#imaginary manager

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[benevolenterrancy]

Sect Leader Nie and his Deputy trauma-bonding over sect paperwork (i feel in my heart that the nie sect does NOT produce great administrators and everyone suffers for that)

[fatehbaz]

Tallying every single tree in the kingdom. Endangered South Asian sandalwood. British war to control the forests. European companies claim the ecosystem. Failure of the plantation. Until the twentieth century, the Empire couldn't figure out how to cultivate sandalwood because they didn't understand that the plant is actually a partial root parasite, so their plantation monoculture approach of eliminating companion species was self-defeating. French perfumes and the creation of "Sandalwood City".

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Selling at about $147,000 per metric ton, the aromatic heartwood of Indian sandalwood (S. album) is arguably [among] the most expensive wood in the world. Globally, 90 per cent of the world’s S. album comes from India [...]. And within India, around 70 per cent of S. album comes from the state of Karnataka [...] [and] the erstwhile Kingdom of Mysore. [...] [T]he species came to the brink of extinction. [...] [O]verexploitation led to the sandal tree's critical endangerment in 1974. [...]

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Francis Buchanan’s 1807 A Journey from Madras through the Countries of Mysore, Canara and Malabar is one of the few European sources to offer insight into pre-colonial forest utilisation in the region. [...] Buchanan records [...] [the] tradition of only harvesting sandalwood once every dozen years may have been an effective local pre-colonial conservation measure. [...] Starting in 1786, Tipu Sultan [ruler of Mysore] stopped trading pepper, sandalwood and cardamom with the British. As a result, trade prospects for the company [East India Company] were looking so bleak that by November 1788, Lord Cornwallis suggested abandoning Tellicherry on the Malabar Coast and reducing Bombay’s status from a presidency to a factory. [...] One way to understand these wars is [...] [that] [t]hey were about economic conquest as much as any other kind of expansion, and sandalwood was one of Mysore’s most prized commodities. In 1799, at the Battle of Srirangapatna, Tipu Sultan was defeated. The kingdom of Mysore became a princely state within British India [...]. [T]he East India Company also immediately started paying the [new rulers] for the right to trade sandalwood.

British control over South Asia’s natural resources was reaching its peak and a sophisticated new imperial forest administration was being developed that sought to solidify state control of the sandalwood trade. In 1864, the extraction and disposal of sandalwood came under the jurisdiction of the Forest Department. [...] Colonial anxiety to maximise profits from sandalwood meant that a government agency was established specifically to oversee the sandalwood trade [...] and so began the government sandalwood depot or koti system. [...]

From the 1860s the [British] government briefly experimented with a survey tallying every sandal tree standing in Mysore [...].

Instead, an intricate system of classification was developed in an effort to maximise profits. By 1898, an 18-tiered sandalwood classification system was instituted, up from a 10-tier system a decade earlier; it seems this led to much confusion and was eventually reduced back to 12 tiers [...].

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Meanwhile, private European companies also made significant inroads into Mysore territory at this time. By convincing the government to classify forests as ‘wastelands’, and arguing that Europeans would improves these tracts from their ‘semi-savage state’, starting in the 1860s vast areas were taken from local inhabitants and converted into private plantations for the ‘production of cardamom, pepper, coffee and sandalwood’.

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Yet attempts to cultivate sandalwood on both forest department and privately owned plantations proved to be a dismal failure. There were [...] major problems facing sandalwood supply in the period before the twentieth century besides overexploitation and European monopoly. [...] Before the first quarter of the twentieth century European foresters simply could not figure out how to grow sandalwood trees effectively.

The main reason for this is that sandal is what is now known as a semi-parasite or root parasite; besides a main taproot that absorbs nutrients from the earth, the sandal tree grows parasitical roots (or haustoria) that derive sustenance from neighbouring brush and trees. [...] Dietrich Brandis, the man often regaled as the father of Indian forestry, reported being unaware of the [sole significant English-language scientific paper on sandalwood root parasitism] when he worked at Kew Gardens in London on South Asian ‘forest flora’ in 1872–73. Thus it was not until 1902 that the issue started to receive attention in the scientific community, when C.A. Barber, a government botanist in Madras [...] himself pointed out, 'no one seems to be at all sure whether the sandalwood is or is not a true parasite'.

Well into the early decades of twentieth century, silviculture of sandal proved a complete failure. The problem was the typical monoculture approach of tree farming in which all other species were removed and so the tree could not survive. [...]

The long wait time until maturity of the tree must also be considered. Only sandal heartwood and roots develop fragrance, and trees only begin developing fragrance in significant quantities after about thirty years. Not only did traders, who were typically just sailing through, not have the botanical know-how to replant the tree, but they almost certainly would not be there to see a return on their investments if they did. [...]

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The main problem facing the sustainable harvest and continued survival of sandalwood in India [...] came from the advent of the sandalwood oil industry at the beginning of the twentieth century. During World War I, vast amounts of sandal were stockpiled in Mysore because perfumeries in France had stopped production and it had become illegal to export to German perfumeries. In 1915, a Government Sandalwood Oil Factory was built in Mysore. In 1917, it began distilling. [...] [S]andalwood production now ramped up immensely. It was at this time that Mysore came to be known as ‘the Sandalwood City’.

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Text above by: Ezra Rashkow. "Perfumed the axe that laid it low: The endangerment of sandalwood in southern India." The Indian Economic and Social History Review, Volume 51 (2014), Issue 1, pages 41-70. First published online 10 March 2014. DOI: 10.1177/0019464613515533 [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Italicized first paragraph/heading in this post added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[darkficsyouneveraskedfor]

Jonathan Pine + we are getting married today

We Are Getting Married Today

The motion of the car adds to your dizziness. The motion sickness pills have you groggy and completely out of sorts. You blink as you're certain you're not seeing straight, at least not seeing anything familiar.

"What's going on?" You ask from the passenger seat, curled up under your hoodie.

"Why, darling," Jonathan purrs, "we are getting married today."

[mugmegan]

Go to part 1

This is a comic I made of a scene from the fanfic Imaginary. I recommend it hard!

Op's rambling about comic:

Making a comic on paper it turns out, is hard. But I didnt trust myself to manage to draw warmth and sincerety on my phone because I am just not that good with digital. Pen and paper is where I feel. So here it goes. The lines are smudged and everything is branded with my fingerprint. Enjoy!

Also I didnt look at Second's actual design and just drew what I thought he looks like so he looks slightly chubbier here. In my defense, I forgot he even showed his face for more than 2 panels at the time.

[alligaytorswamp]

hate the obnoxious 'im this character's no.1 fan' people, who aren't actually joking they truly act like they are the only person ever to love this imaginary dude. and it's not even about understanding the character, oh no, there is a high chance this individual doesn't even get the character! it's about how they approach other fans or people who simply also like this particular fictional guy. these freaks straight up manage to gatekeep a character in a conversation with another fan, always acting like it somehow belongs to them completely, turning any and all topic revolving around this blorbo into a weird competition where you will undoubtedly lose, because god knows they will make a point to act like they are the only person to like this character in the Right way, no one else is even capable of the passion they have, and you... well you just get to experience a curious feeling of 'do i enjoy this character wrong? why do i feel like i'm not doing it right? why do i feel weird for even mentioning them to this person... how the hell did they manage to make me feel bad about liking my fav...?'

[spasikonik]

an edek themed collage 🪲

[helloanthy]

Hello friend! I hope one day you get this 🩷 I am sending all my love to you. You are so brave and I'm proud of you! I hope the world treats you kindly. I took a hiatus from tumblr and only just now realized you left, I wouldn't have said anything different than I have now if I'd known before but I will miss you! You are amazing, can't wait to see you again. Thrive, my little bird! You've done great 🩷

i'm trying not to tear up. my heart is embarrassingly soft these days. i knew before that revolution has never come without great hardships. though of course, knowing is different from doing some days, the moments between sleep are only stitched together by lengths of crying. other days, i wander incessantly in an attempt to escape both my self and my dreams but it is by the love of my friends and the kindness of people like you that carries me through. it is so easy to drown in this world, i need to hold on to what little i can kindness doesn't have to hurt, i've only been convinced it does. i'm trying to learn that love can save me, if i let it. lately, i feel like it is all that i really have i wonder if anyone will ever know how much it means to me. i wonder if you'll think me odd if you do. but another thing i am trying to learn: there is nothing shameful in trying to live so from one friendly stranger to another, i send my love to you too. i hope it reaches you ! sincerely, thank you

[imaginarycyberpunk2023]

OTP: Lite Sneeze // Macha Richter and Vinnie Gallo

M: "You're like a big puppy."

V: "What? No! More like a big bad wolf."

M: "...big adorable puppy."

V: "..."

[velvetjune]

one of my main takeaways from the alan wake games is that alan/alice/barry should exist and they all love each other so much.

[shippy-from-apocalypse]

Ok im Very sleepy rn it's 2 am bare with me

What do we think Jon would think of How The fandom sees him? And I don't mean this in a pedantic "oh fandom bad because dumbed down and Insert Petty Headcanon Disagreement"

I mean this entirely in a "How would Jon, The man who believes himself to be an Irredeemable monster who is to blame for everything that ever went wrong, react to Just so so many people listening to his shortcommings and ultimately seeing his side"

Like yeah everyone agrees he's kind of an asshole sometimes but he is so beloved by The fans?

I'm sure some people did but I've never seen anyone doubting his humanity or blaming him for the horrors™ he Just clearly understood as his fault? Like yeah Martin tried telling him it wasn't but what I'm getting at is

I love to think about what Jon would do If he saw just the ocean of people who listened to (what he considers to be)

the most unsympathetic person in the world becoming a monster and making choices that brought the literal apocalypse upon humanity

and pretty much everyone saying "he did the best anyone could reasonably expect and he is not a bad person for being caught in the crossfire of an impossible situation with no good solutions"

remember that time in mag 187 a lady grabbed jon in fear and he shouted and presumably pushed her away? and everyone and their mother defended jon's humanity because that was a textbook trauma response i think he would break down crying if he saw that

[ursula-legun]

Call me whatever kind of weirdo political label you like, but it is insane to me how de-emphasized non-human ecocide/genocide/specicde is.

I know that everyone - including myself - has massive anthropocentric bias when it comes to processing death, and the reasons for that make sense in the abstract (even if I think this should be shifted heavily.)

But, like, entire ecosystems are disappearing. Species, and the relationships between them, are literally being eradicated on a daily basis. We are barely even aware of most nonhuman culture, and it's getting destroyed at a rate beyond what we can measure; not only does the loss of life (by any metric - organism count, expected lifespan lost, biomass, etc) massively outstrip anything humans have ever experienced, but the loss of kinds of life or ways of life are being destroyed at, again, a rate beyond what anyone is bothering to quantify right now.

It makes sense to me when people are relatively unconcerned about this because they aren't aware of it. But when somebody has even a fractional understanding of the environmental devastation happening at every moment...even given the (tremendous) relative emotional weight that people place on human life, I don't understand how anybody can know about this but not prioritize it.

And unfortunately, even half-heartedly prioritizing nonhuman life massively shifts so many decisions in both day-to-day life and broad-spectrum politics that it feels like. A completely different set of conversations to be having. As environmental collapse roots deeper into mainstream political discussion, I feel like this is getting to be a more and more stark contrast - the political goals/desires of people who are becoming concerned about environmental collapse, purely for the potential human consequence, are so many steps away from the goals of environment-for-its-own-sake that things become almost untranslateable.

IDK. I think that in some ways I am feigning confusion to myself about this because it's....kind of necessary to do that...to continue having regular interactions with other human beings..................but on other levels, I am genuinely baffled.

The most profound anthropogenic environmental impacts of the last ~400 years were, charitably, mostly inadvertent; they stem from a combination of "acceptable losses," colonial alienation from the environment, and general ignorance as to the effects of various technological processes. At this point the consequences are clearly, and without exaggeration, apocalyptic; but most of the proposed mitigation strategies are about as blind as the initial processes, if not outright known to be inadequate.

There are very obvious actions that can be taken, which would clearly permit the greatest mitigation of the processes that are currently dominating the catastrophe - and there are similarly obvious obstacles to these actions, like, how do you get everyone to coordinate on global degrowth?

But what gets me, what really keeps me up at night, is that this is all entirely off the table for any "serious" discussion. Because large-scale degrowth, spinning down of industry, would lower many life expectancies and disrupt possibly every single human society, it's just...rejected out of hand no matter what. And again, I get it, loss of human life usually just feels worse than loss of nonhuman life, especially when it's your own community, but like...we're not even going to try and talk about this? We're not even going to try and plan out what it would look like?

The best alternative plans boil down to nuclear power, increased urbanization, electric cars, and space-based resource extraction. (Admittedly, while I don't love nuclear power, I would actually massively prefer it to hydro or wind.) But this is the basket into which we are putting the eggs of global food production? The idea of doing something that you know would cause significant human suffering, but massively benefit the entire globe, is so repugnant that you're going to go with....the fucking spacex weirdos??? As though that's not already causing incomprehensible levels of human and nonhuman suffering as we speak????? You think this is actually going to lead to a better average quality of life for humans, let alone all the other organisms, three centuries out??????? Hello???????????????

[dexaroth]

such an awful handicap to be a person that always needs goals assigned by someone else to have things be fun. maybe its just a quality thats been stripped and stolen away from me like every ounce of normalcy i used to have. who knows. still sucks though

[journey-to-the-attic]

be cute if everytime satan needs to let off steam him n ik just have another fake massive blowout argument about the stupidest things

if lucifer pisses him off he just goes to ik's room and they pretend to yell at each other about whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich for half an hour and he feels better immediately after

sometimes satan will knock and ask hesitantly if ik would mind 'having a bit of a fight' - other times he walks in, says the stupidest sentence he can think of, and waits for ik to do the verbal equivalent of a tennis strike

at first the others get concerned about the shouting, but eventually they get used to it and just show up to listen in every now and then

(asmo starts calling these events their 'play-catfights' and satan likes it so much he starts using it as well)

[urlocallesbiab]

sometimes the same scenes i haven't written down yet will revisit me again and again, months, years later, when i was sure i must've lost them for good; it's amazing, the preservance of a story, it's determination to live and be loved, be told.

[aria0fgold]

So that's... the power of Luocha e1... I get it now. I am now a lil less salty from losing my 75/25.