#high quality low cost living

[lisablack000]

No spend activities

Breaking the cycle of always buying things, being in malls and having to spend money to be happy is one of the best things we can do to set ourselves free from the blind consumerism that society is drowning in.

#free #free range human #happiness #high quality low cost living #blind consumerism #joy #nature #love #wisdom #priceless #empathy

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Better failure for social media

Content moderation is fundamentally about making social media work better, but there are two other considerations that determine how social media fails: end-to-end (E2E), and freedom of exit. These are much neglected, and that’s a pity, because how a system fails is every bit as important as how it works.

Of course, commercial social media sites don’t want to be good, they want to be profitable. The unique dynamics of social media allow the companies to uncouple quality from profit, and more’s the pity.

Social media grows thanks to network effects — you join Twitter to hang out with the people who are there, and then other people join to hang out with you. The more users Twitter accumulates, the more users it can accumulate. But social media sites stay big thanks to high switching costs: the more you have to give up to leave a social media site, the harder it is to go:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Nature bequeaths some in-built switching costs on social media, primarily the coordination problem of reaching consensus on where you and the people in your community should go next. The more friends you share a social media platform with, the higher these costs are. If you’ve ever tried to get ten friends to agree on where to go for dinner, you know how this works. Now imagine trying to get all your friends to agree on where to go for dinner, for the rest of their lives!

But these costs aren’t insurmountable. Network effects, after all, are a double-edged sword. Some users are above-average draws for others, and if a critical mass of these important nodes in the network map depart for a new service — like, say, Mastodon — that service becomes the presumptive successor to the existing giants.

When that happens — when Mastodon becomes “the place we’ll all go when Twitter finally becomes unbearable” — the downsides of network effects kick in and the double-edged sword begins to carve away at a service’s user-base. It’s one thing to argue about which restaurant we should go to tonight, it’s another to ask whether we should join our friends at the new restaurant where they’re already eating.

Social media sites who want to keep their users’ business walk a fine line: they can simply treat those users well, showing them the things they ask to see, not spying on them, paying to police their service to reduce harassment, etc. But these are costly choices: if you show users the things they ask to see, you can’t charge businesses to show them things they don’t want to see. If you don’t spy on users, you can’t sell targeting services to people who want to force them to look at things they’re uninterested in. Every moderator you pay to reduce harassment draws a salary at the expense of your shareholders, and every catastrophe that moderator prevents is a catastrophe you can’t turn into monetizable attention as gawking users flock to it.

So social media sites are always trying to optimize their mistreatment of users, mistreating them (and thus profiting from them) right up to the point where they are ready to switch, but without actually pushing them over the edge.

One way to keep dissatisfied users from leaving is by extracting a penalty from them for their disloyalty. You can lock in their data, their social relationships, or, if they’re “creators” (and disproportionately likely to be key network nodes whose defection to a rival triggers mass departures from their fans), you can take their audiences hostage.

The dominant social media firms all practice a low-grade, tacit form of hostage-taking. Facebook downranks content that links to other sites on the internet. Instagram prohibits links in posts, limiting creators to “Links in bio.” Tiktok doesn’t even allow links. All of this serves as a brake on high-follower users who seek to migrate their audiences to better platforms.

But these strategies are unstable. When a platform becomes worse for users (say, because it mandates nonconsensual surveillance and ramps up advertising), they may actively seek out other places on which to follow each other, and the creators they enjoy. When a rival platform emerges as the presumptive successor to an incumbent, users no longer face the friction of knowing which rival they should resettle to.

When platforms’ enshittification strategies overshoot this way, users flee in droves, and then it’s time for the desperate platform managers to abandon the pretense of providing a public square. Yesterday, Elon Musk’s Twitter rolled out a policy prohibiting users from posting links to rival platforms:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221218173806/https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platforms-policy

This policy was explicitly aimed at preventing users from telling each other where they could be found after they leave Twitter:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221219015355/https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1604531261791522817

This, in turn, was a response to many users posting regular messages explaining why they were leaving Twitter and how they could be found on other platforms. In particular, Twitter management was concerned with departures by high-follower users like Taylor Lorenz, who was retroactively punished for violating the policy, though it didn’t exist when she violated it:

https://deadline.com/2022/12/washington-post-journalist-taylor-lorenz-suspended-twitter-1235202034/

As Elon Musk wrote last spring: “The acid test for two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one!”

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533616384747442176

This isn’t particularly insightful. It’s obvious that any system that requires high walls and punishments to stay in business isn’t serving its users, whose presence is attributable to coercion, not fulfillment. Of course, the people who operate these systems have all manner of rationalizations for them.

The Berlin Wall, we were told, wasn’t there to keep East Germans in — rather, it was there to keep the teeming hordes clamoring to live in the workers’ paradise out. In the same way, platforms will claim that they’re not blocking outlinks or sideloading because they want to prevent users from defecting to a competitor, but rather, to protect those users from external threats.

This rationalization quickly wears thin, and then new ones step in. For example, you might claim that telling your friends that you’re leaving and asking them to meet you elsewhere is like “giv[ing] a talk for a corporation [and] promot[ing] other corporations”:

https://mobile.twitter.com/mayemusk/status/1604550452447690752

Or you might claim that it’s like “running Wendy’s ads [on] McDonalds property,” rather than turning to your friends and saying, “The food at McDonalds sucks, let’s go eat at Wendy’s instead”:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1604559316237037568

The truth is that any service that won’t let you leave isn’t in the business of serving you, it’s in the business of harming you. The only reason to build a wall around your service — to impose any switching costs on users- is so that you can fuck them over without risking their departure.

The platforms want to be Anatevka, and we the villagers of Fiddler On the Roof, stuck plodding the muddy, Cossack-haunted roads by the threat of losing all our friends if we try to leave:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

That’s where freedom of exit comes in. The public should have the right to leave, and companies should not be permitted to make that departure burdensome. Any burdens we permit companies to impose is an invitation to abuse of their users.

This is why governments are handing down new interoperability mandates: the EU’s Digital Markets Act forces the largest companies to offer APIs so that smaller rivals can plug into them and let users walkaway from Big Tech into new kinds of platforms — small businesses, co-ops, nonprofits, hobby sites — that treat them better. These small players are overwhelmingly part of the fediverse: the federated social media sites that allow users to connect to one another irrespective of which server or service they use.

The creators of these platforms have pledged themselves to freedom of exit. Mastodon ships with a “Move Followers” and “Move Following” feature that lets you quit one server and set up shop on another, without losing any of the accounts you follow or the accounts that follow you:

https://codingitwrong.com/2022/10/10/migrating-a-mastodon-account.html

This feature is as yet obscure, because the exodus to Mastodon is still young. Users who flocked to servers without knowing much about their managers have, by and large, not yet run into problems with the site operators. The early trickle of horror stories about petty authoritarianism from Mastodon sysops conspicuously fail to mention that if the management of a particular instance turns tyrant, you can click two links, export your whole social graph, sign up for a rival, click two more links and be back at it.

This feature will become more prominent, because there is nothing about running a Mastodon server that means that you are good at running a Mastodon server. Elon Musk isn’t an evil genius — he’s an ordinary mediocrity who lucked into a lot of power and very little accountability. Some Mastodon operators will have Musk-like tendencies that they will unleash on their users, and the difference will be that those users can click two links and move elsewhere. Bye-eee!

Freedom of exit isn’t just a matter of the human right of movement, it’s also a labor issue. Online creators constitute a serious draw for social media services. All things being equal, these services would rather coerce creators’ participation — by holding their audiences hostage — than persuade creators to remain by offering them an honest chance to ply their trade.

Platforms have a variety of strategies for chaining creators to their services: in addition to making it harder for creators to coordinate with their audiences in a mass departure, platforms can use DRM, as Audible does, to prevent creators’ customers from moving the media they purchase to a rival’s app or player.

Then there’s “freedom of reach”: platforms routinely and deceptively conflate recommending a creator’s work with showing that creator’s work to the people who explicitly asked to see it.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

When you follow or subscribe to a feed, that is not a “signal” to be mixed into the recommendation system. It’s an order: “Show me this.” Not “Show me things like this.”

Show.

Me.

This.

But there’s no money in showing people the things they tell you they want to see. If Amazon showed shoppers the products they searched for, they couldn’t earn $31b/year on an “ad business” that fills the first six screens of results with rival products who’ve paid to be displayed over the product you’re seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

If Spotify played you the albums you searched for, it couldn’t redirect you to playlists artists have to shell out payola to be included on:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

And if you only see what you ask for, then product managers whose KPI is whether they entice you to “discover” something else won’t get a bonus every time you fatfinger a part of your screen that navigates you away from the thing you specifically requested:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-fatfinger-economy-7c7b3b54925c

Musk, meanwhile, has announced that you won’t see messages from the people you follow unless they pay for Twitter Blue:

https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-twitter-blue/

And also that you will be nonconsensually opted into seeing more “recommended” content from people you don’t follow (but who can be extorted out of payola for the privilege):

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/Twitter-Expands-Content-Recommendations/637697/

Musk sees Twitter as a publisher, not a social media site:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604588904828600320

Which is why he’s so indifferent to the collateral damage from this payola/hostage scam. Yes, Twitter is a place where famous and semi-famous people talk to their audiences, but it is primarily a place where those audiences talk to each other — that is, a public square.

This is the Facebook death-spiral: charging to people to follow to reach you, and burying the things they say in a torrent of payola-funded spam. It’s the vision of someone who thinks of other people as things to use — to pump up your share price or market your goods to — not worthy of consideration.

As Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax put it: “Sin is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”

Mastodon isn’t perfect, but its flaws are neither fatal nor permanent. The idea that centralized media is “easier” surely reflects the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been pumped into refining social media Roach Motels (“users check in, but they don’t check out”).

Until a comparable sum has been spent refining decentralized, federated services, any claims about the impossibility of making the fediverse work for mass audiences should be treated as unfalsifiable, motivated reasoning.

Meanwhile, Mastodon has gotten two things right that no other social media giant has even seriously attempted:

I. If you follow someone on Mastodon, you’ll see everything they post; and

II. If you leave a Mastodon server, you can take both your followers and the people you follow with you.

The most common criticism of Mastodon is that you must rely on individual moderators who may be underresourced, incompetent on malicious. This is indeed a serious problem, but it isn’t the same serious problem that Twitter has. When Twitter is incompetent, malicious, or underresourced, your departure comes at a dear price.

On Mastodon, your choice is: tolerate bad moderation, or click two links and move somewhere else.

On Twitter, your choice is: tolerate moderation, or lose contact with all the people you care about and all the people who care about you.

The interoperability mandates in the Digital Markets Act (and in the US ACCESS Act, which seems unlikely to get a vote in this session of Congress) only force the largest platforms to open up, but Mastodon shows us the utility of interop for smaller services, too.

There are lots of domains in which “dominance” shouldn’t be the sole criteria for whether you are expected to treat your customers fairly.

A doctor with a small practice who leaks all ten patients’ data harms those patients as surely as a hospital system with a million patients would have. A small-time wedding photographer who refuses to turn over your pictures unless you pay a surprise bill is every bit as harmful to you as a giant chain that has the same practice.

As we move into the realm of smalltime, community-oriented social media servers, we should be looking to avoid the pitfalls of the social media bubble that’s bursting around us. No matter what the size of the service, let’s ensure that it lets us leave, and respects the end-to-end principle, that any two people who want to talk to each other should be allowed to do so, without interference from the people who operate their communications infrastructure.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Heisenberg Media (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_-_The_Summit_2013.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: Moses confronting the Pharaoh, demanding that he release the Hebrews. Pharaoh’s face has been replaced with Elon Musk’s. Moses holds a Twitter logo in his outstretched hand. The faces embossed in the columns of Pharaoh’s audience hall have been replaced with the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The wall over Pharaoh’s head has been replaced with a Matrix ‘code waterfall’ effect. Moses’s head has been replaced with that of the Mastodon mascot.]

#pluralistic #e2e #end-to-end #freedom of reach #mastodon #interoperability #social media #twitter #economy #creator economy #artists rights #content moderation #como #right of exodus #let my tweeters go #exodus #right of exit #technological self-determination

[kp777]

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

Sept. 5, 2023

"We are prepared to do whatever it takes, even get arrested in an act of civil disobedience, to stand up for our patients," said one Kaiser Permanente worker.

Dozens of healthcare workers were arrested in Los Angeles on Monday after sitting in the street outside of a Kaiser Permanente facility to demand that providers address dangerously low staffing levels at hospitals in California and across the country.

The civil disobedience came as the workers prepared for what could be the largest healthcare strike in U.S. history. Late last month, 85,000 Kaiser Permanente employees represented by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions began voting on whether to authorize a strike over the nonprofit hospital system's alleged unfair labor practices during ongoing contract negotiations.

The current contract expires on September 30.

"We are burnt out, stretched thin, and fed up after years of the pandemic and chronic short staffing," Datosha Williams, a service representative at Kaiser Permanente South Bay, said Monday. "Healthcare providers are failing workers and patients, and we are at crisis levels in our hospitals and medical centers."

"Our employers take in billions of dollars in profits, yet they refuse to safely staff their facilities or pay many of their workers a living wage," Williams added. "We are prepared to do whatever it takes, even get arrested in an act of civil disobedience, to stand up for our patients."

Kaiser Permanente reported nearly $3.3 billion in net income during the first half of 2023. In 2021, Kaiser CEO Greg Adams brought in more than $16 million in total compensation.

According to the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, the hospital system "has investments of $113 billion in the U.S. and abroad, including in fossil fuels, casinos, for-profit prisons, alcohol companies, military weapons, and more."

Healthcare workers, meanwhile, say they're being overworked and underpaid, and many are struggling to make ends meet amid high costs of living.

"We have healthcare employees leaving left and right, and we have corporate greed that is trying to pretend that this staffing shortage is not real," Jessica Cruz, a nurse at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, toldLAist.

"We are risking arrest, and the reason why we're doing it is that we need everyone to know that this crisis is real," said Cruz, who was among the 25 workers arrested during the Labor Day protest.

A recent survey of tens of thousands of healthcare workers across California found that 83% reported understaffing in their departments, and 65% said they have witnessed or heard of care being delayed or denied due to staff shortages.

Additionally, more than 40% of the workers surveyed said they feel pressured to neglect safety protocols and skip breaks or meals due to short staffing.

"It's heartbreaking to see our patients suffer from long wait times for the care they need, all because Kaiser won't put patient and worker safety first," Paula Coleman, a clinical laboratory assistant at Kaiser Permanente in Englewood, Colorado, said in a statement late last month. "We will have no choice but to vote to strike if Kaiser won't bargain in good faith and let us give patients the quality care they deserve."

A local NBC affiliate reported Monday that 99% of Colorado Kaiser employees represented by SEIU Local 105 have voted to authorize a strike.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

#california #kaiser permanente #health care workers #understaffed #unions

[deadletterpoets]

Completely stealing this summary from Reddit so here's the link to that (new link since original reddit post with this summary was deleted)

'Dragon Age Dreadwolf' was internally planned for a September 2023 release but got pushed back to 2024. Currently it's planned for Summer 2024 at the earliest but could be pushed back even further (likely by the end of next year, but possibly even as late as March 2025, aka the end of EA’s fiscal). Incidentally, the next Mass Effect has been pushed further as well, as some people from the Mass Effect team have been pulled to work on Dragon Age instead. As for EA, they have started to acknowledge internally that Apex Legends, their major money-maker, is on the decline. The live-service hit has historically been able to offset the costs of their other studios, including BioWare On that note, the publisher has also recently restructured its operations. Unlike before, EA Sports is now evaluated separately from their other gaming efforts, which now fall under EA Entertainment. By decoupling FIFA and Madden from the rest, studios like BioWare will now be under more pressure to justify themselves to the publisher and its shareholders. Consequently, BioWare now finds itself in a bottom rung position at EA, making them the most obvious candidate for layoffs. Morale is low, these firings won’t help, and Jeff does not feel optimistic about the studio’s longterm future, particularly if Dreadwolf doesn’t land.

I post this to say this confirms my unfortunate belief that Dragon Age Dreadwolf has to be the best game Bioware has ever done (which frankly isn't gonna happen) and unfortunately kinda has to have the combination of a mass appeal, high quality, and mainstream success Bioware hasn't had in YEARS. And if Dreadwolf doesn't do what it needs to do, well the next Mass Effect can't be guaranteed.

I will say it'll definitely suck if Bioware as a whole ends up going under, but it'll suck hard cause EA caused it with their practice of neutering and changing so much of what made Bioware work as a major gaming company for so long. And now it's such a shell of what it was before this attempt to save it puts so much pressure the team doesn't deserve.

#bioware #dragon age #dragon age dreadwolf #mass effect

[pathetic-gamer]

something about that "most expensive item of clothing" poll (and, in particular, the post responding to the many tags about $100‐$200 clothes) has been bugging me, and I finally figured out what it is:

you are on the Reject Fast Fashion Buy Sustainable Clothing And Support Small Craftspeople To The Best Of Your Ability website. how much do you think clothing costs? do you not understand the value of labor?

Obviously big fashion labels will mark up their goods to turn a huge profit (basically all labels will), but when you're looking at ethical/sustainable new clothing, you'll see the same prices for similar items. what you need to understand is that the company making those products is turning significantly less profit than the ~designer~ brand. you cannot avoid the higher costs!! growing the fiber takes labor and resources! manufacturing the textiles takes labor and materials! designing and patterning the garments takes labor and skill! sewing the garments take labor and skill and materials! the workers at *every single step* need to be paid a living wage, and all of the processes in general - from growing the fiber to dyeing the textile - take longer and cost more than the industry standard demands. It makes the clothes expensive!!

one of the biggest problems with fast fashion imo is that the obscene level of exploitation of people and resources has allowed giant corporations to drive prices so fucking low that no one understands the value of their *own* labor, let alone the labor of a seamstress they can't see in a factory they've never heard of getting paid 5 cents an hour to work her fingers to the bone finishing a $20 t-shirt.

Bernadette Banner explained once the reason she doesn't take commissions or sew clothing for other people: To use the materials she uses (high quality natural fibers) plus the hours and hours and hours of labor at a living wage, and then a small mark-up to turn any kind of profit, each piece would cost literally thousands of dollars. This shit is fucking expensive.

so anyway. yes, $400 is a lot of money for a pair of sweatpants, but for people who are interested in supporting sustainable fashion brands and who have the means to do so, $100-$200 is beyond reasonable for basically any given item, and the people who buy those clothes certainly aren't your enemy for it.

#textiles #fast fashion #anyway. this is one of those 'i dont think you understand the difference between a million and a billion' situations lol #sustainable clothing

[deramin2]

All Clothes Are Handmade

As a sewist with access to a lot of fancy commercial-grade equipment, I think about this a lot. People have this idea that there's a lot of automation in making clothes, that robots do most of the work. They do not. Very low-wage humans do.

The machines can make fancy stitches, but they can't guide them. Cloth takes fine dexterity and constant adjustments to work with. Any sewist who's tried to sew a straight line but had their thoughts stray know how fast it goes tits up. The 2+ pieces need to be carefully pinned together (expert sewists can use very few pins, but still need some), and then carefully guided and managed so they stay exactly together as the same tension without wrinkles. And if there's any kind of curve, it takes great skill to do all of that while turning at precisely the right angle at the right time while keeping everything together. And then a human has to detect the end and change the stitch appropriately to secure the ends.

And then there's fabric management. A the front the fabric bunches in your lap and tries to fall down at weird angles. At the back in bunches up and tries to pull at weird angles. So you're constantly having to manage where all that fabric is going that you aren't currently sewing. And if you're sewing in the round (like putting on a sleeve), you have to manage bringing the back around to the front. All of this twists the entire garment, which has to be managed even when most of it is sitting next to you. In home sewing this is sometimes a 2-person job.

A machine cannot do any of that that. Automating clothing manufacturing is a holy grail people have been working on for a couple hundred years and are nowhere close to achieving. It takes the kind of very precise and constant adjustment with a sharp mind and keen eye that humans are very good at and machines are very bad at. Machines only sew in straight lines.

But people look at fast fashion prices and assume robots must be making their clothes. But they aren't. Highly skilled human beings in horrific work conditions at breakneck speed and brutal hours are being paid pennies to make even the cheapest and most low-quality garment. The entire commercial and consumer chain has simply dehumanized them into "must be robots."

This red swimsuit is selling for $10.99 from Walmart. It probably cost $2-$3 to produce.

This striped swimsuit is selling for Beefcake Swimwear for $99. This is the fair price for a swimsuit made with ethical labor.

Beefcake is a small Portland, Oregon company that uses local labor, local materials, and doesn't have a high markup. They cost $49 to manufacture (maybe more now with inflation). (With business expenses, trust me that margin is really slim.) Beefcake talks about "The real cost of American-made swimwear." Half the cost to produce is labor costs. I'd wager half the cost of the fabric is also labor costs. This is why clothing isn't typically made in the US, except using prison labor that's pretty literally slavery.

This is the true cost of a product that attempts to not exploit its workers. It's a luxury most people can't afford because the entire labor market exploits workers to the point of being unable to afford anything but exploitative goods and services. Fast fashion has convinced people they greatly benefit from supporting the worst of that exploitation.

These swimsuits were made on similar machines with similar materials by people with similar skill. The same degree of automation went into both of them. But the Walmart manufacturer sewists got paid less than a dollar to make that one and live in abject poverty, and the Beefcake sewists got paid $22, which is livable.

But robots didn't make either of these. human hands did. Human hands made every single piece of clothing in your closet. Think of how to cherish and care for their work.

#fashion #ethical fashion #fast fashion #sewing #Beefcake Swimwear #labor rights #my posts

[anipgarden]

Cheaply Starting Seeds

This is my fourth post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps! 

Having a high-quality seed-starting setup can feel like an ultimate but distant dream. An entire shelf--an entire room, even, filled with grow lights and plant trays in the optimal setup to make tons of plants? Tons of garden tools, each with a diverse and dedicated purpose? That’s just not an option for some of us. But that doesn’t mean we can’t get started at a low cost!

Seed Starting Set-Ups

Speaking from a somewhat biased Floridian perspective, I’ve had great success starting seeds outside! My usual set-up is on a rarely-used outdoor patio table that’s moved to a sunny spot in the yard, but I’ve even grown seeds in solo cups on sidewalks, or directly in the ground, with great results! 

Some seeds grow best when they go through a cold period before germinating, while other seeds aren’t affected much by it and just wait for warm weather. As such, a viable option is to sow your seeds in late fall, let winter roll by, and wait until the seeds sprout on their own come spring! I would try and mark off where you planted said seeds, so you don’t lose track of them and accidentally dig them up.

Alternatively, if you want to get started while it's cold outside, a popular option I've seen is to grow in milk jugs! There's a lot of different ways to do it--everyone has their preference--but if you're already drinking things like milk or juice or sweet tea, and you're going to get jugs at some point in time--why not use them for gardening?

An easy way to clear up a section of lawn to create open gardening space is by using a sheet mulching or lasagna gardening method (though I like to call it the Cardboard Snuff-Out). Place cardboard or newspaper down in fall/winter to mark out where you want to garden. Layer compostable materials like grass clippings and wood chips on top of it, or potting soil/bagged compost. It’ll decompose over Winter into an organically rich bed that’ll have killed the grass and weeds underneath it. You don’t have to break out any tools and sweat over it come spring, and the cardboard itself will slowly decompose as well!

Though it's often recommended to plant things directly into the ground to decrease watering needs and increase nutritional independence, there’s plenty of reasons you may not be able to. Whether you’re renting, living in a place without a yard, or even just can’t or don’t want to break ground in a yard, you can still help biodiversity by growing in pots. Some plants have rather extensive root systems and aren’t well suited for pots, but there are still plenty of options available for plants that’ll boost biodiversity, be beautiful to look at, and grow just fine in pots! A recommendation is to get a larger pot, if you’re able, as it’ll hold onto more water and need watering less often. Not only are potted plants great for providing food for insects, but they can be shelter for other creatures too--there’s been a good few times I’ve moved a pot and found a frog or toad living underneath it.

If you don’t have room for pots on the ground, you could consider using hanging pots or window boxes! These can be great and easily-maintained options to provide food and habitat for insects and birds in an urban living situation like apartments or townhouses, but they can also be a fun way to add even more habitat to an already-robust home garden. You can even make an entire mini habitat in a window box or pot! I can personally say I’ve seen tons of pollinators visit my yearly hanging basket garden that consists of about five to seven plants, and I’ve always loved the idea of having a window box for blooms right out my window. Just make sure that it’s safe--make sure they’re securely fixed, and that whatever they’re hanging from can handle their weight when they’re freshly watered and loaded with plants. 

If you want to start indoors, you don’t necessarily need grow lights or heat mats (though it will make things a bit easier.) I’ve successfully grown milkweed, peppers, tomatoes, zucchinis, and even sprouted lemon seeds in college dorm rooms, and kept tomato and pepper plants in a dorm room on a sunny windowsill. For the most part, you need a nice and sunny window, some kind of container, and a source of heat (in my case, I used anything from a space heater to the warmth of my laptop running nearby. If you don’t have any sunny windows, or enough windowsill space to start plants on, its possible to obtain cheaper grow lights. One year, my mom bought me some gooseneck grow lights that could clip onto things for cheap off of Amazon. (Fair warning, though, they did light up my entire room in purple. I lived alone that year (covid year, my roomies bailed), so it was fine, but it was kind of trippy,)

Another year, when I was in an apartment on my own, I bought a grow light modeled like a normal light bulb from the lightbulb aisle in Lowe’s and put it in my desk lamp. Growing seeds indoors can make them grow fast and leggy, so it’ll help if you can keep a desk fan on them so they focus on growing strong instead of tall and fast.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a friend with a nice set up, you could see if they’re willing to let you borrow some of their space to start your own plants as well! My set-up in college was by no means High Class, but I was still more than willing to start seeds for my friends who asked!

Containers for Seed Starting

So now that we’ve talked starting seeds indoors and out, we need to address what to start them in. It’s important that whatever you’re using has drainage holes, and be large enough to support your plant (starting something like milkweed or a squash in a tiny little pot won’t yield great results). Fortunately, there are options here!

If you’re looking to buy pots, Dollar Tree will sell some small plastic pots for cheap in the spring! They’re kind of thin, and won’t last forever, but they’re great for a few uses and don’t cost a lot of money. Something that’s a bit more pricey but are longer-lasting, in my experience, are the Burpee SuperSeed trays. They come in different sizes, but I’m fond of the 16-cell trays--they have silicone bottoms and are made of a nice solid plastic with a tray to hold water, so they hold up for a long time and are easy to clean and reuse!

Burpee seed tray, my beloved.

What’s better than a cheap pot? Free ones, and there’s plenty of options there! I’ve seen people use toilet paper or paper towel rolls as pots by folding the bottoms in and have it work well for them! I think this method would work best if you had some kind of tray to keep them moist, because mine dried out fast last time I tried this method. I’ve also seen people make pots out of newspaper with a few different methods, and the people who use this method love it--apparently, the roots pass through the paper easier and it decomposes faster when buried, so you can just transplant the whole pot and avoid any kind of transplanting shock. If you don’t have any newspaper on hand, you can likely ask your friends or neighbors! 

I’ve gotten lots of mileage from reusing old containers by poking a few holes in the bottom with knives or scissors--just be careful while you’re doing it! I, personally, am more likely to use an already-used solo cup for it--they’re a nice size, so they hold a good amount of soil and moisture and give the seedling a good amount of root space. I tend to write the plant information on the side of the cup in sharpie marker, or on an index card in pen. I’ve also heard of people making use of egg cartons, fruit containers, yogurt cups, milk cartons, soda bottles--the more you start thinking about what you could easily poke a hole in, the more options start coming around!

This photo may be from 2018, but I'll still regularly reuse cups like this! They're also great for cuttings!

As you start planning to move your seedlings into the ground and preparing planting sites, you’ll likely need a few tools to do it! How do you get these? You may be able to borrow some tools from a neighbor! As long as you make sure to return them in good condition, depending on how friendly your neighbors are, they might be totally fine with you borrowing their tools for awhile. If you don’t want to take that route, there may be a tool library you can borrow from, or a mutual aid group that can loan you tools for awhile. Either way, borrowing tools is cheaper than buying them--though, if you do have to buy tools, cheap hand-tools from Walmart or the dollar store work just fine. They’ll even last a good while if they’re taken care of when not in use! I've even seen places like Ross sell some tools and pots in spring!

Spotted in a Walmart gardening section by the registers, 2023.

Of course, your mileage may vary with these. I genuinely cannot think of the last time my house got a newspaper, and as I've mentioned I don't have to worry about snow. Similarly, maybe you don't use plastic cups when you can help it, or don't have a particular affinity for eggs and yogurt. Maybe there isn't a tool library in your area--I sure don't know if there is in mine--but it could still be worth poking around and asking a neighbor!

That's the end of this post! My next post is gonna be about ways to support your plants for cheap--we're gonna be talking compost, mulch, and trellises. Until then, I hope this advice was helpful! Feel free to reply with any questions, your success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in!

#biodiversity #solarpunk #gardening #outdoor gardening #growing from seed #budget gardening #cheap gardening #indoor gardening #ani rambles #out of queue #the biodiversity saga #I can make a post later about how I prepare solo cups for being used as pots if yall want #I've found its safest to just use a nice pair of scissors and keep the cup upside-down on the table while I cut into the bottom #and when i say 'take care of the tools when not in use' i mean 'dont be me and leave a cheap shovel from dollar tree out in the rain' #it had a wooden handle and it basically just like. rotted. fell apart in my hand when I picked it up #generally keeping tools in the garage will also help them not rust as fast too #but if you're gonna leave them outside at least put them in shade #the number of times i have lost feeling in my hands because i picked up a hoe that was laying in the sun and fuckin SCALED my palms #its not fun. dont do it. maybe its a Floridian problem but still #if you read all these tags. uh. shovel emoji. idk. sorry dude.

[y-rhywbeth2]

Lore: Music

Link: Disclaimer regarding D&D "canon" & Index [tldr: D&D lore is a giant conflicting mess. Larian's lore is also a conflicting mess. There's a lot of lore; I don't know everything. You learn to take what you want and leave the rest]

Useful for bards and priests, one assumes. I had to look up so many songs I'd never heard of to have a clue what half the comparisons were...

Musical education in the Realms (plus what the core Colleges (Lore and Valor) translate to in the Realms (where they aren't called that))

Musical vocabulary

Instruments

Music itself, including: operatic, 'symphonic'-ish, renaissance-style, hymns, 70s folk bands, and 70s rock music. [Popular music | Hymns | Opera | Demihuman traditions] (we got music that sounds like Leonard Cohen, Sinéad O'Connor, 70s folk music, 50s folk music, ELO, Genesis...)

Education

The majority of trained musicians, including bards, start off being apprenticed to accomplished bards willing to tutor, and some seek out Bardic Colleges. The exact focus, quality and curriculum varies by the institution.

To be admitted one must have some experience performing, and be able to pass an audition. They will perform before one of the master bards of the college, as well as one 'invisible' listener they're unaware of. Both masters must agree that the candidate is worth teaching or not for admission, if they don't agree further auditions will follow until they do agree on a verdict.

'Low-order' colleges generally concentrate on mastery of pitch, timbre and nuance. Students are taught to sing scales and perfectly duplicate overheard notes and tunes with their voice, as well as memorizing a set of tunes on a range of instruments to familiarise themselves with different keys and methods. The crafting and repair of one form of instrument is also part of the training.

'High-order' colleges offer a wider range of instruments and repertoire, teaching the history behind the music and lyrics, as well as some language tutoring - not necessarily to speak the language, but to be able to sing such songs perfectly.

New students to any college will be taught the basics in classes at first, but very soon will be passed onto a tutor for one-on-one tutoring.

Pretty much all official colleges in the Realms would make you a College of Lore bard in core DnD terms.

What is called The College of Valor does not actually involve colleges, and is found amongst warrior cultures like Orcs or the Illuskan Northmen, Uthgardt and Reghed: skalds - warrior poets, lorekeepers and clan storytellers.

The most prestigious colleges are the College of Fochlucan in Silverymoon, an ancient bardic tradition which I assume from the name is supposed to be from Ffolk tradition (the Moonshaes). This college has close ties to the Harpers, though most members will stress that their mission and activities are separate to avoid being targeted by the Harpers' enemies.

The College of the Herald is also found in Silverymoon and was founded by a Harper in 922 DR to preserve history. The college maintains a strict neutrality towards the conflicts of the world, and its focus is on preservation of history, folklore and legend over music.

The College of New Olamn, once Ollamh, another ancient bardic tradition, is in Waterdeep, established in 1366 by wealthy patrons of the arts.

On a less formal level, priests of Milil are charged with spreading music and teaching as many as possible to play and sing, and followers of EIlistraee are to 'nurture beauty, music, the craft of making musical instruments, and song wherever they find it.'

Vernacular

'Minstrelsy' is a term for live music, not including hymns and holy music. Recorded music does exist, though mostly in the form of spells that exist to capture and play the song back on command. People like to use them for study, meditation, fun, etc. If you don't have access to magic, due to cost or general mistrust of the stuff, the Gondians have invented music boxes. You can also get those jewellery boxes with the spinning dancer that play music when they open.

A 'song' is monophonic performance or piece, consisting pof a single vocalist with no instrumental accompaniment.

'Allsong' is the term for polyphonic pieces; covering vocals with instrumental accompaniment, multiple singers such as choirs, and orchestras.

'Newclang' is recent music that starts playing with or breaking conventions. May be viewed as a brilliant invention or modern pop garbage, depending on your tastes.

'song-cycles': 'extended stories told by ballads being sung in a particular sequence. Most of these are 'later inventions,' concocted by a minstrel or bard stringing together their personal favourites (or tunes that they could perform well, and that were popular with paying audiences) into a story of sorts, and then knitting them together with altered lyrics, additional linking songs, and sometimes short spoken-word orations, into the tale of one hero's life, or a romance, or the reign of a villainous king, or the saga of a fearsome dragon or other predatory monster (and its eventual defeat).'

If the performance is 'wordless' then there are no sung lyrics. There might be vocalisations along with the music, but as per the name, no words.

The concept of sorting music into genres apparently hasn't much occurred to anybody yet; music is music in most people's eyes. Historical music trends are named after popular artists of the time. Still you have lammuer (slow waltzes), whirls (reels) and tonsets (courtly formal dances).

There is no standard agreed upon scale that is used by the whole of the Realms.

-

Instruments

The instruments most frequently seen in the hands of common minstrels are lutes and harps. Bells, clapping or stamping one's feet, rhythm sticks and a small wooden pipe akin to a penny whistle serve as accompaniment, and for major percussion instruments you have hand drums and 'great drums' (kettle drums).

Ocarinas, kazoos and mouth harps are pretty common.

Yarting: An acoustic guitar, basically, with origins in Amn and Calimshan, but variations exist everywhere.

Songhorn: Recorders

Straele: A violin-like instrument, shaped a bit like a metronome and played cradled in one arm (preferably while sitting).

Great staele: Cellos and basses

Drone: A large, stationary double-reed instrument with a bladder and several mouthpieces, played by multiple musicians and sounding either like the drones of a bagpipe or an organ or synthesizer.

Jassaran: a crude 'keyboard-and-wires' instrument invented in Sembia that sounds something like a harpsichord.

Artang: A dulcimer, though artangs are only plucked or bowed.)

Shawm: A gnomish instrument that's something like an oboe or bassoon in form. There's also a bellows powered variant.

Zulkoon: A Thayan pump organ. Pipe organs also exist.

Tantan: tambourines. Popular with halflings.

Longhorns: flutes

'Birdpipes' or Shalm: pan pipes. Most popular with Lliirans and elves, particularly copper and green elves.

Tocken: carved oval bells set to hang so that they can be lightly struck. Instruments such as this are found in subterranean cultures (Dwarves and goblins, mostly). The sound echoes through the structures.

Glaur: Basically a trumpet (more specifically it sounds like a renaissance instrument called a serpent), shaped something between a cornucopia and a saxophone.

Gloon: Much like a glaur, but lacking in valves and it produces a markedly mournful sound.

'Whistlecanes' or thelarr: The bane of parents. Basically just a cut reed you can whistle with. People like to give them to children, who do as children do and proceed to give everybody ear aches from badly played instruments.

-

Music

With a note that a lot of the following kind of applies to the Sword Caoast, Heartlands, Cormyr, Dalelands and etc. Different regions of Faerûn have different music. The kind of Thayan music you'd hear in alehouses in East Faerûn, for example, apparently sounds like this. (Songs with such tunes are called 'thaeraeden,' or 'life laments', and the lyrics are often melancholy questions and challenges. Usually break up songs and unrequited love, the usual.)

So, switching out more modern instruments like drumkits and electric guitars, this is the kind of music you'd apparently expect to hear from minstrels, street and tavern performers and etc. This is basically turning on the radio:

Popular ballads and songs sound something like:

These: X, X, X, X,

Stuff like Leonard Cohen. X

1970s folk music, like Steeleye Span and Maddie Prior. Like the Prickle Eye Bush X, X.

Tongue-in-cheek songs like the Irish Ballad are popular with the working class. I feel like that one specifically would be popular with drow and Bhaalspawn, personally.

'Easy listening' being played in the background while you're passing the evening at a tavern sounds like standard Renaissance fare like Packington's Pound and My Thing is My Own.

Dance music would sound something like this: X

The kind of music you're likely to hear at an upper class party is going to be bringing in musicians and possibly orchestras and dancing. Stuff like this: X, X, X, X,

Orchestral music doesn't utilise strings very much, and prefers to use vocalisation in its place. You generally get more stuff like this.

-

The Opera

Inasfar as I can tell, the opera is exactly what you expect.

The most famous/popular operas include:

'the War of Three Castles:' Featuring a bunch of kings throwing their sons and daughters off to lead armies against each other. Disaster strikes, two princes and a princess are trapped in a tomb in the Underdark and a love triangle ensues. The princess decides fuck that nonsense, she will have both or neither but she's not having this drama, and they work out a polyamorous relationship, and agree that they will go home and have a 'marriage of three crowns' where they all marry each other, even if their fathers may try to stop them or execute them for it. Then they get back up there, discover that their fathers have been killed turning the entire region into a war torn region. They recover what is left, and they get married and unite their kingdoms in peace and like happily ever after.

'Alvaericknar:' The lovable rogue archetype who shares his name with the title bites off more than he can chew trying to rob a lich - who kills him. But he's prepared for that, and due to ensuring that the lich killed him in a spot that would set of several enchantments he manages to come back as undead, and proceeds to continue his hijinks. 'As an undead, he goes right on being a swindling, fun-loving rascal, only now he doesn’t need food or drink or shelter.'

'Downdragon Harr': An evil sorceress turns a princess into a dragon, uses magic to disguise herself as the princess, murders the king and takes over the kingdom. Her first decree is to have every dragon in the kingdom slain (all dragons are played by bassi profundi). A knight with a magic sword wounds the princess in her dragon form, and the enchantment on the blade breaks the spell on her. They fall in love via duet, and then go to the most ancient wyrm in the land (the titular Harr), wake him from his centuries long slumber and use him as their steed to fly off and challenge the sorceress. 'She sees their approach and uses mighty sorcery, that drains the life from most of her courtiers and all of her guards, to slay the dragon as it dives down on the castle—but in death, it slays her, crashing into the castle and crushing her to pulp under its great bulk as it slides to a (dead) stop. (It sings in death, and so does the queen from somewhere under it.) The princess and the knight begin their happy rule, and wedded bliss, atop the carcass of the great dragon.'

One suspects dragons do not care overmuch for this opera.

-

Hymns:

Religious music is typically plainchant, a form of music that usually consists purely of vocals (typically a solitary singer). There is no set rhythm, as the song consists of singing prayers and religious verse. Sometimes there's the occasional accompaniment from a instrument, such as an organ, or a slow heavy drum beat, in the case of Banite hymns.

They can be more complex: polyphonic hymns involve 'two or more singers or instrumentalists playing independent melodic lines at the same time.'

The hymns of most faiths sound most akin to Gregorian chanting. At its softest and most elaborate, you get something that sounds something like a simplified Enya song.

-

Elves

Ah yes, the mysterious and magic melodies of the Tel'Quessir...

Which apparently sound a lot like, say, Don't Bring Me Down, Land of Confusion, Domino Medley, Mr Blue Sky...

They also have your Enya and Loreena McKennit type stuff.

Replace the guitar with a harp, maybe throw in a flute, that's elven music. It's rock. Elven instruments are the only instruments thus far capable of sustain. The effects on the vocals can be replicated by elves, who have a strange quirk with their vocal chords where they can produce two notes/sounds at once, distorting their voice in a way that's similar. Some have a genetic quirk that allows them to sort of say 'two things at once.' Generally elves prefer softer singing voices.

Elven musical performances feature galadrae - three dimensional illusions depicting scenes to go along with the song, not dissimilar to what one might see at a modern concert. Generally the theme is the history/story behind the piece.

Common elven folk songs are apparently these: Laeryn's Lament My Love Green And Growing Blood of My Sisters The Moondapple Stag Knights On The Ride Thorn Of Rose Winterwillow [an instrumental] Greenhallow Mantle Stone Fall, Tree Rise The Lady Laughing

-

Dwarves

Dwarves like drums and metallic percussion for their music, and vocals tend to be plainsong.

Large clanholds with volcanic vents may build giant complex pipe organs.

'...usually dwarves play piano-like personal instruments (strings hit with hammers; hitting things with hammers is the dwarven way). Most such dwarf instruments look more like an accordion (small portable keyboard) and have metal strings.'

-

Gnomes

Gnomes like drones and oboes (or shawms, I guess). Traditionally, history and lore has been an oral tradition kept by women, so it wouldn't surprise me if some lorekeepers sing it.

-

Halflings

Halflings are apparently known for their comic, and usually bawdy, operas, which are popular with gnomes and dwarves. Titles include 'Ravalar’s Roister In The Cloister; Yeomen, Bowmen, and The Taming Maiden; The Seven Drunken Swordswingers Of Silverymoon; The Haunted Bedpan; The Laughing Statue Of Beltragar; and The Night Six In-Use Beds Fell Into The Castle Moat.'

Outside of that their music overlaps a lot with human music trends.

-

Orcs and goblins

Heavy drumbeats, gongs, warhorns and rhythmic shouting/chanting.

-

Dragonborn

Nothing outside of BG3 that I see, so I'd go with what the game says: throat singing.

#Music on Toril: apparently a grab bag of genres where the 1400s and the 70s collided #'The Prickle Eye Bush' is going to be in my head for a while... #lore stuff #long post

[probablyasocialecologist]

At a societal level, most people grasp the importance of plants to their lives and the ecosystems they inhabit. The success of humans as a species is inextricably interwoven with the success of plant life on Earth. Without the growth of ancient forests, the biosphere in which we live would not have enough oxygen-rich air for humans to have evolved. Without the cultivation of plants for food, humans could not have settled, built shelters and developed rich and diverse cultures. In practical terms, too, building with plants makes a lot of sense. They grow back and are relatively easy to cultivate, harvest and process into useful materials. Their inherent fibrous structures give our buildings integrity. Trees, processed into timber, work extremely well in both compression and tension. Hollow straws and grasses hold air within them, making them great insulators. The lignin in many different plants can act as a natural binder when heated, meaning that you can essentially squash them, heat them and they stick together into useful sheet materials. Mixed with different binders like clay and lime, they can be given resistance to fire, insects and mould. Bio-based materials are also hygroscopic – meaning that they hold and release moisture. The fact that they can absorb humidity from a room helps to regulate damp and prevent mould from growing. That they are moisture permeable means that water vapour trapped in walls, from rain ingress or generated through leaks, always has somewhere to go. Contemporary buildings, on the other hand, are essentially wrapped in plastic sheets, trapping in moisture and resulting in poor indoor air quality.

Some of the best examples of bio-based buildings are hiding in plain sight in villages, towns and cities across the globe, having withstood decades, sometimes centuries of wear and tear. Timber-framed barns, reinforced with hazel wattle and clay daub can be found dotted across the British countryside. The technique of cob building, using loadbearing clay and straw, was very commonly used in the south-west of England in the 19th century, and many of those cob buildings still stand in Devon and Cornwall today. They are finished in a lime render and look from the outside like any other stone or brick building.

That these techniques have not become more widespread is, at first glance, surprising. The local materials and skills used to build with them were relatively low cost, and when well maintained, extremely durable. The critical thing about these materials, however, is how they were intrinsically linked to land, and specific geographies or bioregions. Industrialisation brought with it a change in agricultural practices and land ownership. Bio-based materials were conventionally derived from agricultural waste; long wheat straw was for example used for thatching, until modern chemical fertilisers that help the wheat grow more quickly weakened the structure of the straw, making it too brittle. Water reed, also used in thatching and as a render substrate, was once abundant in wetlands, but these were drained over the course of the 19th century to develop more arable farmland, cutting by approximately 90 per cent the amount of land on which the reed could grow.

Industrialisation also brought about the development of contemporary insulations, designed initially to prevent energy loss from high-energy machinery and factory spaces. Materials such as concrete and steel, which enabled the quick assembly of spaces of production, ultimately sought markets in domestic construction too. These materials were produced at an unprecedented scale and advertised as technologically advanced, in need of little or no maintenance: symbols of a bright future in which being cold, damp and living with fire risk were a thing of the past. And as these materials became more and more popular, regulatory frameworks began to be designed around them, with lawmakers falling victim to aggressive lobbying and marketing campaigns. Today, testing and certification, mortgages and insurances in the UK and beyond are generally designed around contemporary building systems, and materials which have proven their efficacy over decades of service are considered risky, fringe and ultimately more costly.

The petrochemical and mineral materials we have been building with since the Industrial Revolution require an enormous amount of energy to be extracted and processed. The cement industry, for example, is responsible for about eight per cent of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions – far more than global carbon emissions from aviation. We cannot continue to build using materials that generate enormous outflows of emissions and have to be shipped across great distances. We need to use materials that are lower in embodied carbon: bio-based materials, derived from plants which can regenerate sustainably and sequester carbon into our buildings.

#building #construction #architecture #solarpunk

[liminalweirdo]

over 20,000 people in the United States died of Covid-19 since the beginning of 2024. Millions who avoided death are nonetheless still living with Long Covid, and this number grows each month. We are still in crisis.

Most importantly, though, implementing accessibility measures during an active pandemic is the right thing to do, as it makes events safer for everyone. Black communities, people of color, the disability community at large, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and low-income communities continue to be especially hard-hit by the pandemic and the abandonment of Covid-19 precautions. The pandemic reproduces the very forms of ableism, classism, and racism that existed before 2020. There are millions of already systemically marginalized people who are being further pushed out of public life. This is unjust, and we must do better. 

[However,] a blueprint for radical inclusion and living a full, safer life within the context of Covid-19 exists.

source

Install HEPA filters in your space. Installing a plug-in air purifier in your space is a great place to begin. Because almost all public spaces currently fall short of the ventilation needed for Covid-19 safety, it’s safe to assume that your space would also benefit from this efficient first step. Make sure it’s appropriately sized for your space and continuously running. If funds allow, upgrade your HVAC system to include HEPA filtration.

Practice mask requirements. Consider requiring and providing high-quality masks for everyone who will be in your space and attending your events. Contrary to popular belief, mask requirements do not deter guests in any meaningful numbers. Clean Air Club has been hosting Covid-safer events in Chicago for over a year, and a majority of the mask-required events sell out every time. If obtaining masks for your event is cost-prohibitive, check in with your local mask bloc for assistance.

Collect and share data on the safety of your space and region. Collect data on the ventilation in your space using a carbon dioxide (CO2) monitor. The higher the number, the more attention you need to pay to improving the ventilation and air purification in the space. Open windows and doors, crank up the HVAC, and plug in another purifier. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when the CO2 levels in your space are close to the levels expected outdoors in fresh air (around 400 ppm). As a bonus, this improved ventilation and purification will remediate poor air quality due to climate-change induced wildfires, improve concentration, and aid in accommodating disabling conditions such as asthma and allergies. Data collection should also include monitoring wastewater data, now our most accurate picture of the true prevalence of Covid-19 and other wastewater-monitored viruses in our population at any given time. We can use this data to increase the number of mitigation strategies adopted when wastewater levels are high. Consider creating an internal chart at your organization that lists protocols associated with different wastewater levels, reducing the burden of communication and oversight during higher periods.

Consider additional mitigation layers. Some of the other layers of protection from the swiss cheese model include: pre-event testing, far-UVC lights, providing options for virtual participation, and asking guests to stay home if they’re showing any symptoms of contagious or novel illness. Consider promoting individualized mitigation approaches within your organizations, such as the usage of nasal spray and CPC mouthwash. The key is to remain creative, flexible, and open to adding layers of protection in response to changing risk levels in the environment.

Open up lines of communication. As you implement mitigation layers, communicate them to your community. Ask them how they’ve been impacted by Covid-19 and give people space to share their access needs and ideas. This will provide a crucial why behind your actions and investments. Using the accessibility principle of designing for the highest possible need, your virus safety plan should accommodate the most vulnerable and impacted community members rather than those who have high risk thresholds or behave as though the pandemic is over. Part of effective pandemic communication includes providing accessibility and virus safety information in an Access Note or in an Accessibility Guide. This information should be repeated often in marketing and outreach materials.

Resources

[mariacallous]

An Army spy operating at the heart of the IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland probably cost more lives than he saved, a report has found.

Operation Kenova investigated the agent known as Stakeknife.

It said speculation he had saved hundreds of lives was wrong; it was more likely between high single figures and low double figures.

It found the security forces failed to prevent some murders to try to protect their agents in the IRA.

But, the report pointed out that it was the IRA leadership that had "commissioned and sanctioned" the actions of its so-called internal security unit - of which Stakeknife was a member - and "committed brutal acts of torture and murder".

The £40m investigation took seven years to examine the activities of Stakeknife, who was Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci.

The interim report called for apologies from the UK government and Irish republican leadership on behalf of the IRA.

Lawyer Kevin Winters, who represents the families of 12 victims, said the report was "a damning indictment of the state".

"The staggering takeaway message is that the state could have intervened to save lives," he said.

"We are left with the horrendous conclusion that both state and the IRA were co-conspirators in the murder of its citizens."

The report's author, senior police officer Jon Boutcher, highlighted many failings of the security forces and the UK government, but acknowledged they were acting in an extremely stressful and violent environment.

Multiple murders

Operation Kenova linked Stakeknife to at least 14 murders and 15 abduction incidents.

Despite it being widely known that Scappaticci was Stakeknife, the Kenova Report did not officially confirm that. A further, more detailed report is due to be published by the Kenova team later this year.

However, the interim report said Stakeknife was "undoubtedly a valuable asset" to the security forces who "provided high-quality intelligence about PIRA [Provisional IRA] at considerable risk to himself".

The 208-page report added: "Albeit that his intelligence was not always passed on or acted upon and if more of it had been, he could not have remained in place as long as he did."

Mr Boutcher, who is now chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), said claims Stakeknife saved hundreds of lives were based on "unreliable and speculative" assessments.

Mr Boutcher said murders that could, and should, have been prevented were allowed to take place with the knowledge of the security forces.

'You were not mad'

"Morality and legality of agents doing any harm - with the knowledge of the state - is something that we would never, ever allow today," he said.

Mr Boutcher also referred to the decision not to confirm Stakeknife's identity in his report.

"Stakeknife's identity has been exposed to Kenova, subject to confidentiality which I remain bound by and I cannot make his name public without official authority," he said.

So far the government has refused to give such authority.

But Mr Boutcher added that in his view this position was "no longer tenable" and he expected the "government to authorise Kenova to confirm Stakeknife's identity in the final report".

Referring to Stakeknife's victims, Mr Boutcher said many of them had endured "endless delays, setbacks and unfulfilled promises in their search for the truth".

He said his report confirmed what many families had suspected - patterns of state intervention and non-intervention in the torture and murder of people accused of being state agents during the Troubles.

"You were not mad. This was happening and this should not have happened," Mr Boutcher told them.

[blurban-form]

Queenslanders

Many locations have housing types that because of local conditions become very common and come to define an area. Los Angeles dingbats, auto worker housing in Detroit, and Texas donuts are some examples.

But we’re not here to talk those, we’re going to talk about Queenslanders, the type of house the Heelers live in. Like so much of “Bluey”, they’re depicted very realistically.

Queenslanders are the term for a type of house that became commonplace in Queensland, Australia, particularly in Brisbane. (Note the term can also refer to the construction style, so other types of building could be called Queenslanders too.)

They date back to the 1840s when Brisbane was expanding rapidly. Queensland's population increased rapidly from 30,000 inhabitants in 1861 to half a million by 1901 due to a mining boom. Housing was needed that could be constructed rapidly. In the early 20th century, these homes were available as kits from lumber suppliers but were also built by home-building firms, they could be constructed rapidly while maintaining a high level of quality.

Construction and Features

These homes tend to be large: this was intentional as when Brisbane was developing, a minimum lot size was specified to prevent very cramped/dense slum areas that had become an issue in other Australian cities.

These homes were constructed of readily-available low-cost materials: wooden planks and metal roofs, typically a single-level on wooden “stumps”.

This use of these stump posts as the footings for the house had multiple benefits. It protected against flooding (i.e. this lower area could flood without destroying the home’s contents), keeps bugs out (the posts would use metal caps to keep ants from climbing up into the house), and allowed the homes to be built rapidly without the need to smooth out/level the terrain with earth-moving equipment, and also allows the building to be easily moved, raised, etc. if need be.

Note how the Heeler’s house appears to have part of the lower level upgraded while part of it is still an unimproved crawlspace-type area.

Other features include:

Spinning rooftop ventilators to allow hot air to be expelled from the house.

Gabled roofs with steep pitches, typically with fireproof metal roofs (originally corrugated iron, now steel as used on barn roofs), as this was material readily available, could stand up to heavy rains, and was easily replaced in the event of cyclone damage. (Most episodes of Bluey show the house with flatter-style steel barn-type roofing, but “Hammerbarn” shows corrugated metal!)

They have verandas (porches) that wrap around the house but do not enclose the house entirely. Sometimes these get enclosed to create additional indoor living space. The veranda serves as an indoor/outdoor space, and can even be used as a sleeping area in the summer.

The crawlspace area could be used as a shaded play area, workshop, etc. and many were ultimately upgraded into living space but this eliminated the protection against flooding. (This space would be vulnerable)

Inside the rooms are connected and designed with lots of openings to allow for airflow to keep them cool. (As there was no air conditioning at the time.)

(When I did the series of house walkthrough posts I noted how there are often open windows and good airflow throughout the house)

These homes have a light, breezy feel, often being compared to treehouses, or tents. This can also be a criticism; the walls can be thin (making privacy an issue) and hard to insulate, which wasn’t a consideration when they were constructed.

These features combine to make these homes well-adapted to the warm & humid climate of Queensland, where rainfall is heavy and the average summer temperature is typically in the range of 23–36°C (73–97°F). Brisbane is located in a low-lying swamp area and is prone to flooding.

They began falling out of favour after WWII. One reason for this was that earth-moving technology had improved meaning it was no longer necessary to build using stumps, as uneven land could be levelled for building.

References

#Bluey Queenslanders #Bluey architecture #Bluey housing stock #Bluey

[djuvlipen]

Studies from 2016 show that at least 15% of Roma people have a disability, amounting to over 1.6 million people between the European Union, the Western Balkans and Turkey. The available data highlights a high prevalence of disabilities among Roma communities, also due to the health inequality gap and poorer health condition of the Roma population. However, the information on Roma with disabilities is very limited.

To gain a better understanding of the discrimination and social exclusion that Roma with disabilities face in Europe, we have conducted a research study based on the data collected by the EU Agency on Fundamental Rights (FRA) and the research from the European Roma Grassroots Organisation (ERGO) Network. The outcomes and analysis are published in a joint EDF-ERGO Network briefing on discrimination and social exclusion of Roma with disabilities.

The briefing highlights a comparatively high risk of intersectional and multiple discrimination for Roma with disabilities, with the disability marginalisation adding to the systemic racial discrimination and antigypsyism that keeps them at the margins of society. Discrimination affects their access to basic services such as inclusive education, healthcare and long-term care, their integration into the job market and, in turn, their overall socio-economic condition.

Findings

Available data clearly show that Roma with disabilities encounter more obstacles than the average to complete quality education, 81% of them dropping out of education early. Early school abandonment and inequalities in educational outcomes are partly encouraged by the bullying and harassment that young Roma people with disabilities endure in school settings and that, according to the FRA, affect 27% of them, as well as by a general trend to falsely diagnose Roma children with developmental and learning disabilities, leading them to be placed in segregated schools with reduced curricula.

As a result of the low average educational attainment, young Roma with disabilities encounter numerous issues entering the labour market. Within the age bracket 16-24, 63% of Roma with disabilities is neither in education, employment or training – with the percentage raising to 84% for the people of the same age with high support needs. The situation is further worsened by discrimination during job search and on the workplace: many respondents claimed to have felt discriminated against when looking for a job, largely because of being Roma.

The limited access to education, lower access to employment, and unequal access to social protection make so that Roma with disabilities stand an exponentially higher chance of living below the poverty line: 82% of persons with disabilities with moderate support needs, and 90% with high support needs, are at risk of poverty. The marginalisation of Roma with disabilities also reflects on their access to the housing market: inability to pay rent and anti-Roma discrimination when looking for housing are part of the reason why 55% of Roma with disabilities experience housing deprivation and 75% live in overcrowded housing.

The Roma experience an overall poorer state of health than the majority of the population, with a higher prevalence of chronic illnesses and a lower life expectancy. Deterring them from accessing healthcare and long-term care are not only the high cost of treatments and the lack of information, but also discriminatory attitudes informed by antigypsyism. The ethnic discrimination intensifies for those with some form of disability: 18% of Roma with disabilities with moderate support needs and 17% of Roma with disabilities with high support needs felt discriminated against in accessing healthcare, compared to 12% of Roma without disabilities. It is also important to note that the inaccessibility of healthcare system and healthcare services create another discriminatory barrier for Roma with disabilities.

Conclusions

While some of the issues highlighted in our briefing could be addressed by separate Roma and disability policies, the current legal framework adopted by the EU does not offer a comprehensive protection for people facing intersectional and multiple discrimination, e.g. on grounds of ethnic discrimination and disability. Because of this, Roma with disabilities are left with limited protection of their rights and limited legal remedies to respond to their marginalisation.

We therefore, together with ERGO Network, recommend the EU and Member States to adopt targeted actions, in particular:

Increase the visibility of Roma with disabilities and address policy gaps at the European and national levels

Adopt a comprehensive EU equality law to prohibit intersectional and multiple forms of discrimination

Collect equality disaggregated data on people living in institutions in the EU;

Invest in housing first initiatives and targeted outreach measures to improve access to healthcare and long-term care services for Roma with disabilities;

Involve Roma with disabilities and their representative organisations in designing, implementing and monitoring policies that affect them.

#disability month #disability pride month #roma #education #housing #workplace #segregation #ableism #anti roma racism #Romani people and disability #racialized poverty

[andmaybegayer]

This has been sitting in my drafts for a month or two but given that we're having animal agriculture discourse it seems worthwhile to say:

Stating my opinion up front: making society sustainable will almost certainly require changes many people will interpret as a decrease in luxury, but mostly the overall level of luxury in the world will continue to increase significantly.

That said: sometimes when talking about sustainable living policies people will say things like "degrowth is utterly unnecessary" and then go on to recommend policies that can easily be seen as degrowth in predictable ways by large groups of people, and then they wonder why they get accused of lying.

Public Transport Likers and Anti-Animal Agriculture types often fall into this trap. They'll suggest that there is no loss of luxury from switching to a mostly-plant diet or from ditching a car.

In most parts of the world with good public transit, it's still faster to take a car especially outside of peak hours or when you need to carry things. The important concept to convey is that a well run public transit system is fast enough and its other benefits (low cost, improved air quality, etc.) are probably better than the convenience of driving everywhere especially given the cost. This payoff is both not true for all people and not readily apparent to all people.

Meat is absolutely seen as a luxurious, high-enjoyment food. Large meat dishes are a major sign of wealth and plenty, bringing home the bacon isn't a phrase for no reason. A world where animal agriculture is reduced to improve greenhouse gas emissions is almost certainly going to come with an increase in price and decreased availability of animal products. That's not a colossal luxury loss, but people will absolutely recognise it as a loss! Pretending it isn't will do you no favours.

When discussing these things it's important to be open about the side effects, that yes, in most cases there may be extended periods where certain things will get worse, but other things will get better, and that tradeoff probably matters more to more people, maybe even you. It's appealing to present solutions as positive only but it makes you look like a liar.

[royalpain16]

Seven things poor people waste their money on by Warren Buffet

High-Interest Debt: Avoiding debt, especially high-interest ones like credit card balances, is crucial. High interest can quickly erode your financial health.

Get-Rich-Quick Schemes: Buffett warns against trying to make a quick buck and falling for schemes that promise high returns with little risk.

Unnecessary Luxuries: Living below one’s means and not spending on things that aren’t necessary is a principle Buffett has always lived by.

New Cars: Cars lose value rapidly once purchased. Buying and maintaining a reliable used car can be more economical than always opting for a new one.

Paying Unnecessary Fees: Whether it’s investment fees, bank fees, or any other kind of service charge, Buffett believes in keeping costs low.

Brand Loyalty Over Value: Not overpaying for brand names when a lesser-known brand offers the same quality at a lower price is a value-oriented approach Buffett endorses.

Eating Out Excessively: Frequently eating out, especially when done out of convenience, can add up over time. Preparing meals at home is often more economical. Buffett prefers the cheap value of fast food.

#warren buffett #budget #budgeting #don't waste your money #words of wisdom

[gumjrop]

The Weather (according to Wastewater)

SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater are being reported by Biobot again as they file an appeal with the CDC. For now, we will use the map below from WastewaterSCAN, another source for wastewater surveillance. One quarter of the nation’s wastewater testing sites remain shut down while the appeal is being processed, creating an overall gap in data reliability that we could continue to experience for several months to come. We anticipate releasing another COVID map depicting transmission levels developed by the People’s CDC in the coming weeks. According to WastewaterSCAN, nationally, COVID wastewater levels are at medium while the Northeast, Midwest, and the South are high since their last update from October 31, 2023. Across the US, COVID wastewater levels are at 239.7 Pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV) Normalized on October 31, 2023, down from a peak of 430.5 PMMoV Normalized on August 28, 2023, but slightly up from 201.8 PMMoV Normalized on October 18, 2023. PMMoV normalization differs from how Biobot normalizes data, so the raw numbers are not directly comparable with Biobot’s.

Wins

On October 27-29, #namingthelost hosted a memorial at St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in NYC in order to name, honor, and mourn the individuals that we have lost and continue to lose due to COVID and COVID-related complications. On their homepage, #namingthelost states “We know it didn’t have to be this way, that our country’s leaders made choices that risked our lives. We know we can choose a different way forward that is about caring for all of us.”

Hospitalizations and Deaths

New weekly hospitalizations associated with COVID have stopped dropping, staying at a constant of over 15,000 hospitalizations for the past three weeks including the week of October 28, 2023. According to the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker, there have been another 4,000 reported deaths from COVID in the past month of October. We mourn these 4,000 individuals as this is not “normal.” A reminder that the lives and livelihoods of everyone in our entire society continue to remain at stake. Do not lower your standards as many in society, especially those in the business sector, normalize this ongoing atrocity as they demand for a return to on-site work even though most people prefer the option of remote work. Continue to demand layers of protection such as high-quality masking, ventilation, filtration, and testing, in all settings to prevent ongoing COVID infections, hospitalizations, Long COVID, and death.

Vaccines and Treatment

Do not wait to get an updated COVID vaccine for those 6 months and older! Multiple options are available including Pfizer, Moderna, or Novavax. Access continues to be challenging especially for those with certain health insurance plans or who are uninsured. Lack of interest and access difficulties have likely all contributed to a low uptake of only 3.5% of Americans receiving the most recent and updated COVID vaccine. The Bridge Access program ensures no-cost access and you can find a location as determined by the federal government, but be sure to call ahead and ask to ensure local participation. Similarly, federal funding for COVID treatment options, such as Paxlovid and Lagevrio, have transitioned from the federal government to health insurance plans on November 1, 2023. Individuals with Medicare or Medicaid will have access through the end of 2024 and those uninsured will have access at least through the end of 2028 via the federal government, but limited information has been provided. Test to Treat locations continue to provide no-cost access to those without insurance while Pfizer’s Patient Assistance Program can also provide no-cost access to Paxlovid (Nirmatrelvir–Ritonavir). If your health insurance plan does not cover COVID treatments such as Paxlovid, you can participate in the Co-Pay Savings Programs offered by Pfizer, which drops the cost out-of-pocket down to 140 dollars.

Long COVID

The scientific understanding of Long COVID continues to grow with a recent study demonstrating that viral persistence may potentially affect some individuals resulting in Long COVID. However, another study that compared Long COVID outcomes among patients who received Paxlovid at the Veterans Health System did not observe lower rates of Long COVID after treatment. A guaranteed treatment for Long COVID remains to be determined while the primary approach in avoiding this is to employ layers of protection such as consistently using a high quality mask or respirator in order to lower the risk, ultimately preventing a COVID infection.

Take Action

HICPAC, the federal committee that advises the CDC and DHHS on infection control practices in healthcare, met on November 2-3 and voted on draft documents, which continue to fail to protect patients and healthcare workers from COVID infections. We provided a nationwide virtual space to protest the CDC HIPCAC meeting on Thursday, November 2nd. Multiple members of the People’s CDC were recognized to provide public comments to members of HICPAC during the meeting. We also submitted the following official statement this week as our comment. We provide instructions and asked you to also submit a comment to them using our recommendations in response to their terrible decision via email to [email protected] by 11:59 pm on Monday, November 6th to include in their meeting minutes (date has passed). The next steps of their process will include the publication of draft documents in the Federal Register, which can be reviewed and commented on by the general public. Lastly, local groups are a primary opportunity to impact your community. Get involved locally and join a local group.

#op #covid #long covid #covid isn't over #covid 19 #covid-19 #coronavirus #pcdc #people's cdc #pandemic #covid news #covid19 #public health #covid pandemic #medical #medical news #img #described in alt text