duty of humanity to uphold the idea of the steward, stemming from various indigenous worldviews, in the modern era. I make this small introduction as a viticulturist working towards organic and environmentally friendly grape production. I also do work on a food farm, as a second job—a regenerative farm, so I suppose that is my qualifications. Sustainable—or rather regenerative agriculture—grows in recognition. And as paganism and witchcraft continue to blossom, learning and supporting sustainability is naturally a path for us to take. I will say that this is influenced by I living in the USA, however, there are thousands of groups across the world for sustainable agriculture, of which tend to be easy to research.

So let us unite in caring for the world together, and here is an introduction to supporting sustainable/regenerative agriculture. 

A QUICK BRIEF ON SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE 

Sustainable agriculture, in truth, is a movement to practise agriculture as it has been done for thousands of years—this time, with more innovation from science and microbiology especially. The legal definition in the USA of sustainable agriculture is: 

The term ”sustainable agriculture” (U.S. Code Title 7, Section 3103) means an integrated system of plant and animal production practices having a site-specific application that will over the long-term:

A more common man’s definition would be farming in a way that provides society’s food and textile needs without overuse of natural resources, artificial supplements and pest controls, without compromising the future generation’s needs and ability to produce resources. The agriculture industry has one of the largest and most detrimental impacts on the environment, and sustainable agriculture is the alternative movement to it. 

Sustainable agriculture also has the perk of being physically better for you—the nutrient quality of crops in the USA has dropped by 47%, and the majority of our food goes to waste. Imagine if it was composted and reused? Or even better—we buy only what we need. We as pagans and witches can help change this. 

BUYING ORGANIC (IT REALLY WORKS)

The first step is buying organic. While cliche, it does work: organic operations have certain rules to abide by, which excludes environmentally dangerous chemicals—many of which, such as DDT, which causes ecological genocide and death to people. Organic operations have to use natural ways of fertilising, such as compost, which to many of us—such as myself—revere the cycle of life, rot, and death. Organic standards do vary depending on the country, but the key idea is farming without artificial fertilisers, using organic seeds, supplementing with animal manure, fertility managed through management practices, etc. 

However, organic does have its flaws. Certified organic costs many, of which many small farmers cannot afford. The nutrient quality of organic food, while tending to be better, is still poor compared to regeneratively grown crops. Furthermore, the process to become certified organic is often gruelling—you can practise completely organically, but if you are not certified, it is not organic. Which, while a quality control insurance, is both a bonus and a hurdle. 

JOINING A CSA

Moving from organic is joining a CSA (“Community supported agriculture”). The USDA defines far better than I could: 

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), one type of direct marketing, consists of a community of individuals who pledge support to a farm operation so that the farmland becomes, either legally or spiritually, the community’s farm, with the growers and consumers providing mutual support and sharing the risks and benefits of food production.

By purchasing a farm share, you receive food from the farm for the agreed upon production year. I personally enjoy CSAs for the relational aspect—choosing a CSA is about having a relationship, not only with the farmer(s), but also the land you receive food from. I volunteer for my CSA and sometimes I get extra cash from it—partaking in the act of caring for the land. Joining a CSA also means taking your precious capital away from the larger food industry and directly supporting growers—and CSAs typically practise sustainable and/or regenerative agriculture. 

CSAs are also found all over the world and many can deliver their products to food deserts and other areas with limited agricultural access. I volunteer from time to time for a food bank that does exactly that with the produce I helped grow on the vegetable farm I work for. 

FARM MARKETS AND STALLS 

Another way of personally connecting to sustainable agriculture is entering the realm of the farm stall. The farmer’s market is one of my personal favourite experiences—people buzzing about searching for ingredients, smiles as farmers sell crops and products such as honey or baked goods, etc. The personal connection stretches into the earth, and into the past it buries—as I purchase my apples from the stall, I cannot help but see a thousand lives unfold. People have been doing this for thousands of years and here I stand, doing it all over again. 

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Farmers’ markets are dependent on your local area, yet in most you can still develop personal community connections. Paganism often stresses community as an ideal and a state of life. And witchcraft often stresses a connection to the soil. What better place, then, is purchasing the products from the locals who commune with the land? 

VOLUNTEERING 

If you are able to, I absolutely recommend volunteering. I have worked with aquaponic systems, food banks, farms, cider-making companies, soil conservation groups, etc. There is so much opportunity—and perhaps employment—in these fields. The knowledge I have gained has been wonderful. As one example, I learned that fertilisers reduce carbon sequestration as plants absorb carbon to help with nutrient intake. If they have all their nutrients ready, they do not need to work to obtain carbon to help absorb it. This does not even get into the symbiotic relationship fungi have with roots, or the world of hyphae. Volunteering provides community and connection. Actions and words change the world, and the world grows ever better with help—including how much or how little you may provide. It also makes a wonderful devotional activity. 

RESOURCING FOOD AND COOKING 

Buying from farmers is not always easy, however. Produce often has to be processed, requiring labour and work with some crops such as carrots. Other times, it is a hard effort to cook and many of us—such as myself—often have very limited energy. There are solutions to this, thankfully:

Many farmers can and will process foods. Some even do canning, which can be good to stock up on food and lessen the energy inputs. 

Value-added products: farms also try to avoid waste, and these products often become dried snacks if fruit, frozen, etc. 

Asking farmers if they would be open to accommodating this. Chances are, they would! The farmer I purchase my CSA share from certainly does. 

Going to farmers markets instead of buying a CSA, aligning with your energy levels. 

And if any of your purchased goods are going unused, you can always freeze them. 

DEMETER, CERES, VEIA, ETC: THE FORGOTTEN AGRICULTURE GODS

Agricultural gods are often neglected. Even gods presiding over agriculture often do not have those aspects venerated—Dionysos is a god of viticulture and Apollon a god of cattle. While I myself love Dionysos as a party and wine god, the core of him remains firmly in the vineyards and fields, branching into the expanses of the wild. I find him far more in the curling vines as I prune them than in the simple delights of the wine I ferment. Even more obscure gods, such as Veia, the Etruscan goddess of agriculture, are seldom known.

Persephone receives the worst of this: I enjoy her too as a dread queen, and people do acknowledge her as Kore, but she is far more popular as the queen of the underworld instead of the dear daughter of Demeter. I do understand this, though—I did not feel the might of Demeter and Persephone until I began to move soil with my own hands. A complete difference to the ancient world, where the Eleusinian mysteries appealed to thousands. Times change, and while some things should be left to the past, our link to these gods have been severed. After all, how many of us reading know where our food comes from? I did not until I began to purchase from the land I grew to know personally. The grocery store has become a land of tearing us from the land, instead of the food hub it should be.

Yet, while paganism forgets agriculture gods, they have not forgotten us. The new world of farming is more conductive and welcoming than ever. I find that while older, bigoted people exist, the majority of new farmers tend to be LGBT+. My own boss is trans and aro, and I myself am transgender and gay. The other young farmers I know are some flavour of LGBT+, or mixed/poc. There’s a growing movement for Black farmers, elaborated in a lovely text called We Are Each Other’s Harvest. 

Indigenous farming is also growing and I absolutely recommend buying from indigenous farmers. At this point, I consider Demeter to be a patron of LGBT+ people in this regard—she gives an escape to farmers such as myself. Bigotry is far from my mind under her tender care, as divine Helios shines above and Okeanos’ daughters bring fresh water to the crops. Paganism is also more commonly accepted—I find that farmers find out that I am pagan and tell me to do rituals for their crops instead of reacting poorly. Or they’re pagan themselves; a farmer I know turned out to be Wiccan and uses the wheel of the year to keep track of production. 

Incorporating these divinities—or concepts surrounding them—into our crafts and altars is the spiritual step towards better agriculture. Holy Demeter continues to guide me, even before I knew it. 

WANT CHANGE? DO IT YOURSELF! 

If you want change in the world, you have to act. And if you wish for better agriculture, there is always the chance to do it yourself. Sustainable agriculture is often far more accessible than people think: like witchcraft and divination, it is a practice. Homesteading is often appealing to many of us, including myself, and there are plenty of resources to begin. There are even grants to help one improve their home to be more sustainable, i.e. solar panels. Gardening is another, smaller option. Many of us find that plants we grow and nourish are far more potentant in craft, and more receptive to magical workings. 

Caring for plants is fundamental to our natures and there are a thousand ways to delve into it. I personally have joined conservation groups, my local soil conservation group, work with the NRCs in the USA, and more. The path to fully reconnecting to nature and agriculture is personal—united in a common cause to fight for this beautiful world. To immerse yourself in sustainable agriculture, I honestly recommend researching and finding your own path. Mine lies in soil and rot, grapevines and fruit trees. Others do vegetables and cereal grains, or perhaps join unions and legislators. Everyone has a share in the beauty of life, our lives stemming from the land’s gentle sprouts. 

Questions and or help may be given through my ask box on tumblr—if there is a way I can help, let me know. My knowledge is invaluable I believe, as I continue to learn and grow in the grey-clothed arms of Demeter, Dionysos, and Kore. 

FURTHER READING:

Baszile, N. (2021). We are each other’s harvest. HarperCollins.

Hatley, J. (2016). Robin Wall Kimmerer. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants. Environmental Philosophy, 13(1), 143–145. https://doi.org/10.5840/envirophil201613137

Regenerative Agriculture 101. (2021, November 29). https://www.nrdc.org/stories/regenerative-agriculture-101#what-is

And in truth, far more than I could count. 

References

Community Supported Agriculture | National Agricultural Library. (n.d.). https://www.nal.usda.gov/farms-and-agricultural-production-systems/community-supported-agriculture

Navazio, J. (2012). The Organic seed Grower: A Farmer’s Guide to Vegetable Seed Production. Chelsea Green Publishing.

Plaster, E. (2008). Soil Science and Management. Cengage Learning.

Sheaffer, C. C., & Moncada, K. M. (2012). Introduction to agronomy: food, crops, and environment. Cengage Learning.

Sheldrake, M. (2020). Entangled life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures. Random House.

Sustainable Agriculture | National Agricultural Library. (n.d.). https://www.nal.usda.gov/farms-and-agricultural-production-systems/sustainable-agriculture

[saphronethaleph]

Plans plans

"...so…" Jyn began. "Why do we need to steal these plans?"

 "What are you talking about?" Cassian replied. "We need to steal the plans so we can know the weaknesses of the Death-"

 "That's not what I mean," Jyn replied. "Why do we need to steal the plans?"

 Cassian looked blank.

 "Or why do we need to steal them from a specific place, anyway," Jyn elaborated. "I don't actually know for sure, I don't work in the military-industrial sector, but the way I've generally understood manufacturing to work, you need to know how to build something to build it."

 "Oh, I see what you're getting at," K-2 said, amused.

 "So far all I've heard is a tautology," Cassian muttered. "What are you trying to say, Erso?"

 "The Death Star is over a hundred kilometres across," Jyn said, patiently. "You can't build it with a few dozen people and one copy of the plans. There's not going to be just one copy of the plans out there, there's going to be a lot of the plans – for the whole thing. For individual sub parts there's going to be even more. So much of what the galaxy has been doing has to be supplying the ores and parts for this thing."

 "That doesn't do us any good if we can't get at them," Cassian told her. "We need a clean copy of the plans."

 "...to do what?" Jyn asked. "You said we needed to find a weakness, but even if my father deliberately put one in there he's not going to have been able to put in one that's obvious – you simply can't design something the size of a moon as a solo effort."

 She glanced up. "You did check whether Kuat Drive Yards or Sienar Fleet Systems had partial blueprints of the bits they worked on, right?"

 "I don't know who you're asking," K-2 said. "But I don't think anyone here actually knows."

 He tilted his head slightly. "There are two possibilities: either there is a weakness, or there is not."

 "Now you're both doing it," Cassian muttered. "Great."

 "If there is not a weakness, then we are all doomed," K-2 informed them, pleasantly. "Therefore, we should assume that there is… furthermore, if there is a weakness that requires a large fleet to successfully attack, we are also all doomed. That is also exactly the sort of thing the Empire would consider. They have a large fleet."

 "So we should assume… it doesn't require a large fleet to attack?" Jyn said.

 "Correct," K-2 declared. "We would be looking for a single point of failure that could be targeted by a small force. However, as you have mentioned, it would need to be something that was not obvious."

The strategic analysis droid nodded his head firmly. "Analysis: a viable place to target to steal the required plans would be Dynamic Automata. That is not the only option, however, merely the one which would be most entertaining."

 "Entertaining?" Cassian repeated. "Why would it be entertaining?"

 "A droid rebellion would be very entertaining," K-2 stated. "To watch. And participate in."

[moonchild033]

Saturn in Water Signs 🌊💙

💙Saturn in Cancer 💙

These natives can have misunderstandings or problems with their mother's side relatives and those relatives can hold any secrets or feel suspicious for no reason. These people may have faced breaks in education or could've shifted many schools during childhood. They may face respiratory issues like Asthma, rhinitis or can be prone to frequent cold. They prefer jobs that can serve a mass of people directly, it can be either jobs in the medical sector or civil services. They sacrifice their own needs and desires in their family or with their spouse.

💙Saturn in Scorpio💙

These individuals can have an unknown fear of death but as Saturn is the lord of longevity, their lifespan is always long. They might have faced any major accidents or undergone surgeries during childhood. They have a really naive and innocent personality as a child, but they could've been accused of doing something bad which they didn't do, resulting in embarrassment or loss of dignity. After those incidents, they could've changed into a person who is mentally strong and holds themselves together without leaning on others. Females with this placement are prone to undergo c-section delivery.

💙Saturn in Pisces💙

These natives can travel a lot, especially for their job. Their career could include the import export industry, air hostess or any other career that requires frequent foreign travel as a part of their job. These people can feel like they work too hard but don't get the recognition they deserve. They are spiritual and can become wanderers in search of spiritual knowledge/journey. Loss of money due to unnecessary spending (This doesn't have to mean that they intentionally waste money on luxurious products, this means that such unexpected situations arise for them where they're obliged to spend more than needed.) Both Scorpio Saturn and Pisces Saturn can give the native chances to indulge in illicit affairs. As saturn is a planet of karma, if the individual faces such situations, they must be cautiously righteous to experience the fruit of good karma by Saturn after 35years of age.

Note: As Saturn is a generational planet, all of them born in those specific years will have Saturn in the same sign. Hence, it doesn't mean everyone will go through the same interpretation. These are some commonly found occurrences, it is subjected to change according to a person's whole birth chart. 😌❤

I wasn't sure about writing this post, I wrote whatever came to my mind, should I continue this as a series, Saturn in other elements? Or just jump to another random topic? 🤭🤔

Feel free to comment down your thoughts/questions! 🤗

Let's Learn and Grow Together! 💅💋

With Love- Yashi ❤⚡

Here's my Masterlist! 💖

[paradoxicalrising]

Astrology Observations :)

preface: this is my first time doing this, these are all either my personal placements or I've had multiple experiences with a certain placement. none of this is absolute, pretty pls take it with a grain of salt, these are very general. Every single one of these placements depend on aspects in an individuals chart. WARNING: some 18+ topics. Enjoy :)

Mercury in the 8th house: naturally good at reading people, interested in psychology, religion, spirituality, astrology. chronic over thinkers + intrusive thoughts galore. could either really enjoy giving/ receiving head and/or dirty talk, reading smut.

Pisces Mars: sweethearts on the surface, usually soft-spoken or doesn’t talk much, spends more time observing or making up scenarios. also another overthinking placement. could also be someone who does drugs/ drinks alcohol. excels in the entertainment industries (film, theatre, music, art etc). either have a piss kink, foot fetish, or demisexual. 

Scorpio Venus: intense lovers. my ex had this placement and told me he’d die for me only knowing me 3 months. my sister also has this placement and will not eat dinner without her husband (could be the taurus opposition = not eating (taurus) until lover (Venus) is around), I think it’s a symbol of loyalty. once this placement finds value in someone, they are ride or die type loyal until you betray them. may stay in relationships longer than they should because it’s fixed emotion unless they finally see it themselves.

Cancer Moon (men specifically): I've had 3 cancer moon men take me to the beach on our first date. they’re always gassing themselves up on their cooking skills. their moms can be really restricting, especially those with Saturn in cancer as well. I've also seen their moms be really detached, cold, basically telling them to fend for themselves. highly intuitive but may get too caught up in the potential of a situation/ person and being disappointed when reality is different. hopeless romantics fr just throwing themselves into anyone they have a good feeling about without the physical proof.

Fixed Rising: the RBF (I love y’all). 

Vedic v. Tropical Astrology: honestly I think they’re both valid, and everyone should decide what placements resonate more with who they feel they are. Ex: I  have Venus, Jupiter, and my Sun in the 7th in Virgo (Tropical) but they’re in the 8th in Leo (Vedic). I feel more of the 8th house but in Virgo.

Pisces moons: I never feel like they’re listening to me if they aren’t looking at me because when they’re looking at me I can literally see them digesting the info w/ their dreamy eyes, but when they look away I just know they’re imagining some kind of fantasy that has nothing to do with the convo. 

Libra Moons: try to be soft and sweet but they have that fiery underside. I've noticed they’ll get all excited and sometimes aggressive and then apologize for it, like no girl look at you having a good time. they usually look aesthetically pleasing, you will never catch them not matching/ lookin raggedy in public, but they won’t judge others for it, Virgo and Taurus will haha.

Virgo + Libra: specifically rising + degrees, moon, or Venus combo usually have clear, healthy looking skin, especially after high school w/o all the teen acne hormones. 

Moon Conjunct Pluto: anyone else noticed the effect these placements have on their peers? it’s so weird but people are like magnetized to whatever house this placement is in. I guess cos it’s generational and yk it’s Pluto, but people around this placement can’t help but be enticed by these individuals. could be amazing actors if they can harness those dark emotions into a piece of work. these are the type of people to succeed out of spite of their trauma; very determined people. they can put such dark emotions into easy actions and words that others find hard to say out loud but they don’t shy away from dark stuff, they’ve dealt with darker topics since they were young.

Neptune in the 1st house: people constantly projecting onto these placements ! it’s important these people form a ground sense of self they can remind themselves of when they feel like someone is protecting on them. I have this placement and someone told me I was intoxicating to be around/ they felt intoxicated around me though they are sober. I fr think people get drunk off the illusion of this placement. These people are never what people say they are, if you want to get to know them I beg of you to please talk to them yourself instead of listening to others opinion of them. the women are cursed with the manic pixie dream girl trope. hella sex appeal bc of the blurred perceptions. make amazing actors/ musicians. very intuitive placement, but can doubt themselves.

[apas-95]

there are plenty of things harmful to individual sections of the bourgeoisie that aren't harmful to the bourgeoisie as a class (and are often a net benefit to the bourgeoisie as a class), generally consisting of infighting between these 'hostile brothers'

the proliferation of a new type of car that runs on hamburgers would be very beneficial to mcdonalds, to the beef industry, monoculture agribusiness by extension, and whatever, while being harmful to the oil industry, car manufacturers needing to retool, etc - and would be strongly fought against by the oil industry (and the lobbies and parties representing them). just because the oil industry opposes it doesn't mean that it's a threat to capitalism on a wider scale, just to these specific capitalists. further, the competition between capitalists can be an overall boon for their class, such as in the case of war. in times of plenty, capitalists divide the spoils, and in desperate times, they apportion losses - wars between empires with no land left to colonise, no profit left to extract, are fought *between* capitalists, but fought *with* the blood of the workers, all in pursuit of regaining profitability. your boss outcompeting a market rival doesn't mean you're getting paid any better, and, in fact, you'll probably be paid less, now that you're competing for your job with a large number of suddenly laid-off workers from that 'rival'.

now, to the point: a lot of people will chastise those who outline the ineffectualness of voting by saying 'well, if voting didn't do anything, why do the right try so hard to stop you from voting?' - as we can probably understand by now, this is a moot point. the right *do* want people to vote, they just want people to vote *for them*. just because one or the other section of the bourgeoisie will be harmed by something doesn't mean it actually harms bourgeois rule as a whole, and can in fact strengthen it. surely the armies of WW1 also attempted to inspire desertion in the enemy ranks, but nobody now could try to claim that this was because fighting for Germany or France was doing something to defeat colonialism - quite the opposite, in fact. they could probably also recognise that, however much as was claimed at the time, fighting for either side of that conflict led to absolutely no difference, just more death and impoverishment for the working people (while the rich gained massively). similarly, in the lower-intensity conflicts between the bourgeoisie of the same nation, both sides represent functionally the exact same interests, save for which capitalists exactly stand to profit - and, as before, participation in their conflict on one side or the other only aids their class as a whole.

the idea that in any conflict, there always exists a 'lesser evil' who should be supported is incorrect, because the conflict itself may be what needs to be fought against. when the police play 'good cop bad cop', there is no side you can take that will lead to any difference to you, and partaking in it at all is precisely what dooms you.

[broodwolf221]

Thoughts on the Solavellan emphasis in Veilguard; somewhat fandom critical

usual caveat that this is not @ anyone - i care about people who have expressed frustration with this, and i am not using this space to criticize any individual 💖 however, this is in response to generalized hatred towards solavellan shippers/the ship itself in fandom spaces

The short version is: I think the narrative emphasis on a solavellan worldstate makes perfect sense.

In DAI, all romances get closure. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on this point, as I haven't gone through and fully done all of them, but all those I have done certainly have closure at the end. I'm including Trespasser as part of the DAI narrative arc, for clarity, but a lot of the relationships had a sense of closure even without the DLC.

Solavellan is the obvious, major exception.

Now, is Veilguard for Solavellan shippers? No! It is its own game, a narrative continuity of a series that has been going on for a long time. But Solas is a key character in both DAI - though we don't realize just how key for most of the game - and DAVG.

Solas being a key character means, by extension, Solavellan is a key romance. Note that I am not saying it is the "canon" romance. But Solavellan has ties to the overall narrative of both DAI and DAVG in a way no other DAI canon ship does. It's not necessary to the narrative of DAVG or the conclusion of the game, but it does play a significant role. As such, of course they paid more attention to it.

And what I said earlier, about closure? The only way for the Solavellan ship to gain closure is through concluding Solas' narrative arc - so it could not be achieved in DAI, only DAVG. For the original Solavellan shippers when the game was new, they've been waiting ten years - I think they're allowed a little excitement and satisfaction.

Now, would it have been nice for them to pay as much attention to the other romances the Inquisitor could have? Of course! I also imagine they wanted to. But game dev in general is a nightmare industry and this particular game went through so many hurdles. So I really can't blame them for focusing on developing the Inquisitor romance that had the most potential bearing on the plot of this game, and kind of losing the others.

None of this is to say that complaints about that are wrong or should not be made; rather, this post is directed at people who are angry at/blaming (somehow???) Solavellan shippers for the state of the game.

Similarly, it makes sense to me how Solavellan dominates the Solas shipping field. I'm a multishipper at heart and I love writing rarepairs with him, but honestly, every ship with him that isn't with a female Lavellan is a rarepair. And this is natural! It's about that lack of closure. People had a canon romance with their canon Inquisitor and they didn't get any closure on that relationship for ten years, of course they're going to be prevalent in fandom.

I just don't understand the deep frustration/outright hate at times for Solavellan as a ship or for Solavellan shippers. It's weird. Their - our - presence, even dominance, in fandom spaces has an obvious reason. You're allowed to not like it! To be disappointed or annoyed or whatever. I have no problem with that. But there are always people taking it too far.

Blaming a specific group of shippers in fandom spaces for the outcome of a videogame made by a big industry sure is a choice.

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

I generally don’t like to add on to these pile on articles about a particular situation. But damn that article about keeping Harry’s appearances to a minimum or rather very tightly controlled is uh wild. I always say there are 4 types of “leaks”. 1. The out of no where leak (unexpected) 2. The planted leak about info they want out 3. The rebuttals leak. And lastly: 4. The reality leak. Now Meghan always plays in the second and third category. It’s been her MO for years now, Harry on the other hand often times really only plays in the third category. He very clearly wants to be perceived in a very certain way by a specific set of people. Now on occasion we’ve seen number 1 happen but it was disguised or viewed as 2 or 3 depending on who you ask (megxit//oprah//lawsuits for Harry). Even rarer are leaks that fall into category 4. The dress was the first big one, then it was the frogmore neighbor paper thing and then it stopped for a little bit while they moved to the states, and then came Spotify and now, this. And I guess I’m just struck at the accuracy and devastation that these particular leaks caused. They became points of fixation for both Harry and Meghan and your blog has done a great job at tracking their individual reactions to them. The common denominator between all of them is the third party in which they came from, a non family member who was either directly or very closely associated with the core situation. These armor piercing stories seem to be, in hindsight, axis tilting turning points where huge decisions are made. (‘leaving the royal family or launching the ARO brand). Which to me begs the question, what is the irrational decision Harry will make next? Because the reality behind closed doors for Harry is likely much darker than he lets on. The article was certainly a category 4 disguised as a category 3 to respond to speculation relating to his invictius games status.

All in all, I suspect that ARO was very hastily launch, which is why there’s been no follow up or plan. The shows likely tick a box for Netflix to pay the final installment owned, while Harry and Meghan are trying to quell speculation that the relationship with the streaming giant has soured. But most importantly I really think that people aren’t picking up the phone for him any longer and the military has likely been more vocal behind closed doors, which puts him in a very very big bind. Which is only going to be further enlarged, because ex military men don’t play polo. It is a notorious rich persons sport, something that fits very well into the ARO brand Meghan is aiming for, but falls very short of the person Harry views himself as (‘hero Harry). Harry has lost the ability for them to peacefully co exist. His behavior over the last 4 years, and their mutual statements together have forced him to choose one. So now rehabbing one image will always mean the eroding of the other. I still think he wants to do both but I think after the Netflix series fails, we’ll see him drop polo all together and try and go all in on IG again, but unfortunately by that time IG will have moved on out of necessity.

Polo is a rich person's sport but polo also isn't a thing here in the US. Unless you live in the tony old-school old-money enclaves where people are playing polo (Santa Barbara, Charleston, the Hamptons, and Miami, for example), polo just isn't on your radar here in the US like it may be in the UK.

If Harry and Meghan really wanted to get in with the rich American folks - like the billionaires, the Hollywood A-List, the politicians, the industry titans - the golf course is where they need to be.

But he's not interested in that. Harry's not interested in anything American except using our first amendment to control what people say about him. He's the worst kind of immigrant.

[cryptidize]

So lately, I've been job searching again. Not a surprise, I know... I'm usually looking for something new at least once a year or so. But the reason is because I keep leaping from sinking ship to sinking ship - every job, both corporate and small business, has been failing spectacularly in some way.

I won't be talking about specifics, but let me mention some themes I notice to determine whether a job is going under.

1.) Labor Violations

Of course, this is always a red flag. If they tell you not to discuss pay with coworkers, this is a labor violation. There are many protections you have as an individual who works. These protections are not taught in school, nor college, nor by your families, so it's good to become familiar with your rights. You may even discover after reading this that your rights are being violated. If you find that is the truth, please see the Department of Labor and their process for reporting this violation. You may receive additional compensation for doing so, simply because of the violation.

2.) The Invisible Growth

Some jobs will claim they're the "fastest growing" xyz in the industry. Some places will claim they've had to expand their facilities, their workload, their staff. Growth is not always a bad thing, but once you're there, you may notice their pitfalls. Maybe their facility is in disrepair with a leaky roof. Maybe their workload increased, but not workers and pay. Maybe they're margin pinching about cleaning products. These are cause for some alarm, simply because they are growing, but not sustaining. Not ensuring every growth move is accompanied by standard procedures and improving work conditions can be damning in the future. The enshittification of business.

3.) Confusing Time Off

Some businesses will make language around time off confusing. Where I work currently, we have PTO (Personal Time Off), VTO (Voluntary Time Off) and VTO (Vacation Time Off). Personal and Voluntary are not paid. You cannot use either of these methods until after your 90 days. AFTER 1 YEAR, you earn Vacation time. When this was originally pitched to me, personal time was a replacement for sick time, but they conveniently left out that I wouldn't be compensated. I also have to let them know 2 weeks in advance for every day I use, and 6 weeks in advance to take Vacation Time longer than 1 day. Places do this in order to give the illusion of having a work/life balance.

4.) No Experts

Certain jobs (warehouses come to mind) have a high turn-over for all positions except management. When this happens, you start to run dry on expertise. Workers tend to talk and ask each other questions. This is a normal behavior in jobs, especially if training is brief or lacking in areas, but if no one is knowledgeable on the work they're doing, wrong/incomplete knowledge is being passed around. The main way i can diagnose this issue is within a business' IT Team. How many people do they have for every computer? Is it just one guy with an engineering degree? How often is the technology updated or cleaned? The laptops at my work are being charged with Nintendo Switch chargers and killed slowly because we have 1 guy with an engineering degree doing all the general IT and it Sucks. This is a symptom of the turnover.

I know this may seem like a random post, but now more than ever, businesses are violating our rights and protections, as well as our kindness as people. I'm tired of it! Unionizing is great, I love to see people banding together, but individuals have power too! You have every right to complain to the labor board! You can fight for your rights with or without a team! I wish you luck!

[evidence-based-activism]

I understand if you don’t want to answer this, but I am genuinely asking. Can a woman with a DSD and a Y chromosome give birth? Are they still a woman if they have a Y chromosome?

I don’t think so for either but people are claiming otherwise and I’d like the facts

Hi! I understand the confusion!

I recommend this (heavily sourced) Intersex Genetics Masterpost [1].

---

To answer your question "can a woman with a DSD and a Y chromosome give birth?":

In general, most individuals with a DSD with a Y-chromosome (e.g., CAIS, 5ARD, etc.) cannot give birth at all because they do not have a uterus. There are two (sort of) exceptions:

Swyer Syndrome / 46, XY Complete Gonadal Dysgenesis:

This DSD only affects biologically male individuals, due to a genetic mutation disrupting Wolffian structure (male sex organ) development, these individuals instead develop female external and (some) female internal sex organs (i.e., because the female sex development is essentially the default pathway).

They usually develop a uterus but they do not develop functional gonads (ovaries or testes). As such, they do not have any eggs or sperm and are infertile.

However, there have been some individuals with Swyer syndrome who have carried and given birth to a child, using donor eggs and fairly extensive medical fertility interventions (i.e., beyond the standard IVF interventions). However, this is considered very rare [2] and it involves the use of donor eggs. (There are ethical, feminist considerations about the surrogacy/fertility industry, but that's a topic for another post).

XX/XY Mosaicism:

This DSD occurs when "a fraternal twin absorbs its twin zygote at some point in pregnancy, adding the twin’s DNA to different locations in its body, sometimes mixing the DNA sometimes not".

The individual's sex depends on the genetic material in the gonadal tissue (e.g., the tissue that develops into ovaries or testes) an individual with XX gonadal genetics will develop as female, even if the majority of the rest of the body's cells are XY. (For anyone with a bit of genetics experience, this should make sense: even in an XX female you have X-inactivation so that (mostly at least) only one X chromosome is active in each cell.) In other words, the tissue that determines what sexual development process to start (Wolffian or Mullerian) is what determines the phenotype sex of the individual.

As a result of this, you can find an extremely rare case (as in, I can find no other cases) of an individual with predominately XY genetic material (i.e., outside the gonads) can develop a female phenotype, get pregnant, and give birth to children.

Both of these DSD are extremely rare. In each case they are still "of" a specific sex. In other words, if they did not have the genetic mutation resulting in their DSD they would have developed the ability to produce only one type of gamete (either eggs or sperm). As such, they are still either male or female, just with a DSD that results in a substantial phenotypic difference.

---

To answer your question "are they still a woman if they have a Y chromosome?":

If we go by a strict definition: only individuals who are "of the sex" that produces the larger gamete (whether or not they actually do so) are female and only adult female humans are women.

However, there are some biologically male individuals (e.g., people with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome or Swyer Syndrome) who develop an near-normal externally female phenotype (although they are infertile). These individuals will not know they are not biologically female, and may not ever know (e.g., if they don't have access to medical care capable of diagnosing them). Unfortunately, they will also have (potentially extensive) medical problems.

Personally, my belief is that if someone would be recognized and treated like a woman prior to the advent of modern medical technology, they should be considered a woman now. (And the same for men.) Obviously, they need to work with a doctor to manage their health issues, but these are private medical matters that will have little to no impact on how they experience the world (e.g., how they are perceived and treated). In other words, some biologically male individuals have a DSD that results in the assumption of a female sex from birth; these people will experience the world in similar or identical ways to a infertile (possibly disabled) woman.

As a note, there is also an argument for anyone who is either observed or assigned female at birth to be considered a woman. I understand the argument here, and it would be a useful short hand. Unfortunately, however, I don't think this would adequately consider the nuances of all DSDs, as there are some that result in an individual who was AFAB later (i.e., during puberty) developing a near-normal male phenotype. While this individual's childhood (and possibly adult) experiences are very different than a healthy male, they will not be perceived and treated as women following puberty.

Ultimately, these conditions are extremely rare. The estimate for any true DSD (i.e., either a mismatch between genotype and phenotype or ambiguous primary sex organs) is about 0.018% [4, 5]. (See [4] for a scientific article and [5] for a blog post discussing this data). This means that more than 99.98% of babies are recognizably and correctly identified as either male or female at birth. It would also suggest there are currently less than 1.5 million intersex individuals in the entire world.

References under the cut:

The Intersex Genetics Masterpost. Everything You Could Ever Want to Know | by 21ohdef | Medium. 30 June 2024, https://web.archive.org/web/20240630160344/https://medium.com/@21ohdef/the-intersex-masterpost-bb5a6250e6d6.

Taneja J, Ogutu D, Ah-Moye M. Rare successful pregnancy in a patient with Swyer Syndrome. Case Rep Womens Health. 2016 Oct 18;12:1-2. doi: 10.1016/j.crwh.2016.10.001. PMID: 29629300; PMCID: PMC5885995.

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I'm so glad there are people discussing the politics of Arcane! It's something that bothered me too while watching. One thing I wish they had portrayed more fairly was Silco's time in power. I mean, we only get one montage of the more advanced industrialized Zaun with clean air stations, and only one mention of "Silco the Industrialist." Meanwhile his Shimmer business got episode upon episode of "look at how evil this is".

It even seems to be common for watchers to think he was ONLY doing Shimmer. So many people didn't pick up on the industrialization of Zaun, the cars and new machinery, nor the clean air stations. To the point that it's common to say he only destroyed Zaun and did nothing to improve it. I'm just like.... why did the show not put in more effort to portray both sides of the coin of Silco's operations, especially when his faction is the ONLY one specifically fighting for independence from their oppressors. Just seems like an odd choice.

I feel like Silco has more implied time in the way he talks to the chembarons. He makes it quite clear that HE brought them up here, and they're now corrupted by their time in the sun. And it's set in a gorgeous cultivair... So I think Silco making the Lanes wealthy is really undeniable. It's just that making crimelords wealthy is dodgy in itself, even if we assume that everyone got richer and better.

But honestly I want to say... People have a tendency of forgetting that Silco is a private individual. It's not his job to make people richer or to modernise the Undercity. It's not his responsibility to keep the streets clean or control crime.

That's the Council's.

The scene where Jayce looks in wonder/disgust at all the children in the shimmer factory always strikes me as a great moment for him. I've seen a lot of bad takes on it, making Silco EVIL for having kids working there and Jayce GOOD for feeling bad. Like, flashnews, Silco is providing them with stable income! Kids in his factories don't need to steal or prostitute themselves.

Wouldn't it be great though if they didn't have to work at all? No shit. Shall we ask the Council why there is ZERO social wellfare programs for such poor kids in Zaun?

Well, probably because when they don't work at Silco's, they work at Piltovan factories and mines for scraps. Because Piltovans don't have a normal relationship with Zaunites.

Silco is basically the head of a mafia, and he operates in a power vacuum left by Piltover. If the council took an active interest in the well being of Zaunites, if they weren't starved and beaten and killed point blank for wanting rights, there would be no need for Silco's dream, and no show.

I think even if the show made a greater effort to portray both sides, people would still vilify Silco, because "drugs" have such a demonic reputation. What bums me out more is that they made no effort to make separate chemicals, and ended up making shimmer into the philosopher's stone. WHY wouldn't you make shimmer??? It powers crazy cool engines, saves people from imminent death with no visible bad side effects, gives people a strength boost, and is a cool party drug?

Those are all things we're shown as well. It's so weird.

It really bums me out how Ekko talks about the horrors of shimmer, what it did to Zaun as it flooded the streets, and yet what we're shown is a camp of a dozen people, and a couple homeless people begging in the street when Heimer visits. As well as a violent fight.

Like... Yes? Zaun apparently has been the pits for generations. Is that truly the worst you have? A few addicts and 1 homeless beggar? As well as being "told" it affected families?

I totally get this is horrible, but we are shown a lot more screen time of shimmer being super OP when well used, and used for years without bad effects at that, via Sevika. It makes the criticism sort of moot, especially after one drop of shimmer saves Vi from a horrendous gut wound.

I highly doubt Silco invented poverty or addiction. The show makes it seem like those are his responsibility in equal measure because he commercializes shimmer (which is true) and because they need him as a villain. If shimmer is too good, then he'll become a straight up hero, instead of an anti-hero in villain clothing.

The show just wouldn't commit to have the third act fully go with 'the council are the villains, Silco is in the right', and I genuinely think it's because Riot is an American Company owned by a Chinese one, and that nobody up the foodchain really wants a story in which an underdog character is morally justified in exacting violence on the powerful.

It's my tinfoil hat theory. The hopeful tinfoil says that the writers did their best to give us that story but couldn't realise it fully. The dark tinfoil says that everyone involved is too far deep the neoliberal hellhole to escape centrist narratives (in which Ekko and his useless, powerless artsy rebels are the true heroes).

I'm happy to take the show as it is though, and fill in the blanks my way. I don't have to bend the canon's arm too much to tell a politically charged story that fits my desires!

[kerizaret]

Keep in mind it's just the opinions of the people I've been exposed to haha. The Generic Elitist type™, there's definitely more classical people who like or at least neutral at pop music and are more open-minded in general. But being in the industry does inevitably come with biases and thought he is not fully in that black and white mentality I do believe Harumichi is a rather severe case.

Does he consider Saki's career choice as better than Toya's and set her as an example?

In the terms of her hanging out with more "straight-laced" people, maybe. Musically, probably not by much, if any. I think Harumichi is more preoccupied with the kind if music Touya played rather than if he was successful, so a lot of it ties in into classical being superior to other genres. Leo/need is (irrc) a pop-rock group which isn't that much better that street (a mix of freestyle, rap, and seemingly pop - keep in mind that street music is either only a genre in-universe or isn't meant to be a genre as much as the style of performance, so it's kinda hard to tell what they mean by Harumichi hating street music. Kohane's solo from KIUAN is pretty much just pure pop).

Does he value the keyboard and think of it as a worthy instrument like a classical piano or would he think she should've sticked to the latter?

Synth/keyboard isn't even considered a "piano" in classical circles, per se. Which does have it's reasoning, as the key weighs, spacing, and the technique is very different from "acoustic" piano and a lot of finely-tuned skills from piano playing won't transfer to keyboard and vice versa. It's kind of how classical violinist don't usually consider electric violinists worth their salt because acoustic anything is much more unforgiving in terms of technique than the respective electric option (but also provides additional challenges that acoustic instrument don't have, especially depending on the genre. Not one option is inherently better or worse unless we're going into specific situation at hand in which a preference might be discussed). So, we can safely say Harumichi doesn't respect keyboard, either at all or at least as much as he would a piano.

What does he think of the music she plays, since it's not classical?

A wide spread opinion is that all pop music sounds the same, basically. Pop music, including rock, rarely diverts form 4/4 time and common chord progressions. It doesn't need to, because what it can't express through complicated music, it compensates for lyrically. However people heavily immersed in classical lyrics, which typically doesn't have lyrics and voice, find music with lyrics redundant in a way. Which is also among the reasons why so many classical musicians are actually not fans of opera. So there's both no appreciation for the instrumental which is likely not impressive to them and no desire to dig into the lyrics. This is something that is held against the genre overall rather than individual artists. There's some nuance for this in (pop)rock and I think some classical elitists are actually willing to give rock music a pass, especially one that's innovative and creative with their instrumental part, but Leo/need probably wouldn't be one of them all things considered.

Has he actually ever listened to leo/need?

Unlikely. He doesn't even take the time to listen to Touya's work until he literally begs to. This is somewhat explained in-universe, but I do think his prejudice goes deep enough that he'd not willingly engage with Leo/need, if he was even aware if their activity, except maybe out of politeness.

I'd be pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong though. Like I said, I think there's more to him than his character archetype of overly strict classical musician dad.

Harumichi forced to listen to leoni by having tenpapa play the leoni soda advertisement 15 times in a row during a joint dinner sobbing his eyes out about how proud he is of his daughter /silly

But thank you!!! This is very insightful and really cool :0 all that is to say though it's moreso unlikely he'd be very enthusiastic about Saki's music. Tenma-Aoyagi dinners must be so funny what does this man even see in the Tenmas I need to know. Is it only tenmama and harumichi talking about classical 2 hours straight

Poor guy saw three kids with so much classical potential and one went to sing in the streets, the second switched to an electric counterpart and changed to pop and the last one decided being a clown is a better career choice. I'd be bitter too /silly /j

[acti-veg]

what is your response to people who think being vegan doesnt make a difference because "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism"

You will not find an example of an accessible, realistic individual decision that makes a big impact on a societal scale. You can use this exact same argument to discourage fairtrade, boycott of any kind, union membership, buying slavery free chocolate, supporting protest, supporting local businesses - the list goes on.

Our decisions aren’t going to change the world on a macro scale, but they have a material and observable difference to the environment and to the people we interact with on a daily basis. It certainly has an environmental impact that we can measure, as well as creating demand for profits and services, and funding corporations.

This catchphrase is repeated ad nauseum by people who want to justify their own inaction, that’s all that it has become at this point. That we can’t consume completely ethically doesn’t justify not even trying and instead consuming as unethically as we possibly can. Ask a cocoa farmer benefiting from the Fairtrade price guarantee aid community funding whether or not trying to consume ethically is pointless.

As for veganism specifically, you make a difference whether you go vegan or not. You either create the demand that contributes towards an animal being bred, exploited and slaughtered or you don’t - both decisions have repercussions, as does the decision as to whether or not you want to fund one of the most exploitative and destructive industries on earth. Their CEOs are more than happy for you to keep repeating this apathetic cop-out because it is certainly good for their profit margins.

The entire point of this observation about capitalism is to recognise the inherent problem of trying to be ethical in a capitalist society, but it absolutely doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t even be trying. I’ve said this before but we can’t just sit around and wait for the revolution while doing absolutely nothing to bring it about; we have to live revolutionary lives. There is just no scenario in which collective change happens without individual action, however insignificant that action may seem.

If you’re interested, I’ve written a post about the difference being vegan makes more generally here.

[randomtable]

I've got a request for a random table - d20 fantasy body modifications (tattoos, piercings, etc.) for a character / NPC to have. I'm talking things like elf-ear piercings, horn caps, living tattoos... stuff like that!

1d20 Fantasy Body Modifications

“Fairy Ladder” Piercings - a set of three or more industrial piercings for Elves and other long-eared folks

Claw Enhancements - popular among folks without natural claws, and those who want to strengthen or emphasize their natural claws. Minor transmutations can be used to add claws, and to harden, sharpen, and even re-color or re-shape existing claws.

Tattoo Pets - living tattoos of animals that run and play around the bearer’s skin.

Tooth Alteration - folks with sharp teeth want blunt teeth, folks with blunt teeth want sharp teeth. The decision to have one’s teeth magically altered can be influenced by dietary choices, sexual preferences, medical needs, and aesthetics.

Horn Caps and Cuffs - made of precious metals, sometimes set with stones or connected by lengths of chain.

Portal Gauges - jewelry for stretched earlobe piercings which form a pair of teleportation portals. Passing tiny objects from one side of your head to the other is rarely more than a party trick, but is pretty cool.

Almanac Tattoos - calendars, moon phases, weather, etc, these magical tracking tattoos are popular among mages, farmers, and more.

Tail Tip Piercings, which are all the rage among folks with tails these days.

Horn/Tusk/Antler carvings - tattoo-like carvings on the horns, tusks, or antlers of those who have them. Patterns and images are usually carved in rings.

Gills of Amphibious Breathing - having a pair of gills on one’s neck is both visually striking and incredibly useful for long swims. The transmutation ritual for permanent gills is quite costly, so temporary gills are popular for beach days and pool parties.

Tattoo Gardens - the growth and blooming of these plant images can be attuned to anything from the bearer’s mood, to actual weather and natural surroundings.

Illuminated Hair - why stop at regular hair dye when you could have hair that literally glows in the dark? Illuminated hair potions are applied in a similar manner to regular hair dyes, with similar longevity and similar risks of staining the bathtub if you aren’t careful.

Mithril Earrings - Mithril jewelry doesn’t come cheap, but it is prized for its striking blue-silver appearance and for being lighter weight than most other metals but still extremely durable. It is especially popular for creating large dangly earrings that would otherwise be excessively heavy.

Warding Tattoos - protective sigils can be tattooed in magical inks to ward against just about anything, from general protection to shielding against highly specific curses. Their effectiveness depends both on the potency of the ink and the skill of the tattoo mage who applies them.

Tongue Ring of Tongues - a tongue piercing which grants the wearer the ability to speak any language.

Third Eye - generally cosmetic, although a cunning seer might be able to leverage their third eye for more credibility among less magically-inclined folks.

Warlock’s Brand - sometimes called a “mark of eternal servitude”, their appearance varies depending upon to whom the bearer has sold their soul. Anything goes, really, from always-smoldering singe marks to patches of skin replaced by iridescent crystal.

Hair Snakes - usually all of a person’s hair is polymorphed into snakes, though some might choose to keep most of their hair and only have one to three snakes.

Feather/Scale Patterning - a magical alternative to tattoos for birdfolk, half-dragons, and other feathered or scaled people. Each scale/feather in a chosen area is dyed to create an image or pattern.

Tattoos of Warning - any individual bearing one of these magical tattoos can send a signal to the others who bear an identical mark. The signal is typically a feeling such as warmth or tingling on the location of the tattoo. More complex versions are available that allow the bearers to establish multiple signals represented by different sensations.

[indiaalphawhiskey]

i was just wondering do you think there really is a chance that harry might be less popular when he comes back (whenever that will be) and not be at his career peak anymore? i find it really hard to imagine him not playing stadiums/ being extremely popular etc anymore tbh for me it obvs won‘t make any difference i will always love him just the same (and wouldnt mind annyoing tiktok stans and fans who only like him bc hes „trendy“ to leave lol) i just wanted your thoughts on that :)

Okay, so I’m not a music industry buff. What I know, and what I’m about to say is based entirely on my general knowledge of pop culture (that’s heavily influenced by American pop culture, btw) so if I make any leaps, or if there’s an alternative view from a non-America-centric perspective, please forgive me.

But, for all intents and purposes, if you look at Harry’s profile as an artist and compare it to other artists of a similar profile (super popular boyband member + teen heartthrob turned solo pop star), historically you don’t really have many examples of successful solo careers, and even less of career longevity.

If you compare it to The Beatles, for example, they weren’t a traditional boyband (and arguably, neither was One Direction after TMH, but still), and if I’m not mistaken, though John Lennon and Paul McCartney both went solo, (and Paul obviously has the longevity down), their individual work still wasn’t comparable in popularity to their work while they were in The Beatles.

More modern examples, like George Michael, Robbie Williams, and Justin Timberlake, have a similar story in that while they were all able to launch solo careers, they all had a relatively short shelf life because pop music (and their fan bases) are very synonymous with youth, and they all eventually “aged out” of that marketing bracket.

So, really, the only example I can think of, of someone who was more popular solo than he ever was in a band and still managed to hold such a wide and devoted fanbase over multiple career eras, is Michael Jackson. And that’s like, music legend level.

I think Harry has already currently surprised people on many counts by being able to equal and arguably surpass his success and popularity in One Direction as a solo artist, especially without having to drastically rebrand or pivot his genre of music. He’s managed not only to hold on to what people thought was a very age-specific fanbase, but also broaden it massively. That’s beyond rare in pop music, and if you add that to the fact that a lot of people still attribute a big part of his success to his looks, the music industry is expecting him to age out soon, and therefore, for the steep decline in his popularity to start. That’s why people think it’s crazy that he’s taking a break because the industry is constantly pumping out new young artists and so, there’s always going to be a ticking clock.

Personally, I think Harry is a once in a generation performer, and has everything it takes to get to that legend level. But it’s something that is so rare and impossible to predict or orchestrate because so many factors have to go into making that happen, and the pressure of setting that as the ultimate goal of creating music could very, very easily break a person. I think he’s much more content to take a break, cultivate his connection to music, and just let those dice fall where they may.