#maryland sucks

[deadweight-at7am]

Oh my fucking GOD. Are we going to see yet another snowless winter? I’m literally so pissed. Terrible weather today, RAIN and 36 degrees. Strong rain storm on Tuesday. Rain. Rain rain rain.

I’m starting to hate the winter.

[neonyellowanemone]

Here’s some good news Americans:

Missourians raised the minimum wage, gained required paid sick leave, rejected an amendment that would’ve increased police pay, and passed an amendment that legalized abortion until fetal viability, thereby removing one of the strictest bans in the country.

Alaskans raised the minimum wage in the state and gained required paid sick leave.

Arizonans rejected an amendment that would’ve lowered pay for tipped workers and legalized abortion until fetal viability, likely upending the previous 15 week abortion law.

Coloradans passed an amendment that codified abortion rights and removed a section of the statewide constitution that limited marriage between one man and one woman, further protecting same-sex marriage.

Californians added same-sex and interracial marriage rights to the constitution.

Nevadans are a step closer to having abortion protected in the state’s constitution, and if it passes again in 2026, it will add an extra layer of protection for abortion rights.

Marylanders voted so that abortion is now protected under the state’s constitution and it will be incredibly difficult for future politicians to undo without violating the state’s constitution.

Montanans approved abortion until fetal viability under the state’s constitution.

My father once said that America has always been “three steps forward, two steps back.” This election was generally another step back. That’s frustrating and scary, and it’s normal to feel that way, but it’s going to be okay. We just have to keep fighting to go forwards. We accomplished lots this election, now we just have to keep our sights on the next ones and find ways to help our communities. Stay safe, everyone.

Find a helpline here

[northduhcodeuh]

Friend asked me to draw the sillies

Maryland will never get over oldbay. Colorado is high and trying to understand what he’s doing(same/j)

[treecakes]

i would like to go back to virginia and particularly that town bc apparently the town itself is nice we just lived wayyyy outside of it. but so much of my father’s family lives around there and i don’t want to 😭

[arctic-hands]

Motherfuck I was hoping today's code orange would be the worst of it but they're calling a code red for tomorrow because the smoke it back

[raeathnos]

.

[misseyres]

cussed out a maryland driver and played chappell roan at full volume on a country road with the windows down. balance is restored.

[marylandmagiciansdaily]

Day THE RARE MARYLAND MAGICIANS DAILY USE OF THE DRAWING TABLET ..!!!

[lesbienneanarchiste]

Kill the cop in your head yes but the cop in my head is not "acting professional in a professional situation and having respect for other people's time and property"

[rubbish78]

Katsucon is my least favorite con but I still get FOMO

[ericlovessharks]

begging our parents to say something more than "good" or "nice" whenever we tell them stuff

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Carbon neutral” Bitcoin operation founded by coal plant operator wasn’t actually carbon neutral

I'm at DEFCON! TODAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). TOMORROW (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Water is wet, and a Bitcoin thing turned out to be a scam. Why am I writing about a Bitcoin scam? Two reasons:

I. It's also a climate scam; and

II. The journalists who uncovered it have a unique business-model.

Here's the scam. Terawulf is a publicly traded company that purports to do "green" Bitcoin mining. Now, cryptocurrency mining is one of the most gratuitously climate-wrecking activities we have. Mining Bitcoin is an environmental crime on par with opening a brunch place that only serves Spotted Owl omelets.

Despite Terawulf's claim to be carbon-neutral, it is not. It plugs into the NY power grid and sucks up farcical quantities of energy produced from fossil fuel sources. The company doesn't buy even buy carbon credits (carbon credits are a scam, but buying carbon credits would at least make its crimes nonfraudulent):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/31/carbon-upsets/#big-tradeoff

Terawulf is a scam from top to bottom. Its NY state permit application promises not to pursue cryptocurrency mining, a thing it was actively trumpeting its plan to do even as it filed that application.

The company has its roots in the very dirtiest kinds of Bitcoin mining. Its top execs (including CEO Paul Prager) were involved with Beowulf Energy LLC, a company that convinced struggling coal plant operators to keep operating in order to fuel Bitcoin mining rigs. There's evidence that top execs at Terawulf, the "carbon neutral" Bitcoin mining op, are also running Beowulf, the coal Bitcoin mining op.

This is a very profitable scam. Prager owns a "small village" in Maryland, with more that 20 structures, including a private gas station for his Ferrari collection (he also has a five bedroom place on Fifth Ave). More than a third of Terawulf's earnings were funneled to Beowulf. Terawulf also leases its facilities from a company that Prager owns 99.9% of, and Terawulf has *showered * that company in its stock.

So here we are, a typical Bitcoin story: scammers lying like hell, wrecking the planet, and getting indecently rich. The guy's even spending his money like an asshole. So far, so normal.

But what's interesting about this story is where it came from: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet that's funded by a short seller – an investment firm that makes bets that companies' share prices are likely to decline. They stand to make a ton of money if the journalists they hire find fraud in the companies they investigate:

https://hntrbrk.com/terawulf/

It's an amazing source of class disunity among the investment class:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

As the icing on the cake, Prager and Terawulf are pivoting to AI training. Because of course they are.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/09/terawulf/#hunterbrook

[ivys-garden]

Oh shit the states are fighting

American state flags sh!ttily redesigned by a European

Maryland:

Montana:

Washington:

Hawaii:

Arkansas:

[hazbin-but-good]

another hazbin hotel rewrite/redesign?

yup! and i'm so serious about it that i made a whole blog for it. i'm a white queer ex-cath tran doing this as an art and writing exercise, so feedback from other creatives + jewish and/or racialized folks is especially welcome.

i'm putting this post and only this post in the main tags for visibility. also, not gonna link my main, but i do make my own original stuff, and i encourage fans and haters alike to do the same.

anyway, here's a mostly good-faith 1.7k-word essay on the original. i think it's pretty funny and brings up some less talked-about points. correct me on the facts, disagree with my opinions, and ask clarifying questions, but don't come at me with any piss-poor reading comprehension.

the hellaverse is garbage, and here's why

cw: strong language, stronger opinions, intersectional feminist critical discourse analysis

1. vivienne medrano, the person

medrano was born as a well-off white-passing latina (salvadoran-american) in bougieass frederick, maryland. while attending new york's top art school, she got popular on deviantart-tumblr-twitter by being a prolific multifandom fujoshi furry who's more into ornamental character design than storytelling. upon graduation, she leveraged her fanbase and industry connections to make the hazbin and helluva boss pilots, get helluva made for youtube, and get hazbin made for amazon prime.

like every woman online, she gets harassed for no good reason, and as a certified autist, i will defend her right to be dumb, weird, annoying, and bad with words. however, there are legit reasons to criticize her:

racism, misogyny, homophobia, fatphobia, some antisemitism, past transphobia, past ableism

shitty boss, bad friend

cowardly, vindictive, manipulative, thoughtless behavior

skeevy friends

sucks at taking criticism

in short, i think she desperately needs a PR person and someone to clean up her digital footprint.

2. medrano's art

incurious

inauthentic

noncommittal

creatively stagnant

overindulgent, and the indulgence isn't even fun

shallow and childish framed as complex and mature

bland and boring framed as shocking and subversive

to be clear, i'm at peace with the existence of suckass art like this; i just think the money, attention, and praise it gets are unearned and should go to more interesting works, of which there are infinite.

medrano's had the time, money, and social cache to grow as an artist, learn from the best, and take creative risks, but she hasn't. if she truly has nothing more to offer, she should let her collaborators take the wheel, but she doesn't do that either. instead, she keeps getting more and more resources to make the same baby bullshit, and that pisses me off. she could be the nicest person ever, and this fundamental arrogance would still make her art blow.

stop with the pointless guilt: liking medrano's work does not make you stupid or evil. however, if you stay in the kiddie pool of culture, if you refuse to engage with a diversity of art, if the hellaverse is your point of reference for anything media-related, you can't expect to have your opinions on art, media, or culture taken seriously. you have not earned a seat at the table. you gotta hit the books first.

i cannot emphasize enough how much incredible stuff is out there if you're willing to look further than what social media and streaming services put right in front of you. if you come away from this blog having learned about just one new artist or piece of art, i'll be a happy camper.

3. the hellaverse

a. empty and confused

hazbin and helluva's content and marketing has no clear target audience. the subjects are inappropiate for teens, but the execution is too childish for adults, and lemme tell you what i don't mean by that, first.

not inherently inappropriate for teens:

sex and sexuality

violence, including when it intersects with the above

politics and religion

not inherently childish:

animation (any style)

comedy

episodic writing and/or loose continuity

young characters

fun, happiness, optimism, the power of friendship, cuteness, tenderness, sincerity, etc.

what i mean is that these shows are literally about adult characters who fuck, smoke, drink, do drugs, go clubbing, work full-time, manage their own finances, and deal with stuff like bureaucracy, sexual violence, domestic abuse, marriage, divorce, late adoption, and family estrangement.

however, none of these "adult" things are given enough specificity to create drama or comedy. it's all too stock, vague, flat, weirdly sanitized, and thus utterly banal—pure aesthetics on top of bad saturday morning cartoons. it's exactly what i'd expect from a sheltered disney kid who needs to log off and get into their local gay scene ASAP so their only contact with things like poverty, policing, addiction, and sex work stops being facile movies and TV.

if the shows were aware of this and played with it, that could be amazing, but they're not. they give you the mickey mouse version of the world with a straight face and then play looney tunes sound effects to try to make you laugh and sad_violin.mp3 to try to make you cry. now that's funny.

b. old and tired

let's make like americans and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist. even within the confines of the USA, home of the hays code, the red scare, and reaganite propaganda, this neopuritan fascist state ruled by 1000 megachurches in a trenchcoat, the indie/underground animation scene has been doing crazier shit for decades. anti-war films in the 60's, bakshi movies in the 70's, the simpsons shorts and r-rated movies in the 80's, adult swim and MTV in the 90's, flash/newgrounds/youtube in the 00's, streaming in the 2010's—so what are we doing in the 2020's with this wet white rice drowned in expired ketchup? i feel crazy making this point because it's obvious if you've watched these things, but if you haven't, you're gonna be like "well, there's gotta be something new here". no! there isn't! in the words of jimmy "the scot" jordan, nothing, nothing, NOTHING!

c. ideological purgatory

actually, there is one thing in these shows i've never seen before: the presbysterianism. shout out some interesting or at least intentional presbysterian art in the comments, because the way these ideas are presented here is not compelling. it just makes the rainbow neoliberalism even more confusing and contradictory.

i guess the big presbysterian things are protestanism, calvinism, and, uh, big church government? presbysterians, get your shit together. get your brand down. catholics have BDSM and vampires, evangelicals have TV and corporatism; what do you have? celtic crosses? no wonder medrano has such uninspired ideas on divinity.

d. queer deficiency

when i look at a piece of art, i ask myself: "what does this give me that i can't get from the hunchback of notre dame (1996)?" if the answer is as limp as "uhh, gay people, i guess", i can probably look for my gay shit elsewhere and rewatch the hunchback of notre dame (1996) in the meantime.

but let's say that you have no standards. you've been waiting for ages for a show about gays by the gays for the gays, and by god you're gonna get it. this is it! here we go! time for some

generic twink obliteration

male sexuality as aggression and dominance displays

WLW (sex and chemistry not included)

a couple straight femdoms

and the stalest sex jokes known to man

...yeah, it's not very queer. and by "queer", i mean "questioning or subverting gender norms (including sexual roles) within a given cultural context regardless of creator identity and intent". i'm not a queer studies scholar so LMK if there's a more specific term for this, but whatever you call it, it's not in the hellaverse much.

there's not even any transness, literal or metaphorical, just ancient drag jokes. i guess the writers thought we would've been too controversial. so much for an indie animation studio that prides itself in the diversity of its staff both above and below the line, bakshi-style. i wonder how medrano, a bisexual woman, would've felt if told that a lesbian main couple in hazbin would be "too controversial".

4. spindlehorse and the vivziepop brand

spindlehorse toons underpays its overworked staff and keeps outsourcing more and more labor to even more overworked freelancers overseas to cut costs. a rainbow sweatshop is still a sweatshop, and just because these practices may be "industry standard" doesn't make them any more ethical.

the studio has also been repeatedly accused by current and former employees and contractors of creating a hostile and abusive workplace. AFAIK, it still has no dedicated HR person, and victims are too afraid of retaliation like blacklisting and online harassment to speak out.

this is exactly the stuff that unions exist to prevent. as i'm writing this, the IATSE (the parent union of TAG, which is the parent union of all US animation unions) is negotiating with entertainment industry executives for better working conditions, and if the execs fuck around like last year, it's strike time again. so watch this space, voice your support, and don't cross any picket lines.

i hope spindlehorse unionizes, but until then and for these reasons, i don't think you should give money to the company.

first of all, all content on amazon-owned platforms is ok to pirate, and all youtube ads are ok to block. everyone involved in making the episodes has (or should have) been paid upfront, so you're not taking the bread out of anyone's mouth.

next, let's look at the succulent offerings of the official vivziepop merch shop:

$10 pins and keychains

$15 sticker packs

$20 mugs and acrylic cutouts

$25 shirts

$30 metal cards (not even tarot)

$40 lounge pants

$50 mini backpacks

random $80 skateboard deck

forgive my latin americanness, but this is all stuff you can get made by a local metalsmith, print/sublimation shop, or just crafty people in your life. it's cheaper, customizable, and better for the environment to skip all the shipping and packaging. also, not painting your own skateboard is poser shit.

the hazbin website also has $15 pins, one $20 keychain, and $6 trading card packs. people are weird about trading cards, so if for some reason you wanna gamble for a mass-produced bit of cardboard, plastic, and tinfoil, at least bulk-order for all the vivziepoppers in your area so it's less of a huge waste. better yet, trace the designs and make infinite bootlegs.

at the end of the day, buying merch is not activism. your bulk order of trading cards will not save any wage slaves from getting evicted from their overpriced studio apartments. however, the shop links you to all the credited artists/designers, and more of your bucks will actually reach them if you buy their designs directly, then turn them into body pillows or life-sized bronze statues or whatever the fuck.

go through the credits of any episode of helluva or hazbin, and you'll find even more creatives you might wanna support. get jinkx monsoon's albums on CD. subscribe to actually good artist, animator, and composer gooseworx. lots of voice actors now have patreon, cameo, or self-hosted pages where you can write better lines for their characters and have them read it. these things may not look as shiny as Official Merch™, but we all need less plastic shit and more culture anyway.

[mydarlingclaudia]

there’s always a piece of you

note : divider is from @/cafekitsune. uhhh idrk how to feel about this one I just kinda wanted to write angst so this probably sucks and I know it's ooc whoopsies

wc : 1.3k

desc : you've been dead for a few months now, Leon still can't get over it. established relationship, angst, hurt no comfort (I think? correct me if I'm wrong), not proofread, Leon contemplates suicide and is also reliant on alcohol, gn!reader, I kind of flip-floped between vendetta!Leon and re6!Leon so idrk you pick

There were plenty of things that happened to Leon that made his life miserable, one of them was losing you. It was no one's fault, you got sick, you had an expiration date, and Leon did everything he could to try and help you get better, but it didn't work. Leon didn't regret spending a bunch of his money trying to make your sickness go away, he just wished it would've worked, that you'd still be here with him.

Maybe not right this second, though. Maybe he doesn't want you in the car with him while he's speeding down the road, half-past one in the morning and half-past drunk.

He thinks too much, drinking doesn't help him stop thinking, like, at all, he doesn't know why he expects the outcome to be different whenever he pours himself some whiskey, but if he crashes his car then he has something to blame it on. He'd already gotten too many lectures from Claire and Chris about how he should take better care of himself, that things weren't going to stay as bad as they are right now, but things had been shitty for Leon for so long that this just added to the list of reasons on why he should drink himself to death.

You and Leon had your ups and down, everyone did, but he still doesn't believe you ever really knew how much you helped him. Knowing he had someone at home waiting for him made his job a bit easier, and knowing you were his and that he was the one who put that ring on your finger made him feel like there was something more to his life than being a weapon for the government. Leon was your husband, had been your husband, still is. He wished more than anything that he had spent more time with you, that his job didn't have to be the center of his life while you were forced to be secondary, he couldn't quit, not while he was still able-bodied, but he promised you that one day he'd have his final day in the DSO and that he'd take you on vacation without having it interrupted.

Leon was able to take you on vacation for a week to Greece, but even when the two of you came back home, he wanted to keep taking you beautiful places while he was still able to. There was still paperwork he had to do, a few less missions but he still had to do his job, you understood. He hated it, though. He wanted you to yell at him about how he should be at home with you, spending as much time as he possibly could with you. But you never yelled at him about it even though he knew it upset you, you said there was no use in arguing, he’d be there when you needed him.

He shouldn’t keep dwelling on this, you’ve been dead for five months now, but he can't get himself to focus on anything else. Leon didn't know why ghosts weren't real. If there could be zombies wandering the streets as well as dozens of other creatures that only Hell could spit out, why weren't there ghosts? Leon would take you being alive over you being a ghost any day, but if a ghost was the best he could settle for, then that's what he would accept. But he was yet to get any messages on the wall written in blood or find your belongings in places where they weren't before, not that you had to be a ghost to haunt him.

All the windows in his car are rolled all the way down, Leon's not listening to the radio or any music, he's been on all these roads before, but he still doesn't really know where he's going. He left D.C. around eight p.m. to go to a bar in Maryland, he had left the bar maybe half an hour ago and was driving through the woods, he didn’t have any plans on going back into D.C. just yet. Leon wasn’t the best driver to begin with, being drunk definitely didn’t make him any better, be he’d rather drive himself home or to the middle of nowhere than call someone to take him home.

He liked calling you, though.

Of course, you never picked up, he just liked calling so he could hear your voice on the recorded message for your missed calls. Sometimes he’d actually talk, others he’d just keep driving down the road while the silence on your end of the line dragged on.

Leon sighs softly and bites the inside of his cheek as he takes one hand off the wheel to dig in his back pocket for his phone. He steals glances between the road and his phone as he unlocks it and opens your contact, waiting patiently as it begins ringing. Leon clears his throat slightly and takes his other hand off the wheel to run his hand through his sweaty hair as he waits for your voice recording to switch on before grabbing hold of the wheel again.

He opens his mouth to talk once the ringing stops, but he doesn’t get the chance to say anything before he hears someone else on the other end.

“Hello? Who is this?” The tired voice of a woman makes his breath catch in his throat, he takes his foot off the gas and slams down on the brake, the tires of his car make a horrible screeching noise as he swerves to the side. Leon thinks he must've finally gone crazy, there couldn't have been another voice on the end of the line that was supposed to belong to you.

The woman speaks up again as Leon's car finally comes to a stop, he hadn't hit anything, but there are swervey skid marks that go down the road for a couple dozen feet. Leon breathes shakily into his phone, his foot still pressed down on the brake as he puts his car in park and leans back against his seat.

"I- fuck, I'm sorry." Leon began, his throat feeling even dryer than it already was. "Go back to bed, o-or whatever you were doing before I called. Just- goddammit." He quickly hangs up the phone and tosses it down onto the passenger seat. Leon runs his hands down his face, he can feel his chest tightening up like his lungs are about to pop inside his ribs, the stinging sensation in his eyes and throat only worsens.

When had they put your number back into use? That poor girl would probably block his number and he'd lose that little bit of your voice forever. Leon could go through his phone to find videos of you or just anything where he could hear your voice, but he figured he should wait until he remembered to work his phone more than trying to call you.

Day by day, it feels like he's losing you even more. He doesn't think he'll ever be able to get rid of your things, your clothes are still in his closet, your shampoo was still in the shower, God, even your medication was still in the medicine cabinet. But no matter how many of your things remained in his home, you're still gone.

Leon was supposed to die before you, he'd imagined it hundreds of times in his head, you knew it, too. All of this could have been avoided if he just killed himself after Raccoon City or had died on one of his missions before meeting you, maybe it would have been better for him if he had never sat next to you on that train and started talking too much.

There's nothing he can do about it now except weep and get so drunk that he could still hear you talking to him, not that he didn't imagine you laying back down in bed or lounging on the couch when he was sober. Maybe he'll see you again sooner rather than later, there wasn't really anyone who was around enough to stop him. All he knew was that his life was never really his after 1998, and without you in it, maybe it was time for it to come to an end.

[raeathnos]

.