rampaging-poet

Which like, I know the mechanics of TF2 hats and NFTs are probably different on some level but as someone with a limited understanding of crypto NFTs literally just looked like TF2 hat economy running on crypto, especially when applied to games

Well, yes – crypto fundamentally doesn't do anything that isn't possible without it. Lots of non-crypto games have real-cash economies. Which isn't a good thing, either, but it's a separate issue from the crypto thing!

Much like the relationship between crypto and banking, the idea behind using NFTs to implement cash economies in games is that, in theory, it would allow the exchange of items to be carried out and validated without involving any central authority. In practice, of course, this falls down even harder than cryptocurrency; at least with cryptocurrencies you're dealing with abstract financial instruments – with real-cash game economies, the game's physical servers need to be owned and operated by somone, and if that someone decides not to recognise the validity of your NFT, what the fuck are you going to do? Authority over virtual environments is inherently centralised by virtue of centralised physical infrastructure dependency, no matter what the magic paperwork says.

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.

putting that guy in prison wouldn't have done anything for me or even for anyone else. rape doesn't stop because we put every rapist in a cage, because a rapist isn't a kind of person. and because everybody can rape and everyone might rape. rape also doesn't happen because of opportunity (not necessarily). it's like, rape happens because it is part of the processes that reconstruct the world we find ourselves in. rape is a force (one of many) that drives gender and racial subordination, which are needed for capitalism to work. rape happens because it has to.

black men and women are raped to reinforce racial hierarchies, women are raped to reinforce their subordination to men and to reconstruct the nuclear family, trans women are raped to dehumanize us. rape is a deterrent and rape is productive. we're raped because we are a threat.

people can be impulsive, vindictive, resentful, selfish, greedy, insecure, and just plain nasty in so many ways, and managing and redirecting negative emotions can be a lifelong struggle that many people sadly lose, or even more sadly don't even fight.