#tourism island development

[sheltiechicago]

Unique Hotel Concept Is Inspired by the Mollusks in the East China Sea

The Nudibranch Hotel, proposed for a tourism island development in Zhejiang, in the East China Sea, is inspired by a gastropod mollusk. The design features two massive curving shells on a gently undulating landscape.

#future architecture #hotel concept #mollusks #nudibranch #nudibranch hotel #zhejiang #tourism island development #east china sea #travel #gastropod mollusk #shells

[coastalconguero]

#greece #islands #tourism #development #environment #culture

[alpaca-clouds]

Colonialism never ended

Okay, let me talk about one thing that a lot of white folks don't quite seem to realize. And that is the fact that colonialism never really ended.

Like, the official telling of it was: "Oh, yeah, after world war 2 the colonizing nations realized it was wrong." Or, if it is more honest, then: "Yeah, after world war 2 the colonizing empires were out of money to uphold her colonies." But even that still very much is a total lie. We still live under colonialism - both settler colonialism and extractionist colonialism.

Probably the easiest way to realize, we still have settler colonialism in place, is to look at the amount of land that never was in any way or form given back to the indigenous folks who once called it their home. No, they do not get to live there again. And also, no, they will not see a penny of the money that might be extracted from their former homes through development, agriculture or for example oil extraction.

In the US the state that shows it maybe the strongest is Hawai'i, in which indigenous folks are more and more pushed away from where they were living and praying, as parts of the island get used for tourism, rich people homes, military stuff or maybe a nice observatory on one of their sacret sights. More and more indigenous Hawai'ians are forced to move away from Hawai'i. Because through the rich folks and their development, they cannot afford to live on their own islands any longer.

We also see it through extractions. I already spoke about the land in the USA, but the same is happening in so many other places. A lot of land (especially mines) all over Africa are still owned by white people directly or indirectly. So they will still, to this day, extract the wealth from it.

Or, heck, we have all those exotic fruit plantages all over the tropical regions. Like how the US literally overthrew a government to keep the banana productions going and keeping it in white people hands.

Or there is of course the fact that the fucking lines onf the maps we have now have been drawn by white people, artificially grouping people together, who might not even be from the same culture. Something that often instabilized nations - an outcome that was very clearly intended, to make it easier to control and extract value from the nations in question.

Just look at the entire thing with the Sykes-Picot-agreement, that is responsible for so many of the wars happening in the Arabian world right now. Or at the division of India, that was and still is cause for so much violence.

And of course, while Slavery is officially outlawed, the US kinda contructed its justice system all around keeping it further going. By criminalizing Black people for all sorts of stuff and then making unpaid prison labor legal.

Colonialism is still going strong. And really, whenever western nations go crying about China's neocolonialism, what they are really crying about is, that it loosens their own colonialist control over them. Not that there is colonialism happening at all.

And we cannot have a just world, until we fully decolonize and until reparations are paid for the evils that have happened for now five hundred years.

This is also, why we cannot have anything in terms of solarpunk futures, until we decolonize. Because solarpunk aims for a just world. A just world that cannot exist unter colonialism.

#solarpunk #colonialism #anti colonialism #decolonize #decolonisation #no justice no peace #indigenous rights #land back #first nations #social justice

[snapscube]

I see a lot of people sending ffxiv asks. What's something you're hoping for in dawn trail? Personally I would love to do some food tourism with the gang and go on a bar crawl that ends with drunk karaoke with Urianger

LOL those are extremely understandable desires

Honest to god i have zero expectations OR hopes for the story in Dawntrail specifically. It's a brand new arc! I kinda just want to see where they take it. I know it's not gonna reach the same heights as Endwalker for me, purely by virtue of it not being An Ending To A Decade of Meaningful Storytelling. If anything I expect it might feel a little underwhelming at first, but that's fine! I'm with this game for the long haul, I wanna trust that they'll be able to build to something great again at the very least.

As for OTHER hopes i have, there is one thing I am really specifically hoping for. It's like, disgustingly specific:

PLEASE INTRODUCE BETTER ANTI-ALIASING IN ONE OF THE GRAPHICS UPDATE PATCHES

I would KILL for them to find some crazy fucking way to implement something like DLSS/DLAA however unlikely it is but AT THE BARE MINIMUM this game desperately needs some MSAA or hell I'd even take TAA.

And then aside from the pipe dream of getting some AA upgrades, I just hope they have some actual multiplayer/battle-focused large scale content in Dawntrail like Bozja. Or SOMETHING with a little bit more Meat on it. I was hyped as hell for Island Sanctuary but in retrospect I feel like THAT much development effort going towards content that is purely single player and designed to be incredibly low-stakes and, quite frankly, kinda boring was a bit of a mistake in the long run. It had potential but they didn't really sell it at the end of the day imo. They've mentioned there is going to be some more "lifestyle" content in Dawntrail, which is nice in its own right! But I hope that it stands alongside something with a lot more depth to it, cause as it stands a large majority of my playtime in Endwalker has been catching up with legacy content I missed on my way through the leveling.

#ffxiv

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A link-clump demands a linkdump

Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/

All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.

It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.

But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.

Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.

This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands

I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.

The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:

https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/

The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.

Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!

Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/

But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/

The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":

https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.

The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges

The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money

The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.

All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/

These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.

The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:

https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/

Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.

Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.

Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.

But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/

In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/

He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.

That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":

https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/

Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

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/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

#pluralistic #hbo #astroturfing #sweden #labor #unions #tesla #adblock #ublock #youtube #prompt injection #publishing #robin sloan #linkdumps #linkdump #ai #tlds #anguilla #finance curse #ted Kulczycky #toronto #stop making sense #talking heads

[skyprowler]

A spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories.

“The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

The $9bn (£7bn) port project, planned to transform the Indian Ocean island of 8,000 inhabitants into what has been called the “Hong Kong of India”, includes the construction of an international shipping terminal, airport, power plant, military base and industrial park. It will also develop tourism

#indigenous #indigenous rights #nicobar islands #india #news #shameful #human rights #construction #environment #shompen people

[cursedcola]

Synopsis: After attending NRC, our beloved characters suddenly find themselves transported to your world! The thing is, they have no idea where you are and have to make a life for themselves in the meantime. How would they adapt to life on earth? Characters: Everyone! Mix of Sentient AU! and Modern AU! Warnings: None lol. This is for my own enjoyment. Part(s): Heartslabyul, Savanaclaw, Octavinelle, Scarabia, Pomefiore, Ignihyde, and Diasmonia You are here!: Ignihyde

Note: Spoilers for Idia’s background.

Nothing could have prepared the students of NRC for what lied beyond the mirror. A world unlike any of them ever known with magic being virtually non-existent ( or so it appears to the general public). With nothing but the clothes on their backs, falsified basic identification, personal items, and the small bits of knowledge gathered from your vessel Yuu; these young adults have one mission-find the player and stay out of prison. It was time to split up, cover as much ground as possible, and make a life in this unknown world.

Let us see how these fresh minds conform to life on earth, yes?

Ignihyde Residence: Greece!

(I have an obvious bias for this as it is my heritage. No, I don't feel bad about it)

Idia Shroud

Residence: Lipsi, Greece

Owns multiple small properties across the Greek islands. He has a preference for the locations with less tourism and more agricultural life.

Hence why his favorite place to stay is in Lipsi. A small island where at most he has the comfort of seeing the same faces every week when grabbing groceries. His diet has also improved immensely from all the locally produced goods. Well, disregarding all the junk food he sources on his own.

On the island, Idia owns a small "farmhouse" that he built himself. To the average person, it blends in perfectly with the rest of the local homes. He's buried himself deep into the island as well, so his home cannot be found by tourists. No, you physically have to go looking for it.

The outside has the traditional blue and white exterior, but inside? Decked out with the most advanced technological gear. Do NOT underestimate this man's ability to get what he needs. He has his own WIFI service up and running. Everything from the Heating/Cooling system to the stairs that automatically fold inward (to save space) were built and programmed by him. Even his trashcan!

Secluded Island? Check. Best tech? Check. Ortho is happy? Checkaroo. Idia has everything he needs to survive happily.

His house is not the tidiest though. It's not like anyone ever visits him, but still. What if you appear at his door one day? Sucks to suck, because you will be walking over so much sand that he has dragged in yet not cleaned. Also energy drinks, clothes, etc. It's horrible. One time one of the local Yiayia's came to deliver him some baked bread and spanokopita. He nearly had a heart attack when she saw the hovel known as his home and started to lecture him as if he was her own grandson

Something he learned to deal with over time. Ortho was not kidding when he said that Greece values community

Idia wasn't on board with going to Greece in the beginning. Heat? Beaches? Community? Pah. Why couldn't he be placed somewhere more westernized, where he could hide away in a high-rise building somewhere and never come out. If anyone should be surrounded by saltwater it should be the Octavinelle trio - not him!

Which...is exactly why Idia was sent to Greece. Ortho thought this would be the perfect opportunity for his big brother to get out of his shell, and the internet shows that countries in the Mediterranean are highly community oriented! Idia wouldn't be caught dead dancing zorba at a festival or having wine with the local theos and theas as they gossip. But? Perhaps seeing him do his work on the terrace while sipping frappe isn't far out of reach?

Occupation: Software Developer

There is another reason Idia agreed to go to Greece. Out of everyone, he is the best suited to do remote work. The nitty gritty of trying to use technology to locate you. Things that could get him put in jail if caught for privacy violations and data theft. To do this he needs absolute privacy.

He tries to make things quick and track the phone you used to play Twisted Wonderland with. Sadly, life is not that easy and your data is unreachable. Almost like some unspoken force (me. the one writing this) is keeping him from reaching his goal for the sake of their entertainment

There is also the matter of his and Ortho's...'special' features. Crowded places likely will not accept someone with flames for hair. Even if he passes it off as cosplay, what if something is set on fire? Or an idiot tries to touch his hair thinking it is fake? He could be denied access to facilities in highly populated places from the risk. It simply isn't worth it. Not when he can go somewhere tucked away and still be helpful.

Idia blows all tech gurus on earth away. He becomes one of the most sought after hackers, and no one is able to trace his location. To make a living, he only does short-term contract work. He only communicates through warped audio and no one knows of his identity. In all honesty, he becomes filthy rich from the amount of employers throwing contracts at him despite his strict terms. The hush-hush market is strong with this one.

When he first moved into his "farmhouse," he planned on doing his job and never socializing. Food can be ordered in bulk online, and he could pay off one of the locals to leave the packages at his doorstep. He wanted Ortho to stay home with him as well, since the chances of villagers running away and screaming in terror were high. Then the island church would likely get involved and y'know...evil demons yada yada yada because they have pointy teeth and can use their hair to roast a lamb. He watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Froyo man convinced him that everyone is close minded.

This does not work out. At all. Unfortunately, people become curious about the new residents that never seem to leave their secluded house to greet their neighbors. It's unheard of! Then they begin to talk, the local children grow curious, and Ortho gets spotted while he's tending to the goat he insisted on keeping as a pet

Surprisingly, they aren't outcasted. The people just view their hair as a weird costume, and label the brothers as interesting foreigners. It's the 21st century, and it takes more than that to frighten someone here. Not the worst outcome? And now they can go walk around the outdoor shops (I.E Ortho drags Idia)

Idia doesn't know when it exactly happened, but he became the island's handy man. It might have been when he installed security cameras for one of the local shops? Anyways, he is always getting requests and accepting them since Ortho insists on being a good neighbor. Yadayada ‘they welcomed us with open arms’ yadayada ‘we have to play nice’ yadayada

Deep down, Idia has begun to like this way of life. He gets is peace, and the people aren't too bad. He becomes a favorite of the elders and is always being sent home with baskets of food whenever he steps into town. It's nice...in moderation

He still dresses very conservatively despite the hot weather, which normally earns him a resounding "what's the matter with you? are you crazy?". He has a large collection of turtle necks, gaming t-shirts, blue jeans, and a singular pair of worn out sneakers. On rare occasions he'll swap the sneakers for sandals (like Birkenstocks) , but that's only if Ortho drags him to walk the coast at night. One of the blacksmiths in the area welds him a metal hairband; which is concerning because don't they think his hair is a costume? He uses it regardless and occasionally ties his hair back.

While living in your world, he takes the opportunity to play all the games you might have experienced growing up. He sources all of the retro systems in attempt to try things that aren't similar to what he sees back in Twisted Wonderland. At one point he notices Ortho start to invite his new friends over. He actually doesn't mind since his brother is beginning to adjust to this new way of living, and he has an entire collection of consoles, board games, etc for them to choose from when hanging out in his home.

It’s easy being in your world. Magicless. It’s boring, but with no magical energy to eat at then his curse is essentially null. Believe it, he has spent so many nights trying to use his magestone with out any luck. Everyone here is equal (at least in being human y’know. No one can fly on a broom) - a normie. He is a normie.

And it’s not as bad as he thought it would be. It’s dull but no one has expectations of him. He can do whatever he wants whenever he wants.

He wonders if things could have different if he was born here. If Ortho…yeah. It’s better that he doesn’t let the thoughts linger or else jealousy might overcome his need to see you. What matters is that his brother has never looked happier than on earth. It’s almost like the boy has found his own family and place (sparking another tinge of jealousy in his older brother)

Over time he becomes less desperate to get off the “forsaken saltwater hell,” and instead hopes that you might be open to letting himself and Ortho stay on earth. With you. As a family.

But not like one of those sickeningly cringeworthy families he’s been forced to see in those telenovas all the yiayia’s watch. Seriously. He is tired of fixing their TVs and getting yelled at if he isn’t on time for their show’s slot on cable

#twisted wonderland #twst #twst x reader #twst imagines #twst scenarios #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland imagines #twisted wonderland scenarios #ignihyde #idia shroud x reader #twisted wonderland idia shroud #twst idia shroud #idia shroud #ortho shroud #life on earth au

[fatehbaz]

Sweden became a slaveholding nation when it acquired its only Caribbean colony, Saint-Barthélemy -- a.k.a. St. Barths or St. Barts -- from France in 1784. When the island was retroceded in 1878, the records created during ninety-four years of Swedish Caribbean rule were left behind and are now held in France. Examining the history of this archive that stands as a metaphor for Swedish colonial amnesia, [...] the reluctance in Sweden to recognize a past [...] goes against a self-image untainted by slavery and colonialism. [...] [There is now] a project that aims to open the archive to a larger audience [...]. Saint-Barthelemy was retroceded back to France in 1878, at which point the entire archive that had been created by Swedish civil servants during the ninety-four years’ possession was left on the island. The FSB’s 327 volumes (approximately 130 linear feet and three hundred thousand pages) provide, despite disorder and lacunae, a comprehensive picture of Swedish rule and slavery in the Caribbean.

[Text by: Fredrik Thomasson. “The Caribbean Scorpion: The Saint-Barthelemy Archive and Swedish Colonial Amnesia.” Small Axe. July 2020. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

---

St. Barthelemy’s history is deeply embedded in the settlement and economic history of the Caribbean. [...] References to Indigenous peoples are made in the form of the island’s Arawak name, Ouanalao, in the coat of arms, [...] and of brand names [...]. A table showing the development of the island’s population in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries reveals that a small number of Caribs were enslaved and worked on the island [...]. That St. Barthelemy was by no means exceptional in the exploitation of Black labor is, however, manifested in a 1736 revolt by enslaved people, who obviously collaborated with protesting enslaved laborers on the neighboring islands [...].

With the arrival of the Swedish in the 1780s, the island gained from the transatlantic [...] slave trade. Under King Gustav III, the harbor town of Gustavia was erected [...]. [T]he port benefited from wars in Europe [...] and from Sweden’s neutral position among belligerents [...]. [B]etween 1800 and 1815, one-third of the altogether 2,000-3,000 enslaved workers on the island had been born in Africa [...], 10 percent had been born into slavery on the island, and 25 percent had been born elsewhere in the West Indies [...].

Sweden transferred the island back to France in 1878. The island then depended mainly on a subsistence economy again [...] until the 1950s, when members of the Rockefeller family and the adventurer, entrepreneur, and later mayor of the island [...] identified the island’s potential for the establishment of private estates and luxury tourism resorts. Luxury tourism, the real estate business, and connected services have since become the undisputed main source of revenue [...]. Easily accessible information about St. Barthelemy -- for instance, the results of a quick online search -- relays an image of the island as a high-end tourism destination and tax haven, and as a slice of Europe in the Caribbean. [...] [T]he island’s “Europeanness” and whiteness [might seem] to be some of the most surprising [...] aspects of the shared past of St. Barthelemy and Sweden. Historical and natural factors have given rise to a situation on the island that is unusual in its West Indian context and in the context of the French overseas territories and their legacy of colonization and slavery: namely, the [...] subordinated role of the region’s Afro-Caribbean heritage. [...]

The naturalization of whiteness and the downplaying of the relevance of slavery and of Indigenous presence and their manifold legacies are two features that have characterized the Swedish self-understanding of the country’s colonial history. [...]

In her overview of Swedish historiography related to colonialism, Gunlog Fur describes Scandinavia’s uneasy relationship with the history of colonialism:

Engagement with colonialism proper appears limited and distant in time, and this “indirect” form of Scandinavian involvement in colonial expansion allows room for claims of innocence in confrontations with colonial histories. Seemingly untainted by colonialism’s heritage, the Scandinavian countries throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first successfully maintained positions as champions of minority rights and mediators in global politics. (2014,18) [...]

Fur suggests that Sweden has skipped a phase of scrutinizing its own involvement in colonialism and transatlantic enslavement [...]. Another elliptical narrative concerns the celebration of abolition, often in the form of European abolitionist “heroes,” while the establishment and maintenance of systems of enslavement remain more obscure. [...] In the meantime, there has been a tendency to treat St. Barthelemy as an exotic but rather insignificant curiosity. This tendency in Swedish historiography is currently being remedied, with a range of recent publications [...]. Studies comprise, among other aspects, [Swedish] overseas colonialism and enslavement; the treatment of minorities and Indigenous peoples; the history of Swedish race biology, ideology, and the institutionalization of eugenics; as well as the assumed conflation of national belonging and whiteness [...]. However, [...] [t]here is thus no ready archive to resort to when studying the relations between Sweden and its former colony [...].

[Text by: Lill-Ann Korber. “Sweden and St. Barthelemy: Exceptionalisms, Whiteness, and the Disappearance of Slavery from Colonial History.” Scandinavian Studies. Spring/Summer 2019. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[Korber’s reference to “no ready archive” involving documentation of Swedish slavery/rule was made before the more-recent announcement of the availability of the FSB’s 327 volumes referenced above by Thomasson writing for Caribbean journal Small Axe.]

#Caribbean #abolition #imperial #indigenous #we still dunking on Swedish and Scandinavian colonialism right

[gemsofgreece]

What is a more ethical way to visit Greece in terms of lodging? Like in terms of over development in the tourist sector? Hotels or air bnb or hostiles?

That’s a good question. With the assumption that there is the budget for any of these, my recommendation is definitely:

Hotels >> Hostels >>> Airbnbs

With an ethical perspective. (With a quality perspective I would probably switch hostels with airbnbs.)

Hostels are not particularly developed in Greece. It can be an okay choice though, especially if you do not care about many amenities, you are young and don’t have too particular needs / preferences or are tight on budget. But it is 90% the lowest quality option in Greece.

Greek airbnbs can vary from mediocre to awesome and you can find okay places for very good prices. However, it is the least ethical option. Yes, it’s usually people renting a property for some more income but a) many rich people with a LOT of properties turn all of them into airbnbs or buy more and more properties to use them exclusively as airbnbs and b) Greece is one of the countries that has started facing very serious problems due to the uncontrollable expansion of airbnbs. The government is trying now to set some limitations to them. Especially the most touristy areas have huge issues since all property owners - regardless of income - turn their apartments into airbnbs, making it impossible for local people and critically important professions such as teachers and doctors to find houses on normal rent to stay. As a result they are forced to quit on their jobs and touristy yet remote places such as islands and traditional towns are left without teachers and doctors and generally suffer from an imbalance of necessary services. There are now just tourists, restaurant owners and airbnb owners frenchkissing or something there and that’s it. Sometimes, when the need for them is too bad yet people still insist on turning their houses to airbnbs, teachers and doctors end up sleeping in rooms or yards or rooftops of the local owners. That shit has turned into a dystopia. Furthermore, the rise of airbnbs has been causing big problems in cities and non-touristy areas as the cost of rent has skyrocketed (as the incentive for house owners to not make their property an airbnb) which makes it impossible for students and young people to find apartments in reasonable and affordable prices! I don’t care if anyone reading this has airbnbs and is pissed, airbnb is unethical in touristy countries!!!

Because Greece is a touristy country there is a huge variety of hotels to choose from, all quality types, all types of businesses. Greece is a country with MANY family run hotel businesses that can have great quality and can provide a cozy environment even better than airbnbs do. There are obviously also many big shark hotel chains but they are not the standard. The standard are the family run hotels. You can usually tell by the websites whether a hotel is part of a chain. For example, the Hiltons are foreign sharks. The Domotels are Greek sharks. But even so, even the sharks, honestly they do not cause a lot of problems. Usually they are expensive large hotels with all sorts of amenities, big breakfasts, nice environments.

There are some concerns about hotels lately getting overbuilt in environmentally sensitive areas but that is also the case for private properties intended to be used as airbnbs. This is something you as a tourist can’t possibly guess. But hotels - big chains or not - definitely cause fewer problems in the society compared to airbnbs.

But if you want both an ethical choice and good services opt for a small or medium sized hotel that is not part of a chain. Usually most of them are of the 3 star and the 4 star range, but you can find lower and higher as well. Those are often called boutique hotels.

Last but not least, a whopping 80% of the services sector in Greece is tourism, therefore all these people need tourists to go to hotels to make an income and help economy run smoothly. We are not talking about the sharks here, but simple owners who have to sustain the hotels, receptionists, cleaners, waiters, cooks and all other professions involved in a hotel. Let alone that the sharks employ a gazillion of people that have to make a living - gardeners, physiotherapists, gymnasts, drivers and so on. Airbnbs are antagonising that 80% of the service economy trying to steal tourism’s profit and turn it into their personal side income.

I know I didn’t have to write all this but I am passionate about this topic.

#greece #europe #anti-airbnb #travel #ethical travelling #tourism #tourist guide #Greek facts #anon #ask

[sepdet]

(I don't usually break copyright for journalists, who deserve to make a living through their writing the same as other authors, but this paywalled article mentions a few native Hawaiian relief efforts that need funding)

Native Hawaiians organize aid for Maui fire victims as government lags

Reis Thebault, Washington Post [12Aug 2023]

LAHAINA, Hawaii — The boats kept coming. One by one, cruisers and catamarans eased toward the beach in Kahana, a small and tightknit neighborhood just north of Maui’s hardest-hit areas.

Each one was laden with supplies: generators, propane tanks, trash bags full of clothing and ready-to-eat meals. And each one was greeted by two dozen people, the first among them wading waist-deep into the ocean to retrieve provisions from the boat and pass them down the chain, which wound its way to shore.

[Hawaii utility faces scrutiny for not cutting power to reduce fire risks]

The entire operation buzzed with urgent efficiency. But this was not the National Guard, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency, nor state or local government. This was scores of residents, led mostly by native Hawaiians, who had battled immense grief and unreliable communications to coordinate a large-scale disaster relief effort serving everyone in need after Tuesday’s ruinous Maui fire.

And this, a parade of boats that brought desperate locals thousands of pounds of supplies, was one of many.

“There’s no government agency helping us — this is it,” said Jareth Lumlung, a native Hawaiian who helped arrange the de facto donation hub. “This is our home, our community.”

[Live updates on Hawaiian wildfires]

In the days since a ferocious wildfire decimated whole swaths of Maui, including the historic west island town of Lahaina, those who live here have said they’ve received little help from the county and state, small entities which are struggling to respond to an unprecedented calamity.

For people whose cultural traditions have been threatened by American colonization and the state’s embrace of tourism and development, government help was never expected. Instead, the community has relied on itself.

Many, native Hawaiians in particular, see the absence of visible official support as a continuation of long-standing frustrations and pain, which began with the destructive arrival of Europeans and lives on in struggles over water rights.

The displacement of native Hawaiians is a particularly acute concern now, as much of the island has been targeted for gentrification, driving up the costs of living and forcing many native Hawaiians to move to mainland cities like Las Vegas.

[After five hours in ocean, Maui fire survivor is ‘blessed to be alive’]

Government officials have said they were focused on putting out the flames, housing and feeding survivors in evacuation centers outside the burn zone, protecting damaged areas, clearing roads in and around the town and helping to restore essential utilities. Some of the aid is out of reach of survivors, however, because they lack transportation or working phones to alert them about services. In Lahaina, the private efforts have been more visible, survivors said.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green (D) estimated that nearly all of Lahaina had been destroyed. But in Kahana, the town’s spirit remained completely alive.

“If you take away all Hawaiians, there’ll be no more Hawaii,” Lumlung said. “It’ll be just a place. This is what it’s all about right here. We’re all raised the same way; this is something that’s just naturally instilled. You don’t have to be asked to do these things.”

Residents gather at Napili Plaza in Lahaina, Hawaii, to connect to Starlink satellites to contact their loved ones on Friday. (Mengshin Lin for The Washington Post)

The supply boats began arriving on Wednesday, as first responders were still battling the blaze and recovering bodies amid burned-out homes and businesses. Two days later, they hadn’t slowed. On Friday, they began arriving early, and volunteers had tents set up to sort the goods: a pile of men’s pants here, a pyramid of diapers there and vast mounds of bottled water.

“We lost everything. We lost our town,” said Jerica Naki, whose home in Lahaina was destroyed. “That’s why we’re here.”

On this day, the volunteer boats largely came from neighboring islands, Oahu and Molokai, northwest of Maui in the Hawaiian archipelago, traveling far on choppy seas. Naki was helping sort donations and she described an emotional whirlwind, from escaping with nothing to seeing a staggering amount of volunteer support for those who have been displaced like her.

[These maps show where wildfires are burning in Hawaii]

“A lot of us are born and raised here,” Naki said, looking around as the chain of volunteers hauled in boxes of tinned sausage. “There’s a l xd ot of pride in Lahaina, so it hurts, a lot. But this is all we have here now, each other, and we’re making do.”

As the response has worn on, the greatest needs have shifted. There is now plenty of nonperishable food and bottled water. Generators, fuel and Starlink satellite internet systems would be most useful, volunteers say.

Sheryl Nakanelua knew instinctively where she needed to go when she fled her Lahaina home as flames spread. She made her way to Kahana and set up a tent across from Lumlung’s house, where she’ll stay until her family is let back into her subdivision, one of the few that was spared.

“This is our family place, it’s home,” she said of the Kahana neighborhood. “This is the best part to be at. It’s what’s keeping us positive.”

Other such spots have popped up. Napili Plaza, once a destination for groceries, ribs and tattoos, is now a donation drop-off center. And some 100 cars lined up for free gas near the town’s former railroad station. Coordinating the boats and other donation sites is a massive task that involves maddening games of phone tag in a place largely without cell service and requires a relentless dedication and extensive Rolodex.

Residents like Zane Schweitzer have both. Schweitzer, whose family has lived around Lahaina for generations, has spent nearly every hour of the last 48 working his walkie-talkie and phone, frantically arranging aid from around Maui, Hawaii and the mainland. Working with the Oahu-based youth nonprofit Na Kama Kai, he helped coordinate one of Friday’s largest deliveries.

Officials said most of Lahaina, the historic town in West Maui, was destroyed when hurricane winds pushed fires to the coast.

On the south side of Lahaina, in Olowalu, Eddy and Sam Garcia are transforming their groundbreaking sustainable farm into a shelter for those who have lost their homes. The married couple, who themselves have lost farmland and fruit crops worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, are setting up temporary housing, a massive solar power system and a satellite internet connection that they’ll open to anyone who needs it.

“In the immediate moment, people need shelter, they need food, they need water, they need a place to get on the internet so they can look for their loved ones,” said Eddy Garcia, who grew up in Lahaina. “We’re shifting all of our attention to trying to feed and house our neighbors.”

The Olowalu farm is uniquely well-prepared to handle this sort of disaster. Run by the Garcias’ nonprofit, Regenerative Education Centers, it was already operating off the grid, with its own power, plumbing and food. The nonprofit has launched a fundraiser to help pay for the fire effort, which will continue as long as there’s a need.

The property, even after being raked by the fire’s severe winds, is verdant and shaded by tall mango trees. On Friday, volunteers and staff readied the farm to fill any needs. They butchered and smoked a wild pig, set up new solar panels and scoured the internet for portable toilets. Eddy Garcia whirred with adrenaline, his satellite-connected cellphone ringing every few minutes with someone offering help.

For locals like him, helping his neighbors is not only about their survival, but about preserving the island’s identity and keeping it livable for those whose families have been here for generations.

“It’s not about these giant hotels on the beach and all the big companies, but trying to take care of local people,” he said. “This is not a visitor’s destination spot, this is the kingdom of Hawaii. That hit the heart of it in Lahaina. It hurts to even talk about it.”

His phone rang again and he stood up to leave.

“I’m like a ball of rubber bands right now,” he said, “and the only thing keeping me going is I got to organize these things.”

——

[More photos and links to the latest news in and after article]

#maui fires #lahaina #relief efforts

[corelliansunsets]

PART 1 of my project on mapping out regional variations in the people of Shili, also known as the togruta!

For even more detail, read below!

Shili is home to a variety of coastal communities, ranging from freshwater, to wetlands, to oceans, to small islands whose populations have remained more genetically isolated. Many of the traits seen in individuals of these regions were developed to help them become the best fishermen and swimmers of the planet.

Their most defining features are the larger, smooth markings across their bodies that can be broken down into thin stripes, much like some of the aquatic life they hunt. Combined with their often more horizontal montrals and shorter lekku, it is hard to mistake someone who hails from these communities.

The one shown in this example is wearing a traditional loin piece that has been worn by his people for generations and is based on the Maro and similar Polynesian styles.

Often host to people from all over their planet or other planets in nearby systems, the ocean regions have begun to develop a bit of a tourism industry. Of course, many of the communities who have lived and fished those waters for centuries are now pushing back on the change in local culture. Many of the oldest villages on Shili are found on these coasts and still hold their traditions very close to their hearts.

This design mainly based off of small physiological adaptations that different groups would develop over periods of time in certain climates and ecosystems. Many modern togruta may have a combination of traits from different regions in their appearance and this is related to the gradual globalization of the planet and its cultures.

Hope you enjoyed and keep an eye out for more variations!!

#star wars #digital art #character concept #concept art #togruta #Shili #Ahsoka tano #shaak ti #Star Wars lore #original characters #Star Wars oc #character design #reference sheet #character guide #Star Wars fan #star wars fan art #world building #illustration #procreate #artists of tumblr #fan art #the clone wars #prequel trilogy #original trilogy #sequel trilogy #Star Wars art #Star Wars artist #world building guide #procreate art #digital painting

[weirdowithaquill]

Traintober 2023: Day 17 - Holiday

How Sudrian Tourism has Evolved:

Sodor has changed majorly thanks to the publication of the Railway Series and the subsequent Television Series, both of which propelled the island and its railways from being just another part of the UK into a tourism juggernaut. But the fact of the matter is that Sodor did not immediately transform from being an insignificant island on the coast of Cumbria to one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United Kingdom overnight – so how did it all change?

To understand, we must go back to the 1500s, and the Protestant Reformation in England. At the time, Sodor was part of the English Crown – but far looser than its Irish and Welsh neighbours. Due to its small size, rough terrain and low population, King Henry VIII was far less interested in confiscating Catholic land on the island than its surrounding areas. This was in part due to the both Sir Geoffrey Regaby and Bishop Michael Colden, who managed to guide Sodor away from the Lincolnshire Rising and the Pilgrimage of Grace. Due to their remote location and general poverty, Thomas Cromwell never visited Sodor, and Cronk Abbey was never closed. For its part, St Luoc’s Cathedral at Suddery was ‘converted’ to a Protestant Cathedral in 1537, but continued holding Catholic mass. This was done by holding the two religious ceremonies one after the other.

As Sodor was now one of the few parts of the British Isles that had a Catholic church and direct line to the Papacy in Rome, it became an ‘underground’ tourist destination as a new British site of pilgrimage, frequented by Catholics looking to attend mass at the Suddery Cathedral. In return for continuing these ceremonies, Sudrians became more devout to the crown – in particular to Queen Elizabeth I, and by 1603 the Catholic mass had been all but forgotten. This did not end the attractiveness of Sodor as a religious destination, due to the caves of Saint Machan and several other holy sites that litter the island; the numbers were not large, but they did lead to a number of important connections, especially with Ireland, the Isle of Man and English ports.

The next phase of Sudrian tourism came in the 1860s, when the Skarloey Railway found the long-forgotten Skarloey lake and hidden hollow. Rather than explain it, I think I’ll just use the description that the Reverend Wilbert Awdry did:

“Spas were popular at the period and offered the possibility of a lucrative passenger business. Skarloey’s mineral springs and sheltered situation took hold on the minds of some members of the Board, among them Shamus Tebroc who conceived the idea of developing Skarloey as a spa. An hotel and a number of villas were built as a speculation, and the gravity worked incline which had been installed for the conveyance of materials was retained and up-graded for coals, merchandise, and passengers’ luggage.”

Skarloey became the first of the Island of Sodor’s tourist hotspots, especially due to its proximity to Culdee Fell and Saint Machan’s cave. The popularity of the spas was good for a time, but began to fall off as the bad fortunes of the Sodor & Mainland Railway continuously hurt the Skarloey Railway’s tourism campaign with delayed and cancelled trains, ratty carriages and even standoffish staff. This led to Skarloey becoming a local holiday destination instead, but even that began to slow down as WWII loomed.

On the other side of the island, the Mid Sodor Railway also began heavily advertising their railway to holidaymakers across the UK, but to a somewhat better result. The Isle of Man Steam Packet contract the railway picked up led to a large influx of tourists across the late 1800s and early 1900s, up until the 1920s. The railway’s ability to reach the walled city of Peel Godred and the cave of Saint Machan (via the Culdee Fell Railway) made it a very attractive destination for tourists, though this would change at the end of WWI.

The advent of relatively cheap international travel via ferries in the 1920s did a lot of damage to Sodor’s tourism economy, as their major markets in England preferred to travel to either the Continent or the Lake District – or even as far afield as the United States. Sodor instead switched to being primarily an agricultural and resource-extraction economy, with some manufacturing. This continued throughout WWII.

Which leads us to May 12th, 1945. The Three Railway Engines was published – in colour – in the UK. It achieved enough success to lead to the continuation of the series in 1946, and again in 1948, and then again continuously until 1972. These twenty-seven years’ worth of publicity for the island and its railways had a massive effect. Skarloey was rediscovered and the budget-conscience holiday maker of the 1960s chose it for its low prices, high quality, and picturesque scenery, turning around the railways needed to reach it. The Culdee Fell Railway also saw an uptick in traffic as the Peel Godred Railway brought in more passengers than the old Mid Sodor Railway had.

Furthermore, tourists came to see the engines, a phenomenon not seen before in the island’s tourism industry. Insignificant towns such as Dryaw, Brendam, Crosby and Glennock became infinitely more popular as the sites of incidents in the Railway Series, or as convenient locations to stay for travelling the island. The biggest success story of the island’s cities was Cronk however. Cronk grew massively from the tourism trade as the most central location on the NWR to reach the various tourist destinations of Sodor – even Awdry takes a moment to mention ‘The Crown of Sodor’ Hotel on Sigmund Street due to its prominence as a hotel on the island.

This large influx of tourists was however of a majorly local source – the UK, parts of continental Europe and a relatively low number from North America. It wasn’t until the advent of cheap international jetplane flights in the mid-1970s and the debut of the TV series on October 9, 1984.

This debut is what changed everything.

The Thomas and Friends Television series was an international success, with translations into a number of languages (eleven by Wikipedia’s count) and broadcast around the globe. This, coupled with the opening of an enlarged airport at Vicarstown (which had been constructed in 1941 by the RAF and expanded by Vickers in the 1960s. The airport itself had been bought by the NWR in 1982 (probably in anticipation of the TV series) and began receiving jetliners from across the world as early as 1986.

Today, Sudrian tourism is one of the largest income producers in northern England due to its international status crafted by the Thomas & Friends series. The island is a popular tourist attraction for both railfans and Thomas fans, as well as religious pilgrims, spa enthusiasts, hikers, ramblers and historians. The airport at Vicarstown has been linked into the NWR via a spur line, and more recently a number of signs on the island have been converted to include secondary and tertiary languages, for better interpretation.

Sodor reached its best numbers for international tourists in 2019, when over 1.5 million people visited the island, making it the third most visited tourist destination within England, beating out Birmingham. The secret to it’s recent further uptick in visitors is the opening of a number of museums, galleries and other cultural sites on the island, as well as a strong advertising campaign that focused on the island’s major tourist draws, which are:

The North Western Railway, Skarloey Railway, Culdee Fell Railway and Arlesdale Railway from the Railway Series book and subsequent Television series

A pre-Norman era Abbey at Cronk, one of the oldest of its kind in Britain

Suddery Cathedral, which continues to be one of the few remaining pre-reformation cathedrals in Britain

Several Norman-era castles, including a completely intact castle at Harwick

The Walled City of Peel Godred

The caves of Saint Machan

Culdee Fell

Henry's Forest National Park

Skarloey and its spas

Museums, galleries, and cultural centres

The Standing Stones of Killdane.

This advertising campaign brought a greater variety of tourists to the island, especially those from North America.

The island was badly affected by the advent of the Coronavirus pandemic, which saw the high tourist numbers of the previous decade prop by over eighty percent, which forced the island to once again consider restructuring their economy around agriculture, manufacturing, and resource extraction. This eventually was decided against, as tourist numbers have slowly picked back up through 2022.

Sodor has been greatly affected by its rise to one of the most prominent tourist destinations in the UK, including a number of hotels being built on the island – many of which are converted manorhouses – as well as several upgrades made to the transport systems of the island, with updated ferry services between the island’s major ports and locations in the UK and Ireland, as well as the railway building a special line to the island’s main airport, new tram and bus services within the major cities on the island. The island’s railway system has also seen upgrades throughout the latter half of the 20th century, including a third track being added to the mainline, new signalling systems and a number of extra connecting services to cities in the UK, such as Manchester, Birmingham, Carlisle and Preston.

Sodor has grown drastically as a result of its tourism industry and is today an international tourism hotspot. The island continues to be popular into the modern day, as a result of strong advertising and a pointed diversification of tourist offerings on the island to help the island’s tourism industry grow and bring in profits for the island’s people.

Back to Master Post

#fanfiction writer #weirdowithaquill #railway series #thomas the tank engine #railways #RWS analysis #Thomas and friends analysis #island of sodor #tourism #mid sodor railway #skarloey railway #traintober 2023 #traintober

[fabiansociety]

what is dondoko island about? what is any of infinite wealth about? I'm dozens of hours into this game, and i still have no idea. and, yeah, i'm spending a ton of time on the sidequests — the game is maybe too full of distractions and minigames, even by yakuza standards, and that's saying something — but shoot, in other games the major distractions were all obviously trivial, textural, or thematic, and sujimon and dodongo are too big for trivia or texture, and if there's a connecting theme there beyond "these are popular games that also exist" i'm not seeing it.

like, the pocket circuit racing is a big distracting sprawling minigame, but it resonates with kiryu's character every time it shows up — first, that he's still half a child in yakuza 0, then trying to recapture his lost decade in yakuza kiwami, then poignantly and tragically in the doomladen gaiden game. the business management minigame in like a dragon wasn't great, but it was grounded in that game's themes of community solidarity — it's a major source of employment for kasuga's fellow homeless folks, and a way to assert yokohama's economic independence, in parallel to the way the main plot was about asserting its cultural and criminal independence.

but infinite wealth didn't set up any thing like that up before introducing the minigames, despite how late in the game they come. there's plot there, but it's very stock, in a way the series has drawn on a ton in these sorts of diversions. for the series' first excursion outside of japan, i was expecting… something? about japan's relationship to america, or the interaction of american colonialism and japanese tourism in an occupied state, or even just something more developed about kasuga's loss of family, but there's just nothing. it's a perfectly pleasant time, but the last several games all had Things to Say and infinite wealth seemingly doesn't, and that's a shame for a game that's so sprawling. makes it hard to read the game instead of just playing it

like, the job system in YLAD was halfbaked, but it was one of the ways the game tied its rpg mechanics to the game's interest in hardscrabble existence on the margins of society: you picked up jobs because you needed money because you were homeless and broke. in IW the jobs have been replaced with tourist stuff or straight up cultural theft: you go scuba diving, and unlock the aquanaut class; you go to a fire dance and unlock a class where you DRESS UP LIKE A FIRE DANCER. it's a novelty rather than a statement.

maybe this'll all turn around as the chapters progress, but my god if that's the case it's taking forever

#infinite wealth #yakuza #like a dragon #yakuza 8

[ningauinerd]

While most of the stuff I post in this blog is going to be Australia oriented given that's what I'm most knowledgeable on (and have the most resources for), I also want to occasionally branch out to talk about wildlife from surrounding landmasses every so often - wider Oceania, Wallacea, and generally anything east of the Wallace Line (where the animals become funni). Today, I wanted to start off by briefly introducing one set of islands I find to be particularly overlooked, the Solomon Archipelago, better known as the Solomon Islands.

(Image credit: Wikimedia)

Isolated ever since they first rose above the waves 40 million years ago, the Solomon Islands has been dubbed the ""the Galapagos of the Western Pacific" by renowned mammalogist Tim Flannery for the sheer uniqueness of its fauna. Sitting to the east of New Guinea, the archipelago consists of seven main islands and thousands of smaller islands that vary greatly in size, from impressive volcanic islands like Kolombangara to countless tiny coral cays. Naturally, the islands are clothed almost entirely in tropical rainforests, from lush lowland jungles to misty cloud forests over 2,000 metres above sea level, with some areas of seasonal dry forest and grassland on the on the northern slopes of Guadalcanal being the main exception.

Despite its close proximity to New Guinea (and therefore continental Australia), the Solomon Islands possess no native marsupials - instead it is a world of giant skinks, coconut-eating bats and mysterious rodents.

(Image credit: Tourism Solomons)

Easily the most famous animal from the Solomon Islands is the prehensile-tailed skink (Corucia zebrata), also known as the monkey-tailed skink or simply as the Solomon Islands skink. These are the largest of all living skinks, measuring up to 81 centimetres in length, and they are adapted to an arboreal way of life, feeding on leaves, fruit, flowers and fresh shoots. Like many skinks in the subfamily Egerniinae, the prehensile-tailed skink also has a pretty highly developed social life, more like that of a mammal than a typical reptile. They live a social group known as a circulus, in which different individuals band together to protect each other's offspring, and some pairs have even been known to practice long-term monogamy (practically "mating for life").

(Image credit: Johnathan Richmond)

After big skink, the fauna of the Solomon Islands instantly drops into the territory of "obscure creature even most animal nerds don't know about", but they are no less remarkable or unique. Take the monkey-faced bats (Pteroplex) for example. As their name suggests, this endemic genus is notable for their highly unusual thick head shape, which gives them a vaguely monkey-like appearance. The resemblance to primates is no coincidence, for the lack of competing mammals on the islands aside from a few rats has led them to take up a lifestyle unlike that of any other bat. Their canine teeth are enormous, and what's more, possess a double cusp - something completely unique among mammals. Their boxy, powerful jaws and complex teeth are designed for tackling particularly tough fruits and nuts, and they are well known for their ability to crack into green coconuts. There are five species of monkey-faced bat scattered across the Solomon Islands, with the largest being the greater monkey-faced bat (P. flanneryi), which can have a wingspan of over 1.5 metres and weighs in at about 800 grams.

Guadalcanal monkey-faced bat (Pteralopex atrata), juvenile (Image credit: Johnathan Richmond again, legend)

(also kinda irrelevant here but I really gotta talk about the Fijian monkey-faced bat sometime. what a knee slapper)

However, bats aren't the only coconut crackers on the Solomon Islands, for they are also home to several genera of rats that reach pretty gargantuan sizes. The largest species is Poncelet's giant rat (Solomys ponceleti), which reaches over a kilogram in weight and has quite an unusual appearance, with long but sparse dark brown hair, pinkish-white skin and a crest or mane down the back - unfortunately I cannot find any photographs or even illustrations of this species online. The impressively named emperor rat (Uromys imperator) was almost as large, but it is only known from 3 specimens collected in the 1880s and is now considered to likely be extinct. In a demonstration of how much of the Solomons remain under-surveyed however, a new species of giant Uromys, the vika or Vangunu giant rat (U. vika) was discovered by westerners only in 2015, although it had been known to the locals for far longer. This orange-haired coconut-chewer is unfortunately only known from a single specimen for now, but it weighed in at 0.5-1 kg and now represents the largest known member of its genus on the islands.

The only photograph of a living vika (Image credit: O. Revon)

Also just to keep with the pattern of everything being giant (and therefore cool), this huge frog, the giant webbed frog (Cornufer guppyi), also calls the Solomons home. I don't know much about them but they seem like cool guys.

Remember this is only meant to be a brief overview! Would love to talk more about the Solomons sometime, as well as more in-depth about the species featured here.

#oceania #solomon islands #islands #wildlife #animal facts #skinks #bats #rodents #frogs #natural history #infodumps #my stuff

[greatwesternway]

The Lexicon

Since @littlewestern and I are partners in trainrot in general and in authorship in particular, we have developed a lexicon of terms to encompass concepts that occur frequently in Thomas the Tank Engine so's to make discussion of those things quicker. Thought it'd be fun to show you some of them.

Sodor Karma

Everyone probably uses this one or something like it. On Sodor, if you talk shit, you get hit within six business hours and then literally everyone you know will hear about it, if they didn't see it firsthand. And they will never forget it happened either. They'll bring it back up at every opportunity.

Killed Summarily

The kind of hypothetical accidents that never seem to happen on Sodor, where one or both parties would be absolutely demolished beyond repair. Originally arose from the idea that they coulda added Henry to the clusterfuck in "Duck in the Water" since he's green too, except that he would have absolutely killed all of the rest of them going at missed signal speed. Summarily. "Thankfully, no one was hurt" prevents these kinds of accidents.

9/11 Flight Path

Speaking of Henry, when an engine is on an unavoidable collision course with disaster we call it the 9/11 Flight Path, owing to this diagram in Thomas the Tank Engine Owners' Workshop Manual that looks like every 9/11 diagram complete with crash burst graphic.

It's Fkn Cocoa Time

But we're not concerned with the engine on his 9/11 Flight Path to kill us summarily because it's fkn cocoa time.

When you've eaten shit or are about to, you can count on a driver, a fireman, and maybe a guard somewhere to be enjoying hot cocoa, completely unbothered with your plight.

Fucking Cunt Dork

"Engines don't go fishing! Fucking cunt dork."

This is from the Carlin Comp, in a clip edited from Thomas Goes Fishing. When an engine starts getting all obsessive and distracted over some shit what engines ought not be caring about (fishing, winning medals, rainbows, statues of oneself, seeing golden eagles, wearing costumes, chasing shooting stars, finding pirate treasure (twice), being a hero, finding The Man in the Hills, getting one's picture taken, etc), he's become a fucking cunt dork.

While in practice, we do use this pretty loosely for anytime an engine becomes obsessive to the point of not being Useful, strictly speaking, being a fucking cunt dork is specifically for when the subject of that obsession is something engines shouldn't be concerned with. For example, Duck is not being a fucking cunt dork about the Great Western Way, but he was a fucking cunt dork about the regatta.

Cotton Candy Economy

Facetious term for the apparent shift in Sodor's economy from agricultural/fishing exports to tourism. We actually find this idea fascinating, that Sodor started out struggling to even get a railway running to becoming the steam engine mecca of the world such that its economy depends on this mismatched fleet of engines. Nonetheless, this change is marked by an increase in festivals, fun fairs, carnivals, magic shows, circuses, toy factories, and ice cream deliveries.

Holiday Friends

When engines are bein' extra friendly with each other in a way entirely too saccharine for the NWR. Maybe in a way bordering on festive. When you're friendsing with your friends in the cotton candy economy.

OK, holiday friend.

Dignance Meeting

The opposite of an indignation meeting. Shit's goin' good and we're meeting to discuss it.

Unincorporated Sodor

Misty Island, where they keep all the titty bars and laundromats.

Cosa Nostra

Oliver's obviously willing to break the rules if his survival depends on it. While he's known around the railway for having ripped that mouthy car in half, it was actually Toad who thought the plan up. Even Duck's prepared to crush you under his wheels if you fuck with his passengers.

"There's only two ways to do this: the Great Western Way or the wrong way" is not advice. It's a warning. Cosa nostra.

More Regulator

Let's not leave Donald and Douglas out of the Little Western mafia though. This YouTube comment on TheUnluckyTug's Sodor's Finest video on Duck been living on in our vernacular ever since we laid eyes on it.

"But the Little Western is the kind of ride-or-die energy that you only get by taking four of probably the biggest shit-stirrers on the entire island, cramming them into a branch line together, and then rather than killing each other they save one another's lives. Oliver, Duck, Donald, and Douglas can and will dunk on each other given the opportunity, but if you even LOOK like you're going to fuck around with them and theirs, I've got a couple piles of old firewood that will tell you to decide otherwise. And that's even before you get into their crews, who all have balls of steel so heavy the engines probably need to be fitted for trailing wheels. Grand theft, forgery, and the kind of dick energy that looks at a line of freight cars going 75 miles an hour down a hill and says "I can do that" or hears the guard say "the van's breaking up!" and decides "good, more regulator."

Eat Shit Bridge

If you go over this bridge, you will eat shit.

Dumbass Saddletank Humor

Originated with an early Duck theory of mine: "So if you're some dumbass saddle tank engine who doesn't know shit about fuck and you see this boxy motherfucker with his tanks hoisted up on his boiler like he just got a new bra, you maybe assume that the weight distribution of his water is going to slosh around and make him prone to swaying. Waddling maybe."

and became a catch all for low-grade train amusement.

For example, Ray was making a Duck playlist on Spotify...

DJ: I guffawing at Montell Jordan - This is How We Do It DJ: You don't gotta add it, but I'm cacklin' Ray: lmaoooo Ray: It's not really thematic but… DJ: 'Cause I mean Ray: I do love it DJ: It's a song about how proud he is of where he comes from! DJ: And how they do it there! Ray: I was going to have Rubber Duckie be the joke bonus track but that one's way funnier. DJ: Ever since he was a lowercase G! Ray: god DJ: This is dumbass saddle tank humor. Ray: It is but what do you expect? Ray: We are dumbass saddle tank engines.

11:75 A.M.

From this excerpt from my solo trainfic:

Thomas pulled into the station. Sir Topham Hatt stood on the platform and pointed at his watch crossly.

"When you think about it Sir," said Thomas, "12:15 P.M. is actually 11:75 A.M."

Sir Topham Hatt felt exhausted.

11:75 is when trains arrive when they're late.

Ding Ding, Motherfucker

RWS Toby energy. Particularly with regard to those fleeting and scant moments in the CGI era where he gently brushes the cheek of gettin' his spicy old man energy back.

"What does he know?"

Originated for use about Tug and his since reformed Duck disappreciatin' ways. Now we usually use it in reference to Rev. Awdry whenever we decide to make a decision that contradicts his word on the matter.

Mostly this attitude stems from that infamous interview where he complains about "Henry's Forest", saying "What does an engine care for scenery?" As if he did not write a story in which Thomas was being a fucking cunt dork about fishing. Or another in which Percy was being a fucking cunt dork about scarves. You set the precedent, my man! Too, Henry caring about trees, I would argue, is not fucking cunt dorkery since one of the few ways in which engines have to interact with their world besides tracing 9/11 flight paths into it is looking at it.

Also that he was getting so uppity about the sanctity of his stories compared to the new ones that were being written for the show, as if he didn't only take actual trainecdotes and put his characters over top of them. Not discounting the skill involved in turning a train accident into a narrative, but he was not exactly coming up with scenarios on his own. That's why there's only one Culdee Fell book. The Snowdon Railway hasn't had enough incidents for any more.

Anyway, point is, sometimes we disregard whatever additional info he gave in The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways because he was very strictly 1-to-1 about it and did not consider anything beyond whether thems the facts, ma'am. But it's a better story if there's only one Truck instead of the two the Snowdon Railway has or if Godred languishes in the Shed for a few years rather than being scrapped immediately.

After all, what does he know? He only wrote the books.

The Big Book of People, Places, and Things

The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways

---

This list is not exhaustive, obviously, and I invite you to add to it with your own shorthand expressions.

[reasonsforhope]

One country in the [climate-change] firing line is Cape Verde. The West African island nation, where 80% of the population lives on the coast, is already feeling the brunt of rising sea levels and increasing ocean acidity on its infrastructure, tourism, biodiversity and fisheries.

The country desperately needs to both mitigate and adapt to these problems, but – as with many Global South countries at present – simply lacks the budget to do it: Cape Verde’s debt reached an all-time high of 157% of GDP in 2021.

In a bid to address both issues simultaneously, the country has signed a novel agreement with Portugal to swap some of its debt for investments into an environmental and climate fund. The former Portuguese colony owes the Portuguese state €140m ($148m) and Portuguese banks €400m.

On a state visit to Cape Verde on 23 January, Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa announced the debt would be put towards Cape Verde’s energy transition and fight against climate change. Costa earmarked projects involving energy efficiency, renewable energy and green hydrogen as possible targets for the fund.

“This is a new seed that we sow in our future cooperation,” said Costa. “Climate change is a challenge that takes place on a global scale and no country will be sustainable if all countries are not sustainable.”

“Debt-for-climate swaps” allow countries to reduce their debt obligations in exchange for a commitment to finance domestic climate and nature projects with the freed-up financial resources. The concept has been knocking about since the 1980s, typically geared at nature conservation. However, after recent deals for Barbados, Belize and the Seychelles, and huge $800m and $1bn agreements in the offing for Ecuador and Sri Lanka, is this financial instrument finally coming of age?

How It Works

Debt-for-climate swaps typically follow a formula. First, a creditor [here, a group or government that money is owed to] agrees to reduce debt, either by converting it into local currency, lowering the interest rate, writing off some of the debt, or a combination of all three. The debtor will then use the saved money for initiatives aimed at increasing climate resilience, lowering greenhouse gas emissions or protecting biodiversity.

The original 'debt-for-nature swaps' began as small, trilateral deals, with NGOs buying sovereign debt owed to commercial banks to redirect payments towards nature projects. They have since evolved into larger, bilateral deals between creditors and debtors...

Debt-for-climate swaps free up fiscal resources so governments can improve resilience and transition to a low-carbon economy without causing a fiscal crisis or sacrificing spending on other development priorities. [These swaps] can create additional revenue for countries with valuable biodiversity or carbon sinks by allowing them to charge others to protect those assets, thereby providing a global public good.

Swaps can even result in an upgrade to a country’s sovereign credit rating, as was the case in Belize, which makes government borrowing cheaper [and improves the country's economy.]

Right now, these [swaps] are needed more than ever, with low-income countries dealing with multiple crises that have put huge pressure on public debt...

Debt-for-climate swaps: “Increasing in size and scale”

Although debt-for-climate swaps are not new, until recently the amount of finance raised globally from the instrument has been modest – just $1bn between 1987 and 2003, according to one OECD study. Just three of the 140 swaps over the past 35 years have had a value of more than $250m, according to the African Development Bank. The average size was a mere $26.6m.

However, the market has steadily picked up pace over the past two decades... In 2016, the government of the Seychelles signed a landmark agreement with developed nation creditor group the Paris Club, supported by NGO The Nature Conservancy (TNC), for a $22m investment in marine conservation.

The government of Belize followed suit in 2021 by issuing a $364m blue bond – a debt instrument to finance marine and ocean-focused sustainability projects – to buy back $550m of commercial debt to use for marine conservation and debt sustainability.

Then, last year, Barbados completed a $150m transaction, supported by the TNC and the Inter-American Development Bank, allowing the country to reduce its borrowing costs and use savings to finance marine conservation.

“Two or three years ago, we were talking about $50m deals,” says Widge. “Now they have gone to $250–300m, so they are definitely increasing in size and scale.”

Indeed, the success of the deals for the Seychelles, Belize and Barbados, along with the debt distress sweeping across the Global South, has sparked an uptick of interest in the model.

Ecuador is reported to be in negotiations with banks and a non-profit for an $800m deal, and Sri Lanka is discussing a $1bn transaction – which would be the biggest swap to date."

-via Energy Monitor, 2/1/23

Note: I'm leaving out my massive rant about how the vast majority of this debt is due to the damages of colonialism. And also countries being forced to "PAY BACK" COLONIZERS FOR THEIR OWN FREEDOM for decades or in some cases centuries (particularly infuriating example: Haiti). Debt-for-climate swaps are good news, and one way to help right this massive historic and ongoing economic wrong

#climate change #developing countries #economics #debt for climate #debt relief #cape verde #barbados #seychelles #ecuador #sri lanka #portugal #belize #global south #conservation #biodiversity #good news #hope #international politics