Wave Celestial Intent

TLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike in solidarity. The Foundation is sitting on $296 million in reserves and a freshly profitable AI revenue stream. This is a confrontation with global implications.

"You hold more leverage than a cancellation could ever give you, and it works in the opposite direction. A donation that disappears is invisible. It shows up as one anonymous line in a spreadsheet, gets blamed on the economy or a bad fundraising email, and teaches the institution nothing.

"A donor who speaks up is much harder to wave off, because donors are handed a door that the Foundation’s own staff and volunteers aren’t. You should walk through that door instead of slipping out the back.

"In practice, that means writing to the Board of Trustees, whose job is to hold leadership to account, and telling them in your own words that your support has always been a matter of trust, and that trust depends on how an institution treats the people who build it.

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

I see this reaction a lot, and I gotta say, it always makes me a little sad. Whenever the conversation of exploitation of labor comes up, inevitably someone finds themselves struggling with the guilt of “It is so important to me not to contribute to exploitation but I cannot do this thing myself and need someone else to do it for me, so how do I even approach that?”

Exploitation isn’t in the hiring of a service worker. Exploitation is in the respect you show them for their ability to perform the service you need from them.

I have been on a cleaning service staff before, and also been someone who hired a cleaning service, and I can tell you for sure that a lot of cleaning crews (especially worker owned ones) absolutely LOVE their clients and are genuinely happy to be able to make their lives better. The clients they don’t like? Those are the ones who disrespect the workers.

When I was involved with a cleaning service, we had everything from little old ladies living alone to McMasions with five cars as clients, and I can assure you that whenever there was someone who clearly hired us because they were overwhelmed or unable to keep their space clean, those were the households where you put a little more elbow grease in and did a deep clean even when it wasn’t paid for, because you could see how much these people were trying and struggling, and they were always so kind and generous and often embarrassed when talking to you about the job.

I only hired a service a couple if times in my life, but whenever I did, I worked with the same people as often as I could, tipped as well as I could afford, and tried to be the kind of client I would want to have, and that’s how I often ended up with my baseboards cleaned too, or my fridge scrubbed and organized or a restorative clean done in a high use room even when that wasn’t what I had scheduled or paid for.

I’ve heard the same thing from all manner of service workers over the years. Many of us like our jobs! We enjoy the work. It’s the customers that can do a number on you.

Mainly because I read it and thought, "Ah, OP is talking about how we are in a new Gilded Age" where graduated taxation on the .001% has eased and the political influence of the .001% has grown enough that the (economically speaking) middle class and lower class are being squeezed while the .001% revel in the kind of stuff Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al get up to. Making islands. Rockets. Yachts that fit inside other yachts. WTF level of stuff.

It's not quite that Bezos is buying lifetimes to do his chores. He's creating a situation where people urinate in bottles in body damaging work to create wealth that allows him to have multiple immense homes / yachts / rockets whatever that he buys the lifetimes of multiple staff to maintain them. Possibly even unoccupied.

This is very different than having people come into a residence, ones own home, to clean it better than a body would/can. Same with yardwork. Same (as post above says) with having your teeth cleaned or your pizza delivered. It's just work. All work is selling your lifetime. Office job, service worker, sex worker, whatever. It is selling your time on this earth that you can't get back for the thing you need to live, money. Sometimes it's exploitative, sometimes it's not. Sometimes you can control that. Sometimes, you, an individual, you can't.

Now, in true Tumblr fashion going to go on a complete tangent and talk about the end of the Gilded Age and early progressive era.

For some context, I am currently working on writing a book set in San Francisco 1900ish that spends a lot of time shifting between folks in the poorer districts South of the Slot (the rail for the cable car) and Nob Hill. Many of the characters are in service industries: housekeeper, maids, building labor into union labor, sex workers, owner of laundry/laundryman, etc.

In my research I came across a simply amazing series of articles / interviews with a sex worker in 1913, and formed a lot of my thinking for thinking about labor for the last several years since I came across it. Let's let the woman speak for herself,

“Well, I wondered, was there anybody in the world, according to that, who didn’t sell herself or himself for money? Didn’t everybody supply some demand, in some more or less disagreeable way?”

A number of the characters are "elite" and own 20, 30, 50 room mansions that occupy full city blocks. During my research I came across this great Ambrose Bierce line, which encapsulates things,

Governor Stanford of the Central and Southern Pacific is a pirate and a pig, but Governor Stanford of California Street is a gentleman and a philanthropist. In his dual character of malefactor and benefactor he somewhat resembles the ideal highwayman dear to the hearts of the novel writers, who sometimes bestows in charity as much as one half of 1% of its plunder.

But I suppose the best symbol of the era, and this kind of reality distortion was Charles "Bull" Crocker's Spite Fence. He was the task master of the Big Four of the Central Pacific Railroad. The guy who brought in labor from China to build the inter continental railroad, and a lot of them died in the mountains and the desert. The guy who witheld food from the work camp when labor wanted safer conditions and more pay. That guy. This was exploitative.

When the Big Four started moving up California Hill (hereafter Nob Hill) after the cable cars were put in, they wanted to own those city blocks I was talking about so they could build big houses with stables lined with marble out back (an actual thing). But there were already people living up there. For the most part, they bought them out.

In Crocker's case, he bought out everyone on his block except an undertaker, Mr Young, who was solidly middle class. Young had a nice house up on the hill for his family to live away from factories and ironworks down by the harbor, and didn't want to sell.

As an aside, all the books I'm reading (out of print books woo-who) soldily frame what happened next as Young's fault, but, I give these long dead authors the side eye.

Anyway, Crocker built a 40 foot Spite Fence around the three sides of Young's house that he owned. So now, instead of having a nice house with a view of the City, Young and his family lived in a well. Paraphrasing Young here, he was all, "I'm flying a pirate flag, and I am not selling to this asshole." He also threatened to put a giant coffin on top of his house, which I'm not clear if he ever did.

Now the fence did have to be reduced to 25 feet because high winds, but the fence stood.

For 26 years.

It was a tourist attraction. Folks would go up to see it.

It was a lightning rod for political groups. Both the Workingman's Party of California (separate from the Workingman's Party) and the Union Labor Party (hyper local political parties) would march up to the fence, rile up the crowd, and demand that...waits dramatically...no, more drama needed...the Chinese be expelled because they thought immigrants from China were taking jobs out of the largely Irish-Italian-French population of the city.

Given there were riots in which people died in Chinatown, but the fence didn't come down, and no one every did diddly to Crocker's mansion, says what their real priorities were.

Which as I was reading about all this, and trying to think how to incorporate this element into the childhood of one of the characters, it made me think about the populism of Trump, MAGA, and America Firsters.

I mean, here are these incredibly rich people up on this hill in these mansions that cumulatively represent a level of wealth it's hard to comprehend, and incredibly poor people doing their best to survive.

But the energy of working labor was redirected at a specific group of immigrants. Rather than the real problem, the rich guy who was maintaining a spite fence, and got/maintained his wealth through extremely exploitative practices.

Time passed. Charles Crocker died, and his children maintained the fence.

The undertaker literally had his house moved out of the lot (it was easier when there was no plumbing involved), but refused to sell.

The Spite Fence was by then around an empty lot with a hole in it. That's what the "elite" are like.

The undertaker died, widow refused to sell.

The Crocker's actively maintained the Spite Fence. Even mumblity 20 years on during gale force winds that scoured San Francisco in 1901, knocking down fences (spite or not), early electrical poles, etc.

It was only in 1904, two years after the Mrs. Young died that her children sold the land to the Crockers, and the fence came down.

Sadly, it did not burn in the 1906 fire that incinerated all the mansions on the top of Nob Hill (+ 80% of the city of San Francisco, and leaving 250k people homeless).

Obviously, I am writing a fictional novel in which there is magical realism, so I say fuck it. That Spite Fence shall go like it was meant to go. As kindling for the Crocker mansion.

What I'm trying to get across here is, I've spent a long time doing a lot of time thinking about the Gilded Age, and the new "Gilded for Certain Folks" age that we are in. There are so-called populists who want to distract working people for power.

But the 1900s were also the dawn of an era of real populist change. Spite Fences like Crocker's Spite Fence were made illegal. It wasn't the 1% of the wealth of the uber rich were willing to donate that made things better for people, it was legislative and collaborative action. It was advocacy, and quite frankly taxing the rich to pay their fair share. It was changing systems so they were fairer. e.g., back then State Senators were appointed by the State Represenatatives, not elected, so graft was rampant.

Not completely fair. Obviously. The work is never done. It is on-going.

The new spite fences are digital. They are AI. They are not physical.

In a post telling you that

“there is nothing wrong with you; you’re doing your best in a game rigged against you, probably not enough people and fruit tell you that”

don't decide it's about how you are exploitative if you pay someone to help you do a task. Listen to the sex worker from 1913. That's everyone who works.

“there is nothing wrong with you; you’re doing your best in a game rigged against you, probably not enough people and fruit tell you that”]

This wolf in British Columbia took a break from eating herring roe to investigate a half-submerged object: the photographer’s camera

38 on a technicality (own a business)

I think as of TVL 3.05 I've seen enough data points to confidently say IWTV/TVL isn't just changing the canon selectively.

I think they picked a specific event in Lestat's life and had that one event go differently, and all the subsequent timeline changes are a result of this.

My hypothesis? The divergence point is Gabrielle convincing Lestat to kill the de Lioncourt family with her. (Though it could be something even earlier that that.)

Here's my take:

In the book, Lestat's family is killed during the French Revolution by a mob because they are aristocrats. Lestat's father barely escapes. Eventually, Lestat and Gabrielle part ways and then Lestat takes his father to New Orleans.

While in New Orleans in the late 1700s, he meets white plantation owner Louis de Pointe du Lac and befriends him for (among many reasons) his wealth so Lestat can look after his father in comfort during his old age.

But because Lestat's father is dead in the show at Lestat and Gabrielle's hands, this never occurred.

Because Lestat's family died earlier, he might have been around to see Nicki die instead of traveling at the time. It's not a direct cause/effect but it is possible.

Also because Lestat's family died, it might follow that his travels with Gabrielle were different so he didn't go looking for Marius the same way. Again, it's not a direct cause/effect but it is possible. They're still traveling together in 1802, when in book canon, Claudia was made in 1794 so this is much longer.

TVL 3.05 and book canon hint that Akasha was already growing tired of Enkil when she and Lestat met in the book canon.

But since they didn't meet at their original date in the late 1700s, by 1802 Akasha took matters into her own hands and mind-whammied Marius into leaving Enkil out in the sun (at least, that's my theory as to how Enkil died. You can't convince me that Mr. Martyr To Those Who Must Be Kept Marius would ever slip up that badly while transferring them to a new location. Nah, Akasha set it up, I'm convinced.)

But to go back to Lestat, at this point, he goes to the New World after 1900.

Because Lestat wasn't there to turn white, plantation-owner Louis de Pointe Du Lac, Book Louis's mortal descendants of mixed race instead inherited the plantation's wealth.

TV Show Louis in fact mentions that he had a plantation-owning great-something grandfather. In my opinion, that great-grandfather was the book!Louis, who TV!Lestat never met.

Because events played out this way (otherwise more or less the same as in book IWTV but staggered by ~100 year) Louis and Armand's relationship isn't quite the same. TV!Louis and TV!Armand don't drift apart soon after leaving Paris the way their book counterparts did, they stay together.

As a result, Armand isn't single when he meets fascinating young Daniel. He therefore is able to bring greater willpower to bear in denying young Daniel his demand to be turned into a vampire.

However, the love is real, so Armand continues to stalk and pine after Daniel and, eventually, we are brought full circle with now Old Daniel being brought to Dubai to interview Louis and save Armand from this emotionally stagnant relationship the two are stuck in.

happy new year -------------_--------------------

like they are NOT on good terms this season, but this is a moment of, "i am showing this painful, infected wound to you because you have a matching one, and you are the only one who can do this for me." like this is a big, extremely vulnerable ask from louis.

and even lestat's quiet "yes. okay." in this request even though things are bad, because this is a request of one parent to another and thus sidesteps the conflict of, "we are supposed to be something to each other, but you didn't even call when i was shot." like louis is louis and the great love of his life, but louis is also the person he raised a child with, and that bond still stands strong enough to call a favor in on.

and louis's tone when lestat brings up claudia's eyes and louis jumps in with, "i know, right? there's no spark." and there is SO MUCH pain in it but also such a moment of, "she was our child and you know her like i did. you know her eyes. talk to me about her because it's the only way she can still exist, and you are the only one she can exist for me with. she was ours."

is the actual epitome of all things scrum diddly cunt-tious, the PINNACLE of serving absolute pussõire??!?

Already does. In Star Trek Picard S2 when they went back in time to 2024, none of the characters had to change their outfits because their 25th century fashion was just like, normal jackets t-shirts and trousers in a variety of black, grey and brown fabrics. A stark contrast to early TNG, where - while everything looked painfully 80's - the non-uniform attire was all fun shapes and textures that didn't actually resemble off the shelf clothes as far as I'm aware*

Even the uniforms are AMAZING from a tailor perspective!

They didn't want ugly zippers to show so the closures of the uniforms are in the seam of the raglan sleeve!!!!

In all the new adaptations they are lazy and don't do raglan and put the zippers in the back and it looks shit

Not even to mention the incredible lines of the womens uniforms!!!

Like look how smartly the lines for the pattern go, to not just have boring darts in places! These costumes STILL look futuristic!

You could not even see this on 1960s TVs!

A few months before he passed away in 2003, a 74 year old children’s television host sat down in the same studio where he had filmed 895 episodes over 33 years and recorded one last message. It wasn’t for children. It was for the adults who had grown up watching him.

Fred Rogers hosted Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on American public television from 1968 to 2001. For over three decades he walked into the same set, changed into a cardigan and sneakers, looked directly into the camera, and spoke to children as if each one of them was the only person in the room. He never raised his voice, never talked down to his audience, and never rushed a single moment.

In that final recording, he looked into the camera one last time and said “I’m just so proud of all of you who have grown up with us. And I know how tough it is some days to look with hope and confidence on the months and years ahead. But I would like to tell you what I often told you when you were much younger. I like you just the way you are.”

And like there was no permanent cast, all these celebrities seem to have gotten a scene or part of a scene to do (i’m not sure exactly, I did not ever watch Quibi and thus haven’t seen this yet), and then they just… recreated it as best they could. At home. Under quarantine.

So like, you had Jennifer Garner in a blanket cape playing Princess Buttercup AND the Booing Old Woman with a crowd comprised entirely of stuffed animals:

Or Taika Waititi paying Westley off a badly-drawn Inigo on a piece of cardboard held in front of someone’s face:

And it’s all just delightful.

But my absolute favorite part of this thing that I’ve sadly never seen but assume is probably absolutely hilarious and a treasure and I want to find it some day and watch the whole thing… is that Carey Elwes is in it.

As Prince Fucking Humperdink.

Here ya go