#only when it profits big corps will it exist

[twinkrundgren]

i always imagined the internet as a sand castle on the shore, the tide constantly washing over it, seeking to increase entropy as the universe does. We work every day to combat it, replacing hard drives, fixing server errors, fighting back DDOS attacks, and paying for ever increasing amounts of electricity. But one day, maintaining it will not be cost effective. The average hard drive will fail in 6 years after constant use. If not being maintained, the sea will seek to reclaim all that you hold dear immediately. While everything rots, digital rot happens so quickly, so easily, and once it's not profitable, the rot sets in so quick you didn't even have time to process it, much less archive it somewhere else. the internet is so, so large, and keeping it alive requires so, so much. Forbes is quoted as saying Americans use 4 million Gigabytes of data every minute. Now imagine how much it costs, not in terms of profit but labor, hard drives, and electricity to store all of thatTo keep that data alive.

"This new deletion policy is terrible for preservation of archival media" that's the point, bro. That's explicitly the point, though they'll never admit it. Major social media platforms straight up do not want archival media to be a thing – it disrupts their business model by existing, and it's hard to monetise. In their perfect world, media more than 90 days old would vanish in a puff of smoke and be irrecoverably forgotten.

[metamatar]

$200k seems like quite a reasonable cost for a small sterile lab. It's not a plan to make it at home, it's a plan to make it in your town. As of now, there are so few insulin plants that the economies of scale aren't optimal for distribution (but they are for profits!)

did you miss the part that it was speculative? that it has never been demonstrated? also no, the economies of scale are fine for distribution cold chain distribution it is a solved problem. people aren't struggling to get insulin bc it can't be delivered, they're struggling bc its expensive.

im not sure you understand what economies of scale means, it means when you try to do things at larger scale – you are generally able to deploy productive technologies and innovations in organisation (specialisation) which make things easier to produce (less labour and capital input) on average. things become cheaper to produce. it is cheaper to weave cloth at a factory than in a loom you install in your backyard. that's why open insulin can only hypothetically get a vial down to the price of for profit insulin in the uk. big pharma is able to profit from insulin at 7 dollars a vial, ie it's even cheaper to produce. this is like, adam smith pin example.

the existence of a big factory or doing things at scale doesn't create destructive megaprofits... this is such a bizarre worldview of the world. you have to make a very sophisticated argument to prove this, which imo is immediately debunked by the reality of worker organised cooperatives in factories or even state run industrial production. profit tends to be a function of factors like labour relations + market dynamics like supply, demand and competition. us healthcare sucks bc your workers don't have rights, private insurance colludes with hospitals and competitors and the govt doesn't regulate pharma companies who are providing an inelastic good (medicine.)

also addressing this bc some people are mad at me but the only part of my argument that cites a piece hosted on RAND corp is the extremely high price of US insulin compared to every other country in the world. its like 30x. i don't think that is a fact that's a capitalist conspiracy, the data can be confirmed with other sources too, it just illustrates how dysfunctional US healthcare is. like, when your enemies agree...

[threewaysdivided]

Thinking about The Light

More thought exercises? More thought exercises.

You know the drill: in this house we are Season 1 only - let’s see what we can extrapolate from just the information available way back when.  You can consider this canon to the Deathly Weapons-verse if you like but I’m also a big fan of Death of the Author so feel free to ignore literally anything I say on this blog until/unless it appears in-story.

Let’s go:

What are the Light’s Overarching Values?

The Light’s recurring tagline is to “make humanity see the Light” or “bring humanity into the Light”, which can be decoded to mean driving humanity into “the next stage of evolution” and building Earth into a cosmic power.

In Auld Acquaintance, Vandal Savage gives the clearest explanation for why their organisation opposes the Justice League; he believes that the heroes are upholding (and perhaps even enforcing) a “calcified status quo”, and that by continuing to operate they have become “agents of stagnation” who allow weakness to persist, holding humanity back from the next stage of its evolution.

Here’s a question: Do they have a point?

Let’s break this down into some sub-questions:

Is the status quo bad?

Do the heroes exist to uphold or enforce the status quo?

Are the heroes doing harm by (accidentally or intentionally) upholding the status quo?

Are the heroes impairing humanity’s development?

1. Is the Status Quo bad?

This is argument that has the most validity.  There are real issues with the status quo of Season 1; we see crime, corruption, poverty, domestic abuse, racial supremacy, violent dictatorships, warmongering and war-profiteering among others.  Season 1’s Earth-16 is presented as fairly analogous to the real world of 2010 so it would be reasonable to assume it has many of the same underlying issues with structural and systemic inequality.

2. Do the Justice League exist to uphold or enforce the Status Quo?

From an outsider perspective it could be argued that the Justice League as an organisation don’t do much to meaningfully address the problems with the status quo.  The League claims to uphold the principles of “truth, liberty and justice” but operationally they’re most publicly involved in danger management, apprehension of super-criminals, disassembling large-scale organised crime, and disaster relief.  Some League heroes do overtly function as an extension of some kind of military or law enforcement organisation - for example, the Green Lantern Corps.  From this perspective, one could argue that heroes exist to stop the status quo from backsliding/ being disrupted but don’t do a lot to better it, or to effectively address the root causes of suffering.  

And for someone who empathises or agrees with the arguments of a figure who the Justice League has stopped, and who interprets this as the League condemning and silencing their ideology (rather than the actions it is being used to justify), they could come to see the League as existing to forcibly instate a specific status quo and set of values.

However, while this is a not-reasonable conclusion for someone with a limited in-universe perspective to reach, from the audience’s wider perspective we know it to be incomplete.  Behind the scenes and outside of public Justice League activities, many heroes are working to improve the status quo and its systems.  In-show Bruce Wayne (Batman) is acknowledged as an internationally active philanthropist, and general pop-culture knowledge holds that several others do grassroots work in their home-cities (either as civilians or openly as heroes).  From certain angles, “heroes” could be considered a single extrajudicial facet of a diffuse humanitarian effort; the publicly visible stopgap against things getting overtly worse, while the same people work to make systemic improvement more quietly through other avenues.  

The League also doesn’t have a single unified agenda or stance on the specifics of their mission and methods; as seen in Agendas, the actions of the organisation are decided democratically through a process of round-table debate and voting.  From general pop-culture knowledge of the heroes presented as core members of the League, a range of political and ideological backgrounds are represented.  In that regard, the Justice League is more of an administrative/ logistical body for efficient large-scale coordination and information-sharing than an institute with an active political agenda.  

Some additional fridge-logic nuance should also be noted: because of their position, heroes cannot be too overt in their politics or in agitating for societal change.  Heroes - particularly metahumans and aliens - are physically powerful and imposing, especially a large paramilitary body like the Justice League.  They have to walk a fine line to avoid being seen as a political or military threat, or to give their more politically-influential adversaries material to make that argument.  In order to retain the public and institutional sympathy needed to continue operating unimpeded, the League has to maintain some degree of outward image positioning themselves as apolitical defenders working with society and within the status quo.  Being outwardly seen as safe is a necessity of being allowed to continue operating.

3. Are the heroes doing harm by (accidentally or intentionally) upholding the Status Quo?

Not really.  An argument like this holds some weight in worlds like My Hero Academia - where heroism has become a widespread societally-integrated institute that is functionally a branch of law-enforcement, with a financial incentive to enforce the status quo and supress dissent - but in DC Comics heroes are still a fairly small movement with limited systemic power.  

Exact numbers vary depending on the canon but there are usually no more than a handful of individual heroes or a small team (<10) per major city, with many cities having no permanent resident hero.  Even on the scale of organisations like the Justice League (which, let’s be real, is small relative to most institutes), they don’t have the presence needed to be an oppressive force - let alone the inclination.

You could argue that the presence of heroes inadvertently creates more violence and expansion from “villains” - a risk that the Justice League themselves acknowledge during Agendas - but it’s kind of a non-argument.  While heroes do sometimes create their own “villains” this is fairly rare - a lot of criminals are motivated by personal goals that have nothing directly to do with the heroes, and some of the ones who claim to be “the monsters you created” would probably have slid into villainy anyway and are just shifting blame for their actions onto the nearest available authority.  (The Joker’s multiple-choice past being a prime example here).  The fact that some criminals use the heroes as scapegoats to justify their actions or alliances doesn’t make them liable for those crimes.

4. Are the heroes impairing humanity’s development?

No.  The Justice League uphold “truth, liberty and justice” - outside of opposing corruption, criminal actions and inhumane behaviour they do not arbitrarily block progress.  They may be opposed to the development of technology that has the potential to be used for harm but the opposition is to the potential misuse and damage, not to progress itself.

Nor are they stifling innovation.  Heroes exist to solve a very specific niche of problems; they are a supplement to existing systems, stepping in where the normal course of justice is failing/ being impeded and to manage immediate threats/ disasters that are too large to be easily handled by existing infrastructure, everyday civilians or communities.  The problems they solve are not problems that had other viable solutions at the time, and they do not treat the development of alternative solutions as “competition” to be eliminated.  The most legitimate argument is that the League hoard advanced technology (such as Zeta-transportation and holo-displays) for themselves rather than sharing it with the public, but even here they are not attempting to supress its use or distribution by others.

Vandal’s argument contains a more overt implication that heroes cause complacency because people become over-reliant on them to solve problems rather than using their own ingenuity/ developing resilience, but again the League doesn’t have the scope for this to be systemically true.  It’s the same bad-faith argument that can be used against any safety-net or preventative system/tool: “X is bad because people can rely on it rather than having to be fully individually self-reliant to survive Y”.  You might as well argue that oncologists are bad because people rely on them to help overcome cancer.

Let’s look at another angle: do the Light practice what they preach?

Are the Light addressing the problems with the status quo?

Are the Light working to progress humanity?

1. Are the Light addressing the problems with the Status Quo?

No.  All of the members are either indifferent to these problems, actively benefiting from unfair systems that they have a vested interest in maintaining, or intentionally doing harm.  Lex Luthor is an ultracapitalist war-profiteer who is openly self-aware about the moral bankruptcy and purely financial motivation of his actions in Targets.  Queen Bee is an iron-fisted dictator, using dubious claims and propaganda to justify annexing her country’s peaceful neighbours.  Ocean Master stoked the flames of the Purist racial supremacist movement in Atlantis as part of an attempted coup for the throne.  Ra’s Al Ghul runs a sect of assassins, engaging in “extortion, manipulation [and] power-broking”.  The Brain is largely removed from the world, preferring to conduct unethical experiments in pursuit of his interests in bioenhancement, immortality and the mind.  Klarion is an overtly sadistic Lord of Chaos who would happily turn the world into a “personal playground of pandemonium”.

All of these people have the power to influence the status quo and address some of the issues but they are not interested in doing so.  When they do attempt to make change it’s usually for the worse, in service of personal gain.

2. Are the Light working to progress humanity?

Not really.  This one’s a little more complex as the big-picture scope and ultimate goal of their actions is not clear, but for the most part each are shown pursuing largely personal endeavours outside of the unified plan for Starrotech - which is itself a mind-control device intended to disrupt the Justice League rather than something to benefit the people.  All of them in some way have the resources and/or influence to improve the lives of people in their sphere and/or contribute to technological advancement but we never see them doing this; more often than not they cause harm, and any good done is an incidental side-effect of pursuing another goal (e.g. the Rhelasian peace summit).

To summarise:

Claims of harm used to justify dissembling the Justice League are a gross overstatement/ wilful misunderstanding at best and illegitimate at worse

The Light are demonstrably not working to address any of the criticisms that have legitimacy

Many of the Light’s actions either directly or indirectly cause far more harm

From this we can draw 2 potential conclusions:

1. The Light’s claims are an empty placard used to lend a veneer of legitimacy to selfish pursuits

This seems very likely given the composition of their membership, their actions and that several members are openly self-aware of their wrongdoing.  

The following statement could be easily applied to the narrative of the Light: “The moral of this new story is freedom over equality, and one freedom above all – the freedom to be unbothered by others' needs.”  In holding the members of the Light accountable for their actions, the Justice League “impinges” on the desired “freedom” to indiscriminately do what they please in pursuit of selfish goals.  It is not hard to interpret the Light as reactionary and their rhetoric as the bad-faith reactionary argument that being held accountable is a form of oppression.

This would explain why they do not propose an alternate solution beyond dissembling the League and eliminating/ restricting heroism.  They don’t actually want to refine the system, they just want to remove a control.

2. The Light subscribe to a different moral/ ideological framework, which has diagnosed a different “problem” and is prescribing a different “solution”

This is not mutually exclusive to the first idea.  While the Light is an organisation, it is composed of individuals who each have their own personal position towards the mission of the whole.  Some may be in it purely as an alliance of convenience against a common enemy, others because they believe in “the cause” to varying degrees.

But to make sense of the Light as a unit you need to make sense of the ideology driving its formation.  Which is to say, the ideology of its leader.

Vandal Savage and Survival of the Fittest

Vandal Savage is positioned at the leader of the light - he is designated L1, he is the one who brought them together and he is the character who most explicitly vocalises their stated motivation.  The Light’s purported ideological stance is specifically a reflection of Vandal’s personal ideological stance.

What is Vandal’s ideology?

Functionally it is a belief in “survival of the fittest”.  This is the overt explanation he gives - that by protecting humanity from dangerous situations the heroes allow the “weak” to continue existing, causing human evolution to stagnate.  

Implicitly, his stance is that the heroes should stand aside and allow humanity to face danger directly, so that the weak can die and the survivors can build a stronger species.

Is there any validity to this?

No.  He’s categorically wrong.

Firstly, this is a basic failure to understand what “survival of the fittest” means.  It has nothing to do with individual strength or athletic “fitness” - what it actually means is that natural selection favours individuals and populations with traits that are best suited to efficiently survive in the ecological niche they inhabit.  It is a process of random mutation and the primary success metric is simply that the organism survive long enough to pass that mutation on to the next generation.  Physical strength or aggression are not prerequisites for this; in fact, both can become liabilities in excess (high musculoskeletal mass becomes deleterious if the environment cannot meet the nutritional needs to maintain it, while overly-aggressive individuals will be unlikely to successfully attract a mate).  Some of the “fittest” organisms on Earth are incredibly physically weak and incredibly vulnerable to sudden changes in their niche.

Secondly, humanity has been evolving successfully around Vandal Savage in a way that disproves his thesis.  Natural selection has been at work, it has been selecting for the traits that make humanity best suited to survive on Earth, and (on the whole) the traits it has selected for are ones that make humans pro-social, intelligent, compassionate, communicative, collaborative, adaptive and resilient.  Evolution selected for a species of individuals who care about others, and whose ability to develop tools and pass on information outstrips the need for raw physical might - a collective that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.  (To use a real-world example, there is a reason why women survive so long after menopause and why we feel compelled to care for people who are visibly elderly/ frail - it benefits the population to have individuals with accumulated life experience).

Within DC comics’ alien-inhabited universe there are also a large number of other social species with community structures.  Pro-social/ tribal behaviour is one of the most commonly selected-for evolutionary traits across the galaxy (just look at the diversity of species that comprise Green Lantern Corp membership), with compassionate pro-social behaviour being a quite common variant.  Vandal isn’t just wrong about physical strength being the end-goal of life on Earth - he’s wrong on a cosmic scale.

There is also an irony to Vandal Savage being a self-proclaimed champion of human evolution. Vandal himself cannot evolve.  He can adapt, certainly, he can learn and he can grow on a physical/psychological/emotional level, but evolution does not occur on the scale of a single individual, even a long-lived one.  As an immortal individual and static point, Vandal will always be limited to the constraints of his own starting nature; human evolution will inevitably leave him behind no matter what direction it takes.

How might someone like Vandal have come about this mindset?

Vandal is indeed limited by his origins and starting point.  He is a relic of early-humanity; a man who fought a bear and won, who was big and strong - at best a warrior-protector type - and who gained immortality/invulnerability through exposure to meteor-radiation that either made him into a mutate or awakened a latent proto-metagene.  

This was a random event - not necessarily the “next phase of human evolution” but simply the acquisition of a trait that offset the personal negative consequences of his more aggressive, uncompassionate and antisocial sides.  But that invulnerability elevated him above his peers and gave him a reason to see himself as exceptional.  It bred within him a narcissism, and a belief that his mindset and experiences were either universal or superior.  

And then humanity moved on.  It evolved, and that evolution selected for a more communal, more pro-social, more compassionate population; whose skills at collaboration, coordination and tool-building surpassed the need for raw brute strength and domination.  Not only that but other meta-humans and mutates began to emerge - ones who chose to use their abilities in compassionate, pro-social, humanitarian ways.  Vandal was left behind, no longer exceptional in any way that mattered.  

But a world in which Vandal Savage was not “the fittest” was intolerable to his ego.  Rather than considering that maybe he was flawed, that he needed to revaluate himself, adapt, grow and place value in other things, he became reactionary.  Instead of accepting the evolution occurring before his eyes, he disdained it as wrong, as enabling weakness, as a regression. Vandal may have adapted the rhetoric of his worldview to fit within the new language of modern science but he’s never actually questioned the core premise.  He actively rejects the evidence in front of him, seeking to drag humanity back to a mythologised past, where might is power and Vandal Savage is the apex of the species.

Underneath all the attempts at intellectual rationalisation, this is ultimately the validation-seeking tantrum of a reactionary narcissist, whose meta-abilities let him enact it on an immortal and cosmic scale.

Here is a small truth Evil is mundane.

What is the ultimate goal of The Light?

While never explained in-show the most logical answer is that it’s probably a form of intergalactic colonialism. This tracks with the membership of the Light - ultra capitalists, unethical scientists, dictators, power-hungry princes - and is a reasonable fusion of the “survival of the strong” and “evolved humanity” ethos.  

It also aligns well with this reading of Vandal - the idea of conquering the universe, dominating all the warlike species and subjugating the peaceful ones to become the ultimate “apex predator” would flatter his ego and strength-based exceptionalism.  It also tracks with traits of narcissism; one of which being a perception that others exist to support and serve oneself.  In Vandal’s mind, humanity will be better off reshaped in his image: Earth as a cosmic power, not through trade or innovation or diplomacy but through might.

Let’s ask a couple of other questions:

If Vandal is immortal then why only form the Light now?

There are a few potential factors here.  

Firstly, the tools he needs are now readily available. True global interconnectedness, communication and space travel were only properly refined in the last two centuries - before that he would have been limited to operating on a much smaller scale, over much longer timespans.  The last two centuries also saw large leaps in technology, science and warfare.  In the modern age Vandal can source allies from around the world, communicate with them instantaneously over distance and make use of a number of resources.  Starrotech is the product of multiple advancements that would have until recently been impossible for even powerful people to easily obtain.  

Secondly, this is the age of metahumans and heroes.  The last two generations saw the prominent appearance and then public acceptance of heroes on Earth 16, and development of coordinated groups (first the Justice Society and then the Justice League) combined with global news media spreading the word.  This would likely have provided the inspiration for Vandal’s plot of using the heroes as tools.  It also would have made him more reactionary; the presence of people who were exceptional in similar ways to himself and who chose to use their gifts compassionately challenging both his view of human nature and his place as “the fittest”, spurring him to action.

A Theory T.O. Morrow and his Reds may have been an early test.  Vandal may not have directly recruited him but he could have made contact and planted the suggestion of using Androids to infiltrate the Justice Society - an experiment he could observe from afar.   It would also account for Morrow’s ambitions diverging into a plan to wipe out humanity - Vandal planted the seed but he didn’t have control over what it would ultimately grow into.

It is also possible that Vandal made smaller scale attempts in the past, but this likely would have been hamstrung by both technological limitations and by the personalities involved. Vandal’s preferred allies would be people who share similar strength-based antisocial worldviews but those groups are essentially doomed to tear themselves apart with infighting eventually - after all, there can only be one “fittest”.

What do the Light’s loyalties look like?

The 7 principal members of the Light have different motivations for joining, spanning from purely personal alliances of convenience to varying degrees of belief in Vandal’s mission.  These factors will determine the closeness of their allegiance and the conditions under which they might turn on the others.

It’s also worth noting that all of the members of the Light are at least somewhat antisocial and will likely abandon or even betray the group out of self-preservation if needed.

Vandal Savage The originator of the ideology.  He will remain loyal to it but may turn on the others if he perceives them as no longer useful, as “weak” or as a potential liability/ threat to himself, his ego or the cause.

Lex Luthor Luthor has a number of potential personal and ideological reasons for joining.  As an ultra-capitalist he stands to economically benefit from their colonial schemes.  As someone with political ambitions, the Light’s rise to power as leaders of the “new humanity” would appeal to him.  Luthor is also often depicted as xenophobically motivated by a fear of Superman - a projection of his own mindset, which cannot conceive of someone using their power for pure altruism - something that aligns well with Vandal’s reactionary strength-based mindset.

Luthor will potentially turn on the others if he believes doing so is a more financially or politically profitable move.

Ra’s Al Ghul Ra’s alignment will depend on the specifics of the character; his depictions range from a brutal, villainous “demon” to a more sympathetic anti-villain with environmental motivations.  What little is seen in Young Justice seems to swing more towards a calculating villain.

Ra’s often has a strength-based worldview, something that would resonate with Vandal’s mission:  though they may diverge on the details, Ra’s has no great love for humanity in its current state and would have reasons to see them as weak.  As the leader of an assassin sect, he has a potential business interest in intergalactic warfare as it generates a need for espionage and sabotage.

In canon it seems that Ra’s is withholding some information from the Light, as he explicitly knows Batman’s identity but does not appear to have shared this with the rest.  He canonically has family, Talia Al Ghul appearing in the YJS1 companion comics.  He also often has some degree of honour-code (if not a moral code), and a loyalty to his Shadows.

Ra’s will likely hold true to any agreement he has made, but may turn on the others if they go back on their word, if their actions severely violate his personal code or reveal them to be hypocrites, or if he believes they pose a threat to his Shadows or his family.

Queen Bee Queen Bee’s motivations and allegiance to the Light are somewhat unclear.  Her personal motivations seem mostly concerned with retaining power in Bialya and acquiring Qurac as a territory.  As a dictator holding power through military might and propaganda, it is possible that she is sympathetic to Vandal’s ideology and may stand to politically and materially benefit from the Light’s intended rise to power.

Interestingly, the Light seems to have more interest in Queen Bee’s connections than her own skills and abilities; making use of Bialyan locales and the more powerful telepathy of her second-in-command, Psimon.  It is possible that the Light could turn on her if they were to require an equivalent alternative ally and supply of resources.

Queen Bee may turn on or abandon the Light if they do not provide adequate support to her ambitions in Qurac, or if she believes their plans will require her to cede power without equivalent returns.

Ocean Master/ Prince Orm Ocean Master’s reasons for allying with the Light are not explained.  He seems personally motivated by jealousy toward his half-brother, King Orin (Aquaman), and a desire to supplant him on the throne of Atlantis. It is unclear what the Light are offering him in return, although the promise of gaining political power through alternative avenues, or the potential to discredit and unseat Orin as part of dissembling the Justice League may be driving him.

Like Queen Bee, Orm seems more useful to the Light for his position and sphere of influence than his specific personal skillset; he provides a foothold in Atlantis and the ability to monitor and potentially influence Orin’s court in his capacity as Prince Orm.  The Light may turn on him should he fall out of Orin and Mera’s favour, or if they acquire another Atlantean ally with similar reach.

Orm may turn on or abandon the Light if they do not sufficiently support his attempts for the throne.

The Brain The Brain seems rather detached from the main activities of the Light - mostly involved in their experiments with Kobra Venom and bioenhancement rather than Starrotech. He appears to be their biochemical and neurology expert - being the one to suggest that the Kobra Venom sample could be reverse engineered - yet it is Luthor who seems to be driving the operational side of Project Cadmus.  

It is possible that he scientifically agrees with Vandal’s Darwinian argument.  However he may also be involved for more amoral, transactional reasons; content to provide the Light with scientific services and advice so long as they provide the resources and facilities for him to pursue his own unethical research interests.  This may explain his relative distance from their central plan.

It is unlikely that the Brain will diverge from the Light on moral or ideological grounds, but he may turn on or abandon them if he believes they are cutting him off.

Klarion Klarion is here for shits and giggles; he allied himself with the Light because he thought it would be “fun”.  As an immortal Lord of Chaos who cannot be contained, they have very little to offer that he might materially want.  The Witch-boy is a wildcard loose cannon - impulsive, impatient and childish - both their powerhouse and biggest potential liability.

He will stay so long as it remains entertaining and will either abandon or turn on them on them if it becomes too “boring”, if he thinks the alternative would be “more fun” or if he believes they might try to contain him.

A Different Take on the 16 Hours

For the sake of people just tuning in: I don’t really vibe with the direction Season 2 took - I think both the heroes’ and villians’ plans are more hole than plot and end up much less compelling than they had the potential to be.  So, let’s try something different:

How about this?

When the Light sent the Justice League members off-world for 16 hours, they sent them to directly adjacent solar systems and galactic arms (with the exception of Green Lantern who may have been sent further in attempt to divert the attention of the Corps).  The intent of this was to extort resource-rich alien civilisations; demonstrating the strength of the controlled heroes before demanding that the inhabitants being paying protection tithes to Earth, with the threat that the full might of the League would descend upon those who did not comply.

This would accomplish several things:

The Light could quietly collect resources from any planet that complied, allowing them to stockpile wealth and alien technology to serve their future plans.

If any of the threatened planets attempted to contact Earth in protest it would reputationally damage the Justice League - shattering public trust by “revealing” that their supposed protectors had apparently been racketeering for personal gain outside of the public eye.   In order to counter this, the Justice League would have to definitively prove that they had been controlled against their will - an admission to having been severely compromised that would weaken faith in a different direction and create opportunities for the Light’s publicly visible members to smear them as dangerously incompetent.

If any of the threatened planets attempted a military retaliation it could accomplish some combination of A) setting the Justice League up for targeted elimination, and/or B) present a “common threat” for Earth to militarily rise up against, allowing the Light to stoke demand for their own weapons-tech (bionic limbs, Kobra-Venom, Genomorphs etc.), potentially rise to power and drive humanity into a more aggressive state that would justify abandoning the “weak”.

Not only would this variant strategy offer multiple potentially beneficial outcomes, it would also yield results on a faster timeframe.  By acting on adjacent systems, effects would likely be seen within a year or two at most - sufficient time for the Light to make preparations and set other support plans in motion, while also allowing just enough time to pass for the Justice League’s own investigations to potentially start turning cold, opening them up to be blindsided.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for today.  Let me know your thoughts - or if you want other meta I did a S1-Only Take on Martian Colourism.

[frankendykes-monster]

What's funny about this post is that I completely forgot that Jack Kirby agrees, by virtue of the existence of the comic OMAC, which is my 2nd favorite thing Kirby ever did.

Writer Chris Sims discussed OMAC briefly back in 2016 for Comics Alliance:

For those of you who aren't familiar with it, OMAC was one of the Kirby's more obscure creations from his time at DC in the early '70s. While the Fourth World saga that he was weaving through the pages of Jimmy Olsen and The New Gods was a kind of mythological morality play writ large, OMAC was, at its heart, an update of what he and Joe Simon had done thirty years earlier when they created Captain America. Stop me if you've heard this one: When the world is on the brink of destruction, a powerless young man is chosen to undergo a strange, unique experiment to turn into a super-soldier with the ability to single-handedly battle the unchecked evil forces of tyranny and oppression that threaten innocents. It's the same origin story for both Steve Rogers and Buddy Blank, the man who would become OMAC, with just a few details swapped out. Professor Erskine, the Super-Soldier Serum and the Vita-Rays are replaced with the sentient satellite called Brother Eye and a round of instantaneous "electro-hormone surgery." They're even both designed to echo the past; Cap's shield and scale mail are meant to make him a modern-day knight, while OMAC's amazing mohawk is meant to evoke a Roman centurion. Just, you know, Kirby'd up a little. Or a lot. The only big difference -- and, in a way, the most telling similarity -- is that they're both products of their time. Cap is rooted in being created during World War II in just about every aspect of his character, a fictionalized assault on Nazis directly from the brain of Simon and Kirby. But OMAC is the product of the '70s and a different set of societal fears. His stories are set in a worst-case scenario version of the future, where the world was in danger from resource shortages, science motivated solely by profit and, most importantly, the omnipresent threat of nuclear war. That, in fact, is the catalyst for OMAC's creation. His world is too dangerous for armies, whose actions will inevitably be met with a nuclear holocaust. Thus: The One Man Army Corps.

And again while writing for Looper:

As much as I like the action on the page, the one thing that comes to mind when I think of OMAC is the text piece at the end of the first issue, where Kirby lays it all out for his readers. In two columns of text, he talks about devastating weapons small enough to fit into suitcases, a "common variety nut" possessing the means to defoliate Glacier National Park, and the perils of drone warfare. If that wasn't enough, he also makes a passing mention of networked computers exchanging information across long distances, like, say, the thing you're using to read this right now. And he was talking about that stuff in 1974.

[...]

Buddy Blank—the average joe who gets blasted with "electro-hormone surgery" by a satellite named Brother Eye in what's essentially a sci-fi version of Captain America's origin—lives in a particular sort of dystopia that seems especially relevant today. He works in a factory where employees are encouraged to deal with the stresses of their jobs by going into a "Destruct Room" and smashing up its contents with weapons of their choice, and if that sounds a little familiar, there's a reason for that. For one thing, it was a gag that was used on Delocated, but it's also a business that exists in real life. You can give it a shot yourself if you're ever in California. It's also worth noting that the company Buddy works for, Pseudo-People Inc., is in the "Build-A-Friend" business, which is basically the Comics Code-approved way of saying that they make highly realistic sex dolls capable of passing as real people—which, if you were wondering, is why there's a smiling disassembled lady on that cover. Buddy even hits his breaking point when his only friend at work, Lila, is revealed to be one of the Build-A-Friends, and that her entire "friendship" with him was a test to see if the Pseudo-People were good enough to get close to government officials in order to assassinate them. And be honest: if that actually happened right now, if there was a news story about a politician who was killed when his RealDoll turned out to be an IED, would you be even a little bit surprised? There's more, too. In the book's fifth issue, in which OMAC takes on a conspiracy among the super-rich to swap their brains into younger bodies, there's a scene where the villain orders a traitor's execution by missile launcher, lounging in his apartment and watching the hit go down via television. In 1974, I have to imagine that this seemed like an incredible bit of decadence, but today, when we've all seen footage of airstrikes shot by cameras mounted on the noses of missiles, aired over and over again on prime-time TV? A reader wouldn't even raise an eyebrow.

When Kirby returns to Marvel in 1975, it's pretty clear that he has mentally checked out from Captain America (and The Fantastic Four...and Thor...etc.) given how his last run on the title doesn't say or do anything of interest.

Had lunch with coworker today and brought up how we are sort of "stuck" with characters in comics now that weren't ever intended to last more than a few years and sort of only just yesterday realized Captain America was one of them. Sigh.

[overdue-library-books]

A note on rainbow capitalism.

First things first, I'm not saying that it's not pandering and the big cooperate world isn't just trying to take advantage of pride, because they are, and I'm not promoting at all buying from companies which were against your ethics before.

But, BUT

Do non of y'all see the positive side to this? The privalaged side of this? I see so many posts about it and whilst I'm in agreement that corps need to stay out of pride, all these huge capitalist giants having pride themed logos and social media and merch? That's fucking huge. Can we take a moment to appreciate that we have this as an issue, I know that sounds stupid but hear me out.

The fact that corporations are choosing to do it means that they know it's not going to cost them a huge drop in sales, they won't be boycotted which means society as a whole has improved so bloody much in the past decade. (Once again they care about profit, not representation, this is about what it means in terms of how far we've come in society, not corporate "activism")

We're stuck in a capitalistic society, and whilst that sucks as a whole, it helps in its own way. Can you imagine when you were child in a supermarket with your mum seeing a pride collection on full display, not hidden away, in a mainstream chain? What that would have done for you in the world before social media or LGBT education in schools existed. Most children didn't (and still don't) have any means of representation at home and seeing representation in public where you go everyday/week is fucking powerful stuff.

Can you see how much this will add to the change of heart for older generations who have grown up in a world where being gay was seen as a sexual offence. The ones who's sources of news is the weekly conservative paper and not a progressive online platform. Who are now seeing more and more in their weekly shops that it's not the public opinion anymore, that its not the few but the many who want change.

Can you see how it's still illegal to be gay in 70 countries, it's punishable by death in 12. Can you see how only in 29 out of 193 UN recognised countries have marriage equality. What it would mean for people in those countries, what a privalage it would be, to be legally allowed to wear a tacky gay mass produced shirt in public.

Anyway I don't know about you but personally when I see pride merch in shops, it makes my little gay heart swell because we're getting there. We're fucking getting there. I'm not going to buy it, I'll make my own damn gay own thank you very much, but I am going to a have a little cry of happiness that we are allowed to have this, that things are changing for the better and it's on full public display. We've progressed an unimaginable amount in such recent times. If the capatilists see us as a tasty potential profit margin, that means there's more of us, that means there's more that stand with us, that means means we're powerful.

♥️🧡💛💚💙💜

[kineticpenguin]

I just want to make sure I'm not alone on this, but why are people are acting surprise that ransacking capitol hill has consequences. like people are upset that trump is being ban.

Well, there are layers to it.

For one thing, there’s the right-wing perception that left-wing activists are treated with kid gloves, while their guys are being arrested by the feds all around the country. The irony is that they have it backwards: during leftist BLM/antifa/etc demonstrations this year, cops would routinely snap up anyone they could get their hands on only to let them go the next day or so because the DAs had nothing to go on. The cops knew this would happen; it was an intimidation tactic on top of everything else they brought to bear. There’s also the fact that people who might’ve actually been doing something illegal tend to be in black bloc, so it’s much, much harder to discern their identity.

Meanwhile at the Capitol, these yahoos had not only made being anti-mask such a point of pride that they wouldn’t conceal their faces while committing a crime, they went around taking selfies. Maybe the relaxed response from Capitol police made them feel like that was a smart move. But now that they’re getting arrested all around the country and facing felony charges, well, that’s just not fair!

As for Trump being banned from the major social media sites... well, some people cry “censorship” at the slightest obstacle, despite the fact that Trump still has access to, y’know, the White House Press Corps, he can make a televised or radio announcement at any time, and can even push out a message to every phone in America. I think people are generally less concerned about Trump personally being deplatformed than they are about the wave of bans of other talking heads and the average schmucks that followed them.

Personally, I have mixed feelings about Parler being taken down. On one hand it absolutely deserved to be taken down, like, it was criminally badly run (literally, the assholes in charge of it may be in serious trouble for failing to even slightly protect user information in accordance with legal guidelines) and it mostly existed as a refuge for dangerous pieces of shit to form their echo chambers and radicalize people. On the other, this does actually present a free speech problem when it comes to the Internet.

That being, the internet has no public square. Some people have insisted that Facebook and Twitter are so big that they are now the public square, but we have just seen that that’s demonstrably untrue: if a handful of big corporations find you a liability, they can effectively boot you out. There is no actual public alternative, no public access social network.

The problem is, there will never be a good answer for this. There has to be some form of content moderation. Facebook and Twitter have been notoriously bad at it, and played a direct part in fascist radicalization in the US. Facebook itself has been directly tied to massacres and genocides around the world, because they don’t want to spend the money on adequate moderation services in non-English speaking countries. They definitely shut the barn door long after the Trump and Q horses bolted. Clearly, profit incentive is not nearly enough for content moderation. This is one of those things where nobody really has a good answer and it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better. If it ever gets better.

But I guess the TL;DR version is: because a bunch of financially comfortable people are facing consequences for the first time and they don’t like it

[paralleljulieverse]

It’s been a while between posts here at the Parallel Julieverse, but we have finally managed to clear a bit of time from work, life, and other such annoyances to get back to what really matters: all things Julie!  And in this post we highlight an interesting tidbit of trivia from late-1950 when Julie was appearing in Red Riding Hood at the Theatre Royal Nottingham, the subject of a recent 70th anniversary tribute post.

Although she had only just turned 15 when she was cast as the eponymous lead in Red Riding Hood, Julie Andrews was already an established juvenile star of considerable note. Her debut star-making turn as a 12-year-old child prodigy in Starlight Roof in 1947/48 garnered widespread media attention and it catapulted the young singer into a whirlwind period of touring performances, radio programmes, West End pantomimes, and even early television appearances. Julie’s subsequent casting as the resident singer in the hit BBC radio series, Educating Archie, augmented her fame further, bringing her voice into the sitting rooms of Britain on a weekly basis and making her a household name. 

With this growing renown came equally expanded opportunities for cross-promotional marketing such as celebrity endorsements and advertising. A particular variant of celebrity promotion popular in the era was the staged 'star visit’ or what today might be termed ‘celebrity event marketing’ (Segrave 2005). Here the star would be invited to appear at a particular event or special occasion as a way of boosting public and media interest, while serving in return as a form of value-adding PR for the star and his/her professional ventures. 

Julie was involved in several such ‘star visits’ during the three month run of Red Riding Hood. During rehearsals in mid-December 1950, she was invited as a VIP guest and honorary judge at the Annual Dance for Booth and Son, a major British apparel manufacturing company (‘Ilkeston’, 1). Around the same time, she paid a special visit to the Nazareth House for Children in Nottingham (‘Night’, 2), as well as the Borough Green Air Training Corps Cadets Open Night where “[p]art of the evening’s entertainment had to be cancelled in order to allow the enthusiastic younger generation to get her autograph” (‘Julie stopped’,  3). 

One of the more fascinating such events -- and the one that we profile here -- was a courtesy visit to famed music impresario, Lawrence Wright. Today, Wright is little remembered, save by a handful of theatre history enthusiasts, but he was a major figure in the British entertainment industry of the early twentieth century (Wright 1988). Popularly dubbed the ‘Daddy of Tin Pan Alley’ and the ‘Monarch of Melody’, Wright started as a music composer in his hometown of Leicester where, under the pseudonym of Horatio Nicholls, he penned a string of popular songs such as “Down by the Stream", “Blue Eyes”, “Toy Drum Major”, and “Among My Souvenirs” (‘Alley’s Daddy’, 3). 

Wright’s greatest success, however, came as a sheet music publisher and entertainment entrepreneur. In 1910, he chanced upon a catchy tune written by a local Leicester street singer called “Don’t Go Down the Mine, Daddy”. He promptly purchased the rights to the song and published it as part of his embryonic music company. A week after the song went on sale, there was a tragic mining disaster in Whitehaven in which 147 men and boys lost their lives. Recognising a potential marketing angle, Wright had a snipe printed across the top of the sheet music declaring that “Half the profits from the first ten thousand sold will go to the relief fund for the Whitehaven pit disaster” (Wright, 4). The song became a national sensation, selling over a million copies, and making Wright a small fortune. With the proceeds, he moved to London and set up shop as the ‘Lawrence Wright Music Company’ in Denmark Street, establishing what would become the city’s ‘Tin Pan Alley’.

Under the slogan, ‘You Can’t Go Wrong with the Wright Song’, Wright became the single biggest music publisher in the UK with an eventual catalogue of over 5000 songs which he leased to major theatre producers and singing artists of the day. In an era when many homes had a piano and singalongs in the parlour were a popular social pastime, Wright also sold his sheet music direct to the public through a nationwide chain of ‘Lawrence Wright Music Shops’. Ever the canny entrepreneur, Wright diversified his business holdings with a host of affiliate ventures. In 1926, he founded The Melody Maker, the first British periodical devoted to popular music, which remained in continuous publication right into the early-2000s. He launched a popular series of self-paced musical tutorials which taught a generation of young Britons how to play everything from the piano to the banjo. Wright also moved into theatre producing, mounting an annual summer revue, On With the Show at the North Pier Pavilion in Blackpool, which ran for 32 years and served as a showcase for many of the nation’s biggest variety acts (Wright 1988). 

One of Wright’s more legendary professional pursuits was in the area of entertainment publicity. An inveterate showman, he would do anything to advertise his latest song or business venture, often falling foul of the authorities with some of his more colourful efforts. To promote his 1927 song, “Me and Jane in a Plane”, he chartered a bi-plane to fly at low altitude around the Blackpool Tower, while Jack Hylton and his Band played the song on board and dropped advertising leaflets to the startled crowds below. He offered £1000 to anyone who could disprove the title of another Wright song, “I’ve Never Seen a Straight Banana”, with the result that Denmark Street was awash with truckloads of fruit sent in by eager contestants. And what better way to launch a tune called “Sahara” than to dress a bevy of beautiful blondes as Arabian princesses and ride them on camels around Piccadilly Circus (Wright, 11; ‘King’, 7).

Less extravagant, but no less important to his business success, was Wright’s promotional use of stars. Across his fifty year career, Wright forged key professional relationships with many leading musical artists of the day. He even married a star: variety singer and comedienne, Betsy Warren, in 1933, though their union ended in divorce after only a few years. More enduring were his collaborations with the scores of stars who sang his songs and appeared in his shows. In 1960 to mark his 50th year in show business, Melody Maker published a special golden anniversary tribute to Wright that was brimming with congratulatory greetings from a cavalcade of stars old and new: everyone from George Formby, Jack Payne, and Billy Cotton to Harry Secombe, Connie Francis, and Frankie Vaughan (Wright, 18).

It was in this context that 15-year-old Julie Andrews found herself paying a promotional ‘star visit’ to Lawrence Wright in late 1950. The precise circumstances surrounding the visit are unknown. The young singer had an existing professional relationship of sorts with Wright, having included several of his songs in her concert repertoire such as “The Dream of Olwen” and “I Heard a Robin Singing”. Indeed, an article in the trade press from this time makes mention of Julie in relation to a newly published Wright number, “The Song of the Tritsch Tratsch” which she had started to perform in some of her concerts and, she was quoted as saying, it “always gets a grand reception” (‘Song Notes’, 4). Another likely influence behind the visit was Tom Arnold, the producer of Red Riding Hood. Arnold was a close business associate of Wright’s and one suspects he may have been instrumental in engineering the visit as a way of promoting his panto. Either way, at some point in November/December 1950, Julie dutifully trotted off to Wright’s office where, with photographers conveniently on hand, the young “panto starlet” was received by the impresario and what press reports termed a chorus of “his stars”.

It is this “chorus of stars” that makes the visit especially interesting from a theatre history perspective. While the names of the five female stars assembled to greet Julie may not ring many bells today, they were all celebrated theatrical luminaries of their day:

Carole Lynne (1918-2008): A glamorous actress and singer of the 1940s, Lynne starred in a string of big West End musicals including Black Velvet (1939), Old Chelsea (1943) opposite Richard Tauber, and a revival of Jill Darling (1945). She also appeared in a number of wartime comedy films such as Ghost Train (1941) and Asking For Trouble (1942) with Max Miller. In 1946, Lynne married famed theatre impresario, Lord Bernard Delfont -- the brother of Sir Lew Grade who would play a major role in Julie’s career -- and, after retiring from the stage in the early 50s, she became  a prominent society hostess and patron to many theatre charities (’Carole Lynne’, 62).

Dorothy Ward (1890-1987): A noted beauty of the Edwardian stage, Ward rose to prominence in West End operettas such as The Dairymaids (1906) and Tom Jones (1907). She achieved her greatest fame, however, as a dashing pantomime Principal Boy, appearing in over 40 pantos across her 50 year career. In many of these shows, she played opposite her husband, Shaun Glenville, a noted panto Dame, and few Christmases passed without the pair “on the same stage, he in skirts and she in tights” ( ‘Obituary: Miss Dorothy Ward’, 14).

Marie Burke (1894-1988): A singer of remarkable versatility, Burke originally trained for an operatic career but found her niche in the lighter fields of operetta and musical theatre. She made a high profile debut as Isolde in Charles Cochran’s controversial 1919 production of Afgar, after which she spent several years touring in the United States and Australia. Burke had her greatest stage success playing the part of Julie in the premiere London production of Show Boat (1928). Thereafter, she headlined several major operettas including the London premiere of Waltzes from Vienna (1931-32) and its Broadway transfer as The Great Waltz (1934), and Don Juan de Mañara (1937) at Covent Garden. Burke had an equally successful screen career, appearing in over 70 films and TV programmes from the teens till the 1970s (‘Obituary: Marie Burke’, 12).

Patricia Burke (1917-2003) : The daughter of Marie, Patricia Burke was born in the proverbial trunk while her mother and father, tenor Tom Burke, were on a concert tour in Milan. Inevitably, she took to the boards herself as a teen, singing and dancing her way to fame in a string of West End musical successes of the 1930s -- with more than a few Julie connections. She made her professional debut in the 1933 premiere of Cole Porter’s Nymph Errant starring Gertrude Lawrence and later appeared alongside Beatrice Lillie in Happy Returns (1938). One of her greatest West End successes was as the female lead in The Lisbon Story (1943), a show which introduced the popular standard, “Pedro, the Fisherman” which Julie would later record. Following the war, Burke made an unexpected move into 'legit’ theatre, playing the female lead opposite Trevor Howard in a well received 1946 Old Vic production of The Taming of the Shrew, followed with a number of other equally high profile performances in classics such as As You Like It (1948), Jonson’s The Alchemist (1948) and Shaw’s Saint Joan (1948). Burke never forgot her popular roots, though, and she continued to alternate dramatic roles with musicals and pantos, as well as appearances in film and TV programmes (‘Patricia Burke’, p. 44). 

Marjorie Browne (1910-1990): Another popular performer of the mid-century, Browne started her career in the mid-twenties as one of producer Charles Cochran’s ‘Young Lady’ beauties, scoring a major success in his revue One Damn Thing After Another (1927). Browne went on to perform widely in hit West End shows such as On Your Toes (1937) and Chu Chin Chow (1940), as well as touring productions of Rose Marie (1942-3), Hit the Deck (1944) and Good Night Vienna (1946). She also appeared in a number of British film musicals of the 30s and 40s including Lassie from Lancashire (1938), Laugh It Off (1940) co-starring Tommy Trinder, and I Didn’t Do It (1945) with George Formby. 

It was, thus, quite the illustrious welcoming committee on hand to receive our young Julie. And, as much as the visit was a factitious PR event staged for the cameras by the ever-wily Lawrence Wright, there is still something deeply moving about its symbolic enactment of a generational passing of the theatrical torch. As representatives of the outgoing old guard, the five grand stars stand at the rear, poised with the confidence of a lifetime’s experience, charging their glasses in warm salute to the rising star of the next generation. That the women are bedecked with the emblematic accoutrements of mid-century celebrity -- furs, coiffure, champagne -- while, in the foreground, an adolescent Julie -- perched rather awkwardly on the corner of the desk, lanky legs akimbo -- is garbed in a homey juvenile ensemble of woollen coat, tartan skirt, ankle socks and Mary Janes -- cradling that perennial icon of cosy British domesticity, a cup of tea -- only adds to the symbolic poignancy.

By 1950, the tide was also starting to ebb for Lawrence Wright. Musical tastes were changing and audiences were fast moving on from the fireplace singalongs and end-of-pier entertainments with which he had built his career. A few short years later, he would stage his final summer revue in Blackpool in 1956, going into semi-retirement before passing in 1964 at age 76. His voluminous catalogue of songs, however, would endure. Prized as a valuable commercial property, the Lawrence Wright catalogue has been owned, at various times, by the Beatles and Michael Jackson, before being bought up by the Universal Music group (Horn, 595). 

As a final Julie connection, years after her 1950 ‘star visit’ to the great man himself, Julie would once again sing a Lawrence Wright song when, as Gertrude Lawrence in the 1968 musical biopic, STAR!, she performed the classic WW1 music hall number, “Burlington Bertie from Bow”. Wright had purchased the rights to "Burlington Bertie” when it was first written in 1914 and it would remain a valuable possession of his corporate trunk. Even though “Burlington Bertie” was not in fact a song ever performed by Gertrude Lawrence, it perfectly captured the flavour of Edwardian music hall and provided an ideal showcase for Julie’s combined vocal and comic talents. The song was also something of a personal favourite for Julie. She had recorded the song previously for her 1962 album of music hall standards, and had even shared the stage in the late-40s with the original “Burlington Bertie” herself, the legendary Ella Shields (Andrews, 116). Julie’s performance of “Burlington Bertie” in STAR! would prove a highlight of that otherwise troubled film and she would continue to perform the number in concert well into the 1980s, proving indeed that “you can’t go wrong with a Wright song”!

Sources:

‘Alley’s Daddy Dead’, 1964. The Stage and Television Today, 21 March: 3.

Andrews, Julie. 2019. Home Work: A memoir of my Hollywood years. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

D.G. 1964. ‘The King is Dead. Long Live the King!’, The Illustrated Chronicle. 22 May: 7.

Heyes, Joy 1991. ‘Obituary: Marjorie Browne.’ The Stage and Television Today, 21 February: 30.

Horn, David 2004.  ‘Lawrence Wright Music Company’ in J. Shepherd et al, eds. Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World : Media, industry, society. London: Continuum, pp. 594-95.

 ‘Ilkeston Firm’s Event’, 1950. The Nottingham Evening Post. 16 December: 1.

‘Julie stopped the show at cadet’s open night.’ 1950. The Chronicle and Advertiser. 15 December: 3.

“Night of their Lives: Children at panto. dress rehearsal’, 1950. The Nottingham Evening Post. 23 December: 2.

’Carole Lynne: Glamorous actress and musical theatre star who as Lady delfont became one of London’s leading theatrical hostesses’ 2008. The Times, 22 January: p. 62.

‘Obituary: Marie Burke’ 1988. The Times, 23 March: p.12

‘Obituary: Miss Dorothy Ward’ 1987. The Times, 22 January: p. 14.

‘Patricia Burke: Thirties musical star who proved her range with Shakespearean roles, but retained a love of pantomime.’ 2003, The Times, 27 November: p. 44. 

Segrave, Kerry, 2005. Endorsements in Advertising: A social history. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland.

‘Song Notes’ 1950. The Stage. 16 November, p. 4.

Wright, Lawrette, 1988. Lawrence Wright: Souvenirs for a century. Chards: Matthews Wright Press.

Copyright © Brett Farmer 2021

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 6, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

I spent much of today thinking about the Republican Party. Its roots lie in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in spring 1854, when it became clear that elite southern slaveholders had taken control of the federal government and were using their power to spread their system of human enslavement across the continent.

At first, members of the new party knew only what they stood against: an economic system that concentrated wealth upward and made it impossible for ordinary men to prosper. But in 1859, their new spokesman, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln, articulated a new vision of government. Rather than using government power solely to protect the property of wealthy slaveholders, Lincoln argued, the government should work to make it possible for all men to get equal access to resources, including education, so they could rise to economic security.

As a younger man, Lincoln had watched his town of New Salem die because the settlers in the town did not have the resources to dredge the Sangamon River to increase their river trade. Had the government simply been willing to invest in the economic development that was too much for the willing workers of New Salem, it could have brought prosperity to the men who, for lack of investment, failed and abandoned their town. The government, Lincoln thought, must develop the country’s infrastructure.

Once in power, the Republicans did precisely that. After imposing the first national taxes, including an income tax, lawmakers set out to enable men to be able to pay those taxes by using the government to give ordinary men access to resources. In 1862, they passed the Homestead Act, giving western land to anyone willing to settle it; the Land-Grant College Act, providing funds to establish state universities; the act establishing the Department of Agriculture, to provide scientific information and good seeds to farmers; and the Pacific Railway Act, providing for the construction of a railroad across the continent to get men to the fields and the mines of the West.

In 1902, Republicans fascinated with infrastructure projects joined forces with southern Democrats desperate for flood control to pass the Newlands Reclamation Act. Under the act, the federal government built more than 600 dams in 20 western states to bring water to farmland. “The sound and steady development of the West depends upon the building up of homes therein,” President Theodore Roosevelt wrote. Water from the western dams now irrigates more than 10 million acres, which produce about 60% of the nation’s vegetables and 25% of its fruits (and nuts).

Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt combined this focus on infrastructure development with the need for work relief programs during the Depression to create the 1933 Civilian Conservation Corps, which planted trees, built fire towers, built trails, stocked fish, and so on. In 1935, Congress created the Works Progress Administration. During its existence, it employed about 3 million workers at a time; built or repaired more than 100,000 public buildings, including schools and post offices; and constructed more than 500 airports, more than 500,000 miles of roads, and more than 100,000 bridges. It also employed actors, photographers, painters, and writers to conduct interviews, paint murals of our history, and tell our national story.

As the country grew and became more interconnected, pressure built for a developed road system, but while FDR liked the idea of the jobs it would produce, building the road fell to Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Three years after he became president, Eisenhower backed the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act, saying, “Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods.” The law initially provided $25 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles of road; at the time, it was the largest public works project in U.S. history.

In America today, there is good news. The Biden administration has rolled out vaccines at a faster pace than anyone foresaw. Today, President Biden announced that health care workers have administered 150 million doses of the vaccine and, at an average of 3 million shots a day, they are on track to administer 200 million by his 100th day in office. He is moving the date for states to make all adults eligible for a vaccine from May 1 to April 19.

The vaccines have dovetailed with the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan from last month and the spring weather to speed up the economic recovery. Economists had expected a job gain of about 660,000 in March, but nonfarm payrolls actually rose by about 916,000. And now Biden has rolled out a dramatic new infrastructure proposal, the $2 trillion American Jobs Plan.

So why was I thinking about the Republicans today?

In this moment, Republican lawmakers seem weirdly out of step with their party’s history as well as with the country. They are responding to the American Jobs Plan by defining infrastructure as roads and bridges alone, cutting from the definition even the broadband that they included when Trump was president. (Trump, remember, followed his huge 2017 tax cuts with the promise of a big infrastructure bill. As he said, “Infrastructure is the easiest of all…. People want it, Republicans and Democrats.”) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) warns that Biden’s plan is a “Trojan horse” that will require “massive tax increases.”

Biden has indeed proposed funding the Democrats’ infrastructure plan by raising taxes on corporations from their current rate of 21% to 28% (but before Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, that rate was 35%). It ends federal tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and it increases the global minimum tax—a tax designed to keep corporations from shifting their profits to low tax countries-- from 13% to 21%.

This is in keeping with our history. Americans since Lincoln have proudly used tax dollars to develop the country. During Eisenhower’s era, the corporate tax rate was 52% (and the top income tax bracket was 91%). The Newlands Act was designed to raise money through public land sales, but in 1928, when Congress authorized what would become Hoover Dam, the Bureau of Reclamation began to operate out of the government’s general funds.

But it was Lincoln’s Republicans who first provided the justification for investing in the nation. In the midst of the deadly Civil War, as the United States was hemorrhaging both blood and money, Republican lawmakers defended first their invention of national taxes. The government had a right to “demand” 99% of a man’s property for an urgent need, said House Ways and Means Committee Chair Justin Smith Morrill (R-VT). When the nation required it, he said, “the property of the people… belongs to the [g]overnment.”

The Republicans also defended developing the country. In a debate over the new Department of Agriculture, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee William Pitt Fessenden (R-ME), famous both for his crabbiness and for his single-minded focus on the war, defended the use of “seed money.” With such an investment, he said, the country would be “richly paid over and over again in absolute increase of wealth. There is no doubt of that.”

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[daretosnoop]

Lessons I learned from the Games

Most of this is just silly, some are actual lessons.

SCK/SCK2:

If you’re going to get murdered, get revenge by leaving clues to the blackmail you have on potential suspects and hope to god someone figures it out

If you’re investigating a crime, being a random transfer student at the end of the year is probably not the way to go, but no one cares because they’re too busy with college applications.

If your niece is coming to your place to investigate a murder and you’re not there, the least you can do is set up a cage to trap any possible break-ins.

Nothing beats being able to hold a gun to the murderer #whySCKremastered???

Teens dealing with pressures to meet college and parental demands

Teens resorting to drugs

Teens dealing with sexism that’s found in abundance in college and work environments

Teachers not giving a shit about what students are going through.

STFD:

If you’re getting death threats, play it cool. Keeps the perps unhinged

Toxicity of fan culture

Throw all CEOs into the closet

Nothing beats Jazz

If you’re going to commit crime in an actor’s community, you must do it with flare

MHM:

If you’re going to buy a Victorian mansion, the least you can do is check for ghosts. And also hire a carpenter beforehand

Never invest your life’s savings into anything

Treat those who help you with basic decency (my god Rose!)

If you’re snooping on someone, don’t give them any indication that you’re onto them

If someone slips a threatening message under your door, open the door.

Victorian houses have all sorts of booby traps, FIND THEM.

TRT:

Don’t trust anyone who’s eager to be your friend

Trust the weirdos and grumpy people

Learn French

Don’t leave incriminating evidence that reveals your lies

There is no such thing as too much food

Women in history have been badly treated by (male) historians.

It’s called the past for a reason

Turn a bad situation into an opportunity to learn

If you’re going to do crime, at least ensure you have an escape route that’s not blocked by the snow

Don’t date people who pressure you to marry them/ask you to prove your love for them

 FIN:

As a woman, if you want anyone to take you seriously and help, you have to be adamant, sassy, and everything men don’t like to see in women.

If you’re a POC, the chances of the police helping you decreases

Capitalism sucks

Police suck

Misogyny in capitalism

Old theaters are amazing

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!!!!!!

Don’t talk to suspects about your case

Have confidence in yourself

 SSH:

Colonialism still exists in the form of capitalism

The art industry is completely profit driven

Mexico and America tensions

The Mayans

They never talked about what happened to the Mayans…..

Don’t deal with shady salesmen

Sometimes saving money contributes to a bad system

If you accepted a position, take your work seriously

Don’t trust the guy trying to be your friend!!!!

Master the art of amnesia should you ever need to use it

Even if you disband a group of art thieves, it’s best to be humble

No one in life is going to help you, even if you get pushed into a monolith

 DOG:

This game is why it’s important to put your dog(s) on a leash! (insert that dog vine: “it don’t bite. Yes it do!”)

If we didn’t have uptight rangers, the parks would be burnt to smithereens

Misogyny exists in the woods

People who are just trying to do their job always get a bad rap even though it’s because of them the park still exists!

Gangsters are bad, but also low-key cool

Get back at your enemies by making a fake grave of them

Old people have interesting stories

Gold can release arsenic into water

Always check well water before using

Wood mice are bad for health

If you’re going to get tied up and tossed into your tool shed, keep a scythe on hand

Go birdwatching at night

Torque is a fancy word for screw driver

If you’re a POC, people are most likely to suspect you.

CAR:

There is no job security if you end up in hospital

Sometimes you really need a 2000 calorie sundae

If you went to jail, people are most likely to suspect you first

Don’t spy on your co-workers

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!

Don’t procrastinate on a job

If you’re miserable in life, maybe it’s time to sign up for some therapy

If you have a sad backstory, you’re automatically entitled to everyone’s sad backstory

Mental illness: depression

Health awareness: niacin, don’t eat junk food like a 2000 calorie sundae

Don’t dump someone just because they’re not able to give you a lavish lifestyle

DDI:

If you’re going to trash someone’s boat, don’t leave your business card behind

If you’re tired of small mindedness, it’s best to just leave

It’s always handy in life to know boating skills

If you’re trying to report suspicious activity, communicating by bottles is not the way to go

Don’t feed wild animals!

Capitalism sucks

Look carefully at your environment, you never know what clues are left behind

Always make a plan B in case plan A doesn’t work

Don’t be afraid to explore

SHA:

Never trust the guy who’s trying to be your friend!!!

Always trust the grumpy guy

Horses die easily

There is no such thing as over ripe vegetables

Sunflowers should be planted near gardens so that bees come

Respect chickens

Falling in love with a criminal is difficult when your dad’s a cop

It’s handy to know how to ride a horse

Ghost towns are terrifying

Farmers work hard and should be respected

CUR:

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!!!!!!!!!!

Don’t be a negligent parent

Before getting married, make sure your partner has a good relationship with your child

Don’t trust creepy people

America and British will always oppose each other

Talking parrots are always handy

British aristocracy was supported through colonialism #got Loulou on his Travels, uh huh

If you’re a spinster, you’re going to be the mom of something

If you’re afraid of becoming a monster, best be dramatic about it

It’s really important to have good communication between partners

Don’t stick your new wife in a room that still has pictures of your old wife and where all the furniture has covers on them

If you have a manor, you better explore it before some 12-year-old gets hurt exploring it

don’t go to great lengths to protect a rock

calling something that skips every generation a “family tradition” is just rude and exclusive

don’t leave your child alone for so long. Don’t keep them away from people their age

don’t write memories, no one wants to hear your life story

CLK:

if you’re going to presume someone’s identity, you better nail the part down hard

don’t blow up the kitchen when there’s only three people in the house and you were the closest and last one in the kitchen

emotional manipulation

gas lighting

if someone mentions stolen jewellery, putting back what you stole just incriminates you

even if you have psychic abilities, don’t be an ass bout it

no one ever tips because no one like the system. Pay your employees what they deserve!

Even though the depression’s going on, people are still dumping money in psychic lessons and dress making

No one ever gives anything away for free

Even if you’re promised money, don’t put too much trust in the promises of others

Don’t be rude to the person who’s trying to help you

If your partner is demanding to be spoiled during an economic depression, find a better partner

People aren’t as smart as you, tell them straight where you left your will.

 TRN:

The dumb blonde joke is not funny

Cops are useless and unhelpful

People are more willing to listen to adults then teens/young adults

Celebrities are much different in real life then in their celebrity world.

Don’t steal someone else’s ideaà artist theft

Old trains are super cool

People aren’t as smart as you, tell them straight where you hid your treasure

Don’t dump someone just because people think they’re dumb

 DAN:

Capitalism sucks

The fashion industry is brutal

normal size representation

Boss’s can be crappy people

Don’t blackmail people

If you promised to do work, you better dedicate yourself to it

Having a healthy fear of giving away personal information is not a bad thing

Don’t aid stalkers

Covid-precaution: cover face with mask. Act erratic to keep people away from you

Concept of older men dating younger women is actually frowned upon

Love is mysterious

Flashlight on the many women who helped decode during WW2 but largely remain unrecognized by countries today

Forgery is okay sometimes

 CRE:

Indigenous cultures continue to be badly and negatively portrayed in media

Capitalism sucks

Environmentalism

Academia is not as research oriented as one wishes it was

Daddy-issues

Native Hawaiians forced to “work with” big corps in order to survive.

Tourism industry and its affects on the environment and native population

Sometimes an upgrade is not a good thing

ICE:

Animal conservatism

Capitalism sucks

International competitions suck

Running away from humans to hide in a cabin and bonding with a wolf is not a bad thing

Never enter a sauna alone

It’s bad business to kick customers out

If your customers are falling asleep everyday in a common room, it’s probably not a good sign of booming business

Don’t be chill over bombs exploding near your hotel

Always handy to know how to drive a snow mobile

Don’t volunteer to be a maid, ever

Cops are useless

CRY:

Don’t dump your job on your girlfriend

There’s nothing wrong with being emo

Men being emotional and desiring love and affection

Men being abused in relationships

Even if your relative leaves you a ton of money, it’s no excuse for not being a good guardian/parent

Don’t trust strangers. Don’t eat food from random people

Customer service is awful. Even when the customer is trying to instigate a horrible reaction in you, you got to put on a smile

Always trust the eccentric lady

Nancy’s sad backstory allows her to hear everyone else’s sad backstory, unless you’re a guy, I guess.

A date in the cemetery is not a bad idea

If your partner demands you to spoil them, get a new partner

People aren’t as smart as you, tell them where you hid your treasure

VEN:

Anyone can help out on an international mafia case

The mafia is very creative and artistic

Capitalism sucks

Assert your independence as a young woman by dancing in a cat suit on stage? I guess?

Money can be found anywhere

Eat the rich

Don’t trust the person trying to be friends with you

Possessive relationships are red flags

Don’t steal a cheap neckless if you’re a notorious thief

Cops kind of useful for once.

HAU

Don’t pull a prank on your partner before your wedding

Don’t invite someone who used to date your partner and still has feelings for them

If your partner is missing, actually look for them instead of sitting around

Crows are amazing

Fiona might have lost her parents at a young age and her life as a hermit definitely had its side affects, but she also saved herself from the misogyny women endured

RAN:

If your friend gets kidnapped, please, at least fake some concern

Don’t waste time with monkeys

The only other person on the island is probably the culprit

WAV:

Girl bullying can be worse than boy bullying

Don’t trust the person who’s trying to be your friend!!!!!!

  TOT:

Nancy’s sad backstory allows her to hear everyone else’s sad backstory, unless you’re a guy, I guess.

Academic institutions are struggling to fund research

Capitalism sucks

Even if you hate your lead, don’t sabotage the team

Communication is important

Even if you hate your job, don’t sabotage your team

 SAW:

People who resist to change just become boulders in the way of progress

Boomer mentality is soul destroying

Emotional manipulation

Gas lighting

Depression

Sometimes you have to cut away from those you love in order to maintain your sanity

Nancy’s sad backstory allows her to hear everyone else’s sad backstory.

If you have to give your partner a gift every time you fight, you might have relationship problems

Don’t be in a relationship just because you’re used to it

Don’t force someone to adhere to your expectations in life

If you’re unable to talk to your partner and so resort to haunting her inn, you probably have relationship issues

[itzstockchartz]

ITZ 2020 PIX portfolio return was amazing, in part to SNAP & AMZN. For 2021, to recap buying 5 stocks $100,000 and holding for the year, ITZ is holding onto SNAP & AAPL returns from 2019 portfolio. The portfolio favors tech, but bias to a second-half Covid-19 recovery. Dem’s will continue to flood the market with cash, ITZ sees a lower US Dollar, the consumer will return as the spend and travel again. Here are the five pix for 2021—– AAPL One of ITZ 2019 Pix is now back in the line up…. Apple’s long-term thesis remains intact, on expanding addressable market in Services/ Wearables, improving replacement cycles from a 5G launch, and robust free cash flow aiding growth initiatives/shareholder return. ITZ see a Super Cycle as consumers upgrade from 100’s of millions of older iPhones. Buy reflects the view of AAPL’s ecosystem, high customer retention rates, and free cash flow generation partly offset by near term economic concerns surrounding Covid-19. While acknowledgement iPhone replacement cycles are extending, a rising and older installed phone base approaching 1 billion (1.5 billion plus total active base) creates the potential for stabilization/growth in this category given  5G launch in October. Investors should be encouraged by margin expansion within Services and that this business can sustainably grow at a mid-teens pace over the next two years while Wearables can sustain a 15%-20% growth pace. On top of that recent news that Apple could possibly enter the autonomous vehicle market will push the stock higher. 12-month target of $160 is based on a P/E of 35x  FY 22 EPS estimate of $4.60, above peers and the 5-year forward historical average of 14.8x. NCLH   As Norwegian is relatively smaller than its North American cruise peers,  it has the ability to deploy its assets more quickly once cruising resumes. Lower fuel prices could help benefit the cost structure to a greater degree than initially expected, thanks to Norwegian's partially floating energy prices (with more than 50% of fuel costs hedged). Norwegian has capitalized on leisure industry knowledge from its prior sponsors as well as the addition of high-end Regent Seven Seas and Oceania brands, gathering best practices and leverage with vendors. As the industry resumes operations, opportunities to improve Norwegian's operating margins should exist; this includes increased scale as the full fleet sails, improved brand awareness via the implementation of higher safety measures, and the favoring of a differentiated product (freestyle cruising), which should restore adjusted EBITDA margins to a mid-20% range in 2029 (from 30.6% in 2019). Norwegian can also improve profitability by stringently managing its expenses when sailing resumes, thanks to a young fleet and more cost-efficient ships. Norwegian's adjusted ROICs including goodwill approximated our estimated 10.4% weighted average cost of capital in 2017, but given setbacks stemming from COVID-19, won't be able to do so until 2029. NCLH is primed for a huge turnaround in 2021-2022, 

12 month price target $50 PAAS Pan American Silver Corp (NASDAQ:PAAS) most recently reported unaudited results for its fiscal third quarter (ended September 30, 2020), which featured revenue of $300.4 million, primarily reflecting lower quantities of metal sold, partially offset by strong realized precious metal prices. The company also noted that it recorded a $79.8 million increase in inventories during Q3 2020, of which approximately $25.0 million was in the form of ore and finished inventories. As per  BofA, we have seen $1.3 billion in asset purchases by central banks every hour since March. Every hour, another $1.3 billion. That’s nearly a trillion a month. US  treasury has issued nearly $3.5 trillion in US government bonds in 2020.  The potential for an inflationary cyclical boom as pent-up demand thunders back out into the economy following vaccine-driven herd immunity – a weak dollar, too much money creation, and inflationary cyclical activity could add up to a big year for metals. Nice Bull Flag setting up technically, ITZ year end PT $50 SNAP Snap's Spotlight product, updated ad campaign objectives & bid types, Unity Ads' inclusion into the Snap Audience Network (SAN), have the potential to drive further momentum in engagement growth as well as provide valuable scale to advertisers, look for a strong Q4. Latest consensus estimate is calling for revenue of $839.86 million, up 49.74% from the prior-year quarter. Consensus Estimates are projecting earnings of -$0.10 per share and revenue of $2.44 billion, which would represent changes of +37.5% and +42.21%, respectively, from the prior year.  ITZ has a $70 PT,  faster revenue growth, improving profitability, and the potential for social media companies to experience multiple expansion. SQ This is a transformative company in a sector that’s going to post enormous growth in coming years. The pandemic is only going to accelerate the existing move to cashless solutions. Square is a cryptocurrency play as well. Now... SQ stock has almost quadrupled in 2020...and  yes, relative to next year’s earnings, the stock does look expensive. But it shouldn’t look cheap. This is a company that is going to grow for several years. It has the potential to expand into new market segments. The potential from crypto alone has real value. And, again, next year’s earnings, at least using current Wall Street estimates, are somewhat depressed by the pandemic. The company's Q3 Seller revenue still provided 5% year over year growth despite the challenging circumstances.  In part to Square's software, which helped businesses develop omnichannel strategies (combining online and brick-and-mortar operations) to keep things going during shutdowns. As our economy moves beyond the coronavirus, businesses that survived should be set to thrive again, benefiting Square. New up and coming businesses are seeing the value in the services Square provides. The new year will drive the stock higher.. as the  Cash App segment retains its users, and the Seller segment surges. ITZ 2021 PT $290 

[pompcoco]

Harold Mews Character Analysis

(Authors note: This essay was made for fun and to educate people more on Mews and my analysis on him. I will be stating and summarizing many facts that some people might not know about Mews because the website I will be mentioning in this essay can only be found from a link in Mews’ page in the Poptropica Wiki. He has lots of information and character to him that the team and creators of Poptropica probably might’ve given without realizing, but honestly, it was good that they did. This will be a long read, so it’s ok to skim through or just read the conclusion and TLDR at the end. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy!)

              Harold Mews is the eccentric millionaire that hosts the contests on Cryptids Island and aids you during your quests to find the cryptids. But during the time on the island, you don’t get to know Mews unless if you pay attention to his dialogue or what other NPCs say about him. There are multiple things you can learn about him from his wiki, an archived website of the Mews Foundation that was created to promote Cryptids Island in the times of its release, and the Cryptids Island Book. In this essay, I will go in-depth on Mew’s character and how he is one of the most developed characters in the Poptropica universe.

           (What we learn from the game)

Mews is the first main character of Cryptids the player first hear about in the game. The player also learns that he is giving one million dollars to get proof of four very well-known cryptids. And before his introduction, you learn from NPCs from the rest of the island that he hides in his mansion, and the public has not seen him in years. He saves you from Gretchen after she nearly drowns you, and comments on how she is a cheater and will do anything to get the prize money. He mentions that he’s always had a fascination for cryptids ever since he was young and wants to prove that their there. When you give him invalid evidence, he doesn’t get angry at you and still believes in you. He provides the helicopter, the motorcycle in New Jersey, and the lab for the contest. And in the end, he wants to create a shelter for Bigfoot but won’t have enough money and will be broke until the player in the script gives up the money prize. From this, we can see that he is a kind man who has a passion for monsters and the unknown to the point of trying to prove their existence, but at the same time is considerate of their safety and does not try to put them in a zoo, unlike Grimlock.

           (From the Website)

           Mews has a biography that can be found in his wiki, sourced from the archived Mews Foundation website. This article explains he was well raised and came from a humble, hardworking family, inherited his family company, and turned it into a big success, Mews Corporation. He had always been adventurous and spent his free time in nature and on adventures. Examples include him riding the Great Booga Shark from Shark Tooth island and challenging Hermes, a literal god, in a ski race, in which he won. Mews, in the Poptropica universe, could’ve been one of the first people to climb Mt. Everest, but left the climber party to follow tracks he believed belonged to the Yeti. He did not find anything, but it made him realize his passion for discovering and researching cryptids. This dream of his was set in mind as years after this event; he retires from Mews Corp to creating the Mews Foundation. Their goal is going beyond scientific boundaries and show proof of cryptids.

From the website itself, it gives more detail of what the Foundation does from the News section. The Foundation does not just do research and expeditions, but they also provide and help the public. They showcase this by supporting and giving hair growth products for the people who turned bald in Spy Island. Despite their charitable acts and innocent goal, Mews and his Foundation have mixed publicity. For example, Mews was accused of helping build Dr. Hare’s Rabbot because Hare had used a navigational device that was developed by Mews Corp. Despite the accusation, a spokesperson of Mews, Cheerful Spinner, defends him and his company by mentioning that they defiantly did not have any involvement with Dr. Hare as well as the fact that adventurers use Mews tech and devices in a daily bases with their blimps. And when the announcement came up for the contest, Spinner comments that it is to stop the negative publicity that the Foundation has.

  (From the Book)

           In the book, it shares more characteristics of Mews. He has the habit of rambling about his adventures, which the main character in the placement of the player, Anne, notes that he is known to do. At the beginning of the story, Anne’s mom adds the fact that Mews does have a negative reputation for others by mentioning he is a “reclusive nut.” More on people’s opinions of him are in the book, but he does still has the humbleness and dislike of Grimlock from the game. For example, he’s sympathy for Anne when Grimlock steals their proof of the cryptids and also tells Anne that Grimlock is the only actual monster that actions should be put in a museum and should be long extinct. (Dang he really roasted her there it’s such a good quote) He also shares his story of seeing Bigfoot at a young age that either adds or is an alternative event to the Yeti search that stricken Mews interest for cryptids.  

           (Analysis)

           From what has been given here, Mews is a man with the lifetime passion of proving the existence of cryptids, and despite being an old eccentric millionaire, he is still very to others and is very grounded and still has an adventurous spirit. A question that still is not answered or explained is Mews’ disappearance from the public and becoming more reclusive and private. There are multiple reasons that could explain his actions. One, he could just be working from home for the Foundation and wants to keep some of his research there, for example, the Cryptid Museum that is set up in his own home, private. Or two, he’s just tired. He’s had a busy life and wants more privacy and rest, especially with his status. And to why he created the contest all of a sudden after years of not being public is unknown. It could be because of the idea of him not proving the existence of cryptids as his life goes by broke him because he had been searching for years, and he was so sure that they existed. He might’ve been scared that everything he had worked for could be for nothing, so he began the contest without hesitation because he wanted all the help he could get to prove his dream to come true, but that wouldn’t go without consequences.

Despite his good intentions and character, he does have flaws. One flaw is that he has is that he is impulsive. He created the contest without any set rules or guidelines that could’ve made the contest safer and less messy. Mews also seemed to know Grimlock before this and knew her means to get what she wanted and could’ve prevented her from getting involved with the contest and hurting the other contestants. Mews is generous, but that is a flaw of his as well. His Foundation was funded from his pocket. He is a millionaire, but there is a limit to spending even with the amount he had. The Foundation website bio stated that they had been around for more than ten years, and they don’t take donations, meaning he had been providing the Foundation for years. Still, he would eventually become almost broke also as well as the Foundation because they did not earn money from their discoveries and expeditions. The inevitability of the Foundation’s lose in money is shown in a News article on the website, where it is briefly mentioned that the expedition leader of the failed Mongolian Death Worm search, Cuddly Fly, was told he would not be paid for the trip due to legal reasons. And as we all know at the end of the contest, Mews tells the player that he’d love to make a sanctuary for Bigfoot, but once he gives away the million, he’s broke due to spending everything on the contest and it being the last drop of money he has from the years of funding his Foundation.  

 Harold Mews is probably one of the most thought out characters in Poptropica. Even if the website was promotional for Cryptids Island, it gives a lot of details and information about Mews and his Foundation, their reputation, and slowly lose money. The book is also very good at showing his personality with his kindness, persistence, quirkiness, and rambles. Many Poptropica NPCs, especially if their not villains, are overlooked because they don’t have much lore or depth given to them due to the storyline of islands and how the player is usually given quests by NPCs and does most of the work. But Mews proves to be not just a normal NPC that makes you do all the work; he is an actual friend to the player by showing them much gratitude, patience, and really helps throughout this island.

 TLDR; Mews is a cool character, and there’s a lot of things about him. He did a lot of things adventurous things in his life and threw away his life in business to go to his true calling and passion for Cryptids. He is kind and generous, but he has flaws since he started the contest without rules that led it to be pretty chaotic if you think about it as well as he ends up broke by the end because of the contest as well as the years of funding his Foundation by himself with no donations and no profit from it.

(Sourses)

Mews wiki

Mews Foundation Website on Wayback Machine (if this link doesn’t work its on the Mews wiki)

Crytpids Island Book you can get on Amazon!

[capitalism-and-analytics]

50 Ways Journalists & Politicians Mislead the Public About Businesses

Due to the severe lack of understanding of businesses on Tumblr, I thought I’d write up 100 ways that politicians and journalists mislead their readers & the public! Stay tuned for part 2!

Using revenue as a synonym for net income. These are not synonyms as net income equates to revenue minus expenses.

Using wealth as a synonym for income. These are not synonyms as wealth is an accrued measure, while income is a periodic measure.

Using profit as a synonym for positive cash flow. These are not synonyms as most businesses report on an accrual basis, therefore it is quite common for businesses to report earned revenue prior to payment in a given fiscal period.

Using CEO as a synonym for sole proprietor, owner, or "dictator" of a business. Although there are instances where a CEO can be these things, in many cases (predominantly those targeted by politicians and journalists), this is not the case as they usually report to a board of directors who actually represent the ownership of the business.

Basing executive compensation estimates based on a 40 hour estimate, when in reality most executives work far more than 40 hours.

Using corporation as a synonym for big business. These are not synonyms as many small and mid-size businesses can be structured to be a corporation in order to utilize the legal protections it provides.

Misrepresenting very common tax procedures for deducting taxes as "exploiting tax loopholes" with the connotation of an unintentional omission or obscurity in the law that allows the reduction of tax liability to a point below that intended by the framers of the law.

Failing to specify if figures are nominal or real. Nominal means the figures are expressed without adjustment for inflation, meanwhile real means the figures have been adjusted for inflation.

Providing estimates and calculations of accurate studies, yet failing to give time periods that provide context as for the significance of the estimates and calculations.

Claiming that inflation is measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), when in reality it is measured by the percentage changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over a specific period.

Using percent as a synonym for percentage point. These are not synonyms as a percentage point is a measure for the arithmetic difference between two or more percentages, meanwhile a percentage is the proportional difference between two or more values.

Using varying percentile comparisons, despite there being a significant disparity of range in values among the percentiles. For example; comparing median housing cost (50th percentile) to minimum wage income (bottom 1st percentile), despite the range of housing costs varying greatly between percentiles.

Using nonequivalent studies and measurements for comparison. For example; using the median income all CEOs in Norway versus the median income of the top 500 CEOs  in the USA.

Selecting date ranges to misrepresent trends through omission of key events.

Using evidence of correlation as a means to claim that two or more variables share a relationship, despite have no evidence of causation.

Using multiple studies of common terms, yet the studies utilize varying definitions or calculations of the common terms. For example; some studies use living wage to mean $15/hr, while other studies may use living wage to be dependent on varying costs of living.

Generalizing corporations to encompass all types of corporations (c-corps, s-corps, limited liability corps, etc.), despite them having very significant differences.

Claiming that businesses that collect charitable donations are using it to reduce their own net income. When in reality, charitable donations received have to be reported and the charitable donations collected are only limited as deductible to the amount received.

Conveying a message that there are no internal controls on executive compensation, meanwhile for executive compensation to increase, earnings paid to stockholder's must decrease.

Conveying an ultimatum of choices for businesses when discussing legislation reform, despite alternative choices being available.

Failing to recognize costs associated with risks.

Oversimplifying business processes, therefore creating misrepresentations and miscalculations of key performance indicators.

Failing to recognize the changes of quality of typical goods and services over time.

Failing to recognize the separation of figures reported by franchising businesses and the figures reported by the individual franchisees.

Failing to acknowledge that many outliers or uncommon business practices are only effective due to the practices being less common. For example; paying your employees more than the market level will attract higher quality employees, but it relies on competitors to continue to pay at or below the market level, therefore if all businesses paid above the market level, then the market level would rise, negating the initial effect. This is known as efficiency wage theorem.

Using self-reported survey results as a substitute to actual measurements. For example; many people may say they would pay extra for products made in the USA, instead of foreign countries, but actual sales numbers indicate that shoppers will predominantly favor cheaper goods regardless of the country of origin.

Using anecdotes to extrapolate to the majority of the population being discussed.

Using bad data as a justification or substitute for lack of good data.

Using key individuals and businesses interchangeably, when in reality many key individuals for businesses do not have the majority ownership of a company.

Conveying the message that wealth is always easily liquid-able.

Using total wages as a synonym for total compensation. These are not synonyms as total compensation can include non-wage factors such as: vacation days, sick days, freebies, reimbursement of certain expenses, etc.

Failing to recognize that employees can have expenses associated with that outside of compensation.

Using majority market share as a synonym for monopoly. When in reality, being a monopoly deals far more with the existence of barriers of entry, than the actual % of market share.

Overgeneralizing key business concepts and terms.

Using average and median interchangeably, despite these measurements implying very different meanings.

Failing to mention confidence intervals when citing statistics.

Claiming that stock-based compensation is equivalent to cash-based compensation without mentioning the separation of long-term and short-term capital gains tax rates, as well as the volatility of stock-based compensation.

Claiming that stock-based compensation allows executives to avoid paying any income tax.

Conveying the message that many very common business deductions are exclusive to big businesses, despite them being regularly used by smaller businesses.

Claiming that businesses pay no taxes when their federal income tax liability is zero, despite paying other taxes.

Claiming that executive compensation has significant relevance on the compensation of all employees.

Failure to recognize previous period amounts in analysis of current financial situations.

Using biased samples

Failure to acknowledge the separation of an accurate study and a valid study.

Using measurements from studies in very different timelines.

Performing proportional analysis to a point that it loses relevance. For example; claiming a small business is growing at a significant percentage, therefore is outperforming it's larger competitors.

Failing to recognize that money passed to employees is still taxable.

Failing to mention that c-corporations undergo a double taxation principle, which means they not only pay taxes at the corporate level, but taxes are also paid at the individual level when paid out to shareholders.

Failing to recognize that there are alternatives to employees and those alternatives do have quantifiable costs that can be surpassed to a point that jobs available can decrease.

It is extremely challenging to perform a study on large populations of human trends to a point of high certainty, therefore almost all studies involving human trends are historical and/or lack certainty.

[m00nslippers]

In crushing au or any au what lantern do u think Jason would be? I personally would think Jason would be hope or love. if so how would the green lanterns or anyone would react to Jason being a lantern and him wearing a bad ass suit that combines his red hood gear with what ever lantern he is?

Okay now, I only knew sort of bare bones knowledge about the various corps, so I did some research…and I’ve come to a conclusion. You might say it plays into some misconceptions people tend to have about Jason, but I didn’t come by this decision lightly, I have real arguments. So how about I tell you why I think Jason wouldn’t be various lantern colors and then I’ll get to the ones I think are more likely. We aren’t counting white and black, because black is just death as in being dead, and white is a cop-out because it’s every color.

Orange Lantern: Greed. Jason is one of the least greedy characters there is. He’s selfless, he grew up poor, he does not have strong attachments to the material. He has been known to give up profit or money in various heroic efforts–he blew up weapons he could have sold for profit, used money to protect civilians, gave up profit to keep drug dealers under his territory from selling to children. He’s just not a greedy person. He wouldn’t be an orange lantern.

Yellow Lantern: Fear. While the Red Hood certainly inspires fear in many people, he doesn’t rely on it like Batman does (who was canonically a yellow ring bearer). In fact Jason’s entire agenda is that he believes there are those who are not inspired by fear to turn from their crimes and that such people need to be killed to protect their future victims. Also, Jason’s costume is not designed to make people afraid, it was mostly designed to be practical and to hide his identity from Bruce. So Jason being a Yellow Lantern isn’t very likely in my opinion.

Violet Lantern: Love. Now Jason is certainly a kind person who identifies with victims and wants to protect people, he’s a person who loves deeply. But the Violet Lanterns power does not seem to come from this broader understanding of love that includes filial or platonic or empathetic love. It seems to exclusively be about Romantic Love. And Jason? Putting aside that he’s a man and men don’t seem to be allowed to be a Violet Lantern for dumb reasons, he’s never had a real romantic relationship that lasted beyond a few dates. He does not seem to be especially interested in Romantic relationships in general and a lot of people even headcanon that he might be aro or ace because of his dearth of love interests. And even if he was in a relationship, it’s hard to imagine that he would be so overcome with emotion that he would put said relationship above everything else. That’s just not him. So no, I don’t think Jason would be a Violet Lantern either.

Blue Lantern: Hope. Those who are primarily chosen for this corps are not those who have a lot of hope, but are able to inspire people to fight. Now…Jason can and has done this. His Outlaws are a great example because everyone who has been on his team are there specifically to support him. They fight because and for Jason specifically, they aren’t there for prestige and some of them aren’t even there to be heroes or save people or do anything in particular, they just care about Jason and decide to support him. So Blue Lantern Jason…it’s viable. I think compared to someone like Dick, for example, he is not particularly good at this though, so I don’t think this is the lantern color for Jason.

Indigo Lantern: Compassion. Now at first I was like, oh it’s this one, it has to be. Jason is so compassionate, he identifies with victims so strongly that he feels the need to kill to prevent victims, so this has to be his ring color, right? Well…as it turns out, those who are chosen for this indigo tribe are those who actually lack compassion (sociopaths, basically). The ring seeks out people who have committed a great atrocity and causes them to feel remorse for their actions. If you already have compassion, it doesn’t work right, you can’t channel the Indigo light, it gets turned into some other emotion. Now Jason has certainly done things that some people think he should feel remorse about and which he does not, but… I think because those actions had justifiable reasoning behind them, even if some people might disagree, it would probably still make those not count. So, as for the emotion behind the ring color, totally Jason, but as the corps exist in the comics? Naw, he ain’t an Indigo lantern either.

Ultraviolet Lantern: Shame. This one I don’t know much about, it seems to feed off of negative emotion, specifically shame. Now Jason doesn’t have much shame. He generally believes even his more villainous actions to be justified. The only one of his actions he’s ever expressed much shame about was hurting Tim before he reconciled with the other bats, but Tim is okay so in the end it’s not much to be ashamed of, there wasn’t any lasting damage. Certainly if he ever changed him mind about killing then there would be a lot of shame to harness, but as of the canon we have? No, he’s not a person who feels much shame or remorse for his actions. So that being the case, I’m not convinced that Jason would make a very powerful Ultraviolet Lantern.

Green Lantern: Will. Now, green lanterns are those who seem to be able to overcome hardship and trials to accomplish their goals. They have a certain tenacity and practicality and ability to ignore fear. They also seem to be people who are imaginative/creative. Jason fits both of these criteria, he has gone against everything he was taught by Bruce, even given up the love of the man he considers his father, because he believed what he was doing was right and necessary. Jason does not give up, he keeps fighting, he doesn’t compromise on his beliefs, he doesn’t draw a line on how far he’s willing to go to protect people. He decides to do something and he doesn’t stop until it’s played out to it’s completion, he was beaten to death by the Joker and he still protected a women who betrayed him with his own body. He overcomes fear so completely that even in the face of hallucinations of his worst fears, he doesn’t break down, he overcomes. And we all know how damn dramatic Jason is, you think that comes out of thin air? He has imagination, he’s creative in his strategy. Jason could be a Green Lanten and he’d be a damn powerful one too.

Red Lantern: Anger. Red is the stereotypical choice for Jason when people try to assign him a lantern color because he’s ‘an angry person’. Now, contrary to what people tend to say and what Bruce and Dick themselves claim in the comics, Jason isn’t actually a very angry person. He rarely curses, doesn’t act recklessly out of anger, lose or use his temper on people who aren’t objectively evil or deserving of his ire except in a few instances that can be attributed to the Lazarus Pit’s influence or poor characterization…generally he acts very calm except for one, very specific subject–and that is Bruce refusing to avenge his death, and betraying his trust by (in his eyes) replacing him as if he didn’t matter. Jason is angry because he was wronged and damn is that anger powerful. Now this ties in perfectly with the type of people chosen by red lantern rings, who aren’t just angry people with tempers, but people with righteous anger, who have been subject to a loss or injustice. That describes Jason to a T. Furthermore, Red lanterns are basically immortal because their blood gets replaced with red lantern juice/power and coming back from the dead is Jason’s claim to fame. Also like…Red Hood? Red Lantern? Both red. It’s not my big argument, but that color wasn’t chosen because it had no association with Jason at all. He’s associated with red for a reason.

So, in conclusion, if I’m assigning Jason a lantern ring, he’s going to be either a green or red lantern, more probably a red lantern and Atrocitus better pray Jason never gets a red ring because he’d have that guy out on his ass in ten seconds flat, and anyone who got in his way would be fucked. I think his red hood gear would pair great with the Red Lantern uniform. I just imagine his black boots with bright red soles.

[fuelcut]

Silicon Valley’s imaginary Q2 2020 earnings call

[switch to long version]

CEO, MEGA TECH CORP - Hello everyone. These aren’t normal times. We’re not going to talk about our 10Q on this call. We’re here to talk about the next 10 years. So if you’re here for DAUs, ARR or CPC, you can drop off now.

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the race, health and economic crises our country faces. Over the last few weeks, I’ve asked our exec team to leave their homes, their [Zoom alternative] calls and their DoorDash deliveries to join protests and explore our community through new eyes.

What we now see - more clearly than ever - is that our entire company, industry, and Valley - are built on flawed foundations. A flawed social contract.

We can no longer just focus on the magical software bits and hope someone else figures out racial equity, employment, climate and health. This is Joel Spolsky’s Law of Leaky Abstractions on the ultimate scale. The abstractions are failing - and we’re seeing bugs and unintended consequences all around us. And the more we invest to deal with one-off bugs, the more likely we are to calcify change and imprison ourselves inside a failing stack. It’s like we decided to build the world’s notification service on Ruby on Rails - or building an iPhone competitor on Windows CE. Fail Whale everywhere. Unfortunately, America’s democratic institutions are in poor condition. They are struggling to deal with inequality let alone looming environmental disaster.  A polarized electorate - particularly at the national level - leads to populism and makes it hard for these institutions to execute meaningful, long-term plans.

We talk a lot about speech, misinformation, fairness of targeted ads etc. But it’s becoming clear that UX, linear algebra/training data and monetization in our products is just the tip of the spear to address polarization. We believe polarization is a product of the underlying conditions of civil rights, education, health and climate debt that affect Americans differentially based on race, wealth, neighborhood and region. 

So will today’s peaceful protests for racial justice expand into tomorrow’s revolution(s) for economic freedom? If you don’t think things are bad now, think about what happens when the stimulus checks run out. Take a look at the amount of debt in the public sector, use any imagination about COVID, work out what happens to their tax base / pension returns and consider the impact on public services, public servants and their votes.  MMT better be a real thing. Maybe we didn’t start these fires, but that refrain won’t save us when the flames come our way.

We’re done debating why we need to act. It’s clear America needs our help. Let’s talk about how we’re going to rise to the occasion. Our mantra will be “internalize, innovate, institutionalize”.

First, we’re going to internalize our problems. I’m here to tell you that issues of racial and economic justice are not just moral issues but they’re financial issues. Racial debt, education debt, health debt, climate debt  will hit us harder and harder each year.  (By the way, revolution probably won’t be great for your DCF models.) So we’re going to recognize these off-balance sheet liabilities - which amount to a few hundred billion in the US alone over the next 10 years for a company at our scale. You should assume other CEOs are thinking the same things - even if it takes them a few more quarters or years to say it.  

Second, we’re going to innovate against these systemic problems - but our only shot at making progress is if we realign the entire company’s mission to address them. This is not about optics. This is not about philanthropy. This is not another bet.  We have no choice but to put all our chips behind one bet - America - at least to start. It's the country that backed us in the first place, it's where most of our people are and most of our profits. The job for our existing products, platforms and cash flows will be to advance four areas: place / race, skilling / manufacturing, health / food and climate / mobility - starting in America. The board will measure me based on job creation and diversity.  It should go without saying that we’re pausing dividends and buybacks for the foreseeable future. Every dollar will serve our mission. Every senior leader will need to sign up for our new mission - and those who choose to stay will receive a new, back-end loaded, 10 year vesting schedule.  We want them focused on the long-term health of society - not the whims of Robinhood day traders or strengthening the moats of existing products. We will need to invent entirely new ways to operate and ship products. As Joel Spolsky said, “when you need to hire a programmer to do mostly VB programming, it’s not good enough to hire a VB programmer, because they will get completely stuck in tar every time the VB abstraction leaks”. We need engineers, designers and product managers that will look deep into the stack, confront the racial, job access, health and climate debts that our products, our companies and our communities are built on top of.   This is not about CYA process to protect cash cows or throwing things over the fence to policy. We will need to innovate across technical, cultural and organizational lines. This requires deep understanding and curiosity. Systems and full-stack, not just pixels. This will bring more scrutiny to our company - not less.  Change must not be the burden for only our Black employees or other subsets. Everyone must be on board - so for the next 12 months, we’re giving folks a one-time buyout if they want to leave.

Third, we can’t do any of this by ourselves.  The problems are too big. Our role will be to provide enlightened risk capital (from our balance sheet or by re-vectoring operating spend) alongside R&D, product, platform leverage to help leaders and innovators pursue solutions in these areas. We will work with our peers and the public sector wherever possible - buying/R&D consortia, public-private partnerships, trusts, etc. Collaboration is the default, not the exception. But the new era and landscape demands that we explore institutional models beyond global capital/startups, labor unions, NGOs or government. We need models that can more flexibly align people and purpose, that innovate on individualized vs. socialized risk/reward - and that ultimately help build and sustain local, social capital. It’s difficult to say what these will look like - but increasingly figuring this out will be existential for our core business. Right now, it doesn’t matter if you’re designing the best cameras in Cupertino or the best ways to see their snaps in Santa Monica - we’re all just building layers of an attention stack for global capital. Our Beijing competitors have figured this out. ByteDance is already eating our lunch. They’re using the same tech inputs as us - UX, ML and large-scale systems - which are now a commodity - but with vastly lower consequences for the content they show - creating a superior operating / scaling model. They’re not internalizing social or political cost. What we need in this era is the accumulation stack - where each interaction builds social capital.  This is not about global likes. This is about local respect. We’ll create competitive advantage when we build products that reach across race / economic lines to harness America’s amazing melting pot and do so in ways that build livelihoods / property rights for creators and stakeholders.

With this operating model in place, we’re committing to fundamental change in four areas:

Place & Race - Over the next 10 years, 100% of our jobs will be in diverse communities that embrace inclusive schooling, policing, housing and transit policies. (Starting tomorrow, we’re putting red lines on our maps around towns with exclusionary zoning.) This is not about privatizing cities or an HQ2-style play to extract concessions. This is about investing our risk capital and our reputation to innovate alongside government. How do we bring world-class education to neighborhoods with concentrated poverty? What is the future of digital/hybrid charter schooling? Unbundled public safety? We’re done with de facto segregation. We’ll embrace “remote-first” with physical centers of gravity as a means to this end. The Bay will become one physical node alongside several others (e.g. Atlanta, DC, LA) creating a strategic network to develop diverse talent across the country. We’re going to coordinate our investment with leading peers - since after all, this isn’t about cost or cherry-picking. It’s about broadening our country’s economic base.

Skilling & Manufacturing - We’re going to 10x the tech talent pool in 10 years - by inventing new apprenticeship models that bring women, minorities and the poor into the workforce. We’ll start with our existing contractor base, convert them to new employment models with expanded benefits and paths for upward mobility. Next, we will invent new productivity tools for all types of workers - from the front office to mobile work to call center - that brings the power of AI and programming to everyone. These will be deeply tied into new platforms for work designed from the bottom-up to build social and financial capital for individual workers and teams. Last, we’re setting a goal to manufacture most of our hardware products - from silicon all the way to systems - entirely in the US in 10 years. This will require massive investment, collaboration and innovation. It may require a revolution in robotics - but we will pursue this in a way that makes the American worker competitive - not a commodity to be automated away. If we’re successful, the dividends of our investment here will have massive spillover benefits to every other sector of manufacturing in the US - autos, etc. - including ones we have yet to dream up.

Health & Food -  We’re not going to tolerate a two-class system for healthcare. As we convert our contract workforce to new employment models, we’ll innovate on the fundamental quality/cost paradigm. This may feel like a step down but it will put us (and the rest of society if we’re successful) on a fundamentally better long-term trajectory. Can we use AI to help scale the reach of community health workers? Can we help them create co-operatively owned care delivery orgs that offer new ways to share risk and support behavior change?  Local, social capital is critical. Food is part of Health, and we’re going to innovate there too. Free food for employees is not going to come back post-COVID. Instead, we’ll use our food infrastructure to bootstrap cooperatively-owned cloud kitchens. We’ll provide capital to former contractors - mostly Black and Hispanic - to invest and own these. We’ll build platforms to help them sell food to employees (partly subsidized), participate in new “food for health” programs and eventually disrupt the extractive labor practices we see across food, grocery and delivery.

Climate & Mobility - Lastly, we’ll be imposing a carbon tax on all aspects of our own operations - which we’ll use to “fund” innovation in this space - with a primary focus on job creation. This is an area where we’re going to be looking far beyond our four walls from the beginning.  As a first step, we’re teaming up with Elon and Gavin Newsom to buy PG&E out of bankruptcy and restructure it as a 21st century “decentralized” network of community utilities.  It will accelerate the electrification of mobility - financing networked batteries for buses, cars and bikes along with charging infrastructure - and lead a massive job creation program focused on energy efficiency. It will use its rights of way to provide Gigabit ethernet + 5G to everyone - which will help people and help fund some of this.  Speaking of mobility, private buses aren’t coming back after COVID. Instead, we’re teaming up with all of our peers to create a Bay-wide network of electric buses (with bundled e-bikes) that will service folks of all walks of life - including our own employee base. Oh and one more thing - we’re bringing together the world’s most advanced privacy/identity architecture and computational video/audio to bake public health infrastructure directly into the buses. For COVID and beyond. None of this is a substitute for competent, democratically accountable regional authorities. This is us investing risk capital on behalf of society - with the goal of empowering these authorities.

Open technology for global progress - While we have to prioritize America given the scale of problems, the intent is not to abandon the rest of the world or hold back it’s progress. We feel the opposite - that over the coming decades each country’s technology sectors will thrive. To get there, we will continue to invest patiently - hiring, training, partnering, investing and innovating - but with a clear north star to help each country develop local leaders in new areas. Long-term, we’ll continue to contribute open technology that others can build upon.

America should be the proverbial city on a hill for everyone - not a metaverse for the rich with the poor dying in the streets. We don’t have much time so we’re getting to work now. See you next quarter.

[theexaltedbride]

(Images taken from the old board/card game Hornet Leader: Cthulhu Conflict, which doesn't seem to be around anymore.)

Up in the clouds, flying above the earth, fast and free, its so easy to forget the problems we have. I’ve seen images of the Earth from space, its a beautiful thing, from up there it all looks so peaceful. You could forget that anything is even wrong with it, you could pretend that all the ugly parts of human history don’t exist. wars, genocides, starvation, hatred, man killing man for eons. 

Now though, the cancer of madness spreads across the earth like an infected boil, turning the blue oceans green, and turning the land sour. From up above you can see Mu and R’lyeh, and the madness that spreads out from them like tumors.

The Stars were right, the way was opened, and the world would never be the same again. Ancient horrors long put away to myth and legend were unleashed, a madness spread through the cities, with people being driven insane and butchering their loved ones, reveling in the bloodshed and madness as cults helped to spread the insanity.

Those first days were so chaotic, so insane, even this pathetic excuse of a war is better than those days, because now we have an enemy to point out fury towards, to take out our aggression against.

 Even many of our leaders were in on it, secretly working to bring about the end of the world, for their own benefit, for their own gain, profit, for they felt it was better to rule in Hell than to die along with the common plebeians like us. The politicians so happily sold their souls and weakened us from within as the cultists spread their influence, forcing us to fight against one another, to quarrel over differences in faith, race, sex, making us hate each other, so we could not stand together when the time came. They would raise some up (with their own tablescraps) so that they could better keep others down. Until the time came when all of mankind needed to be cast down for their new masters, their unholy gods.

Many countries fell in those first few months, completely imploding and being turned into charnel houses for our enemies. Or worse, into camps. In retrospect, it shouldn't have been that much of a surprise to learn that the average KKK asshole or Nazi fuckhead was in on the plot to betray humanity. Thinking they were protected by their racial supremacy, or that big CEOs had been so happy to maintain wealth, even if the world burned. But they didn't succeed everywhere. 

Many other nations still held out. Survivors from fallen nations moved to those of the Free Earth Alliance and joined forces with human forces that had not yet fallen. There is still alot of animosity, bigotry, and hate, but at least we all have enemies we can hate together.

The eldritch forces have near total control over the sea, ruining many much needed trade routes and most naval forces are put on convoy duty or in protecting important naval ports or positions. The land war was ugly, with native wildlife being harmed by the eldritch beings. But the air war, has thankfully been far better for humanity than anywhere else, and it gives us a chance. Not even the strongest Hunting Horror or the largest Byakhee swarm could keep up with most modern jet aircraft. Fighters, bombers, drones, it gives us a chance. Even Migo (When not flying in a ship) cant stand up to a jet. 

Already planes have made a big difference in operations to bomb Deep One Incursions in New England, bombing the continent of Mu and supporting resistance fighters in various across the globe. Even in failed operations (such as the Marine invasion of R’lyeh) the planes provide much needed support and keep failed missions from becoming disasters. The few pilots who become aces and strike good blows against eh Eldritch forces become like rockstars. They become heroes, giving people hope, a real hope that we might survive this. Even if every day we just get closer to destruction. To the press corps these pilots are a godsend for propaganda purposes, prettied up and put out there so the people can have hope. But the pilots, find themselves caring less and less. They are broken, they don’t believe in their cause. Many of them are becoming robotic now. Its just about flying the next missions, killing the next Deep One swarm, taking down a Shoggoth with napalm. Perhaps that is what it takes to win, to give up what makes us human. Who can really say? Up in the clouds, flying high up, its so easy to forget about the madness below, to fly free, to only focus on the joy that is flying, and on the next mission.

[meditativeyoga]

Discover the Peaceful Practice of Yoga Nidra

One cool evening in a high-ceilinged eating hall in Novato, The golden state, an unlikely yoga exercise course is obtaining under means. Fourteen guys wearing blue denims, job boots, or running footwears roll out yoga exercise floor coverings and also obtain settled on resting bags, blankets, as well as pillows-- in prep work for Yoga Nidra.

The instructor, Kelly Boys, grins as she surveys her students, residents at Henry Ohlhoff North, a material abuse recovery. She asks if anyone intends to review their experiences in the previous week's session. A trim 52-year-old named Charles volunteers that he deals with feelings of loneliness.

Around the area, faces loosen up, jaws soften, as well as soon snores begin to roll as the guys go down further right into relaxation.

' How does your body really feel when it strikes you?' Boys asks. 'Stressful,' Charles says. 'And where do you really feel the tension?' she asks. 'In my shoulders,' he says.

' Just ask it, 'Exactly what do you need? What do you want?" Boys states. 'We're simply bringing inquisitiveness to it. When you truly satisfy it, it does slope.' Charles responds, completely satisfied for now.

As the men settle right into kicked back placements, Boys starts to speak them via a detailed trip of their own bodies on this day as well as currently-- the initial step in the method of yoga nidra. Slowly the room quiets, till the only sounds are the hum of the ventilation system as well as Young boys' voice: 'Can you feel the inside of your mouth? Currently bring your attention to your left ear. Really feel the in of your left ear. Feel your right ear. Can you feel both ears simultaneously?' Around the room, deals with unwind, jaws soften, as well as soon snores begin to rumble as the men drop deeper into relaxation.

The Benefits of Yoga Nidra

Yoga nidra is an ancient however obscure yogic method that's ending up being increasingly popular as both a kind of meditation and a mind-body therapy. It is a systematic type of led leisure that typically is done for 35 to 40 mins at a time.

Practitioners say that it typically brings immediate physical advantages, such as lowered anxiety and also much better rest, and also that it has the possible to heal emotional wounds. As a meditation method, it could engender a profound feeling of delight as well as well-being.

' In yoga nidra, we recover our body, detects, and mind to their all-natural function and also awaken a 7th sense that permits us to really feel no splitting up, that only sees wholeness, harmony, and wellness,' states Richard Miller, a San Francisco Bay Area yoga teacher and professional psycho therapist who is at the center of the activity to educate yoga exercise nidra and to bring it to a broader audience.

While several popular instructors offer classes, CDs, and also publications on yoga nidra, Miller is accountable for bringing the practice to an impressive variety of ultramodern setups. He's aided present it on military bases and in professionals' clinics, homeless shelters, Montessori institutions, Head Beginning programs, medical facilities, hospices, chemical reliance facilities, as well as prisons. Exactly what's more, thanks to Miller, it's beginning to get significant scientific focus. Researchers are taking a look at the practice's potential to aid soldiers experiencing trauma, addicts struggling to obtain tidy, individuals with depression, cancer, as well as MS, health treatment employees, and also married pairs managing anxiety and insomnia.

More than 40 years ago, in 1970, Miller attended his very first yoga exercise class at the Essential Yoga exercise Institute in San Francisco. 'At the end of that course, they taught a customized yoga nidra-- deep Savasana,' he says. 'I had one of the most profound experience, there was this sense of my inter-relatedness with the whole world. As well as a vow occurred in me to actually investigate this practice.'

Over years of researching and teaching yoga nidra, Miller has actually developed his own strategy, discovering ways to make the technique accessible to a wide series of individuals, also those with little or no education in yoga exercise. In 2005, he released a publication, Yoga Nidra: An Introspective Technique for Deep Relaxation as well as Recovery, as well as he's released several audio guides. He currently leads the not-for-profit Integrative Reconstruction Institute, an organization committed to the research study, teaching, and also technique of yoga nidra and yoga philosophy.

' Lots of people are attempting to change themselves,' Miller claims. 'Yoga nidra inquires to welcome themselves. That moment of real inviting is where the extensive change takes place.'

You Do not Have to Do Yoga exercise or Practice meditation to Do Yoga exercise Nidra

It's a stealthily simple technique. Since yoga nidra is usually showed relaxing-- at first assisted by an educator-- it's interesting individuals that might feel frightened by yoga postures or conventional seated meditation. A short version of yoga nidra could be introduced and also practiced in much less than 10 minutes. Yet its various aspects, taken with each other as well as practiced frequently, make up an advanced set of mind-body tools that can aid professionals navigate some of life's harshest minutes. Yoga exercise nidra could likewise be practiced as an accessible kind of meditation for those seeking everyday well-being.

In a regular yoga exercise nidra session, an instructor guides experts with a number of stages. You start by developing an objective for your life as well as for the practice. You find out to concentrate your understanding on your breath, physical feelings, feelings, and also thoughts. Throughout, you are motivated to touch right into an underlying sense of tranquility that is constantly present and to cultivate 'witness awareness,' observing and welcoming whatever exists without getting captured up in it.

' Yoga exercise nidra allows us to get to one of the most extensive level of relaxation feasible,' claims Pole Stryker, the creator of Para-Yoga, who has actually been educating yoga exercise nidra because the mid-1990s and who composes about it in his publication, The Four Desires. 'It opens an entrance to a location where we could see ourselves and our lives in the most favorable light.'

Unlike various other kinds of reflection, in which you concentrate on a concept or on your breath, yoga nidra asks you simply to allow go. 'The technique requires us to involve the muscle mass of abandonment,' Stryker says.

Yoga Nidra for Remedy for PTSD

The course to bringing yoga nidra to the focus of a wider audience led, oddly enough, via the Walter Reed Military Medical Center, a military treatment center based, at the time, in Washington, DC. In 2004, Christine Goertz, a scholastic scientist at the Samueli Institute, a not-for-profit research study institute, teamed up with Robin Carnes, a yoga exercise teacher that had actually instructed yoga nidra as component of a cardiac care program at Walter Reed. Carnes had actually found out yoga exercise nidra from Stryker as well as from Miller's publication. She as well as Goertz made use of Miller's technique as the basis for a pilot research study examining whether the technique could help soldiers struggling with posttraumatic stress condition (PTSD). The results of that first small research, conducted with active-duty solution members, recommended that yoga exercise nidra might be valuable for handling PTSD in experts. (Along the road, somebody at Walter Reed suggested renaming the practice to something extra available, as well as Miller created 'iRest,' brief for 'Integrative Remediation.') As a follow-up, a randomized, regulated test entailing 150 participants was conducted over 18 months at the Veterans Affairs (VA) facility in Miami from 2009 to 2010. And also one more study is starting this winter season at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Healthcare Facility in Chicago.

On the basis of the pilot research study results, the military is currently offering Miller's iRest yoga nidra practice to wounded warriors at Walter Reed, Brooke Military Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, Camp Lejeune, a big Marine Corps base in North Carolina, and VA centers in Miami, Chicago, and Washington, DC. In these recurring classes, soldiers have actually reported that a few of their most unpleasant PTSD signs and symptoms, consisting of hyperalertness, anxiety, and rest disruptions, have diminished.

Tools like yoga exercise nidra could be crucial sources for soldiers changing to life after battle, says Mona Bingham, a retired colonel who's investigating the practice at Brooke Military Medical Center. 'A great deal of soldiers are returning [from fight] with physical, mental, and ethical wounds,' she says. 'It's not something we could simply provide a medicine for.' She's examining iRest's result on army couples handling the tension that frequently arises after an implementation ends.

Yoga nidra literally means 'yogic rest,' however that is a little bit of a misnomer. It's not a special sort of rest, however a state in between sleeping and also waking.

Cheryl LeClair shows the iRest practice to marines with PTSD and terrible brain injuries at Camp Lejeune. 'Most of the men do not sleep,' she states. 'Some have actually informed me they take 2 Ambien a night, and also they still can not sleep. Many of them drop rest in the extremely first iRest session. To see them kick back as well as release is simply incredible.'

Like the marines in LeClair's classes, new specialists typically falling asleep during their initial couple of yoga nidra sessions. That's not unexpected, claims Stryker, because nowadays several individuals are rest deprived. Yoga nidra literally means 'yogic rest,' however that is a little bit of a misnomer. It's not a special sort of sleep, however a state in between sleeping and also waking. With more experience, Stryker claims, professionals can experience deep rest while preserving just what he calls 'just a trace of recognition.'

For LeClair, whose partner returned from Iraq in 2003 with a mind injury, PTSD, as well as a smashed vertebra in his neck, yoga exercise nidra has actually ended up being a vital part of obtaining with exactly what are often extremely trying days. (She handles the family members finances as well as much of the duty for raising a nine-year-old grandson.) She first experienced the practice at a weekend workshop. 'After I awakened, I said, 'Whatever that is, I want a lot more,'' she says. Now, when she gets overloaded, she remembers the lessons of yoga exercise nidra: 'If you can tip back and also witness the ideas without response, it gives you some space. You learn how to have equanimity.'

Yoga Nidra Aids Emotional Healing

The roots of yoga nidra are believed to go back countless years. When Miller adapted the trainings to earn them more obtainable to Westerners, he intended to address emotional health. 'The Eastern yoga exercise principles took it for given that you went to a particular state of wellness and also wellness,' he claims. 'Just what I saw was that this was not true of a lot of students. So I included the component of the Inner Source.'

Early on in Miller's yoga exercise nidra instruction, as you begin to kick back, you are asked to invoke up your very own personal Inner Source, a vision of and also really feeling concerning a place where you really feel secure and protected. If intense feelings surface throughout yoga exercise nidra-- or, for that issue, at any moment-- you can return to your Inner Source to take a break.

Charles, one of the males at Henry Ohlhoff North, relies on the technique frequently. A previous exec cook, he retired after a back injury left him in consistent discomfort. He ended up being addicted to alcohol and also medicines as well as, after three apprehensions on drug charges, chose rehab rather than jail.

Yoga nidra has assisted him locate his back to a part of himself unblemished by dependency as well as persistent pain. His Inner Source is the bakeshop his parents ran. 'I go back to my youth,' he says, 'doing chores in my parents' bakeshop. I think of my papa and also how good it really felt to have his arms around me.'

Earlier this year, when Charles was approved his initial overnight pass 2 months into his six-month rehabilitation remain, a close friend amazed him with a birthday celebration that consisted of alcohol. Charles began to panic.

' I headed out to my cars and truck, put my head back on the headrest, and also went into [the practice],' he claims. 'My breathing boiled down, and I can concentrate better.' After concerning half a hr, he opted to leave the celebration and also go back to the rehab center.

Early research sustains the suggestion that yoga nidra can assist people like Charles who remain in recovery from dependency. In a study of 93 people at a chemical reliance therapy center, Leslie Temme, a teacher in the social work division of Western Carolina University, found that participants who practiced yoga nidra had less adverse moods as well as a reduced risk of falling back into drug abuse. With its focus on self-awareness, yoga nidra appears in order to help recovering addicts really feel much more comfy in their own skin, cope better with hard emotions, as well as make far better choices, Temme states. What's more, she adds, 'The customers liked it. They were aligning at the door to obtain to it.'

Discover Your Connection to All Living Things

If you've ever before attempted to sit in meditation for HALF AN HOUR, you understand that you don't need to be recouping from trauma to be unpleasant in your very own mind. As a reflection method, yoga exercise nidra offers a mild approach, starting with body awareness, after that working compassionately with thoughts and emotions as they occur, and slowly leading the meditator to access a better area of recognition. Actually, in several of the earliest written referrals to the term yoga exercise nidra, it is identified with samadhi, or union, the supreme goal of the eightfold path.

This aspect of yoga exercise nidra is perhaps one of the most tough to take into words, however, for Miller, it's the core of the method. Discovering to observe and invite all the feelings, feelings, as well as thoughts that develop in deep remainder could lead an individual to become less identified with the specific self-- just what Miller calls the 'I-thought.' Through this experience, he says, it's feasible to lose the feeling that one is different from others and also to tap into an unsinkable feeling of interconnectedness to all of life.

And when that happens, Miller claims, 'There's a deep swimming pool of wellness. It's just what I discovered because first yoga exercise nidra session in 1970. That's exactly what I attempt to share.'