#imaginary manager

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[fatehbaz]

Endangered Indian sandalwood. British war to control the forests. Tallying every single tree in the kingdom. European companies claim the ecosystem. Spices and fragrances. 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. French perfumes and the creation of "the 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." Indian Economic and Social History Review 51, no. 1, pages 41-70. March 2014. [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.]

[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.

[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: "..."

[triglycercule]

im on vacation how can i make this about the murder time trio. mtt fresh out of a flight and the minute that they leave the airport dust stops horror and killer for the smoke break. because being around a smoker is like that. and while horror is dying and coughing from the cigarette smoke and killer is pretend coughing to make dust feel terrible theyre both simultaneously roasting the shit out of dust for being such an addict smoker. cancer speedrun GO says horror. refreshing his signature smell says killer. dust just glares at them and blows smoke in their face (horror literally takes damage he's at 0.7 HP)

[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

[sidetable-drawer]

Foster's Imaginary Nursery when it was first announced in 2022: Oh nice, Foster's is coming back...eh, as a preschool show, but oh look Craig's making it so I'm a little more optimistic. And at least it's focusing on a new group of characters and not doing the "spinoff babies" treatment to the original cast or having the original main cast teach the alphabet or whatever.

Foster's Imaginary Nursery when some more info was announced in 2023: Okay putting it in CGI is kind of "eh, I'd rather them not", but this is a show that can at least translate well enough and again, I trust Craig.

Foster's Imaginary Nursery in 2024: I actually hope this show gets made and not canned in pre-production or written off after production ends because WB is terrible.

[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.

[nexus-nebulae]

man i hate that one teacher ruined the whole concept of math for me bc i love physics and string theory and chemistry and all that stuff but every time I'm watching a video about it i hear like. specific algebraic concepts and i immediately lose all interest

[irishbreakfst]

Is it valid to get mad at your significant other for something they didn't do but that you feel could realistically happen or do I need to calm down

[aeide-thea]

still thinking abt the tumblrinx i encountered a while back whose pinned post said they were transmasc… and also demanded that men dni

like—i’m not confused by the convoluted not-like-the-other-boys doublethink that gets you there, i can follow the chain of illogic just fine, but i sure am deeply wearily depressed by it!

[nocylipcowa]

okay officially told my mom that i can see talk and feel spirits we are not getting outta this one