Rhea

In South Asia, heat weaves already claim more than 200,000 lives annually. According to a recent study, as temperature rises, the death toll might exceed 400,000 by 2045. India is at high risk.

The study further reveals that over 200,000 deaths are currently attributed to severe temperatures, and this figure may nearly quadruple over the next twenty years.

With deaths increasing and governments lacking strategies to protect laborers from dying, vulnerable workers across South Asia are demanding their governments provide heat wave protections.

Ashok Kumar, forty-two, a migrant worker from India’s Bihar state, has been running a barber shop on a footpath with no roof in India’s national capital, New Delhi, where temperatures exceed to 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit). With no shaded resting area, Kumar spends nine hours a day in a scorching heat to support his family.

“Where shall I go? I have to feed my family. The government cannot install air conditioning at the roadside for us. We are dying under the blazing sun. We have no options. If we stop work, our families will die hungry,” Kumar told me. [...]

While knowing risk factors, many migrant laborers are unable to do much more than cover their heads with wet towels.

【UNWAVERING】

1. It is a four season story arc that ended when the writers thought it should end, and didn't get dragged out or cut off though season 4 should have been longer.

2. It sticks to its fucking themes all the way through so that when it circles back to them in finale it feels like a concluding paragraph and not a last minute grab for meaning.

3. The character arcs are beautifully consistent and all the main characters get a complete story, regardless of where that story ends. They're also informed but not exclusively characterized by their demographics in a way I appreciate-- no one is there to be The Gay or The Black Guy or The Woman, and no one "just happens to be X": their experiences of being gay and/or Black and/or women impact how they see and interact with the world in ways that are unique to each character's personal experiences.

4. The women have varied and complex relationships with each other as friends and lovers and rivals and mentors (supportive) and mentors (derogatory) and enemies and allies, and those relationships are key to huge swaths of the plot. Even the character archetypes that are traditionally Smurfetted (the #girlboss, the One Of The Guys) are just. Surrounded by other women. It's great. Especially since Treasure Island has no women on purpose.

Treasure Island is itself a pretty dark tale. The content is not actually all that different in terms of it vs Black Sails, but where Treasure Island hedges around some things in order to preserve its narrative tone as an adventure story (and due to its POV character having been a child when the narrative events unfolded), Black Sails delves into the social dynamics and brutality head-on.

It's a prequel with a lot of liberty to recount events, since Treasure Island only barely touches upon the subject of Silver's past. So nothing much of Treasure Island itself is shifted around to try and create a more "adult" story.

like. imagine you are james flint. you have a horrible secret tragic backstory you won't tell anyone about how you became the fearsome and capable pirate captain you are today. that tragic backstory involves being the bisexual unicorn for a rich couple's poly triad dreams in 1700s england. you confide in someone outside of this dynamic for the first time after everything happened about what happened because they asked to know. you bare your soul uncharacteristically about being bisexual, polyamorous, and griefstricken. nobody else but one person in your life has seen this of you. the person you confide this to is someone that genuinely worried about you killing them in front of your entire crew like, literally 10 days ago, for confessing to betraying you abt smth that took months of efforts and dozens of death to try to achieve. this person, who is the most kindly understanding and softspoken person on your ship of ragtag hardened pirates, looks you in the eyes by the soft lighting of the campfire under cover of nightfall after burying literal and now metaphorical secrets, and says, in order, to your FACE, that 1) firstly he is a hashtag gay ally (in the 1700s) and so sorry for your loss but 2) he's been thinking lately it's kind of weird everybody around flint dies and he doesn't want to be next bc everybody flint trusts is a dead man walking bc 3) hey flint have you ever considered maybe it's your fault this happened and that you are doomed bc of just who you are as a person? and 4) but it's okay actually bc if it came down to it i think i've grown as a person enough that if anyone dies in this partnership it will be you 😤

like. to his face. i repeat, to the face of the most feared pirate this side of the americas, who has considered killing him within the past month or two, who opened up to silver in the most baring way possible for a regular man, much less a man like flint--to his FACE silver said that "maybe the homophobia you experienced that ruined your entire life was actually your fault for existing and everybody you love is doomed to die because being around you is a curse :/" in the most GENTLY understanding tone of voice while staring deeply into his eyes and professing genuine care and friendship and respect for him.

i'd lose my mind. i'd implode. no fucking wonder flint takes a preparatory, longsuffering swig of liquor with the most exasperated expression i've ever seen on a 40+yo man's face the literal second silver's mouth is open for longer than 2 sentences. silver is SO goddamn lucky this man stopped seeing him as an enemy 6 weeks ago and instead switched to begrudgingly ominous mentor and weird older brother.