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dresshistorynerd · 10 months ago

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The Real Cost of the Fashion Industry

Atacama Desert, in Alto Hospicio, Iquique, Chile. (source)

The textile industry is destroying the world. The industry is wasting massive amounts of energy and materials, and polluting the air, the ground and the water supplies. It overwhelmingly exploits it's labour and extracts wealth from colonized countries, especially in Asia. I assume we all broadly understand this, but I think it's useful to have it all laid out in front of you to see the big picture, the core issues causing this destruction and find ways how to effectively move forward.

The concerning trend behind this ever-increasing devastation are shortening of trend cycles, lowering clothing prices and massive amount of wasted products. Still in year 2000 it was common for fashion brands to have two collections per year, while now e.g. Zara produces 24 collections and H&M produces 12-16 collections per year. Clothing prices have fallen (at leas in EU) 30% from 1996 to 2018 when adjusted to inflation, which has contributed to the 40% increase in clothing consumption per person between 1996 and 2012 (in EU). (source) As the revenue made by the clothing industry keep rising - from 2017 to 2021 they doubled (source) - falling prices can only be achieved with increasing worker exploitation and decreasing quality. I think the 36% degrees times clothing are used in average during the last 15 years (source) is a clear indication on the continuing drop in quality of clothing. Clothing production doubled between 2000 and 2015, while 30% of the clothes produced per year are never sold and are often burned instead (source), presumably to prevent the returns from falling due to oversupply.

These all factors are driving people to overconsume. While people in EU keep buying more clothes, they haven't used up to 50% of the clothes in their wardrobe for over a year (source). This overconsumption is only made much worse by the new type of hyper fast fashion companies like SHEIN and Temu, which are using addictive psychological tactics developed by social media companies (source 1, source 2). They are cranking up all those concerning trends I mentioned above.

Under the cut I will go through the statistics of the most significant effects of the industry on environment and people. I will warn you it will be bleak. This is not just a fast fashion problem, basically the whole industry is engaging in destructive practices leading to this damage. Clothing is one of those things that would be actually relatively easy to make without massive environmental and human cost, so while that makes the current state of the industry even more heinous, it also means there's hope and it's possible to fix things. In the end, I will be giving some suggestions for actions we could be doing right now to unfuck this mess.

Carbon emissions

The textile industry is responsible for roughly 10% of the global CO2 emissions, more than aviation and shipping industry combined. This is due to the massive supply chains and energy intensive production methods of fabrics. Most of it can be contributed to the fashion sector since around 60% of all the textile production is clothing. Polyester, a synthetic fiber made from oil which accounts for more than half of the fibers used in the textile industry, produces double the amount of carbon emissions than cotton, accounting for very large proportions of all the emissions by the industry. (source 1, source 2)

Worker exploitation

Majority of the textiles are produced in Asia. Some of the worst working conditions are in Bangladesh, one of the most important garment producers, and Pakistan. Here's an excerpt from EU Parliament's briefing document from 2014 after the catastrophic Rana Plaza disaster:

The customers of garment producers are most often global brands looking for low prices and tight production timeframes. They also make changes to product design, product volume, and production timeframes, and place last-minute orders without accepting increased costs or adjustments to delivery dates. The stresses of such policies usually fall on factory workers.

The wage exploitation is bleak. According to the 2015 documentary The True Cost less than 2% of all garment factory workers earned a living wage (source). Hourly wages are so low and the daily quotas so high, garment workers are often forced through conditions or threats and demand to work extra hours, which regularly leads to 10-12 hour work days (source) and at worst 16 hour workdays (source), often without days off. Sometimes factories won't compensate for extra hours, breaching regulations (source).

Long working hours, repetitive work, lack of breaks and high pressure leads to increased risks of injuries and accidents. Small and even major injuries are extremely common in the industry. A study in three factories in India found that 70% of the workers suffered from musculosceletal symptoms (source). Another qualitative study of female garment workers and factory doctors in Dhaka found that long hours led to eye strain, headaches, fatigue and weight loss in addition to muscular and back pains. According to the doctors interviewed, weight loss was common because the workers work such long hours without breaks, they didn't have enough time to eat properly. (source) Another study in 8 factories in India found that minor injuries were extremely common and caused by unergonomic work stations, poor organization in the work place and lack of safety gear, guidelines and training (source). Safety precautions too are often overlooked to cut corners, which periodically leads to factory accidents, like in 2023 lack of fire exists and fire extinguishers, and goods stacked beyond capacity led to a factory fire in Pakistan which injured dozens of workers (source) or like in 2022 dangerous factory site led to one dead worker and 9 injured workers (source).

Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 is the worst industrial accident in recent history. The factory building did not have proper permits and the factory owner blatantly ignored signs of danger (other businesses abandoned the building a day before the collapse), which led to deaths of 1 134 workers and injuries to 2 500 workers. The factory had or were at the time working for orders of at least Prada, Versace, Primark, Walmart, Zara, H&M, C&A, Mango, Benetton, the Children's Place, El Corte Inglés, Joe Fresh, Carrefour, Auchan, KiK, Loblaw, Bonmarche and Matalan. None of the brands were held legally accountable for the unsafe working conditions which they profited off of. Only 9 of the brands attended a meeting to agree on compensation for the victim's families. Walmart, Carrefour, Auchan, Mango and KiK refused to sight the agreement, it was only signed by Primark, Loblaw, Bonmarche and El Corte Ingles. The compension these companies provided was laughable though. Primemark demanded DNA evidence that they are relatives of one of the victims from these struggling families who had lost their often sole breadwinner for a meager sum of 200 USD (which doesn't even count for two months of living wage in Bangladesh (source)). This obviously proved to be extremely difficult for most families even though US government agreed to donate DNA kits. This is often said to be a turning point in working conditions in the industry, at least in Bangladesh, but while there's more oversight now, as we have seen, there's clearly still massive issues. (source 1, source 2)

One last major concern of working conditions in the industry I will mention is the Xinjiang raw cotton production, which is likely produced mainly with forced labour from Uighur concentration camps, aka slave labour of a suspected genocide. 90% of China's raw cotton production comes from Xinjiang (source). China is the second largest cotton producer in the world, after India, accounting 20% of the yearly global cotton production (source).

Pollution

Synthetic dyes, which synthetic fibers require, are the main cause of water pollution caused by the textile industry, which is estimated to account for 20% of global clean water pollution (source). This water pollution by the textile industry is suspected of causing a lot of health issues like digestive issues in the short term, and allergies, dermatitis, skin inflammation, tumors and human mutations in the long term. Toxins also effect fish and aquatic bacteria. Azo dyes, one of the major pollutants, can cause detrimental effects to aquatic ecosystems by decreasing photosynthetic activity of algae. Synthetic dyes and heavy metals also cause large amounts of soil pollution. Large amounts of heavy metals in soil, which occurs around factories that don't take proper environmental procautions, can cause anaemia, kidney failure, and cortical edoem in humans. That also causes changes in soil texture, decrease in soil microbial diversity and plant health, and changes in genetic structure of organisms growing in the soil. Textile factory waste water has been used for irrigation in Turkey, where other sources of water have been lacking, causing significant damage to the soil. (source)

Rayon produced through viscose process causes significant carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide pollution to the environment. CS2 causes cardiovascular, psychiatric, neuropsychological, endocrinal and reproductive disorders. Abortion rates among workers and their partners exposed to CS2 are reported to be significantly higher than in control groups. Many times higher amounts of sick days are reported for workers in spinning rooms of viscose fiber factories. China and India are largest producers of CS2 pollution, accounting respectively 65.74% and 11,11% of the global pollution, since they are also the major viscose producers. Emission of CS2 has increased significantly in India from 26.8 Gg in 2001 to 78.32 Gg in 2020. (source)

Waste

The textile industry is estimated to produce around 92 million tons of textile waste per year. As said before around 30% of the production is never sold and with shortening lifespans used the amount of used clothing that goes to waster is only increasing. This waste is large burned or thrown into landfills in poor countries. (source) H&M was accused in 2017 by investigative journalists of burning up to 12 tonnes of clothes per year themselves, including usable clothing, which they denied claiming they donated clothing they couldn't sell to charity instead (source). Most of the clothing donated to charity though is burned or dumbed to landfills (source).

Most of the waste clothing from rich countries like European countries, US, Australia and Canada are shipped to Chile (source) or African countries, mostly Ghana, but also Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire (source). There's major second-hand fashion industries in these places, but most of the charity clothing is dumbed to landfills, because they are in such bad condition or the quality is too poor. Burning and filling landfills with synthetic fabrics with synthetic dyes causes major air, water and soil pollution. The second-hand clothing industry also suppresses any local clothing production as donated clothing is inherently more competitive than anything else, making these places economically reliant on dumbed clothing, which is destroying their environment and health, and prevents them from creating a more sustainable economy that would befit them more locally. This is not an accident, but required part of the clothing industry. Overproduction let's these companies tap on every new trend quickly, while not letting clothing the prices in rich countries drop so low it would hurt their profits. Production is cheaper than missing a trend.

Micro- and nanoplastics

There is massive amounts of micro- and nanoplastics in all of our environment. It's in our food, drinking water, even sea salt (source). Washing synthetic textiles accounts for roughly 35% of all microplastics released to the environment. It's estimated that it has caused 14 million tonnes of microplastics to accumulate into the bottom of the ocean. (source)

Microplastics build up into the intestines of animals (including humans), and have shown to probably cause cause DNA damage and altered organism behavior in aquatic fauna. Microplastics also contain a lot of the usual pollutants from textile industry like synthetic dyes and heavy metals, which absorb in higher quantities to tissues of animals through microplastics in the intestines. Studies have shown that the adverse effect are higher the longer the microplastics stay in the organism. The effects cause major risks to aquatic biodiversity. (source) The health effects of microplastics to humans are not well known, but studies have shown that they could have adverse effects on digestive, respiratory, endocrine, reproductive and immune systems. (source)

Microplastics degrade in the environment even further to nanoplastics. Nanoplastic being even smaller are found to enter blood circulation, get inside cells and cross the blood-brain barrier. In fishes they have been found to cause neurological damage. Nanoplastics are also in the air, and humans frequently breath them in. Study in office buildings found higher concentration of nanoplastics in indoor air than outdoor air. Inside the nanoplastics are likely caused mostly by synthetic household textiles, and outdoors mostly by car tires. (source) An association between nanoplastics and mitochondrial damage in human respiratory cells was found in a recent study. (source)

Micro and nano plastics are also extremely hard to remove from the environment, making it even more important that we reduce the amount of microplastics we produce as fast as possible.

What can we do?

This is a question that deserves it's own essays and articles written about it, but I will leave you with some action points. Reading about these very bleak realities can easily lead to overwhelming apathy, but we need to channel these horrors into actions. Whatever you do, do not fall into apathy. We don't have the luxury for that, we need to act. These are industry wide problems, that simply cannot be fixed by consumerism. Do not trust any clothing companies, even those who market themselves as ethical and responsible, always assume they are lying. Most of them are, even the so called "good ones". We need legislation. We cannot allow the industry to regulate itself, they will always take the easy way out and lie to their graves. I will for sure write more in dept about what we can do, but for now here's some actions to take, both political and individual ones.

Political actions

Let's start with political actions, since they will be the much more important ones. While we are trying to dismantle capitalism and neocolonialism (the roots of these issues), here's some things that we could do right now. These will be policies that we should be doing everywhere in the world, but especially rich countries, where most of the clothing consumption is taking place. Vote, speak to others, write to your representative, write opinion pieces to your local papers, engage with democracy.

Higher requirements of transparency. Right now product transparency in clothing is laughably low. In EU only the material make up and the origin country of the final product are required to be disclosed. Everything else is up to the company. Mandatory transparency is the only way we can force any positive changes in the production. The minimum of transparency should be: origin countries of the fibers and textiles in the product itself; mandatory reports of the lifecycle emissions; mandatory reports of whole chain of production. Right now the clothing companies make their chain of production intentionally complex, so they have plausible deniability when inevitably they are caught violating environmental or worker protection laws (source). They intentionally don't want to be able to track down their production chain. Forcing them to do so anyway would make it very expensive for them to keep up this unnecessarily complex production chain. These laws are most effective when put in place in large economies like EU or US.

Restrictions on the use of synthetic fibers. Honestly I think they should be banned entirely, since the amount of microplastics in our environment is already extremely distressing and the other environmental effects of synthetic fibers are also massive, but I know there are functions for which they are not easily replaced (though I think they can be replaces in those too, but that's a subject of another post), so we should start with restrictions. I'm not sure how they should be specifically made, I'm not a law expert, but they shouldn't be used in everyday textiles, where there are very easy and obvious other options.

Banning viscose. There are much better options for viscose method that don't cause massive health issues and environmental destruction where ever it's made, like Lyocell. There is absolutely no reason why viscose should be allowed to be sold anywhere.

Governmental support for local production by local businesses. Most of the issues could be much more easily solved and monitored if most clothing were not produced by massive global conglomerations, but rather by local businesses that produce locally. All clothing are made by hand, so centralizing production doesn't even give it advantage in effectiveness (only more profits for the few). Producing locally would make it much more easier to enforce regulations and it would reduce production chains, making production more effective, leaving more profits into the hands of the workers and reducing emissions from transportation. When the production is done by local businesses, the profits would stay in the producing country and they could be taxed and utilized to help the local communities. This would be helpful to do in both exploited and exploiter countries. When done in rich countries who exploit poorer ones, it would reduce the demand for exploitation. In poor countries this is not as easily done, since poor means they don't have money to give around, but maybe this could be a good cause to put some reparations from colonizers and global corporations, which they should pay.

Preventing strategic accounting between subsidiaries and parent companies. Corporate law is obviously not my area of expertise, but I know that allowing corporations to move around the accounting of profits and losses between subsidiaries and parent companies in roughly 1980s, was a major factor in creating this modern global capitalist system, where corporations can very easily manipulate their accounting to utilize tax heavens and avoid taxes where they actually operate, which is how they are upholding this terrible system and extracting the profits from the production countries. How specifically this would be done I can't tell because again I know shit about corporate law, so experts of that field should plan the specifics. Overall this would help deal with a lot of other problems than just the fashion industry. Again for it to be effective a large economic area like EU or US should do this.

Holding companies accountable for their whole chain of production. These companies should be dragged to court and made to answer for the crimes they are profiting of off. We should put fear back into them. This is possible. Victims of child slavery are already doing this for chocolate companies. If it's already not how law works everywhere, the laws should be changed so that the companies are responsible even if they didn't know, because it's their responsibility to find out and make sure they know. They should have been held accountable for the Rana Plaza disaster. Maybe they still could be. Sue the mother fuckers. They should be afraid of us.

Individual actions

I will stress that the previous section is much more important and that there's no need to feel guilty for individual actions. This is not the fault of the average consumer. Still we do need to change our relationship to fashion and consumption. While it's not our fault, one of the ways this system is perpetuated, is by the consumerist propaganda by fashion industry. And it is easier to change our own habits than to change the industry, even if our own habits have little impact. So these are quite easy things we all could do as we are trying to do bigger change to gain some sense of control and keep us from falling to apathy.

Consume less. Better consumption will not save us, since consumption itself is the problem. We consume too much clothing. Don't make impulse purchases. Consider carefully weather you actually need something or if you really really want it. Even only buying second-hand still fuels the industry, so while it's better than buying new, it's still better to not buy.

Take proper care of your clothing. Learn how to properly wash your clothing. There's a lot of internet resources for that. Never wash your wool textiles in washing machine, even if the textile's official instructions allow it. Instead air them regularly, rinse them in cool water if they still smell after airing and wash stains with water or small amount of (wool) detergent. Never use fabric softener! It damages the fabrics, prevents them from properly getting clean and is environmentally damaging. Instead use laundry vinegar for making textiles softer or removing bad smells. (You can easily make laundry vinegar yourself too from white vinegar and water (and essential oils, if you want to add a scent to it) which is much cheaper.) Learn how to take care of your leather products. Most leather can be kept in very good condition for a very long time by occasional waxing with beeswax.

Use the services of dressmakers and shoemakers. Take your broken clothing or clothing which doesn't fit anymore to your local dressmaker and ask them if they can do something about it. Take your broken and worn leather products to your local shoemaker too. Usually it doesn't cost much to get something fixed or refitted and these expert usually have ways to fix things you couldn't even think of. So even if the situation with your clothing or accessory seems desperate, still show it to the dressmaker or shoemaker.

If it's extremely cheap, don't buy it. Remember that every clothing is handmade. Only a small fraction of the cost of the clothing will be paying the wages of the person who made it with their hands. If a shirt costs 5 euros (c. 5,39 USD), it's sewer was only payed mere cents for sewing it. I'm not a quick sewer and it takes me roughly 1-2 hours to cut, prepare and sew a simple shirt, so I'm guessing it would take around half an hour to do all that for a factory worker on a crunch, at the very least 15 minutes. So the hourly pay would still be ridiculously low. However, as I said before, the fact that the workers in clothing factories get criminally low pay is not the fault of the consumer, so if you need a clothing item, and you don't have money to buy anything else than something very cheep, don't feel guilty. And anyway expensive clothing in no way necessarily means reasonable pay or ethical working conditions, cheep clothing just guarantee them.

Learn to recognize higher quality. In addition to exploitation, low price also means low quality, but again high price doesn't guarantee high quality. High quality allows you to buy less, so even if it's not as cheep as low quality, if you can afford it, when you need it, it will be cheaper in long run, and allows you to consume less. Check the materials. Natural fibers are your friends. Do not buy plastic, if it's possible to avoid. Avoid household textiles from synthetic fibers. Avoid textiles with small amounts of spandex to give it stretch, it will shorten the lifespan of the clothing significantly as the spandex quickly wears down and the clothing looses it's shape. Also avoid clothing with rubber bands. They also loose their elasticity very quickly. In some types of clothing (sport wear, underwear) these are basically impossible to avoid, but in many other cases it's entirely possible.

Buy from artisans and local producers, if you can. As said better consumption won't fix this, but supporting artisans and your local producers could help keep them afloat, which in small ways helps create an alternative to the exploitative global corporations. With artisans especially you know the money goes to the one who did the labour and buying locally means less middlemen to take their cut. More generally buy rather from businesses that are located to the same country where the production is, even if it's not local to you. A local business doesn't necessarily produce locally.

Develop your own taste. If you care about fashion and style, it's easy to fall victim to the fashion industry's marketing and trend cycles. That's why I think it's important to develop your personal sense of style and preferences. Pay attention at what type of clothes are comfortable to you. Go through your wardrobe and track for a while which clothing you use most and which least. Understanding your own preferences helps you avoid impulse buying.

Consider learning basics of sewing. Not everyone has the time or interest for this, but if you in anyway might have a bit of both, I suggest learning some very simple and basic mending and reattaching a button.

Further reading on this blog: How to see through the greenwashing propaganda of the fashion industry - Case study 1: Shein

Bibliography

Academic sources

An overview of the contribution of the textiles sector to climate change, 2022, L. F. Walter et al., Frontiers in Environmental Science

How common are aches and pains among garment factory workers? A work-related musculoskeletal disorder assessment study in three factories of south 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, 2021, Arkaprovo Pal et al., J Family Med Prim Care

Sewing shirts with injured fingers and tears: exploring the experience of female garment workers health problems in Bangladesh, 2019, Akhter, S., Rutherford, S. & Chu, C., BMC Int Health Hum Rights

Occupation Related Accidents in Selected Garment Industries in Bangalore City, 2006, Calvin, Sam & Joseph, Bobby, Indian Journal of Community Medicine

A Review on Textile and Clothing Industry Impacts on The Environment, 2022, Nur Farzanah Binti Norarmi et al., International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Carbon disulphide and hydrogen sulphide emissions from viscose fibre manufacturing industry: A case study in India, 2022, Deepanjan Majumdar et al., Atmospheric Environment: X

Microplastics Pollution: A Brief Review of Its Source and Abundance in Different Aquatic Ecosystems, 2023, Asifa Ashrafy et al., Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances

Health Effects of Microplastic Exposures: Current Issues and Perspectives in South Korea, 2023, Yongjin Lee et al., Yonsei Medical Journal

Nanoplastics and Human Health: Hazard Identification and Biointerface, 2022, Hanpeng Lai, Xing Liu, and Man Qu, Nanomaterials

Other sources

The impact of textile production and waste on the environment (infographics), 2020, EU

Chile’s desert dumping ground for fast fashion leftovers, 2021, AlJazeera

Fashion - Worldwide, 2022 (updated 2024), Statista

Fashion Industry Waste Statistics & Facts 2023, James Evans, Sustainable Ninja (magazine)

Everything You Need to Know About Waste in the Fashion Industry, 2024, Solene Rauturier, Good on You (magazine)

Textiles and the environment, 2022, Nikolina Šajn, European Parliamentary Research Service

Help! I'm addicted to secondhand shopping apps, 2023, Alice Crossley, Cosmopolitan

Addictive, absurdly cheap and controversial: the rise of China’s Temu app, 2023, Helen Davidson, Guardian

Workers' conditions in the textile and clothing sector: just an Asian affair? - Issues at stake after the Rana Plaza tragedy, 2014, Enrico D'Ambrogio, European Parliamentary Research Service

State of The Industry: Lowest Wages to Living Wages, The Lowest Wage Challenge (Industry affiliated campaign)

Fast Fashion Getting Faster: A Look at the Unethical Labor Practices Sustaining a Growing Industry, 2021, Emma Ross, International Law and Policy Brief (George Washington University Law School)

Dozens injured in Pakistan garment factory collapse and fire, 2023, Hannah Abdulla, Just Style (news media)

India: Multiple factory accidents raise concerns over health & safety in the garment industry, campaigners call for freedom of association in factories to ‘stave off’ accidents, 2022, Jasmin Malik Chua, Business & Human Rights Resource Center

Minimum Wage Level for Garment Workers in the World, 2020, Sheng Lu, FASH455 Global Apparel & Textile Trade and Sourcing (University of Delaware)

Rana Plaza collapse, Wikipedia

Buyers’ compensation for Rana Plaza victims far from reality, 2013, Ibrahim Hossain Ovi, Dhaka Tribune (news media)

World cotton production statistics, updated 2024, The World Counts

Dead white man’s clothes, 2021, Linton Besser, ABC News

#fashion #fashion industry #sustainability #sustainable fashion #sustainable clothing #environment #climate change #i will be continuing the series of how to see through fashion industry propaganda at some point #i just felt compelled to write this because i feel like people so often miss the forest for the trees in this conversation

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votevotevotevotevote · 2 months ago

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Why young people need to vote

By request, here's the text from the screenshot I shared previously. Still a good thing to show to every young person you know!

Why things won't truly change until young people vote like old people:

The government is, to put in bluntly, anti-youth — the needs and desires of young people are given the lowest priority. Social security is considered an untouchable “third rail” for politicians, yet those same politicians pay little price for ignoring climate change or paying nothing but lip service to confronting it. The US does little to address soaring education and housing costs, which disproportionately affect young people, despite being willing to spend nearly a trillion dollars annually on its military. In a particularly egregious affront, the country runs huge budget deficits — thereby offloading part of the cost of running the government onto future generations — while subsidizing fossil fuels, which means that young people are being forced to pay for their own destruction.

The reason behind all of this is simple: Old people vote at much higher rates than young people, so elected officials are incentivized to fight for them. Politicians do more to address energy prices than the future of the planet because slightly higher gas prices cause them to be punished at the polls, and young people aren’t there to back them up with their own votes.

The good news, of course, is that this can change. The beauty of democracy is that we get to choose who’s in the government, and young people exist in large enough numbers to be the driving force behind that decision. Millennials and Generation Z combine for (depending on the specific definition of the millennial generation you use) about 45% of eligible voters, but low voting rates mean that we don’t get much of a seat at the table in determining public policy. Younger generations can make up 45% of the electorate by voting at the same rates as older generations, but that’s not all — if young people can get each other to vote at higher rates than old people, we can make up a majority of the electorate and thus gain a controlling stake in the government, forcing it to finally work for us.

Tired of being screwed over by your own government? Angry at being forced to pay for your own destruction? Register to vote, and get all of your friends to do so as well. Let’s beat the boomers at their own game.

Note that (if you live in a state other than North Dakota) you have to register to vote before actually voting, and most states have registration deadlines that fall before election day — some as soon as October 6 or 7. Check your state’s deadline here, and make sure to register in time!

(source: outvote-the-boomers.blogspot.com)

#vote #voting #us politics #american politics #climate change

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spaghettioverdose · 9 months ago

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Am I stupid or something because I agree with all of your post but I don't know what's wrong with small businesses. Am I a capitalist because I'm disabled and can only make money selling stickers or am I missing a bigger picture

Because this is tumblr and people in the notes will immediately read three lines of this and accuse me of pissing on the poor, I will begin with a disclaimer that I am neither comparing you to a Elon Musk nor calling you evil.

So, you sell stickers. I would assume that in this context you are selling your own stickers with your own designs, rather than working as a cashier selling someone else's stickers, since you're disabled and you mentioned you can't work a job. You are therefore selling a product you own (whether you produce the stickers entirely yourself or use a 3rd party company) for a profit at a (presumably) online store instead of selling your labour power for a wage. This, by definition would make you petit bourgeois.

When communists talk about class positions, it is not a question of an individual's morality, motivation or amount of income.

Being a small business owner (or petit bourgeois), means that your class interests and the class interests of the workers (the proletariat) come into conflict. As a clear example, let's say in this scenario that you are selling a sticker design on a 3rd party website that specialises in this service, and they source the actual physical stickers from factories around the world. Here, you are essentially selling your intellectual property to the company in exchange for some of the profits from its further sale. Perhaps many of those factories are in the global south, in countires with very low wages and few worker protections (due to intervention from imperial core bourgeoisie powers). One day, the political struggle for worker rights and higher wages is won in some of these countries, driving up the cost of production for the stickers. Perhaps there is also a victory for a union of delivery service workers at home in the imperial core, driving up wages and protections for them as well, further cutting into profits.

The function of the 3rd party sticker company is to strive for ever-increasing profits the capitalists who own it and its investors. The cut in profit will have to be made up elsewhere. This will be done by investing in political groups that are willing to repress worker movements within these countries, shifting production to countries that have yet to achieve these worker victories, cutting corners on their imperial core workers, increasing their price of service by taking a larger cut of your profits, or a mixture of some or all of these.

In that scenario, the proletarian class interests (higher wages, more protections and regulations) are in direct conflicts with the interests of the bourgeois 3rd party sticker company (higher profits, meaning lower wages and less protections and regulations) and by extension, yours, as your class interests also revolve around profit. When workers gain more power, it cuts into your profits. As a petit bourgeois, you are incetivised to support and pursue bourgeois and petty bourgeois politics such as IP laws.

As an individual, you can be whatever kind of person with whatever politics and views you have. As a petit bourgeois small business owner, you have a certain class position that comes with a certain set of class interests. You can always choose to forego your own class interests and instead support the class interests of the proletariat by being a communist even while continuing to be petit bourgeois or even as full on bourgeois. Very notable example being Engles who, although he was a factory owner, he was also one of the two founders of marxism, with the other one being Marx.

The point I was trying to make in the post that probably got you to send this anon, is that there isn't anything inherently communist or "leftist" about supporting small businesses. It is both an incredibly common liberal policy and talking point to support small business, and it does not serve the interests of a proletarian political movement to protect the petit bourgeoisie or ally with them, except in certain instances and involving certain sections of the petit bourgeois, rather than a blanket statement of saying that the small business owner is a nobler form of capitalist.

#asks #anon

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reasonsforhope · 11 months ago

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Countries That Generate 100% Renewable Energy Electricity

Pictured: Hydropower is the most widely used source of renewable energy-generated electricity. This dam is located near Polson, Montana.

Is 100% Renewable Resource-Generated Electricity Possible?

"With concerns growing regarding burning fossil fuels and their connection to global warming, a great debate is occurring regarding the feasibility of producing electricity entirely from non-carbon emitting green renewable energy sources such as geothermal, hydroelectric, wind, and solar. Skeptics and naysayers claim that achieving such a goal is impractical, would destroy the economy, and is in the realm of pie-in-the-sky thinking.

But is it actually impractical and unattainable? The answer is clearly "no" since there are already several countries that generate 100% of the electricity they use from renewable sources of energy. There are also many other countries that obtain over 90% of the electricity they use from renewable energy sources. Despite the negative rhetoric by some, there’s nothing impractical about using renewable energy to generate electricity on a grand scale.

The Countries Leading the Way to a 100% Renewable Energy Electricity Future

The following is a list of countries that are leading the world into the new frontier of economies that run their electrical grids either entirely or nearly entirely on renewable energy per a 2018 report by the International Renewable Energy Association (IREA) and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) statistics. This list and the percentages are subject to change over time, but it provides a good snapshot of just how practical renewable energy currently is for electricity generation.

Iceland obtains 100% of the electricity it needs from renewable energy sources. Iceland is somewhat unique since volcanic activity on the island provides a significant geothermal energy source that is utilized to provide approximately one-quarter of the country’s electricity. The remaining three quarters are provided by hydro-power.

Paraguay obtains 100% of the electricity it uses from renewable sources. Huge hydropower dams provide all of Paraguay's electricity needs, as well as supply neighboring Argentina and Brazil with electricity.

Costa Rica is another country leading the way towards 100% renewable-produced electricity. During 2018, Costa Rica met all of its electricity needs using renewable energy sources such as hydro-power, geothermal, biomass, wind, and solar for 300 days in a row.

Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, Norway, Tajikistan, and Uruguay are countries currently generating greater than 90% of the electricity they use from renewable energy sources. Some of these countries are working towards running their electric networks entirely from renewable energy.

Some things stand out from the list of countries leading the way in electricity generated from renewable energy.

They are relatively small countries.

They have abundant renewable natural resources, particularly abundant water resources available to generate hydro-power.

The list includes both wealthy developed and poor developing countries.

The fact that both developed wealthy countries and poor developing countries are leaders in renewable energy-produced electricity indicates that the cost of constructing renewable energy resources is not a limiting factor. In fact, developing countries can justify the capital cost of building renewable energy sources of electricity due to the fact that the operating costs are relatively low and predictable (not subject to commodity price swings), and renewable energy allows a country to be self-sufficient in meeting its electricity needs.

Large Developed Countries Can Also Produce 100% Of Their Electricity From Renewable Energy

Critics and naysayers might say that while these achievements by small countries are impressive, implementing renewable energy on a large scale is impractical for larger developed countries. But is it really impractical?

Cost and technological barriers are not what they once were for renewable energy. In fact, costs for renewable energy continue to decline year after year, and renewable energy technologies continue to develop and become more efficient. Many countries have not even come close to tapping their renewable energy potential or even tried some of the technologies available, such as electricity generated by wave or tidal power. Additionally, the argument that renewable energy is only useful when it is being generated is becoming irrelevant since large utility-scale batteries are now available that have the capability to store electricity generated by renewable energy and allow it to be used when needed.

Clearly, the answer is yes. Large developed countries can produce 100% of the electricity they need from renewable sources. It is only a matter of the will and investment at this point to make the changeover from fossil fuel-generated electricity to renewable energy electricity generation. The technical barriers are not as great as naysayers claim, as proven by smaller countries that have already reached the 100% threshold. Moving towards 100% renewable energy sources of electricity will become easier over time as wind, solar, and other renewables become more efficient and large utility-scale battery storage technologies become capable of storing larger quantities of energy for use when needed.

Pictured: Researchers lay out a plan for nearly 140 countries that could be powered 100 percent by renewable energy by 2050. spectrum.ieee.org

The City of Los Angeles Leads the Way in the U.S. With Inexpensive Solar

Various forms of renewable energy have experienced significant cost reductions to a point at which they are competitive and, in some cases, cheaper than traditional electrical energy sources such as coal, oil, and natural gas. This cost reduction trend will accelerate the change over to renewable sources of electricity. For example, the City of Los Angeles signed a deal in July 2019 for a large solar electricity array that will provide 7% of the city's electricity by 2025 at only two cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). This is far cheaper than fossil fuel-derived electricity.

In addition to being cost-competitive, the practicality and reliability of renewable energy are poised to make major advances as large utility-scale battery technologies are rolled out that can be used to capture renewable energy when it is created, so the electricity can be used at a later time when needed. The Los Angeles solar array project includes utility-scale battery backup at a cost of 1.3 cents per kWh, so the electricity generated by the sun will be available even when the sun is not shining.

Los Angeles has a goal of achieving 100% renewable electricity generation by 2050. This solar contract is a big step toward achieving their goal."

-via TurboFuture, February 21, 2023

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chaos0pikachu · 1 year ago

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Is BL Being Overly Influenced by Modern Western Romance Tropes?

Short answer: No. anyways, in the following essay I will explain that James Cameron is a weeb...

(okay fine~~ lets actually do this)

TLDR: discussing what media globalization is, how fandom can distill it down to only American/European cinema, showcasing how a lot of current BL is influenced by countries within it's own proximity and NOT "the west" but each other, also James Cameron is still a weeb

I had seen a post that basically proposited that BL was being influenced by modern western romance tropes and had used things like omegaverse and mafia settings as an example. I found this, in a word, fucking annoying (oh, two words I guess) because it's micro-xenophobic to me.

It positions western - and really what we mean by this is American/European countries, we're not talking about South American countries are we? - cinema as the central breadbasket of all cinema in and of itself. Inherently, all following cinema must be in some way, shape, or form, influenced by American/European standards, and as such America/European countries are directly responsible for cinema everywhere else, and these places - namely non-white countries - do not influence each other, nor have their own histories in regards to storytelling or cinema and do not, in turn, also influence American/European film making either.

Now like, do I think all of that~~ is intentionally malicious thinking on behalf of folks in fandom? No, so chill out.

I do, however, think a lot of it is birthed from simple ignorance and growing up in an environment where ~The West~ is propagated to be central, individual, and exceptional as opposed to the monolith of "Asia" - by which we mean China, Korea, Japan don't we? How often in discussions of Asian countries is Iran, India, or Saudi Arabia brought up even tho they are all Asian countries? - or the monolith that is South America - in which some folks might believe regions like the Caribbean and/or Central America belong to, but nope there both North America.

Anyway, what we're talking about here is the concept of "media globalization":

"The production, distribution, and consumption of media products on a global scale, facilitating the exchange and diffusion of ideas cross-culturally." (source)

"The media industry is, in many ways, perfect for globalization, or the spread of global trade without regard for traditional political borders. [...] the low marginal costs of media mean that reaching a wider market creates much larger profit margins for media companies. [...] Media is largely a cultural product, and the transfer of such a product is likely to have an influence on the recipient’s culture." (source)

Typically when I see fandom discussing what falls under MG the topic is usually focused on how "the west" is influencing Thai/Korean/Chinese/Japanese media.

Enter, Pit Babe.

Surely Pit Babe was influenced by Supernatural right? Omegaverse is huge in the west - love it, hate it, meh it - it originated in the west - specifically via Supernatural after all.

Nah.

Omegaverse has been popular in Japan and China for almost a decade, if not longer. The earliest omegaverse manga I can think of is Pendulum: Juujin Omegaverse by Hana Hasumi which was released in 2015, almost a decade ago.

(what if you added furries into omegaverse? WHAT IF?? - Japan)

There's countless popular omegaverse manga too, and the dynamics only moderately resemble the ones we're familiar with in the west. Juujin is part omegaverse and part furry/beastmen - the alphas are all beastmen the omegas are humans - while something like Ookami-kun Is Not Scary only slightly resembles omegaverse dynamics as a hybrid series - beastmen are really popular in Japan in part b/c of historical mythology (you see the combination of romantic Beastmen and Japanese culture & folklore in Mamoru Hosoda's work The Boy and the Beast and Wolf Children).

Megumi & Tsugumi (2018) is so popular they're an official English edition published by VIZ's imprint SuBlime and that's a straight up omegaverse story.

(look at the omega symbol on the cover loud and proud baby)

So if Pit Babe was influenced by anything, it certainly wasn't "the west" it was Japan, Korea and China. Because those countries have a thriving omegaverse sub-genre going and have had such for 10 plus years now. Supernatural is popular in Japan, yes, and that may be where Japan and Japanese fans originally found omegaverse as a fictional sub-genre.

HOWEVER

Japanese fans took the sub-genre, bent it, played with it, and evolved it into their own thing. As such, other countries in their proximity, like Thailand, China, and Korea who read BL and GL manga, found it and were like "hey, we wanna play too!"

(is that an omegaverse yuri novel I spy?? yes, yes it is)

When I watched the Red Peafowl trailer, it had more in common with Kinnporsche, History: Trapped, along with films and shows like: Jet Li's The Enforcer, and Fist of Legend, Donnie Yen's Flash Point, Raging Fire, and Kung Fu Jungle, Han Dong-wook's The Worst of Evil, Kim Jin-Min's My Name, Lee Chung-hyeon's The Ballerina, Baik's Believer & Believer 2, Yoshie Kaoruhara's KeixYaku, popular Don Lee films The Gangster, the Cop and the Devil and Unstoppable alongside BL manga like Honto Yajuu and Bi No Isu (probably one of the most well known yazuka manga to date).

youtube

Like, we're seeing a rise in mafia based BLs and people think that's because of "western influence" and not the absolute insane success of kinnporsche??? Especially in countries like China, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines and other Asian countries???

Mafia films and gang shows aren't even that popular here in America/Europe; don't get me wrong, they still get made and exist, but the last full length film was The Irishman which did not make it's budget back, and while Power is still on-going it's not a smash hit either. The heyday of Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, Goodfellas, and Scarface are long gone. And if you've watched any those shows or films they have very little in common with Kei x Yaku, Kinnporsche, or Red Peafowl in tone, or style.

(who knew martin just wanted to make his al pacino/robert de niro fanfic come to life all these years?)

Another example, The Sign, which is clearly taking inspiration from Chinese costume dramas: Ashes of Love, Fairy and Devil, White Snake (and it's many adaptions), Guardian, & Ying Yang Master Dream of Eternity. Alongside Hong Kong and Korean cop and romance shows like Tale of the Nine-Tailed, Hotel Del Luna, Director Who Buys Me Dinner, First Love, Again, and previously mentioned cop dramas.

youtube

Like, I know y'all don't think Twins is influenced by, what, American sports classic Angels in the Outfield?? Gridiron Gang?? Rocky?? Nah that shit is inspired by the popularity of sports manga like Haikyuu!!, Slam Dunk, Prince of Tennis (which even has a Chinese drama adaption), and the like. And also probably History 2, & Not Me but I'm like 87% sure Twins is just Haikyuu fanfic.

So like, does this mean that there's NO history in which American and European cinema influenced these countries? What, no, obviously that's not true, American/European totally have had media influence on countries like Korea, Japan, etc.

Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka considered "the father of manga" was inspired by Walt Disney's work on Bambi. Another more recent and prominent example is director Yeon Sang-ho and his film Train to Busan.

"And it was Snyder’s movie [Dawn of the Dead, 2004], not the 1978 original, that filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho recalled as his first encounter with the undead. “That was when I started my interest in zombies,” Yeon said, in an email interview through a translator from South Korea. Even today, he added, “it’s the most memorable and intense zombie movie I’ve ever seen.”" (source)

HOWEVER, the global influence doesn't stop there. It's not a one-way street. Yeon Sang-Ho was inspired by Zack Synder's Dawn of the Dead, a remake of George Romero's own work, but Yeon Sang-Ho's work has inspired countless Korean film makers to make their own zombie media; following Train to Busan there's been: Kingdom (2019 - current), All of Us Are Dead (2022), Zombie Detective (2020), Zombieverse (2023), Alive (2020), Rampant (2018).

And hey, wouldn't you know it now we're starting to see more zombie media coming out of places like Japan (Zom 100 the manga, movie, and anime) and High School of the Dead.

Do you know what Domundi's series Zombivor (2023, pilot trailer only) reminds me of? It's NOT The Walking Dead (which is the only relevant zombie media America has created in the last decade) it's Korea's All of Us Are Dead (2022). Comparing the trailers, the settings, the tone, it's clear where Zombivor is pulling inspiration from: Korean zombie cinema. NOT American zombie cinema.

youtube

In fact a lot of Domundi's shows - Cutie Pie, Middleman's Love, Naughty Babe, Bed Friend - are all very clearly inspired by Korean filmmaking, specifically that of romantic kdramas from the 2016 - 2020 era. Not always in story, but rather in technique.

This is media globalization. It's not simply ~The West~ influencing non-American/European countries but countries who are often more close in terms of: proximity, culture, and trade are going to have more influence on each other.

It is far more likely that Aoftion (Naughty Babe, Cutie Pie, Zombivor) was influenced by watching Train to Busan, All of Us Are Dead, and other Korean zombie shows and films than a single episode of Walking Dead.

My point isn't that this goes one way only, but rather it is very literally a global thing. This includes American and European film makers being influenced by non-American and European cinema.

Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, the Wachowski sisters, George Lucas and James Cameron have all been influenced by Japanese film making, especially the works of Akira Kurosawa, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Oshii.

John Wick's entire gun-fu sub-genre is heavily influenced by classic Hong Kong action films, specifically John Woo films. Legend of Korra, The Boondocks, Voltron, Young Justice, My Adventures with Superman are all obviously inspired by Japanese anime but animated by a Korean animation studio (Studio Mir). Beyond that, the rise in adult animated dramas like Castlevania, Critical Role Vox Machina, and Invincible to name a few are very clearly taking inspiration from anime in terms of style. The weebs that were watching Adult Swim's Inuyasha, Bleach, and Dragon Ball Z have grown up and are now working in Hollywood.

Okay so like, what's the point of all this? What's the issue? Since American/European cinema does influence et all cinema does any of this really matter?

YES.

I take contention with this line of thinking because it centers "the west" and our supposed individual importance way to much. Declaring definitively that "BL is being influenced by western tropes" and then including tropes, narratives, and film making styles that aren't inherently western and actually have major roots in the cinema of various Asian countries, removes the existence of individual history these countries have which are rich, varied, and nuanced. It removes the "global" part of globalization by declaring "the globe" is really just America and Europe.

It distills these countries down to static places that only exist when American/European audiences discover them.

BL doesn't exist in a vacuum you can trace the development of Korean BL to the development of Korean het dramas almost to a T. You can also trace their development to the queer history of each country and how Thailand interacts culturally with China, Japan, Korea, etc and vice versa. It also ignores the history of these countries influencing American cinema as well. Don't mistake "the globe" for only your sphere of experience.

Anyway James Cameron is a damn weeb y'all have a good night.

Check out other posts in the series:

Film Making? In My BL? - The Sign ep01 Edition | Aspect Ratio in Love for Love's Sake | Cinematography in My BL - Our Skyy2 vs kinnporsche, 2gether vs semantic error, 1000 Stars vs The Sign | How The Sign Uses CGI | Is BL Being Overly Influenced by Modern Western Romance Tropes?

[like these posts? drop me a couple pennies on ko-fi]

#kinnporsche #pit babe the series #the sign the series #twins the series #red peafowl the series #domundi #gmmtv #chaos pikachu speaks #fucking a this was an entire essay #i should drop a ko-fi link cause good god damn #chaos pikachu metas #Youtube #pikachu's bl film series

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bekolxeram · 2 months ago

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Human remains as props — the Billy Boils of old horror movies

In this week's Halloween themed 9-1-1 episode, Buck rented a mummy replica from a Hollywood prop shop which turned out to be a real human body. This set off a series of misfortunate events for the firefighter, that might or might not be the result of a curse. Once again, the writers have surpassed themselves in terms of over-the-top silliness that has become the trademark of our beloved weewoo show. There's no way someone can accidentally get their hands on a real corpse... right?

Oh, you'll be surprised. You too may have seen a real cadaver or two on the silver screen.

The Economics of prop dead bodies

Using real human remains as movie props was such a common practice back in the days that prop masters working on the 1979 Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now were totally unfazed when body broker (later revealed to be a grave robber) brought several dead bodies to the set. The plan to use those bodies as props for maximum authenticity was only scrapped after a producer ruled against it.

Source: The Independent

Interestingly, films that ended up actually featuring real bodies were the low-budget, fake looking ones. In the age before 3D printing, creating a set of realistic human skeleton was a very labor intensive process. That combining with the cost of the material used, the price of a plastic replica was in fact more expensive than a real skeleton.

A special effect make-up artist who worked on the 1982 Spielberg classic Poltergeist explained the film's decision to use actual human remains on a podcast:

Source: Snopes

Eerily, two young actresses who worked on the Poltergeist trilogy passed away unexpectedly shortly afterwards, leading to the urban legend of a curse on set.

The story of Elmer J. McCurdy

In late 1976, the production crew of the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man was filming scenes at the Pike, a then amusement zone in Long Beach, California. While shooting a scene at a thrill ride, a member of the prop department spotted a wax mannequin covered in fluorescent paint dangling from a noose. Worrying it would get in the way of the camera, they gave the dummy's arm a tug in an attempt to remove it, but instead of the whole thing coming off, only the arm broke off, exposing a human bone and muscle tissues.

A penny from 1924 and ticket stubs to the "Museum of Crime" were found in the body's mouth. Investigators contacted the museum owner's son, who identified the body as Elmer McCurdy, an outlaw killed in 1911 in the middle of a shootout with police following a botched train robbery in Oklahoma.

Unlike the fictional McCurdy in 8x05, the real McCurdy was a simple petty criminal looking for some extra cash to support his alcohol habit. Utilizing the skills he learned from the army, his robbery method of choice was explosives, but he was very terrible at it.

Source: KCRW

His body was subsequently taken to a funeral home, where he laid unclaimed for the rest of his stay. The undertaker embalmed the body, shaved his face, dressed him in a suit, but refused bury him until someone come forward to claim it and pay for the service. As time went by, the owner of the funeral home decided to dress the body as a gunslinging cowboy and allow visitors to see "the Bandit Who Wouldn't Give Up" for the price of a nickel, in order to fund his burial.

5 years later, two men claiming to be McCurdy's long lost brothers came forward to take custody of the body for a proper burial. End of the story, right? Well, of course they were travelling carnival owners lying to acquire the body for their shows. In 1922, the body was sold to yet another travelling exhibit called "Museum of Crime", which featured wax figures of other famous outlaws in history.

For the next 3 decades, McCurdy's body travelled all around the country as an attraction. He even had a brief film career. He was once used to promote the 1933 film Narcotic!, then he had a small cameo in the 1967 B-movie She Freak. In 1968, the Museum of Crime owner's son decided to sell his father's exhibits to the Hollywood Wax Museum. There, McCurdy's body started getting mixed up with other wax figure, and his origin story long forgotten.

Following over half a century of voyage, McCurdy eventually became fully mummified. The wax museum believed that the body was too gruesome and unlifelike to be showcased anymore, so he was finally sold to The Pike, an amusement zone in Long Beach, where he began his new life as a thrill ride decoration dummy.

After the shocking revelation by TV crew in 1976, McCurdy was transported back to Oklahoma, where he took his last breath 66 years ago, and finally laid to rest after a graveside service attended by 300 people. (Under 2 feet of concrete, to prevent grave robbing)

Source: Atlas Obscura

#Yes the meta posts are back #They're so fun to write #I love doing research on surprisingly interesting topics #911 spoilers #911 abc #911 meta #evan buckley #bucktommy

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gainedgeconsulting · 2 years ago

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#Low cost country sourcing #Procurement consulting

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batboyblog · 10 months ago

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Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #7

Feb 23-March 1 2024

The White House announced $1.7 Billion in new commitments from local governments, health care systems, charities, business and non-profits as part of the White House Challenge to End Hunger and Build Healthy Communities. The Challenge was launched with 8 billion dollars in 2022 with the goal of ending hunger in America by 2030. The Challenge also seeks to drastically reduce diet-related diseases (like type 2 diabetes). As part of the new commitments 16 city pledged to make plans to end hunger by 2030, the largest insurance company in North Carolina made nutrition coaching and a healthy food delivery program a standard benefit for members, and since the challenge launched the USDA's Summer EBT program has allowed 37 states to feed children over the summer, its expected 21 million low income kids will use the program this summer.

The US House passed a bill on Nuclear energy representing the first update in US nuclear energy policy in decades, it expands the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and reduces reducing licensing fees. Nuclear power represents America's single largest source of clean energy, with almost half of carbon-free electricity coming from it. This bill will boost the industry and make it easier to build new plants

Vice President Harris announced key changes to the Child Care & Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program. The CCDBG supports the families of a million American children every month to help afford child care. The new changes include capping the co-pay families pay to no more than 7% of their income. Studies show that high income families pay 6-8% of their income in childcare while low income families pay 31%. The cap will reduce or eliminate fees for 100,000 families saving them an average of over $200 a month. The changes also strength payments to childcare providers insuring prompt payment.

The House passed a bill making changes to the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program. The 8(a) is an intensive 9 year program that offers wide ranging training and support to small business owners who are socially and economically disadvantaged, predominantly native owned businesses. Under the current structure once a business reaches over 6.8 million in assets they're kicked off the program, even though the SBA counts anything under $10 million as a small business, many companies try to limit growth to stay on the program. The House also passed a bill to create an Office of Native American Affairs at the SBA, in order to support Native-owned small businesses.

The White House and HUD announced steps to boost the housing supply and lower costs plans include making permanent the Federal Financing Bank Risk Sharing program, the program has created 12,000 affordable housing units since 2021 with $2 billion and plans 38,000 additional units over ten years. As well as support for HUD's HOME program which has spent $4.35 billion since 2021 to build affordable rental homes and make home ownership a reality for Americans. For the first time an administration is making funds available specifically for investments in manufactured housing, $225 million. 20 million Americans live in manufactured housing, the largest form of unsubsidized affordable housing in the country, particularly the rural poor and people in tribal communities.

The Department of Energy announced $336 million in investments in rural and remote communities to lower energy costs and improve reliability. The projects represent communities in 20 states and across 30 Native tribes. 21% of Navajo Nation homes and 35% of Hopi Indian Tribe homes remain unelectrified, one of the projects hopes to bring that number to 0. Another project supports replacing a hydroelectric dam in Alaska replacing all the Chignik Bay Tribal Council's diesel power with clear hydro power. The DoE also announced $18 million for Transformative Energy projects lead by tribal or local governments and $25 million for Tribal clean energy projects, this comes on top of $75 million in Tribal clean energy projects in 2023

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg put forward new rules to ensure airline passengers who use wheelchairs can travel safely and with dignity. Under the planned rules mishandling a wheelchair would be a violation of the ACAA, airlines would be required to immediately notify the passenger of their rights. Airlines would be required to repair or replace the wheelchair at the preferred vendor of the passenger's choice as well as provide a loaner wheelchair that fits the passenger's needs/requirements

The EPA launched a $3 Billion dollar program to help ports become zero-emission. This investment in green tech and zero-emission will help important transportation hubs fight climate change and replace some of the largest concentrations of diesel powered heavy equipment in America.

the EPA announced $1 Billion dollars to help clean up toxic Superfund sites. This is the last of $3.5 billion the Biden administration has invested in cleaning up toxic waste sites known as Superfund sites. This investment will help finish clean up at 85 sites across the country as well as start clean up at 25 new sites. Many Superfund sites are contained and then left not cleaned for years even decades. Thanks to the Biden-Harris team's investment the EPA has been able to do more clean up of Superfund sites in the last 2 years than the 5 years before it. More than 25% of America's black and hispanic population live with-in 5 miles of a Superfund site.

Bonus: Sweden cleared the final major barrier to become NATO's 32nd member. The Swedish Foreign Minster is expected to fly to Washington to deposit the articles of accession at the US State Department. NATO membership for Sweden and its neighbor Finland (joined last year) has been a major foreign policy goal of President Biden in the face of Russian aggressive against Ukraine. Former President Trump has repeatedly attacked NATO and declared he wants to leave the 75 year old Alliance, even going so far as to tell Russia to "do whatever the hell they want" with European NATO allies

#Thanks Biden #Joe Biden #Politics #US politics #Democrats #Climate change #end hunger #hunger #proverty #disability #native Americans #tribal rights #clean energy #child care #housing #housing crisis

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justinspoliticalcorner · 8 months ago

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WaPo: How car bans and heat pump rules drive voters to the far right

Shannon Osaka at WaPo:

More than a decade ago, the Netherlands embarked on a straightforward plan to cut carbon emissions. Its legislature raised taxes on natural gas, using the money earned to help Dutch households install solar panels. By most measures, the program worked: By 2022, 20 percent of homes in the Netherlands had solar panels, up from about 2 percent in 2013. Natural gas prices, meanwhile, rose by almost 50 percent. But something else happened, according to a new study. The Dutch families who were most vulnerable to the increase in gas prices — renters who paid their own utility bills — drifted to the right. Families facing increased home energy costs became 5 to 6 percent more likely to vote for one of the Netherlands’ far-right parties. A similar backlash is happening all over Europe, as far-right parties position themselves in opposition to green policies. In Germany, a law that would have required homeowners to install heat pumps galvanized the far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, giving it a boost. Farmers have rolled tractors into Paris to protest E.U. agricultural rules, and drivers in Italy and Britain have protested attempts to ban gas-guzzling cars from city centers.

That resurgence of the right could slow down the green transition in Europe, which has been less polarized on global warming, and serves as a warning to the United States, where policies around electric vehicles and gas stoves have already sparked a backlash. The shift also shows how, as climate policies increasingly touch citizens’ lives, even countries whose voters are staunchly supportive of clean energy may hit roadblocks. “This has really expanded the coalition of the far right,” said Erik Voeten, a professor of geopolitics at Georgetown University and the author of the new study on the Netherlands.

Other studies have found similar results. In one study in Milan, researchers at Bocconi University studied the voting patterns of drivers whose cars were banned from the city center for being too polluting. These drivers, who on average lost the equivalent of $4,000 because of the ban, were significantly more likely to vote for the right-wing Lega party in subsequent elections. In Sweden, researchers found that low-income families facing high electricity prices were also more likely to turn toward the far right. Far-right parties in Europe have started to position themselves against climate action, expanding their platforms from anti-immigration and anti-globalization. A decade ago, the Dutch right-wing Party for Freedom emphasized that it wasn’t against renewable energy — just increasing energy prices. But by 2021, the party’s manifesto had moved to more extreme language. “Energy is a basic need, but climate madness has turned it into a very expensive luxury item,” the manifesto said. “The far right has increasingly started to campaign on opposition to environmental policies and climate change,” Voeten said.

The pushback also reflects, in part, how much Europe has decarbonized. More than 60 percent of the continent’s electricity already comes from renewable sources or nuclear power; so meeting the European Union’s climate goals means tacklingother sectors — transportation, buildings, agriculture.

[...] Some of these voting patterns have also played out in the United States. According to a study by the Princeton political scientist Alexander Gazmararian, historically-Democratic coal communities that lost jobs in the shift to natural gas increased their support for Republican candidates by 5 percent. The shift was larger in areas located farther from new gas power plants — that is, areas where voters couldn’t see that it was natural gas, not environmental regulations, that undercut coal.

Gazmararian says that while climate denial and fossil fuel misinformation have definitely played a role, many voters are motivated simply by their own financial pressures. “They’re in an economic circumstance where they don’t have many options,” he said. The solution, experts say, is todesign policies that avoid putting too much financial burden on individual consumers. In Germany, where the law to install heat pumps would have cost homeowners $7,500 to $8,500 more than installing gas boilers, policymakers quickly retreated. But by that point, far-right party membership had already surged.

The Washington Post explains what may be at least partially causing the rise of far-right extremist parties in Europe, Conservatives in Canada, and the Republicans in some parts of the US: rising energy costs that low-income people are bearing the brunt of.

In the US, right-wing hysteria about gas stove bans and electric vehicles are also playing a role.

#Climate Change #Energy #Environmentalism #Europe #United States #Coal #Electric Vehicles #Fossil Fuels

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designsfromtime · 30 days ago

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How will Tariffs effect the Historical Costume Community?

Maybe it was divine inspiration that I chose the summer of 2025 to semi-retire, because textiles are about to increase, ya'll! - so are avocados, strawberries, and fruits and vegetables from Mexico; electronics (from China) - like your cell phones and computers, televisions. But it doesn't stop there: building supplies, car parts, clothing, toys, medical supplies, medications, and much, much more is about to increase!

Why?

Because of Trump's brilliant economic plan to implement tariffs on countries like China, Mexico, and Canada on "Day one," to quote him directly.

Yes, that was sarcasm. For those who haven't been following the dire warnings economists worldwide and in America were shouting to the rooftops, i.e., that tariffs will cause economic disaster for many companies in the USA, and you still think the cost of gas and eggs and groceries are going to decrease in the Trump administration, boy oh boy are ya'll gonna have a huge awakening come January 20, 2025.

The way tariffs work is like this: American companies, who purchase goods outside of America, "are the ones who pay the tariffs" - NOT the companies sending goods to America for American consumers to buy. American companies will be paying MORE to import goods from other companies, and that increase will be passed on to the American people. These large corporations, who have already been recording record breaking profits since 2020, will use Trump’s tariffs as an excuse to raise their prices even more! – because there are no regulations on what they can charge the public. ALSO, they will be receiving more tax cuts, while the rest of us, especially the middle class who already carry the burden of the majority of the taxes in the USA, will see an increase in our taxes. These tariffs will cost us an additional $2500 a year per household. That doesn't sound like much, but it adds up, especially for many who are already barely scraping by - myself included.

How will these tariffs impact the historical costume community specifically?

While Mexico, China and Canada are our top exports (places we buy from), the following countries are ALSO popular sources that USA consumers import textiles and clothing:

Vietnam

India

Bangladesh

Indonesia

Honduras

The majority of fine woolen textiles are exported from the UK. The cost of wool will also be affected, with costs going up from 10 to 20%. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re already paying $30 to $40 (and more) a yard for a good wool product an additional $3 to $6 per yard will carry a punch on my client’s budgets.

Companies like Silk Baron, who import silk fabrics in bulk from places like India, will have to increase their prices by a minimum of 20%. The price of silk is already $20 to $30 or more a yard through Silk Baron, and we can expect their prices to increase to $22 to $24, or $33 to $36 a yard.

Fabric-Store.com, used to only charge $12 a yard for linen, but beginning in 2020 they have raised their prices every year and are now charging $18 a yard. The impacts of tariffs will only increase these costs.

Trump’s tariffs on China will raise prices by 60%, and 10 to 20% to other countries who import goods to the USA. Tariffs impact consumers, NOT the companies who produce the products and ship them to American businesses.

Walmart and Lowes have already rung a warning nell that their prices are about to increase. According to an article by Reuters, a Walmart spokesperson stated, “We're concerned that significantly increased tariffs could lead to increased costs for our customers at a time when they are still feeling the remnants of inflation"…"Trump has vowed to make tariffs, which are a fraction of U.S. tax collections, central to his economic agenda. Executives have been increasingly fielding questions on the subject, with many noting ongoing efforts to continue to diversify their supply chains, particularly away from China, Trump's top target.”

Additionally, the CFO of Lowe’s, Brandon Silk, said: "Roughly 40% of our cost of goods sold are sourced outside of the U.S., and that includes both direct imports and national brands through our vendor partners"…"And as we look at the potential impacts (of tariffs), it certainly would add to product costs." These tariffs will impact the cost of appliances and building supplies, which means the cost of new construction will increase.

Grocery stores, who were already price gouging consumers since the pandemic, are beginning to raise their prices. By the way, the President of the United States (or the Vice President) does not control the prices that big corporations charge consumers, it’s greed on the part of these companies like Albertson’s, Fred Meyer, etc., who set the prices. Harris planned to institute regulations to control their greed and lower the cost of groceries, etc., but Trump’s “tariffs,’ WILL absolutely affect American consumers.

Furthermore, voters, pissed off about Biden’s handling of Hamas, voted for Trump in protest. By the way, Trump and his entire administration are 100% pro-Israel, and support the atrocities Netanyahu has perpetrated against innocent civilians who have nothing to do with the terrorists of Hamas.

Voting is the equivalent to an open book examination in college or high school. All the information needed to educate yourselves on the issues are available at your fingertips, but you have to open the damn book! Voters, angry about Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people, chose not to educate themselves about what control or influence on world politics a Vice President actually HAS. Harris was not pro-Israel, but publicly stated she was against Palestinian and Israeli aggression.

When textile and supply prices go up, those increases affect the cost for costumers. The tariffs that will be implemented will increase costs by 60% from any goods purchased from China. For my business, this will impact such items as “freshwater pearls,” that I use on my costume embellishment. China is the world’s largest exporter of pearls, which are “grown” or farmed in that country.

Coates embroidery thread, which I use in my embroidery machines, are based in Mexico. With Trump’s tariffs the cost will go up 20%. A spool of Coates gold metallic thread is $12.99 at JoAnns. That will increase by roughly $2.60 per spool.

Faux Baleen from Germany, used in corsetry, will go up anywhere from 10 to 20%.

American Duchess, who contracts with shoemakers in China to produce their historical shoes will have to raise their prices by 60%!!

Buttons, thread, fabric, notions, everything you can imagine used in the creation of historical costumes are imported from China. Tariffs will have a noticeable impact on the entire historical costume community, which is already an expensive hobby.

At a time when American’s are paying more for goods and groceries than other countries, not only will tariffs impact the economy, but Trump and the Republicans as outlined in Project 2025, plan to cut Social Security by no less than 20%, but they also are planning to do away with it entirely, to include social security disability, which millions of disabled and retired Americans depend on to exist.

In a word, and I don’t give a flying fig that I’m bringing politics into historical costuming, you voted for more inflation and higher cost of goods. It would behoove all ya’ll among the younger generations to use Google and research how the stock market crash of 1929 happened, and how tariffs played a significant role in exacerbating the Great Depression.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, passed in June 1930, was a key factor. This act raised tariffs on thousands of imported goods in an attempt to protect American industries and farmers, which had unintended consequences such as:

Retaliation by Other Countries: Many countries responded by imposing their own tariffs on American goods, which led to a significant decline in international trade.

Reduction in Exports and Imports: American exports and imports fell by about 67% during the Great Depression. This decline in trade worsened the economic downturn.

Global Economic Impact: The tariffs contributed to a global economic slowdown, making it harder for the U.S. and other countries to recover from the depression.

These consequences ended in joblessness, as companies closed down. Read about the how the banks went under, people lost their jobs, resulting in widespread foreclosures, and the rise in shanty towns to house millions of homeless who were once productive members among the middle class.

Is this hyperbole? No! If you do not educate yourselves, history will repeat itself. Trump’s tariffs will impact Americans on a catastrophic level, as well as impact the global economy.

So, next time, maybe study for the “open book test” rather than sourcing your information from word of mouth like, you know, Fox News.

Hang on to your butts, it’s gonna get rough for all of us.

P.S: If you voted for him, and your fee-fees are hurt by this article, don't you dare say one hateful thing in my blog or my Facebook page or you will be blocked.

#historical costume #costume design #historical fashion #renaissance costume #elizabethan costume

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mitigatedchaos · 4 months ago

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Free Speech

Regarding the speech restrictions in Europe, I will summarize my overall position as follows.

An economics textbook can easily weigh in at nearly 500,000 words. (This could be a contemporary economics textbook, or the original economics textbook, The Wealth of Nations.) Yet an economic textbook cannot tell you everything there is to know about business. You cannot simply use one as a manual to fill the position of CEO.

The world is thick and filled with many possibilities, while a textbook is thin and unable to change in response to situations.

Ideology is a network of related beliefs, rules, and moral values, which influences how information is perceived and what behaviors are considered right. It is often communicated through books and printed materials, speeches, videos, and so on.

Like a textbook, it is not the world. And, like a textbook, it is much simpler than the world.

Ideology is used to synchronize the behavior of members of a political coalition. As such, it may be derived from a generalization of the various coalition members' interests. Putting ideology into action requires keeping coalition members on-side, and so it is often less coherent and more contradictory than scientific theories.

Because ideology is less complex than reality, there is a distance between what an ideology says and any real situation. This distance can be larger or smaller.

This gap between the ideology and reality can produce externalities. If the ideology says that enough solar power and energy storage will come online that you can shut down the nuclear power stations in your country without burning coal... and the energy storage does not come online, then you may end up burning the coal.

Because ideology is not a person, but a body of ideas, and because conditions in the real world are constantly shifting (such as new technologies being invented, or new political events occurring), a movement requires personnel to consistently update and adapt the ideology to account for new developments, to keep the distance between reality and the ideology low.

Because the ideology also represents the interests of the coalition members, and for other reasons, shifting it may result in a difficult political fight that could reduce support for the political coalition.

In this model, speech restrictions are generally a method to push the costs of the externalities off on to people outside of the ruling coalition, while avoiding doing the genuinely challenging work of updating the ideology, as well as having a costly intracoalitional political battle.

This is a short-termist approach that may cause the ideology to become more misaligned from reality in the long term as the underlying conditions continue to change.

As such, in this model, the default position should be to be highly skeptical of speech restrictions. Political coalitions shift unpredictably over time; there is always the possibility that you will be the one getting the short end of the stick in the future.

It is possible for politicians and government officials to obtain private information about the world merely by observing reality and remembering what they have observed. They may also speak directly to each other in private settings.

However, eventually, all politicians and public officials will either grow old or die. As such, the political parties and the state must continuously recruit new personnel from the young. The young have easy access to public channels of information, but private channels of information do not scale - when they become too large, they become public channels of information.

In a low-censorship environment, there are outside sources of information who can correct for the missing information even if young people don't admit to reading them or don't read them directly.

In a high censorship environment, public information can drift very far from reality. Those who trust the censorship anyway will make policy which is not well-aligned to reality, and which therefore can only succeed by accident. Those who do not trust the censorship will not have access to high-quality alternative information; they may not even know what is and is not being censored. Therefore, while they can account for alternate possibilities, they will also have difficulty in making successful policy.

#politics #flagpost #epistemic blues

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anipgarden · 1 year ago

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What Kind of Plants to Add

This is my sixth post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert–just an enthusiast–but I hope something you find here helps!

I’d love to be able to give a quick and easy list of things to add, but frankly I can’t do that. I can strongly encourage you, however, to look at these categories of plants and do further research to discover what’s native to your area, so you can plant things that’ll have the most impact in your particular area.

With that being said, I will mention a few plants as examples. This is in no way, shape, or form me telling you that you have to or even should buy these specific plants. Not every plant works well in every place in every garden, not to even mention across countries. Above all, if you’re wondering what plants you should be adding, I can wholeheartedly say plants that are native to your area--or at least nonnative non-invasive.

Flowers

Flowers are some of the most common ways people work to increase biodiversity in their gardens, and who can blame them? Seeing pops of color out your window, and directly seeing the impact via butterflies and bees visiting the garden? It’s a win-win for us and the wildlife!

Flowers--especially native wildflowers--are a quick, easy, and cheap way to increase wildlife traffic in your garden. Perennial gardens are more likely to get you the most bang for your buck, as they’ll come back year after year if you treat them well. But don’t dismiss annuals--if you get ones that easily reseed, they’ll eagerly return on their own! If you can, do your best to ensure that the flowers you plant all have different blooming periods--that way, your garden can support wildlife throughout the year instead of for just one brief season.

Flowers are environmental super boosters. Their nectar and pollen can feed insects and birds, their stems and leaves can provide nesting materials for all sorts of creatures, and their seeds are a popular food source among birds at all times of the year.

Climbing Plants

Climbing plants can be fantastic options for maximizing your impact. If you have limited ground space, growing up can provide interest as well as additional habitat for all kinds of creatures.

Training plants up a trellis, fence, or bare wall offers food, shelter, and habitat. Trumpet vines, passionflowers, honeysuckles, and more will provide sweet nectar for pollinators as well as nesting and hiding spaces for other wildlife like birds, bugs, and lizards. Do note that in some cases, climbing plants can actually affect the structural integrity of walls and roofs if allowed to climb too much and too far along a house, so be careful.

Bushes/Shrubs

Bushes provide shelter for creatures, which then provides hunting grounds for other animals. Their fallen leaves and petals can be food and shelter for detritivores, amphibians, reptiles, and small mammals--and they also provide good cover for moving around the garden, for creatures who like to stay hidden. They can be a bit more pricey to obtain--unless you get cuttings or seeds and are willing to wait--but they’ll definitely be worth it, and they’re typically low-maintenance once they’re established.

Bonus points if you get a flowering and fruiting bush, like bottlebrush, serviceberry, lilac, or others. This’ll make your bushes not only a place of shelter, but a food source as well--and depending on the kind you pick, may be food for you too! Making a garden border with a series of bushes can be a great option to providing lots of habitat, if you can manage it.

Shrubs with pithy or hollow stems are excellent options for supporting solitary bees. Some examples you could look into are elderberry, raspberry, blackberry, or sumac.

Trees

Trees have a high up-front cost and take awhile to grow, but once they’re settled in place they provide crucial habitat to all kinds of creatures! Insects will be attracted to flowers they may provide, or to nest in the wood. Others may eat the leaves as food, or use them as nesting materials. Birds will perch and nest in trees, and feed off the fruits and seeds and insects that also use the tree. Squirrels also use trees as nesting places, piling up dead leaves into huge clusters to raise their young in, and will absolutely feast on any nuts the tree may provide. Mice, badgers, and more will feast on fallen fruits or seeds, and bats roost in the trunks when given the chance. Detritivores eat fallen leaves and decomposing fruits, providing further food for hunting creatures. Trees can also be good for us--they help block out noise and air pollution, and are the poster child for taking CO2 and making it breathable oxygen. Not to mention they can provide plenty of food for us, too. Nesting grounds, hunting grounds, shelter from weather, and more--trees are, in my opinion, likely to be the best way to boost biodiversity long-term. If you can get your hands on a sapling for cheap and can care for it for awhile, I’d definitely give it a shot! Make sure the tree won’t get too big for where you’re growing it, though--you’ve definitely gotta plan for the long-term before you plant any.

Some trees can be grown in containers. Though they won’t become gigantic branching behemoths, they’ll still do their part to support all the life that depends on them. Growing a tree from seed may take awhile, but could be an easy option to getting one if you have the patience--the trees are more than happy to help you, as they drop tons of seeds and fruit in fall for you to gather.

Groundcover

Bare soil is the enemy of microbial life in the soil, and while small pockets of bare soil can be great nesting places for bees and other insects, having swaths of empty soil should be avoided. Groundcover plants grow low to the ground in a sprawling habit, and will often spread quite easily on their own. This is a great way to provide shelter, keep soil temperatures cool, block out weeds, and give your soil life a chance to thrive.

Sometimes, ground covers don’t even have to be planted in the ground. Shallow-rooted plants like succulents, ferns, and alyssum can be planted into cracks in stone walls, and moss can be planted by making moss graffiti and painting it onto a surface. As with climbing plants, do make sure that you don’t cause extra damage to important walls and housing foundations.

Host Plants

Host plants get their own section, because plants of all kinds can be host plants for different creatures! It’s common to think only flowers can be host plants in the beginning, but in reality, many bushes and trees are host plants to dozens of species of butterflies and moths. Honestly, I feel that factor's not talked about enough. Look up what insects live in your area and what kind of host plants they need, and plant some if you can! Bonus points if you can plant a variety of them--I know that there’s hundreds of kinds of milkweed, each one flowering and leafing up around different times of the year. Planting several varieties of milkweed, then, would provide monarchs with food through several seasons, allowing many more of them to grow up in your garden!

Nectar Plants

Plants that provide nectar to insects is a great foundation to increasing biodiversity! This is, of course, many native wildflowers (and even nonnative wildflowers, though be sure they aren’t invasives who’ll do more harm than good), but many native bushes, vines, and trees will also provide nectar to hungry pollinators!

Keystone Species

To be frank, some plants can have a bigger impact than others in a landscape. By all means, every bit helps, but if you want to boost biodiversity quickly there are a few plants that can essentially serve as the backbone of local ecosystems that you can grow in anything from a balcony pot to a small patch of your backyard. These plants can be different depending on where you are, so do your research to find out what would be best to grow in your area. If you can’t get them all? That’s alright! But even hitting just a few of these target species really can do a lot.

That’s the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about things to keep in mind/continue to do once you get plants in the ground! Until then, I hope this advice was helpful! Feel free to reply with any questions, your success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!

#biodiversity #solarpunk #gardening #outdoor gardening #ani rambles #out of queue #the biodiversity saga #sorry its been 2 months since I last posted to this series #I literally have everything drafted out I just got Busy because maannnnnnn animating a grad school capstone project all by yourself....#i should really start using my youtube channel to post my animations but they never feel Done so I just Dont #i dont have as many links in this one because... they weren't in the draft and any tumblr posts that came to mind I couldn't hunt down #either way i hope this was Helpful and Lit and All That Jazz #I might just post the other parts tomorrow so I can stop having that hanging over my head #and so I can get my sources masterpost out there so people can like. see I'm trying my best not to just talk out of my ass #anyways see yall

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