shitpost-lord69

[shitpost-lord69]

The Human Race Must Abolish Billionaires

Hello, let’s have a talk. A talky talk. A talky talk about how and why Billionaires should not be allowed to exist, why we can, must, and should seize all of their combined wealth, and what we can do with it when we have it.

And maybe some cheeky ideas about what to do with that sorry lot once we’ve plundered all their shinies and wealth, mhm! Oh yes.

Let’s start here:

Oh my oh my oh my! What is this!

It seems that 2,754 human beings on this planet we share have over $1,000,000,000 in wealth! This simply will not do, that’s far too many. But what I’d really like to do is draw your attention to the eye-gouging sum of their total wealth.

$9,200,000,000,000.

Truly a staggering sum. In fact, it’s so staggering, it’s achieved what really big numbers can do where they no longer really contain any conceivable value. It is truly difficult for the human mind to conceive of this kind of largeness, and it can even trick you into thinking, hey, this isn’t that much bigger than 9.2 million! Which isn’t all that much, really.

I’m so sorry but that’s wrong.

So how much is 9.2 Trillion?

A useful way to look at numbers is to use a scale we encounter every day: the second. I refer to this excerpt from a helpful letter to the New York Times written in 1986: 

“I found that 1,000 seconds ago was equal to almost 17 minutes. It would take almost 12 days for a million seconds to elapse and 31.7 years for a billion seconds. Therefore, a trillion seconds would amount to no less than 31,709.8 years.

A trillion seconds ago, there was no written history. The pyramids had not yet been built. It would be 10,000 years before the cave paintings in France were begun, and saber-toothed tigers were still prowling the planet.”

That’s just 1 Trillion seconds. 9.2 Trillion seconds is 291,730.16 years ago! Recorded history doesn’t even go back that far. The lost island in the North Sea Doggerland was still around back then. The land bridge between Russia and Alaska was still around. Starting to get how much money $9.2 Trillion is?

For the sake of argument, let’s say that these 2,754 people are one person (and for the sake of humanity’s scale, they might as well be), and decide to spend their cash. What can they do with $9.2 Trillion dollars?

What about a castle? Castles are cool! I’d like a castle. They gotta be expensive right?

The Devizes Castle, built in the 12th century, was sold for $3.2 million. On our time scale, that’s just about 39 days out of 291,730.16 years. But that’s not even close to the most expensive castle. That’s probably the Asheford Castle, in Ireland, also from the 12th century, valued around $68m. That’s a bit bigger of a chunk, coming around to about 3.2 years out of our budget of 291,730.

Okay, we have a swanky place to live. How about a plane to fly there? Or a boat? Let’s buy the best ones of each.

Luxury jets are easy: you want a Gulfstream IV - clocking in at $38m. There are other, much more expensive planes, but they are more straight up commercial airliners or tactical bombers. For a single person, a Gulfstream is really where it’s at.

Yachts? The choices here are way more varied. Technically, the world’s most expensive yacht is the History Supremee at $4.5 Billion, but this is just a mere 100-foot vessel coated in pure gold and platinum. Let’s go bigger, but slightly cheaper, and get the Eclipse, a 536 foot long, $1.5 Billion dollar vessel that is sure to make all the less rich people envious.

Why not a car? The most expensive car is the Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita, coming in at a mere $4.8 Million.

If we add this all up, it’s $1,042,500,000. This is 33 years.

You can buy the world’s most luxurious castle, jet, yacht, and car, and only use 35 years out of the budget of 291,730.

In FACT: if every single one of the 2,754 billionaires could buy one of the most luxurious castle, jet, yacht, and car each, there would still be $6.3 TRILLION left over between them.

Starting to get the picture?

There is no logical, moral, ethical, or even comedic argument to be made for even 10,000 people to have access to $9.2 Trillion in wealth, much less 2,754. They simply cannot spend this wealth on a meaningful, individual level. It can only be hoarded, and used to create more wealth.

Now, let’s say we forcefully take their money, and liquidate all their assets, and we, the people, now have $9.2Trillion in fungible cash. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the $200 billion that we need to drop to make this an even 9 gets lost in depreciation. That’s almost 2%, so, I feel that’s not a difficult or even unfair argument to make.

So, let’s say after seizing these bastard’s wealth and liquidating it we have $9Trillion left over. What can we do with all of that?

It would only cost about $55 Million to fix Flint. Let’s do that.

The most bloated estimates say it would cost $265 Billion to end world hunger and malnutrition. Let’s do that.

What about education? What if we forgave all the American student loans? That’s a hefty $1.4 Trillion, but, we have it to spare.

Reducing Greenhouse Gasses is a tricky one. Planting trees to offset carbon emissions is a good idea, so, let’s fund some projects to do that.

“The cost to plant a tree varies depending on the location of the project and the type of tree being planted, and ranges between approximately one dollar to three dollars per tree.” - Plant a Billion Trees

So, $3Billion for a billion trees. Nice. That’ll regreen the landscape quite a bit, and this is just one example of a single effort to reforest multiple lost jungles. Let’s fund five such projects, bringing the total to 5 billion trees and $15 Billion dollars.

What about Solar? What if we made a Solar Farm in the Sahara to cover the energy use of the entire planet? The cost of the project will be about five trillion dollars assuming we could figure out the infrastructure to support it.

What’s that got us, totaled up? We’ve spent $6.68 Trillion. We’ve got about $2.3 Trillion left over. We’ve ended world hunger, forgiven all American student loan debt, replanted billions of trees, and the world, in theory, is on 100% solar power now. Seems like a pretty rosy state of existence. And we still have 72,932 years of our time/money left over. That’s almost enough left over to buy every billionaire the most luxurious castle, jet, yacht, and car.

FUCK. THAT.

So, clearly, it is an illogical, immoral act for a billionaire to hoard all this wealth, when we’ve seen what we can do with it. What should we do with them?

[shitpost-lord69]

The Emperor’s Clothes: Cotton in Mesoamerica

Annual Maya Symposium - Joanne Baron

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It appears that just like Gritty...

… the Untitled Goose is now a leftist icon:

(graphic taken from https://twitter.com/IGN/status/1175492642773200897)

In celebration of our apparently new SJW ally, I give you some handy graphics:

[shitpost-lord69]

So, my university does a lot of outreach Classics work, trying to make it less of an elitist subject and more accessible to children, and as part of that, I went to give a talk to a class of 6 and 7 year olds a few months back.

And here’s the thing. Classics is really often portrayed as the last bastion of academic privilege, a subject that is only taught to rich white kids so that they can brag about knowing Latin and get jobs as Tory MPs. But these kids were OBSESSED. They had already done some stuff on myths, and they were so excited to talk about it. They knew all the stories, all the heroes, the gods, the monsters. I have never seen such an excitable group of kids as these 6 year olds shouting about Odysseus.

For the lesson, I asked them to think of their favourite myth and to consider it from the point of view of the monster rather than the hero. The end goal was to show that often the monsters and heroes are quite similar. We decided to do Polyphemus (the Cyclops) in the Odyssey, and so I asked them why they thought Polyphemus might have been so angry at Odysseus that he killed some of his men.

Because he came home and found lots of strange men in his house, eating his food, said the kids.

So, I asked them, do you think that was a good reason to kill people?

No, they said, but he was very cross, and he didn’t do it because it was fun.

And then this KID, this SIX YEAR OLD CHILD, put her hand up and said “well, it was very bad of him, but if we’re cross with him then we have to be cross with Odysseus too, because when he came home from his adventure and found lots of men in his house, trying to marry his wife, he killed them, and that’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

AND LET ME TELL YOU

I am a published Classicist! A PhD student! And I have never made that connection before! Not once! And this child was six years old! And she made the link! By herself!

And so I tried not to show how gobsmacked I was, and we talked more about other monsters, including Medusa, and at the end of the lesson a lot of them said that they thought the monsters were not as evil as we usually think, and then I went home.

But I honestly haven’t got over how excited and engaged those kids were, in a totally regular primary school. Classics, in that classroom, was not elitist or inaccessible. It was something they understood, could really get their teeth into and use to think of new ideas of good and bad, of why we demonise different people for doing the same things. And that’s how I like to think about Classics. Not a series of dry texts in ancient languages, but as living stories that you actually can’t help but love, just a bit.

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[shitpost-lord69]

Computer, I need a good vibe! Show me “white dad wearing a dashiki”.

Aaaaah it’s so good. He’s having a great time and learning about different cultures.

[shitpost-lord69]

Abstract

The Maya of Central America constitute the only truly literate pre‐Columbian civilization. Analysis of ancient Maya hieroglyphic texts and accompanying images dating from the Classic period (A.D. 200–900) documents the presence of a central and pervasive institution of governance: ahaw. The material symbol systems of the Lowland Maya of the protoliterate Late Preclassic period (350 B.C.‐A.D. 100), as evinced in monumental decorated buildings and in portable art, suggest that these Maya innovated ahaw, the institution of kingship. The authority of ahaw rested upon direct descent and spiritual communion with the ancestors of all Maya, the Ancestral Heroes. Along with noble lineage, ahaw claimed charismatic power through the performance of shamanistic ritual. The Late Preclassic antecedents of the shamanistic parameters of ahaw are discussed in light of Classic and Postclassic ritual expressions.

You can read this with a free JSTOR account.

[shitpost-lord69]

Cylinder vase

Maya

Late Classic Period, A.D. 755–780

Place of Manufacture: Motul de San José area, El Petén, Guatemala

Ritual drinking vase painted with a scene that combines elements from two seminal Maya myths–the sacrifice of the Baby Jaguar and the featuring the birth/resurrection of the Maize god at Nah-Ho’-Chan , a supernatural mountain location in the north named in the hieroglyphic text as well as depicted underneath the conflated representation of the Baby Jaguar-Maize god. Two supernaturals flank him, and a white cord, which makes reference to an umbilical cord, unites the three figures. This vase was painted by one of the most accomplished artists of the Classic period.

This vase is considered one of the finest examples of Maya painting. The artist’s mastery of the watercolor-like quality of slip paint is particularly remarkable here. Notice the subtle washes on the bodies, extremely difficult to achieve with clay-based paints.

The scene depicts the birth of the Maize god, flanked by a supernatural with jaguar attributes and another with Sun-god features. The white umbilical cord that unifies the scene also encouraged the viewer to rotate the vase. The hieroglyphic text records the birth’s mythological date and supernatural locale, Na-Ho-Chan (Five Sky House).

MFA

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[shitpost-lord69]

“Sleep Boss” comic I originally did for Vice’s UK site

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“ For The Buffalo that could not dream, German photographer Felix von der Osten chronicles life on Montana’s the Fort Belknap Reservation, where since 1888, the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Native American tribes have raised their families and continued to foster a deeply-felt respect for the land. “

Full article here: http://www.featureshoot.com/2015/04/fascinating-portraits-give-us-a-window-into-native-american-life-on-a-reservation-in-montana/

[shitpost-lord69]

10 Steps To Care For Your Hamster (long post!)

1. Do not keep them in pairs. Hamsters are loners - keeping them together often results in stress, fighting, injuries and death. They are very happy alone. 

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2. Minimum cage size

dwarf hamsters: 30 x 20 x 20 inches (80x50x50cm);

bigger hamsters: 40 x 20 x 20 inches (100x50x50cm)!

NOT like this: 

Living in cages like this for them is like a human living in an elevator - a lot too small and even dangerous! 

For them it feels like this:

Behavior like this is a signal for stress because the cage is too small or that they need more bedding:

Better:

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3. Your hamster (always!) needs a hamster wheel - and it must be a lot bigger than you might think! 

Hamster must be able to run with a completely straight back

on a closed surface

with a closed back wall! 

NOT like this: 

Results of those wheels are: spine problems, backache, stress, injuries! 

Minimum wheel size for dwarf hamsters: 9-10 inches. 

Minimum wheel size for bigger hamsters: 12 inches! 

Better: 

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4. Do not buy them plastic tubes (at all): 

Those tubes are not suitable at all: Hamsters get stuck or suffocate in them easily. 

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5. Your hamster needs enough bedding to dig and build tunnels.

NOT like this:  

Better: 

Your hamster will be extremely happy and dig around and build tunnels all day (night). 

A study also found out that (golden) hamsters need up to 12-36 inches of bedding, so just do your best do give them the highest amount of bedding possible. :)

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6. The less plastic the better! 

NOT like this:

Plastic gets swallowed, splinters, can injure or even kill your hamster. 

Better: 

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7. Hamsters ALWAYS need a sand bath.

Hamsters love rolling around in the sand, for them it’s like showering. How would you feel without a shower? 

You can use those little baths as toilets, but you still need a bigger sand bath!

Better:

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8. Hamsters need a house with at least 2 or more chambers to store food, sleep etc. Also make sure that your hamster does have enough hiding places like coconuts, small houses, toilet rolls! 

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9. Do use unperfumed toilet paper for nesting material, don’t use “hamster wool” -> it can tangle around a limb and seriously hurt and even kill your hamster! 

NOT like this: 

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10. Never ever ever put your hamster or any animal in a hamster ball. 

They can’t get out, might suffocate or panic, might run against furniture and seriously injure themselves. The ventilation is terrible, your hamster can’t see/smell/hear enough or use any of their senses properly.

In some countries they even discuss about banning those by law! 

Even if you think that “your hamster has fun in it” - please don’t use them! 

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Please reblog and spread this information.

Pet stores often are very misinformed and sell terrible cages and have little to no idea how to keep a happy hamster - please be careful when trusting them. In the end they often just want to make money - and the hamsters suffer. 

Please adopt, not buy hamsters - there are too many hamsters in this world that we need any more breeding. 

**

MASTERPOST: Cheap Cages And Supplies For Hamsters - IKEA

~ more to come ~

(Sorry for the spelling errors - I made this post in a rush.)

[shitpost-lord69]

~ Portrait Vessel of a Ruler.

Date: 100 B.C.-A.D. 500

Culture: Moche

Place of origin: North coast, Perú

Medium: Ceramic and pigment

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what happens if you mix up suburban white mom “i cant function without coffee” facebook culture and edgy anime glittergraphix emo internet culture because i have an idea.

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This is why baby boomers think we can pay for school while having a part time job

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Link to NY times article

If now is not a time to organize, idk what is.

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