#Industrial By-Products Management Division
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According to Marx, metabolic rift appears in three different levels and forms. First and most fundamentally, metabolic rift is the material disruption of cyclical processes in natural metabolism under the regime of capital. Marx’s favourite example is the exhaustion of the soil by modern agriculture. Modern large-scale, industrial agriculture makes plants absorb soil nutrition as much as and as fast as possible so that they can be sold to customers in large cities even beyond national borders. It was Justus von Liebig’s Agricultural Chemistry (1862) and his theory of metabolism that prompted Marx to integrate an analysis of the ‘robbery’ system of agriculture into Capital. [...]
Liebig harshly criticized modern ‘robbery agriculture’ (Raubbau), which only aims at the maximization of short-term profit and lets plants absorb as many nutrients from the soil as possible without replenishing them. Market competition drives farmers to large-scale agriculture, intensifying land usage without sufficient management and care. As a consequence, modern capitalist agriculture created a dangerous disruption in the metabolic cycle of soil nutrients. [...]
Marx formulated the problem of soil exhaustion as a contradiction created by capitalist production in the metabolism between humans and nature. Insofar as value cannot fully take the metabolism between humans and nature into account and capitalist production prioritizes the infinite accumulation of value, the realization of sustainable production within capitalism faces insurmountable barriers.
This fundamental level of metabolic rift in the form of the disruption of material flow cannot occur without being supplemented and reinforced by two further dimensions. The second dimension of metabolic rift is the spatial rift. Marx highly valued Liebig in Capital because his Agricultural Chemistry provided a scientific foundation for his earlier critical analysis of the social division of labour, which he conceptualized as the ‘contradiction between town and country’ in The German Ideology. Liebig lamented that those crops that are sold in modern large cities do not return to the original soil after they are consumed by the workers. Instead, they flow into the rivers as sewage via water closets, only strengthening the tendency towards soil exhaustion.
This antagonistic spatial relationship between town and country – it can be called ‘spatial rift’ – is founded upon a violent process of so-called primitive accumulation accompanied by depeasantization and massive urban growth of the working-class population concentrated in large cities. This not only necessitates the long-distance transport of products but also significantly increases the demand for agricultural products in large cities, leading to continuous cropping without fallowing under large-scale agriculture, which is intensified even more through market competition. In other words, robbery agriculture does not exist without the social division of labour unique to capitalist production, which is based upon the concentration of the working class in large cities and the corresponding necessity for the constant transport of their food from the countryside. [...]
The third dimension of metabolic rift is the temporal rift. As is obvious from the slow formation of soil nutrients and fossil fuels and the accelerating circulation of capital, there emerges a rift between nature’s time and capital’s time. Capital constantly attempts to shorten its turnover time and maximize valorization in a given time – the shortening of turnover time is an effective way of increasing the quantity of profit in the face of the decreasing rate of profit. This process is accompanied by increasing demands for floating capital in the form of cheap and abundant raw and auxiliary materials. Furthermore, capital constantly revolutionizes the production process, augmenting productive forces with an unprecedented speed compared with precapitalist societies. Productive forces can double or triple with the introduction of new machines, but nature cannot change its formation processes of phosphor or fossil fuel, so ‘it was likely that productivity in the production of raw materials would tend not to increase as rapidly as productivity in general (and, accordingly, the growing requirements for raw materials)’ (Lebowitz 2009: 138). This tendency can never be fully suspended because natural cycles exist independently of capital’s demands. Capital cannot produce without nature, but it also wishes that nature would vanish. [...]
The contradiction of capitalist accumulation is that increases in the social productivity are accompanied by a decrease in natural productivity due to robbery [... i]t is thus essential for capital to secure stable access to cheap resources, energy and food. [...]
The exploration of the earth and the invention of new technologies cannot repair the rift. The rift remains ‘irreparable’ in capitalism. This is because capital attempts to overcome rifts without recognizing its own absolute limits, which it cannot do. Instead, it simply attempts to relativize the absolute. This is what Marx meant when he wrote ‘every limit appears a barrier to overcome’ (Grundrisse: 408). Capital constantly invents new technologies, develops means of transportation, discovers new use-values and expands markets to overcome natural limits. [...]
Corresponding to the three dimensions of metabolic rifts, there are also three ways of shifting them. First, there is technological shift. Although Liebig warned about the collapse of European civilization due to robbery agriculture in the 19th century, his prediction apparently did not come true. This is largely thanks to Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, who invented the so-called Haber-Bosch process in 1906 that enabled the industrial mass production of ammonia (NH3) by fixing nitrogen from the air, and thus of chemical fertilizer to maintain soil fertility. Historically speaking, the problem of soil exhaustion due to a lack of inorganic substances was largely resolved thanks to this invention. Nevertheless, the Haber-Bosch process did not heal the rift but only shifted, generating other problems on a larger scale.
The production of NH3 uses a massive amount of natural gas as a source of hydrogen (H). In other words, it squanders another limited resource in order to produce ammonia as a remedy to soil exhaustion, but it is also quite energy intensive, producing a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) (responsible for 1 per cent of the total carbon emission in the world). Furthermore, excessive applications of chemical fertilizer leach into the environment, causing eutrophication and red tide, while nitrogen oxide pollutes water. Overdependence on chemical fertilizer disrupts soil ecology, so that it results in soil erosion, low water- and nutrient-holding capacity, and increased vulnerability to diseases and insects. Consequently, more frequent irrigation, a larger amount of fertilizer and more powerful equipment become necessary, together with pesticides. This kind of industrial agriculture consumes not just water but large quantities of oil also, which makes agriculture a serious driver of climate change. [...]
[T]here remains a constant need to shift the rift under capitalism, which continues to bring about new problems. This contradiction becomes more discernible in considering the second type of shifting the metabolic rift – that is, spatial shift, which expands the antagonism of the city and the countryside to a global scale in favour of the Global North. Spatial shift creates externality by a geographic displacement of ecological burdens to another social group living somewhere else. Again, Marx discussed this issue in relation to soil exhaustion in core capitalist countries in the 19th century. On the coast of Peru there were small islands consisting of the excrement of seabirds called guano that had accumulated over many years to form ‘guano islands’. [...]
In the 19th century, guano became ‘necessary’ to sustain soil fertility in Europe. Millions of tons of guano were dug up and continuously exported to Europe, resulting in its rapid exhaustion. Extractivism was accompanied by the brutal oppression of Indigenous people and the severe exploitation of thousands of Chinese ‘c**lies’ working under cruel conditions. Ultimately, the exhaustion of guano reserves provoked the Guano War (1865–6) and the Saltpetre War (1879–84) in the battle for the remaining guano reserves. As John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark (2009) argue, such a solution in favour of the Global North resulted in ‘ecological imperialism’. Although ecological imperialism shifts the rift to the peripheries and makes its imminent violence invisible in the centre, the metabolic rift only deepens on a global scale through long-distance trade, and the nutrient cycle becomes even more severely disrupted.
The third dimension of metabolic shift is the temporal shift. The discrepancy between nature’s time and capital’s time does not immediately bring about an ecological disaster because nature possesses ‘elasticity’. Its limits are not static but modifiable to a great extent. Climate crisis is a representative case of this metabolic shift. Massive CO2 emissions due to the excessive usage of fossil fuels is an apparent cause of climate change, but the emission of greenhouse gas does not immediately crystallize as climate breakdown. Capital exploits the opportunities opened up by this time lag to secure more profits from previous investments in drills and pipelines. Since capital reflects the voice of current shareholders, but not that of future generations, the costs are shifted onto the latter. As a result, future generations suffer from consequences for which they are not responsible. Marx characterized such an attitude inherent to capitalist development with the slogan ‘Après moi le déluge!’ (Capital I: 381).
This time lag generated by a temporal shift also induces a hope that it would be possible to invent new epoch-making technologies to combat against the ecological crisis in the future. In fact, one may think that it is better to continue economic growth which promotes technological development, rather than over-reducing carbon dioxide emissions and adversely affecting the economy. However, even if new negative emission technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) are invented, it will take a long time for them to spread throughout society and replace the old ones. In the meantime, the environmental crisis will continue to worsen due to our current inaction. As a result, the expected effects of the new technology can be cancelled out.
Kohei Saito, Marx in the Anthropocene
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The End of the Stampede
Today, Mane6, developers of Them's Fightin' Herds, put out a new patch for the game, along with a news post about the game's two upcoming characters and the game's future.
The post goes into detail about Nidra, who was announced several months ago, and reveals Baihe, the fourth and final DLC character. The two will release together in early 2024.
I say "final" because after they're released, all active development on Them's Fightin' Herds will come to an end. Aside from balance and bug patches, no major updates will happen. This means that the promised ambitious Story Mode feature is over for good too, although a stage from it will be made available.
Them's Fightin' Herds is a fantastic game that had a lot of promise but is mostly remembered for the circumstances from which it came from. It began as a MLP fangame called "Fighting is Magic" before Hasbro forced the devs to cease production. Lauren Faust, who created MLP's 4th generation, joined the dev team to give them new characters, a new world, and a story, and Them's Fightin' Herds was born. It launched on Indiegogo where, against a $436k goal, it made just over $586k. Stretch goals included a seventh character as DLC and a Story Mode.
The game launched in Early Access in 2018 before the first official iteration of the game was released in 2020. The game was initially published by Humble Games in 2018, before they changed over to Modus Games, a division of Maximum Games.
Unfortunately, in all this time, Them's Fightin' Herds barely managed to capture any mainstream recognition. It was an outlier at many fighting game tournaments, it got no advertising, and few mainstream press outlets reviewed it. It got no awards either; the only accolade I can find for it is it being a finalist at the 24th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards in the Best Fighting Game category.
It's a shame that a brilliant and creative game was passed over this badly and didn't meet its own ambitions, but those are caveats of the game industry overall. Regardless of what could have been, I love the game we got and I wish the developers well on their future prospects.
Thank you, Them's Fightin' Herds.
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Five pick ups and one drop off (Pick up 4)
Pick up 1 | Pick up 2 | Pick up 3 | Pick up 4
Scott is tired and a little pissed off, so watch for language. Again, kinda crack just for fun.
I hope you enjoy.
-o-o-o-
Scott Tracy needed to re-apply his deodorant.
He was beginning to get a bit whiffy. But that’s what happens went you cut halfway across the planet after pulling a dozen people out from under a building in Taiwan.
As it was, he’d had to leave Virgil to liaise with local services to make it in time.
Thunderbird One wasn’t known for her shower facilities, but he had foreseen that in the past and his office in New York was set up with all the amenities including a spare business suit or two.
But that was a good five hours ago. If there was one advantage of crossing the dateline, it was the preservation of sunlight. He had the great pleasure of living the same day over again. With less concrete dust.
But more numbers and more annoying people.
One thing about rescue sites, bar the occasional asshole, was that the people there were usually very, very happy to see Scott and his brothers.
Here in the board room he received the distinct impression that at least several of the members would be much happier with his absence so they could do exactly what they wanted.
Which was what had been happening and why he was here.
“Sir, why the higher expenditure? Their employees are not our responsibility.”
Scott grit his teeth and his blood pressure sung in his ears. “We are saving the company and its employees. I believe with the correct financial support, they can become a solid division of Tracy Industries. We are not in the business of destroying lives.”
“This is not a rescue site, Tracy, this is business!”
Scott straightened from where he had been bent over the conference table, glaring at Martin at the far end, and pulled himself up to his full height before turning to glare at Landers on his left. “Not the way we conduct it.” His tone turned acid. “Do you think caring makes us soft, Landers?”
“Yes, it does. You are destroying our profit margin.”
Scott could not give a fuck about this particular profit margin. They were absorbing a large manufacturing business with its heart in country USA. If they didn’t handle the situation carefully, a good hundred thousand employees looked to lose lifetime jobs. The impact on the people and society would be massive. Not to mention a foolish move as TI’s most important asset was its talent. And there was good talent out there. The business had been struggling, but only to out compete TI, which it could no longer.
Its product was excellent. Brains and Virgil had done an assessment and agreed that the teams had potential. All they needed to do was absorb them into TI and then manage them into a better working culture in order to support that talent.
But it was obvious certain members of the board did not see things the same way as the Tracy brothers. Yes, the profit margin would suffer, may even go into cost in the short term, but it was the long term Scott Tracy was interested in and not lining his pockets at the cost of other people’s lives.
Tracy Industries was big and stable enough to take a hit for the common good.
“Landers…” Scott really wished his head wasn’t hurting so much. “…just go.”
“What? Go where?”
“Out.” Scott waved an irritated hand at the door. “Get out!”
“You can’t-“
“GO!”
The whole room jumped.
Landers glared everything at Scott, swore under his breath, and made a scene of gathering his tablet and collection of paraphernalia off the table and stomping towards the exit.
The moment he left, murmured protests rumbled around the room.
Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Carly, his EA, talking into her headset. A moment later Jeremy, his personal security guard, stepped into the room and took up a position quite casually just inside the door.
Great.
Not the best politic move, Tracy. But Landers was a dick and he had had it coming for a long time.
Scott had just needed to be irritated enough to follow through.
He leant over the table again. “Do we have any further objections?”
Martin at the far end was noting furiously on his tablet. Yeah, more trouble would come from that direction.
Scott sighed. He really wasn’t at his best. He needed sleep. The Virgil at the back of his head was jumping up and down on his neurons demanding he stop growling at staff and come home.
There was a knock at the door and that same brother, still dressed in his IR uniform, stuck his head through. “Hey, excuse me, I need to borrow the President for a moment.”
The room was still rumbling and didn’t really respond. Scott strode over to his brother. “What is it?”
“Come out here for a sec.”
“I can’t leave right now.”
“Yes, you can.” A heavy lifting arm reached in and yanked him out into the hall.
“Virgil, what the hell?”
But his brother was busy staring at him, dark eyes assessing him as if he was capable of medically scanning him with the melanin in his eyeballs. “You’re coming with me.” And before Scott could react - a definite sign of exhaustion if there was one - Virgil lifted him in one quick move and threw him over his shoulder.
“Virgil, what the fuck?!” He struggled, but Virgil was known for his iron grip and even in Scott’s worst moments, he couldn’t hurt his brother.
“We are going home.”
“It’s an important meeting!” The view of the floor and his brother’s butt was infuriating.
“I know. Which is why we let you go initially. However, that was hours ago, and before you disassemble the board one by one, we are intervening.”
“We?”
“Hi, Scott.”
He cranked his head up just in time to see John walk past in a crisp turquoise-grey suit. “What? John? Virgil, put me down!”
“Nope.” They entered an elevator…going up, no doubt to the roof.
“Virgil, please. John will eviscerate them.”
“Yep.” They stepped out into sunlight.
“Aww, c’mon. They’re scared of him.”
“Yep.” A big green shadow loomed over them and Virgil stepped onto her elevator, giving Scott a fantastic view of checkerplate and nothing else. “It will do them good.”
“Virg-“
“Nope. Bed.”
“Please?”
His brother kicked the wall of the cockpit and folded down one of the stretchers. He rolled Scott gently off his shoulder, carefully catching his head and neck and let him sink into the soft medical support.
Every muscle cheered in gratitude.
“Virg…” God, he was tired.
His brother responded by brushing a hair out of his eyes, his gloved hand pushing Scott’s mess of hair back from his forehead. Kind eyes looked down at him. “You need rest, big brother.”
Sure fingers darted over his body, doing up safety straps and securing him in place, and for some reason Scott did not have the energy to protest.
He fell asleep halfway across the Pacific lulled to rest by the comforting roar of his brother’s ‘bird.
-o-o-o-
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#thunderbirds are go#thunderbirds#thunderbirds fanfiction#scott tracy#virgil tracy#nuttyfic#scott is pissed off#Virgil is determined#and John is scary
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1969-71 Continental Mark III
Iacocca’s Lincoln: The Inside Story of the 1969-71 Continental Mark III
Lee Iacocca is remembered as the father of the Ford Mustang and the Chrysler Minivan, but there was another Iacocca vehicle that changed the Motor City: the Lincoln Continental Mark III.
In auto industry lore, the design studio guys hate it when the people from upper management start fooling around with their work. Nothing good can come from that, or so the story goes. But there’s at least one instance that cuts against the grain of that familiar Motor City tale. It was Ford senior executive Lee Iacocca who originated the two signature styling features of the Lincoln Continental Mark III: the classic stand-up grille and the faux tire bustle in the deck lid.
It’s no exaggeration to note that these visual features created a design theme and defined the Lincoln Mark Series brand for decades. Years later, lead designer L. David Ash would recall that neither he nor Styling VP Gene Bordinat had conceived these two now-famous design gadgets; no, in fact it was all Iacocca. “Neither one of us would have done it on our own, I’m sure,” Ash remembered. “I have to give Lee credit for that.”
As vice president of the Ford Motor Company’s car and truck group—top product boss, among other duties—Lido Anthony “Lee” Iacocca had at least two problems on his plate in the autumn of 1965. First, sales of the Ford Thunderbird had flattened out after a promising start years earlier. Meanwhile, Ford’s flagship Lincoln division wasn’t setting the world on fire, either. While the Elwood Engel-designed 1961 Lincoln was a style maker of the decade, it was nearing the end of its product cycle. Actually, Lincoln was a perennial problem for Ford senior management. According to Bordinat, it had never turned an actual profit since Henry and Edsel Ford acquired the company from the Lelands in 1922.
So a plan was hatched to build a new, small Lincoln on the same platform as the Thunderbird, which was switching to body-on-frame construction for 1967 (in part due to limited production volume). This would help the Thunderbird fill out production capacity at the Wixom, Michigan plant, and it would give Lincoln an entry in the rapidly expanding personal-luxury category, joining the Buick Riviera, Cadillac Eldorado, Olds Toronado, et alia.
The original body design by Ash and his staff, at one point named the Lancelot, was clean and elegant but lacked visual punch, one could argue. Iacocca’s fake-Rolls grille shell and spare-tire bump fixed that, creating a distinctive and memorable look. It was said that the chrome grille shell was the most expensive such piece in the industry, with a unit cost nearing $200. Ash and crew completed the theme by hiking up the rear quarters and deck lid two inches, scrunching the roof down into the body for a classic ’30s profile.
From its exterior appearance, you might never know that the finished design shared its greenhouse with the Thunderbird coupe, or its floorpan, black metal, and 117.2-inch wheelbase with the T-Bird four-door. When Henry Ford II saw the clay model in the studio, he reportedly said, “I’d like to drive that home.” With the Ford family’s seal of approval secured, the new car was christened the Continental Mark III, establishing its lineage with Edsel Ford’s original 1939 Continental and the Continental Mark II of 1956-57. At that point the previous Mark III, IV and V models of 1958-60 were conveniently forgotten—today it would be called a reboot.
Introduced in April 1968 as a 1969 model, technically (Lincoln division downplayed model year designations, trying to present the car as “timeless”) the Mark III was panned by the critics but embraced by the car-buying public. “The buffs may not like it but the people with money will,” Bordinat wisely predicted. The Mark wasn’t big for an American luxury car at just over 216 inches long and 4,800 lbs, but it was big enough, with solid road manners and a comfortable ride. Interior specialist Herman Brunn covered the seats with rich, pre-creased leather, like the easy chairs in a men’s club. Noteworthy technical features included an all-new 460 CID V8 and Sure-Track, an early form of antilock braking developed by Kelsey-Hayes.
With a base price of $6,758 compared to $4,807 for its Thunderbird cousin, the Mark III was quite a moneymaker for the Motor Company, spawning an even more popular and profitable successor, the Mark IV (shown with Iacocca below). The Mark series, which comfortably outsold the Eldorado and effectively doubled the Lincoln division’s volume at times, continued on all the way to 1998 and the Mark VIII, and Iacocca would to on to further glories, including the Chrysler Minivan.
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Morganatic Idol Prologue 1/10
Just as each star shines differently, each person has a different charm.
I believe that everyone has their own brilliance.
However... sometimes there are stars that emit light many times more intense.
The sparkle is so intense and dazzling...
The light is so strong that it blurs the surrounding stars, attracting everyone, making them yearn for something... and sometimes even giving them the courage to live.
I never knew that there were such overwhelmingly beautiful stars until I met them.
This is my Cinderella Story, guided by those dazzling stars...
Office
The sound of someone typing on a keyboard echoes in the noisy office
(I think this is fine)
After I finished entering the data, I let out a sigh.
(All you have to do is check it and submit it, and all your morning work is done)
Eiko Mori: Mr. Kawanaga, have you done what I asked you to do?
MC: Ah, Mori-san. Yes, please check it
Mori: Then next time, please hurry up more and give me a copy of the document
Interrupting my words, Mori-san quickly placed a stack of materials on the desk
MC: "Oh, I understand..."
I sigh softly as I listen her leaving with the sound of heels clicking.
(Additional work, huh? It can't be helped. let's hurry and get it done!)
This is Aegis Public Holdings, a company located in Tokyo.
It's a major advertising agency that handles a wide range of advertising on TV, magazines, internet, etc.
The department that produces advertisements is the Create Division, I work here as a temporary employee
When I was looking for a job, I went to the final interview at Aegis and unfortunately failed.
(I was really disappointed at that time. Fortunately I was able to get a job offer in another industry...)
I had always dreamed of becoming an advertising planner, and I just couldn't give up on working for Aegis.
That's why I chose to become a temporary employee
(When I think about that, I can't keep whining)
(I've always admired Aegis for a long time. And being able to work in the Create Division is an amazing thing in itself)
Lunch break
As i walked through a nearby park with my lunch in hand, I remembered the materials I had copied earlier.
(If I remember correctly, that was a commercial for drinking water that Mr. Mori worked on)
(That's amazing... I want to do someting big like that someday)
Mr. Mori is a full-time employee and the leader of the team I belong to. She is said to be the ace of the department.
The other employees are all people who have built up their careers through their upbringing.
(Everyone is doing a good job, looks stylish, and is full of confidence)
It's so sparkly and dazzling... I still don't have that kind of confidence...
(I mainly work as an assistant, and I don't have enough experience to be involved in the main work...)
Even in eating lunch , the difference is obvious... I make my own lunch to save money but the full-time employees get a special lunch from a fancy restaurant
(... No, no, no... The bento that I took so much effort to make won't taste as good but It's ok)
I Shake my head to get rid of the dark feeling
(I got into Aegis anyway, so now I'll work steadily and gain solid experience)
And... someday, I want to be promoted to a full-time position, create wonderful advertisements and give dreams to others
Just as I was once encouraged by an advertisement I saw when I was feeling down... that is my dream
(Okey, let's do our best this afternoon too!)
Office
(What is it? It's kind of noisy)
Manager: Everyone, listen please! The sales department has just landed an incredibly large project!
The section manager looks excited and speaks in front of everyone
Manager: It's a commercial for a new perfume from the major French brand "Esance"!
Manager: This product will be rolled out worldwide, and of course the commercial will be aired all over the world!
MC: The whole world!?
(Amazing! But why did such a worldwide project go to a Japanese agency?)
Manager: Actually, this time, Ezans has specified the image character to be used in the commercial
Manager: Exe Creed!
At that moment, the screams of female employees rang out
Exe Creed is a Japanese male idol group that is popular all over the world
Their strength lies in self-production, from song writing, composition and choreography to costume design and stage direction
With their outstanding singing and dancing, they quickly exploded in popularity as soon as they were formed and rose to the top
Their momentum is not limited to Japan, but they are a global group that has topped the American hit charts
(Even I, who don't know anything about idols, know about it)
There is not a day that goes by that I don't see them in the media and I hear that they have many passionate fans all over the world
(I see... The reason Ezans entrusted the commercial to Japan was to use Exe Creed)
(But up until now, famous Hollywood actresses have always done the commercials for Ezans)
(Japanese idol... and It's outrageous that a man is nominated...!?)
Apparently, the advertising agency that will handle this project will be decided through a competition between multiple companies
Manager: We will definitely win, we are putting the prestige of our company on the line!
The enthusiastic manager said something even more surprising
Since the person chosen was a world-famous idol we asked for a wider rang of opinions but in the end, all employees seem to be able to come up with plans, regardless of department or position
(This is a great opportunity! Even as a temporary worker, I might be able to be involved in creating advertisements from the planning stage...!)
My heart pounded violently. The feeling of "I want to try it" overflows
Female employee 1: If I'm selected does that mean I will be able to meet the Exes?
Female employee 2: I'll do it!
Mori: It's amazing that It's on a global scale and It's with Exes, I can't miss it!
While the office is buzzing with excitement, a fire is burning inside my heart. I was thinking of a plan, and I started to feel anxious.
I'll show them what I can do!
(Let's do it. I'll think of a plan and I'll definitely grab this chance!)
Next
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more commonly referred to as ideal, is a fictional entertainment company based in seoul, south korea that's been around since 2006. created by producer nam cheongsik originally for his wife &. former idol corinne nam, the label was dedicated to helping corinne re-establish herself in the music industry after her sudden disappearance from the now infamous &. defunct girl group girls to the front, or girl front for short. though after a few observations of the current algorithm and demand of interest towards other companies, plans were changed. using their combined expertise of working with idol groups, the married couple decided to create their own.
what was an idea thrown out on a whim soon became the origin story for a legacy that's recognized worldwide. their small yet close-knit roster of artists makes them stand-out amongst the rest; ideal music focuses on reaching the highest potential for each of their artists individually and as a whole rather than debuting idols back to back. this formula has helped mass a nearly 100% rate of success for when they do debut new acts, the anticipation for what they put out next aiding into the immediate support given.
over the years, ideal music has gained a reputation for the company's tight-knit dynamic &. overall freedom given to their artists. whilst this seems like a positive, observers of the label noticed that not every act is given the same treatment as others. speculations of favoritism and nepotism have plagued ideal for a few years but nothing was ever confirmed nor denied. though in recent time, more and more inside sources have come out exposing the cult-like environment for their cover-ups and weird internal affairs.
disregarding the flaws slowly beginning to seep through the cracks their facade, ideal music is still named among other influential and successful entertainment companies worldwide. most of their household names have worked with dozens of other idols in the industry, easily cementing themselves among other high profile producers, lyricists, composers, and choreographers. because of this, many onlookers call this the ideal effect as their acts are often deemed the "ideal standard" thanks to their longevity and impact within the industry.
𝟷𝟷𝟷⠀.⠀⠀⠀PUBLIC DOSSIER⠀⠀︵⠀⠀★⠀⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀STATS !
FOUNDED ⠀ June, 2006.
CEO ⠀ Nam Cheongsik.
FOUNDER ⠀ Nam Cheongsik ⠀&.⠀ Corinne Nam.
HEADQUARTERS ⠀ Gangnam-dong, Seoul, South Korea ⠀&.⠀ Santa Monica, California, United States.
INDUSTRY ⠀ Music, Entertainment, Production.
OPERATES AS ⠀ Record Label, Talent Agency, Music Production Company, Event Management and Concert Production Company, ⠀&.⠀ Music Publishing House.
𝟷𝟷𝟷⠀.⠀⠀⠀PUBLIC DOSSIER⠀⠀︵⠀⠀★⠀⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀BYOU !
established in march of 2012, BYOU is the dedicated beauty cosmetic line housed underneath ideal music. referencing their slogan "done by you," the division first got their start releasing more natural, soft glam inspired products that targeted makeup beginners who wanted to start easy. as the years went on, the company began noticing the rise in skincare and wasted no time developing their own line to fit their brand. after 4 years of development, MILKT was introduced. thanks to the global expansion of both the online &. with in-store openings, as well as the several partnerships with ideal idols and other signed acts, BYOU has become an essential piece of the beauty world with their biggest sales coming from south korea.
𝟷𝟷𝟷⠀.⠀⠀⠀PUBLIC DOSSIER⠀⠀︵⠀⠀★⠀⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀VITAL IMAGE !
taking inspiration from the video vixen era of western music, VITAL IMAGE began as a modeling agency solely created to house the pretty faces that appeared in the earlier ideal music videos. staffed with both female and male models, the subsidiary was often reached out to by other companies for extras in their own productions. this sparked an era for VITAL as between 2009 - 2013, a lot of the love interests or backgrounds in music videos were utilized from here. in 2014, the sub-label was hit with a wave of models who wanted to branch off into either music or acting. it was here when VITAL decided to expand into housing actors as well - a cheap move that one article described the change to be in an attempt to keep their models signed entirely under them. since 2014, a lot of famous faces in both industries have been born and still continue to influence thousands of people each day. a few idols have also been birthed from VITAL with some even branching out the entertainment mold altogether.
𝟷𝟷𝟷⠀.⠀⠀⠀PUBLIC DOSSIER⠀⠀︵⠀⠀★⠀⠀𓈒 ⠀⠀⠀L.E.N.S !
LET'S EXPLORE NEW SCENES, abbreviated as L.E.N.S, is the production house under ideal music created back in september of 2012. the subsidiary label acted no different from other labels as they catered to make idol-specific mini series and variety content that was aired on networks like KBS, JTBC, and MNET. later down the line, L.E.N.S migrated into theatrical performances and documentaries following the surge of them with competing companies. after going into a partnership with neflix and hulu, the production house began creating their own movies and dramas that starred their signed talent from VITAL and IDEAL. this has led to many debates online about the "star-quality" these people actually possess with many accusing L.E.N.S of using "dolls" - a term basically meaning that their actors were just good to look at but held no real personality. despite the critiques, a lot of the productions created by the sub-label have done pretty well in the media, so it's safe to assume that at least someone likes their acting.
#𝟷𝟷𝟷⠀.⠀⠀⠀IDEAL⠀⠀︵⠀⠀★⠀⠀𓈒#𝟷𝟷𝟷⠀.⠀⠀⠀COMPANIES⠀⠀︵⠀⠀★⠀⠀𓈒#fictional idol company#fictional idol oc#fictional idol community#fake kpop addition#fake kpop oc#kpop oc#kpop au#idol oc#idol au
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The latest job cuts come after Snap laid off 20% of its workforce, nearly 1,300 employees, in August 2022 and announced the shutdown of several initiatives, including ending Snapchat original series. In November 2023, in a much smaller round of layoffs, Snap said it let go about 20 product managers.
For Snap, the layoffs are part of efforts to curb costs and return to profitability. In early 2024, job cuts have swept across multiple industries as companies look to reduce expenses, including among tech players like Google (including YouTube) and Amazon (including Prime Video, Twitch and Audible). Microsoft, meanwhile, last month axed 1,900 jobs in its gaming division, almost 9% of its employee base, after closing its massive deal to acquire Activision Blizzard.
#news#labor news#tech news#snapchat#2024 layoffs#layoffs#tech industry layoffs#tech layoffs#snapchat layoffs
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The Communist Manifesto - Part 2
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The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune*: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
* This was the name given their urban communities by the townsmen of Italy and France, after they had purchased or conquered their initial rights of self-government from their feudal lords. [Engels, 1890 German edition] “Commune” was the name taken in France by the nascent towns even before they had conquered from their feudal lords and masters local self-government and political rights as the “Third Estate.” Generally speaking, for the economical development of the bourgeoisie, England is here taken as the typical country, for its political development, France. [Engels, 1888 English Edition]
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
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"How much safer has construction really gotten? Let’s take a look.
Construction used to be incredibly dangerous
By the end of the 19th century, what’s sometimes called the second industrial revolution had made US industry incredibly productive. But it had also made working conditions more dangerous...
One source estimates 25,000 total US workplace fatalities in 1908 (Aldrich 1997). Another 1913 estimate gave 23,000 deaths against 38 million workers. Per capita, this is about 61 deaths per 100,000 workers, roughly 17 times the rate of workplace fatalities we have today...
In a world of dangerous work, construction was one of the most dangerous industries of all. By the 1930s and early 1940s the occupational death rate for all US workers had fallen to around 36-37 per 100,000 workers. At the same time [in the 1930s and early 1940s], the death rate in construction was around 150-200 deaths per 100,000 workers, roughly five times as high... By comparison, the death rate of US troops in Afghanistan in 2010 was about 500 per 100,000 troops. By the mid-20th century, the only industry sector more dangerous than construction was mining, which had a death rate roughly 50% higher than construction.
We see something similar if we look at injuries. In 1958 the rate of disabling injuries in construction was 3 times as high as the manufacturing rate, and almost 5 times as high as the overall worker rate.
Increasing safety
Over the course of the 20th century, construction steadily got safer.
Between 1940 and 2023, the occupational death rate in construction declined from 150-200 per 100,000 workers to 13-15 per 100,000 workers, or more than 90%. Source: US Statistical Abstract, FRED
For ironworkers, the death rate went from around 250-300 per 100,000 workers in the late 1940s to 27 per 100,000 today.
Tracking trends in construction injuries is harder, due to data consistency issues. A death is a death, but what sort of injury counts as “severe,” or “disabling,” or is even worth reporting is likely to change over time. [3] But we seem to see a similar trend there. Looking at BLS Occupational Injuries and Illnesses data, between the 1970s and 2020s the injury rate per 100 workers declined from 15 to 2.5.
Source of safety improvements
Improvements in US construction safety were due to a multitude of factors, and part of a much broader trend of improving workplace safety that took place over the 20th century.
The most significant early step was the passage of workers compensation laws, which compensated workers in the event of an injury, increasing the costs to employers if workers were injured (Aldrich 1997). Prior to workers comp laws, a worker or his family would have to sue his employer for damages and prove negligence in the event of an injury or death. Wisconsin passed the first state workers comp law in 1911, and by 1921 most states had workers compensation programs.
The subsequent rising costs of worker injuries and deaths caused employers to focus more on workplace safety. According to Mark Aldrich, historian and former OSHA economist, “Companies began to guard machines and power sources while machinery makers developed safer designs. Managers began to look for hidden dangers at work, and to require that workers wear hard hats and safety glasses.” Associations and trade journals for safety engineering, such as the American Society of Safety Professionals, began to appear...
In 1934, the Department of Labor established a Division of Labor Standards, which would later become the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), to “promote worker safety and health.” The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which legalized collective bargaining, allowed trade unions to advocate for worker safety.
Following WWII, the scale of government intervention in addressing social problems, including worker safety, dramatically increased.
In addition to OSHA and environmental protection laws, this era also saw the creation of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
OSHA in particular dramatically changed the landscape of workplace safety, and is sometimes viewed as “the culmination of 60 or more years of effort towards a safe and hazard-free workplace.”"
-via Construction Physics (Substack newsletter by Brian Potter), 3/9/23
#construction#osha#workplace#workplace safety#workers rights#labor rights#occupational health#nlra#collective bargaining#united states#us history#labor unions#industrial revolution#this is why unions and regulations are so fucking important by the way#if you have not studied late 1800s and early 1900s labor history in the US#you really can't grasp how incredibly dangerous things used to be#and how much proof we have that corporations suck#government regulations
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Steel Scrap Suppliers in India | Flat Product Scrap | IBMD | Tata Steel
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While it is certainly true that, historically, the roles of 'witch' and 'wizard' were gendered ones (to say nothing of warlocks!), this does not necessarily hold true in the modern era.
A comparative analysis of the composition of self-described witches and wizards demonstrates a clear breakdown in gender delineation. The rate of this breakdown, however, is not steady, and cannot be explained simply by an inter-miscibility of the two. Rather, the composition remains fairly static since the advent of the two roles, and experiences a rupture during the years 1848-1887, with a sudden and massive decrease in homogeneity. Following this has been a generally steady equalisation of gender makeup, without any shifts holding nearly significant. Notably, the second derivation of the general trend of both makeups shows a slowing, towards an asymptotic value of complete equalisation, 50-50.
While the recent data could be explained partially by the notion of evolving social attitudes and permissibility, said approach cannot explain the complete stagnation in the early period, nor the sudden leap during the 19th century, without resorting to crude misconstruals of historical society. Nor could such an explanation give a concrete answer to the source of said social attitudes and their evolution. Rather, the explanation supported by both material evidence, as well as accepted theoretical models, is an economic one. The breakdown in the domestic sphere of production, and its replacement during the 19th century with industrial division of labour, coincides with the breakdown of the social basis for gender delineation between witches and wizards. While this delineation survived the slow shift towards artisanal batch- and shop-production over the 18th century, it was debased entirely by the advent of innovations such as lithigraphic sigil printing during the 1810s and potion production plants during the 1840s. As occult manufacture became proletarianised and deskilled, the gendered division was dissolved in favour of greater economic efficiency.
Ultimately, the service-nature of on-demand potion production remains, from the nascent days of village witches, along with the corresponding attitude of personal enrichment for court wizards, and consequently reproduces 'gendered' attitudes and dynamics across different lines, while maintaining gender stratification within these new categorisations. While short-lived attempts towards reformulating traditional genders in the occult industry exist - 'sorcerers' and 'sorcoresses' - they have not persisted. Doctors and nurses, witches and wizards, managers and line-cooks - these are the genders of the modern age, while the genders of the past flounder and fade within professions.
Excerpt. Journal of Occultism and Magic - Economics, October 1997 issue
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The New Economic Policy and “State Capitalism”
As marxist-leninists we have all heard the common anarchist argument of “but lenin called the USSR state capitalist!”, spoken with the intent and belief of instantly invalidating our entire political practice.this statement is layered in many levels of pure liberal stupidity, but it is also not entirely wrong (just not in the way that they think!)
see, lenin did refer to that specific application of a DOTP as “a state-run capitalism”,(role and functions of the trade unions under the new economic policy) but that does not by any means validate anarchist claims about a fraudulent mockery of REAL communism, this evil and totalitarian “state capitalism.”
Introduction to the Leninist Definition of “State Capitalism”
first off, we must remember the NEP and its purpose, which comrade lenin talks about in his work “Role and Functions of the Trade Unions Under the New Economic Policy”
Changes in the forms of socialist development are necessary because the Communist Party and the Soviet government are now adopting special methods to implement the general policy of transition from capitalism to socialism and in many respects are operating differently from the way they operated before: they are capturing a number of positions by a "new flanking movement", so to speak; they are retreating in order to make better preparations for a new offensive against capitalism. In particular, a free market and capitalism, both subject to state control, are now being permitted and are developing; on the other hand, the socialised state enterprises are being put on what is called a profit basis, i. e., they are being reorganised on commercial lines, which, in view of the general cultural backwardness and exhaustion of the country, will, to a greater or lesser degree, inevitably give rise to the impression among the masses that there is an antagonism of interest between the management of the different enterprises and the workers employed in them.
Following its seizure of political power, the principal and fundamental interest of the proletariat lies in securing an enormous increase in the productive forces of society and in the output of manufactured goods. This task, which is clearly formulated in the Programme of the Russian Communist Party, is particularly urgent in our country today owing to post-war ruin, famine and dislocation. Hence, the speediest and most enduring success in restoring large-scale industry is a condition without which no success can be achieved in the general cause of emancipating labour from the yoke of capital and securing the victory of socialism.
As the USSR was a backwards, semi-feudal country before the revolution(s) and even after them to some extent, with low productivity of labor, measures had to be taken to empower and further develop the proletariat through the development of a “capitalism controlled/limited by the proletarian state” (the New Economic Policy).
State capitalism is simply that; an act that a socialist country takes to empower itself through empowering capital to leverage it benefits without losing proletarian power.
Empowerment of the Proletariat through "Development of Capitalism"
so how, exactly, would one empower the proletariat through empowering our oppressors? such a contradictory notion seems unreasonable, but contradiction is exactly where the answer lies.
as mentioned prior, in semi-feudal economies such as the USSR’s and the PRC’s, the proletariat was not fully developed, meaning that productivity of labor was very low, causing widespread starvation and isolation.
The capitalist mode of production brings with it much higher labor productivity than feudalism through its highly socialized labor and ever-increasing division of labor, which are both enabled under capitalism by the ownership of the means of production by the bourgeoisie.
Policies like Reform and Opening Up focus(ed) on supplementing the growth of the industrial base in rural and urbansectors across the country by leveraging bourgeois imperialist investments to their advantage, while maintaining a strong grip and control on that capital in order to maintain the DOTP, which, as anyone with eyes can see, has worked extremely well. So, how is capital controlled?
Applications and Development of the Proletarian State to Control Capital in the USSR
In the USSR with the NEP, the trade unions were converted from simple means of negotiation for better conditions in the sale of labor power into tools of the state to maintain worker power and labor conditions by establishing much better communication with the masses and their complaints, in order to quickly and discreetly remedy any problems within socialized enterprises. Comrade Lenin produced a very useful list of their purposes in his publication Role and Functions of the Trade Unions under the New Economic Policy;
1. The trade unions should help to staff all the state business and administrative bodies connected with economies: nominate their candidates for them, stating their length of service, experience, and so forth. Right of decision lies solely with the business organisations, which also bear full responsibility for the activities of the respective organisations. The business organisations, however, must give careful consideration to the views on all candidates expressed by the trade unions concerned.
2. One of the most important functions of the trade unions is to promote and train factory managers from among the workers and the masses of the working people generally. At the present time we have scores of such factory managers who are quite satisfactory, and hundreds who are more or less satisfactory, but very soon, however, we must have hundreds of the former and thousands of the latter. The trade unions must much more carefully and regularly than hitherto keep a systematic register of all workers and peasants capable of holding posts of this kind, and thoroughly, efficiently and from every aspect verify the progress they make in learning the art of management.
3. The trade unions must take a far greater part in the activities of all the planning bodies of the proletarian state, in drawing up economic plans and also programmes of production and expenditure of stocks of material supplies for the workers, in selecting the factories that are to continue to receive state supplies, to be leased, or to be given out as concessions, etc. The trade unions should undertake no direct functions of controlling production in private and leased enterprises, but participate in the regulation of private capitalist production exclusively by sharing in the activities of the competent state bodies. In addition to participating in all cultural and educational activities and in production propaganda, the trade unions must also, on an increasing scale, enlist the working class and the masses of the working people generally for all branches of the work of building up the state economy; they must make them familiar with all aspects of economic life and with all details of industrial operations—from the procurement of raw materials to the marketing of the product; give them a more and more concrete understanding of the single state plan of socialist economy and the worker’s and peasant’s practical interest in its implementation.
4. The drawing up of scales of wages and supplies, etc., is one of the essential functions of the trade unions in the building of socialism and in their participation in the management of industry. In particular, disciplinary courts should steadily improve labour discipline and proper ways of promoting it and achieving increased productivity; but they must not interfere with the functions of the People’s Courts in general or with the functions of factory managements.
The Unions served their purpose perfectly, and this flow of information and connection with the masses enabled that extremely powerful industrial base the USSR is known for.
state capitalism is nothing close to what american “communists” say it is. it is no signifier of the “impurity” of real socialist movemnts. death to america
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Classes in the Wizarding World. Why don't wizards have an "upper class" linked to wealth? And where do the wealth of the Malfoys and the Blacks come from, and how could wizards become rich?
Alright, this will be controversial, as there seems to be a widely accepted HC that wizards have exactly the same class divisions as Muggles, and I see a lot of metas where poor wizards are referred to as the "working class." I respect all opinions, but I want to express mine :) I disagree with this because the Wizarding world does not imply a replication of the Muggle social structure. The main argument about why there are no classes tied to wealth is that purebloods don’t have any exclusive access to means of production. The wizarding world isn’t like the muggle world, and their class structures are different. Magic fundamentally changes the entire structure of society.
In the muggle world, classes were primarily divided based on their access to wealth, economic resources, and means of production. If one part of society monopolises all the land, then you have classes of landlords and peasants. If one part of society owns factories and plants, holds stocks and capital, while another works at these factories, you have classes of capitalists and proletarians. Wizards don't have such classes. Strictly speaking, if we divide wizards into wealth-based "upper" and "lower" classes, we need to show where exactly the upper class has or ever had exclusive access to means of production that gave them the "privilege" to be called the "upper class". This is impossible to show because it doesn’t exist in the Wizarding world.
However, they do have a clear different way of dividing society.
But let's take it step by step.
In its time, the muggle upper class of the feudal society was too tied to "land" and the idea of land, which evolved into snobbery towards commerce and business because commerce allowed wealth beyond the nobility. This upper class felt their exceptional privilege. Their position was given to them at birth. But the emerging middle class... They were simply "mercantile" merchants. Many held beliefs in the superiority of feudal values and considered trade and business less honourable pursuits. Some nobles could also manage various enterprises related to agriculture, including mills, wineries, and sawmills. (Pure-blood wizards look much the same, but they don't have titles or lands, they have their blood. Your wealth doesn't matter if you're a pure-blood wizard. Take a look at the Black family tree. It's clear that not all of them were wealthy. I'm sure that many of these wizards had quite modest means. The Malfoys were an exception, but more on that later.)
When the English Revolution occurred, followed by the Industrial Revolution, and capitalists began to get very rich, while nobles unexpectedly started getting poorer, there was even stronger prejudice against "flaunting money," as it became associated with the newly wealthy lower class. Because true upper-class status isn't just about gold, and a capitalist will never have what they do – their family names and status given by God himself. Yes, among the nobles, there could also be entrepreneurs engaged in trade or investing in various projects, mining development, but the trend still leaned towards the impoverishment of aristocrats.
The Industrial Revolution happened after the imposition of the Statute, but the English Revolution came before. Obviously, wizards didn't have an industrial revolution. It's unclear how their production worked at all. Much of their production relied simply on craft workers. There are businesses like potion-making, Sleekeazy's Hair Potion production, broomstick manufacturing, although these "businesses" might look more like artisanal enterprises. Additionally, there's definitely a black market, but it's quite small. And let's not forget, in the world of Harry Potter, there's "slave labor."
Moreover, their main means of production is magic. And everyone has magic. Their production primarily requires knowledge and skills and doesn't require any significant physical infrastructure. Meanwhile, Hogwarts is free and accessible to all by birthright. Yes, access to raw materials may be limited, and these materials may indeed be owned by wealthy families, but for the most part, we don't see resources that are impossible to obtain independently. Another point is that students don't invent anything themselves over the seven years... Where's the theory of magic?! How to create spells?! Perhaps this needs to be self-taught.
Well, it's entirely obvious that they don't have peasants either, so there's no exclusive access to wealth for pure-bloods based on the feudal system either.
So, no classes based on wealth can exist for them simply because pure-bloods don't have any exclusive access to resources or means of production. A wizard born pureblood doesn't get anything at all for their blood, except connections.
Essentially, connections and blood itself are their exclusive resources, which they try to increase. Pure-bloods find it easier to get the right jobs, to get a job at the Ministry, and so on. Also Muggle-borns who became a part of the WW, presumably, could encounter difficulties getting hired or be paid less. But they could always start their own craft production of something. They had the main means of production – magic. But they lacked connections and social capital. Over time in the Wizarding World, Muggle-borns or half-bloods, judging from canon, could also get a job at the Ministry and even become Minister of Magic. Moreover, they created their own small craft-based enterprises or worked for other craftsmen and traders.
The Malfoys are likely those from former "Muggle aristocrats" who always kept a finger on the pulse and were well-connected in the Muggle world. They quickly figured out how to make even more money rather than just relying on income from land, although they also expanded their lands (they have managed to add to their lands in Wiltshire by annexing those of neighbouring Muggles). We know they keep a Rolls-Royce in their garage and have a collection of Muggle art (the favour they curried with royalty added Muggle treasures and works of art to an ever-expanding collection). It's not surprising if they invested in some muggle businesses. Essentially, the Malfoys are blood traitors, considering they had half-bloods in the family, but the family is too cunning and clever, so they maintain their position over the centuries. The Malfoys have always had a reputation as a slippery family, striving for power and wealth wherever they are.
The result is that they are one of the richest wizarding families in Britain, and it has been rumoured for many years (though never proven) that over the centuries the family has dabbled successfully in Muggle currency and assets.
Some other families were probably also Muggle aristocrats before the imposition of the Statute and owned some lands, but even if they still had these lands after the Statute was imposed, what good are these lands without peasants? Land doesn't monetise itself. The Statute assumes complete disappearance from the Muggle world, meaning these lands became invisible to Muggles and were either used for wizards and their internal agriculture or simply remained dead weight, as there is no demand for land in the WW as a resource. Considering magical means of production, cultivating land was very simple and efficient, so there were never any problems with food in the Wizarding world. And they didn't even need much land to provide all wizards with the agricultural products they needed. Additionally, house-elves could work on it. Furthermore, over time, many wizards owned their own gardens in different parts of the country and could grow food for themselves (for example, the Weasleys actually have their own farm, and Hogwarts definitely has pumpkins and poultry).
Moreover, strictly according to canon, food can be duplicated... Perhaps it's incredibly complex magic, so ordinary wizards can’t do it, but there are special wizard craftsmen who trade in duplicated food. Perhaps this food isn't as tasty.
Also, I headcanon that not all families agreed to hide precisely because they didn't want to lose their statuses and potential wealth.
The Malfoys also resisted to the imposition of the Statute, although they later denied it.
Historically, the Malfoys drew a sharp distinction between poor Muggles and those with wealth and authority. Until the imposition of the Statute of Secrecy in 1692, the Malfoy family was active within high-born Muggle circles, and it is said that their fervent opposition to the imposition of the Statute was due, in part, to the fact that they would have to withdraw from this enjoyable sphere of social life.
Likely, families like the Blacks and the Lestranges originally supported the imposition of the Statute.
Overall, the Malfoys' wealth was colossal; obviously, they were and remain the wealthiest in the WW. Perhaps the wealth of the Blacks and the Lestranges also persisted from the time when they were Muggle aristocrats. The Malfoys invested in the Muggle sector of the economy. The Blacks and the Lestranges might have invested their money in building Diagon Alley or income properties in Hogsmeade, or they could have been involved in the gray and black markets of the Wizarding World. They could also own magical mines, but it's unknown if this was allowed in the Wizarding world. Other families might have started some small businesses–broomsticks, wand production, potions, cauldrons, and so on. The Potters invented a potion and sold it and became "very rich." Well, suppose they exported their potion to other countries because they couldn't become "very rich" on the domestic market alone. The market is tiny. Or their "very great wealth" is greatly exaggerated.
We know that some pure-blood families pass down their trades from generation to generation, but that doesn't make them really wealthy. Still, they're considered noble. And the Gaunts are "noble" but very poor. Nobility can't be earned, but it can be lost quickly – like becoming a blood traitor. Take the Weasleys, for instance, who were considered noble even in the 1900s.
Families like the Umbridge have no connection to "nobility," but they really want it. They're desperate to belong: "I am related to the Selwyns... Indeed, there are few pure-blood families to whom I am not related. A pity... that the same cannot be said for you. 'Parents profession: greengrocers.'"
In a mockingly imitation of a Black: 'Typical half-blood. She doesn’t even understand our society!'
When a true Slytherin heir appears, even the Malfoys are willing to tone down their arrogance. The first Death Eaters followed Tom for this reason–he's the heir of Slytherin. It's a very high status among their society.
But the Malfoys' arrogance about money is probably because they had many connections with the Muggle world, the Muggle economy, and their personal views on money. They also continued to adopt the ways of Muggle capitalist society.
Sure, wizards wanted to get rich, but the wealth of individual families like the Lestranges, Blacks, and Malfoys wasn't class-based for the wizarding society. Firstly, a class of three families can't exist, and they don't have anything specifically exclusive that would set these three families apart in their access to wealth. What they possibly retained from pre-Statute life can't be the basis for forming a new class in the wizarding society. It just doesn't work like that.
Moreover, it seems that significant wealth could only be attained through innovations, as they also didn't have an internal investment market, financial instruments were absent, and Gringotts simply stored their gold. Okay, gold itself increased in value, but they constantly withdrew money for their living expenses, so capital must have been leaking out too. I suppose many families that were wealthy before the Statute quickly spent their large fortunes if they didn't adapt to the new conditions.
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How Merve Emre became the hottest — and most divisive — name in literary criticism
Wherever Emre goes, for better or worse, she tends to turn heads. "Merve is the kind of literary 'it girl' of the moment," the senior editor, who's worked with Emre, said. "Everyone's jealous of her because she's extremely prolific, extremely productive, extremely beautiful. And she also is very polarizing. And I think that she is polarizing in great part because she is so prolific and so beautiful."
[...] "She's somebody who shows you why you might really love something rather than show why you shouldn't love it at all," Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, said. Reading Emre on an author she loves is like listening to someone describe the honeymoon phase of a new relationship — her criticism has an erotic charge to it.
[...] Over the past few years, Emre's reach has grown such that she has the power to represent her field in the public imagination much the way Alison Roman has become shorthand for "cookbook author" or Frank Gehry for "architect." It leaves her in both a prestigious and precarious position, with seemingly as many people in the cutthroat literary world cheering her on as rooting for her to fail. "Academics can't bear it when someone does popular work," her friend the philosopher Jason Stanley said. The stench of misogyny, too, is hard to ignore. As trite as it is to dismiss someone's haters by saying "they're just jealous," her friend Anna Shechtman, the writer and crossword designer, noted, "it may actually be true when it comes to Merve."
Courting an audience and wearing one's ambition as openly as Emre does is "a complicated variable for a lot of academics," one Ivy League professor noted. "It's a moment where your weird little closed world suddenly gets cool on the outside, and is it gonna get cool in a way that ruins what you love about it?"
[...] Emre sees her role as part of a larger mission to democratize criticism beyond the walls of the academy. She wants to be "the Avon Lady of criticism," she joked.
[...] Emre is the eldest of three girls born in Adana, Turkey, to two doctor parents who emigrated to the US when she was 3. [...] In 2007, she graduated from Harvard and went to work as a management consultant at Bain & Company in New York. She made a lot of money and was "very, very, very bad at it," she said.
Her ex-colleagues remember it differently. "Of all the people I've recruited to Bain in the 30 years, and this is in the thousands, she is one of the brightest," said Chris Bierly, her mentor at Bain, who called her "other-level intelligent." Still, he said, "she was impatient with learning the job from the bottom up." When she was toying with leaving the industry a few years later, he asked her why. "She said, 'I want to do your job. I just don't wanna do all the jobs in between,'" he recalled.
After a year and a half, Emre fled the consulting world and applied for a Ph.D. in English at Yale. "Going to graduate school in literary studies was a form of rebellion," she said. "I suspect I got as much pleasure from it as I would have been if I'd been getting wasted in high school." [...] It was there she developed the sociological approach to criticism that informs much of her work; her thesis, "Paraliterary," was about the idea of "good" and "bad" readers and how literary critics need to draw the circle wider in order to keep their field relevant.
[...] She reads as many as two books a day. For every book she writes, she gets a tattoo of its call number in the Library of Congress on her side.
[...] She moved to Montreal to teach at McGill in 2016, with Nakarado and 1-year-old Aydin in tow. "The students loved her. She had a line outside her office door," her former colleague Ara Osterweil said, recalling the excitement that surrounded her glamorous, brilliant colleague who wore stilettos to her lectures.
She also rubbed some people the wrong way. "She thought she was Beyoncé coming into the department," one former colleague said. "She didn't want colleagues or students. She wanted an audience."
Even more so than in consulting, there is a fixation in academia on bureaucratic rank that Emre has little patience for. "I was never someone who was going to be comfortable with highly hierarchical and patriarchal institutions," she said, explaining that one of the reasons she never learned to drive was because she couldn't tolerate being taught by her father. "So now my husband drives me," she noted with irony.
[...] "She should not be in academia because there is a measure of burying your own opinion in order to mentor, and she does not have that capacity," the colleague who thought she acted like Beyoncé said. "She liked to talk about the money she was getting for the book on personality traits, and that was just so hilarious to everyone, because she was so un-self-aware of her own personality."
[...] But not everyone liked Emre's way of doing things. Last year, someone sent an anonymous note about Emre to half a dozen professors around the US with no return address. It's titled "ME, a short biography" and reads: "Daughter of rich doctors with vacation homes in different countries claiming poor immigrant status tears through Ivies like the Ivy pricks she denounces finds tall, useless pretty boy husband to have some children to lie about." Typed out in flowery word-processor cursive, it continues: "Lives eats breathes shits on social media for a decade, wanted by no university in the United States, writes click bait books to become filthy rich to buy followers and bribe half her profession to pretend the emperor has clothes on, badmouths every place she's worked" and "still cannot shake the absolute thirst."
[...] "People in this business can be really weird," [Michael Berube, a professor of English at Penn State] said, though he noted that they generally don't resort to real violence. "They just tend to be sort of textually obsessed."
Emre was shaken by the incident. "It was hard for me to imagine how thwarted" someone must feel to send something like that, she said. Still, she tried to have a sense of humor about it. "The author probably meant to use the word 'slake,' not 'shake,' since thirst is not something you shake." She has no idea who's responsible. "My sense is that only an academic could imagine that essays on James Joyce or Simone de Beauvoir were driving The New Yorker's advertising revenue," she remarked, noting that the postmark on the envelope suggests it was mailed from near Fordham University. At least, as one of her friends noted upon receiving the letter, "even your haters can't deny that your man is hot."
[...] As Emre became increasingly frustrated with academia, she began pouring herself into her writing career. "When I imagine the way that Merve thinks, it's like the spreading branches of a tree — everything can take you somewhere," her friend the writer Sarah Chihaya said. "She's not always interested in getting from point A to point B but rather in helping to open up all these expanding questions." She did the edits for her first New Yorker web piece in the hospital the day after giving birth to Altan back in 2017. Other academics resented seeing Emre's byline everywhere. There was a bit of a feeling, like, "Why does she get to write for The New Yorker?" her friend Anna Shechtman said.
The media world first really started paying attention to Emre after she panned writer Durga Chew-Bose's 2017 essay collection, "Too Much and Not the Mood." That piece "put her on everybody's radar," said the critic Christian Lorentzen, which is "rare for something in the Boston Review." In it, she laid out her concern that today's personal essayists are concerned not with judgments about "the formal or stylistic features of prose" but with "pretty phrases that mean nothing and teach nothing," whose only purpose is to confirm the "author's status as a beacon of complex selfhood."
Emre was blasted for being anti-feminist; Lena Dunham, a friend of Chew-Bose, tweeted that the review was "rude, patronizing bullshit." Nowadays, Emre is trying to move away from writing about books she doesn't like. "The easiest way to get attention is to have a kind of contrarian take about another female writer," she said. "It is not challenging to get people not to read something. People are not reading things all the time."
[...] The discussion segued to her Twitter presence. Did she feel there was any tension between her philosophy of criticism, which encourages the evacuation of the personal, and her more confessional use of social media? "These are two totally different genres that we're talking about," she said, as we scaled the steps outside the Yale Science Building. The idea that "high-quality criticism" and "canny self-promotion" are trade-offs "seems to rely on an error, which is the belief that just because something is popular, or is marketed well, it can't also be good."
"But the other thing is like, I don't actually think that the work relies on the evacuation of subjectivity," she continued. "It is impossible. So then I think the question becomes, what does it mean to make style charismatic through an act of withholding access to the personal in one genre, and then giving or creating the appearance of giving people access to the personal in another kind of genre?"
"So are you saying this is all a calculated dance?" I asked.
"Everything's a calculated dance," she shot back. "It would be foolish for anyone to think that what happens in a form of writing, whether it's a long-form magazine piece or 140 characters, isn't in some way calculated. I wonder what pure authenticity would even be."
[...] Emre's calling, as she sees it, is no less than the wholesale reform of higher education from the ground up. She is preoccupied with two interconnected crises. The first is an economic crisis of the humanities: Higher education is overpriced yet underfunded, there aren't enough jobs, and college degrees are increasingly devalued. The second is what her friend John Guillory has dubbed a crisis of legitimation within the profession: that literary criticism has become trapped in English departments, talking only to itself, rendered useless and separate from the reading public. Her goal is to make the practice of teaching criticism, which she sees as a public good, accessible to the wider world.
"I understand the purpose of literature as a kind of meeting place between reader and writer. It's the romance of that imagined meeting place, and it's the romance of all of the possibility that still lives there," Emre said. "One very cynical way to think about life is that it's a series of reducing possibilities. And one way to think about what criticism does is that it's a place where possibility is left really open-ended."
[...] These grand ambitions, she suggested, are why she has let herself be profiled, despite her distaste for the endeavor; she's savvy enough to know that building a brand is necessary to her larger mission. Twitter, for instance, "is a way of addressing a very different kind of public" than one gets to address at Yale or Wesleyan or The New Yorker. "We are people who are supposed to be preservers and disseminators of literature or literary culture, and we're not actually engaging people to read," she said. "If you're not trying to get people excited about it, then why are you doing it?"
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Northrop Grumman releases update on the program and progress of the B-21 Raider
Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 09/192023 - 6:00 p.m. in Military
At last week's Air, Space and Cyber Conference of the Association of Air and Space Forces, the leadership of the U.S. Air Force and the Department of Defense discussed the B-21 program in terms of effective program management, production readiness, and early integration of support elements as fundamental to the effective delivery of operational capacity.
In addition, the U.S. Air Force announced that Northrop Grumman has driven the B-21 engines, a significant milestone in the aircraft's ground testing program. Although the first flight of the B-21 is a data-driven event closely monitored by Northrop Grumman and the U.S. Air Force, key decisions and programmatic strategies are putting the program in a positive position in the future.
Production representative aircraft
A key to the overall program strategy established from the beginning was to build a first test article representative of production. Instead of a prototype, the first test article of the B-21 Raider was built with rigorous production processes on the same manufacturing line with the same tools that will be used to continue to shape the B-21 fleet. Exclusive to aircraft development programs, the first test article of the B-21 is equipped with its primary mission systems, such as communication and navigation systems.
The decision to build a highly representative test vehicle will allow Northrop Grumman and USAF to conduct a robust flight test campaign and discover what is necessary, in alignment with the program's execution strategy from the beginning.
"The B-21 program is an excellent example of how the industry can be a capable partner in providing systems that meet critical needs efficiently. The first test aircraft was built by our technicians using factory production processes; we are doing this learning and refinement in parallel, which will allow us to reach a stable and constant production more quickly," said Tom Jones, president of the sector of Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems.
Support influencing design
In addition to focusing on production in the early stages of the program, the B-21 program took into account the support during the design phase. In addition to boosting long-term efficiency, this approach also produces more short-term benefits.
“Given Northrop Grumman's focus on support at the beginning of development, the B-21 is much more advanced in technological data than we would normally expect in a new program at this time,” said Doug Young, vice president and general manager of the division, Northrop Grumman Aeronautics Systems. "Content development such as product support, material preparation and training is well underway, giving the B-21 an initial advantage in support and support operations before delivery to the user community."
Proven fidelity of the digital model
Developed with a digital line throughout the life cycle of the program, the B-21 Raider uses the latest in digital tools and resources, from design to development and testing and, finally, in support. This focus on the B-21 digital ecosystem, along with investment in laboratories and testing facilities, allowed the Northrop Grumman team to digitally model the B-21's performance before physical movements or needs.
As the B-21 undergoes several ground tests, digital models are surpassing industry standards with twice the accuracy. This is evident in the initial tests, with the first test article presenting the expected performance; the tests of the engines, weapon compartment doors, landing gear and control services demonstrated the expected results and indicate the effectiveness and value of digital modeling.
Defining the capacity of the sixth generation
The B-21 Raider is the world's first sixth-generation aircraft, supported by decades of experience in stealth technology and optimized for cutting-edge threat environments. With its open architecture and cloud technology application, the B-21 Raider was built for seamless incorporation of software updates and new features. Northrop Grumman has already demonstrated that the B-21 will be able to integrate third-party technology, supporting the maximum focus of the program on modernization and the need to keep the weapons system at the forefront of future threats.
The new approach of the program to the execution of the program, together with the effective application of digital technologies, demonstrates a focus on delivering exceptional capacity, effectively and efficiently.
Tags: Military AviationB-21 RaiderNorthrop GrummanUSAF - United States Air Force / U.S. Air Force
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Fernando Valduga
Fernando Valduga
Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Daytona Airshow and FIDAE. He has work published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. Uses Canon equipment during his photographic work throughout the world of aviation.
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