#or any of the (linked) supporting materials if its an article

[bunnyboy-juice]

GRAAAAAAAH MISREPRESENTING DATA DOES NOTHING FOR ANYONE EXCEPT FEED TROLLS WHO ARE TRYIGN TO TAKE OYU IN BAD FAITH ANYWAY OH MY GD

[dandelionsresilience]

Good News - May 15-21

Like these weekly compilations? Support me on Ko-fi! Also, if you tip me on Ko-fi, at the end of the month I'll send you a link to all of the articles I found but didn't use each week - almost double the content!

1. Translocation of 2,000 rhinos in Africa gets underway in “one of the most audacious conservation efforts of modern times”

“The 2,000 rhinos - more than are currently found in any single wild location in Africa - represent around 12-15% of the continent’s remaining white rhino population. […] “Rhinos perform an important ecological function in the environment as a large grazing herbivore,” says Dale Wepener[….] “The protection of rhino is far more than just looking after rhino; other species that occur in the protected areas will benefit from the protection,” explains Jooste. “This will lead to an increase in diversity and result in much healthier ecosystems.”

2. Florida Corridor Buffers Effects of Climate Change on Wildlife — And People

“A massive multi-partner effort that has conserved 10 million acres for wildlife in Florida over past decades will help buffer wildlife—and people—from the effects of climate change, a new report says. […] Protecting these corridors is important for wildlife genetics, demography and connectivity […], conducting prescribed fires in the corridor can reduce the risk of more intense wildfires [… and] they can provide buffers against hurricanes and seasonal thunderstorms.”

3. Global life expectancy to increase by nearly 5 years by 2050 despite geopolitical, metabolic, and environmental threats

“Increases are expected to be largest in countries where life expectancy is lower, contributing to a convergence of increased life expectancy across geographies. The trend is largely driven by public health measures that have prevented and improved survival rates from cardiovascular diseases, COVID-19, and a range of communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases (CMNNs).”

4. Valencia has Spain’s longest urban park

“Jardin del Turia (Turia Garden) is the green spine of the City of Valencia and Spain’s (and possibly Europe’s) longest urban park stretching for a length of 8.5 kilometres [… and] the current administration plans to make Jardin del Turia Europe’s largest city green space by extending it to the sea[….] Almost all Valencia residents (97 per cent) live within 300 metres of an urban green space. […] Jardin del Turia is a true urban oasis that provides exceptional thermal comfort, with a temperature difference of up to three degrees compared to other areas of the city.”

5. This Paint Could Clean Both Itself and the Air

“When an artificial ultraviolet light source shines on [photocatalytic] paint, the nanoparticles react with pollutants to make them break down—theoretically removing them from the nearby air and preventing a discoloring buildup. [… R]esearchers developed a new photocatalytic paint that they claim works using UV rays from ordinary sunlight, making its self-cleaning properties easier to activate. They’ve also shown that they can effectively produce this paint from recycled materials [including fallen leaves].”

6. Planting Seedlings for a Cooler Rockingham

“A dedicated group of volunteers recently planted over a thousand native seedlings in Lewington Reserve [… and] re-established canopy cover to areas of the reserve to create cooling shade for the local community and provide homes for native wildlife. […] Planting lots of trees and shrubs in urban areas can help create shade and cool cities, mitigating the impacts of climate change, contributing to biodiversity conservation and building greener, more resilient communities.”

7. Sydney’s first dedicated affordable housing for trans women designed to deliver ‘positive outcomes’

“Community housing provider and charity Common Equity NSW, […] which is for people on very low to moderate incomes, prides itself on creating inclusive living and promotes the independence and well-being of people and communities […, and] will deliver the first-of-its-kind social housing in a bid to provide a safe place to live for transgender women seeking an affordable home.”

8. Rewilding: How a herd of bison reintroduced to Romania is helping ‘supercharge’ carbon removal

“170 European Bison reintroduced to Romania’s Țarcu mountains could help capture and store the carbon released by up to 84,000 average US petrol cars each year. […] By grazing a 48 square kilometre area of grassland in a wider landscape of 300 kilometres squared, they helped to capture an additional 54,000 tonnes of carbon each year. That is around 10 times the amount that would be captured by the ecosystem without the bison.”

9. World’s biggest grids could be powered by renewables, with little or no storage

“[…] 100% renewable supply can then match the load by putting surplus electricity into two kinds of distributed storage worth that [an energy expert] says are worth buying anyway – ice-storage air-conditioning and smart bidirectional charging of electric cars, and recover that energy when needed, filling the last gaps with unobtrusively flexible demand.”

10. Supporting the Long-Term Survival of Copper River Salmon and Alaska Native Traditions

“With $4.3 million in NOAA funds, the Copper River Watershed Project and The Eyak Corporation will remove fish passage barriers, opening more streams for salmon spawning and subsistence fishing. [… As part of this effort, o]ld narrow culverts that constrict water flow will be replaced with “stream simulation” culverts wide enough to fit the full stream, including its banks. They are also deep to allow contractors to place stones and other material inside to mimic a natural stream bottom.”

May 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[hotvintagepoll]

all the round one polls are over!!! huzzah!!🥳🎉🎈🎂🍾

Hooray! Round 2 will be up on Monday.

Also, before anyone wonders. I've decided to take Gish and Cooper out of the bracket, because Birth of a Nation is an explicit hate film and Gish and Cooper's careers feel inseparable from it. I'll be replacing them with Fay Wray and Jennifer Jones as the women with the closest ties. For everything else, I'm sticking to the same rules I always stick to: it's up to you to research + decide if morality matters to your vote. I cannot adequately research every single candidate and every single issue, so removing these two is a rare move for me, and I hope this is the last time in this tournament I have to.

However, since this is an international bracket and I'm not aware of every woman's filmography, there may be other contestants here who took part in explicitly hateful propaganda films + showed no second thoughts about it (the second thoughts part is important). If you are aware of someone who took place in a film during our era that was made for the sole purpose of inciting violence and was as clearly and explicitly hateful in its intentions as Birth of a Nation, please send me a link to the film (if possible) and some backup material so I can review for myself and decide on a contestant's inclusion. If you can't provide the problematic film for me to see for myself or any conclusive evidence of the harm it directly caused, I will not remove a contestant; I don't operate on hearsay and I don't have time to do your research for you if you can't provide proof. If I see trolling about this, instead of honest discussion, I will block.

I spent a lot of time reading up on BoaN to make sure I made a decision I feel solid with, and my sources are under the cut.

Sources:

The Birth of a Nation: Media and Racial Hate by Desmond Ang

How a racist film helped the Ku Klux Klan grow for generations from the Economist

The Birth of a Nation: the most racist movie ever made from the Washington Post

The Legacies of Lillian Gish from Inside Higher Ed

Where to Begin with Lillian Gish from the BFI

Lillian Gish: should a great actor be judged by a racist film? from the Guardian

A Public Menace: how the fight to ban The Birth of a Nation shaped the nascent civil rights movement from Slate (this was my favorite of the articles and I think gives the best historical context for where BoaN came from, how it was made, and what its consequences were)

The movie itself, which I'm not linking. I watched enough of it to make up my mind, and it is its own best argument for being a film too intolerant to support in any measure. Hope everyone understands.

[gallopinggallifreyans]

I would love to hear your opinions about ancient currency! And any recommendations you have for learning more about the Roman economy!

oh boy i am SO glad you asked! I'm going to put everything under a readmore because it's a Lot.

I have a few opinions on Greek coinage, specifically that of the introduction of coinage to Athens, though I'm working on a proposal for studying Spartan coinage rn.

Current publications re:Athens haven't really determined For Sure who introduced coins; it's a toss-up between Solon and Pisistratus but I'm in the Pisistratus camp for reasons that I can absolutely summarize in a separate post, as I've written and published a paper in my undergrad journal that (hopefully) holds weight in the current hodgepodge of thoughts. If you'd like that, I can write it up and link it here!

Re:Spartan coinage, I think the Spartan homoioi were real idiots. Most city-states were using silver (and very occasionally gold) for their coins, but Spartan homoioi were using iron spits. The spits (obeloi) were six to a drachma, which was the exchange rate for a long time. And by long time I mean there was no such thing as a floating conversion, coins were just the most portable form of precious metal, which was intrinsically valued. Outside Sparta (even the perioikoi) most city-states would have used ingots pre-coinage and that evolved into stamped metal, i.e. coinage. The Spartans considered themselves to be very religious and followed the Great Rhetra (unsure if Lykourgos existed), which maintained that silver and gold were holy and could not be used, so they used iron.

Unfortunately, the rest of Greece didn't follow that, and used silver in their coins, especially influenced by Attic-Ionian city-states who were in regular trade with Persia and further east, i.e. regions that valued precious metal outside their religious significance. Essentially, Spartans kinda screwed themselves over re:trade outside Sparta; they couldn't even trade in contemporary currency with the rest of Lakonia and forced their subject city-states into the same position. This is supported mostly by the explosion of Messenian and other Lakonian coinages after Sparta collapsed, though I want to see if I can find more text evidence, since I (an archaeologist) tend to rely too heavily on material. It's a whole thing, personally I believe this was a significant factor in Sparta's collapse, though other things factored in as well. Sparta was incredibly insular both in its trade/economy and religious practice and that combination led to its downfall.

For the Roman sources, I recommend starting with the Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy by Walter Scheidel, and The Ancient Economy by Walter Scheidel and Sitta von Reden. Von Reden has excellent articles related to the ancient economy in general, and most are available on JSTOR, so I recommend giving her stuff a look.

I also highly recommend reading Moses Finley's work The Ancient Economy (no relation to Scheidel and Von Reden's work), as it lays the foundation for much of our current school of thought. Peter Temin's subsequent work, The Roman Market Economy argues against Finley and kicks off a whole debate about how to define an economy without using capitalism as the basis, because capitalism as we know and define it did not exist then, and it is incorrect to assume that. We can call it protocapitalist, but not capitalist.

Slavery in Rome is a nuanced subject that is integral to learning about its economy — I suggest keeping an open mind and treading carefully with respect to post-1492 slave trades. Noel Lenski's chapter "Framing the Question" (linked; you need access through your institution) discusses the slave trade against a Finleyan model, while Scheidel (him again) talks about how to determine the wages of slaves (JSTOR link). W. V. Harris talks about the demography and geography of slaves here (JSTOR link). These three are good starts for learning about Roman slavery, but if you want more sources, I can pull some up for you.

I don't want to overload you with sources, so in general I'll recommend anything by Scheidel, Von Reden, Nicholas Purcell and Peregrine Horden (connectivity), Seth Bernard (coins and emissions), Astrid Van Oyen (tech innovation), and Willem Jongman (economic structure). As with the slavery sources, if you want direct links I can definitely find them for you! I'm always happy to share info :)

[dalishious]

Hi Lydia-Marc!

I want to reach out to you because of something you posted. Usually when I reach out like this, I get blocked, I’m hoping you’ll be willing to listen.

You said that “Zionism is a colonial movement that supports building an ethno-national state for Jewish people on top of Palestine, by any means necessary.” And then linked to Al Jazeera as proof.

I want to start by pointing out that Al Jazeera is the state media of Qatar, a nation that in its state approved textbooks teaches that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a debunked soviet antisemitic conspiracy theory) are true, as well as teaching that Jews are evil, and that the holocaust isn’t real/the holocaust was actually a Jewish plot to further their nefarious goals (https://efile.fara.gov/docs/3492-Informational-Materials-20200917-70.pdf). I am asking that you acknowledge that if that is what’s in state run textbooks, then the state media outlet might also be biased against Jews.

What you state Zionism is sound more like Kahanism (https://imeu.org/article/fact-sheet-meir-kahane-the-extremist-kahanist-movement ), a movement that most Jews (and most Jews – about 80-90% depending on the survey – are Zionist) thoroughly denounce. The founder and his political party were actually banned from participating in the Israeli government because most Jews found the movement so disgusting.

Zionism is actually a land back movement that supports self-determination for Jews in their ancestral homeland. (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Zionism ) A lot of leftists have decided to try to change the definition of the word into something more like what you said, but it’s a Jewish word to describe a Jewish movement, and non-Jews don’t get to define our words for us.

Applying a colonizer/colonized lens to the area is not really useful, but if you must, then please recognize that we have archeological evidence of Jews in the southern Levant going back over 3000 years (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/opinion/jewish-history-israel.html ), genetic evidence that even the whitest looking Ashkenazi Jews have middle eastern genetic markers (https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.100115997 ), and written evidence from Rome talking about the Jews living in the area. In fact, we have maps showing that the area that is now called Palestine, used to be called Iudea (https://www.worldhistory.org/image/269/map-of-the-roman-empire-in-125-ce/ ) prior to Rome conquering the area, extracting its wealth, and taking the native, Jewish, population as slaves back to the empire (https://www.worldhistory.org/The_Bar-Kochba_Revolt/ , https://www.britannica.com/event/Siege-of-Jerusalem-70 ). The people who identify as Palestinian are the descendants of the people who filled the void left by Rome’s abduction of the Jews, and the descendants of the actual colonizers from the Arabian peninsula who showed up hundreds of years after the majority of Jews had already been evicted. The area has been colonized repeatedly, just not the way you claim.

I, personally, as a Zionist, am in favor of a two state solution, and I know many other Zionists that feel the same way. Palestinians have been living on the land a long time, and should have a state, but there is no denying that the area is the Jewish homeland, and they should be allowed a state of their own as well. It is frustrating to see so many people decide that self-determination (a human right!) is something that should be denied to the Jews, simply because they were conquered so long ago that everyone considers the colonizer’s presence to be “normal.” Apparently, somewhere along the line, Jewish indigeneity expired.

I hope you’re still reading this. I hope you’re willing to listen. If you have any questions, or want to discuss this further, I’m happy to talk.

Anyway,

[leviathan-supersystem]

You seem knowledgeable on the USSR, can you do a debunking of this post, or link me a source which debunks it?

https://www.tumblr.com/sanson-ki-mala-pe/746822120828502016/soviet-antisemitism-a-hundred-years-of-recycling

i don;t have time to address every claim made here, but it jumps out to me immediately that the source they're referencing, "More than a Century of Antisemitism: How Successive Occupants of the Kremlin Have Used Antisemitism to Spread Disinformation and Propaganda" is quite literally published by the US Department of State, and that this document in turn uses as one of it's major sources the Romanian defector Ion Mihai Pacepa, a controversial figure who's various claims have been frequently called into doubt even by those sympathetic to his cause.

for example, in this book review by the national catholic register [link], the author of the review, who is plainly sympathetic to Pacepa's anti-communist goals, nonetheless casts doubt on many of the claims he makes:

In the article “Moscow’s Assault on the Vatican,” published in 2007, Pacepa  claimed he convinced legendary Vatican diplomat Msgr. Agostino Casaroli — later cardinal and secretary of state under Pope John Paul II — to let three Romanian agents, posing as priests, peruse the papal archives. Under scrutiny, Pacepa’s story began to unravel, with doubts expressed by historians and Vatican experts. Then the reason Pacepa claimed to have credibility with the Vatican collapsed: He said he had engineered a “spy trade” in 1959, exchanging jailed Romanian Archbishop Augustin Pacha for two spies caught in West Germany. But Archbishop Ioan Robu of Bucharest showed photos of the bishop’s 1954 crypt, explaining the heroic man was already dead when Pacepa claimed to have liberated him.

[...]

Vatican diplomats Cardinals Giovanni Cheli and Luigi Poggi were involved in negotiations with Romania and the Soviet bloc. Cardinal Cheli called Pacepa’s allegations “untruthful scenarios,” while Cardinal Poggi declared them “the product of a troubled mind and soul.” Archbishop Robu, who was consecrated by Cardinal Casaroli, emphatically calls the Pacepa account false: “We would know, it would be in our memories, if Romanian spies gained access to the Vatican Archives. It didn’t happen.”

[...]

In Disinformation, Pacepa credits KGB operations with everything from plotting the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy to provoking the rise of Islamic extremism. In each scenario, he portrays himself as a witness to history — when his true rank and job description would never explain access to these events or decisions.

another similarly anti-communist catholic source is the catholic review, the official publication of the archdioces of baltimore. [link] they write:

Mr. Rychlak, the author of two books on Pope Pius and World War II, said he thinks Mr. Pacepa’s account needs to be verified in the Soviet archives. “Pacepa’s timing is questionable. Why hasn’t this story been revealed until now? I hope the United States government will declassify any information it has on this important matter, to spare the time a Freedom of Information Act request takes,” said Mr. Rychlak. John Cornwell, the British author of a 1999 book, “Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII,” told CNS he has never heard the claims described by Mr. Pacepa and considers them “most unlikely.” “As a supporter of NATO and the Western Alliance, it’s not inconceivable the pope could have been targeted (by the KGB). But I haven’t seen any credible documents indicating anyone doctored material,” said Mr. Cornwell, whose book was criticized by church officials for its negative portrayal of Pope Pius. Former colleagues of Mr. Pacepa, 79, expressed doubts about his story. “Between 1960 and 1962, when he pretends he ran Vatican spies, he was in Bucharest, assigned as a deputy in the techno-scientific section of Securitate (the Romanian secret police), where he stayed until he defected in 1978,” said a former high-ranking Securitate officer who would not allow his name to be used. “In the chain of command he would not have had direct communication with the KGB generals. If he did, that would make him a Soviet agent, not a Romanian one,” the source added. “In 1959, Pacepa was in Germany under diplomatic cover. He was a captain in Cologne with a degree in chemistry and belonged to the techno-scientific section. Again, the KGB generals wouldn’t have taken him into consideration,” said the source, who believes Mr. Pacepa is trying to build a “mysterious aura” for himself in his later years. “Why did he wait 29 years (since his defection) to reveal this? If it’s true, it would have made so much sense to put it on the table in 1981, after the Soviet-Bulgarian plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II,” the source said. A former Romanian diplomat of the communist era, who has advised the U.S. government, expressed “deep doubts” about the account. “Pacepa is not a serious source,” said the former diplomat. “His book ‘Red Horizons’ (1988) is about one-third fiction. He takes some real facts, and then invents. “I’m afraid he is just trying to bring attention to his persona. He invokes the Vatican because the Romanian Securitate has been exhausted and is a marginal issue,” he added. “Pacepa does not document. Given the gravity of the affirmations he makes, in order to be credible, he must unveil the source, himself, or otherwise it is fiction,” said the retired diplomat.

given Ion Mihai Pacepa's overall track record, i would certainly like to see some other source verifying the various claims that the "More Than A Century Of Antisemitism" cites from him, most especially the claim that the USSR distributed copies of the Protocols in arabic in the middle east, a claim I cannot find any other source for.

Edit: also i should note that one of the major thrusts of the "More Than A Century Of Antisemitism" document is to smear all criticism of Azov in Ukraine as somehow antisemitic, which is just ludicrous. regardless of how you feel about the war in Ukraine, there are legitimate criticisms to be made of Azov Battalion and the role they have played there.

[minervamagicka]

introduction / pinned post.

Howdy - I'm Maddie, but you can call me Minerva, minervamagicka or any of the three. I've been playing the Sims since 2010 and making CC for just about as long; though my current focus is Sims 4 equestrian-themed content in collaboration with my partner in crime, Schrodcat, who you can find on DA. Both of us will have a hand in just about everything that is to be released on this tumblr & to DA.

cc master folders

I've reorganized my SFS into folders that I'll be linking below for folks to refer to when searching for my CC. If you'd rather get everything in one go, this is the easiest way to do it!

Click here to view the SFS folder for all of my SIMS 3 content.

Click here to view the SFS folder for all of my SIMS 4 content.

These folders (or, well, just the TS4 folder) will have all of my CC added to them as its' released so they'll always be up to date!

p.s. if any creators would like an SFS code please message me!

donations

I'm not going to proselytize too much concerning my stance on modding and financial compensation here, as it could be an essay in and of itself. What it comes down to is this; everything I ever post for download will always be and always shall be 100% free. It will never be paywalled, hosted behind an ad.fly link or for purchase. However, for those who may want to buy me a coffee so I can fuel my caffeine addiction and keep posting at the speed of sound;

My Ko-Fi & SchrodCat's Ko-Fi / SchrodCat's Patreon

Again; financially supporting one, either or both of us will not grant access to anything exclusive or tangible beyond our gratitude. Additionally, donating with suggestions or requests will not mean those ideas will be automatically fulfilled as if they were a commission. This is just if you wish to express some thanks and get us some drinks!

requests / 'can you do xyz?'

I'm always happy to receive any requests or suggestions for what to release next, however me & S already have quite the list of personal ideas we want to get through first. Therefore, any requests we get will be secondary to those until we finish.

'what are you working on right now?'

S & I have set up a proper Trello board to track our progress on our original meshes & game conversions. You can view it here!

'how can i learn to mod?'

My friend Schrodcat wrote an excellent DA post on this topic with links to resources & some very solid advice on getting into CC creation or modding in general.

'you didn't make [xyz game model], how dare you convert it to the sims?!'

As I've seen an uptick in off-site concern over my [Game]toTS4 conversions, I'm adding this disclaimer to my pinned post that I do not convert models for profit, and I do so transformatively and as a fan of the original work. If it continues to bother you that I do so without the explicit permission/support of the games I port from, I kindly ask you to not engage and to leave my blog.

To learn more, I recommend reading my initial statement on my SSO ports, or, if you're interested in learning more about my stance on modding and my belief in the 'moral economy' of modding in general, this published journal covering the subject may of interest, or this journal article explicitly discussing the use of copyrighted material in modding.

🎊 latest release

→ [MMxSC] Loose Ring Snaffle Bridle

[themthouse]

The Internet Archive, Misinformation & the Problem of Digital Lending

I am in the embarrassing situation of having reblogged a post with misinformation. Specifically, the "Save the Internet Archive" post featuring the below image and its associated link to a website called "Battle for Libraries".

The post claims that the recent lawsuit the IA faced threatened all IA projects, including the Wayback Machine, which is not true. The link to a petition to "show support for the Internet Archive, libraries’ digital rights, and an open internet with uncensored access to knowledge" only has one citation, which is the internet archive's own blog.

After looking for more context, I found that even articles published from sources I trusted didn't seem to adequately cover the complexity of what is going on. Here's what I think someone who loves libraries but is hazy about copyright law and the digital lending world should know to understand what happened and why it matters. I am from the U.S., so the information below is specifically referring to laws protecting American public libraries. I am not a librarian, author or copyright lawyer. This is a guide to make it easier to follow the arguments of people more directly invested in this lawsuit, and the potential additional lawsuits to come.

Table of Contents:

First-Sale Doctrine & the Economics of E-books

Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)

The “National Emergency Library” & Hachette v. Internet Archive

Authors, Publishers & You

-- Authors: Ideology v. Practicality

-- Publishers: What Authors Are Paid

-- You: The Ethics of Piracy

First-Sale Doctrine & the Economics of E-Books

Libraries are digitizing. This is undisputed. As of 2019, 98% of public libraries provided Wi-Fi, 90% provided basic digital literacy programs, and most importantly for this conversation, 94% provided access to e-books and other digital materials. The problem is that for decades, the American public library system has operated on a bit of common law exhaustion applied to copyright known as first-sale doctrine, which states:

"An individual who knowingly purchases a copy of a copyrighted work from the copyright holder receives the right to sell, display or otherwise dispose of that particular copy, notwithstanding the interests of the copyright owner."

With digital media, however, because there isn't a physical sale happening, first sale doctrine doesn't apply. This wasn't a huge problem back in the early 2010s when most libraries were starting to go digital because the price of a perpetual e-book license was only $14 -- about the price of single physical book. Starting in 2018, however, publishers started limiting how long a single e-book license would last. From Pew Charitable Trusts:

"Today, it is common for e-book licenses from major publishers to expire after two years or 26 borrows, and to cost between $60 and $80 per license, according to Michele Kimpton, the global senior director of the nonprofit library group LYRASIS... While consumers paid $12.99 for a digital version, the same book cost libraries roughly $52 for two years, and almost $520 for 20 years."

Publishers argue that because it's so easy to borrow a digital copy of a book from the library, offering libraries e-book licenses at the same price as individual consumers undermines an author's right to license and profit from the exclusive rights to their works. And they're not entirely wrong about e-book lending affecting e-book sales -- since 2014, e-book sales have decreased while digital library lending has only gone up. The problem, they say, is that e-book lending is simply too easy. Whereas before, e-book sales were competing with the less-convenient option of going to the library and checking out a physical copy, there is essentially no difference for the reader between buying or lending an e-book outside of its cost.

Which brings us to the librarians, authors and lawmakers of today, trying to find any solution they can to make digital media accessible, affordable and still profitable enough to make a livable income for the writers who create the books we read.

Further Reading:

1854. Copyright Infringement -- First Sale Doctrine

The surprising economics of digital lending

Librarians and Lawmakers Push for Greater Access to E-Books

Publishing and Library E-Lending: An Analysis of the Decade Before Covid-19

Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)

Controlled digital lending is a legal theory at the heart of the Internet Archive lawsuit that has been proposed as one solution to the economic issue with digital media lending. This quick fix is especially appealing to nonprofits like the IA that are not government, tax-funded programs. Where many other solutions, like a legally enforced max price on e-book licensure for public libraries, would not apply to the IA, CDL would essentially be manipulating copyright law itself as a way to avoid e-book licensure altogether and would apply to the IA as well as public libraries.

Essentially, proponents of CDL argue that through a combination of first-sale and fair use doctrine, it can be legal for libraries to digitize the physical copies of books they have legally paid for and loan those digital copies to one person at a time as if they were loaning the original physical copy.

It is worth noting that the first-sale doctrine protecting physical media lending at public libraries does not cover reproductions:

“The right to distribute ends, however, once the owner has sold that particular copy. See 17 U.S.C. § 109(a) & (c). Since the first sale doctrine never protects a defendant who makes unauthorized reproductions of a copyrighted work, the first sale doctrine cannot be a successful defense in cases that allege infringing reproduction.”

This is where fair use comes in, which allows some flexibility in copyright law for nonprofit educational and noncommercial uses. Because the IA and other online collections are nonprofit organizations, proponents of CDL argue that they are covered by fair use so long as their use of CDL follows very specific rules, such as:

A library must own a legal copy of the physical book, by purchase or gift.

The library must maintain an “owned to loaned” ratio, simultaneously lending no more copies than it legally owns.

The library must use technical measures to ensure that the digital file cannot be copied or redistributed.

While this model first earned its name in 2018, it has been practiced by a number of digital collections like The Internet Archive’s Open Library since as early as 2010. It is important to know that controlled digital lending has never been proven officially legal in court. It is a theoretical legal practice that has passed by mostly unchallenged until the Internet Archive lawsuit. This is partially due to the fact that before releasing their official CDL statement in 2018, the IA had been honoring Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown requests of books in CDL circulation, which authors claim they are not always responding to or honoring anymore. The legality of CDL essentially depends on a judge's interpretation of current copyright law and whether they see the practice as an infringement, which would set a precedent for similar cases moving forward.

There are, however, U.S. court decisions that have rejected similar cases, like Capitol Records v. ReDigi, which argues that digital files (in this case, music files) cannot be resold without copyright holder’s permission on the grounds that digital files do not deteriorate in the same way that physical media does, implying that first sale doctrine doesn’t apply to digital media.

In 2019, the Authors Guild, a group of American authors who advocate for the rights of writers to earn a living wage and practice free speech, pointed out this court case in an article condemning CDL practices. They also argued that not only does CDL undermine e-book licensure (and therefore author profits off e-book sales), but it also would effectively shut down the e-book market for older books (the market for copyrighted books that were published before e-books became popular and are only being digitized and sold now). The National Writers Union has also released an “Appeal from the victims of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL),” that cites many of the same complaints.

Further Reading:

U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index

Position Statement on Controlled Digital Lending by Libraries

FAQ on Controlled Digital Lending [Released by NYU Law’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy]

Controlled Digital Lending Is Neither Controlled nor Legal

Appeal from the victims of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)

FAQ on Controlled Digital Lending [Released by the National Writers Union]

 The "National Emergency Library" & Hachette v. Internet Archive

While the Internet Archive is known as the creator and host of the Wayback Machine and many other internet and digital media preservation projects, the IA collection in question in Hachette v. Internet Archive is their Open Library. The Open Library has been digitizing books since as early as 2005, and in early 2011, began to include and distribute copyrighted books through Controlled Digital Lending (CDL). In total, the IA includes 3.6 million copyrighted books and continues to scan over 4,000 books a day.

During the early days of the pandemic, from March 24, 2020, to June 16, 2020, specifically, the Internet Archive offered their National Emergency Library, which did away with the waitlist limitations on their pre-existing Open Library. Instead of following the strict rules laid out in the Position Statement on Controlled Digital Lending, which mandates an equal “owned to loaned” ratio, the IA allowed multiple readers to access the same digitized book at once. This, they said, was a direct emergency response to the worldwide pandemic that cut off people’s access to physical libraries.

In response, on June 1, 2020, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House filed a lawsuit against the IA over copyright infringement. Out of their collective 33,000 copyrighted titles available on Open Library, the publishers’ lawsuit focused on 127 books specifically (known in the legal documentation as the “Works in Suit”). After two years of argument, on March 24, 2023, Judge John George Koeltl ruled in favor of the publishers.

The IA’s fair use defense was found to be insufficient as the scanning and distribution of books was not found to be transformative in any way, as opposed to other copyright lawsuits that ruled in favor of digitizing books for “utility-expanding” purposes, such as Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust. Furthermore, it was found that even prior to the National Emergency Library, the Open Library frequently failed to maintain the “owned to loaned” ratio by not sufficiently monitoring the circulation of books it borrows from partner libraries. Finally, despite being a nonprofit organization overall, the IA was found to profit off of the distribution of the copyrighted books, specifically through a Better World Books link that shares part of every sale made through that specific link with the IA.

It worth noting that this ruling specifies that “even full enforcement of a one-to-one owned-to-loaned ratio, however, would not excuse IA’s reproduction of the Works in Suit.” This may set precedent for future copyright cases that attempt to claim copyright exemption through the practice of controlled digital lending. It is unclear whether this ruling is limited to the National Emergency Library specifically, or if it will affect the Open Library and other collections that practice CDL moving forward.

Edit: I recommend seeing what @carriesthewind has to say about the most recent updates in the Internet Archive cases for a lawyers perspective of how these cases will effective the future of digital lending law in the U.S.

Further Reading:

Full History of Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive [Released by the Free Law Project]

Hachette v. Internet Archive ruling

Internet Archive Loses Lawsuit Over E-Book Copyright Infringement

The Fight Continues [Released by The Internet Archive]

Authors Guild Celebrates Resounding Win in Internet Archive Infringement Lawsuit [Released by The Authors Guild]

Relevant Court Cases:

Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.

Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust

Capitol Records v. ReDigi

 Authors, Publishers & You

This is where I’m going to be a little more subjective, because each person’s interpretation of events as I have seen has depended largely on their characterization and experience with the parties involved. Regardless of my own ideology regarding accessibility of information, the court ruling seems to be completely in line with current copyright law and precedent. Ironically, it seems that if the Internet Archive had not abandoned the strict rules regarding controlled digital lending for the National Emergency Library, and if they had been more diligent with upholding those rules with partner library loans prior to the NEL, they may have had a better case for controlled digital lending in the future. As is, I agree with other commentators that say any appeal the IA makes after this point is more likely to damage future digital lending practices than it is to save the IA’s current collection of copyrighted works in the Open Library. Most importantly, it seems disingenuous, and even dangerously inaccurate, to say that this ruling hurts authors, as the IA claimed in their response.

The IA argues that because of the current digital lending and sales landscape, the only way authors can make their books accessible digitally is through unfair licensing models, and that online collections like the IA’s Open Library offer authors freedom to have their books read. But this argument doesn’t acknowledge that many authors haven’t consented to having their works shared in this way, and some have even asked directly for their work to be removed, without that request being honored.

The problem is that both sides of this argument about the IA lawsuit claim to speak for authors as a group when the truth isn’t that simple.

Authors: Ideology v. Practicality

Those approaching the case from an ideological point of view, including many of the authors who signed Fight for the Future’s Open Letter Defending Libraries’ Rights in a Digital Age, tend to either have a history of sharing their works freely prior to the lawsuit (ex: Hanif Abdurraqib, who had published a free audio version of his book Go Ahead in The Rain on Spotify before Spotify began charging for audiobooks separately from their music subscriptions) or have alternative incomes related to their writing that don’t stem directly from book sales (ex: Neil Gaiman, who famously works with multiple mediums and adaptations of his writing).

In these cases, the IA lawsuit is framed as an ideological battle over the IA’s intention when releasing the National Emergency Library.

Many other authors, including a large number of smaller names and writers early in their careers, take a much more practical approach to the lawsuit, focused on defending their ability to monetarily profit off their works. This is by no means a reflection of their own ideology surrounding who has the right to information and whether libraries are worth protecting. Instead, it is a response to the fact that these authors love writing, and they simply would not be able to afford to continue writing in a world where they do not have the power to stop digital collections from distributing their copyrighted work without their consent. These include the authors, illustrators and book makes working with the Author’s Guild to submit their amicus brief in  Hachette v. Internet Archive.

These authors claim that controlled digital lending practices cause significant harm to their incomes in the following ways:

CDL undermines e-book licensing and sales markets, as most consumers would choose a free e-book over paying for their own copy.

CDL devalues copyright, meaning authors have less bargaining power in future contract negotiations.

CDL undermines authors ability to republish, whether as a reprint or e-book, out of print books once their publisher has ceased production. This includes self-publishing after the rights to their work have been returned to them.

CDL removes the income from public lending rights (PLR) that authors receive from libraries outside of the U.S. which operate on different lending and copyright standards.

The amicus brief provides first-person anecdotes from authors, including Bruce Coville of The Unicorn Chronicles, about how the rights to backlisted books, or books without an immediately obvious market, make up a huge portion of their annual salary. Jacqueline Diamond cites reissues of out-of-print novels as what kept her afloat during her breast cancer treatment.

It is worth noting that according to the Author’s Guild, some authors who originally signed Fight for the Future’s open letter defending the Internet Archive have even retracted their support after learning more about the specific lawsuit, including Daniel Handler, who writes under the pseudonym Lemony Snicket. The confusion stems from the use of the term “library” by both the Internet Archive and Fight for the Future. While authors overwhelmingly support public libraries, online collections like the Internet Archive don’t always fit the same role or abide by the same regulations as tax-funded public libraries. Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, has written the following:

“To this day, I am angry that Internet Archive tells the world that it is a library and that, by bootlegging my books, it is simply doing what libraries have always done. Real libraries do not do what Internet Archive does. The libraries that raised me paid for their books, they never stole them.”

Further Reading:

Amicus Brief [Submitted by the Author’s Guild]

Fight for the Future’s Open Letter Defending Libraries’ Rights in a Digital Age

Joint Statement in Response to Fight for the Future’s Letter Falsely Claiming that the Lawsuit Against Internet Archive’s Open Library Harms Public Libraries [Published by the Author’s Guild]

Copyright: American Publishers File for Summary Judgment Against the Internet Archive

 Publishers: What Authors Are Paid

Some of the commentators I’ve seen are disgruntled specifically with the publishers suing the Internet Archive, and I will say that many of these complaints are valid. The four publishing companies behind the lawsuits (Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House) are not known for the stellar treatment of their authors and employees. With the HarperCollins Publishers strike ending only a month before the IA lawsuit ruling, many readers are poised to support any entity at odds with one or more of the “Big Five” publishers. In this particular case, however, the power wielded by these publishing companies was used in defense of author’s rights to their works, for which The Authors Guild and other similar creator groups have expressed gratitude.

When it comes to finding solutions to the digital lending problem in general, it is important to understand what and how authors are paid for digital copies of their work. Jane Friedman has created the graphic below displaying the industry standards for the Big Five publishers. You can read more about agency and wholesome models here.

As you can see, authors and publishers alike benefit from e-book library licensure when compared to individual e-book sales, especially when you consider the time limits on library licensures. But advocates of this licensure model argue that the high prices for e-book licensure are designed to make up for the lost sales in e-books. While library goers buy more books than book buyers who don’t visit the library, the copies they buy typically vary by format. For example, a reader may borrow an audiobook from the library, decide they like it, and purchase a physical copy for their collection. While readers may buy a physical copy of a book after reading a physical library copy, they are unlikely to buy a digital copy after readying a digital library copy, making e-book lending a replacement for e-book buying in ways that physical lending doesn’t fully replace physical book purchases.

What ISN’T accounted for in this graphic is self-publication and what is known as a right of reversion. Depending on the wording of their contract, an author can request their publication rights be returned to them if the work in question is out of print and no longer being published. The publisher can then either return the work to “in print” status or return the rights to the author, who can then self-publish the work. In these cases, the 5-15% profit they would have made off their traditionally published book becomes a 35-70% profit as a self-published book. This is why authors are particularly frustrated with the IA’s argument that it is perfectly legal and ethical to release digital copies of books that are no longer in print. Those out-of-print works are where many authors earn their most reliable, long-term income, and they provide the largest opportunity for the authors to take control of their own works again and make fairer wages through self-publication.

The most obvious answer to this is that if authors are being the ones hit hardest by library and digital lending, then it is the publishers that need to treat their authors with better contracts. The fact that some authors are only earning 5% of profits on hardcover copies of their books (whether those are being sold to libraries or individuals) is eye opening. Alas, like the “we shouldn’t have to tip waiters” argument, this is much easier said than done.

Further Reading:

What Is the Agency Model for E-books? Your Burning Questions Answered

What Do Authors Earn from Digital Lending at Libraries?

You: The Ethics of Piracy

There are number of contributing factors to Tumblr’s enthusiasm for pirating. We are heavily invested in the media we consume, and it is easy to interpret (sometimes accurately) copyright as a weapon used by publishers and distant descendants of long-dead authors to restrict creativity and representation in adaptations of beloved texts. There are also legitimate barriers that keep us from legally obtaining media, whether that is the physical or digital inaccessibility of our local libraries and library websites, financial concerns, or censorship on an institutional or familial level. In fact, studies have found that 41% of book pirates also buy books, implying that a lot of illegal piracy is an attempt at format shifting (ripping CDs onto your computer to access them as MP3 files, for example, or downloading a digital copy of a book you already own in order to use the search feature).

The interesting thing is that copyright law in the U.S. has a specific loophole to allow for legal format shifting for accessibility purposes. This is due to the Chafee Amendment (17 U.S.C. § 121), passed in 1996, which focused on making published print material more available to people with disabilities that interfere with their ability to read print books, such as blindness, severe dyslexia and any physical disability that makes holding and manipulating a print book prohibitively difficult. In practice, this means nonprofits and government agencies in the U.S. are allowed to create and distribute braille, audio and digital versions of copyrighted books to eligible people without waiting for permission from the copyright holder. While this originally only applied to “nondramatic literary works,” updates to the regulations have been made as recently as 2021 to include printed work of any genre and to expand the ways “print-disabled” readers can be certified. Programs like Bookshare, Learning Ally, and the National Library Service for the Blind and Print-Disabled no longer require certification from a medical doctor to create an account. The Internet Archive also uses the Chafee Amendment to break their Controlled Digital Lending regulations for users with print disabilities. While applications of the Chafee Amendment are still heavily regulated, it is worth noting that even U.S. copyright law acknowledges the ways copyright contributes to making information inaccessible to a large amount of people.

Accessibility is not the only argument when discussing the morality of pirating. For some people, appreciation for piracy and shadow libraries comes from a background in archival work and an awareness how much of our historical archives today wouldn’t exist without pirated copies of media being made decades or even a century ago. But we have to be more careful about the way we talk about piracy. Though piracy is often talked about as a victimless crime, this is not always the case, and each one of us has a responsibility to critically think about our place in the media market and determine our own standards for when piracy is ethical. In some cases, such as the recent conversation surrounding the Harry Potter game, some people may even decide that pirating is a more ethical alternative to purchasing. Here are a few questions to consider when deciding whether or not to pirate a piece of media:

What other alternatives have you seen for legally purchasing, renting or borrowing a copy of this media?

Is the alternative to pirating this media purchasing it or not reading/referencing it at all?

Who does this particular piracy affect? Whether or not you think the creator(s) deserve to have their work pirated, you need to acknowledge there is someone who would otherwise be paid for their work.

If a significant portion of consumers pirated this work, what would the consequences be for future projects? Would you be willing to claim partial responsibility for that outcome?

I’m not making any moral statements about pirating as a whole, just noting that the way we discuss the consequences of pirating has a genuine effect on the media landscape. If you got this far,  thank you so much for reading! It is genuine work to try and understand the complexity behind every day decisions, especially when the topic at hand is as complicated as the modern digital lending crisis.

Further Reading:

Panorama Project Releases Immersive Media & Books 2020 Research Report by Noorda and Berens

The Chafee Amendment: Improving Access To Information

National Center on Accessible Educational Materials

National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled

Books For People With Print Disabilites: The Internet Archive

Bookshare

Learning Ally

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT SEO & MARKETING NEWS FOR ECOMMERCE, JULY 2024

If you are new to my Tumblr, I usually do these summaries of SEO and marketing news once a month, picking out the pieces that are most likely to be useful to small and micro-businesses.

You can get notified of these updates plus my website blog posts via email: http://bit.ly/CindyLouWho2Blog or get all of the most timely updates plus exclusive content by supporting my Patreon: patreon.com/CindyLouWho2

TOP NEWS & ARTICLES 

There is a relatively new way to file copyright claims against US residents, called The Copyright Claims Board (CCB). I wrote more here [post by me on Patreon]

After a few years of handwringing and false starts, Google is abandoning plans to block third-party cookies in Chrome. Both Safari and Firefox already block them. 

When composing titles and text where other keywords are found, it can be useful to have a short checklist of the types of keywords you need, as this screenshot demonstrates. While that title is too long for most platforms and search engines, it covers really critical points that should get mentioned in the product description and keyword fields/tags as well:

The core keywords that describe the item

What the customer is looking to do - solve a problem? Find a gift? Feel better? 

What makes the product stand out in its field - why buy this instead of something else? Differentiating your items is something that should come before you get to the listing stage, so the keywords should already be in your head. 

Relevant keywords that will be used in long tail searches are always great add-ons.

What if anything about your item is trendy now? E.g., sustainability? Particular colours, styles or materials/ingredients are always important.  

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google’s June spam update has finished rolling out. And here is the full list of Google news from June. 

Expect a new Google core update “in the coming weeks” (as if we needed more Google excitement).

Google’s AI overviews continue to dwindle at the top of search results, now only appearing in 7% of searches.

Despite Google trying to target AI spam, many poorly-copied articles still outrank the originals in Google search results. 

Internal links are important for Google SEO. While this article covers blogging in particular, most of the tips apply to any standalone website. Google also recently did a video [YouTube] on the same topic. 

Google had a really excellent second quarter, mostly due to the cloud and AI. 

Not Google

OpenAI is testing SearchGPT with a small number of subscribers. Alphabet shares dropped 3% after the announcement. 

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General

New social media alert: noplace is a new app billed as MySpace for Gen Z that also has some similarities with Twitter (e.g., text-based chats, with no photos or videos at this time). iOS only at the moment; no Android app or web page. 

Thinking of trying out Bluesky? Here are some tips to get the most out of it. 

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

Meta’s attempt at circumventing EU privacy regulations through paid subscriptions is illegal under the Digital Markets Act, according to the European Commission. “if the company cannot reach an agreement with regulators before March 2025, the Commission has the power to levy fines of up to 10 percent of the company’s global turnover.”

If you post Reels from a business page, you may be able to let Meta use AI to do A/B testing on the captions and other portions shown. I personally would not do this unless I could see what options they were choosing, since AI is often not as good as it thinks it is. 

Apple’s 30% fee on in-app ad purchases for Facebook and Instagram has kicked in worldwide as of July 1. 

Facebook is testing ads in the Notifications list on the app. 

Meta is encouraging advertisers to connect their Google Analytics accounts to Meta Ads, claiming “integration could improve campaign performance, citing a 22% conversion increase.”

Instagram

The head of Instagram is still emphasizing that the number of DM shares per post is a huge ranking factor. 

LinkedIn

Another article on the basics of setting up LinkedIn and getting found through it. 

You can now advertise your LinkedIn newsletters on the platform. 

Pinterest

Pinterest is slowly testing an AI program that edits the background of product photography without changing the product. 

Is Pinterest dying? An investment research firm thinks so. 

Reddit

If you want to see results from Reddit in your search engine results, Google is the only place that can happen now. 

More than ever, Reddit is being touted as a way to be found (especially in Google search), but you do have to understand how the site works to be successful at it. 

Snapchat

Snapchat+ now has 9 million paying users, and they are getting quite a few new personalization updates, and Snaps that last 50 seconds or less. 

Threads

Threads has hit 175 million active users each month, up from 130 million in February. 

TikTok

TikTok has made it easier to reuse your videos outside of the site without a watermark. 

TikTok users can now select a custom thumbnail image for videos, either a frame from the clip itself, or a still image from elsewhere.  

Twitter

You can opt out of Twitter using your posts as data for its AI, Grok. 

YouTube

YouTube has new tools for Shorts, including one that makes your longer videos into Shorts. 

Community Spaces are the latest YouTube test to try to get more fan involvement, while moving users away from video comments.

(CONTENT) MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies) 

Start your content marketing plans for August now, including back-to-school themes and Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday on August 13. 

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES) 

Google Ads now have several new updates, including blocking misspellings. 

Google’s new Merchant Center Next will soon be available for all users, if they haven’t already been invited. Supplemental feeds are now (or soon will be) allowed there. 

STATS, DATA, TRACKING 

Google Search Console users can now add their shipping and return info to Google search through the Console itself. This is useful for sites that do not pay for Google Ads or use Google’s free shopping ads. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

The second part of this Whiteboard Friday [video with transcript] discusses how consumer behaviour is changing during tight economic times. “People are still spending. They just want the most for their money. Also, the consideration phase is much more complex and longer.” The remainder of the piece discusses how to approach your target market during these times. 

Prime Day was supposedly the best ever for Amazon, but they didn’t release any numbers. Adobe Analytics tracked US ecommerce sales on those days and provides some insight. “Buy-now, pay-later accounted for 7.6% of all orders, a 16.4% year-over-year increase.”

MISCELLANEOUS

You know how I always tell small business owners to have multiple revenue streams? Tech needs to have multiple providers and backups as well, as the recent CrowdStrike and Microsoft issues demonstrate. 

If you used Google’s old URL shortener anywhere, those links will no longer redirect as of August 25 2024. 

[harlivies]

Legacies: The Little Spin-Off That Wouldn't

[Article translated into English below; access link above for original Portuguese version.]

With the first anniversary of Legacies' series finale long past us, it seems the appropriate time has finally come for us to reflect a bit on the various elements that led to the series not achieving the same kind of success as its predecessors. If you haven't seen this spin-off of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals in its entirety, don't worry; you didn't miss out on much. If, on the other hand, you followed the series and our reviews while it was on the air, you know we have a lot to discuss. So grab your favorite snacks, maybe a drink, and without further ado, let's get into it.

Created by Julie Plec, Legacies premiered in October 2018 on The CW. The spin-off provides a continuation to the story of Hope Mikaelson (played by Danielle Rose Russell since The Originals' fifth season), the descendant of some of the most powerful lineages of vampires, witches, and werewolves in the universe created by The Vampire Diaries. The teenager attends the Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted, a boarding school that aims to provide a safe haven for young supernatural beings, teaching them to control their powers and navigate the challenges of an adolescence which, albeit similar to that of ordinary mortals, isn't without its differences.

Despite a promising premise that had indeed worked in the past, Legacies came to an end after only four seasons, becoming one of the last series to succumb to the great purge of 2022. This cancellation was not received with much surprise by most of its audience, who, after a season marked by the departure of an original cast member, anticipated the inevitable. However, Legacies' failure can hardly be exclusively attributed to what happened during its final stretch, having the problems of "the little spin-off that wouldn't" started long before the final nail was ever hammered into its coffin.

The Forgotten Legacy

As a spin-off, Legacies inherited not only a well-established vast universe from its predecessors but also the obligation to find its own voice within it. It's quite the burden, but let's be honest: anyone who wanted to revisit The Vampire Diaries or The Originals could do so at any time, so something a little different wouldn't have been frowned upon. However, while there is much to be said about Legacies' distinct tone – and, believe me, we will get to it –, one of its cardinal sins will forever be the relationship of narrative neglect it maintained to the original series.

For a self-titled "legacies" show, Legacies always used its source material rather loosely, treating the inherited mythology and characters with carelessness. If its solid mythological foundation was disrespected and scattered with the introduction of the ill-fated "monster of the week," so were the very characters who were brought into this derivative of The Vampire Diaries. By name alone, Hope, Josie (Kaylee Bryant), and Lizzie (Jenny Boyd) are the "legacies" the series should've served. Instead, the baggage they had accumulated throughout both original series and its implications were often minimized to favor a more carefree plot, reducing the main trio to a mere shadow of what it could've been.

It's purely antithetical that Legacies sought to capitalize on the emotional connection its audience had to the source material all the while ignoring it entirely, but that didn't stop it from trying. This led to the existence of cameos and references that, in an attempt to evoke a nostalgic feeling, appeared at moments that contributed little to the plot. If, in The Originals, Hope's family moved heaven and earth for the young tribrid, in Legacies, they seemed too busy to provide any kind of support to the character until the ratings demanded it. As for Caroline's (Josie and Lizzie's mother, portrayed by Candice Accola) absence, although its reason was briefly explained at the beginning of the season, her mission hardly justified her being gone through circumstances that truly warranted her visit, with the character making her first and only appearance in Legacies' series finale.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

As previously mentioned, it's no secret that Legacies attempted to differentiate itself from the other series in its universe by adopting a lighter tone, opting for largely inconsequential narratives, caricatured villains, and a whole roster of stock characters. During its first season, this gave the show its own vibe, something akin to series like Legends of Tomorrow: a comic book series with a somewhat out-there premise, but still with rather captivating characters. However, Legacies quickly began to alternate between its decidedly camp style and a more serious tone in an attempt to rationalize its overall lack of seriousness. Thus, while one episode would present a more grounded reality, the next would return to its extravagant origins, giving rise to scenarios such as a musical, a dream world, and even an alternate universe.

This inconsistency in tone between episodes had a negative impact on the various storylines and how they were received. The constant change not only left the series' audience uncertain about what to expect from any given episode but also caused many important storylines to fall flat, their content and message often contrasting with the overall tone of that particular chapter.

It's fair to say Legacies tried to be a bit of everything: comedy, drama, fantasy, film noir, western – the list goes on. But thinking that this amalgamation of genres would result in a cohesive series was just another of the many mistakes made by the production. Continuing on this topic, whose inevitable conclusion is the maxim "less is more," Legacies was inconsistent even with its characters, introducing a too vast array of figures that, ultimately, it couldn't develop. Instead of focusing on the main and secondary characters it introduced during its first season, the series wasted its time not only with the monsters that appeared in each new episode, but also with so many figures whose impact on the narrative proved negligible. Eventually, this disregard was reflected in the loss of actors (such as Olivia Liang or Peyton Alex Smith) and characters of interest to the audience to more appealing projects.

A Wronged Protagonist

Werewolf, vampire, witch. These are the three factions from which Hope Mikaelson descends, making her the first tribrid in the The Vampire Diaries universe and one of the most powerful supernatural beings in its mythology. When dealing with characters as overpowered as Hope, there are several avenues writers can explore to lay the foundation for their conflict. They can create an even greater force to pose a challenge to the protagonist, or they can choose to present an internal struggle, for example. Ideally, good writers seek to develop both external and internal conflicts side by side. Legacies, however, relegated all of Hope's baggage to the background, neglecting all that made the character great in favor of a supernatural bulldozer that had little use beyond dealing with whatever threat was present at the time.

The primary conflict for a character like Hope Mikaelson should always be internal – that's a fact. In this particular case, Legacies had no shortage of material to work with, to the extent that it would be possible to write an entire article about its protagonist alone. Identity crises due to her unique position in the supernatural world, expectations associated with her lineage, the fear of becoming like her parents, ethical and moral issues related to her powers, the fear of losing those around her... These are just some of the many viable options the series had at its disposal but, unfortunately, chose not to explore.

Another criticism that must be leveled at how Legacies treated its protagonist related to the romantic relationship between the character and Landon Kirby (played by Aria Shaghasemi). For reasons that, in all honesty, I'm still unable to comprehend, higher powers believed it would be beneficial for the series to focus its narrative on Landon instead of Hope. Thus, storylines like that of Malivore – which initiated the external conflict of Legacies – gradually began to shift toward the character, placing Hope in a secondary position.

Finally, the very characterization of the protagonist suffered from the presence of Landon in her orbit. Any qualities or interests the young Mikaelson might've had faded over time. In a way (and taking the opportunity to make a Barbie reference), he was everything; she was just Hope.

The Risks Not Taken

The existence of a protagonist like Hope, all-powerful and always ready to save the day, was a factor that consistently contributed to the lack of perceived stakes throughout the series. Legacies had several other opportunities to raise the bar of its storyline but, like many other aspects discussed throughout this article, it chose the easiest path to tread. In general, whenever something a bit more daring happened, it quickly got resolved. This rule could be applied to almost everything within the show, from narrative threads that were concluded easily and inconsequentially to the deaths and subsequent resurrections of a handful of characters.

Combined with the fact that the narrative was almost circular in both its content and development, this regression in any kind of weighty decision resulted in a progressive loss of interest for an audience that, considering the unpredictability of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals, concluded that the spin-off was entirely too mild.

In summary, the series made promises it simply couldn't keep. Its initial marketing and the premise set forth during its first season had little to do with what the spin-off eventually became. Instead of a drama about the trials and tribulations of supernatural teenagers with a special focus on a trio of female lead characters, the audience ended up with a clash of titans between these same young adults and Greco-Roman gods. No, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the production of Legacies lost the plot.

Even with months separating the end of the series and the date I finish writing this article, it's impossible not to feel a certain level of frustration with this spin-off. Legacies had everything it needed to become a successful series, including feedback from the audience and numerous opportunities over time to correct its many mistakes, but it never did. Whether out of pride or stubbornness, it continued to dig its own grave by reinforcing everything its fans and critics complained about. For this reason, Legacies will forever live in my memory not as "the little spin-off that could" (an allusion to the folktale The Little Engine That Could), but rather as "the little spin-off that wouldn't."

You can revisit Legacies on Max.

[antinataliegroup]

Hi, so I came across your post about the PR relationship not being helpful to Austin Butler in anyway and I see this argument a lot. Its mostly from people who think they are real and want to prove that he gets nothing out of agreeing to be with her. They always toss out that he was nominated for an Oscar, won a bafta and a golden globe. It is their biggest thing to point out the fame he has *now*.

What so many seem to fail to realize, and I would like to open it up for discussion between us, is that he was first linked to her at the premier of the Elvis movie, meaning long before he was ever this famous. His contract started with her long before he was this award winning actor that was being talked about for his performance. Meaning that at the time that he entered the contract she was *technically* the more famous of the two. She could get him brand deals, and with her family connections could get him through doors he didn't have access to before. She could help further his career. But then Elvis took off and made him pretty much a list material and she was no longer needed.

She no longer served a purpose with his career and he was making connections all on his own without her anywhere in sight so it turned to giving her exposure and keeping him in the headlines no matter what. So now we get pointless pap shots, him reading her book club book to promote it, going to her fashion show to be supportive but he's also a face of the brand so would have been invited anyway. And since she has no big events that he can gain anything from we get dumb shots of them on vacation with her family to show how close they are. All which helps her and gives him nothing other than staying in the headlines... or so it would seem.

For those who will scream that the ride of Elvis is over he can end the contract... The strikes hit pretty rapidly after award season. Plus he is looking to produce a new movie, has a few coming out in the next few months. With the strikes in place he can't promote any of that... But all the articles that come out about him mention those projects reminding people that not only are they "together" but that dune is coming out, bikeriders is coming out, he's producing. The contract still serves a purpose for him and his career. I think long as the strikes go and he can't do self promotion for anything he will continue to be with Kaia.

Once the strikes ends and he doesn't need the relationship to keep his project names out there then it will end. At least this is what I think. I leave the floor open to you and any others that want to discuss this further.

LOVE your observation!! Sorry the late reply.

To answer in short: even if they were together BEFORE his career took off, it’s because normally you can see where things are going. Meaning they knew Elvis was going to take off!! So no, she actually came at the right time someone uses someone. It then because about EXTENDING the contract.

Austin is simply just uncomfortable around her and always indicated so. So I’m glad they’re over xx

[dandelionsresilience]

Good News - April 15-21

(Sorry it's late, I got sick)

Like these weekly compilations? Support me on Ko-fi! Also, if you tip me on here or Ko-fi, at the end of the month I'll send you a link to all of the articles I found but didn't use each week - almost double the content! (I'm new to taking tips on here; if it doesn't show me your username or if you have DM's turned off, please send me a screenshot of your payment)

1. Restoring an unsung hero

“"We are aiming to restore a significant area of seagrass around Nova Scotia, rebuilding these ecosystems and doing it in a climate-smart way," says Derek Tittensor, head of the FOME research group and a professor of biology at Dalhousie. "Importantly, we are also integrating Indigenous and scientific knowledge of these remarkable ecosystems through a two-eyed seeing approach.””

2. Four super-rare quolls caught sneaking around Australian wildlife sanctuary

““We had a mysterious case of cat-trap tampering whereby the traps were closed, the bait was gone but no culprit inside,” explains AWC Field Ecologist, Erin Barritt. [… T]he opportunistic little mischief-makers were juvenile western quolls, the first to be born on the sanctuary in 100 years.”

3. LGBTQ+ parents are raving about ‘accessible’ gender-neutral children’s book What Makes A Baby

““Overall I think this is a great book and a great representation of what inclusive media can look like. It incorporates a variety of perspectives and experiences to make something that is accessible to everyone.” The LGBTQ+ community – with parents in particular – praised “the accuracy of the terminology”, with one writing: “Human anatomy isn’t too much for children to learn and this book makes it so accessible for them to learn!””

4. Switch to green wastewater infrastructure could reduce emissions and provide huge savings according to new research

“Researchers have shown that a transition to green wastewater-treatment approaches in the U.S. that leverages the potential of carbon-financing could save a staggering $15.6 billion and just under 30 million tons of CO2-equivalent emissions over 40 years.”

5. Millions Offered Up To Create New Disability Employment Models

“[Projects] can focus on increasing access to advanced technology careers, using advanced technology to support youth or adults with disabilities to access competitive integrated employment or helping justice-involved youth with disabilities gain employment. In addition, projects can look at early intervention and workforce reintegration strategies for those with acquired disabilities or efforts to reintegrate disconnected individuals with disabilities into the workforce.”

6. Laser-Treated Cork Absorbs Oil for Carbon-Neutral Ocean Cleanup

“Cork comes from the bark of cork oak trees, which can live for hundreds of years. These trees can be harvested about every seven years, making cork a renewable material. When the bark is removed, the trees amplify their biological activity to replace it and increase their carbon storage, so harvesting cork helps mitigate carbon emissions.”

7. This boat runs on 100% renewables. Can it help clean up bigger ships?

“For the past seven years, Energy Observer has traveled around the world, serving as a floating test bed for zero-emission technologies that can propel boats and ships — without spewing any of the nasty pollution that comes from running diesel engines. […] The project’s leaders say they’re now ready to focus their efforts on cleaning up much larger and dirtier types of vessels, including cargo ships.”

8. 1,000 oceanic manta rays seen in the Maldives

“With 1,000 individuals in its waters, the Maldives is home to the world’s third largest population of giant mantas (it also has the most reef mantas (Mobula alfredi) in the world, with over 5,000 individuals).”

9. Service Finalizes Land Protection Plan for Expanding Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge

“Plan aims to deliver in-perpetuity conservation of up to 700,000 acres of land for benefit of migratory and resident wildlife. […] "These vast grassland landscapes provide essential habitat for wildlife while also providing benefits like clean water filtration and carbon sequestration, which are essential for both the environment and human well-being."”

10. Medicaid Officials Remove Barriers For Those With Disabilities

“In addition [to grace periods for submitting paperwork], states will no longer be allowed to conduct renewals any more than once every 12 months and they will be barred from requiring in-person interviews for people with disabilities, among other changes.”

And a bonus article to make up for posting late: Gay Furry Hackers strike again!

April 8-14 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[theoutcastrogue]

Distributed Denial of Secrets — the nonprofit transparency collective that hosts an ever-growing public library of leaked and hacked datasets for journalists and researchers to investigate — has been a major source of news for organizations like the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, BBC News, Al Jazeera, the Associated Press, Reuters, and Fox News, among others. It has published datasets that shed light on law enforcement fusion centers spying on Black Lives Matter activists, revealed Oath Keepers supporters among law enforcement and elected officials, and exposed thousands of videos from January 6 rioters, including many that were used as evidence in Donald Trump’s second impeachment inquiry. (Disclosure: I’m an adviser to DDoSecrets.) But not everyone is a fan. DDoSecrets has powerful enemies and has found itself censored by some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit. The governments of Russia and Indonesia are also censoring access to its website. Shortly before the 2020 election, Twitter prevented users from posting links to a New York Post article based on documents stolen from Hunter Biden’s laptop, citing a violation of the company’s hacked materials policy. After intense pressure from Republicans, Twitter reversed course two days later. This was widely covered in the media and even led to congressional hearings. What’s less well known is that earlier in 2020, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter uprising, Twitter used the same hacked materials policy to not only permanently ban the @DDoSecrets account, but also prevent users from posting any links to ddosecrets.com. This was in response to the collective publishing the BlueLeaks dataset, a collection of 270GB of documents from over 200 law enforcement agencies. (German authorities also seized a DDoSecrets server after the release of BlueLeaks, bringing the collective’s data server temporarily offline.) When Elon Musk bought Twitter, which he has since renamed X, he promised that he would restore “free speech” to the platform. But Musk’s company is still censoring DDoSecrets; links to the website have been blocked on the platform for over three years. Lorax Horne, an editor at DDoSecrets, told The Intercept that they are “not surprised” that Musk isn’t interested in ending the censorship. “We afflict the comfortable, and we include a lot of trans people,” they said. “Transparency is not comforting to the richest people in the world.” [keep reading]

[meret118]

The system red states are constructing works by empowering extreme ideologues and partisans to impose their will on their communities, whatever level of popular support they happen to enjoy. Dissenters get the right to set public health and educational policy, overriding the judgment of elected school boards and expert regulators. Anti-abortion vigilantes and anti-LGBTQ+ extremists are empowered to surveil their neighbors and rewarded for bringing legal proceedings against them. Lax open-carry laws, immunity from criminal prosecution, promises of kid-glove treatment from police and prosecutors, and pardons when “leftist” prosecutors try to crack down on right-wing thuggery signal to militias and other reactionary radicals that they can engage in political violence with near impunity.

Examples abound. This year, Indiana’s Republican attorney general, Todd Rokita, launched a website with the Orwellian name “Eyes on Education.” The website invites informants to report on teachers who share “objectionable curricula, policies, or programs”; it also posts personally identifying information that can easily be used to dox or harass educators. Among the “objectionable” materials reported through the site is an email from a superintendent who vowed to “address societal injustice in our classrooms” in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. After Florida enacted its Safety in Private Spaces Act, banning transgender people from using state-owned bathrooms that match their gender identity, transgender and cisgender residents alike have reported being assaulted by bystanders claiming that they “don’t belong” in public restrooms. Localordinances designed by Jonathan Mitchell, the lawyer behind Texas’ anti-abortion bounty-hunter scheme, use vigilantes to target individuals who cross state lines to secure abortions. Georgia is implementing changes to its electoral rules that practically invite hardcore partisans to disrupt the certification of election results, a strategy with origins in the 2000 presidential election that MAGA leaders returned to in 2020 and 2022.

. . .

one of the most widely reported proposals in Project 2025 is its threatened “campaign to enforce the criminal prohibitions” of the Comstock Act “against providers and distributors of abortion pills.” That law, enacted in 1873 amid a sexual-purity crusade, purports to make it illegal to mail any “article or thing … intended for producing abortion.” For decades, federal agencies under both Republican and Democratic administrations interpreted the Comstock Act narrowly, to apply only when the person mailing an article or thing intended that it be used unlawfully. Reversing this long-standing position would trigger not only a wave of federal criminal prosecutions, as speakers at the Democratic National Convention stressed. It would also kick off a surge of vigilante lawsuits under local laws that authorize ordinary citizens to enforce federal abortion restrictions.

More at the link.

[shrimpmandan]

Hello! I have a question about evaluating and understanding scientific sources. You seem to be interested in that sort of stuff, so I figured I'd pop over and ask. Feel free to answer or not answer, whatever you wish.

What is the difference between a scientific study, a review, a meta-analysis, and a commentary? I am asking because I am confused on how to interpret some reading I looked into while researching on gender identity and sexuality.

This commentary states that, "No evidence has shown gender identity to be innate." A paragraph in the commentary goes on to say that, "Much has been made of differences in brain structure and activation between transgender and cisgender people, but the significance of that work is unclear. Differences are found in regions with no obvious ties to gender identity. There is little work on the neural substrate of gender identity itself, and it is unclear how cortical thickness, white matter microstructure, or activation to various stimuli have conceptual relevance for gender identity. But, even if such differences are better understood, they do not necessarily reflect predetermined or innate behaviour. The brain is plastic, and changes in response to behaviour and environmental input. Brain differences between transgender and cisgender people may simply reflect (or result from) their behavioural differences and not mark a cause of their gender identity."

I am a bit confused on how to understand this information, because the commentary doesn't cite any specific work in this paragraph that I can compare it to. Why do numerous studies discuss differences in the brain affecting gender identity itself if the differences "do not necessarily reflect predetermined or innate behavior?" I think I am missing a piece of the puzzle here in understanding the material.

I just realized I technically asked more than one question, but I gave the example because it's what got me confused on interpreting this information and relating it to other information, as well as on what exactly a commentary is. Thank you for reading over this post.

From what I understand, a meta-analysis is a systematic review that draws from multiple studies, instead of just citing one specific one. Commentaries can depend, because they can either be judging a source by the quality of its arguments, or simply be an author giving their own subjective opinion on a matter that isn't meant to be taken as strictly scientific. Sometimes it's both.

The commentary you cited seems to be mostly the former, with it criticizing the validity of the arguments made by people who support the idea of gender identity being innate. It could absolutely be influenced by unconscious biases that the author holds, but that can go for people in support of innate gender identity too. It's easy to say "there's no proof of gender being innate", when it's just human nature to seek out sources that confirm our own preconceived notions about how the world works (confirmation bias). Same goes for people trying to prove the inverse.

So in short: the commentary is just that. Someone commenting on a study or a multitude of studies pertaining to their own field of expertise, and criticizing the validity of those studies in relation to what they were trying to claim. I do think we have a long way to go in understanding the human brain myself, even if I do lean heavily towards neurological sex being a real thing. Doesn't mean scientists and random people won't keep trying to debate whether it truly exists or not, though. It's kind of in a weird spot right now.

Link that further explains what a commentary is:

[nuttyblizzardflower]

How do I create an email sequence for contacts within a given segment Product Support

Inhaltverzeichnis

Company

Finally, around email three or four, you’ll make a call to action, asking them to make a purchase. Start with an email that provides instant value to make an excellent funnel sequence. This could be a link to an industry report or an interesting article. This cadence walks these new leads through the awareness, consideration, and decision stages, ending in a call to purchase.

Also, consider making re-engagement sequences that make people feel excited about continuing a relationship with your brand. Numerous other possibilities exist, such as if people didn’t understand your product or service or only intended to use your company to fulfill a one-time need. Once a person has a few days to work with the material in the first onboarding message, it’s smart to send another to address any possible frustrations. So, if you use this kind of email autoresponder series, it’s essential to have something in your automation tool that recognizes if a recipient acts on the offer.

Sequence 15: Nudge long-term customer to upgrade to annual subscription

A truly clean, unique, perfectly up to date CRM is the white whale of every revenue leader ever. With Clay, you can keep your CRM truly up -to-date on your team’s most important data points without any manual steps. After you build some data prompting skills, turn to the final frontier - AI copywriting.

It is quick and easy to get started and offers a simple, handy option for small businesses that don’t need the latest tools innovative tech companies are after. SendX allows you to create automated email sequences that are triggered based on specific actions such as subscribing to a newsletter, making a purchase, or abandoning a shopping cart. Email drip campaigns are easier to set up compared to automation as the content in automation keeps changing. Automation sequence on the other hand will be benefited heavily if the segment of the user is well defined.

Company

That content could be a white paper, a downloadable checklist, or an ebook, to name but a few. Make the first email in your drip sequence exceptionally catchy, but be sure it doesn’t seem like junk email sequencer mail. Moreover, there are different sequences to use, depending on the purpose. However, succeeding in that aim is imperative, especially since email recipients have so many possible distractions.

Perhaps you’re wondering how to create the best email marketing sequence.

Its advanced segmentation capabilities enable you to target specific audiences, while its customizable templates and drag-and-drop email editor make it easy to create engaging email content.

You can create an email sequence using specialized software like Saleshandy to create and manage your email sequences.

The next email in the sequence should come at a time when the average game player would have recently used up their complimentary gold bars.

The thing is on free plans, ChatGPT is still the king when it comes to structure, but Claude is much more elegant in actual content creation.

Every email sequence should be carefully crafted with a clear objective, whether to re-engage an existing customer or convert a lead to a sale. Triggers within an email sequence can also determine the specific journey the sequence will take. Automated email sequences make your everyday marketing life so much easier. List cleaning is good for everyone – it makes room for people ready to be connected with you, and it improves your deliverability and open rates over the long term. Drew Sanocki, the CEO of AutoAnything and former CMO of Karmaloop,, talks about how tripwire marketing really helps retain repeat customers and increase profitability. Trip-wire marketing is getting a customer to buy a smaller or more inexpensive product from you to ensure repeat customer retention going forward.

What is email Sequence-R, and can it benefit my business?

Campaign Monitor is an email marketing platform that provides email sequence automation for businesses of all sizes. Selecting the right email sequence software allows you to streamline your sales processes, automate your email marketing campaigns, and drive better results in 2024. In conclusion, email sequence software has become essential for businesses looking to streamline their sales automation and maximize their efficiency in email marketing campaigns.

Follow-up sequences work exceptionally well if the downloadable content comes via a dedicated link that expires after a week or two. The content informs people that the company behind the event does more than just one festival per year. The best email marketing sequence can anticipate a person’s needs before they address them, and this example does that well. Those minimize the possibility of the recipient thinking it’s too hard to get the information they need to feel confident about finishing the purchase. But, the subject line should contain information that’s intriguing or makes people feel like they’re missing out if they don’t read the message. The language you use varies depending on if you’re trying to get a person to buy something from a sale, sign up for a subscription or take part in another activity that helps your company.

We've helped companies like [similar companies or case studies] achieve [specific results]. I'd love to explore how we can do the same for [Prospect's Company]. 4th email - Provide a brief update, restate the value proposition, and encourage the prospect to ask any questions or provide feedback. 2nd email - Share a resource aligning with the customer's interests, demonstrating your expertise, and offering immediate value. Smartlead empowers recruiters to optimize lead gen through effective communication. Put a lot of effort into brainstorming all the ways you could accomplish these goals, and don’t limit yourself.

It's not only about cost savings; it's about ensuring that the software onboarding and usage process isn't a drain. For instance, instead of "Sign Up", use "Get My Free Guide Now". By emphasizing the value that taking action will provide, you're more likely to engage your readers and motivate them to click. Here is an example of a nurture sequence from Harry’s educating about their products after we signed up for their email list. Nurture sequence is all about converting a lead into a paying customer.