a little more information regarding the maui wildfires:
medical workers on the ground are describing finding hundreds of bodies. the current death toll in the media is, unfortunately, only a fraction of the reality
hospital workers are describing injuries and trauma as if survivors had come out of a warzone
thousands are still missing
an apartment complex for the elderly was lost. not everyone could get out. people were saying goodbye to loved ones over the phone
people who did get out of lahaina were leaving with ashes covering their faces and nothing but the clothes on their backs. people are losing everything.
hotels are still operating. hotels are still operating. they are not the ones offering shelters or housing or food. even bowling alleys are offering shelter, but hotels have the audacity to build on burial sites but not open their doors to local families who have lost everything.
One of the highest achievements of Italian Gothic art and architecture is Orvieto Cathedral. Few buildings in the world are that ornate, and at the same time - few have such a well balanced and harmonious architecture.
One fallacy, I think, of anti piracy arguments is that a lot of them seem to assume that if I’m unable to pirate something I’m going to pay for it instead rather than going “oh! that’s a terrible shame” and then quickly forgetting about it
“If you were not pirating [media] you’d be paying for it and therefore piracy is evil 😡” actually if I were not pirating that media I would be thinking about something else. I have made the decision to not spend any money on this and even god himself could not shake it
the research on this was already done decades ago and then quickly squashed because the record labels did not like the finding that people who pirated music were spending way more money on actually buying music legally than people who did not pirate music. it turns out people who care enough to pirate media are generally big fans of that media and willing to spend money on it if they have the money to spend
article is from 2009 so we have known this for a LONG time.
The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. Researchers found that those who downloaded “free” music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music. This would make music pirates the industry’s largest audience for digital sales.
Wisely, the study did not rely on music pirates’ honesty. Researchers asked music buyers to prove that they had proof of purchase.
so yeah that fire in Lahaina, Maui? That was what indigenous activists were trying to prevent. That is why Land Back movements wants indigenous people to be the stewards of the land that was once theirs. Not kick out white people and settlers. But to prevent shit like that where a bunch of tourists/settlers won’t destroy the planet in their ruthless pursuit of productivity and profit. So yeah, think on that.
People are asking how was this white people fault?
Power lines, in Hawaii they are owned by Blackrock and Vanguard, keep catching on fire because they forget to turn off their shitty electricity. So when they eventually topple over, white people forgot to cut the Guinea grass planted by colonizers 200 years to feed cows which changed Lahaina from a a swampland to the fucking tinderbox that it is today.
But hey, grass is grass and no need to mow an invasive species, right colonizers? Oh shit, that global warming that these fucking oil companies spent decades telling us wasn’t real is real and that dried up the land in Maui?
Now motherfuckers are trying to buy land off of the indigenous people in Maui because colonizers just love having part time homes, right?
But yay let’s celebrate the fucking billionaires who own homes in Lahaina because they are donating. Nope, no fucking correlation there right?
Indigenous Hawaiians have been saying how tourism is killing their islands for over a decade yet you fucking assholes keep mentioning how Tourism is the point of Hawaii as if that culture wasn’t just about living instead of living for profit.
They don’t want you there but you fuckheads insist of making it your timeshare goal. So yeah. It’s absolutely settler’s fault that this shit happening.
