Elk

Stanhill, Lancashire, 1764. Wear and carpenter James Hargreaves invents the Spinning Jenny, the first practical spinning-frame, to make the tedious task of producing cloth a little bit faster. He doesn't know it yet, but this will destroy the world. Spurred by inventions like his, the industrial revolution will transform everything -- work power, the wealth of nations. Society as we know it began here, and it wasn't great for everyone. But a group of weavers and textile workers saw this future coming. And did their best to prevent it.

"Curse you spinning jenny, you ruined everything!" The standard narrative does that LUDDITES were foolish lunatics who, in fear of technology, decided progress was bad, and started hitting it with sticks. But the truth is entire ways of life were being destroyed. Previously, skilled craftsmen were respected for the time and effort it took to do their work. The entire family usit would form a cottage industry - creating something valuable, and command a decent living. But when a machine can work 10 times faster its owner can charge less for the prodcts- craftsmen couldn't compete and were left out of work almost overnight. And as factories became a fixture of the british landscape, these now unemployed labourers often ended up working the factories that had just destroyed their way of life. Britain was the most prosperous nation in history, factory owners became extremely wealthy and influential. But the people doing the actual work saw almost none of it.

Factory work paid little, since "the machines" did "the real work" human labourers were deemed unimportant and replaceable. FUN FACT!: Factory owners preferred to hire ORPHANS since less people would notice if they were maimed or killed on the job! Now the owners quickly realized the workers might notice they did all the work for almost no pay. If they went on STRIKE or ARGUED FOR HGHER WAGES, this would threaten their tremendous wealth. In 1799, Parliament passed the Combination Act, which made FORMING TRADE UNIONS, COLLECTIVE BARGAINING, AND GOING ON STRIKE ILLEGAL. Organizing against the rich became a crime.

If you were living through it, opposing the industrial revolution wasn't techno-phobia. It was SELF-DEFENSE. The combination act forced unions underground into secret societies. And the greatest secret of all was their leader - Ned Ludd. Ned had been a folk character for years. In one version after being whipped by his master, he smashed two knitting frames in a rage. In more fanciful versions, he then escaped to the Sherwood forest, here he lived among the animals as their king. Some versions specifically call him 'Much Better Than Robin Hood'.

Happy Labor Day!

Today we're bringing you The First Union, as told by HBomberguy (@hbomberguy.bsky.social) and illustrated by Skutch (@skutchdraws.bsky.social) It's the dawn of the industrial revolution, and of the way many of us work...

Have you ever heard of the term "Luddite" from an elder?

@vornietom.bsky.social just been totally blindsided by the Highbury Vaults mention on Adventuring party.

The yearly Jack-in-the-Green pilgrimage collides with D20?? Mad

Still, there's something inherently violent even about dice rolls. It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...

Cute!

I don't like to speak badly of people. I have grown up thinking and being told that if you cannot say something nice about someone, you should not say anything at all. But I must break that rule in this case because I hate Hulk Hogan very much. He is a big ugly goon and I want to squash his face. -Andre the Giant

“THEY CAN STOP AGEING NOW” But the real kicker comes on the last question. “Every man wants to be part of a heist,” I say, stating a universal truth. “What role would you take, on your imaginary heist?” I figure he’ll say something like, I dunno, “Muscle, brother.” Or “The Brains, brother!” and we can all have a laugh at that. No. Hulk says something else. Hulk says something entirely unsolicited. I’m going to reproduce it in full below. (Emphasis mine.) “I would like to be thief that steals the actual formula from this laboratory in Reno Nevada that has figured out how to stop human cells from ageing, and they cannot put it on the market for another ten or fifteen years. If it happens – they’ve got these things called telomeres which the DNA is like the end of a shoelace the plastic on the end of a shoelace, telomere is when they shorten the DNA strands kinda like go apart and that’s why people die – the cells die – and they’ve got something called Telomes that now keeps the cap on the end of the DNA strands so cells don’t age. But there’s more than that to ageing, they can stop ageing now, they just cannot release that little bit of information which, I would love to have, I would love to live so long my kids come along and they’re like “when are you gonna die?” I would love to have that because it would change so many things about our environment because we’d adapt to our environment and people wouldn’t overpopulate so we wouldn’t have to worry about the world having too many people and the quality of life, so, yeah, I would like to have that formula.”

The first interview I ever did was with Hulk Hogan. I wasn't ready for what he had to say, because Hulk Hogan unironically believed in immortality. lookrobot.co.uk/2014/07/30/o...

Open Source TTRPG Resources Here's a collection of forever open licensed tabletop roleplaying games and resources. Borrowed from and inspired by the Forever Open Source RPG game jam series. Example Open Licenses Creative Commons Zero ("CC0"). Release your work into the public domain. The most open license. Creative Com

Come explore a large random selection of forever open source #TTRPG resources, from games to SRDs to art and more!

thoughtpunks.com/ope...

#OpenSource #TabletopGames #IndieGames

Finally (16 days later) my elaborate plan comes full circle @cheekface.bsky.social

It's me I'm friends

Awoo!

It's like gambling, but you do bits with your friends instead of losing all your money

Second post in 4 hours that's just nothing to do with its picture

Shame there doesn't seem to be any humans running this page

10 pigeons sitting hunched on a railing in the rain. Behind them a lone seagull watches jealously from the river.

Buncha pigeons in the rain.

The seagull in the back is jealous of their camaraderie

Its my birthday!! So y'all get a lil gift too ✨️

GIVEAWAY: $500 CAD for a shopping spree (or your cart completely refunded + credit for more if you've already pre-ordered!)

rules:
⁠ 🌿like & rt this post⁠
💚must be following us!⁠
🍵tag friends for extra entries⁠
🌎open worldwide
✨️ closes june 15th

The audacity of Brennan Lee Mulligan to use the word 'effulgent' in earnest.

Truly a word i only know because they put it in Buffy to show how Spike was really bad at poetry.

#dimension20 #cloudwardho #cloho #dropout

The wood-wide web: A story too good for its own good? Hard questions about one of our most popular scientific narratives

Below-ground relationships of trees and other soil organisms are complex and barely understood. Is the wood wide web (WWW) proven or a theory? It's neither, and books on the subject are not based on science. We will learn more, but for now, we just don't know enough. Biologists avoid the WWW term.

Messy spotlight : Moles (Talpa europaea for Latin buffs)
These little animals are remarkable- just look that those claws! They don’t feed on plants they in fact eat grubs which would damage plant roots and they aerate garden soils and improve drainage 👏😊

you guys are being very cynical about this but the real explanation is that bears and Bigfoot are buddies. They like to hang out and do stuff together

*cartoonish, not implying that this is wealth not seen since the echelons of both Hanna and Barbera

Smells like oxo cubes!

One of my favourite botanical names, it's fetid yet fancy ✨

[Rushes in, holding a telegram] My Lord, forces loyal to Miriam Margolyes have taken Cornwall

Honestly it's just this cartoonist level of oblivious wealth, way beyond what I saw when I was a life model in Bath for the idle rich

And I just find it really sad.

Horticulture lends itself so naturally to an opulence and an abundance that anyone can enjoy, but it can't escape its own history yet

And now I'm working as a maintenance gardener for incredibly wealthy clients in Bristol, I see the remnants in these attitudes.

One of them told me I "speak very well"

Another said, upon seeing a second gardener that day "my empire groweth"

And very few will let me use their toilet

I have a background in post-colonial literature, so I'm primed for this shit, but it's maddening.

Even just the history of the lawn is deeply colonial and a display of wealth and power.

The same with garden design, sodding Capability Brown carving up the 18th century landscape to assert dominance

This is a really solid proposal.

The further into horticulture I go, the more baffling levels of nasty class metrics I find propping up every aspect.

Chelsea is the microcosm of the whole thing, but it really is everywhere. And it absolutely doesn't have to be

It should be for everyone!

Anyway the players ate that rumour phase UP and I am so glad i brought it in because it just makes everything so much more collaborative and helps players engage with the material

And it's just doing bits!

I love doing bits with my friends

Will never know if my obsessive categorisation-brain love of genre comes from procrastinating on tvtropes, or if I just needed to prove the English Lit degree wasn't pointless after all

Because you know what runs on secrets, rumours and political intrigue? Noir! And regency!

Whether you're discussing sensitive topics and taking a turn about the grounds or soliciting a gumshoe in a dark office, the execution is different but the moving parts are functionally the same

Been working on an rpg setting for the last year, and have run it on a couple systems.

Two were Fate Core homebrew

Currently working on a blend of kids on bikes (Mentopolis variant) with a rumour phase a la Good Society from @storybrewersroleplaying.com because of ACOFAF @aabria.bsky.social