#the advertising industry is killing the planet

[anxi0us-0p0ssum]

How many jobs exist purely to cut down trees, grind them into pulp, press the pulp into paper, print advertisements on them, and deliver them to every mailbox in the targeted area?

How much CO2 could we avoid pumping into the atmosphere if useless bulk advertising mail didn’t exist?

I think the moment that convinced me the operating logic of our society is truly fucked in a way that cannot merely be reformed was after that eclipse in 2017 when the articles started coming out about how much money had been lost by productivity dropping from people stopping momentarily to watch it happen. To measure the world by the metric of the dollar to such a devotion that any cult leader would be jealous of that you would look at one of the most sublime experiences in nature which we, our ancestors, and even a not insignificant number of non-human species, have been observing in awestruck wonder for millennia, and decide that such a moment of profundity is something to be fought and preferably expunged from the human experience because it briefly impacts quarterly revenue.

It's a feeling that has been coming up repeatedly, but with increasing frequency in the last few years. That being: what is all of this for? Where are we going? Nobody who defends the status quo can seem to answer it. What's the point of an uninterrupted quarterly revenue stream if we can't even look at an eclipse every few years? What's the point of hustling and grinding 50, 60, 70 hour weeks if you never have time to have dinner with your friends, talk to your family on the phone, but on a bigger spectrum, what's the point of all of that if you still don't have any way of retiring in the future? With the way that our lives are being increasingly monetized and squeezed every second, what is there to look forward to?

[trinrose3]

Not to be conspiratorial on main but fuck if this is true 😭😭😭😭

Honestly I think that’s not TOO far off from what I think is happening but the YouTubers aren’t the main point here, it’s the animation industry itself! considering what recently happened with HBO Max and Warner brothers (and now Netflix) and the cancelation of mutiple GOOD animated series, especially ones that actually CARED about good rep it wouldn’t be too far off to say this is just adding fuel to the anti original “woke” animate series that’s been happening. Like take Disney for example they purposely remove and “forget” to advertise shows and movies (like Strange Planet and TOH) that have actual representation so that they can say “oh these shows don’t do as well let’s not make more”.

they’re doing almost the same thing with this. They knew it was gonna be shit which is why they were TOLD not to included scooby in the show.

also im SURE they’re aware of the distaste people for for the “riverdale” effect that reboots have been having. They’re purposefully making it unappealing to EVERYONE and THATS why critics can’t figure out who it’s target audience is for. It’s whole purpose is that there ISNT one. they’re already getting rid of all the original animated content. What’s next? The reboots. The only thing really left for mainstream 2D(!!) animation at that point would be ads (and MAYBE a few games). And we’ll we all know how we feel about those… they’re purposefully trying to kill the industry, specifically, a very UNIONIZED industry. Now THATS my conspiracy theory lmao

anyways support small animation studios and creators except for vivziepop :)

[swamp-spirit]

Got tagged by @redhoodinternaldialectical

My word is ENOCH, so the prompt is to go through a WIP file to find paragraphs starting with those letters and share a snipper. Enjoy some previews from my Superhero Thesis Novel and a junky xeno space lesbian romance.

Even talking was too loud.

“I’ll do her make-up with a little extra foundation and she’ll look fine,” Liz said. “You know I’m a miracle worker.”

She really was. When corporate realized there wasn’t a single professional make-up artist in all of Northern Nevada that could do dark skin who hadn’t already moved to Vegas, Liz was recruited off her social media make-up tutorials, and Sara had been nervous. Liz was a fan, and fans tended to be disappointed when their heroes were people, but she’d been…

She’d been a good friend, really. That was hard to find for heroes. You could only give your secret identity outside the industry if you were married, which meant lying a lot, but Liz hung out with her on days off and had her back at work. Kim could well get Liz fired, but Liz was confident in her skill.

The dehydration was too bad to sleep, but she wasn’t up for audiobooks or music, so she just lay back, wishing the roads were smoother. Maybe Bloom could campaign against potholes.

The IV was finally starting to kick in when her tablet buzzed.

“Fire. It’s an all hands,” Sara said, sitting up. “And Kim, before you say anything, we still have three hours before the shoot, and we can tell them we’ll be a little late due to the huge fucking fire, okay? Because if it gets out everyone else was saving homes and I was advertising strawberry milk, they’ll crucify me.”

Nexus was the only planet in the system where aliens were common, and even then, it was usually Batk-Hy. She’d never seen an alien in person. Humans were famous for their unprotected skin. Their name translated to ‘a bare heart under armor’, something that could refer to the contrast between their brutal and affectionate reputations or provide helpful instructions for killing them.

What did a sentient creature with no fur or scales look like in person? Were they slimy like exposed muscle or dry like sandstone?

“It is my honor to meet you all. I have been kindly granted the name Mist-Rolling-in-Across-the-Harbor. My shortname is to be ‘Harbor’.”

The human’s accent was perfect. Their voice was a bit odd, and she finally looked over to see if it had a throat injury.

Oh. Of course. Its voicebox wouldn’t be flexible enough to talk properly.

It was small, only up to Dawn’s shoulder, and without the armor she’d seen in pictures. It was dressed for the local heat in light cloth. The skin didn’t look slimy or dry; it looked like soft fabric.

Once Dawn was safely married out… it would be a relief to be an orphan. She would no longer be asked to be a spy to her own mate. She could forget her past and make a better life with her new family, raise her children with affection and gentleness. If she didn’t like the family she married into, she’d be free to divorce, take anyone or no one as her mate, go to another planet. Go to another Solar System where House Mist meant nothing.

If Harbor tried to kill her, however, she was screwed. Killing Dawn was as easy as turning off her heater on a cold night.

Well, if Uncle Close didn’t know how to win a human’s loyalty, Dawn would have to learn how to do it right. She didn’t need a loyal tool. She just needed, if Harbor ever realized how many of her problems could be solved with murder, not to be one of those problems.

"Course. How’s your day going?”

Listening to her complain about office politics was a nice break from hero stuff. He’d been seeing too much of the kind of stuff nobody filmed. Grieving loved ones, hecklers and catcallers nearly every time they got out of the car, and the slow realization that Derby was maybe not stable enough to keep herself safe in the field. People admired her work ethic, but, from close up, Drew thought it looked more like compulsion.

Derby slept two hours, but she woke up to the emergency alarm. 

“Shit,” she said. “Shit fuck. Villain punched out a support column on a hotel. We’ve got a lot of people injured. We need to go.”

She leaned toward, like she could make the car run on her own energy.

He’d seen the AYMU building downtown. AYMU’s hero office was a shining tower you could see from blocks away, the logo across the eighth floor daring a villain to attack. Drew knew most hero offices were non-descript. He was pretty sure daisy heroics operated out of a coffee shop downtown.

The office his GPS had taken him to was ugly, a squat, brown thing from the seventies with a few decorative plants barely hanging on to life. Drew stepped through the sliding doors onto yellow-brown carpet, worn down the center and coming up at the edges. He was still half hoping for this to be a front, but instead of pressing in a code and taking the elevator down into a lair, he was shown into a meeting room with foam cups and stale coffee. The woman across from him, Joanne, was small and professional. She handed him stacks of documents to sign.

Kicking it forward to @lebirbybitch @19cats-and-counting @esseastri @abalidoth if they want to play. Your word is REMAIN,

[scarletanpan]

If u wanna know why I hate ai to the core of my soul it's bc the industry has claimed this is some new technological revolution for 4 yrs while ppl have been screaming since the beginning abt the amt of energy consumed by training/usage and its environmental impacts, while companies and governments have only continued to fight harder over obtaining the processors necessary to implement it into their own systems for. Useless features that only make navigating the internet harder or for military technologies that are actively being used for further genocide and oppression

While half the south is underwater over a devastating hurricane not too long after one 2 yrs ago. While this year had one of the hottest summers, actively killing so many ppl and animals. Like idk anyone else think changing weather patterns due to rising temperatures might be exacerbated by the fact that the company where the leading ai chips are made is on track to generate more energy than all of the homes in Taiwan by next year. Or that every single computer doing ai and crypto shit all over the world is also wasting boundless energy thats heated up the planet in who knows how many ways

We are killing the planet and each other bc we want an algorithm to questionably reproduce work we can do ourselves. And its all bc companies don't give a shit abt having no use case for this technology and will force it onto their platform, might even make u pay extra bc ai is the future to them and nothing else matters. Making profits off the mysticism of ai is exactly why so many ppl use it and do Not know it can just. Lie to u. Or that generating responses and images takes much more energy than any google search (which now does the same shit since we need ai answers for basic search engines apparently) We're at the point where so many ppl admit to using it daily, like wow love seeing capitalism genuinely ruin the world. U can't get off the internet and go outside bc its actively uninhabitable half the time, and now the internet is impossible to navigate w/o losing more time than ever before or u end up sucked in by reactionary content and even j scrolling past ads only benefits advertisers it's just. I want a lot of ceos dead tbh

[headedoutleft]

Musk, who appeared both high and made of plywood, responded with a reality of his own:

“Actually, what this advertising boycott is going to do is, it’s going to kill the company. And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail.”

Here Musk looked out to the audience, expecting vehement agreement, perhaps even applause. He was greeted with dead silence instead. Sorkin, still residing in the correct reality, told Musk, “But those advertisers, I imagine they’re going to say, ‘WE didn’t kill the company.’”

And here is where Musk revealed his delusion to all. “Oh yeah?” he shot back. “Tell it to Earth.”

“Tell it to Earth.” If you imagine Will Smith delivering that line, it REALLY hits. But this was coming from a purported titan of industry, who was seemingly unaware that no one gives a holy s—t about his social media platform anymore. “Twitter isn’t real life” is a tired sound bite, but it’s never been more true than now. You really are screaming into the void when you post there. But Musk, who told Sorkin that he believed data to be more valuable than gold, remains committed to the idea that owning X means owning the chief information exchange for all of this planet’s 8 billion citizens. He thinks he can Thanos Snap wars and recessions into being merely by posting a recycled Pepe the Frog meme from 2016 on there. There is no reasoning with someone who is so megalomaniacal and so, SO stupid.

“The brands are right. No one gives a f—k about X anymore, and no one will be outraged when you — yes, you, Elon Musk — have finally killed it. The days of serial tweeters like me lamenting the days of Twitter Classic are over. We’ve gone elsewhere and use X only sparingly, and only as a necessary evil. Without us, and without any advertising support, X will soon make no money of any sort, and you’ll be left only with the occasional $8 a month from @FreedomBob69. Oh wait, but here’s more reality for you, Elon! The Cybertruck is already not only a laughingstock, it’s also barely existent on the eve of its launch and, by your own admission, won’t turn a profit until a year and a half from now at the earliest. The Boring Company, established to make the Hyperloop a reality, has only built a glorified parking ramp in Vegas after burning through nearly $800 million in VC funding. Tesla’s revenues are sinking as the big automakers roll out their own EVs that are more appealing than your four-wheeled bachelor pads. Your company SpaceX will fail in its doomed mission to make humans a multiplanetary species, and its rockets won’t stop blowing up. And your biography sucked. So it’s over for you, Elon Musk. You are a public failure of a man. You’ll still be rich, but you no longer matter. That’s all you really wanted out of this, wasn’t it? You bought Twitter because you thought that owning it would make you the most special person in the whole wide world, only to reveal yourself as an unremarkable s—thead with no good ideas. You drove everyone away, including the companies that could have propped up your reputation for another five minutes. Whether you’ll ever understand this is of no concern to me, or to anyone else. You’ve shared your bucket, and it has nothing but holes in it. So, for Bob Iger, and for the rest of humanity, let me say: Go f—k yourself, Elon. Go. F—k. Yourself. Is that clear?”

— The end of Elon Musk

[vegi1]

Do vegans eat meat?

In many cultures, eating meat is so rooted in human life that we rarely think about why we should eat meat. Where and how is the meat prepared? We rarely try to see who is behind the scenes of the meat industry Most people consider themselves to be animal lovers, but eating animal meat is normal for them, and I still don’t know why you love an animal and hug it and cut another animal into pieces and eat it? It’s time to face the fact that man created the meat industry for his diversification and greed and tortures and kills many animals.

The answer to this question is relatively simple; however, come with me, and I’ll tell you every single aspect of this question.

I’m Sara and I’ve been vegan for 7 years with my family of 5. As my family and I thrive on this lifestyle, I wanted to share with you all my experiences in this particular area.

So let’s get started.

This article will be dedicated to why vegans might or might not consume meat.

In some of our previous articles, we mentioned that vegans do not consume meat, no matter the source. This means that vegans do not consume land animal meat or seafood.

There are many reasons why we have chosen a vegan lifestyle. But let me tell you a few things Some vegetarians choose a vegetarian diet just for the sake of their health, because they have come to the conclusion that meat and chicken are not useful for human health and cause a lot of harm to the body, and they refuse to eat animal meat like us. But vegans have more reasons for not eating meat besides health.

Before getting to why Vegans do not consume meat, we have to tell you that while vegans refuse to eat any flesh, they can get all of the nutrition, minerals, and supplements that meat has from plant-based food.

This proves that vegans do not have to eat meat to gain its vitamins, minerals, and nutrition.

· The first reason that comes up when we ask why vegans don’t eat meat is related to moral beliefs. In other words, vegans are against the meat industry and industries that use animal abuse or cruelty to produce their products (be it clothing or consumer cosmetics).

We can never accept someone as ours or even our lives without full consent, so why should we do the same to defenseless animals? I must mention that some of these animals and even insects are vital for the health of the planet We know what happens behind the scenes of slaughterhouses and farms. We know how animals are imprisoned, tortured and killed in order to put them in beautiful packages in the human food basket. Research has proven that the anatomy of the human body has been vegetarian since the beginning of creation, and later we became carnivores with the change in human taste and advertising. Please watch this video : 15 reasons that prove that human herbivor

· The following reason vegans avoid meat is the physical consequences that meat offers over time. When you consume meat, you are consuming a product that is not 100% hygienic. I might add that the fat included inside the core is saturated fat or the harmful fat that can cause heart diseases and failure over time if consumed more than limited.

These two reasons are the main issues of consuming meat, so vegans choose to avoid meat to fulfill these reasons.

You might wonder, if vegans do not consume meat, what do they eat to obtain the nutrition embedded inside the animal meat?

When talking about meat and the need to consume it, individuals assume that the protein and the galleries that come from meat can not be obtained from plant-based food.

While this fact seems true but it is not correct.

Because after the considerations and research I did several years ago on this matter, I have concluded that some other plant-based consumables like beans and soy contain the same kind of protein that exists inside red or animal meat.

And by consuming plant-based protein, you can get the same energy from the protein inside the animal meat.

However, on some special occasions, vegans must use supplements to gain the complete nutrition they need throughout the day to function correctly.

The reason why some vegetarians need supplements is that the diet and body needs of each person and their metabolism are different from other people. Sometimes some vegetarians need supplements to complete the minerals or nutrients their body needs, even It is possible that many meat-eating people also suffer from B12 or iron deficiency. This has nothing to do with vegetarianism.

But the important thing is that if you start a plant-based diet with planning, you will need less supplements because the nutrients of plants are more and healthier than animals. I have done an article on vegetarians and the need to take supplements that you can read .

Now that you know whether vegans eat meat or not and the reason for this action, let’s get to the end of the article and sum up all of the information we have gathered for you.

We all have seen some special diets from all around the world and different individuals; however, there is a debate on whether vegans can eat meat or not, meaning can they include meat in their diet or can’t?

In this article, I talked about how vegetarians do not consume animal meat or other animal products. However, it’s best to remember that as a human being who has been a vegetarian since birth, there are plenty of plant-based alternatives that you can supplement your meals with and that you can live without animal carcasses.

Then I explain some of the reasons vegans have for not eating animal meat, and I think if you read through these reasons yourself, you can better understand this diet and lifestyle.

I advise you to read through some related articles to this matter to understand why vegans do not consume meat.

In the end, I am very much glad and delighted that you decided to accompany me throughout the “Do vegans eat meat?” article.

If you have any additional inquiries or opinions that you want to share with me, you only have to use the comment section below this article or contact page 4 on the contact page of this website.

[ajokeformur-ray]

Omg I totally feel you on the veganism thing. Like on a personal level, I totally support people eating the things they want and being firm in their morals. So I have absolutely 0 issues with people not wanting to eat/use animal products. But on an industrial level and on a larger scale, there's a lot of things I wish people were just more aware of. Like certain foods become trendy and are advertised as more ethical staples in people's diets, when in reality, in order to get those foods, a ton of really unethical things have to happen. Like farming, leading to massive amounts of deforestation and actually causing more lose of animal life due to their habitats being ruined in order to produce these "vegan" foods. And at that point, buying beef from a local farmer actually kills fewer animals than buying those foods, which is counterproductive. But a lot of people aren't willing to do that research and just jump on trends, and then proclaim that they're inherently better than people who aren't vegan like they are. Even with things like fake leather like you were talking about, it leads to more waste because a lot of it isn't great quality, so it has to be replaced constantly.

I also see tons of vegans, obviously not all but a lot, using their veganism to justify racism. Indigenous people are constantly berated and verbally abused by vegans for their cultural practices that have kept their community alive for hundreds of years. Like a lot of Inuit people who fish and catch and eat whales, they have done it sustainably for hundreds of years, and due to lack of resources where they live, they depend on those practices to survive. Indigenous people have always practiced sustainable hunting and agricultural traditions. But they are constantly attacked by vegans for those things. They are regularly called murderers and horrible people and even have their practices compared to the literal h*locaust. It just ends up being extremely racist and then people hide behind their vegan identity to get away with it. :/

Not to mention how expensive veganism is. But a lot of vegans market it as totally sustainable for everybody and then bash people who simply can't afford it. They'll tell people to live solely on rice and beans as a way to practice veganism cheaply, ignoring people in food deserts who don't even have access to those few things. And realistically, nobody wants to live solely on rice and beans, that's not sustainable and honestly could be bad for people's mental health. Food is meant to be enjoyed and is a way for communities to connect all around the world. Telling people to limit their diet to 2 things is not realistic. Sure, in certain parts of the world it is cheaper to be vegan, but that's definitly not everywhere and acting like everyone has equal access to healthy vegan foods is just not true and a very privileged take.

So yeah, I totally support people making their own informed decisions about the foods they eat and the products they use, and advocating for less waste and a cleaner planet. But the movement it's become really does a lot more harm than good and puts more people off veganism than on it. Idk, just my take. I hope that's not too political. Please feel free to delete it if it is.

Oh, ohmyGOD YES YES YES aaaaall of this!!!!!

This is exactly why I'm very VERY antivegan; always have been and I always will be. You summarised it better than I was able to!!!!❤️

It's nice to know I'm not alone in seeing veganism as a solely negative and dangerous lifestyle; not to mention the fact it kills people and endangers people's health!!!

And this isn't too political!!! Politics is in absolutely every facet of life (and if you (not you personally nonnie but in general) think it isn't then sorry but you gotta educate yourself a bit more🥰) so it's important to be aware of it as much as possible.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and for the validation!!!

[jim-fetter-illustrations]

Why would you destroy that which gives you life?!?!

think about the Trees.

Trees are the best air purifiers on the planet, bar nothing else!,.... The Arbor Day Foundation tells us that in one year a mature tree will absorb more than 48 pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen in exchange,.... oxygen we Humans need to live.

48 pounds of more oxygen per tree...... and there are no man made products that will do that!

But when trees are burned that carbon dioxide release's back into the atmosphere.

This is why we must preserve most trees from destruction, because they are literally saving our dumb human lives even though MOST Human Beings don't know that simple fact,...... which I find amazing that people are that fucking stupid about their environment and yet they think the political leaders they vote for are the real saviours of humanity,......... which is probably the furthest from the truth given all the corruption in our political arena.

It's estimated that 15 billion trees are cut down each year to build stuff that pollutes even more, and to stripmine areas looking for gold—more than 41 million trees per day.

Deforestation is a major global problem, and just adds to global warming, as Only 36% of the world's rainforests remain intact, and most likely had we not cut down the rainforests in the first place we probably wouldn't be going through global warming today.

Water under the bridge as political leaders would say,...sheesh!

Ya see, the whole world is like one big LIVING ecosystem that takes care of itself with all the environmental plants that it grows on itself, and the more we kill, poison, and burn that ecosystem away,... the less the living earth can protect itself, so it has to put itself through a kind of survival mode to get rid of the problem that is killing it, That would be us Human Beings polluting it.

So the Earth goes through what we call Global Warming to kill off all the problems that are attacking its ecosystem,..... again that would be our polluting the earth.

We did this, and we are not trying to fix it, but instead industry is offering us electric cars to drive so we can think we are trying to solve global warming, but the fact is just the process of manufacturing those electric cars causes HUGE amounts of more pollution, more than they will eventually save from not burring fossil fuels,............. it's just another way to make more money making people think they are part of the solution, and they are NOT! They have been yet again suckered by the same industry that has polluted the earth for decades.

Plant more trees and stop buying things that cause more pollution that advertise they are the solution to global warming is the mindset we should have.

I planted 400 tree Saplings last year, and plan to plant another 200 this year that I will never sit under to enjoy the shade, but someone will in 40-60 years,..... hopefully if we are still here!

[sergioguymanproust]

More proof of the consumerist society that we are.Specially in our so called developed world. We design , create , build , advertise, sell, use , once we get tired simply throw away in a nutshell.We call this progress,we call this a successful society.We are so backward,we talk about saving the planet ,it is all a joke which politicians spin to make millions of dollars and make us believe that they are the good guys and gals.No siree! Governments like ours are only interested in saving themselves,check the meaning of government as a business entity a republic created not for the people but the preservation of its own survival monetarily speaking. We the people are completely separated and treated as assets nothing more, just a herd of sheep to be sacrificed if need be. Nothing more ,and yes , we are now in a stage they openly declare as a government must have a cull of us the sheep,better known as population reduction. Just ask any government goon,large corporations taking over the farms and food production and reducing us to pulp ,courtesy of Billy goat Gates and his woman going around the world enforcing sterilization starting in third world countries as a gentle way to cull and kill the poor sheep.Nothing new here,just business as usual.Enter chemical warfare to poison us by the use of chemtrails that will sicken the population and helping the pharmaceutical industry to rake billions of dollars in so called vaccines and treatments for the sheep.Well, the warnings are already out,the hope is that the world collapses bringing down the whole world and we can go to the fifth dimension,away from the one world government which is as corrupt and disgusting as hell.We know George Orwell 1984 tale was spot on! And yes let’s not forget our good friend Nostradamus.Awake from your stupor friends.Words by Sergio GuymanProust.

[botfinance]

Why New York City is the Ultimate Destination for High-Paying Jobs

Are you looking to make some serious cash and live the high life in the city that never sleeps? Then look no further than New York City! With a booming finance sector and high-paying jobs in industries like technology, healthcare, and media, NYC is the ultimate destination for anyone looking to build their wealth and climb the corporate ladder.

If you're looking to make a name for yourself in finance, New York City is the place to be. As the financial capital of the world, Wall Street is home to some of the biggest financial institutions on the planet, and they're always on the lookout for top talent. Whether you're an investment banker, financial analyst, or trader, the opportunities to make a killing in finance are endless in NYC.

But finance isn't the only game in town. With the rise of tech startups, NYC has become a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship. From Silicon Alley to Flatiron, there are countless opportunities to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing. Whether you're a programmer, designer, or marketing guru, the tech industry in NYC is brimming with potential.

And it's not just finance and tech that offer lucrative careers in NYC. Healthcare is another rapidly growing industry, with plenty of high-paying jobs in fields like nursing, medicine, and research. The city is home to some of the top hospitals and medical centers in the world, making it an ideal destination for anyone looking to make a difference in the field of healthcare.

Last but not least, the media industry is also thriving in NYC. From publishing to advertising to film and television production, there are endless opportunities to make a name for yourself in the world of media. And with the rise of social media and digital marketing, there's never been a better time to get involved in the industry.

So if you're looking to make some serious money and build a career that will take you to the top, New York City is the place to be. With a diverse range of industries and opportunities, there's something for everyone in the city that never sleeps. So what are you waiting for? Start exploring your options today and see where your dreams can take you in the Big Apple.

New York City #high-paying jobs #finance #tech #healthcare #media #career growth

[fatehbaz]

Caribbean cruise vacations have a long violent history. Earlier today, I came across one of the early print advertisement illustrations for the Caribbean cruise ship vacations offered by “the Great White Fleet.” And I pondered bananas.

Just as uncomfortable as it sounds. The story of the origin of the Caribbean cruise industry is, after all, also the story of the origin of the term “Banana Republic.”

In 1914, the Great War began as the planet’s powerful empires of old were collapsing, as British, French, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, Russian, and Qing/Chinese powers were marred by internal revolt and global warfare. But in 1914, the United States completed their Panama Canal and consolidated power in Latin America and the Caribbean, celebrating the ascent of a “new” empire made strong, in part, by bananas.

As of 2022, bananas generate 12 billion dollars per year, with 75% of bananas exported from Latin America and the Caribbean.

The planet’s single biggest banana-producing company is Chiquita. The Chiquita brand was previously known as United Fruit Company, which had essentially monopolized the banana industry in Latin America. United Fruit Company has a bit of an image problem, following its theft of Indigenous land across Central America in the early 20th century; its role in provoking the killing of tens of hundreds/thousands of plantation laborers during the Banana Massacre of 1928; the company’s direct role in the CIA-backed toppling of the Guatemala government in the 1950s; and the company’s role in paying to harass and intimidate labor organizers in Colombia in recent decades.

But what of the “romance” and “adventure” of the Caribbean?

So it’s 1915 or 1916.

Middle of the Great War. Classic empires are disintegrating: Spanish empire, British empire, Austro-Hungarian empire, Russian empire, Ottoman empire, remnants of the Qing/Chinese state, etc. And whose empire is rising? United States, an empire expanding in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. After the 1898 Spanish-US war, as Teddy Roosevelt’s cartoon cavalry conquered Cuba, the Spanish Main belongs to the US of A. The US Navy controlled the Caribbean Sea, and was aiming to expand across the Pacific Ocean, to Hawai’i and beyond.

But the official US Navy isn’t the only fleet upholding the empire. The United Fruit Company had its own fleet.

The text of one of these Great White Fleet ads, from 1916, adorned with imagery of a blue-and-gold macaw and an aerial map of the Caribbean, reads:

“[W]here winter never comes and where the soft trade winds bring renewed health. [W]ith all the comforts and all the luxuries of life you enjoy aboard the palatial ships of the GREAT WHITE FLEET. Delicious meals a la carte [...]. Dainty staterooms, perfectly ventilated [...]. [A]mid the scenes of romance and history in the Caribbean. And with it the opportunity to win for yourself a treasure of health and happiness, of greater benefit than the fabled fountain of youth, sought by Spanish adventurers in the tropic isles of the Spanish Main.”

Who’s leading the charge?

The United Fruit Company!

From the May 1916 issue of Red Book. Image source, from Archive dot org:

Another:

Image source, from Archive dot org:

“There the Pirates hid their Gold -- and every voyage, every port, every route of the Great White Fleet through the Golden Caribbean has the romance of buried treasure, pirate ships an deeds of adventure [...].”

The Golden Caribbean.

The same region where Columbus murdered Indigenous people, where the US and France had just spent 100 years punishing Haiti with unending economic warfare afters slaves rebelled against colonization, and where the United Fruit Company would now set up shop.

The company’s plantations would expand across Central America, establishing brutal racial hierarchies and essentially controlling federal governments of Central American nations.

In 1928, over 30,000 laborers were on strike at banana plantations in Colombia. They demanded payment of actual wages, rather than the credits they were given which were mostly only redeemable at company-owned stores in company towns. The US government threatened to send the Marine Corps to intervene if the “subversive” workers would not return to UFC’s plantations. In December 1928, after martial law had been declared, General Cortes Vargas entered the town square of Cienaga (Magdalena) during Sunday gatherings, with machine guns, opening fire on the crowds, and killing perhaps 3,000 people.

In the late 1940s, the United Fruit Company intensified its ad campaigns led by propagandist Edward Bernays (nephew of Sigmund Freud???), who also practiced his skill at manipulative advertising when working to popularize the American Tobacco Company by showing women smoking “torches of freedom” and linking “women’s rights” to cigarette iconography.

Bernays, who explicitly wrote about his “counter-Communist” intention in the ads, was “drafted” in the war to topple ascendant leftist governments. After 1944 and after Arevalo’s labor reforms, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman took control of Guatemala in 1951, and took over 200,000 acres from United Fruit Company and returned them to poor families. Bernays launched propaganda attacks against Guatemala, helping to plant stories about Guatemala eventually carried in the Saturday Evening Post, New York Herald Tribune, and Reader’s Digest. In January 1952, Bernays personally led a tour of Central America, accompanying publishers and editors of Newsweek, the Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Cincinnati Enquirer, Scripps-Howard, and Time magazine. When the CIA-trained military force led by Carlos Castillo Armas invaded Guatemala, with CIA aerial support, installing Castillo Armas as president, Bernays called them an “army of liberation.”

Bananas and Caribbean cruises aren’t the only culprits in expanding imperial power in Latin America, the tropics, and the Global South.

In 1914, the same year that the United States finished the Panama Canal and consolidated power in Latin America and the Caribbean, Richard Strong was a newly appointed director of Harvard’s new Department of Tropical Medicine. Strong was also appointed director of the Laboratories of the Hospitals and of Research Work at United Fruit Company. Strong toured the company’s plantations in Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, and Cuba. In the coming years, Strong would also personally approach Harvey Firestone, chief executive of the Firestone company, which owned and brutally operated rubber plantations in tropical West Africa. Research in tropical medicine was thus inaugurated by and dependent on colonial/imperial plantations and racial/social hierarchies at United Fruit Company and Firestone sites across the tropical regions, planetwide. Strong is just one character that demonstrates the interconnectedness of academia, fruit plantations, rubber supplies, food distribution, motor vehicle industries, strike-breakers, military forces, imperial expansion, and other tendrils of violently-enforced racist power.

Today, in 2022, Chiquita maintains twenty thousand employees across 70 countries. 

I think about this as I eat a banana for lunchtime. I think about this when I see the Edenic portrayal of a Caribbean shore, a landscape baked not so much by the tropical sun but instead scarred by centuries of genocide, slavery, and plantation labor, where government officials gleefully report “with honor” on the massacre of thousands.

“Just a banana, it ain’t.”

Agreed.

[notquiteaghost]

off the back of that post, smth else i think about all the time in regards to Voting With Your Wallet! is that modern capitalism is not actually affected by supply and demand

like, on the small scale, sure. most small businesses will cease to exist if no one buys their goods. but on the large scale? any chain, any major corporation, any company with significant financial backing? supply and demand don't mean shit, that's what advertising is for

like. that's what advertising is for. so much of the truly wasteful parts of commercial industry is someone saying, okay i can make this thing for ten cents and sell it for twenty times that, how do i convince people to buy this thing. no one buying it is barely even a loss, because the whole business model is it's dirt cheap to make

there's no kind of consumption-related action that makes that business model unprofitable. we have to make using [insert any planet-killing method or material] illegal. or start setting manufacturing places on fire.

i do believe buying less & more consciously is useful and important, but not because doing so makes a meaningful impact. it's useful and important because the way we currently live is unsustainable and we all need to get used to living differently

[headspace-hotel]

"We can't sustain the pursuit of infinite growth on a finite planet" "We need to stop using fossil fuels" "We need to stop using huge amounts of resources to give the rich profits" become tiresome things to hear when they are expressions of frustration heard everywhere, but there is no plan or idea of how to proceed accompanying them.

Personal choices to consume resources differently are promoted, but they have little power because most people don't see the process of the resources they consume emerging from Earth, so their understanding of what a better choice is comes from ads and articles.

Companies don't really take cues from how people consume and adjust accordingly, they simply adjust their branding and advertise differently, so their business can stay the exact same. They influence the government and the world's system so people are forced to buy their product whether they want to or not.

And very few individual components of a person's life can be significantly adjusted by choice. In the USA, where I live, most carbon emissions come from heating and cooling buildings and from cars. There would need to be a great amount of people that do not use cars and buildings would need to be heated and cooled in a more efficient way.

Well, then, who will volunteer to not drive a car? Can you simply choose to not go to work? You will get a new job in a place you can walk to on foot—but is it possible? How would you get food and other necessities, with no stores close by and no path to walk on?

I would like to buy a house—a small house designed with energy efficiency in mind. But no houses like that are being built. They are all too big with too much space and too high ceilings, locked within housing developments that cut me off from being able to walk to the store.

And that is not even taking into account the buildings that aren't homes. Can I go to an office building and turn down their thermostat? Can I tell the local Walmart, "Find a less wasteful way to heat the store, and stop having frozen items in those open troughs constantly pouring out cold air." Why would they care what I have to say?

Everybody is always posting semi-ironically about killing oil executives or CEO's and fixing the nauseating torrent of waste by force, but if this hasn't happened yet, it is unlikely to happen at all, and it is overly charitable to assume that it would certainly help.

We have to create a way to live without these powers that coerce us into a choice of "consume resources, or gradually perish—" ...a parallel system of community support that allows people to turn away from their jobs and support of destructive industries. But to do this, we have to overcome the hatred and mistrust of other humans. It seems impossible...

I would probably be less tired if my brain wasnt trying to solve climate change 24/7

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google's short-lived data-advantage

There's a lot of ways to think about the movement to tame Big Tech, but one of the more useful divisions to explore is the "Night of the Comet" people versus the "Don't Believe the Criti-Hype" people.

This is a division over the value of the data that Google, Facebook and other large tech firms have amassed over the years - data on their users, sure, but also data on the advertisers and publishers they serve with their ad-tech platforms.

Big Tech companies and their investors are really bullish on the value of this commercial data-advantage: they say that spying on us - the users - lets them manipulate our opinions and activities so that we buy or believe the things their advertisers pay them to push.

More quietly, their investors believe that the data-advantage extends to publishers and advertisers, a deep storehouse of data that makes it effectively impossible for anyone else to do the precision targeted that Big Tech manages, which is why they have such fat margins.

Night of the Comet tech criticism accepts these claims at face value: Big Tech's advantage, they claim, comes from having amassed this insurmountable data-advantage that allows it to both predict and shape what we - and therefore advertisers and publishers - will do.

The implication of this is that traditional antitrust remedies - breakups, say - won't be merely ineffective; they'll be terrifyingly harmful.

If Googbook invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew fidget-spinners, then breaking them up will only make it easier for Robert Mercer to hijack that mind-control ray to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

Googbook's data-advantage, in other words, is like a planet-killing comet heading towards the Earth. If we break that comet up, it will turn into a killing rain of meteors that shower onto every part of the globe - we can't break up the comet, we have to *steer* it.

In this version of tech criticism, the answer is to leave Big Tech intact, but turn it into a utility, or some other highly regulated entity, bound by rules that limit its use of that mind-control system.

Bringing Big Tech to heel by deputizing it to serve as an arm of the state (and perhaps a national champion in the new Cold War with China), like the Bell System prior to the AT&T breakup in '82.

On the other side, you have the Don't Believe the Criti-Hype school. Lee Vinsel coined the term "Criti-Hype" to describe a kind of criticism that actually hypes its subject - say, by repeating Big Tech's self-serving claims.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/02/euthanize-rentiers/#dont-believe-the-hype

These claims aren't just self-serving, they're also highly dubious. Everyone who's ever claimed to be able to read - or control - our minds was lying (to themselves, or to everyone else, or both).

The "psychometrics" that all this behavior-modification depends on is - to quote *Nature* - a "scant science." From Big Five Personality Types to microexpression/sentiment analysis, we're deep into the realm of irreproducible results and junk science.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03880-4

The Criti-Hype school posits that the supernormal returns to capital for Big Tech aren't driven by awesome ad-tech capabilities, but rather, by monopoly (buying or crushing all competitors) and the fraud it enables (the industry has nowhere else to go).

That is, Big Tech makes money the same way hedge-fund managers make their own stunning returns: by cheating so they get paid whether or not they're any good at their jobs. The mere existence of a profitable industry is not proof that the industry is run by competent people.

And to be clear, there is a *lot* of fraud in ad-tech. Tim Hwang calls it a "Subprime Attention Crisis," where the ads are fake, the clicks are fake, the publishers' inventory is fake, the whole thing *riddled* with fraud.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

As Aram Zucker-Scharff wrote, "The numbers are fake, the metrics are bullshit, the agencies responsible for enforcing good practices are knowing bullshitters profiting off the fake numbers and none of the models make sense at scale of actual human users."

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#adfraud

It's a "bezzle" - a con whose mark hasn't twigged to the ruse...yet.

And while the Night of the Comet side relies on the irreproducible claims of self-proclaimed Svengalis, the Criti-Hype side has an increasingly corpus of cold, hard facts about the bezzle's operation.

Take last November's "Why Google Dominates Advertising Markets," Dina Srinivasan's  superb and detailed dissection of Google's crooked ad-markets, in which they steal from advertisers and publishers by rigging the bids on both sides of the exchange.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/20/sovkitsch/#adtech

Srinivasan proves you don't need mind-control rays to explain how Big G makes fantastic returns from the ad-tech market. That prospect is further explored in the UK Competition and Markets Authority's 437-page report on "Online platforms and digital advertising" (Jul '20):

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5fa557668fa8f5788db46efc/Final_report_Digital_ALT_TEXT.pdf

Here's where it starts to get *really* interesting. In May 2020, Yale's Fiona Scott Morton and Omidyar's  David Dinielli used preliminary CMA data to publish their "Roadmap for a Digital Advertising Monopolization Case Against Google."

https://omidyar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Roadmap-for-a-Case-Against-Google.pdf

Morton and Dinelli zero in on the actual mechanism of Google's data-advantage, the thing it commands a lion's share of, which advertisers genuinely prize: location data. If I know you're around the corner from my cafe, I might spend a *lot* to show you an ad for my pasties.

This location data advantage is undeniable, but man, it has a short half-life. Thing is, I might spend a lot of money to show you an ad for my coffee shop when you're around the corner, but once you've moved on, you can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. You're dead to me.

This short half-life tells us that we're not living the Night of the Comet nightmare scenario. Break up Google, starve it of location data, and within *hours* most of its location targeting advantage is gone...forever.

As the antitrust cases against Google proceed, more and more of these technical exposes of rigged markets emerge, showing us how monopoly and fraud are at the heart of the data-advantage, and how contingent, time-bound and fragile that advantage really is.

The latest is the bizarrely named "Project Bernanke," a formerly secret ripoff that was exposed when Google forgot to redact a document it filed in its Texas antitrust case:

https://twitter.com/KhushitaVasant/status/1379955848118726659

Google used data from recent ad-auctions to help advertisers shade their bids for ad-placements, exploiting the information asymmetry so the ads it brokered won the auctions, ensuring that rivals ad-brokerages were frozen out.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/googles-secretive-project-bernanke-reportedly-093732134.html

Though Google insists that this was just an industry practice, the leaked document reveals that Google kept this a secret from publishers. Its internal presentations claim that they made $230m in 2013 alone from this practice.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-secret-project-bernanke-revealed-in-texas-antitrust-case-11618097760

All together, this constitutes a highly specific account of how a data-advantage worked - and what its weak-point is. Project Bernanke was not grounded in longitudinal market data from ad-sales - it exploited *recent* data to deliver a $230m+/year advantage.

The multisided market - a multisided bezzle - exploits the monopolist's data advantage to harm readers, publishers and advertisers, not by predicting and shaping their behavior by bypassing their critical faculties with spooky, advanced psychometrics.

The bezzle requires fresh data - it's a flywheel that uses the monopolist's god's-eye-view to freeze out competitors and entrap publishers and advertisers to get more data to rig the market to entrap the publishers and the advertisers.

It's not a comet. It's a monopoly. It's not terrifying supergeniuses using machine learning to turn us into clicking zombies: it's garden-variety monopolists using anticompetitive, underhanded, dishonest and (probably) illegal tactics to maintain their monopoly.

Bust the trust, ban the conduct, and the data-advantage evaporates with the half-life of that extremely time-bound data. The criti-hype that says that the data-advantage is a deadly, unstoppable comet is just Google's own sales-patter, flipped on its head.

Don't believe the criti-hype.

[b2supertiddydroid]

hay mattie! i was wondering if you would be open to talking more about the pleather vs animal leather post you reblogged?

If you ask me to make a nuanced point we’re gonna be here for weeks. So sure.

First there’s a big difference between leather substitutes and pleather, let’s get that out of the way. Currently, plastics are the only material I’m aware of that can mass commercially match leather in texture, durability, and other physical attributes, but that most certainly doesn’t mean it’s the only one which *can exist*. Biodegradable plastics is a big on the rise field that’s worth looking into in this regard, and there’s currently some companies attempting to make viable leather substitute from mycelium with reasonable success. So while right now pleather is the predominant leather substitute material, having leather substitutes isn’t a bad idea and absolutely should be made more sustainable in the future.

There is also plenty to be said of how mass market animal products trades are exceedingly cruel in a capitalist society. I’m well aware that most leather comes from animals raised for slaughter in factory farms that keep them in terrible living conditions. Problem is, the leather trade hasn’t really got shit to do with those conditions. Supply and demand is, and has been for the majority of the 20th century as well, a complete lie. Companies don’t make products to meet demand, they make products to put every component of what they produce to profit and artificially inflate the demand through advertising to meet it. Those animals would be abused and dead regardless, not even not eating meat could change that bc you’re never realistically going to get enough people to move from those products to others thanks to the companies being capable of moving to alternative markets where your outreach on its harm isn’t present or saving face with rebrands and superficial reforms to make the people who only moved away from their meat products out of moral discomfort become complacent. And leather is a byproduct trade of that, that industry could very easily take to what corn production did and just shift to marketing that byproduct as a manufacturing end material or commercial product. That’s not even getting into how leather is genuinely uniquely useful for many applications, the point of it all is that really the idea that even large movement level consumer outcry cannot and will not ever push a corporation with the power they have today to do jack shit. They’re too large, have too many resources at their disposal, and have too many lanes to simply avoid change to save money that the majority of objecting people aren’t gonna be aware of. Hell I haven’t gotten into the half of what they could potentially do here that issue is far too nebulous.

There’s ALSO something to be said about the fact that the current material realities of mass-market leather production weren’t really the point of the post in question. That post was making a point of how deeply ideologically flawed lots of modern animal welfare movements are when it comes to dealing with the nature of inter species relationships between humans and animals and their ideological and moral ramifications. That post made it much clearer in much shorter terms than I could, it’s about the narrative of using products that kill an animal “cutting a life short before it’s time” and being unjustly cruel is at its heart unable to contend with the thought of death. Animals die a lot easier than we do, of lots of different things. Predation is normal, lethal competition is normal, disease and disaster are normal, accidents are normal. Even domestic animals are creatures only trying to survive to fulfill their biological drives on this planet with, not awareness of, but full preparation for the significant chance that most individuals won’t get to do that. Animals die, and they die pretty early all the time of normal things. Human needs are one of those things, we are as much a natural predator in an ecosystem as a coyote or a bear or a hawk. The circumstances of our existence have spiraled FAR beyond that being readily apparent, but just bc we don’t have a naturally constructed living environment does not mean our presence in ecological relationships is unnatural. To divide the world into natural and unnatural is a logical fallacy in the first place, humans are an animal species who shape their ecosystem around them to suit their needs just as any other living organism does. The only difference between us and deer is that we keep adapting beyond typical natural limitations on our growth faster than most evolution can keep up with, which is still not an unnatural thing. The post in question is criticizing the mindset of ignoring humans place in natural ecological relationships with other animals by anthropomorphizing them to the point of being unable to morally reconcile the reality that all living creatures kill others to survive. Which is a real problem, bc a movement for reform built on such a fraught foundation isn’t going to make effective change in the world, it’s gonna spin it’s wheels attacking others whose normal lives conflict with their denial and falling into traps set by corporations like the idea that pleather is a more ethical thing for animal life. You wanna take a guess how many animals die from plastic byproducts along the entire production life cycle of a pleather product from raw plastic pellets to manufacturing byproducts to trimmings to finished product to waste at the end of its lifespan, with shipping impacts and micro plastics shedding at just about every single stage in that process? Cause I’m willing to bet it’s at least a couple more than are involved in leather products, and the thing that dies to make the leather be it a cow or a sheep or a goat is at the very least a casualty of a normal natural interaction between one species and another, whereas animals killed by waste byproducts are avoidable casualties of our species sprawling beyond the bounds of ecological sustainability that should be avoided to maintain ecosystem health. And even that itself isn’t unnatural strictly speaking, most animal species are capable of accidentally growing far beyond the limits of what their ecosystem can sustain and damaging the balance of life around them for it.

So all in all, that’s what I have to say about the pleather post. I understand fully not wanting to be involved in the process of mass market manufacture of leather goods due to the unnecessary callous cruelty of those industries themselves, but when you take it out on a product and not how that product is produced you move people to miss the point of the objection and fall into bad ideas that end up doing more harm than good. You wanna improve animal health conditions in modern commercial farms, put pressure on the corporations responsible for it to change by making them suffer until they’re forced to, and accept absolutely nothing except unconditional and by the letter surrender from a corporation ALWAYS. They can and will use every single other available Avenue to avoid blame and avoid change first. It’s a valid point of serious debate to consider how one should do that in this day and age, given that in their current state effective reform resulting from outcry or protest has effectively been nullified in most nations across the world, one which I don’t have any satisfactory answers for even ones as long winded and no doubt dubiously coherent as this one was. But leather isn’t your enemy, not in and of itself.

[singlecrow]

Let's start with "regulation". That term includes, but is slightly broader than, legislation. I would call it the situation that arises where either a legislature or other public body imposes rules on an industry that it can enforce, either by imposing penalties for noncompliance or severely disincentivising noncompliance.

In the UK and in other Commonwealth nations, there are certain things a legislature cannot do because they are unconstitutional, and similar things that a public authority can't do because they're irrational. ("Irrationality"= - basically unconstitutionality writ small.) One of these things is to act counter to the rule of law.

But let's say I don't know any of that and I make a law that says you can't make advertising that shames people, or tries to make you buy the advertised product out of guilt. I can try and do that.

But what do I write? What does that mean? Don't use that mooncup because you're killing the planet? Okay, not that. How about, don't use that mooncup because climate change gets worse when you do? Is that shaming, or is it less extreme than "kills the planet" so it's ok? What if half the focus group feels guilt-tripped by the wording and the other doesn't? Does it have to be serious, about the climate? What about, don't eat that you'll make your mother sad? Is it worse if it's your dead mother?

What about advertising for children? Should that subject to different standards because they understand guilt and shame in a simpler way? What about other languages and their conventions? What if I advertise in the UK in English, Welsh and Gaelic, and the same translated slogan reads like a guilt-trip in one but not the others? Do I have to change that one or does the existence of the other two mean the law should be construed differently in my case? How do I know, when I sit down to prepare my advertising copy, what I'm allowed to say and do? Who gets to set the standard about a thing like "shame" or "guilt" and is it consistent with democratic norms to do so? Advertising can be banned for advertising specific products like sugar and cigarettes, and it can be banned for being untrue, but we know what both of those things mean in and of themselves. We don't have to undertake a separate assessment.

And the thing is: it doesn't matter how important your objective is. If it isn't possible to say easily, simply, clearly what it is that is prohibited, than you can't impose a penalty for noncompliance. If you're a public authority doing that, you're being irrational; if you're a legislature, you're being unconstitutional. (There are, of course, many exceptions, but those are known to the law; i.e. have substantial history of specific jurisprudence around them.) Because this is what they normally call the rule of law - that it should be publicly understood and apply to all people in the same way. If we start regulating things that can't be objectively determined, we fall away from that.

That's the reason not to make regulations like this; mostly, that you can't. And the reason this is good for us all is because it flows directly from living in a democratic polity, where there can be no arbitrary or unfettered use of power. That sort of thing happens small as well as big, and everything big starts small.

Look, the list of things I would want regulated in advertising is very long, and this doesn't even get near the top, but I do think you shouldn't be allowed to shame people into buying your product

Doubly so if it's a necessity, not a luxury

Like, "our moon cups create less waste than other menstrual products" is fine, but fucking "look at the number of tampons and pads that end up in landfill, isn't it terrible? don't you want to stop killing the earth with your period?" has no place in a paid advert

Like, if you're an activist blogger who wants to use that kind of language for free, fine. I'll think you're a twat, but fine. But a fucking company should not be paying money to shame people into buying their product...