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dandelionsresilience · 6 months ago

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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.)

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hotvintagepoll · 8 months ago

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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.

#asks #housekeeping #lillian gish #miriam cooper

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gallopinggallifreyans · 5 months ago

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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 :)

#ana says stuff #tagamemnon #roman economy #numismatics #just-late-roman-republic-things

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dalishious · 5 months ago

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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,

#ask #blocklist

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wanderingnork · 4 months ago

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Gith Deep Dive: The Illithiad, The Mind Flayer Trilogy, and the Forerunners

Ask and ye shall receive: this option won the poll on what I should deep dive first. Two thousand words later, please enjoy.

We all know the basic story of the gith: a massive, terrifying illithid empire was brought down by a slave revolt led by a warrior named Gith. The unified rebellion tore apart the empire, but then fell to internal fighting, leaving the githyanki and githzerai forever separated. It's virtually identical in every source, with only tiny changes. Whatever happens after that, this is the one thing everyone can agree on.

But where did the gith come from before the illithids?

ORIGINS

Over the course of D&D history, we get a few glimpses into the earliest days of the gith, before they were even called that. No real attempts were made in 4th or 5th Edition to get into the deep history of the githyanki, but 2nd Edition (2E) and Edition 3.5 (just 3.5) both give us a look. First, back in 2E, the book Planescape: A Player’s Guide to the Planes (p.12). Here, the gith are simply originally from the Prime Material Plane, in a place called Gith—notably, the legendary figure herself is absent from this telling, although she's not missing from "A Guide to the Astral Plane" and other 2E sources. Probably a case of discontinuity. Unsurprising, considering just how many 2nd Edition Planescape books were published!

As for 3.5, we get several tastes of the possible origin story. First, there's the empire of Zarum, on the world of Oerth (home of the Greyhawk campaign setting). It appears in three linked sources for the Chainmail Miniatures game (Chainmail Miniatures, Set 2: Blood & Darkness; Dragon #294 – Chainmail: Underground Scenarios; Dragon #298 – Wizards' Workshop: Chainmail). Zarum is no more than subterranean ruins now, with its crumbled former capital serving as a drow outpost, and only hints of its mysterious inhabitants remaining.

In the "Invasion of Pharagos" campaign concept, published in Polyhedron magazine #159, a small planet is presented as the ancestral home of the githyanki. The long-dead body of their patron goddess, a deity of patience and perseverance who was killed at the height of Gith's rebellion, still lies buried and forgotten under the crumbling ruins of their greatest city. There aren't many further details given, since the focus of the article is on githyanki PCs and how they would participate in the invasion as Vlaakith's servants.

Finally, the strangest origin theory of all comes from the Lords of Madness sourcebook. Here, it's revealed that the illithids are actually a species from the future. Under attack by an unknown and terrible enemy, they traveled backwards from the end of time itself to reestablish their empire in the past. They might have enslaved the gith progenitors upon arrival. Or the alternative: "The base race from which [the githyanki and githzerai] derived is unknown; gith progenitors might have been brought to the distant past from the illithid empire at time’s end…" (p.73)

That's a whole lot to unpack right there.

Regardless of which of these, if any, is the true story, there's a source that allows us to meet these earliest gith—quite simply called the Forerunners.

Continued below the cut, because this is so incredibly long.

THE ILLITHIAD

The Illithiad is a huge volume for 2nd Edition D&D which sets up a lot of the illithid lore we take for granted these days. The various illithid Creeds, the society, Ilsensine, the biology, all of it had its full genesis here. Of course, it discusses the gith. The details of the githyanki are typical and unexceptional, although it includes one of the most spectacularly spooky pieces of githyanki art ever.

(Credit to artist James Crabtree.)

The Illithiad supports a trilogy of adventures, the "Mind Flayer Trilogy," in which player characters undertake a quest to stop illithids from destroying every sun and star in the multiverse.

Yeah.

While the first adventure just sets up the whole production, introducing the illithid plot and giving the adventurers reason to take action, it's in the second adventure of the trilogy (Masters of Eternal Night) where the Forerunners make their appearance. The player characters, after an extended journey while an unnatural winter rages around them, discover an ancient, crashed illithid ship in the center of a crater. In the first area they enter, they discover the skeletons of humanoids and an illithid who died in combat. A player can identify a skeleton as something like githyanki and githzerai, but the text reveals the truth: the skeletons are far more ancient than that. They're the remnants of the forerunner species. The ship crashed during an escape from the gith rebellion.

Dozens of skeletons litter the ship. Some still in prison, many with holes punched in their skulls by long-ago tentacles, some with weapons in hand. One eerie discovery in a chamber full of supplies for taking care of thralls is a sealed elixir of youth. In 2E, the elixir of youth could make a humanoid drinker younger by two to five years. Although an illithid could certainly use this, since it's qualified as a humanoid in that edition, the presence of the elixir among other supplies intended for thralls would suggest it was also designed for their use. I don't really want to go too deep into why this is awful, so I'll leave it to your imagination.

Finally, though, we meet some living beings. In the garden of the ship, there's a single surviving forerunner, kept alive by the strange temporal magic of the ship. Anyone who speaks the modern gith language can manage to communicate simply with him: his name is Bomwe and he has no concept of a world beyond illithid control. The players can get little information out of the terrified man, and if they convince him to accompany them he'll obey any mind flayer without question.

Deeper inside the ship, a group of forerunners, armed and wearing "headmeshes" that protect against illithid psionics, is on the verge of overcoming a group of illithids. The DM narration is clear that if the players don't get involved, the forerunners have an 80% chance of victory. It's a guarantee if the players do jump in to help. This group, prior to the crash millennia ago, was part of the rebellion, and they were ready to win.

The leader of the group is fascinating. Going by name of Nilton, he wears illithid-skin-leather armor, a headmesh, and carries a spiked club—armed to the teeth by ancient standards. He can read a little of the illithid script, which usually requires four tentacles as well as psionic ability. He has the morale level "Fearless," meaning that barring truly exceptional circumstances he will never flee from a foe. In his statistics, he has a psionic power called "molecular rearrangement," which in its most potent form allows transmuting lead to gold or metal to glass merely by thinking. Most commonly, though, it's used to temper and strengthen weapons. A psionicist with weaponsmithing abilities can create a magic weapon simply by thinking. (Complete Psionics Handbook, AD&D 2nd Edition, p.35)

This gives some sense of what the rebellion under Gith might have looked like. Slaves armed with whatever they could carry, wearing the skin of their former masters for armor, with leaders capable of reshaping matter with their thoughts and withstanding any fear the illithids could throw at them. If Nilton is representative of an average leader, one can only imagine what Gith herself would have been like.

Given what we hear in the game Neverwinter Nights 2, that Zerthimon crafted the first silver sword for Gith, perhaps he did it with the use of psionics—transmuting a piece of wood or bone into a weapon fit for a queen.

TO PENUMBRA

Although Nilton will assist the characters during the remainder of the exploration of the ship, he's not mentioned again directly in the adventure. Nor is he mentioned in the opening of the final adventure of the trilogy, "Dawn of the Overmind." Hard to believe he wouldn't try to come along, though, considering that the adventurers are on their way to stopping the rise of a new illithid empire.

This adventure carries players, aboard a nautiloid ship, to the distant planet of Penumbra. It's an artificial construction, a planet-sized disc hovering in space that was once the seat of illithid power at the height of the empire. It's here that we meet the modern forerunners of the gith: the branch of the species that never left the world once ruled by the mind flayers. From here on out, I'll just refer to them as the Penumbrans.

Unlike their downright skeletal cousins among the modern gith, the Penumbrans just look like gaunt, long-limbed humans. They have black eyes, bone-colored skin, and slightly pointed ears. Only one in a hundred Penumbrans possesses any real psionic ability, unlike their universally-psionically-gifted ancestors or modern cousins. Due to the sheer size of Penumbra, millions of Penumbrans live on the disc. Some live in kingdoms, some in clans, and some—like the villagers in this adventure—live subsistence lives surrounded by monsters in the dark.

See, Penumbra's sun has been almost fully blocked out by the illithid construction. The entire planet exists in perpetual twilight, meaning that the Penumbrans all have night vision. Their eyes glow like cats' eyes in firelight (and yes, that's in a sidebar).

No one on the disc has any memory of the rebellion thousands of years ago, or any idea that they have strange cousins living on other planes. Their language is close enough to the modern gith langauge that a character who speaks it can communicate basic ideas. But, all things considered, the Penumbrans are almost a completely different species. Their role in the adventure is to set the players on the right path and give them a refuge from the dangers of Penumbra.

Although the village's chieftain has a psionic longsword, these aren't the silver-sword-wielding pirates and matter-shaping monks that players know and love. These are shepherds and weavers, who raise alien sheep and wield bronze swords at best. For players who don't plan to stay on Penumbra after the adventure is over and the illithids are stopped, the Penumbrans are just a poignant vision of what the gith elsewhere in the multiverse could have become.

MUTATION

This is where that vision takes a turn for the tragic. In the lair of one of the adventure's major villains, a pair of bizarre "tumerogenesis tanks" can be found. Any character who makes the fucking boneheaded decision to drink from the tanks (or worse, dive in) suffers a massive seizure. Then, if they're unlucky enough to fail a "system shock" roll, they start violently mutating. Their organs might climb out of their body, bits of their bodies might explode, and—my personal favorite—an arm might simply drop off and crawl away of its own accord. On the other hand, they might gain a wildly beneficial mutation: weapon invulnerability, psionic powers, and more.

Of course, this is a fun hazard and temptation for impulsive players. But it's a starkly disturbing piece of lore. While the githyanki and githzerai all hold strongly that it was their own will that gave them the strength to overcome the illithids, there's a chance that some of the ancient forerunners were put through genetic experimentation to change them into a better fighting force. Psionic, spiritual, and physical gifts, as well as changes to the body, could all have resulted from experimentation.

The Penumbrans, looking so human and lacking in gith psionics, might well be the forerunners who were never put through this mutation process.

Historical records from the period have all been destroyed. And, according to sources in all later editions of D&D, the consensus is that the forerunners acquired their power simply by ambient exposure and selective reproduction by illithids. Still, this idea lingers—that maybe the illithids truly created their own worst enemy.

If that's true, the gith may never escape the touch of their most hated enemies, even if they were to wipe out every mind flayer in the multiverse.

#githyanki #githzerai #d&d lore #bg3 #nork rants #stay tuned for next time: the weirdest dragon magazine lore

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leviathan-supersystem · 8 months ago

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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.

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minervamagicka · 1 year ago

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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

#pinned post #ts3 #ts4

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themthouse · 2 years ago

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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]

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

#Internet archive #IA lawsuit #digital lending #libraries #digital libraries #open library #controlled digital lending #national emergency library

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cindylouwho-2 · 4 months ago

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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.

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 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.

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.

#seo #ecommerce #social media #cindylouwho2 #search engine optimization #content marketing

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harlivies · 1 year ago

Text

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.

#legacies #the originals #the vampire diaries #hope mikaelson #josie saltzman #lizzie saltzman

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