#wealthy enclave

[socialjusticeinamerica]

🤦‍♀️🖕🏽😡

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

“The £375,000 a day cost involved 3,000 police and soldiers, plus helicopters, sniffer dogs, bomb disposal units and an ever-present guard armed with a ballistic briefcase or bullet proof shield just in case of a sniper attack.” So let me check my notes from the last few days, the couple that quit the BRF almost five years ago and moved to an extremely wealthy enclave in California where they’re largely left alone needed all of that? But the heir to the British throne and his family could have a Nerf gun battle with others around with the exception of RPOs, were left alone and had no issues? Just a fun day out? Huh. Okay. I wonder if a security threat assessment was done before the Sussexes arrival to see if they needed all of that security? It’s excessive. I’d expect that for a head of state or other diplomatic representative but that’s not who the Sussexes are because they don’t work for anyone but themselves. I didn’t pay much attention to this trip but now I’m interested in the fallout from it.

Of course they needed that much security. It’s all theater and performance specifically designed to help bolster Harry’s argument in the RAVEC lawsuit that he’s a very important person who needs a massive security detail just to exist.

Because after all, if they don’t have a giant security detail, then clearly that means RAVEC is right and there goes the lawsuit.

[adamsvanrhijn]

Character Descriptions BILL CAMP as JP Morgan, the world-famous investment banker who finds himself at odds with George Russell (Spector) over the future of the railroad industry. MERRITT WEVER as Monica O’Brien, Bertha Russell’s (Coon) estranged sister who appears at a crucial time for the family. LESLIE UGGAMS as Mrs. Ernestine Brown, Elizabeth Kirkland’s friend and a member of the Black elite community in Newport. LISAGAY HAMILTON as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the famed Black suffragist who inspires Peggy (Denée Benton) to become involved in her cause, in spite of the dissenting opinions of those around her. PAUL ALEXANDER NOLAN as Alfred Merrick, a dashing, wealthy New York businessman, who has all the hallmarks of the old money set – elegance, refinement and sophistication. The Russells invite him to dine at their home in the hopes of charming him into a business deal. HATTIE MORAHAN as Lady Sarah Vere – Sister to the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb), Lady Sarah makes it clear that the Russells are not to her taste. ANDREA MARTIN as Madame Dashkova, a medium who claims to be able to commune with the dead.

JESSICA FRANCES DUKES as Athena Trumbo, Dorothy (Audra McDonald)’s beloved first cousin and a part of an elite enclave of Black residents of Newport, Rhode Island, who is pleased to host Peggy (Benton) and is supportive of her writing career.

[mllemaenad]

Not that you are by any means the worst offender in this regard, but it rubs me ghe wrong way how much leniency the NCR gets when it comes to considering the effects of their actions, and perhaps more importantly, their intentions.

Groups like Caesar's Legion, The Brotherhood of Steel, House's factions, The Unity, The Enclave, and The Institute are treated as villains if anyone is even indireehurt because of them.

If two human surface-dwellers kill each other in Diamond City, people blame the Institute.

If the White Legs emulate Twisted Hair cultural traditions without fully understanding them, Ulysses blames the Legion.

And yet... the NCR is treated by fans as well-intentioned and good-natured despite the harm they cause. The situation in Nipton was the fault of the NCR. Its corrupt Mayor was from the NCR. The Powder Gangers were only in the Mojave because the NCR moved them there.

Vulpes set up his lottery (not that I'm saying it was a perfect solution) to address a problem that had gotten out of hand, a problem downstream of the NCR... and yet most fan discussions blame the Legion for what happened in Nipton.

ThevNCR seems to get a pass because people see their goals as noble... but their goals are to recreate the exact conditions that caused the Great War!

We see the exact same phenomena in pre-war terminals as we do in contemporary NCR. A government more obsessed with maintaining its own power than solving problems, a corrupt justice system that favours the wealthy, an obsession with democracy that makes decisions slow and bureaucratic, and a rapacious desire for resources that leads to expansion and conflict eith other factions.

Why is Caesar condemned for his ego, and his shortsigtedness, but Kimball is not?

Why is Roger Maxon blamed for creating an organisation that has hurt people, but not Aradesh?

Why is Justin Ayo blamed for his secrecy and lack of trust, but not Colonel Moore?

It's a double-standard. Others are blamed for trying something new, the NCR gets carte blanch to repeat old mistakes!

Hi, anonymous person.

So ... I've read this, and I've read it again, and again after that and ... I'm a little puzzled about what's bothering you. The NCR is broadly attempting to feed, clothe and house hundreds of thousands of people ... and fans tend to give them a little more leeway when they fuck up than they do, say, the Enclave, which is a fascist organisation bent on global genocide and this is ... bad?

Honestly not really seeing the problem there.

I've barely written anything about the NCR, and certainly not in depth character profiles of the people you bring up, so I'm not completely sure why this is directed at me. If you're saying that there are fans who refuse to acknowledge that the NCR has flaws ... well, I haven't met those people, but if you look for an opinion on the internet you'll probably find it, so I'm not going to try to claim they don't exist. I've seen people claim women don't play Fallout, which is kind of a problem, from where I'm sitting. :)

But. Well, okay.

It's a double-standard. Others are blamed for trying something new, the NCR gets carte blanch to repeat old mistakes!

Nobody's trying anything new. That's kind of the point here. War never changes. Just to do the main antagonists ...

Richard Grey/The Master is just doing eugenics with a sci-fi twist. He's going to forcibly convert everyone who can be into a super mutant, and prevent any remaining humans from breeding. One of the ways to beat him is to tell him that his "master race" is sterile. It's a horrifying plan.

The Enclave are American fascists. They believe that only their people are truly human and that everyone else should literally die.

Edward Sallow/Caesar is ... I mean he's just cosplaying as Caius Julius Caesar because he thinks it looks cool. That's an actual human being who lived, and who quite famously got stabbed to death. More historical precedent than you could shake a gladius at. Sallow got over excited when he read Caesar's Commentaries and decided he wanted to be Caesar. Presenting "doing ancient Rome" as new is ... certainly something, and particularly hilarious as a plan for a civilisation given the decades long clusterfuck that was the fall of the Roman Republic, plus fun subsequent imperial followups like "the year of the four emperors".

The Institute has just reintroduced slavery, only this time let's 3D print the people instead of abducting them so literally no one will care what we do to them! They also lean into the idea that they are the only real people, although they are not quite as committed to this as the Enclave.

What's new and exciting here that I should be willing to give a try? They're all old ideas, and ideas that seem to involve a lot of genocide, enslavement and general misery for anybody who isn't part of a specific in group.

Vulpes set up his lottery (not that I'm saying it was a perfect solution) to address a problem that had gotten out of hand, a problem downstream of the NCR… and yet most fan discussions blame the Legion for what happened in Nipton.

I ... what? Yeah, I'm going to disappoint you here. The massacre at Nipton was the Legion's fault because they were the ones who walked in there and, you know, massacred people. Mayor Steyn was absolutely engaging in a round of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" and if anybody tries to argue that he was competent I will dispute that wholeheartedly. But there was only a massacre because the Legion actively set one up.

There's political corruption in Nipton, but the problem of the Legion is that they think a lottery that decides who gets beheaded, who gets crucified and who gets sold into slavery is some sort of solution to that problem, rather than an atrocity. That's why they're still the bad karma choice, even if the NCR is kind of fucking things up.

Also ... ha. I promise you imitating ancient Rome is not going to solve your political corruption problems. I mean ... I know Vulpes Inculta makes his little speech, but Rome never did solve the problem of profiteering governors and corrupt politicians. This is not a problem that is going to miraculously disappear under Legion rule. And the idea of Rome somehow getting rid of prostitution is just ... Honestly, Caesar's Legion would be hilarious if you didn't have to have these conversations standing next to people dying on crosses.

If two human surface-dwellers kill each other in Diamond City, people blame the Institute.

... Diamond City is run by the Institute, under the synth-replacement of Mayor McDonough. The leadership actively plays up the paranoia in the city by refusing to investigate disappearances. The particular scene you are describing is paired with one that occurs in Goodneighbor, where the neighborhood watch is able to accurately identify a synth infiltrator – because they are not Institute run.

It's also a feature of gameplay that an inhabitant of one of your settlements may be a synth infiltrator and become hostile to the other settlers. So I'm pretty sure people are blaming the Institute for things they're doing.

If the White Legs emulate Twisted Hair cultural traditions without fully understanding them, Ulysses blames the Legion.

... The Legion massacred Ulysses' people. They enslaved some and crucified the rest along the roadside, like Spartacus's army of old. That's why he's the only one left who understands what the braids mean. His reaction is somewhat unfair to the White Legs, yes, who had no way of knowing what they were doing was wrong ... but I can't see why blaming the Legion would be a problem. They did, in fact, exterminate his people.

ThevNCR seems to get a pass because people see their goals as noble… but their goals are to recreate the exact conditions that caused the Great War!

There's a line I like, that Deacon says in Fallout 4.

I never really much cared for the Minutemen. The idea sounds great. But you give small men big power and sometimes you'll pay for it. –Fallout 4, Deacon Miscellaneous Dialogue

In the context of Fallout 4, the Minutemen are the scrappy underdogs you root for. They're helping to rebuild the shattered settlements of the Commonwealth and they're a potential source of resistance against the Institute. But if you talk to Preston, you get hints of the politics and infighting that brought them down the first time. There's no reason that couldn't happen again. They could become a controlling and exploitative organisation.

Do I think that means you shouldn't work with them? No, of course not. You deal with the situation in front of you. You try to support the people who aim to make life better for everyone.

If we roll back around to the Commonwealth in Fallout 8 or something (assuming I haven't died of old age by then) and the Minutemen have become a military dictatorship ruling the people with an iron fist ... well, we go deal with the fucking Minutemen then.

Deacon's right about the threat, but if you don't take the chance on trusting people, you never build anything.

It's a thing in Fallout. War never changes. There are some truly evil, terrible ideas that turn up again and again and need to be slapped down. But there is no perfect Utopia on the other side of it. There are just communities banding together to try and make it work. What stops them from going bad? Nothing. It can always happen. You make the best choices you can in every story, given what you have to work with.

Or you do an evil playthrough. Your choice. Not my business.

The NCR is supposed to hurt. Watching them fail is supposed to hurt. It's no good if it doesn't hurt. No one cries when you blow up the Enclave. That's a job well done. You can't say good things about them.

The point of the NCR is that you can. They have some runs on the board! Democracy! Agriculture! Education! You want them to make it work. And yeah, it lets you ask much more interesting questions like: how many fuck ups do we let slide?

We don't need the Enclave, or the Legion, to fuck up to know they're bad news. Their goals are bad. We want them gone. But with the NCR ... how much bad are we okay with, to keep the good?

You haven't given me any examples to work with, so I can't reasonably speak to what fans say. But I don't think the games give them any sort of uncritical pass. Fallout New Vegas is ... absolutely about the problems of colonialism and aggressive expansionism. It's very clear that the NCR has not made good choices recently. The game gives you a lot of room to figure out what you want to do about that, and no answer is perfect.

It's only with regard to the Legion specifically that it's an obviously moral choice – and they level the playing field for you there. Both the Legion and the NCR have imperial pretensions, and those are not good. But since that specific thing is the same, well, we're supporting the people who aren't implementing mass slavery and treating women as "breeding stock", right?

If there are people who won't admit flaws in the NCR, well, yeah, I'd call them wrong. But I don't really think it's a double standard to favour a group that doesn't have "wouldn't it be great if we murdered everybody" as a core philosophy over one that does.

[randomishnickname]

Thinking about Amma Crellin and her actions as reflections of the social hierarchy she grew up in. (spoilers under the cut)

Amma is pretty much Windgap royalty. Not only is her family extremely wealthy, her mother holds power over the livelihoods of big parts of the population. Her family history is deeply tied to that of Windgap. The sheriff and other officials are at Adora's beck and call. Everyone knows Adora and deferes to her, and this status transfers to Amma:

She plays the star part in the school play as a matter of course. She can get away with everything, from shoplifting to breaking curfew, from taking drugs to insulting and taunting a police officer. She's hot shit and very good at being a hot girl to boot, on the way to being prom queen like Camille once was. Her friends do everything she wants. Boys, she feels, are hers to control. Others are her playthings. At home, she's at the mercy of her mother. In the rest of Windgap, she's invicible.

Then, Ann and Natalie. Both outsiders who moved to Windgap only recently, their family without social capital worth speaking of. Both freaks, misfits - tomboys and late bloomers, still running through the woods instead of following the norms of girlhood and femininity. Still lacking self-control, prone to tantrums and biting. In the social hierarchy both of the school and the town, they're near the bottom - it's interesting Amma was friends with them once at all, but then this keen sense for social status often becomes more prominent once puberty hits. I think it's a safe bet they were bullied. They were not cool girls. And so Amma, who never faces consequences for everything, who's royalty, who has friends entirely devoted to her - she's safe killing them, in her good right almost, they're nobodies, and Windgap, that she knows so well, proves her right by not even once suspecting her. Had not an other outsider and freak, Camille, disturbed the status-quo, she would have gotten away with everything swimmingly. Her friends laugh about it too - Ann and Natalie's lives don't seem to have had much worth to them.

[I do believe her choice of killing Natalie wasn't entirely out of convenience either - I have the suspicion that Amma had a childhood crush on Natalie's older brother John that got rejected, and that killing his beloved little sister was a form of punishment for this unheard of outrage. Amma telling Camille John fancies her (despite him treating her like a venomous snake in the pool scene) could be a sort of wish fullfilment. Would explain how viciously she latches onto the 'baby killer' narrative.]

And then, Mae. To me it's VERY MUCH not a random choice to have Mae be a black kid. The only people of color Amma has probably ever met in the conferedate nostalgia enclave of Windgape are domestic workers that obeyed her, or workers at her mother's pig farm who defered to her, all of them incredibly lower on the social hierarchy than the litte Windgap princess. And now she meets this black city kid, who lives in a rented apartment, maybe with a single mom. That's not someone Amma would respect, or consider on her level, but instead I think she'd have this deep belief that Mae was her inferior and should obey her, defer to her. Did she plan on killing her when Camille granted Mae attention? Or did Mae refuse her somehow, got sick of being bossed around, in this fight they supposedly had?

And I love how all of this is both implicit and subtle yet crystal clear, in everything we learn about Ann and Natalie, the way their peers describe them (in contrast to the adults who are more proficient liars), in every interaction we see between the white upper class of Windgap and POCs.

[partly-cloudyskies]

Red Birthright

Witch From Mercury/Star Wars AU

Chapter 6

Loret Noor’s capital city had one of its spaceports set in an outlying enclave. That was where she had been instructed to put down. The spaceport squatted like a bulky, high-walled fortress honeycombed with landing pads that saw starliners and haulers come and go. It anchored one end of a wide boulevard and on the other end was a gaudy mansion—no, palace, more like. Lining the boulevard between was what had appeared to be storefronts but—upon their unscheduled acquisition of previously spoken for goods through the use of emphatic coercion—turned out be concealed auto-turrets. The entire ‘town’ was an artfully concealed fortress for an extremely wealthy, extremely paranoid, and now extremely angry Hutt. “Raddu,” Agrum had said, half an hour ago before everything went to hell. “A respectable Hutt, not like the violent warlords you get out on the Outer Rim. By which I mean, he’ll introduce himself before having one of his henchmen slit your throat.” And yes, Raddu was indeed announcing himself. Via a four-story tall holoprojection of himself, beamed out of his palace. He thrashed and flailed in all his slug-like glory, a glass of some dark liquid sloshing in the grip of one hand as he raged in Huttese. Miorine had to confess her grasp on the language was rusty, but she heard the name ‘Shaddiq’ followed by a string of profanity that she definitely recognized. In that moment, she felt a kinship with Raddu. It was a shame his bodyguards were trying to kill her. “Why isn’t the cargo moving?” Miorine shouted over the firefight. The three skiffs that occupied the middle of the road were laden with their ill-gotten goods. They had glided serenely on hover skis a good way down the main thoroughfare until coming to a puttering stop roughly halfway between the palace and the spaceport. “I am unsure!” Agrum said. “Doc is responsible for remoting the skiffs and I have lost contact with her!” Doc? Miorine furrowed her brow. Who was— She heard an impact of blaster bolt against metal and caught a shower of sparks in her periphery. Above her. Second level of the storefront. Something fell, feet away from where she crouched. Limp limbs tangling together in a heap on the paved street. They landed with the sound of metal scraping on concrete. “Doc!” Agrum called out. Doc, it turned out, was a slicer droid, slight and stealthy. Not, it appeared, sufficiently so. Agrum shifted his aim, pointing above Miorine, and fired. A Raddu henchman fell atop Doc then rolled away with a smoking hole in his armor. “This sucks,” Miorine said under her breath.

[servants-hall]

Camp (Presumed Innocent) will star as JP Morgan, the world-famous investment banker who finds himself at odds with George Russell (Morgan Spector) over the future of the railroad industry. Martin (Evil) will play Madame Dashkova, a medium who claims to be able to commune with the dead. Wever (Unbelievable) will take on Monica O’Brien, Bertha Russell’s (Carrie Coon) estranged sister who appears at a crucial time for the family. 

“The American Gilded Age was a period of immense economic and social change, when huge fortunes were made and lost overnight,” reads the season’s official description. “With the old guard officially deposed, New York society finds itself turned upside down, and all must get their house in order. But even those at the helm of this new era may find that change comes at a cost.”

Other new cast members joining the above trio are Leslie Uggams (Roots) as Mrs. Ernestine Brown, Elizabeth Kirkland [Phylicia Rashad]’s friend and a member of the Black elite community in Newport; Lisagay Hamilton (Winning Time) as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, the famed Black suffragist who inspires Peggy (Denée Benton) to become involved in her cause; Paul Alexander Nolan as Alfred Merrick, a dashing, wealthy New York businessman, who has all the hallmarks of the old money set — elegance, refinement and sophistication; Hattie Morahan (Fool Me Once) as Lady Sarah Vere, Sister to the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb); and Jessica Frances Dukes (Ozark) as Athena Trumbo, Dorothy’s (Audra McDonald) beloved first cousin and a part of an elite enclave of Black residents of Newport, R.I.

[warrioreowynofrohan]

@potatoobsessed999 oh eyyy you read the scholomance books! talk to me about the scholomance books!!!

Oh, lots of thoughts!

I’ve only read the first and third ones (and read the TVtropes entry for the second), but I enjoyed them a lot! The biggest thing that sticks out to me as a very intentional theme is that, unlike most action-oriented stories, they’re not really about the protagonist defeating a main villain or groups of villains: instead, the antagonist is the status quo, the structure of society and people’s acceptance of that structure. It’s not about defeating the bad people because, essentially, everyone is the bad people, and everyone is the good people: the third book in particular focuses on both the willingness of ordinary people to do and accept horrific things and their willingness to do better when they’re shown an alternative and pushed towards it.

One of the things that the series solidified for me is the idea that ‘there is no alternative’ is the voice of evil. People will do and accept terribly evil things so long as they’re convinced that these things are the only option, or that every other possible option is worse. El’s mother stands out as the character who defies this: she will not live in an enclave, even for the sake of her infant daughter’s safety, knowing what they are built on. She will do and sacrifice anything for her daughter except going against her conscience. This makes her bargain/petition - even though she could not know and did not intend its consequences - appropriate to the story, because it’s flowing from a place of sincerity: an alternative to the evil of the current system is what she cares about most, because it’s basically the only chance for her daughter to live in a decent world. (I was going to compare the low-level use of malia to the carbon economy - pretty sure I did get that comparison off tvtropes - which is funny because if anyone in the wealthy parts of the world is managing to live a carbon-neutral life, it would be El’s mom.)

El’s fascinating because she’s such a cranky jerk while at the same time having such strong principles underneath that, and especially in the earlier parts of the first book is such a great unreliable narrator. She’s not liked, but she’s also terrible at recognizing when people are genuinely being nice to her, and tends to attribute pragmatic or self-interested motives to people who are actually being kind. She starts getting over this over the course of the book, but even in The Golden Enclaves she takes a while to realize that a woman who is willing to cross the world for her is actually her friend. The funny connection is that she also deliberately attributes selfish and hostile motives to herself that don’t line up with her actions - again, mainly in the first book. It’s like she’s deliberately trying to be more cynical than she really is.

I don’t know how much of this is from tvtropes and how much from the books that I read, but there’s a bit where one if the enclaver kids says that the Scholomance isn’t that dangerous and El just boggles, because she and the other non-enclavers are being attacked on basically a daily basis, and I thought that was a solid understanding of how privilege works: all the things you just don’t notice or think about because they’re not part of your life, to the point where it’s strange and confusing to realize that these are things other people deal with every day.

Oh, one more thing. It seems like one of the things that pushes El to be a good person is that, due to the nature of her powers, she can’t make small moral compromises (e.g., regarding use of malia): she can stick to the straight and narrow, or she can topple off a cliff. So much of the rest of the series is about where the choice to make small, apparently harmless or unavoidable moral compromises leads to making bigger and bigger ones (the mals exist because of low-level malia use worldwide, which leads to more low-level malia use to fight off the mals, leading to even more mals, leading to the enclaves with their horrific secret). While El’s dark power is stated as being important in the books in order for her to have the firepower to deal with mawmouths and other mals, I think it’s also a key element in who she becomes, because the path of the ‘lesser evil’ has been effectively closed off to her; she can choose good, or she can choose the ‘greater evil’, and she’s confronted with needing to reject the choice of the ‘greater evil’ nearly every day. This - and her mother, who raised her as someone who would reject evil - is what gives her the foundation to become the hero she does.

[southeastasianists]

Singapore’s prosperity has long set it apart from many other former British colonies. There is another difference, too: Singapore has clung to honouring its former colonial ruler — and it wants to keep doing so.

Special accolade has gone to Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, who is considered to have founded modern Singapore in the early 1800s. For decades, Singapore’s textbooks credited Raffles with transforming the island from a “sleepy fishing village” into a thriving seaport. He has been the central character in a larger official narrative that says imperial Britain had set up Singapore for success as an independent nation.

Dedications to Raffles dot the landscape of Singapore. A business district, schools and dozens of other buildings bear his name. Two 2.5-metre likenesses of the man loom large in downtown Singapore.

But a new statue of Raffles, installed in a park in May, has revived a debate about the legacy of colonialism in Singapore. On one side is the broader establishment, which has held up British colonial rule positively. On the other are those who want a closer inspection of the empire that Raffles represented and the racial inequity he left behind, even as Singapore became wealthy.

This divide has surfaced before, perhaps most prominently a few years ago when Singapore celebrated the bicentennial of Raffles’ arrival on the island. Now, the new statue has set off a fresh debate, with critics pointing out that other countries have for years been taking down monuments to historical figures associated with slavery or imperialism, or both.

“The thing about Raffles is that, unfortunately I think, it has been delivered as a hagiography rather than just history,” said Alfian Sa’at, a playwright who wants to see the Raffles statues destroyed. “It’s so strange — the idea that one would defend colonial practice. It goes against the grain on what’s happening in many parts of the world.”

The new statue of Raffles stands next to one of his friend Nathaniel Wallich, a Danish botanist, at Fort Canning Park. Tan Kee Wee, an economist who pooled $330,000 with his siblings to commission the statues, said he wanted to commemorate the pair’s role in founding Singapore’s first botanic gardens, which were his frequent childhood haunt. He donated the sculptures in his parents’ name to the National Parks Board.

Opponents have also criticised the government for allowing the statue to go up at the park because it was the site of the tomb of precolonial Malay kings. The parks board said it considered historical relevance in the installation of the sculptures.

Questions about the statue have even been raised in Singapore’s parliament. In June, Desmond Lee, the minister for national development, responded to one by saying that Singapore did not glorify its colonial history. At the same time, Lee added, “We need not be afraid of the past.”

The plaque for the Raffles statue explains how Singapore’s first botanic gardens “cultivated plants of economic importance, particularly spices”. That, critics said, was a euphemism for their actual purpose: cash crops for the British Empire.

Tan defended the legacy of British colonialists in Singapore, saying they “didn’t come and kill Singaporeans”.

He added: “Singapore was treated well by the British. So why all this bitterness?”

Far from benign

But colonial Britain was far from benign. For instance, it treated nonwhite residents of Singapore as second-class citizens. Raffles created a town plan for Singapore that segregated people into different racial enclaves. And he did not interact with the locals, said Kwa Chong Guan, a historian.

“He was very much a corporate company man, just concerned with what he assumed to be the English East India Co’s interests,” Kwa said.

Raffles landed in Singapore in 1819 as Britain was looking to compete with the Dutch in the Malacca Strait, a crucial waterway to China. At the time, Singapore was under the sway of the kingdom of Johor in present-day Malaysia. Raffles exploited a succession dispute in Johor to secure a treaty that allowed the East India Company to set up a trading post in Singapore.

Within a handful of years, Singapore was officially a British territory. Convict labour, largely from the Indian subcontinent, was crucial to its economic development. So, too, were Chinese immigrants, which included wealthy traders and poor labourers.

Singapore achieved self-governance in 1959, then briefly joined Malaysia before becoming an independent republic in 1965. It has since built one of the world’s most open economies and among its busiest ports, as well as a bustling regional financial hub.

In recent years, the government has acknowledged, in small ways, the need to expand the narrative of Singapore’s founding beyond Raffles. Its textbooks now reflect that the island was a thriving centre of regional trade for hundreds of years before Raffles arrived.

In 2019, officials cast the commemoration of Raffles’ arrival as also a celebration of others who built Singapore. A Raffles statue was painted over as if to disappear into the backdrop. Placed next to it, though only for the duration of the event, were four other sculptures of early settlers, including that of Sang Nila Utama, a Malay prince who founded what was called Singapura in 1299.

To some historians and intellectuals, such gestures are merely symbolic and ignore the reckoning Singapore needs to have with its colonial past. British rule introduced racist stereotypes about nonwhites, such as that of the “lazy” Malay, an Indigenous group in Singapore, that has had a lasting effect on public attitudes. Colonialism led to racial divisions that, in many ways, persist to this day in the city-state that is now dominated by ethnic Chinese.

“If you only focus on one man and the so-called benevolent aspect of colonialism, and you don’t try to associate or think about the negative part too much, isn’t that a kind of blindness, or deliberate amnesia?” said Sai Siew Min, an independent historian. (Story continues below)

Role of race

Race relations played a role in Raffles’ ascension in Singaporean lore. Soon after Singapore became independent, the governing People’s Action Party — which remains in power decades later — decided to officially declare Raffles the founder of Singapore. Years later, S Rajaratnam, who was then the foreign minister, said that anointing a Malay, Chinese or Indian as its founder would have been fraught.

“So we put up an Englishman — a neutral, so there will be no dissension,” Rajaratnam said.

The decision was also meant to indicate that Singapore remained open to the West and free markets.

In a 1983 speech, Rajaratnam acknowledged that Raffles’ attitude toward the “nonwhite races was that without British overlordship the natives would not amount to much”.

Critics of the Raffles statues also argue that his legacy should reflect his time on the island of Java. Although Raffles outlawed slavery in Singapore, he allowed trading of slaves in Java, including children as young as 13, according to Tim Hannigan, who wrote a book about Raffles.

The new statues of Raffles and Wallich were created by Andrew Lacey, a British artist. The sculptures evoke the two men as apparitions — symbolism that Lacey said represented the world’s evolution away from the West.

Lacey said he had “wrangled” with the public reaction toward his sculptures and he had no qualms if Singaporeans wanted to take them down, destroy them or replace their heads with the Malay gardeners who were instrumental in creating the botanic gardens.

“I was cognisant of the complexities of making any dead white male,” he said of Raffles. “I wasn’t cognisant of the degree of complexity around him.”

[kendrixtermina]

I just read on a website that prior to the Nakba, the Gaza strip was actually somewhat prosperous - you had ports & a market hub where farmers from the surrounding land would sell their produce.

When it became an enclave, you suddenly hand this bunch of densely populated cities cut off from the surrounding countryside, a pretty unnatural anrangement which of course trashed the economy and led to deterioration ever since, especially with how the occupation has kept tightening the noose.

But it became an enclave because there were too many ppl to dominate & control right away (especially with the addition of refugees that had been pushed there) and there were too many people to control right away because it was once wealthy enough to sustain a cluster of cities.

And now, even before the war they had the highest unemployment rate in the world with large numbers of residents dependent on UN aid.

Imagine what it would look like today if there hadn't been any Zionism.

kinda like most places that were colonized, ppl came there because there was something worth stealing but then told tall tales back home about how it was all jungle and wilderness. The first colonists had to fight kingdoms & empires, but then later generations would indeed see jungle & wilderness, ignorant that they're looking at the wreckage caused by their predecessors. and then "theyre backward" was used as a justification to rule over them... even though the europeans had actively wrecked the places & discouraged growth (why invest in progress if everything just gets stolen?) - in some cases the wreckage preceded them, as in plagues spread in the americas or economic havoc & war wrought by the slave trade in africa.

Even today many ppl don't know that while the Americas and Africa DID have Nomads (as did Europe, before Hitler...), there were actually sophisticated kingdoms & empires in all places that allowed for them (modern nomads generally live in places not suitable to farming, so it's not due to "backwardness" either.), not that different from the medieval or early renaissance europeans that first discovered them. The nomads were just the ones left after plague etc. collapsed the sophisticated societies.

It's really that same MO of spreading the idea that there was no one there or it was always poor even when the first generations of settlers had to actively fight the locals. But it's crass that this could still happen in times with cameras, videotapes and extensive records.

[ausetkmt]

Ga. islanders vow to keep fighting change favoring rich buyers

DARIEN, Ga. - Descendants of enslaved people living on a Georgia island vowed to keep fighting after county commissioners voted to double the maximum size of homes allowed in their tiny enclave.

Residents fear the move will accelerate the decline of one of the South’s few surviving Gullah-Geechee communities.

An aspect of the ordinance that residents take issue with is the fact that it erases a clause about protecting the island’s indigenous history.

During public meetings leading up to the vote, the zoning board proposed changes to the ordinance of lowering the newly allowed home size and removing talk of golf courses being added to the island.

Black residents of the Hogg Hummock community on Sapelo Island and their supporters packed a meeting of McIntosh County’s elected commissioners to oppose zoning changes that residents say favor wealthy buyers and will lead to tax increases that could pressure them to sell their land.

ISLAND’S HERITAGE

Gullah-Geechee communities like Hogg Hummock are scattered along the Southeast coast from North Carolina to Florida, where they have endured since their enslaved ancestors were freed by the Civil War. Scholars say these people long separated from the mainland retained much of their African heritage, from their unique dialect to skills and crafts such as cast-net fishing and weaving baskets.

Regardless, commissioners voted 3-2 to weaken zoning restrictions the county adopted nearly three decades ago with the stated intent to help Hogg Hummock’s 30 to 50 residents hold on to their land.

Yolanda Grovner, 54, of Atlanta said she has long planned to retire on land her father, an island native, owns in Hogg Hummock. She left the county courthouse Tuesday night wondering if that will ever happen.

“It’s going to be very, very difficult,” Grovner said. She added: “I think this is their way of pushing residents off the island.”

Hogg Hummock is one of just a few surviving communities in the South of people known as Gullah, or Geechee, in Georgia, whose ancestors worked island slave plantations.

MORE | Mom in Grovetown calls cops on U.S. energy secretary’s staff

Fights with the local government are nothing new to residents and landowners. Dozens successfully appealed staggering property tax hikes in 2012, and residents spent years fighting the county in federal court for basic services such as firefighting equipment and trash collection before county officials settled last year.

“We’re still fighting all the time,” said Maurice Bailey, a Hogg Hummock native whose mother, Cornelia Bailey, was a celebrated storyteller and one of Sapelo Island’s most prominent voices before her death in 2017. “They’re not going to stop. The people moving in don’t respect us as people. They love our food, they love our culture. But they don’t love us.”

Merden Hall, who asked not to be on camera, has lived on Sapelo his whole life. He says he’s worried about the sizes of homes now allowed on the island.

“I’m not comfortable with this. They approved the 3,000 square feet, that’s the only thing I disapprove of, because that’s going to raise property taxes,” he said.

Hogg Hummock’s population has been shrinking in recent decades, and some families have sold their land to outsiders who built vacation homes. New construction has caused tension over how large those homes can be.

Commissioners on Tuesday raised the maximum size of a home in Hogg Hummock to 3,000 square feet of total enclosed space. The previous limit was 1,400 square feet of heated and air-conditioned space.

Commissioner Davis Poole, who supported loosening the size restriction, said it would allow “a modest home enabling a whole family to stay under one roof.”

“The commissioners are not out to destroy the Gullah-Geechee culture or erase the history of Sapelo,” Poole said. “We’re not out to make more money for the county.”

Commission Chairman David Stevens, who said he’s been visiting Sapelo Island since the 1980s, blamed Hogg Hummock’s changing landscape on native owners who sold their land.

“I don’t need anybody to lecture me on the culture of Sapelo Island,” Stevens said, adding: “If you don’t want these outsiders, if you don’t want these new homes being built ... don’t sell your land.”

County officials have argued that size restrictions based on heated and cooled spaced proved impossible to enforce. County attorney Adam Poppell said more than a dozen homes in Hogg Hummock appeared to violate the limits, and in some cases homeowners refused to open their doors to inspectors.

Hogg Hummock landowner Richard Banks equated that to the county letting lawbreakers make the rules.

“If everybody wants to exceed the speed limit, should we increase the speed limits for all the speeders?” Banks said.

Hogg Hummock residents said they were blindsided when the county unveiled its proposed zoning changes on Aug. 16. Commissioners in July had approved sweeping zoning changes throughout McIntosh County, but had left Hogg Hummock alone.

Commissioner Roger Lotson, the only Black member of the county commission, voted against the changes and warned his colleagues that he fears they will end up back in court for rushing them.

Two attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center sat in the front row. Attorney Anjana Joshi said they had “due process and equal protection concerns” about the way the zoning ordinance was amended.

“In our view, this was not done correctly,” said Joshi, who added: “We’re just getting started.”

Located about 60 miles south of Savannah, Sapelo Island remains separated from the mainland and reachable only by boat. Since 1976, the state of Georgia has owned most of its 30 square miles of largely unspoiled wilderness. Hogg Hummock, also known as Hog Hammock, sits on less than a square mile.

Hogg Hummock earned a place in 1996 on the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the United States’ treasured historic sites. But for protections to preserve the community, residents depend on the local government in McIntosh County, where 65% of the 11,100 residents are white.

[righthandarm-man]

What’s your housing philosophy, if you don’t mind me asking?

Don't mind at all anon, thanks for asking! For the sake of clarity; I'm going to make this into a numbered list lmao

In the year 2023, the vast majority of anglophone countries are experiencing a housing shortage. This part is non-negotiable. If we can’t agree on this basic fact of reality, the rest of this conversation is moot. Housing vacancy rates are at or near their lowest in decades according to the U.S. Census.

An abundance of housing empowers tenants. The number one contributor to our recent spike in housing costs is a lack of housing supply first and foremost. Landlords suck, but they’ve always sucked, and yet housing hasn’t always been this expensive. What has actually changed is the number of constraints on housing supply. Exclusionary zoning, parking minimums, and NIMBYism keep housing scarce, enabling landlords to price gouge and rent seek.

Density is good, actually. Letting people agglomerate in one area (i.e. live in a city) is good. It’s good for the environment (prevents sprawl, increases transit use), good for communities (deters class and racial segregation, provides more tax revenue relative to infrastructure costs) and good for preventing housing scarcity (when you’re allowed to build up, you’re able to provide more houses for less money).

Wealthy enclaves should either not exist or pay their fair share. Urban3 has done some fantastic work recently breaking down how city tax revenues are distributed per household. Their findings…poorer residents living in city centers are essentially subsidizing wealthy suburbs nearby, with most subsidies going to roads, highways, and parking. This is the opposite of good housing and tax policy and is one more reason to be in favor of density and in opposition to things like parking minimums and minimum lot sizes.

Neighborhood change is good and necessary. Living in a just, multi-cultural society means you can’t restrict who moves in and what gets built, freezing a city in amber helps no one. This means you build housing for immigrants and college kids, for refugees and tech yuppies, for abuse survivors and old-timers, for young families and nepo babies. You may like the former group more than the latter, but a just society is one that makes housing maximally accessible for both.

[crcwned]

okay, another post of me asking for things because i keep coming up with things to want . so i'm still looking for mumus , but i would love to have some with these particular vibes . if you’re interested , leave a ♡ and i’ll check out your blog !

small southern town . everyone knows each other because no one moves there and very few people actually leave . since there's not a lot of movement , maybe there's some kind of social hierarchy in place where the founding families still run everything , have their debutante balls and country club memberships that are unattainable for most of the other people living there ( but they get on just fine without all the pomp and circumstance ) . on the flip side , there are still a lot of mom & pop shops , independently-owned farms , etc., because the town's not big enough to attract a lot of chains . also : generations on generations of drama .

another small town , but this time coastal and northeastern . i'm thinking a lot of old money . people who've never had a will read to them but know all about family trusts . lawyers , politicians , authors , professors — lots of intellectual types living there , but also people who've never needed to think too much about anything ( aside from where their next vacation will be ) . people who use summer as a verb and a noun . most people are super laid back . not too , too much widespread drama but plenty of petty spats between neighbors . maybe just a touch of white collar crime .

small wealthy enclave of a big city , but this time on the west coast . lots of new money . influencers , actors , musicians , tech moguls , entrepreneurs . also lots of unnecessary competition . on the other hand , there's a lot of superficial behavior , shallow relationships , broken trust between neighbors and friends ( if there was any trust to begin with ) . fights breaking out at high-profile events and ending up all over social media by the end of the night . trying to maintain certain illusions because to give them up is to damage one's entire sense of self .

a small circle of royals and aristocrats . they have certain expectations to meet regarding their public image . whether or not they actually do meet them is up for discussion . behind closed doors , they're free to do whatever they want and they take those liberties very seriously .

[iwanthermidnightz]

“Living in aspiration means ignoring the convention of coming out in favor of just … existing. This is easier for those who can pass as cis and straight if need be, those who are so wealthy or white that the burden of hiding falls to others and those who live in accepting urban enclaves. This is a queer life without friction; coming out in a way straight people can see is no longer a prerequisite for acceptance, fulfillment and equality.

This aspiration is tremendous, but in our current culture, it is available only to a privileged few. Should such an inequality of access to aspiration become the accepted state of affairs, it would leave those who can’t hide to face society’s cruelest actors without the backing of a vocal, activated community. So every queer person who takes issue with the idea that we must come out ought to ask a simple question — what do we owe one another?

If coming out is primarily supposed to be an act of self-actualization, to form our own identities, then we owe one another nothing. This posture recognizes that the act of coming out implicitly reinforces straight and cis identities as default, which is not worth the rewards of outness.

But if coming out is supposed to be a radical act of resistance that seeks to change the way our society imagines people to be, then undeniable visibility is essential to make space for those without power. In this posture, queer people who can live in aspiration owe those who cannot a real world in which our expansive views of love and gender aren’t merely tolerated but celebrated. We have no choice but to actively, vocally press against the world we’re in, until no one is stuck in it.

And so just for a little while longer, we need our heroes.

But if queer people spend all of our time holding out for a guiding light, we might forgo a more pressing question that if answered, just might inch all of us a bit closer to aspiration. The next time heroes appear, are we ready to receive them?”

— NYT OPINION: Look What We Made Taylor Swift Do (x)

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Adam B. Coleman

Published: Apr 17, 2024

Recently I was driving through an affluent neighborhood outside of Boston and I saw more "Black Lives Matter" flags on one street than I've ever seen in totality in any black majority working-class neighborhood.

If I were to presume that most of the people who live in this area are white, why do they feel the need to brandish this flag more so than black people? It only makes sense if "Black Lives Matter" were using the image of black people as a front for an upper-class religion.

Most people agree with black lives matter as a sentiment, including me, but for many it's a way to signal to other ideological believers where they stand and differentiate themselves from the non-believers.

It's no different than if I wore a cross on my chest to let others know about my faith in Christ: they want to signal to the world their social justice & economic status. Within their class bubble, this is how they measure their righteousness against others within their enclave.

That flag has nothing to do with me as a black person but instead has everything to do with making upper-class suburbanites feel less guilty about their social status and elevate their moral standing amongst their social circle.

They find affirmation about us needing them as our faux saviors through other upper-class blacks, especially the academics who are well-versed in their ideological scripture and reject people like me as being false prophets attempting to lead them astray.

Sometimes when people are void of significant problems, they manufacture their own or adopt other people's problems. I believe a significant reason why this ideology holds so strongly amongst the wealthy is because it gives them purpose and an issue to strive to resolve.

However, regular people who are just trying to make ends meet don't need to create problems that aren't there: they have enough of them already. They don't generally have an ego that accepts the possibility of how they can become the saviors of the world, one flag at a time.

Coincidentally, on that same street, those same houses all had LGBT flags and "hate has no home here" lawn signs: It was like driving through an internet meme mocking the ideological left.

Because they rarely leave their bubble, they can't see the absurdity in their actions. They are distant from the demographics they claim to champion, making their advocacy theoretical and improbable for them to bring a resolution to the problems they claim are abundant.

Personally, I am skeptical about anyone who attempts to state their character unprovoked. When I see a neighborhood like that which is trying to convey that they are good people, I think to myself "If you're moral people, you don't need to tell me this: It will shine through."

I worry that there is a segment of wealthy Americans who are insecure about their morality, which is why they quickly bought into a narrative about them being inherently racist or immoral based on what they look like. Maybe this is their way to repent for their sins?

The reason we are being inundated with racial fallacies, outrageous claims, and ideological bent in our media coverage, entertainment, and legislation is that the people who dominate in these fields have all graduated from the same seminary-esque liberal universities.

What's very clear to me is that the flourishing of radical left-wing ideology is fueled by those who reign at the top of the economic ladder. They are disconnected from the rest of us & can't see the ridiculousness of what they're doing because their bubble only reflects their image.

[papapandashipyards]

Calactic Council Part 1 : The Caridina Trade Enclave

The first somewhat fleshed out Galactic council Members, at least when it comes to a name, ships, location on a map and style, is the Caridina Trade Enclave. Headcanon wise I see them as a uncomfortably wealthy Region, that acts as a neutral buffer and bridge between the Taiidan state, and it's neighbours. As a faction they make trade between all the regional factions, who don't really see eye to eye possible, by virtue of their position. Of course this is facilitated with non substantial mark ups, hence the uncomfortable amount of wealth. Due to political circumstances and logistical issues, their fleets are mainly built to defend Trade Routes and Convoys from bold Raiders. Ultimately, if it weren't for their usefulnes as a trade hub, they would sucumb quickly to their clients ambitions.

Fighter class

Intercepter

Heavy Intercepter

Plasma Bomber

Corvette Class

Attack Corvette

Railgun Corvette

Frigate class

Assault Frigate

Support Frigate

Capital Class

Destroyer-Carrier

Here's the same ships, with complete stat blocks for the Game:

And yes, their aesthetic is based on shrimp :)