#2022 at 03:15PM

[skrubu]

Afternoon #fence #bush #karis #finland #tree https://instagr.am/p/Ck8VKq7tsbp/

[mft-toyama]

ロボットにリモートでPCを付けてもらえるようになった。 https://t.co/8nra28NrT9

— Yukiya Okuda / ツク郎くん™ (@alumican_net) Oct 26, 2022

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Wall Street Journal goes to bat for the vultures who want to steal your house

Tonight (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Tomorrow (June 6), I’m on a Rightscon panel about interoperability.

The tacit social contract between the Wall Street Journal and its readers is this: the editorial page is for ideology, and the news section is for reality. Money talks and bullshit walks — and reality’s well-known anticapitalist bias means that hewing too closely to ideology will make you broke, and thus unable to push your ideology.

That’s why the editorial page will rail against “printing money” while the news section will confine itself to asking which kinds of federal spending competes with the private sector (creating a bidding war that drives up prices) and which kinds are not. If you want frothing takes about how covid relief checks will create “debt for our grandchildren,” seek it on the editorial page. For sober recognition that giving small amounts of money to working people will simply go to reducing consumer and student debt, look to the news.

But WSJ reporters haven’t had their corpus colossi severed: the brain-lobe that understands economic reality crosstalks with the lobe that worship the idea of a class hierarchy with capital on top and workers tugging their forelacks. When that happens, the coverage gets weird.

Take this weekend’s massive feature on “zombie mortgages,” long-written-off second mortgages that have been bought by pennies for vultures who are now trying to call them in:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/zombie-mortgages-could-force-some-homeowners-into-foreclosure-e615ab2a

These second mortgages — often in the form of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) — date back to the subprime bubble of the early 2000s. As housing prices spiked to obscene levels and banks figured out how to issue risky mortgages and sell them off to suckers, everyday people were encouraged — and often tricked — into borrowing heavily against their houses, on complicated terms that could see their payments skyrocket down the road.

Once the bubble popped in 2008, the value of these houses crashed, and the mortgages fell “underwater” — meaning that market value of the homes was less than the amount outstanding on the mortgage. This triggered the foreclosure crisis, where banks that had received billions in public money forced their borrowers out of their homes. This was official policy: Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner boasted that forcing Americans out of their homes would “foam the runways” for the banks and give them a soft landing;

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

With so many homes underwater on their first mortgages, the holders of those second mortgages wrote them off. They had bought high-risk, high reward debt, the kind whose claims come after the other creditors have been paid off. As prices collapsed, it became clear that there wouldn’t be anything left over after those higher-priority loans were paid off.

The lenders (or the bag-holders the lenders sold the loans to) gave up. They stopped sending borrowers notices, stopped trying to collect. That’s the way markets work, after all — win some, lose some.

But then something funny happened: private equity firms, flush with cash from an increasingly wealthy caste of one percenters, went on a buying spree, snapping up every home they could lay hands on, becoming America’s foremost slumlords, presiding over an inventory of badly maintained homes whose tenants are drowned in junk fees before being evicted:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

This drove a new real estate bubble, as PE companies engaged in bidding wars, confident that they could recoup high one-time payments by charging working people half their incomes in rent on homes they rented by the room. The “recovery” of real estate property brought those second mortgages back from the dead, creating the “zombie mortgages” the WSJ writes about.

These zombie mortgages were then sold at pennies on the dollar to vulture capitalists — finance firms who make a bet that they can convince the debtors to cough up on these old debts. This “distressed debt investing” is a scam that will be familiar to anyone who spends any time watching “finance influencers” — like forex trading and real estate flipping, it’s a favorite get-rich-quick scheme peddled to desperate people seeking “passive income.”

Like all get-rich-quick schemes, distressed debt investing is too good to be true. These ancient debts are generally past the statute of limitations and have been zeroed out by law. Even “good” debts generally lack any kind of paper-trail, having been traded from one aspiring arm-breaker to another so many times that the receipts are long gone.

Ultimately, distressed debt “investing” is a form of fraud, in which the “investor” has to master a social engineering patter in which they convince the putative debtor to pay debts they don’t actually owe, either by shading the truth or lying outright, generally salted with threats of civil and criminal penalties for a failure to pay.

That certainly goes for zombie mortgages. Writing about the WSJ’s coverage on Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith reminds readers not to “pay these extortionists a dime” without consulting a lawyer or a nonprofit debt counsellor, because any payment “vitiates” (revives) an otherwise dead loan:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/06/wall-street-journal-aids-vulture-investors-threatening-second-mortgage-borrowers-with-foreclosure-on-nearly-always-legally-unenforceable-debt.html

But the WSJ’s 35-paragraph story somehow finds little room to advise readers on how to handle these shakedowns. Instead, it lionizes the arm-breakers who are chasing these debts as “investors…[who] make mortgage lending work.” The Journal even repeats — without commentary — the that these so-called investors’ “goal is to positively impact homeowners’ lives by helping them resolve past debt.”

This is where the Journal’s ideology bleeds off the editorial page into the news section. There is no credible theory that says that mortgage markets are improved by safeguarding the rights of vulture capitalists who buy old, forgotten second mortgages off reckless lenders who wrote them off a decade ago.

Doubtless there’s some version of the Hayek Mind-Virus that says that upholding the claims of lenders — even after those claims have been forgotten, revived and sold off — will give “capital allocators” the “confidence” they need to make loans in the future, which will improve the ability of everyday people to afford to buy houses, incentivizing developers to build houses, etc, etc.

But this is an ideological fairy-tale. As Michael Hudson describes in his brilliant histories of jubilee — debt cancellation — through history, societies that unfailingly prioritize the claims of lenders over borrowers eventually collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Foundationally, debts are amassed by producers who need to borrow capital to make the things that we all need. A farmer needs to borrow for seed and equipment and labor in order to sow and reap the harvest. If the harvest comes in, the farmer pays their debts. But not every harvest comes in — blight, storms, war or sickness — will eventually cause a failure and a default.

In those bad years, farmers don’t pay their debts, and then they add to them, borrowing for the next year. Even if that year’s harvest is good, some debt remains. Gradually, over time, farmers catch enough bad beats that they end up hopelessly mired in debt — debt that is passed on to their kids, just as the right to collect the debts are passed on to the lenders’ kids.

Left on its own, this splits society into hereditary creditors who get to dictate the conduct of hereditary debtors. Run things this way long enough and every farmer finds themselves obliged to grow ornamental flowers and dainties for their creditors’ dinner tables, while everyone else goes hungry — and society collapses.

The answer is jubilee: periodically zeroing out creditors’ claims by wiping all debts away. Jubilees were declared when a new king took the throne, or at set intervals, or whenever things got too lopsided. The point of capital allocation is efficiency and thus shared prosperity, not enriching capital allocators. That enrichment is merely an incentive, not the goal.

For generations, American policy has been to make housing asset appreciation the primary means by which families amass and pass on wealth; this is in contrast to, say, labor rights, which produce wealth by rewarding work with more pay and benefits. The American vision is that workers don’t need rights as workers, they need rights as owners — of homes, which will always increase in value.

There’s an obvious flaw in this logic: houses are necessities, as well as assets. You need a place to live in order to raise a family, do a job, found a business, get an education, recover from sickness or live out your retirement. Making houses monotonically more expensive benefits the people who get in early, but everyone else ends up crushed when their human necessity is treated as an asset:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

Worse: without a strong labor sector to provide countervailing force for capital, US politics has become increasingly friendly to rent-seekers of all kinds, who have increased the cost of health-care, education, and long-term care to eye-watering heights, forcing workers to remortgage, or sell off, the homes that were meant to be the source of their family’s long-term prosperity:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom-bfad6f3b35a9

Today, reality’s leftist bias is getting harder and harder to ignore. The idea that people who buy debt at pennies on the dollar should be cheered on as they drain the bank-accounts — or seize the homes — of people who do productive work is pure ideology, the kind of thing you’d expect to see on the WSJ’s editorial page, but which sticks out like a sore thumb in the news pages.

Thankfully, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is on the case. Director Rohit Chopra has warned the arm-breakers chasing payments on zombie mortgages that it’s illegal for them to “threaten judicial actions, such as foreclosures, for debts that are past a state’s statute of limitations.”

But there’s still plenty of room for more action. As Smith notes, the 2012 National Mortgage Settlement — a “get out of jail for almost free” card for the big banks — enticed lots of banks to discharge those second mortgages. Per Smith: “if any servicer sold a second mortgage to a vulture lender that it had charged off and used for credit in the National Mortgage Settlement, it defrauded the Feds and applicable state.”

Maybe some hungry state attorney general could go after the banks pulling these fast ones and hit them for millions in fines — and then use the money to build public housing.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in London and Berlin!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/vulture-capitalism/#distressed-assets

[Image ID: A Georgian eviction scene in which a bobby oversees three thugs who are using a battering ram to knock down a rural cottage wall. The image has been crudely colorized. A vulture looks on from the right, wearing a top-hat. The battering ram bears the WSJ logo.]

[dhr-ao3]

Basidick

Basidick https://ift.tt/El6RzB0 by mysticwrites originally posted on twitter for Pau's birthday on January 17, 2022 Words: 935, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: F/M Characters: Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy Additional Tags: Hogwarts Eighth Year, NSFW, Draco Malfoy Has a Large Cock, hermione just wants to fuck him, draco doesn't want to hurt her, basidick, slyther in via AO3 works tagged 'Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy' https://ift.tt/FSZshPg August 17, 2023 at 03:15PM

[ao3feedzukka-blog]

Standing up for Love

https://archiveofourown.org/works/42651102 by RavensOracle1988 Zuko and Sokka are in love. That is what they believe. What happens when family wins decides your fate? Is this where it ends or is it the start of a new beginning? Words: 964, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Fandoms: Avatar: The Last Airbender Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Categories: F/F, F/M, M/M Characters: Sokka, Zuko, Katara, Uncle Iroh, Ozai, Azula, Aang, Jet, Mai, Ty Lee, Bato, Hakoda (Avatar) Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar), Toph/Haru, mentions of Suki/Sokka, Mentions of Sokka/Yue - Relationship, Aang/Katara (Avatar), Suki/Female, Jet/Katara (Avatar), Jet/Sokka - Relationship Additional Tags: Angst, Fluff, abuse (not a lot), mpreg possibly October 26, 2022 at 03:15PM

[bobbie-robron]

Classic ED schedule week 42 (2022)

INCLUDES 50TH ANNIVERSARY CLASSIC EPISODES AIRING EACH EVENING (ALL TIMES ARE UK BASED)!!

16-Oct-2002 (Sunday):

6:00pm: ED: 50 Unforgettable Years - 1 hour

———

17-Oct-2022 (Monday):

1:40pm: 26-Sep-2002 (3274) Viv gives Katie a job at the cafe. Zoe offers Chris support with riding

2:15pm: 27-Sep-2002 (3275) Glynis lures Eric to hotel and he succumbs to her; Mack & Syd bet on who will bed Angie!

10:00pm: 16-Oct-1972 (0001) Meet the ORIGINAL LEGACY FAMILY - the Sugdens. There’s also the Skilbecks along with Amos & Mr. Wilks!

10:30pm: 13-Jan-1972 (0288) At the Woolpack, news of a train accident is announced!

11:00pm: 16-Mar-1978 (0434) As Ruth Helton & Joe Sugden walk towards the mine, an explosion ensues!

11:30pm: 21-Mar-1978 (0435) Rescue efforts at the mine.

———

18-Oct-2022 (Tuesday):

1:40pm: 30-Sep-2002 (3276) Laurel agrees to continue staying (and pay her way) with Betty & Seth; the results of the nude calendar are in

2:15pm: 01-Oct-2002 (3277) Announcing he’s pulling out of the campaign, Pollard comes clean to Gloria about his affair with Glynis and gets hit (rightly so)

10:00pm: 26-Aug-1986 (1078) Robert’s birth mum, Pat, dies in a auto accident swerving to miss a flock of sheep

10:30pm: 18-May-1988 (1249) Crossgill Farm (home of Matt Skilbeck) goes aflame due to a rag on the stove

11:00pm: 19-May-1988 (1250) The Crossgill fire continues as Annie is saved by Phil Pearce

11:30pm: 28-Dec-1993 (1828a) Christmas 1993 with the Sugdens, Tates & McAllisters

———

19-Oct-2022 (Wednesday):

1:40pm: 02-Oct-2002 (3278) Gloria tells Eric to continue his affair with Glynis. Zoe is feeling under the weather/dizzy

2:15pm: 03-Oct-2002 (3279) Brian and Andy worry about Katie suggesting counseling which she refuses. Dizziness persists with Zoe

10:00pm: 30-Dec-1993 (1829) A plane crashes into the village; final appearances for Elizabeth Pollard and Archie Brooks

10:30pm: 24-Dec-1996 (2144) Biff & Linda’s wedding; Home Farm in flames; final appearance for Tina Dingle - 1 hour episode

11:30pm: 26-Dec-1996 (2145) Dave Glover’s final appearance; the Sugdens officially can foster Andy

———

20-Oct-2022 (Thursday):

1:40pm: 04-Oct-2002 (3280) Zoe collapses and Edna and Betty bicker whether she’s fit to be in the community

2:15pm: 07-Oct-2002** (3281) Katie finally breaks down over the miscarriage. Charity’s proud of Zoe taught Chris to ride

10:00pm: 01-Jan-2004 (3623/3624) A storm devastates the village; Tricia is critically injured (dying on 08-Jan-2004) - 1 hour episode

11:00pm: 22-Sep-2005 (4159/4160) Zoe Tate’s exit (along with her daughter Jean, Joseph Tate and Callum Rennie) - 1 hour episode

———

21-Oct-2022 (Friday):

1:40pm: 08-Oct-2002 (3282) Andy proposes to Katie. Zoe fears she’s having a relapse. Louise has a secret admirer

2:15pm: 09-Oct-2002 (3283) Zoe getting impossible news - she’s pregnant! Brian & Jack give their blessing to the teens

10:00pm: 17-Oct-2012 (6371/6372) Live 40th Anniversary - Katie & Declan’s wedding; the death of Carl King (with Cameron & CHEATER Chas) - 1 hour episode

11:00pm: 04-Aug-2015 (7252/7253) Debbie & Pete’s wedding; Chrissie’s revenge at Robert leads to the devastating helicopter crash - 1 hour episode

12:00am: 05-Aug-2015 (7254) The aftermath of the helicopter crash; final appearance for Ruby Haswell

12:30am: 06-Aug-2015 (7255) The final appearance (and wrongly killed off) of Val Pollard

**Robert appears in the episode (excludes evening airings); note, for Oct-2002, wiki shows only (4) appearances on the 7th, 11 & 28th and 29th

[nnmrblgksk]

RT @asaman_man: ちょっと本読むときに使える、折りたたみ式の椅子が欲しいなーと思ってAmazon見てたら、椅子業界にイノベーション起きてた https://t.co/muIOWz2r8s — ksk_oue (@ksk_oue) Oct 17, 2022 October 17, 2022 at 03:15PM via Twitter https://twitter.com/ksk_oue

— RT @asaman_man: ちょっと本読むときに使える、折りたたみ式の椅子が欲しいなーと思ってAmazon見てたら、椅子業界にイノベーション起きてた https://t.co/muIOWz2r8s — ksk_oue (@ksk_oue) Oct 17, 2022 October 17, 2022 at 03:15PM via Twitter https://twitter.com/ksk_oue

[hiddenticket]

orbit [/w JayDottCee] Made cover kinda of Alex Isley Into Orbit https://ift.tt/KwG6SPc Uploaded by Forestxfire https://ift.tt/ykfh3rA via SoundCloud https://ift.tt/s1l6aJD April 07, 2022 at 03:15PM

[gesau-it]

Andate ora, e dite ai vostri fratelli e sorelle la verità sull’Inferno e il Purgatorio prima che sia troppo tardi. Perché se non lo fate voi, nessun altro lo farà https://messaggidivinamisericordia.blogspot.com/2022/06/andate-ora-e-dite-ai-vostri-fratelli-e.html ºººº — █ █ May 03, 2023 at 01:15PM

[skrubu]

Sunshine metro #helsinki #finland #overgroundunderground https://instagr.am/p/Cj-bVDctBM-/

[mft-toyama]

#NovelAIDiffusion #novelAI がリリースされました7 無加筆無編集出力まま　 は？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？？！？！？！白黒漫画……え？！？！？！？！？？！あ？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？！？えっっっっっっっっっぐ　これ　うわ https://t.co/3Av6i4dGWK

— 852話 (@8co28) Oct 3, 2022

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Tomorrow (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

On Tuesday (June 6), I’m on a Rightscon panel about interoperability.

#15yrsago British Telecom’s eavesdropping software crashed browsers https://www.wired.com/2008/06/isp-spying-made/

#15yrsago Entertainment industry accuses campus laser-printers of downloading Indiana Jones https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/the-inexact-science-behind-dmca-takedown-notices/

#10yrsago Scenes from #OccupyGezi https://occupygezipics.tumblr.com/post/52217650905/a-young-girl-sells-anonymous-masks-in-taksim

#10yrsago Anonymizing is really hard really, so why is the EU acting like it’s easy? https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/jun/05/data-protection-eu-anonymous

#10yrsago Beast Academy: grade three math textbooks in monster comics form https://memex.craphound.com/2013/06/05/beast-academy-grade-three-math-textbooks-in-monster-comics-form/

#5yrsago Rob Ford crack-smoking video is “gone” https://www.gawker.com/the-rob-ford-crack-video-might-be-gone-511254183

#5yrsago HOWTO make edible Aliens eggs and chestbursters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bxYD2fF1XA

#5yrsago Facebook is the hub of the global trade in endangered species: can securities law be used to force the company into action? https://www.wired.com/story/tusks-horns-and-claws-inside-the-fight-to-destroy-the-animal-parts-bazaar-on-facebook/

#5yrsago For more than a decade, Facebook shared your friends’ data and other sensitive info with phone makers, even after they claimed not to (they’re still doing it) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/facebook-device-partners-users-friends-data.html

#5yrsago Bayer and Monsanto merge into a new company called “Bayer” because Nazis have a better reputation than Big Ag https://www.reuters.com/article/us-monsanto-m-a-bayer-closing/with-deal-to-close-this-week-bayer-to-retire-monsanto-name-idUSKCN1J00IZ

#5yrsago This viral campaign video for a progressive New York Democratic primary challenger cost less than $10K and spread like wildfire https://theintercept.com/2018/06/05/ocasio-cortez-new-york-14th-district-democratic-primary-campaign-video/

#5yrsago It’s really easy to steal your cellphone number, and that’s a gateway to stealing everything else https://www.consumerreports.org/scams-fraud/cell-phone-account-fraud/

#5yrsago Rob Ford’s brother is running for Ontario Premier, but Rob Ford’s widow is suing him for stealing millions from the family https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-faces-multimillion-dollar-lawsuit-1.4691378

#1yrago The Big Box of Sparkly Unicorn Magic https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/heavenly-nostrils/#better-than-calvin

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in London and Berlin!

[beesandeverythingelsethatstings]

Plan of action for trusts:

1. Issue spot for papers: Sep 2021, May 2021, Sep 2020, May 2020, May 2022, May 2019, May 2018, May 2017 (THURS 9th March)

2. Write a list of which topics came up on each exam. (SUN 12th March 1:30pm)

Planning on doing 2 problem questions and 500 words of dissertation today

3. Check essay topics generally too.

4. Write up answers to Qs from:

May 2022/May 2021/May 2020/May 2019/May 2018

Do one of each by Monday.

Tracing 1 (2018): first try 3 pm 12/03/2023 - 910 words. Updated try 2 using past paper feedback 11pm 12/03/2023 - 1,448 words.

Validity of Will 1 (2018): first try 3:30pm 12/03/2023 - 330 words. Updated try 2 using past paper feedback 7pm 12/03/2023 - 1,280 words.

Ownership 1 (2018): first try 11:15pm 12/03/2023 - 302 words.

2/20 Qs - second attempt.

5. Thoroughly check and highlight what you noticed/missed against mark schemes for May 2022, May 2021, May 2020, May 2019, May 2018 (Fri 10th March)

4. Go through those answers against mark scheme, lectures, seminars, readings, moodle activities.

(Sun 12th March)

5. Be prepared to discuss this Monday.

[gliartigianisulweb]

Published on YouTube: produzione tavoli in pietra lavica https://t.co/W55al1xaO9 Published on YouTube: produzione tavoli in pietra lavica https://t.co/W55al1xaO9 Gli Artigiani sul Web (@gliartigianisw) Dec 22 2022 December 22 2022 at... https://t.co/7tJVgsJAit

Published on YouTube: produzione tavoli in pietra lavica https://t.co/W55al1xaO9 Published on YouTube: produzione tavoli in pietra lavica https://t.co/W55al1xaO9 Gli Artigiani sul Web (@gliartigianisw) Dec 22 2022 December 22 2022 at…... https://t.co/7tJVgsJAit — Gli Artigiani sul Web (@gliartigianisw) Jan 6, 2023 January 06, 2023 at 03:15PM via Twitter https://twitter.com/gliartigianisw