#the effects of monopolizing an industry

[mostlysignssomeportents]

General Mills and cheaply bought "dietitians" co-opted the anti-diet movement

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in NEXT THURSDAY (Apr 11) in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroehttps://cockeyed.com/lessons/viagra/viagra.html, then PROVIDENCE, RI (Apr 12), and beyond!

Steve Bannon isn't wrong: for his brand of nihilistic politics to win, all he has to do is "flood the zone with shit," demoralizing people to the point where they no longer even try to learn the truth.

This is really just a more refined, more potent version of the tactical doubt sown by Big Tobacco about whether smoking caused cancer, a playbook later adopted by the fossil fuel industry to sell climate denial. You know Darrell Huff's 1954 classic How To Lie With Statistics? Huff was a Big Tobacco shill (his next book, which wasn't ever published, was How To Lie With Cancer Statistics). His mission wasn't to help you spot statistical malpractice – an actual thing that is an actual problem that you should actually learn to spot. It was to turn you into a nihilist who didn't believe anything could be known:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

Corporations don't need you to believe that their products are beneficial or even non-harmful. They just need you to believe nothing. If you don't know what's true, then why not just do whatever feels good, man? #YOLO!

These bannonfloods of shit are a favored tactic of strongmen and dictators. Their grip on power doesn't depend on their citizens trusting them – it's enough that they trust no one:

http://jonathanstray.com/networked-propaganda-and-counter-propaganda

Bannonflooding is especially beloved of the food industry. Food is essential, monopolized, and incredibly complicated, and many of the most profitable strategies for growing, processing and preparing food are very bad for the people who eat that food. Rather than sacrificing profits, the food industry floods the zone with shit, making it impossible to know what's true, in hopes that we will just eat whatever they're serving:

https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2003460

Now, the "nothing can be known" gambit only works if it's really hard to get at the truth. So it helps that nutrition and diet are very complex subjects, but it helps even more that the nutrition and diet industry are a cesspool of quacks and junk science. This is a "scientific discipline" whose prestigious annual meetings are sponsored (and catered) by McDonald's:

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/05/my-trip-mcdonalds-sponsored-nutritionist-convention/

It's a "science" whose most prominent pitchmen peddle quack nostrums and sue the critics who point out (correctly) that eating foods high in chlorophyll will not "oxygenate your blood" (hint, chlorophyll only makes oxygen in the presence of light, which is notably lacking in your colon):

https://www.badscience.net/2007/02/ms-gillian-mckeith-banned-from-calling-herself-a-doctor/

When the quack-heavy world of nutrition combines with the socially stigmatized world of weight-loss, you get a zone ripe for shitflooding. The majority of Americans are "overweight" (according to a definition that relies on the unscientific idea of BMI) and nearly half of Americans are "obese." These numbers have been climbing steadily since the 1970s, and every diet turns out to be basically bullshit:

https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/what-does-ozepmic-actually-do-with-dr-dhruv-khullar

Notwithstanding the new blockbuster post-Ozempic drugs, we're been through an unbroken 50-year run of more and more of us being fatter and fatter, even as fat stigma increased. Fat people are treated as weak-willed and fundamentally unhealthy, while the most prominent health-risks of being fat are roundly neglected: the mental health effects of being shamed, and the physical risks of having doctors ignore your health complaints, no matter how serious they sound, and blame them on your weight:

https://maintenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/11968083-glorifying-obesity-and-other-myths-about-fat-people

Fat people and their allies have banded together to address these real, urgent harms. The "body acceptance" movement isn't merely about feeling good in your own skin: it's also about fighting discrimination, demanding medical care (beyond "lose some weight") and warning people away from getting on the diet treadmill, which can lead to dangerous eating disorders and permanent weight gain:

https://www.beacon.org/You-Just-Need-to-Lose-Weight-P1853.aspx

Fat stigma is real. The mental health risks of fat-shaming are real. Eating disorders are real. Discrimination against fat people is real. The fact that these things are real doesn't mean that the food industry can't flood the zone with shit, though. On the contrary: the urgency of these issues, combined with the poor regulation of dietitians, makes the "what should you eat" zone perfect for flooding with endless quantities of highly profitable shit.

Perhaps you've gotten some of this shit on you. Have you found yourself watching a video from a dietitian influencer like Cara Harbstreet, Colleen Christensen or Lauren Smith, promoting "health at any size" with hashtags like #DerailTheShame and #AntiDiet? These were paid campaigns sponsored by General Mills, Pepsi, and other multinational, multibillion-dollar corporations.

Writing for The Examination, Sasha Chavkin, Anjali Tsui, Caitlin Gilbert and Anahad O'Connor describe the way that some of the world's largest and most profitable corporations have hijacked a movement where fat people and their allies fight stigma and shame and used it to peddle the lie that their heavily processed, high-calorie food is good for you:

https://www.theexamination.org/articles/as-obesity-rises-big-food-and-dietitians-push-anti-diet-advice

It's a surreal tale. They describe a speech by Amy Cohn, General Mills’ senior manager for nutrition, to an audience at a dietitian's conference, where Cohn "denounced the media for 'pointing the finger at processed foods' and making consumers feel ashamed of their choices." This is some next-level nihilism: rather than railing against the harmful stigma against fat people, Cohn wants us to fight the stigma against Cocoa Puffs.

This message isn't confined to industry conferences. Dietitians with large Tiktok followings like Cara Harbstreet then carry the message out to the public. In Harbstreet's video promoting Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Puffs and Trix, she says, "I will always advocate for fearlessly nourishing meals, including cereal…Because everyone deserves to enjoy food without judgment, especially kids":

https://www.tiktok.com/@streetsmart.rd/video/7298403730989436206

Dietitians, nutritionists and the food industry have always had an uncomfortably close relationship, but the industry's shitflooding kicked into high gear when the FDA proposed rules limiting which foods the industry can promote as "healthy." General Mills, Kelloggs and Post have threatened a First Amendment suit against such a regulation, arguing that they have a free speech right to describe manifestly unhealthy food as "healthy."

The anti-diet movement – again, a legitimate movement aimed at fighting the dangerous junk science behind dieting – has been co-opted by the food industry, who are paying dietitian influencers to say things like "all foods have value" while brandishing packages of Twix and Reese's. In their Examination article, the authors profile people who struggled with their weight, then, after encountering the food industry's paid disinformation, believed that "healthy at any size" meant that it would be unhealthy to avoid highly processed, high calorie food. These people gained large amounts of weight, and found their lives constrained and their health severely compromised.

I've been overweight all my life. I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting when I was 12. I come from a family of overweight people with the chronic illnesses often associated with being fat. This is a subject that's always on my mind. I even wrote a whole novel about the promise and peril of a weight-loss miracle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781429969284/makers

I think the anti-diet movement, and its associated ideas like body acceptance and healthy at every size, are enormously positive developments and hugely important. It's because I value these ideas that I'm so disgusted with Big Food and its cynical decision to flood the zone with shit. It's also why I'm so furious with dietitians and nutritionists for failing to self-regulate and become a real profession, the kind that censures and denounces quacks and shills.

I have complicated feelings about Ozempic and its successors, but even if these prove to be effective and safe in the long term, and even if we rein in the rapacious pharma companies so that they no longer sell a $5 product for $1000, I would still want dietary science to clean up its act:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2816824

I'm not a nihilist. I think we can use science to discover truths – about ourselves and our world. I want to know those truths, and I think they can be known. The only people who benefit from convincing you that the truth is unknowable are the people who want to lie to you.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/05/corrupt-for-cocoa-puffs/#flood-the-zone-with-shit

#pluralistic #corruption #nutrition #food #diets #dieticians #nutritionists #junk science #junk food #astroturf #fat acceptance #fatphobia #health #nihilism #steve bannon #flood the zone with shit #general mills #dietitians

[robertreich]

How Amazon Is Ripping You Off

Shopping on Amazon? Stop! Watch this first.

Amazon is the world’s biggest online retailer. This one single juggernaut of a company is responsible for nearly 40% of all online sales in America. In an FTC lawsuit, they’re accused of using their mammoth size, and consumers’ dependence on them, to artificially jack up prices as high as possible, while prohibiting sellers on Amazon from charging lower prices anywhere else.

They’re accused of using a secret algorithm, codenamed "Project Nessie," to charge customers an estimated extra $1 billion dollars,

If this isn’t an abuse of power that hurts consumers, what is? So much for all of those “prime” deals you thought you were getting.

Project Nessie isn’t the only trick Amazon has been accused of using to exert its hulking dominance over the online retail industry — leading to higher prices for you.

Much of the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit centers around the treatment of independent merchants who sell items on Amazon’s online superstore — accounting for 60 percent of Amazon's sales.

Amazon allegedly uses strongarm tactics that force these sellers to keep their prices higher than they need to be. Like barring them from selling products for significantly less at other stores — or else risk being hidden in Amazon’s search results or having their sales stopped entirely.

And Amazon is accused of engaging in pay-to-play schemes and charging merchants excessive fees that end up costing you even more.

Independent sellers are effectively forced to pay Amazon to advertise their products prominently in search results. If they don’t fork over cash, then their products get buried underneath products of companies who do. This hurts sellers but also harms shoppers who have to parse through less relevant products that may be more expensive or lower quality.

And to be eligible for the coveted “Prime” badge on their items — which is considered crucial for competing on the platform — independent sellers are pushed into paying Amazon for additional services like warehousing and shipping, even if they could get those services cheaper elsewhere. If sellers forgo trying to qualify for Prime, their goods apparently become harder for customers to find.

When all of these extra fees are added up, Amazon takes around a 50 percent cut of each sale made by a third party. It’s projected that Amazon will earn around $125 billion from collecting fees in the U.S. in 2023, most of which get passed on to you.

By charging all of these extra fees and stifling independent companies from selling their products for less elsewhere, Amazon is using its dominance to essentially set prices for all consumers across the internet.

And when you combine Amazon’s control of ecommerce with all of the other industries it has entered by gobbling up companies — such as Whole Foods, One Medical, and MGM — you’re left with a behemoth that simply has too much power.

This is all part of a much larger problem of growing corporate dominance in America. In over 75% of U.S. industries, fewer companies now control more of their markets than they did twenty years ago.

The lack of competition and consumer choice has resulted in all of us paying more for goods because corporations like Amazon can raise their prices with impunity. By one estimate, corporate concentration has cost the typical American household $5,000 a year more than they would have spent if markets were truly competitive.

This power isn’t just being used to siphon more money from you. A giant corporation has the power to bust unions, keep workers’ wages low, and funnel money into our political system.

It’s a vicious cycle, making giant corporations more and more powerful.

But under the Biden administration, the government is making a strong effort to revive antitrust law and use its power to reign in big corporations that have grown too powerful.

We must stop the monopolization of America. This FTC lawsuit against Amazon is a great start.

#youtube #Amazon #Video #Politics #shopping #Joe Biden #monopoly

[txttletale]

"we should boycott the use of this capital good, seeing as how it's being monopolized."

"but if it were socialist we wouldn't have to boycott it. it's not inherently evil."

[nothing happens]

capital is not a good, it is a social relation to the means of production.

capital cannot be boycotted, only consumer goods can.

boycotts (against consumer goods) are executed in an organized, targeted fashion with specific goals. otherwise it's not a boycott, it's just a consumer choice.

needless to say there exists no organized boycott campaign on AI art. even if it did, it would not be very useful because AI companies make money by licensing their API to other companies and end users are not a primary source of direct revenue for them.

there exists no monopoly on art or AI art -- not only can you use many different image generation services but you can download stable diffusion right now and make your own. you can also still Draw. there exists no monopoly here on anything

where there has been (effective, organized action) against the use of AI technology to immiserate workers (not the technology itself, only specific applications by employers) in the form of industrial action (e.g. the AI elements of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike demands, which were to be clear not the primary causes of those strikes) it has, shockingly, worked, and far more than "nothing" has happened, & it was good and awesome and should happen more

i'm not telling anyone not to take effective industrial action to secure labour protections from new technologies obvsies.

ceterum censeo IP law esse delendam

#ask

[wauzmons]

We have been Betrayed, Backstabbed, Bamboozled: The Future of Elysian Eclipse

So, if you are active on our Discord, you know that EE is made in the Unity Engine and the CEO just decided to massively fuck over all the devs who are using it...

Callum Upton made a great video explaining the situation:

But it gets even worse!

Unity since defended themselves, saying that these fees are only affecting 10% of their customers, because of the $200k and $1m thresholds, so Indie devs don't have to worry about that.

…which isn't true:

Unity Plus

They aren't only introducing these fees but also changed the regular pricing plans! They just removed "Unity Plus" which is the lowest tier and costs about $50/month per dev with taxes. This is what most indies use. The next higher tier costs QUADROUPLE that amount and is also required to remove the universally loathed "made with Unity" splash screen. Oh! And if you have the personal tier, you won't be able to use Unity offline anymore! It now needs to do a license check every 3 days to function!

Unity's Ad Service

The fees will hit devs that do free-to-play mobile stuff especially hard, since they still have to pay the fees even when the players don't buy anything, meaning they could end up owing Unity more than they make in income. But what's this? If you use Unity's advertising service for your game, you will get a discount on the fees! The majority of mobile games run on Unity, meaning they are trying to monopolize the mobile ad market with this!

Publishers

Elysian Eclipse has caught the interest of a really big studio and publisher, who is considering to handle the marketing and publishing for the game. They are obviously planning to make the game come out big with sales, going beyond Unity's thresholds. But since the game is made in Unity, they probably now have to reconsider that carefully, since that would cause a massive amount of fees with Unity's new pricing model. So any game using Unity is now an instant turn-off for publishers, also massively hurting indie devs who don't reach that income threshold yet.

What will happen now?

So, Unity can't be trusted anymore and should be seen as a major threat to us and the gaming industry. Even if they walk back on some of these decisions, what has been said, has been said. They showed that they don't care about destroying thousands of games, as long as it nets them profit, so who knows what they are going to do next?

I will pause the development of Elysian Eclipse and release the Patreon demo, including all the prototypes like Aquatic Stage for free today. I canceled my subscription and it will run out next year, so Unity isn't getting a single cent from my games anymore.

Unreal Eclipse?

In the meantime I'll focus on improving my C++ skills, so I can work more effectively in Unreal Engine 5. Unreal is the current industry leader, offering much better solutions for graphics and performance for 3D games. It is also partially open source and completely free until you reach $1 million in revenue.

It is unlikely that I will be able to just translate the game from C# to C++ and port it over, since it is using a lot of engine-specific features. This basically means, we will start from scratch... I can't tell yet how much work this will be or in what ways the game will change.

But one thing, you can always be certain of: I will NEVER BETRAY MY DREAM. I will finish this project, no matter who or what stands in my way. I hope you will continue to support me on this journey.

That being said,

FUCK JOHN RICCITIELLO!!

Fucking cunt.

#elysian eclipse #spore #gamedev #indie games #unity #unity engine #fuck unity #unreal engine #youtube

[etaleah]

All the fuckery with Warner Bros losing money because of what they did to HBO Max and Netflix losing a million subscribers after canceling beloved shows makes me think streaming companies have genuinely forgotten that their products are luxuries and not necessities, which means they don’t have the same chokehold over their customers that other corporations do.

If an airline or an internet company like Comcast tells its customers to fuck off, there may not be much the customers can do about it since internet and air travel have become so essential to modern life and these companies have so effectively monopolized their industries that there’s rarely, if ever, another option. If a healthcare company tells its customers to fuck off, there’s even less the customer can do since healthcare can quite literally mean the difference between life and death.

But a streaming service? We don’t need that. And we can usually find whatever media we want to watch some other way. Or we can just find something else to watch, even if it’s not what we originally wanted. It’s the one sector of society where you really can vote with your wallet.

If an entertainment company tells its customers to fuck off, they absolutely can. And they’ll take their money with them when they do.

#and then the corporations will be all surprised Pikachu face when that happens #even though it was entirely predictable and they had it coming #my thoughts #streaming #warner bros #hbo max #netflix #social justice

[sadoeuphemist]

There was a script that the artist used when introducing herself to people unaware of her and her occupation, one that she had carefully refined over the last several years. Despite her considerable fame, there had always been the occasional encounters in the semi-anonymity of online interaction, or in person, disguised beneath a baggy, shapeless sweater, and she had taken every opportunity at practice. “I’m doing quite well for myself, actually,” she would say, in response to any reference to poverty, or the economy, or automation, or how impossible it was to get a job these days; and then would immediately undercut that graceless boast with a modest smile and a reference to her humble beginnings: “I’m just grateful I had a lot of practice for my career, having been a starving writer, and all.”

There were those who were well-informed enough to immediately point out the absurdity of what she had said, and from there she would have to go off-script, either acting apologetic over her misleading phrasing, or insisting that she had been perfectly clear, it was they who had misunderstood. But more often than not, the other person would simply swallow her story whole, and ask, with a hopeful, almost desperate gleam in their eye, some variation on the question: “So, there’s money to be had in writing, then?”

This was her occasion, if she so chose, to immediately correct their (entirely reasonable, given her initial remarks) misconceptions and launch into a well-rehearsed diatribe on how creative writing had been among the first industries to go extinct, well before the total automation of the economy; how electronic publishing had gradually pushed print media out of business; how the pivot to video and the monopolization of ad revenue by major tech companies had led to a wave of massive layoffs in the field; how algorithmically-generated clickbait content had proved more effective and gathering and maintaining viewership than carefully crafted human-authored pieces; how predictive text had evolved to comb through the great classics of literature and churn out variations on them at a rate no human being could hope to match; and how even human editorial judgement, the one vital ingredient in separating the wheat from the procedurally-generated chaff, no longer presented an employment opportunity in itself but was instead farmed out to legions of listless readers, given access to what they were told were preview versions of the next bestsellers, leaving likes and dislikes and ratings that fed the great mindless algorithm, ever-refining its content.

Then, it was her greatest hope that her listener, befuddled by this deluge of contradictory information, would retreat back to her earlier words and parrot them back to her, more or less, in protest, saying something along the lines of: “But I thought you said you were a starving writer?”

And to this she would respond, almost graciously: “That’s right. I’m just lucky to have had so much experience with starving.”

Here, she planned to make a flourish with her arm, to call attention to her thin wrists protruding from the sleeves of her sweater, hoping they would reevaluate her gaunt cheeks, her lank brittle hair. She would show them her website, the pictures of her shirtless with her ribs sharply defined through her skin, the knobs of her spine protruding from her back, her legs extending from her underwear at bent angles to her hips, her skeletal limbs furred with the hazy aura of lanugo, her eyes staring out wide and hungry from her skull. She would show them her daily blogs: her painstaking descriptions of the acidic pangs gnawing at her stomach, the sensation of her her body clenching in on itself, the weakness that ran shakily through her veins and hollowed out her bones so that at times she felt as if she might fall and shatter, the countless hallucinatory descriptions of food, conjured up from her memories, or from the scent of it wafting out from a restaurant or food stall, imagining its weight and heft on her tongue as her mouth filled with drool, and then swallowing down her own saliva as if the imagining had flavored her spit with its juices. She would show them the videos of herself openly weeping, clutching her narrow arms, thanking a patron for some scrap or another they had sent her as she took it between her teeth, chewing slowly, face convulsing in paroxysms of gratitude; imploring, begging, exposing herself to a million anonymous eyes, asking for their patronage.

For she was famous, pictures of her gaunt frame reblogged across the internet along with links to her Patreon and GoFundMe, with millions of followers, her starvation amplified to an ever-growing audience. For she was an artist of the one remaining craft that only a human could perform, that to a robot was impossible: to suffer, and to be visible in its suffering.

She supposed that they would hate her afterwards, for the evidence of her runaway success; that they would think her a fraud, undergoing the self-inflicted starvation of a millionaire discontent with luxury. But the physical deterioration of her body would prove itself; and besides, with the economy fully automated and with almost the entirety of the population without a job, what use was money, then, with no one earning it to spend and near none of it in circulation? Her vast fortune was just another incrementing number on her screen, nothing more, along with her follower count and likes and shares and reblogs, the vast majority of which surely came from the bots themselves, vastly superior as they were in social media engagement than human beings.

Despite the resonant symbolism, at this point, nearing the ending, her script suffered considerably from vagueness, as her conversations seldom extended this far. To her dismay, it was considerably harder to steer a dialogue when you weren’t controlling both sides, and the conversation would inevitably become distracted with irrelevancies, arguments, and worst of all, expressions of uncritical sympathetic pity that made it impossible to continue on.

And so, with every chance she got, the artist would rehearse the script in her head, editing, revising, in between the blog posts and videos and photographs, not stopping to eat, beginning shakily the conversation even as her voice faltered and her throat closed up, saying “I’m doing quite well for myself, actually” at the slightest provocation; all the while growing thinner, thinner, thinner until she was nearly two-dimensional, an image invoked by words scrawled across the screen, transforming herself into art.

Originally posted January 31st, 2019

#fiction #repost #eating disorders

[cock-holliday]

My issues with AI and my irritation with leftists who fetishize the Industrial Revolution are rooted in a very similar place. Technology is a morally neutral tool. The problems with it are when it automates human suffering and exploitation, and comes at the cost of planet devastation.

Capitalism thrives on exploitation, creating scarcity, and endlessly pillaging for resources. A lot of leftist solutions focus only on the human exploitation (to a point) and do not also effectively resolve the destruction the system calls for. Equal share in an industry that poisons the earth is not liberation.

Degrowth is essential. Land back is essential. Changing our relationship to land and resources and utilizing green alternatives is essential. But this doesn’t mean doing away with any and all advancement. This is based in the idea that it HAS to come from exploitation and environmental destruction—that’s such a capitalist lie that the “only way” to have things is through this destruction.

We have alternative sources of energy that are forced out of realization because they are not profitable for corporations monopolizing these industries. We have alternative methods of materials that recycle effectively or naturally decompose, of cost effective sturdy building materials that don’t depend on rapidly vanishing resources, and of so much else in our daily lives. We have alternative systems available to us that threaten the ability of the rich and powerful to maintain a chokehold of authority.

A rejection of our current system is not a rejection of all modern concepts, simply the methods of achieving them, and the impact on those within these communities, as well as the world we live in.

#anarchism

[kakodaimones]

Born in late 1912, died in early 1953 at age 40.

Rural California ranch kid, sees a lot of slaughtered cattle from a young age. It has... effects on him fairly quickly.

Becomes obsessed with radio around the time the Depression hits (including a certain syndicated host). Discovers a talent for tinkering with machines around the same time. Enamored with technological innovations and "great men" in art and industry.

Spends most of the 1930s barely making it as a writer - mostly ad copy mixed with scifi pulp stories. Frustrated over his lack of recognition, turns into a burning resentment for the "herd."

Enlists and contributes to making Pacific Front propaganda during World War II for the Navy. Serves for around four years. Attracted to servicemen who engage in particularly brutal acts during the war, but doesn't dare act on it. (Lifetime bachelor).

Uses the GI Bill to get himself an engineering degree, moves on to working at RCA. On the side, he sells "self-help" books that are transparently a pyramid scheme. He actually develops a small following among the people who take his advice to heart - but it's really just a scheme to monopolize their money and attention.

Cause of death... undetermined by the mun at the moment. But regardless, he was intimately familiar with the workings of color television right in time to be the first to bring it to Hell.

#{vox; ic}「we can’t rewind」 #{headcanons}「body count in the hundreds」

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 17, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

Although few Americans paid much attention at the time, the events of February 18, 2014, in Ukraine would turn out to be a linchpin in how the United States ended up where it is a decade later. 

On that day ten years ago, after months of what started as peaceful protests, Ukrainians occupied government buildings and marched on parliament to remove Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych from office. After the escalating violence resulted in many civilian casualties, Yanukovych fled to Russia, and the Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, returned power to Ukraine’s constitution.

The ouster of Yanukovych meant that American political consultant Paul Manafort was out of a job. 

Manafort had worked with Yanukovych since 2004. In that year, the Russian-backed politician appeared to have won the presidency of Ukraine. But Yanukovych was rumored to have ties to organized crime, and the election was full of fraud, including the poisoning of a key rival who wanted to break ties with Russia and align Ukraine with Europe. The U.S. government and other international observers did not recognize the election results, while Russia’s president Vladimir Putin congratulated Yanukovych even before the results were officially announced. 

The government voided the election and called for a do-over.  

To rehabilitate his reputation, Yanukovych turned to Manafort, who was already working for a young Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska worried that Ukraine would break free of Russian influence and was eager to prove useful to Vladimir Putin. At the time, Putin was trying to consolidate power in Russia, where oligarchs were monopolizing formerly publicly held industries and replacing the region’s communist leaders. In 2004, American journalist Paul Klebnikov, the chief editor of Forbes in Russia, was murdered as he tried to call attention to what the oligarchs were doing.  

With Manafort’s help, Yanukovych finally won the presidency in 2010 and began to turn Ukraine toward Russia. In November 2013, Yanukovych suddenly reversed Ukraine’s course toward cooperation with the European Union, refusing to sign a trade agreement and instead taking a $3 billion loan from Russia. Ukrainian students protested the decision, and the anger spread quickly. In 2014, after months of popular protests, Ukrainians ousted Yanukovych from power and he fled to Russia.  

Manafort, who had borrowed money from Deripaska and still owed him about $17 million, had lost his main source of income. 

Shortly after Yanukovych’s ouster, Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimea and annexed it, prompting the United States and the European Union to impose economic sanctions on Russia itself and also on specific Russian businesses and oligarchs, prohibiting them from doing business in U.S. territories. These sanctions were intended to weaken Russia and froze the assets of key Russian oligarchs. 

By 2016, Manafort’s longtime friend and business partner Roger Stone—they had both worked on Richard Nixon’s 1972 campaign—was advising Trump’s floundering presidential campaign, and Manafort was happy to step in to help remake it. He did not take a salary but reached out to Deripaska through one of his Ukrainian business partners, Konstantin Kilimnik, immediately after landing the job, asking him, “How do we use to get whole? Has OVD [Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska] operation seen?” 

Manafort began as an advisor to the Trump campaign in March 2016 and became the chairman in late June.  

Thanks to journalist Jim Rutenberg, who pulled together testimony given both to the Mueller investigation and the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, transcripts from the impeachment hearings, and recent memoirs, we now know that in 2016, Russian operatives presented Manafort a plan “for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded, and -directed ‘separatists’ were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead.” 

In exchange for weakening NATO, undermining the U.S. stance in favor of Ukraine in its attempt to throw off the Russians who had invaded in 2014, and removing U.S. sanctions from Russian entities, Russian operatives were willing to help Trump win the White House. The Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee in 2020 established that Manafort’s Ukrainian business partner Kilimnik, whom it described as a “Russian intelligence officer,” acted as a liaison between Manafort and Deripaska while Manafort ran Trump’s campaign. 

Now, ten years later, Putin has invaded Ukraine in an effort that when it began looked much like the one his operatives suggested to Manafort in 2016, Trump has said he would “encourage Russia to do whatever they hell they want” to NATO allies that don’t commit 2% of their gross domestic product to their militaries, and Trump MAGA Republicans are refusing to pass a measure to support Ukraine in its effort to throw off Russia’s invasion. 

The day after the violence of February 18, 2014, in Ukraine, then–vice president Joe Biden called Yanukovych to “express grave concern regarding the crisis on the streets” and to urge him “to pull back government forces and to exercise maximum restraint.”  

Ten years later, Russia has been at open war with Ukraine for nearly two years and has just regained control of the key town of Avdiivka because Ukrainian troops lack ammunition. President Joe Biden is warning MAGA Republicans that “[t]he failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.”

“History is watching,” he said.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#letters from an american #heather cox richardson #Putin #Russia #War in Ukraine #disinformation #Manafort #Russia and Trump #american politics #election 2024 #MAGA collusion with Russia #anti-american

[argyrocratie]

"Standard monopoly, in the microeconomic sense, is when one firm in a market secures a dominant position in supplying a particular good. Radical monopoly, in contrast, is when an entire institutional complex makes the type of good itself artificially necessary in order to exist and crowds out alternatives. “Radical monopoly imposes compulsory consumption and thereby restricts personal autonomy. It constitutes a special kind of social control because it is enforced by means of the imposed consumption of a standard product that only large institutions can provide.”

I use the term “radical monopoly” to designate… the substitution of an industrial product or a professional service for a useful activity in which people engage or would like to engage. A radical monopoly paralyzes autonomous action in favor of professional deliveries.

The classic example of radical monopoly is car culture and its attendant urban sprawl.

Cars can thus monopolize traffic. They can shape a city into their image — practically ruling out locomotion on foot or by bicycle in Los Angeles…. That motor traffic curtails the right to walk, not that more people drive Chevies than Fords, constitutes radical monopoly…. [T]he radical monopoly cars establish is destructive in a special way. Cars create distance…. They drive wedges of highways into populated areas, and then extort tolls on the bridge over the remoteness between people that was manufactured for their sake. This monopoly over land turns space into car fodder. It destroys the environment for feet and bicycles. …A radical monopoly paralyzes autonomous action in favor of professional deliveries. The more completely vehicles dislocate people, the more traffic managers will be needed, and the more powerless people will be to walk home.

Another example is how the institutional complex around the building industry — contracting firms, materials production, building codes, etc. — has reinforced its own power at the expense of convivial alternatives. Favelas and shantytowns — often displaying a high degree of craftsmanship and technical skill — exist on the outskirts of cities all over the Global South (Colin Ward has a considerable body of work on the tradition of self-built housing in the West, as well). It’s entirely feasible, technically, to produce construction materials conducive to self-built housing by amateurs. “Components for new houses and utilities could be made very cheaply and designed for self-assembly.” Not only do local building codes prohibit such construction as unsafe, but they also prohibit competitive pressure for even professional contracting firms to adopt cheaper, vernacular building techniques using locally sourced material, by codifying conventional methods into law.

The problem of radical monopoly is exacerbated by a shared institutional culture that can imagine no solution to the negative effects of radical monopoly but to intensify the scale of the monopoly. With entire sincerity, for the most part, the managerial elites in a given policy area which suffers from the pathologies of radical monopoly are conditioned to perceive as “extreme” any proposed solution that cannot be carried out within the existing institutional framework, by people like themselves. That is, “the institution has come to define the purpose.” The only cure for a managerial bureaucracy’s mismanagement is to give it more resources and control. The standard approach of a managerial bureaucracy is to “solve a crisis by escalation.” Reforms which are carried out within the framework of radical monopoly “escalate what they are meant to eliminate.”[31]

-Kevin Carson, "The Thought of Ivan Illich: A Libertarian Analysis"

#kevin carson #ivan illich

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Monopolizing turds

Update 31 May 2023: an earlier edition of this article identified the price of Rebyota as $20,000; this was the rumored price prior to Rebyota’s release in December  2022, when Stephen Skolnick wrote the article I referenced. When Rebyota was actually released in 2023, the average wholesale price (AWP) was $10,800. Thanks to Benjamin Jolley for catching this error, and to Stephen Skolnick for getting to the bottom of it.

It’s been ten years — to the day! — since I first started writing about the bizarre, amazing world of turd transplants, in which a sick person receives a microbiotic infusion in the form of some processed poop from a healthy person:

https://web.archive.org/web/20130608030455/http://blogs.plos.org/publichealth/2013/05/29/why-diy-fecal-transplants-are-a-thing-and-the-fda-is-only-part-of-the-reason/

Gut biomes are one of those understudied, poorly understood medical areas that are both very promising and also full of sketchy medical claims from “supplement” companies, influencers, quacks and grifters. But in the decade since I first started tracking turd transplants (formally called “Fecal Microbiota Transplants” or FMTs), a growing body of sound science has emerged on the subject.

One thing that’s increasingly undeniable is that the composition of your microbial nation is related in significant ways to both your physical and mental health. What’s more, as antibiotic resistant “super bugs” proliferate, FMTs are becoming increasingly central to treating dangerous gut infections that otherwise stand a high chance of killing you.

“Eat Shit and Prosper” is Stephen Skolnick’s delightfully named newsletter about poop and health science. Skolnick is a physicist by training, but has a long history of collaboration with Openbiome, a nonprofit that coordinates between doctors, patients and donors to provide safe FMTs:

https://stephenskolnick.substack.com/

In an edition of Eat Shit from last December, Skolnick recounts the amazing history and dismaying future of FMTs. In 2013, the FDA announced it would regulate FMTs as “Investigational New Drugs,” which could only be administered as part of a registered clinical trial:

https://stephenskolnick.substack.com/p/a-monopoly-on-poop

At that point, FMTs were already in widespread use by docs to treat otherwise untreatable cases of Clostridioides difficile (C. diff), an antibiotic resistant bacterial infection that literally makes you shit yourself to death. These doctors were in no position to run registered clinical trials, which meant that they would have to stop using the most effective therapy they had for a potentially lethal infection.

Doctors and patients kicked up a fuss, and the FDA walked back its guidance, announcing that it would exercise “discretion” in enforcing its Investigational New Drug rule, giving a pass to docs who were treating C. diff with FMTs:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2013/07/18/2013-17223/guidance-for-industry-enforcement-policy-regarding-investigational-new-drug-requirements-for-use-of

That’s where things have stood for the past decade or so. The “discretion” rule means that patients could still get FMTs, but their insurance wouldn’t cover it. But even if you had cash to pay for an FMT, your doc probably wouldn’t administer it for anything except a C. diff infection, despite the promising signs that FMT can help treat other conditions, and despite the generally safe nature of FMTs.

If your doc did give you an FMT, chances are good that they sourced their poop from Openbiome. Openbiome recruits very healthy people, gets them to poop in a bag, then processes the poop — removing nonbacterial solids, testing it for pathogens, freezing it, portioning it, and sending it to docs. All this is done at cost, and it’s not cheap: $1–2k/treatment, mostly due to cold-chain logistics (the poop is shipped at -80C).

Despite the cost, and despite the limitations on treatment, the Openbiome method has proved very reliable. Indeed, FMTs as a whole are pretty darned safe, with the most common side-effects being transient gas and bloating. In the past decade, there’ve been a total of six “adverse effects” associated with Openbiome’s 5,000+ procedures, all in severely immunocompromised people, and none conclusively linked to the treatment:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016508522003511/pdf

A decade into this system, the FDA has taken the next step forward — only it’s actually a step backwards.

During this intervening decade, a pharma company called Ferring has conducted clinical trials on FMTs and received approval for an FMT product called Rebyota. The process for making Rebyota is effectively identical to the process used by Openbiome: collect poop, remove solids, test for pathogens, add glycerol, freeze and ship.

The main difference between Rebyota and Openbiome’s poop is price. While Openbiome charges $1–2k per treatment, Rebyota charges $10,800

That’s some expensive shit!

Fine. Getting Rebyota through clinical trials means that insurers might start covering it, and perhaps some patients will prefer brand-name poop to open-source poop. But as part of the FDA’s approval of Rebyota, the agency also rescinded its “discretionary enforcement” guidance, making it illegal for docs to source their poop from Openbiome:

https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/enforcement-policy-regarding-investigational-new-drug-requirements-use-fecal-microbiota

For Ferring, this is a monopoly on shit, one that lets them charge patients $10.8k for poop that costs $1–2k to process. The FDA does not claim that this is being done in the name of safety. Instead, an FDA official told Skonick that the goal was to “incentivize innovation without creating an access crisis.”

That is, the FDA changed its guidance and put nonprofit stool banks out of business because it wants to incentivize pharma companies to perform expensive clinical trials, and it believes that these companies won’t pay for trials if they have to compete with the likes of Openbiome, which would make it impossible to charge 900% markups on poop.

Trials are important! Evidence-based medicine is important! But Ferring’s clinical trials didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. FMTs were already the best therapy we had for C. diff. Testing Rebyota against a placebo didn’t tell us anything new — unlike testing Rebyota against the existing therapies, e.g. product from open stool banks.

Such a trial might have given rise to a very different regulatory outcome, because the cure rate reported by Rebyota is much lower than the cure rate from Openbiome’s own interventions:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40265-022-01797-x

That is, using the $1k poop from Openbiome seems to be much more effective than using the $10.8k poop from Ferring. But Openbiome, a nonprofit, hasn’t been able to perform the kind of rigorous — and expensive — clinical trial that Ferring funded.

This points to a significant problem with the FDA’s model. The agency wants good clinical data for the medicines it regulates, as it should, It presumes that the only way to get that data is through granting commercial exclusivity to a for-profit, which ends up costing patients vast sums, and locking many patients out altogether.

This creates all kinds of new dangers. 150,000 people/year in the US contract Recurrent Clostridium difficile Infection (RCdI). FMT increases the cure rate by 20% relative to antibiotics alone. That means that if everyone with RCdI gets a poop transplant, 30,000 extra people will get better. That’s a big number!

For well insured people, Rebyota probably represents a cash-savings — if your insurance covers the $10,800 procedure, you might pay $500 out of pocket, which is far less than the $1–2K you’d pay to get an Openbiome poop transplant. But if you’re uninsured or underinsured, the FDA’s new enforcement rules mean that you’re now on the hook for $10,800.

The FDA did carve out a loophole: if your doc or their hospital are willing to prepare the poop transplant themselves, they can administer that. On the one hand, preparing a poop transplant isn’t that hard — some people do them at home, on their own:

https://web.archive.org/web/20211015060558/https://thepowerofpoop.com/epatients/fecal-transplant-instructions/

But on the other hand, there’s been exactly one death conclusively linked to FMT, and it was from one of these hospital-prepared transplants (the patient had just had a marrow transplant for cancer that wiped out their immune system, and the donor had a novel pathogen that the hospital failed to test for).

So the FDA has created a situation where, if you can’t afford a $10,800 proprietary formulation, your only option is to convince your doc or hospital to prepare their own poop transplant, which will cost less than the $10.8k for Rebyota, but more than the $1–2k from Openbiome, which has all kinds of economies of scale. And if you do manage it, you’ll be getting a procedure that has a much worse safety track-record than the Openbiome process that the FDA just killed.

The FDA has an important role to play here, but as with so many policy questions, how the FDA plays that role depends on things that are far upstream from the agency and its decisions. The choice to fund medical trials through the promise of exclusivity — and with it, extremely high margins — puts the FDA in the position of choosing winners in the marketplace: Ferring wins, Openbiome loses.

Ironically, this is the thing that exclusivity is supposed to prevent. By using profit to incentivize medical research, the FDA is supposed to be recruiting the Invisible Hand as its partner in regulation. But exclusivity is incompatible with the idea of medicine as a public good. The tens (hundreds) of millions that Americans will pay for $10.8k poop transplants from Ferring will add up to far more than it would cost to underwrite clinical trials for an open process like Openbiome’s.

The result: both Americans’ wallets and Americans’ guts suffer.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Hay-on-Wye, Oxford, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/29/oh-shit/#rebyota

[Image ID: A poop emoji wearing a top hat and a monocle, posed against a backdrop of e coli bacteria seen through a high-resolution microscope.]

#pluralistic #stool bank #eat shit and live #pharma #fda #regulatory capture #fecal transplants #microbiomes #rebyota #openbiome #c diff #fmt #fecal microbiota transplant

[robertreich]

Busting the “Paid What You’re Worth” Myth 

You’ve probably heard that everyone is “paid what they’re worth.” Don’t buy it.

According to this mythology, workers at the bottom are “unskilled” and don’t deserve more than what they currently earn.

Minimum wage workers at McDonald’s are paid what they are worth in the so-called “free market.” If they were worth more, they’d earn more.

By the same logic, the CEO of McDonald’s is worth his multi-million dollar compensation package.

The notion that people are paid what they’re “worth” is by now so deeply ingrained in the public consciousness that many who earn very little assume it’s their own fault that they don’t earn more. That they simply lack the skills they need to be paid more.

But there’s no such thing as unskilled workers. Only underpaid workers. Their productivity — that is the value of what they produce — has been growing for decades. The problem is that their wages haven’t kept pace with their productivity.

The “paid what you’re worth” mythology also lures the unsuspecting into thinking nothing can be done to change what people are paid. It’s simply the way the market works.

Meanwhile, according to this same view, CEOs who rake in tens of millions and Wall Street traders who rake in hundreds of millions, are simply being paid what they’re "worth” because that’s what the market has dictated.

Rubbish. The “paid what you’re worth” fairytale ignores power and disregards policies that have made inequality skyrocket. Like the demise of antitrust enforcement, which has given big corporations the power to set prices, make record profits, and reward their CEOs unprecedented compensation. This fairytale ignores the attacks on labor unions that have reduced union membership from over a third of all private-sector workers in the 1950s to just 6 percent today. All of this resulting in a massive shift in power and wealth from workers to owners.

Those at the top justify their staggering wealth, and they’re “worth,” three ways:

The first is trickle-down economics. They claim that their wealth trickles down to everyone else as they invest it and create jobs. Just wait for it… But as we know, wealth at the top has soared for decades and nothing has trickled down.

The second is the “free market.” They talk about market forces beyond their control. But remember, markets are created by rules. These rules don’t exist in nature; they are human creations. The political power of the wealthy has let them change the rules for their own benefit — busting unions, monopolizing industries, and reaping big tax cuts.

The third is the idea that they’re superior human beings. Sure, they may be talented but this doesn’t justify the staggering amount of wealth they are now taking home. Nor does it justify the amount of wealth they will pass down to heirs. The biggest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history will occur over the next 25 years as the richest 1.5% of Americans hand down roughly some $36 trillion dollars to their children and grandchildren. That doesn’t make those heirs superior. It makes them lucky.

The reality is there’s no justification for today’s extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. Or for how little people are paid at the bottom.

The “paid what you’re worth” myth has proven to be a cruelly effective way to put the blame on workers for not getting ahead — while giving the rich and powerful cover to rig the game for their own benefit.

It is distorting our politics, rigging our markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people while millions of Americans struggle to get by.

Don’t fall for it.

#youtube #economics #inequality #workers #unions #video #videos #politics #wealth

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

As we learned in the recent rail union contract negotiations, ruthless profit-seeking has made conditions for railworkers unbearable. It’s also made railroads less efficient. America badly needs a national rail service owned and operated for the public good.

Earlier this year, the federal board charged with overseeing America’s rail network called a hearing to discuss widespread complaints about higher costs and poor service. Predictably enough, rail executives sought to blame the pandemic and labor shortages for the likes of gridlock and supply-chain breakdowns. But the dysfunction on America’s railroads is neither a product of COVID-19 nor the result of nebulous constructs like the so-called “Great Resignation.” As Matthew Buck explained earlier this year in an article for the American Prospect, the single biggest contributors have been corporate monopolism and financialization — both of which contributed to the horrendous working conditions at the center of the recent showdown in Congress.

Thanks in large part to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan–era deregulation, American rail has steadily become more consolidated — the number of major carriers shrinking from forty to just seven between 1980 and the present day. Unsurprisingly, there’s little evidence that this shift has made rail transport any more efficient. It has, however, made the rail business incredibly lucrative. In an effort to wring as much profit from railways as possible, company barons have in turn cut costs, laid off workers, and introduced a host of other changes ostensibly geared to improving the quality of service. Central to this project has been something called “precision scheduled railroading” (PSR), the brainchild of late executive Hunter Harrison. Under PSR, as Buck explains:

"Railroad management’s job is to drive down the 'operating ratio,' or operating expenses as a percentage of revenue. In other words, Wall Street judges railroads’ success based in part on spending less money running the railroad and more on stock buybacks or dividends. Theoretically, focusing on lowering operating ratios pushes railroads to be more efficient, to do more with less. But when railroads have the market power they have today, they can instead 'do less with less,' as shippers and workers put it."

The upshot, in addition to appalling conditions for an ever-diminishing workforce, is that railways — a basic utility relied upon by millions every day for commerce and transport — are now treated more than ever as an asset designed to be milked for profit than a service structured to meet need.

For shareholders, the whole arrangement has worked out brilliantly. As companies like Union Pacific have laid off tens of thousands of workers, revenues have gone through the roof and billions have been paid out through dividends. Measured against more relevant metrics, of course, it’s been a catastrophe: even before the pandemic, both overall productivity and the number of usable track miles were down. When COVID-19 brought with it backlogs, derailments, and higher costs, however, it became glaringly clear that cutbacks to the railways driven by their hyperfinancialization have rendered them a significant weak point in the country’s supply chain.

One lesson in all this is that an enterprise can be profitable — and thus “efficient” in a narrow business sense — without actually working particularly well or operating effectively to service the needs around which it’s ostensibly erected. This is true in most industries, but it has always been particularly applicable in the case of rail. As the late historian Tony Judt once explained, the very idea of competitive or market-based railroads is, for very straightforward reasons, fundamentally incoherent:

"You cannot run trains competitively. Railways — like agriculture or the mail — are at one and the same time an economic activity and an essential public good. Moreover, you cannot render a rail system more efficient by placing two trains on the same track and waiting to see which performs better: railways are a natural monopoly. . . . Trains, like buses, are above all a social service."

Judt was primarily writing about Britain’s railways, but the essence of his argument applies to America’s as well. Actual “competition” is a non sequitur when it comes to railroads and, fittingly enough, private monopolism has left a handful of rail giants with what are essentially noncompetitive fiefdoms in different corners of the country. Deregulation has additionally allowed the tiny remaining handful of companies to discontinue service on unprofitable routes, leaving whole regions cut off. With greater control and fewer constraints on the terms of their operations, they’ve also been at liberty to raise prices and introduce new fees. Bottlenecks, in fact, often provide further opportunities for such price-gouging — one executive boasting on a 2019 earnings call that Union Pacific is in a position to “take some pretty robust pricing to the market” (i.e., charge more regardless of efficiency or the quality of service).

A further corollary, of course, is that those who actually make the trains run and keep the tracks in working order have been increasingly expected to do more with less and endure a brutal work culture no reasonable person could possibly defend: having gone three years without a raise, many railworkers are now required to be on call more or less around the clock and expected to report for shifts of up to eighty hours on as little as ninety minutes’ notice. Unable to take time off even in the event of an emergency, many also face punitive attendance policies that can see them suspended or terminated if they can’t show up for work.

Freshly reimposed by a Democratically controlled Congress without substantive modification, these horrendous conditions are a potent symbol of what happens when an essential public good like rail is turned over to Wall Street. Smashing the monopolies, introducing stricter regulation, and giving workers paid time off would certainly be a good start. For the sake of its supply chain, transport needs, and basic economic fairness, however, what America ultimately needs is a single national railway, owned and operated in the public good.

#us politics #news #jacobin #jacobin magazine #2022 #nationalize the railroads #railroads #railway workers #rail workers #luke savage #op eds #rail strike #unions #union workers #worker's rights #worker's union #Union Pacific #railroad monopolies #paid sick leave #paid time off #introduce stricter regulation #deregulation #financialization #supply chain #Matthew Buck #American Prospect

[helluvahell]

　A quick rundown of each of my muses, to be added to my pinned post.

　VALENTINO, OVERLORD OF LUST

　Sex-driven, aggressive, and dripping with charisma. Valentino rules the Lust Quarter in the Pride Ring, as the owner of nearly every strip club, brothel, and porn studio. The VVV Porn Studios is the biggest XXX filmmaker in the entirety of Hell. 　WARNING : This muse may become touchy, pushy, or sexually aggressive with your character, but will never outright assault them without prior discussion.

　VOX, OVERLORD OF TECHNOLOGY

　The living embodiment of electronics and technology, Vox has monopolized everything in Hell with a wattage, with the exception of the lingering radio industry. He works primarily with Valentino, supplying film and photography supplies, but has had dealings with almost every big name in Hell.

　STRIKER, THE ASSASSIN

　Coming up from the streets and watching the disparity in the treatment between his succubus mother and his imp father, Striker learned at a young age that to get what you want, you have to take it. He's trained himself from childhood to hunt, torture, and kill, and now uses his skills to slaughter the high ranking demons of Hell that keep their heel on those below them.

　BLUE, THE RADIO DEMON

　In an alternate universe, Vaggie is soft spoken and sweet, Husk is a bundle of joy and energy, Angel is a sex-repulsed teetotaler, and Alastor is blue. The Radio Demon has a reputation for being elusive and almost shy, despite his immense power. Those that get close to him hardly survive, and those that do find themselves gripped tightly in his obsessive and dependent hold.

　ASMODEUS, EMBODIMENT OF LUST

　Patron saint of the puppies, littles, voyeurs, fetishists, and perverts, Asmodeus knows Lust in and out. As the youngest of the Sins, he's used to being spoiled, and uses that experience to spoil the people who throw themselves at him. Though some may think of him as an eternally-horny being of pure desire, Asmodeus has a soft side that only those closest to him have ever seen.

　SIR PENTIOUS, THE MAD SCIENTIST

　The definition of insanity is to repeat the same action time and time again expecting a different result, but Sir Pentious would argue that it's just being thorough. A dedicated man of science and logic, Pentious is determined to secure his place in Hell as the newest Overlord, but he keeps falling flat. His inventions have a tendency to self destruct on a hair trigger, perhaps a side effect of his refusal to use modern technology. He'll get there eventually.

　HUSK, THE BARTENDER

　Angry, apathetic, drowning in alcohol and debt. Husk is aware that most look at him and see nothing but failure. Frankly, he doesn't have the energy to care. He spends his days drinking and betting his money and possessions, because what's the point of living your afterlife when you're chained to the Radio Demon's command?

　LUCIFER, RULER OF HELL

　Struck from the very height of Heaven, scarred and broken, left alone and abandoned; weaker men may have fallen to despair. Lucifer -- well, Lucifer started collecting rubber ducks. Who's gonna stop the all-powerful King of Hell from doing whatever the fuck he wants?

　ARACKNISS, THE MOB PRINCE

　Under his father's teachings, Arackniss became a feared gangster in life, and after he was shot down he decided to keep doing what he was best at. Though the Spider Family doesn't yet have total control over the Pride Ring, they're well on their way, with Arackniss leading them. He's ruthless, bloodthirsty, and nothing is standing in his way.

　FATHER, ALMIGHTY CREATION

　He is known by many names, though the majority of them just translate to God. Father, as He prefers to be called, is the ultimate creator of Heaven, Hell, and everything in between. He rarely leaves His golden throne past the Pearly Gates, but when He does, it's often to visit family. What kind of Father would He be otherwise?

　LUKAS & LYDIA, THE SUCCUBUS

　He's absolutely beautiful. Smooth, unblemished pink skin, pointed horns, glittering yellow eyes, thin but not scrawny, with a healthy bit of muscle and a head of fluffy black hair. She's drop dead gorgeous, with dangerous curves and a haunting gaze behind a curtain of silky black locks. The only problem is that they're connected at the hip -- literally. Lukas and Lydia might be two people, but the money maker is below their conjoined waist, making them qualify as a singular succubus. Even in Hell, that makes business... a little hard. 　WARNING : This muse may reference incest in a serious or joking way due to the nature of the characters.

　NERO, THE CASINO MASTER

　He's hardly the most intimidating of Sinners. Nero stands at a diminutive four feet and ten inches, his horns only giving him a few extra on top of that. But that doesn't stop him from making a name for himself. Working under contract for Mammon, Nero owns the majority of casinos in the Pride Ring. He's no Overlord, but he has enough power nearly to rival one, especially if you find yourself indebted to him.

#👁️ SKEPTIC; OOC.

[shiveringsoldier]

It’s equal parts funny, infuriating, and terribly sad when an acclaimed filmmaker criticizes Marvel and Marvel fans crawl out of the woodwork to badmouth the filmmaker and lick Marvel’s boots.

The criticisms raised by people like Scorsese and Tarantino are obviously making no difference on Marvel revenue. It’s still a big multibillion-dollar conglomerate that has a near-total monopoly on movie theatres. And since Scorsese and Tarantino are already well-established filmmakers, it’s not a risk for them to criticize Marvel. Their films will still get wide releases and do well at the box office. Plus their movies aren’t two hours of military propaganda filled with shitty visual effects from overworked, underpaid VFX artists. I don’t even like Tarantino, but at least I know he cares about the artistic integrity of films.

But Marvel fans (and some Marvel actors apparently) are so quick to cry gatekeeping whenever anyone points out the serious problems with Marvel’s output. It’s all “let people enjoy things” and “but that’s my emotional support franchise” and “but every Marvel movie has a new First Openly Gay Character In Disney History so how dare you criticize this diversity-focused corporation.” The notion that you can love something and still criticize it is alien to them. The notion that audiences deserve easy access to a wide variety of films instead of cinemas dedicating half of their theaters to the latest Marvel product is just as alien.

And they’re doing all this and making a public fool of themselves for a franchise that only cares about money. They don’t care about letting actors do their jobs. They don’t care about letting directors bring their own unique visions. They don’t care about critical response or deviating even the slightest bit from their tried and true formula. They only care about the box office. More money in the CEO’s pockets so they can further monopolize the film industry.

In my opinion, Scorsese & Company’s criticisms of Marvel are clear-headed and warrant a serious discussion of the current state of film and how it affects our critical thinking. But Marvel fans would rather respond with rabid attacks. You can’t reason with them.

#.txt #sorry the latest disk horse I’ve seen on Twitter is fraying my brain

[radiofreederry]

The nine major merchant dynasties of Merland.

While Merland is officially a republic, in which the position of Shipmaster is elected from among the property-holding landed men of the population, in practice the position draws almost exclusively from members of these powerful houses. The current Shipmaster, Lyonal Sealily, was the first Shipmaster in over two centuries not to come from one of the nine great houses, and with Lyonal approaching 80 years of age, the houses are already vying to reclaim their power.

- Fastning: House Fastning is one of the oldest and most powerful families in Merland, having ruled as petty kings in the days before Merland was united as a republic. They control much of Seaspray Point, one of Merland’s most notable ports, monopolizing shipping and trade in the city. House Fastning has produced more Shipmasters than any of the other houses, including a period in which five Fastnings served as Shipmaster in succession, making the role effectively hereditary for over a century and a half. The Fastning candidate for Shipmaster is Ralph Fastning, middle son of aged patriarch Quincy Fastning.

- Lionheart: The Lionhearts made their fortune in building and selling mercenary armies to other nations, and militarily they are the most powerful of the great houses. Demand for the Lion’s Teeth, the family’s mercenary soldiers, is high, but supply is necessarily limited; as a result, recent generations of Lionhearts have discreetly begun partaking in the slave trade in order to procure candidates. The slave trade is illegal in Merland, and while House Lionheart’s participation in it is an open secret, the lack of concrete evidence has thus far prevented the other houses from exploiting the precarious situation it puts the family in. The Lionheart candidate for Shipmaster is Rishor Lionheart, brother of patriarch Errool Lionheart.

- Da Casia: The Da Casias are the youngest and least powerful of the great houses, having only produced four Shipmasters. The Da Casias are of foreign origin, migrating to Merland from a distant southwestern continent called Cruscesca, far beyond the Western Breach. They arrived aboard an exploration ship which wrecked off of Seaspray Point; the only survivors were a handful of Da Casias and a collection of exotic animals known as ant-eaters from their home continent. These beasts proliferated on the mainland, and are now fairly common in Merland and Kakalikos. The Da Casias, meanwhile, found employment with the Fastnings of Seaspray Point as customs officials, and rose quickly to an independent nobility and wealth. The Da Casias’ primary trade is in intrigue and intelligence, typically aligning themselves with another great house, often the Fastnings. On occasion, Da Casias have risen to positions of great power, including, as stated, four Da Casia Shipmasters, but they are still considered just a step above the minor houses of Merland. The Da Casia candidate for Shipmaster is Sebastiano De Casia, Lord of Customs of Seaspray Point.

- Shipp: The Shipps are an old and influential family in Merland. Only the Fastnings and Jockers have produced more Shipmasters than the Shipps, and Shipps have typically found positions of great influence in the courts and councils of non-Shipp Shipmasters. The Shipps control a good deal of the shipbuilding industry in Merland, giving them a great deal of leverage over almost every other family in the country. At present, the Shipps are focused on producing and selling war galleys and caravels for other Kalashan nations, and have not presented a candidate for Shipmaster, instead throwing support behind Ralph Fastning.

- Jocker: The Jockers are the traditional rivals of House Fastning, the only house which has produced more Shipmasters. The Jockers claim through family legend to descend directly from the Sea-Father, and to have once ruled as High Kings of Merland. The Jockers have their hands in a variety of industries, from trade to shipbuilding to hemp production, and they have established effective control over the island of Blackreef, officially Firavemish territory. The Jocker candidate for Shipmaster is family patriarch Bapharius Jocker.

- Butcher: The Butchers are a family of humble origins. Arising from the peasantry as butchers and meat-packers, the family worked its way up to control much of the meatpacking and distribution industry in Merland, developing novel methods of meat preservation allowing for greater levels of meat exportation. Although other older houses may look down on them, the Butchers have strong support from more minor families and has six times leveraged this support to ensure that one of their number is elected Shipmaster. The Butcher candidate for Shipmaster in the next election is William Butcher.

- Marius: An ancient and noble house, House Marius claim descent from heroes of the Deusaera, during which time their ancestors conquered rich lands in the east of the country. The Mariuses are thus one of the few houses which does not make their wealth through the sea, but instead through mineral wealth, mining gold, silver, and rubies seemingly without end. Though they control relatively few actual ships, ten Mariuses have risen to the position of Shipmaster. The current Marius candidate is Zacus Marius.

- Fletcher: The Fletchers, like the Mariuses, do not make their wealth at sea, but instead through controlling almost all river trade in Merland. They have controlled Lake Town, the terminus of the great Elf River Trade Route, for centuries, growing fat and rich off the generated profits. The Fletchers also have their hand in weapon and armor production, as well as horse breeding, relatively minor industries in Merland but still important, particularly to the Lionhearts, who use the Fletchers as their primary supplier. The Fletchers have produced five Shipmasters, but their candidate, Finn Fletcher, has withdrawn from consideration under suspicious circumstances, endorsing Rishor Lionheart in his place.

- Wavebreak: The Wavebreaks have produced sixteen Shipmasters in recorded history, their great power and influence arising from the great level of control they exert over trade and industry in the capital of Trident. Every other family doing business in Trident pays their dues to the Wavebreaks if they know what is good for them, and they are considered on par with the Jockers, Shipps, and Fastnings in terms of wealth and power. Though no Wavebreak has been Shipmaster in two centuries, they hope to change this with their candidate, Thaddeus Wavebreak.

#kalasha