#AND we’re cheaper than most major cities to live in

[we-re-always-alright]

I think the thing people most underrate or misunderstand about Chicago is how many fucking parks we have. The city is downright covered in green space. When they were laying it out the goal was “never more than a 10 minute walk to a park” and it’s true. There’s 6 parks within 10 minutes of me. And it’s not just Grant/Millennium park either—I think people assume all big cities are like NYC where there’s really just 1 giant park (Central Park) but Chicago has not just 26 miles of ‘free and clear’ public beach front (and parks) but also giant parks scattered around the city. We have over 600 parks. 27 beaches. A free zoo.

[kinsey3furry300]

The past was the worst: part 51, 324. The OG food desert

While I feal that, rightly enough, people here are criticising the deplorable state of over-processed, un-nutritious food in the west in general and the US in particular, I’m also seeing a lot of whimsical, “Oh people in the past ate an all organic healthy diet” bullshit, and I’m like to remind everyone that the past was always awful, food deserts in the US are nothing new, and in fact a lot of the very first processed foods were well-meaning attempts to fix them.

Bottle formula: Over one in ten first time mothers don’t lactate, or don’t produce enough milk for their baby. Before bottle formula, unless you were rich enough to afford a wet nurse, those babies would die, or suffer lifelong developmental problems. Is formula right for every mother? No. Did Nestle trick millions of people in the developing world into thinking that they needed bottle formula, and them make them make it with unclean water killing over seven million babies? Yes. But stop demonizing formula as a concept, it really helps some people.

Hydrogenated vegetable oils: you know those old-timey 1880s to 1900’s pictures of The Lower West side, where it’s nothing but conservative Jewish families living very crowded conditions? Yeah, there was a reason for that: Lard, it was in EVERYTHING. It was commonly added to bread in the Victorian period! Outside of specialist shops in big cites, every fat available was either prohibitively expensive, or pig-based. This kept Jews, Muslims, and vegetarians restricted to tiny areas of major cities, essentially enforcing ghettoization. Crisco was seen as a legit miracle when it came out: a hard cooking fat that was plant based and cheaper than lard. Because it was so cheap, it went everywhere and replaced lard in most common uses.  Suddenly, people who didn’t’ eat lard for ethical reasons could live wherever the hell they wanted, and Margarine suddenly made it possible for poorer families to butter their fucking bread for the first time in history.  Should you be eating tones of Hydrogenated Vegetable fats? Should they be in fucking everything? No, but you already knew that.

Supplements. Okay, and this ties into the history of America’s first food desert: the EINTIRE POST CIVIL WAR SOUTH. So, between the 1870’s and the 1920’s, the entire deep south was repeatedly ravaged by a mystery disease called Pellagra, or “The spring sickness2. Symptoms included skin rashes, skin legions, secondary gangrene of the skin legions, swollen and bleeding tongue and gums, hair loss, extreme light sensitivity, loss of mental function, un-coordinated movements and poor balance, confusion, and in extreme cases, insanity, hyper-aggression and death. It was seen as “Human rabies” and no one knew what caused it: epidemiologists were at a loss, and no known bacteria, parasite or virus seemed to be the cause. It was an unknown, unstoppable Specter, looming over an enter quarter of the USA.

And yeah, it was discovered to be a vitamin B3 deficiency. It was striking every spring because fresh food wasn’t available over winter.

People brains just stopped working because they we’re getting their vitamins.

The cause of this was, of course, poverty. Poor sharecropping farmers, black and white, were forced as an economic necessity, to plant cash crops like corn, tabaco and cotton, on every inch of land they had. Growing a home vegetable patch was simply an aspirational notion outside of the economic reach for most people. Entire generations lived on cornbread (made with lard), bacon, and canned vegies brought in cheap form California. Canning at that time, involved boiling the cans for a prolonged period as opposed to milder steam flash-heating starvation. Vitamins did not survive the process.  People fucking died of malnutrition in the richest nation in the world, sounded by fertile farmland. Their kids got rickets, adults got scurvy, and people would occasionally just go fucking mental because their brains weren’t getting b3.

When doctors discovered this and pointed out the obvious solution: lift these people out of poverty, it was of course shot down by politicians. Research on dogs (who can get a similar illness form b3 deficiency) was hampered by the fact that the typical southern cornbread diet was so bad, the dogs refused to eat it. When Dr Joseph Goldberger tried to trick the dogs into eating the bread by spearing it with savoury brewers yeast extract, he discovered that yeast extract was a cheep and easy cure to the illness. Brewers yeast, malt extract, cod-liver oil, concentrated lime juice, vitamin and mineral enrighed flour, florinated water, and that weird boomer obsession with force feeding kids milk at every opportunity? All the first generation dietary supplements were very needed and very well intentioned efforts to stop actual debilitating illnesses at a cost that everyone could afford. Do you need 3000 pills including something Gwyneth Paltrow spat out of her over-steamed Virginia? No, but you knew that already.  

So yeah: eat what you like, try to eat well, and never forget, the past was just the worst and the cause of these problems is always poverty and inequality, so maybe do something about that.

[newstfionline]

Sunday, May 7, 2023

Fire and floods across western Canada force evacuations (Reuters) A week of record hot weather in western Canada has forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes, as wildfires rage in parts of Alberta and rapid snow melt triggers flooding across interior British Columbia. By Friday, more than 13,000 people were under evacuation orders in Alberta, as 78 fires burned. There have been 348 wildfires in Alberta this year and more than 25,000 hectares burned. In British Columbia, rivers burst their banks, washing through homes and forcing highway closures in numerous communities across the province’s interior.

How Finland managed to virtually end homelessness (Toronto Star) Determined to pack more homeless people into Toronto’s overcrowded shelters, officials have come up with a solution: reduce the number of inches between beds. In Toronto we’re busy studying how to jam more beds into already-cramped shelters, while over in Finland they’ve managed to virtually end homelessness. Instead of abandoning the homeless, they housed them. And that led to an insight: people tend to function better when they’re not living on the street or under a bridge. Who would have guessed? It turns out that, given a place to live, Finland’s homeless were better able to deal with addictions and other problems, not to mention handling job applications. So, more than a decade after the launch of the “Housing First” policy, 80 per cent of Finland’s homeless are doing well, still living in the housing they’d been provided with—but now paying the rent on their own. This not only helps the homeless, it turns out to be cheaper.

More Americans pray in their car than in a place of worship, survey finds (Religion News Service) Despite reports of declining worship attendance and religious affiliation, 6 in 10 Americans say that they pray, a new survey reports. A higher percentage—85%—say they engage in a spiritual practice to connect with a higher power, whether prayer, meditation, mindfulness, reciting affirmations or spiritually based yoga. Prayer is the most common of the five practices, with 39% of Americans saying they practiced meditation and 38% practicing mindfulness. The survey showed that U.S. adults who pray often do so at dawn or when they awaken (50%) or at bedtime (55%). More people report that they pray in their car (61%) than in a place of worship (46%). “These results make it clear that there is more praying taking place than people expect,” said John Dye.

Chicago’s pension problems (News Items) When Chicago’s mayor-elect, Brandon Johnson, is sworn in on May 15, he’ll inherit an albatross: the weakest pension system of any major American city. Its relentless cash calls have been squeezing city programs for years, helping to spur the departures of thousands of over-taxed, under-served residents. It isn’t just the teachers’ plan. Chicago owes hundreds of millions of dollars to thousands and thousands of other retirees. Officially, the city has just four pension plans, but you can easily find twice that many if you go looking. There are pensions for teachers, pensions for park crews, pensions for mass-transit drivers, pensions for college professors, pensions for the people who fix the water mains, all technically separate from the city but supported, at least in part, by city residents. All are underfunded. Researchers at the University of Chicago say the city spent one-fifth of its 2023 budget shoring up just its four official pension funds. That crowds out spending on other city services, and it’s never enough to fill the hole. The city wants to tax the rich to fund its programs. But you can’t tax the rich if the rich are leaving. Last year four large companies left Chicago: Boeing, Caterpillar, Tyson Foods, and Citadel, the big hedge fund. With them went hundreds of taxpaying employees and millions in philanthropic dollars. Last year, more than 94,000 people moved out of Cook County, which overlaps much of Chicago. In a recent survey, 34 percent of Chicago respondents said they would like to leave the city, given the chance. And low-tax Indiana is right next door.

Chile will select constitutional council amid voter apathy (AP) Chile will vote Sunday to choose 50 delegates to a council that will draw up a new Constitution, after voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed charter last year that was widely described as one of the world’s most progressive. For the most part, though, Chileans appear to be greeting this latest phase with a collective shrug. Polls have indicated that nearly 70% of those surveyed said they had little or no interest in Sunday’s vote. Critics had said the previous charter was too long, lacked clarity and went too far in some of its measures, which included characterizing Chile as a plurinational state, establishing autonomous Indigenous territories, and prioritizing the environment and gender parity. 62% of voters rejected it. For many Chileans the idea of rewriting the constitution takes a back seat to more bread-and-butter issues. “The problems our country is facing in terms of public safety, a profound migration crisis and an economic crisis have led the urgency of the day-to-day to overshadow the interest in constitutional matters,” said Gonzalo Muller, head of the Public Policies Center at the University for Development.

A crowning moment (AP) King Charles III was crowned Saturday at Westminster Abbey, in a ceremony steeped in ancient ritual and brimming with bling. At a coronation with displays of royal power straight out of the Middle Ages, Charles was presented with an orb, a sword and scepter and had the solid gold, bejeweled St. Edward’s Crown placed atop his head as he sat upon a 700-year-old oak chair. In front of world leaders, foreign royals, dignitaries and a smattering of stars, Charles declared: “I come not to be served but to serve.” Inside the medieval abbey, trumpets sounded, and the congregation of more than 2,000 shouted “God save the king!” Outside, thousands of troops, hundreds of thousands of spectators and scores of protesters converged. It was the culmination of a seven-decade journey for the king from heir to monarch.

Russian Unease Over Ukraine War Grows Amid Attacks and Leadership Rifts (NYT) With Ukraine stepping up attacks deep inside Russian-controlled territory, there were new signs on Friday of disarray and unease among Russia’s military and political leadership as they brace for a looming Ukrainian offensive, for which their forces may be ill-prepared. The latest manifestation of those tensions came from Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, leader of the Wagner mercenary group, who used what he said were the newly bloody corpses of his fighters as the backdrop for another expletive-laced rant against the top military command. Not for the first time, he threatened to pull his fighters out of the long-embattled Ukrainian city of Bakhmut if the Ministry of Defense did not provide more ammunition. That was just one of a series of events that contributed to a sense that the war effort, and by extension the country, was adrift. Two explosions rocked the Kremlin in the middle of the night on Wednesday, in what the Russians claimed was a failed drone attack by Ukraine. No matter the culprit, symbolically it seemed to many to signal Kremlin weakness. That came in tandem with attacks on a number of oil storage facilities, igniting huge fires, and train derailments both near the border and well away from the battlefields, all attributed to Ukrainian drones or sabotage.

Ukraine downs Russian hypersonic missile with US Patriot (AP) Ukraine’s air force claimed Saturday to have downed a Russian hypersonic missile over Kyiv using newly acquired American Patriot defense systems, the first known time the country has been able to intercept one of Moscow’s most modern missiles. Air Force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said that the Kinzhal-type ballistic missile had been intercepted in an overnight attack on the Ukrainian capital earlier in the week. It was also the first time Ukraine is known to have used the Patriot defense systems. The Kinzhal is one of the latest and most advanced Russian weapons. The Russian military says the air-launched ballistic missile has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (about 1,250 miles) and flies at 10 times the speed of sound, making it hard to intercept.

Strong quake in central Japan; 1 dead, more than 20 injured (AP) A strong, shallow earthquake hit central Japan on Friday afternoon, killing at least one person and injuring more than 20 others. The magnitude 6.2 quake struck Ishikawa prefecture on the west coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The Japan Meteorological Agency measured the quake at 6.5. Japan is one of the world’s most earthquake-prone nations. A massive 2011 quake in the country’s northeast caused a devastating tsunami and nuclear plant meltdown.

Businesses Caught in Cross-Fire as Iran Enforces Hijab Law (NYT) In the first days of the Iranian New Year holiday in March, the police showed up at a cafe in Tehran with orders to shut it down for two days. The cafe had run afoul of Iranian law by serving women who were not covering their hair with head scarves, they said. Since then, the cafe’s management has been summoned repeatedly by the authorities and ordered to warn customers to wear their scarves. Mohammad, the owner, grudgingly did the bare minimum, putting a sign on the wall telling women to respect the hijab law. There is little point in doing more, he said. Emboldened since the women-led protests that broke out last fall, which turned into nationwide demonstrations against the Islamic Republic, growing numbers of Iranian women have started going around without head scarves and wearing Western-style clothes. “In all honesty, we didn’t get upset when they shut down our cafe,” said Mohammad. “In fact, we felt good about it, because this is really good P.R. for us and our business.” His nonchalance suggested the depth and speed of change in Iran, where the theocratic government considers the dress code a matter of existential importance. As temperatures rise and more women go out in outfits that run flagrantly afoul of the law mandating modest clothing, official efforts to enforce it could intensify the conflict between Iranians and their clerical rulers.

Israeli army kills 2 Palestinians in West Bank raid (AP) Israeli forces shot dead two Palestinians during a military raid in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said. The deadly raid in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the city of Tulkarem was the latest in Israeli-Palestinian violence that has surged since last year. Israel has been staging near-nightly arrest raids into West Bank villages, towns and cities for more than a year in an operation prompted by a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israelis last year. Israel says the raids are meant to dismantle militant networks and thwart future attacks. The Palestinians see the attacks as further entrenchment of Israel’s 56-year, open-ended occupation of lands they seek for a future independent state. Some 250 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the raids were launched. Israel says most have been militants, but stone-throwing youth and people not involved in the confrontations have also been killed. During that same time, nearly 50 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks against Israelis.

Trapped by War, Saved by 2 Students With a Taxi (NYT) In the first days of Sudan’s war, the two university students felt helpless. They locked themselves into their apartment in the capital, Khartoum, as the battle unfolded. On the fifth day, the phone rang: Someone needed a taxi. A senior United Nations official, a woman in her 40s, was trapped inside her home. Pickup trucks mounted with machine guns stood outside her building, firing at warplanes that zoomed overhead. She had run out of water. Her phone’s battery was dying. Could they rescue her? The students, Hassan Tibwa and Sami al-Gada, in their final year of mechanical engineering, had a side gig driving a taxi. But this call wasn’t a paying job—it was a mercy run. They found the U.N. official, wrapped her in an abaya, concocted a cover story, and drove her to safety. Over the following week, Mr. Tibwa, 25, and Mr. al-Gada, 23, rescued dozens of desperate people from one of Khartoum’s fiercest battle zones. Along the way they were robbed, handcuffed and threatened with execution. Fighters accused them of being spies. Shellfire and stray bullets fell around their car. “The bravery of these guys is just amazing,” said Fares Hadi, an Algerian factory manager who survived a hair-raising ride with them through Khartoum. “So impressive, so courageous.”

WHO downgrades COVID pandemic, says it’s no longer emergency (AP) The World Health Organization said Friday that COVID-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, marking a symbolic end to the devastating coronavirus pandemic that triggered once-unthinkable lockdowns, upended economies and killed millions of people worldwide. The announcement, made more than three years after WHO declared the coronavirus an international crisis, offers some relief, if not an ending, to a pandemic that stirred fear and suspicion, hand-wringing and finger-pointing across the globe. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the pandemic had been on a downward trend for more than a year, acknowledging that most countries have already returned to life before COVID-19.

[blackwoolncrown]

”This essay has been kicking around in my head for years now and I’ve never felt confident enough to write it. It’s a time in my life I’m ashamed of. It’s a time that I hurt people and, through inaction, allowed others to be hurt. It’s a time that I acted as a violent agent of capitalism and white supremacy. Under the guise of public safety, I personally ruined people’s lives but in so doing, made the public no safer… so did the family members and close friends of mine who also bore the badge alongside me.

But enough is enough.

The reforms aren’t working. Incrementalism isn’t happening. Unarmed Black, indigenous, and people of color are being killed by cops in the streets and the police are savagely attacking the people protesting these murders.

American policing is a thick blue tumor strangling the life from our communities and if you don’t believe it when the poor and the marginalized say it, if you don’t believe it when you see cops across the country shooting journalists with less-lethal bullets and caustic chemicals, maybe you’ll believe it when you hear it straight from the pig’s mouth.”

>>Copied here in case anyone gets paywalled when they click the above. The full article is...a lot.<<

WHY AM I WRITING THIS

As someone who went through the training, hiring, and socialization of a career in law enforcement, I wanted to give a first-hand account of why I believe police officers are the way they are. Not to excuse their behavior, but to explain it and to indict the structures that perpetuate it.

I believe that if everyone understood how we’re trained and brought up in the profession, it would inform the demands our communities should be making of a new way of community safety. If I tell you how we were made, I hope it will empower you to unmake us.

One of the other reasons I’ve struggled to write this essay is that I don’t want to center the conversation on myself and my big salty boo-hoo feelings about my bad choices. It’s a toxic white impulse to see atrocities and think “How can I make this about me?” So, I hope you’ll take me at my word that this account isn’t meant to highlight me, but rather the hundred thousand of me in every city in the country. It’s about the structure that made me (that I chose to pollute myself with) and it’s my meager contribution to the cause of radical justice.

YES, ALL COPS ARE BASTARDS

I was a police officer in a major metropolitan area in California with a predominantly poor, non-white population (with a large proportion of first-generation immigrants). One night during briefing, our watch commander told us that the city council had requested a new zero tolerance policy. Against murderers, drug dealers, or child predators?

No, against homeless people collecting cans from recycling bins.

See, the city had some kickback deal with the waste management company where waste management got paid by the government for our expected tonnage of recycling. When homeless people “stole” that recycling from the waste management company, they were putting that cheaper contract in peril. So, we were to arrest as many recyclers as we could find.

Even for me, this was a stupid policy and I promptly blew Sarge off. But a few hours later, Sarge called me over to assist him. He was detaining a 70 year old immigrant who spoke no English, who he’d seen picking a coke can out of a trash bin. He ordered me to arrest her for stealing trash. I said, “Sarge, c’mon, she’s an old lady.” He said, “I don’t give a shit. Hook her up, that’s an order.” And… I did. She cried the entire way to the station and all through the booking process. I couldn’t even comfort her because I didn’t speak Spanish. I felt disgusting but I was ordered to make this arrest and I wasn’t willing to lose my job for her.

If you’re tempted to feel sympathy for me, don’t. I used to happily hassle the homeless under other circumstances. I researched obscure penal codes so I could arrest people in homeless encampments for lesser known crimes like “remaining too close to railroad property” (369i of the California Penal Code). I used to call it “planting warrant seeds” since I knew they wouldn’t make their court dates and we could arrest them again and again for warrant violations.

We used to have informal contests for who could cite or arrest someone for the weirdest law. DUI on a bicycle, non-regulation number of brooms on your tow truck (27700(a)(1) of the California Vehicle Code)… shit like that. For me, police work was a logic puzzle for arresting people, regardless of their actual threat to the community. As ashamed as I am to admit it, it needs to be said: stripping people of their freedom felt like a game to me for many years.

I know what you’re going to ask: did I ever plant drugs? Did I ever plant a gun on someone? Did I ever make a false arrest or file a false report? Believe it or not, the answer is no. Cheating was no fun, I liked to get my stats the “legitimate” way. But I knew officers who kept a little baggie of whatever or maybe a pocket knife that was a little too big in their war bags (yeah, we called our dufflebags “war bags”…). Did I ever tell anybody about it? No I did not. Did I ever confess my suspicions when cocaine suddenly showed up in a gang member’s jacket? No I did not.

In fact, let me tell you about an extremely formative experience: in my police academy class, we had a clique of around six trainees who routinely bullied and harassed other students: intentionally scuffing another trainee’s shoes to get them in trouble during inspection, sexually harassing female trainees, cracking racist jokes, and so on. Every quarter, we were to write anonymous evaluations of our squadmates. I wrote scathing accounts of their behavior, thinking I was helping keep bad apples out of law enforcement and believing I would be protected. Instead, the academy staff read my complaints to them out loud and outed me to them and never punished them, causing me to get harassed for the rest of my academy class. That’s how I learned that even police leadership hates rats. That’s why no one is “changing things from the inside.” They can’t, the structure won’t allow it.

And that’s the point of what I’m telling you. Whether you were my sergeant, legally harassing an old woman, me, legally harassing our residents, my fellow trainees bullying the rest of us, or “the bad apples” illegally harassing “shitbags”, we were all in it together. I knew cops that pulled women over to flirt with them. I knew cops who would pepper spray sleeping bags so that homeless people would have to throw them away. I knew cops that intentionally provoked anger in suspects so they could claim they were assaulted. I was particularly good at winding people up verbally until they lashed out so I could fight them. Nobody spoke out. Nobody stood up. Nobody betrayed the code.

None of us protected the people (you) from bad cops.

This is why “All cops are bastards.” Even your uncle, even your cousin, even your mom, even your brother, even your best friend, even your spouse, even me. Because even if they wouldn’t Do The Thing themselves, they will almost never rat out another officer who Does The Thing, much less stop it from happening.

BASTARD 101

I could write an entire book of the awful things I’ve done, seen done, and heard others bragging about doing. But, to me, the bigger question is “How did it get this way?”. While I was a police officer in a city 30 miles from where I lived, many of my fellow officers were from the community and treated their neighbors just as badly as I did. While every cop’s individual biases come into play, it’s the profession itself that is toxic, and it starts from day 1 of training.

Every police academy is different but all of them share certain features: taught by old cops, run like a paramilitary bootcamp, strong emphasis on protecting yourself more than anyone else. The majority of my time in the academy was spent doing aggressive physical training and watching video after video after video of police officers being murdered on duty.

I want to highlight this: nearly everyone coming into law enforcement is bombarded with dash cam footage of police officers being ambushed and killed. Over and over and over. Colorless VHS mortality plays, cops screaming for help over their radios, their bodies going limp as a pair of tail lights speed away into a grainy black horizon. In my case, with commentary from an old racist cop who used to brag about assaulting Black Panthers.

To understand why all cops are bastards, you need to understand one of the things almost every training officer told me when it came to using force:

“I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.”

Meaning, “I’ll take my chances in court rather than risk getting hurt”. We’re able to think that way because police unions are extremely overpowered and because of the generous concept of Qualified Immunity, a legal theory which says a cop generally can’t be held personally liable for mistakes they make doing their job in an official capacity.

When you look at the actions of the officers who killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, David McAtee, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, or Freddie Gray, remember that they, like me, were trained to recite “I’d rather be judged by 12” as a mantra. Even if Mistakes Were Made™, the city (meaning the taxpayers, meaning you) pays the settlement, not the officer.

Once police training has - through repetition, indoctrination, and violent spectacle - promised officers that everyone in the world is out to kill them, the next lesson is that your partners are the only people protecting you. Occasionally, this is even true: I’ve had encounters turn on me rapidly to the point I legitimately thought I was going to die, only to have other officers come and turn the tables.

One of the most important thought leaders in law enforcement is Col. Dave Grossman, a “killologist” who wrote an essay called “Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs”. Cops are the sheepdogs, bad guys are the wolves, and the citizens are the sheep (!). Col. Grossman makes sure to mention that to a stupid sheep, sheepdogs look more like wolves than sheep, and that’s why they dislike you.

This “they hate you for protecting them and only I love you, only I can protect you” tactic is familiar to students of abuse. It’s what abusers do to coerce their victims into isolation, pulling them away from friends and family and ensnaring them in the abuser’s toxic web. Law enforcement does this too, pitting the officer against civilians. “They don’t understand what you do, they don’t respect your sacrifice, they just want to get away with crimes. You’re only safe with us.”

I think the Wolves vs. Sheepdogs dynamic is one of the most important elements as to why officers behave the way they do. Every single second of my training, I was told that criminals were not a legitimate part of their community, that they were individual bad actors, and that their bad actions were solely the result of their inherent criminality. Any concept of systemic trauma, generational poverty, or white supremacist oppression was either never mentioned or simply dismissed. After all, most people don’t steal, so anyone who does isn’t “most people,” right? To us, anyone committing a crime deserved anything that happened to them because they broke the “social contract.” And yet, it was never even a question as to whether the power structure above them was honoring any sort of contract back.

Understand: Police officers are part of the state monopoly on violence and all police training reinforces this monopoly as a cornerstone of police work, a source of honor and pride. Many cops fantasize about getting to kill someone in the line of duty, egged on by others that have. One of my training officers told me about the time he shot and killed a mentally ill homeless man wielding a big stick. He bragged that he “slept like a baby” that night. Official training teaches you how to be violent effectively and when you’re legally allowed to deploy that violence, but “unofficial training” teaches you to desire violence, to expand the breadth of your violence without getting caught, and to erode your own compassion for desperate people so you can justify punitive violence against them.

HOW TO BE A BASTARD

I have participated in some of these activities personally, others are ones I either witnessed personally or heard officers brag about openly. Very, very occasionally, I knew an officer who was disciplined or fired for one of these things.

Police officers will lie about the law, about what’s illegal, or about what they can legally do to you in order to manipulate you into doing what they want.

Police officers will lie about feeling afraid for their life to justify a use of force after the fact.

Police officers will lie and tell you they’ll file a police report just to get you off their back.

Police officers will lie that your cooperation will “look good for you” in court, or that they will “put in a good word for you with the DA.” The police will never help you look good in court.

Police officers will lie about what they see and hear to access private property to conduct unlawful searches.

Police officers will lie and say your friend already ratted you out, so you might as well rat them back out. This is almost never true.

Police officers will lie and say you’re not in trouble in order to get you to exit a location or otherwise make an arrest more convenient for them.

Police officers will lie and say that they won’t arrest you if you’ll just “be honest with them” so they know what really happened.

Police officers will lie about their ability to seize the property of friends and family members to coerce a confession.

Police officers will write obviously bullshit tickets so that they get time-and-a-half overtime fighting them in court.

Police officers will search places and containers you didn’t consent to and later claim they were open or “smelled like marijuana”.

Police officers will threaten you with a more serious crime they can’t prove in order to convince you to confess to the lesser crime they really want you for.

Police officers will employ zero tolerance on races and ethnicities they dislike and show favor and lenience to members of their own group.

Police officers will use intentionally extra-painful maneuvers and holds during an arrest to provoke “resistance” so they can further assault the suspect.

Some police officers will plant drugs and weapons on you, sometimes to teach you a lesson, sometimes if they kill you somewhere away from public view.

Some police officers will assault you to intimidate you and threaten to arrest you if you tell anyone.

A non-trivial number of police officers will steal from your house or vehicle during a search.

A non-trivial number of police officers commit intimate partner violence and use their status to get away with it.

A non-trivial number of police officers use their position to entice, coerce, or force sexual favors from vulnerable people.

If you take nothing else away from this essay, I want you to tattoo this onto your brain forever: if a police officer is telling you something, it is probably a lie designed to gain your compliance.

Do not talk to cops and never, ever believe them. Do not “try to be helpful” with cops. Do not assume they are trying to catch someone else instead of you. Do not assume what they are doing is “important” or even legal. Under no circumstances assume any police officer is acting in good faith.

Also, and this is important, do not talk to cops.

I just remembered something, do not talk to cops.

Checking my notes real quick, something jumped out at me:

Do

not

fucking

talk

to

cops.

Ever.

Say, “I don’t answer questions,” and ask if you’re free to leave; if so, leave. If not, tell them you want your lawyer and that, per the Supreme Court, they must terminate questioning. If they don’t, file a complaint and collect some badges for your mantle.

DO THE BASTARDS EVER HELP?

Reading the above, you may be tempted to ask whether cops ever do anything good. And the answer is, sure, sometimes. In fact, most officers I worked with thought they were usually helping the helpless and protecting the safety of innocent people.

During my tenure in law enforcement, I protected women from domestic abusers, arrested cold-blooded murderers and child molesters, and comforted families who lost children to car accidents and other tragedies. I helped connect struggling people in my community with local resources for food, shelter, and counseling. I deescalated situations that could have turned violent and talked a lot of people down from making the biggest mistake of their lives. I worked with plenty of officers who were individually kind, bought food for homeless residents, or otherwise showed care for their community.

The question is this: did I need a gun and sweeping police powers to help the average person on the average night? The answer is no. When I was doing my best work as a cop, I was doing mediocre work as a therapist or a social worker. My good deeds were listening to people failed by the system and trying to unite them with any crumbs of resources the structure was currently denying them.

It’s also important to note that well over 90% of the calls for service I handled were reactive, showing up well after a crime had taken place. We would arrive, take a statement, collect evidence (if any), file the report, and onto the next caper. Most “active” crimes we stopped were someone harmless possessing or selling a small amount of drugs. Very, very rarely would we stop something dangerous in progress or stop something from happening entirely. The closest we could usually get was seeing someone running away from the scene of a crime, but the damage was still done.

And consider this: my job as a police officer required me to be a marriage counselor, a mental health crisis professional, a conflict negotiator, a social worker, a child advocate, a traffic safety expert, a sexual assault specialist, and, every once in awhile, a public safety officer authorized to use force, all after only a 1000 hours of training at a police academy. Does the person we send to catch a robber also need to be the person we send to interview a rape victim or document a fender bender? Should one profession be expected to do all that important community care (with very little training) all at the same time?

To put this another way: I made double the salary most social workers made to do a fraction of what they could do to mitigate the causes of crimes and desperation. I can count very few times my monopoly on state violence actually made our citizens safer, and even then, it’s hard to say better-funded social safety nets and dozens of other community care specialists wouldn’t have prevented a problem before it started.

Armed, indoctrinated (and dare I say, traumatized) cops do not make you safer; community mutual aid networks who can unite other people with the resources they need to stay fed, clothed, and housed make you safer. I really want to hammer this home: every cop in your neighborhood is damaged by their training, emboldened by their immunity, and they have a gun and the ability to take your life with near-impunity. This does not make you safer, even if you’re white.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE A BASTARD?

So what do we do about it? Even though I’m an expert on bastardism, I am not a public policy expert nor an expert in organizing a post-police society. So, before I give some suggestions, let me tell you what probably won’t solve the problem of bastard cops:

Increased “bias” training. A quarterly or even monthly training session is not capable of covering over years of trauma-based camaraderie in police forces. I can tell you from experience, we don’t take it seriously, the proctors let us cheat on whatever “tests” there are, and we all made fun of it later over coffee.

Tougher laws. I hope you understand by now, cops do not follow the law and will not hold each other accountable to the law. Tougher laws are all the more reason to circle the wagons and protect your brothers and sisters.

More community policing programs. Yes, there is a marginal effect when a few cops get to know members of the community, but look at the protests of 2020: many of the cops pepper-spraying journalists were probably the nice school cop a month ago.

Police officers do not protect and serve people, they protect and serve the status quo, “polite society”, and private property. Using the incremental mechanisms of the status quo will never reform the police because the status quo relies on police violence to exist. Capitalism requires a permanent underclass to exploit for cheap labor and it requires the cops to bring that underclass to heel.

Instead of wasting time with minor tweaks, I recommend exploring the following ideas:

No more qualified immunity. Police officers should be personally liable for all decisions they make in the line of duty.

No more civil asset forfeiture. Did you know that every year, citizens like you lose more cash and property to unaccountable civil asset forfeiture than to all burglaries combined? The police can steal your stuff without charging you with a crime and it makes some police departments very rich.

Break the power of police unions. Police unions make it nearly impossible to fire bad cops and incentivize protecting them to protect the power of the union. A police union is not a labor union; police officers are powerful state agents, not exploited workers.

Require malpractice insurance. Doctors must pay for insurance in case they botch a surgery, police officers should do the same for botching a police raid or other use of force. If human decency won’t motivate police to respect human life, perhaps hitting their wallet might.

Defund, demilitarize, and disarm cops. Thousands of police departments own assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, and stuff you’d see in a warzone. Police officers have grants and huge budgets to spend on guns, ammo, body armor, and combat training. 99% of calls for service require no armed response, yet when all you have is a gun, every problem feels like target practice. Cities are not safer when unaccountable bullies have a monopoly on state violence and the equipment to execute that monopoly.

One final idea: consider abolishing the police.

I know what you’re thinking, “What? We need the police! They protect us!” As someone who did it for nearly a decade, I need you to understand that by and large, police protection is marginal, incidental. It’s an illusion created by decades of copaganda designed to fool you into thinking these brave men and women are holding back the barbarians at the gates.

I alluded to this above: the vast majority of calls for service I handled were theft reports, burglary reports, domestic arguments that hadn’t escalated into violence, loud parties, (houseless) people loitering, traffic collisions, very minor drug possession, and arguments between neighbors. Mostly the mundane ups and downs of life in the community, with little inherent danger. And, like I mentioned, the vast majority of crimes I responded to (even violent ones) had already happened; my unaccountable license to kill was irrelevant.

What I mainly provided was an “objective” third party with the authority to document property damage, ask people to chill out or disperse, or counsel people not to beat each other up. A trained counselor or conflict resolution specialist would be ten times more effective than someone with a gun strapped to his hip wondering if anyone would try to kill him when he showed up. There are many models for community safety that can be explored if we get away from the idea that the only way to be safe is to have a man with a M4 rifle prowling your neighborhood ready at a moment’s notice to write down your name and birthday after you’ve been robbed and beaten.

You might be asking, “What about the armed robbers, the gangsters, the drug dealers, the serial killers?” And yes, in the city I worked, I regularly broke up gang parties, found gang members carrying guns, and handled homicides. I’ve seen some tragic things, from a reformed gangster shot in the head with his brains oozing out to a fifteen year old boy taking his last breath in his screaming mother’s arms thanks to a gang member’s bullet. I know the wages of violence.

This is where we have to have the courage to ask: why do people rob? Why do they join gangs? Why do they get addicted to drugs or sell them? It’s not because they are inherently evil. I submit to you that these are the results of living in a capitalist system that grinds people down and denies them housing, medical care, human dignity, and a say in their government. These are the results of white supremacy pushing people to the margins, excluding them, disrespecting them, and treating their bodies as disposable.

Equally important to remember: disabled and mentally ill people are frequently killed by police officers not trained to recognize and react to disabilities or mental health crises. Some of the people we picture as “violent offenders” are often people struggling with untreated mental illness, often due to economic hardships. Very frequently, the officers sent to “protect the community” escalate this crisis and ultimately wound or kill the person. Your community was not made safer by police violence; a sick member of your community was killed because it was cheaper than treating them. Are you extremely confident you’ll never get sick one day too?

Wrestle with this for a minute: if all of someone’s material needs were met and all the members of their community were fed, clothed, housed, and dignified, why would they need to join a gang? Why would they need to risk their lives selling drugs or breaking into buildings? If mental healthcare was free and was not stigmatized, how many lives would that save?

Would there still be a few bad actors in the world? Sure, probably. What’s my solution for them, you’re no doubt asking. I’ll tell you what: generational poverty, food insecurity, houselessness, and for-profit medical care are all problems that can be solved in our lifetimes by rejecting the dehumanizing meat grinder of capitalism and white supremacy. Once that’s done, we can work on the edge cases together, with clearer hearts not clouded by a corrupt system.

Police abolition is closely related to the idea of prison abolition and the entire concept of banishing the carceral state, meaning, creating a society focused on reconciliation and restorative justice instead of punishment, pain, and suffering — a system that sees people in crisis as humans, not monsters. People who want to abolish the police typically also want to abolish prisons, and the same questions get asked: “What about the bad guys? Where do we put them?” I bring this up because abolitionists don’t want to simply replace cops with armed social workers or prisons with casual detention centers full of puffy leather couches and Playstations. We imagine a world not divided into good guys and bad guys, but rather a world where people’s needs are met and those in crisis receive care, not dehumanization.

Here’s legendary activist and thinker Angela Y. Davis putting it better than I ever could:

“An abolitionist approach that seeks to answer questions such as these would require us to imagine a constellation of alternative strategies and institutions, with the ultimate aim of removing the prison from the social and ideological landscapes of our society. In other words, we would not be looking for prisonlike substitutes for the prison, such as house arrest safeguarded by electronic surveillance bracelets. Rather, positing decarceration as our overarching strategy, we would try to envision a continuum of alternatives to imprisonment-demilitarization of schools, revitalization of education at all levels, a health system that provides free physical and mental care to all, and a justice system based on reparation and reconciliation rather than retribution and vengeance.”

(Are Prisons Obsolete, pg. 107)

I’m not telling you I have the blueprint for a beautiful new world. What I’m telling you is that the system we have right now is broken beyond repair and that it’s time to consider new ways of doing community together. Those new ways need to be negotiated by members of those communities, particularly Black, indigenous, disabled, houseless, and citizens of color historically shoved into the margins of society. Instead of letting Fox News fill your head with nightmares about Hispanic gangs, ask the Hispanic community what they need to thrive. Instead of letting racist politicians scaremonger about pro-Black demonstrators, ask the Black community what they need to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. If you truly desire safety, ask not what your most vulnerable can do for the community, ask what the community can do for the most vulnerable.

A WORLD WITH FEWER BASTARDS IS POSSIBLE

If you take only one thing away from this essay, I hope it’s this: do not talk to cops. But if you only take two things away, I hope the second one is that it’s possible to imagine a different world where unarmed black people, indigenous people, poor people, disabled people, and people of color are not routinely gunned down by unaccountable police officers. It doesn’t have to be this way. Yes, this requires a leap of faith into community models that might feel unfamiliar, but I ask you:

When you see a man dying in the street begging for breath, don’t you want to leap away from that world?

When you see a mother or a daughter shot to death sleeping in their beds, don’t you want to leap away from that world?

When you see a twelve year old boy executed in a public park for the crime of playing with a toy, jesus fucking christ, can you really just stand there and think “This is normal”?

And to any cops who made it this far down, is this really the world you want to live in? Aren’t you tired of the trauma? Aren’t you tired of the soul sickness inherent to the badge? Aren’t you tired of looking the other way when your partners break the law? Are you really willing to kill the next George Floyd, the next Breonna Taylor, the next Tamir Rice? How confident are you that your next use of force will be something you’re proud of? I’m writing this for you too: it’s wrong what our training did to us, it’s wrong that they hardened our hearts to our communities, and it’s wrong to pretend this is normal.

Look, I wouldn’t have been able to hear any of this for much of my life. You reading this now may not be able to hear this yet either. But do me this one favor: just think about it. Just turn it over in your mind for a couple minutes. “Yes, And” me for a minute. Look around you and think about the kind of world you want to live in. Is it one where an all-powerful stranger with a gun keeps you and your neighbors in line with the fear of death, or can you picture a world where, as a community, we embrace our most vulnerable, meet their needs, heal their wounds, honor their dignity, and make them family instead of desperate outsiders?

If you take only three things away from this essay, I hope the third is this: you and your community don’t need bastards to thrive.

RESOURCES TO YES-AND WITH

Achele Mbembe — Necropolitics

Angela Y. Davis — Are Prisons Obsolete?

CriticalResistance.org — Abolition Toolkit

Joe Macaré, Maya Schenwar, and Alana Yu-lan Price — Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?

Ruth Wilson Gilmore — COVID-19, Decarceration, Abolition [video]

[dezz111]

Funerals Are Cheaper than College: The Fatalistic Humor of Gen Z and Our Rising Depression

“Bold of you to assume I want to live.”

I can already feel the pearl clutchers gasping in offense and concern at these words. But hear me out. The average funeral with the viewing, embalming and all that good jazz costs between $7,000 - $12,000.  That price tag drops dramatically to a pretty $350 if you decide to do cremation since the funeral home can usually do it in house. The average college can cost roughly $25,000 for four years. Four years that you might need to tack on some extra time depending on your major. So as you can see, funerals are cheaper than college. By a long shot.

“Guess I'll die.”

College is super expensive and life is already stressful enough as it is without the crippling weight of student debt. Now ok Boomers, I can hear some of  you asking  “What stress could we possibly have?” And I’d be more than happy to read back facts to you if I knew how such a thing felt. But because I’m from Gen Z and relish chaos, I’ll sum it up.

We’ve grown up with:

911

Regular School Shootings

Bombings

Several Natural Disasters

Mass Shootings in General

A Civil War

Civilian Murders by Those Meant to Protect

A Pandemic

And many other things 

All this before 25. I’d say we’re pretty traumatized. To quote Summer Smith, “B*tch my generation gets traumatized for breakfast!” 

We live in a technological age where everything is at the tip of our fingers. I'm writing this very piece on my phone where it will automatically upload to the cloud and be ready to update from any device. Older generations may claim that this has made us inattentive to what's happening around us as we become so absorbed in social media and our dumb jokes. But it's because we are too aware of the world that we're like this. Everything is right there. 

And we're seeing it as it happens.

Remember that list of things we've lived through I provided with apparent glee? That was the trademark cynicism that we use to protect ourselves. We are reliving history with better weapons and coverage. We don't have the luxury of simply turning away from something we don't want to see. A shooting happens and we see it on six different channels from thirty different angles.  You can scroll as much as you want but you'll see that same disaster on every feed as it gets shared over and over. A murder that might have taken a few days to reach a city can now reach the nation in seconds. We know everything. And it hurts.

Everyone has coping methods and ours just happens to be the one people take the most offense to: humor. We don't make our jokes in jest, it's simply how we process it. We can't simply tune out what makes us uncomfortable. Turning off our own phones makes it easier to hear someone else's. It's inescapable. We can only sit back, watch and listen as our whole world continues to go up in flames. 

And so we make our jokes.

We put together our draft list for World War III in order to ease the foreboding sense of terror at how close it is. We compare the security of government buildings to that in video games and books to ease the fear of how easy it was to storm the Capital. We put together funny clips comparing the blast radius of bombs to hold back the absolute anxiety of how easy it would be for one man to wipe us out with the push of a button. We make memes about everything that scares us because we have no other way to cope.

“This is fine.”

Our parents may tell us to try therapy but for us, it's not a viable option for everyone. Trauma has become something of an entertainment value for older generations. True crime is the most popular genre of podcasts amongst women. Crime shows such as Law & Order (Which has been airing since 1999 and has 23 seasons. Let that sink in a moment.) are topping the charts and breaking records. Medical dramas fill countless blocks of the tv guide. Movies based on true stories of highly traumatizing events fill theaters. We are surrounded by our triggers and told to watch as “these are real things that we need to learn about”. When we argue against it and declare our discomfort, we are labeled uncaring or selfish. It's hard to open up or seek help when our emotional shortcomings are summed up as a “bad attitude”. 

Having therapists complaining about our trauma dumping on Tik Tok isn't very encouraging either.

And thus we get to the root  of our problem: depression. Uncertainty is the pandemic of this generation, a far worse disease than Covid in some cases. Studies performed by the American Psychological Association have shown that only 45% of Gen Zers report their mental health as very good or excellent - a number that pales in comparison to Millenials (56%), Gen Xers (51%) and Boomers (70%). Gen Z has been coined as the “most depressed generation”, with over 37% seeking out mental health counseling or therapy. There was a 30% increase in suicide between 2006-2016, peaking in youths 2017. We are chronically stressed, most of us coming of age within the last four years. Housing costs have never been higher, the economies destabilized, our school lives completely uprooted.

It's hard enough to be a member of Gen Z without becoming something of a caretaker to your younger siblings now that everyone is trapped inside and has to do online learning. 

Anxiety rose by 25%, people ages 20-24 making the largest leaps in numbers in 2020.The rate of depression had jumped by nearly 33% in 2021. The isolation has taken a serious toll that has been further compounded by the lack of mental care. Areas of lower income reported that school counselors were the only source of mental health services. School is stressful enough. 

Let's move to the fun part of trying to find a job. 

At this point we wish we were back in grade school where the most stressful thing was deciding between the orange crayon or the yellow color pencil for the sun. We've got student debts breathing down our necks and a resume with no references other than McDonald's and that job you worked at a summer camp. Jobs don't want to hire you without appropriate references. They want a masters degree and five years of experience  despite this being your first interview. And you're probably not even going to get hired for something your degree is in. Don't forget that student debt, which will take twenty years to pay off as you struggle to survive off of that biweekly check that's barely above minimum wage. Maybe if you're lucky you'll get a nice office job… as an intern. In a struggling job market, you're sure to have everything in life!

So sorry if our last two brain cells have a little trouble processing our trauma in a way that protects the feelings of others. But we have to face the fact that Gen Z is traumatized as hell and we became super ( note the heavy sarcasm ) adjusted through humor dark enough to resurrect the Black Plague. Not that Covid's any better...

"Aight, Imma head out."

[recurring-polynya]

soul reapers to get paid and their salaries are even quite high! if i remember correctly, lieutenants make around $7k while a captain’s salary is almost triple(nearly $19k)

(cont) that is if my conversion was right, in a JET interview kubo said captains make 2million yen, lieutenants - 700 000yen and an unseated officer - 200 000yen. but then again, i think the living cost in ss is much higher, i remember matsumoto mentioning that clothes in the living world are much cheaper

I have to say this is one of the liveliest discussions on Bleach meta that I have ever participated in on this website. I feel like I can definitively report that is is both fanon consensus and supported by the creator himself that Soul Reapers do, in fact, get paid. For the record, my husband, who started this, conceded days ago and I am sure has not thought about it since.

In any case-- I was very surprised by these numbers, and at first I thought that maybe they were in kan, the fictional currency used in Soul Society, rather than yen. I mean, $19k/year is a terrible salary (for those of you who are not American it is roughly minimum wage). I attempted to figure out the conversion rate between kan and yen once, and at the time, came to the conclusion that kan were worth somewhat more than yen, but I no longer have my scratch pad, so I cannot show my work. Looking at it again, they seem pretty close.

Then, just to get an idea, I googled the salary of a four-star general in the American military, which I thought should be a rough equivalent, and the article I found reported all its numbers in monthly salaries, which I am not used to seeing, but maybe they are more common in other countries. In any case, according to the article I found, the highest salary you can make in the US military is $15,800/month ($189,600/year), which is pretty close to what a Gotei captain makes. I realize that is a lot of money on an absolute scale, but that actually seemed shockingly low to me, in the sense that there have only ever been 246 four-star generals in the history of the U.S., but this is the sort of salary that, say, a C-suite executive might make. A president of even a public university can make 2-5 times this. Now, a career in the military comes with a lot of other perks-- free room and board, free healthcare, etc, but I think this is going to make a much bigger difference to the people in the lower ranks.

The more I thought about it, I do think this tracks, though. Gotei captains are immeasurably valuable and basically impossible to replace. One of the more chilling moments leading up to the Winter War was the part where Hitsugaya is basically like “we don’t know how many Arrancar Aizen has, but if it’s more than 10, we’re screwed” and then it cuts to Hueco Mundo, and Aizen is just surrounded by guys. So, yeah, it honestly makes perfect sense to me that captains are paid a “good living” but it’s insulting compared to the wealth of the nobles that live around them. I don’t usually have a lot of nice things to say about Byakuya, but I do want to emphasize that this has to be chump change for him. This guy definitely works out of a sense of duty, he is not in it for the Benjamins.

The vice-captain salary (~$84k/yr) comes closest to an O-4, which corresponds to a major or a lieutenant colonel, and usually entails about 10 years of service. I guess years count for less when you’re immortal, so I guess that works out. One thing that doesn’t fit is that in another interview, Kubo states that Renji’s sunglasses cost half a year’s salary, but their price is listed in the Bleach Bootleg as 84,700 kan. If a kan is roughly equal to a yen, this is wildly off. I will get back to this later. In WDKALY, there was some mention of vice-captains and captains being given “mansions” to live in (if they chose to). I absolutely cannot accept this fact as canon. I can’t. I mean, there are numerous omake about Hisagi trying to score free food out of Omaeda, yet this man lives in a mansion? And do not tell me he (or Matsumoto or Iba) would pass up living in a mansion if they had the option, even if the commute were an absolute nightmare. Maybe he can’t afford the cost of utilities and furnishings. I don’t know. Please, someone write me a sitcom of Hisagi and Kira living in giant mansions next door to each other, but it’s just like the Bluths living in the sample house in Arrested Development. [Aside: Renji would take the mansion, but he would turn it into an indoor soccer field and continue to sleep in the barracks search your heart you know it’s true]

Back on topic! The unseated officer salary of 200k yen/mo works out to an E-3, which is what an enlisted service member makes after a year. Everyone in the Gotei is considered an officer, and unseating people are awful, so, once again, this seems fine. Well, it seems shitty, tbh, but consistently shitty.

To really answer the question of “is this shitty?” though, we need to consider buying power. Earlier, I mentioned that Gotei service includes free room and board, and that alone is equivalent to a lifetime of wealth for someone from the lower Rukon. I mentioned earlier that I once tried to calculate the exchange rate between kan and yen using a variety of prices for various items. I wish I had kept better notes, because my main takeaway was that prices for things were not very consistent. A copy of the Seireitei Bulletin is 380 kan. Using a straight kan to yen to dollar conversion, that’s $2.80 (I am using 100 yen = $1 because it’s close enough, in case anyone was wondering). Sexy photo books of the captains cost ~$25. The budget of the Shinigami Women’s Association is $2500/year, and the Men’s is $900/year, which is roughly the cost of one pair of sunglasses. I think it must have been the sunglasses that threw me, because I kept trying to peg the cost of a pair of sunglasses to a half year’s salary. The club budgets are just honestly confusing because I have no idea what a calligraphy club budget should look like. It seemed... fine... that a club budget should be equivalent to half a year’s salary? To be honest, I think a kan should be roughly equal to a yen and the sunglasses are just priced too low. (Not a statement I ever thought I would be making).

The comment about clothes being cheaper in the World of the Living makes a lot of sense! Cloth in Soul Society is probably hand-dyed, rather than mass printed, and sewed by hand, rather than by machine. On the other hand, if you wanted goods made in traditional ways, it would be a lot cheaper to get in Soul Society. A chusen-dyed kimono is a luxury good in 2021, because you have to option to order a cheap t-shirt and sweatpants from Amazon. Everyone wears hand-made kimono in Soul Society because that’s what there is, so the price is going to be relatively lower. I do think that cost-of-living jumps sharply inside the walls of the Seireitei, and that it’s very common to do your shopping in the upper districts of Rukongai, where there are lot of highly skilled artisans making goods for the city-dwelling market. I figure that one of the few opportunities for upward mobility, aside from selling your soul to the military is to make enough money to buy your way inside the gates (either through overpriced business licenses, getting a noble patron, or by arranging a marriage to someone who already lives inside)

That being said, I have thought a lot about importing items from the WotL--shinigami usually travel through senkaimon, which do not allow for matter conversion, so they wouldn’t normally be able to bring anything with them. I imagine that it’s sort of a perk of the job that when you go on a mission where you have to go through a matter converter (which would include any time you are bringing a gigai over) you could smuggle back whatever you can fit in your kosode. It’s very strange which technology is adapted from the World of the Living (washing machines, treadmills, urinals) and what isn’t (coffee). In fanfic, it’s common to see shinigami wearing Living World clothing in their off-hours, but I don’t think that’s supported by canon or filler in any way. For my own fanfiction, because it’s fun and world-buildy, I like to pretend that Ichigo is a very popular figure after the Winter War and that World of the Living fashion, music, etc becomes popular, starting during the two-year timeskip, particularly among the younger denizens of the Seireitei, and that there are special bars and such that specialize in that kind of thing. Shinigami who have done extensive stints in the Living World are considered cool for their knowledge of such esoteric subjects as “rice cookers.”

I am done now! I swear! Thank you, everyone for reading all the way down to the bottom of possibly the nerdiest and most boring post I have ever made on this website! (wait, no, I just remembered the one on senkaimon transfer protocols. Second most boring.)

[oliviacookewrites]

A secret santa gift for Yuri! @tesscthompson

In which Phoebe and Hesperis need to get out of their home town.  Their playlist can be found here

(there is a death tw through car accident in the fic and suicide tw in the first song)

It wasn’t even a week after high school graduation when Phoebe called up Hesperis, her home was a total drag and she couldn’t be around her parents anymore.  Phoebe had the brilliant idea that they go on a road trip across the country.  No real destination.  No real time frame.  Just the two of them for an unknown amount of time before Hesperis was going off to college.  Luckily for Phoebe, Hesperis was immediately on board and they made plans to leave the next day.

Phoebe arrived at Hesperis’s place with her beat up car that she had built herself.  Sure it wasn’t much to look at but it was her baby.  It was already stocked with luggage, maps, and countless food they could survive on the trip.  Hesperis was already out of the house ready to go as she ran over and gave Phoebe a kiss on both cheeks before loading her supplies into the car.

“Okay I made a playlist but you’ll just have to trust me on this.”  Phoebe started as soon as they sat down and pulled out of the driveway.  “But you have full veto powers, as always.”  It was something that usually went unsaid, the two girls had vastly different tastes in music, so usually there were a lot of skips involved until they could finally decide on a middle ground.  The music started out blaring, heavy drum beats filling the shoddy stereo system at full volume.  The two had barely gotten to the chorus when Hesperis skipped it.  “Really Phoebe, it is way too much at this hour.  Nothing that heavy.” (see Note 1)  Phoebe didn’t protest, she thought it was a fair assessment.  The second song (see Note 2) started out much softer and seemed to be appropriate.  Looking over at Hesperis, Phoebe was quite proud to see her bobbing along with the song.  Phoebe knew what was coming though so towards the last verse she was staring straight ahead as the music got more heavy.  She didn’t have to look to her right to see Hesperis looking at her in mild disappointment.  “You tricked me.”  She said in a slight betrayal.

“I never stated that it would be like that the whole way through.  Anyway you have to admit that is a pretty good road trip song!”  Phoebe pointed out, a bit too smugly.

“I simply do not.  Your music is vetoed, we’re putting my playlist in.”  Hesperis was already unplugging Phoebe’s phone and replacing it with her own.  The music started up with the upbeat music but as soon as the voice came out Phoebe objected. (Note 3)

“That’s a veto for me.”  Phoebe said sadly.

“What?  It’s Taylor Swift!”  Hesperis said in horror.

“I know but that’s not the vibe for today!  We have to respect the vibes.”

Hesperis just sighed and continued on with her music.  If Phoebe was honest, Hesperis’s taste wasn’t bad at all.  Wasn’t her first choice but it was enough that they could both sing and jam together.  (Note 4)

Roads started to blend together and hours passed as the girls were just enjoying the open road.  Phoebe always felt the most comfortable around Hesperis, it was like she just knew her better than anyone else.  Especially lately.  

As if on cue, Hesperis turned down the music slightly so she could be heard.  “Now I’m loving an impromptu road trip, don’t get me wrong.  But do you want to talk about why we needed one, Pheebs?”  It was clear in her voice that she was just waiting for a time to ask.  And Phoebe couldn’t blame her, if the situations were reversed she’d want to check in too.

“I just couldn’t be around them anymore.  They’re always sad, not that they don’t have a right to be, but I just couldn’t be in the house.  Especially on the anniversary.”

It went without saying.  It was about to be a year from when Phoebe had lost her twin brother in a car accident.  Sure Phoebe wasn’t the one driving, but she felt that she should have been.  Should have been the one to say that Phaedrus should slow down and not take the turns too fast just for fun.  But when the twins were together they tended to mix like fire and gasoline, always encouraging the bad behavior of the other.  Their parents blamed Phoebe and honestly Phoebe blamed herself too.  The only person who didn’t seem to blame Phoebe was Hesperis.  They were close beforehand, which stunned almost everyone in town -- they weren’t exactly slated to be in the same friend group.  But after the accident they had gotten even closer.

Hesperis didn’t say much after that, she just reached out to hold Phoebe’s hand.  Hesperis knew that Phoebe wasn’t much to talk about her emotions, but the one act meant the world to Phoebe.  “I’ve been thinking.”  Hesperis started.  “We could get an apartment together once school starts.  I know you don’t have plans for college, so why don’t we just get a place and live together?  I’m sure it’ll be cheaper than room and board anyways.”

Phoebe almost started crying on the spot.  That was another reason she wanted to go on an indefinite road trip.  The idea of being without Hesperis was too much and she wanted to make memories last forever.  “I’d really like that.  There’s a mechanic’s place nearby that’s actually hiring.  I hate to say I already looked it up but didn’t know how to bring it up to you.”  She said sheepishly.  And without another word from the two of them, the matter was settled just like that.

Another hour or so passes before they have to turn into a gas station to refuel.  It was in the middle of nowhere but the girls were desperate.  They got out and were greeted by a young attendant with a scar on his face.  “Well greetings and salutations, we don’t get much new visitors here.”  He said as kindly as he could.  

“And where exactly is here?”  Hesperis said.  When it came to outsiders, Hesperis was usually the one to speak up first.  Phoebe didn’t mind it, she knew she wasn’t exactly the most charming to new people.  She tended to be blunt and say things in ways she didn’t mean.  

“The fine city of Meletis!  Well the outskirts of it.  If you go about five miles down the road here you’ll hit the center of town.  Lots of fine shops if you’re interested.”

The girls hummed in a non-committed answer.  Phoebe filled up the old beat up car while Hesperis went inside to look around.  After she was done, Phoebe joined her.  They both were playing around at the sunglass turnstyle, debating on if shutter shades were Phoebe’s style, and got some slushies to go.  Phoebe even picked up a glizzy much to Hesperis’s concern that she would get sick.  “I’ve got it this round.”  Phoebe offered, knowing full well she was going to try to pay for every round after that as well.  Hesperis went out as Phoebe patiently waited by the cash register for the attendant to come back and ring her out.

It wasn’t long before Hesperis was back in the store.  “Pheebs?  Where’s the car?”  In a more panicked tone than she normally takes.

Phoebe immediately turned around in alert and ran out of the store with her slushie in tow.  She saw for herself that her own crappy car was nowhere in sight.  “Why would anyone take my car?  It barely runs!”  Phoebe said in major distress.  Now they were abandoned in the middle of nowhere with just a couple of slushies and a glizzy to their name.

“Dammit!”  Phoebe shouted in anger as she slammed down her slushie.

Now one slushie to their name.

“Wow like, you dropped your slushie.  That’s a bummer.”  An unfamiliar voice called out as they noticed they weren’t the only ones in the parking lot anymore.  An open top jeep holding three passengers was idle as they all stared at each other.

Note 1: this track is the first track of the playlist (please be warned there is suicide tw in the song)

Note 2: naturally this is the second track of the playlist

Note 3: third track in the playlist

Note 4: they continue on with the playlist with no objection from either of them

Note 5: the last song is sung partly by Tessa Thompson 👀👀👀👀

[darkwood-sleddog]

Kinda weird to ask, but is VT a good state to live in? My understanding of it is that it's very pretty, a good place for mushing, and that buying a house is big $$$ but renting is apparently pretty cheap? I live in GA right now but have always wanted to live in New England, and VT seems to be held in pretty high regard by a lot of New Englanders. Sorry if this is inappropriate to ask!

It’s not inappropriate to ask. It is a beautiful state with a small mostly rural population. I’d say we are known mostly for our small towns and fall foliage. We have laws against building billboards and buildings over certain heights so our natural beauty is preserved. I can’t even begin to tell you what an assault it is to the eyes to drive over the border to New Hampshire and just see a mass of billboards.

Living here is expensive. There is really no other way to parce it. Unless you want to be far away from modern amenities and resources. Owning a house is expensive in the county I am in which is the most populous. But if you can find a house (tight market) at a decent price your mortgage costs monthly will likely be lower than the average cost to rent a two bedroom in the city if Burlington (our largest city, poplulation around 42,000). Houses under 300,000 are often fixer uppers but there is such a small market of houses in that price range they get snapped up VERY quickly, sometimes before they are listed.

The issue with buying further out to get cheaper living that we have truly terrible internet here. And there are many pockets in the state (my entire town for example) where you will not have phone service without WiFi). This really limits what businesses can be where and if people can work from their homes etc. some small, more affordable towns may also lack jobs or even basic grocery stores so you will often find yourself driving at least 30-45 minutes for some essential items (my town doesn’t have any stores and we are building a country store right now which is super exciting).

There is a shortage of jobs here. Most jobs are service or tourism jobs (tourism is a large part of our economy). If you work in tech that is also popular.

If you are looking for a typical city experience you won’t find it here. Even in Burlington there is a huge focus on outdoor activities and buying local is a big part of the state culture. We don’t have a lot of stores other places may have, but we have a shitload of weird country stores selling local produce/meats. If you want to do more city related activities you can go to Montreal, Boston, NYC which are all a reasonable distance. If you want to hike, ski, kayak, fish, bike, hunt, dog sled etc. VT is for you. The Long Trail passes through the state and everybody that is physically capable will likely hike our tallest peak Mt. Mansfield at least once in their lives (the main trail is a fairly easy climb).

The state is majority white, majority democrat, but our diversity is increasing. We have a history of activism and we’re the first state to allow Gay marriage. Especially in Chittenden County you will find it is very LGBT friendly. When people make jokes about lesbian farmers it applies heavily here. My small rural town is full of Black Lives Matter posters and we fly a pride flag at our school. There are pockets of intolerance though (the Northeast Kingdom and parts bordering Canada for some reason). The SNL skit with Adam Driver about white supremecists looking for a white utopia and wanting to drive Subaru’s was scarily accurate. There are def pockets of racism here despite our history of democratic socialism and tolerance.

We have the most beer breweries per capita of any state last time I checked and have some of the best beer in the US. We have a lot of small/midsized breweries and are known for our IPAs. VT maple syrup is a coveted item here. We want none of your fake syrup here. None. Of. It. Ben ‘n Jerry’s was founded here and we also do a soft serve ice cream called a “Creamee” which is made with real milk which you can get in maple syrup flavor (or swirled maple and black raspberry!) We used to have a ton of dairies here but the larger ones have all retired, mostly smaller producers now, but it is a huge part of our history. We have lots of weird art along the highways and roads, just overall we’re pretty quirky. We also have a bunch of nudist colonies lmao.

[we-re-always-alright]

seven years in a row!!!!!!!!

[meganshinsou-tm]

Shared Walls. (m)

↳ chapter five: knock, knock

❧ genre: pro-hero shouto, coworkers to lovers, happy ending

❧ chapter warnings: drugging, minor panic attack, blood

[multi-chap masterlist] [previous chapter - next chapter]

"So I guess it makes sense why we never ran into each other." 

Todoroki looked at you as you looked out the window of the train, humming at your question when you turned back to stare at him and smile, making his heart warm. 

"You know since you have to be at work much earlier and later than me, then with you taking Enji's place lately didn't give you much free time huh?"

Shouto nodded agreeing with you.

"Man, well I gotta say, I'm really relived that it's you living on the other side of me. I feel a lot safer."

Shouto quirked a red brow at you, this wasn't the first time you mentioned safety and it made him wonder what had you so ... scared.

"You know, you never told me why you moved here in the first place."

In the reflection of the window the man could see you biting your lip and looking down in the corner at nothing in particular.

"Well, to be honest Shouto it's a long and - complicated story, one that I don't really want to lie to you about but also one that I'm not exactly ready to tell you yet."

Todoroki sat there silently examining your body language. You had yet to look at him again and your fingers nervously fidgeted with the hem of your sweater while the other rubbed the back of your bare neck. Whatever your reasoning for possibly fleeing from the States, it had to be something serious and it made him worry. He didn't want to force you into telling him anything you weren't comfortable with yet though, he'd wait if he had to and show you that you could trust him. 

Taking a chance, Shouto reached for your hand, it was the first time he had touched it since that dreadful handshake when you first met. Focusing hard on not letting his quirk get the best of him and possibly burn your skin, he enclosed your soft hand in his and squeezed lightly.

You looked from the window finally and to his hand holding yours, a tint of pink brushing your cheeks. You looked at him with those (e/c) hues that followed him home from work every day this past week, making him feel a little better at his choice of action.

"Tell me when you're ready then. I can wait, in the mean time if you ever need anything no matter what time it is or what it is, just knock on the wall twice and I'll be right over okay?"

"Thank you Shouto."

The rest of the train ride you and Shouto talked about everything under the moon that didn't involve delving too deep into your past. You found out he loves cold soba and that he prefers the cooler seasons over the warmer ones. He told you all about his years at UA, it sounded so amazing yet terrifying to you. He was only a teenager and went through so much shit and yet he was still here, not once running away from his problems.

"You really are amazing Shouto, all your experiences make my own seem so insignificant."

Your hand was squeezed again and a not so amused look crossed your friends handsome features.

"That's not true (Y/N), don't say that."

"I'm sorry Shouto. It's just, you see I don't exactly think so highly of myself, like I've said before I'm nothing special."

Todoroki looked like he was having an internal struggle going on, not sure what kind of face to make or what to say until he finally let out a deep breath. 

"You know I really wish you wouldn't talk down about yourself so often. You may not think you're special but that's not how others see you (Y/N), especially me."

You grunted, the two-toned man was extremely serious and straight forward with his confession, making you get flustered as your hand and entire body broke into a sudden heat.

Air. Space - you needed just a little bit of space!

You chuckled and gave a sheepish smile towards Todoroki before shooting to your feet, looking for an escape to the bathroom to make sure you weren't sweating through your clothes.

"Excuse me Shouto, I need to go to the bathroom real fast before we stop."

He nodded and let go of your hand, letting you pass but at the same time the train come to a sudden harsh stop making you tumble and fall backwards into Shouto's lap. He grunted under the force of your body not so gracefully colliding into his, making him hunch over. His mouth nearly brushing your bare neck and shoulder and his hands gripping your hips. The sound that escaped from his mouth made you dizzy,

"Shouto~" you let out breathlessly.

He seemed to pull your hips closer to his as his name left your lips the way it did and you felt a sudden cold and heat flare up on your hips making your eyes widen and say his name again but with more urgency.

"Shit," he hissed out and let go of your hips. You both looked to see the left side of your sweater black and seared and the right side covered in frost.

You burst out laughing, wrapping your arm around yourself and covering your loud obnoxious noises. Shouto looked at you confused. One, you didn't bother moving from his lap, not that he was complaining and two because you were laughing at what could've been a major accident.

"You’re very strange!"

"RokiRoki, you didn't need to buy me another top, really!"

You complained as Todoroki handed the store clerk his card. The second the two of you got off the train he dragged you into the closest store to replace the sweater he almost burned to ash, you settled for whatever was cheaper considering he happened to pull you into a high end store. You picked out another slouchy sweater but it unfortunately hid your shoulders, ruining your plan to look somewhat attractive to your crush. As the two of you walked out of the store you quickly grabbed his hand and held it tightly making his eyes widen and stop and look at you.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, its just I don't know this place and it looks really busy ... I don't want to lose you."

Shouto smirked and nodded, continuing to lead you into the busy and noisy city.

"The place isn't much further."

Nodding, you walked along and marveled at the city, looking in every direction. As you looked over to the other side of the street past Shouto you could see someone walking along while staring at you. It looked like a male but they had a black surgical mask on not giving away their identity. Squeezing Shouto's hand you walked closer to him and clung to his arm. The hero didn't mind and even lifted his arm, letting you hide under the shelter of him as you both walked. You don't know when but somewhere along the way you lost sight of the stranger.

"Here we are, you like ramen right?"

Sitting inside of the ramen shop put you at ease, it was nestled in a alley far away from the city and noise, you both ordered your food and waited at your table with your warm teas in hand.

"It's your turn," Shouto stated out of the blue, causing you to look at him from searching the establishment.

"My turn?"

"To hold up your end of the deal, we're here on a lunch date, now you tell me what happened with my father."

Remembering the text exchange from the night before you chuckled and leaned forward on the table, crossing your arms, making the little bit of cleavage that showed push further out and made Todoroki chuckle as he drank his tea.

"So, get ready, I'm about to tell you all about how I met my future father-in-law!"

The man before you choked on his drink and coughed as he covered his mouth and wiped it clean. You laughed back and handed him a napkin, "Just jokes folks, just jokes!"

After his episode you told him about the scene that unfolded the day before with his Hulk of a father, how he walked in at the worst possible time but helped you out and even chuckled at your dumb word vomit and how he told you to call him by his first name. In perfect timing your food came out when you wrapped up the story.

Todoroki smiled, "And you think you aren't special? No one else in our office is allowed to call my father by his first name, not even heroes that have been there for years."

"Oh yeah? Well maybe you had already put in a good word for me, he mentioned hearing a lot about me. I wonder from who," you tilted your head, slowly sucking up a noodle and staring Shouto straight in the eyes.

Shouto only shrugged and smiled as he started to eat his own food. Relaxing at his good mood, you sighed and ate as well. You seemed to put on a good front so far, Todoroki not realizing how on edge you were currently, you've gotten good at it from being with your ex.

Your eyes scoped out the place here and there, watching to see if anyone was staring at you in particular. People seemed to be minding their own business chatting among themselves, some looking around the same as you did. You saw a group of girls looking your way as well, gushing over Shouto obviously. It made you chuckle, you forget most of the time that he's a very popular hero, to you he's just Shouto.

Once you finished your food you decided to go to the bathroom, "Excuse me Shouto, I need to go wash up real quick. If the check comes here's my part of it!"

You went to shove money his way and he swatted it away with a stern look, anyone else you'd protest but the man had a way with putting you in your place with just a look or phrase. Giving up you ruffled his hair and walked off.

Once Todoroki had paid for your meal he waited, and waited.

It had been nearly five minutes and still you weren't back, causing the hero to get worried. He noticed how you looked around the room constantly as you ate, as if someone was watching you, seeming on edge and trying to hide it from him which you weren't very good at no matter what you thought.

"Hey what are you doing to her? Help!"

A yell caught his attention and immediately Todoroki jumped from his seat and ran outside where the bathrooms were located to see an elderly man walking towards a woman sitting on the ground caving in on herself and bleeding from her arm. Shouto felt his heart stop as he realized who it was, it was you.

Crimson liquid cascaded from your forearm and around the fingers of your hand that tried to grip it, your chest heaved as you panicked and whined out. The elderly man crouched down and gently grabbed you by the shoulder and cupped your face, trying to calm you down. Todoroki grit his teeth, he should've been doing that, it was his job, he does it all the time but he was frozen in place, he couldn't move, couldn't get to you.

"Stay with me sweetheart, breathe! I'm gonna call for – hey you! Help!"

The man called out as he saw Shouto standing at the end of the alley, he continued to call out but his voice was muted as Shouto only focused on your cries. Your head fell back against the brick wall and your face lulled to the side and looked at him. Your (e/c) orbs dull and lazy, pleading and full of fear.

Todoroki's feet finally moved as he sprinted towards you, pushing the old man out of the way. His arms scooped you from the wall and into his chest, your head falling back as you were going in and out of consciousness, falling limp in his hold.

"I think he tried to drug her, to make her go with him but she fought. He cut her while I was running for him but I couldn’t hold him."

Shouto's heart was pounding and he pressed his ear to your chest, trying to listen to your heartbeat and breathing. It was slowing but it wasn't stopping. You struggled to keep yourself up and your eyes open.

"(Y/N), I'm here, just hold on and don't lose my voice, okay? Please say something to let me know you understand!"

He stood from his crouched position, cradling you in his arms bridal style and shaking you lightly, repeating his words back to you. 

"Dammit (Y/N), you gotta answer me, please!"

Your tired head rested on his chest and your fingers loosely gripped his shirt as you looked up into his eyes and tried to smile and put on that dumb front that you were fine.

"Sh-Shouto ..." you breathed out as you made a fist and lightly knocked on his chest twice.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

THE COURAGE OF PROJECT

Then when you start a startup anywhere. That's why mice and rabbits are furry and elephants and hippos aren't.1 The very design of the average site in the late twentieth century. He got a 4x liquidation preference. Google, it's hard to get into grad school in math. Can we claim founders are better off as a result of this new trend. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But investing later should also mean they have fewer losers.

They make something moderately appealing and have decent initial growth.2 If you major in math it will be whatever the startup can get from the first one to write a paper for school, his mother would tell him: find a way to turn a billion dollar industry into a fifty million dollar industry, so much the better, if all fifty million go to you. The classic yuppie worked for a small organization. Before us, most companies in the startup funding business. The best way to get a big idea can take roost.3 4 or 5 million. This essay grew out of something I wrote for myself to figure out how to increase their load factors. But you can also apply some force by focusing the discussion: by asking what specific questions they need answered to make up their minds. This plan collapsed under its own weight.4 Startups happened because technology started to change so fast that big companies could no longer keep a lid on the smaller ones.

The only place your judgement makes a difference is in the industry.5 People who do great work, and it's a bad sign when you have a special word for that. One of the exhilarating things about coming back to Cambridge every spring is walking through the streets at dusk, when you can see into the houses. If you have steep revenue growth, say over 6x a year, no matter how many good startups approach him. Recently we managed to recruit her to help us run YC when she's not busy with architectural projects.6 This works better when a startup has 3 founders than 2, and better when the leader of the company in later rounds. I'm not saying you can get away with zero self-discipline.

We're not a replacement for don't give up. What you should not do is rebel. But while series A rounds from VCs. Someone who's scrappy manages to be both threatening and undignified at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious.7 Even Tim O'Reilly was wearing a suit, a sight so alien I couldn't parse it at first. They can't tell how smart you are.8 The story about Web 2. Maybe one day the most important thing is to be learned from whatever book on it happens to be closest. This essay is derived from a keynote at FOWA in October 2007. They'll decide later if they want to raise.9

Sometimes it reached the point of economic sadism: site owners assumed that the more pain they caused the user, the more benefit it must be to them. It's cities that compete, not countries.10 Kids are curious, but the best founders are certainly capable of it. But investors are so fickle that you can fix for a lot of time on work that interests you, and don't just refuse to. But you have to be an insider.11 A key ingredient in many projects, almost a project on its own, is to step onto an orthogonal vector. So ironically the original description of the Web 2. Back when it cost a lot to like I've done a few things, like intro it to my friends at Foundry who were investors in Service Metrics and understand this model I am also talking to my friend Mark Pincus who had an idea like this a few years ago.12 0 seemed to mean was something about democracy. We didn't have enough saved to live on. There is another reason founders don't ask themselves whether they're default alive or default dead.13

So most investors prefer, if they wanted, raise series A rounds. They're unable to raise more money, and precisely when you'll have to switch to plan B if plan A isn't working. That doesn't mean the investor says yes to everyone. Miss out on what? It's so cheap to start web startups that orders of magnitudes more will be started. Investors evaluate startups the way customers evaluate products, not the way bosses evaluate employees. The bust was as much an overreaction as the boom.14 Startups are undergoing the same transformation that technology does when it becomes cheaper.15 Another way to fly low is to give them something for free that competitors charge for. After all, a Web 2.16 He bought a suit.

Instead you'll be compelled to seek growth in other ways. They all knew their work like a piano player knows the keys. But consulting is far from free money. They say they're going to get eliminated. What does it mean, exactly? If investors were perfect judges, the two would require exactly the same skills. And to be both good and novel, an idea probably has to seem bad to most people, or someone writes a particularly interesting article, it will show up there. The mere existence of prep schools is proof of that.17 So far the complete list of messages I've picked up from cities is: wealth, style, hipness, physical attractiveness wouldn't have been a total immersion. Don't just do what they tell you to do. But advancing technology has made web startups so cheap that you really can get a portrait of the normal distribution of most applicant pools, it matters least to judge accurately in precisely the cases where judgement has the most effect—you won't take rejection so personally. If raising money is hard.

There is no sharp line between the two types of startup ideas: those that grow organically out of your own life, and those that you decide, from afar, are going to get rarer. While some VCs have technical backgrounds, I don't know enough to say, but it happens surprisingly rarely.18 Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can never safely treat fundraising as more than a startup that seems like it's going to stop.19 It sounds obvious to say that you should worry? One reason startups prefer series A rounds? When I was in high school either. If you feel you've been misjudged, you can do. Google. Of course, someone has to take money from people who are young but smart and driven can make more by starting their own companies after college instead of getting jobs, that will change what happens in college.

Notes

Though they are themselves typical users. But it takes to get good grades in them to private schools that in three months, a valuation. Giving away the razor and making more per customer makes it easier to get them to stay in a time machine.

Apple's early history are from an angel investment from a mediocre VC.

In the beginning.

Plus ca change. But on the other.

And that is exactly the point of a stock is its future earnings, you now get to go behind the scenes role in IPOs, which allowed banks and savings and loans to buy it despite having no evidence it's for sale.

However, it will seem dumb in 100 years. Digg is Slashdot with voting instead of blacklist.

Sofbot.

I write out loud can expose awkward parts.

I've become a so-called signalling risk.

Hint: the way they have because they couldn't afford a monitor.

And it's particularly damaging when these investors flake, because there was a new search engine is low. They have no connections, you'll find that with a wink, to take care of one's markets is ultimately just another way in which income is doled out by Mitch Kapor, is to raise money after Demo Day, there would be easy to discount, but I'm not against editing. As one very successful YC founder told me they like the one hand and the exercise of stock options than any preceding president, he tried to shift back. At three months we can't believe anyone would think twice before crossing him.

Progressive tax rates has a significant startup hub. He, like speculators, that alone could in principle 100,000 sestertii apiece for slaves learned in the early adopters you evolve the idea is crack. As we walked in, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniation as juicy except literally.

It's sometimes argued that we didn't, they thought at least accepted additions to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years, it was cooked up by the National Center for Education Statistics, about 28%. I've come to accept that investors don't like the bizarre consequences of this essay talks about programmers, but I know of no Jews moving there, and should in some ways First Round excluded their most successful startups are competitive like running, not the original text would in itself deserving. This is not whether it's good enough at obscuring tokens for this type are also several you can't even claim, like play in a city with few other startups, because time seems to pass. Please do not try to avoid that.

This kind of people starting normal companies too. If Ron Conway had been raised religious and then using growth rate to manufacture a perfect growth curve, etc, and then a block or so.

But it is to trick admissions officers. I meant. The mere possibility of being harsh to founders. As he is at fault, since 95% of the class of 2007 came from such schools.

I started doing research for this purpose are still, as they are now. There was no more unlikely than it would be easier to say that it is dishonest of the next round, that suits took over during a critical point in the usual standards for truth. Wittgenstein: The French Laundry in Napa Valley.

It wouldn't cut their overall returns tenfold, because they wanted, so the best ideas, they mean statistical distribution. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

A doctor friend warns that even this can give an inaccurate picture. At some point, when the problems you have no idea what's happening till they also influence one another directly through the window for years while they think they're just mentioning the possibility is that in Silicon Valley. I find hardest to get rich by creating wealth—wealth that, isn't it? Look at those goddamn fleas, they have less money, the big winners aren't all that matters, just as if you'd invested at a famous university who is highly regarded by his peers.

Compromising a server could cause such damage that ASPs that want to pound that message home. He, like arithmetic drills, instead of blacklist.

Thanks to Tim O'Reilly, Peter Norvig, and the guys at O'Reilly for inviting me to speak.

[angiewang19]

contemplating about careers

At the start of spring semester, I decided to not do 3-2, and I switched to a new academic advisor, my first semester math professor. During my first meeting with Prof. Aksoy, she asked, “What do you want to do after you graduate?” 

I was stunned that she dared to ask this weighty question to a college freshman. I came from a high school that espoused “Do what you love in the moment!” and “You don’t need to plan for or think about the future; everything will fall in place when it needs to!” Most of my classmates had no idea what they wanted to do in college (let alone life), and most seniors went to college as undecided majors. 

However, when I’d get home from high school every day, my parents relentlessly pushed me to make decisions as soon as I was ready. Planning for the future would give me luxuries -- more time, more opportunities, and therefore, possibly more money, happiness, and clout. While I was quick to fall back on, “almost all of my classmates have no idea what they want to do!” they knew, as first-generation immigrants, that being undecided was a privilege. To put off any form of planning is an acknowledgement that you can afford to buy time, opportunities, happiness, and clout. It is an acknowledgement that you have options that you can tap into whenever it’s convenient for you. 

All of this went through my head as I tried to provide a coherent answer to Prof. Aksoy: “I’m thinking about going into consulting or finance. I think it might be nice to work in the industry for a few years to understand the purpose of my education, and then I’ll go to grad school. But... I don’t really know.” 

My last sentence was my only genuine thought in this jumble of words -- I really had no idea. 

She gave me a slightly disappointed look: “You need to do some soul searching. Look at your parents -- are they happy? Would you be happy doing what they do every day? You need to do something that makes you feel fulfilled.” 

Before our conversation, fulfilled was a word I never gave a second thought to. Through our conversation, I realized I wanted to go into those fields because it seemed like everyone at CMC was/is fighting to get these opportunities. I think about the Goldman Sachs information session, where they didn’t talk about what exactly they did (maybe their day-to-day is actually mundane or they just assume that everyone already knows?), but they spent a great deal of effort talking about what it’s like to live in New York City as a first-year analyst and the fact that “everyone at Goldman is just so smart.” The fact that jobs and internships in these fields are so highly sought after at CMC made these roles seem glamorous in my eyes. More importantly, I saw them as prestigious destinations, and chasing prestige is addicting. 

I found a question about consulting/finance on Quora: 

Q: Why do so many students in the Ivy League and other elite universities go into investment banking and management consulting? 

A (from a student at Wharton): A slightly majority of my classmates (and myself included) go into finance and consulting. This speaks to how we’re all insecure and value the safety of a high paying and prestigious job.

Most people (especially “students in the Ivy League and other elite universities”) aren’t idiots, so I’m sure there are decent reasons to go into either of these fields. But I realized that wanting to go into consulting/finance because “everyone else is doing it” or “it pays well” are not good enough reasons for me. Over the past few months, I realized that consulting is not a great fit for me (thank you CCG), but I still haven’t closed the door on finance. However, I don’t feel strongly about a possible career in finance (in a positive or negative light), since I haven’t done my homework on what exactly the people do. In my opinion, understanding the responsibilities of the day-to-day and the consequences of my actions at work are the first steps to figuring out whether this career will feel good in the long run. 

“Feeling good in the long run” is a nebulous phrase. In the process of trying to find more concrete understanding, I thought about the distinction between fulfillment and meaningfulness, words that are often used synonymously. I believe there’s a difference -- fulfillment is when an individual feels personally satisfied, while doing something meaningful has consequences beyond the individual doing the action (think: meaningful = full of meaning). 

They’re connected, as often doing something meaningful gives you a sense of fulfillment -- volunteering for a cause you believe in, Bryan Stevenson’s work at Equal Justice Initiative, Jon Favreau writing speeches for Obama. As Favreau mentions in his commencement address, the day-to-day grind of a fulfilling job might not be pretty, but the work can still make you feel empowered and inspired. 

To make my point about the distinction between the two words, I believe there are jobs that are meaningful but not necessarily fulfilling -- maybe serving our country via the military. According to Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Obama remarked that the audiences he spoke to at military bases were always diverse coalitions, but as you climb higher up the chain of command, it became all white men. So while serving your country is meaningful work, I can imagine feeling cynical and disheartened if you were trying to work your way up, and you were anyone but a white male. Finally, there are jobs which I believe are fulfilling but not necessarily meaningful. Unfortunately, the first ones that come to mind are consulting and investment banking, which aren’t typically considered the most “moral” professions. For many people in the field, it’s immensely satisfying to close a deal or engage in the daily grind of solving client’s problems and being well-compensated for those efforts. But I’d argue that managing rich people’s money or consulting for Coca-Cola is self-serving and actually perpetuates inequality -- you help the rich get richer in the former and in the latter, you’re complicit in a Rust Belt child’s set of teeth completely rotting before they reach adulthood because soda is cheaper than water or other healthier alternatives. 

This is my perspective based on a limited (sheltered + privileged) worldview. It’s important to look at any opportunity from the question of fulfillment and meaningfulness, but why you make choices, especially professional choices, is more nuanced than that. Favreau says he’s been better off looking for opportunities which enable him to do something, not to be something. As immigrants, my parents tucked away many of their genuine interests in order to make a living in the very expensive Bay Area. For them, the search for meaningfulness and/or fulfillment was put on the back burner, which serves as a reminder that evaluating for meaningfulness/fulfillment/happiness is a luxury. Michelle Obama’s parents told her to make money first, and then do what makes her happy. Worded differently, money buys you any kind of freedom you’d like (hence economists say that the best gift is always cash), which buys you a sense of fulfillment or meaningfulness or whatever combination of the two you’d like. 

As a starry-eyed, ambitious, and naive college student like me, I’ve kept Andrew Lee's advice in mind: “Money isn't the most important thing, but money goes where value is being created - for me, this was a really hard pill to swallow coming out of college, but you'll notice people at the top of their field tend to be able to move to other fields and have come from other fields. Why? Well, it turns out a lot of them started in places where they were surrounded by the best resources - sometimes that is money, sometimes that is people, sometimes, that is technology (or some other resource that helps you shape reality). Early in your career, people tell you to pursue your passion, but it's really the intersection of passion, economic engine, and what the market will bear. As a result, people who go to money first, find it then easier to go out of it than the other way around. It's not that you won't learn anything elsewhere, but you learn with more resources, and it turns out most people go to where resources are.”

So... I feel like this post has taken a windy path, where I ramble a ton. Scrolling up, I notice that I start with my conversation with my academic advisor, and I go to the differences between meaningfulness and fulfillment. Ultimately, I make a pit stop to the role that money plays in all of our choices (the elephant in the room, in my humble opinion). Our individual core values shape our choices and outcomes, and we can condition ourselves to feel certain ways, for better or for worse. As of right now, I think working in academia or education checks my boxes, but others won’t agree (and ha! I don’t know if I have what it takes to go into academia). Andrew Lee argues that “right now the private sector is pretty damn good at being able to achieve some powerful social ends,” and as a venture capitalist, he can fund underrepresented founders and amplify their voices in society. You have people who are marketing sustainable products (hi Lauren), and you have people like my parents who work tirelessly every day so that we can have a better life in America. There’s not one way to get there -- wherever you believe "there” is. 

[lady-divine-writes]

Klaine fic - “Need for Speed: New York - Chapter 1” (Rated NC17)

Summary:

It's been years since high school graduation, and Kurt and Blaine are living the lives of their dreams in New York City alongside their best friends, Nick and Jeff. Car racing behind them, they're working towards the future - Kurt and Jeff at NYADA, Blaine and Nick at NYU. But soon after moving from their tiny apartments to a bigger loft, bits and pieces of Ohio start to weed their way in to their lives - along with some New York grown angst, causing rifts that hopping behind the wheel of a Mustang might not be able to solve.

Read on AO3.

“One grande nonfat mocha …”

“That’s me!” Kurt called, reaching over the heads in front of him and grabbing his coffee.

“… and a tall black, one cream one sugar, with a blueberry muffin.”

“That one’s mine.” Nick wrenched his arm through the crowd to snag his cup from the barista, along with the small brown paper bag that had his muffin nestled inside. "Ugh! I wish we could find a bigger place!" he complained. His remark received glares from a handful of people who had no investment in what he was saying, but felt offended by his tone of voice. He followed Kurt to an empty table in the corner by the window where they could watch the rain pound the pavement, cleaning away the grime from the glass.

“Unfortunately, most of the coffee shops on this side of town are about this size,” Kurt commented, setting his cup down and grabbing an extra chair from a nearby table. “I know it’s crowded, but I think we’re out of luck.”

“I’m not talking about the coffee shop, Kurt!” Nick groaned, putting down his suitcase and landing heavily in his seat. “I’m talking about our apartment! It’s tiny! If we had a bigger place, then Jeff could dance at home. We need more space to move around."

"More room to move?" Kurt opened the lid to his coffee and took a deep breath in, sighing in contentment at the sweet scent of chocolate mixed with the strong jolt of Arabica he needed to fuel his day. "So what you’re saying is you guys ran out of places to have sex, right?"

Nick threw Kurt a pointed look, glancing nervously around to see if anyone took notice.

"No. I mean we're spending all of our spare time at the dance studio at NYADA. It would be nice to live somewhere with enough floor space where Jeff could practice at home so we’re not riding the subway back and forth at one in the morning.”

“An apartment with that much space would cost a small fortune. Trust me. The idea has crossed my mind many, MANY times.”

“Really?” Nick opened the crinkled top to his brown paper bag, shoved his nose inside, and took a sniff that caved the sides in.

“Yeah. Your place is tiny and you have a corner unit. We don’t. Ours is microscopic compared to yours.” Kurt opened a browser on his phone and pulled up the classifieds. Space wasn’t the only issue for Kurt. After last summer’s temperatures hit triple digits and stayed there, Kurt had declared himself done with their apartment. But when several exhaustive searches turned up nothing they could afford, he’d come to the conclusion that finding a new place within their budgets close enough to school to make the commute worthwhile might be a pipe dream.

“I have to admit that it's nice though, hanging out at NYADA after hours. It's quiet, it’s air conditioned in the summer, and George the janitor has been helping me with my homework."

Kurt snapped his head up. "Your law homework?"

"Yeah. He majored in criminal law. At one time, he was one of the foremost attorneys in the country! Six figure salary! But he gave it up to be a janitor.”

Kurt raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Nick shook his head. “I Googled him. He’s legit.”

“But why in the world would he do that? Give up a career and all that money to plunge toilets and mop floors?””

“Because he wasn’t happy. He didn’t want a career in law. His dad wanted him to. He wanted to work in theater, but he said he wasn’t any good. Had two left feet and couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket – his words. Working at NYADA was the compromise. He says it's like going to the Met every day for free, so the decision was easy."

Kurt laughed and went back to the ads. “Only in New York.”

“I guess.” Nick stared out the window, focused on the people running back and forth trying to avoid the rain. There were a handful of commuters in dark coats and rain boots speed walking from bus stop to bus stop to subway terminal. But mixed among them were the tourists meandering slowly on their way to wherever, huge smiles on their faces as if getting caught in a New York rainstorm was exactly what they had hoped for. He spotted one couple coming off a bus hand-in-hand, beaming at one another, obviously in love.

Probably honeymooners, he thought, adverting his eyes when they stopped at the curb and started to kiss.

New York was for lovers. It was written everywhere. It was one of the reasons why he fell in love with the city the moment he got there. He and Jeff were so much in love, it hurt. This was definitely where they were meant to be.

Or so he thought …

“Hey. Hey, Nick.” Kurt’s concerned voice and the touch of his hand pulled Nick’s eyes from the window. “What’s going on with you? You’ve been in such a funk lately.”

“I … I don't know.” Nick looked down into his cooling cup of coffee, avoiding Kurt’s eyes. His fears and doubts were stupid. He knew they were. But if he saw Kurt looking at him with worry, he’d unload everything. And there were things going on in his head he wasn’t prepared to admit to right now.

Though, if reassurance was something he felt he needed (and it was) there was no better source for that than Kurt, if for no other reason than he and Jeff went to school together.

If there was something Nick didn’t know, Kurt would.

“I just think maybe Jeff's getting a little tired of having me hang around all the time, you know? At school?”

Kurt’s worried eyes widened with confusion.

“I mean,” Nick tried to clarify, “that’s kind of his world, and maybe I shouldn’t interfere?”

Kurt’s eyes became wider until they took up a good portion of his face, and Nick backpedaled.

“I don’t know. Forget that. What I mean is, it would be nice to just ... stay in."

"Why in the world do you think Jeff's getting tired of you!?” Kurt barked, attracting the attention from diners at nearby tables that Nick was trying so hard to avoid. “From what we hear through the walls, you guys don't ever get tired!"

Nick’s cheeks turned the color of a brand spanking new fire truck, polish and all. “Kurt!”

"And," Kurt continued, "do you know how embarrassing it is to walk to school every day with Jeff and his incredible hard-on!? Seriously, Nick! It's like every morning!"

“Kurt!!”

“I’m not kidding! At this rate, you’re going to have to buy that thing its own MetroCard!”

"Alright, alright! I get the picture! But, you know, if we’re talking about erections, going to school with your boyfriend isn't much better!" Nick argued, leaning across the table and whisper-scolding through clenched teeth, praying he could stop the current discussion before they gathered an actual crowd. “If you guys aren’t going to stop with the early morning shower bjs, then you may want to consider asking Blaine to change the cut of his jeans … or start wearing slacks. WITH underwear!”

That worked.

"Touche.” Kurt returned to the listings on his phone, scrolling past ads he’d read so many times, he had them memorized. There wasn’t going to be anything new, he told himself. Not since last week. Blaine had offered to up his contribution on his portion of the housing costs so they could widen their search parameters, but Kurt refused. He didn’t want Blaine carrying the financial weight, regardless of how large his trust fund was, or how much profit he made off selling his house. Besides, Kurt had to be realistic. Considering what the job market was like in the arts, it would be nice to have a hefty nest egg to rely on.

Kurt bit his lip at his own line of thinking - talking about their finances as if they were an old married couple.

As if that nest egg was theirs and not just Blaine’s.

Kurt tried not to think of it as theirs, but it got hard when Blaine constantly referred to it like that.

Their savings.

Their money.

Put aside for their life. Their future.

Kurt was a hopeless romantic. Had been all his life. He loved Blaine heart and soul, saw them spending the rest of their lives together. But he wasn’t naïve. Unfortunately, things do happen. He didn’t think they would happen to them. They were such a clear-headed and balanced couple. But they could. So Kurt started a nest egg of his own, and contributed to their savings as much as he could. He still flipped cars from time to time. He’d made quite a name for himself in Ohio, so when he went back to visit, he had a list of people willing to wait months for him to get their ride up on a lift and give it an overhaul. Plus, he had customers who were loyal to him, who drove up to New York just for an hour of his time. On a good weekend, he could come home from a trip to see his dad with a cool ten grand in his pocket.

Not too shabby for a side gig … a legal one.

He’d almost convinced himself to open up a shop in New York, but even with the high demand, the price of rent and the time commitment didn’t outweigh the potential profits.

Besides, he didn’t want to be known as an auto tuner.

He wanted to be a Broadway star.

But he didn’t hang up his coveralls completely. It was good to have something to fall back on. And with high performance race cars always in demand, he could have a steady source of income. Though, for the price of some of these shoebox apartments, it might be cheaper, and more lucrative, to open up a shop and live above it because damn! How the hell did college kids move to New York and survive without humongous trust funds?

He had no idea. Television definitely didn’t prepare him for this.

He was about to exit out of the browser and pull up the Variety! website when he stumbled on an ad tucked at the bitter end that looked interesting. The picture had originally turned him off. He thought it was another bodega for rent. But after a third read, he felt the slow burn of excitement flutter like butterflies all over his entire body.

"Nick, when are you due back at the office?"

"In about …" Nick looked at his own phone clock and sighed the sigh of a man about to surrender himself to a long afternoon of dull research, even duller coffee runs, and chalking it up to experience “… thirty minutes. Then I’m off at four. Why?”

Kurt shared the listing to Nick’s phone, then clicked the hyperlink to dial the realtor’s number.

"What are your feelings about Bushwick?"

“I don’t think I have any.” Nick opened the listing Kurt sent him and read through it. His eyes went wide, a smile spreading his lips despite the promise of a painstaking afternoon. “But I’m beginning to have some.”

***

“Bushwick? What the hell’s in Bushwick?” Blaine laughed, undoing the buttons on Kurt’s jacket and snaking his hand inside. He needed this closeness, needed to feel his boyfriend after a long day without him.

He was also freezing his ass off and hoping he could leech some of Kurt’s never-ending warmth so he could feel his fingers again.

Kurt shifted in his seat, moving closer and putting a hand over Blaine’s to help keep him toasty. He wasn’t a big fan of P.D.A. on the subway, but it was so crowded at this hour, no one was paying any attention.

“A big ass loft, that’s what,” Kurt said, thrusting his phone into Blaine’s view. “Big enough for you, me, our friends, our stuff, your ego …”

“Nonsense. Nothing’s that big.” Blaine took the phone, the screen loaded to a slideshow of pictures showing every inch of the loft in question, plus a floor plan and a list of amenities. Kurt and Nick had taken the liberty of submitting a pre-qualification application, and with help from Nick’s legal and financial expertise, they’d been provisionally approved. All they needed was to tour the place with their boyfriends and get the final okay from the realtor.

But as far as Kurt and Nick were concerned, they were in love.

“That definitely looks big enough for all our stuff. Hell, I could probably park my Mustang in there and we’d never bump into it! But why do we need to move to a new place?” Blaine had no objections to moving. He agreed they needed more space, and yesterday. But he enjoyed giving his excited boyfriend a hard time.

It was like foreplay to him.

“Well, aside from the things I’ve already mentioned - more space, less per month in rent, our own washer and dryer, living with our best friends in the world - I have two words for you: air conditioning.”

“What? You don’t like sleeping in the kitchen on hot summer nights with every window in the place open?”

“No.”

“Not gonna miss that one little bit?”

“Not a bit.”

“Too bad, because that is literally my favorite thing about living in the apartment we have now.”

“And yet, I still manage to love you.”

“Go figure. Have Nick and Jeff seen it yet?”

“They’re supposed to meet us.” Kurt scrolled through the text conversation he’d been having with Nick since Nick left his internship to pick up his boyfriend. “The last I heard from him is that he and Jeff had met up and they were heading out.”

“Give or take five minutes in the coat closet for a little hanky panky,” Blaine joked. “Or should I say an hour? If they find a place with a lock on the door, we might not seem them till midnight!”

Kurt wanted to rebut in defense of his friends, but Blaine was probably right. If there was a couple in this city that had more sex than Kurt and Blaine, it was Nick and Jeff.

Kurt knew because he heard most of it first-hand.

***

“I thought you guys said this was a loft?” Jeff wandered through the kitchen, opening cabinet doors and peeking inside, looking for what, no one knew. “When does a loft have bedrooms?”

“According to the website, it’s a conversion,” Kurt replied.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they had to knock down the wall between a loft and a two bedroom apartment, and since it was too complicated to replace, they just left it. Something about the plumbing. They gutted the extra kitchen, renovated the bathroom and …”

“And created this enormous airplane hangar of an apartment,” Blaine finished.

“A-ha. And it’s two hundred dollars less a month than both our old apartments combined,” Nick said.

“That’s because we’ll be living in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan,” Jeff pointed out.

“But our rent is coming up in a week,” Blaine mentioned, circling the place for a second time. At this rate, they won’t need gym memberships. Then could just jog around their apartment. “I don’t want us all paying double. If we say yes to this place, when would we be able to move in?”

“Like, now,” Nick said. “We’ve been talking to the realtor all afternoon. She has the keys and she’s bringing them down.”

“I thought you guys said our approval was provisional,” Jeff said.

“It took us close to five days to get the keys to our last place. Why are they so eager to rent this place?” Blaine asked.

“Technically, this is a historic building. The owners are filing to make it official, but in the meantime, there’s a developer trying to buy it out and turn it into an IHOP or something. They need to have all the apartments filled by the end of the month to make their case that it’s still viable as a living space while they wait on certification. They’ve apparently had tons of nibbles, but no follow throughs.”

“And they’re desperate. They’re trying to fight off gentrification.”

“And they’re going to do that by renting the biggest space I’ve ever seen at a steal to four white gay guys?” Jeff asked.

“Hey, I don’t make the rules,” Kurt said, throwing open the drapes to let the afternoon sunlight in. “I’m just willing to benefit from them … uh … just this once, of course.”

“Look at all the room you’ll have to dance now, Jeff.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said, taking a few experimental steps, running the soles of his shoes against the floor one at a time to check the grip of the wood grain. “It’s great, but is this really what you want, Nicky?”

“Yes. I mean, you’ll be able to practice at home now. No more late night trips back and forth from NYADA.”

“Oh, I don’t know …” Jeff wrapped his arms around his boyfriend’s waist and squeezed, lifting him an inch till their noses touched “... I was starting to enjoy those late night trips. All that alone time together, late nights on the train, catching dinner on the corner … it was kind of romantic.”

“But if you practice at home and we don’t have to spend time on the train, we’ll have more time to do other things late at night.”

Jeff frowned, his brow pinched together as he tried to decipher the meaning behind his boyfriend’s cryptic words.

“Other romantic things?”

Jeff’s brow pinched further, and Nick raised his eyebrows in an attempt to help him. They stood like that, staring at one another, deadlocked and waiting for Jeff to figure it out, until Kurt lost his patience.

“Sex! He means sex, Jeff! If you don’t have to travel to NYADA every night, you get to have more sex! Though how that’s possible, I have absolutely no damn idea!”

Across the room, Blaine laughed so hard, he stopped breathing.

“Oh!” Jeff smiled like the bear that stole the honey and got away without getting stung. “Okay. I’m sold.”

“Great!” Kurt grabbed his phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. “Oh, that’s the realtor. She’s on her way up. This is so exciting! I can’t wait to start packing up our stuff and moving it in!”

“Hey, would you guys mind if Nicky and I stayed the night?” Jeff asked. “So we can celebrate early?”

“Celebrate?” Kurt shot Blaine a look, but it was no use, as the man had his head in his hands, laughing up a storm. “But there’s no electricity! And you guys won’t have a bed!”

“Kurt - that is the weirdest thing you have ever said to us.”

“Whatever.” Kurt pushed open the sliding door. “Just do us a favor and don’t baptize our room before we get the chance.”

Jeff clapped a hand over his boyfriend’s ass, causing him to yelp. Jeff smirked. “We’ll do our best.”

[mosylufanfic]

Two Truths and a Lie

Killervibe Week Day Six: Soulmates

(I’m working on day 5. It’s haaaaaard.)

Also I never took a single science class in college so if I got this way off base, let me know.

Two Truths and a Lie

The lab was filled with deafening sound as people came in and got settled and said hi to each other. Caitlin parked herself at an empty table and started setting out her lab notebook and her pencil case.

"This seat taken?" said a boy with long hair and a Star Trek t-shirt, giving her a bright smile. 

She shook her head. 

"Thanks." He dropped his bag on the table and rooted around in it. "I was afraid I was going to be late."

Caitlin nodded at the front of the room. "You're okay. Professor Stein just walked in."

"Settle down," the prof called out. "Settle down! Let's get started, people. You all know me, if you were at the lecture yesterday." He narrowed his eyes at them. "If you weren't at the lecture yesterday, we're going to have a problem."

The boy laughed. Caitlin didn't. 

He leaned over. "Hey, don't be fooled. Stein puts on a mean face, but it's all crust. He's pretty chill, actually."

"I'm not worried," Caitlin whispered back. "Shhh."

"The first thing we're going to do," Professor Stein announced, "is go around the room and introduce ourselves. We'll all be working closely in this lab and you should know each other." He looked over his glasses. "And none of those silly fake names you kids do these days."

"But sir," said a boy in the front row, tall and lanky and bright-eyed. "What if our soulmate is in the room? The only way we'll know is if we can't lie to them."

"We're a group of less than twenty," Stein said. "Even if you assumed that your soulmate was on this campus and not any of the million other places in the world they could possibly be, the odds of them being in this room with us is -" He narrowed his eyes momentarily.

"Point four-five percent," Caitlin said.

Stein bestowed a smile on her. "Well calculated."

"But mathematically speaking, there's still a chance," said the boy at her table. He turned and grinned at her. “I mean, they’re our soulmate. We have to meet them somewhere, right?”

The rest of the lab group giggled. 

"You know, in my day, we didn't have soulmates," Professor Stein said. "We fell in love and dated and got our hearts broken."

"That sounds awful," the boy said. 

"Such a waste of time," Caitlin muttered. 

The boy glanced at her, looking surprised. "Not to mention getting your heart broken must've sucked."

"It did suck," Stein said. "But it made us better. Stronger." He looked around at the hopeful faces and rolled his eyes. "Fine," he said. "Fine. Do the silly names, it's not like you've got several experiments to run through this session. But I'm warning you, if you find your soulmate in the next five minutes, you'll refrain from true love's kiss until after class, understood?"

Everyone giggled again. 

Stein rolled his eyes again, but the corner of his mouth quirked up. Caitlin thought the boy next to her might have a point about it all being a put-on. "We'll start with you," the prof said, pointing at the lanky boy who'd argued for the fakes. 

He said brightly, "My name is Albert Einstein!" His face fell as he was able to tell the obvious lie with no problem at all. "I mean. Barry Allen."

No soulmate for you, Caitlin thought. Not today, anyway.

He wasn't the only one to start with a fake name, but he was the only one who looked so deeply disappointed by his ability to lie. Most of them picked a scientist - Galileo, Marie Curie, Stephen Hawking. It was a bunch of science majors, after all. 

A few people just said their own name, smiling the smug smile of a person who'd already found their soulmate when everyone else looked at them. 

When it came to her, Caitlin said, "Caitlin Snow," without any fuss, and looked down at her notebook. 

She hadn't found her soulmate yet, but she was only twenty. There was time. She was here to learn, not get tied down for the rest of her life to a stranger.

Everyone thought soulmates were so sweet and romantic. Try to tell a mild lie and discover the person you were meant to spend your life with.

But the thought filled her with dread. What if they wanted to get married right away? Have kids right away? She'd heard horror stories of people who gave up their dreams for a person they'd barely met. She had a lot of dreams, and no intention of giving up a single one of them.

To her surprise, the boy next to her said, "Cisco Ramon," without correcting himself, either. She stole a glance at him. He was looking at his notebook, too, brows drawn together. Maybe he was concerned about this class. Stein was supposed to be tough.

"Fine," Dr. Stein said. "Now that charade is done with, and we can move on to our experiments. For today, work with the person next to you."

"Sweet," Cisco Ramon said, his pensive look evaporating. "Lab buddies!" He put out his fist. "You bump it," he added when Caitlin didn't make a move.

"Oh," she said, and did. He grinned triumphantly and handed her a pair of safety goggles. 

She found she liked working with him. He made lots of pop-culture references and jokes, and chattered the entire time, but his science was solid. Not to mention, his smiles made her feel like she’d swallowed hot chocolate, and his high fives when something went right made her feel like Marie Curie.

By the end of the lab session, she'd learned that he was bilingual, had grown up in Central City, was living at home while he went to school - "only cuz it's cheaper, believe me" - planned to be a mechanical engineer, and had a firm opinion on the proper order of the Star Wars movies and which captain of the Enterprise was the best. 

She'd also decided that she would ask him to be her permanent lab partner.

"Sorry if I talked your ear off," he said as they were cleaning up. They'd had to re-start one of their experiments, and they were among the last ones in the room. "If you want the truth, I was a little weirded out and that's sort of the way I cope."

"I didn't mind," she said, packing her lab notebook in her bag. "Weirded out by what?" She held her breath. What if he'd been weirded out by her?

"Can you keep a secret?"

"What?"

"So you know how I just said my real name when we were all introducing ourselves?"

"Yes, I noticed." He hadn't mentioned his soulmate at all, she realized. Not once. 

"I did have a fake name ready to go," he said. "Guacardo."

"Isn't that the avocado?"

"Might as well have fun with it, right? But when I started to say it, I couldn't. It was like there was something in my throat, or my tongue froze up. It was the weirdest sensation."

She looked up, eyes wide. "But that means - "

"My soulmate was in this room." His smile beamed out, big and excited, and then he sobered. "But nobody else looked like they couldn't lie. What does that mean?” He looked tragic. “Oh, shit, what if I'm one of those poor saps where like, they're my soulmate, but I'm not their soulmate? Oh, shit."

She focused on putting all her pens and pencils and highlighters back in her pencil case. “Maybe, um, maybe they didn’t try to lie.”

“Who would do that, unless they already had their soulmate?”

“Maybe it’s someone who wants to focus on school and not think about a soulmate, and just decided to tell the truth all the time until they were ready.”

“Ready for what? Like I’m going to drag them to a courthouse and make them marry me just because we found each other?”

“M-maybe?”

“Come on. I’ve got dreams and stuff. I don’t want to be married and settled down yet either.” He scowled. “Who would take that risk? Who would want to wait? What if you never run across your soulmate ever again?”

“Maybe it sounded like a good idea before.”

Before. Before she was faced with a smiling boy with his shiny hair and his nerdy jokes, who looked so disappointed that his soulmate might want to put off meeting him. 

He shook his head and hoisted his bag onto his shoulder. “I’m gonna say something at the start of next class. I don’t care if Stein gets mad. I just want to know.”

She grabbed his arm. “Cisco? Ask me my name.”

“What? You’re Caitlin - “ He stared at her. 

“Please,” she said. “Just ask.”

“O - okay? What’s your name?”

Rachel, she thought. Madison. Danielle. 

But all the names that weren't hers bottled up in her throat, refusing to be spoken aloud. 

His eyes went wide with wonder and happiness.

“Caitlin,” she gasped. “My name is Caitlin Snow.”

He took her hand and wrapped it in his. “It is so good to meet you, Caitlin Snow.”

FINIS

[atmcnz-blog]

Cost of living for an international student at Auckland, New Zealand?

New Zealand is one of the world’s best places to live and study. Find out more about life in New Zealand and studying at ATMC-NZ.

Our people and culture

Auckland is an exciting and welcoming place to live with a wide variety of cultures from around the world.

We’re the fourth most culturally diverse city in the world – our city is home to more than 200 different ethnic groups – and over a third of Aucklanders were born overseas. Our Māori heritage gives us a unique place in the world. Auckland is also the world’s largest Polynesian community and nearly a quarter of people living here are of Asian descent... Read More https://atmc.ac.nz/before-you-arrive/

Living costs

Living costs are at a level you would expect from a rapidly growing cosmopolitan hub that’s one of the world’s most livable cities.

You’ll find some items and services cheaper and some more expensive than at home. In general, Auckland ranks very well against other major cities, with a cost of living significantly lower than London, Sydney, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Singapore, Guangzhou and New York. (Source: Mercer Cost of Living Survey 2015) .... Read More https://atmc.ac.nz/before-you-arrive/

Healthcare

Healthcare in Auckland is first-rate and it’s free or low cost for citizens, residents and some work visa holders. Non-residents can also use healthcare services at a cost. If you have children aged 17 years or under, they may also be eligible for publicly funded healthcare. You can check whether you qualify for free or subsidized healthcare with the Ministry of Health

. … Read More- https://atmc.ac.nz/before-you-arrive/

Tax

The US-based Tax Foundation ranked New Zealand’s overall tax system as second in the developed world for its competitiveness (2014) and top for its individual/personal taxes. https://atmc.ac.nz/before-you-arrive/

Wages or salaries are usually paid directly into employees’ bank accounts and taxed at set rates depending on your income. Find out more about taxes in New Zealand

. … Read More https://atmc.ac.nz/before-you-arrive/

Housing

Whether you’re buying or renting, you’ll be able to choose from different types of Auckland housing to suit your lifestyle, from city apartments to family homes with gardens. … Read More https://atmc.ac.nz/before-you-arrive/

Getting around Auckland

Travelling in and around Auckland is unchallenging and economic at the same time. The city centre is just a few minutes’ drive from some of the best spots of the city. There are various commuting options like buses, trains, taxi, etc. The ferries are an important part of this harbour city, for the daily commuters as well as tourists. Ferries help you get to different parts of the city in a quick, economic, and less stressful manner. The train service connects 41 stations across 4 lines. … Read More https://atmc.ac.nz/before-you-arrive/

Support after you arrive

Settling into a new place can feel overwhelming, but there are plenty of support services and networks to help make it easier. … Read More https://atmc.ac.nz/before-you-arrive/

https://youtu.be/64uOQGujKqQ

[defsbeom]

1, 13, 16, and 17

1. favourite place in your country?

omg way too many??? ok i’ll list some of my favourite places:

1. andaman & nicobar / one of the 2 islands in the country. our family visits it quite a bit but its still my og place. it just somehow happened that a lot of my life decisions were taken in this place. plus i’m a big fat sucker for the ocean and there’s obviously an abundance of that here.  

2. ladakh / its one of the coldest places here and i lived there for like 3 years when i was growing up and i have the fondest memories of that place. again, we still go back there quite a bit and i’m still in love with how beautiful it is.

3. my friend momo’s old apartment in the city / again, a lot of my major life Things happened in her apartment somehow and it was my safe haven for a big chunk of my highschool years.

13. does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem strange to outsiders?

well, most people know so little about india’s extremely vast traditions and superstitions that i don’t know what might seem stranger to outsiders tbh. but for starters, during important celebrations we put on alta (which is like a red ink, usually put on your feet); in most of indian wedding ceremonies, the couple circle a fire 7 times. talking of weddings, indian ones can last from 2-4 days (its a big fat celebration). there’s a day in the year (which coincidentally is today this year) when kids (students) pray to the goddess of knowledge to bless their books and their minds. there’s like legit a ceremony where kids take their books with them and get them blessed. 

16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

hahahaha this one. this is a loaded question. one stereotype i really can’t stand is the outlook that india is somehow a poor/cheap country. like yes, in many many ways it is cheaper and there is severe poverty. but that’s just a side of india that western media wants you to know of. there’s rich people here, beyond some people’s wildest imaginations and the city i live in at times is just as expensive as many other big metropolitan cities in the world. another one is like “oh india is so spiritual”. i find that one to be such a misinformed and misguided thought process. 

one stereotype that i somewhat do agree with has to be how colorful india is. my friend recently pointed this out while i was showing her my favourite desi designer’s work and i have to agree, everything in indian culture and traiditons are very colourful and vibrant.

17. are you interested in your country’s history?

YES! i’m a big history nerd and if we’re travelling (to a place that isn’t near a beach) i love seeing more historical places than anything else tbh. and wherever we go, my mom and i both always read up about the history and cultures of the place. 

"hi i'm not from the us" ask set