The CEO was shot as his motorcade left talks with the Silicon Valley power. Homestuck fandom group The Gray Hand has claimed responsibility, citing Yahoo’s aggressive imperialism and alleged genocide in the geocities. 

Many political analysts suspect that Yahoo will use the assassination as a pretense to launch an attack against Tumblr fandoms, though it is suspected that if they do, the porn blogs may join the war on the fandom side, due to the longstanding alliance the two groups have enjoyed under the Slash Accords. 

yeah you read that right. 

so as i’ve talked about before, EU4 has various tech groups that its cultures fall into. and as i mentioned before, i actually like the idea of making the country that i’m playing, Brythonia, non-western, for reasons i previously discussed. but that got me thinking. people see the british isles as a heretic backwater in this world. france is a shattered mess being gobbled up with an italian crown. spain is facing a re-reconquista by sultanate of algiers. the holy roman empire is powerful, yes, but lotharingia, bavaria, saxony and mecklenburg stand independent, and challenge its power. 

what if the perceived “center of civilization” in this timeline isn’t northern/western european? it certainly has the potential to tip that way if spain, portugal and brythonia begin colonization projects (and this is going to be a “cheap” source of westernization for them, i’ve decided) but if i look at where the actual great powers of “europe” are… we have sardinia, algiers, byzantium (even in the midst of its civil war with a breakaway greece), croatia, a mongol khanate in arabia. moreover, outremer crusader states, whose western population is mostly italian, have thrived in egypt and jerusalem. the center of civilization, for these people, is as it ever was! around the Mediterranean. most of these states are the heirs, geopolitically if not culturally, of great, ancient empires. rome, carthage, babylon, egypt, macedonia. what if these Mediterranean states felt more kinship with one another than they necessarily did with their religious brothers? seeing themselves, perhaps, as stewards of their brothers of the faith, and equals with the great empires of other faiths. 

relations with the mongols are likely to be somewhat frostier. they don’t SEEM like our sort. but they come from far to the east and have a strange eastern religion, and maybe that gives them some legitimacy as heirs to an unknown “cathay”. 

in such a world racism probably doesn’t function on skin colour (though it may yet, if the triangle trade develops in the same way). people who are assimilated members of a properly ancient culture get a pass, barbarians are looked down on. 

some of the biggest, baddest nations don’t fit this model of course. crimea, poland and mali are big, threatening and powerful. but there were similar states outside of the “west” in our history too, so i’m not too bothered by it. 

so what would this actually mean in gameplay terms? 

croatia, serbia, the greek empires, jerusalem, egypt and algiers and the ilkhanate are now “western” where previously they (or their vanilla equivalents) were in eastern or muslim tech groups. ilkhanate maaaay be in the ottoman tech group if it still exists just because they’re likely to be an insane engine of destruction in the western tech group, needs testing.

the french, british, spanish and scandinavian states are now in the “eastern” tech group. they have an option for cheap westernization if they can tip the poles of europe by building colonial empires (fairly likely for britain and spain)

not sure what to do about germany. switzerland is probably western. if the ottoman tech group exists then germany might fit well in there. otherwise, torn between eastern and western for them. 

mali, ifat and oman are the only cultures still in the “muslim” tech group at the start date. this is a significant upgrade for mali.

themineralogist:

Ruby from Tanzania

bijoux-et-mineraux:

Vanadinite crystals on blades of Barite

i guess i’m thinking these things because i keep seeing people berate trans people and call them inauthentic, “transtrenders” or whatever, because they don’t experience significant dysphoria/don’t desire a medical transition pathway, and just erasing those people aggressively.

and then i also see people saying that reducing the experience of being trans to something centred around dysphoria is bad, or that hating your body as a trans person is somehow something that you can opt out of with positive thinking/the idea that social pressure creates dysphoria, and that seems to erase that community of trans people and the ways they’re trying to explain their situations. 

and both groups of people are really stupid and i hate them.

is it important or valuable to draw a distinction between trans people for whom gender identity is essentially culturally mediated dysphoria (be it physical or social) and people for whom gender identity is an assertion of positionality wrt to gender as a social entity and their place within it? reactive to internal causes vs reactive to external causes. tho of course people can be, and in probably most cases are to at least a small extent both.

groups formed around the poles of these ideas seem to yell at each other a lot. rather than focusing on narratives of authenticity (let’s say both are authentic, because that’s my take anyway), is it fair to say that these groups have little common cause? is trans as an umbrella helpful? what about notions of gender identity? are we making words like “gender” and “transgender” do too many things? is the fact that the definitions of these words are unclear even within the same (notional) community causing problems? are compromise positions between subgroups in trans so vague as to be useless in describing the nature and experience of the people within them? 

chespin (cute hedgehog/chestnut)

fennekin (cute fox with bad ear hair problem)

froakie (dumb frog who cares)

Fletchling (neat bird, dumb name, tho it’d be less dumb if there was some sort of ARCHER theme)

pancham (rude as heck panda)

helioptile (frill necked lizard dog thing)

gogoat (goat you can go on, for a ride)

xerneas (magic deer)

yveltal (hands bird)

mewtwo (this is just mewtwo)

GOD DAMMIT I FUCKING FORGOT SYLVEON

so it appears that due to the inability of anyone to fucking agree, the NHS national commissioning board has decided to temporarily (and with caveats) adopt the scottish treatment protocol for transgender patients from june 1st. this is pretty interesting and cool, since the scottish protocols are about a billion times more progressive than anything south of the border.

now, don’t expect your GIC to necessarily be playing ball with this (especially if you’re in charing cross, dr barret who heads the place up was apparently one of the main figures against reforming the english system so i doubt he’s at all happy about this)

what does this actually mean for your treatment? well assuming anyone pays attention:

• FTM top surgery should be easier to access, though i’m getting conflicting reports on how easy it is in practice. top surgery is treated as essential for trans men.
• HRT, and voice therapy should be available after one appointment with a GIC specialist, rather than two and three months RLE.
• Genital surgery should be available after 2 GIC specialist appointments and 12 months RLE, rather than the current two years.
• psychotherapy will be made available to trans people and their families where necessary

what this doesn’t include from the scottish protocols:

• there’s no self-referral, you still have to go through your GP and probably a local psychiatrist for an initial assessment.
• hair removal for trans women is a) not covered and b) not acknowledged as essential
• breast augmentation for trans women is still unlikely to happen in most cases
• if you’re under 16, hahahahaha. yeah. you are probably still shit out of luck, kid, sorry.

so this is, i guess, a pretty good thing! at best, it means speedier access to treatment for a bunch of trans people. at worst, it means dr barrett and the other conservative GIC doctors will grind their teeth down to nubs over their irritation at having their Ultimate Expertise questioned