Eminent domain requires payment.

The government cannot come in and merely seize your land under eminent domain and pay you nothing. There is a process & they have to pay you market value for your land and the buildings on it. A couple of my former clients went through this about 15 years ago when the 202 Bypass went through in Montgomery & Bucks County in Pennsylvania. Their houses and land were taken via eminent domain so that the highway could be built, but, I need to say this again: they were paid.

They were paid and there was a process in which they were informed ahead of time. They didn't just drive home one day and find out their home had been snatched, too bad, so sad, no money for you, you should have put your house in a bank vault.

Just taking someone's shit like that without compensation has a name, and it's not eminent domain or anything like it:

It's fucking theft.

https://www.condemnation-law.com/blog/general-eminent-domain/farm-land-and-eminent-domain/ https://www.vermontpublic.org/programs/2019-10-29/interstates-burning-farms-eminent-domain-remembering-romaine-tenney

There have long been worries about the abuse of eminent domain, and the AI scraping model is far closer to the abusive aspects of eminent domain than any supposed public good aspect. https://ij.org/issues/private-property/eminent-domain/eminent-domain-history/ https://www.purdybailey.com/blog/2020/january/5-famous-cases-of-eminent-domain-abuse/

Anytime someone brings up an argument that states something is for the greater good, always ask yourself "for whose greater good?" Who benefits most, who gets harmed the most, what are the actual harms when you think through the logistics and future implications of the harms and not just the immediate harm, is there remuneration for the harm being caused, is it sufficient?

Dragostea Din Tei party boat:

mermaid megafauna

I did some digging.

@unashamedly-enthusiastic

There is no shame in it, i'm a fantastic reader, I can burn through 100,000 words in a day without trying and I still have books I enjoy where i'm looking up the definition of something on every page.

Because a lot of the time you can make a pretty good guess on what a word means in context, but if you do you will miss out on crutal information.

Take the word "alacrity".

If you read the sentence "The queen signed the treaty with alacrity, and gestured to the guards to enforce it immedately"

Then based only on context, "alacrity" could mean a lot of things, like "formality", "certanty", "quickness", "agreement" or "beuracratic efficency".

You know the queen signed the treaty and thats what's really important. But if you look up the word you see that it means "promptness in response : cheerful readiness, speed and eagerness"

Now dosen't this change things! Queenie here isn't being beaurocratic or formal at all. This treaty is personal to her, enough that she's happy and excited and she signs it fast. How long has she been involved with the drafting of this treaty for her to be eager about it? Is she a careless and overly excitable ruler who does not think through the consequences of her actions or is she experienced, caring, and confident enough as queen to be certian it's a good treaty? Or maybe the deal just so good that any potental consequences are more than worth it! All these layers of meaning go straight over you head if all you took from the scene was "she signed the contract"

And now that you fully know the word, you can use it! "They lept into the fight with alacrity" "If you asked me to go to any museum ever I will respond yes with alacrity" "If I ask him out will he say yes? With alacrity! I've seen the way he looks at you!"

so excited to share this art I made for the preorder campaign for A Dangerous Bargain by Erin Cotter!

this queer historical story follows a young artist who makes a Faustian bargain for divine inspiration and has a little romance with the one and only Leonardo da Vinci! commentary on AI, historical gay romance, I’m so excited for this book! and I absolutely loved getting to nerd out in this piece. I’ve studied early modern handwriting in my academic career, so it was really fun to try my hand at writing in it, using da Vinci’s own words! the text is also mirrored as a reference to da Vinci’s journals (thank you Alice Cao for reminding me of this fun fact) so hopefully all together, it satisfies the history nerds out there.