The argument Pinto makes is that the story and the doll normalize 24-hour surveillance in the mind of a child, which makes them susceptible to more passively accept police-state surveillance as adults.
“I don’t think the elf is a conspiracy and I realize we’re talking about a toy,” Pinto told The Post. “It sounds humorous, but we argue that if a kid is okay with this bureaucratic elf spying on them in their home, it normalizes the idea of surveillance and in the future restrictions on our privacy might be more easily accepted.”
It’s based in a theory that was developed by Jeremy Bentham and popularized by Michel Foucault in which students, prisoners, factory workers and others were thought to function better (for whatever value of better) in a system called a panopticon, in which an individual is potentially under surveillance 24-hours a day, but never actually KNOWS whether or not he or she is being surveilled.
Pinto said she’s not the first person to be troubled by Elf on the Shelf’s surveilling. She’s said parents routinely contact her to say they changed the rules of the game after it made their families uneasy. And many kids, she said, often intuitively feel like spying and being a tattletale is wrong.
“A mom e-mailed me and told me that the first day they read the elf book and put the elf out, her daughter woke up crying because she was being watched by the elf,” Pinto recounted. “They changed the game so it wouldn’t scare the child.”
In addition to the problem of normalizing surveillance in the mind of a child, this also forces the child into a situation where they never feel like they are free to simply be themselves; they are forced to be “on their best behavior” at all times, unable to relax and make mistakes and do the job of growing up and being a child, because they never know if the elf is spying on them, ready and waiting to report back to Santa Claus that they’ve been bad.
My co-worker got Elf on the Shelf for her four-year-old daughter last year, and was so freaked out by her daughter’s sudden and complete change in behaviour (uncharacteristically worried and anxious, while trying to be on her ‘best’ behaviour that she never kept up for family or at school) that she stuffed Elf in the garbage after a week, telling the daughter that the Elf had to go back to the North Pole to help Santa with Christmas.
Also read the paper linked above, it’s a good one.
I hate this entire concept so much.
the creators of this monstrosity are exactly what you would expect
Electric cars and solar panels are the most visible signs of California’s ambitious climate change policies. But now the state is setting its sights on a lower-tech way to cut carbon emissions: soil.
It’s spending millions of dollars to help farmers grow plants, which absorb carbon and help move it into the soil where it can be stored long-term. This makes California home to some of the first official “carbon farmers” in the country.
Not that almond grower Jose Robles thinks of himself that way.
Climate is something they talk about in the state capital Sacramento, he says, not around Modesto, where he lives and works.
But in December, the ground under Robles’ almond trees was a carpet of green, full of mustard plant and clover. It’s not a common sight in the Central Valley. After all, most farmers hate weeds.
“Everybody wants to have the orchards nice and clean,” Robles says.
His neighbors really don’t understand it.
“I’ve heard them say, ‘We’re in the business of growing almonds, not in the business of growing weeds,’” he says, laughing.
Robles got the idea a few years ago, during California’s severe drought, when he had to cut back on watering his trees.
“We had no water,” he says. “It made us look at things different.”
Robles knew that richer earth with more microorganisms holds moisture longer, but there wasn’t a lot of organic matter in his orchard to build the soil up. Like most farmers, he sprayed herbicides to kill weeds.
So he decided to grow organic matter specifically to feed his soil. He planted species that most people commonly see as weeds, but when sown on purpose are known as a “cover crop.”
Once they get a few feet tall, he mows them and lets them decompose, along with some extra compost and mulch. A $21,000 grant from California helps cover his extra costs and labor.
It can be tricky, because almonds are harvested from the ground after they’re shaken off the trees. Having mulch or weed remnants on the ground would interfere with that, so Robles has to make sure the organic matter breaks down before harvest begins.
He’s already seen a difference.
“The trees, they don’t stress as much, because they hold the moisture a lot longer,” Robles says.
Before leaving office, Gov. Jerry Brown set a goal for California to be carbon neutral by 2045. That will likely mean not just reducing carbon emissions — from electricity production, cars and buildings — but also absorbing carbon that’s already in the air.
California’s Healthy Soils initiative is now in its third year, and designed to be part of the state’s climate strategy. A state report finds that farms and forests could absorb as much as 20 percent of California’s current level of emissions.
“I think there’s great potential for agriculture to play a really important role” in reaching the state’s climate goals, says Kate Scow, professor of soil microbial ecology at the University of California-Davis.
We have very ambitious climate goals, and without natural and working lands, California simply won’t get there.
Jeanne Merrill, policy director, California Climate and Agriculture Network
As we talk, she’s standing in a large wheat field at Russell Ranch, seven miles west of the campus, where the university plants crops to study sustainable agriculture.
“Soil is alive,” she says. “There’s farmers that know that.”
To show me, Scow starts enthusiastically digging in the dirt. “All right, see, we’re starting to hit the mineral soil,” she says.
This is where the carbon is stored. Plants soak up the carbon dioxide in the air to build their leaves and stems. Their roots pump the carbon down into the earth. Then, when the plant dies, its organic matter gets broken down by microbes and fungi.
“The deeper you can get [carbon] in the soil, especially below the plow layer, the more stable and secure it’s going to be,” she says. That’s key to prevent the carbon from being released back into the air.
“We have very ambitious climate goals, and without natural and working lands, California simply won’t get there,” says Jeanne Merrill, with the California Climate & Agriculture Network, a coalition of ag groups working on climate policy.
Merrill says California’s farmers are already on the front lines of facing climate impacts, like more extreme weather.
“Some are willing to say that it’s climate change,” she says. “Others are unsure. But I think many know that things are changing and they need different tools.”
Farmers are interested in the climate programs, Merrill says, if only because it can help them weather extended droughts.
Hundreds have signed up. But state climate officials say the Healthy Soils program needs to be five times larger to have real impact. Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested more money for the program, but a decision will be up to state lawmakers as they craft a budget in coming weeks.
Merrill says expanding the healthy soils initiative would send a signal that California’s climate efforts need help from the entire state, not just coastal cities.
I’ve seen a lot of arguments from non-farmers against the idea of cover crops because of this exact scenario: : “It can be tricky, because almonds are harvested from the ground after
they’re shaken off the trees. Having mulch or weed remnants on the
ground would interfere with that.” And yet actual farmers prove that they’re perfectly capable of dealing with that situation with careful timing…
Wait someone out there is against cover crops what the everliving fuck??
Also a huge environmental thing not mentioned in this article is that the soil in the orchards and other forms of woody agriculture are in much better shape than the ones planted with annuals crops that are tilled multiple times a year.
I don’t care if you’re growing in super organic unicorn manure, every time you till into the earth you’re literally destroying the fungal networks that predominantly live in the top 4″ of the soil. It is in these fungal networks that carbon is stored, that plants form their “underground internet” and swap things like nutrients and water. A diverse mix of cover crops + roller crimper (aka no spray) is the way to go until we stop growing so many freaking annuals for everything.
Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Djibouti. Those are the countries. It will be drought-resistant species, mostly acacias. And this is a brilliant idea you have no idea oh my Christ
This will create so many jobs and regenerate so many communities and aaaaaahhhhhhh
it’s already happening, and already having positive effects. this is wonderful, why have i not heard of this before? i’m so happy!
Oh yes, acacia trees.
They fix nitrogen and improve soil quality.
And, to make things fun, the species they’re using practices “reverse leaf phenology.” The trees go dormant in the rainy season and then grow their leaves again in the dry season. This means you can plant crops under the trees, in that nitrogen-rich soil, and the trees don’t compete for light because they don’t have any leaves on.
And then in the dry season, you harvest the leaves and feed them to your cows.
Crops grown under acacia trees have better yield than those grown without them. Considerably better.
So, this isn’t just about stopping the advancement of the Sahara - it’s also about improving food security for the entire sub-Saharan belt and possibly reclaiming some of the desert as productive land.
Of course, before the “green revolution,” the farmers knew to plant acacia trees - it’s a traditional practice that they were convinced to abandon in favor of “more reliable” artificial fertilizers (that caused soil degradation, soil erosion, etc).
This is why you listen to the people who, you know, have lived with and on land for centuries.
DO NOT VOTE FOR HER. WE ARE PRE-PRIMARIES RIGHT NOW. IT’S OK TO BE PICKY
She’s worth for shit. Vote Democrat regardless, but good god damn vote for somebody else to get the Dem. nomination
Reblog bc this is something people should see
👀
I did not fucking know this shit. I feel stupid for ever trying to endorse her
@jehovahhthickness don’t feel stupid. She tried to use the fact that she looks like us to make us think she is like us. Now we know better and that’s what matters. We have to make sure everyone else knows better too.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
