#i know the US government probably has one
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I don't actually think that shooting the ten guys with the wealth has literally never made things better at any point in the history of man. If you actually read my post instead of pattern-matching it to the nearest easy thing to dunk on you might notice that I don't ever say anything incompatible with there being a wide range of outcomes. That said, it really is the case if you read history broadly there are trends in how well countries do if they descend into political violence and civil war. It tends not to make things better. Yes, there's a distribution- it's not a good distribution.
I understand that's a bit rude to accuse you of pattern matching to something dunkable rather than actually thinking, but you're the one who opened by attributing people who disagree with you to propaganda from the US government and fantasy novels. I get that that lets you feel pleasantly smug but there are in fact historically literate people who disagree with you for real reasons.
The American Revolution is probably one of the examples of "just kill some people" working out well you're thinking of here. It's genuinely true that things worked out well, but the American Revolution was a very weird civil war. The American revolution notably preserved most of the existing ruling class and didn't substantially disrupt the general structure of society. If you want to argue that wars of secession specifically have a very different track record from popular uprisings or attempting to use political violence to stabilize a country you'd have a good case for doing so. That said, even in that reference class the American Revolution had much better results than typical.
Perhaps you're not thinking of something so famous and instead thinking of examples like the overthrow of the government of communist Romania?
If you're making predictions from the American Revolution and the French Revolution and a handful of overthrows of dictatorships at the end of the Cold War and not on the banal, boring, usually forgotten peasant uprisings in Early Modern Europe, or the various peasant uprisings and descents into warlordism in Ancient China, or the slow rise of political violence and decay in norms in the Roman Republic (a shiny popular example, but still not one you should leave out- reversed stupidity isn't intelligence and we have a disproportionate amount of insight into this one), or the dozen instances of political violence in the early twentieth century aiding in the rise of the opposed party from the people doing the violence, or the communist attempts to swiftly restructure society in ways that accidentally caused massive famines, or the general outcomes of civil wars in the late 20th century, or the hundred other things in this vein, you're going to end up wrong about things.
Yes, the distribution of outcomes is wide. Yes, it is not entirely negative. That doesn't mean anywhere near as much as it might seem. A lottery which has a 50% chance of killing you horribly, a 20% chance of torturing you before you die, a 30% chance of leaving you alive but worse off, a 10% chance of not much detectable change, and a 10% chance of making things a small amount better, is not a lottery worth playing. That doesn't correspond to the political violence lottery, it's just a simple example.
The obvious response to this is that we should be examining the cases where it goes well to see how to get results like that. That response is a good response. However, to do that you need to know in the first place that violent revolution isn't a magical cure-all. You need to know that it tends negative or you won't even bother figuring out how to make it not do that. You need to know that the present has a larger list of fragile improvements and so you can't just use outcomes from nobility in 13th century France or even 18th century America to make predictions.
Things are legitimately different in the period where wealth flows almost entirely from land and just killing people and taking their land will mostly just work to enrich yourself. Even then, doing a bunch of it via an outside-the-norms-method in a polity and eroding the legitimacy of whatever is stopping the descent into violence from kicking off earlier tends to result in more and more violence over time. That trend really isn't hard to notice. Almost every single time without exception you end up with the place in general being drastically worse off. Usually the people who started the cycle end up very dead and frequently their family ends up extinct or less powerful than they started. Yes, they cared about different things- it was still usually a mistake to kick off a period of violence by their own values. For an example of this, consider literally any period of civil war in the history of China. Yes, someone manages to succeed and end up the next dynasty. The odds of being that someone aren't great. Assassinating your uncle to end up Emperor has a better track record. if not a stellar one. It's also not a mass uprising, and has a lower chance of kicking off a civil war.
If all you do is notice a lot of the people who hold a view are unsophisticated and stupid, find a couple counterexamples, and then smugly posture about how there's nuance, you see, you may legitimately be doing better than the idiots. But you need to actually know the distribution to be right, you can't just notice some other people know less than you and assume that means nobody knows more. Historians can tend kind of stupid in a lot of ways but there is actually something you get from having seen a broad overview of history. Not as much as a lot of historians like to pretend, but "just using a bunch of outside-the-norms violence to try to make things better for you personally was a high risk strategy before the modern world, doing it to make things better for people in general or for the sake of preserving a polity's stability was harder still, and the modern world makes it all work a lot less well" is one of the things that is, frankly, somewhat overdetermined.
What people care about is usually whether something makes slides into dictatorship more likely. Whether it makes famines more likely. Whether it makes instability and a lot of suffering more likely. Whether it tends to make things worse by our values, both when people don't care much about that and even when they do. The answers there are pretty clear. Yes, there's a distribution rather than a universal single outcome. It's not a good one.
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"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal."
🇺🇸JEFFREY SACHS says ⬇️
"Who elected Trump? Billionaires.
Who was opposing Trump with Harris? Billionaires.
When you look at our politics—'We the People'—we are like spectators at a sport.
Who are the billionaires? Well, it's that list on one side and that list on the other.
We sit back—who's going to win? I don't know, but it's going to be the billionaires.
So what do the billionaires backing Trump want? Tax cuts.
What did the billionaires backing Harris want? Tax cuts.
What is the election going to produce? Tax cuts.
Big surprise. Is it a drama? Of course it's not a drama.
Our Congress is corrupt. Our political system is corrupt. It's run by the big boys, not by the little people, so we're going to have more tax cuts.
Here comes Trump, elected by a disgruntled voting population—the working class. This is his core.
And he's telling the working class, 'You've been cheated. I'm going to support you.'
And what's he going to do? He's going to give tax cuts to the richest people in the world.
You know, ten people now—TEN PEOPLE—have a net worth of $2 trillion.
I'm sorry, we can't even imagine what this means.
The days after Trump was elected, their net worth increased by $100 billion—in days.
Because people who have money know, 'Oh, this is a bonanza for the billionaires.'
By the way, if Harris had won, it probably would have gone up the same way—because it's billionaires on both sides.
So this deficit is going to rise; it's not going to fall.
Now Trump has a very particular, clever electoral strategy.
He says to the voters, 'The billionaires are your friends. That's not the problem. Your enemy is the immigrant and your enemy is China. I'm going to go after your enemies, not your friends, the billionaires.'
So what Trump says is, 'I'm going to raise tariffs on the Chinese, I'm going to kick out the immigrants, and you're going to live the American dream.'
And it's not going to happen.
And sure enough, within the next few years, the Trump administration will be a failure—widening income inequalities, big unhappiness, larger budget deficits, frictions with China, a lot of lawsuits in the United States, and people trying to stay in the U.S. who are threatened with deportation.
It's not going to be a happy period.
And this, unfortunately, comes from the fact that when you have two parties—billionaires backing this one and billionaires backing that one—someone gets left out.
And that's the people."
youtube
How rich people fukkk over Americans
This is a concept that meets a lot of resistance in the US, where Americans are taught to worship money.
Thus, ordinary people - especially conservatives - admire rich people regardless of how the wealth is acquired.
And the rich people are good at diversion — they blame the government, China, immigrants etc.
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get ready for my thoughts on yaoi UBI
So I’ve kvetched about UBI in the tags for long enough someone finally asked me what I was going on about so here we go!
I will start with some caveats:
I am British, and so I can only speak about the British specifics.
I have for the past twelve years worked as a professional health economist, and health economics is based on social welfare theory (specifically growing out of Arrow’s work in the 1960s and Sen’s work in the 80s/90s). I literally could talk forever about this, but I won’t. If you want to know more, read the pretty good wikipedia article on welfare economics.
But fundamental to welfare economics is two things: if we make a great big change, do the benefits outweigh the costs? And does the change make a fundamental change for good? (aka cost-benefit analysis and pareto efficiency).
The other thing you need to know about me is that I don’t like activists very much, because they never have to show their working, and my entire professional life is showing my working, and critiquing other people’s working. We all have ideas mate, show me the plan! I love a plan! and this isn't coming from anything but personal experience; I have been to talks by UBI activists before, including ones by economists, but I have never had the case made to me that UBI would be either cost-beneficial OR approach pareto efficient. In fact, it usually reminds me of arguments that are based on some other imaginary world, and then I get so annoyed I want to scream.
In the early 2010s when I was first starting working as an economist, I was asked to build a model to see whether switching a disability benefit from government administered to individual administration would be cost-effective. Essentially, if you were newly in a wheelchair and you needed a ramp building up to your house, would it be better for the government to organise a contractor, or for you to be given a cash transfer and organise it yourself? The answer was that it wasn’t, but anyone who has ever had to hire a builder could have told you that, and the government didn’t have to pay my firm £30,000 to make that decision. But that is what UBI essentially is; a cash transfer where you get cash and the government gets to enjoy less responsibility.
There are 37.5 million people of working age in England. (Nearly) every single working person gets what's called a tax free allowance, where the government doesn’t claim income tax on the first £12,570. (Once you make over £120k, your allowance starts to decrease, and you lose it entirely at I think £150k)
Let’s assume that instead of just not claiming tax on this amount, the government switched to making that £12,570 your UBI. That is £471,375,000,000 just for England - just under half a trillion pounds. In cash, or nearest as in our modern economy. And not one off - Every year.
Okay, let's say that the country does have a spare half a trillion a year (in cash) lying around. What is the benefit to switching from tax free allowance to UBI? Well, let's assume that no one stops working, so there would be the tax receipts from the 20% income tax on the £12,570, and that’s just a shade under £100 million. Not bad.
But if you’ve seen a UBI post, you will know that people like the idea because they will be able to work less. Which probably means that UBI will need to be paid for in some other way. Perhaps by cutting existing benefits. The universal credit cost is around £100 billion. So we’re still £300 billion short, and honestly, you wouldn’t cut all of universal credit anyway, probably only the unemployment benefits, but I’m not digging into the maths on that tonight.
But, look, I am sympathetic. I am a welfarist. I genuinely believe that the economy is not just money, that welfare is happiness, it is utility, it is all the stuff that makes life worth living, and it is the responsibility of the government to maximise the welfare/happiness/utility/quality of life of the country through efficient use of taxation and other sources of money. So people give the government money and it spends it on goods and services and then people get utility, and then they spend their own money to get more utility, and ultimately we can gain intangible things that are incredibly valuable.
But the problem is that cash is cash, cold and hard and very real. I don’t know how unlimited spare time translates into half a trillion real pound coins. I wouldn’t know how to build a model that complex and uncertain, especially as this all assumes that you can live on 12k a year, and that whatever replaces progressive taxation is equally progressive. I haven’t even touched on how having a convoluted welfare state insures it somewhat against being entirely destroyed after a change in political opinions, aka what I call the daily mail test. You think the narrative about people on welfare is bad now? But also, how would you deal with people who didn’t manage their UBI money well? What happens if there is a personal crisis?
The more I look at it, the more the existing system is actually remarkably good value for money. Individualism is expensive. Collective decision making and spending is just cheaper.
Ultimately I don’t see the additional benefit of UBI, requiring a pie in the sky change, when it is far, far, far more cost effective to strengthen the existing regime across the board; taxation law, social safety net, childcare, working laws, education and health - all systems that are already in place, and have a thousand times higher likelihood to be pareto optimal and cost effective than trying to find half a trillion pounds of cash round the back of the sofa, while torching 150 years of progress so middle class people can write their book without having to have a job. If I was conspiracy minded I would say that UBI feels like a psy-op, trying to shut down old fashioned progress in favour of ripping it all out and starting again.
Ultimately, that is my real annoyance. It is far, far, far cheaper for the government to provide you with your new ramp for your house, and that is done through politics, but not fun moonshot politics, the hard shit that isn’t sexy.
#UBI#universal basic income#me being an economist on main again#the third time in twelve years#which is a pretty good record#study economics and be involved in politics#engage with the actual politics you have!#you'd be surprised how many progressive things get passed by conservative governments#and that is because you should never give up hope#I hope I don't get cancelled for my perfectly anodyne takes where I also show my working#and now back to your regularly scheduled blorbo fixating
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What were Adeleine and Noir’s parents like
Sorry to hold onto this ask for so long! I've had trouble shaking this weird self-conscious streak that's made it tricky to share my non-art but today seemed like the right day for it.
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So, I feel like there are two types of parents in OC land: bad abusive parents the OC has to get away from and good parents who die tragically early in the OC's life.
Neichel Fontaine, songstress of the New World, and Rim de la Ride, peregrine Prince of Ripple Star, are definitely the later.
Though, thinking about their personalities, they were probably not like, fairy-tale perfect parents! ^^; Neichel came from a rough background on Shiver Star to start, and due to her career as an agent of government propaganda, had a lot of her empathy stomped on and ground up in order to survive under strict regulations... Till she met Rim, who taught her there was soooo much more to the world–to the galaxy–than just humanity in their darkest days. This didn't lead to Neichel rejecting humanity though! She learned to see the beauty of what her own species had to offer through him.
Rim, meanwhile, is positively filled to the brim with heart (and attuned strongly to Heart Matter, as all fairies are) and almost can't help himself from caring for literally everyone! However, he's perpetually clumsy (like his sister, the Queen of Ripple Star) and a hu~ge cloud cuckoo lander. Fairies are almost identical to humans externally, but they're without a doubt an alien species and there was a lot he did not know about humans (especially raising two little ones >w>) in his job masquerading as a lab technician.
Rim and Neichel were probably the kind of first-time parents who would slip into a minor panic attempting to do some VERY basic baby-rearing task, and (after a bunch of frightening machine noises) finally emerge from the dust and fire with a single (!) bottle of baby formula, smiling at each other with that wonderful new parent glow~ before one thinks to ask, "...Wait. Which one of us has Noir?" "...Oh. I thought you...?" and, screaming, run back inside the smoking kitchen because they realized they left him in the chaos omg!!
...It's a bit of a miracle little Noir survived childhood, honestly! They got much better at the parenting thing by the time Adeleine was born. Not to mention that Noir was -instantly- won over by his adorable baby sister, so his constant questions to them on how he could best take care of little Adeleine helped train his parents to be a little less ditzy and more on the ball about child-rearing as well!
TF when you are born into the role of being the sibling-parent XD
Neichel was the most actively protective of the children, having all the reason in the world (rightly so...) to think that they were pretty constantly in danger: from the New World government, from the agents of Lab Discovera, from the seedy underbelly of Shiver Star...
She never forgot the haunting words of the scientists that day toward her children and kept a close eye on Noir especially (who even the lab had consigned to leave solely in her care from very early on) which in turn lead Noir to becoming a bit of a mama's boy. Her death devastated him in the kind of way that there simply is no words for... The fact that Noir grew up in a world where his mother was considered a traitor and a pariah and he had to play along with the popular opinion of "Neichel" for their safety hurt him a lot...
Neichel sang to both children, frequently, and gave them lots of motherly affection. Noir's habit of letting Adeleine sleep on his lap while he brushes her hair is his mimicking something she used to do for the two of them...
He took his interest in the stars from his father though! While Noir was a mama's boy, Adeleine was absolutely papa's little girl~
(Coincidentally - or anime genetics - each sibling resemble the parent they were closest with: Noir has his mother's warmer skin tone and thicker, faintly brownish hair while Adeleine has her father's straight dark hair and paler complexion. They both have their father's distinct violet eyes, a hint to their heritage as Ripple Star royalty.)
Apologies Adeleine is on the autism spectrum (the reason why she was soo gullible to Noir's kinda painfully obvious lies; why she took his words about "forgetting their past" overly literally; how she could live for years focused on her art without realizing that she wasn't getting any -older- during that time...) so her father's alien-spaciness had a strong appeal for her! He adored her too because they had that shared "Isn't humanity weird and fun?!" (autism + alien = handshake) and she absolutely ate up all his stories about fairies and magic and other planets! She especially loved his stories of what it was like on the fairy home world of Ripple Star and she dreamed of seeing it and all the other fairies one day!
As such, Adeleine is basically having the time of her life in the present, getting to see fun planets similar to the ones her father spoke of and even winding up with a fairy as a best friend!
Clumsy and spacey as Rim was, as much of a total devoted malewife (1) as he was (even with his perpetual clumsiness, he was simply better suited to certain household chores) as mild and polite to everyone as he was, Rim was a strong papa bear figure too!
As much as it hurt to have to make the worst call a parent can make to their children, that being the one he made as he lay dying (Neichel was killed first... Arguably, Rim's fairy constitution kept him alive a little longer) his last act was to call Noir and warn him what was coming, giving the young Noir enough time to trash his father's research, shut down the house, and make it appear like the kids had ran while hiding himself and Adeleine till the first wave of danger was over.
(It was enough time to hide, but enough for Noir to properly grieve? ...Alas, no.)
As mentioned above, present-day Adeleine no longer remembers her parents that well thanks to Noir's insistence, as well as the shock-inducing trauma of their death, and the scary things that followed. Noir does recall them (though he doesn't remember the more...magical aspects of their family) but he doesn't like to talk or think about them.
Even with odd quirks like him spending his first few years growing up in a highly controlled lab environment (which he didn't seem to mind?! Making friends with his fellow the lab animals) Noir and Adeleine did have a happy childhood with them. Which is what makes the way everything came crashing down all the more traumatic....
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(1) Rim and Neichel were very much in love btw. Neichel's life was quite dark when she met Rim, and he gave her, well, everything she simply could not see in the world. He restored her faith in all of it and kept her grounded, despite his fairy wings fufu~ For Rim, it was love at first sight, and the more Neichel bloomed around him, the more he found himself unable to draw away, despite the fact that he was in the Earth system for a valuable mission. (O-Oops...!)
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The feminine urge to pilot a war mech
#just one little sortie#i know the US government probably has one#i can be trusted with advanced military technology#what if i say please?#armored core#armored core 6#mech#titanfall 2
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Sabaody time.... I am so fucking scared
FIRST OFF I KNOW THATS NOT WHAT HE SAID!!!!
Another one for the sanji faces hall of fame
Luffy should have stuck with the fritters.... I know the end of this........
More for the hall of faces (? Got confused)
OH FUCK HERE WE GO!!!!!!!!
AJDKAJSK TELL HIM USOPP!!!
AJDHAKSBIASNAOAJ!!!!!! COLD!!!!
Califa wearing jabra's shirt bc nami ripped all her clothes 💀💀 wild
Franky and usopp team up with the sunny
Usopp once again just telling the truth
Look at him... 🧍🏻♂️
Conqueror's haki tease..... yeah
This just..... yeah.......
GET A JOB!!! LEAVE THEM ALONE!!!
Is he clocking that sanji had to cross the red line so he sure as hell didn't do it with pirates bc he doesn't know how...... or am I reaching (yeah)
Incredible use of the gag here btw
Shakky.... my queen... why does rayleigh have a former amazon lily empress and kuja pirate hidden away in a nasty bar in sabaody.... how can he do that... girl.... that love sickness really got her bad... and the man is gay for a dead man. Damn. WAIT A FUCKING SECOND
SHAKKY WHAT IS GOING ON!!! WDYM HE HAS A GIRL!!! RAYLEIGH WHAT ARE YOU DOING???? open relationship???? What is their deal. I am so curious now ajdhajnsns
Luffy is looking at the camera (?) Like he is wondering what their deal is too... he gets me
Also am I crazy to think that killer would uave been related to the shandians just by the way he looks.... the pants like wiper wears and the long hair like kalgara... also introduced fighting urouge who is a skypiean.... do you see my vision.... maybe oda went naaah with this and that's why his design changed after the timeskip but here??? Idk
Look at this fucking loser..... AHDJAHSKA
I so want to know what is going to happen to kid because he has been doing terrible things to people but we never get into that... maybe shanks was the consequences.... but anyways he is right here lmao... "aren't we kinda cute killer??"
They want each other so bad.... "and he's got bad manners 😏😈"
AN OLD MAN WHO WHAT also haki introduction hello 👋🏻 so I was right about luffy and the bull ALSO CHAPTER 500!! CRAZY!!! ONLY 630 MORE TO GO
Sanji smoking three cigarettes akdjsisjl he is STRESSED
Nami once again not having enough money to save someone she cares about we should all kill ourselves
Hachi blaming himself for being a pirate when even nami is worried about him right now.... we need to kill the celestial dragons
The fucking cover for this volume..... do they know....
Look at these fucking freaks
Usopp landed butt first into the tenryuubito 💀💀💀 Here we fucking go...
#its so funny how they discover its hatchi and they just turn around to leave akdhakbsks yeah.... and how they all wait for nami....#ooooh the cover stories its about the cp9..... inch resting... the destroyed island is enies lobby... serves you right#the bubbles... the sound of the bubbles im the anime HAUNTED me.... they wont be here so i wonder if there is something alike#celestial dragons jhave appeared here we fucking go.... also 20 kingdoms formed the government etc etc ✍️✍️#kid has long black nails here.... slay and he should have killed appoo right here i hate that man jesus christ....#also kids nickname being captain.... ahdkahdka whyyyyyyy.... also the kid pirates and the bonney pirates are so.... uninspired#bonney saving zoro.... did he remember her in egghead island???#sanji so serious after camie gets kidnapped and he says hes gonna call the fish riders akdjssjslsl...#but honestly the thrill of not knowing what is going on until here.... yeah yeah yeah.... and they don't even show us the exact moment...#franky calling namo little girl.... thats his sister for real for real......#seeing doffys symbol on the slave auction and law wearing his is making me so insane akdbaksnsl#AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH ACEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THEY ANNOUNCED THE EXECUTION NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO#and luffy has so much going on that he doesmt notice until he reaches amazon lily... what could have been....#It's so lucky hachi didnt die out of luffy's impulsiveness.... what happens later is a kind of punishment for this i am so sure#not just for this but for the kind of danger he would put his crew in the future if he kept going on like this... kuma and rayleigh saved e#kid being so important in sabaody but then law stealing the show after the timeskip.... thats so funny#luffy was so into bepo when he first saw him akdjaksn “whats that bear is he a pirate too?” he would have asked him to join the crew#shakky: he's probably with another woman..... rayleigh: im going to sell myself as a slave and rob my buyer BLIND to fund my gambling#reading one piece#talking tag
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you have activated my trap card (worldbuilding and extensive headcanons in bizlys world)
First, about Mr. Extraordinary Lougferd. He is a sort of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk sort of man in my head. He is a millionaire, and he can use that money to fund whatever he wants. He can use that money to fund bills that work in his favor. Laws that will require his inventions, laws that deregulate production, laws that keep people quiet. And this sort of person very likely doesn't see children as people, but as property. Troy is not a son, he's an heir. He must be fit enough to take over the company, the clockwork soldiers, when his father retires from public view. And for that, he must be smart and able to engineer upgrades for these soldiers. Or at least a good enough leader to have others do so for him. And he has neither of these qualities at the moment, which makes his father well and truly upset. He is 25 and neither a mechanical wiz nor a up-and-coming business leader. He is a disappointment and not what Mr. Lougferd wanted, which he made abundantly clear. Troy is not quite banned from the Lougferd estate, but knows that he will be questioned and grilled upon arrival as to if he has somehow become a miracle-child overnight.
The Overseer simply oversees the Wondrous Trade Company. This is a segment of the government that publicly deals with trade deals, especially that of food trades. Privately, of course, it is much different. There are so many above him because he's not the whole government of wonder. this is one branch, one department, and he probably isn't even be the top of that branch. He could easily be the one that oversees the Inventor project.
as for the guards being chill with rat and owl folk, they were heavily covered with scarves, so they probably could barely see any defining features that would make them recognizable, especially in Runt's case because her ears are easily hidden in a hood/hat. And for the general populace, I'm gonna base it off of my reaction if i, personally, were to see an owl-human hybrid. Which is confusion, and then acceptance. If you have ever seen the walrus/fairy at your doorstep debate, very similar to that. Fairies are real? okay, slightly jarring, but I will change my worldview accordingly.
I have more (eventually) but I need to go to class </3
wonderlust took a while to really pull me in but now. what is with the weird sociopolitical climate of this world. "The Overseer" is a big menacing final boss sounding title but according to pinch there are dozens of people above him. why is there a thick fog blocking off the island from the rest of the world. people in wonder arent meant to know about reclaim but all of the overseer's guards were completely chill with rat and bird people. WHY are there animal people living under this random ass island where did they come from. where did the humans come from. why does bizly keep randomly mentioning troys dad but keep going "but theres a lot to unpack there so you dont want to visit just yet". why did the overseer take one look at blink and immediately fall head over heels for Owl Man. is runt about to die
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Only just woke up, somehow made it down the stairs, and got hit with the ‘everyone has aches and pains suck it up’ talk. Sorry but if everyone had aches and pains the way I did, they’d have my exact diagnosis. Getting really sick of the way my family forgets I’m disabled. And when I point this out to them I’m told ‘there’s no reason to get aggressive’ okay.
#it’s laughable that they were like do you need to rent a wheelchair at the horrible museum/park we went to#I didn’t get one of course. and later regretted it. but like—#you can’t be like yes. isadora uses a cane and sometimes a wheelchair#and then turn around and say well everyone has aches and pains#okay? like yes. we’re all sore from the hikes and the car rides. but you guys can actually walk like are you seeing the difference here#recovery time is Needed. I am going to be in pain at least three times as long and also. can’t walk easily! so like#no I don’t think you all have aches and pains like I do#then they were like well how do you know what kind of pain im in and like. again#i was like if yall were in the same amount of pain or more. you’d have my diagnosis. so come on what are we gonna do here im sick of this#they’re talking about going to busch gardens and they’re like of course isadora will need a wheelchair and someone will have to push her#(accompanied with an eye roll and a muttered why can’t she just walk like the rest of us it’s not that bad. but I’ll take it)#and it’s like. you guys can remember im disabled when it benefits you!! being in the wheelchair means fast passes usually 🙃#anyway. hidden disabilities are so fun!!! like y’all I am disabled enough the state government recognized it#and paid for my medical leave. that is not nothing!!!!!!!!#anyway. I probably won’t be downstairs for long. think im going back to bed after this one tbh. my mother is impossible
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Now I'm curious about something 🤔 Reblog this and put in the tags or comments what ideas or concepts did you scrap for your OC's lore/backstory.
I know an OC's background isn't always going to be consistent or concrete and that's fine! But do you ever have ideas that you either A) didn't have time to work on, B) found too complex to incorporate into their lore, or C) feel like it just didn't fit in based on the standards of whatever universe (canon or original) your OC is in? Or perhaps a secret fourth option, I dunno!
#Hehe I'll start ofc beware the tags are lengthy and plenty hehehe#But as far as I remember I had a bunch of convoluted ideas for Madison's background#The most notable one being that she was an android who had a human soul trapped inside her and was such when she came into the events of SDC#Died at a very young age from an accident that had her in the hospital but her father managed to somehow scrounge up the core of her soul#Said soul was then booted up into an empty android which then became sentient#BUT limited in its physical features since it was the 70-80s and that her father worked in some hidden department in the government#Her father brought 'her' home and her mother grew suspicious of how different her daughter has been acting-#-Unaware that her body is actually gone and all that is left of her is her soul and memories#I was also going to incorporate some concept of a time loop but like a long loop if it makes sense?#Like a week loop of how the 'android' Madison is brought home and her mother and brother are suspicious#Said mother and brother are horrified knowing that she is no longer who she was because all that she *is* left is her soul...#am i making sense SJDKKSKDKS probably not but the huge inspiration for this idea comes from the indie game Mothered which i LOVED#you should defo try watching an LP of it!!#The plot revolves around the MC's soul and her family and the terrible but sad fate that the mother has to go through-#-to keep seeing her daughter be forced into the vessel of an android and live with them#even when they know that their daughter will never be the same again#I still kept the aspect of angst within the family but translated it through a more digestible concept#(at least I hope it is when I share more of it with posts in the future ( ´Д`)=3)#I also wanted to use aspects of amnesia where Madison gets complacent into living with her mother as an android-#-bc as soon as she finds out that she is no longer who she is the system inside the android tries to erase said memories#And that she'll only regain them when she finds that her biological name isn't Madison but is actually Rhonda#NDKDKSKD LIKE THATS A WEIRD EXPLANATION where I got more of that inspo from a song by The Scary Jokes but eh!!#The amnesia and soul explanation plot just doesn't work for me!#ALSO i got inspired by the jojo fangame 7SU and wanted to incorporate the concept of the time loop too-#-with how in one universe we get the canon ending and in another universe after pucci resets the world#so Madison have more knowledge on what's going to happen to the crusaders#and manages to save all or most of them#Too convoluted and honestly not as fun to think about if anything it stays as a fun scrapped idea#Luckily i figured out a way to make it somewhat easier to achieve that 'everyone lives-no one dies' scenario in my lore now wahoo 🕺💃#sorry for the typos and grammar errors just correct them in your head lolol
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Girl help I've acquired possibly yet another expensive hobby
#op#2 of them in fact#currently making a frame weaving loom (and by that i mean my dad idk enough about wood working and this wood is too expensive to fuck up)#and getting into mechanical keyboards#i already have a lotta yarn so the real costs rn are the keyboards#which are like at least 100usd a pop#what sucks is that they all seem to be 60% keyboards or tkl's and like. i need my fn and number pad keys pls and thx#debated sacrificing the num pad and getting a seperate one bc wowza these custom boards are absolutely gorgeous but#i am on such a budget and a cheap (cheap!!!) keyboard i found that i quite like is still gonna run me 200cad#if i got a pretty keeb and a seperate numpad i could easily be looking at $500+ like lordy#that's not even counting the switches i want to get (gateron baby kangs which are. $66. I'm assuming in usd bc it doesn't actually say)#anyway debating on whether or not i should order the keyboard now or wait till later cuz like is it even gonna be there later?#so much of this stuff is temporary and u never know#its a 96% keyboard and it has a calculator button!! only other board ive seen with that is my dads maybe 2005 wireless microsoft#so useful tbh#such a pretty board too all things considered#and finding a nice board like that with the numpad is not easy lemme tell ya like i was truly considering a ducky which.#i cant say im quite fond of their logo among other things#i think its more of a cream than white but u cant win em all#hmm to purchase now or to not purchase now‚ that is the question.... i could technically afford it but then#there's ComicCon + cost of supplies and whatnot for opening up my shop which is gonna be probably at least a hundred...#and then i would like to get some nice wool skirts for the winter/now bc pants are of the devil which is gonna be another 100/150 or so...#augh#i think the government should give me more money i think that would be very sexy of them to do#anyway can you believe i went on my phone to find a banana bread recipe then did all this instead? crazy#hashtag adhd life
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it is becoming Increasingly Clear to me that i can no longer be taken out into public because i will start doing to fonts what jirt would do to the rocks and plants whilst on little walks
#the worm speaks#i'm noticing that a lot of signage these days don't have small caps which is a bit sad but i suppose they are somewhat antiquated#most of them have just straight up all-caps and i'm like 'mmmm. would a small caps version be better here?'#the other day i was like 'what if i left everything behind to get a job at a type foundry in taiwan. what then.'#what would i bring to the table there? why a sense of western aestheticism for the latin glyphs in their fonts#combined with a lesser but probably still noteworthy knowledge of chinese calligraphy to help ensure there is a sense of unity#btwn the latin and chinese glyphs#and also kerning i would bring kerning to the table for the latin glyphs. like if we Must be monospace abt things we can do that#but on god. the number of times i download a cn script font and go 'ah.' bc the english is the Ugliest monospace serif you'll ever see#fortunately while it is a bit of work it's at least easier to match english fonts to cn ones bc there are So Many more free ones lol#the other day i was looking through a chinese font website n i was reading their ~story~ behind this one particular series#that they based off the calligraphy in these five or six Ancient Rare Books in the national palace museum#and they were like 'yes the poetry was beautiful and moving. but to a type designer the writing itself is even more attractive'#and i felt so called out. i have just the most incurable font disease on the planet lmao#the other thing i think that might be neat to bring to cn font design Would be the concept of italics#like i know that's just not a standard thing and that Makes sense bc to oblique the letters is just#like. why would you do that. it's hard to read. but the spirit of italics is to change the font style entirely whilst keeping in harmony#with the rest of the regular typeface which i think would be Neat to bring in esp since italics usually have a bit more flourish to them#the other day i also found out that fangsong is used in government documents n i was like#>:0 no wonder it has every character and variant known to man......
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okay i had to save this screenshot to make a post about later because i was too fucking upset to post it when i got there. but uh. excuse me hi hello what?????? WHAT DO YOU MEAN NORMAL HUMANS?????? AS OPPOSED TO WHAT????
#one piece#you know i thought blackbeard in the current arc#i thought he wanted the op op fruit so bad to either bargain with the world government#or to give it to his crew or w/e#but ummm......i didnt know it was because he himself could probably use it#well i mean he probably wouldn't use it because he can't use the immortality surgery on himself...#you know what i shouldn't speak too soon#if anyone has the plot armor to survive it his ass does
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using this blessed image like a piece of cheese in a rat trap to try and coax my talestuals (tales mutuals) into reading loveless. alternatively using this image to coax my loveletuals (loveless mutuals) to play tales
#tales is much less like a rat trap than loveless. altho it has one of the most obliviously heterosexual fandoms i've ever been in.#you guys would probably like abyss or graces the most. maybe symphonia#i recommend playing symphonia as your first if you do decide to play bc the gameplay is refined with each entry and going back gameplay#if you aren't used to it can be kind of a pain#you guys also might like vesperia but mostly for yuri lowell since that seems to be ritsuka's favourite character lmao#i just know yun kouga is a fl/uri..............#me tho i'm a yu/rav..........#and a fure/y/urav....................#flu/ri is okay but something about it gives like 95% of the shippers shit idiot brain fungus#abyss's combat is kind of slow but it's a very good story and i know we love a hateable at first protag here on soubiapologist.tumblr.com#graces is like. if you like gay people being catholic about their gay denial and also imo the peak of series gameplay#the combat is so fun play hubert and thank me later#it will make you really mad though#because well. it is catholic. i'm still waiting for the divorce and [redacted] losing his fucking mind to the horrors of municipal-#government and killing everyone and having to be stopped in the epic sequel or whatever that's never happening#usually tales has really good writing for its female characters but the female cast of graces is probably the series's weakest female cast#sophie is great and fourier is also great#but the rest are just eugh or wasted potential or forgettable#if you like loveless you will like richard windor (graces). or at the very least he will make you feel like an insane person#ANYWAY. :)#which is a bummer
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literally had to quietly turn off asks on my main because in the last line 2 weeks ive gotten probably 50 asks about that whole situation asking for money. how about no.
i 1. dont have money 2. live in fucking missouri usa 3. dont have any influence nor reach online and 4. refuse to post about that topic on my main blog EVER. because i like my main staying as light hearted as possible.
i am the last person these people should be sending asks to about this.
hell, there was even one that started with 'youre our last hope!!!' no the fuck im not. you probably sent that ask to 100 people. i am no ones last hope.
also apparently im r@cist for thinking that at least a few of these are scams. because there totally couldnt be people taking advantage of this situation to be greedy and awful and scam people. it wouldnt be the first time, nor the last.
it was also just annoying. i never get people talking to me online anymore so when i get asks its usually so exciting... but now it was just dreadful. 'whos gonna try and guilt trip me today?'
seriously, most of them started guilt trippy. at least some of them started polite though.
i know its a huge tragedy and w@r and all that but i dont know why i need to have any part of it. there is nothing i can do about it, and all it would do is make me upset, especially because theres nothing i can do.
and people can tell me all they want 'but there IS something you can do!!' but like... if people are getting killed, i doubt me signing a petition is gonna make them go 'oh, i guess i was wrong to kill people, sorry' like...
and like i said, i dont have reach or influence online. plus, thousands if not millions of people are already posting about this topic CONSTANTLY and saying everything better than i could, and having more reach than i ever will. i think me not posting about it will be fine.
#this whole thing has been going on since before literally all of us were born. probably even since before my dad was born.#like maybe we can sway it around and shit but i doubt itll end anytime soon.#thats awful to say and it feels awful to say because i know its horrible but#thats just how it feels to me#plus i dont like the idea of making things about countries. its the government. its always the government#but anyone who says 'dont blame the everyday people for this' and shit are called g3noclde apologists#seriously. every single time someone calls a celebrity that and i look up what they ACTUALLY said. its ALWAYS THAT.#its not 'wow im so glad that people are dying and i love the government for it!'#its ALWAYS 'hey please dont hate the everyday people who are just trying to live their lives in that country'#its begging you to not see things as purely black and white and begging you to not harass people who have nothing to do with it#not to mention all the @ntlsemltlsm people are throwing around#dude most celebrities saying that stuff are j3wlsh too. like ive seen maybe one g0y say that and the rest were j3wlsh#idk how much i need to censor but i dont want people finding this im just ranting#hot take that could get me killed if people found it but#everyone else is worrying about one side. i think its fine if some people worry about the innocent people on the other side. someone has to.#like. even with the other w@r that started a few years ago. that one sucks too but i couldnt help but worry about my russlan friend#i hope hes still doing okay. he seemed to be last i saw him
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thinking. of. when i am less poor. getting 2-3 lotto tickets. and losing.
#i’m thinking big ones like ones where if i win i can just buy a house and pay my debt and even some of my moms debt off#i hate her but she gives me a lot of money so i feel like if i won the powerball or smthn that i would owe that to her#i don’t hate her anymore i guess but i don’t really like her very much and i don’t trust her. anyway.#other than taking music lessons and finally getting my jaw fixed idk what i would do with it but i would want to use the rest to help people#but i don’t trust charities because i fr don’t know a single soul who’s gotten help from anything other than a food bank#and i feel like with so much money maybe i could do more than just disperse it to peoples gfms u kno#but idk how to go about lobbying the US government for universal healthcare and tbh i am not sure if i agree with lobbying even if it’s for#something good idk#and big pharma probably has at least 100 powerballs to throw at legislators:/#these are very silly thoughts i know i wouldn’t win and i know i couldn’t single handedly lobby for health care idk i just want to not#struggle financially or be dependent or let people suffer in some greedy fucking mansion
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You're a reasonably informed person on the internet. You've experienced things like no longer being able to get files off an old storage device, media you've downloaded suddenly going poof, sites and forums with troves full of people's thoughts and ideas vanishing forever. You've heard of cybercrime. You've read articles about lost media. You have at least a basic understanding that digital data is vulnerable, is what I'm saying. I'm guessing that you're also aware that history is, you know... important? And that it's an ongoing study, requiring ... data about how people live? And that it's not just about stanning celebrities that happen to be dead? Congratulations, you are significantly better-informed than the British government! So they're currently like "Oh hai can we destroy all these historical documents pls? To save money? Because we'll digitise them first so it's fine! That'll be easy, cheap and reliable -- right? These wills from the 1850s will totally be fine for another 170 years as a PNG or whatever, yeah? We didn't need to do an impact assesment about this because it's clearly win-win! We'd keep the physical wills of Famous People™ though because Famous People™ actually matter, unlike you plebs. We don't think there are any equalities implications about this, either! Also the only examples of Famous People™ we can think of are all white and rich, only one is a woman and she got famous because of the guy she married. Kisses!"
Yes, this is the same Government that's like "Oh no removing a statue of slave trader is erasing history :(" You have, however, until 23 February 2024 to politely inquire of them what the fuck they are smoking. And they will have to publish a summary of the responses they receive. And it will look kind of bad if the feedback is well-argued, informative and overwhelmingly negative and they go ahead and do it anyway. I currently edit documents including responses to consultations like (but significantly less insane) than this one. Responses do actually matter. I would particularly encourage British people/people based in the UK to do this, but as far as I can see it doesn't say you have to be either. If you are, say, a historian or an archivist, or someone who specialises in digital data do say so and draw on your expertise in your answers. This isn't a question of filling out a form. You have to manually compose an email answering the 12 questions in the consultation paper at the link above. I'll put my own answers under the fold. Note -- I never know if I'm being too rude in these sorts of things. You probably shouldn't be ruder than I have been.
Please do not copy and paste any of this: that would defeat the purpose. This isn't a petition, they need to see a range of individual responses. But it may give you a jumping-off point.
Question 1: Should the current law providing for the inspection of wills be preserved?
Yes. Our ability to understand our shared past is a fundamental aspect of our heritage. It is not possible for any authority to know in advance what future insights they are supporting or impeding by their treatment of material evidence. Safeguarding the historical record for future generations should be considered an extremely important duty.
Question 2: Are there any reforms you would suggest to the current law enabling wills to be inspected?
No.
Question 3: Are there any reasons why the High Court should store original paper will documents on a permanent basis, as opposed to just retaining a digitised copy of that material?
Yes. I am amazed that the recent cyber attack on the British Library, which has effectively paralysed it completely, not been sufficient to answer this question for you. I also refer you to the fate of the Domesday Project. Digital storage is useful and can help more people access information; however, it is also inherently fragile. Malice, accident, or eventual inevitable obsolescence not merely might occur, but absolutely should be expected. It is ludicrously naive and reflects a truly unpardonable ignorance to assume that information preserved only in digital form is somehow inviolable and safe, or that a physical document once digitised, never need be digitised again..At absolute minimum, it should be understood as certain that at least some of any digital-only archive will eventually be permanently lost. It is not remotely implausible that all of it would be. Preserving the physical documents provides a crucial failsafe. It also allows any errors in reproduction -- also inevitable-- to be, eventually, seen and corrected. Note that maintaining, upgrading and replacing digital infrastructure is not free, easy or reliable. Over the long term, risks to the data concerned can only accumulate.
"Unlike the methods for preserving analog documents that have been honed over millennia, there is no deep precedence to look to regarding the management of digital records. As such, the processing, long-term storage, and distribution potential of archival digital data are highly unresolved issues. [..] the more digital data is migrated, translated, and re-compressed into new formats, the more room there is for information to be lost, be it at the microbit-level of preservation. Any failure to contend with the instability of digital storage mediums, hardware obsolescence, and software obsolescence thus meets a terminal end—the definitive loss of information. The common belief that digital data is safe so long as it is backed up according to the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies on 2 different formats with 1 copy saved off site) belies the fact that it is fundamentally unclear how long digital information can or will remain intact. What is certain is that its unique vulnerabilities do become more pertinent with age." -- James Boyda, On Loss in the 21st Century: Digital Decay and the Archive, Introduction.
Question 4: Do you agree that after a certain time original paper documents (from 1858 onwards) may be destroyed (other than for famous individuals)? Are there any alternatives, involving the public or private sector, you can suggest to their being destroyed?
Absolutely not. And I would have hoped we were past the "great man" theory of history. Firstly, you do not know which figures will still be considered "famous" in the future and which currently obscure individuals may deserve and eventually receive greater attention. I note that of the three figures you mention here as notable enough to have their wills preserved, all are white, the majority are male (the one woman having achieved fame through marriage) and all were wealthy at the time of their death. Any such approach will certainly cull evidence of the lives of women, people of colour and the poor from the historical record, and send a clear message about whose lives you consider worth remembering.
Secondly, the famous and successsful are only a small part of our history. Understanding the realities that shaped our past and continue to mould our present requires evidence of the lives of so-called "ordinary people"!
Did you even speak to any historians before coming up with this idea?
Entrusting the documents to the private sector would be similarly disastrous. What happens when a private company goes bust or decides that preserving this material is no longer profitable? What reasonable person, confronted with our crumbling privatised water infrastructure, would willingly consign any part of our heritage to a similar fate?
Question 5: Do you agree that there is equivalence between paper and digital copies of wills so that the ECA 2000 can be used?
No. And it raises serious questions about the skill and knowledge base within HMCTS and the government that the very basic concepts of data loss and the digital dark age appear to be unknown to you. I also refer you to the Domesday Project.
Question 6: Are there any other matters directly related to the retention of digital or paper wills that are not covered by the proposed exercise of the powers in the ECA 2000 that you consider are necessary?
Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.
Question 7: If the Government pursues preserving permanently only a digital copy of a will document, should it seek to reform the primary legislation by introducing a Bill or do so under the ECA 2000?
Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.
Question 8: If the Government moves to digital only copies of original will documents, what do you think the retention period for the original paper wills should be? Please give reasons and state what you believe the minimum retention period should be and whether you consider the Government’s suggestion of 25 years to be reasonable.
There is no good version of this plan. The physical documents should be preserved.
Question 9: Do you agree with the principle that wills of famous people should be preserved in the original paper form for historic interest?
This question betrays deep ignorance of what "historic interest" actually is. The study of history is not simply glorified celebrity gossip. If anything, the physical wills of currently famous people could be considered more expendable as it is likely that their contents are so widely diffused as to be relatively "safe", whereas the wills of so-called "ordinary people" will, especially in aggregate, provide insights that have not yet been explored.
Question 10: Do you have any initial suggestions on the criteria which should be adopted for identifying famous/historic figures whose original paper will document should be preserved permanently?
Abandon this entire lamentable plan. As previously discussed, you do not and cannot know who will be considered "famous" in the future, and fame is a profoundly flawed criterion of historical significance.
Question 11: Do you agree that the Probate Registries should only permanently retain wills and codicils from the documents submitted in support of a probate application? Please explain, if setting out the case for retention of any other documents.
No, all the documents should be preserved indefinitely.
Question 12: Do you agree that we have correctly identified the range and extent of the equalities impacts under each of these proposals set out in this consultation? Please give reasons and supply evidence of further equalities impacts as appropriate.
No. You appear to have neglected equalities impacts entirely. As discussed, in your drive to prioritise "famous people", your plan will certainly prioritise the white, wealthy and mostly the male, as your "Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin and Princess Diana" examples amply indicate. This plan will create a two-tier system where evidence of the lives of the privileged is carefully preserved while information regarding people of colour, women, the working class and other disadvantaged groups is disproportionately abandoned to digital decay and eventual loss. Current and future historians from, or specialising in the history of minority groups will be especially impoverished by this.
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