#I have to pay $1000 fix it

[pastelsugar6w6]

I have been having

a month

[tellie-vision-art]

Where the hell am I supposed to even post art now, or even go to look at art???

I barely even use twt anymore bc I barely see art and the posts I do see usually aren’t even entertaining anymore, it’s just a bunch of shit I don’t care about or drama that I could live without hearing about

Here is basically dead, I do see art but it’s not usually art I care about? Like, I like OC artwork idc that much about fan art most of the time but that’s most of what I see (and it’s for media I don’t consume also so—). Or maybe I’m unlucky and my mutuals’ art just doesn’t show up for me 😭???

Both sites, it doesn’t matter what I post, it WILL be flopping, my mutuals don’t even really interact with me anymore and they always used to 😞. What do I even do? I just feel completely lost between this and all of my personal/health issues

[nomairuins]

anyways sry its not srs eventually ill get it together . and be a person again. one day

[sumplysilly]

Today is sumply one of those days (bad)

[nexus-nebulae]

absolutely fucking screaming ripping my hair out over the stage of tech today

[ningningkittie]

🦩🌷🌺

[pisces-gf]

lol .

[lesbianbucky]

you guys know that tiktok audio about homosexual audacity and thinking you can do anything with no prior experience? "no i've never done that but i'm gay so how hard could it be?" that's me right now having almost no knowledge of computers but wanting to build by own pc

[automatonknight]

i have. no perfume and a 3v4 fight to go through. i'm going to be honest i don't think i can survive that no matter how hard i try

[wedding-shemp]

How do you make $1650 in a month without being very good at anything in particular

[beansnpeets]

There are a handful of houses for sale that Jon and I could reasonably afford. I sent him some links. I know some of them he's seen and even shown me, but he never wants to pull the trigger and go see them. I do think we could afford most of these places. They aren't acreages like we want, but we were never supposed to be in this shoebox for 5 years. It was supposed to be temporary until we found something better. But we never started really looking. We thought about moving closer to the city and looked at a place down there, but never went further than that, which is too bad because the place we looked at would have been really nice.

[mayfly-maycry]

It’s a simple process, really; you walk up to the console, enter a number, and either the microchip implanted in your body at birth immediately kills you or a little slot underneath the screen pops out a wad of cash and you move on with your life.

The lines were long, so you had plenty of time to people watch. Most people walked away with nothing; anything short of 90% chance of sudden death wouldn’t get you any money, and less than $1000 was just not worth it, even for teenagers who thought they were invincible. Only a few people actually took the risk. You could tell which ones they were by how they tensed right before hitting the confirmation button at the bottom of the screen. And then went entirely limp as they crumpled to the ground, losing their gamble. Not one of them got their money.

As the person in front of you stepped up to the console, you idly wondered if the cash slots still worked, or if they had rusted closed from disuse. Or maybe there never even was any money in there.

And suddenly, it was your turn. You stepped up to the console, palms slightly sweaty. Of course, you had no intention of taking any chances, but it was still a little nerve-wracking to be only one typo away from death. There was a fingerprint scanner and a small number pad underneath the screen, which was black with three large words printed across it in white: "ENTER YOUR NUMBER."

You swallowed, scanned your thumb on the scanner, and used the number pad to do just that: 0. Just to be safe, you entered a few more 0's, a period, and some more 0's. Wouldn't want something weird to happen with unfilled digits. You hit the "enter" key on the number pad and held your breath.

The console's message changed: "CALCULATING REWARD..." It would come out to 0, then announce that you were free to--

The screen suddenly went blue, and from the sounds of protest from the people around you, yours wasn't the only one. As the technicians -- who were really just there to tote out the corpses of the foolish -- worked their way through the crowd, white text appeared on the screen:

Error on line 15:

Illegal operation: divide by 0

When a technician finally reached your side, he took one look at the console and cursed. "God dammit, who's the asshole who put in 0?!"

"Um... that may have been me," you admit sheepishly. You had no idea what was going on; of the hundreds of teenagers at the consoles before you who had also refused to risk death, not one of them had broken the machine, but somehow you had?

The technician shot you a disparaging look as he pulled a foldable keyboard out of his pocket and plugged it into a port hidden on the side of the console. "Seriously? Couldn't you have just jumped off of a building like a normal person? You didn't have to come in here and break our machine..."

The technician started tapping away at his keyboard, still grumbling, while your brain worked furiously to figure out what he was talking about. Why would he think you were suicidal for entering 0? You entered 0 because you wanted 0% chance of death--

Your heart skipped a beat as you realized. The number the machine wanted wasn't chance of death -- you were supposed to tell it your chance of life. Every person ahead of you who had made the same choice had entered 100%; you, on the other hand, had asked the machine for certain death.

In a daze, you watched the console screen as the technician worked. Instead of its usual simple, almost menacing black interface, it now displayed the rolling hills of a version of Windows older than you were with a terminal window pulled up in the corner. You didn't know much about coding, but you suspected that the mere 20 lines of code pulled up in the terminal were the entirety of what ran the machine.

The technician groaned. "Are you kidding me?! Why does it decide the money before it even decides if the person is going to live to see it?! And there's not any kind of error handling! How has it taken this long for the machine to break? I'd heard that it was shitty, but I didn't think it was this bad!"

You barely understood a word of what he said, but you did get the important part: you had asked the machine for certain death and been spared by a technical error. With a few more key presses on the technician's keyboard, the console returned to its original screen. The technician folded his keyboard away and turned to go.

"Wait...!" you called after him. "What should I do?"

The technician sighed and turned around. "Well, you can't use the console again -- the machine already marked your fingerprints as used," he told you. "At least there's an actual database hooked up to this thing so we didn't lose everything when it crashed," he added under his breath. The technician returned to his normal volume. "You're not getting any money, if that's what you're asking. Just be grateful you still have your life and get out of here."

His expression softened. "And, maybe take it as a new lease on life?" He put a hand on your shoulder. "I promise you, kid, life can be tough, but it's almost always worth living. Don't forget that, okay?" He awkwardly pat your shoulder before walking back to his post at the edge of the room.

You took his advice and left the room, truly grateful to be breathing in a way that, suicidal or not, you never had been before.

At 18 everyone must go to “the machine” and choose a percent that represents the odds the machine will not euthanize you. Those who live are granted 1000/(x^5) dollars. You confuse the meaning of the numbers and become the first person to ever put 0, but when the machine activates, you survive.

[puppygirlclick]

Help Two Disabled Trans Women Get Back On Their Feet

My federal income tax withheld wasn't properly updated by my employer on account of their bookkeeping which means I owe $1000 to the IRS by the end of July. I also had to go through intensive surgery at the end of February to fix a hernia which had caught my left testicle up in it, with a good portion of the left side of my abdomen being covered with a hernia mesh. Despite having been supposed to be healed up after 8 weeks, I have surpassed my employers 180 day limit for a leave of absence of which I wasn't informed of. Being terminated from my job leaves me with no health insurance and no way to continue paying for my doctor's appointments and treatments, all this as I am still paying $270 a month for my car and am possibly at risk of losing because I don't have a reliable way to pay for anything. On top of this, my girlfriend (@stcecilia) has recently moved in after being kicked out by a transphobic landlord and is dealing with worsening undiagnosed pain and sickness which has left her unable to work. Unfortunately she was relying on me getting better which isn't happening right now, and she's having to take care of me instead because of the condition I was left in with severe nerve pain the past few months leaving me stuck in a chair. We are both living with my parents and I can't even begin to put into words how much this is affecting both my girlfriend and I's mental health and physical well being along with everything else, with the way the house is always dirty, my step-mother constantly starting arguments with anyone who comes near her and constantly vitriolic and everyone else arguing and fighting with each other because of this.

It's hard to set a precise goal without it being subject to change for what we need as of right now but at least $1800 would help to pay my federal taxes and keep my car for the next two months and keep us on our feet for the time being.

Any amount helps towards paying off what we owe and moving closer to getting out of this house and into a better living situation and making sure we're properly cared for.

$0/1800

C*sh*pp $StSeeSee (@stcecilia's account) P*yp*l @debtanddeerteeth (Friend's account i can't get into mine without phone# and cici has no bank account rn) Ask for V*nmo (Not listing here because of my deadname) DO NOT TAG

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The housing crisis considered as an income crisis

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

A paradox: in 1970, everyday Americans found it relatively easy to afford a house, and the average American house cost 5.9x the average American income. In 2024, Americans find it nearly impossible to afford a house, and the average American house costs…5.9x the average American income.

Feels like a puzzler, right? Can it really be true that the average American house is as affordable to the average American earner as it was in 1970? It is true, as you can see from Blair Fix's latest open access research report, "The American Housing Crisis: A Theft, Not a Shortage":

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/10/23/the-american-housing-crisis-a-theft-not-a-shortage/

Fix also points out that is even more true of rents than it is of house prices. The ratio of rent to average income has actually fallen slightly since 1970. Rents are also, in some mathematical sense, "affordable."

Now, those of you who are well-versed in statistical card-palming will likely have a pretty good idea of the statistical artifact at the root of this paradox: the word "average." If you remember your seventh grade math, you'll recall that "average" has more than one meaning. Sure, there's the most common one: add several values together, then divide the total by the number of values you added. For example, a nonzero number of people have one or zero arms, so the average human has slightly fewer than two arms.

That average is called the "mean." The mean US wage is pretty robust: $73,242/year:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A792RC0Q052SBEA/1000

But the majority of Americans are not earning anything like $73k/year. Since the Reagan years, the number of Americans living in poverty and extreme poverty has climbed and climbed. And while their declining income sure drags down that average, it's dragged way, way, way up by another group of Americans – the ultra-rich.

You see, as Fix writes, back in the Reagan years, America initiated an experiment in redistribution. Reagan enacted policies that moved most of the nation's wealth from the great majority of working people to a tiny minority of people who ended up owning pretty much everything. Throw their income into the mix, and the average American's income is sufficient to finance the average American home, with plenty to spare.

In other words, this isn't an "average human has fewer than two arms" situation, it's more like a "Spiders Georg" situation. Spiders Georg is a Tumblr meme about a guy who eats 10,000 spiders every day and is thus single-handedly responsible for the (false) statistic that the average human eats two spiders a week:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiders_Georg

The American rich – Reagan's progeny – are the Spiders Georg of house prices. By hoarding the great mass of American national wealth, they create a statistical mirage of affordable housing.

Now, that's interesting, but where Fix goes next with this is even more fascinating. If the average price of housing (relative to average income) has stayed fixed since 1970, then it follows that the price of housing isn't being driven up by a problem with supply. Rather, these numbers suggest that America has enough housing, it's just that (most) Americans don't have enough money.

If that's true – and I have a couple of quibbles, which I'll get to in a sec – then the most common prescription for solving American housing (building more of it) is somewhat beside the point. For Fix, using public funds to subsidize cheaper housing is like using public funds to pay for food stamps for working people whose wages are too low to keep them from starving. Sure, we should do that: no one should be without a home and no one should be hungry. But if working people can't afford shelter and food, then we have a wage problem, not a supply problem.

Fix – as ever – has a well-thought through, painstakingly documented "sources and methods" page to back up his conclusions:

https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2024/10/23/the-american-housing-crisis-a-theft-not-a-shortage/#sources-and-methods

And while Fix acknowledges that reversing the mass transfer of wealth from working people to their bosses (and their bosses' idle offspring) is a big lift, he rightly wants to keep the question of wages (rather than housing supply) front and center in our debate about why so many of us are finding it hard to keep a a roof over our heads. We need progressive taxation, higher minimum wages, protection from medical and education debt, and hell, why not a job guarantee?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/25/canada-reads/#tcherneva

I love Fix's work, and this report is no exception. He does it all in his spare time. Some nice progressive think tank should give him a grant so he can do (a lot) more of it.

That all said, I do have a quibble with his conclusion about the adequacy of the American housing supply. In California, we have a shortage of 3-4 million homes, a number arrived at through the relatively robust method of adding up the number of California families that would like to have their own homes and subtracting the number of homes available near those families:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_housing_shortage

How to explain the discrepancy? One possibility is that the price of housing is artificially low, because more than 181,000 people are homeless here. Hundreds of thousands of more people are living in overcrowded housing, with multiple families inhabiting spaces intended for just one (or even a single person). If all of those people were competing for housing, the price might rise even higher.

Think of the people who have given up looking for work – because they're not in the workforce, wages go up. If they were competing in the labor market, wages would fall. Maybe all those people would prefer to have a job, but they're missing from the statistics.

That's one theory. Another is that we're getting tripped up on averages again here. California does have some towns with many vacancies, extra supply that is pushing down prices; it's also got many places with far more people who want to live there than there are homes for. It's possible that there's enough supply on average across the states, but – as we've seen – averages are deceptive.

Ultimately, I think both things can be true: we have a wage problem and we have (many, localized) supply problems. Both of these problems deserve our attention, and neither is acceptable in a civilized society.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/24/i-dream-of-gini/#mean-ole-mr-median

[kaile-hultner]

Help me dig upward: the Tumblr post

In which I talk a little bit about the hole I’ve been in for a hot minute—and what I want to do to dig out of it.

Hey y’all,

For the second time in a few years I’m starting a GoFundMe. This time, though, it’s not for the site, at least not explicitly. It is to help me get out from under the weight of debt that I’ve been carrying for more than a decade at this point, but which has finally gotten so bad that it’s affecting everything from my sleep patterns to my overall mental health and ability to do the thing that you likely already support me for: this website. 

If you’ve been wondering why the posting has decreased here, or reduced in quality, or why we started 2024 off publishing other writers and then just as suddenly stopped doing that again, this is why: I am out of money, I am in debt, and it feels like I’m living every day in pure, basic survival mode. 

This GFM, in which I’m asking for $10,000, is a moonshot, a Hail Mary. I don’t expect it to raise anything; it will be the last time I ask the Internet for money, whether it works or it doesn’t. If it works, obviously it’ll mean I’ll be able to post more and maybe my mental health will improve and I won’t feel like every moment is a countdown to a terrible ending, and I’ll be able to think of compelling angles to talk about video games again. If it doesn’t work, maybe I’ll figure something else out. Bankruptcy, probably. I don’t know. 

I hate doing this. I hate being in this position. I hate that I’ve already asked for money this year and people have been extremely generous and it just feels like all that generosity just went into a hole. I wish I had something to show for that generosity, or proactively for anything I gain from this campaign. So, if there is something you want me to cover or talk about or look at in exchange for your support on this campaign, just shoot me an email with proof of your donation, no matter how small. It’s kaile@noescapevg.com. I can’t promise I’ll write a bunch of magnum opuses at your request but I will do what I can just simply to show appreciation for your support. 

Anyway, this feels bad to me and I’m already starting to regret it, so I’m going to wrap this up by saying thank you in advance and I owe you my life. I wish that was figurative.

Edit: here is the text of the GFM I posted. 

Hi y’all,

My name is Kaile Hultner. I am an online cultural critic who has been running the video game criticism website No Escape since 2019. My work has been featured in other places like PC Gamer, Polygon and Bullet Points Monthly. And like a lot of people, I have been deeply in debt for years. 

Debt is a very strange phenomenon. As anthropologist David Graeber demonstrated in his book Debt: The First 5000 Years, it is a phenomenon that imparts a kind of moral valence on a person; whether or not that person can pay their debts is a sign of their trustworthiness or virtue as a member of polite society. Yet you can’t go without debt: at some point, at least in the United States, you have to pick up a form of debt – credit – to establish your credit score, without which you can’t rent an apartment, buy or lease a car, or, in some cases, even get a job. Being debt-free can harm this score, as can having a credit history that is “too young.” 

I’ve been in debt for a long time. I’ve been managing my debt for over a decade. Every year for the last six or seven years in particular it feels like I’m losing progressively more and more ground. Seven years ago I had a car; I could do things like deliver Uber Eats and DoorDash and make extra money whenever I ran out. It broke down in my driveway in 2022 and I couldn’t afford to take it to a mechanic to get it fixed. I sold it for $200. I haven’t been able to replace it. I don’t know what I’ll do if I ever need a car for anything. Luckily my day job is WFH. 

Recently, I’ve been fighting with my old bank over charges it erroneously applied to my account in excess of $1000, causing it to go deep into the negatives. I’ve been slowly, slowly digging myself out of that hole thanks to some close friends and some very kind folks who follow me on the Internet. But it’s caused other debts to exacerbate. And tonight I realized that I am at the end of my rope. I can’t do this anymore. I won’t sit here and say that I’ve done everything right; certainly, more than one bad decision made out of desperation has put me here. I won’t make excuses for that. But I’m tired of being here, in this position. I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night with heart palpitations because I got an alert from my bank that I’m in the negatives. I’m tired of getting emails and phone calls from debt collectors. I’m tired of living in basic survival mode with no discernible path forward. I’m tired of being tired, of not having the energy to be creative and do the work I’ve built an online presence around for five years. And paradoxically, I’m tired of asking people on the internet for money. 

So I’m going to ask people on the internet for money, one final time. 

I’ve set the goal at $10,000. This is far more than I’m honestly expecting to get, but if I get even a fraction of that I could finally obliterate my debts in a meaningful way. I do have specific milestones that I basically need to meet, otherwise this GFM doesn’t hit its maximum effectiveness, but otherwise the sky is the limit. If I reach the whole amount… I don’t really know what I’ll do. Cry, maybe. 

Milestones – bolded are high-priority

Milestone reached! $750 – gets my old bank account out of the negatives. Eliminates one vector of harassment, allows me to close that account and move on. 

Milestone Reached! $1800 – does the above and allows me to fully pay any late or past-due loan payments missed as a result of the bank issue.

Milestone Reached! $6000 – does the above and allows me to fully pay off all installment loans 

$8000 – does the above and allows me to pay off any remaining debts. 

$10,000 – does the above and allows me to start saving. 

$10,000+ – basically a moonshot, I have no idea what I’ll do with extra. 

I fully do not expect you to donate to this. There are people trying to escape genocides, much more abject poverty, crushing medical debt, and so much more that feel – at least to me – so much more worthy of your attention and money. But just know that if you dodonate something, you have my undying appreciation. I will quite literally owe you my life. 

I’m going to post this now before I get too emotional or lose my nerve entirely, but again: thank you. Even if all you do is read this. 

—Kaile

[mousedetective]

PAYPAL | AMAZON WISHLIST | KOFI | GOFUNDME |PATREON

10/28/24 - New Post!

CAR EMERGENCY + NEED TO COME UP WITH RENT!

Our car died today. Apparently the power steering belt snapped off and one of the things supporting it fell off our car. We already have other repairs that we need done, so we need to raise about $3000 total, with at least $1000 before they can buy parts.

I also have to pay the movers who helped me move storage units $765 after what I already paid, and I'd like to pay them as quickly as possible.

Please spread this far and wide. I can't walk the mile it is to connect to the bus stop to get places so we desperately need to get the car fixed. And we just got rehoused and really don't want to be homeless again.

$1706/$5771