I Need More Elfroot

I would liken you

To a night without stars

Were it not for your eyes.

I would liken you

To a sleep without dreams

Were it not for your songs.

Communalism: A Liberatory Alternative To The Present System

Communalism is the all encompassing term given to a comprehensive theory and practice that seeks to reconstruct society along ecological lines. It is based in the essential premise that all environmental problems are rooted in social problems. Along with global climate change, problems such as widespread pollution, deforestation, and species extinction are all anthropogenic in their source. Assessing these issues as a whole, we can see that our society is simplifying the environment on a global scale. In fact, it is undoing the achievements of evolution by creating a more simplified, inorganic world. 

Communalism holds an objective set of social ethics that reflect the most developmental trends in evolution, including greater choice, dynamic stability, and diversity. Supported by these ecological trends, Communalism provides a foundation to act against injustice, domination, and hierarchy, which are neither “natural” nor inevitable features of society.

Today the Department of Awesome Natural Wonders is trying to resist the urge to boop the great big pink snoot of this incredibly rare white moose in western Newfoundland. Newfoundland photographer Gerald Gale recently captured video footage of this ghostly moose, who isn’t albino, but piebald, which means he has a pattern of pigmented spots on an un-pigmented (white) background of hair.

Head over to Atlas Obscura to watch Gale’s video of this magical moose.

when you grow up rich you’re kind of by default disconnected from reality. you learn that you can just… make things happen. an expensive education? top-quality healthcare? a fancy seat on the plane? you just wave your credit card in the right direction AND IT HAPPENS. you get your way, every time, immediately, and to your exact specifications. you’re also immune to failure by default because if you fuck something up you can afford to start over, so even if you reach your 70s with a trail of financial disasters behind you, you’re still rich, so they can’t have been that bad. you’re blind to your own incompetence. and you’re inevitably going to end up with very few, if any, genuine friends, especially if you’re inherently a bit of an asshole. instead you’ll be surrounded by people pursuing their own agendas, who will tell you literally anything you want to hear: that you’re a genius, that everyone loves you, that you can successfully accomplish anything you set your mind to. which you totally can, of course, but because of your money, not your personal merit.

trump is not a pathological narcissist with the under-developed mind of a child and a half dozen other mental disorders experts have not yet reached a consensus about. he’s too used to being obscenely rich and likely never had a problem in his life he knew he couldn’t solve by throwing enough money at it. and right now he’s angry that he can’t use that to get his own way anymore.

Find a copy of the customer agreement online. Read it. Have the “big cats in boxes” YouTube video on standby so that you can renew your will to live periodically while reading it.

Focus on the sections about cancellation

Examine any terms regarding early termination fees, notice required, proration of the time between cancellation and the end of the billing period, and equipment return policies.

Send a letter requesting cancellation to your carrier via certified mail. Include the date you wish for it to be cancelled. If you are not the account holder but have power of attorney, or the account holder has died and you are managing their estate, send copies of the relevant documentation with the letter. 

The day after, when it isn’t cancelled, call back. Ask for “retention” or “loyalty” and when asked why, state that you wish to cancel. 

They’ll ask you why you want to cancel. Say “I don’t want to discuss it, I just want to cancel my service.” (note: there are times when it pays to disclose your reasons; my company will waive all early termination fees and penalties if the account holder is being entering military deployment or a nursing home. Check their policies.)

They’ll offer something nice. Bundles, discounts, free channels, etc. Say “as nice as that sounds, and as much as I appreciate the offer, I just need to cancel my service.”

When they deflect again, ask how to return any leased equipment. They’ll launch into another spiel about that, thankful that you aren’t making them process the cancellation. Write down the process – they’ll either tell you to bring the equipment to a local office, or they’ll state that they are sending recovery kits. If it’s the latter, ask for the address that the recovery kits return to and write it down (you want to use the recovery kit if you get one, since it’s prepaid, but if they aren’t sent you’ll want to be able to return the equipment yourself.) 

After all of this has transpired, state “As I stated in the letter sent via certified mail on [date], I am ending our contractual relationship and terminating this subscription. Has my cancellation order been processed?”

If the cancellation order has not been processed, tell them to process it. Listen to their spiel. Ask for the date that it will be terminated.

Hang up, wait thirty minutes. Call back, ask if your account is pending cancellation or not. If not, ask to be transferred to retention and ask for a supervisor. Demand that your cancellation be processed and advise them that a complaint will be filed with the FCC if it is not. 

Here are some more “ambiguous” phrases which courts have found DO NOT invoke your right to a lawyer:

“Maybe I should speak to my lawyer first.”

“I might like a lawyer.”

“I think I should have a lawyer present for this.”

“Could I speak to my lawyer first?”

“How long until my lawyer gets here?”

And perhaps most egregiously – “Get me a lawyer, dawg – ‘cause this is not what’s up.”

Here are the magic phrases which you need to know if you want to invoke your Miranda rights:

1) “Am I free to leave?”

It’s worth asking this even if the answer is obvious. Even if the officer does not let you leave, by forcing them to admit that you are not free to leave, you are creating a record which your attorney can use to prove that you were in custody. Miranda rights only apply if the interrogation is custodial, meaning that police officers will frequently claim that their suspects were “not in custody” to get around their Miranda rights.

2) “I am invoking my right to remain silent.”

Simply staying silent will not invoke your right to remain silent. As absurd as this is, you must explicitly say that you are invoking your right to remain silent in order to invoke that right.

3) “I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

As stated above, you must be not only clear and unambiguous, but clear and legally unambiguous. Don’t get cute. Don’t get sassy. And on the flip side, don’t get intimidated and use verbal ticks to minimize your request. Say the line with those words exactly – say it clearly, and say it once, and then say nothing else.

Because even after you’ve done all this, the police can still try to get you to talk. They’re not supposed to interrogate you, but they’re allowed to make casual conversation, and if that conversation just happens to circle back around to the thing they wanted to question you about, well, that’s really your fault for talking after you said you wouldn’t, isn’t it? Can’t possibly fault the poor officers when you initiated – if you really wanted to have your rights respected, you wouldn’t have talked to them in the first place.

The police know this, and they will mercilessly exploit this loophole. So, once you’ve successfully invoked your Miranda rights, any and all conversation you have with police officers will put those rights back into jeopardy. 

Putting it all together:

Ask: “Am I free to leave?”

If they say no, say: “I am invoking my right to remain silent and I am invoking my right to an attorney.”

And then shut up and do not say a single thing to them for any reason whatsoever until you have actually spoken to an attorney. Yes, even if it takes hours. Yes, even if they start talking to you about something else.

Finally, a very important disclaimer:

The sequence of generation is typically prescribed and kept in record by a generation poem (bāncì lián 班次聯 or pàizì gē 派字歌 in Chinese) specific to each lineage. While it may have a mnemonic function, these poems can vary in length from around a dozen characters to hundreds of characters. Each successive character becomes the generation name for successive generations.[1] After the last character of the poem is reached, the poem is usually recycled though occasionally it may be extended.

Generation poems were usually composed by a committee of family elders whenever a new lineage was established through geographical emigration or social elevation. Thus families sharing a common generation poem are considered to also share a common ancestor and have originated from a common geographical location.

Doodle of Isabela and her infamous hat