Well Red Quaker

Our grandparents tell us stories about the birds that used to be here and how the seasons were predictable and the weather less extreme.

HM

"What if a small group of religious extremists, persecuted in their own country, moved to an inhospitable uninhabited island and had to rebuild society there?" - But the Americas and Australia weren't inhospitable and were full of Native nations, why are you perpetuating the idea of Terra Nullius and manifest destiny? - Yes, that's because this isn't a metaphor for the British invading other countries, it's a metaphor for finding out how much of a person's religious practise is rooted in worldly concerns, vs how much they will really stymie themselves for the sake of God.

"What if 1/100 children born was a werewolf?" - But queer people are no danger to straight people, and disabled people don't have predictable patterns to their illnesses, and most people who have uncontrollable rages really CAN control them and are just lying, and no minority group has superpowers... - Yes, but that's all immaterial, because I wanted to talk about a load of other metaphors about the passage of time and responsibility and the relationship between humans and wildlife.

I think it particularly comes up the moment an author includes any sort of marginalisation/oppression for their fictional/fantasy world. I've lost count of the times now where I've seen people read a book on, say, the terrible oppression of the Gwyllion, and immediately gone "Oh, so the Gwyllion are a metaphor for the real world X people, either deliberately or accidentally through the author's inherent racism. This is therefore super problematic because the Gwyllion are also described as Y, which means the author is also saying that about X people."

There will always be real world parallels when discussing oppression. Always. But that's because oppression is oppression - precise details may vary, but it follows the same pathways the world over, and that will naturally be copied into fiction as well. This does not mean the author is intentionally telling the exact allegory that you've projected onto it. If that's how you read everything, then yeah, everything becomes super problematic, but also, why are you reading any fiction that isn't solely about real world historical events? It's clearly not for you

And, you know, obviously there are works that are racist/misogynistic/etc, including deliberately so. But I really don't like the way people have started going "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY here, I'm ever so smart" and acting like they're the cleverest little critic that ever lived. You have to meet a work on its own terms. Lovecraft was a big ole racist, sure. Someone who has written a book about the oppression of magic users in their fantasy world, however, is rarely writing a story about how queerness lurks in family lines and must be controlled; they are way more commonly writing a story about a world with magic that they then wanted to take seriously, and while there might well be elements of queerness there, those magic users are not a 1:1 replacement.

Sometimes these lines are blurry! But we're going way too far to one end of that spectrum

The post that got me thinking about this yesterday was someone talking about how they'd love to write a vampire story exploring vampirism as a disability (dependence on a substance to manage the condition, blindness/weakness in daytime, can't enter buildings without accommodation, etc). But, they said, they can't, because they don't want to be making the point that disabled people are parasites, and vampires are generally considered parasitic.

And like. What an incredible shame. That we'll lose that, because they're already afraid of the "I have spotted a PROBLEMATIC ALLEGORY" crowd. That would be a great story for exploring disability themes, OR just a great new take on vampires, and either of those things would be so good to read. But there would be so many people who would jump in with "So you think disabled people are draining the life force of the ableds around them?", never stopping to actually think "Vampires are not a 1:1 stand in for real world disability because they are fictional and do not exist."

News articles are great but I think direct info from the source is more important here, though all of the stuff above appears to be correct. For something as potentially impactful on peoples' health as this, I think the barrier to getting to the information should be as low as possible.

This is the official website to use to check serial numbers. It has the tool to check and full instructions on locating the serial. There is also an FAQ page.

The email I received also listed a customer service number and an online support page.

Abbott Customer Service 1-833-815-4273 Available seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

Online support, 24/7

Carrying stuff is huge.

If you can put meat in a bag, you can carry more meat. If you can put something like nuts in a bag, then nuts abruptly become a food that you can bring back to the tribe or save for later and not a food that you're required to eat on the spot because they are tiresome and stupid to carry by hand. In both cases your ability to feed yourself and your tribe just got a whole fuck of a lot better.

If you can put your baby in a bag, you now have both your hands free to stick a spear into things, pick nuts, fish, dig tasty cicadas out of the ground, etc. Your ability to feed yourself and your tribe just got a whole fuck of a lot better, and so did your ability to defend yourself while you do it. (And let's face it, your babies were already getting downright ridiculous in terms of the time it takes them to be fully walking-ready, due to brain size and being essentially premature; inventing Multitasking With Baby is like, pure survival at this point, and your way to do that is to create a specialized bag.)

If you can put water in a bag (first water containers very well may have been animal bladders or stomachs, not pots) you can bring water to your sick tribe members and they have a much higher chance of recovering.

And then you have elaborations of the basic "thing that contains objects" idea. If you make an exceptionally loosely woven bag and put it in the water, you can on occasion finesse some fish into it. And then you have delicious fish. If you put yourself in a loose and flexible bag of animal skin, your tribe can operate in the cold better, which changes your entire migration pattern and opens up new environments to you. If you make a hard container and fill it with water and put it over your fire, you have invented a new type of cooking that unlocks whole new food types, such as vegetables that need softening in order for humans to eat them. (Of course at the same time your stomach is becoming steadily more dependent on being able to fuck with your food in this way, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the less energy you spend on digestion, the more energy you have to spend on other things, like brains. And big brains are good for unlocking whole new levels of communication, allowing for fantastic new levels of foraging cooperation, passing knowledge through generations, mate selection, and even various sorts of mental recreation where you imagine something that you don't see, and then convey that to your fellow beings.)

We will never know their names.

The first victim could not have been recorded, for there was no written language to record it. They were someone’s daughter, or son, and someone’s friend, and they were loved by those around them. And they were in pain, covered in rashes, confused, scared, not knowing why this was happening to them or what they could do about it - victim of a mad, inhuman god. There was nothing to be done - humanity was not strong enough, not aware enough, not knowledgeable enough, to fight back against a monster that could not be seen.

It was in Ancient Egypt, where it attacked slave and pharaoh alike. In Rome, it effortlessly decimated armies. It killed in Syria. It killed in Moscow.  In India, five million dead. It killed a thousand Europeans every day in the 18th century. It killed more than fifty million Native Americans. From the Peloponnesian War to the Civil War, it slew more soldiers and civilians than any weapon, any soldier, any army (Not that this stopped the most foolish and empty souls from attempting to harness the demon as a weapon against their enemies).

Cultures grew and faltered, and it remained. Empires rose and fell, and it thrived. Ideologies waxed and waned, but it did not care. Kill. Maim. Spread. An ancient, mad god, hidden from view, that could not be fought, could not be confronted, could not even be comprehended. Not the only one of its kind, but the most devastating.

For a long time, there was no hope - only the bitter, hollow endurance of survivors.

In China, in the 10th century, humanity began to fight back.

It was observed that survivors of the mad god’s curse would never be touched again: they had taken a portion of that power into themselves, and were so protected from it. Not only that, but this power could be shared by consuming a remnant of the wounds. There was a price, for you could not take the god’s power without first defeating it - but a smaller battle, on humanity’s terms. By the 16th century, the technique spread, to India, across Asia, the Ottoman Empire and, in the 18th century, Europe. In 1796, a more powerful technique was discovered by Edward Jenner.

An idea began to take hold: Perhaps the ancient god could be killed.

A whisper became a voice; a voice became a call; a call became a battle cry, sweeping across villages, cities, nations. Humanity began to cooperate, spreading the protective power across the globe, dispatching masters of the craft to protect whole populations. People who had once been sworn enemies joined in common cause for this one battle. Governments mandated that all citizens protect themselves, for giving the ancient enemy a single life would put millions in danger.

And, inch by inch, humanity drove its enemy back. Fewer friends wept; Fewer neighbors were crippled; Fewer parents had to bury their children.

At the dawn of the 20th century, for the first time, humanity banished the enemy from entire regions of the world. Humanity faltered many times in its efforts, but there individuals who never gave up, who fought for the dream of a world where no child or loved one would ever fear the demon ever again. Viktor Zhdanov, who called for humanity to unite in a final push against the demon; The great tactician Karel Raška, who conceived of a strategy to annihilate the enemy; Donald Henderson, who led the efforts of those final days.

The enemy grew weaker. Millions became thousands, thousands became dozens. And then, when the enemy did strike, scores of humans came forth to defy it, protecting all those whom it might endanger.

The enemy’s last attack in the wild was on Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977. For months afterwards, dedicated humans swept the surrounding area, seeking out any last, desperate hiding place where the enemy might yet remain.

They found none.

35 years ago, on December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory.

This one evil, the horror from beyond memory, the monster that took 500 million people from this world - was destroyed.

You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of, when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in the world.

It wasn’t the end of the world. Maybe if this place was my livelihood I’d start panicking or packing up, but it’s not. I’m a vet, I own my own home, and I’m not hurting if my vegetables get looted. The garden’s a hobby at best, and yeah, maybe it was Grandma’s pride and joy, but I warned her I killed my mom’s geraniums when she told me she was leaving me the house, so it’s not like she has room for disappointment.

If anything, the rabbits are lucky they picked my land to figure out civilization on, because I’m pretty sure my neighbor Carl would be dropping dynamite down the burrows in my shoes.

I won’t lie, I came close. Monster Truck got out while I wasn’t looking, and when he came hobbling home with a goddamn spearhead embedded in his leg, I was about ready to rain my own personal Iliad down on the little bastards. Lucky for them, treating arrow wounds on my cat gave me enough time to calm down and think. I figure it was self defense. I don’t like letting my cats outside off-harness anyway, and I would’ve been plenty upset if he’d come home with a dead bunny in his mouth.

#Repost @mattxiv

may the universe reward their bravery

So LA has been — and continues to — protest against ICE. These protests haven’t gotten any smaller or lost any momentum, but social media wasn’t reflecting it.

TikTok users, realizing that the platform/other social media are censoring/deleting/shadowbanning these protest videos, decided to find a workaround.

They’re calling it the LA Music Festival. Ice detention centers and other protest locations are “stages.” The hottest band is Rage Against the Machine. “Here’s what gear you should be bringing to stay safe at the LA Music Festival.”

And it fucking worked.

TikTok has become a proving ground for a lot of new music, meaning lots of labels and organizations have lucrative deals with TikTok to promote their new artists and music festivals. So they absolutely cannot censor the words “music festival” or train the algorithm to ignore it, or they risk endangering that very important revenue.