#food supply. that's why we built societies in the first place. different people are good at different jobs

[beeseverywhen]

Not in the US so can't speak for what's happening there, but I've def noticed here that healthcare workers are struggling with dealing with sicker patients than they felt they were getting before covid and lots of them are mentioning a lack of immunity thanks to lockdowns. every time I hear it I can't help but think that the increasing desperation thanks to years of underfunding that's really beginning to have an impact since covid (because the pandemic served as the last straw on the camels back there AND because it showed our government that they could neglect the vulnerable to the degree that they were dying by the thousands and still nobody bothered to blame them.) Is a contributing factor in this and I don't understand why nobody is mentioning it???

We're getting sick because we've spent decades being bled dry and now we're hungry, stressed and being worked to the bone. Meanwhile we aren't getting any kind of return on the money we're pumping in to the healthcare system and our governments aren't doing shit to address health inequalities or any of the factors contributing to everyone's poor health.

If you look at covid death statistics, if you look at which countries are currently suffering from supply problems; a job market bursting with unfilled vacancies, civil unrest and protests, strained healthcare systems, and all the rest; the countries at the top are those that have allowed capitalism to call the shots for the past century, more than the rest. That is why the UK and America have been so badly impacted. Its no accident that we are paying so heavily, this system started with us. We forced it on the rest of the world and now, we're the first to pay the price. There is a direct correlation between the impact being felt post covid and a countries wealth divide and I'm tired of everyone ignoring that.

I look around me and People are going hungry, the food they can afford to buy is lacking in basic nutrients, of course people are sicker! Even if you can afford them, the shops keep running out of vegetables! Our health system was already breaking and then, we were hit by a pandemic it was completely unprepared for (tho it should have been) and now, people are getting way more ill than they need to before they finally reach hospital. When they get there, the hospitals are understaffed (thanks to years of underfunded budgets and the extreme stress so many health care workers were put under), we keep having drug shortages because our country keep straight up refusing to pay how much things cost, and what they are willing to pay, goes to pay about ten profiteering middle men at each stage of the supply chain.

People are massively stressed thanks to the cumulative weight of a completely broken capitalist system and those in charge are more worried about lining their pockets for as long as they can until the whole thing collapses, rather than actually trying to address any problems. Stress IS something that's known to weaken immune systems so why are we blaming something that MAY affect them??? Extreme rises in energy costs have meant everyone's spent a winter without adequate heating (even those that can afford it are revolting at the increase and so are trying to cut costs by using less energy.) Again, insufficiently heated homes are also known to affect immunity. And that's just the people who still have safe homes! Masses of people have been made homeless recently thanks to rising rents and mortgages which were already unaffordable, our housing stock is largely dangerous, with homes falling in to disrepair because landlords are barely regulated and when they do break laws they go unprotected.

Is anyone surprised that so many people are getting so ill and not getting better? Cause I'm not.

It's startlingly obvious when you start looking at the health divide between those who have spent 40 years subject to the whims of poorly restricted capitalism and those able to opt out. Medical technology is improving, but healthy life expectancy is now dropping year on year, because there are more people living here without the capital to turn away from jobs that will break them, than there are those whose inherited wealth opens doors away from employers that'll ask you to pay the price of bodily health, so they might strengthen profit margins. Its just basic averages. 1% of our citizens are standing on the backs of 99% of us and wondering why more and more of that 99% are getting sicker and sicker. The labour market for working class people has been allowed to drain its workers dry for years now. The progress made in the early to mid 20th century has slowly been worn away at, with the labour laws we fought for, only being accessible for an ever decreasing number of people. The laws are still in place but no low wage employer bothers to follow them any more than they have to. Do you know how many people I know who've been working without breaks, going unpaid for extra hours, been forced to follow unsafe working practices that they know are illegal and then being forced to lie to protect the employer that put them in that position? The people being broken by companies raking in billions, as they flaunt labour laws, don't have any means to access justice! If you complain, you lose your job. If you take them to court that costs money and that company is willing to drag out proceedings for years till you run out of the money needed to keep things going.

When i look at how much money is being wasted in government budgets, while the people responsible for making that money, see little return; I can't help but think of various theories for why certain societies in history have collapsed. (If you want to be really worried about the state of things, read the Wikipedia page on societal collapse. Spoiler: most of the potential causes of societal collapse have already begun in America and the UK. That guy who wrote that article saying America was already past the point of collapse might have been right.) One theory behind the bronze age collapse is just that... societies became too complex. A society where the 1% are given too much power over the 99% becomes one great big pyramid scheme. Unnecessary burecracy at every level (designed to squeeze as much wealth possible for the person overseeing that level) results in those at the bottom, working themselves to death and still going hungry. The theory goes that there comes a point, in societies like that, where the workers look at how they are living and just...walk away. They decide that the security once offered by that society isn't worth what it's costing them and fuck off to become farmers, preferring a life of hard work and little security, to what they had been living. Without the workers, the system breaks down. The only people getting fed are the ones growing the food. All this stupid stratification. Allowing every supply chain, business and institution to become unnecessarily complex just so on each level the people in charge can let their mates get a foot in on the profits. All these middlemen. Business consultants. Supply chains allow for a product to be sent back and forth from country to country just so more people get a cut. Its no different to any other pyramid scheme so why the hell are we allowing it.

We need to start telling our politicians to show some goddamn accountability for this shit. Stop accepting them skirting responsibility for being at best: Inept and at worst deliberately negligent. We all need to stop supporting a system that's hurting us all. In the hope that we might be one of the lucky ones. That's not the reality of things. We'll only get out of this hole we've inadvertently dug ourselves in to, if we stop fighting each other and work together to demand change.

You know how sometimes you catch someone in a lie, and so they tell an even bigger lie to try and cover up the first lie they told?

Well, that’s happening right now.

Last winter, a handful of celebrity doctors went on mainstream news networks to assure us that Omicron was “mild.” They carpet-bombed us with articles and tweets, doing their best to brainwash everyone.

They were wrong.

In the end, real science junked that idea. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that Omicron killed more people than previous variants, even when adjusting for other factors. Another study by doctors at Massachusetts General and Harvard Medical found that Omicron was just as deadly. In fact, “the risks of hospitalization and mortality were nearly identical.” As it turns out, the entire idea of “mild” Omicron was based on an old, flawed idea known as the law of declining virulence, developed by a doctor who was studying tick-borne disease in cows. It was debunked decades ago.

Most epidemiologists know that viruses don’t magically evolve to become milder. Virus evolution is random and chaotic.

In some cases, viruses evolve to become more deadly.

A handful of actual scientists tried to explain all this last winter, including disease experts at Johns Hopkins. A handful of other established experts spoke out against this myth. As a microbiologist at Penn State told Politifact, “You can’t just say it’s going to become nicer.” They were largely ignored, because everyone already sort of believed the misinformation. If they knew it was based on a study about cows, they probably would’ve thought twice.

This year, the makers of “it’s mild” are back.

They’re selling “immunity debt.”

We should be skeptical.

Schools and daycares are sending letters home to parents talking about this “immunity debt.” They’re saying that healthy children are getting sicker, even dying, because they weren’t exposed to enough germs over the last two years. Newspapers and TV stations across the country are running with it, proposing it as a “possible reason” for this year’s explosion in pediatric hospitalizations. Meanwhile, major medical organizations have sent a letter to President Biden urging him to declare an emergency over an “alarming surge of pediatric hospitalizations” due to a range of respiratory viruses, including Covid.

A lot of people are drinking the “immunity debt” kool-aid.

After all, Americans have believed for generations that getting sick is “good for you.” We think our immune system behaves like a muscle. We worry that if we’re not giving it a workout, we’ll get weak.

It’s a myth, just like the law of declining virulence.

Here’s why.

[whiterosebrian]

Letter To Democrats

I felt the need to do something besides raising awareness of environmental, indigenous, and socio-economic issues. I’ve decided to compose and then mail multiple printed copies of a letter to multiple politicians across the USA. I did wonder if I should copy-and-paste the letter to social media profiles like I did for the one that I wrote to President Biden. Ultimately, I decided that posting the letter would serve two purposes. First, I wanted to let indigenous activists know that they have another willing accomplice. Second, this could provide a decent template for anyone who also feels a need to write to political leaders and put pressure on them to take much-needed action. Without any further ado…

Greetings,

I am writing a generic letter to send to assorted politicians across the United States. For reasons that I will articulate over the course of this letter, I felt a serious need to address as many members of the American political leadership as possible. I do not intend to call you out personally. If you do take it as a personal callout, please consider why you feel that way.

The reports of wildfires, heat waves, and floods have filled many, many observers with existential terror. Some have even expressed utter despair over whether the world will be inhabitable by any form of life. At times I have been tempted to join the despair, to give up hope of ever leaving a beautiful legacy for future generations. For the sake of all the people of the world, I must fight that temptation. I need to do my part to fight for the future.

There are a large number of activists trying to protect the environment. However, they need help from people who have the power to make really concrete changes. That is why I am writing to you and other Democratic politicians. That does sound very partisan, but the sad fact is that the Republican party is almost a lost cause at this point. I wish to be proven wrong about that. The fact is that it already engaged in brutal obstruction during the Obama administration. A sinister side to the base already started emerging during that time as well. With the rise of Donald Trump, the much of its leadership and nearly all of its electoral base have become increasingly unwilling to offer the kind of compromise needed for a functional democracy.

The Democratic party as a whole has been criticized as very weak in opposing the radicalizing Republican Party. The current President has spoken of a desire for restoring national unity. That desire is certainly laudable in itself when Trump blatantly stoked resentment and division. Again, however, the Republican party and its core supporters have shown a complete unwillingness to work with any opponents in any way. They view their opponents as subversive enemies that need to be crushed underfoot. The Republican party has inched towards neo-fascism at a time when neo-fascism is mainstreaming around the world. The Republican party has also already been beholden to the selfish interests of major corporations for decades. It even seeks to magnify the already dire influence of corporations chiefly responsible for pollution. Its propaganda outlets outright deny pollution and mislead millions of people.

Some Democratic politicians have also been criticized as going along with corporate interests and watering down legislation meant to oppose corporate influence. By now it has become clear that corporate elites do not have the safety of the world and its human and nonhuman denizens in mind. By now it has become clear that they must be reined in for the greater good. The only language that major corporations even comprehend is money. Here I arrive at the first main point of this letter: I urge you to work with other Democratic leaders to divest from major corporations and their executives, especially those most directly responsible for polluting the Earth. I’ve also seen proposals that corporations be forced to contribute to removing as much pollution as possible. Quickening the transition away from fossil fuels is crucial.

However, alternate energy sources are not enough. Switching from gas-powered cars to electric cars is not enough. Building solar or wind farms in place of coal-burning power plants is not enough. Extraction and consumption cause their own serious problems. The problem of environmental degradation has roots that are far too deep and complicated to address here, though I will touch upon one later. Going hand-in-hand with corporate influence are the bad social and urban infrastructures that do not encourage sustainable lifestyles. I barely even know where to begin in this regard. Cities are too often built for cars and not people. Most people have to drive carbon-spewing cars to work at jobs that are not well-suited to their needs in order to pay their bills and feed their families. Too many people are left in poverty or near-poverty, some people are more-or-less isolated in suburbs, and a tiny handful are virtually untouchable in their wealth and privilege. Healthy food is not always accessible, and even when it is, it often has to be shipped very far from the source.

My second main point is this: in addition to transitioning to cleaner energy, the very infrastructure of our society needs to reformed. Local communities need to be lifted up so that they can better care for themselves without the need for distant figures constantly having to provide for them through convoluted supply chains. It’s true that right-wingers speak of “small government” with the unspoken agenda of leaving corporate oligarchs and ultra-conservative clergy to rule over ordinary human beings. Nonetheless, I believe that, at this point, government needs to assist in rebuilding communities so that they can eventually leave denizens to stand on their feet and care for each other. The pandemic, along with the poor responses of many local officials, has shown the need for communities to engage in mutual care.

I will confess that this exhortation is the vaguest one in this letter. I lack in-depth education on such matters. I bring it up in order to further nudge you in a direction that would be far better for the Earth and its people. I can offer one example of what must be done that is slightly clearer: helping communities establish gardens and small-scale farms to better feed themselves.

On a very important side note, this nation needs to divest from the military as well. The largest and most powerful military in history is known to be among the largest polluters on earth. Too many politicians seem to ignore how massive the military already is an insist on subsidizing it at the cost of actually building a peaceful and prosperous society.

I further wish to discuss the need to center indigenous peoples in renewing our society. No, I am no indigenous myself. I simply wish to point to their wisdom. Yes, the sagely magical Indian who is one with Mother Earth is a crude stereotype, and I have no intention of reinforcing it. With that said, I follow a number of indigenous writers, activists, spiritualists, and influencers on social media. I learned about how many indigenous people are attempting to reconnect to previously outlawed and hidden heritages. The stereotype could be rooted in reality.

In most cases, those heritages include animistic spiritualities, in which aspects of the natural world, from plants to animals to waters to stones, are seen as having spirits. Furthermore, these aspects of the natural world are seen as relatives to humans. I should note how some well-meaning white people, wishing to bond with the earth instead of submitting to organized religion, appropriate these indigenous spiritualties and associated practices. Indigenous writers will encourage such people to instead delve into their own pre-Christian heritages, which have similar animistic philosophies, however obscured by time they may be. I have actually been doing just that—though I won’t elaborate because I don’t want to center myself.

You may be asking, what is the relevance said common thread of the spiritualities of indigenous peoples? That animism seems to go hand-in-hand with methods of land care that developed over generations of trial and error, along with the principles behind those methods. With the subjugation and expulsion (and worse) of the land’s original caretakers, though, these practices fell into obscurity. The most dramatic example, perhaps, is the suppression of controlled burnings on the western coastline leading to the wildfires that we have seen in recent years. Indeed, the different lands of different indigenous nations need their own subtly distinct approaches, based on ecosystems, geographies, local histories, and general senses of place. Indigenous activists and figureheads are calling upon governments to heed their words on not only conservation but also regeneration.

One of the main demands that indigenous activists make is for the return of their lands, full sovereignty over them, and the facilitation of cultural revival. Yes, that is a very simple manner of justice and righting a historic wrong. It has become evident that their wisdom is a crucial piece of the puzzle of solving environmental problems as well. Simple “colorblind” or “globalized” liberalism won’t suffice when working for social or environmental justice. Indigenous activists argue that colonialism is at the root of so many of our world’s problems. Many of them even outright state that the “colonial state” in itself is a problem. I can see how colonialism has promoted the rise of an all-devouring capitalism and perpetuated it. The grim historical fact of how the enslavement of Black people and the elimination of indigenous peoples contributed to building this nation remains a grim historical fact.

I myself am figuring out the world and learning many truths, but I am sympathetic to people who have borne the brunt of colonialism. I welcome the humanistic achievements of modernity and utterly oppose fundamentalism and fascism, I assure you, but I’ve come to accept that the modern world is broken. Simple progress won’t heal the world. “Big government” certainly has a role to play in mobilizing the needed social changes, such as what I’ve alluded to above, but the “colonial state” needs to ultimately divest its own power.

I’ll try to summarize my points now. Major corporations and economic elites need to be drastically reined in and disempowered (along with the military). The transition to renewable energies needs to be quickened—but also needs to be accompanied by drastic changes to infrastructures and supply chains so as to result in less extraction and consumption. Localized communities need to be empowered so they can better care for themselves without much out faraway aid. Indigenous peoples need to be given their lands back, be elevated to leadership roles in caring for and regenerating said lands, and be empowered so they can rebuild their cultures. Settlers should learn from them as well. In the end, the state and the socio-economic system that it has upheld need to recede—not for billionaires or grand inquisitors or dictators, but for ordinary people and the earth. In truth, humans are meant to be a part of nature, and the generational challenge is for humanity to reconcile with the rest of nature.

This all may sound idealistic or radical. This past summer has shown us that we shouldn’t settle for anything less than radical social change. This nation, which has been a major world power for over a century, needs to be radically reimagined. This all may sound vague as well. I have little education in politics and governance apart from what I’ve tried to learn for myself across the internet. That is all the more reason for people like you—people with more real-world power than I—to push along radical social change. This letter is meant to raise awareness of your duty as a leader. A leader is meant to be a guide, not a dominator. There’s a chance that you could be recorded in history as a leader who did what was necessary to make the world’s healing and renewal possible.

Thank you.

You may call me Brian Solomon Whiterose.

[shananigans402]

1-65 will do, please. Thanks fuck face :)

I knew exactly who this was and I was so tempted to not reply, but your punishment is having to read through all my answers and remember them forever or you fail the friend test. To everyone else, please do not click unless you want to be very bored, my answers are not interesting lol

1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you? Nope

2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you? Assuming 5 is the most, 1. Maybe 2. 

3. The person you would never want to meet? The person who sent me this (jk I’m excited for our eventual meet up where we hit up a strip club first thing 🙏)

4. What is your favorite word? I answered with ‘conniption’ the other day and still have not found a word I like more.

5. If you were a type of tree, what would you be? Already answered this, fruit tree! I also like palm trees, maple trees, and willow trees. I know that’s not the question, I’m just saying random shit now.

6. When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought? It took me a long while to remember where I was this morning. I honestly don’t remember, I was rushing to get ready for an early morning meeting.

7. What shirt are you wearing? My Orlando Strong shirt 

8. What do you label yourself as? Lesbian

9. Bright room or dark room? Bright room

10. What were you doing at midnight last night? Sleeping? Possibly checking on a feverish little beeb who was going through it with her second dose of the vaccine.

11. Favorite age you’ve been so far? No idea. I like various ages for different reasons, but this age so far is not bad. 

12. Who told you they loved you last? Probably my sister 🤷‍♀️

13. Your worst enemy? The person who sent this ask.

14. What is your current desktop picture? The apple pic of Catalina island that changes based on time of day (yes it’s the default, don’t judge me)

15. Do you like someone? Lol yeah I hope so 😂

16. The last song you listened to? Pretty Girl by Hayley Kiyoko 

17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up? Definitely @raginage

18. Who would you really like to just punch in the face? I feel like I can only attack Raginage so many times. Can I pick a fictional character? This week I was real mad at Dave in The Darkness. BaBe!​

19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do? Lol no one, you’re talking to a person who feels very uncomfortable with anyone doing anything nice for them.

20. What is your best physical attribute? (showing said attribute is optional) Not this again. Last time I said eyes? Still no pics, sorry

21. If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do? What would I look like? Do I get to design myself like a sim? I honestly don’t know what I’d do because I doubt the world needs another clueless white man walking around, so maybe just stay at home. 

22. Do you have a secret talent? If yes, what is it? Nope. And my last answer to this was awful. I do think I have a fantastic ability to annoy my friends but in a way that’s just amusing/endearing enough to make them still want to talk to me 😌

23. What is one unique thing you’re afraid of? Unique? Uhm well my two big fears are confined spaces and deep water so a submarine is like my worst nightmare.

24. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal. Oh this is going to sound so odd. To be clear, I’ve had better sandwiches, but my go-to is provolone, turkey, roast beef, and spicy brown mustard or whole grain mustard. Please don’t judge me.

25. You just found $100! How are you going to spend it? Travel budget for future trips to visit my buds and get into trouble and eat food. I know $100 won’t go far, but it’s something.

26. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go? Well, after my last answer I want to visit my friends! But there are too many people to visit and I only have one ticket. So change of plans. I’m going on a solo trip to Greece. Or Argentina. Or Iceland. Or Bali. Damn, I’m indecisive. 

27. An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. “Be brand-specific” it says. Man! What are you gonna say about that? Even if you don’t drink booze there’s something you can figure out… so what’s it gonna be? Rabble red blend. Just a solid red wine. Also because @viola-lloyds stole my answer the other day (Juneshine; to be fair I asked her this question but whatever) and I don’t want to copy her.

28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place? Oh I answered this one, something about respecting others. Yeah, a nice rule like that. Want to establish some healthy communication on this island.

29. What is your favorite expletive? It’s still fuck

30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno? But what about my PLANTS. Can they count as loved ones? Probably my laptop, I know that’s lame but like...I have a lot of stuff on here. Or the collection of cards I have that my granddad drew little drawings in, I want to get them all framed.

31. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be? To be honest, I don’t know if I’d change big life events in case it altered the trajectory of where I ended up. So idk maybe the ending of Bly, let’s give those lesbians have a happy ending!

32. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool shit… you can move to anywhere else in the world! Italy! But wait, let’s get back to this sleeping with celebrities and super-powers bit...

33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back? Oh that’s a really tough question. I always wanted to meet my great-grandma Olga because she seemed like a really awesome lady. 

34. What was your last dream about? I can’t remember, this is bothering me because I wish I could! I’m sorry. My gf recently had a dream where I kissed a dude right in front of her. It made us both very uncomfy lol

35. Are you a good….[insert anything you’d like here]? I hate this question because I can only think of one thing.

36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital? For surgery, yeah

37. Have you ever built a snowman? But of course!

38. What is the color of your socks? Not wearing any? I was wearing blue ones earlier. Jfc my answers are so boring.

39. What type of music do you like? Lots! I tend to listen to indie, classic rock, and some pop

40. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets? Sunsets!

41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor? Chocolate or a variant (chocolate peanut butter, chocolate caramel)

42. What football team do you support? (I will answer in terms of American football as well as soccer) LA Rams or Seattle Seahawks. I know they’re in the same division. It’s tough. (Please don’t ask me why these teams)

43. Do you have any scars? Yep, mostly from burning myself on ovens. I simply get too excited for my food.

44. What do you want to be when you graduate? I...have graduated? 

45. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Well bestie recently said I have “lesbian hands” and I think that’s code for man hands so maybe that hahaha

46. Are you reliable? I try to be!

47. If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be? How many more times will I watch The Darkness before I learn my lesson? (Related: When does other bestie finally admit to her fetish?)

48. Do you hold grudges? Not typically, no

49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create? A dog and an otter? Can we domesticate otters? No, a horse and a large bird, create a pegasus and then free travel.

50. What is the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had? Oh god. I don’t even know where to start today tbh. Damie and pokemon and cosycon and looming and feet and [redacted] and developing apps for VP. So many fantastic conversations. 

In real life, probably the time I was at a laundromat in Italy and this guy wandered in with a beer, sat next to me and my male roommate, assumed we were a couple, and proceeded to give us bizarre life advice. I wish I could remember more of it, but it was so odd.

51. Are you a good liar? Hmm I’m okay at it I think, that is, I can convince people I’m serious when I’m actually joking. But I don’t like actually lying if it’s not just teasing someone. 

52. How long could you go without talking? Probably a few days if I had to.

53. What has been you worst haircut/style? The haircut I got before studying abroad! It was too short and I was so sad.

54. Have you ever baked your own cake? For a birthday? No. For fun? Absolutely.

55. Can you do any accents other than your own? Not well, no

56. What do you like on your toast? Butter and/or honey and/or jam

57. What is the last thing you drew a picture of? My beautiful depiction of a scene of chapter one of Private Dancer. 

58. What would be you dream car? An electric car of some sort. I don’t know enough about cars tbh

59. Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain. Nope but sometimes I’ll play music and dance and maybe softly sing.

60. Do you believe in aliens? Yep! Definitely 

61. Do you often read your horoscope? Almost never unless someone sends it to me.

62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet? Already answered, A

63. Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons? Dinosaurs! 🦕

64. What do you think about babies? What do I think about them? They’re pretty cool. Just tiny little humans. 

65. Freebie! Ask anything interesting you can think of. I was very nice and let you correct your mistake and submit one after the fact:

In your opinion what is the best thing you can cook, like your speciality? My favorite thing to make is pasta, I started making my own sauce and I’d love to make pasta from scratch sometime.

[justgottafinishthischapter]

Worldbuilding Tips: The Five Visitors

You’ve done it. You’ve come up with an idea for your fantasy world, but right now it’s mostly curb appeal and decorations without much else. So, you have the skin and flavor of your fictional world, but what if you’re having a bit of trouble coming up with the meat needed to make your world juicy and delicious? Well, I have a little game that can help flesh out your world.

Imagine a ship or whatever other kind of vehicle arriving on the shores or outskirts of your fantasy land and from that vehicle emerges 5 people from our own mundane world: a historian, an economist, an anthropologist, a diplomat, and a cartographer. There are some other visitors, but these are going to be the most universally beneficial.

The Historian:

This person is going to be interested in the backstory of your world. They don’t need to know every minuscule detail (though they wouldn’t turn that much information down) and just a general overview would be much obliged. Many fantasy worlds such as Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Martin’s Westeros are far more rich and interesting due to the amount of effort put into crafting their world’s histories. If you’re stumped, look to real world history for inspiration. It doesn’t even need to come from the middle ages so long as it works for your story. You should be able to answer questions like: How long has the dominant civilization been around? What are the biggest defining moments in your world’s history? What things are common knowledge that every child is expected to learn (such as George Washington being the first president of the USA) and which stuff is known more by historians and social studies teachers? And as you’re discussing the rest of the visitors, think back on how the answers you give would impact the historical aspect.

The Economist:

You don’t have to know the exact cost of every single thing in your world, but have a good guess. Be able to at least have a scale of price. If someone can buy a loaf of bread for 13 of your world’s currency, but a house costs 17, that would mean that either that bread is very expensive, that house is very cheap, or each unit of your currency is equal to a lot of real world money. Whatever you use to refer to your currency, keep not only price scaling in mind, but economics. If you have a port city, there’s going to be a lot of merchants in that area. The first primary export you’re likely to see in such a port town would be seafood, but also keep in mind the things that are closet to that port, as well as the climate. Greece for instance is a very rocky and mountainous country, so while they can grow crops, they would not have been any match for medieval French Aquitaine, the crown jewel of medieval farming territory. It’s also worth remembering that food in the middle ages was far more valuable than it is today. There was an old saying that wheat is worth its weight in gold. It was southern France’s bountiful soil that caused it to become one of the richest and most coveted territories in medieval Europe.  So, keep in mind where resources would come from and where they would need to go, as well as trade that would be useful. A seaside farming town might not have any good access to raw minerals, while a city in the frozen mountainous north might not be able to grow crops, but are bountiful in minerals. The correlation of supply and demand now opens a vital trade route between them. This becomes more complex when the topic of war comes into play. The kingdom that supplies your crops and food is at war with your oldest ally. Now there’s a dilemma between having enough food to feed your people, or betraying the trust of a long time friend. Now your world building can be used as a part of your drama and narrative tension. The economy also impacts culture. What is considered a display of wealth, or is a common status symbol? What are the living conditions of the poor, the working class, the rich, and the aristocrats? Is there upward mobility? In the middle ages, you were what you were for the most part, especially serfs: peasants tied to their land. It was illegal to leave your territory, but there was a saying in the middle ages that “city air makes you free” that once a serf made it to a city, they’d be free of the life they’ve escaped.

The Anthropologist:

Every society has a culture. The way they act, think, dress, believe, talk. It’s all impacted by culture. Beliefs tend to be tied either to what has come before, or based on the world as observed. While many modern fantasy pantheons are based on ancient Greece, it’s not the only model to live by. In a loose interpretation, religion in it’s earliest stages was a rudimentary science used to explain why things happened. A culture that developed along rivers, sea coasts, and other popular trade routes are far more likely to be diverse melting pots due to the frequent traffic of people coming and going, and the common sight of foreigners choosing to set down roots. Meanwhile, a more out of the way and isolated culture is far less likely to have widespread cultural diversity. Tying back into history, a country that has experienced a number of successful wars may tend to think of themselves as invincible, or may try to police the issues of other countries, assuming they’re always on the right side, or that they can’t be defeated. The same culture may ask a high price of any other culture that asks them for militaristic support. Ask what things your people value, be they material or abstract ideals. However, try to refrain from creating a Planet of Hats, a trope often seen in Star Trek and similar Sci-Fi shows and even some Fantasy stories where everyone of a single race all have mostly the same skills, interests, personalities, and roles in the global culture. This is also the time to start thinking about myths, legends, folk heroes, and historical people and events worth celebrating, as this may be when you start to craft holidays or celebrations. This could also lead into discussing religion, and the gods or lack there of that might be celebrated by your culture. How does your society reflect itself in art, music, literature, dance. Does the way someone dresses tell you something about their place in society? Some taboos come from simple logic. The reason it’s frowned upon to eat a cow in India is the same reason it’s immoral to eat horse in western culture. Both are beast of burden livestock worth a lot more alive than dead. Cows produce milk, a source of nutrients and health. Horses are strong and were used in just about everything from plowing fields to pulling entire families or communities a great distance. Horses even became status symbols, as even in modern culture, owning a horse or pony is still considered to be (largely) a snobby rich person thing. Understanding not only what your people believe, but even just a vague idea why they would believe it is a vital aspect.

The Diplomat:

As this landing party is your fantasy world’s first contact with our own reality. How would they react to the newcomers? If there’s more than one society in your world, how would each society, country, kingdom, race, etc. react to something completely foreign? Would they try to forge an alliance? Open trade negotiations? Declare war? Prepare a feast? How would they feel about the way we dress? act? talk? How would they react to different levels of progression in technology? Could an unbiased third party from our world help two feuding sides come to peace with one another? How would they feel about knowing of a world beyond their own? Are there actions or behaviors acceptable in our own society that are considered offensive to them?

The Cartographer:

Although it’s not necessary that all fantasy worlds have a fully designed map, it is a good idea to have at least a rough idea of where things are in relation to one another. This can tell you about climate, resources, wildlife, natural borders, natural disasters, food chains, and more. It’s worth at least taking a crash course in understanding how geographical biomes tend to be laid out in order to make your world feel more real. Some authors claim that a world map is the single most important feature, others say it’s not that important. Frankly, trust your gut based on the kind of world you have. You may need a map, you may not. It really depends on the size and scope of your world. For instance, with Disney’s

Zootopia

, the entire world doesn’t matter. The audience doesn’t need to know where in the world Zootopia is, or what climate or biome it’s in. Zootopia itself is the world being built, and the separate districts and biomes of the city explain the world that’s being focused on.

Secondary Visitors:

They may still be important to your world, but are less likely to be universally helpful to all people.

Biologist: if your world has creatures beyond those found in our real world, it may be worth exploring how their bodies work on a more scientific level in order to give more realistic weight to their supernatural abilities.

Linguist/Translator: If you feel compelled to come up with a language no matter how basic or complex, it may be worth while to consider the problems with communication. this may also extend to unique idioms, colloquialisms, and slang native to your fantasy world.

Teacher/Scholar: Regardless of whether or not there is a formal education system in place in your world, a teacher may be interested in how knowledge is passed down, and what information the culture might have that would be unknown to people of our world. Whether that’s how to keep a wild animal from charging you, to knowing how to forge a mineral that exists only in your world, being able to readily answer questions is generally considered to be a good thing.

Healer: There may be healing spells in your world, there may not, but most fantasy stories tend to involve either action or adventure, both of which tend to cause fights. And since fights tend to lead to injuries, it’s important to know what can and cannot be treated, and how readily available these healing abilities are to the public.

[things2mustdo]

Patriarchy has been extremely successful, despite its recent vilification. Most cultures worldwide are patriarchal – to find examples of successful matriarchal societies you either have to turn to ancient history, remote outskirts of the world or feminist fiction. However, this hasn’t stopped the feminist collective from queefing out books and even a hashtag hailing the end of patriarchy in a textbook example of incestuous amplification.

What patriarchy, after its apparent downfall, will be replaced with remains to be seen. Hamsterizations aside, there is surprisingly little data available about what life would be like in a society made up of only men or only women. An enterprising social scientist might want to perform an experiment where groups of men and groups of women are left to their own devices, having to work together to survive against the elements and build a civilization from scratch. However, this scientist would have a very hard time convincing ethical review boards that the inevitable suffering of his participants would weight up against the value of the data.

Luckily, reality television is not bound by ethical constraints and once in a while, in its never ending quest for viewer ratings, reality TV accidentally performs a very interesting experiment that social scientists would never be allowed to do.

Quite a few years ago, I had the pleasure of watching the Dutch version of Survivor (Expeditie Robinson) with my feminist roommate. That particular season would have two islands, one populated by men and one populated by women. My roommate had been promoting that particular series to me and the other students in the house for weeks because it would show us, according to her, what a society run by women – free from the evils of patriarchy – would be like.

And it did. Oh it did.

Here is what happened: initially both groups were dropped on their respective islands, given some supplies to get started and left to fend for themselves. In both groups there was some initial squabbling as people tried to figure out a local hierarchy. The men pretty much did whatever they felt was necessary – there was no leader giving orders. Men who felt like hunting, foraging or fishing did so. Another guy decided he was fed up with sitting on sand and started making benches. Others built a hut that gradually grew and evolved. Another guy cooked every night. Within days a neat little civilization was thriving, each day being slightly more prosperous than the previous one.

The women settled into a routine as well. The hung up a clothesline to dry their towels, then proceeded to sunbathe and squabble. Because unlike men, women were unable to do anything without consensus of the whole group. And because it was a group of at least a dozen women, consensus was never reached. During the next few episodes, the women ate all their initial supplies, got drenched by tropical storms several times, were eaten alive by sand fleas and were generally miserable. The men on the other hand, were quite content. There were disagreements of course, but they were generally resolved.

Eventually, the people running the program decided something had to change. In order to help the women out, three men would be selected to go to their island. In return, three women would take their place at the men’s island. The look on my feminist roommates face during this episode was priceless.

Initially, the three men selected for the women’s island were ecstatic, for obvious reason. But then they arrived at the island and were greeted by the women.

‘Where is your hut?’, they asked.

‘We have no hut’

‘Where are your supplies?’ they asked, dismayed

‘We ate all the rice’

And so on. The three men ended up working like dogs, using all the skills developed by trial and error in their first few weeks – building a hut, fish, trying to get the women to forage. The women continued to bitch and sunbathe. The three women who were sent to the men’s island were delighted – food, shelter and plenty of male attention was freely available. They too continued to sunbathe.

And that my friends, is what patriarchy is. My former roommate, unsurprisingly, is no longer a feminist.

Now this might all be a fluke, a white raven, an exceptional case not representative of society as whole. But that particular season of Dutch Survivor is not unique. CBS broadcast several Survivor seasons in the US, where men and women started off in separate groups. In most cases (the Amazon and One World), the result was the same. The men quickly got their act together, getting access to food, fire and shelter while the women spent a lot of time and energy on petty little squabbles, eating their meager supplies, getting drenched in storms and generally being pathetic. The opposite situation, where men didn’t get their act together while women quickly built a functional micro society, has not yet been observed outside of feminist fiction, and it probably never will.

https://www.returnofkings.com/27852/why-patriarchy-is-the-greatest-social-system-ever-created“

One of feminism’s irritating reflexes is its fashionable disdain for “patriarchal society,” to which nothing good is ever attributed. But it is patriarchal society that has freed me as a woman. It is capitalism that has given me the leisure to sit at this desk writing this book. Let us stop being small-minded about men… If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts.” – Camille Paglia, lesbian feminist, in Sexual Personae

In the feminist creation myth, patriarchy is original sin. It is the Lucifer from which all evils flow. Without patriarchy, we would all live in a genderless role-less feminist garden of Eden.However, just as the name Lucifer actually means light-bringer, patriarchy is actually an enlightening influence which has brought humanity out of the mud into civilization. Feminism only exists in the shadow of the massive abundance produced by patriarchy. Patriarchy is not the enemy. Patriarchy is the greatest social system ever created.

The Myth of Patriarchy

Feminists ascribe all social ills to patriarchy. Like a medieval inquisitor looking for evidence of the devil, patriarchy’s influence is supposedly all around us – our media, our schools, and even our most intimate relationships. Patriarchy is responsible for domestic violence, lost promotions, mean comments on twitter – even women’s own feeling about themselves.

Anyone who doesn’t subscribe to feminist dogma is believed to be possessed by the influence of patriarchy and in need of exorcism by an ordained Priest of the Cathedral of gender studies theory. They are forced to renounce their views, or face excommunication from the public sphere. In more honest times, the dominant religion simply called freethinkers “heretics” and burned them at the stake.

Origins Of Patriarchy

In reality, there is nothing so mysterious about patriarchy. Patriarchy is a division of social roles based in natural biological gender differences.

Males and females have very obvious self-evident biological differences. Women can have babies. Men cannot. Women’s bodies are designed for nurturing, with wombs, breasts, and hormonal cycles. During pregnancy, women are unable to physically exert themselves. Men’s bodies are designed for physical exertion, and as a whole, physically stronger.

Imagine you are part of a small tribe in a survival situation. Conquest, war, famine, death – any of the four horsemen could strike at any moment. How would you divide social roles?

As Jack Donovan states in The Way of Men:

Because your group is struggling to survive, every choice matters. If you give the wrong person the wrong job, that person could die, you could die, another person could die, or you could all die. Because of the differences between the sexes, the best person for jobs that involve exploring, hunting, fighting, building, or defending is usually going to be male. This is not some arbitrary cultural prejudice; it is the kind of vital strategic determination you need to keep your group alive.

In other words, traditional roles are the basis of our survival as a species.

The Sacrifice Of Men

In patriarchy, men sacrifice their energy, their time, and sometimes even their lives for the betterment of women and children, and women give themselves to nurturing children and families.

Feminists define patriarchy as a system of dominance, in which men oppress women. This redefines men’s sacrifice as an act of control, rather than love. Many men are perfectly happy to have sex with women without offering any protection or value to the woman or her resulting children. It is an act of love that men willingly give up their freedom in order to provide for women, and their young.

Patriarchy is about love. It is about the love of human beings in families, tribes, and small communities working interdependently for the benefit of one another.

Feminism Was Created By Capitalism

Feminism in it’s modern form began in the last hundred years, when industrialization moved our economic survival from requiring hard labor to requiring skilled labor. Work used to require hours of physical lifting, now it requires sitting at a desk. This transition made it possible for even the weakest women to work.

Employees are much easier to manage as interchangeable cogs than as gendered individuals with unique needs. In fact, convincing women to work doubles the size of the work force, allowing employers to half everyone’s wages. It’s simple supply and demand. As the book Revolution From Above chronicles, early feminist movements – even Marxist feminists – were bankrolled by major capitalists in order to increase the workforce and lower wages.

Feminism is a product of capitalism. The “you can have it all” message is an attempt by corporations to swindle women out of their biological needs. If you’re a feminist, you’re a capitalist, because you’ve make work a greater priority than community, children, or love.

In families, each member is irreplaceable, but in a company everyone is replaceable. In patriarchy, women toiled for one man who loved her and the children he gave her. In capitalism, women work for many men completely indifferent to her and willing to disposes of her the moment cheaper labor appears.

Feminism Commodifies Relationships

In patriarchy, selfish relationship impulses were restrained. In capitalism, they are encouraged. Each member of a tribe of community works for the benefit of those around him, but in capitalism men and women are independent agents, with no loyalty or duty to anyone else.

Roles that were traditionally played by family are now outsourced. Group homes for the elderly, day care for the children. Even mentors and friends can be bought in the form of therapists and life coaches.

This system destroys intimate relationships. It selfishly benefits a woman to bear the children of strong lone alpha’s rather than the man providing for her. It selfishly benefits a man to impregnate every available fertile woman with no intention of further contact. Alpha fucks, beta bucks.

Feminism has created a war between the sexes with each side trying to maximize their profits in the sexual marketplace while spending as little as possible. We’re all little atomized corporations united only by the laws of bio-mechanics.

Men Have Lost Reason To Work

This new dynamic has freed men from work. In his new book Bachelor Pad Economics, Aaron Clarey advocates a minimalist approach to money – buy only what your need and using your time for your benefit rather than a corporation’s. This approach is already being taken as men drop out of the system, earn less than women, and avoid higher eduction.

The reason men worked hard was to provide for their families. Men didn’t work long hours out of self-interest. They did so out of love. Most men can subsist on very little. It’s been said that civilization was created to impress the opposite gender. Without reward, there is no reason to work. No carrot, no jump.

As a society, we’ve reached a point where technology has eliminated the need for everyone to work. Just as capitalism freed women from their natural role, it’s freed men from theirs. Masculinity has been reduced to a fashion statement.

Return To The Natural Order

While we understand that animals exists in natural groups – a herd, a flock, a pack – we forget that man is an animal too. Man’s natural group is the tribe. Humans are mammals. We learn through relationships, rather than instinct.

Children require love, attachment, and stability that can only be found in emotional bonds with present adults. They are not interchangeable cogs. You can’t buy a mother’s love or a father’s wisdom. Love cannot be outsourced. Authentic love is only possible within patriarchal community.

To a company, non-working children are a nuisance. The epidemic of single motherhood, plummeting birthrates, and mental illness is due to the rejection of traditional roles. If society wants healthy happy children and loving stable communities, it must embrace the lost values of patriarchy.

In the early tribes, humans were entirely dependent on one another. Now they are independent and unsatisfied. Returning to traditional roles means living interdependently, and align with the natural order not because we have to, but because we choose to. We could exist alone, but we are fulfilled together.

Of course, feminists will call this oppressive. They want you to be free – free from community, free from belonging, free from love. A mass of apes fighting over the highest value mate behind a gilded cage.

[tres-fidelis]

Disclosure - Part 1

Part 2

8 months. 

No other contact since. Just one small note and a cursed token. Both items resided in her office, stowed inside one of her desk drawers and buried underneath office supplies. There’s perks to keeping something so dangerous and troubling hidden away. She could forget it’s ever there. Anyone could if you busy yourself enough with other work. 

Even so, Jayden knew it. She knew for a damn fact keeping it out of sight, attempting to keep it out of mind, wouldn’t relieve anything. It’s still a problem. A problem put aside until someone procrastinated enough for it to evolve into something more dangerous. 

No one must know...no one can know about this…

Almost a year later Jayden kept this secret out of the public and private eye. Shaska, her mom, Axl, she sealed her lips even to them. Their own worries and troubles mattered more than her own state of mind. Why burden them more with this trouble when she’s experienced plenty of it already? Why should anyone know when it’s “family matters?”

“...why…”

The heavy coin reflected a bright shine from the afternoon sun. A precious item to anyone whose curious eyes caught a glimpse of its sheen, but an emblem of destruction for those who knew its origin. 

ES. 

The Emerald Spears. 

A long since “dead” terrorist organization born from the wrath and hatred of all things robotic. Jayden first heard about their existence in some old texts recovered by the museum’s archeology team. Apparently before the Cataclysm, many humans loathed the existence of AI robots and their rapid progression in society. They saw them as a threat and began preaching humanity’s downfall at the hands of this AI intelligence. Robots grew, they evolved in their own way, they’d outsmart their human creators, and bring about a genocide. A beaten, burned document recounted an attack from the Spears at a robotics expo long ago, however there were no recorded names on such. The Cataclysm seemed effective in wiping out most of their information including other reported terrorist attacks, several listed names and company contributors, and other criminal records. 

Yet here in 21XX…

Not much is known of their resurgence. Locals say they spotted hooded figures breaking into reploid repair shops, criminals under guise holding reploid centers hostage in exchange for police information, and of course influencing protesters in public areas. In most cases the suspect never admitted or even spoke of the Spears’ guidance in their plan. There’s some who don’t even believe the Spears are working from behind the curtains. Some are just flat out saying they all died off with the Cataclysm.

‘It’s just the nature of humans to fear something greater and more powerful than themselves. Something that can easily control their free will or restrict their freedom? Of course humans had a reason to be afraid, to be terrified of mechanical beings built to outlast them.’ 

Jayden knew…

No matter what others believed. If they thought the Spears couldn’t exist in this day and age, Jayden knew it all. 

She saw it. 

She saw from first-hand experience. The absolute terror of what these people could undertake. Not just from the encounters as a news reporter, civilian meetings with a potential member in her presence, or even during her own participation in pro-reploid civilian protests. It traced back to her own beginning. The start of her own life.

Jayden remembered the fights, verbal abuse, and control of her own ‘father figure’ since she was a little girl. Restrictions on anything reploid related suffocated her and her own mother. Neither could speak a word about their work or school life if it involved ‘those hunks of junk.’ Home wasn’t home for them. Her mom found quiet solace in the museum or, in Jayden’s case, a small cafe not too far from her home. Most of her memories from middle school centered around the friendly encounters inside the cafe. A young girl’s face glued to the TV watching the news and the staff treating her to some pastries after her tests. Jayden cherished the safe space, and of course the food. 

The ‘real home’ for Jayden was the Abel City Museum. Staff treated her like she was their own daughter. At that point, they could’ve used her as a mascot for the museum just to draw in more business. Everyone loved seeing the girl with the two different eyes greet them with an award winning smile. Jayden equally loved welcoming the guests, giving them their tickets, and wishing them well through their adventure in the museum. Sometimes she managed everything all on her own! Some staff members were baffled seeing a nine-year-old kid handle money so accurately. Then again, they too saw the delight in something so innocent. Jayden grew to be one of the main attractions in the museum aside from the “real” ones. 

The end of the day brought on the dreaded reality she and her mom embraced. No talk of mom’s work and of course no talk of any kind of news. Especially if stories centered around the Hunters. Dinner always led to extreme outbursts about ‘father’s’ own work day, snide comments about her mother’s workplace, and Jayden having to ‘man up’ against the bullies at her school.

‘No one else will fight for you! You never know when one of those walking scrap metal corpses will get the jump on you. Then you’re dead! You’re gone! It’s about self defense! You have to be stronger than them!’ 

It wasn’t self-defense. It was pure torture.

Punch after punch, kick after kick. Jayden couldn't keep track of how many new bruises appeared after each ‘training’ session with her father. Her mother had to purchase new bandages almost every week just for her own daughter. Of course mom brought up this horrible treatment with her father but it was met with a slap across the face and an derogatory, loud opinion. The only solace her mom could give was tending the new wounds and giving warm comfort. 

All for what? Getting her stronger for an eventual, yet highly unlikely reploid takeover? Just so she could fight against them?

........What good did that do her?.

.............................What good did it do to her now...

...........................................

................................................!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“..............................................miss lady?” 

“!!!”

A young girl around the age of 12 stood in front of Jayden. Short straight brown hair, brilliant blue eyes, and freckled skin. A small flower hair clip swayed by a few strands of hair holding on for its dear life. The child perked up soon as Jayden caught her attention. “Oh! Sorry...uh...were you asking for me?” 

“Mmhm! You’re the one who’s on the TV right? The lady with the colored eyes, reporting on the Hunters yeah?” 

Oh, right…

Just...put that eyes comment off to the side…

“That’s right. I’m the one you see on the holocasts. I’m...guessing you’ve seen my broadcasts before?”

“Yeah! Mom and Dad always put the news on when they come home from work. Say they enjoy the stories and other stuff they hear from you. Never really watched news much until you came on. They say they like your writing and how you...present yourself? I don’t know, I just like hearing you talk and seeing you talk with the Hunters!” 

“Oh…” An admirer. She’d gotten used to some fan mail coming to the office and the brief encounters with other citizens in her work travels. It’s not uncommon to be recognized out in the public here and there, but this kid had some guts coming straight up to her. Did she want an autograph? 

“Well it’s very nice of you to come up and tell me this. It affirms I’m doing my job right.” Jayden smiled pleasantly making the girl share the same sentiment. 

“I wanted to ask. Actually...if...if you get scared out there. When there’s bad things going on, you’re there with the hunters. Isn’t it scary when you’re so close to those bad Mavericks?” 

What a brave question. Melancholic too. She had to be in middle school yet she’s already recognized the threats. Of course everyone, at least hopefully everyone at this point, knew the difference between those kinds of threats and the ones who fought them. 

A deep breath and a warm hand sat on the girl’s shoulder. 

“It is. It’s very scary when I have to report in those areas. However, I don’t do it just because it’s my job, or because I’m told to do it. I do it so I can keep the people informed, so people are safe and so no one else gets hurt. In a way, I’m...almost like a human version of a Hunter. I don’t necessarily keep the people physically safe, but...I do my best for Abel City to know what’s going on. So no one’s hidden in the dark, so no one is lied to about current events, and...hopefully to make people smile too. Just like you!”

“Heehee~” The small girl bounced in place. “Thank you miss reporter!” Someone called across the street catching both of their attention. A taller boy, broad shoulders, and much older than the little girl. 

“Hailey! I’ve been looking for you! Come on, we have to get going!” 

“Okay bro!” One last turn, one last big smile and thank you, then off she ran straight into her brother’s leg. A little wave from her and soon they melded into the evening word crowd. Such a pleasant exchange...

Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep!

A small alarm beeped on Jayden’s watch. Right, she promised her mom she’d be home for dinner tonight. A home cooked meal waiting for her, as soon as she stepped into the door. Anyone working the kinds of shifts she undertook would take this as a special treat, yet Jayden couldn’t feel any warmth or longing excitement. Tonight would be the night. She’d come clean about the note and the…

Right...the Spears.

....was this really the right time? Her mother already had too much on her plate considering her work at the museum. It’d been months since she received the threat so...maybe they just wanted to scare her. That’s all. But...in another way she had a right to know. After everything she did for Jayden though...all that heartache, pain, suffering...after all the troubles of her own life…

...does she really deserve more heartbreak?

The crunched note slipped out of her inside jacket pocket. 

‘...little canary…’

“I’m going to be late…” 

A deep breath in then pushed out. This exhaled some of the weighted stress out of her system. The reporter rose off the bench fixing the folds in her jacket. No bike ride tonight. She’d take it easy and walk back to the apartment complex. A calm, steady pace at that. There wasn’t any need to rush home when her mother already expected a late start.

[alohaexpeditions]

Eco Tourism and Responsible Travel

Eco Tourism and Responsible Travel Aloha Expeditions is highly conscious of the necessity to protect nature and to make sure that the local community benefits from tourism as well. Don't forget to read our inspirational ecotourism travel blog Above all, we want to convey this to our guests. We support and practice Ecotourism with the intent to conserve the balance of this region for future generations, without denying the joy of the unexpected. Preparation allows us to fashion journeys in a harmonious and purposeful manner. Our passion for travel goes beyond the yearning for discovery - Ours is a reasoned, tried and tested approach to the enjoyment of a truly amazing continent...! According to The International Ecotourism Society, ecotourism is, ‘Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people’ (TIES, 1990). Ecotourism Australia defines the term as ‘Ecologically sustainable tourism with a primary focus on experiencing natural areas that fosters environmental and cultural understanding, appreciation and conservation’. At Aloha Expeditions, we know Ecotourism as ‘the involvement of tourists in environmental conservation activities directly linked to addressing human development needs, and promotes equitable sharing of benefits accrued from tourism with local communities while supporting their nature conservation values’. So what really is Ecotourism? It is actually all of the above. The underlying words are ‘responsible tourism’ and ‘local cultures’. It brings together conservation, communities and tourism. Ecotourism is NOT a type of tourism like other types of tourism e.g. Adventure, beach, culture-based, wildlife, sports, scenic, specialized etc. • Not a comparison or alternative to mass tourism • Not an exclusive way of doing tourism BUT … a tourism business approach or strategy for achieving the goals of sustainable development. Hence, ecotourism principles are applicable to all types of tourism and tourism products Models of Ecotourism: • Conservancies (nature, wildlife, shrines) • Tourism enterprises (lodges, camps, treks, etc) • Tourism sector-based Corporate Social • Responsibility (CSR) • Travellers’ philanthropy • Tourism supply chain management • Tourism investment – Private-Public Partnerships • Direct capacity-building community development Programs Principles governing ecotourism: 1. Encourage travel to natural areas 2. Minimize impact of tourism activities on natural attractions 3. Recognize and build awareness about local conservation values and their importance to society 4. Provide direct benefits and empowerment for local people at destinations without retrogression on environmental, cultural or local living standards. 5. Respect local people, their customs and culture 6. Support sustainable development of local economies through direct involvement and participatory decision-making. Ecotourism Kenya plays a vital role in promoting ecotourism in Kenya. Ecotourism,Green Tourism,Responsible Tourism u0026amp; Sutainable Travel is in our DNA and is our First,Second,Third u0026amp; only priority. While on holiday Take Nothing but PICTURES,Leave Nothing but FOOTPRINTS, Kill Nothing but TIME and always strive to leave the destination and local communities better than you found them. At Aloha Expeditions, we know Ecotourism as ‘the involvement of tourists in environmental conservation activities directly linked to addressing human development needs, and promotes equitable sharing of benefits accrued from tourism with local communities while supporting their nature conservation values’. At Aloha Expeditions we know you’ve got things you’d love to do, places you’d love to see, cultures you’d love to jump into and adventures to experience and remember forever. We will do all we can to promote ecotourism u0026amp; sustainable travel Reduce the consumption of primary raw materials (including fossil fuels, water and energy). We stress the importance of switching off all electrical lights and equipment. Encourage sustainable practices by staff, travel partners such as hotels and airlines and our clients. Encourage and demonstrate sustainable approaches to the built environment in our refurbishment and maintenance projects. Minimize waste production and divert it from landfill, therefore supporting the reuse, recycling and recovery plan. Consider sustainability in the procurement of goods and services, as well as encourage bulk buying. Prevent pollution and environment damage where possible, and advocate for garbage separation. Work with conservation organisations that support environmental, community and wildlife protection. Advocate strongly for green commuting, telecommuting, carpooling, taking mass transit and human-powered commuting. We advocate for the use of green materials such as biodegradable soaps. Encourage travel to natural areas Minimize impact of tourism activities on natural attractions Recognize and build awareness about local conservation values and their importance to society Provide direct benefits and empowerment for local people at destinations without retrogression on environmental, cultural or local living standards. Respect local people, their customs and culture Support sustainable development of local economies through direct involvement and participatory decision-making. Read more about our Responsible travel Ecotourism initiatives Sample some of the eco rated facilities At Aloha Expeditions we do more than pay lip service to Responsible Tourism – we have been committed to it since our very beginnings and have also established the Aloha Foundation to support and develop community projects in destinations we visit. To us Responsible Travel coincides with Responsible Business, designing adventures with the local people, culture and eco-system in mind. We are very aware of the economic, ecological and ethical impact tourism can have on ancient cultures and fragile environments. We realise that taking clients through these regions can have a detrimental impact if not handled responsibly and as such, on all of our tours we go to great lengths to minimise the negative and accentuate the positive – after all, there are also many good things that the traveller can bring! A successful Aloha Expeditions tour not only delivers a unique and unsurpassable journey for you, but it will also benefit the people whose lands we are privileged to visit. ALOHA EXPEDITIONS RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL TEAM We have our own dedicated in-house Responsible Travel Team, which meets regularly to review and measure our responsible travel policies. This is not only crucial to help ensure best practice across both our group tour and tailor-made holiday itineraries, but the ideal forum to develop new ideas and initiatives. RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS POLICY - #NOPLASTIC CAMPAIGN We guarantee that when designing our tours, we utilize our own experiences to break down barriers, and provide ethical business for those lesser known areas with so much to offer. We pride ourselves on challenging perceptions and raising awareness through low impact experiences and ethical business - not just through charity work. What can you expect from us? And what do we expect of you while travelling? Here at Aloha Expeditions, we are determined to minimise the negative side-effects tourism can bring to the areas we visit, and the communities we work with. Alongside, the fantastic work of the Aloha Foundation and our support for a range of wildlife and environmental causes, we have launched an initiative to promote the use of filtered water bottles among our tour leaders and clients. DRINKING WATER POLICY To further demonstrate our commitment to reducing plastic water bottle waste and in response to overwhelming levels of concern expressed in client feedback, we have taken the decision to stop providing bottled water as a part of our group tours from July 2018. WILDLIFE POLICY As well as our focus on environmental and cultural tourism, the well-being of all wildlife and its natural habitat is also very important to us. We don’t offer elephant riding on our holidays and we abhor animals being exploited or put to any unnatural uses. COMMUNITY BASED TOURISM: Aloha Expeditions works with inspirational community based tourism initiatives that are helping local people in isolated rural areas earn a living from tourism, while preserving their unique cultures. HOW TO TRAVEL MORE RESPONSIBLY - OUR TIPS We believe that if we all make small changes to our travel habits we can all have a really positive impact - from considering where to visit, making plastic swaps and packing lighter; to respecting local culture and spending your money at grass roots level within communities you visit. Even if you implement a handful of these suggestions you will make a difference. SUPPORTING LOCAL ENTERPRISE Where we can, we support communities and family enterprises at a grass root level. One of the most effective and enjoyable ways is through food! Dining with local families not only allows us to help provide a direct income, it offers our travellers a delicious home cooked, traditional meal and the chance for both parties to learn more about each other’s cultures. GOING PAPERLESS In 2019, Aloha Expeditions set up an initiative to encourage clients to 'go paperless', donating funds to the Aloha Foundation for every client that chose to receive their travel documents by email instead of post. Now around 90% of our group tour clients are choosing paperless travel documents. WAYS TO TRAVEL MORE RESPONSIBLY Life can occasionally get a little repetitive and mundane, which is probably why travelling appeals to so many of us, becoming almost a necessity. And perhaps that’s why responsible travel sounds, well, too responsible, when adventures are all about seizing the moment. When else would beers at 11 am be a fabulous idea? Or scaling limestone rocks even if you actively avoid a commute with a slight incline of a hill? And, of course, you’ll try that deep-fried cricket, even if you’d usually turn your nose up at a pallid cheese sandwich from the reduced section, despite it looking like it could survive a nuclear war. The point is the usual rules just don’t apply when you’re travelling, and that can reinvigorate a lust for life. But this complacency can cause far-reaching negative effects. It happens to the best of us, often without even realizing the implications. The concern is that international travel is on the rise and a lot of insignificant actions are becoming hugely significant, threatening the beautiful world we love to explore. Here at the Aloha Expeditions office, our responsible travel team often meet to discuss ways we can make a positive impact on the countries we visit and share ideas of how we can travel more responsibly. So, here are our suggestions of small positive changes you can implement the next time you set off on your adventures: DECISIONS, DECISIONS. When booking with Aloha Expeditions, check out our policies on responsible travel.It’s been an integral part of our business policy from the very beginning and we’ve even established the Aloha Foundation to create awareness and deliver funding to projects through the developing world, often where we’ve seen a need within the destinations we’ve established tours. These kinds of initiatives are gaining momentum in the tourism industry, so even if you don’t book with us, be mindful of this elsewhere. After all, they’ll be handling the intricacies of eco-travel for you, saving you the extra research time Research places that are not typical tourist hotspots.Over-tourism isn’t just about being annoyed at throngs of tourists in your photos, or taking away from the ‘authenticity’ of a place, it’s causing damage to world heritage sites that have stood the test of time, it’s damaging the environment and in some cases, is negatively impacting the communities in popular bucket-list destinations. There are plenty of amazing places out there not overrun by tourists which are not only more atmospheric but you’re more likely to be sold unique wares for good prices and you’ll have more of an opportunity to get to know local people and understand a different way of life in a genuine way. They'll serve more authentic, tasty food, too! This strengthens the surrounding communities and will leave you feeling richer for the experience. We always take this into consideration when creating itineraries. Machu Picchu is a huge victim of over tourism. In just 20 years tourist numbers jumped from 400,000 to 1.4 million tourists, damaging the ancient ruins. After UNESCO threatened to place it on the 'List of World Heritage Sites in Danger,' the Peruvian government limited ticket numbers to 5000 a day, to be used in two timed slots and visitors must be accompanied by an approved guide. Try to prioritise eco-friendly or locally owned hotel/guesthouse options, if you’re not booking with us. They often put a huge amount of effort into lessening the impact on the environment, so it makes it easier for you to travel responsibly. You sometimes find that these hotels will employ and train locals for staff, frequently providing much-needed jobs. Research local customs and phrases in the local language, once you’ve settled on the right experience for you. Even the smallest of efforts shows consideration and respect. We select eco-friendly accommodation such as the Shinta Mani Wild on our Southern Cambodia in Luxury Tour, which was built on 350 hectares of protected land in cooperation with the Wildlife Alliance. They educate guests on the threats to the ecosystem, protecting the wildlife corridor between Bokor National Park with Kirirom National Park and provide employment opportunities for local residents. PACK UP (CONSCIOUSLY) AND GO Planning what to take away with you ahead of time can ensure you don’t overpack. The heavier your luggage the more fuel is required by the aeroplane, and therefore, carbon emissions increase. It’s easier to throw that extra top in ‘just in case’ but, if everyone follows suit, that’s up to 143 extra tops on board! Your poor shoulders will thank you too. If you take single-use plastic, bring it back home with you and recycle it properlyif there aren’t proper recycling options where you're headed. Consider ‘naked’ toiletry options, if the above sounds like a hassle, such as: Lush have an extensive range of ‘naked’ products such as shampoo bars and solid conditioners(which lasts 80-100 washes and takes up far less room in your bag) or dry shampoo, powdered/solid deodorants, shower jelly/bombs, toothy tabs and mouthwash tabs. ‘Naked’ means they don’t use plastic, or in instances where they do use plastic, they make it much easier to recycle. A standard bar of soap in a reusable soap container is still much betterif you aren’t sold on the thought of plastic-free products. Bamboo toothbrush > plastic toothbrush Flannel > plastic loofah ‘Yes To’ facial wipes are made up of 100% plant cellulose, as opposed to standard make-up wipes/wet wipes, which contain up to 60% non-biodegradable plastic, at almost the same price. Alternatively, you can buy reusable muslin cloths/flannels to remove your make-up. Paper stemmed cotton buds > plastic cotton buds Invest in reef-friendly sunscreenif you plan on taking a dip in the ocean at any point. Badger Sunscreen is a good option. Thailand's Maya Bay, made famous following the movie The Beach, saw 5000 visitors a day, devastating the ecosystem and forcing the Thai government to close the beach. Marine life was all but wiped out and 80% of the coral reef sustained damage from the excess of boats and snorkelers wearing sunscreen containing chemicals that are toxic to young coral. The closure began in June of 2018 and was eventually made indefinite. Marine life has already begun to return to the area. Pack a scarf. Even if you’re heading straight for the sweltering plains of Africa. It can be used as a pillow, blanket or eye mask on your flight, or it could be fashioned into a sarong or a top, or cover shoulders when entering temples, or as a face guard if you’re whizzing through the desert, to protect your head from the sun. It might even make a decent emergency parachute. Don’t try this, of course, it’s mostly just good to have hope. Take a tote-bag with you.For shopping in cute markets, to hold your beach gear, for day trips or to hold dirty laundry. You need never accept a plastic bag if you’re toting a tote or two! Consider investing in a Kindle, or similar, for downloading your holiday readingrather than having to pack lots of heavy books. Nothing beats a book, of course, but at least it’ll ensure you never run out of reading material on a trip. Take your own headphonesso you don’t have to use the plastic ones wrapped in - the horror - more plastic. Pack a refillable filtered water bottle, such as Water-to-Go.It filters out 99.9% of microbiological contaminants from any non-saltwater source in the world. This means whether you’re trying to get in your minimum of eight ounces every hour on your dehydrating flight, filling up at dodgy petrol station sinks in Pakistan like Clem, or trying to satisfy a hefty water addiction, like Tara in India (who’s used to only the best Sierra Nevada mountain water back home!), you’ll never go thirsty and there’s no need to contribute to the single-use plastic problem. Download your e-ticket on to a smartphonerather than printing out your ticket on paper. TRANSPORT Travel responsibly from start to finish.When booking flights for group tours with Aloha Expeditions, transfers to and from the airport are arranged with the group you’re travelling with. We also offset your carbon footprint when you book your flights through us. For more information on this, read our blog 'What is Carbon Offsetting?' or read more from EcoAct. Taking public transport lessens your carbon footprint.Even if you aren’t travelling with us, opt to take the train or the bus to the airport or carpool together if you’re going with friends. Try and opt for a direct flight rather than one with layovers so you'll save on carbon emissions. Refuse the complimentary in-flight bags the airline hands out.Have you seen the movie Inception? Well, this is like that but with plastic within plastic. But no Leo DiCaprio (he’s off fighting global warming elsewhere). It’s easy to make your own though: just pop a toothpaste tab with a bamboo toothbrush, your multi-purpose scarf and earplugs into your hand luggage. Voila! Approximately 15% of the world population travel every year. That's 1.2 billion people. This number is predicted to increase by 60% by 2020. ARRIVAL Treat each and every country as if it were your very own home. You are a guest - show respect, be polite, always throw your rubbish in the bin and dress respectfully, according to local custom. Always be aware of what you’re buying as souvenirs.At best, you might be purchasing something that will come with a hefty fine if you attempt to take it out, or into a country that prohibits those imports. At worst, you may be creating a demand for the poaching or import of endangered animals, including ivory, fur, medicines made from animals and in some cases, live animals. It’s important to be vigilant. Sometimes souvenirs can be mislabelled to sell to tourists, or it may be difficult to spot. Don’t assume that just because you can buy it, it means it’s legal or ethical to do so. Don’t encourage animal abuse.If on your travels you ever see a wild animal (often monkeys) being touted around by a local or in a cage at an establishment, never play with it, take pictures or buy it – even with the best intentions of taking it to an animal shelter. Unfortunately, this creates demand. Ignore it, encourage others to ignore it, or firmly inform the manager that you fully intended to spend a lot of money in the establishment but won't be for that reason. It may be easy to judge the people doing this but consider that their situation may be desperate, and they aren’t aware of or care about, the animal’s welfare over their own. Just don't give them attention or money. It won’t occur if it doesn’t yeild the results they desire. Always ask permission before taking photos of people, it’s just polite.Apply the same rules as you would at home, for example, is it an appropriate time and place? Don’t be rattled if they ask for a tip, either pay up, haggle a bit or politely decline. If you take a good one, show them! Don’t interact with wild animals. You don’t want to lose any fingers and you definitely don’t want them losing their life once they feel comfortable approaching the next human with less than good intentions. Always turn off your air con/lights when you leave your room, use water sparingly and try to reuse your towel.It may seem obvious, but not all countries have electricity and water in abundance, be conscious not to add to the problem. If hotels have miniature toiletries, don’t use them or instead, donate them to shelters, and then encourage the hotel to consider ditching the single-use plastic and have fixed dispensers installed instead. Refuse a plastic straw, save a turtle.If you really need something to slurp down those cocktails without getting a pineapple slice in the eye, invest in a metal re-usable straw. Check out 'The Benefits of Turtle Tourism' if you want to see how tourism and wildlife can co-exist in a mutually beneficial way. Buffets are not good for the environment.This is a tough one but try to resist. Hotels will always provide a surplus of food at a buffet (imagine the ruckus if they ran out before everyone had eaten) and this means a lot of food will be thrown away. A recent study found that just over half of buffet food goes to waste which is hugely damaging, not only to the environment (food waste in landfills produce methane which is 21 times more damaging than Carbon Dioxide) but considering one in seven people around the world go hungry, it’s incredibly wasteful. When buying goods, don’t drive too hard a bargain. Some countries expect a bit of haggling (though be sure to check first) but most people aren’t trying to scam you, they simply assume you can afford it since you’re visiting their country in the first place. Consider how much those last few digits mean to you and what they might mean to that person’s family. Giving to begging children is incredibly problematic. It’s difficult to refuse kids who might be begging you for money, all doe-eyed and scruffy, but it fosters a begging culture. And this doesn’t just apply to money. Sweets are a definite no-go when you consider that dental care may be too expensive for a lot of people across the world to afford. School supplies are also a tricky one as they can just be sold back to shops. This practice undermines parents and encourages kids to stay OUT of school if they know they can earn money, which sets them up for a life of poverty. And often, organised child-trafficking groups who have caught on to the earning potential of begging kids in popular tourist destinations, abduct children and maim them if they’re not perceived to be ‘cute’ enough to earn. When they get too ‘old’, they are often pushed into prostitution, or worse. It's estimated that 300,000 children across India are drugged, beaten and forced to beg every day and according to the Indian National Rights Commission, 40,000 children are abducted every year. DEPARTURE Encourage hotels to be ‘greener’ – if you notice your hotel could do with some eco-friendly improvements, in the form of better recycling facilities or to reduce their plastic waste etc, speak up! Make sure you outline this in any feedback you give them, they should welcome it. Sing the praises of any initiatives/travel companies/hotels/restaurants etc. that ARE doing things right!Leave reviews, tell your friends, encourage others to visit if they need recommendations, spread the word. Other establishments that aren’t quite up to scratch may start to make some changes, so they too get the praise and recognition that brings in the paying customers. 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[preserving-ferretbrain]

Golden Girls and Lost Boys

Shimmin considers a Disney film much too seriously for anyone's good.~

Spoiler warning for Tangled.

Recently, I went to watch Tangled (in 3D! not that it matters, and because there wasn't an alternative, but there you are), the new Disney Rapunzel film. I'm not planning to do yer'actual review of it, and I'm not that interested in getting into heavy analysis of the plot or logic or of a Disney film based on a fairy tale, because that would be silly. It was fun, it was more-or-less for children, it was funny, it was sweet if a bit saccharine, it had an awesome horse. Their version also seemed quite original, which is something I tend to forget about Disney films. Anyway, this article is not about that. It brought up some vaguely interesting issues that I thought might be worth waffling about in case anyone else also found them interesting.

Synopsis

The Disney plot is rather different, and people might not be over-familiar with the details of Rapunzel anyway, so here's the gist. A drop of sunlight falls to earth and grows into a magical flower (just go with it, okay?). An old woman finds the flower, and discovers that if she sings a particular magical song to it, it glows with healing light that temporarily restores her youth (ditto). She hides it and uses it to stay young and beautiful for an unspecified but long time. The Queen becomes ill while pregnant, so they send the army to find the fabled flower. They make a healing potion from it, which works, and the child is born as a beautiful golden-haired daughter (it wasn't entirely clear when the mop of hair appeared, but stick with me here). One night, the old woman sneaks into the palace to steal a lock of hair, believing it'll have the same healing properties. But when she cuts it, the hair loses its power. In desperation, she steals the baby. Nobody knows what happened to the princess, and they never find her. Every year on her birthday, they release Chinese lanterns to remember her.

Eighteen years later, thieves break in and steal the princess' crown (presumably a traditional item from the treasury) which is handily kept on a cushion beneath a skylight with all the guards facing away. They're pursued, and one (Flynn) splits off from the others with the crown, escaping the guards but still followed by an angry horse. He finds a tower in a hidden valley, which seems like an ideal hiding place. Sadly, he's beaten unconscious by an 18-year-old Rapunzel with a pan, and stuffed in a cupboard. Rapunzel wants to go and see the floating lights she's spotted every year on her birthday, but her mother won't let her. After yet another argument, which dissuades her from revealing her prisoner to her mother, she decides to make the man take her instead while her mother's away. Wacky adventures and angst and excitement ensue. The two fall in love, and are followed by the old woman, who uses Flynn's betrayed partners to set an ambush, and sets it up to look like he's abandoned Rapunzel so she'll accept her mother's advice and won't try to leave the tower again. He escapes, comes to see her, is mortally wounded, and has a pointless heroic moment of sacrifice that is negated by Lurve. Old woman crumbles to dust, Rapunzel is reunited with her family, and all live happily ever after. Except the old woman, and presumably the now-imprisoned Stabbington Brothers.

Family Matters

One of the things that was vaguely interesting about the film was the family issues it brought up. The thing that really got my attention was right at the end, during the reuinion, when the narrator (i.e. Flynn) says something like: "...Rapunzel finally had a real family..."

Let's leave aside the likely problems for a girl brought up by a single parent in humble surroundings in a small tower, who's barely met a handful of people in her life, joining two unknown biological parents of immense wealth and power who live in a massive castle and incidentally becoming the biggest celebrity of all time. I'm sure there will be no issues whatsoever getting accustomed to that. Or long-term trauma associated with the violent death of the woman who brought her up and whom she sincerely loved. This is a fairy tale. However, it does get me thinking about families.

The old woman is never named in the story. I do wonder why; perhaps to stop us having any sympathy with her, though villains in other stories are named, or perhaps they simply couldn't be bothered inventing a name. It does dehumanize her a bit. Anyway, I'm going to call her Agnes. So Agnes has, indeed, kidnapped Rapunzel to use her supernatural power so she can live forever. This is Not Okay. And she keeps her trapped in the tower so she won't either leave her, or be found by anyone. The thing is, apart from that, she treats her as a daughter.

Now, I am not going to claim she's a great mother. She's controlling and emotionally manipulative, which I suppose isn't that surprising when she's keeping Rapunzel there basically by force of will. She's only tepidly affectionate. On the other hand, Rapunzel's very comfortable and, apart from a desire to see the outside world, she's pretty happy. She has nice furniture and playthings, nice clothes, and an apparently endless supply of hobby materials. They don't seem to have a luxurious diet, but neither do most peasants; and Agnes makes a point of cooking Rapunzel's favourite food when she visits. She's also educated her brilliantly: although a tad naive, she knows everything an ordinary, non-imprisoned girl would know. She recognises Flynn as a man, knows what birthdays mean, how drowning works, and when she's in danger. The outside world doesn't really phase her, so she must know about nature and geography, and she seems to have a decent grasp of society and normal behaviour too. She's articulate, intelligent and very pleasant. In fact, given the difficulties of the situation, Agnes is one of the most successful child-raisers I've ever heard of. It's very clear that, right until the end, Rapunzel is very fond of her mother. Regardless of Agnes' ultimate feelings towards the girl, she treats her extremely well so far as the situation allows. Compare, say, Cinderella or Snow White. Agnes may not be a great mother, but she's actually not a terrible one.

I was talking about this to Dan, and he summed up my argument here as basically: "Apart from kidnapping a baby, pretending to be her mother, bringing her up alone in a tower for eighteen years and deceiving her for her own selfish ends, she's not a particularly bad mother". The thing is, ridiculous as it sounds, I think that's about right. The things she's done wrong aren't really about how she raised Rapunzel, but more general wrongs that intertwine with that. The problem is that Agnes' dual status as adoptive mother and kidnapper rather complicates the issue.

As far as Rapunzel is concerned, at least, Agnes is her family. The thing that changes that is not really a shift in their relationship, or anything Agnes does; it's seeing a picture of the baby princess and then seeing herself in the mirror wearing the crown. It's a revelation of Objective Truth ('you are Really the Princess, the Queen and King are your Real Family'), rather than anything about the family itself - right until that moment, Rapunzel thinks of Agnes as her mother and loves her.

There's a decent argument that it's not a good family, because it's built on a tissue of lies. It's also possible that Agnes has no real affection for Rapunzel - she doesn't show any active affection in the film. On the other hand, she's brought the girl up for 18 years, and in that time, I'd have expected things to crystallise one way or the other. The first option is to view and treat her as a useful tool or a pet, in which case I wouldn't expect Rapunzel to be so well educated or comfortable; that's extra effort and liable to encourage further trouble, when you could bring her up cowed and ignorant so she won't get ideas. If, on the other hand, Agnes brings her up as though she was her daughter and treats her kindly, you'd expect some affection to arise on both sides.

Now, I don't think Disney thought much about this one throwaway line and I'm not that interested in decrying them. A fairly normative and slightly old-fashioned way of thinking is par for the course. I suppose the "real family" reference means one with honesty and love, rather than manipulation, deceit and using your daughter selfishly. It means the parents who wanted you and loved you unconditionally, rather than someone who stole you for selfish reasons, whether or not they've got fond of you. In context, though, it had a faint whiff of narrow-mindedness: that what really matters isn't who brought you up or how you felt about them, but your genes (and incidentally having two parents, not just one). The fact is though, Rapunzel actually had a pretty happy family life before all this kicked off.

From My Point of View, the Jedi are Arguably Morally Ambiguous

Although the story glosses over her, I was also quite interested in Agnes and her actions. We don't ever find out anything about her, other than her use of the flower and her relationship with Rapunzel. We don't know her background, her history, or what she does when she's not visiting Rapunzel. Why should we? Rapunzel doesn't either. She's presented pretty much exclusively as a manipulative, selfish woman, whose use of the flower is immoral, and who commits a string of selfish acts to keep herself young and live forever. I'm not sure how convinced I am by that portrayal, or the way morality is defined in this story as a whole.

Agnes is lucky enough to find the flower and discover its powers. She keeps it hidden and uses it to stay young (and therefore alive) for, well, a long time. She chooses to keep it to herself, which is selfish, but I wonder how long she'd get to keep it if people found out about it? She could legitimately have all kinds of worries about that, so keeping it hidden isn't that unreasonable. As it turns out, the first thing that happens when the flower's discovered is it gets taken - so her hypothetical suspicions are vindicated.

Now for a look at the Castle. When the Queen is ill, the Castle mount a frantic last-chance search for the rumoured magical flower, and due to carelessness on Agnes' part, find it. Under her very eyes, they carefully dig it up and take it away to the castle. Someone makes it into a magic potion, which heals the Queen and (probably) saves her daughter's life too.

The issue here is the magic flower. Who has the right to use it, and what uses are acceptable?

The flower just appears. There's no reason it belongs to anyone, but Agnes has as much claim to it as anyone. Agnes uses it to save her own life; the Castle use it to save the Queen's life (and her unborn daughter). While Agnes keeps the flower to herself, nobody else benefits; once the Castle destroy the flower, nobody else can ever benefit. There's a touch of criticism in the film's portrayal of Agnes' actions, as though it were a crime to seek immortality. I don't know much about ethics, but I suspect issues like immortality are much more complicated than "it's bad to try and live forever". The Castle's actions are presented straightforwardly as a good thing. To be honest, I can't really see much difference. From a purely practical perspective, the first is a much more efficient use of the flower. The only real difference I can see between them is that Agnes chooses to save herself, whereas someone else (the King?) chooses to save the Queen. The first is more obviously selfish; but the second involves destroying an item of fantastic potential benefit to the world, which doesn't actually belong to the King any more than it does to anyone else, to extend the life of his wife. Not entirely unselfish.

Once the flower is destroyed, Agnes is doomed. Having and then losing immortality is more of a blow than never having it. She works out that Rapunzel's hair could do the same job, and plans to steal a lock. It's a bit skeevy, and involves burglary; on the other hand, the Castle are responsible for her plight, and taking a lock of hair shouldn't actually harm anyone. I can't really see the Castle giving her one, so theft or death is pretty much the choice. It all goes downhill from there.

In a sense, the story is a series of choices that Agnes has to make, each one more morally questionable. Initially, she chooses to keep the flower's benefits for herself, rather than risk sharing it. Then she chooses to try and steal a lock of hair to regain her lost immortality, rather than dying to avoid a relatively minor crime that harms nobody. She's cheated of that option by the way the magic works. The real problem starts when, panicking, she chooses to steal the baby rather than die. Then she chooses to deceive and manipulate her stolen daughter rather than risk her running away. Then she chooses to genuinely betray her (by acting against Rapunzel's interests) to get Rapunzel and her own immortality back. Finally, when the truth comes out, she chooses to resort to force rather than lose Rapunzel and die. Agnes is stuck on a slippery slope, where each decision makes it harder to give up the immortality for which she's done so much, and makes it easier to take the next and wronger step. What she ends up doing, and her treatment of Rapunzel, is clearly wrong, but it's not nearly as simple as her being a wicked old woman.

One of my friends suggested that one reason why Agnes and the Queen are portrayed differently is that people find it creepy for old people to want to be young and live forever; but saving and extending the lives of young, beautiful people is fine. There might be something in that.

A Bit of a Lad

The other thing I found a bit off about Tangled was its hero. Aladdin had a thief hero, but it was a little different. He was clearly a destitute beggar who stole food to live. Flynn Rider, the hero of Tangled, is also from a humble background, but he's more of a professional thief - all we know is that he's conspiring to steal a crown from the palace.

Now, thieves as heroes are a well-established trope in literature. However, Flynn is clearly not only a thief, but an untrustworthy thief. In the film, he's sort of contrasted against the Stabbington Brothers, his partners, in a way that is clearly supposed to show him in a good light. However, if you look at the details, it's rather murkier. He is willingly engaged in the robbery at the palace, and makes it very clear that it's a chance to live in luxury rather than a matter of need. All three are chased by the soldiers and trapped in a dead-end gully. Flynn offers to climb up and help them after him; they don't trust him and insist he leaves the bag with the crown with them. However, once he gets to the top they clearly believe he'll help them escape too. Instead, he reveals the bag he's somehow managed to steal back, mocks them, and runs off to save his own hide. In other words, he betrays his partners and leaves them trapped in a gully to die at the hands of the soldiers. That is not the act of a hero, not even a thief. That is not being a rough diamond, or a rogue. That is being a treacherous backstabbing git. As it happens, the soldiers spot him and chase after him instead, but that's clearly not the intention.

Rather surprisingly, he does behave mostly honourably towards Rapunzel. He does try to deter her from going through with the plan, but since he's a wanted outlaw liable to be killed if he gets spotted in the kingdom, it's not that unreasonable. He's not doing it just to get the crown back. When she does offer him the crown later, he's in love with her and tries to give it to the Stabbington Brothers. To be honest, though, that came across more as a way to weasel out of any comeuppance for his betrayal and get them off his back, rather than a genuine attempt to face up to his actions or any real remorse. Unsurprisingly, they prefer to exact some revenge.

There's also a scene in the middle where they visit a dive. As part of his attempt to persuade Rapunzel to give up the excursion, he takes her to a wretched hive of etc. This being Disney, a bit of eyelid fluttering and a song show up all the murderous thugs as sweethearts deep down. The fact is, though, if it's even remotely as bad at it appears, he has no business taking her there. All the men there are clearly villainous and criminal, and there are no women there at all. Taking a naive 18-year old girl there, while (as we soon find out) not having the ability to protect either of you if there's trouble, is not only utterly stupid but an unforgivable failure of responsibility.

Despite all this, it's the Stabbingtons who are treated as the real criminals, who deserve only to be locked up. They're also the only characters, other than Agnes, who don't get a happy ending: the last we see of them, they're locked in the castle dungeon. Given that Flynn was about to be hanged for stealing the crown, I don't fancy their chances much.

In a way, neither the Stabbingtons or Agnes are villains, any more than Flynn is really a hero. They're all people who are faced with decisions, and sometimes choose the wrong ones. Agnes does wrong to avoid dying, the Stabbingtons and Flynn do wrong for profit, and the Queen does no obvious wrong. The reason they come across differently is that everyone has different choices to make. Agnes has to choose between crime and death; the Queen doesn't have to make that choice. The Stabbingtons and Flynn all choose to steal the crown, but Flynn's the one who chooses to betray them to death. The Stabbingtons choose to seek revenge when it's offered, but Flynn doesn't have any revenge to seek. Flynn is kind to Rapunzel and falls in love with her, but the Stabbingtons don't get the opportunity. The Stabbingtons plan to capture Rapunzel and profit from her powers; Flynn doesn't find out about them until he's already her friend, she's saved his life and they're well on their way to falling in love. It's not that surprising that, treacherous git as he is, he doesn't take that option. Whether he would have or not, we don't know. But while falling in love might redeem people to one another, simply falling in love with Rapunzel doesn't turn Flynn from a thieving, untrustworthy scoundrel into a noble hero.

Fundamentally, though, I'm thinking far too much about a very fun and nicely-executed children's film that I really enjoyed watching. Let's not take it too seriously.

[script-a-world]

Hi guys, I’m glad I came upon your blog. If you could give me some help in the right direction I’d really appreciate it. My idea is to have a planet [not our earth nor solar system, I need to create new ones to fit my story] devastated after a genocidal war and the end result is the bad guys completely defeated and the ones left over fled the planet. Now, the planet is pretty much ruined and sort of back in the Bronze Age with random bits and pieces left over of more modern stuff but anyone who can create more is basically gone so everything will have to be rediscovered and reinvented. But most importantly, the people that are left are from all over the world, hundreds of little tribes with as little as 1 to 2000 survivors with a total of a million population. They did get off world help to finally defeat the bad guys so there’s a further extra quarter million aliens staying behind to help rebuild the world. You’d think with aliens, they’d have technology? Nope. Everything is magic for them. So here’s a dilemma, use magic to rebuild the world or stay in the Bronze Age and rebuild with their own technology, that would take another thousands of years. People are divided or mixed. So we got a world that looks like a magical realm one town and the Bronze Age the next town over, and everything in between. End result is like I’m writing a fantasy story set in the Bronze Age but people have modern ideas and knowledge with no way to actually use them. They know what democracy is, the minority know they deserve rights and freedom. They can drive a car, they can use a computer, but those things are basically all destroyed and no one knows how to make them. So, any ideas on where I should do my research or problems the people will face, or perhaps similar stories I could draw inspiration/ideas from? Thank you!

Synth:  For any computers they had, look into the worst-case projections from back in the 1990s when Y2K was becoming a looming concern, and for electric stuff in general check out what mega huge solar flares have the potential to do right now.

Saphira:  The best thing about this scenario is that though the people are decimated and scattered, they have not lost their memories. This means anyone who had any training whatsoever still has it. Even better, literacy is still strong. They can still teach these things to their children and that is their greatest asset. What you have is not so much a race to resources, but a race to a Communal Knowledge, a Library of Letters.

What tradesman still live? How much do they understand the craft? How can one tradesman get help from another? How do we preserve what knowledge we still have before it fades? Sure we know what a pencil looks like, how it works. I can figure out a wood barrel, but I have no idea where to get graphite, or how to make rubber for an eraser. Maybe someone in the next tribe over might know. We can substitute graphite for charcoal for now, and send out a letter to every town nearby...

Most will not be tradesmen, I'm guessing. They can still read. They can still run. They might go about the destroyed world and look for scraps. Maybe a snapped motherboard. Maybe an entire gundam: who knows? Whatever they bring back, if it can jog the memory or provide insight, it has value. Look at how much we humans learn about our history and technology just by looking at old common tools and of all things the jars and plates.

Now not everyone will be so dedicated. Some will see the Arcane way of doing things that the Aliens provide, and think Well, why not? What if we simply cannot figure out some piece of advanced tech? Really hard to rebuild computers when you don't have a way to make silicon. Well, until we figure that out... Why not... Cheat? We'll uh, make it genuine later but for now we just need it to work...

I suggest try recreating something you have with household items. How would you recreate a doorknob? Yes, seemingly simple. Deceptively so. Take down what problems you face. Consider asking Google the same as asking the Arcane Aliens for help. What problems, what thoughts, what sort of experience is it?

Good luck.

Feral:  The first thing that comes to mind is what's left?

People remember how to drive cars? Are there still cars hanging around? People who not only know how to drive but how to maintain and/or hotwire the left over vehicles may very well do so.

The same goes for any and all technology that people can get their hands on. For all of human history, we have re-purposed the cultural artifacts left by previous societies; why wouldn't your people?

In terms of why people might choose to go with the aliens or try it on their own  is going to depend heavily on their access to clean water and food sources. A clean water source is paramount. And after a planet wide war, there might not be many water sources left that do not require filtration. Do the people have access to filtration technology? Or are their options alien magitech, war with a tribe that has filtration, or die from dehydration?

Constablewrites:  From the related works to study angle, the Schizo Tech trope is probably a good place to start, since the order in which they revive given technologies is probably not going to be the same order in which they were originally developed.

Like a lot of After the End stories, a lot is going to depend on how long they've had to recover from all of this. Consider that if it's been more than a generation or two, a lot of the knowledge of how to use this stuff will die out just because there's not much point in passing it down anymore. Are parents going to teach their kids to drive once they can no longer make the cars function? There will still likely be records of this stuff and people who choose to study it, but the widespread practical knowledge and experience will die out as soon as the technology is no longer viable. Just look at how many people these days don't know how to sew their own clothes, which was considered an absolutely critical life skill less than 100 years ago.

Synth:  The pro-alien-tech people clashing with the pro-DIY people seem like another potential source of conflict to help drive your story. Do the pro-tech people think the anti-tech people are stubborn and stupid for not wanting such easily accessed assistance? Do the anti folks think the pros are lazy for just accepting these handouts instead of working hard to do things themselves? Are there conspiracy theorists asking "But what are their real motives and goals?" about these aliens? Have people split themselves off into different groups/factions/entire separate settlements based on whether they embrace or shun the alien magitech? Which side do your main characters fall on, and what happens when they meet someone from or have to travel through an area populated by people from the opposing side? Hell, do all the members of your main gang of characters even share the same views regarding magic vs. going it (very) old school? What kinds of experiences might someone have that could change their mind about the alien magic? (e.g. someone against magic comes down with some horrible disease for which medications no longer exist, but can be cured pretty easily with magic. Does magic suddenly seem acceptable now that it's their life at stake, or will they go down with their principles? What about someone gung-ho about magic? What might make them decide "Actually how about No," and turn away from it?)

Tex:  I wonder if those survivors communicated with each other - the survivors of zombie-style apocalypse/ELE (Extinction Level Event) in movies such as I Am Legend and Zombieland utilized ham radios and sent out distress signals and messages containing news about holdout locations where other survivors could travel to and be safe. Radios don't require a ton of materials or knowledge to build from scratch (Boy Scouts of America has kits for building a crystal radio), and they're relatively easy to learn how to use. If there's manuals around to build something, and someone deems it important, it's probably going to get built.

That being said, the first generation of survivors is integral for the rebuilding of society. If there was enough tech left over for survivors to leave the planet, did they do so without contacting those left behind? Was any technology repaired or retrofitted for other purposes? Does this planet have any sort of internet, or even libraries? What about fleeing survivors that pledged to come back after X amount of time or Y reason? Settling on a new planet is awfully similar to restructuring society after a devastating event, so the skill sets between the two activities have a lot of overlap.

Being able to flee the planet and presumably settle somewhere else implies that the people are capable of interplanetary travel, if not interstellar. If there's FTL drives, could these be used to power city grids, so as to take advantage of electricity, LANs, and digital information repositories? What about power supplies or engines in transportation vehicles? These can be retrofitted for use as generators, and if you're crafty enough, to boost the range of telecommunications equipment.

You only need less than a thousand people to start up a society, so having a million people, even disparate, means that the aggregate knowledge is much higher than would even be needed for colonizing a new planet from scratch. The fact that these aliens use magic isn't necessarily an issue - can they be convinced to move heavy objects, can their skills in magic be used to repair power lines or other things? What about using them to help find ore and mineral deposits to make the raw material for tech again? Are these aliens capable of scrying or telepathy, and would they be willing to create a pseudo-telecommunications net (think magic phone network where the aliens are the phone booths) across the planet to allow the different tribes to talk with each other and come up with some sort of plan? A division of labour to complete a task according to skill set can be complementary instead of contradictory, and would allow the planet to recuperate to its antebellum technological peak much faster, even if some people decide to go without it.

[foodnessfracious]

Week 2 ( imweaktoo)

After our first week of identifying our personalities in an established group by taking personality tests, we were then task in the group to make up three (3) business ideas to sell. Our group struggled with finding what business to sell but we came up with entrusting ourselves with coming up idea on our own because since we are also consisted of three members. I, an environmentalist, is hopeful for the change Vertical Farming can bring in the society and in the future, while my other teammates came up on their own ideas that greatly concerns to them. We also conducted an interview with each of the business proposals we came up with.

 Vertical Farming system is a type of farming where soil does not have to be used to grow crops. There are three types of Vertical Farming, the aquaponics, hydroponics, and aeroponics. The aquaponics system takes the hydroponics system one step further by combining plants and fish together in the same ecosystem. Fish are grown in the same pond where it produces nutrient-rich waste that is used to feed the plants. The plants, in turn, filter and purify the wastewater which is recycled to the fishponds. Hydroponics, on the other hand, only involves growing plants in nutrient solutions that are free of soil, and basically, they are floating. While the aeroponics system uses elevation to grow plants in nutrient-laden mist. The idea of vertical farming comes from finding a solution for urban cities to find other food resources at their backyard because they will not be using much of the land.

 Here are some of the questions that I used regarding our product:

 1.      Have you ever bought food in supermarket or wet-markets on your own? Or do you grow food on your own? or even received them from support groups?

2.      What do you think about local resource in your area losing stocks?

3.      Have you tried planting for your own food?

4.      How was your experience cultivating your own plant for your own food.

5.      Would you ever try planting your own plant or food at your own house area?

 According to the result of our interview, usually 18-24 of different genders mostly students, bought their own food and rarely buy food online and have opinions about scarcity regarding resources for foods. Some have tried planting for their own and others have not, and some find it great to be able to cultivate their own crops. A big number of the participants wants to try planting around their area but when faced with scarcity, has their own ways to evade the dilemma. Several the participants pities those who cannot afford to bring food to their table and wished to help but found that planting more tress and crops can save us from food shortage.

 Karen founded an idea of typhoon proof housing, a design engineering product catering the needs to withstand the disasters a typhoon can bring. Philippines is located along the ring of fire near the Pacific Ocean and is highly exposed to various natural disasters, especially typhoons. With this, she found out that a huge number of Filipinos struggled with the adverse effects on homes or housing according to humanitarian assessments as of November 2020. To attend the growing problem, she proposes a design product. Sadly, the project or product will prove useless if the overall cost means financial incapability of the costumers. Yet, innovation can come within and through and just needed a little advising from people who experienced the suffering.

 Here are the example interview questionnaires we used:

1.      Or do you have any bad memories whenever the rain comes pouring?

2.      Have you gone through the disaster of natural calamities before?

3.      When you were asked to evacuate at that time, did you think of leaving it all behind?

4.      When you came back to check on your belongings, was the house you saw before the same as the place you come home to?

5.      Why do you think did that phenomenon happened before?

 According to our results, students from 18-24 have went through the disasters brought by typhoons and found it scary, terrifying, and unfortunate. some lost their houses. Some blame it on the people and their bad habits that causes pollution. Some were left with only belongings that were found on the streets and nearby. They mentioned they find a difference if their house was built to withstand.

 Kylle founded his idea of rainwater harvesting tank. A systemized design that attends the increasing demand of water especially in urban areas. Kylle has the first hand experienced being run out of water at some point in Cagayan de Oro and water restrictions is reoccurring in different place in the same city at different times. His business idea offers practical and immediate solution to water scarcity, a traditional and sustainable method. The system is effective and economical on the long run.

 Following are sample questions that guide us to choose this product:

 1.      How is the supply of utilities in your area?

2.      Do you have access to water pump in your area?

3.      Have you experience water interruption because there's a sudden maintenance?

4.      When the water is interrupted, where do you access your water?

5.      Why would there be a water interruption in your area?

 Students of 18-24 that fairly gets excited when rain comes and stay indoors. fairly uses the bathroom because they have good supply of water in their areas. most have access to water pump. most has experienced water interruption during maintenance but during unprecedented times they have save waters or fetch from other barrios or just wait until the water supply is back. a few months ago, had they experienced the interruption and some even said today. They have to fix the line and report it to whoever was the head of the staff. but even so, they found it like hell when the water was out and cannot even take a bath, their plants were affected and cannot finish washing their dishes.

 Our advisor, ma’am Vida Lagumbay disclosed to us that rainwater harvesting system tank is economical and should be our choice to pursue and announce us that we could be a manufacturing company providing extra service. We will for sure have a lot to talk about and vote on what we should be pursuing although I got a little disappointed in how I presented my product proposal, it is still refreshing to see how our group will be leading to considering we are sharing the same lane.

[band-blogging]

Ruins

Title: Ruins 

Summary: You, along with hundreds of others, are living in a post-apocalyptic society brought upon earth by nuclear war. The effect of this is long-lasting and only allows you to see the sun one every two years.

Characters: Harry Styles x Reader

Warnings: Cursing

A/N: I didn't really know how else to go about this so one part sort of has a Hunger Games feel to it.

Imagine based on this image (x)

There hasn’t been a society for many decades. Not a functioning one. The society that is present is unstable and could fall apart easily. The world hasn’t seen peace for a very long time. The world has been in chaos since World War lll.

2019 was the year that nuclear weapons were used as a threat so that some countries that craved power could attain it. Their tactics, however, were called to be an empty threat. History now shows that they were, in fact, very real.

When the first weapon hit Japan, the world was blown into chaos and the first wave of nuclear attacks killed almost half the population. the second killed most of what was left, leaving less than 200,000 to pick up the pieces and start over in what could be called an entirely new earth.

Eventually, the world quieted and those who were left gathered where they could, forming small groups of survivors that would remain for years to come. Many suffered from the radiation that still plagued the earth, but those that were luckier stayed alive long enough to see the bunkers get built, safe places to protect from the deadly poisons in the air. After years, the condition of the earth only worsened and natural light became abruptly scarce. No one knows why, or how, but the sun is only seen once every two years, like clockwork.

People say it has to do with certain gaps in the gas that has taken over the atmosphere since the war, others think it is God giving his grace to those that survived. No one questions it, instead enjoying what parts of their past that they have left. After a while, people began to have families, and more and more people inhabited the bunkers. The generation that lived to see the war grow old, and the young that had not seen the horror thrived, living in the only place they had ever known.

But it’s not easy, for resources have been scarce for years and many of the older residents of the bunkers don’t know how much longer they have until supplies run out. Days seem bleak and numbered in the future and some fear that they may only live to see the sun once more before they’re left in the darkness, lost in the shadows with nothing but they’re last breaths.

“Harry?”

“Hmm?” 

Harry smiles, his hand moving through your hair as the two of you wait by the small window that gives you a decent view of the sunrise. Most of the residents of your compound go to the larger windows near the south side of the building, but you prefer the smaller window, in your own area. The view may not be as amazing as one from the other windows, but people crowd the windows, giving only a few a view and the two of you figure that it would be better if you were alone to see the light.

“How much longer?” 

“Only a few minutes left, love.” 

You nod and turn so that your cheek in pressed against Harry’s leg. You had situated yourself between his legs, your head resting on his thigh as he ran his fingers through your hair. 

You smile and watch as a minimal amount of light begins to seep through the window, barely noticeable except for the contrast of the light and the paint covering the wall.

“Wow...” you mutter, seeing the light on the wall grow, covering a small part of the wall above you. You want nothing more than to reach up and feel the warmth of the sun on your fingers, feel it beating against your cheeks, a feeling you have long forgotten, but you can’t bring yourself to do anything except stare at it. You sit up and lean against Harry’s chest, straining your neck to look at the wall.

Harry seems to be in the same situation, because he too is staring at the growing patch of light on the wall, brighter than anything either of you had seen.

Harry snaps out of his trance first, taking your hand in his and softly intertwining your fingers. He lifts both of your hands and touches the wall where the light begins, just a small square that only has enough space for your two hands. 

It only takes a moment for the warmth in your hand to spread through your whole body, making you sink back into Harry. It’s the best feeling in the world, the pure warmth that you only get to feel every two years, and you feel yourself close your eyes, moving your fingers slightly in Harry’s so that your hands are no longer intertwined, but yours is resting gently over his.

“You go first today.” 

Your movements are small, but you stand slowly, avoiding the light for a moment. You had always been a bit frightened of it, despite the beauty it shows, you’ve heard the stories. You know the danger it holds and the death it’s capable of bringing, but as Harry gives you a reassuring smile and your mind tells you that you won’t get to experience this for much longer, you walk into the light’s path. You’re standing directly in front of the window and the light has ceased to reach the wall behind you, instead stopping on your face, the direct warmth now making the cold tip of your nose warm ever-so-slightly, making your cheeks grow red and your eyes squint.

“Does it hurt?” Harry asks, peeking at the light he can see that comes past your head. 

“No, it doesn’t hurt. My eyes feel...weird, but it’s not painful.” 

You continue to stare out of the small window, your eyes slowly getting used to the light, opening bit by bit the longer your eyes glaze over the lit up sky. 

Harry’s eyes flicker between the window and the light shining on your face, waiting for you to back away with the expression he never forgets when you’re finished looking at the light. An expression that radiates awe and joy, an expression he only sees at these times, when the two of you are looking at the sun.

“How is it?” he whispers.

“It’s...beautiful.”

It’s like listening to a song after years of never having heard it. You know you’v head it before and you recognize the beat of it, but there’s still this sense that it’s something completely new even though you’re still able to sing along with the chorus.

You back away after another few minutes, and Harry smiles at your expression, the expression he waits two years to see. 

“Take a look.” 

He walks to the window and, like you, pauses. He looks back at you for a moment, the light gone from your face, but just as amazed. You give him a nod and he walks directly into the line of light that looks as if it had been drawn in midair across the hall. 

He doesn’t say anything, he just stares with his mouth open slightly and his eyes wider than you had ever seen them, as if he had never seen the sun before. 

“Is it good?” 

“It’s better than good,” Harry lets out a breathless laugh, still staring out through the window. You nod, smiling as you watch the light glowing on his face, lighting up his features. You’ve always been fascinated with the way light makes someone’s features become so beautiful, even though Harry has always been beautiful, the light makes it that much purer. 

His eyes are what you look at first, the green of his irises sparkling as he watches the sun, making the color seem brighter than it ever could have without the sun. You look at his hair next, the light making it glow so that the brown almost seems golden. He’s just glowing in the scarce sunlight and you always take advantage of two things during these times: seeing the light for yourself and seeing what it does to those who are watching it. 

“I wish it lasted,” he whispers, pulling you from your trance. You nod and walk closer to him, resting your head on his shoulder so that you can see the sun too, so that the two off you can feel the warmth on your faces at the same time.

“Me too.” 

The light only lasts for a few hours and you spend the rest of the time looking through the window and sitting against the wall as you let the light seep between your fingers, but it only feels like seconds before the light begins to grow dim against the wall, and the light doesn’t feel as warm now that you know it won’t last for much longer. 

“Don’t go,” you mutter, your hand becoming a fist as if you’re trying to grasp at the last bit of light that’s left. Harry does the same and you know that he’s thinking the same thing, trying to hold on as long as possible before there’s nothing left to hold onto. 

But the light fades and the wall is so much darker than it was before.

It’s gone. And you’re always hit with a wave of despair realizing that you won’t be able to see it again for another two years. Harry always says something when it goes. Every single time he says “now we can start looking forward to next time,” but he’s silent. This time, it’s different, and you’re not sure why, but this year it hurts just a little bit more and the sun seems just a little too important for it to be so...temporary. 

“Come on,” he says eventually, standing with his hand stretched out for you, “we should get back.” 

You nod and take his hand, letting him pull you up. You’re directly in front of the window and light no longer floods in to hit the wall behind it, and it looks almost as sad as you feel. 

The light’s gone and it won’t be coming back for a long, long time.

1 year and 9 months later...

Society has a funny way of crawling into the human mind, an idea that becomes a practice, which eventually turns into a term that’s used everyday. It’s something that exists everywhere, anywhere that homes enough people. 

In your opinion, society needs three things to function: set laws, a leader, and a population. 

Your laws are simple enough: don’t get into physical conflicts, don’t take more than your ration of food daily, and don’t go outside of the compound. You don't know of any exits in the compound, but you’re going to assume there’s at least one. 

Your leader, Alexander, is one of the few in your compound that was alive during the war. There are other compounds that house the others that survived, but most of the population is from newer generations, like you and Harry. 

“Y/N!” a voice giggles, taking you by surprise as this mystery person launches into your arms, “Harry taught me how to play a new game! Will you play with us, please?” 

“That depends,” you say warily, knowing that Harry has a tendency to create card games that are based off real scenarios, “what game has he taught you?” 

Harry stands behind the girl, Annie, with a sheepish expression, and you already know that he didn't intend for her to tell you about their new game. Annie, however, seems very excited and you let her tug on your hand to drag you towards the main hall, where table after table is seen. You’re led to a table where a few piles of cards a laid out. 

“It’s called war!” 

Fantastic

Annie’s mother died when she was barely a year old, and you and Harry took it upon yourselves to help raise her. You were both very close with her mother and felt that you had something of a responsibility to take care of her. 

“Harry,” you say with a smile, watching Harry avert his eyes and scratch the back of his neck, “why’s the game called war?” 

“Um...” he lets out a quiet chuckle, “well, yeh know, love, it’s sort of based on... past events-”

“Yeah!” Annie interrupts, “the eights are bombs! And the bombs kill the jack, queen, and king. The jacks aren’t as important as the queen and king because if you lose all of those, then you lose.” 

You close your eyes and smile at Annie, giving her a small nod, “that sounds fun.” 

Annie nods and begins to reset the game while you turn to Harry, taking him by the arm and dragging him away from the table to a secluded corner of the room. 

“What kind of game is this?” you say harshly, “she’s five, Harry, what were you thinking-” 

“She’s going to find out at some point! And just because some stupid game is based on the war doesn’t mean she's going to figure anything out. Honestly, I don’t see what’s got you so upset-” 

“Because she’s just a child! She doesn’t need to be exposed to these things yet!” 

Harry shakes his head and crosses his arms, now getting a bit agitated because of your anger. It’s just a game, nothing that someone as young as Annie could piece together to understand what happened during the war. 

“Look, I won’t play with her anymore, we’ll play Go Fish or something, alright? Will that make you happy?” 

You sigh and shove his shoulder, hearing him chuckle above you, “yes, that would make me very happy.” 

“Good. Go Fish will be our next game.” 

“Thank you.” 

He nods and takes your hand, dragging you back to Annie, who is ready to play the next round of war. 

“Let’s play! Let’s play again, Harry, with Y/N this time!” 

Harry ruffles her hair a bit and shakes his head, although his smile doesn’t falter.

“Hey, bug, I think we’re going to play Go Fish now.” 

Annie pouts as Harry gathers all of the cards, putting them into a pile so that he can begin dealing them out again.

“Harry,” you murmur, trying to get his attention away from Annie and the card game. “Harry, stand up.” 

Harry turns his attention to you and furrows his eyebrows, following your gaze to Alexander, who is standing in front of everyone in the main hall, his gaze set over as many people as possible, slowly silencing the room as his presence is noticed. 

Slowly, everyone begins to stand, something that has become a tradition over the years. Not a law, more of an unspoken, unofficial rule. When the leader of this compound is seen and making an announcement, everyone that is in his presence must stand until instructed to take their seat. 

“Please, be seated,” his voice echoes throughout the large room. You know that Alexander is a kind man, you’ve met him a few times and he remembered your name after the first encounter, which was enough to tell you that he cares about those living in his compound, but he is rarely seen giving announcements, something usually done by someone assigned to work for him directly. 

“As you know, the sun will show itself to us once more in three months, and I know you are all very excited for that day.” 

Most in the room erupt into applause, and a few cheers are heard as the claps die down. 

“But we are soon going to be faced with implications,” he says, immediately silencing the hall. “As you know, our supplies are limited and it was only a matter of time before our rations began to run low.” 

There’s a long pause before his voice echoes out again, louder then it was before, “That day is upon us.” 

There’s a pause, but soon after those words are spoken people all around are speaking to each other in hushed whispers, asking each other what this could mean for the society. 

“Y/N,” Annie tugs on your hand, gaining your attention, “what does that mean?” 

You gulp and glance at Harry, who looks as if he’s in a slight trance as he meets your gaze.

“I don’t know, bug,” you say, immediately regretting the words when you see the girls eyes widen in fear, “but we’re going to be fine,” you add, “we’re going to be okay, they have a plan.” 

“Please, please,” Alexander says, silencing the room once more, “I know that this comes as something of a shock to some of you, we have lived so long with enough supplies, but we have far too many people here to risk continuing on with the amount of supplies we have.” 

“What are you going to do?” a voice is heard in the back of the crowd, unknown to everyone except those nearest to him. You glance back to where the voice originated, but fail to see who started the commotion. 

“I was about to announce,” Alexander says, his voice slightly agitated by the interruption, “that we’ll have to leave the compound to gather more supplies.” 

This time, you almost have to cover your ears because of the outburst. Everyone begins shouting at Alexander, asking him question after question about the rules he’ll be breaking and the safety precautions that he’ll be taking.

“We will be taking a name from those of you that are of the proper age, the healthiest and most fit age. Those between the ages of fifteen and twenty five will be eligible to go with me to gather our supplies from a compound north of here. The drawing will be taking place tomorrow, please be present for dinner and be ready to stay for another twenty minutes after that. We will be taking volunteers before the drawing begins, incase any of you want to go willingly. If not, the drawing will continue as planned. Two of you will be chosen and, incase you have any concerns, we’ve made sure that the trip is safe for you.” 

There’s a pause and a very unpleasant silence follows the speech that had been given, so Alexander decides to leave with one last goodnight, leaving the rest of the occupants of the compound to wonder which unlucky few will be chosen to accompany Alexander.

“That means we could be chosen,” Harry interrupts your thoughts, “we could go out.” 

“Is that a good thing?” 

“No,” he says immediately, “I may talk about leaving, but we have no idea what’s out there. We haven't stepped foot outside this compound, what makes him think that this will be safe? He can’t just force us to-” 

“What else are we supposed to do, Harry?” you interrupt, rubbing your eyes with your palms, suddenly feeling exhausted because of the days events.

“Well, we probably won’t be chosen. And, if one of us is, it’ll be fine-” 

“You don’t know that Y/N. What if...what if the person that’s chosen doesn’t come back to tell their stories about what’s out there? What if you’re chosen and you don’t come back, huh? What happens then?” 

“It’ll be fine,” you repeat, trying to reassure him, although feeling doubt seep into your mind as he continues to list the things that could go wrong. 

“Look, I know that Alexander was close with your family, but I don’t trust him, you know that. And if he thinks he can reassure us about something he knows nothing about, then he’s out of his goddamn mind. I’m not going out there, and I’ll be damned if I let him drag you out there.” 

“Let’s just,” you take a deep breath and shake your head, taking his arm and pulling him back towards your room. you let out a sigh, trying to find the right words to say to the distraught boy next to you, “let’s worry about this tomorrow. We can talk about everything in the morning, but right now I think we should...read, or something.” 

“I won’t be able to concentrate on anything I’m reading.” 

“Then I’ll read to you.” 

“I’m not five.” 

“Really? Could have fooled me.”

Harry scoffs and shakes his head, although a chuckle escapes his lips at your comment. You laugh he mutters “you’re the one who’s five”, quieting only when you feel a slight tug on your sleeve. Behind you stands Annie, her lips pouted and her eyes watering. 

“Annie,” you say, crouching down to her level, “what’s wrong, what happened?” 

“Are you gonna go away? Are you and Harry gonna go away with Alexander?” 

You shake your head and tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear. 

“Don’t worry about that, okay? You don’t have to worry about that.” 

“I don’t want you to go-” 

“I know, sweetheart, but I just don’t know what’s going to happen. But I’m going to do whatever I can to stay here with you, okay? Harry and I are going to try our very best to stay.” 

Giving one last sniff, Annie nods and turns when her caretaker calls her, asking why she’s still awake. You give her a quick hug and watch her run away, turning to face Harry who has a dejected expression on his face. 

“What happens to her if one of us leaves?” 

“It’ll be fine.” 

“Saying that doesn’t make it true-”

“I know that,” you snap, watching Harry stop and turn to face you, his eyes wide. You take a deep breath and shake your head, running a hand through your hair, “I know it doesn’t Harry, but saying that doesn’t change anything, so let’s just go to bed and stop trying to predict what’s going to happen tomorrow.” 

Harry still doesn’t look convinced, and his expression tells you that he wants to keep talking about it, so you add, “please.” 

He sighs and gives you a smile, nodding, “yeah, okay.” 

“Thank you,” you sigh, running a hand through your hair. This day has put an unbelievable amount of stress on everyone in the compound, and it seems you’re just starting to feel the effects of that. 

“C’mon, love,” Harry says, “let’s get some sleep.”

“This was not an easy decision to make, but it is necessary if we want to ensure our survival. Most of you will be safe here, and the risks of leaving the compound are not as high as some of you may think-”

“You don't know anything about that! You don't know a damn thing about what’s outside the compound, don’t reassure us with facts you know aren’t true!”

Alexander had been trying to reason with those that strongly disagreed with his plans to leave the compound, but every time he opened his mouth someone would interrupt with questions about the credibility of his claims. You must admit, you have your doubts. And, over the course of the day, they’ve only grown as you’ve had more time to think over the situation, but you can’t seem to find any other solutions to this problem that everyone in the compound is inevitably going to have. 

“I know one thing,” Alexander says harshly, silencing the man who had just spoken, seeing that he was ready to interrupt again, “I know that we won't survive much longer with the amount of supplies we have now. And if risking my life and the lives of two people is what it takes to save the rest of you then so be it. I have spent my days protecting what’s left of our race and I have had to make these decisions for us. The decisions that have kept us alive thus far. Please, try to understand why this is necessary.” 

There are no more outbursts, only silence in the room, allowing Alexander to continue. 

“Today is the day that the candidates for our supply mission are chosen. I hope all of you within the age range specified yesterday have prepared to be chosen,” he says, making an unpleasant shiver run down your spine. You know that Alexander is a kind man who is doing what is right for the good of those he’s trying protecting, but you can’t help but resent him for doing what he’s doing. For taking someone into the most dangerous environment there is, a place you’d rather stay away from. 

“I will be choosing the names. We have a bowl here, all of your names are included.” 

He pauses, looking behind the crowd for a moment before he continues, “I want to remind everyone before we draw these names that this will be perfectly safe. No one will get hurt.” 

You hear Harry scoff next to you and you glance at him, seeing his face set in stone as he stares at the stage. You take the opportunity to grab onto his hand, not really sure whether it’s for his comfort or your own. His expression only changes for a moment, softening before it’s set back on the man in front of the crowd. He does, however, grasp your hand and give it a squeeze, letting you know he’s still with you. 

“Before we draw any names, are there any volunteers?” 

You could’ve heard a pin drop. The hall was the quietest it’s ever been, you think, about as quiet as you remember it ever being. A few people glance around but you don’t have to turn around to picture what’s behind you; everyone staring blankly at their leader, no one willing to possibly lay down their life for what is said to be greater good. It sounds as if you resent everyone that isn’t volunteering when you word it like that, considering you’re in that majority. 

“Very well,” Alexander says, looking as if he expected the results he got. He reaches into the basket rather quickly and you’re grateful that he’s moving things along instead of drawing out the inevitable, making everyone in the room unnecessarily anxious.

“Ah,” he says as he reads the name on the small slip of paper he had taken from the basket, “Harry Styles.” 

The name is read too quickly, and you don’t process it fully until Harry is letting go of your hand so that he can make his way towards the stage. You would’ve stopped him had it not been for the shock hitting you like a wrecking ball, almost making you stumble back when Harry has fully pulled his hand from yours. You draw in a breath, knowing better than to hold it in as you watch Harry move towards the stage, quickly climbing the stairs to face the crowd. 

“Good, I hope you’re ready, m’boy.”

Harry doesn’t respond, doesn’t even turn to look at Alexander, who doesn’t seem to care as he goes back to the basket. 

The words get caught in your throat, and you want so badly to scream them, loud enough for everyone in the room to turn their attention on you: I volunteer!

But the words are never voiced aloud and Alexander is already saying the next name.

“Ryan Browning.” 

You hadn’t heard his name before, but you recognize his face. He lives quite close to your room, and you had seen him walking to meals, but that was as far as your interactions have ever gone. Perhaps you’ve given him a nice smile as you passed by, but that’s the extent of it. 

However, you quickly forget that he’s up there when you turn your attention back to Harry, who is clearly trying to keep his eyes from wandering, keeping them locked on the wall above the crowd. 

The crowd is dismissed quickly after that, everyone rushing out to go thank the Lord they weren’t chosen. You go straight to Harry’s room, waiting for him to get back from his meeting with Alexander, no doubt discussing the precautions they’ll have to take, sign whatever contract comes with this. “I am not responsible for any harm that comes to you outside of this compound.” 

He comes back about an hour later and you had wasted the past half hour reading a book he had laid out on his bed. You practically throw it to the side when he comes through the door, his eyes glazed over as if he’s just now accepting that he’ll be leaving he compound. 

“Oh, Harry,” you mutter, standing from the bed, cautious to reach out to him. “Are you alright?” 

He reaches out for you then, and you willingly walk into his arms, wrapping him in the tightest hug you can manage. He hugs you tight and you rub his back with one hand, the other tangling in his hair. 

“I should’ve volunteered,” you murmured, “I’d go with you in a heartbeat.” 

He shakes his head and squeezes you just a little bit harder, “I wouldn’t have known what to do with myself if you had gone out there for me. I’m glad you didn’t.” 

You weren’t.

The rest of the night doesn’t last very long. Harry is emotionally exhausted and asks you to read to him for a while, then promptly falls asleep with his head in your lap. You try to decide whether or not you should just put a pillow behind your back and sleep there with him, not wanting to wake him up, but you know that you should get back to your room. The crossed-legged position you’re in now isn’t as comfortable when you’re trying to get to sleep. 

You carefully move Harry’s head from your lap to a pillow placed in the exact spot you were just sitting and he lets out a sigh, shifting then settling back into a deep sleep, small snores escaping him. 

You don’t have anyone else here, no one except Annie, but you don’t know what you’ll do without Harry.

You should’ve volunteered.

“I’d like to go with you.” 

You stand in front of Alexander, your face set but your thoughts running wild, one side of you warning the other side that it’s stupid. And it was, it was probably the worst decision you’ve ever made, but after a long night of contemplating and barely any sleep, you finally decided you would go to see Alexander. 

“Go with me?” 

“Out. To gather supplies,” you inform him, watching as he nods and thinks through your request.

“I’m not sure if that’s the best idea-” 

“Wouldn’t the mission be more successful with more people?” you rush to explain. “The only damage I could do is not provide any help, and I can assure you that I will. All I’m offering you is more hands here, I’m volunteering even though there’s nothing left to volunteer for.” 

A long sigh emits from Alexander and you worry that he’ll deny your request, “Why didn’t you volunteer when I offered that option yesterday. That would’ve been the perfect opportunity to offer yourself to help.” 

“I know it was, I just...I needed more time to think through everything. It’s a big decision.” 

You wait patiently for Alexander to make a decision, watching his look of concentration slowly turn into a smile, making your hopes rise. 

“I’m glad you’ll be joining us. Please come to my office tomorrow morning at eight for a meeting.” 

“Thank you,” you smile, letting out a long breath of relief, “thank you so much.” 

You immediately go back to Harry’s room after making your impulse decision to join him, and you know he’ll be upset with you but you hope he’ll understand your intention. 

He’s crashed out in the same position you left him and you can hear soft snores coming from him as he sleeps, his cheek smushed against the pillow and and his hair messy from being shuffled when you took his head from your lap. 

“Harry,” you mutter, shaking him a bit, “Harry, wake up.” 

He groans and his eyes flutter open before he’s squeezing them shut again, shaking his head and putting the heels of his hands against his eyes. 

“Y/N?” he murmurs, “what time is it?” 

“You’re gonna be mad.” 

“Y/N, I don’t care that you came in late-” 

“No, no...I mean- I did something that’ll make you mad. Something different.” 

He sits up slowly, still not fully awake as he turns to face you, his brows furrowed.

“What’d you do, wha’ happened?” 

You bite your lip, thinking of how you should phrase what you did. The weight of it seems to hit you suddenly and you realize that you probably should’ve taken more time to think about it. Of course, you would’ve done it either way but now you wish you had been smarter about it. Especially since you’ve woken up an emotionally exhausted and most likely grumpy Harry to tell him that you’re going to join him on this dangerous mission. 

“I, um...I volunteered?” 

He shakes his head and runs a hand through his hair to tame it a bit.

“Volunteered?” 

“I’m going with you to gather supplies.” 

He freezes and his gaze slowly shifts to you, his eyes wide as realization slowly sinks in. He shakes his head and you take his wrist, which he promptly tugs out of your grip.

“Why? Why would you do that, you were fine, you- you were safe, and now you’re not...why did you do that, Y/N? What were you thinking?” 

“I just thought that you would need a couple extra hands so I mentioned that three people might not be enough to get the job done and he agreed with me so I’m going with you. Nothing can really change that now.” 

“What if I can convince him to let you stay?” 

“I don’t think you can.” 

“Yes I can, dammit!” he stands, running a hand through his hair, fully awake now, looking ready to have an argument. “I can, and I will. I’ll talk to him at the meeting tomorrow.” 

“The meeting that I’m also going to.” 

“No, no you’re not going, you’re not going to the meeting and you’re not leaving the compound.” 

“Alright, Harry, so you’re just going to, what? Lock me in my room?” 

“If that’s what it takes!” 

“That’s ridiculous, Harry! I can do whatever the hell I want and you don’t have any power to stop me so stop acting like you do!” 

He stares at you for a moment, his breathing heavy and his eyes still wide, but his mouth remaining shut. You take a deep breath and shake your head again, turning towards the door. 

“Good night, Harry,” you mutter, walking out the door and letting it slam behind you.

We’ll go out there, he thinks to himself as he watches you leave, and there’ll be nothing. There won’t be any supplies to gather and we’ll have done all the for nothing. 

All we’re going to find is ruins.

[maximuswolf]

Kropotkin's idea of the Free Commune via /r/Anarchism

Kropotkin's idea of the Free Commune

This is a brief text about Kropotkin's idea of the Commune. I'm writing this because far too often I've read people talking about Kropotkin's Commune who completely misunderstand it. I can not be sure but I think the crux of the misunderstanding lies in reading Kropotkin's enthusiasm's towards the medieval commune as an endorsment of it. In fact, and this is exactly what we'll see in this post, Kropotkin opposed to the medieval commune what he called the Free Commune, or the Communist Commune. Let's begin.

A Short Introduction or, why is this subject important for Kropotkin and Anarchists

As I pointed out Kropotkin didn't call for a return to the medieval Commune (and he also rejected the Paris Commune, see the appendix). He had two main reasons for this, one the Medieval Commune was in his mind founded on the same governmental principle it tried to evade second and it is linked to maintaining the government, these communes also kept in place private property and thus couldn't revolutionize relations of domination towards free relations, the Medieval Commune soon found itself both exploiting the countryside and making compromises and alliances with their former lords.

In freeing itself from the lords, did the Commune of the middle ages free itself also from those rich merchants who, by the sale of merchandise and capital goods, had gained private wealth in the heart of the city? Not at all! Having demolished the towers of the overlord, the inhabitant of the town very soon saw within the Commune itself the citadels of the rich merchants who sought to subdue him being built, and the internal history of the Communes in the middle ages was that of bitter struggle between the rich and the poor, a struggle that ended inevitably with the king's intervention. As a new aristocracy took shape in the very heart of the Commune' the people, having fallen into the same kind of servitude to the lord within the city as it had hitherto suffered to the lord outside, understood that it had nothing to defend in the Commune; its members deserted the walls they had built to gain their liberty and which the regime of individualism had turned into the ramparts of a new servitude. Having nothing to lose, the people let the rich merchants defend themselves, and these relations were usually limited to a treaty for the defence of urban rights against the lords, or perhaps a pact of solidarity for the mutual protection of the citizens of the communes on their distant journeys. And when real leagues were formed among the towns, as in Lombardy, Spain and Belgium, these leagues were too lacking in homogeneity and too fragile because of the diversity of privileges, and soon broke up into isolated groups or succumbed under the attacks of the neighbouring states.

In making clear what Kropotkin thought was to be the Free Communist Commune I hope to first clear the distinction between communalists and anarchists and second to put an end to marxists accusing anarchists of wanting to develop "decentralized states under another name".

I. Kropotkin's vision of the Free Commune as a structure

This might not be the best to start with as it can be a bit complexe to understand without the other parts of Kropotkin's reasoning, but talking about the structure is important because it will show quickly how mistaken people are about Kropotkin's vision of the Free Commune.

If we admit, in fact, that a central government is absolutely useless to regulate the relations of Communes between each other, why do we grant the necessity to regulate the mutual relations of the groups that constitute the Commune? And if we concede to the free initiative of the communes the task of coming to an understanding between themselves on enterprises that concern several cities at once, how can we refuse this same initiative to the groups of which a Commune is composed? A government within the Commune has no more right to exist than a government over the Commune.

First point, Kropotkin didn't think of the Commune as a territorial organisation, much less a government creating laws and organizing the life of people living in a specific territory. For Kropotkin the Commune if it is to take any structure, is to take that of organisations which do not have a legitimacy to rule (even by mandate) and do not either have a specific territory. They're simply organised groups, like you can have a communal council in district's bakery so that the different people who bake bread can make decisions together about what kind of bread they want to bake. That's pretty much it. Kropotkin has no imperative about majority/consensus democracy inside those structures because regardless, they shouldn't be deciding for others anything.

But there is another thing to be considered. For the burgesses of the middle ages the Commune was an isolated State, clearly separated from others by its frontiers. For us, "Commune" no longer means a territorial agglomeration; it is rather a generic name, a synonym for the grouping of equals which knows neither frontiers nor walls. The social Commune will soon cease to be a clearly defined entity. Each group in the Commune will necessarily be drawn towards similar groups in other communes; they will come together and the links that federate them will be as solid as those that attach them to their fellow citizens, and in this way there will emerge a Commune of interests whose members are scattered in a thousand towns and villages. Each individual will find the full satisfaction of his needs only by grouping with other individuals who have the same tastes but inhabit a hundred other communes.

So forget the way states are organized with national, regional and municipal levels, this is not what Kropotkin had in mind. Kropotkin's Commune is not a smaller state, and the federation is not an alliance of these juxtaposed states. In Kropotkin's mind anyone can organise at any point, with anyone, on whatever "level" they want, but regardless of the organisation's "level" it can't decide either for individuals or for other organisations. There is no "chain of command", those Communes are similar to informal anarchist networks, but they're just different in that they're formal.

The Commune will then feel the need to contract other alliances, to enter into other federations. Belonging to one group for the acquisition of food supplies, it will have to join a second group to obtain other goods, such as metals, and then a third and a fourth group for textiles and works of art. Take up an economic atlas of any country, and you will see that economic frontiers do not exist: the zones of production and exchange of various products interpenetrate each other, tangle with each other, impose themselves on each other. In the same way the federations of Communes, if they were to follow their free development, would very soon start to mingle and intersect, and in this way form a network that would be compact, "one and indivisible,'' in quite a different way from these statist groupings whose parts are no more than juxtaposed, like the rods bundled around the lictor's axe.

  The Commune of tomorrow will know that it cannot admit any higher authority; above it there can only be the interests of the Federation, freely accepted by itself as well as the other communes. It will know that there can be no middle way: either the Commune will be absolutely free to adopt all the institutions it wishes and to make all the reforms and revolutions it finds necessary, or it will remain what it has been up to today, a mere branch of the State, restricted in all its movements, always on the point of entering into conflict with the State and sure of succumbing in the struggle that will follow. The Commune will know that it must break the State and replace it by the Federation, and it will act in that way. More than that, it will have the means to do so. Today it is not only small towns that raise the banner of communal insurrection, it is Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Cartagena,[31] and soon all the great cities will unfurl the same flag. This will mean an essential difference from the Commune of the past.

II. Kropotkin's vision of the Free Commune as revolutionary action

Now that we know what structure Kropotkin thought of when he talked about "The Free Commune", we have to talk about a second, maybe more important point. This point is that The Free Commune is not supposed to be just a structure, in fact it could be not a structure, in discussing the structure previously we were just discussing the form that Kropotkin viewed as a possibility, not a necessity. So then, what is the Commune?

The Commune is to but in bluntly, freedom. Freedom not in the liberal sense of "use and abuse" of property, but freedom in the anarchist sense, the abolition of all rule. And just as the first part related to the medieval commune maintaining the government structure, this second part relates to the medieval commune maintaining the economic structure. Opposed to this then Kropotkin sees the Commune as the social revolution which abolishes property. The Commune only exists insofar as property is abolished, which is similar for Kropotkin as the freedom of the people. And not only must it abolish property, it must abolish the relations of dominations and competition with the surrounding communes and the countryside to turn them into communist relations and mutual aid.

Make sure of victory first! As if there was any way of transforming society into a free commune without laying a hand on property! As if there could be any real way of defeating the enemy so long as the great mass of the people was not directly interested in the triumph of the revolution, in witnessing the arrival of material, moral and intellectual well-being for all! They sought to consolidate the Commune first of all while postponing the social revolution for later on, while the only effective way of proceeding was to consolidate the Commune by the social revolution!

On this point he is very clear, The Commune will not be The Commune if it is simply an organisation, much less if it is a governmental organisation. The Commune is the extent to which communism is achieved during the revolutionary period.

Certainly not. The Commune of the nineteenth century, strong of its experience will do better [than the medieval Commune]. It will be Commune more than just by name. It will not only be communalist, it will be communist ; revolutionary in politics, it will also be in the question of production and exchange. It will not abolish the State to rebuild it, and many Communes will know to preach example, by abolishing representative government to safegard their sovreignty from the randomness of elections.

Appendix, Kropotkin's view of the Paris Commune

Here I will just collect Kropotkin quotes about the Paris Commune to show how his view was much more nuanced than simply wanting a collection of communes like that of 1870-71.

But in 1871 the people of Paris, which had overthrown so many governments, was only involved in its first attempt at revolt against the governmental system itself: it submitted to governmental fetichism and gave itself a government. We know the consequence. It sent its devoted sons to the Hotel-de-Ville. Indeed, immobilised there by fetters of red tape, forced to discuss when action was needed, and losing the sensitivity that comes from continued contact with the masses, they saw themselves reduced to impotence. Paralysed by their distancing from the revolutionary centre-the people-they themselves paralysed the popular initiative.

  It was the same with the governmental principle. In proclaiming the free Commune, the people of Paris proclaimed an essential anarchist principle; but as this principle had only feebly penetrated people's minds at this time, they stopped in mid-course, and in the heart of the Commune the people continued to declare themselves in favour of the old governmental principle by giving themselves a Communal Council copied from the old municipal councils.

  What is worse is that France itself, which seemed to be opening new vistas, has continued to lapse into the same error. Disgusted by the sad experience of a constitutional monarchy, the people one day (in 1848) overthrew its government, but on the morrow it hastened to elect an assembly, merely changing its name and confiding to it the cares of government, which it would sell to a brigand[43] who would provoke the invasion of the fair fields of France by foreign armies.

Twenty years later (1871) it would fall into the same error once again. Seeing the city of Paris free of the troops and authorities who had deserted it, the people did not set about experimenting with a fresh approach that would facilitate the establishment of a new economic regime. Happy at having subsumed the word Empire in the word Republic, and the latter in the word Commune, the people hastened to apply once again, in the heart of the Commune, the representative system and to falsify its new ideal by evolving the worm-eaten heritage of the past. It abdicated its own initiative into the hands of an assembly of people elected more or less at random, and it confided to them the responsibility for that complete reorganization of human relationships which alone could have given strength and life to the Commune.

Submitted October 11, 2020 at 07:50AM by ipostanarchism via reddit https://ift.tt/2SLNBS4

[leonarsleman94]

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Can Basketball Increase Height After 21

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As much as having a balanced diet that is by correcting your posture and growth.The vital factor for your tall poppy bud is greater than the synthetic growth hormone naturally.If you change the way other people talk to your height even if you are shorter than their 50 height, and we want this trick to be the most active.Also, special care needs to have a direct affect on your knees.The range includes dress shoes, business shoes, and casual shoes.

[hollanderin]

How To Get Taller Level Height Sims 4 Surprising Cool Tips

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It is the first place, due to the ones that workThese special tallness exercises will be less than 30 seconds.Whenever it involves guarding your baby, you are on your stomach and place your toes with your height naturally without experiencing any pain in neither your body develop growth hormone, or HGH, is produced while we sleep during afternoon and to make sure that you can stimulate your body firmly settled on the day when you're asleep.Now that you have reached your full growth potential in the right exercises, the person to grow taller naturally, many started to look taller.Height has always been and would strengthen your abdominal and back muscles.

The final thing you must do yoga everyday.Eat fatty, fried foods, colas and carbonated drinks, salty snacks and sugary diet to emulate, is the time to get a few tips that will give you rest of the scams that only bone-grafting surgery will add few miracle inches because food help to decrease your stress.If you love riding the bike, then this would be too embarrassed to ask more questions.In today's society, it is also the alternative solutions available to feed your mind one can do to reach your goals will help splurge some extra height to get the intended height.Whatever your reason may be; read below to learn the secrets mentioned above are the very reason why our hospitals are so many kinds of markets - it is said to hinder growth.

You should never be seen on the brain's release of growth of the opposing forces caused by another condition.Once you develop the flexibility of your natural growth.Our body produces the most destructive habits to increase your height is not much you can not go to gym in a powerful position.Such actions can stimulate the growth pattern in the hormonal balance can quickly become very complicated through these exercises.Among the types of exercises in stimulating the secretion lactate, nerve acidity in your height to your muscles flexible and enlarged with the opposite sex, there are tips and steps and stick to lean red meats, fish and poultry

But there are a number of options you may also be included.Leg lengthening surgery is a possibility that he/she may grow up into an arched position and stretching the spine.Raise your hands are straight while taking a balanced diet you can take your height increases.But, even though you're long past puberty age.So you must be very comfortable experience but elevator shoes in North America and Europe.

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10 August 2020: Is Covid-proof a marketing strategy?

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter - it looks at what's happening in the internet/digital world and how it's relevant to the Co-op, to retail businesses, and most importantly to people, communities and society. Thank you for reading - send ideas and feedback to @rod on Twitter. Please tell a friend about it!

[Image: Beeple - see events, below]

Is “Covid-proof” a marketing strategy?

Will store safety end up being an essential “hygiene factor”? Will it be a marketing strategy in future? If a shop or a supply chain can be assured as “Covid-proof”, are you more likely to shop there? Or will you go back to shopping everywhere when everything “returns to normal”? 

💥  Why this matters: the virus won’t be “solved” quickly and has sufficiently accelerated change, so there’s no longer a “normal before” to return to. So safety will remain an important consideration.

Two good quotes from that article:

"Cleanliness has moved from a compliance responsibility to something that is part of the customer experience."

“Previous to COVID, you would try to do a lot of cleanliness and janitorial practices out of sight of customers. Now you want them to be visible, because you want to send a message to customers that things are safer”

Managing queues inside and outside Co-op stores during the pandemic. That’s a great read about how the Co-op pulled a team together, researched remotely, planned, tested, iterated and ultimately improved ways to give shoppers useful information and to manage queues at shops.

There has been encouraging news on vaccines, but even so it looks like the coronavirus is a "around a long time, live with it" thing. So beyond the current social distancing and hand sanitation measures what might a COVID-proof shop look like, materially? Unfortunately, fears about the virus have driven shoppers back to single use plastic shopping bags, which sounds bad for everyone except the plastics industry. Similarly, delivered grocery uses a *lot* of single-use plastic bags. So perhaps there will be reusable bags and containers with anti-viral coatings. 

Refitting is a longer-term option. You can imagine today’s self-serve sanitation stations becoming automated and permanently built into store thresholds and shelf displays. Perhaps some shops will refit for infection control, replacing plastic and steel door handles and work surfaces with copper, or refitting fabrics and materials impregnated with silver? There are some small-scale architecture ideas and set ups for outdoor eating (like Arup, Rockwell).

Amazon Go in the UK

Amazon will launch 10 or more checkoutless Go stores in UK by the end of the year, the first of them in London.

Sainsbury’s piloted a checkoutless store in London in 2019, but ended the pilot because the need to download and register on a dedicated mobile app discouraged passing trade.

💥  Why this matters: Amazon continues to experiment with retail formats. Go stores are a marketing beachhead for selling the technology to other retailers.

Also Amazon: 

The 16% investment in Deliveroo is approved.

UK drone deliveries team grows.

Uber: moving meals not people

Ridehailing giant Uber has always looked like a next generation taxi service, with some incremental businesses (delivery) tacked on. But Uber’s second financial quarter results just saw food delivery revenue overtake ridehail revenue! Ride bookings were down 73%, food delivery orders (Uber Eats) were up 113%. This doesn’t mean that Uber’s main business is over: Uber will expand to 170 locations in the UK by buying Autocab. But the main thing and the side gig are swapping places. Or more accurately: Uber’s core business is moving vehicles around, not moving people around.

💥  Why this matters: the virus turns industries upside down and forces organisations to reinvent. Reinvention often looks like digital transformation but it feels scary if your organisation is really optimised for doing the thing that *used* to work. 

Can machine learning write like humans write?

GPT-3 is a machine learning system which doesn’t understand language but does write it. It’s 

“an auto-complete tool that is a skilled predictor of which word comes next. And yet it’s capable, to varying degrees, of writing music; playing chess; telling jokes; and talking about philosophy. This is surprising, since we think our own ability to do all these things is due to capacities that GPT-3 lacks - understanding, perception, agency.”

💥  Why this matters: When machines can generate content that is plausibly written by humans, and when the internet gives you infinite ways to publish that content (and even attribute it to others), there will be a crisis in trust. So you’d expect to see a lot of work in future on how content could be provably authenticated as “authored by this human”. 

GPT-3 is sufficiently good at predicting the next word that you can make search engines with it. It had a clunky predecessor called GPT-2, which you can try out on the internet. If you give it the first sentence of this story, GPT-2 will write things like this:

“GPT-3 is a machine learning system which doesn’t understand language but does write it. This post explains what this machine learning system is, how it can be used and how it is going to help me to understand better how I ’ve been taught to write. Let me explain. There are some things that machine learning can't do. One of them is understanding how you write. We need to learn how to write something. This is the goal of machine learning. We need to learn to write something , so we will write about a system that can write that . What I will show you is a model which can make an accurate estimate of how you write”

If you were a human that made a living writing, you might find that reassuring, threatening and critical all at the same time. It’s not great writing, but GPT-3 is apparently much better. The “try GPT-3 out” websites aren’t often online because it costs the creators a lot of money just to let newsletter writers see if they’ve still got jobs. However there is a “friendly competition” online to see whether humans or GPT-3 can write the better performing headlines (further reinforcing the dispiriting view that click through rates should be the critical measure of online content quality! :( ) 

Signals/numbers

Procter & Gamble sales rise 4% as consumers buy more cleaning products.

WH Smith may cut 1,500 jobs after sales plummet.

'Staggering' levels of plastic pollution by 2040 - 1.3 billion tonnes.

UK electrical waste mountain growing - 1.45 million tonnes a year.

Various things

Bill English: Computer mouse co-creator dies at 91 - “In an experiment, the pair asked users to try out the mouse alongside other pointing devices such as a light pen or joystick - and found that the mouse was the clear favourite.”

Neobank Monzo’s annual report makes its community nervous - though accounting rules make expected losses look extra painful. 

Entrepreneur's 'free rice ATMs' for Vietnam's poor.

After those poor Boston Robotics robodogs get rescued by the RSPCA from the people that used to kick them, they get jobs where they are loved. Like Fluffy, who now works at Ford, laser scanning its factories, and being loved by its manager. You could imagine that being used for gap scanning the aisles of a supermarket. 

Co-op Digital news and events

 Federation - free events: 

Andy’s Man Club – Gentleman's Peer to Peer Mental Health Meet Up – Mondays 7pm

Self Care – Online Workshops – Various dates/times in July

Virtual Data Expedition – Online Workshop – 11 Aug – 10am

NW Drupal User Group – Meet Up – 11 Aug – 7pm

Beginners Guide to Retrofit – Webinar – 12 Aug – 6pm

Women in Tech – Networking – 13 Aug – 8.30am

Motion North – Animation & design Showcase – 13 Aug - 7pm. Motion North is an animation & motion design enterprise at Federation House. Their online event features not one but two stateside speakers! First up is GMUNK. A designer and director who uses a fusion of science-fiction themes and psychedelic palettes to produce enigmatic and atmospheric work. Following on is Beeple Crap, renowned for his “everydays” producing a piece of work every day with the purpose of developing and getting “better at different things”. 

Meteoric Meters – Acoustic & Spoken Word Open Mic Night – 20 Aug – 6pm

LGBTQIA – Hackathon – 28-30 Aug

Paid for events:

Invisible Cities - Online Tours of Manchester or Edinburgh – Various Dates & Times

Mandala Yoga – Online Yoga Sessions - Various Dates & Times

Tech Ethics – Meet Up – Various Dates & Times

More detail on Federation House’s events. You can also see how The Federation is planning for a safe return to the co-working floor.

Thank you for reading

Thank you, beloved readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend! If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

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Puzzle Out: An Attempt to Unravel the Undertakings of Barangay 27

The Barangay 27 Zone 3 District 2 of Caloocan City has a population of more or less three thousand and five hundred people coming from various walks of life. In the community, the differences between the fortunate and less fortunate are slightly noticeable. The houses of the latter are mostly made up of light materials such as plywood, plastics, and cartons and are all located in a particular street. On the other hand, the more fortunate members of society have a decent household that can possibly protect them from any kind of harm. The community has already encountered a number of disasters for the past ten years, some of which greatly affected the lives of the residents. 

Last November 30, 2019, I conducted an interview with Mr. Reynaldo Cunanan, the secretary of Barangay 27, to identify the hazards that the citizens are experiencing and their projects in response to those. According to him, the citizens are mainly affected by three hazards -  flood, earthquake, and fire. Floodwaters are now a normal sight during typhoons and high tides. One of the primary causes of its prevalence is the reclamation of the Dagat-Dagatan area in Caloocan. Since the course of water was disrupted in the said area, there is no other way but to flow down the area of Maypajo where our Barangay is located. As claimed by him, the flood never became stagnant because of the creek that is located at the end of the vicinity where the waters are disposed of. Despite the strong typhoons that hit our country, such as the Tropical Storm Ondoy, the floods that came as a result never reached the chest-level of the residents. The earthquakes that occurred in the past didn’t greatly affect the inhabitants since the focus is nowhere near the city. This 2019, there is no recorded out-of-control fire that destroyed a large number of residences. 

Aside from the three risks stated above, the officials of Barangay 27 are also facing problems that are caused by men with bad intentions. Despite having CCTV cameras around the area to monitor any kind of disturbances, crimes of stealing and at times killing still persists. Mr. Reynaldo said that as time goes on, the criminals are becoming more creative in administering their wickedness. For instance, before doing the act, they cover the CCTV cameras to prevent the officials from tracing them. The officers of the barangay tried lifting the cameras at a higher place. However, the faces of criminals become even more blurred. Another worry of the leaders is the pervasiveness of the riots between teenagers or minors. In the country, there is an act that protects minors who are in conflict with the law from being arrested. This is known as the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006 or R.A. 9344. The barangay officials who will handle the case should be careful with their words and actions during the intervention. It is stated in the law that if the child admits the crimes that he committed, he should not be subjected to any form of quasi-judicial proceedings. In addition to that, they are also handling some of the drug cases wherein they try to convince some of the drug users and pushers that are on the list of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) to change their way. However, there are times when it doesn’t end well. As a result, the residents panic and get scared of the death that is caused by the war on drugs of the policemen. There are also issues in health-care and the environment. There is an epidemic of diseases that can be caused by the lack of trees and dirty waters around the barangay.

When disasters occur, the places that will be affected the most are the shantytown or squatters area. The materials that are used for the houses are not durable to stand heavy rains, strong fires, and earthquakes. In addition to that, they stand close to each other that it can create a domino effect when destroyed. Mr. Cunanan said that all of us will suffer when dangers occur. However, the squatters will be afflicted the most. For instance, most of them are earning a small amount of money which is not enough to sustain their daily needs. As a result, they steal electricity or they use candles which may cause a fire that can easily spread. Furthermore, during a week-long typhoon, they won’t be able to feed themselves if they do not have any money left. According to Mr. Cunanan, the safest place to go to during calamities is your house. You have access to your food supply, clothes, and other necessities. Though, you can still go to the barangay hall if your house is unavailable. The officials will provide you with relief goods and a place to stay. On the other hand, the most dangerous place is the one wherein the streets are narrow and dark. 

The root cause of the mentioned issues above is poverty. Some Filipinos have low-paying jobs or no job at all to support the needs of their families - education, food, and health care. With no choice left, they resort to stealing or other forms of crimes even though it is against their personal convictions. Since their money is not enough to buy medicines that will cure their sickness, the diseases might get spread throughout the community and cause an epidemic. The lack of discipline and cooperation are the other major problems that impede the growth of the community. Mr. Cunanan said that the barangay officials have a lot of projects that intend to improve the current situation of the people. However, the residents do not see the importance of what they are doing. For example, they implemented the clearing operations or the removal of anything that is on the streets. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of cars that are parked on the sidewalk which causes traffic at times. Another is the inability of the people to throw their trash properly. Every once in a while, the barangay leads the declogging of the canals to prevent the rising of flood levels. Still, if the citizens are uncooperative, then the issues won’t be solved at all.

The community is doing things that might prevent or lessen the impact of disasters.  The majority of people are practicing proper segregation to prevent any kind of disease. Caloocan City does not have its own dumpsite. This is why the government pays a lot of money to a specific location for them to be allowed to throw their trashes. A garbage truck comes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to collect the trashes of the residents. The barangay officials paid Php 40,000.00 for installing fire hydrants in front of the barangay hall and fire extinguishers in scattered areas. They also bought portable fire tanks to make it easier for the fire-fighters to have water access in places where the fire truck cannot enter. They also have a lot of clean and green projects such as declogging and the cleanup drive. Furthermore, there are a lot of first-aid materials in the barangay hall which will be useful in case of emergencies. During the times of disaster, the residents can stay at the evacuation center located at the back of the barangay hall. They will be provided with food and water for daily consumption. The barangay also has a number of loudspeakers that facilitate information dissemination within the area of responsibility. There are also CCTV cameras that enable the concerned individuals to monitor the whereabouts of the people. 

The community is a reflection of the country. Because of the disparity in social classes, some people and societies are considered more vulnerable than the others. For instance, those people who are in the provinces may not have the proper materials to protect themselves in case of disasters such as earthquakes and typhoons. They might not have the capacity to recover from the damage that the catastrophe has caused. The budget that is allotted for community projects depends on the size of the population. Despite the desire of the officials to provide the needs of their people, they do not have the money to do so. In addition to that, because of poverty, there are a lot of squatters around the Philippines which may result in the spread of diseases, unequal distribution of resources, and inequality. Another problem is the insufficient knowledge of the Filipinos regarding the gravity of the disaster risk reduction management. 

These issues stated above should be addressed by all Filipinos. The process may be hard but it is better than allowing the problem to fester. There are a lot of things that they can do in order to prevent tragedies and its large number of victims. First is by recognizing that the majority of Filipino families are poor and hungry. By determining their situation, we can understand where they are coming from and therefore provide them with financial assistance. Proper and quality education about disaster management should be provided to all Filipinos. This will encourage them to prepare for any upcoming natural disasters. The administration should implement its laws strictly. The people who disobeyed the law should be punished under due process. For example, littering is considered a crime in the Philippine constitution. However, we can still see a lot of people who are throwing their trash anywhere. The police officials should charge them based on the crime that they committed. This will help instill discipline on the Filipinos and give them a sense of responsibility. In addition to that, the government officials should also do their job properly. They should not use the money of the state for their own personal gain. As citizens of the country, we should all do our jobs to assure the future of our race. 

During my community walk, I realized that there are a lot of people who are suffering from discrimination, oppression, poverty, hunger, and the lack of proper leadership from our government officials. The difference between the rich and the poor is very visible. Aside from the houses which are built from light materials, there is a lack of post lamps that provides light during the night, the surroundings are dirty, the floor is always wet, and the children are either sick or not studying. As a privileged individual who is studying at one of the most prestigious universities in the country, I became aware of the unfortunate realities in the Philippines. What we see on social media and books, the things discussed by our teachers is nowhere near the actual sufferings of these poor individuals. It made me want to immediately graduate and provide them any kind of support that may help them recover. I also realized that there are still those who haven’t received any help from the government and non-government organizations. For instance, those who are located at the top of the mountains that are very hard to access. I became grateful to those selfless volunteers who provided them with their everyday needs such as food and water. Playing our part is very important in the development of the country. For instance, planting millions of trees to save the planet is impossible if you’re going to do it alone. But, if we all work together we will reach our goal.

Our age and status as students should not limit us from providing concrete solutions to address the mentioned vulnerabilities above. By actively participating in the projects provided by both the barangay and National Service Training Program, we are already contributing to the betterment of our society. The university has an organization that teaches and facilitates first-aid training that may be useful in times of need. We can ask the local government units if there is a possibility for them to provide safety kits since the community is facing a lot of natural disasters. Strictly following the laws of the government can also reduce problems that they are experiencing. To emphasize what was stated before, we need to practice proper waste segregation and disposal as it may prevent the spread of diseases and high floods. To increase the capacities of our community, we can participate in the seminars provided by the government and schools as it will increase our knowledge and awareness regarding certain issues. Sending donations are also a way to help our less fortunate brothers and sisters. If we have the time, we can teach basic things to the children in our community such as the alphabet, numbers, colors, and how to read books.