#when these laws have already existed and harmed thousands if not millions

[andromachos]

denying a trans man gender afirming surgeries and trying to legally make him incapable of having decision over his own body, is transphobic, undoubtly, but the legislation exists to control cis women. the societal expectation of fertility and searching all the posible means to have control over the womb and vagina of another person is both fundamentally racist and ableist in nature, as ranging from liberals to full on conservatives, will see people they oppress getting forcibly castrated and relish in the thought of them having "no legacy"

' irreversible damage ' was written about trans men, but we should not forget, from cover to the author's intention, that it's expressing the fear of losing women's fertility and societal indoctrination of baby makers. this is because, to the misogynistic mind, the idea of gender non-conformity presents the idea of questioning gender roles, which between many things not only proposes a woman that does not live for men, but also a woman that can find fulfilment without birthing kids through pregnancy. for these reasons self proclaimed "radicals" venerate the divine feminity and conservative groomers defend their right to refuse to teach girls about anything other than how to carry a pregnancy. it is the fear of losing the conditioned woman who is submissive to patriarchy, and the hipocrisy of considering race, class and disabilities despite claiming to be "pro-life"

trans liberation will come with women's liberation and viceversa, as they both encourage body autonomy and the concept of the woman happy with her existence without serving men. we should not think one cannot advance without the other, as transmisogyny shows us how deeply settled the standards of cis womanhood are, even within cis women themselves, when needed to shame women into conformity and submission and the shame of failing to be molded "correctly"

[banji-effect]

On Friday, Israel began warning more than a million Palestinians who live in the northern Gaza Strip to evacuate their homes. It did so while continuing its bombing campaign, which it says is meant to destroy Hamas, the terrorist group that brutally murdered over thirteen hundred Israelis last weekend. The United Nations has said that a relocation of so many civilians from such a densely populated area is “impossible”; already, more than twenty-four hundred Palestinians have been killed. To help understand the situation in Gaza, I recently spoke by phone with Sari Bashi, the program director at Human Rights Watch. She also co-founded the organization Gisha, which works on human-rights issues in Gaza, and she is currently in the West Bank. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed her specific concerns about Israel’s military action, the challenges of evacuating Gaza, and how human-rights advocates wrestle with different types of atrocities.

This is not the first Israeli incursion into Gaza since Hamas took control of the territory, in 2007. What human-rights norms has Israel observed and not observed in prior incursions?

In prior incursions, the Israeli military engaged in disproportionate and in some cases indiscriminate attacks on civilians. The laws of war require armies to avoid deliberately targeting civilians, and also to avoid attacks that by their nature cannot distinguish between civilians and combatants. In particular, in Gaza, because it’s such a densely populated urban area, when you fire explosive weapons on a massive scale, it’s predictable that civilians will die. It’s predictable that children will die. And that’s what has happened certainly in the last couple of days, but also in most of the rounds of violence that have taken place over the last many years.

What the Israeli government tends to claim about these prior incursions is that they have warned people to disperse from an area beforehand, and moreover that they don’t directly target civilians. Instead, they say that they target Hamas terrorists, and seek to avoid civilian casualties. Do you agree with this, and what have you observed over the past couple of decades?

I disagree. I think in many cases, the Israeli Army has openly targeted civilians; it’s just that they don’t recognize them as civilians. There was an attack on a police station where there were police cadets who were graduating and hundreds of people were killed. This was back in 2008. The fact that these cadets were working for the Hamas-run government does not turn them into combatants. In other cases, the Israeli Army also attacked political leaders of Hamas, which is not allowed by international law in terms of targeting. But I think most of the terrible harm has come from indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian areas.

There was one military operation where the Israeli government claimed with pride that they had sent messages to one hundred thousand homes in Gaza. This is interesting because that’s about half of the number of households that exist in Gaza. So if you tell people that we’re going to bomb your area, but there’s no safe place to go—that is not considered an effective warning. And even if you warn civilians, if they don’t leave because they can’t or won’t, you’re not allowed to target them. And, in terms of the disproportionality of the attacks, we’ve seen a number of attacks that rise to the level of war crimes because the Army was bombing such densely populated cities and areas where civilian deaths, and the deaths of children, were expected. And that’s a pattern that we’ve seen over and over again, I’m sorry to say.

Now to be clear, militants in Gaza—including Hamas and Islamic Jihad—are clearly engaging in war crimes because they are firing indiscriminate rockets at Israeli towns and cities. It is not hard to see that those are war crimes because they’re directly targeting civilians. The Israeli government uses a lot more obfuscation, but I can’t say that they’ve been respecting the laws of war, and the terrible, terrible deaths and injuries and destruction of homes and schools and clinics in Gaza is an indication that they have not been following the laws of war.

You’ve been involved in Gaza for almost two decades—how has the humanitarian situation there changed or worsened? Obviously there’s been a blockade for much of that time.

The Gaza Strip was carved out after the 1948 war, and it led to a situation where you had hundreds of thousands of refugees living in a very densely populated area. Gaza is 2.2 million people, seventy per cent of them are refugees, and nearly half of them are children. And, for the last sixteen years, they’ve been subject to a punishing situation where the Israeli government has closed the crossings into and out of Gaza, restricted the movement of goods in and out, and allowed people to travel only for what it calls “exceptional humanitarian circumstances.”

So the economy in Gaza has taken a nosedive. Unemployment is approaching fifty per cent. The G.D.P. per capita is lower than it was in 1994. People in Gaza can’t leave for study, or for jobs. They can’t have people come in for work or other kinds of opportunities, and eighty per cent of the population is dependent on humanitarian assistance. The situation has narrowed the horizons of young people in particular. It’s a very young population, and it’s difficult to travel abroad. Most of them have never even left the Strip. They’re not able to visit relatives, in some cases, immediate family members in the West Bank or in Israel. Young people have not been allowed to travel to Palestinian universities in the West Bank. It’s a situation that cannot be ignored as one of the drivers of the current violence.

During prior incursions, Israel has said that it was going into Gaza to destroy Hamas or to weaken Hamas. This operation seems much larger. What are your specific concerns about it, and how does it sit on a continuum with past actions in Gaza?

This past week has been unprecedented. The attacks that Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza launched on Israeli civilians on Saturday are unlike anything in Israeli history. We’re talking about fighters coming, kidnapping children, kidnapping older people, kidnapping babies, burning families out of their homes, engaging in a massacre at an outdoor dance party, so that hundreds of Israeli civilians were killed. We’ve never had that. And the Israeli response in terms of its warfare on Gaza is also unprecedented.

The Israeli government has blocked supplies of food, electricity, fuel, and water to the 2.2 million residents in Gaza. [On Sunday, the White House said that Israel has turned the water back on in southern Gaza.] They have declared that they’ve asked the people in the north—half of the population—to evacuate to the south. That’s a million people. They’ve done that under circumstances in which there’s no safe place to go to, and many people can’t evacuate. You have the elderly, and you have people with disabilities. You have people who are hospitalized.

But none of this has a precedent. In the past, the Israeli government has said that they’re allowing humanitarian supplies in; now they have openly said they are engaging in collective punishment against the people of Gaza, and that they are going to deprive the civilian population of supplies as a way of punishing Hamas and Islamic jihad.

You mentioned the order to evacuate. Putting aside the specifics of this conflict, what is the humane way to deal with civilians in war zones?

So the laws of war require, assuming the circumstances permit, that warring parties give effective advance warning of attacks that could affect the civilian population. In order for a warning to be effective, it has to take into consideration the timing of the warning, and the ability of civilians to leave the area. If you don’t give them adequate time, it’s not considered effective. But civilians who do not evacuate, either because they can’t or they choose not to, do not become legitimate targets. They are still fully protected by international humanitarian law. So even after warnings have been given, the Israeli Army still has to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians and their property in the so-called evacuation zone.

My concern is that the Israeli military has been saying, “Well, it’s the fault of Hamas if those people don’t evacuate,” which makes me worry that they then see themselves having a license to harm the civilians in the areas where they haven’t evacuated. [Hamas has told Palestinians not to leave their homes.] And the reality is that Gaza’s main hospital, which is currently coping with more than six thousand people injured just from the last couple of days, is in the evacuation zone. I mean, what do they expect people to do? Do they expect the woman in the I.C.U. bed to evacuate? There are many people who cannot evacuate, and there are many people who choose not to.

For many of the refugees in Gaza, especially the elderly who remember 1948, this feels like a replay of what Palestinians called the Nakba, when they were told to leave or they fled and they were never allowed back. And the fact that the Israeli military has also called upon Egypt to open its border and has called on civilians in Gaza to flee to Egypt just ramps up those fears.

What else is Israel saying about where they can go?

Those who have fled have fled to the south. The Israeli government drew a line at the northern end of Gaza and said, Everything above this line, including Gaza City, including refugee camps that are densely populated, including the main hospital, everything above this line, you have to leave. Many people are terrified, and they’ve fled to relatives, and to homes in the southern part of Gaza. Many people cannot flee. I hope very much that the Israeli Army understands the fact that they gave people a warning that would be very difficult, and in some cases impossible, to heed, but it does not remove their responsibility to take all possible precautions not to harm civilians.

The Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, responded to a question on Friday and said that, “It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians being not aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up, they could have fought against the evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état.” How much is this in conflict with international law—the idea that civilians take some responsibility for the political situation that they find themselves in?

International humanitarian law prohibits punishing people for acts that they did not commit. In this case, punishing civilians for the actions of Hamas. So when the President says that, it’s particularly disturbing because nearly half of the people in Gaza are children, so they’re the ones being punished for the acts of adult fighters. International law is very clear about that. Collective punishment is unlawful. You are allowed to target fighters. You may not punish the civilian population by depriving them of basic goods, and there are specific prohibitions against using starvation as a method of warfare. Israel also has positive obligations to facilitate humanitarian assistance for people in Gaza who need it. So the Israeli military has an obligation to proactively insure that civilians and Gaza are adequately supplied and to facilitate all humanitarianism. Instead, it is deliberately blocking that humanitarian aid, including food and water.

Israel has said that Hamas uses civilians as shields. Is that a war crime?

Yes, we have serious concerns about Hamas and other fighters not taking adequate measures to protect civilians. So when they store weapons in civilian areas, when they concentrate fighting activities in densely populated civilian areas, they are putting civilians at risk, and that is a violation of international law. When they do that, it does not give the Israeli government the right to then disregard its obligation to avoid disproportionate or indiscriminate harm to those civilians.

You said you were in the West Bank when we started our phone call. What are your concerns about the West Bank over this next period of time as we see the increased bombardment of Gaza?

So even before this week, there has been an escalation in violence in the West Bank, primarily Israeli soldiers and settlers attacking Palestinians and some incidents of Palestinian gunmen attacking Israelis, both soldiers and civilians. Part of the concern is that Netanyahu’s government has not only not shown any willingness to rein in violence by Israeli settlers but has actually backed acts of violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians. That all creates a powder keg under the current circumstances. In the past week, there’s been an uptick in violence with some people shot and killed, and other attempted attacks. And my concern is that it’s going to get worse as the situation in Gaza gets worse, and the Israeli government is particularly uninterested in deëscalation. So a lot of people are worried here.

Do you see Israel and its behavior in Gaza as outside the norm of how democratic countries like the United States engage in war? And by norm I don’t mean to imply that it is an acceptable norm. But do you feel that Israel is actually outside of that norm?

There are some countries who have democratic elections who are engaging in horrific war crimes, and there are some countries that are quite repressive politically, but they don’t violate the laws of war. The only norm I recognize is the norm that all the countries in the world have signed up for, which is international humanitarian law. The way that something becomes a binding requirement under the laws of war is that almost every country in the world says this is a binding requirement. So almost every country in the world agrees that you are not allowed to target civilians, and that custom of not targeting civilians is how that became a rule.

I would say that unfortunately, the Israeli government has been committing crimes against humanity in the form of apartheid and persecution, which are part of the root causes of this violence. And that underlying oppression is part of the root causes of this violence. And I say that without justifying any of the violence.

A lot of the rhetoric in the United States has been about Hamas being at a different level of barbarity than Israel because of the brutality of the massacre we saw last weekend, and the feeling, widely expressed across the American political spectrum, that Israel doesn’t engage in those sorts of acts. At the same time, Israel has probably already killed more people and more civilians and more children in their response than Hamas did last weekend. I’m curious how you try to keep both of those thoughts in your head: How torturing or killing civilians and children intentionally is a uniquely awful thing, but, at the same time, Israel has also engaged in illegal behavior that’s going to lead to more people being killed.

International-law obligations are nonreciprocal. If the other side commits war crimes, that doesn’t mean you can commit war crimes. We don’t make comparisons between different kinds of war crimes. Hamas killing civilians deliberately on a massive scale, taking civilians hostage, and even threatening to execute civilians—those are war crimes. That doesn’t justify the Israeli government committing its own war crimes. And I’m very concerned.

Let me say this a different way: our job at Human Rights Watch is to try to hold open a very narrow space where universal principles of humanity and human dignity are maintained no matter who you are. And I’m worried that the United States is appropriately condemning the horrific acts committed by Hamas on Saturday, but is then forgetting that those same principles of protecting civilians also apply to the Israeli military operation in Gaza.

I think that you’ve tried to walk an interesting line in this conversation, because it seems like you’re trying to make people aware of past actions. You’ve talked about the Nakba and people fleeing and being scared of history repeating itself, and about what happened last weekend. You’ve mentioned that Israel has some responsibility for the long-term situation on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza. But at the same time you are saying that from a human-rights perspective, in some sense, that’s all irrelevant, and that people have the responsibility to live up to human-rights obligations regardless of what’s happened in the past.

Absolutely. And to be fair, I can understand that people look at the horrific acts of Saturday in southern Israel and they feel angry. But if they try to connect with why they’re feeling angry, they’re feeling angry because children were targeted. They’re feeling angry because elderly people were kidnapped. They’re feeling angry because civilians were harmed and basic principles of human decency were flouted. And so the response should not be to flout basic principles of human decency and protections of civilians on the other side. It shouldn’t be this difficult to say that, but it is. And I guess I would encourage people to think about whether the “They’re worse than we are” argument is particularly constructive or morally sound.

Or, perhaps, even if it’s morally sound, it still might not be constructive right now, because we all still need to follow the same universal ideas in our behavior.

And those universal ideas include very strong standards of nonreciprocity. You do not get to target civilians because somebody else has targeted civilians. It’s nonreciprocal because your obligations are to the civilians. It’s not a deal between fighters. It’s a deal with humanity. ♦

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Wells Fargo can't stop criming

Wells Fargo is America’s third-largest bank. It used to be the largest, but it committed a string of terrible frauds that it was never truly punished for (it made more from crime than it paid in fines).

Its crime spree did result in one meaningful punishment: Wells was forced to downsize to #3, with a mere $1.77 trillion in assets.

Have no fear: Wells Fargo is down but not out, and despite its reduced stature, it is still engaged in egregious acts of fraud.

The latest scam? “Forex transposition.” Say you have an account with Wells where you get income in euros but need to spend dollars. Historically, Wells would have defrauded you with “Range of Day” pricing.

That’s where Wells converts your euros to dollars using the best rate (for Wells, AKA the worst rate for you), on the day you ordered the currency conversion. Currency prices move around a lot during the day, and this scam could easily double Wells’ commission.

But the Range of Day scam is a grift for the little people, not suited to kings of con like Wells Fargo.

Wells just paid $76m to settle a federal investigation into a much more ambitious and brazen scam.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-28/wells-fargo-swapped-some-digits

As Matt Levine writes for Bloomberg, the new scam involved simply “making up prices,” while maintaining plausible deniability.

Here’s how that worked: say the W Range of Day exchange rate (an already crooked number) was 1.0241. Wells Fargo’s forex trader would exchange your funds at 1.0421. On big trades, that could cost you hundreds of thousands — even millions of dollars.

But you were unlikely to catch the error, and if you did, Wells’s trader would just apologize and say that they transposed the digits accidentally.

As crimes go, this is pretty unambiguous. It’s fraud. It made them a lot of money, and they only had to give some of it back.

That means they’ll do it again.

Of course they will! This is Wells fuckin’ Fargo, we’re talking about. They cannot stop criming.

In case you’ve forgotten about Wells’s crime-spree (it’s been a minute), here’s some highlights:

During foreclosure bonanza of the Great Financial Crisis, Wells led the pack. They literally broke into peoples’ homes, stole all their worldly goods and changed the locks, all without bothering to check whether they had the right house.

https://theintercept.com/2015/08/28/wells-fargo-contractors-stole-family-heirlooms/

Around then, Wells began to pressure its low-waged, young, precarious tellers to meet quotas on new accounts opened by existing customers. Its managers taught tellers how to fraudulently open these accounts. 2,000,000 customers were affected.

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/blog/what-you-need-know-if-you-were-harmed-wells-fargo/

These new accounts racked up millions in fees and penalties. Victims’ credit scores were tanked, costing them mortgages, access to student loans, and jobs. The executive who ran the program was given a $125m bonus.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/09/wells-fargo-ceos-teflon-don-act-backfires-at-senate-hearing-i-take-full-responsibility-means-anything-but.html

The CEO — who took a $200m bonus himself — blamed low-level employees for the crimes. What he didn’t say was that low-level employees who blew the whistle on the scam were illegally fired.

https://money.cnn.com/2016/09/21/investing/wells-fargo-fired-workers-retaliation-fake-accounts/index.html

They fired a lot of whistleblowers.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-09-22/whistle-blowers-and-good-activists

They didn’t just fire kids for blowing the whistle — they ruined them. After Wells fired a whistleblower, they’d add them to an industry database of bankers who’d been fired for doing crimes — people on that list can never work in the industry again.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/26/495454165/ex-wells-fargo-employees-sue-allege-they-were-punished-for-not-breaking-law

Eventually, John Stumpf, the CEO who oversaw the crimes, resigned. The Wells board appointed a successor who insisted that the bank had no problems with its culture.

https://consumerist.com/2016/10/13/new-wells-fargo-ceo-recently-denied-overbearing-sales-culture-that-created-fake-account-fiasco/

Naturally, some customers who’d been stolen from sued. Wells asked a judge to throw out the case, because those customers signed away their right to sue when a Wells Fargo employee forged their signature on the paperwork to open a fraudulent account.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wellsfargo-accounts-lawsuit-idUSKBN13J1WX

The judge agreed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/business/dealbook/wells-fargo-killing-sham-account-suits-by-using-arbitration.html

Trump also liked Wells Fargo (he owed them a lot of money). Shortly after he took office, the Department of Labor’s site for Wells whistleblowers vanished.

https://nypost.com/2017/01/27/whistleblower-site-for-wells-fargo-workers-vanishes/

Wells Fargo’s got great timing. During the Trump years, so many of its scandals came to light — and were never seriously punished by Trump’s DOJ or regulators.

They stole millions with fraudulent “home warranties”:

https://theintercept.com/2017/08/12/theres-a-new-wells-fargo-scandal-this-time-its-the-trucoat/

They stole millions by ripping off small businesses with fake credit-card fees:

https://consumerist.com/2017/08/11/wells-fargo-accused-of-overcharging-small-businesses/

They defrauded 800,000 car insurance customers and stole (“improperly repossessed”) 25,000 cars:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/business/wells-fargo-unwanted-auto-insurance.html

They tricked people who sought mortgage refinancing into scam packages that looked good at first, but led to waves of defaults and foreclosures:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/14/business/wells-fargo-loan-mortgage.html

When Wells finally admitted it ripped off 2m customers with fake accounts and offered to pay them back, it created an opt-in repayment system, ensuring that most of its victims would never be made whole:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/02/wells-fargo-screws-customers-yet-now-failing-make-right-abuses-elizabeth-warren-demands-answers.html

The Trump tax cuts only emboldened the company: after having its taxes slashed, Wells cut 26,500 jobs, shuttered branches across the country, and firehosed money over its shareholders with a $40.6 billion buyback.

https://rooseveltinstitute.org/2018/11/07/what-wells-fargos-40-6-billion-in-stock-buybacks-could-have-meant-for-its-employees-and-customers/

Not all the shareholders were satisfied. Some of them sued because the company had not delivered on its promises to “restore trust” in the bank. The company’s defense? “Everyone knows we’re liars, so they shouldn’t have relied on our statements.”

https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-wells-puffery-20181109-story.html

I mean, they have a point. It was only months later when the company blamed a “computer glitch” for its theft of 525 homes from people who should not have faced foreclosure.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wells-fargo-loan-modification-error-homeowners-who-went-into-foreclosure-seek-answers/

There’s no such thing as a non-sociopathic giant bank, but even in the crowded field of crime-addicted financial firms, Wells Fargo stands out. The fact that they’ve paid $76m — instead of having their execs go to prison — means they’ll do it again.

And again.

And again.

[realityshiftingjourney]

Reality shifting is literally just dreaming/lucid dreaming

https://youtu.be/q1mLq0QCkPk

Woohoo, first ask! Too bad it’s a hater lmao. Anyways anon, I watched the video by TheOdd1sOut. He posted it about, what, 3 or 4 hours ago? And you’re telling me your first thought was to go on tumblr and harass people because of a youtuber’s opinion? Alright then. I have no doubt that you’ve sent this exact same ask to dozens of other reality shifting blogs.

This is just going to be a quick post about my initial thoughts, and why I don’t agree with James’s opinion. His main opinion seems to be that reality shifting is fake and that it’s just dreaming/lucid dreaming. Reality shifting is not lucid dreaming! (By the way, do let me know if there’s any false info or anything in my response, I’m trying to be accurate, but things always slip by)

More under cut:

Now, for starters, I haven’t watched really any of TheOdd1sOut/James’s videos before, but I know he’s pretty popular and all, so in no way am I hating on him, I just disagree with his opinion on reality shifting and am going to point out some of my problems with his video.

It seems to be like he was first introduced to reality shifting through TikTok, which already isn’t a very good start, and he also got some information from Amino, but not nearly as much as from TikTok. TikTok is infamous for having a lot of misinfo and fake shifters, so it is not a very good place to get information about reality shifting without having to parse through the thousands upon thousands of untrue content just to find a couple hundred good creators.

James’s main problem with reality shifting is that if reality shifting is real, then what happens to the consciousness of the body you are shifting to? He did some research and found out about clones, but doesn’t really seem to believe in them or parallel universes in general, which when making a video about reality shifting, especially when he has 16 million subscribers, is kind of closed minded. Some people believe in clones, others don’t. I’ll just be explaining my personal view. To me, shifting isn’t just putting your consciousness from one universe to another, kicking out other consciousnesses, but rather expanding your awareness. You exist in other universes as literally anything, and shifting just allows you to be aware of this and experience life in your DR. The consciousness of the body you’re shifting to, and your body, are the same. Reality shifting just allows you to be aware of other universes. (Sorry if this is hard to understand, I’m not entirely happy with the wording of this)

James’s understanding of reality shifting is that somebody could shift to the same reality as the same person as someone else is, and essentially they would both be in the same person. However, there are infinite realities, so this is impossible. Same argument with fictional villains like Voldemort shifting here. There are infinite realities, so while Voldemort could shift to a reality exactly like this one, it would not be this one.

One good point he brought up was that the laws of physics should still be the same in other realities, meaning things like magic shouldn’t be possible. I..... don’t really have a good explanation for this, as I don’t know much about physics, but if anyone else could help shed some light on this, it would be much appreciated! So far it’s clear James doesn’t have a very high view of spiritual things like reality shifting or witchcraft. He thinks that reality shifting is just dreaming/lucid dreaming because people shift while asleep, but I have to stress this: This is not true! Lucid dreaming and shifting are two very different things! Plenty of people have shifted while awake, and falling asleep to shift is simply just a popular method, not the only one.

Looking through TikTok, James’s impression was that mainly all of the reality shifters are kids, which while accurate to a certain degree, isn’t completely true. On TikTok, the majority of the user base are indeed kids, so it makes sense that mainly kids on there would be reality shifters. However, there are people of all ages who are reality shifters, and just because a lot of teenagers are shifters doesn’t mean that shifting is fake.

James likens reality shifting to conspiracy theories a lot, and often compares reality shifters to anti-vaxxers and flat earthers a lot, mainly because he doesn’t think that there’s any proof about shifting. But there is proof! A lot! James has just been looking in the wrong places. There are all those CIA documents! The Gateway Experience! Anything by Robert A. Monroe! And there’s so many credible books out there! After watching the video, it just seems like he didn’t do much research beyond looking at Tiktoks and some Amino posts.

Going back to reality shifters being compared to anti-vaxxers and flat earthers, James seems to be perpetuating the idea that reality shifting is harmful, when it’s not! The shifting communities I’m in have honestly had some of the most positive people I’ve known, and we’ve all built a really nice, loving community together.

Overall, I think this video is harmful to the shifting community, and just brings a lot of bad attention to reality shifters. It doesn’t seem like James did a lot of research, and he also seems to have a low view of spirituality in general, meaning that this video is just going to tell the public that reality shifters of delusional and cringy, and that shifting is lucid dreaming. Reality shifting is not lucid dreaming! At all! So, thank you anon, for allowing me the opportunity to explain why reality shifting is real.

If anyone wants to add onto this, please do!

[afterglowlws]

Hi there! I like supercorp content but gave up on Supergirl in season 3. What were you alluding to when you said a romantic boundary has been crossed?

Hi! Sorry if this is super long winded but I have so many feelings about it still 😭😂

I think there’s been several things throughout each season that were really romantic, but something about the entirety of season 5 was just different. It was the most romantically framed they’ve ever been; the romantic music, the outfit choices, the Clois parallels, the parallels to other canon couples, the romantic tropes, etc. You’ve had all that in previous seasons as well, but this season established them as soulmates on top of it all. It established that they can’t live without each other, and that they don’t want to either.

Seeing the way Kara was desperate to apologize and get Lena back was already walking the line, but I think there were a few different things that ended up completely crossing it. The first thing is their willingness to bend their morals for each other. We have Kara, who absolutely swore to never kill no matter how evil the person was. Kara, who swore to never choose a singular person over saving thousands/millions/billions of people. Season 5 starts with Kara thinking she killed Lex (and trying again upon seeing him alive during Crisis), and she is 100% okay with this because she knows Lena is safer because of it. We also see Kara once again risk the world and all of her friends lives to save Lena. We saw this briefly in 3x05 when she was willing to let the city’s water supply get poisioned rather than drop Lena. But in season 5A she was willing to put the entire world at risk rather than inflict any harm on her. And then again in 5x13 where she got all her friends killed in AU because she revealed her identity to the world to save Lena. Revealing her identity for Lena, in and of itself, is super romantic to me. And then we have Lena, who straight up killed her brother to keep Kara safe. I also find it interesting that Kara went against Alex’s direct order and broke a federal law to steal Lex’s journals for Lena because “a friend like you has no boundaries.” That line was just...an interesting choice, especially when you parallel it to when Lena told James that a season or two ago.

Another thing is all of 5x13, which was the AU episode where Mxy took Kara through all the different timelines. That episode established them as soulmates. Established that Kara can’t live without Lena, and that Lena is heartless without Kara. This part is up for interpretation but to me, Lena’s heart was symbolic of Kara’s kryptonite being Lena not loving her. The show itself kind of backs that claim with all of their ‘stronger together, weaker apart’ posts. But anyway, in the Metallo Lena AU she started blasting Kara with kryptonite. Kara doesn’t try to fight back, run away, or even move...she just lays there and says ‘I won’t fight you Lena.’ That same ‘evil’ Lena had tears in her eyes when she saw Kara, even though she had no clue who she was, because they’re that connected across any version of reality. I could write a whole essay about the Metallo AU alone, but there’s just one more timeline I want to quickly highlight. I found it extremely interesting that Kara’s ideal timeline was when her and Lena were ‘partners’ from the beginning. They had a whole cult of followers praising the pairing of a Luthor and a Super. Kara was bothered by her cult following in the past, but being praised for her partnership with Lena was ideal to her. Lena working alongside her was ideal to her. A world where Lena was her #1 and none of her ex’s seemed to exist..was what she wanted. I think it’s telling.

The last thing is actually a deleted scene, but I have to say that had they kept it...it would’ve been very hard to explain from a platonic standpoint. There was a deleted scene from 5x07 where Kara insisted on Lena staying in a DEO safe house for her protection, and Lena told her that she wanted to fight alongside her because she’s not a damsel in a tower. The damsel in distress trope is probably one of the oldest romantic tropes in the book. Kara said it to MonHell, Iris said it to Barry, etc. There are other non deleted scenes that are just as telling as this one, but this scene in particular still just has me screaming into the void so I had to mention it lol.

Like I said I could write an entire essay with all the romantic evidence in season 5 alone, but I’ll stop here for now because I’m sure this was way more than you bargained for 😅😅

[buzzdixonwriter]

Closing The Window

In the aftermath of the election, I think there’s a major lesson for the entire country to learn with two big offshoot lessons, one for each party.

I think very few people voted for Joe Biden this year.

I think a lot more people voted for Donald Trump.

But I think there was one helluva larger number who voted against Trump than voted against Biden.

Catch my drift?

THE BIG LESSON:

Americans by and large are centrists.

They do not want their daily lives disrupted.

They resist change, but once change occurs and they see how little effect it has on their daily lives -- viz women voting, civil rights, LGBT+ rights, etc. -- they accept it and roll on.

Americans actively seek change only when something is going Very, Very Wrong.

Trump trailed in the popular vote in 2016 because most people correctly read his character:  Shallow, impulsive, self-centered.

They recognized he lacked both the temperament and the discipline to effectively lead a nation of 323 million people in a world facing rapid social, political, and climate change.

The next three years bore this out repeatedly, yet Trump managed to hold on despite his bunglings and betrayals simply by not adversely affecting the daily lives of the large minority who voted for him.

Trump’s base can most charitably be described as people anxious about their position in America, and Trump -- to no one’s great surprise, not even those who voted for him -- simply lied and promised to make everything better even though he lacked any clear plan for doing so, much less the actual talent and ability to follow through on his promises.

And for three years, it didn’t matter.

While others could see the great harm he inflicted upon America’s long term interests, by and large he let his base feel they were no longer slipping in their standing, that their lives were stabilized and ripe for improvement.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit.

To be 100% fair to Donald Trump, he neither created the pandemic nor could he stop it from eventually reaching America.

But he could have followed the effective pandemic response plan put in place by GWBush.

Doing so would have disrupted Americans’ daily lives, to be sure, but could be offset by the truthful claim it prevented an even greater disruption.

Most importantly, instead of nearly a quarter million dead Americans as of this posting, the fatality rate would be only in the tens of thousands.

If Trump followed the pandemic response plan, he would have cruised to an easy re-election victory.

But as anyone who observes him knows, he is incapable of the foresight and discipline needed to serve his own best interests.

Biden didn’t need to be better than Trump to beat him.

All he needed was to be “not Trump”.

This is why Biden didn’t have any coattails in this election.

The Democratic Party’s lesson:

Right now, America wants stability.

Trump’s cheesy theatrics aside, until 2020 he didn’t disrupt the average American’s life.

The bad things he stirred up were by and large just continuations of already existing bad situations, not new problems.

And yes, those already suffering from those situations continued suffering, and in many cases it grew worse, but it was not a new thing.

This doesn’t minimize or mitigate their suffering, it simply marks it was not a radical change from the status quo.

But killing a quarter million people through deliberate lies and bungling, then seeing the nation’s economy go into the dumpster due to lack of a coherent national response to the pandemic?

That disrupted a lot of people’s lives.

Right now the best thing the Democratic Party can do is create a semblance of order and stability in the face of the pandemic.

It won’t be easy, but it can be done.

The Republicans will try to paint them as radical leftists determined to undermine everything that makes America great.

This is because the far right in America has spent decades trying to shove the Overton window further and further to the right.

The GOP’s problem is this: They engage in magical thinking, presuming that if they wish for something rilly rilly hard enough, they can make it a reality.

The truth is the Overton window is not a rigid frame that can be repositioned but a stretchable boundary.

The reality of what the populace wants will not move greatly from its fixed cultural point.

And for the overwhelming majority of Americans that fixed cultural point means some form of health care available to all that doesn’t render people destitute if they get ill, some sort of social safety net for the elderly and those who want to work but can’t find employment, an environment as clean and as safe as possible to live in, and the freedom to live their daily lives unmolested so long as they show the same courtesy to others. 

These are all things the GOP claims represent progressive radical socialist COMMUNIST ideas.

That’s a lie, of course.

But today’s GOP leadership is nothing if not disciples of Josef Goebbels.

The Democratic Party must not rise to the bait.

The Democratic Party must present the political desires of the majority of Americans as what it is:  Reasonable and sane centrist policies.

It will be difficult, because the GOP will continue lying, and will be quick to blame every setback and mistake as a grievous failing of the Democrats, but success will lay in embracing those centrist values and making the Overton window snap back to its real position.

And the leftists and radicals in the party who chomp at the bit to push things really further to the left?

Just getting back to a true centrist position is going to address most of their concerns.

The Republican Party’s lesson:

There’s enormous potential for conservative gains among American minority groups.

Case in point:    Crime-plagued communities want effective law enforcement.

They do not want a police force that acts like an occupying army, treating every member of the community as a criminal suspect.

Learn that lesson, and you’ll peel off huge numbers of Democratic voters.

Right now the GOP thinks it holds the American center.

It doesn’t.

It holds a reverse Venn diagram, a wide circle that goes around the center but doesn’t truly occupy it.

It holds a few extremely wealthy plutocrats concerned only with making more money -- and keeping more of what they make, as well.

It holds so called “conservatives” who are so ultra-right wing as to shoot right off the scale of libertarianism and plunge into virtual anarchy -- only they lack the self-awareness to acknowledge that,

It holds a rapidly shrinking organized religion contingent that is rapidly losing members to uncommitted centrists or the new burgeoning pseudo religion of conspiracy fanatics.

It holds an increasingly aging and rapidly dying generation of mostly white voters who feel threatened by the inevitable change going on around them, and cling to any false promise that the America of their perceived fondly remembered childhoods can be restored.

It holds bona fide hate-mongers and bigots of a wide variety, all of them itching to inflict harm on groups and genders they don’t like and not particular about what policies are used to do so.

This is not the healthy formula for a long lived viable political party.

America can benefit greatly from a real conservative party, one that acts with fiscal responsibility and tries to preserve everyone’s right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It can’t benefit from the GOP as it’s currently constituted.

For the GOP to thrive in the remaining years of the 21st century, it needs to regain the ability to compromise and when necessary, embrace change.

It’s about to find itself outside a window that’s about to snap back to the middle, and if it’s not already there when the snap occurs, it’s going to have a hard time getting back in.

  © Buzz Dixon

[foreverlogical]

The ballot measure is trying to move the state from a criminal justice to a public health approach on drugs.

Oregon may take a big first step toward ending the war on drugs this November, with voters set to decide whether the state will decriminalize all drugs through the ballot initiative Measure 110.

The initiative would decriminalize all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, and redirect the savings — along with sales tax revenue from marijuana, which is currently legal in the state — to setting up a drug addiction treatment and recovery program. It’s an attempt to replace the criminal justice approach for drugs with a public health one.

Decriminalization is very different from legalization. In general, decriminalization means the removal of criminal penalties — particularly prison time — for the possession and use of a drug, but not the legalization of sales. So people wouldn’t get arrested for having small amounts of heroin or cocaine on them, but don’t expect stores legally selling either substance to pop up.

Supporters of decriminalization argue that drug misuse and addiction are public health issues, not problems for the criminal justice system. They claim that criminal prohibition leads to hundreds of thousands of unnecessary, racially biased arrests each year in the US — a costly endeavor, straining police resources and contributing to mass incarceration, that does little to actually help people struggling with drug use. Instead, they advocate for resources to be put toward education, treatment, and harm reduction services. Meanwhile, other laws remain on the books to deal with any crime or violence that arises due to drugs.

Opponents argue that decriminalization would remove a powerful deterrent to trying and using drugs, potentially fueling more drug use and addiction. They claim criminal penalties attached to drug possession can also be leveraged — through, say, drug courts — to push people into addiction treatment they otherwise wouldn’t accept. And to the extent there are racial disparities in such arrests, they argue that’s a problem with bias in law enforcement and systemic racism across American society in general, not necessarily a result of drug prohibition itself.

Some critics separately question if the ballot initiative would really direct sufficient funding to addiction treatment. The campaign behind the measure claims, citing state analyses, that it would effectively quadruple state funding to recovery services in particular.

Oregon would be the first state to decriminalize all drugs. To date, the most aggressive steps that states have taken to scale back the war on drugs are to legalize marijuana and to defelonize all drugs, which can still leave criminal penalties like jail or prison time in place. But actual drug decriminalization is untried in the modern US.

Still, Oregon wouldn’t be the first place to decriminalize drugs. Portugal did it in 2001, earning a lot of continued media coverage (including at Vox). The effects seem, on net, positive: Coupled with boosts to drug addiction treatment and harm reduction services, decriminalization seemed to lead to more lifetime drug use overall but less problematic use.

Such an approach could have different results in the US. Supporters are hoping that voters in Oregon, however, will at least be willing to give it a try. If voters embrace the approach, and it works, prohibition opponents could use Oregon to make a case for scaling back the war on drugs more broadly — similar to the approach they’ve taken with marijuana policies.

It begins, however, in Oregon.

Oregon’s Measure 110 would decriminalize all drugs

Oregon’s Measure 110 would remove criminal penalties for the personal, noncommercial possession of a controlled substance, while giving people caught with small amounts of drugs the option to either pay a fine of no more than $100 or get a “completed health assessment” done through an addiction recovery center. The measure would decriminalize all drugs classified Schedule I through IV under federal law, including cocaine, heroin, and meth.

According to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, the measure would lead to a roughly 91 percent decrease in drug possession arrests and convictions in Oregon. Black and Native American people, who are currently overrepresented relative to their population for possession arrests and convictions, would disproportionately benefit.

The measure would also direct savings from law enforcement and incarceration costs and tax revenue from marijuana sales to a new drug addiction treatment and recovery program. The funds would be overseen by an oversight council set up by the Oregon Health Authority made up of treatment providers, a harm reduction services provider, a drug researcher, and people who’ve dealt with addiction, among others. The funds will be audited by the secretary of state’s office at least once every two years.

The measure, in other words, takes a two-pronged approach to drug decriminalization: It tries to eliminate the criminal justice system’s role in simple drug possession, while shifting the issue to a public health system by both facilitating health assessments and directing more funds to addiction treatment and harm reduction services.

The potential benefits aren’t just fewer arrests and convictions, but also a reduction in the collateral damage that can come from those arrests and convictions, including a criminal record that makes it harder to get a job, housing, schooling, or a range of social services.

At the same time, the reality is America’s addiction treatment system is still underfunded and underregulated. As Vox’s Rehab Racket series exposed, the current system is full of questionable programs that don’t provide evidence-based treatment but nonetheless can cost tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket.

There’s also some cause for concern that state funds will flow to substandard treatment providers. Local, state, and federal governments already offer some funds and grants for addiction treatment facilities. But many of the agencies that give out these funds often fall under heavy lobbying by the industry — leading them to perpetuate the broken system as it exists today. Oregon’s measure tries to chip away at this problem by setting aside a pot of funds overseen by a council tasked with ensuring the money is spent wisely.

Critics of Measure 110 maintain that it would fail to live up to its promise. They argue that the reallocation of existing spending isn’t enough to fully fund drug addiction treatment services. And some, like Oregon Council for Behavioral Health Executive Director Heather Jefferis, argue the reallocation would take away funds from services, including education and behavioral health, that currently help prevent addiction. “Shifting funds from one part of the continuum of care to another does not equate to increased funding,” Jefferis told me.

The campaign counters, citing in part a state analysis, that Measure 110 would effectively add more than $100 million a year for addiction recovery services in particular — up from the $25 million a year that Oregon currently spends outside of Medicaid and the criminal justice system. “This measure is a big step forward,” Peter Zuckerman, campaign manager for Yes on 110, told me. “But,” he acknowledged, “it doesn’t solve everything.”

The opposition, backed particularly by law enforcement, also argues the measure will lead to more drug use and addiction — as criminal penalties can no longer be used or leveraged to deter people from drug use and direct them to treatment.

While drug courts built on criminal penalties for possession do help some people struggling with drug use, the question is if the threat of jail, prison, or a criminal record is really necessary to get people to treatment. A criminal penalty may even have the opposite effect — deterring people from getting help because they know that, in effect, they’ll be admitting to a crime and possibly exposing themselves to all the consequences that come with that.

Given that decriminalization is so far untried in the US, it’s difficult to say how it would play out. In that sense, Measure 110 would create a real-time experiment for Oregon and the rest of the country.

But first, Oregon’s measure will need to get voters’ approval. It’s unclear how likely it is to pass, due to a lack of polls. But a few big political actors in the state, including the Oregon Democratic Party, have backed the proposal.

Measure 110 is somewhat similar to the Portugal model

There’s no modern example of decriminalization within the US for Oregon voters to draw from. But the measure does very loosely follow the structure of what Portugal did back in 2001: The country decriminalized all drugs, and pushed people toward better-funded and -supported treatment and harm reduction services.

A 2009 report from the libertarian Cato Institute, written by Glenn Greenwald, concluded that decriminalization spared people from the “fear of arrest” when they sought help for their addiction and “freed up resources that could be channeled into treatment and other harm reduction programs.”

After the change, Portugal saw a decrease in drug-related deaths and drops in reported past-year and past-month drug use, according to a 2014 report from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation. But it also saw an increase in lifetime prevalence of drug use, as well as an uptick in reported use among teens after 2007.

Nicholas Kristof wrote in the New York Times in 2017, after visiting Portugal to see its model in action:

After more than 15 years, it’s clear which approach worked better. The United States drug policy failed spectacularly, with about as many Americans dying last year of overdoses — around 64,000 — as were killed in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars combined.

In contrast, Portugal may be winning the war on drugs — by ending it. Today, the Health Ministry estimates that only about 25,000 Portuguese use heroin, down from 100,000 when the policy began.

Crucially, Portugal adopted special commissions that attempt to push people with drug addictions to treatment with the threat of penalties, including fines and the revocation of professional licenses. Although the success of the commissions has yet to be thoroughly evaluated, it’s possible that even as decriminalization increased drug use, the commissions and improved access to treatment got so many people off drugs that use fell or held steady overall.

The requirement in Oregon’s measure for a completed health assessment via an addiction recovery center could work similarly to Portugal’s commissions, pushing people to get care instead of paying a fine. But it remains to be seen if these assessments will provide enough encouragement to seek treatment, or if people will generally decide to pay the $100 fine instead.

Also similar to Portugal, Oregon’s measure is pushing to put more money toward addiction treatment. But a lingering question is if the Oregon measure will truly match the scale of Portugal’s big investment into its own addiction treatment system — particularly towards evidence-based approaches like medications for opioid addiction and needle exchanges.

Given these potential differences, Oregon’s approach may not work as well as Portugal’s. But if voters adopt the measure, it would be as close to the Portugal model as any state has gotten in modern times. And if it works, drug policy reformers could leverage the example to spread the idea around the country.

This is part of a broader effort to scale back the war on drugs

Over the past decade, progressives have increasingly called to “end the war on drugs” — citing, in particular, the vast racial disparities in anti-drug law enforcement. While some lawmakers have taken up that call, legislation has often lagged behind what progressive activists — and voters — support. So activists and voters have begun to take matters into their own hands with ballot measures.

Marijuana legalization is one such example. There’s a lot of support for marijuana legalization, with even a majority of Republicans, who are typically more skeptical of drug policy reform, backing the change in public polls. Yet progressive politicians have lagged behind voters on this issue — for instance, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for president, opposes marijuana legalization (though he backs decriminalization).

Rather than wait for politicians to catch up, activists have gone through the state ballot initiative process to get the change they want. In 2012, that approach made Colorado and Washington the first two states to legalize marijuana. Nine more states, and DC, have since followed (although two states, Illinois and Vermont, did so through their legislatures). Four other states have legalization measures on the ballot in November.

Given their successes with marijuana, drug policy reformers are now looking for other ways to scale back the war on drugs through ballot measures. That includes Oregon’s drug decriminalization measure, as well as other ballot measures, including one in Oregon, involving psychedelic substances. The question now is if the voters will be as receptive to these ideas as drug policy reformers hope they are.

If voters do prove receptive, that could make the new measures the beginning of a broader push in the next few years, similar to what the US has already seen with marijuana. But first, we’ll have to see how the vote works out in Oregon this November.

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[fuelbyj]

THE PERFECT STORM

 It is the 21st century and in the United States we are still some how dealing withe the burden of Racism and Police Brutality. On May 25th of the year 2020 the perfect storm hit not just the United States but once the news broke out about how yet another hacious act was committed in Minneapolis MN. A man by the name of George Floyd a 46 yr old Black man was murdered by the police; the police were called because a store employee thought George had paid for a box of cigarettes with a counterfeit bill of $20.When the police arrived he was held down on his stomach with his hands tied with hand cuffs that the officer placed on him and officer Derek Chauvin was the officer who pinned down his knee on George's neck and held it there for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. George pleaded that he could not breathe and if you watch the videos which are all over the web you will see for yourself that there was no need for such aggression when George never resisted any form of arrest and was complying with the officers. George constantly gasped out as he was losing air every second the the officer had his knee on his neck '' I CAN'T BREATHE '' and as the officer continued to apply pressure George also was calling out for his mom as those were some of his last words. Every thing that I have described above was caught on video by a witness and instantly uploaded into the internet and that's where AMERICA got it's long over due wake up call. George's death was seen on every social media platform that you can think of and was on every news channel that you can think of. George's death and pain was felt through the screen or any where you got to watch his wrongful death, his death has sparked thousands and dare I say millions of protest across the U.S and the world where even places like France,Spain,Puerto Rico etc have all taken a stand against police brutality and as I write this are still protesting because these protests aren't just for George; they are for every single Black man or women that has unfortunately lost their life to the police when they didn't have to ! Millions join day in and day out in joining forces with the BLACK Community because ENOUGH IS ENOUGH it is no longer just the black community that is enraged because after all they have been mistreated for over 400 yrs ! that is decade over decade and generation over generation ! that the country who has it written in their national anthem and constitution has put in paper that it is JUSTICE FOR ALL has failed across the board and has failed to represent what it said it would stand for. Let me make it abundantly clear that George Floyd has not been the first and unfortunately won't be the last to die to police brutality, our justice system has failed our black community in various ways. One way it has failed our black brothers and sisters is by simply changing the rules when it comes to them; how is it that a white man or female can commit whatever crime of their choice and get little to no punishment? yet a black man or female does the same crime or not even a crime at all and they get years in jail and most go without bail? Why is is that I can go running and by the way I'm Hispanic and ill get into my situation later; but nonetheless how is it that I can go for a jog and return to my house perfectly fine but a person of color aka black cannot do the same without having the thought in the back of their head '' I might not make it back home today ''. Ahmaud Arbery, a 25 yr old black man, was shot to death by 2 white men. Ahmaud was out on a habitual jog when the men hunted him down; This story honestly brakes my heart because it is the prime example that RACISM still exist till this day. I ask myself constantly and think about how what if that would of been me? Why is is that this sort of HATE must still exist against a race that all they are asking for and voicing their pain is to be treated EQUALLY just like the U.S claimed that they would do so? The black community is not saying that ONLY BLACK LIVES MATTER  we understand that all lives matter no matter where you come from or how you look, you and I have the same right to do what ever we please as long as it is respecting the rules. It is about the PRINCIPAL that I will not treat you any different because you look or are different from me! We are all different because I think we can all mutually agree that if we were all the same life would be a bit boring. It is time that our country stands for what it said it would, It is time for our justice system and that includes cops and judges because cops make the arrest but the judges are the one's who deliver a sentencing accountable as well. Far too many have fallen already for this cycle of SYSTEMATIC RACISM to continue to hurt our brothers and sisters. We must understand that RACISM does not discriminate and it can happen to anyone and only because maybe you have been lucky that is hasn't happened to you doesn't mean it can't ! To those in position to make EFFECTIVE CHANGE I ask that you remember why you decided to do the job you chose to do. I ask that you remember that when you swore the OATH to protect you remember that you swore to protect EVERYONE not just those you choose. I ask that if you personally feel that you cannot swear to protect everyone for 20+ years that you reconsider what you are signing up for. I ask to those in our justice system in what ever role you play that you remember the line from our countries CONSTITUTION '' NO MAN ABOVE THE LAW '' meaning no matter who you are or what skin color you have YOU GET HELD ACCOUNTABLE JUST LIKE ANYONE ELSE.    I would also like to make it clear I do not form part of any group or organization and I am implementing my 1st Amendment Right just like any one is allowed to do so. I would also like to make it clear that I do no support THE VIOLENCE that some of the protests have lead to and I agree that who ever is causing the harm to any sort of business should be held accountable and charged appropriately! I want to make it clear that this MOVEMENT is not in place to start a RACE WAR but to understand that this is A CIVIL RIGHTS situation. Thank you for your time and hope this sparks a fire in someone to make effective change or even just spread awareness on our country's current situation. Fuelbyj.

[myfriendpokey]

Morality Play

What does it mean to have a videogame tell you you're a good person? It doesn't know me, can't see me. I don't know if you can be *immoral* in a single player game outside of some very inventive custom controls. Why should I care what a game says? Any inner moral life that a videogame or a painting might possess would be more alien to me than that of a bug or a starfish. Of course videogames and paintings are made by humans, and shaped by the moral opinion of humans.. but we might make a distinction between what the human says and the object says, we might still feel the latter is more important, somehow. 

The moral authority of an artwork or object comes from the fact that it's not quite human, that it comes to us from outside humanity to an extent, is distinguished from the unreliable back and forth of human consciousness in motion. But this distance is exactly why you might expect those moral verdicts to be unintelligible to us, or at the very best, to be untrustworthy, an imitation. So what's the appeal – that of having a human voice which speaks with the gravitas of an immortal object? The pleasant conceit that the general shape of our minds is universal, like all those Star Trek aliens that are just regular guys with slightly weirder ears or foreheads? The void speaks, and turns out to sound like a computer engineer.

But maybe not necessarily, maybe in fact it's sometimes not universal authority and moral support that we seek from the object: maybe a certain jankiness of verdict around the way these things communicate in human terms is itself part of the appeal. I think of paper fortune tellers, magic eight-balls, "love tester" machines that return a romantic prognosis based on palm temperature. The entrancing bathos of the chance-driven or mechanistic judgement that still speaks with a human voice: I’m sorry, I cannot answer right now. Please shake me, so I may try again. How different is that to the widely beloved and magnificently broken romance system in Dragon's Dogma, where, spoilers: your "soulmate" is not a matter of direct moral choice, but of variables being tracked over the course of the game including who you talked to and what sidequests you completed - which means it could arbitrarily turn out to be the weapons merchant, or a grandpa npc you found a potion for. Which is goofy, but only in a slightly more blatant way than "accidentally unlocking the romantic option in a dialogue tree from just clicking around" or "having your morality score drop 5 points because you pressed the wrong button and accidentally hurled a rock at someone's head while trying to equip shoes". 

I think something I appreciate about videogames is the kind of insectlike moral life that they tend to portray, the sense of value systems which are in some way recognisable but which have mutated in conversion to something alien and horrifying. Lara Croft shooting a wild eagle is unfortunate, Lara Croft shooting a thousand wild eagles is bizarre – but really those thousand eagles are just the one eagle, the one self-contained pulp encounter fantasy, which has been extended, extrapolated, systemised as result of being placed in this machine. The latter may be more egregious but it’s still composed of repeated incidents of the original encounter - and part of the strangeness in these games is just the uncomprehending machine effort to systemise the half-formed gunk substance of our terrible fantasy lives, which only bear a vague and halfhearted relation to any notion of ethics in any case.. We can contemplate with envy and excitement the possibilities of running more realistic, recognisable emotional and moral situations through the meatgrinderof the format in this way. How about a solemn middlebrow videogame about divorcing 50 different wives, each one larger and more powerful than the last (excluding sprite recolours)? 

All this is not to say that the casual political and moral stupidity already in videogames should simply be excused or exist outside of critique. But in addition to the body of discourse  around "moral commodities" - commodities invested with moral  or political meaning independent of any brutal labour practices they might entail or monopolistic accumulation of private  wealth they might support – I think it's also worth considering the purpose of the "moral object" itself. The alienation intrinsic to the object form can be a way to think, and also a way to avoid thinking. To project moral beliefs away from the specific context of a creaturely human existence can be a way of expanding that existence, but also of denying it. The paltriness of the human can itself be problematic next to the splendour of the object, and the reflected moral superiority of those with the means of producing such objects.

*****

There's a famous line in the Spiderman comics that with great power comes great responsibility. But it's also kind of a weird line because, while obviously applicable to Spiderman, the person it's actually delivered to is Peter Parker - who is, for all his uncle knows, still a physically awkward and friendless nerd with no immediately visible "great power" to speak of. He does like nuclear physics, though - maybe the advice was intended as a friendly intervention to keep him from turning into the next Edward Teller? Or possibly it's just a kind of unconscious, pulp-writer-trance-appropriation of the muscular liberal rhetoric of the then-current Kennedy administration. Or maybe, and stretching a bit, it's a line that relates more to the conditions of pulp culture manufacturing itself, to the awareness that the stuff you make will be printed thousands of times and sold to kids around the country, poured raw into the national subconsicous. With great sales figures comes great responsiblity.

I mention it because I think it connects to an issue with the kind of cultural criticism that emerged, like it or not, from the specific context of an age of mass media. With great power comes great responsibility - but conversely, to execute your great responsibility you also need great power. And what are you meant to do if you don't have it? Does no power mean having no responsibility? It's possible, but i feel like most people would be dubious about this as a moral lesson - and the inescapability of heavily-financed blockbusters in the culture means that an assumption of already "having great power" sometimes becomes a critical starting point. If you don't have power you should get it, so that you can then have great responsibility and contribute to the discourse. The effect can sometimes be like climbing a mountain of corpses to get a better platform for your speech about world peace.

A good essay on jrpgsaredead.fyi points out the way that certain industry conversations on "accessibility" revolve specifically around access to whatever mainstream AAA action games are currently dominating the news cycle. And the related effect where both problems and proposed solutions are particular to these games, the audience they have, and the resources they can bring bear: More consultants! More characters! More romance options! Better character creators! If you're speaking to an (essentially captive, given the marketing monies involved) audience of five million people you'd better be sure your ideas are, at least, not actively harmful, and in fact should ideally be improving - - fine. How about an audience of 50 people? Or an audience of 0? Does that mean this work is less moral than what speaks to a larger crowd - in effect, that it's worse? And what about the relationship to audience that this kind of teaching implies? i can think of several occasions where people from different subcultures or minority groups were reprimanded because something in their own experience might read differently, or problematically, when presented to a presumably white/cis/affluent etc audience - which is of course the audience that matters, because what's the value of presenting work from an alternative perspective to an audience already familiar with that perspective, to whom it has no automatic moral significance (might, in fact, merely be 'aesthetic')? Compare the complexity of a specific local audience which can think for itself to the easy win of the alternative:  a phantasm audience of moral blanks to whom rote lessons in hypothetical empathy can be tastefully and profitably imparted over and over, forever.

****

If the ethical act is that which we'd be willing to posit as universal law, perhaps we could say: the ethical artwork is that which we'd be willing to mass produce. Small or hobbyist developers are encouraged to work from the perspective of a mass-productive capacity they do not in fact possess; their successes and inevitable failures are hoovered up alike by the industry proper for later deployment in the form of cute dating sim or inspirational narrative with similar but sanitized tone or aesthetic. In essence a kind of moral QA testing, with all the job security and recompense that this implies. 

The hobbyist is, by definition, not universal: they are enclosed within the local and the material. What time do you get off work? What materials do you have to hand? Are those materials always legal? The entire western RPG Maker community exists as result of widespread bootlegging; the entirety of videogame history and preservation essentially depends on stolen copies; we find out about it through ROMs, videos and screenshots which mostly depend for their continued existence on copyright holders either not finding out or choosing not to pursue these debateable violations.  It's a complicated discussion whether this stuff can be justified on a general, universal level - but also I'm not sure we can do without it. When Fortnite uses dances from TV and music videos of living memory they're considered to be in the public domain; but Fortnite itself is not in the public domain, even though it's so inescapable that even I have a pretty good idea of what it looks and plays like despite having made a pretty determined effort to not find out anything about it. It's "public culture" in that sense, and it includes public culture within it, but both game and imagery are privately owned and aggressively policed (suing teenage hackers, etc). What does it mean for art to emerge from an ever more privatized sense of public life?

In 2007 the RPG Maker game Super Columbine Massacre RPG was added to, then removed from, the Slamdance festival following complaints; it was a minor cause celebre at the time following concerns about censorship and the lack of protections for expression in the videogame format specifically following the Jack Thompson media crusade in the United States. In 2019 the same festival retrospectively changed their reasoning: now the game had no longer been removed on the basis of questionable taste, but on the basis of questionable compliance with copyright law, since it included music from the likes of Smashing Pumpkins without paying for licensing fees (and also because the author generally "hadn’t created several of its elements" - asset flips!!!). There's some humour in the fact that a benign-sounding concern with "artist's rights" could just be swapped in as a more respectable-sounding surrogate for general prudery with exactly the same result. But also, in this instance, what does it mean about the game? As facile as SCMR is, the bootleg use of graphics and music was its most interesting element: the game was a bricolage of American pop culture at a specific point in time, as were the killers, as are we. The nearness and recognisability of that culture, the sense of not being able to get enough distance from it to properly fictionalise or think about what happened, is what stands out. An "ethical" version of the same game which used original music - Nirvanalikes, some tastefully copyright-adjacent Marilyn Manson clones - would not just be diminished, it would be actively insulting in the false distance it implied.

I don't mean this at all as a request for more edgelord-ism. But it's worth remembering that videogames themselves are not ethical; are, in fact, colonized materials assembled with exploitative labour and dumped aimlessly into public life by electronics corporations looking to make a buck. The bizarre and haphazard ways this long dump of poor decisions has manifested, warped, been adjusted into culture is part of what's worth attending to about the format – I think it's worth looking closer into all these pools of murkiness, before ethical  landlords can come drape a tarp over them as part of the process of divvying up the property.

(image credits: youkai douchuuki, quiz nanairo dreams, trauma center: under the knife, espial)

[phroyd]

WASHINGTON — Humans are transforming Earth’s natural landscapes so dramatically that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction, posing a dire threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their survival, a sweeping new United Nations assessment has concluded.

The 1,500-page report, compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies, is the most exhaustive look yet at the decline in biodiversity across the globe and the dangers that creates for human civilization. A summary of its findings, which was approved by representatives from the United States and 131 other countries, was released Monday in Paris. The full report is set to be published this year.

Its conclusions are stark. In most major land habitats, from the savannas of Africa to the rain forests of South America, the average abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by 20 percent or more, mainly over the past century. With the human population passing 7 billion, activities like farming, logging, poaching, fishing and mining are altering the natural world at a rate “unprecedented in human history.”

At the same time, a new threat has emerged: Global warming has become a major driver of wildlife decline, the assessment found, by shifting or shrinking the local climates that many mammals, birds, insects, fish and plants evolved to survive in.

As a result, biodiversity loss is projected to accelerate through 2050, particularly in the tropics, unless countries drastically step up their conservation efforts.

The report is not the first to paint a grim portrait of Earth’s ecosystems. But it goes further by detailing how closely human well-being is intertwined with the fate of other species.

“For a long time, people just thought of biodiversity as saving nature for its own sake,” said Robert Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services,which conducted the assessment at the request of national governments. “But this report makes clear the links between biodiversity and nature and things like food security and clean water in both rich and poor countries.”

A previous report by the group had estimated that, in the Americas, nature provides some $24 trillion of non-monetized benefits to humans each year. The Amazon rain forest absorbs immense quantities of carbon dioxide and helps slow the pace of global warming. Wetlands purify drinking water. Coral reefs sustain tourism and fisheries in the Caribbean. Exotic tropical plants form the basis of a variety of medicines.

But as these natural landscapes wither and become less biologically rich, the services they can provide to humans have been dwindling.

Humans are producing more food than ever, but land degradation is already harming agricultural productivity on 23 percent of the planet’s land area, the new report said. The decline of wild bees and other insects that help pollinate fruits and vegetables is putting up to $577 billion in annual crop production at risk. The loss of mangrove forests and coral reefs along coasts could expose up to 300 million people to increased risk of flooding.

The authors note that the devastation of nature has become so severe that piecemeal efforts to protect individual species or to set up wildlife refuges will no longer be sufficient. Instead, they call for “transformative changes” that include curbing wasteful consumption, slimming down agriculture’s environmental footprint and cracking down on illegal logging and fishing.

“It’s no longer enough to focus just on environmental policy,” said Sandra M. Díaz, a lead author of the study and an ecologist at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina. “We need to build biodiversity considerations into trade and infrastructure decisions, the way that health or human rights are built into every aspect of social and economic decision-making.”

Scientists have cataloged only a fraction of living creatures, some 1.3 million; the report estimates there may be as many as 8 million plant and animal species on the planet, most of them insects. Since 1500, at least 680 species have blinked out of existence, including the Pinta giant tortoise of the Galápagos Islands and the Guam flying fox.

Though outside experts cautioned it could be difficult to make precise forecasts, the report warns of a looming extinction crisis, with extinction rates currently tens to hundreds of times higher than they have been in the past 10 million years.“Human actions threaten more species with global extinction now than ever before,” the report concludes, estimating that “around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades, unless action is taken.”

Unless nations step up their efforts to protect what natural habitats are left, they could witness the disappearance of 40 percent of amphibian species, one-third of marine mammals and one-third of reef-forming corals. More than 500,000 land species, the report said, do not have enough natural habitat left to ensure their long-term survival.

Over the past 50 years, global biodiversity loss has primarily been driven by activities like the clearing of forests for farmland, the expansion of roads and cities, logging, hunting, overfishing, water pollution and the transport of invasive species around the globe.

In Indonesia, the replacement of rain forest with palm oil plantations has ravaged the habitat of critically endangered orangutans and Sumatran tigers. In Mozambique, ivory poachers helped kill off nearly 7,000 elephants between 2009 and 2011 alone. In Argentina and Chile, the introduction of the North American beaver in the 1940s has devastated native trees (though it has also helped other species thrive, including the Magellanic woodpecker).

All told, three-quarters of the world’s land area has been significantly altered by people, the report found, and 85 percent of the world’s wetlands have vanished since the 18th century.

And with humans continuing to burn fossil fuels for energy, global warming is expected to compound the damage. Roughly 5 percent of species worldwide are threatened with climate-related extinction if global average temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the report concluded. (The world has already warmed 1 degree.)

“If climate change were the only problem we were facing, a lot of species could probably move and adapt,” Richard Pearson, an ecologist at the University College of London, said. “But when populations are already small and losing genetic diversity, when natural landscapes are already fragmented, when plants and animals can’t move to find newly suitable habitats, then we have a real threat on our hands.

The dwindling number of species will not just make the world a less colorful or wondrous place, the report noted. It also poses risks to people.

Today, humans are relying on significantly fewer varieties of plants and animals to produce food. Of the 6,190 domesticated mammal breeds used in agriculture, more than 559 have gone extinct and 1,000 more are threatened. That means the food system is becoming less resilient against pests and diseases. And it could become harder in the future to breed new, hardier crops and livestock to cope with the extreme heat and drought that climate change will bring.

“Most of nature’s contributions are not fully replaceable,” the report said. Biodiversity loss “can permanently reduce future options, such as wild species that might be domesticated as new crops and be used for genetic improvement.”

The report does contain glimmers of hope. When governments have acted forcefully to protect threatened species, such as the Arabian oryx or the Seychelles magpie robin, they have managed to fend off extinction in many cases. And nations have protected more than 15 percent of the world’s land and 7 percent of its oceans by setting up nature reserves and wilderness areas.

Still, only a fraction of the most important areas for biodiversity have been protected, and many nature reserves poorly enforce prohibitions against poaching, logging or illegal fishing. Climate change could also undermine existing wildlife refuges by shifting the geographic ranges of species that currently live within them.

So, in addition to advocating the expansion of protected areas, the authors outline a vast array of changes aimed at limiting the drivers of biodiversity loss.

Farmers and ranchers would have to adopt new techniques to grow more food on less land. Consumers in wealthy countries would have to waste less food and become more efficient in their use of natural resources. Governments around the world would have to strengthen and enforce environmental laws, cracking down on illegal logging and fishing and reducing the flow of heavy metals and untreated wastewater into the environment.

The authors also note that efforts to limit global warming will be critical, although they caution that the development of biofuels to reduce emissions could end up harming biodiversity by further destroying forests.

None of this will be easy, especially since many developing countries face pressure to exploit their natural resources as they try to lift themselves out of poverty.

But, by detailing the benefits that nature can provide to people, and by trying to quantify what is lost when biodiversity plummets, the scientists behind the assessment are hoping to help governments strike a more careful balance between economic development and conservation.

“You can’t just tell leaders in Africa that there can’t be any development and that we should turn the whole continent into a national park,” said Emma Archer, who led the group’s earlier assessment of biodiversity in Africa. “But we can show that there are trade-offs, that if you don’t take into account the value that nature provides, then ultimately human well-being will be compromised.”

In the next two years, diplomats from around the world will gather for several meetings under the Convention on Biological Diversity, a global treaty, to discuss how they can step up their efforts at conservation. Yet even in the new report’s most optimistic scenario, through 2050 the world’s nations would only slow the decline of biodiversity — not stop it.

“At this point,” said Jake Rice, a fisheries scientist who led an earlier report on biodiversity in the Americas, “our options are all about damage control.”

Phroyd

[sixtyfivehundredmiles]

A crack in the Great Lakes Compact? Approved water diversion prompts pushback

The Great Lakes hold quadrillions of gallons of water. Is allowing one more company to take water from them such a big deal?

Yes, say groups worried about the slippery slope of Great Lakes' diversions.

A controversial plan to divert 7 million gallons of water a day from Lake Michigan to the proposed site of a factory in Wisconsin, run by Foxconn, an international manufacturer of electronics, was upheld by an administrative law judge earlier last month. That hasn't ended opposition to the plan by environmental groups or settled worries that this decision is the first crack in the Great Lakes Compact, a regional agreement to keep 21 percent of the world's surface freshwater where it is now: within the Great Lakes basin.

Controversial diversions from the basin have been approved in the past, but opponents claim this diversion is strictly for industrial purposes and violates the Compact. Though much of the water used at the proposed factory will be returned to the Great Lakes basin, opponents worry the precedent set will open the door to more harmful diversions in the future.

The Great Lakes Compact, enacted in 2008, is still young and relatively untested.

"One of those [diversions] is not going to make or break the health of the Great Lakes," Peg Sheaffer, the director of communications for Midwest Environmental Advocates, the organization leading the opposition, told EHN. "If we set the precedent that other states follow, the cumulative impact of multiple diversions could have a significant effect."

The Great Lakes Compact says that Great Lakes water must stay within the basin, except for public water supplies in cities or counties that straddle the boundary. A diversion to a city outside the basin but in a straddling county must be reviewed and approved by the governors of all eight states bordering the Lakes and the premier of Ontario, the only Canadian province bordering the lakes. A diversion to a straddling community—a city which the basin boundary passes through—only needs the approval of the home state.

Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, the future home of Foxconn, is a straddling community.

But there are hundreds of straddling communities around the Great Lakes basin, Sheaffer said.

More cell phones, more water

Foxconn is building a massive plant to manufacture LCD screens—for tablets, mobile devices, computers and other uses— in Mount Pleasant, so Racine, Wisconsin, which provides Mount Pleasant with water, applied for a diversion to serve the site. That application was approved by Wisconsin in April 2018 and challenged shortly after by Midwest Environmental Advocates and several other groups. That challenge was denied in June, but further appeal is possible.

Both sides of the debate acknowledge that the amount of water to be drawn from Lake Michigan—7 million gallons a day—won't negatively affect the level or health of the Great Lakes. Lake Michigan holds 1,180 cubic miles of water. At a rate of 7 million gallons a day—ignoring the 4.3 million gallons the application says will be returned to Lake Michigan via Racine's wastewater processing facilities—it would take more than 150,000 days to remove one cubic mile of water.

But opponents argue that the diversion isn't allowed under the Great Lakes Compact. The argument hinges on interpretation of two paragraphs in the Compact and the definition of public water supply.

First, the Compact says water can be transferred outside the basin within a straddling community "provided that, regardless of the volume of Water transferred, all the Water so transferred shall be used solely for Public Water Supply Purposes within the Straddling Community."

Second, a public water supply is water distributed through treatment, storage and distribution infrastructure that serves "a group of largely residential customers that may also serve industrial, commercial, and other institutional operators."

Opponents say the water used outside the basin must be used primarily for residential purposes.

The argument that the Compact allows a diversion like this—because it's being added on to existing residential infrastructure, even if it is serving commercial customers outside the basin—is "really unreasonable," Sheaffer said.

"Diversions were never intended to aid and abet industrial development outside the Great Lakes basin, and that's a really important distinction," Sheaffer added.

Aerial photo showing both lakes Michigan and Huron. (Credit: Stuart Rankin/flickr)

Others don't think the diversion actually tests the limits of the Compact.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources "ensured compliance with all requirements of the Great Lakes Compact as well as all federal and state laws," Adam Freihoefer, the water use section chief in the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' drinking water and groundwater bureau, told EHN in an email. "The DNR feels that the consistent adherence to the requirements of the Compact is one aspect that makes the Compact strong after 10 years of implementation."

When the application was submitted, other Great Lakes states asked Wisconsin to further explain how the diversion met the definition of public water supply purposes. One of those states, Michigan, feels that Wisconsin has now adequately explained its decision.

"Any proposed diversion of Great Lakes water deserves the highest level of attention and review," Emily Finnell, Great Lakes Senior Advisor and Strategist in Michigan's Office of the Great Lakes, told EHN.

Because few diversions have been approved under the Compact, each new application offers details that haven't been encountered before and requires care, she said.

Proponents of the approved diversion say it clearly counts as public use. Despite the fact that the water used outside the basin will be for primarily commercial uses, it is part of the larger Racine water system that mostly serves residential customers.

"It's important to note that 92 percent of Mount Pleasant is within the Lake Michigan water basin and is already served by the Racine Water Utility and that the vast majority of those served are residential users," Keith Haas, General Manager of the Racine Water and Wastewater Utilities, wrote in a public statement at the time of the application. Haas also pointed out the water needs of the thousands of Foxconn employees who will staff the factory, which will be served by the diversion.

Any water sent to or from Foxconn will pass through Racine's facilities. Haas isn't concerned about what's still unknown: the exact amount of water Foxconn will need or how contaminated the wastewater will be.

"It's nothing we're new to here," he told EHN. "It's just another industry that will be treated the same as the other industries we work with."

Racine Water and Wastewater Utilities already receives wastewater from close to 40 other industrial sites which must pretreat the water to remove certain pollutants, Haas said. Although he doesn't know how much wastewater will be sent back by Foxconn or if it will need to be pretreated, Haas said it has to meet local, state and federal standards, especially with the extra scrutiny from opponents at every step of the process.

"This will be the most transparent pretreatment application in the history of the country," Haas said.

"People are afraid of the unknown. Today they're afraid of wind. Tomorrow they might be afraid of Foxconn," Haas said, referencing recent windstorms in Racine.

Opponents of the deal say they aren't afraid of Foxconn specifically. They're concerned about the future protection of an invaluable source of water.

If Foxconn had located entirely within the basin, Midwest Environmental Advocates wouldn't have a problem with their water use, Sheaffer told EHN in an email.

Averting a future crisis

Beachgoers at Port Stanley Beach on Lake Ontario. (Credit: Gary Paakkonen/flickr) 

 The Great Lakes Compact is a unique agreement because it was formed before the crisis it addresses.

Although agreements meant to stop future diversion were on the books, in the 1990s the patchwork nature of regulations allowed the government of Ontario to approve a plan by the Canadian Nova Group to ship water from the Great Lakes to Asia.

"This was the classic straw that broke the camel's back," Peter Annin, author of The Great Lakes Water Wars, a book about the decades-long argument about where Great Lakes water is used, told EHN.

The Great Lakes Compact drew a clear line—the boundary of the Great Lakes basin—to contain Great Lakes water, Annin said.

Wisconsin isn't new to controversial diversions outside that boundary.

Waukesha, Wisconsin, applied for a diversion which was approved in 2016 after a review process by all the Great Lakes states and provinces. In a long and heavily contested application process, Waukesha had to revise its application to cover a smaller area and withdraw less water—8.2 million gallons per day—before it was approved.

In 2009, New Berlin, Wisconsin, was granted the first diversion: 2.142 million gallons of water per day.

While the Great Lakes are massive and the Compact is firmly in place, other bodies of water thought too big to fail have been altered forever by diversion, Annin said.

The Colorado River no longer reaches the ocean, prompting the seven states who rely on its water to recently draft greater protections for its use. The Aral Sea is 10 percent the size it was in the 1960s before the Soviet Union siphoned off most of its water for irrigation.

"The idea that massive water bodies can be permanently transformed is not a fanciful one," said Annin, who directs the Mary Griggs Burke Center for Freshwater Innovation.

Although depleting the Great Lakes is a credible but distant threat, the chances of one diversion or another harming the lakes are still low. The largest diversion in the Great Lakes' history, which, since the early 1900s, sends 2.1 billion gallons of Lake Michigan water to the Mississippi River every day via the reversed flow of the Chicago River, lowered Lakes Michigan and Huron 2.5 inches below their natural levels. A few more diversions the size of the Chicago River could drop lake levels a foot which, in addition to the six feet that levels naturally fluctuate, could disrupt shipping on the Great Lakes, Annin said.

On top of that, Annin and other researchers see the world leaving a century of oil and entering a century of water, in which conflict and human movements are driven by freshwater availability, not oil reserves. Peter Gleick, cofounder of the Pacific Institute which studies solutions to water challenges, wrote that the Syrian refugee crisis was, in part, a climate-driven water crisis.

"It's true that from a Great Lakes perspective this water diversion issue is not some wolf at the door now. What's remarkable about the Great Lakes Compact is that it's this multijurisdictional, bipartisan agreement adopted in the absence of a crisis on behalf of future generations," he told EHN. "And that doesn't happen very often."

(source: Andrew Blok, Environmental Health News)

[a-wandering-fool]

With the compensatory damages verdict of $11.2 million having been rendered last Friday, the parties in Gibson’s Bakery v. Oberlin College are now into the punitive damages phase.

But in a civil trial that has gone on much longer expected, the jury never saw the courtroom today as the judge had to rule on about a half-dozen motions filed by Oberlin College.

The motions sought to restrict the information the jury could hear in the punitive phase, which could add an up to extra $22.4 million to the verdict the jury gave last week against the college and its Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo.

The motions were all filed at the last minute, and Gibson’s attorney Lee Plakas was quite angry with the tactics, calling it “a total disregard for the jury, who gets called into court again to sit it out for another day. There was plenty of time to file these, and decided without having the jury called in, but Oberlin College thinks the jury sitting and waiting is not a problem for them.”

Jury Will Not See Blast Email

In what might be construed as a victory for the defendants, Judge John R. Miraldi ruled that in deciding a punitive amount (if any), the jury cannot be presented with an email blasted out to alums immediately after the verdict last week. Part of the email by Donica Thomas Varner, Oberlin College’s Vice President, General Counsel & Secretary, sent to thousands of alumni in the United States and around the world, said the following:

“We are disappointed with the verdict and regret that the jury did not agree with the clear evidence our team presented.” …

“Neither Oberlin College nor Dean Meredith Raimondo defamed a local business or its owners, and they never endorsed statements made by others. Rather, the College and Dr. Raimondo worked to ensure that students’ freedom of speech was protected and that the student demonstrations were safe and lawful, and they attempted to help the plaintiffs repair any harm caused by the student protests.”

The Gibson lawyers wanted to not only present the jury with the email as evidence of “malice,” but to also bring in Varner to testify via subpoena to the jury in the punitive phase. However, the judge ruled the jury would get neither the email nor the testimony of the general counsel.

Owen Rarric, an attorney for the Gibson’s, argued that the email was valid because the “jury will be deciding based on the deterrence and punishment they will exact on the school,” and that “this [email] is directly relevant to the issue of malice and the jury can determine the amount award to prevent future malicious conduct.”

Lee Plakas added that “Oberlin College just doesn’t get it and doesn’t accept that anyone else’s decisions is right except their own.”

The defense claimed in its court motion that the email was not relevant and would needlessly inflame the jury:

The conduct underlying all of these claims, as set forth at trial, spanned from November 10, 2016 (the first day of the protest) through late January 2017 (when Oberlin College resumed its daily orders from Gibson’s Bakery). The Trial Update is irrelevant to actual malice, which is required for an award of punitive damages, as the Trial Update comes two-and-a-half years after the tortious conduct that formed the basis of the jury’s verdict. In other words, the Trial Update is not relevant because nothing in the Trial Update has “any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of” actual malice “more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” Evid.R. 401.

Put simply, what relevance does an email sent by Oberlin College’s General Counsel, Vice President and Secretary to Oberlin College alumni—two-and-a-half years after the tortious conduct that lead to the jury’s finding of liability—have to actual malice? None. Thus, evidence on the Trial Update should be precluded from trial.

* * *

As discussed, certain news outlets have manipulated the Trial Update to suggest that Defendants have somehow disrespected and rejected the jury’s verdict. As the jury has been instructed not to read news postings and editorials about this case, so too should Plaintiffs be prevented from parroting the themes of those news postings and editorials to incite the jury into believing that it has been belittled in the Trial Update. The only reason Plaintiffs seek to introduce the Trial Update is to inflame the jury’s emotions and maximize a potential punitive damages award. Thus, evidence of the Trial Update should be excluded, as Defendants stand to be unfairly prejudiced by Plaintiffs’ improper use of the document.

Judge John R. Miraldi held that “this was a letter sent by the Oberlin general counsel after the verdict. We are talking about the actions of the defendants that demonstrated malice. What we will use is only what was litigated in court.”

Motion for Mistrial Denied

In addition to his ruling that the email could not be admitted, the judge ruled favorably for the Gibson team in most of the other mostly procedural matters. The Oberlin College lawyers claimed the court had not separated the “compensatory” damages in the verdict between the Gibson family members and their business, and thus, in their argument, the jury could not figure out the punishment phase with such wrongful jury instructions from the court.

Oberlin College attorney Ronald D. Holman called the lack of a proper “breakdown of damages per claimant by claim” was for Oberlin College, an “incurable legal quagmire.” That line drew some giggles from the packed courtroom, especially from friends of the Gibson family who have been in this Ohio courtroom since early May.

The judge ruled against the motion for a “mistrial”:

Attorney Fees Could Be In Play

The Court also ruled that the jury could designate whether the court could award attorney’s fees. As we understand the procedure, the jury will get to determine whether to give the judge the power to award the Gibsons attorney’s fees. If the jury so authorizes, the amount will be up to the judge. It’s unclear to us whether the judge could award the amount of the contingent fee (which presumably is the basis on which the plaintiffs’ lawyers took the case), because if so, that could add many millions to the ultimate judgment. Even at an hourly rate, it still would be substantial.

What’s Next

The evidence presented tomorrow will be by the plaintiffs about how Oberlin College acted with malice. The attorneys would not tip their hand as to what the evidence of malice might be, but did indicate they would focus on evidence already presented to the jury in the trial.

One would suspect the jury might see the email again tomorrow from Oberlin College Dean of Students Meredith Raimondo, where she wrote to colleagues, in relation to criticism of the college’s handling of the matter, ““Fuck him … I’d say unleash the students if I wasn’t convinced this needs to be put behind us.”

Daniel McGraw is a freelance writer and author in Lakewood, Ohio. Follow him on Twitter @danmcgraw1

WAJ Adds: We will be on Verdict Watch as soon as the jury gets the punitive damages case. As soon as there is a verdict, Dan will contact me and I will post it. As with the compensatory verdict, you will be the first to know, other than people in the courtroom.

====================

Actions have consequences....

[coldalbion]

Part 1: I was Odin and Loki devotee for 3 years and I considered having quite a strong connection with both of them despite of being a noob so to say. At one point I tried to become part of a certain small pagan community, because I felt I needed a pack; I didn't know much about anything and wanted to learn. Couple of months went well. Then I found out admin was a manipulative closet nazi and gay/transphobe.

Part 2: The rest of the ppl there didn't mind it at all in the name of "tolerating different opinions" and just laughed it off. I was so outraged, and I left. However, they too were norse pagans or inclined in one way or another towards the practice. They were talking like the gods had their back, helped them to get forward and agreed with what they were doing. Tried to talk me to "open my mind" to it as well.Part 3: When I was younger, I used to loathe everything monoteism related because of people like that. Now the same fury I thought had already been dead and buried, emerged stronger than ever, and this time it wasn't aimed at monoteism, but norse gods. I felt betrayed and used. I thought I'll rather be alone than have anything to do with deities who hang out with nazis or other human scum, while crying my eyes out and getting rid of my altar.Part 4: A friend tried to tell me to be reasonable, reminded me they're just people and people can talk shit or be deluded, and asked do I trust more the gods or people. I answered "I don't trust anybody anymore. Everyone can just fuck off." Now it feels like I've chopped off my own arm and run into space, far away from Earth, and just drifting there with nowhere to go. Like I would've lost one of my senses. It's dead silent.Still, just a thought of putting the altar back pisses me off, as everything norse related reminds me of those people. And I hate it as well how big of an infuence they have over me. I'm not even sure why am I writing this. I was thinking have you or someone of your followers perhaps had similar experiences and how did they overcome it?

That’s a horrible thing to have happen anon, and it’s never easy to experience betrayal - particularly when it’s in an arena where you feel that you were an individual who knew less, and in a sense looked up to those others as worthy of respect. I can only imagine what it felt like to have folks you used to consider pack, people you thought worthy and trusted to watch your back and look out for your spiritual well being, embrace or give time to such vile ideas which should never be tolerated.It’s bad enough when authors or authorities you respected turn out to not be what you thought they were, or espouse sentiments that are anathema to our own sense of justice and right living, let alone when those ideas have been proven to lead to atrocity after atrocity, violations of body and soul for thousands, nay, millions of people.So I understand you anger, and your sense of loss, because while the circumstances were different, I too have felt the gutting horror, the rising bile, and the brutal bruising of the soul under such an abuse. Because make no mistake, abuse of trust is abuse. When we make ourselves vulnerable to another, when we open our hearts enough to allow others to draw us along on a journey, we take a risk, allowing them to come into contact with pieces of ourselves we do not often expose in ordinary life. When we extend them that privilege - and make no mistake, it is a privilege - in a very real sense we give them access to the private laws, those intimate paths of thought and action we lay down which govern our inner lives, and we expect people to abide by them when in those spaces. True friends acknowledge those laws, and abide by them in interactions with us - even if they don’t always agree completely, in toto, because they respect us, and wish us to prosper. The recognise that these laws are the root-channels our life-force has forged throughout our existence, and they respect that which animates us - that which brings us Life and More Life. That which allows us to become More ourselves.This doesn’t mean that they should kowtow to us, but that they should act with respect towards us, and when in our orbit behave in a manner which is regarded by all parties as respectful within the context of relationship. Thus, I can have a respectful relationship with a friend even if our interactions seem naught but insulting to each other, because, contrary to what might appear to outsiders, we both know the insights arise out of love and respect.I mention respect, because many people have an inorganic ossified notion of respect, and honour and the like. They do not understand that they are both properties of betweenness - bonds between groups and individuals, gods and human, friends, siblings, parents and children etc. When those bonds, those shared agreements, implicit, or explicit, are broken ? Life, sense, meaning? They are disrupted - the flow of the world, its rhythms, its pulses, are thrown into disarray.Anger, rage - these are primal emotions, primal forces. Raw powers unleashed in some manner to grasp, to shape the world into new meanings, either by defending our integrity, or allowing us to gain a foothold in the world by overpowering things enough for us to make sense of them. In the service of Life, in the service of hope and kindness? They are holy things, but like many things, perhaps all things, they can be debased, can be twisted or turn harmful. When combined with fear, they can lead to atrocities, as we mentioned earlier.Make no mistake then, anon, but believe me when I say: You have been wronged. You have been wronged, and have every right to be angry. You have been wronged by people, not gods. But your anger at the gods is understandable. After all, it was for, and through them, that you encountered the people who abused your trust.So when you friend asked you whether you trusted the gods, I understand what they were trying to do. But the truth is, it has very little to do with the gods at all, except in a manner which I’ll come to into a moment.It is not surprising that your rage is also spilling over towards the gods, despite that sense of loss that you mention. Not surprising at all, not only for reasons you yourself mention, but also because you do not wish to be like those people who broke your trust, and what bound you to them was, seemingly, the gods. Was altars and shrines and hailing the names of Odin and Loki. To honour those gods is do as they did.So. Do not do as they did. Forgo the altars. Forgo the blots. Forgo the poisoned practice. Forgo “Anything Norse” as you put it. Those bonds are shattered. Let the anger rage, righteously.Let the fury have its head. Let it roar, let it surge, let it pulse. Let the pain of the wound sing. And know this, as you drift above the earth, senseless..The gods are. They are not their names (How can they be, when Odin has hundreds?) They are not their shrines. They are not their so-called worshippers.The gods were.A thousand years before your birth, they interacted with humans.

The gods will be.With you, or without. Long after you die, they remain. After this generation, and the next, and the next. No one raised up their names or gave them cultus, or erected altars or shrines for centuries.Yet still, they impacted upon you.Think about that, for a moment. Across all of space and time, down the centuries, down the generations, they made contact, and you forged a bond. 

Independently.Before your betrayers ever came into your life, it was You And Them.Before Nazi scumfucks were even a glimmer in Hitler’s grandparents eye, there they were.Before your betrayal, your relationship with them was good, was prosperous, yes? It served the purpose of Life, enhanced your existence, and in doing so, enhanced the existences of those around you, yes?And those arseholes took that from you. Made the forms and functions of your spiritual life into things of hate and apologism for hate.How fucking dare they?!How dare they break something holy, how dare they violate frith like that?So. Consider this: If I feel your rage, who else does? If I regard such violation as a crime, who else might?Suppose, just for a second, for a moment, that the anger, the disgust you feel at anything resembling ‘Norse’ as presented by our society right now? Suppose it’s not just yours. Suppose it’s theirs too.Suppose for a moment that those signs and symbols by which you previously navigated your relationship with The Master of Fury and the Mother of Sleipnir, are indeed poisoned for you.Suppose therefore that your anger may (or may not) be a sign from them, a desire to develop a more intimate relationship with them, beyond name and form, beyond ‘Norse’ into pure Life, existence itself. To form new bonds which cannot be contaminated by society, and in fact might lead to the destruction of poisonous ideas, via a more organic betweeness -  a vitalistic, enthusing, Life-affirming relationship of frith between all things, which by definition opposes hate?My advice anon: Allow your fury to guide you to the place where you feel whole. I suspect you’ll meet some strangely familiar folks, though their faces may be different.Be well, and know that I understand. 

[trickormemes]

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp sentence starters

92starters feel free to change gender pronouns ‘read-more’ added for length

“Tell me a story!”

“Donuts! Hot dogs! Pie! Cakes! ARGH! Why can’t I stop thinking about food?!”

“Did you mistake me for a cuddly and adorable toy just now? Don’t worry. When you’re as cute as I am, you get used to that kind of thing happening all the time.”

“You sure know how to get someone’s attention!”

“You’d really give this to me? I must be the luckiest girl in the world!”

“The longer and more annoying your method of brewing coffee is, the better it tastes. It’s science!”

“Getting tired, _____? Just remember there’s no harm in taking a breather.”

“Oh, man... You’re making me feel feelings again. Haven’t felt those in years.”

“No complaints here! I’m just taking a load off, breathing in the fresh air, and watching the world go by...”

“Well, well, well... What can I do for you?”

“Should we invent something? Destroy something? Invent something that destroys things?”

“Wow, you take the cake when it comes to friendship. Mmm... cake.”

“Do you have some new gossip?”

“When you think of winter, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? For me it’s sitting in front of a big ol’ roaring fire, eating marshmallows. Don’t judge me!”

“Hmm... I just can’t decide what to do today...”

“I’ve got two words for you: you rule... a lot. Wait, was that more than two?”

“Ever had a song stuck in your head for so long you started to wonder if a tiny singer was living in there? I wouldn’t mind it so much if he coughed up some rent.”

“I’ve been lazing away around here for hours. What can I say? It’s my favorite way to spend the day!”

“Hey! You can cook, can’t you? Excellent! ‘Cause I can eat. We’re a match made in heaven.”

“I can only think of one thing that’d make it even better... MORE SNACKS!”

“I see you’re still out and about, _____. I like the way you think.”

“What are you doing up this late? Nevermind... People in glass houses shouldn’t call the kettle black and all that.”

“Hey, _____... What’s the most special place in the world to you?”

“Burning the midnight oil, eh, _____? Oh, come on. It used to be a common expression!”

“Bah, whatever. Don’t listen to your headphones too loud, kiddo, or you’ll end up like me!”

“You know, _____, I know being friends with me is a gift in itself... but here’s a little something to sweeten the deal!”

“We don’t always have to talk about training, you know. There’s plenty of other stuff goin’ on!  Like... um... You know... How ‘bout the weather? ...Uhhhhh... Sorry! I’m out of my element!”

“Hey, what’s up? Something on your mind?”

“Listen, _____—I just want to warn you that I have a tendency to be a little... needy. It’s not that I’m super selfish or anything like that! I’m always happy to share with a friend. I’ve just found the best way to make friends is to ask them for stuff!”

“When I really think about it, I realize you always do so much for me. That’s why I prepared you this little thank-you gift! So... thank you!”

“Whoa, you’re giving this to me? That’s amazing!”

“Traveling is nothing if not entertaining, am I right? You never know what kinds of peeps you’re gonna run into out in the world.”

“Whenever I meet someone new, I can’t help but wonder, “What’s your story?”“

“You’ve been such a big help! Let me know when I can return the favor.”

“Hey, you! What are you standing around here for? Go have some fun already!”

“You did it! And it’s not easy to get your hands on stuff like this.”

“Wanna hear something funny? ...Uh-oh. I totally forgot what I was gonna say. That’s too bad. Guess it wasn’t so funny after all!”

“Oh, man. The ocean is just so magnificent and powerful at night. Like a perfectly executed burpee...”

“You know what I’ve figured out? That traveling is a great way to make new friends.”

“It’s a beautiful day! Isn’t it, _____? Where I come from, they call this “favor weather”!”

“You really do put the “awe” in “awesome”!”

“What? Do I look lonely or something, _____?”

“Know what? I thought of you the other day, and it filled me with warm, fuzzy feelings! For the record, I was also thinking about puppies, so you were in good company.”

“Oh, man! I’m feeling great... and it’s all thanks to you.”

“Wow, you really helped me out. You’re, like, my hero or something!”

“What would I do without you, _____?”

“I can’t imagine doing this trip without you, ______. Well, I can... but it’s a lot less fun.”

“I read in a book that the sun has a strange power to make people happy... Just wanted to share!”

“This place just screams picnic! ...Well, not literally, ‘cause that would be terrifying.”

“Did you know that just talking about your muscles can make them bigger and stronger? Okay, maybe I just like talking about them. Sue me!”

“What a day. Don’t even get me started.”

“Oh! Did you say something? Did I say something? What were we talking about?!”

“Hey, _____. Wait. Don’t talk to me. Not till I’ve had my coffee.”

“Me? I’m so lazy. It never fails to amaze me when people actually do things.”

“I mean, I might ask you to read some of my fan fiction. And I don’t just let ANYONE see it!”

“Hey, I hope they invent a way for me to never have to sleep... but FEEL like I slept 43 hours!”

“So, what can I do for you? Or, more accurately, what can you do for me?”

“Woah, _____! Sleep makes you strong... so why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Good evening, _____! Or should I say “good night”? It’s so late!”

“I was tidying up my books the other day, and I found my secret stash... of more books, of course!”

“If you’re out to see the stars, you just found the brightest one.”

“Well, well! Bit of a night owl, are we, _____?”

“How are you always there when I need you, _____? Thanks a million.”

“Why is it that the sun goes down right when I start to wake up?”

“These beach chairs are way more comfortable than my furniture at home. Earlier today I plopped down for a catnap and woke up three hours later! It would have been much more pleasant if I had been wearing sunscreen.”

“Planning to do some post-midnight mischief? Yeah, me neither.”

“The best kinds of friends are the ones who’ll stop and help when they find someone in trouble.”

“It’s that late?! I guess I’ve been so busy, I completely lost track of time! Honestly, I can’t believe that I’m still awa—”

“Hmm? You start a conversation with me but expect me to do all the heavy lifting? Sorry, chief. I’m afraid I’m fresh out of hilarious banter for the day. Try me later on. Pah!”

“The lighthouse is supposed to help travelers lost at sea find their way home. But what it really does is keep me up at night!”

“Got any fun trivia to share?”

“I could go for some tea right now. What do you think, _____? Tea?”

“Today has now become one of my top ten days... ever. And it’s because of you, _____!”

“Wow. You really came through... I didn’t think people like you still existed.”

“Holy hot dogs, you’ve really outdone yourself this time, buddy.”

“The perfect antidote for stress and exhaustion is the natural beauty of the great outdoors!”

“I wonder if there are any undiscovered islands still out there. Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing to come upon?! I’m getting excited just thinking about it!”

“Your help has been invaluable, _____! Without you, I’d be lost...”

“You’re pretty hardy to be out here in nature this late.”

“If you ever have any questions... ask literally anyone but me!”

“When do you even sleep? I guess I’m not one to talk.”

“The only thing that could make me happier right now is a hug from a baby penguin!”

“Maybe I’m a weirdo, but I like collecting bugs.”

“Everyone works too much. It’s important to take a break every once in a while!”

“Some things get old. Like me! But watching the sunrise from a beautiful island ain’t of ‘em.”

“You’re one reliable gal. Put me down as a reference on your job application!”

“I like that skip in your step today.”

“Am I hallucinating, or is this for me?”

“From time to time, I like to sit in a chair like this and ponder all of life’s big questions. Like... what am I going to have for dinner tomorrow night? Or... did I unplug the toaster? Oh, no! DID I unplug the toaster?!”

“Can’t sleep? I recommend doing a thousand squats. Or... you could try fishing. Whatever works for you.”

“_____?! What are you doing up?! It’s past your bedtime!”

“Don’tcha just hate burning your feet on the hot sand at the beach? There oughta be a law against it! Or, I could just try and remember to wear flip-flops. Whatever!”

[xtruss]

A 1445 Sicilian fresco by an anonymous painter depicting "The Triumph of Death." The Black Death swept Europe, killing 34 to 50 million people – between a third and half of the population. Photograph By Werner Forman, Universal Images Group, Getty

‘Spillover’ Diseases are Emerging Faster Than Ever Before—Thanks to Humans

History is pockmarked with the scars of past zoonotic outbreaks. What have we learned, why are they increasing, and what can we do to avoid them?

— By Sharon Guynup | October 6, 2021

When a dozen merchant ships from the Black Sea docked in Messina, Sicily, in October 1347, they carried a deadly cargo that would change the course of history.

Most of the sailors onboard were dead. The few survivors were covered in oozing, black pustules. Though authorities quickly ordered all people to remain onboard the “death ships,” rats had already disembarked. They and the fleas they carried were infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague.

Over the next five years, the Black Death swept Europe, killing 34 to 50 million people—between a third and a half of the population at the time. Scholars at the University of Paris blamed the contagion on a dangerous "triple [astrological] conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars."

Nearly seven centuries after the Black Plague hit Europe, yet another pandemic is raging. This time scientists know it’s caused by a virus, and modern germ theory coupled with advanced gene sequencing mean we have the tools to study its weaknesses and curb its spread. Nevertheless, the current recorded death toll from COVID-19 has surpassed 4.8 million, and experts say true numbers are far higher.

Fabian Leendertz handles an insect bat during a capture and sample operation. Three species of fruit bats have historically been suspected of being the reservoir host of the Ebola virus. Photograph By Pete Muller, National Geographic

Deadly outbreaks and novel diseases have challenged human existence throughout history, profoundly impacting economics, culture, and commerce, killing world leaders and bringing down empires, says David Morens, a zoonotic disease expert at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Many of the viruses and bacteria behind these outbreaks existed for millennia without causing widespread harm. Human behavior has changed that. “Few people realize that measles, plague, and other diseases go back thousands of years, with Neolithic origins,” he says.

The growing human population, increasing globalization, and environmental damage are all accelerating the process, says William Karesh, an executive vice president at EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based nonprofit that studies zoonoses, or diseases that spread between animals and humans. “The laws of biology haven’t changed, but the playing field has changed dramatically,” he says.

The result: Dangerous new human diseases are emerging at unprecedented rates, including Marburg virus, avian flu, AIDS, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Nipah virus, swine flu, Ebola, Lyme disease, chikungunya, Zika, dengue, Lassa fever, yellow fever, and now COVID-19. Some 2.5 billion people are infected with zoonotic diseases each year, and because many of these ailments have no cure, they kill about 2.7 million annually, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Unlike previous centuries when diseases took time to spread, the infected can now board a plane and disseminate their germs worldwide before they even show symptoms. COVID-19 emerged in China just 21 months ago, and cases have since been reported in 223 countries and territories. Humans have also enabled disease-carrying ticks and mosquitoes to expand their ranges by altering the climate. As the planet warms, these insects move into new territory.

Part of the problem is that forgetting the lessons from past disease outbreaks has become a recurring theme in human history, Morens says. “Almost all the experts I know think that this will keep happening again and again because the problem is not the germs. The problem is our behavior, right?”

The Neolithic Revolution

From a pathogen’s perspective, the bonanza of vulnerable hosts began 12,000 years ago during the Neolithic Revolution. Small bands of nomads that rarely came in contact with others couldn’t spawn a pandemic. But once hunter-gatherers transitioned to farming and congregated in large, crowded settlements, infectious microbes flourished.

There were many opportunities for infection. Settlers shared the land with wild species. They domesticated wolves as companions, and later, tamed and lived with wild sheep, goats, and cows they used as livestock. Grain stores attracted flea- and tick-infected rodents. Standing water in wells and irrigation systems allowed mosquitoes to flourish.

In close contact, all of them swapped pathogens and parasites, allowing zoonotic diseases to jump the Darwinian divide between animals and humans. Some 60 percent of humankind’s deadliest killers originated in animals, including smallpox, cholera, and influenza. “Some may have jumped multiple times before successfully infecting people,” says Timothy Newfield, a historical epidemiologist at Georgetown University.

Some diseases use “middlemen” as part of their jump between species. Livestock often fill that role, acting as an intermediary host between wildlife and humans. One example is Nipah virus, which jumped from wild fruit bats to domesticated pigs to humans in Malaysia in 1998. Livestock sometimes becomes reservoirs for diseases: for example, people transmitted tuberculosis to cows, some of which now harbor the bacterium that causes it, allowing the disease to keep moving between species.

Still, it’s a roll of the dice what happens once pathogens find a new host, Morens says. Factors such as contagion level, how a disease is spread, and the availability of appropriate hosts dictate whether an emerging disease becomes a dead-end infection, as most do, or explodes into a serious outbreak.

Victims of the Spanish flu lie in beds at a barracks hospital on the campus of Colorado Agricultural College, Fort Collins, 1918. Photograph By American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs, Photoquest, Getty Images

The Rise of Outbreaks

Historical accounts offer glimpses into ancient pandemics. Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets, the world’s oldest surviving writings, describe plague and pestilence that raged in 2000 B.C. These writings blame angry gods for illnesses, or sometimes, the demons they enlisted, which were known as “the hand of a ghost,” says Troels Pank Arbøll, an Assyrian historian at the University of Oxford. Celestial conjunctions involving the planet Mars, which was linked to the Assyrian god of death, could portend an epidemic.

The cuneiform texts describe how venerated healers diagnosed patients. Male exorcists or physicians combined physical examination with environmental observations, which could be anything from a creaking door in the house to animals that appeared. How those animals moved was indicative of their impact: from the right, propitious, from the left, not good, Troels says.

The healers would then consult written “omens” to concoct and administer herbal remedies, which they applied as poultices or poured into the appropriate orifice. They chanted incantations and prayers to appease the deities and ritually dispelled symptoms by melting a figurine of the patient in a fire or tossing it in a river.

Warnings about rabid dogs are the tablets’ only mention of zoonotic disease. But other ancient evidence exists. Smallpox is described in early Indian, Chinese, and Egyptian writings. When archaeologists discovered the mummy of ancient Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses V in 1898, they found his skin pocked with scars. He, along with two other mummies, revealed that smallpox has existed for at least 3,000 years. Researchers note that it may have jumped from a rodent pox virus; rodents are also a reservoir for closely related cowpox and camelpox.

One of history’s first documented plagues—the virulent Plague of Athens—ravaged ancient Greece from 430 to 425 B.C. As growing settlements and rising cities facilitated infection, people evolved resistance to local diseases. Then they began to travel, unwittingly spreading germs across the ancient world in a process Morens calls “pathogen pollution.”

The Athens plague is thought to have arrived by sea, ravaging a city ripe for contagion. At the time, Athens was embroiled in war with neighboring Sparta and the city was crowded with refugees.

The historian Thucydides lived in Athens during the plague and vividly detailed the symptoms. People’s heads burned with fever, their mouths bled, eyes turned red, they coughed, vomited, had dysentery, and developed an unquenchable thirst. Their reddened skin erupted in ulcers. Most were dead within a week. The suffering “seemed almost beyond the capacity of human nature to endure,” Thucydides wrote in the History of the Peloponnesian War.

Scavenger animals avoided the unburied dead. Enveloped in a specter of death, the city descended into “unprecedented lawlessness ... the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or of law,” Thucydides wrote.

This mysterious pestilence still has not been identified, though experts suggest it could have been anthrax, smallpox, typhus, or any of two dozen other infectious candidates. Whatever it was, the plague killed tens of thousands, and a weakened Athens fell to Sparta in 404 B.C.

Altering History with Waves of Disease

Over the next few centuries, devastating waves of bubonic plague, measles, and smallpox annihilated huge numbers of people across three continents.

“It shows how interconnected the world was 2,000 years ago,” says Lucie Laumonier, a historian at Montreal’s Concordia University. The Silk Road and trading ships connected Europe with North Africa and Asia, creating big opportunities for microbes, with each outbreak altering human history in its own way.

A pandemic may have sped the demise of the Han Empire in A.D. 160. Just five years later, Roman armies returning home from Western Asia imported an unknown disease that caused the Plague of Antonius. It killed emperor Marcus Aurelius as well as five million Romans and devastated the empire, impacting both the military and agriculture and emptying state coffers.

The Justinianic Plague struck Constantinople, now Istanbul, during the sixth century, the first of three pandemics of bubonic and pneumonic plague. They rank among humanity’s most fatal biological events, says Georgetown’s Timothy Newfield.

The historian Procopius, who carefully chronicled Emperor Justinian’s reign, wrote that “there was a pestilence, by which the whole human race came near to being annihilated.” He claimed it came from Egypt, which shipped wheat to Constantinople. That’s feasible: Grain shipments back then could have carried plague-bearing rodents and fleas.

Mongol armies may have been responsible for the next bubonic plague pandemic by unwittingly bringing flea-infested rats from Central Asia to Ukraine in 1346 during the siege of Kaffa. Some historians have suggested that the Mongols used biological warfare and catapulted diseased corpses over the city walls to infect those inside—however, evidence is limited, and critics have since called that idea into question.

Either way, the survivors fled, sailing from the Black Sea to Genoa and Messina and bringing the Black Death with them. Within three years the disease had spread to England, Germany, and Russia.

In 1348, Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio described the bubonic plague as a disease that “would rush upon its victims with the speed of a fire racing through dry or oily substances ... Swellings, either on the groin or under the armpits … waxed to the bigness of a common apple, others to the size of an egg.” These buboes turned black and purple, seeping blood and pus. Victims shook with fever, aches, and digestive distress.

To try to cure them, doctors often used bloodletting or induced vomiting. Most of the infected quickly succumbed. “The scale of mortality was unlike anything that we can even imagine,” says Newfield.

Superstition ruled. Some people believed planetary movements, bad air, or poisoned water caused this deadly pestilence. Many thought it was a punishment from God. Other people blamed outsiders. Various minority groups were driven away, tortured, or killed. “The desire to scapegoat is very, very old,” Newfield says.

Meanwhile, rats and fleas thrived in cities without regular garbage collection. They burrowed into rugs made from wetland rushes and nibbled leftovers that were thrown to pet cats and dogs. Their role in the pandemic went unnoticed, along with lice that may also have been carriers.

Back in Asia, the plague killed some 16 million people. Since pandemics limit travel and trade, this plague caused the Mongols to lose control of Persia and China, and that ultimately dissembled their empire.

Ancient Roots of Prevention

Fear of contagion during this second plague outbreak sparked countermeasures that are still in use today.

In 1377, in the Venetian-controlled port of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia), officials set up a place outside the city to treat the town’s sick residents. They also isolated all ships and overland caravans for 30 days before allowing travelers entry to the city. That later stretched to 40 days—or quarantino in Italian. These measures created the cornerstone of Medieval preventative social distancing.

Still, the plague ebbed and recurred for the next 400 years. A ferocious 1664 outbreak in London is famous for ''dead carts'' that clattered along cobblestone streets with drivers shouting, ''Bring out your dead,'' immortalized by Monty Python. The last of the three bubonic plague pandemics began in the Chinese province of Yunan around 1855 and lasted until 1960.

It was during this episode that Swiss scientist Alexandre Yersin discovered the bacterial cause in 1894. Four years later, Jean-Paul Simond traced transmission from rodents to fleas to humans. When bubonic plague crossed the Pacific and reached San Francisco in 1900, officials rejected the accumulated science, instead quarantining Asian immigrants.

In 1897, scientists developed a preliminary vaccine; a better version emerged in 1931, and antibiotic treatment proved effective in 1947. With these tools in hand, plague in humans can be controlled and large outbreaks are far less likely. However, the bacteria are still circulating in the wild. Plague was in the headlines just this August after it was detected in chipmunks in Lake Tahoe, California, forcing some tourist destinations to shut down.

A person visits the 'In America: Remember' public art installation near the Washington Monument on the National Mall on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021 in Washington. Photograph By Kent Nishimura, Los Angeles Times Via Getty

The Modern Viral Explosion

Various viruses have also haunted humankind, and smallpox was among the deadliest. From the time of ancient Egypt onward, “the speckled monster” infected the Old World, often leaving survivors horribly scarred or blind. It killed 25 to 40 percent of victims, including pharaohs, nobles and royalty: China’s Shunzi Emperor (1661), Queen Mary II of England (1694), Habsburg Emperor Joseph I (1711) , Russia’s Czar Peter II (1730), and Louis XV of France (1774), among others. It’s thought that Japan’s Emperor Komei died of smallpox in 1867. Queen Elizabeth I of England and U.S. President Abraham Lincoln barely survived infection.

By contrast, the New World had been comparatively free of pandemic disease, possibly because indigenous peoples domesticated fewer animal species, offering fewer opportunities for germs to jump to humans. That ended when the conquistadors carried Eurasian germs across the Atlantic. The hueyzahautal—or “great eruption”—of smallpox exploded in Mexico in 1520 and spread into South America, slaying some 3.5 million people, including Aztec emperor Cuitláhuac and Incan emperor Huayna Capac. It crippled both empires and facilitated Spanish conquests.

“The age of exploration might more appropriately be called the age of global microbial devastation,” says Morens.

Notably, an exponential rise in human population that also started around the 1500s brought with it a sharp increase in dangerous epidemics and pandemics.

In 1793 U.S. President George Washington was confronted by the “American plague” of yellow fever, which would burn its way across the country for the next six years. In 1832 a cholera pandemic spread from India into Europe, killing more than 18,000. And the devastating 1918 influenza pandemic erupted near the end of World War I, killing at least 50 million worldwide. From 1900 to today, the world has been introduced to microbial killers ranging from HIV, the H1N1 swine flu, Zika virus, and infectious coronaviruses that are still wreaking havoc.

Still, there is no global pandemic prevention strategy. Morens notes that since COVID-19 emerged in late 2019, there has been growing discussion of the need for greater surveillance, international communication, and vaccine development. But there has been little mention of mitigating the human activities that boost the risk of dangerous disease, he says. That includes deforesting land, encroaching into wild ecosystems and selling and consuming wild animals, actions that bring wildlife, livestock, and humans into close contact.

Global cooperation in a unified “one health” effort is needed to prevent the next pandemic, says Steve Osofsky, director of the Cornell Wildlife Health Center in Ithaca, New York. It's an approach that “recognizes the relationships between our own health, the health of our domestic animals, and the health of wildlife and how all that's underpinned by environmental stewardship,” he says. This framework will protect both humanity and nature, but, he adds, it requires collaborations between a wide spectrum of experts, from medical doctors, veterinarians, epidemiologists, zoologists, business leaders and Indigenous peoples to agriculture, public health, and environment professionals. “How we treat the natural world has direct bearing on our future,” Osofsky says.

— National Geographic