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itspyon · 3 months

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Have you by any chance taken a look at r/dwt2 recently? I'd really like to hear your thoughts on the posts over there about Dream's interactions (or lack thereof) with the fanbse rn and the big content drought. I think you always have realistic outlooks on this stuff and it would definitely help some people on here that I know are trying not to feel too down about it. (100% /nf)

hello dashboard

this is the longest post i have ever written. remember, this is how i personally see things. you don't have to agree with all of it or at all. still, long as fuck. you have been warned

i do not use reddit and i especially don't visit spaces that are a vent melting pot. not something i want to encourage by giving it clicks

however it is a topic i do have thoughts on, of various kinds, so walk with me on this one. i believe the position is in right now is 1 - one he hates, 2 - one he was forced to be in and 3 - one he's too afraid to get out of

you can understand my second point easily, i don't think there's any argument about it. if it was up to him, the current state of his content would not be like this, not talking quality, but in the general lack of it. he had to reorganise his life around october 2022 to the point he considered quitting. that's not an easy thing, logistically an otherwise, and for dream out of all people to have even think about it, it must have been a tremendous feat to get out of that spot mentally. then he could not make usmp happen. dealing with the hate. gumball. releasing the video. these aren't things that he could predict, and did shape the timeline of content release

i don't want to say i feel a bitterness about it from him, because he's not a bitter person. but when he talks about the things that weren't, i do feel that sad yearn, the-one-that-got-away-esque vibe in the conversation. which is completely understandable, because those are his projects he put time thought money and love in. and then he gets the carpet pulled, and now we're here. i feel people forget that a bit you feel sad about all the content, imagine him. we knew about usmp for tops 3 or 4 days, he had been working on it for months. empathise with him a bit and understand this is not a place he wants to be in either

my general "critique" of him regarding the situation is the third point. i say fear, i don't exactly know if that's what it is, and just as above, i understand why it would exist yes, obviously the face reveal and meeting fans and having the parasocialism hit you in the face changes a lot. i understand, say, walking back from his "Stans" video, i understand walking back on the nsfw, i get those things. but we're a bit past that point now, where denouncing that parasocialism is turning into what i see as becoming the cc he has said he doesn't want to be

and i say this as someone that has been around for a WHILE. he has in the past spoken negatively about the path he is taking. the cc that's removed from his audience, the famous guy that has all his accounts managed, the creator with the over scripted, over hyped, removed of all spontaneous dynamic content that ends up either underdelivering, or not delivering at all. ( note here, i don't think dream will ever underdeliver. not in his dna. simply describing that general persona )

he's not there yet, at all, but he's edging close enough where people are starting to feel uneasy about it. some quietly, some in an understanding tone, others demanding and demeaning. and i feel at every step of walking down this figurative path, my first and second points ring very loudly. he doesn't really want this, he never asked for any of this. he has been forced into this position. but now he's on this weird stasis chamber of sorts, not fully in it but also doing nothing to get out ? i see the absolute love he has for music. i see how much he loves minecraft, and his fans, and the weirdness of it all. but he's alienating himself from it and not particularly putting up any sort of fight. not even raising his voice. nothing at all

no snapchats no tweets no likes no replies no streaming no casual popping into a friend's stream. and i am happy for him ! let me make that super clear ! taking time for himself, chilling, doing things in private. i'm glad he has that space now, and he's enjoying a life he very much could not have for years

but the very overwhelming, and genuinely new type of quiet makes that uneasiness i mentioned before grow exponentially. this isn't a quiet we're used to, and i have been through many. i am personally fine with it, i am not the one to demand content, i can simply do something else. but it does worry me he's kind of just taking the punches, and is taking them so much to heart he has removed himself this much from the public, in a seemingly unnecessary fashion. and here's the real issue for me on that third point, and where that worry comes from, and maybe in part curiosity ?

he's sure of what he's doing. at least it appears that way. i don't see all the puzzle pieces, and i am concerned at the picture they paint. is he scared ? is he tired ? is he waiting it out even more ? should i be concerned ? is that maybe too parasocial, or am i just so put off by the change of scenery and the lack of explanation for some of these changes ( like i said, i understand some, but others seem out of left field ) , it that it makes me reasonably worried

still. i get it

i criticize some of it, because yeah, i am selfish, i want the content creator that i have been following for five years to be, at least in part, the one i subscribed to. i want some content, any content, at all

i also understand the road to here was not the one neither of us expected it to be, and it changed him more than it changed me

i am a passive onlooker of his life, and i have no right to make demands to what he gives me access to. i only can complain as much as it is appropriate, which is vocalising my feelings of missing him, because he has given me a piece, and now i don't quite get why it's gone. previously he would have told us why, now it's dead lining

but it's his life. it's his time. it's his piece. and it's his choice. he can do with it as he pleases. i can be unhappy. i can have issues with it, i can worry. i can demand explanations. i am not entitled an answer. the second people understand that last part, they will have a much better time dealing with the quiet

i miss him, i really do. i understand why he's gone. i don't approve of how far he's taking it. but that doesn't fucking matter, because whatever the reasoning is, if he is doing it this way, it's for a reason that's enough to him. and i'd say, we have to trust him with his own life

#pyon askies #pyon long post

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thordorfralf · 30 days

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The Ragnarok war prolouge

During their rise towards the interstellar age humanity completely killed their own home. The capitalistic greed poisoned the air, the seas, the land, their minds, everything. Around the year 2500 of their Christian calendar the population dwindled rapidly, because of famine, drought and the last resources were depleted.

This is why humanity was forced to the stars, building enormous life ships to evacuate as many people as possible. Those crude behemoths barely held together and without any ftl technology they started their long journey towards the planet chosen as their new home: the Ygdrasil system.

So, for many generations humans lived in their self-inflicted colony of ships and their outlook on life and society surprisingly changed. Everyone had expected that the rich would keep their luxurious levels to themselves hoarding knowledge and resources as they had done on earth, but after a few generations they started to share and work towards the good of everyone. Finally, humans left behind their greed and exchanged it with passion and love, knowing they all faced the same fate if the mistakes of the past would be repeated.

Once Midgard was reached a society was in place, that the people from the 21st century would have called solar punk, and the planets Midgard, Alfheim and Vanaheim were settled in a symbiotic way with nature. During this time the intergalactic council reached out to humanity, congratulating them for their advancements and offering them a place among the many species for trade and exploration. The humans agreed, happily sharing their technology, and trading their fine art and the crops they had to share.

The next century went by, and it was a time of prosperity for all the races, until the ksis'tor had a change in their government and decided that their occupied space wasn't enough anymore, and they started conquering the neighbouring systems. When they came closer to the Ygdrasil system, humanity send ambassadors in their beautiful and unarmed ships, but the Ksis'tor just shot them down.

After that incident humanity gave every foreign ship half a rotation to leave their part of space, after that every craft was grounded indefinitely. After that it took only 5 rotations that the human controlled space was inrecognisable. On their planets many concealed bunkers opened and out of there came things that we believe are the remnants of their journey to Ygdrasil: Large and heavy armoured vessels, armed with antique and modern weaponry. The whole system turned into one fortress with no way in or out.

I am one of the few ambassadors that didn't leave. I asked a human general yesterday why they were that good prepared for war and he just said: "We lost Earth... we won't lose another home."

The Ksis'tor don't know what they are getting into.

#humans are space orcs #humanity fuck yeah #writers on tumblr #short story

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rjzimmerman · 5 days

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Do the recent or right-now-ongoing crazy global weather scare you? Bother you? Interest you?

I'm pulling this from various media sources, because there is so much crazy weather happening now, or that has happened within the last couple of weeks, it seems like no single media source is picking it up.

From Heatmap AM:

Houston’s floods – More than 400 people in and around Houston, Texas, evacuated their homes over the weekend due to flooding. At least one person, a child, was killed. In one nearby county, more than 21 inches of rain fell over five days last week. The rain has tapered off but the cleanup has just begun.

Brazil’s rain – In Brazil’s southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, days of intense rain caused the Guaiba River to overflow and flood more than 340 cities, including the region’s capital of Porto Alegre. At least 78 people are dead and more than 115,000 have been forced to evacuate. One climatologist calledthe catastrophe “a disastrous cocktail” of climate change and the El Niño effect. “It looks like a scene out of a war,” said Rio Grande do Sul governor Eduardo Leite.

Chile’s fires – Fires in Chile’s Valparaiso region, fueled by an intense heat wave and enduring drought, have killed at least 51 people and burned more than 64,000 acres.

Kenya’s deluge – Flooding and landslides in Kenya from unrelenting rainfall have killed more than 200 people. It is still raining and the weather is forecast to worsen throughout the month of May.

Southeast Asia’s heat wave – A lengthy heat wave has shattered temperature records across Southeast Asia, forcing many schools to close. One weather historian called the heat wave “the most extreme event in world climatic history.”

From the Associated Press (AP):

A weekend spring storm that drenched the San Francisco Bay area and closed Northern California mountain highways also set a single-day snowfall record for the season on Sunday (May 5) in the Sierra Nevada. The wet weather system had mostly moved out of the state by Sunday morning, but officials warned that roads would remain slick after around two feet (60 centimeters) of snow fell in some areas of the Sierra. “Did anyone have the snowiest day of the 2023/2024 season being in May on their winter bingo card?” the University of California, Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab asked on the social platform X. The 26.4 inches (67 centimeters) of snowfall on Sunday beat the second snowiest day of the season — March 3rd — by 2.6 inches (6.6 centimeters), according to the lab.

From Yale Climate Connections:

For the first time since the 2010s, a high-risk outlook for severe weather (level 5 of 5) has been issued for parts of the Great Plains. The outlook was put in place at 8 a.m. EDT Monday, May 6, and updated at 12:30 p.m. EDT Monday by the NOAA/National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center, as a busy few days of severe weather moved into high gear. Dozens of tornadoes could erupt by midweek, including in and near Oklahoma on Monday and across a broad swath of the mid-Mississippi and lower Ohio River valleys on Wednesday. Many of the worst tornado U.S. outbreaks of recent years have played out across the Mississippi Valley and Southeast, but multiple rounds of twisters have hammered the Plains since late April, taking at least seven lives and wreaking what will no doubt be hundreds of millions of dollars in damage.

From Wikipedia:

On 16 April 2024, heavy rains caused floods in the United Arab Emirates, affected cities of mainly Dubai and Sharjah, the northern Emirates, and different areas of the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah. According to the National Center for Meteorology (United Arab Emirates) , this was the country's heaviest rainfall recorded in 75 years. The floods in the Emirates were a part of the greater Persian Gulf floods.

#extreme weather

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raychelsnr · 5 months

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Typically, if you saw a precipitation map in December as you do on the left, you would be forgiven if you thought a major winter was about to impact the middle of the country. But a glance at the 6-10 day temperature outlook on the right reveals we will remain warm for this time of year as a storm system moves across the Plains. It looks like we have a good shot of rain in the region mid-late this week.

This is yet another moisture-rich system swinging through, with plenty of rain set to fall starting on Thursday and lasting into the weekend. Trailing this rain will be a bonafide winter storm (and possibly White Christmas) for portions of the High Plains and adjacent Rockies foothills from Wyoming down to New Mexico. The WPC 7-day forecast doesn’t fully capture all of the rain that might fall, given some of the action does reside beyond the seven-day window, but as it stands right now, over an inch of rain may be widespread by Christmas.

This will likely continue to erode the ongoing drought conditions on our march to a drought-free start to the Spring in a few months.

#weather #severe weather #nature

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allthebrazilianpolitics · 9 days

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Brazil soy output at top farm state may drop 15% amid torrential rains

The outlook for soy production in one of Brazil's biggest farm states is deteriorating quickly after heavy rains disrupted harvesting with about a quarter of fields left to reap from in Rio Grande do Sul.

The situation has dampened farmer sentiment in Brazil's southernmost state, where soy production was at one point in the 2023/24 season expected to be a record after at least two years of drought slashed output in the region.

Leandro da Silva, who manages a grains unit at farm cooperative Cotrisal in the town of Sarandi, said on Friday the impact of the downpours, which left entire cities under water and flooded grain fields in lower areas, could slash production in Rio Grande do Sul to between 19 million metric tons and 20 million metric tons.

National crop agency Conab has Rio Grande do Sul soy output at 21.89 million tons and state crop agency Emater has it at 22.25 million.

#brazil #brazilian politics #politics #economy #environmental justice #farming #mod nise da silveira #image description in alt

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aeniith · 2 months

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Sometimes I really have to be in a different physical environment to do the work I want to do. Typically, this means creative work, but not always. It applies to the more mental/intellectual too, like research/scholarly writing.

I have worked (in whatever capacity) from home since well before the pandemic happened. I’ve always enjoyed this, 9 times out of 10. I have a good study in my house, my house now is spacious enough that working from home is not difficult or suffocating.

But there are still occasions when leaving my house to work on something is clearly the best choice. That’s why I’m glad to have this option available to me. A change in scenery, in lighting, in ambiance, in soundscape, in social milieu, can completely change my perspective, mood, outlook, mental state, everything. It can be the difference between malingering in inertia, executive dysfunction, and inspirational drought, and the capacity to feel motivated and inspired and actively moved to create.

This isn’t advice, exactly. What works for me doesn’t *always* work, and it probably doesn’t apply universally (what does?), but maybe it’s worth a shot? Maybe it’s worth trying, if you can.

#working #motivation #creativity #work #productivity #inspiration #mental health

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years

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Tory Britain is crashing and burning

After 43 years of Tory policies (including the 12 years of Tory-lite Blairism), Margaret Thatcher has been vindicated — there truly no longer is “any such thing as a society.” As Thatcher predicted, “there are individual [ultra-rich] men and women, and their families [whom they pass vast inheritances on to].”

To get a sense of just how truly fucked the UK is, start with Charlie Stross’s dissection of the omnishambles (“omnishambles” is a Made-in-Britain forerunner to “polycrisis”):

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2022/08/the-gathering-crisis.html

In the midst of Europe’s worst drought in 500 years, the UK is particularly hard-hit, with staple crops (carrots, potatoes, onions) facing failure — potato yields are down 50% (!).

Inflation is out of control. If you believe the Citibank estimate, it’ll hit 18.6% by January. If you want a rosier outlook, follow the Bank of England, who say it’ll be a mere 13%.

This has driven the pound to a ten-year low against the US dollar, which is driving up import prices from one of the few major trading partners the UK has left, thanks to Brexit.

Speaking of Brexit! The incompetent, lying philanderer who became PM after lying and backstabbing all of his Tory rivals sure “got Brexit done.” He was spectacularly bad at it and eventually his own party had enough of him. Boris is a lame-duck PM, and he’s popped off for a leisurely foreign holiday while his party decides who’ll get the job next.

So effectively, the country has no PM — and it also has no one to serve in his stead, since Boris sidelined his deputy, the ghastly Dominic Raab, on his way out the door. It’s not just the PM’s office that rudderless — a wave of scandal-driven ministerial rejections have left key ministries without leadership.

Brexit is the gift that keeps on giving, lopping 6% off the UK economy. The promised red tape reductions haven’t delivered good news for UK small businesses, which are failing at the rate of knots.

What has Brexit delivered? Well, it led to deregulation of the water system (which Tories had largely privatised), permitting water companies to flush raw sewage into Britain’s rivers and coastal waters, rendering them unsafe to swim in. To be fair, even if they wanted to treat the sewage, they’d couldn’t, because Brexit stopped water-treatment at the border.

There’s runaway energy prices everywhere, but Britain’s version is extra-special, with contracts coming in at 400–1000% higher than last year, triggering a wave of small business closures. Care homes are warning that they might have to turn off the heat this winter.

But even if they manage to keep paying their bills, it might not help, because energy experts are forecasting unscheduled, UK-wide rolling blackouts this winter. The Tories’ backup plan is to import energy from France, Belgium and the Netherlands, these being three countries that are slowing or halting energy exports.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has proposed re-nationalising the energy companies (36% of Scots households are headed to fuel poverty by October). The Tories have categorically rejected this, which is great news for anyone hoping to convince Scotland to leave the UK.

Tory rule — starting with Thatcher’s airdrop of the nation’s stock of public housing — destroyed the nation’s capacity to supply housing to working people, and what affordable housing remained was turned into deathtraps after it was sheathed in highly flammable cladding.

Conservative ideology has produced a country that can’t provide shelter, or food, or water, or energy. But what about health-care? The NHS is OK, right?

Yikes. England’s NHS — a patchwork of underfunded public providers and hollowed out, private providers — has suffered from worsening annual winter crises for years. This year’s winter crisis arrived early — in the summer, with overflowing A&Es and hospitals out of beds.

A key goal of Tory rule has been suppressing the wages of working people, smashing unions and coming up with wheezes like zero-hours contracts and wage-theft schemes like making up servers’ pay out of their tips. British workers were already one bad beat away from losing everything, and 10% inflation has pushed millions over the brink.

Not all workers are broke! This year, average executive pay for FTSE 1000 companies has risen 39%, to £3.4M.

Unsurprisingly, this has precipitated waves of strikes: rubbish collectors are out in Edinburgh, as are criminal barristers, whose wages and staffing have been cut, starving the justice system to the point where criminal cases are taking 708 days to be heard in court.

Also striking: dock workers, London transit workers, and, maybe, everyone, as a general strike movement gains supporters across the country. A new generation of labour leaders, exemplified by the incredible Mick Lynch, are filling the void left by Starmer’s Labour party:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0017sxg

What will the Tories do about this? Liz Truss is the presumptive next PM, who will attain that office thanks to the votes of a minuscule rump of registered Tory party members.

Liz Truss is a fucking terrible human being. As Marina Hyde writes, she’s the perfect leader for “a country whose own sewage laps at its shores.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/19/liz-truss-lead-uk-sewage-leadership-marina-hyde

What will Truss do? Well, for one thing, she’ll ban strikes, which will obviously do wonders for labour conditions. She’s got an energy plan, too — she’s going to make it much harder to install solar and wind.

Pensions are being devastated by inflation. A third of the country can’t pay its monthly bills. The Tories have no answers. Their best answer to the polycrisis is drumming up culture war nonsense about “wokeism.” That’s actually slightly better than their main strategy, which is to suggest that poor people should just get better jobs:

https://www.indy100.com/politics/rachel-maclean-work-cost-living

Starmer’s Labour has abandoned any kind of politics aimed at materially improving the lives of working Britons, firing ministers who join picket lines, and refusing to breathe support for nationalisations, public housing provision, and deprivatisation of the NHS.

With or without Labour, working people and the left in the UK are rising up. It’s not just picket-lines, either. There’s mounting support for a payment strike, with the Don’t Pay UK organising a million people to refuse to pay their energy bills effective October 1. Hilariously, the Financial Times has warned these people that they will damage their credit-ratings if they do:

https://www.ftadviser.com/your-industry/2022/08/17/don-t-pay-uk-campaign-will-damage-people-s-finances/

The poorest people in Britain are forced into pay-as-you-go metering, paying the highest energy prices. Meanwhile, the private energy companies who were handed public infrastructure on the cheap by Tory leaders who promised “private sector efficiency” are making out like bandits.

For hard numbers on the UK cost-of-living crisis, check out Richard J Murphy’s roundup in The Independent, whose headline tells the whole tale, really: “It’s now impossible for the average worker to live decently in Britain.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/energy-bills-food-prices-inflation-average-wages-b2149941.html

Murphy starts by noting that the Office for National Statistics’s official after-tax income figure for average households is wildly inflated. The ONS puts the number at £31,383, but the true figure is £23,500, which has to cover £2k in National Insurance and £800 in “near-compulsory” pensions.

Rents in the UK average £1,100/mo (£13k/year), while Council Tax averages £2k, water is £400, and a family mobile service comes in at £1k/year. Add £300 for broadband and £2k for energy (a figure that is shooting up as you read these words).

Then there’s a car (£3k/year), food (minimum £100/week for a family, or £5k/year), and you’re at £26k/year. That leaves £5k/year for clothes, Christmas gifts, and a holiday.

No surprise that most UK families have no savings and carry heavy debt burdens. Tory voters were promised a better life for their kids. Instead, they’ve got nothing. Less than nothing, really, when you factor in debt.

Payment strikes are increasingly common around the world, proving Michael Hudson’s maxim that “debt’s that can’t be paid, won’t be paid.” There are a lot of unpayable debts, thanks to the role of consumer debt in funding the past two decades of economic expansion.

From the capital classes’ perspective, debt is a great way to fund expansion, since it means that the economy can grow even as wages stagnate, and consumer loans can be packaged as financial products that deliver a steady return, allowing people who have money to multiply it without producing anything.

So payment strikes are hitting China, home to a regional mass-scale mortgage payment strikes, hitting 320 property development projects. 28% of China’s top property developers have renegotiated their debts or defaulted altogether:

https://carnegieendowment.org/chinafinancialmarkets/87664

Meanwhile, in the USA, Biden steadfastly refuses to make good on his promise of unconditional student debt cancellation. Instead, he’s dribbling out means-tested, complex, partial cancellations that no one loves — especially not the young voters who’ll have to show up and vote in the midterms if the Dems are going to keep the House.

Abandoned by the Democratic Party, student debtors are organising themselves independently, with Strike Debt leading the way with their own payment strikes.

For more, check out Naked Capitalism’s roundup of payment strikes by Nick Corbishley, who also notes surging support for Mexican water-bill strikes, amid skyrocketing water prices, accompanied by water privatisation and sweetheart deals for foreign companies like Coca-Cola:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/08/are-payment-strikes-about-to-become-a-regular-feature-of-the-economic-landscape.html

#pluralistic

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