Time To Scream

Benjamin Forsyth was a Moravian war hero in the War of 1812. Moravians are an ethnic minority and religious sect that settled in North Carolina after first landing in Georgia and then Pennsylvania. Forsyth County North Carolina is named for our Moravian Colonel. Winston-Salem North Carolina was founded as a central hub for the now-Moravian region. Moravians were communal and notably pretty egalitarian, educating both men and women. They also had an ethical opposition to slavery as an institution, but their communal social structure in North Carolina necessitated so much labor that they ended up slave owners anyway. Collectively. Neither private nor personal ownership was allowed. Initially, slaves were more like indentured servants, bizarrely unfree community members. The inescapable inequality and incoherence of the arrangement where white and black Moravians existed in unfree and free categories side by side was untenable and was fed by North Carolina’s particular unease about slave revolts.

Moravian history with slavery honestly mirrors Indigenous history with slavery to some extent. They weren’t staunch abolitionists like Quakers. Rather like several First Nations, Moravians participated in the slave trade, and like the First Nations, they were some of the first people to build resistance to the institution of slavery. Even this resistance is complicated however, as Nation members would return slaves for money or incorporate them into tribes rather unpredictably (a lot of US capture policy was based on pre-colonial Indigenous capture practice). The relationship is ambiguous and ambivalent rather than benevolent, and it persists. See the Cherokee Nation disowning its Black members as the Moravian Church continues to struggle with the work of reconciliation.

This is the history Kaneeka’s name is invoking.

All of this happens before the Civil War, in which North Carolina specifically saw a horrific loss of life (not just Confederate) and went on to suffer some of Reconstruction’s most profound failures.

This is where Silas Scarlet comes in. Former confederate who not only benefits after the war but sets up a damn mine. Mining is not ancient history. Most of the quartz in your electronics comes from North Carolina. But Scotch-Irish farmers pushed into the state’s mountains were the first non-Natives to mine. Early conflicts were between Natives and Settlers over resources. Massive Capitalist Landowners like Silas created an entirely different situation. North Carolina didn’t see labor riots and revolts like its Appalachian neighbors. It just saw constant pointless loss of life.

I’ve provided this context because the South gets treated like some kind of homogeneous political strawman, and Scarlet Hollow is smarter than that.

so the difference between having 0 cookies and having 1 cookie is 80 cents, right? you might assume that the cookies to follow would be similarly priced. maybe 2 cookies could cost $1.50 or something! but you'd be wrong

the difference between 1 cookie and 2 cookies is not 80 cents or even close. it's 1.31. huh? cookie number two costs more than cookie 1 did? it's over 2.5x the price of 1 to get 2? hang on cause

The strike was initiated by IF Metall after five years of Tesla refusing to negotiate a collective agreement.

It is the first formal labor conflict called against Tesla anywhere in the world.

The National Mediation Office summoned both parties, but Tesla's representatives quickly withdrew from negotiations.

The strike was then extended to include all repair shops servicing Tesla vehicles in Sweden.

Swedish employer unions have also pressured Tesla to cave and align with the country's labour model.

Strikebreakers have been sent in, a tactic forbidden since the 1930s by agreement between the Swedish unions and employers. (Ie. not illegal but liable to make the entire country hate you.)

As noted by Atle Høie, general secretary of IndustriALL, an industrial union confederation representing 50 million workers in 140 countries: “Elon Musk’s business model is to avoid respecting human rights. Now he is taken on by one of our strongest unions. We must defeat the Tesla business model, and Sweden is the best place to start.”

Sweden has one of the highest rates of unionization out of the Nordics (which have the highest rates of unionization globally alongside Cuba and Vietnam) and the thing about that is you get sympathy strikes:

There's already talk of launching similar strikes here in Norway if the Swedes aren't heard. For an idea of what happens if they keep this up, let's look at the time McDonald's tried these kinds of tactics:

Or Toys R Us:

Tesla's presence in the country is limited compared to those, but I think it's fair to say their choice is going to be between pulling out or caving to their demands, because these kinds of threats to union power are not tolerated.

The import blockade began in select cities today, and Tesla has already tired to get around it. The unions have responded by extending the blockade to every port in the country, with further measures in the works if Musk refuses to budge.

With Musk controlling Twitter/X now, discussions about it on there are predictably filled with trolls and detractors. The workers at Tesla could all be tremendously happy with their jobs and it would not change the fact that this is an attack on the entire labour model that gives other workers decent conditions. This is not just about Tesla, it's about preventing it from setting a precedent for other employers.

IF Metall have asked people to talk about this on social media, particularly on X, to counteract Musk's army of trolls and build awareness and support for the strikes, so please do if you can. Here's an up-to-date (Nov 7th) article in English which you can share:

This fact has filled me with hubris.

My containment is unbreachable. I have four blogs and never gotten more than 100 notes on a post. The majority of this site Cannot Percive me. I can post whatever I want and nobody except for some of my beloved mutuals and followers will see it.

@jusiri I have blazed posts twice now, my friend, and they have recieved 200 and 100 notes respectively. Enough to make my notifications interesting for 24 hours, but not enough to make them unuseable.

From this I can only conclude that I am immune from the fires of Tumblr blaze. No scorch marks can ravage my notifications, and I can post freely knowing that they can never be rendered unusable.

i saw this and I thought, oh how ironic surely if I am seeing this now it is because in an ironic twist of fate this post has like 15k notes now

but no

it's at 29 notes

I will be making:

Chocolate Brownies

and

Polvorones

And documenting it for proof of Tasty Treat

I have no idea If I should document the entire process in the notes of this post, or make a separate post and just put the final result here. I'd say to make a suggestion, but I probably won't be able to see it considering the circumstances.

Humans are not built to see and predict hurling planes, tiny among a vast sky. People knew this. Pilots had close calls. Those with the right amount of caution told anyone who would listen about how it is possible to not see another plane until after it hit you, and maybe we should do something about it. And we still had "see and avoid, otherwise feel free to have fun with it" flight rules until it killed people.

It used to be normal for flights to swing and circle around a bit at a whim to give passengers a better view or whatever. So normal that what eventually happened was inevitable, predictable, and it still had to actually happen before humanity learned.

We built those imaginary sky tunnels out of lives.

We could've built them with foresight and caution instead. But most people neglect, ignore, and dismiss very unlikely things as if they can't happen, instead of systematically making them actually unable to happen.

BOAC Flight 911, Air New Zealand Flight 901

Then there are the mid-air collisions:

1956 Grand Canyon mid-air collision, 1960 New York mid-air collision

One of the reasons I love air disaster podcasts (as opposed to, say, true crime) is the way many of them focus on "what did this incident do to make flying safer for us all in the future." That 1956 crash? It led to funding for Air Traffic Controllers and giving them military-grade radar systems. A 1958 collision between a civilian and a military airplane led to the FAA being given control over all US airways--civilian and military.

inspiration struck and would not let me go until i drew this

So you build your protagonist. She has no personality traits beyond being decently strong-willed, so that her quirks and interesting traits absolutely can’t get in the way of the audience’s projection onto her. She is dainty, birdlike, beautiful despite her protestations that she is ugly–yet she can still hold her own against significantly taller and stronger combatants. She is the perfect mask for the bashful, insecure tweens you are marketing to to wear while they read.

You think, as you draft your novel, that you need to add something that appeals to the basest nature of teenagers, something this government does that will be perversely appealing to them. The Hunger Games’ titular games were the main draw of the books, despite the hatred its characters hold for the event. So the government forces everyone into Harry Potter houses. 

So the government makes everyone choose their faction, their single personality trait. Teenagers and tweens are basic–they likely identify by one distinct personality trait or career aspiration, and they’ll thus be enchanted by this system. For years, Tumblr and Twitter bios will include Erudite or Dauntless alongside Aquarius and Ravenclaw and INTJ. Congratulations, you just made having more than one personality trait anathema to your worldbuilding. 

Your readers and thus your protagonist are naturally drawn to the faction that you have made RIDICULOUSLY cooler and better than the others: Dauntless. The faction where they play dangerous games of Capture the Flag and don’t work and act remarkably like teenagers with a budget. You add an attractive, tall man to help and hinder the protagonist. He is brooding and handsome; he doesn’t need to be anything else. 

The villains appear soon afterward. They are your tried and true dystopian government: polished, sleek, intelligent, headed by a woman for some reason. They fight the protagonists, they carry out their evil, Machiavellian, stupid plan. You finish the novel with duct tape and fanservice, action sequences and skin and just enough glue and spit to seal the terrible, hollow world you have made shut just long enough to put it on the shelf. 

And you have just destroyed YA dystopian literature. Because you have boiled it down to its bare essentials. A sleek, futuristic government borrowing its aesthetic from modern minimalism and wealth forces the population to participate in a perversely cool-to-read-about system like the Hunger Games or the factions, and one brave, slender, pretty, hollow main character is the only one brave–no, special enough to stand against it. 

but divergent was clumsy make-believe the whole way through. it aped the forms and functions of dystopian lit but the writer didn’t actually have any real, passionate, sincere anger to put on the page. she didn’t know what it was talking about, so she didn’t have anything worth listening to.

You contrast that with how the marketing for the Hunger Games films directly contradicts the messaging of the text, and how Divergent seems ready-made for the big screen, and it becomes really apparent why the genre folded in on itself. Capitalism tried to recuperate dystopian fiction criticizing capitalism, and in doing so, butchered the genre.

simple example (in France):

you are required to state your “little identity” which is your name, date and place of birth. Your home address is not part of it (they might tell you otherwise).

If you don’t give your name, it is considered an offense (délit) so you might be detained 24hrs starting at the time you refused to say it (so, if you had been detained for X amount of time, the clock restarts). If you are detained, they will want to take your mugshot and take your fingerprints (identité biométrique). Refusing it will also be considered an offense. Both might be grounds to keep you longer (the max. should be 48hrs but in practice some are detained more, and again, 48hrs starting at your last offense).

It is rarely prosecuted (especially the biometric identity!!!!)

There are cases where some people choose to remain anonymous, some where they feel it’s better to comply. A lot of people think giving their biometrics to the police isn’t a great plan and don’t comply –even though it’s technically illegal. (now, it’s a personal choice and being detained is a psychological challenge, so remaining anonymous can be tough and we’re only human)

(im not recommending you do illegal actions, im stating facts, hello haiiii police officers, im not tempting fellow citizens to commit an illegal, i would never)

That’s just one example! Look up these info, try to talk to people who know this shit at a local level (tolerance towards this changes from police station to police station) especially if you are going to a protest! in France you can contact a local branch of the Défense Collective, or look them up online.

Squirrels

Pandas

They were late and the shelter wouldn't let them in and voided the rest of their allowed stay bc they didn't call and tell the shelter they couldn't make it in before closing.

One of the other people at the shelter got violent/threatened violence and the shelter refused to do anything about it.

One of the SHELTER EMPLOYEES/VOLUNTEERS got violent/threatened violence and the shelter refused to do anything about it.

The shelter refuses to disclose if allergens are in the food they're providing saying, "This is all you're getting, be glad for this much and thank god!"

Shelter can't accommodate couples or families

Shelter bans life-saving medication prescribed by a doctor

Shelter is several miles from downtown, forcing people to choose between accessing shelter and accessing other services like food and healthcare

Shelter is unsanitary and unsafe for immunocompromised and disabled folks

Shelter has onerous criteria to weed out the "undeserving" poor, such as requiring unhoused people to prove they've lived in the area for 6+ months before being allowed to access the shelter

Services are offered based on bigoted assumptions about unhoused people instead of their stated needs