#with much more of it increasing during the industrial revolution

[blackwoolncrown]

You are not immune to propaganda.

This includes sexuality.

*transphobes DNI*

[reasonsforhope]

"The man who has called climate change a “hoax” also can be expected to wreak havoc on federal agencies central to understanding, and combating, climate change. But plenty of climate action would be very difficult for a second Trump administration to unravel, and the 47th president won’t be able to stop the inevitable economy-wide shift from fossil fuels to renewables. 

“This is bad for the climate, full stop,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at the Columbia Business School. “That said, this will be yet another wall that never gets built. Fundamental market forces are at play.”

A core irony of climate change is that markets incentivized the wide-scale burning of fossil fuels beginning in the Industrial Revolution, creating the mess humanity is mired in, and now those markets are driving a renewables revolution that will help fix it. Coal, oil, and gas are commodities whose prices fluctuate. As natural resources that humans pull from the ground, there’s really no improving on them — engineers can’t engineer new versions of coal. 

By contrast, solar panels, wind turbines, and appliances like induction stoves only get better — more efficient and cheaper — with time. Energy experts believe solar power, the price of which fell 90 percent between 2010 and 2020, will continue to proliferate across the landscape. (Last year, the United States added three times as much solar capacity as natural gas.) Heat pumps now outsell gas furnaces in the U.S., due in part to government incentives. Last year, Maine announced it had reached its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule, in part thanks to state rebates. So if the Trump administration cut off the funding for heat pumps that the IRA provides, states could pick up the slack. 

Local utilities are also finding novel ways to use heat pumps. Over in Massachusetts, for example, the utility Eversource Energy is experimenting with “networked geothermal,” in which the homes within a given neighborhood tap into water pumped from underground. Heat pumps use that water to heat or cool a space, which is vastly more efficient than burning natural gas. Eversource and two dozen other utilities, representing about half of the country’s natural gas customers, have formed a coalition to deploy more networked geothermal systems.

Beyond being more efficient, green tech is simply cheaper to adopt. Consider Texas, which long ago divorced its electrical grid from the national grid so it could skirt federal regulation. The Lone Star State is the nation’s biggest oil and gas producer, but it gets 40 percent of its total energy from carbon-free sources. “Texas has the most solar and wind of any state, not because Republicans in Texas love renewables, but because it’s the cheapest form of electricity there,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, a climate research nonprofit. The next top three states for producing wind power — Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas — are red, too.

State regulators are also pressuring utilities to slash emissions, further driving the adoption of wind and solar power. As part of California’s goal of decarbonizing its power by 2045, the state increased battery storage by 757 percent between 2019 and 2023. Even electric cars and electric school buses can provide backup power for the grid. That allows utilities to load up on bountiful solar energy during the day, then drain those batteries at night — essential for weaning off fossil fuel power plants. Trump could slap tariffs on imported solar panels and thereby increase their price, but that would likely boost domestic manufacturing of those panels, helping the fledgling photovoltaic manufacturing industry in red states like Georgia and Texas.

The irony of Biden’s signature climate bill is states that overwhelmingly support Trump are some of the largest recipients of its funding. That means tampering with the IRA could land a Trump administration in political peril even with Republican control of the Senate, if not Congress. In addition to providing incentives to households (last year alone, 3.4 million American families claimed more than $8 billion in tax credits for home energy improvements), the legislation has so far resulted in $150 billion of new investment in the green economy since it was passed in 2022, boosting the manufacturing of technologies like batteries and solar panels. According to Atlas Public Policy, a research group, that could eventually create 160,000 jobs. “Something like 66 percent of all of the spending in the IRA has gone to red states,” Hausfather said. “There certainly is a contingency in the Republican party now that’s going to support keeping some of those subsidies around.”

Before Biden’s climate legislation passed, much more progress was happening at a state and local level. New York, for instance, set a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 40 percent by 2030, and 85 percent by 2050. Colorado, too, is aiming to slash emissions by at least 90 percent by 2050. The automaker Stellantis has signed an agreement with the state of California promising to meet the state’s zero-emissions vehicle mandate even if a judicial or federal action overturns it. It then sells those same cars in other states. 

“State governments are going to be the clearest counterbalance to the direction that Donald Trump will take the country on environmental policy,” said Thad Kousser, co-director of the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research at the University of California, San Diego. “California and the states that ally with it are going to try to adhere to tighter standards if the Trump administration lowers national standards.”

[Note: One of the obscure but great things about how emissions regulations/markets work in the US is that automakers generally all follow California's emissions standards, and those standards are substantially higher than federal standards. Source]

Last week, 62 percent of Washington state voters soundly rejected a ballot initiative seeking to repeal a landmark law that raised funds to fight climate change. “Donald Trump’s going to learn something that our opponents in our initiative battle learned: Once people have a benefit, you can’t take it away,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a press call Friday. “He is going to lose in his efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, because governors, mayors of both parties, are going to say, ‘This belongs to me, and you’re not going to get your grubby hands on it.’”

Even without federal funding, states regularly embark on their own large-scale projects to adapt to climate change. California voters, for instance, just overwhelmingly approved a $10 billion bond to fund water, climate, and wildfire prevention projects. “That will be an example,” said Saharnaz Mirzazad, executive director of the U.S. branch of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. “You can use that on a state level or local level to have [more of] these types of bonds. You can help build some infrastructure that is more resilient.”

Urban areas, too, have been major drivers of climate action: In 2021, 130 U.S. cities signed a U.N.-backed pledge to accelerate their decarbonization. “Having an unsupportive federal government, to say the least, will be not helpful,” said David Miller, managing director at the Centre for Urban Climate Policy and Economy at C40, a global network of mayors fighting climate change. “It doesn’t mean at all that climate action will stop. It won’t, and we’ve already seen that twice in recent U.S. history, when Republican administrations pulled out of international agreements. Cities step to the fore.”

And not in isolation, because mayors talk: Cities share information about how to write legislation, such as laws that reduce carbon emissions in buildings and ensure that new developments are connected to public transportation. They transform their food systems to grow more crops locally, providing jobs and reducing emissions associated with shipping produce from afar. “If anything,” Miller said, “having to push against an administration, like that we imagine is coming, will redouble the efforts to push at the local level.” 

Federal funding — like how the U.S. Forest Service has been handing out $1.5 billion for planting trees in urban areas, made possible by the IRA — might dry up for many local projects, but city governments, community groups, and philanthropies will still be there. “You picture a web, and we’re taking scissors or a machete or something, and chopping one part of that web out,” said Elizabeth Sawin, the director of the Multisolving Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes climate solutions. “There’s this resilience of having all these layers of partners.”

All told, climate progress has been unfolding on so many fronts for so many years — often without enough support from the federal government — that it will persist regardless of who occupies the White House. “This too shall pass, and hopefully we will be in a more favorable policy environment in four years,” Hausfather said. “In the meantime, we’ll have to keep trying to make clean energy cheap and hope that it wins on its merits.”"

-via Grist, November 11, 2024. A timely reminder.

[communist-manifesto-daily]

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Part 13

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The industrial and commercial middle-class had, therefore, not yet succeeded in driving the landed aristocracy completely from political power when another competitor, the working-class, appeared on the stage. The reaction after the Chartist movement and the Continental revolutions, as well as the unparalleled extension of English trade from 1848-66 (ascribed vulgarly to Free Trade alone, but due far more to the colossal development of railways, ocean steamers, and means of intercourse generally), had again driven the working-class into the dependency of the Liberal party, of which they formed, as in pre-Chartist times, the Radical wing. Their claims to the franchise, however, gradually became irresistible; while the Whig leaders of the Liberals "funked", Disraeli showed his superiority by making the Tories seize the favorable moment and introduce household suffrage in the boroughs, along with a redistribution of seats. Then followed the ballot; then, in 1884, the extension of household suffrage to the counties and a fresh redistribution of seats, by which electoral districts were, to some extent, equalized. All these measures considerably increased the electoral power of the working-class, so much so that in at least 150 to 200 constituencies that class now furnished the majority of the voters. But parliamentary government is a capital school for teaching respect for tradition; if the middle-class look with awe and veneration upon what Lord John Manners playfully called "our old nobility", the mass of the working-people then looked up with respect and deference to what used to be designated as "their betters", the middle-class. Indeed, the British workman, some 15 years ago, was the model workman, whose respectful regard for the position of his master, and whose self-restraining modesty in claiming rights for himself, consoled our German economists of the Katheder-Socialist school for the incurable communistic and revolutionary tendencies of their own working-men at home.

But the English middle-class – good men of business as they are – saw farther than the German professors. They had shared their powers but reluctantly with the working-class. They had learnt, during the Chartist years, what that puer robustus sed malitiosus, the people, is capable of. And since that time, they had been compelled to incorporate the better part of the People's Charter in the Statutes of the United Kingdom. Now, if ever, the people must be kept in order by moral means, and the first and foremost of all moral means of action upon the masses is and remains – religion. Hence the parsons' majorities on the School Boards, hence the increasing self- taxation of the bourgeoisie for the support of all sorts of revivalism, from ritualism to the Salvation Army.

And now came the triumph of British respectability over the free thought and religious laxity of the Continental bourgeois. The workmen of France and Germany had become rebellious. They were thoroughly infected with Socialism, and, for very good reasons, were not at all particular as to the legality of the means by which to secure their own ascendancy. The puer robustus, here, turned from day-to- day more malitiosus. Nothing remained to the French and German bourgeoisie as a last resource but to silently drop their free thought, as a youngster, when sea-sickness creeps upon him, quietly drops the burning cigar he brought swaggeringly on board; one-by-one, the scoffers turned pious in outward behavior, spoke with respect of the Church, its dogmas and rites, and even conformed with the latter as far as could not be helped. French bourgeois dined maigre on Fridays, and German ones say out long Protestant sermons in their pews on Sundays. They had come to grief with materialism. "Die Religion muss dem Volk erhalten werden" – religion must be kept alive for the people – that was the only and the last means to save society from utter ruin. Unfortunately for themselves, they did not find this out until they had done their level best to break up religion for ever. And now it was the turn of the British bourgeoisie to sneer and to say: "Why, you fools, I could have told you that 200 years ago!"

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[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Man, the more I think about future alternate history of Temeraire the more it looks like the 20th century would see a massive decline if not outright near-extinction of heavyweights dragons, at least those in Europe and maybe Russia

It's 1914, dragons in Europe have had rights for a while now, still not 1:1 to humans (not sure where women's rights would be at in Temeraire universe so maybe dragons are on par with human women) but we're getting there. They aren't seen as beasts or intelligent warships anymore. But then World War I begins and the propaganda machine is everpresent and merciless. It is every man's duty to defend his country or else he is a coward and a weakling and deserving of shame, and for dragons, whose size and strength is incomparable to humans, this applies tenfold. Not to mention the fact that dragons require lots of food from the already dwindling wartime resources. The pressure on dragons to "pull their weight" would be massive. And so most of them join the war effort, working as messengers, reconnaissance, moving cargo, or serving as soldiers in their own right, old but still capable dragons once again taking on harnesses and crews like they have 100 years ago and teaching the younger ones the tactics they still vividly remember. But this is not the 1800s anymore, technology has progressed and just like the traditional cavalry, dragons and their crews fall prey to modern artillery and machine guns. Smaller, lighter breeds manage to keep ahead of the relatively primitive technology, but the large and slow heavyweights become little more than gigantic moving targets. In this world, the term The Lost Generation rings even more true.

Meanwhile in Russia the period of chaos after the dissolution of Russian breeding grounds during the Napoleonic wars has long since passed, with sky-high costs in both human and dragon lives. By the 1830s, some of the few remaining dragons were lured back to human society with promises of steady food and treasures, and it did not take long for things to return to what they used to be. Dragons were indeed treated better now, but still far from equal, their situation more reminiscent to pre-Temeraire Britain, and there was still a strongly baked-in hierarchy of preferential treatment based on dragon size. Come 1917. The war drags on, living conditions plummet and unrest rapidly rises in the Russian Empire. Still not seeing any of the societal changes that dragons of Western Europe enjoyed, Russian dragons find much common ground with peasants, especially the small lightweight dragons, and calls for a change became louder. Humans and dragons alike united by the vision of peace, freedom, prosperity and equality for all, the Socialist Revolution sweeps through the country with the speed of a grey courier's flight. A republic is established, the tsar and his family are executed, same as thousands of other members of nobility, the wealthy, and others seen as enemies of the state. This includes many dragons who did not side with the revolution, particularly those who refused to part with their hoards. Many heavyweights saw themselves as targets, viewed as symbols of the imperial power by the people and as tyrants in their own right by smaller dragons. Then the middleweights, and even lightweights do not avoid suspicion. Talks of the inherent greed and savagery of dragons find more and more voices, people remind themselves of the brutality unleashed by freed dragons a hundred years ago. With the increasing industrialization and technological development, there are opinions that dragons have no place in a modern world, claims that "why need dragons when we can achieve just as much with machines and pure human ingenuity". Many dragons find themselves out of work and out of food, and retreat to the wilderness. Those who remain are mostly the small ones, just large enough to live similar to humans, eat as much as humans and work according to human standards.

[max1461]

I have said this before, and also gestured at it in a lot of my recent posts, but every time I think about it I am increasing convinced that the explanation for the Great Divergence is basically "there's nothing to explain".

Ok, maybe that's a little unfair: there is something to explain. Western European states and the US saw a series of remarkable technological leaps during roughly the period from 1600 to 1900, which allowed them to achieve astonishing wealth and global political power. There is an explanandum here.

But what I mean when I say there's nothing to be explained is the following. We already have good reason to believe that technological growth is approximately exponential. Technology is self-compounding: the more of it you have, the more of it you can develop. And very many metrics that we would expect to correlate with technology, like agricultural yield and life expectancy, seem to grow exponentially. So I think the idea that technological growth is more-or-less exponential is well evidenced. When something grows exponentially, there is necessarily going to be a point of rapid take-off, a "foom". This is also something we see with technology, and life expectancy, and so on, particularly around the time of the industrial revolution.

This is fairly uncontroversial.

Another fact that I think is uncontroversial is that technological and scientific growth are subject to network effects, and subject to local material conditions. Societies that are generally wealthier may have more time and resources to spend on science, etc., and once you have a bunch of scientists working together in a specific place and sharing ideas, you get more rapid advancement. This seems true even in today's highly interconnected world, which is presumably related to why a small number of universities produce so much cutting edge research—they have the funding and the networks of top people. And I think there really is a sense in which you have many more opportunities for fruitful research and collaboration at e.g. an R1 university than an R2 university. The network effects still matter a lot. In the world before the twentieth century, when information traveled much slower, network effects would presumably have been much more important.

This is, again, a conclusion that I think is independently obvious and uncontroversial. If there was some sense in which it was not true, that would deeply surprise me.

But, look: the conclusion of these too facts taken together is basically that the observed course of history was (in a sense) inevitable. The second fact predicts that you'll get localized "scientific booms" through history, where a bunch of progress is being made in one area. We see this multiple times, with "golden ages" of science and philosophy in the Bronze Age Near East, in the Greco-Roman world, in ancient India, Tang China, the medieval Islamic world, and so on. Obviously I think in some sense "golden ages" are post hoc constructions by historians, but I think there's likely at least some reality behind them. So you have these localized scientific booms that slowly contribute to the exponential increase in global scientific knowledge. And it follows, if scientific growth is exponential, that there's going to be a foom. And it follows that whoever's having a boom when there's a foom is going to benefit a lot—in fact, exponentially more than anyone has before!

I am tempted to call this the "boom and foom theory" of the scientific and industrial revolution.

But it's not really a theory. It's a prediction of two existing theories about technological growth generally, taken together.

And it seems consistent with observation to simply say that Western Europe got lucky, to be having a boom when the foom happened. This is what I mean when I say "there's nothing to explain". I am not really sure we need anything extra to explain why this happened where it did geographically. I mean obviously you can dig in to the historical particulars, but ultimately... it was bound to happen somewhere.

Maybe there's something I'm missing here, or maybe I'm being excessively deterministic. But I think probably that any more particular theory of why the Great Divergence happened needs to justify itself against this one; it needs to explain why it adds anything to the picture that this does not already account for. But I don't know.

[dailyanarchistposts]

People

Hunger Has Natural Causes, Right?

Despite the fact that the world produces 1.5 times as much food as is needed to feed the human population, starvation and famine are endemic to modern capitalism. 900 million people die from starvation each year, but there is no global shortage of land to grow food. The UN estimates that there is enough land to feed a world population of 14 billion people. But what is it being used for? As in the ‘developed’ North, large landowners control the vast majority of land. In 83 countries, 3% of farmers control 79% of farmland, much of it left unused in order to maintain profits. Big Food made over $7bn profit from the South in 1990, and probably far more through transfer payments. It uses its economic power to force down the prices of rice, coffee, sugar, cocoa and cotton. Average prices in 1989 were 20% down on those of 1980. This led to an increase in foreign debt for Southern countries, with consequent increased economic hardship for the poor majority (higher taxes, inflation, etc.). Brazil has an area of farmland the size of India left uncultivated while 20 million rural poor are landless; the richest 1% owns 15 times as much land as the poorest 56% of Brazilian farmers. In Guatemala, 2% of landowners own 66% of the land. In the Philippines agribusiness producing sugar, cotton and pineapples for export has pushed 12 million peasants into the lowland forests.

Drought in Africa is part of a millennia-long cycle that human societies adapted to. It is cash crop exploitation, the market economy and taxation that produce starvation, not drought. During the 1970s, when famines first began to be reported regularly, ships that brought relief supplies to the port of Dakar left carrying peanuts, cotton, vegetables, and meat. In Bangladesh, often cited as the model for the Malthusian argument, 90% of the land is worked by sharecroppers and labourers. Many starved after the 1974 floods, while hoarders held on to four million tons of rice. In the mid-80’s severe famines occurred in the Sahel countries of Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Chad yet during the same period record harvests of cotton were exported to the industrial centres of the world.

Cash crops go to feed the global supermarket, yielding higher profits for international capital and accelerating global industrialisation. Mexican soil and labour supplies almost 70% of the US market for much winter and early spring vegetables. The result is that agriculture for local consumption is squeezed out and the prices of staple foods rise. Up to 50% of total meat production in Central America is exported, mainly to North America. The “Green Revolution” of the 1970s and 1980s, that the ruling class said would feed the hungry, has in fact only supplied the global supermarket. The same will certainly be true of the ‘wonder crops’ of the GM revolution. The corporate claims that GM and industrial food production in general will ‘feed the world’ are straightforward lies. The maize/soya/ animal product system they are pushing so heavily is not a rational way to produce food — an acre of cereal is estimated to produce 5 times as much protein as one devoted to meat production, an acre of legumes (beans, peas, lentils) 10 times as much and an acre of leafy vegetables 15 times as much.

[lisablack000]

Alternative Sleep Schedules

Polyphasic sleep refers to sleeping in more than two segments per day. Following a polyphasic sleep pattern doesn't necessarily reduce the total number of hours you sleep, but many people adopt polyphasic sleep as a way to reduce their overall sleep time and maximize their wakeful hours.

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Studies have shown that a polyphasic sleep pattern can fight the negative effects of sleep deprivation by allowing for short naps throughout the day. These naps replenish lost nighttime sleep as well as boost brain function. Polyphasic sleep has also been found to increase alertness.

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To understand polyphasic sleep, it's important to understand our culture's current ideal for optimum rejuvenation. The traditional eight hours of shuteye we hear about most often today is referred to as monophasic sleep - just one sleep session and then you're awake for the day.

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Conversely, polyphasic sleep is about segmenting your slumber into multiple phases. Different sleep schedules such as Biphasic, Dymaxion, Everyman, and Uberman each consist of several naps and/or core sleep sessions (deep sleep and REM) a day.

Biphasic: Consists of a split sleep schedule with two sessions. Often a five to six hour "core sleep" and then a one and a half hour nap.

Dymaxion: Commonly consists of four 30-minute naps during the day. Two hours of sleep total.

Uberman: Usually consists of six to eight 20-minute naps during the day. Generally, two hours of sleep total.

Everyman: Commonly consists of four sleep sessions. Often a three to four hour core sleep followed by three naps throughout the day.

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Historical Sleep Patterns

Now labeled as an "alternative" sleep schedule, polyphasic sleep was once the norm.

The dominant pattern of sleep, arguably since time immemorial, was biphasic... Humans slept in two four-hour blocks, which were separated by a period of wakefulness in the middle of the night.

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These weren't brief phases either. Many times people would actually get up and take on their daily (or in some cases nightly) tasks, visit with neighbors, talk with their family, etc. Sleep schedules changed drastically as the Industrial Revolution brought forth an artificial sense of extended daylight with the advent of the light bulb. Too much bright light stops our bodies from releasing melatonin, a hormone responsible for regulating sleep.

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Some famous advocates of polyphasic sleep, were Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla. Both da Vinci and Tesla followed the extreme polyphasic Uberman method, requiring only 2 hours of sleep a day, segmented into 20-minute naps.

Salvador Dali, had his own sleep method. He would sit with a key in one hand, poised above a metal plate placed on the floor, and let sleep take him. As soon as he began to slumber in earnest, the key would slip from his fingers and clang against the plate – waking him immediately. Dali felt as though sleep was a waste of time.

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Around 85% of mammalian species are polyphasic sleepers.

Ultimately, the vast majority of people are not built to sleep in patterns other than monophasic or biphasic sleep schedules. Biphasic sleep, which deviates the least from the contemporary eight-hour model, has been shown to have some significant benefits. Anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that biphasic sleep can actually maximize creativity and alertness in highly innovative individuals. It is now suspected that the creative genius of historical figures such as Tesla or da Vinci, who were said to have ascribed to the "Uberman" model, actually may have been caused by mania or insomnia.

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Possible Dangers of Polyphasic Sleep

Significant hormone imbalance (especially in young adult males)

Lower cognitive functioning

Trouble operating cars or heavy machinery

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Naps are Still Good

If you take a nap during the day, don't worry. Naps are safe, healthy, and sometimes all you need to stave off your sluggishness. A study on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance by 34% and alertness 100%. In addition to performance, a short session of shuteye can help with:

Alertness

Relaxation

Physical rejuvenation

Stress

Tension

Depression

Research found that only 5% of the population can get by on just six hours of sleep. Regardless of which sleep schedule you choose, the importance of good sleep cannot be underestimated.

[stressed-depressed-and-bored]

People always say “who is going to pay for it?” as if it’s some profound “gotcha!”

The rich. The rich can pay for it. They did in the past and they can do it again.

In the 1930s and 1940s the United States was facing a debt crisis much like todays. The government was running out of money coming out of the Great Depression and going into World War 2, and the economy wasn’t doing too well. Everything was falling apart, much like it is now. What was the solution?

And it worked. The US working middle class and the economy did awesome well through the 50s and 60s. The working middle class was wealthier than ever before and wealthier than it’s ever been. Regular people like you and me. Public infrastructure flourished. States had the budgets to build free colleges. College used to be free by the way. It wasn’t until Ronald Reagan’s advisors warned him how “dangerous” an “educated proletariat” was (those are his words), that major universities started to see cuts in public funding and had to start charging tuition.

Today, the top 1% is only taxed at 43% and has been dropping since Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Reagan also set the precedent of ignoring labor and union rights, violating both domestic (NLRA, Wagner Act) and international (United Nations bill of rights) law. This too has only ever been made worse by Republican policy as time has gone on with yet more tax cuts for the wealthy. Look up the actual policies. Don’t take a politicians word, read their actual policy. They will and do lie to you.

Do y’all understand now why the US debt is going up so fast? It’s because Trump cut that tax rate even more, amassing a whopping 20% of our current total national debt within only 4 years. The debt ceiling was raised THREE TIMES during Trump’s presidency, the uppermost tax bracket was cut even more, and massive corporate bailout loans were forgiven. Research the PPE loans. This has been Republican policy for 40+ years.

The systemic deconstruction of the middle class and the government in favor of corporate control. We are living in a repeat of the Gilded Age of the Industrial Revolution. The railroads and the banks own and control everything, including the government.

These are facts. Read it in any history book.

Or you can just ban those books too and pretend it didn’t happen. That would be a mistake though.

If you wanna know how our economy has REALLY been doing for the last 40 years, I suggest looking into the Economic Policy Institute. Or ask any working class American how they have been doing lately, especially those of us who are young, trying to make it.

Our current struggle is not caused by the “Woke Mob” as propaganda outlet Fox News will tell you.

(Do any of you even know what “woke” means? It means you are aware and attentive to the fact that systematic societal issues and flaws exist. Wether it be race issues, income issues, whatever. Being “woke” literally means you’re not a sheep who follows along anything that the media and government tell you. Thats what it means. Literally look it up. I grew up as this word came to popularity. It’s been around for a very long time. The GOP is taking advantage of the fact that you don’t know what it is, and using it as a fear mongering tactic to channel your anger at your neighbor instead of the corporations pulling the strings. It is corporate propaganda).

Our current struggle is caused by the class warfare waged by corporate scum as they buy all of our politicians in return for bailing out the government’s debt. Both left and right, our politicians have been bought. None of them work for you. They work for the big corporations lining their pockets through unlimited lobbying.

So, when y’all say “I don’t wanna pay for it”- don’t worry, you aren’t going to be paying for it. The middle class will not be paying for it. The multi-billionaire corporations stealing your labor will be paying for it. The rich goons who increase the price of your groceries and lay you off all in the name of making a few extra bucks will be paying for it.

Do some research and you’ll see exactly why and when we got into this mess.

It’s not that complicated. It really isn’t.

Tax. The. Rich.

[disgruntledexplainer]

AI

i think a lot of people really misunderstand what the actual threat that "AI" poses is. AI is not going to try to wipe us out for any reason intrinsic to it, because AI is not capable of having intrinsic motivation (thankfully). rather, AI is a problem because it increases the power of those already powerful, and further marginalizes anyone who isn't powerful. In other words, the problem with AI isn't AI itself, the problem is those who use it, who are altogether too human.

Two major threats come to mind, both of them incredibly obvious when you think about it.

First, corporations will naturally favor any innovation which cuts costs or gives them an edge over their competition, regardless of the consequences to both their workers and their customers. Those in charge of the corporation will always seek to automate any part of the company that isn't them to cut costs, even if it is significantly less efficient or more infuriating to work with. This means that, as with the agricultural revolution and the various periods of automation during the industrial revolution, we are on the cusp of a massive loss of employment across all sectors as humans are replaced with machines.

however, this will be worse than previous periods, because while in previous centuries the removal of some jobs would introduce new jobs to replace them, such will likely not be the case for jobs replaced by AI. Further, certain occupations which we had assumed would be safe have turned out to not be safe from automation at all. Nobody seemed to care about how automation will destroy jobs until "AI art" became a thing, and do you know why? because everyone assumed that creative work was safe. and while algorithms cannot truly match an actual gifted artist in skill and creativity, it doesn't need to, because it's just more convenient, and much more cost-efficient to generate an image procedurally rather than commission it.

maybe next time the art community will take the threats posed to the working class by automation more seriously smh. But i guess it's too late now.

And when I say that corporations will replace humans regardless as to it's efficiency, I mean it. Have you noticed that almost no major company has an actually useful customer support system any more? it's all automated, and it's all useless. Some companies are flat out just not hiring humans for customer support any more, instead relying on a series of generic automated response trees that do nothing to solve the problem and just make the customer angry. What's to stop them from doing the same thing, but with everything from marketing to janitorial work?

AI will continue to replace jobs over and over again until the only jobs left will be the ones that are actually doing the replacement themselves. In other words, at a certain point we will reach a point where the only jobs are government jobs, high-level corporate jobs, and the engineers who are designing the AIs. And if any engineer is stupid enough to design an AI that can design other AIs, that job may be gone too.

the other major problem with AI is what happens when it gets into the hands of government agencies. Which it already has, to an extent. We have been using simple, dumb AI in drone targeting systems for quite awhile now. Despite the fact that it doesn't really work and gets civilians killed more often than not, governments still use this software because it doesn't put their own men at risk. Likewise, the government will almost certainly begin employing robotic soldiers as soon as they become available, even if they don't work very well, because it means they aren't putting their own people at risk. But often in war you need people to be there, in order to make judgement calls. What if a lazy commander tells the machines to "kill everyone in that bunker", but the bunker turns out to be a civilian residence and now dozens of civilians have been killed? The issue here is that AI WILL obey whoever orders it to do something, regardless as to if the order makes any sense or has been negated by unforeseen circumstances.

all this to say that if AI destroys civilization as we know it, it will be because humans told it to. in order to survive, we must restructure society, remove the focus from profit and place it on human dignity. We must deliberately employ people even if it would be cheaper not to do so, because not doing so will have horrific repercussions. Also because it's the right thing to do.

while we're at it, it would probably be best to decentralize government and corporations so they don't get the chance to do something like this. *cough distributism cough principle of subsidiarity cough*

[mogai-sunflowers]

MOGAI BHM- Day 10!

happy BHM! today i’m going to be talking about the harlem renaissance and its significance! the harlem renaissance itself is a huge topic to cover, so this post will be more of an overview, with discussions of art and theater during the movement, and in future posts i will go through literature and music during the harlem renaissance!

Background and Context-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of a group of Black people organized into two lines in a field. At the front of the two lines, there is a table and a few white people administering medical tests/attention to the Black people in the lines. End ID.]

Part of what sparked the Harlem Renaissance was a series of factors that compounded each other in the early part of the 1900s in America. Urbanization was one of these factors, and it describes the process of populations shifting from rural to city/urban environments. Early 1900s America saw a huge increase in the production of metal, the drilling for oil, and other industrial factors, which led to a large amount of skyscrapers being built and cities being developed.

Urbanization is not just the building of cities, though. It’s the population, economic, and cultural shifts that come with the building of cities. The environments people live in influence their financial situation, their culture, their education, and their access to certain resources and opportunities.

When mass urbanization happens, it’s usually accompanied by mass migrations, which is exactly what happened with what is now called the Great Migration, which lasted about 6 decades starting in 1910. The earlier part of the Great Migration was characterized by a huge amount of Black southerners migrating to the rapidly urbanizing North.

The Great Migration of Black people out of the South also coincided with a growth of new, revolutionary ideas about race and culture. The horrible legacy of white supremacy in America had completely severed Black Americans from their individual cultures in Africa. It caused, and continues to cause to this day, a difficulty for Black people to connect to cultural and racial pride- but in the early 1900s, that began to change. 

A lot of Black people began striving to create racial pride out of the racial oppression they were experiencing- since many Black people didn’t know which culture they descended from, a movement to create the ‘New Negro’, as it was then called, out of a pan-African identity, began to grow. New, revolutionary ideas of what it meant to be Black in America- ideas rooted in pride and celebration rather than shame, took root as huge populations of Black people moved northward to growing cities.

In 1919, a series of deadly race riots, later known as ‘Red Summer’, combined with the renewed outrage many Black people had towards their inhumane treatment after experiencing much better treatment overseas at war, led to increased awareness of a racial reckoning in America, and the Harlem Renaissance was afoot.

The Harlem Renaissance-

[Image ID: A black-and-white photograph of a large crowd of Black people all standing in front of a theater. The theater has a glitzy, light-up sign that says “LAFAYETTE” and is strewn with a few signs that say “HALLELUJAH!”. End ID.]

Centered in the city of Harlem in New York, the Harlem Renaissance was a Black cultural revolution. It was a national rebirth of Black pride and it involved the birth and growth of Black literature, art, music, culture, and pride. 

Black music thrived through the international boom of jazz music. Black art and literature grew through publications like The Crisis and Opportunity. Black sociology thrived and defined the movement. 

The Harlem Renaissance influenced the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power movement, and all areas of Black culture, and it had and continues to have international influences.

Harlem buzzed with the opening of many new, ritzy clubs where people enjoyed vibrant performances, and Black night life became a staple of the Renaissance.

Visual Art During the Harlem Renaissance-

[Image ID: A colorful painting by Aaron Douglas. The background is vibrant streaks of golden, yellow, and orange, and the subject of the painting is a Black man in a brown suit, wearing a hat. End ID.]

Visual arts flourished during the Harlem Renaissance. Formal art education institutions were very hostile to Black people, so they very rarely could attend them, meaning that mainstream art movements ignored and excluded Black people, Black artists, and Black art. The Harlem Renaissance challenged that.

Often called the “Father of African-American Art”, the most famous visual artist of the Harlem Renaissance is Aaron Douglas. Influenced by movements like Cubism, Douglas had four of his works, a series which he called the “Aspects of N*gro Life”, commissioned. They became very popular for combining modern art styles with indigenous African styles mainly from West African countries, and they depicted Black people in different areas of life, especially music and other movements which flourished during the Harlem Renaissance.

Considered to be the first Pan-African-American artwork, a sculpture called ‘Ethiopia’ was created inspired by Egyptian culture by artist Meta Warrick Fuller, who made the art dedicated to the contributions of Black Americans to the world of art. Printmaking also flourished as an art form during the Harlem Renaissance with artists like James Lesesne Wells, whose style combined both European and African influences.

Photography helped sustain the Harlem Renaissance- historically, documentation of Black experiences had only been about pain and suffering- and while remembering those experiences is important, they are not the whole story. Famous photographer James Van Der Zee captured never-before-seen Black joy, Black pride, in his thousands of beautiful photographs of the Harlem Renaissance.

Theater During the Harlem Renaissance-

[Image ID: A small, blurry, black-and-white photograph of a large crowd of Black people standing and cheering outside of a theater called the Savoy Ballroom, which has a big, lit sign advertising its name and shows names of shows playing there beneath that sign. End ID.]

In media like plays and stage performances, Black identity had always been extremely limited- racist legacies of minstrel shows and racist stereotypes in performances meant that Black people were only ever portrayed in horribly demeaning roles, usually not even by Black actors, and when they WERE portrayed by Black actors, those actors were treated terribly and were forced to demean themselves in their performances.

The Harlem Renaissance began to challenge that by giving Black Americans the opportunity to represent themselves in their own stage performances- instead of the minstrel stereotypes they’d been reduced to for a long time, many began writing their own roles, allowing themselves to give depth and humanity to Black characters, allowing Black characters to be the good guys, allowing them the ability to have complex stories and lives outside of stereotypes.

Black Americans established such famous theaters as the Savoy Ballroom and the Apollo Theater, eventually becoming just south-adjacent of the white-dominated Broadway. Famous writers like Langston Hughes began writing plays like ‘Mulatto’ and ‘The Sun Do Move’, and famous Black actors like Billy King and Theophilus Lewis became stars.

One of the most influential stage works to come out of the Harlem Renaissance was a play called Shuffle Along, and it challenged the racist exclusion that many Black actors faced on Broadway by becoming the first Black play in over a decade to reach Broadway. It portrayed Black people living their lives and gave them the ability to express the humanity that white Americans were trying to ignore.

Sources-

https://magazine.artland.com/art-movement-harlem-renaissance/#:~:text=The%20Visual%20Arts%20of%20the%20Harlem%20Renaissance&text=Douglas%20was%20influenced%20by%20modernist,from%20Benin%2C%20Congo%20and%20Senegal. 

https://www.britannica.com/event/Harlem-Renaissance-American-literature-and-art/Visual-art

https://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/henken08/articles/r/e/n/Renaissance_and_Theatre_d0e4.html#:~:text=These%20performances%20were%20often%20shown,and%20The%20Sun%20Do%20Move.

https://historyoftheharlemrenaissance.weebly.com/the-apollo-theatre.html https://www.history.com/topics/roaring-twenties/harlem-renaissance

tagging @metalheadsforblacklivesmatter​ @neopronouns​ @genderkoolaid​ 

[lunarsilkscreen]

Climate Change and the Ozone [reference link]

Today, all the search engines yield results for the depleted ozone layer that say something akin to "Cuz UV radiation causes skin cancer". What is UV radiation--you might be asking; it's sun light.

My mother, when I was growing up, explained: "We open the curtains in the daytime to let the sunlight in so it kills the dust mites."

I'm not gonna go into what can cause skin cancer, a lot of people suggest it's sunscreen (or other lotions) especially HIGH UV protection sunscreen. (30 proof or less kids)

Sunlight gives off all colors of light, including that which we cannot see: Infrared, Ultraviolet (UV), and beyond.

It also creates heat, and that's the same mechanism that can give you a good tan, or burn depending on how close to Finland your racial origin is.

Ozone is like Oxygen except that it has an extra Oxygen molecule. This makes it [Heavy Oxygen] and unlike typical oxygen, can kill you if you breathe it in because your body cannot turn it into Oxygen.

You can make Ozone with a high voltage electrolysis process (not to be confused with the hair removal process electrolysis (Similar, but much lower levels) OR with UV Light. 🤔 ⚛️ (Baked Oxygen)

It can also be made with industrial or laser printing. (Which significantly helped speed up the ozone recovery process.)

So, when I was growing up, the big news at the time was "how do we close the Ozone layer, because it's causing global cooling." And everybody was worried about the next Ice Age and return of the wooly mammoths. (And led to the creation of the extreme skiing movie: Day after Tomorrow)

So when people are confused as to what "climate change" means, you tell them about global warming and people older than I think "Global Cooling?" They forgot about the Ozone layer.

The reason they felt this way is because Ozone is a "Green House Air Molecule"--gas sounds to similar to ⛽, so I changed it. As well as lessening UV radiation, it also *increases* the [Green House Effect]. Which means that it keeps the solar radiation that *does* pass through the atmosphere inside longer, and thus helps to keep the planet warm from the unforgiving vacuum of space.

By 1987 (👋) Scientists had identified the cause of Ozone depletion as Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)--which is what we used for aerosol sprays at the time, and 56 countries had signed the "Montreal Protocol" which was an agreement to cutdown the production of CFCs and similar [ozone depleting chemicals].

And so, great news everyone--By increasing our dependence on office printers and cutting our dependence on CFCs: we caused global warming. (I made some accusations in an earlier post about global warming itself having happened before with detrimental effects in BC sometime, AND it being recorded by humans in literature that can be found in Chinese Texts like gilgamesh, as well as the bible, and there are some stones in Japan marking extreme weather indicators based on shore level. (Completely not gonna reference it, you should do research yourself instead of just taking *my* word for it.)

The Ozone layer is due to be completely restored to pre-1984 levels in 2050~ish. Compare the scales of ozone restoration to that of the timeline of global warming, and you'll see they coincide.

Now, the real reason we care about global warming is because it's *higher* than what it was during the industrial revolution. When we were doing much more environmentally adverse warming and polluting. But, you know the pollution was gonna kill us by killing the Ozone . Now, we're going to be suffocated by the ozone keeping the pollution in here, with us. (Throw away joke, the pollution was *always* in here with us.)

So; what, if anything should we do? Should we even worry about it? Does anybody *actually* enjoy cold weather anyway? Why *should* we protect Florida and not just allow the gators to takeover Alabama and Georgia? Two birds one stone IMO.

Well. Stop using printers, for one. The world is digital now, and we need to lower our dependence on oil based products. (Plastic printers and plastic toner my friends)

The resulting paper reduction will also decrease paper production, and cause a pollution deduction from the environment-uction.

Then we can use those ink jet printer materials for better electronics.

We could ramp up CFC production if we *really* find ourselves in a pinch.

We could reduce the production of fecal gasses created from unsanitary farming conditions. (That's a whole thing in itself that I won't get into here.)

Decrease production of food material (like breads and cereals) by factories, and just let people make it themselves. (This one is controversial, because how will people be able to make money to buy food to feed themselves if they're not making cereals for the pervert we know as Tony the Tiger? That's an economic question that should be answered with: why don't more people just work on farms for their income?)

Anyway, trying to prevent all the UV radiations from turning white people into golden brown marshmallows is racist AF* and I won't stand for it.

[oumaheroes]

Sorry if this has already been answered but what are the requirements for a nation to reset? Like it involves dying but does it require upheaval within the nation or a period of turbulence? Is it like great natural disasters and they're events that nations have to naturally go through every so often to "release pressure" but only when they incur a fatal wound/illness (like how the San Andreas fault is theoretically overdue or how some volcanoes erupt every 100,000 years)? Does it just happen whenever a nation's heart stop beating and their brain ceases activity? How often does a nation reset on average in the past then?

Does that mean that nations in this universe are even more wary of death and injuries than usual? Do some nations fear being reset? (BC even if they do survive it in a sense they have to live another life before they return to being a nation. Tho England and France in the epilogue of Reset seemed to remember their reset adventures in medieval Europe with fondness so maybe not entirely.) Do they have different opinions on it for modern day or try to avoid death more as humans live longer now and they'd be living even longer reset lives than typically?

Have there ever been instances where a reset nation became famous for something like a celebrity of sorts? Like idk if America reset and Alfred became a famous singer or youtuber or politician? Would it be awkward for the others and Alfred himself? What would happen if a country goes through political turmoil or troubles while the nation is reset or if the nation somehow dissolves during that time? Does the nation live and die permanently as a human?

Just realized I'm asking a lot ajdhjkf I'm sorry if you mind or are bothered ^^;;;

Oh God Anon, you have made me JOYOUSLY happy with this ask, you have no idea. Questions about Reset , my dearly beloved ancient son, just make my heart so happy ;u;

Warning to anyone who reads this, long feral answers ahead

-----

What are the requirements for a nation to reset? Like it involves dying but does it require upheaval within the nation or a period of turbulence

Yes! Resets are caused by a significant cultural change where the day to day lives of people are significantly different to those who came before them. Religion, war, language, culture influences and mindset- there are many reasons that could cause it. In essence, anything that is significantly different in humanity’s way of life that would mean that their nation would be a bit out of touch with their experiences and troubles and would benefit from seeing things from their mortal viewpoint.

Before the age of the internet and after, the Industrial Revolution and after, Post and Pre WW1- all are good cases. We today grew up so so different from people born 100 years ago.

A Reset wouldn’t be enforced though. Nations wouldn’t one day just keel over and be thrust into a mortal life. The Reset would take advantage of whenever they next die, which is what worries England so much in the fic- it wasn’t a good time to go.

Is it like great natural disasters?

If that causes a significant cultural impact! If a people’s lifestyle has been drastically altered, then yes. If it’s just a big event, then probably not.

How often does a nation reset on average in the past then?

Oh, this is a good question! Previously, on average a nation would Reset every 200 or so years, sometimes much more and sometimes a bit less depending, on what happening in their lifetimes. Really, the lives of the majority of the population wouldn’t have changed much generation to generation, it was more the religion or culture mindset which did.

These days however, with the great technology boom and the fast increase of scientific breakthroughs, ease of travel, and religious shakeups, human lifestyles are changing more rapidly than ever before. Resets will likely be more frequently needed to keep up

Does that mean that nations in this universe are even more wary of death and injuries than usual? Do some nations fear being reset?

Yes! This was explored with England’s worrying after he narrowly put his one off in chapter 8:

‘England had been in danger many times during his long life, but this time felt different. He was not scared of death, he had died too many times in too many ways for him to harbour any trace of the primal terror surrounding his own mortality, and death was not an end for their kind. Death was a mere painful inconvenience which meant that England was out of action and more vulnerable on the world stage for however long it took him to revive again. But this was the first time that he could remember where he was actively conscious of wanting to stay alive for no reason other than he didn't want to die.

Avoiding a Reset added an odd layer of humanity that he hadn't experienced before. He knew full well, of course, that if he were killed now England the nation would not die. The body housing the spirit of the English nation and his own consciousness would momentarily cease to be, but England itself would construct a new body in due time and Arthur the person would once again be aware and alive and healthy. But now he felt more semi mortal, more human- closer to that strange line between life and death- than he ever had before.

There was also the added element that if he died now, at a time when a part of his consciousness was collected and bound up by a few priceless artefacts in the hands of a knowledgeable enemy, it could affect more than just England the person, it could affect England the nation and that made dying dangerous. Knowledge was always power and the knowledge of nations was a powerful piece of information indeed; England felt uncomfortable that a human, not even one of his own choosing, was made, in a way, equal to him by knowing what they knew.’

This time, he knows a Reset is coming and, as people are currently hunting him and France because of who they are, him dying will leave both him and his nation vulnerable. That has never happened to him before, and he hates it.

Aside from this, Resets are just a part of life and can have benefits, as you mentioned with France and England reminiscing at the end.

Do they have different opinions on it for modern day or try to avoid death more as humans live longer now and they'd be living even longer reset lives than typically?

ANOTHER REALLY GOOD QUESTION. Usually they don’t know they’re coming (they can guess but they never know for sure) but they avoid dying as much as the next person. But you touched on a really good point that makes me euphorically happy- people live longer.

Before, a Reset could be over fast. Death was everywhere, infant mortality was high, and the average life expectancy could easily be in the 30’s. Now though, they live longer and it is this exact oversight which got England and France into trouble in the first place:

“'Going forwards, we can make sure this won't happen again,' England's quiet voice prodded France away from the doze he'd been about to slip into after a few long minutes of silence, 'The main issue was that I didn't consider the possibility of you-' He stopped abruptly. It was going to take some time for both of them to get used to the name changes. 'Of Francis going into a home. Every other Reset we’ve either died at home or in battle and the case was found after the Reset or the other could bring it.'

England sighed through his nose. 'The concept of living for so long never occurred to me until it happened, honestly; we've never lived that long before.'

'Our populations have never been this healthy with stability almost guaranteed before.' France reminded him, 'I assume that's why you followed m- Francis, into the home?'

England hummed in agreement, 'I didn't consider he'd last that long there. I thought I'd either smuggle the body out or I'd Reset you quick, depending on the time or day Francis died. Either way, I'd know what happened straight away and could prevent the inevitable medical nightmare. Once I was in there, of course, I was in it for the long haul.'

France felt him turn to lay on his back.

'Which, was a mistake.' England admitted. 'I was away from home for too long and if there hadn't been a problem, Francis could have lived for another five or even ten years with the right care.'

'Oh, don't say that,' France groaned, flinging an arm up to rest over his eyes, 'he was so bored. Could you not have killed him sooner?'

'Could have done,' England agreed far too easily, 'but most of our people are now going through that part of the ageing process; I thought s'probably a good idea to experience it.'”

Chapter 7

Have there ever been instances where a reset nation became famous for something like a celebrity of sorts?

Most definitely! Not in the modern era as they’ve not, aside from France, Reset so recently. But in the past? God yes. I’ll leave exactly who and what to your imagination 😈

What would happen if a country goes through political turmoil or troubles while the nation is reset or if the nation somehow dissolves during that time? Does the nation live and die permanently as a human?

You saved the best question for last 😉 For my headcanons, I think that when a nation truly dies- the culture too changed to adapt to, the people no longer connecting to the culture which came before nor the history it was attached to- they Reset one final time and then die peacefully after living one last human life. If this happens whilst they’re already Reset they just don’t come back and this is seen as the better way to go- without knowing what they’ve lost. Otherwise, they slowly turn mortal and have to live on knowing that they’re on their last go, watching their bodies finally grow older and heeding to the passing of time.

This is what I think is happening to Gilbert, explored in Reckless Mortality

Anon really, you need to know how happy your questions have made me. I’m utterly emotional and I really appreciate you wanting to know more about this fic and AU <3

[communist-manifesto-daily]

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Part 8

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In Calvinism, the second great bourgeois upheaval found its doctrine ready cut and dried. This upheaval took place in England. The middle-class of the towns brought it on, and the yeomanry of the country districts fought it out. Curiously enough, in all the three great bourgeois risings, the peasantry furnishes the army that has to do the fighting; and the peasantry is just the class that, the victory once gained, is most surely ruined by the economic consequences of that victory. A hundred years after Cromwell, the yeomanry of England had almost disappeared. Anyhow, had it not been for that yeomanry and for the plebian element in the towns, the bourgeoisie alone would never have fought the matter out to the bitter end, and would never have brought Charles I to the scaffold. In order to secure even those conquests of the bourgeoisie that were ripe for gathering at the time, the revolution had to be carried considerably further – exactly as in 1793 in France and 1848 in Germany. This seems, in fact, to be one of the laws of evolution of bourgeois society.

Well, upon this excess of revolutionary activity there necessarily followed the inevitable reaction which, in its turn, went beyond the point where it might have maintained itself. After a series of oscillations, the new centre of gravity was at last attained and became a new starting-point. The grand period of English history, known to respectability under the name of "the Great Rebellion", and the struggles succeeding it, were brought to a close by the comparatively puny events entitled by Liberal historians "the Glorious Revolution".

The new starting-point was a compromise between the rising middle-class and the ex-feudal landowners. The latter, though called, as now, the aristocracy, had been long since on the way which led them to become what Louis Philippe in France became at a much later period: "The first bourgeois of the kingdom". Fortunately for England, the old feudal barons had killed one another during the War of the Roses. Their successors, though mostly scions of the old families, had been so much out of the direct line of descent that they constituted quite a new body, with habits and tendencies far more bourgeois than feudal. They fully understood the value of money, and at once began to increase their rents by turning hundreds of small farmers out and replacing them with sheep. Henry VIII, while squandering the Church lands, created fresh bourgeois landlords by wholesale; the innumerable confiscation of estates, regranted to absolute or relative upstarts, and continued during the whole of the 17th century, had the same result. Consequently, ever since Henry VII, the English "aristocracy", far from counteracting the development of industrial production, had, on the contrary, sought to indirectly profit thereby; and there had always been a section of the great landowners willing, from economical or political reasons, to cooperate with the leading men of the financial and industrial bourgeoisie. The compromise of 1689 was, therefore, easily accomplished. The political spoils of "pelf and place" were left to the great landowning families, provided the economic interests of the financial, manufacturing, and commercial middle-class were sufficiently attended to. And these economic interests were at that time powerful enough to determine the general policy of the nation. There might be squabbles about matters of detail, but, on the whole, the aristocratic oligarchy knew too well that its own economic prosperity was irretrievably bound up with that of the industrial and commercial middle-class.

From that time, the bourgeoisie was a humble, but still a recognized, component of the ruling classes of England. With the rest of them, it had a common interest in keeping in subjection the great working mass of the nation. The merchant or manufacturer himself stood in the position of master, or, as it was until lately called, of "natural superior" to his clerks, his work-people, his domestic servants. His interest was to get as much and as good work out of them as he could; for this end, they had to be trained to proper submission. He was himself religious; his religion had supplied the standard under which he had fought the king and the lords; he was not long in discovering the opportunities this same religion offered him for working upon the minds of his natural inferiors, and making them submissive to the behests of the masters it had pleased God to place over them. In short, the English bourgeoisie now had to take a part in keeping down the "lower orders", the great producing mass of the nation, and one of the means employed for that purpose was the influence of religion.

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[rabbitcruiser]

World Industrial Design Day

Industrial designers envision products that fill homes, offices, hospitals, and schools. These visionaries serve diverse working environments and create innovations to help serve the leaders of the global economy.

They work tirelessly and out of sight to give people the best tools of the trade. World Industrial Design Day is a day dedicated to the industrial designers that create the vision of the future.

This holiday is for teaching people about the history of industrial design and potentially getting people interested in the profession.

Learn about World Industrial Design Day

World Industrial Design Day is a global day of observance whereby we celebrate industrial design, as well as the creation of the World Design Organization. World Industrial Design Day aims to increase awareness regarding working in industrial design, as well as championing the power of design in order to strengthen environmental, cultural, social, and economic development.

There are a number of different activities that take place around the design community in order to mark this day. This includes networking events, gallery installations, exhibits, design competitions, workshops, panel discussions, and much more.

Studying Industry Design

There are many different places that you can go with an industry design degree, however, most people aim to become an industrial designer. Industrial designers use digital, artistic, and engineering skills in order to create concepts and products that are based on the demands and wants of the clients.

Products need to be pleasing aesthetically, as well as reliable, user-friendly, safe, and practical. As an industrial designer, you could work on any type of product, ranging from automobiles to home appliances and furniture.

While becoming an industrial designer is the most obvious route for anyone that decides to study industry design, there are a number of other options as well. For example, you may decide to become an industrial design researcher.

This means that you are going to research the needs of the user, coming up with new suggestions and solutions for elements of design. For example, the products that you could research for include gadgets, electronic appliances, and websites. Other careers you may decide to move into include furniture designer, interior designer, event space designer, and automotive designer.

History of World Industrial Design Day

Industrial design is the profession of designing products for millions of people every day. Almost every product used in a person’s home today was invented by designers working hard to make sure that people can live their lives easier. The profession began during the early 19th century when the industrial revolution began in Britain.

The Great Exhibition was held in 1851 as one of the first exhibitions to showcase industrial design on an international scale, helping influence the United States in their mass production.

People such as Robert Lepper, Herbert Reed, Robert Venturi, and Joseph Claude Sinel have all greatly influenced the world of industrial design. They crafted effective equipment that has helped shape the modern generation. Cars, phones, toasters, you name it.

All of those products have touched the hands of one industrial designer to another, been thought over, and executed so you can have the best quality of life.

The first World Industrial Design Day occurred in 2007. This represented 50 years since the establishment of the World Design Organization. Back then, though, it was known as the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (Icsid). Irrespective of the name, it has always been a worldwide organization, which is not tied to any governments, and promotes the industrial design profession, as well as the ability for better experiences, services, systems, and products to be produced.

It is all about better industry and business, helping us to ultimately create a society and environment that is better. When it was founded in 1957, there were 12 founding professional design associations. This has grown considerably over the years, with more than 170 members from 40 different nations. All of these organizations engage in collaborative efforts so that they have the chance to be heard around the world.

How to celebrate World Industrial Design Day

If you’re looking to celebrate World Industrial Design Day, then begin by attending an industrial design expo. Learn about some of the most influential industrial designers of the past and the most modern ones that are influencing our culture today.

Try your hand at designing yourself and pay attention to the products you use every day that you would normally take for granted. Share this information with friends and family and if you are an artist that loves design, then try your attempts at applying for a degree in industrial design and see where it takes you.

You can also spend your day looking online at some of the best examples of industrial design and delving deeper into how they were created and the thought process behind it. From the Mini Cooper and the Piaggio Vespa Scooter to the Curl Lamp and Coke Contour Bottle, there are many different examples of incredible and iconic industrial designs. You can share your favorites online via your blog or social media platforms in order to spread word about the day.

You can find yourself getting lost in research for hours and hours once you start researching industrial design, and it is certainly good to try and broaden your knowledge, right? Do let us know if you find any incredible industrial designs that you were impressed with!  

Source

[dailyanarchistposts]

The 1979 Revolution

In 1977, after years of political stifling, dissent began building that would soon pierce the wall. In May, a number of prominent judges, intellectuals and liberal opposition figures began publishing a series of open letters to high level ministers decrying problems in society, highlighting violations of the 1906 constitution. A month later, and again in August, the government attempted to forcefully evacuate the shantytowns of Tehran. On both occasions, the fierce resistance of residents forced the government to call off their plans. In October, writers and poets organized a series of readings at the Goethe Institute in Tehran. Over ten days the readings continued to grow, taking on a definite political character. At their peak these readings drew crowds of up to fifteen thousand, with some nights ending in clashes with the police.[17]

That year the Shah made an official visit to Washington, with much fanfare from the Carter administration. The event at the White House was met outside by a large student demonstration. Confrontations between pro- and anti-Shah demonstrators turned violent. While the Shah and Carter were meeting with guests, teargas deployed by police wafted onto the lawn of the White House. Guests wiped their eyes amid the tumult outside, in full view of the media.

Back in Iran, student strikes and demonstrations on university campuses were increasing in momentum and frequency, so much so that by the end of 1977 almost all of the universities had been shut down or were unable to properly function. Strikes in various industries were increasing, but at this point still centered on economic demands concerning particular grievances, rather than more general political demands. In spite of all of these events, it was still not clear to most observers that the regime was in severe crisis, or that the country stood on the verge of a revolution. On New Year’s Eve 1977, President Carter came to Iran, where he was treated to a lavish dinner hosted by the Shah and televised across the nation. Carter offered a toast to the Shah, declaring Iran to be “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world.”

In January 1978, a semi-official newspaper published a scandalous article accusing Khomeini (who was still exiled in Iraq) of being a British agent, among other things. Seminarians and theology students responded with mass demonstrations in Qom. The demonstrations turned violent, and a number of demonstrators were killed by troops, instigating a further wave of demonstrations led by the clergy after the traditional forty-day cycle of mourning. Each time a demonstrator was killed, after the forty days was up, their death would be marked with another demonstration; if during that demonstration another demonstrator was killed, there would be another demonstration after forty days, and so on. This dynamic helped push the religious opposition to the forefront of the struggle.

On February 18th, 1978 a mass demonstration in Tabriz descended into a riot. Government buildings and other symbols of the regime were attacked, marking a definite escalation on the part of the popular opposition. Within a month, mass demonstrations and riots had spread to over fifty cities. Attempting to appease the protesters, the Shah promised free elections and appointed a new prime minister pledging more reforms.

Meanwhile, in response to these events, workers’ strikes began to take on a more political character. In August, a strike wave broke out in solidarity with the struggles taking place across the country. Many important industrial centers took part, and the wave rapidly gained momentum, eventually becoming a mass strike that would encompass the whole country. Attempting to quell the strikes, the government promised pay raises, benefits, and revisions to the labor law, but the situation had swelled past the point of return. The demonstrations continued to spread geographically, increasing in scale.

Finally, on September 7, 1978, martial law was declared in Tehran and eleven other cities. In violation of the order, a demonstration took place in Tehran’s Jaleh Square the following day. Troops opened fire on the demonstrators, and over eighty people were killed. The day became known as “Black Friday,” and marked another dramatic turning point for the revolution. However, instead of being intimidated, opposition to the regime only increased. The following day strikes spread to the oil industry, the linchpin of the Iranian economy. This entry of the oil workers into the strike wave was a severe blow to the state. Over the course of September, industrial action spread from refinery to refinery, as well as to other factories and industries. By the end of the month, the rolling waves of mass strikes had coalesced into a general strike, and the entire economy had been brought to a standstill.

In the hopes of restoring order, in November the Shah appointed a new military government, whose soldiers attempted to force the oil workers back to work. This worked for a brief moment, although those forced back to work by the barrel of a gun still succeeded in slowing down and sabotaging the works. Ultimately, however, the force of the army was no match for the collective refusal of the working class, and in December, the military government collapsed.

Next, the Shah attempted to form a civilian government with Shapour Bakhtiar — a leader of the National Front, longtime opposition activist, and former political prisoner — at its head. Bakhtiar accepted the proposal, and was immediately expelled from the National Front, who at this point had thrown their support behind Khomeini.

By this point, demonstrators numbered in the millions, and troops had begun crossing over to the other side, many of them being conscripts from poor families. The military leaders were finding it increasingly difficult to shore up obedience and maintain morale.

Finally, on January 16, 1979, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, fled the country for the second time, hoping that the military and Bakhtiar’s government would be able to restore order. But history does not often repeat itself, and events would not play out as they had in 1953.

When Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile on February 1, 1979, he was greeted by massive crowds. He declared the Bakhtiar government illegitimate and appointed a provisional government consisting of members of the liberal nationalist opposition.[18] At this point, the country was in a situation of dual power: there was the government of Bakhtiar, and that of Bazargan. Ayatollah Khomeini now appeared as the de facto leader of the revolution.

On February 9, 1979, after more than a year of demonstrations, strikes, and riots, a full-scale insurrection broke out. The spark was provided by a mutiny at the air force base in Tehran, when cadets declared their support for the revolution against their commanding officers. The elite Imperial Guard, the famous “Immortals,” quickly attacked the base, attempting to restore order. Word spread, and guerilla groups sprung into action, rushing to fight the Imperial Guard. The action spread into the neighboring town and to other cities. Police stations and military barracks were raided, their weapons distributed to the people. As the police and military units were successively defeated, barricades were erected throughout the city. Government buildings, television and radio stations were all occupied. Prisons were attacked, and political prisoners carried out like heroes on the shoulders of crowds. Seeing that Bakhtiar’s government was a lost cause, the top military generals declared their neutrality, asking those soldiers still loyal to them to return to their barracks. On February 11, 1979, Tehran radio announced the victory of the revolution.

[chennaitop10]

Continental Restaurants: A Culinary Journey Across Europe

The world of gastronomy is vast, offering a myriad of flavors and dining experiences. Among the various cuisines, Continental cuisine stands out as one of the most refined and sophisticated. Continental restaurants, which specialize in European culinary traditions, have gained immense popularity worldwide. They offer a diverse menu featuring dishes from countries such as France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and many more. This article explores the essence of Continental restaurants, their history, popular dishes, and what makes them a favorite among food enthusiasts.Discover the top 10 continental restaurants in Chennai, offering a perfect blend of European flavors, elegant ambiance, and world-class dining experiences. Indulge in gourmet delights, from classic French cuisine to Italian delicacies, right in the heart of the city.

The Origins and Evolution of Continental Cuisine

Continental cuisine primarily refers to the culinary traditions of Europe, particularly those of Western and Central Europe. The term "Continental" was first popularized in British and American contexts to differentiate European food from Asian or Middle Eastern cuisines. The evolution of Continental restaurants can be traced back to the early 19th century when European fine dining establishments began gaining prominence.

During the Industrial Revolution, European cities saw a surge in restaurant culture. With increased trade and cultural exchange, chefs across Europe started experimenting with flavors, blending local ingredients with international influences. French haute cuisine became the gold standard, with chefs like Auguste Escoffier revolutionizing the culinary world. Italian trattorias, German beer halls, and Spanish tapas bars also began making their mark, adding to the richness of Continental dining.

The Key Elements of Continental Restaurants

Several aspects define a true Continental restaurant, setting it apart from other dining establishments:

Elegant Ambiance: Most Continental restaurants exude sophistication, often featuring classic European decor, dim lighting, and soft music.

Exquisite Presentation: Continental dishes are known for their meticulous presentation, emphasizing aesthetics as much as taste.

Use of Fresh Ingredients: Quality is paramount in Continental cuisine. Fresh herbs, cheeses, meats, and seasonal vegetables play a crucial role in crafting authentic flavors.

Fine Wines and Beverages: A hallmark of Continental restaurants is their extensive wine list, featuring selections from renowned vineyards across Europe.

Multi-Course Dining: Unlike fast-food or casual eateries, Continental restaurants focus on a structured dining experience, often including appetizers, soups, main courses, and desserts.

Popular Continental Dishes

Continental cuisine boasts a wide range of dishes, each representing the culinary traditions of its country of origin. Some of the most iconic dishes include:

French Delicacies

Coq au Vin: A classic French dish featuring chicken slow-cooked in red wine with mushrooms, onions, and bacon.

Ratatouille: A vegetable medley cooked with tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant, infused with aromatic herbs.

Crème Brûlée: A rich custard dessert topped with caramelized sugar.

Italian Specialties

Pasta Carbonara: A Roman delicacy made with eggs, cheese, pancetta, and black pepper.

Risotto: A creamy rice dish cooked with broth, butter, and Parmesan cheese.

Tiramisu: A beloved coffee-flavored dessert layered with mascarpone cheese and cocoa.

Spanish Favorites

Paella: A saffron-infused rice dish loaded with seafood, chicken, and vegetables.

Tapas: Small savory dishes such as patatas bravas (spicy potatoes) and gambas al ajillo (garlic shrimp).

Churros: Fried dough pastries served with chocolate sauce.

German and Other European Dishes

Schnitzel: Breaded and fried meat cutlet, typically served with lemon wedges.

Bratwurst: Traditional German sausage, often accompanied by mustard and sauerkraut.

Swiss Fondue: Melted cheese served in a communal pot, enjoyed with bread and vegetables.

Why Are Continental Restaurants So Popular?

Continental restaurants have become a global phenomenon, attracting food lovers from all walks of life. Several factors contribute to their widespread appeal:

Culinary Diversity: With influences from multiple European regions, Continental cuisine offers a wide variety of flavors, catering to different taste preferences.

Healthy and Balanced Meals: Unlike heavy, greasy fast food, Continental dishes often emphasize fresh ingredients, balanced nutrition, and moderate portions.

The Future of Continental Restaurants

As culinary trends continue to evolve, Continental restaurants are also adapting to modern preferences. Several emerging trends are shaping the future of Continental dining:

Fusion Cuisine: Many chefs are incorporating Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latin American influences into classic European dishes, creating exciting new flavors.

Health-Conscious Menus: There is a growing demand for organic, gluten-free, and plant-based options, leading Continental restaurants to introduce healthier alternatives.

Sustainable Dining: With increasing awareness of environmental issues, many establishments are sourcing locally, reducing food waste, and adopting eco-friendly practices.

Technology Integration: Online reservations, digital menus, and AI-driven personalized dining experiences are enhancing customer convenience.

Conclusion

Continental restaurants continue to thrive as a preferred dining choice for those who appreciate refined flavors, elegant presentation, and a rich cultural experience. From French fine dining to rustic Italian trattorias and lively Spanish tapas bars, the world of Continental cuisine offers something for everyone. Whether you are a seasoned foodie or a casual diner, exploring the diverse offerings of Continental restaurants is a journey worth taking. The timeless charm and evolving creativity of these establishments ensure that they will remain a cornerstone of the global culinary landscape for years to come.Experience the best continental restaurants in Chennai, serving exquisite European flavors in a sophisticated setting. Enjoy a fine dining experience with delicious French, Italian, and Mediterranean cuisines.