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diseaseincontext · 10 months

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Looking at a Systematic Review of Environmental Risk Factors for Child Stunting

Child stunting, characterized by impaired growth and development, is a significant public health concern globally. While nutrition plays a crucial role, there are other environmental factors that contribute to this condition. In this blog post, we will delve into the findings of a systematic review conducted by Vilcins et al. (2018) to highlight the key environmental risk factors associated with child stunting. This research sheds light on the multifaceted nature of stunting, beyond nutritional aspects, and provides valuable insights for effective interventions.

Household Air Pollution:

The systematic review by Vilcins et al. emphasizes the impact of household air pollution on child stunting. Exposure to indoor air pollution from sources like solid fuel for cooking and heating, such as biomass or coal, can lead to respiratory infections and chronic inflammation. These conditions can impair a child's growth and development. For instance, in regions where solid fuel is commonly used, such as parts of Africa and Asia, children exposed to high levels of indoor air pollution have an increased risk of stunting.

2. Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Practices:

Inadequate access to clean water and sanitation facilities significantly contribute to child stunting. Vilcins et al. highlight how poor WASH practices, including limited access to clean water for drinking and hygiene, and inadequate sanitation facilities, increase the risk of infectious diseases and nutrient deficiencies. For example, in areas where open defecation is practiced, the risk of stunting is higher due to the increased likelihood of fecal-oral transmission of diseases like diarrhea and intestinal parasites.

3. Environmental Contaminants:

The presence of environmental contaminants, such as heavy metals and pesticides, is associated with child stunting. Exposure to these pollutants, either through contaminated soil, water, or food, can interfere with a child's growth and development. For instance, in agricultural communities where pesticides are extensively used, children may be exposed to these harmful substances, which can impair their cognitive development and contribute to stunting.

4. Poor Housing Conditions:

Inadequate housing conditions, including overcrowding, lack of ventilation, and dampness, are identified as risk factors for child stunting. These conditions increase the likelihood of respiratory infections, which can impact a child's nutritional status and growth. For example, in slum areas with crowded living spaces and insufficient ventilation, children are more susceptible to respiratory illnesses, leading to stunting.

Vilcins et al.'s systematic review highlights the environmental risk factors associated with child stunting beyond nutritional aspects. Household air pollution, poor WASH practices, exposure to environmental contaminants, and inadequate housing conditions all contribute to stunting. Addressing these factors requires comprehensive interventions that improve access to clean energy, promote proper WASH practices, reduce environmental pollution, and enhance housing conditions. By understanding and addressing the environmental risk factors associated with child stunting, policymakers, health professionals, and communities can work together to develop effective strategies for prevention and intervention. It is through targeted actions and investments in improving environmental conditions that we can reduce child stunting rates and ensure healthier futures for children worldwide.

References!

Vilcins, Dwan, Peter D. Sly, and Paul Jagals. "Environmental risk factors associated with child stunting: a systematic review of the literature." Annals of global health 84.4 (2018): 551.

#medical anthropology #medicine #global health #global medicine #child stunting #paediatrics #social determinants #systemic review #anthropology #scientific literacy #environmental factors

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canisalbus · 2 months

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Hello, I'm not sure if you're aware, but tumblr is going to start helping midjourney gather data for their AI. You're one of the artists I follow here pretty actively and I wanted to warn you to maybe start nighshading your art before posting it here so it doesn't get swept up!

I've seen a couple of posts about it. Feeling disappointed but not that surprised. Also not excited about having to start nightshading/glazing my pieces but if there isn't going to be any serious regulations regarding data scraping and ai "art", there aren't a lot of choices.

Thank you for taking the time to warn me just in case, it was very thoughtful of you!

#from what I've seen the effectiveness of nightshade/glaze has been debated and I don't even pretend to understand how it works #but like watermarks it's at least some kind of preventive measure a token effort to stop your art from being stolen and misused #but I fear that if someone is determined to do it anyway chances are they will find a way unfortunately #this shouldn't be the reality of trying to share art online #it's a pretty dismal situation when this responsibility falls on the artists themselves #I've been here since 2011 I've lived through multiple tumblr apocalypses I'm not leaving unless they make this place wholly unlivable #and I don't think there are truly good alternatives with similar sense of community and as varied posting and customization options #it seems like every other major social media platform is doing this exact same thing if not worse #answered #ohdeergood #I'm tired we're all tired of this

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decolonize-the-left · 3 months

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WW3 will be white supremacists vs everyone else.

Not a singular Western country in support of Israel is innocent of colonization, war crimes, treaty violations, or having white supremacists in politics.

Each one of them has been ignoring protests and strikes in their own countries for human rights and protections. Human rights and protections that have thus far been denied btw. Meanwhile they give themselves raises and protections against protesters and so called "terrorists." They inflate military budgets while their people grow more agitated and they don't care.

Not a single one of them have a thriving, happy people.

Historically they've been awful for Black, indigenous, and immigrant populations despite many of their countries being founded on immigration. And even in modern times all of them currently have trials going on to combat state violence such as genocide, rights violations, or police brutality.

None of them have ever been paragons of human rights. None of them represent the world's moral compass least of all Germany.

So why and how is it that you can look at the USA and German support of Israel and your thought is "finally!" instead of seeing a red flag.

White supremacists are teaming up in a Big way.

And this time they're letting white Jewish people count as white which seems to have short-circuited ur brains so let me remind y'all that Nazis hate Jewish people but not every white suprmacist is a Nazi. And white supremacists have a long history of providing white Jewish people with conditional white privileges

For example here in the USA while white men who owned some land could vote, the same could not be said of white Jewish people who were barred from it in some colonies by language that stated you needed to accept Jesus as your savior. But white Jewish ppl could vote & could own land elsewhere when Black and native communities couldn't do that anywhere at all.

White supremacists exploiting white Jewish people for their vote or political support is nothing new and continues to be no surprise.

We can look at Trump's attempt to do exactly that as recently as 2019. We know he isn't an ally of any Jewish person anywhere and yet here he is trying to get right-wingers hyped up with virtue signaling.

The same article addressed how this right wing rhetoric and trying to incite it among Republicans is itself antisemitic and careless.

The past 24 hours have cemented President Donald Trump's reputation as America's "racist in chief." After tweeting a hateful diatribe about how four Democratic congresswomen of color should "go back" to where they came from, the President attempted to justify his racism with accusations that these members of Congress are anti-Israel. On Monday morning, he tweeted that these lawmakers "have made Israel feel abandoned by the U.S." and cited South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, who called them all "anti-America" and "anti-Semitic."

[...]And despite his feigning concern about anti-Semitism, nearly three-quarters of Jews feel less secure than they did two years ago and the majority of Jews attribute their rising insecurity to Trump's policies. More specifically, many are concerned about Trump encouraging right-wing extremism and Republicans tolerating white nationalism within their ranks. In fact, according to a March Gallup poll, more than 70% of Jews continue to disapprove of Trump and only 16% now identify as Republicans.

....then Biden supported a fucking genocide in the name of trying to establish a safe place for Jewish people. When we all know his interest is actually oil in the middle east.

There is no fucking way either of them or the USA cares about any Jewish people or had their best interest in mind.

So that entire argument aside....

We can't keep letting white supremacists play these identity politic games and turning us on each other so we're keeping each other oppressed instead of helping each other be free.

Right now there are white queer people in my asks calling me (an Ojibwe) a Russian psyop for not wanting to vote blue.

That's the shit I'm talking about.

At the end of the day I don't want anyone except white supremacy and white supremacists to be decimated. I want a liberated and free people all over the globe.

Is that what you want too?

Then we have got to start focusing on the big picture. You are not my enemy and I am not yours. Our enemies are the same and they are unified.

We should be too.

International solidarity against white supremacy for the first time, for forever.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Better failure for social media

Content moderation is fundamentally about making social media work better, but there are two other considerations that determine how social media fails: end-to-end (E2E), and freedom of exit. These are much neglected, and that’s a pity, because how a system fails is every bit as important as how it works.

Of course, commercial social media sites don’t want to be good, they want to be profitable. The unique dynamics of social media allow the companies to uncouple quality from profit, and more’s the pity.

Social media grows thanks to network effects — you join Twitter to hang out with the people who are there, and then other people join to hang out with you. The more users Twitter accumulates, the more users it can accumulate. But social media sites stay big thanks to high switching costs: the more you have to give up to leave a social media site, the harder it is to go:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

Nature bequeaths some in-built switching costs on social media, primarily the coordination problem of reaching consensus on where you and the people in your community should go next. The more friends you share a social media platform with, the higher these costs are. If you’ve ever tried to get ten friends to agree on where to go for dinner, you know how this works. Now imagine trying to get all your friends to agree on where to go for dinner, for the rest of their lives!

But these costs aren’t insurmountable. Network effects, after all, are a double-edged sword. Some users are above-average draws for others, and if a critical mass of these important nodes in the network map depart for a new service — like, say, Mastodon — that service becomes the presumptive successor to the existing giants.

When that happens — when Mastodon becomes “the place we’ll all go when Twitter finally becomes unbearable” — the downsides of network effects kick in and the double-edged sword begins to carve away at a service’s user-base. It’s one thing to argue about which restaurant we should go to tonight, it’s another to ask whether we should join our friends at the new restaurant where they’re already eating.

Social media sites who want to keep their users’ business walk a fine line: they can simply treat those users well, showing them the things they ask to see, not spying on them, paying to police their service to reduce harassment, etc. But these are costly choices: if you show users the things they ask to see, you can’t charge businesses to show them things they don’t want to see. If you don’t spy on users, you can’t sell targeting services to people who want to force them to look at things they��re uninterested in. Every moderator you pay to reduce harassment draws a salary at the expense of your shareholders, and every catastrophe that moderator prevents is a catastrophe you can’t turn into monetizable attention as gawking users flock to it.

So social media sites are always trying to optimize their mistreatment of users, mistreating them (and thus profiting from them) right up to the point where they are ready to switch, but without actually pushing them over the edge.

One way to keep dissatisfied users from leaving is by extracting a penalty from them for their disloyalty. You can lock in their data, their social relationships, or, if they’re “creators” (and disproportionately likely to be key network nodes whose defection to a rival triggers mass departures from their fans), you can take their audiences hostage.

The dominant social media firms all practice a low-grade, tacit form of hostage-taking. Facebook downranks content that links to other sites on the internet. Instagram prohibits links in posts, limiting creators to “Links in bio.” Tiktok doesn’t even allow links. All of this serves as a brake on high-follower users who seek to migrate their audiences to better platforms.

But these strategies are unstable. When a platform becomes worse for users (say, because it mandates nonconsensual surveillance and ramps up advertising), they may actively seek out other places on which to follow each other, and the creators they enjoy. When a rival platform emerges as the presumptive successor to an incumbent, users no longer face the friction of knowing which rival they should resettle to.

When platforms’ enshittification strategies overshoot this way, users flee in droves, and then it’s time for the desperate platform managers to abandon the pretense of providing a public square. Yesterday, Elon Musk’s Twitter rolled out a policy prohibiting users from posting links to rival platforms:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221218173806/https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/social-platforms-policy

This policy was explicitly aimed at preventing users from telling each other where they could be found after they leave Twitter:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221219015355/https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1604531261791522817

This, in turn, was a response to many users posting regular messages explaining why they were leaving Twitter and how they could be found on other platforms. In particular, Twitter management was concerned with departures by high-follower users like Taylor Lorenz, who was retroactively punished for violating the policy, though it didn’t exist when she violated it:

https://deadline.com/2022/12/washington-post-journalist-taylor-lorenz-suspended-twitter-1235202034/

As Elon Musk wrote last spring: “The acid test for two competing socioeconomic systems is which side needs to build a wall to keep people from escaping? That’s the bad one!”

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1533616384747442176

This isn’t particularly insightful. It’s obvious that any system that requires high walls and punishments to stay in business isn’t serving its users, whose presence is attributable to coercion, not fulfillment. Of course, the people who operate these systems have all manner of rationalizations for them.

The Berlin Wall, we were told, wasn’t there to keep East Germans in — rather, it was there to keep the teeming hordes clamoring to live in the workers’ paradise out. In the same way, platforms will claim that they’re not blocking outlinks or sideloading because they want to prevent users from defecting to a competitor, but rather, to protect those users from external threats.

This rationalization quickly wears thin, and then new ones step in. For example, you might claim that telling your friends that you’re leaving and asking them to meet you elsewhere is like “giv[ing] a talk for a corporation [and] promot[ing] other corporations”:

https://mobile.twitter.com/mayemusk/status/1604550452447690752

Or you might claim that it’s like “running Wendy’s ads [on] McDonalds property,” rather than turning to your friends and saying, “The food at McDonalds sucks, let’s go eat at Wendy’s instead”:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1604559316237037568

The truth is that any service that won’t let you leave isn’t in the business of serving you, it’s in the business of harming you. The only reason to build a wall around your service — to impose any switching costs on users- is so that you can fuck them over without risking their departure.

The platforms want to be Anatevka, and we the villagers of Fiddler On the Roof, stuck plodding the muddy, Cossack-haunted roads by the threat of losing all our friends if we try to leave:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

That’s where freedom of exit comes in. The public should have the right to leave, and companies should not be permitted to make that departure burdensome. Any burdens we permit companies to impose is an invitation to abuse of their users.

This is why governments are handing down new interoperability mandates: the EU’s Digital Markets Act forces the largest companies to offer APIs so that smaller rivals can plug into them and let users walkaway from Big Tech into new kinds of platforms — small businesses, co-ops, nonprofits, hobby sites — that treat them better. These small players are overwhelmingly part of the fediverse: the federated social media sites that allow users to connect to one another irrespective of which server or service they use.

The creators of these platforms have pledged themselves to freedom of exit. Mastodon ships with a “Move Followers” and “Move Following” feature that lets you quit one server and set up shop on another, without losing any of the accounts you follow or the accounts that follow you:

https://codingitwrong.com/2022/10/10/migrating-a-mastodon-account.html

This feature is as yet obscure, because the exodus to Mastodon is still young. Users who flocked to servers without knowing much about their managers have, by and large, not yet run into problems with the site operators. The early trickle of horror stories about petty authoritarianism from Mastodon sysops conspicuously fail to mention that if the management of a particular instance turns tyrant, you can click two links, export your whole social graph, sign up for a rival, click two more links and be back at it.

This feature will become more prominent, because there is nothing about running a Mastodon server that means that you are good at running a Mastodon server. Elon Musk isn’t an evil genius — he’s an ordinary mediocrity who lucked into a lot of power and very little accountability. Some Mastodon operators will have Musk-like tendencies that they will unleash on their users, and the difference will be that those users can click two links and move elsewhere. Bye-eee!

Freedom of exit isn’t just a matter of the human right of movement, it’s also a labor issue. Online creators constitute a serious draw for social media services. All things being equal, these services would rather coerce creators’ participation — by holding their audiences hostage — than persuade creators to remain by offering them an honest chance to ply their trade.

Platforms have a variety of strategies for chaining creators to their services: in addition to making it harder for creators to coordinate with their audiences in a mass departure, platforms can use DRM, as Audible does, to prevent creators’ customers from moving the media they purchase to a rival’s app or player.

Then there’s “freedom of reach”: platforms routinely and deceptively conflate recommending a creator’s work with showing that creator’s work to the people who explicitly asked to see it.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

When you follow or subscribe to a feed, that is not a “signal” to be mixed into the recommendation system. It’s an order: “Show me this.” Not “Show me things like this.”

Show.

Me.

This.

But there’s no money in showing people the things they tell you they want to see. If Amazon showed shoppers the products they searched for, they couldn’t earn $31b/year on an “ad business” that fills the first six screens of results with rival products who’ve paid to be displayed over the product you’re seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

If Spotify played you the albums you searched for, it couldn’t redirect you to playlists artists have to shell out payola to be included on:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/12/streaming-doesnt-pay/#stunt-publishing

And if you only see what you ask for, then product managers whose KPI is whether they entice you to “discover” something else won’t get a bonus every time you fatfinger a part of your screen that navigates you away from the thing you specifically requested:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-fatfinger-economy-7c7b3b54925c

Musk, meanwhile, has announced that you won’t see messages from the people you follow unless they pay for Twitter Blue:

https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-twitter-blue/

And also that you will be nonconsensually opted into seeing more “recommended” content from people you don’t follow (but who can be extorted out of payola for the privilege):

https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/Twitter-Expands-Content-Recommendations/637697/

Musk sees Twitter as a publisher, not a social media site:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604588904828600320

Which is why he’s so indifferent to the collateral damage from this payola/hostage scam. Yes, Twitter is a place where famous and semi-famous people talk to their audiences, but it is primarily a place where those audiences talk to each other — that is, a public square.

This is the Facebook death-spiral: charging to people to follow to reach you, and burying the things they say in a torrent of payola-funded spam. It’s the vision of someone who thinks of other people as things to use — to pump up your share price or market your goods to — not worthy of consideration.

As Terry Pratchett’s Granny Weatherwax put it: “Sin is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”

Mastodon isn’t perfect, but its flaws are neither fatal nor permanent. The idea that centralized media is “easier” surely reflects the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been pumped into refining social media Roach Motels (“users check in, but they don’t check out”).

Until a comparable sum has been spent refining decentralized, federated services, any claims about the impossibility of making the fediverse work for mass audiences should be treated as unfalsifiable, motivated reasoning.

Meanwhile, Mastodon has gotten two things right that no other social media giant has even seriously attempted:

I. If you follow someone on Mastodon, you’ll see everything they post; and

II. If you leave a Mastodon server, you can take both your followers and the people you follow with you.

The most common criticism of Mastodon is that you must rely on individual moderators who may be underresourced, incompetent on malicious. This is indeed a serious problem, but it isn’t the same serious problem that Twitter has. When Twitter is incompetent, malicious, or underresourced, your departure comes at a dear price.

On Mastodon, your choice is: tolerate bad moderation, or click two links and move somewhere else.

On Twitter, your choice is: tolerate moderation, or lose contact with all the people you care about and all the people who care about you.

The interoperability mandates in the Digital Markets Act (and in the US ACCESS Act, which seems unlikely to get a vote in this session of Congress) only force the largest platforms to open up, but Mastodon shows us the utility of interop for smaller services, too.

There are lots of domains in which “dominance” shouldn’t be the sole criteria for whether you are expected to treat your customers fairly.

A doctor with a small practice who leaks all ten patients’ data harms those patients as surely as a hospital system with a million patients would have. A small-time wedding photographer who refuses to turn over your pictures unless you pay a surprise bill is every bit as harmful to you as a giant chain that has the same practice.

As we move into the realm of smalltime, community-oriented social media servers, we should be looking to avoid the pitfalls of the social media bubble that’s bursting around us. No matter what the size of the service, let’s ensure that it lets us leave, and respects the end-to-end principle, that any two people who want to talk to each other should be allowed to do so, without interference from the people who operate their communications infrastructure.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

Heisenberg Media (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elon_Musk_-_The_Summit_2013.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: Moses confronting the Pharaoh, demanding that he release the Hebrews. Pharaoh’s face has been replaced with Elon Musk’s. Moses holds a Twitter logo in his outstretched hand. The faces embossed in the columns of Pharaoh’s audience hall have been replaced with the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The wall over Pharaoh’s head has been replaced with a Matrix ‘code waterfall’ effect. Moses’s head has been replaced with that of the Mastodon mascot.]

#pluralistic #e2e #end-to-end #freedom of reach #mastodon #interoperability #social media #twitter #economy #creator economy #artists rights #content moderation #como #right of exodus #let my tweeters go #exodus #right of exit #technological self-determination

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goodmode · 10 months

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haven't been drawing much lately and when i do it's 80% lemm. anyway i think he likes fleetwood mac

#hollow knight #relic seeker lemm #ghost #hk ghost #lemm put a pillow there For Them. but theyre uncomfortable on it and would prefer a hard surface.#lemm has noticed. they know hes noticed. unfortunately at this point it is a social challenge and both are determined not to break first #anyway the oldman and his one (1) friend still has me captivated #sorry 2 anyone who expected anything else. it's just this forever #goodmodeart

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corpsentry · 1 month

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breaking the law and outing myself on the internet because i'm showcasing my senior dance thesis on april 28 at 6:30 and 8:30 pm Eastern Standard Time and i want You to see it

we don't have a livestream link yet but we will. in the meantime look at these cool posters and this cool blurb. ok now save the date SEE YOU SOON

#my stuff #my art #these posters went through 14 separate drafts. it was a harrowing and difficult experience #i am Fully Going through it which means 1) physical health is suffering 2) social life also but 3) the thing is going to be so fucking good #sarus is gonna be the best thing ive ever made when we finish it. i Know it #so i want you to see it because it's one of those ambitious stories where everything's bigger than life #and the world is old and young and scary and kind and people live fearlessly and with cowardice #BUT EVERYTHING WILL BE OK. IF YOU JUST KEEP WALKING. this is going to be one of those stories #so many dance blurbs and descriptions are like stupid technical like oh we explored the effect of weighing down our hands and feet #on our Center of Gravity and how it altered the rotational momentum of turns and jumps #or else they're stupid esoteric like oh the wind blew..... and the children wept and all over the world the oceans rose... (global warming)#so i was determined to make this blurb (which is going in the schoolwide email blast) accessible and provocative #and inviting #in a provocative way #im very Locked in rn. im Hyperfocused as fuck. i am not eating as well asi should be but IM TRYING #AND THATS WHAT MATTERS #im inviting all of u bc this is a piece that is going to try and say something and i want everyone ive ever loved to hear it #oghey bye

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covertblizzard · 1 month

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jaykyle au where they're theatre kids in the same school but they're not the actors jason's the scriptwriter/director and kyle is the prop manager (i don't know the official terms sorry) and they'd probably do an amazing job on the backstage setting if they could stop arguing for 5 whole seconds about their artistic visions and ideas and how "this would obviously work better this way"

#jason todd #kyle rayner #jaykyle #mypost #dc thoughts #vp of the club: maybe we should find some other people to do the job if they can't get along?#pres of the club: no they're both talented af and i want this to be raving success just knock their heads tgt and tell them to play nice or #i'll make them wear the get along shirt again #WAIT ONE SEC DONNA'S THE PRES and overseer she's pissed bcos kyle played the same role last year and he was chill then #wally's vp no 1 and backstage manager and he's thinking of kicking kyle out #dick's vp no 2 and main lead and he's thinking of kicking jason out bcos it's embarrassing and annoying to work with your younger siblings #kon helps kyle with props and bart is one of the actors and kon is jealous af about it he grumbles a little #roy is the fight scene choreographer #i'm trying to think of something for garth but the only thing that comes to mind i'm not sure are fitting enough #actor manager? weapon manager? oooh maybe pet manager if they have animals... human and pet manager???? hr department but including animals #ooooh maybe pet manager if they have animals #raven can play bart's love interest (in play) maybe (wally doesn't like it and neither does gar for very different reasons)#eddie deals with the contraptions they build for this bubble machines smoke machines lowering and raising anything mechanical #rose and cass helps with the weapons stuff they keep fighting too and roy is TIRED #connor plays the villain he didn't mean to or want to but he got dragged into it and he's really hot and gunned in for next years main lead #he doesnt want this #steph and mia are hair makeup costume department but bart and kon love to hangout and help too #jennie-lynn and bart are in-charge of socials #tim pops up a lot because so many of his friends (and brothers) are here and when he does he helps steph and mia #damian too pops up to help with pet management and sometimes prop art #this is much to dicks annoyance jason is already here can his little brothers LEAVE HIM ALONE SOMETIMES UGH #damian (taking cues from talia and bruce loverenemies dynamic and wanting an artist in-law): we should set jason and kyle up #dick: no / tim: hmm / dick: NO #i want to add the yj girls (cassie cissie greta anita) but i know too little about them right now but imagine they're there and the roles #are to be determined

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racefortheironthrone · 4 months

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on: "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism," would you agree to the corollary that: "and there CAN be no ethical consumption under capitalism" or is there some meliorist path towards ethical consumption under capitalism

As a social democrat, I'm very much a believer in "meliorist" solutions and deeply skeptical of the undistributed middle. It is a matter of historical fact that capitalism can function in a number of ethical "registers," and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sucker you into pseudo-revolutionary defeatism.

There is a real difference between completely unrestrained dark Satanic mills powered by child labor and slave cotton and a fully-realized social democratic mixed economy, complete with tripartite bargaining and co-determination, economic planning organized through a jobs state and decommodified/nationalized economic sectors including a social democratic welfare state, and a robust regulatory state that can enforce safety and environmental and labor standards at home and abroad - and there are many different points along that spectrum.

My main critique of the whole "ethical consumption under capitalism" thing is that the variant of it that stresses individual consumer behavior is a total fantasy.

It is simply impossible to exert pressure on capitalist systems on your own, or even through ad hoc or single-issue boycott efforts. You need social movements like the National Consumers League that combine mass mobilization with permanent infrastructure, those movements need to be in coalition with the labor movement and civil rights movements, all of them need a regulatory state with the capacity to enforce its will on corporations - and that state needs them as countervailing forces against corporate lobbyists.

youtube

#history #historical analysis #economic policy #political economy #regulation #regulatory state #ethical consumption under capitalism #economic history #social democracy #mixed economy #co-determination #boycotts

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fortunatelychaoticphantom · 6 months

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I recently found out that Native People in the American continent have their own name for it, which is Abya Yala.

Anyway, wouldn't it be nice if we started to support their right for self determination and freedom from the oppression of colonial rule? Wouldn't it be nice if we support the complete and immediate abolition of all colonizer countries, which are *checks notes* every single country in the American continent plus the island ones? Wouldn't it be nice if we started telling all the settlers, conquistadors and immigrants to Go Back To Where They Came From? Wouldn't it be nice if we started chanting in the streets and online for the cleansing of the continent from all non-Native people? Wait, that sounds kind of extreme, doesn't it? But what if it rhymed? Everyone knows that if it rhymes it's true and justified right? So maybe the American continent should be free, you know, maybe from shore to shore... no, no. From sea to sea, that's it! What a great cause! And great causes are worth fighting for by all means, right? Obviously, I do not support violence at all, but like wouldn't it be justified if Native People were to become violent in their fight for freedom? I mean, think of the history for a moment, what brought them to this moment? And could you blame them? After all, shouldn't freedom be fought for by all means necessary? Wouldn't you support their claim?

Anyway.

From Sea To Shiny Sea Abya Yala Will Be Free.

#wouldn't it be nice if this becomes a trend #this is a 100% a post against idiotic westerners that call jews colonizers in their ancestral homeland #and funny enough this is not against people who actually support the abolition of all colonizer countries in the world #you people are still antisemitic idiots who know nothing about jews or our history but at least you are consistent which i can respect #but like i also don't see you hopping on the first flight back to where you came from so what's stopping you darlings?#and just to be clear since i support every people's right for self determination including both the palestinians and the jewish people #i would support every single native nation's claim for independence #but unlike you self righteous westerners i actually don't support violence and not just when it's convenient for me #so this is both a joke and a hundred percent serious but like i said obviously sans the violence #i would support negotiations and reparations but never war #and i would never ever support terrorism #so why would you?#jumblr #jewish things #free abya yala #from sea to shiny sea abya yala will be free #abya yala #social issues #politics #us history #american history #history

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diseaseincontext · 10 months

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Looking Critically at the Impact of Social Determinants on Indigenous Health

Indigenous communities worldwide face alarming health disparities compared to non-Indigenous populations. These disparities are not coincidental; they are intricately tied to a complex web of social determinants of health. In this blog post, we will explore the significant influence of social determinants on the health outcomes of Indigenous peoples, as highlighted by insightful studies conducted by Reading and Wien (2009), George et al. (2019), and Greenwood and de Leeuw (2012).

Reading and Wien's (2009) study sheds light on the health inequalities experienced by Aboriginal peoples. For example, they highlight the impact of colonization on cultural continuity, which affects the mental and emotional well-being of Indigenous communities. The study also emphasizes the influence of socioeconomic factors, such as poverty and limited access to healthcare, in perpetuating health disparities among Indigenous populations. George et al. (2019) conducted a scoping review analyzing problem representation regarding Indigenous health and Indigenous rights in policy. They found that social determinants, such as education and employment, play a crucial role in shaping the health outcomes of Indigenous peoples. For instance, limited educational opportunities can contribute to a higher prevalence of chronic diseases and lower overall health status within Indigenous communities. Inadequate access to employment opportunities further exacerbates these disparities. Greenwood and de Leeuw's (2012) study focuses on the social determinants impacting the well-being of Aboriginal children in Canada. The authors highlight the importance of income and education in shaping health outcomes. For instance, lower household income often limits access to nutritious food and safe housing, leading to increased rates of malnutrition and respiratory illnesses among Indigenous children. Additionally, limited educational resources can hinder academic achievement and future employment prospects, further impacting health and well-being.

The studies reviewed in this blog post provide valuable examples of how social determinants significantly influence Indigenous health. From the impact of colonization on cultural continuity to the role of education and employment opportunities, these determinants shape health outcomes within Indigenous communities. Recognizing and addressing these factors is crucial for reducing health disparities and promoting the well-being of Indigenous populations. Achieving health equity for all requires a comprehensive approach that considers the social determinants of health. By implementing policies and interventions that address issues such as poverty, access to education, employment opportunities, and cultural preservation, we can make meaningful strides in improving the health outcomes of Indigenous peoples. It is through collective efforts, informed by research and guided by social justice, that we can work towards a healthier future for Indigenous communities worldwide.

References!

George, Emma, et al. "Social determinants of Indigenous health and Indigenous rights in policy: A scoping review and analysis of problem representation." International Indigenous Policy Journal 10.2 (2019): 4.

Greenwood, Margo Lianne, and Sarah Naomi de Leeuw. "Social determinants of health and the future well-being of Aboriginal children in Canada." Paediatrics & child health 17.7 (2012): 381-384.

Reading, Charlotte Loppie, and Fred Wien. "Health inequalities and the social determinants of Aboriginal peoples' health." (2009).

#medical anthropology #anthropology #indigenous health #indigenous health canada #intersectionality #healthcare #healthcare disparities #global health #scientific literacy #social determinants

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zhooniyaa-waagosh · 7 months

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Me, first learning kana: Wow I love how straightforward Japanese pronunciation is, it's really nice to not have to wonder how things are pronounced.

Me, learning kanji: oh what the fuck actually

Me, now learning about the types of keigo and how they affect conjugation and pronunciation:

#did you know that there's levels of formality to japanese speech?#which don't just determine the words you use and your tone of voice but also the conjugation and pronunciation!#basic words like ''eat'' dound entirely different based on who you're speaking to!#the standard formality levels are polite (keigo) - casual - rude #and keigo has four (or five depending on who you ask) subtypes! with varying levels of formality and unique pronounciations!#and those types are standard formal (what language lessons start out by teaching)#elevating the other person's status (when talking about someone who is a higher social rank than you)#humbling yourself (when talking about yourself to or in comparison to someone who is a higher social rank than you)#and humbling yourself (when there isn't really anyone who is a higher social rank than you but you want to sound polite and not braggy)#and depending on who you ask there's also a ''beautifying'' one where you add specific sounds to words to make them sound prettier #like saying お寿司 (o-sushi) instead of just 寿司 #there are pronunciations and phrases that are completely unique to each kind of speaking style #and many of them are irregular and have to be memorized individually #i am going to fucking die #日本語の学生 #japanese langblr #langblr

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fallintosanity · 1 year

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calling all US-based renters

I just spotted a VERY interesting request for public comments from the FTC:

The Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau invite interested individuals to submit comments about background screening issues affecting individuals who seek rental housing in the United States. Tenants, prospective tenants, tenants’ rights and housing advocacy groups, industry participants (including property managers, commercial landlords, individual landlords, and consumer reporting agencies that develop credit and tenant screening reports used by landlords and property managers to screen prospective tenants), other members of the public, and government agencies are encouraged to provide comments and information about the use of credit reports, credit scores, and criminal and civil (including eviction) public records in tenant screening; the use of algorithms in making tenant screening decisions; the use of tenant screening recommendation products developed, marketed, or sold by consumer reporting agencies; and other tenant screening issues.

The full document (pdf) also includes a series of questions about “unique impacts on historically underserved populations, such as Black, Indigenous, and people of color; the LGBTQI+ community (especially trans and gender nonconforming individuals); military service members; immigrants; public housing voucher recipients; renters with disabilities; or others”

If you have Opinions on this, drop a comment by May 30th, 2023:

https://www.regulations.gov/document/FTC-2023-0024-0002

#sanity talks a lot #psa #social commentary #politics #sort of #also please share this with any other renters you know #reblog repost whatever idc #the current FTC is VERY effective #and VERY determined #help 'em crack down on shitty landlord business practices

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decolonize-the-left · 2 months

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What is there left to learn?

All you need to know of any good branch of leftism is that self determination and freedom is above everything.

We stand against so much because so much has been created to get in the way of that.

Money often gets in the way by imposing literal pay walls to basic needs so we oppose it. Racism gets in the way when racist gatekeepers prevent POC from receiving equal care, equal service, and equal access to resources so we oppose it. The same goes for all the other -isms and bigotries such as misogyny and homophobia.

Human beings come in all shapes, sizes, colors, sexualities, and genders. We are beautifully diverse this way, it's literally human nature.

And so we must learn to live and accept people different from ourselves.

Nobody has more rights or humanity than anyone else. Nobody has the right to enforce their own determinations and truths on anyone else. There is no singular way of being that is Right or makes you more deserving than the rest, that gives you the right to control others because it's just such a Good way of living. There never will be.

There is no natural way to determine what a good, deserving human looks like. And that's why leftism supports and hears all oppressed people.

Every single excuse and method that attempts to control/feel superior are all social constructs. Ex:

You're rich, fiscally responsible and think you're better than others? Money isn't natural, it's barely even real. It's something that some human made up one day to feel better than the others. It may as well be called pixie dust. And without it you're just like the rest of us.

Being White didn't mean anything before some human decided they could gain self esteem by reducing the perceived worthiness of Black and Brown ppl. Without made-up ideas of race you're just like the rest of us, made of the same hunger and thirst and love as we are.

Cis and Trans or Gay and straight are just different ways for humans to be born and exist. Some people like their bodies, some don't. Some people kiss the same sex, some dont. You aren't superior for being cis or only kissing one sex. You won't get a trophy for denying the kind of human you are or for making others feel bad about the kind of human they are either.

There is no natural test for superiority in humans because human superiority is unnatural. For any of us.

The only measure of being Better than others was how much better you were at being a community member; how much you contributed to the betterment of your peers. You didn't brag about being white, you bragged about how you killed so many deer that your people certainly will Not be starving.

We were born to share this planet and our only ACTUAL job is to take care of each other and the planet in whatever way we can. It's the only thing we've ever owed each other.

Racism, ableism, colonization, capitalism, white supremacy, genocide, Nazis, Zionists, etc.

These are not concepts that deserve to be kept alive. Anything that makes you hate someone else or makes you feel more Worthy than someone else has no place in the future.

I say all this because I feel like I'm beating a dead horse on this blog so often. I really do try to stay educational and focus on solidarity. But there's only so much that words can do without action.

And words without action are as good as dust in the wind.

I love this blog, but I'm long over this. We need to act. There is a genocide happening and I'm starting to believe that everyone who wants to stop it Already knows about it. They do not need awareness. They don't need voices. They need direction. They need community. They need support and bodies to help intimidate police.

They need us.

And instead I blog on Tumblr trying to rally people that hardly reblog a call to action.

This blog is starting to feel like a symptom of the system. A time-consuming distraction for me. And a way for you to placate yourselves while the world gets worse.

Just following leftists doesn't make you a good person. Having the Right opinions doesn't make you a good person. Even believing in equality doesn't make you a good person if you don't do something about it.

I'm tired of begging for people to organize and protest and show up for each other.

I'm convinced that if you ever had the intention of doing so then you already are. And if you're not then that's a choice you've made.

You either support genocide or you fight it, you know?

I don't know what else there is to learn or say. What are you waiting for? An invitation?

Please go fucking organize and join a protest.

In other news....I am getting closer to deleting this blog every day.

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