#But it is owned and operated by the developers

[collapsedsquid]

For some people, that humanity gets trained out of them. For others, the threat of punishment suppresses it. To keep bosses happy, Tenumah explained, agents develop tricks. If your average handle time is creeping up, hanging up on someone can bring it back down. If you’ve escalated too many times that day, you might “accidentally” transfer a caller back into the queue. Choices higher up the chain also add helpful friction, Tenumah said: Not hiring enough agents leads to longer wait times, which in turn weeds out a percentage of callers. Choosing cheaper telecom carriers leads to poor connection with offshore contact centers; many of the calls disconnect on their own. “No one says, ‘Let’s do bad service,’” Tenumah told me. “Instead they talk about things like credit percentages”—the number of refunds, rebates, or payouts extended to customers. “My boss would say, ‘We spent a million dollars in credits last month. That needs to come down to 750.’ That number becomes an edict, makes its way down to the agents answering the phones. You just start thinking about what levers you have.” “Does anyone tell them to pull those levers?” I asked.

“The brilliance of the system is that they don’t have to say it out loud,” Tenumah said. “It’s built into the incentive structure.” That structure, he said, can be traced to a shift in how companies operate. There was a time when the happiness of existing customers was a sacred metric. CEOs saw the long arc of loyalty as essential to a company’s success. That arc has snapped. Everyone still claims to value customer service, but as the average CEO tenure has shortened, executives have become more focused on delivering quick returns to shareholders and investors. This means prioritizing growth over the satisfaction of customers already on board.

[elljayvee]

I sometimes feel like many marketing people need a reintroduction to the concept of a "cash cow". A cash cow is an income stream that provides steady returns with minimal maintenance. It's never going to be giant and take off and make you rich, but also, you aren't going to lose it unless you fuck up bigtime or there's an apocalypse.

A business where it is providing a steady living and you have the capacity to maintain the business without stress isn't exactly a cash cow -- it's "too much" work for that -- but it's a friend of a cash cow.

The goal of a lot of small-scale farming operations is to develop exactly what OP's family has. A big part of my job involves the services provided to farmers by nonprofits to assist them with achieving this exact goal, in various ways, including that sometimes I myself do direct service provision. My most recent client was a small dairy farm, and their goal was to move from selling just milk to small-scale yogurt production, because the income from yogurt would likely allow one of the owners to quit their off-farm job. They don't want to get rich or get big or have to compromise. They want to work with their small number of heritage-breed cows and make tasty things for their neighbors and sell at a locally-owned nearby market, and make enough money to live on comfortably.

That's success, even if people with business-poisoned brains can't see it.

My dad raises grass-fed beef cattle and I help him sell it, mainly by maintaining an online presence. For a while, I kept having the most ridiculous conversations with people who I assume were marketing students. I didn't want to be rude so I'd try to let them down gently but this one guy just kept insisting that with his magical marketing skills he could grow our business.

What he could not seem to comprehend is that we could not grow our business, at least not without significant time and monetary investment. Cows take two years from pregnancy to the size that you can sell. If we buy adult cows, our margins become razor thin or even negative. Even if we somehow could acquire some cows, our barn and hay fields are already near maximum capacity. Renting another field would be relatively easy, building a bigger barn not so much.

Cows are living animals, they aren't widgets that can be produced infinitely. Besides that, many businesses inherently cannot grow, because if they do they'll become something else. The delicious bakery down the street cannot produce much more than they do, if they began mass marketing and production they'd eventually be selling the equivalent of Twinkies. We grow grass-fed, organic beef, if we expanded how long would that last? Eventually we'd become the very factor farms that we hate. Some things can only ever be made on a small scale and they are usually the best things.

But also, what are they teaching them at marketing school and how is it so disconnected from reality?

[papiliomame]

There is some kind of tagging discourse here on tumblr with crossovers I've seen recently and I think these discussions are kinda missing the point what the real problem is.

I think it's the bad tumblr search engine in which you can't even exclude tags/words with it. They added some search operators just LAST YEAR ( I'm kinda baffled that a site this old, took so long to add these):

https://help.tumblr.com/knowledge-base/search-and-filtering-basics/

, but as you can see there is no operator to filter out tags from the search result. If anything we should ask tumblr that they should add a better search engine.

In the meantime we have the block list, but even then you can still see the post, censored but still there. Kinda annoying when there is pages after pages with only censored boxes. Why are these post not hidden like when you block a user? I don't know but again a tumblr problem.

I did some reasearch and found small solution for this problem, at least for desktop user. Have you heard of the extension " Tumblr Savior"?

I did some test and it actually can hide post with the word you put in the blacklist of the extension. Here is a comparison with the most popular crossover in the phandom as an example in firefox:

extension deactivated; 3 crossover posts just on this screenshot:

extension activated; after refreshing the page the order is different but no crossover in sight, not even censored :

I used this blacklist:

with these settings; I only ticked "Hide filtered content"

( Also there are a lot options ticked by default which hides so much stuff, so check the settings):

I also pinned it on the toolbar for quick access

and when I'm in the mod for some blacklisted crossovers I simply put the crossover name in the whitelist without much hassle to see them again:

Well, this is an extension outside of tumblr and also in general with extensions, use them on your own risk, but at least there is something to make this annoyance less annoying.

(Also, I think this is common sense, but if something seems strange like glitchy UI or disappearing usernames etc. deactivate the extension first before contacting the tumblr support and wait for an extension update.)

[x-h3kk3ning-x]

I make jokes on occassion about the place I live being Gotham but with more trees (anywhere, USA) but like....yall...I cannot stress enough...How much This Municipal Election fucking matters and how god damned...ya know what here...

Raleigh, NC is one of the fastest growing cities in America. I HATE that about it. For YEARS we have had a Mayor named Mary Ann Baldwin, who took any bribe a real-estate developer would give her. She even, along with city council, lengthened her term WITHOUT TELLING THE PUBLIC!! Using some loophole in the city constitution or whatever. My hometown and birthplace has become gentrification displacement fucking central!

But THIS ELECTION is THE FIRST ONE that Baldwin is stepping down and NOT RUNNING AGAIN!! Do you want to know who the feont runners are for her position?

A woman whose entire job over the past few years has been converting the land that the Dorthea Dix Mental Hospital was on into a city destination park.

And a guy whose website looks like THIS...

His name is Terrance Ruth so his campaing slogan, I SHIT YOU NOT is "TRUTH FOR RALEIGH"

We don't HAVE a city seawall, thank fuck; But--ya know--at this point I wouldnt even be surprised if one magically blew up and flooded us.

[utilitycaster]

no but seriously what was the fucking deal with Ruidusborn. like the TCSR and Call of the Netherdeep both made it seem like cut and dry discrimination; not so much racism as perhaps disability given the similarities to practices of leaving weak infants to die (for a coherent sf...not even metaphor, straight up text, might I recommend the Hugo and Nebula winning The Mountains of Mourning), but like, very clearly the victims here. And then it turned out that a subset of them did, in fact, have destructive and invasive powers and could serve as the vessel to, effectively, a targeted biological weapon; that several of them had violently turned on the people who were attempting to help them and normalize their acceptance, for no other reason than "a powerful man said so and they didn't have a complete cure fast enough"; and that they were actively recruiting child soldiers and allying with multiple authoritarian states. I am currently running Netherdeep and I'm deep in the Netherdeep portion (not quite to the Heart of Despair), and it's actually wild playing Alyxian knowing that this metaphor is not just broken but like, twisted in some kind of junkyard compressor/electromagnet hellscape way that's impossible to untangle and one can only say "uh what the fuck"

[feroluce]

Me: I wonder what Hook calls Sampo in the Japanese dub? Probably oji-san, since it's shushu in the original Chinese?

Hook: Sampo-ojichan!!

Oji is "uncle," which is hilarious because Hook calls Natasha by "older sister" when she wants something. So Hook either just really wants to get on Natasha's good side, or she takes Sampo at face value when he refers to himself as an old man. She trusts him a lot and takes him at his word and she calls him as such!

And Sampo calls Hook either ojou-san or oujo-san (I can't find the Japanese sub to see the spelling, and I can't tell them apart by ear)!

One spelling, oujo, means "princess," it's how you would refer to royalty. The other, ojou, (which I assume is what he's actually saying) is something you call the young lady of a high-class family with a high social standing. In Genshin Impact, the intro scene for a popular ship, chilumi, shows Childe calling Lumine ojou-chan, which the English dub translated as "girlie." Since Sampo uses -san instead of -chan, his is more formal and respectful, it's more like "young lady."

...It's also how you would refer to the daughter of a yakuza leader, which I love, since Hook leads her own little gang (the Moles) skzhkskdkd

But it really gets me in the heart, because! Hook is generally looked at as a delinquent by most adults. Which I mean. Not without good reason, she

calls Natasha an old witch

frequently sneaks out into the Fragmentum

has left graffiti all over the side of the orphanage

was constantly picking fights with other kids

beat a man unconscious for stealing from her dad

and has already picked up on how business gets done in the Underworld, and uses/actively participates in it to get what she wants- she basically acts an information broker

like Hook earns her reputation haha. The Underground is lucky that what Hook wants is just like. Candy and toys and to play hide-and-seek. I'm sure she'll have the capability to raise all kinds of hell and be more like an actual gang leader when she's older, even if she chooses not to act on it.

So Sampo calling her so politely and respectfully is really sweet and cute! Yes, he's polite and respectful with everyone, but that's just it- he treats Hook much like he does everyone else. He doesn't tell her to buzz off because she's a kid. He doesn't lie or try to cheat her or assume she's naive because of her age. He never talks down to her. He really does just treat her like a respected business partner and he takes her seriously, which Hook really seems to appreciate. And even when Sampo does treat her like a kid, it's not in a negative way; he guides her on little adventures and chats with her and takes her for joy rides on his moped. All of which Hook also really appreciates, since everyone else is too busy trying to get by to make time to play with her. She absolutely adores him.

I hope they officially join forces someday and terrorize all of Belobog with their shenanigans JSKJZNDKSJ

So Hook calls Sampo "Uncle Sampo" in a particularly affectionate/endeared tone, and Sampo calls Hook "Young Miss Hook" in a very respectful tone! And to reiterate:

[kanhotep]

Alastor would love to have a computer because while he still thinky vinyl is the superior medium for music he can't deny that it's more effective to have a digital music library.

He could also built a computer easily, the hardware is no problem for him.

Unfortunately he stopped keeping up with programming in the 60ies, there was just so much going on. And now he can't get any software that is not in some way connected to Vox he doesn't want to admit it, because he's the radio demon, this frivolous digital technology is beneath him, but there is a little part of him that is pissed about it.

Definitely pissed.

And in no way whatsoever melancholic, reminiscing of a past when he and Vox would build them together, Alastor working on the hardware and Vox doing the software.

A past where such actions were meant to be a pleasant hobby, a nice way to pass the time and not a commitment to an unreliable lifestyle that chained itself to whatever new trend arose.

No, he could never miss this old flight of fancy. But he can admit, that he misses the old Vox. His old chum used to be a nice company rather than a persistent annoyance.

[retiredchildsoldier]

I'm a traumagenic Ramcoa system and we gots lots of alters and introjects. Some introjects are abusers, some friends who died in the operation we were raised in, some just grumpy men from media we like (I have no idea why there's so many grumpy men)

System cringe is in my opinion a development of 'the addiction to cruelty' a lot of people seem to have. Like cruelty as a vice (ex: republicans), and people with this vice tend to focus it on the most vulnerable because of corse they do. Add in that systems seem easy to pick apart if you're stupid and you get system cringe.

I've not checked but I'm willing to bet the fake claimed systems have a few things in common:

1. Being women or gender non conforming in any way at all (Reddit hates that)

2. Not being white (Reddit hates that but will gladly pretend otherwise)

3. They feel free to be themselves (Reddit hates authenticity unless it's their own authenticity and even then only on a case by case basis)

Not a fan of the anti-endo stuff myself, they seem pretty normal system wise just developmentally different. Either way they've never given me any trouble so they're cool in my book. I don't claim to understand the endo's, beyond commonalities among systems, but they seem like decent folk.

Also sorry if my tone comes off weird, I am not a tumblr vet and mostly just adding my thoughts on the various topics discussed.

In the wise words of that guy on YouTube who does weirdly good communist puppet shows: "Reddit is a shit-hole"

systemscringe is so fucking stupid?? like ok fakeclaiming like 70% of systems 💔

first of all they're anti endo (not the worst ig)

they don't believe ramcoa exists. are they fucking stupid like cmon now 💔💔 "you can't program alters into your brain!!! you need ton of trauma!!" do you think ramcoa would not be traumatizing

they think fictives don't exist. in endogenic plurality, they exist. in traumagenic plurality, it is very possible for an alter to cling onto some fictional character and become that fictional character. are they ok in the head?? this is just ridiculous ngl

they think a system cant have a lot of alters. fully possible i do fear?????? and considering that traumagenic lads can split after the initial trauma it's fully possible

they're just stupid

sybau sybau sybau

ok that's it

[volamus]

originally  i  was  going  to  have  volo  be  fully  aware  of  the  details  of  his  curse,  but  in  hindsight  it's  fairly  unlikely  that  he's  actually  landed  himself  in  a  position  where  he's  been  killed  yet.  he  tends  to  play  things  quite  safe  and  prefers  to  subtly  manipulate  others  into  doing  most  of  the  dirty  work.  i  feel  like  chess  is  a  pretty  commonly  used  metaphor,  but  volo  really  is  just  nudging  everyone  else  around  the  proverbial  board  like  little  pieces.  he  isn't  some  conventional  evil  mastermind  archetype,  but  he  is  very  good  at  playing  the  role  of  a  helpful  but  otherwise  unremarkable  bystander  —  and  that  combined  with  his  sheer  unwillingness  to  give  up  is  all  that  he  really  needs.  when  push  comes  to  shove,  he  can  be  downright  terrifying  to  battle  —  but  volo  would  really  prefer  not  to  use  force  until  he  absolutely  HAS to.  (  once  he  crosses  that  line,  he  can  no  longer  just  pretend  to  be  friendly  and  unassuming  and  harmless.  )  he's  clever  enough  to  realize  it's  more  beneficial  not  to  draw  attention  to  himself.

i  like  to  run  my  blogs  with  a  relatively  chronological  storyline;  every  interaction  builds  upon  the  last,  important  events  have  a  long-term  influence  on  my  muse,  etc.  volo  has  only  actually  been  isekai'd  out  of  hisui  for  about  a  month  or  so  in-universe.  he's  very  new  to  all  of  this.  with  his  tendency  to  play  it  safe,  i  doubt  he's  placed  himself  in  any  real  danger  —  certainly  not  anything  life  threatening.  he  knows  that  he's  been  cursed,  but  he  probably  assumes  being  thrown  across  time  and  space  is  the  end  of  it.  that  it's  an  ironic  punishment.  a  bit  irritating,  though  it  isn't  enough  to  shake  his  revolve.  on  the  contrary,  he's  actually  kind  of  thriving  with  all  of  the  new  resources  at  his  fingertips.

i  feel  like  it's  going  to  serve  as  a  MASSIVE  wake  up  call  if  or  when  he  finds  himself  in  a  situation  that  leads  to  his  death  —  only  to  suddenly  come  back  again,  as  if  nothing  ever  happened.  i  think  it's  the  one  thing  that's  going  to  truly  shake  him,  because  he's  smart  enough  to  understand  the  implications  and  just  how  terrifying  they  really are.  that  a  curse  from  the  gods  is  no  minor  inconvenience  and  suddenly  he's  being  placed  in  a  position  where  his  own  humanity  has been  thrown  into  question.  is  he  actually  prepared  to  spend  centuries  clawing  a  path  to  arceus  like  he  threatened?  does  he  have  a  choice?

he'll  try  to  convince  himself  that  it's  something  he  can  use  to  his  advantage  later,  but  it  will  definitely  mess  him  up  for  a  while.

[crimescrimson]

Joyce Price in Life Is Strange (2015)

[verdart]

Okay in terms of conjoined twins you have homotaleral control and sensory. Aka they dont control eachothers parts and bc john is all over the place (we tried to map it with the aforementioned friend who regularly diagnoses Arthur each episode at this point)

Again with chimerism its less about control of regions and more about genetic differences in certain regions.

As for the separating the brains bit... you are referring to crabiopagus twins as far as I understand? In that event a successful case requires the pair of twins to be well developed for the surgical removal to be successful. Its a risky operation and also a rare condition and again in that one the motor and sensory control of each twin is their own.

Long story short non of these conditions are applicable mostly because they involve either a pair of conjoined bodies or several genomes. Which is not really the case for our dear Arthur and John.

How ever don't get me wrong I am just clarifying the scientific basis for a semi scientific theory. After all we are still talking about an eldritch entity in a guys head that can do willy nilly. The sky is the limit and I have absolutely zero authority on what you theorized or headcannoned. Im literally a nobody on the webss

Okay i am studying cortical regions and i came to primary visual area (brodmann 17) V1 and im reading about cortical blindness and it made me go ahh arthur lester.

So hear me out, head cannon time. What if John does not have his hand hand: he has his right motor cortex for his hand left motor cortex for his leg (also somatosensory) and his primary visual are. He has parts of Arthurs brain.

So something funny about cortical blindness is that the pathway between the retina and the amygdala and limbic system are intact. So if you tried to punch Arthur he can dodge as long as his amygdala perceives it as danger. This explains to me all the “here”s and “arthur be careful” or “arthur run”s the man cant see but he can sense the danger.

The only thing that is not in line with this hc is that he knows he cant see, which is something cortical blindness patients usually dont acknowledge. Like they will make up what they see based on other stimuli. But if you knew Arthur was blind and asked him what he sees and he responds with what John says bc he thinks you dont know he is blind then yeah I would diagnose cortical blindness not peripheral…

I should send this to my friend who tried to diagnose him in season 5. Was so sure it was tuberculosis (same). Being med students and listening malevolent is an experience.

[which-hospital]

Feel like I haven’t been posting very much lately and definitely not much (enough) about Teddy and it’s because I have like two thoughts on my mind:

1.) Sandra had to die.

2.) What if she didn’t, though?

[courfee]

just went through all my ao3 fics and edited all the tags because i feel like i overtag a lot and it always bothered me. tbf the most overtagging happens in my relationship/character tags but i find it super difficult to judge who/which relationship is important. like friendships are So Important in my fics i dont feel like i cant tag less there? especially my longer fics. amtc james&sirius and black brothers are in my mind at least if not more important than literally amtc jegulus. i know its a jegulus fic but also jegulus is just the catalyst for other relationship dynamics. how do you tag that stuff

[broodsys]

my male snail (aquatic) needs to clean up my female snail already. they usually crawl over each other's shells periodically but my boys been SLACKING and she's growing quite the algae coat

[movie-robotnik-positivity]

I don't think Robotnik ever saw Stone's affection as genuine. He's used to people only valuing him if he's useful. His own bosses call him a freak, yet they put up with him because of his "perfect operation record". He isn't even shocked when he learns the goverment erased him, he expected it and had a contingency plan ready.

He keeps calling Stone a sycophant and a barnacle, because why else would someone stay with him if not to gain something? Clearly, Stone is just a suck-up wanting to ride his coattails. And Ivo is fine with that! He gets his ego stroked and in return Stone gets a slice of the world-domination pie. Mutually beneficial!

This symbiotic relationship gives Ivo a sense of control and ensures that Stone won't abandon him like everyone else. It also keeps him detached: of course Stone waited months or him to return from space, that's his job. His admiration is inevitable, and meaningless.

Ivo develops a genuine, irrational attachment to Stone, one he's able to rationalize as just being transactional. Those emotional walls shield him from the fear of abandonment that comes with caring for another person.

Except...even after Robotnik becomes a liability, Stone stays. There's no benefit, no plans of ruling humanity, not even a paycheck. Yet despite everything, Ivo tries to keep the old boss/employee dynamic going. He can't fathom the idea that someone would stay for anything other than convenience.

Then Gerald shows up, and for the first time Ivo allows himself to put down those walls. As an orphan he had built up this idealized image of family that he thought he could never have. People will use you then toss you aside when convenient, but family? Family is different. Family will always be there for you and love you no matter what. Family won't abandon you.

And suddently Stone's grovelling is no longer necessary. Why would he need someone who just pretends to like him when he now has all the unconditional love he's always longed for? That's obviously why Stone got so jealous, it couldn't have been real concern, he was just afraid of losing his comfy position as the lapdog of humanity's new king. Between a sycophant and family, the choice felt obvious.

And, of course, Gerald turns out to be just like everyone else in Ivo's life: just another person trying to get something from him. The second he stopped being useful, he was tossed aside.

His image of family is once again shattered, but those emotional walls are already down. Now that Ivo experienced that betrayal he was so afraid of, now that he's about to die, he's finally able to be honest with himself.

Looking down on Earth, he realizes there had only ever been one person on that blue marble who actually cared. Someone who had always been there, even when there was nothing to gain. Stone had never abandoned him.

But he had abandoned Stone. He tossed him aside, just like Gerald did to him. Now that he's able to understand how Stone felt, this is his last chance to make things right.

In his final moments, with nothing to fear, Robotnik puts down his emotional walls and opens up as best as he can. Stone had done so much for him, asked for nothing in return, and now it was his turn to do the same. Ivo helped save the world, not for recognition or convenience, but simply out of love.

Stone had always been a sycophant to him, yes, but he had also been a friend. A sycofriend.

[nationallawreview]

Checklist for Transitioning Founder-Owned Law Firms

When transitioning from a founder-owned law firm, it’s essential to establish a clear plan to ensure the firm’s continued growth and stability. A successful transition depends on strategic priorities that enhance operational efficiency, improve client satisfaction, and secure long-term success. Below, we outline the key areas to analyze and implement for a seamless shift in leadership and…