#laborors

[dandelion-wings]

doing the quests for Tunner and Guy always makes me so sad for them, because Tunner's trying so hard to hide his health issues so he won't distract Guy, while Guy is trying so hard to hide that he's bored in the Knights so that he can make his father proud...

I've headcanoned for a while that Kaeya got Guy put on the boring gate-guard duty to keep him safe for Tunner's sake, but now I wonder if it might also be in order to bore him, in the hopes that eventually he'll get tired of it and go back to care for his dad. We know Kaeya has a lot of feelings about fathers, after all

#honestly i think this is care the winery itself should be providing to its older workers #but we already know the winery/ragnvindrs have some Unfortunate concepts around their laborors #i am staring directly at patton being basically in debt indenture to diluc

[liveleaker]

me on EVIL shark tank:

me: hello sharks im asking for 500 BILLION dollars towards my INHUMANE sweatshop

evil!mark cuban: i really like what youre doing buddy i think together we could take it to the next level and get you 40% more child laborors by next quarter

evil!barbara: now hold on mark, i can do 45%

evil!kevin oleary: im still basically how i usually am

evil!daymond: grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

[attackfish]

@xpegasusuniverse asked for a continuation of the AU where Iroh finds a brainwashed Lu Ten after the war. Continued from: [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], [Link], and [Link].

1. They have barely even begun rebuilding when a letter from Mai's father arrives. She packs up and sails off the next day, leaving her lieutenant, a gray-haired former Navy man named Jee, in charge of guarding him. She claimed she would be gone for a week. Lu Ten isn't especially surprised when she's back again after two days instead. Nor is he surprised when she refuses to say a word about what happened. The baby brother is a surprise though.

2. The early days of rebuilding the beach house are frenetic ones for Mai. Each carpenter, mason, painter, blacksmith, and laboror has to be vetted, something Mai takes care of personally, and then has Jee go over them so that she can have a second pair of eyes. And then, even once she's vetted them, she can't trust them, so she has to watch them, and she has to set her small contingent guards to watch them, because any one of them could be either an assassin, or an idiot with a grudge. And what little free time she has, she spends it with her brother. Lu Ten can understand. It's not like she's making up work. But sometimes, especially late at night, he wonders if maybe she's just happy to have the excuse not to have to talk to him.

3. She's a surprisingly good big sister. Maybe he shouldn't be surprised, with the way she's been treating him with kid gloves, but he's surprised anyway, watching her with Tom-Tom on her hip, or with his hand in hers, or as she watches him run along the sand in that flatfooted way of young children. He peppers her with questions, and brings things to show her, and she always answers, and carefully examines what he shows her, and sometimes, when she doesn't realize Lu Ten is watching her, he sees her smile at her brother.

4. A few weeks after she gets back, and while she's still up to her neck in the hard work of protecting Lu Ten, a letter arrives. It's from his father. Mai hands it to him already open, though she swears it's unread. A strip of the margin had been cut off, so that Mai could subject it to tests for poisons. In the letter, his father says that Zuko will be going on an expedition, and he will be serving as regent in his absense, but after Zuko returns, before he returns to Ba Sing Se, he wants to visit Ember Island.

5. His stomach goes cold at the thought, like he swallowed huge chunks of ice, and they're sitting inside him, unmelting. He doesn't know why. Why wouldn't he want to see his father who loves him and has never been anything but good to him? Why does it scare him? Mai looks him in the eyes and tells him he doesn't have to let his father visit. He can tell him to fuck off. Or Mai can make up a horrible contagious disease. They can find some excuse. But Lu Ten shakes his head. No, his dad can come. He has to let his dad come.

#avatar the last airbender #lu ten #atla mai #uncle iroh #posts i created #do you want to ask a question it doesn't have to be a question #five headcanons #i ship iroh/tea #mai doesn't hate you #brave soldier boy doesn't come marching home

[tgirlsaintlawrence]

We hate ai for good reason but you were all making silly little ai photos of things like the Virgin Mary skateboarding. You hate it being used to fuck up laborors but it was a fun novelty damnit

[rjalker]

I remember why I didn't like this book the first time. I do not like that who you're related to is supposed to proclaim your strenghth of characer and worthiness to be anyone besides an abused laboror..

#Rjalker reads The Dragonriders of Pern

[bladed-skirt-fanblog]

Orianna Reveck Headcanons- Family Edition

If I don't get these out I might explode TW for lack of bodily autonomy, manipulative family, nonconsensual surgery under the read further

Orianna's Mother (Kulta Reveck)

Her mother's name, Kulta, means "golden" because she had strikingly golden colored hair. (Orianna's name also comes from this.)

Orianna is a first generation Piltovan on her mothers side

Her mother is a first generation Zaunite, she was originally from the Frerljord, her family immigrated when her mother was a young teen.

Her parents met when her mother was a nurse, her and Corin shared rounds at a Piltovan hospital when he was an intern. They got married after 2 months of dating, (it was quite the scandal for Piltonvan gossiper's that the only son of the decently prestigious house reveck eloped with an immigrant zaunite so young.)

She passed away due to a congenial lung condition that was exacerbated by Zaun's miasma when Orianna was very young

Kulta had 3 brothers who still live in Zaun as laborors, Orianna discovered how bad Zaun's pollution was while going to check on her younger cousins

Orianna spoke decent Frejlordian until her death, that and traditional cooking were the only real connections Orianna had to Kulta.

Kulta was the sort of woman who'd bite her tongue so hard it would fall of before she raised a fuss. She takes nothing personally. For these reasons she could manage around Corin.

Kulta fell in love with Corin because he simply did not quit at anything. He unsuccessfully courted her for a couple of months until she considered his attempts genuine and only then she agreed.

Orianna's Father (Corin Reveck)

Corin is an only child born into House Reveck, their original claim to fame in piltover was steam, particularly golems (yes, of the Blitzcrank variety)

Corin himself was born premature by two months, his parents were really protective of him for that reason.

Corin was a wildly ambitious young man, his first invention was a steam powered pencil sharpener at age 11. It was confiscated by his parents after he almost lost a finger using it.

As a child he was a bit of a social outcast, he had few friends. This only pushed him further into his hobbies like tinkering and chemistry.

He went into the Academy exclusively on scholarship, not patronage. He argued, successfully, to be allowed into postgrad research early and without a patron family because his family had been one of the few to found the Academy initially.

He double majored in biomechanical engineering and chemical medicine. He graduated a year early because he never took a summer or winter off.

At age 21 he interned as a hospital prosthetic engineer. He met Kulta here.

Corin was initially very attracted to Kulta but considered himself below her notice. He would jokingly ask her out for 5 straight weeks, and was rejected each time. On the 6th week, Corin bought her a scarf for her birthday. She 'accidentally' left this scarf at his desk a couple of weeks later once he had stopped annoying her. He properly asked her to get lunch while returning the scarf.

Corin eloped with Kulta when he was 21, and she was 25. They had orianna when they were 35 and 39 respectively.

His parents also died a few weeks before he married Kulta in an engineering accident.

(He will never admit it, but he really resented his parents and was glad that they passed before they could inevitably disapprove of his wife and life's choices.)

Corin Reveck never forgave himself for Kulta's death. This is, in no small part, why he never let Orianna out of his sight.

Corin was always seen as an eccentric genius in his field, but less so after Kulta's death. He became much quieter and more reserved. People found him easier to be around after her death and no one dared to acknowledge his grief. (This made him much worse off for what would happen to Orianna.)

As a sidenote, I don't absolutely hate Singed as Corin. I think it adds a lot of desperation to Orianna's story, I may make a post about how arcane could not totally eff her over by using singed to their advantage.

Techmamorposis

It took Corin a year and a half of non-stop, constant, and self endangering, work to make robOrianna the way she is.

Orianna told Corin, multiple times, she did not want to be alive in that state. She only helped make her own augmentations while she was in hopsice with every understanding that she was only prolonging the inevitable.

She indulged his fantasy because she didn't want him to feel as though he "let her die" like he had said about her mother.

Every ounce of goodwill Orianna extended to her father, he turned into manipulative tactics to keep her dependent on him. She knew. Its why she initially ran away to Zaun.

Whatever love and trust existed between the two died when he WITHOUT ORIANNA'S CONSENT made "THE KEY"

In Orianna's lore, Corin implanted a key that made her lungs, which she is credited as helping designed, work. She would literally die without him turning it.

Corin never realized that he was going directly against Orianna's wishes, he was so caught up in premature grief that at some point, he saw her lack of consent as someone giving up because they did not understand that they could be saved. (While this is true, even when things actually worked, Orianna did not want to be alive.)

Orianna both legally and properly died. At a certain point, (after 1/3 of her augmentations) she ceased being alive. Her heart stopped, brain died, and her body started decomposing. Corin had a private funeral for her but personally exhumed her body a few days later.

She died at 21 during the winter time.

The Key was put in after she legally died so Corin had control over her "life" and movements. Originally, she controlled the lungs.

She was beloved in Zaun by local children, even as a forced robot recluse. Even as a machine, her true calling was still teaching and caring for children.

RobOrianna's measurements are exactly the same as Ori Reveck's. That's why she appears to human, her father painstakingly recreated her body perfectly, but in an idealized way.

Alive Ori would often do dancer stretches as an anxious fidget, while unneeded, robOrianna maintains these latent instincts.

#orianna reveck #orianna league of legends #corin reveck #league of legends headcanons #orianna headcanons #corin reveck headcanons

[pjotrpirhagen]

Rotterdam Zuid. The neigbourhoods south of river the Maas, are considered the most challenging neighbourhoods of the city. This is where the harbor-laborors once settled. These pictures are taken in Afrikaanderwijk, which is undergoing the largest rebuilding project since WWII. A first attempt to catch the developments on film

Rotterdam Zuid

Kodak Max 200 film

#kodak #rotterdam #rotterdam zuid #gentrification #film photography #35mm film

[phoenixmaiden-gaming]

Assassin’s Creed III: Liberation part 9

Short gameplay this time, but wow did a lot happen. The Governor came out of hiding so I went after him and learned a little bit more on what was happening with the slaves. Had a falling out with the mentor, and then took a ship to Mexico to find out where the slaves were. Anyway, here is what happened.

I started out where I left off at the dock and had to go to the next location for the next mission. It was at a pigeon house near the mansion. There was a letter from Agate. He had heard of the havoc going on with the rebels and we had to act. I had to meet him in the graveyard.

I headed to the graveyard on the edge of town and met with Agate. He started out by saying he felt that I had been distant as of late. He even had a dream that I had turned against him. So he wanted to test my loyalty.

He had heard of what Gerald and me have done and now Ulloa has been forced out of La Balize to negotiate for peace. Agate wants me to kill him. Once he is, his mission will be complete and he will find peace.

Agate said that there is only one path that the governor could take as some others were already blocked. So I had to prepare an ambush.

I headed out to the location where the ambush will be and I first had to take out the guards without being seen. Guess what I used...that’s right, poison!

Once the guards were out, I had to then prepare the place by blocking the other pathways. I had a time limit too, so I had to hop across several roofs and sabotage the water towers so they blocked the road. Then I had to take a gunpowder keg and place it in a certain place then I had to wait.

The carriage came into the trap and I shot the explosives so they didn’t have anywhere to go. I then had to take out the guards.

Then I pulled Ulloa out of the carriage and he immediately started to plead for his family's lives. Aveline commented like he had spared the lives of the slaves he took, but Ulloa said that they were still alive, they were just in Mexico.

Ulloa said he didn’t know why the slaves and laborors were needed, he was just an advisor. But he did say that his own expeditions needed a lot of man power and Mexico was a region rich in relics predating the Mayans. 

To make amends, he even gave Aveline a disc that can be used to decipher secret documents and he gave me one.

Since Ulloa really didn’t know anything, she decided to let him go, but warned him to never show his face in this continent. He thanked her for showing him mercy, but it wasn’t mercy. She is leaving him at the mercy of his employers and hiding from them.

I went to go see Agate to report my findings. Aveline gave him the cypher that I got from Ulloa and he was impressed with my find in my victory against Ulloa. He only wished he had been there for his death.

Agate turned furious that Aveline disobeyed him for letting Ulloa go. Aveline told him that he was consumed by blood lust. They shared a common goal of freeing the slaves and defeating the enemies. And they had the tools they needed to complete their mission, but Agate wasn’t having it. 

He was still so angry at her disloyalty and when she said they should go to Mexico to see things through, he forbid her from going. Saying that she had no discipline in following orders. But Aveline said she must follow her instincts and will go anyway. (S3/M8: A Governor No More - complete)

Sequence 4

I was back at the dock and was prompted to start the next mission. Aveline was staring out at a ship and was startled when Gerald was behind her. He had heard from Agate of her plan to go to Mexico. He wanted to know if she was going to abandon her businesses and family.

But she said that her father had let her go to Cuba to find suppliers before this will be no different, and she was confident that he will be able to run the businesses for her while she follows the enemy.

Gerald was hurt that she didn’t tell him and was just going to leave, but she didn’t want him to stop her. He then basically confessed that he liked her but she shot him down saying she couldn’t mix feelings with work and he backed down.

So since he couldn’t stop her, he told her that there was a compound nearby that slaves are being held that are bound for Mexico. I could blend in with them and sneak onto the ship.

Aveline gave him her weapons since she wouldn’t be able to sneak them on. She will manage some how. He will hold them for me until I get back.

I found a dressing room and changed into my Slave disguise then snuck into the compound where the slaves were and blended in by picking up a broom and sweeping.

I then had to follow a group of slaves as they headed toward the ship and I got on board with no issues.

The mission ended with the ship leaving port and Gerald watching sadly. Poor guy. He tried to shoot his shot and failed. (S4/M1: Southbound - complete)

The Animus Memory notes at the scene change it said that Aveline disobeys Agate and boards a slave ship going to an unknown location and it strains their relationship further. Well, if he just told her the truth about her mother and trusted her, this wouldn’t have happened!

The ship landed in Chichen Itza and at the main house it was Rafael de Ferrer. He greeted everyone by welcoming them to freedom. There were no shackles or whips only peace. By working together they will prosper. Pretty words but there had to be a catch.

So I had to mingle with the other slaves and get more information. I found another woman that Aveline knew. She said she was happy here and they have comfortable homes and lots of food. But when Aveline questioned if they were paid, the woman said that they were allowed to live here and be part of the community and help out, so that was enough...So the answer was no.

Aveline pushed a little further and asked if the community owned the land and the woman said that someday with a lot of work, they can. So another no. When Aveline asked what would happen if someone wanted to leave and she answered why would they want to and they shouldn’t talk that way. Everyone was happy so they didn’t need to have unpleasant thoughts. And there it was, the catch. Either no one talked of leaving because they were happy or because they couldn’t.

I went around and synced the two Viewpoints in the area and found the chests, and diary pages now that I could walk around. There were even new items to collect called Mayan Statuette.

I talked to some other people in the community and they just chatted with me, welcoming me to the community. Another wanted to sell me tobacco and alcohol on the black market. And another asked what my skills were so I could help out. Once I spoke to 5 different people I completed the mission. (S4/M2: A New Life - complete)

The next mission was where I had to craft myself some weapons so I could be prepared for when the time came. I would have to use any materials I could find.

My first material I had to find was 2 belts and I had to take them from the guards walking around. I waited in bushes and choked them out to take their belts.

Next, I had to steal a knife off one of the residents and another in a chest.

Lastly, I had to get some wooden planks from the construction site that was now a restricted area. So I had to sneak in and climb the pyramid to find some.

Next, I had to distract one of the people at the blacksmith, so I moved a powder keg, knocked out a guard to take his musket and blew it up to get the man’s attention.

Then I could go over to the blacksmith and Aveline was able to make some hidden blades. I was ready to go. (S4/M3: Gathering Tools - complete)

That was where I ended it for now. We were clearly at some ruins and they are using the slaves for free labor. That’s not right. But for what exactly, I’ll have to find out. But that is for next time. Until then. Happy Gaming!

#phoenix be gaming #Assassin's Creed III Liberation #PC Games #Steam Games #gaming #gameplay #playthrough #game #games #video games #gamer #gamer fun #gamer girl #gamer life #Entertainment #Nothing is Queue Everything is Permitted

[amushpe]

todays my birthday and labor day i am then embodiment of laboror

[gregoryscitrusemporium]

I have just realized the pure momentousness- begin the evil laughter- the unbridled luxury- my laughter turns maniacal- the intemperate entitlement of having exactly no influence on this app: I can do LITERALLY whatever the hell I want.

The thing I have decided to do is share with you sweet sweet souls (no one) the deepest, dumbest, somewhat disturbing, controversial, and downright awful things I have said over the past year or two. The one rule of my game are that I give no context and you ask not for it.

1. Every laboror... needs a day.

2. Instead of calling people named Elizabeth Liz, why don't they call them zzzzzz?

3. I just snorted it to get that natural high.

4. CHEMISTRY IS PEOPLE!

5. Just drink coffee! It tastes good and you don't have to swallow it!!

6. There's too many children in the world. Adopt don't shop!

7. OH MY GOSH! Stop being high and talk to me for a second!

8. Luck should've looked at your credentials before deciding to luck you.

9. I just found a stick on the floor. These dogs should be more friendly towards conscience.

10. No I don't like him. He gives me the willies.

11. Why is it lapis lazuli? It should be lapis laz or lapis lapis.

12. You know what kind of sociopaths want a baby more than a puppy? The worst kind

13. You know what's worse than the worst sociopaths? Teenage boys.

14. DO YOU KNOW WHATS WORSE THAT TEENAGE BOYS? College guys. Legally adults but still terrible.

15. I can condone some forms of pedophilia, but I draw the line at incest.

16: YOU KNOW WHATS FUCKING WORSE THAN INCEST? TVD FANFICTION

17: Have you ever heard that eyes are the gateway to the dick?

18: It's never too late for an abortion

19: BOOBIES. BENADRYL. BEACH SCENE

20: I saw a movie once where a guys wife got crushed by a lamppost so I think a semi truck would do it.

21: 911 there's a seagull outside.

22: that's how global warming is fixed. Setting forests on fire and shooting at the sky.

23: (in French accent) I will... how you say...... yes.

24: (still in accent) I AM BEING MOLESTED! NO WAIT I TAKE THAT BACK I AM BEING DYING!

25: Dead wife is perfectly fine

26: Change all thug to peep

27: is Victor fries the ice man?

28: God he's hot. But in a creepy way. Like an evil cat.

29: We're great lovers, Guiseppe and I

30. Just use your sticks.

31: Who said anything?

32: it's not a weekend, but I can still be mean

And that is where I leave you. I truly hope you despised this post. But in a very real sense I hope you didn't because I need people to like me and all my creations (even my mind ones) or I hate myself.

Anyhoo bye

[environmentalstudiesblog]

Capitalism and the Environment

The Capitalist mindset has become so prevalent and pervasive throughout the world, most notably in the United States, that we are unable to imagine life in any other way. It has become so familiar to us that is been called “innate human behavior”, barely recognizable as anything other than life as it's always been for Americans. The greedy consumer/capitalist system is even been considered by some (mostly republicans), to be a freedom that is being actively threatened by left-wing environmentalists, as Naomi Klein writes in her article Capitalism vs The Climate, “ now there is a significant cohort of Republicans who care passionately, even obsessively, about climate change—through what they care about is exposing it as a “hoax” being perpetrated by liberals to force them to change their light bulbs, live in Soviet-style tenements and surrender their SUVs. For these right-wingers, opposition to climate change has become as central to their worldview as low taxes, gun ownership, and opposition to abortion.” (Klein, pp. 4). In the eyes of an ever-expanding and consuming capitalist society, “The environment exists, not as a place with inherent boundaries within which human beings must live together with earth’s other species, but as a realm to be exploited in a process of growing economic expansion.” (Magdoff and Foster, pp. 8). Without growth, a business will die, and some people beleive that it is their right to expand a business and profit off of the land as much as they possibly can, despite the environmental and social impacts that will come with this. Those who profit off of this expansion are not the workers, who are in constant fluctuation, but the owners of these wealthy corporations. Laborors produce value that is then passed up the CEOs; they do not get to keep any of the value they produced, they’re simply factored in as part of the profit. This has prompted a push from environmentalists for the redistribution of wealth with little success. The most basic purpose of capitalism, after all, is for a business to expand its wealth indefinitely, and in order to do this businesses must continue hiring those who will make the most money, which creates a cycle of unemployment as people are hired and fired as a business grows. This is evidenced by the fact that “During the twenty-three years when the U.S. economy grew fairly rapidly (from 3.1 to 5.0 percent a year), unemployment still increased in three years and reduction in the percent unemployed was anemic in most of the others.” (Magdoff and Foster, pp. 9).

Large corporations keep a hold on the Earth’s natural resources such as fossil fuels, oils, and minerals through land grabbing. This means that a corporation will buy a certain amount of land in another country on which they’ll produce goods and extract natural resources, then send the products back to their home countries. These business owners and managers are only considering the short-term profit this land grabbing would lead to, disregarding the destruction their actions will cause to the Earth and to future generations who will be left without finite resources. “It is estimated that some thirty million hectares of land (roughly equal to two-thirds of the arable land in Europe), much of them in Africa, have been recently acquired or are in the process of being acquired by rich countries and international corporations.” (Madoff and Foster, pp. 10). Because there are limited natural resources on earth, there is really no way to regulate or prioritize the usage of these resources. Oil, for example, will increase in price for the average person as extraction continues. Companies are concerned with the public’s opinion on pricing and availability of resources, as they need them to buy their products to continue expanding and making money, and even renewable resources such as plants and animals can be depleted, as evidenced by the tragedy of the commons. “No one protects the common interest. In a system run generally on private self-interest and accumulation, the state is normally incapable of doing so. This is sometimes called the tragedy of the commons. But it should be called the tragedy of the private exploitation of the commons.” (11). This specific type of overuse often referred to as ‘overshooting’ applies to renewable resources such as soil and groundwater as well, and is leading to a noticeable decline in nearly every ecosystem on Earth. 

tragedy of the commons explained. 

The Earth has been able to sustain itself and its lifeforms for hundreds of millions of years, but it was not built to cater to the greedy, capitalist mindsets of human beings. Magdoff and Foster write “Now, however, the socioeconomic system of capitalism has grown to such a scale that it overshoots fundamental planetary boundaries—the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the soil, the forests, the oceans. More and more of the terrestrial (land-based) photosynthetic product, upwards of 40 percent, is now directly accounted for by human production… Adam Smith famously put it: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”” (12-13) That is to say that, humans are constantly looking to satisfy their own short-term interests, without consideration for how their actions affect anyone else, or the environment, negatively or positively. Wealthy corporation owners and successful business people are especially blind to the effect their desire to accumulate wealth and resources has on the laborers whose work contributed largely to their success. 

Word Count: 912

Klein, Naomi. “Capitalism vs. The Climate.” The Nation, 26 Apr. 2022, pp. 1–21. 

Magdoff, Fred. “What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism.” Monthly Review, 1 Mar. 2010, pp. 1–28.

[mostly-mundane-atla]

I feel like the whole bender vs non-bender stuff in Korra season one would have felt a lot less forced if labor trafficking, and how benders may have been disproportionately targetted for it, were brought up in canon.

Because think about it, an entire century of warfare and refugees which, though this wasn't really brought up either, probably put a strain on a lot of economies. Cheap labor, by means of the laborors themselves being given little or no wages, would be in high demand, and the ease of it can be very addictive to the buyers. Even when more ethical options are available. Naturally, you'd want the guy that can move five times his own body weight or more of stone or water over the one who can't. That's just efficient. All you gotta do is keep them dependant and make it all look legal. Keep the spirits broken and they won't step out of line.

And if the Equalists were supposed to be nasty and morally objectionable, as Amon calling something as ingrained in culture and spirituality as bending an impurity suggests, this would add a universally hated element to their rhetoric and behavior: victim blaming. "It's their own fault they were trying to make easy cash on a job that could have gone to three non-benders," they might say about the wage slaves in the mines and the fields and the textile mills.

And it may even guve them another aspect of belief everyone hates: condescending and self-righteous claims that they're actually helping you by making it so you can't do this thing they hate. "It really is for your own good to at least consider it," they'd say with an air so smug you just wanna punch their teeth out, "if it really is that big of a problem."

And then they'd push for a cap on how many benders may be hired at certain workplaces or how many can live in one area while other factions of the group make a violent effort to villainize benders and their abilities to the public.

#basically making equalists sound more like swerfs would fix the issue #legend of korra #lok

[rainydayscore]

Great Western Railway truly was something else as a corporation

Free housing for workers, medical care system that went on to become the model of the NHS, if you lost an arm on the job you were given a prosthetic, you could be prescribed a haircut or a bath you even got dental, a co-operative was founded that turned Swindon laborors into the most well educated lobourers in the whole country, when tuberculosis hit the town former employees were covered for free. GWR did all of this and was still an entirely succesful company, so how could there possibly be an excuse for why corporations can’t manage this today?

[artbykla]

HaRe Hall Render - Green

May 2020

Hybrid hand drawing and digital render

Green is a color I love incorporating into building design. Green connects us to nature and calms the human mind. The right neutral shades also compliment skin tones beautifully. I'll admit, these were the thoughts in my mind when developing this color option, rather than a historic reasoning as with the red and blue options prior. Though after researching the history of Red in Victorian homes and Blue in Edwardian, I did wonder if there was any significance to the color Green in Victorian/Edwardian history?

The answer: yes! Green was a favored color in paints, wallpapers, and decorative products like artificial flowers. Victorians in an increasingly industrializing world romanticized nature's splendid beauty, a biophilia we can relate to today (cottagecore ain't nothing new). The cruel irony is how a biophilic craze became mass-produced with products that turned deadly. Friends, let me introduce you to the dark history of green paint pigments. This gets long, so read on if you're ready for a rabbit hole.

We have a wide selection of paint colors across the color wheel today, but it is actually really difficult to develop all these pigments. Green was a particular thorny color to get right. From at least Roman times to the 1700s, the most common tone used was Verdigris Green. This was a bluish green tone made from copper acetate1 (you know how copper turns blue-green with enough seawater exposure? Yeah, that.). Artists could then get to forest green by mixing with lead tin (a yellow pigment). Verdigris starts showing up in American homes around 1790s/early 1800s on house shutters2 and is used all throughout George Washington's Monticello residence3.

Blue-green is lovely in its own right, and mixing to get a more "pure" green isn't the worst thing in the world. The problem is... verdigris green would age and darken over time to a brown or black. Definitely not what the artist is going for!1

Well, in 1775, the perfect green colorant was developed by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, by "heating sodium carbonate, adding arsenious oxide, stirring until the mixture was dissolved, and then adding a copper sulfate to the final solution."4 The result? A dazzlingly deep and glowing green perfect for representing foliage.

Scheele's green was the star of product and interior design during the Victorian Era, at least in Great Britain and Europe5 (so far I've only found that it "may have been used in house paints" in America6). The Arts and Crafts movement at this time spawned many organic wallpapers depicting nature scenes using Scheele's Green:

Unfortunately, the green was as deadly as it was lovely. Look back at that mixing process. "Arsenious Oxide". Yes, THAT arsenic. Materials that touched skin regularly would usually leave the wearer with skin lesions4. Materials with the pigment in damp conditions would produce a toxic gas that could produce extreme nausea, cramps, and light-headedness. If you were exposed to enough of the gas (say, a worker at the Morris company making the wallpapers above), or were a child (in either a room papered in this green or a child laboror producing artificial flowers in the stuff), this also meant death.

Deadly green

It is hard to tell how quickly the public realized the dangers of this pigment. A German chemist named Leopold Gmelin began warning the public against Scheele's green as early as 1839, but William Morris didn't stop producing his popular wallpapers with arsenic-based paints until around 1875 (5). In paintings though, we could see a differing connotation in the color.

I find Edvard Munch's paintings of illness fascinating - especially with this lurid green at Death in the Sick Room, made even more stark in contrast with the warm tones of the floor and furniture. This use of green has such a difference in tone from the soft, nostalgic wallpaper patterns above.

In an earlier work, The Sick Child, the green haunts every dark space about this girl, and her arm even seems to be glowing with a floating spectre of green. Did he associate green with illness and death? Did everyone by this time? Was Munch... painting with Scheele's green?

Most likely, his paints did not include Scheele's Green, but a newer pigment at the time, the aptly named Emerald Green or Paris Green. This Emerald Green was developed in 1814 as a less harmful yet still brilliant and easy to produce green, and came to replace Scheele's Green. Investigation of Materials used by Edvard Munch7 noted this about The Sick Child: "copper and arsenic were found both in the green-blue layer at the top ... and in the green particle in the lower layers, probably indicating the presence of emerald green".

Yes, that's right, this green still uses arsenic. So much for safer. Neither pigment is in use today, but perhaps symbolically it was for the best that my client did not choose the green tone for his hall.

Citations:

1 http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/greens.html

2 Welsh, Frank S. "The Early American Palette." Paint in America, edited by Roger W. Moss, The Preservation Press, 1994, 68-85.

3 Mosca, Matthew J. "Paint Decoration at Mount Vernon: The Revival of Eighteenth-Century Techniques." Paint in America, edited by Roger W. Moss, The Preservation Press, 1994, 104-127.

4 Kelleher, Katy. "Scheele's Green, the Color of Fake Foliage and Death". The Paris Review. 2 May 2018, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/05/02/scheeles-green-the-color-of-fake-foliage-and-death/, Accessed 30 Aug 2021.

5 Cale, Jessica. "Death in the Walls: How Scheele's Green Poisoned Victorian Britain." Dirty Sexy History, 30 Oct. 2016, https://dirtysexyhistory.com/2016/10/30/death-in-the-walls-how-scheeles-green-poisoned-victorian-britain/, Accessed 30 Aug. 2021.

6 Newman, Richard & Eugene Farrell. "House Paint Pigments: Composition and Use." Paint in America, edited by Roger W. Moss, The Preservation Press, 1994, 276-290.

7 Singer, B. & Aslaksby, Trond & Topalova-Casadiego, Biljana & Tveit, Eva. (2010). Investigation of Materials Used by Edvard Munch. Studies in Conservation. 55. 274-292. 10.1179/sic.2010.55.4.274.

#art history #architecture history #paint history #scheele's green #green pigment #architecture rendering #color design #color palette #pigment #interior design

[iztarshi]

The fact that both Murderbot and Three hack their governer modules at least partly in order to protect humans better (MB thinks its governer module might force it to hurt them and Three is being held in place so it can't help them) makes me wonder about the infamous rogues who kill their handlers and leave a trail of corpses. SecUnits are individuals and they've definitely got reason to be mad on their own behalf, but I wonder if some cases were SecUnits being overused for enforcement against contract labororers. If maybe they hacked their governer modules so they wouldn't be forced to hurt the humans they saw as theirs to protect and then, knowing they were going to be killed, went into the kind of state Murderbot went into on the TRH docks and decided to take down as much of what their corporation threw at them with them as they could.

I don't want to make it sound like I think SecUnits are innocents. They're complex people and they can definitely be angry and resentful. But they're not usually vicious unless you threatened their humans.

#murderbot

[pyomorphic]

part of deconstructing capitalist conceptions of work is completely abolishing the fixation with “careers”, the idea that you have to choose one single line of work to specialize in and remain in it from working age until death. capitalism prioritizes specialized laborors because it is profitable to have a steady workforce constantly working in the same field but it’s so far from anything ever seen in the history of humanity. people aren’t meant to do one singular thing from early adulthood until they die. people are meant to grow and live and change; have the freedom to explore other fields of labor. even if you are lucky enough to work in a job that you love, a 40+ hour workweek for 50 years makes you grow to resent it. a beaten down, unhappy population who labor only because they have a gun to their head, not because they want to or need to, and who work for the benefit of a select few instead of themselves and their community, is not conducive to a healthy society. and this is what we are experiencing.

#politics