The 100 and Texts from Last Night

Speaker: “I see negroes holding jobs that belong to me! And you! I’ll ask you, if we allow this thing to go on, what’s gonna become of us real Americans!”

Hungarian man with clear foreign accent: “I’ve heard this kind of talk before, but I never expected to hear it in America.”

Young man: “This man seems to know what he’s talking about.“

Speaker: “What are us real Americans gonna do about it? You’ll find it right here in this little pamphlet—the truth about negroes and foreigners! The truth about the Catholic Church! You’ll find…” [audio grows quieter as camera shifts to the onlookers]

Hungarian man: “You believe in that kind of talk?“

Young man: “I dunno, it makes pretty good sense to me.“

Speaker: “And I tell you, friends, we’ll never be able to call this country our own until it’s a country without… without what?“

Other man: “Yeah? Without what?“

Speaker: “Without negroes, without alien foreigners,”—the young man is nodding, following along—“without Catholics, without Freemasons! You know these…“

Young man: “What’s wrong with the Masons, I’m a Mason.” Looks to European man worriedly, “hey, that fellow’s talking about me!“

Huungarian man: “And that makes a difference, doesn’t it.“

Speaker: “These are your enemies! These are the people who are trying to take over our country! Now you know them, you know what they stand for. And it’s up to you and me to fight them!” A bunch of the onlookers in the vicinity wave him off like he’s crazy and turn away, “fight them and destroy them before they destroy us!”

Speaker: “Thank you.“

One man in the now somewhat awkward crowd: “claps“

Young man: *is visibly uncomfortable*

Hungarian man: “Before he said Mason, you were ready to agree with him.”

Young man: “Well yes but, he was talking about… what about those other people?“ *the pair sit down on a park bench*

Hungarian man: “In this country, we have no ‘other people.’ We are American people, of course.“

Young man: “What about you? You aren’t American, are you?“

Hungarian man: “I was born in Hungary. But now, I am an American citizen. And I have seen what this kind of talk can do. I saw it in Berlin.”

Young man: “What were you doing there?“

But we talk mostly about all of that in respect to sex, and relationships, and it’s important to remember this applies to other things, too.

If someone says, “don’t tell anyone I got this new job,” and you then tell people, you’ve violated their consent, their privacy, and their autonomy.

If a friend says, “I don’t like it when people touch my hair,” and you keep touching their hair, you have violated their consent, their autonomy, and their privacy.

If a coworker asks you not to tease them about their new boyfriend, even if it seems like gentle and friendly fun to you, and you do it, you’ve violated their consent, their autonomy, and their privacy.

People remember these things, and they hurt. Not as much as sexual assault, obviously. But those small violations of your wishes, those instances of disrespect, still hurt, and they can add up.

apply to sex. Respect the

wishes of others.

The Whitehawk Woman. She lived in England around 5,000 years ago and was buried with great care. She was also buried with a newborn infant, and died aged between 19 and 25 years old. Researchers believe she died during or very soon after childbirth. Her bones indicate she was otherwise in good health.

Adelasius Ebalchus. He lived in Switzerland 1,300 years ago, and was in his late teens/early twenties at the time of his death. His gravesite indicated he came from wealth, and his bones showed he was well-nourished. His bones also showed that Adelasius suffered a lingering infection; archeologists believe he most likely died from lung inflammation.

The Slonk Hill Man was found semi-crouched in a grave near the seaside town of Brighton, England — in the same area as the Whitehawk Woman. Their lives, however, were separated by nearly 3,000 years. The Slonk Hill Man lived during Britain’s Iron Age. The reconstruction artist (an archeologist and sculptor) described him as being “very good looking”, tall, muscular, and in robust health at the time of his death. There were no obvious signs of what caused his death.

Sorry if I haven’t posted in a while but school just started and I’ve been very busy…

Btw here’s a The 100 post, hope you enjoy ♥️ pls don’t let it flop 🫶

Externalities are the things outside the system that is supposedly dictating how things work but still influencing it. Economic theories, unlike theories of any scientific discipline, are not required to account for externalities.

One of the most common externalities is environmental impact and that was what set the scientist I heard off. The thing he and the economists were talking about was potential nuclear fallout from a space mission.

While not the likely outcome, there was a real potential for the mission to irradiate Earth’s atmosphere.

The scientist was arguing that the potential for the launch vehicle to explode in the higher atmosphere, which has happened - that’s not an abstract possibility, and would result in spreading the nuclear materials powering the mission through the atmosphere and over the entire planet should be accounted for in the process of risk evaluation for the mission.

The economist said that the radiation threat was just an externality. So the possibility should be ignored for risk assessment.

A risk is not a risk if it isn’t what the economist is interested in. Replace risk with factor and you have hit why calling economics the “dismal science” is only half correct. You cannot be scientific if you simply ignore the parts you don’t like.

The factors put in and left out of economic theory make it bs even where it’s correct, the same as a broken clock is not fixed in the moments that it is correct.

The biggest load of bs that economists, and non-economists trying to use economic theory to justify themselves, have been trying to foist off on humanity like it’s perfumed gold for decades in spite of ample proof to the contrary is the idea that selfish individual action results in mass beneficial action.

The most famous real life example of this is trickle down economics but understand that is simply an example. It is based on the underlying idea that if everyone does what is best for themselves it will result, miraculously, in everything evening out to be the best outcome for everybody. This is the idea championed by all of Ayn Rand’s heroes and skewered by the game Bioshock. The extremely well known effects of the Tragedy of the Commons, that any economist will be happy to explain to you like you’re an idiot, are externalities.

The idea that the best possible choice for an individual will inevitably lead to the best possible outcome for everyone is the root of the justification for deregulation as a political policy. Somehow, via the great chain, a business cutting corners to provide cheaper, less safe food so they can increase their profit margin and an underpaid consumer buying the cheapest possible product so that they CAN have a chance at making ends meet will result in everyone being better off.

Perhaps you are an American who is upset about environmental damage and the impact of eating fish. You decide not to eat fish. You remove your $5/month from the system.

Now, here’s where the path forks. If you’re personally changing your consumption habits because knowing what you know about fish has made eating fish unpleasant for you, then it is a complete sentence. That’s one of the best possible reasons to do anything, and may fortune follow your endeavour.

But let’s say you’re changing your consumption habits as part of your plan to SAVE THE WORLD. it is patently obvious that this action won’t save the world, but you feel that “if everyone did it” the world would be saved. In fact, you’re planning to go one step further than virtually anyone else, and as a result of some truly game-changing campaigning and devoting your tremendous talents to this one cause, you have successfully convinced so many people to join you in this behavioral change that you’ve removed $10,000 a month from the fish-buying system. Holy cow, that must be materially saving the world a little bit, right? How shall we quantify this impact? how many fishy lives have we saved with this? How healthy is the ocean getting?? This is pushing the needle in the right direction, right??

Well, in the case of the American fishing industry… no. The American fishing industry made $165 billion in commercial sales in 2019, which means about thirteen billion seven hundred and fifty million dollars a month, which means that it can absorb a change of -10,000 spent in grocery stores without noticing - no Congressman is going to pound his fist on the desk and say “by Jove, the People have changed their minds about fish!” when it’s about the same impact as a freezer in a supermarket breaking down - but honestly, we knew that, what about PUSHING THE NEEDLE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION? HOW ELSE CAN WE COMBAT OVERFISHING APART FROM BUYING LESS FISH? It feels so goddamn obvious that it HAS to be the path forward! This is the way, guys, let’s try to make it $100,000 and THEN we’ll make a difference -

The most depressing externality here is subsidies. The American government directly subsidizes the American fishing industry to the tune of about $35 billion per year*. Of those, environmental groups estimate that over half of them are actively harmful. In addition to distorting The Economy, these “harmful” subsidies actively encourage increased fishing, support commercial enterprises to take risks, practice damaging behavior, or to simply stay in business when they’re no longer profitable.

* this takes into account a lot of factors, some seemingly innocuous, like state sales tax exemptions on fishing vessels, direct disaster aid payments to businesses, and marketing programs to support the industry and increase sales. Others are the result of quite specific lobbying, like the Fishermen’s Contingency Fund, where the American federal government pays out cash to commercial fishermen inconvenienced by oil and gas works - or the Surplus Fish Buyback programs… which purchase unwanted fish cheaply to put in school lunches. The combinations of direct/indirect payments, encouragements and programmes exist to keep American fishing exactly how it is.

This system means that whatever money you choose to withhold from this machine, the machine simply takes from you. You’re locking your $5 in your wallet to save a fishy life: the industry simply takes $5 from your taxes and kills 10 fish with it. You can’t “hurt a system in the profit” or “hit them in the wallet” or “vote with your dollar” when the machine is designed to extract your money regardless of blips, blips like “you not personally handing them your grocery money.” You’re going to change America’s minds about fish by Going Viral? Your tax dollars fund marketing programs to cancel out that impact. You’re hoping that rising fuel costs and climate-change-storms will make it less attractive to send boats out? Not in a subsidised economy, they don’t - it allows the industry to be disconnected from the market! What about if eVeRyOne did it - if we just scaled it bigger and managed to get 2% of fish-buyers to stop, or something? Well, the government already buys extra/unwanted fish for food programmes like school lunches or federal aid - you’d definitely instantly see more Mandatory Bargain Price Fish Meals being fed in schools, the military, state-owned care facilities, etc. But who knows how many heads the hydra might sprout to defend itself? If a $165billion/year industry backed by $35billion of government encouragement doesn’t want to stop, then it won’t. It is not part of the same market conditions that you are.

The point here is that it’s tempting to think of The Economy as something that notices you. It seems clear and obvious that “the solution to overfishing” would be “not eating fish.” And in a simplified market-led economic system it would probably be the case. You simply do not buy the fish, the supermarket sadly throws it away and tells the fisherman, and the fisherman counts up his dollars, checks the buzz on social media, and decides to run ecological whale-watches from his boat instead; the fishy lives are saved. But we don’t even live in a fantasy approximation of that system. Many parts of The Economy are completely artificial, and the machine is designed to resist market pressure. So the beguiling idea of “not feeding the machine” is easy to repeat! but ultimately it does not stop the behavior of the machine.

Solutions to stopping the machine do exist. It’s a human-made thing. You can break it, replace it, change its parameters, reduce its size, take away its nozzle for feeding itself by extracting cash from your back pocket, send it to China, stop it from emigrating to China, or bully it as much as you like. You can put it in a cage with a sustainable amount of food and tell it that it may make a sustainable amount of profit. You can paint it green and call it Eco. You can destroy its batteries, or install it with a solar panel, or adopt it out to a commune of low-income women. You can make the machine illegal. You can wait for another nation to kill it. You can kill it yourself. You can continue your stop-eating-fish campaign to fund ways to attack the machine. You can get many people together to put pressure on the machine. You can wait for it to run out of food.

That professor was the most "liberal" person I'd ever met at the time. He came right out and said in class, "I've lost my faith in the doctrine of laissez-faire". (In retrospect, he was probably right leaning centrist, but that was radical by the standards of the department.)

He did a study on pollution, a massive negative externality. In our little valley, there was a steel mill that pumped tons of smog that went nowhere, trapped by mountains. Due to company solvency reasons, the mill shut down for a few weeks/months and eventually started back up again.

My professor combed through hospital data and found that in the weeks it was shut down, significantly less deaths and hospital admittances happened. Less heart attacks. Less acute asthma attacks. Less everything.

It went right back up when the mill started up again.

The UFO Watchtower in Alamosa CO with supposedly two interdimensional portals in the front garden. People will leave items there to connect them to that other world

There are images of Kokopelli everywhere. Kokopelli is a native american trickster spirit and the spirit of music. You can’t escape him

Whatever the fuck Casa Bonita has going on. It’s a so-called Mexican restaurant but really it’s an eldritch trapdoor. Saying it has Mexican food is an insult to both Mexicans and food. I can't even describe it. It's like another dimension in a restaurant. It's bigger on the inside.

Most people know at least some Spanish - there’s a ton of Spanish names but they’re all pronounced wrong in the Americanized way because we’re stupid. If you don’t know Spanish you miss out on a lot

Nobody knows what group it belongs to in the larger United States. It’s in the West, but nobody can decide whether it’s Northwest or Southwest. I’d personally say Southwest because it has a lot of the native American and Hispanic influence as the rest of that area but it’s very up in the air

The western half and eastern half are SO different. Western half is mountains and elk, Eastern half is plains and cattle. The culture is so different between the two directions that it even confounds natives of the state

You always know what direction it is since the mountains are in the west. Lost? Look to the mountains

The Vampire of Lafayette CO. After Fodor Glava, an immigrant from Transylvania, died he was suspected of being a vampire. Some said the tree that grew from his grave was from the wooden stake lodged in his heart. A red bush grew beside him, a grim reminder of the blood he drank, of all his victims

The Tommyknockers in the mines, who beat out the support beams to cause cave-ins. The only way to know they’re at work is the chilling knocking sound. Miners would leave their food as offerings in the mines to appease them

You can’t predict the weather. Not even the meteorologists can. Don’t even try. It’s 80 one day and 42 the next. 

The Stanley Hotel, which inspired The Shining

Route 666. Later renamed to Route 491 in 2003 because it was too notorious. Some say Hell Hounds and a strange Black Sudan follow them on the road, only to discover nothing there when they pull over

Ridge Home Asylum

A lot of the most famous murder cases happened in Colorado. JonBenet Ramsey and the Columbine Shooting come to mind. History is written in blood

Mike the Headless Chicken Day. Yes, that’s a real holiday. Basically there was this chicken that lived for 18 months without a head so we dedicated a day to him. 

The Hot Springs. Don’t trust them. The spirits like a soak just as much as you do. 

The Coffin Races to commemorate the death of a woman named Emma Crawford. Basically she died of sickness but a flood scattered her remains. We’re still finding pieces of Emma to this day. 

Garden of the Gods. It has that name for a reason

Greeley. It’s known for smelling like cattle because it’s home to a huge slaughterhouse. Once a year they burn the cowblood - nobody goes outside on that day. The smell is too much. 

In the San Luis valley, where that famous UFO tower is located, dead farm animals are often found skinned and gutted, blood drained, with no explanation. Nobody knows what keeps killing them, but it’s been doing it since the 1960s. My bet is on the Chupacabra. 

The Denver Airport. Look up Denver Airport conspiracies. It’s wild

Blucifer. It’s a giant blue horse statue outside the Denver Airport. It once fell over and crushed its creator to death. It’s eyes have glowed red ever since

There’s a huge air force base in the Mountains. You see planes flying all the time. The skies are streaked with their trails. Don’t ask what they’re doing. It’s best that you don’t know

The outside fruit is normal enough, but the nutmeg seed itself is encased in this strange scarlet webbing, called the aril, and looks exactly like the demon-infected heart of a video game monster. That haunted webbing is the source of mace, an apparently common spice that I have literally never heard of but which is the source of the classic doughnut flavor, among other things. (It’s not related to the self-defense aerosol.)

I think most people know you can also get balls high off freshly-ground nutmeg and possibly die after the absolute worst trip imaginable, potentially lasting several days.

So, that’s fun! Doughnuts are flavored with Deeply Cursed Monster Hearts and I find this utterly delightful.

“I bet you don’t know what this is!” he said excitedly as he split one open.

He was right, I definitely did not.

Clarke: But boys are also so hot

Clarke: why iS EVERYONE SO HOT?

Clarke: Calliope is in here