#I just have a household with a bunch of people relying on me for income and a bunch of moving expenses to pay off

[savrenim]

the worst bit about being Super Excited about a new original project is, like. the knowledge that. at best. people aren't going to see it for a year and a half to two years. and that it's really hard to go "hey trust me I'm going to have something so cool in like two years so please stick around now"

[edogawatranslations]

Danganronpa Kirigiri (3) - Chapter 2, Part 1

Table of Contents | Previous: Chapter 1, Part 6

Chapter 2 - Identity Unknown: ~Ghost in the Mirror~

Upon unsealing the black envelope and pulling out the black papers enclosed within, I came to the frightening realization of why it had felt awfully thick.

Altogether, there were twelve Duel Noir challenges.

Prior to opening the envelope, we had mistakenly believed that this case would fall into the same pattern as the previous ones, but reality far trumped our assumptions and pummeled us deeper into despair.

My name was printed on all twelve cards.

“Wh-What... is this...?”

My trembling hands shuffled through the papers countless times. The hope of them being twelve copies of the same challenge was quickly crushed; the cases listed were all unique.

“They share a common thread of being locked room cases,” Kyoko said. Her voice sounded calm, but the shock was evident on her pale face.

“Are they telling us to go solve twelve cases within a week? Twelve locked room murder cases? There’s no way that’s possible!”

I was reminded once again of the terror that was the Crime Victims’ Salvation Committee. When it came to them, any notion of common sense went straight out the window. That was something I never should’ve forgotten.

The game was afoot.

“What do we do...?” I paced around my cramped room, clutching my head in my hands.

Only two of the twelve challenges shared a common location. That meant, at the very least, we would have to travel to eleven separate destinations. Although some research was necessary to track down each place, it was doubtful that all of them would be bunched up in the same general area. One week was not nearly enough time to even come close to solving all the cases.

“Calm down. Let’s formulate a strategy.”

“A strategy...? Unless we somehow mastered Apparition, there’s no way for us to solve everything! Even if we could teleport from place to place, how could we possibly juggle twelve cases at the same time?!”

“We can set aside some of them if it comes to it.”

“...Set aside?”

“No penalty is ascribed to the detective for failing to complete a challenge. Therefore, it’s in our best interest to focus our efforts on the cases that appear solvable and set aside the rest, similar to how people tend to skip over difficult questions on an exam.”

“You know this is totally different from an exam, right? These are real life murder cases, with actual victims and murderers. Lives are at stake. We can’t turn a blind eye to any case!”

“Exactly, which is why I suggest we make a concerted effort to do everything we can, within reason,” Kyoko said, staring at me with an earnest expression. “Rather than overextend ourselves and rush through each case, I believe it’s more prudent to begin by tackling what we can feasibly manage, before moving forward from there.”

What will we have to sacrifice in pursuit of our cause?

The time for another decision was drawing near.

“...I guess you’re right.” I sat down on the mattress next to Kyoko. “I’m not even confident I have what it takes to solve a single case, let alone twelve. It was a mistake to think we could take a stab at all twelve just with added effort.”

“That’s quite a pessimistic turn.”

“Reality’s hitting me hard. I bet these Duel Noirs are meant to teach us that no matter how much we grow, so much in life remains out of reach.”

“But Yui, you can jump higher than anyone,” Kyoko said with a weak smile. “There’s so much we’ve been able to overcome just by virtue of you being here.”

“Kyoko...”

You’ve finally started showing me your smile.

“So don’t feel so dejected right out of the gate. There’s still hope,” Kyoko reassured.

“Hope?”

“There are plenty of detectives specializing in locked room murders registered with the Detective Library. If we can recruit some of them to help us, we can chip away at all twelve cases simultaneously.”

That’s right!

If the enemy was coming at us with numbers, then all we’d have to do was fight back with our own army of detectives—

“Wait, we shouldn’t do that,” I objected. “We can’t trust the Detective Library anymore. They’re likely connected with the Committee, and I’m almost certain there are Committee members listed among the detectives there.”

Detectives who accepted the white envelope.

From what I had gathered, more than a dozen detectives had vanished while attempting to track down the Crime Victims’ Salvation Committee. It would be easy to conclude that they had simply been erased by the Committee, but perhaps a number of them had been offered the white envelope and ultimately decided to join their ranks.

“You have a point...” Kyoko responded. “They would be the ones to eagerly volunteer themselves while actively conspiring to impede our progress.”

“Right? There’s not enough time to determine whether the detectives we gather are with us or the enemy,” I said, shooting a glance at my desk clock. “Look, it’s already been 30 minutes! At this rate, we’ll end up wasting the whole day trying to solve this problem. Argh... What should we do...?”

We couldn’t rely on anyone associated with the Detective Library. Then, maybe it would be optimal to seek out detectives who weren’t registered there? But how would we even begin to find detectives who were unlisted and locked room murder case specialists?

“What about your grandfather? Will he be away for a while?”

“Mhm.” Kyoko nodded while contemplating something. “We haven’t been in contact since that day.”

Ten days earlier, we received a stern warning from Fuhito Kirigiri, the present head of the Kirigiri household, advising us to avoid Mikado Shinsen at all costs. It seemed that he had been called overseas on important business and likely wouldn’t be back soon.

“I guess that means we’ve no choice but to go at it on our own...”

“There’s one person we may be able to rely on,” Kyoko said while looking up. “In fact, if we could get their help, we wouldn’t need to recruit dozens of other detectives.”

“Huh? Who? One of your detective buddies?”

“No, not someone I know. One of the triple zero-class detectives, Rei Mikagami.”

At present, three detectives held the distinction of having the DSC number [000].

Gekka Ryuuzouji, the “Count of the Armchair.”

Johnny Arp, the “Officer of the Peace.”

And lastly, Rei Mikagami, whose identity was unknown.

Everything about Rei Mikagami remained a mystery, including his—or her—whereabouts. Only the reports of cases solved by Mikagami hinted at his existence.

Rei Mikagami typically only handled cases that presented the most extreme of mysteries—strange cases bordering on the occult, or cold cases from the past. One time, after he solved the Zodiac Killings, a cold case from the 1960s in Los Angeles, he appeared for an interview with a local newspaper through an opaque glass partition under the alias “Ghost in the Mirror.” That moniker had since been carried over to Japan, where he became referred to as Rei Mikagami.

“We witnessed Gekka Ryuuzouji and Johnny Arp with Mikado Shinsen, but Rei Mikagami wasn’t with them,” Kyoko said.

“Still, he’s gotta be a member of the Committee. I bet he’s only choosing to remain out of the limelight since he’s made a name for himself for being all mysterious and secretive. We can’t rule out the possibility that he’s in league with them.”

“It’s worth trying to get ahold of him to confirm. If he’s an enemy, it would be in our best interest to uncover his identity.”

“I suppose...”

The thought that we would have to face off against the triple zero-class detectives on opposite sides of the battlefield sent chills down my spine. I felt like I had been thrown into the midst of a war completely unprepared. Why did things have to turn out this way? I was just an average high school girl, no matter how you looked at me.

“How do you suggest we get in touch with someone as elusive as him?” I asked.

“...That’s what we should think about first.”

“It’d be great if we can sort that out within the hour.”

“If you have time for that attitude, start using your brain and think,” Kyoko snapped.

After offering a quick apology, I started wondering more about Rei Mikagami. Just because he was a high-ranking detective didn’t necessarily mean he was a decent human being. He must have been someone quite peculiar to be actively concealing his identity.

Was he an enemy? Or an ally?

If we could enlist the help of a triple zero-class detective, we could substantially reduce the time needed to solve these cases.

“Should we try leaving a message at the Detective Library like before? But we can’t trust the library...”

Running out of ideas, Kyoko and I crossed our arms in silence. We were back to square one, with no inkling of where to start.

Suddenly, an unfamiliar ringtone blared out from somewhere. Kyoko and I exchanged glances.

“Is that your phone?” I asked.

“No, I don’t have one.”

“It’s not mine,” I said, checking my phone. The screen was on standby, and the ringtone wasn’t playing. But the sound was definitely coming from somewhere in my room.

Straining my ears, I scanned around for the source of the sound.

“Oh, maybe...”

I remembered that Licorne had handed me a present as I was leaving Ryuuzouji’s headquarters. I pulled the wooden box out of my backpack.

The sound was indeed coming from inside.

I untied the ribbon, removed the cover, and found a cell phone wrapped in padding. The display lit up, signaling an incoming call. Aside from the phone, the box was empty.

“What’s that?”

“A gift from Ryuuzouji,” I responded, while pulling out the phone. “I’ll answer it.”

Kyoko nodded.

The screen displayed “unknown caller.” I accepted the call.

“Hello?”

“Greetings. How are you faring?”

I immediately recognized the handsome voice on the line.

“Mr. Ryuuzouji?”

“Indeed. It appears you have unsealed the Duel Noir envelope. The challenge this time must have caught you by surprise.”

“Can you really call this fair?” I asked sharply. I put the call on speakerphone to let Kyoko hear as well.

“Fufufu... Each of the Duel Noirs are indeed fair. In fact, I believe they put you at quite the advantage.” Ryuuzouji sounded amused. “It is outside the norms for me to be contacting you like this.”

“What do you want?”

“Three things. First, police records will be crucial for this set of Duel Noirs. Lico will relay you all of the information obtained by the police. Call upon him at any time you find necessary.”

So that was what Lico meant about assisting me.

“Understood. How can I reach him?”

“His contact information can be found in the cell phone in your hand. Feel free to use that gift to your heart’s desire. I shall cover all of the phone fees.” Ryuuzouji gave a little chuckle.

This was no laughing matter.

“Second. These Duel Noirs are all directed and produced by yours truly. Consider this a challenge from not just the twelve criminals, but also from me.”

“...Okay.”

“With regards to that, I wish to attach additional victory conditions to our battle.”

“Sure... Wait, what did you say?”

Our battle?

A triple zero-class detective was challenging me to a battle?

“If you succeed in solving all twelve cases within the time limit, or otherwise prevent them from occurring, you will be victorious. However, it will be your defeat if even one of the cases remains unsolved. Do you accept?”

“How are those conditions fair? No matter how you look at it, we’re at a complete disadvantage!”

“However—” Ryuuzouji continued, ignoring my objections. “Should you triumph against me, I shall bow out of the Crime Victims’ Salvation Committee.”

“Bow out... So you’ll quit the Committee?”

“Indeed. The Committee will be left severely incapacitated without an integral creator like myself amongst its heads. You must be thrilled to hear me offer you these terms.”

“What happens if I lose?”

“Nothing in particular. If you fail this challenge, you shall continue to be called to the battlefield. I suppose you may consider that your penalty for losing. For as long as you remain a detective, you will be fighting an endless war.”

Achieving victory would be a daunting task, but overall, it sounded like a no-risk, high-reward challenge. However, that was precisely why I feared there was something hidden between the lines.

I looked over to Kyoko to get her opinion. She gave me a small nod.

Our minds were made up.

“Okay. I accept your challenge.”

“Wonderful. You are living up to be the very detective I had imagined you to be.”

It was too late to turn back. We had no choice but to venture forth.

Next: Chapter 2, Part 2

[squareallworthy]

Taking UBI seriously part 5: Sheahen

This is the fifth in a serious of posts looking for a serious proposal for universal basic income. Previous posts:

A Budget-Neutral Universal Basic Income by Jensen et. al.

Basic Income – Why and How in Difficult Economic Times: Financing a BI in Ireland by Healy et. al.

Andrew Yang’s proposal as part of his presidential campaign

A variety of indicators evaluated for two implementation methods for a Citizen’s Basic Income by Malcom Torry

Score so far: 0 serious proposals for a full UBI, 1 serious proposal for a partial income

In this post, I will look at It’s Time to Think BIG! How to Simplify the Tax Code and Provide Every American with a Basic Income Guarantee by Allan Sheahen.

tl;dr: Not a serious plan. Sloppy and politically poisoned. There is no way to tell whether poor people are better off or not, and the proposal includes several provisions that would never get a hearing in Congress. If this is as good as UBI proposals get, then there are no serious UBI proposals.

Allan Sheahen was a long-time advocate of a universal basic income, or basic income guarantee, as he preferred to call it. He published two books on the subject, Guaranteed Income: The Right to Economic Security in 1983 and The Basic Income Guarantee: Your Right to Economic Security in 2012, as well as numerous articles and papers. He was an early leader of the US Basic Income Guarantee Network (usbig.net) and spent more than 30 years advocating for basic income. Basic Income Earth Network ran an article noting his passing in 2014 which you can read here.

Sheahen published this proposal in 2006, using 2004 budget figures. On the benefits side, the plan is straightforward and typical: a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) of $10,000 per year for each adult US citizen under the age of 65, and $2000 for each child. Recipients of Social Security and other federal retirement programs would get either their current benefit or the BIG, whichever is greater. He would distribute this as a refundable tax credit, so none of the BIG would be taxed back.

He calculates a gross cost of $1,895.6 billion. To pay for this, he plans on treating all other income as taxable at standard rates and increasing taxes in various ways, eliminating a bunch of current transfer programs (basically everything except Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid), and making deep cuts to defense spending. Figures below are in billions of dollars.

The budget cuts and tax increases are enough to fund the BIG with $265 billion left over. (Sheahen also considers a 2% tax on wealth, but that is for the purpose of balancing the federal budget. Since that is unrelated to the BIG, I am leaving it out of this budget.)

There is a lot going on in that $985.2 billion in the first line. It includes personal exemptions, standard deductions, all itemized deductions, all tax credits, and most importantly, all the tax expenditures for 2004 from this list, which Sheahan characterizes as “tax loopholes.” He provides details on all these provisions -- far too many to go into here -- which give his proposal the appearance of being thoroughly thought out. Once you start digging into it, though, it becomes clear that he didn’t pay that much attention to what he was doing. As a result, his proposal is sloppy, unclear on what it accomplishes, unfocused, and politically doomed.

General sloppiness

Sheahan seems to have taken a list of what he considers tax loopholes and, without looking at what they are, decided that they all have to go. He applied the same bulldozer approach to cutting transfer payments. The result is a mess.

Contradictory on pensions. Sheahen says that recipients of Social Security and other federal retirement programs would continue to receive their current benefits or the BIG, whichever is greater (p. 7). But then on pp. 20 and 21 he calls for eliminating spending on pensions for railroad workers, District of Columbia government employees, and veterans. What he actually intended is unclear.

Double-counting  Some of the savings he expects to get from closing tax loopholes are incompatible with his spending cuts. For instance, on p. 20 he calls for eliminating public assistance programs such as food stamps, and then on p. 15 he counts on additional revenue from taxing those benefits as ordinary income. He plans on taxing contributions to IRAs, (p. 17), which would leave taxpayers no reason to use them, but doesn't subtract income taxes paid on money withdrawn from IRAs. This doesn't amount to a great deal compared to the cost of the whole program, but it's sloppy and annoying.

Unequal comparisons  Eliminating these tax expenditures means converting many things that are not normally considered income into taxable income. The biggest such item would be employer contributions to health insurance. Also included would be scholarships and tuition reductions for students, for instance, or housing and meal benefits for military personnel. Under Sheahen's plan, the cash equivalent would count as income and would be taxed as income.

Counting employer-provided health insurance as its cash equivalent could easily boost someone's reportable income by $5000. Imputed rental income (which I will return to below) could add $10,000 or more. Not everyone will be hit by these additional taxes, but homeowners with health insurance make up a solid slice of the middle class.

This means that when he compares the current system to his BIG plan on pp. 23-24, he does not compare like to like. The person with $40,000 in reportable income under the current system is not the same as the person with $40,000 income under the BIG plan. But he calculates increase/decrease figures as if they were. The net increase in disposable income he calculates on pp. 23-24 will be wrong for anyone who owns a home, has employer-provided health insurance, is in the armed forces, is a student paying tuition or on a scholarship, is paying student loans, or has an IRA, among other circumstances.

It may be Sheahen's intention to place more of the tax burden on homeowners and on people who have employer-provided health insurance. If so, it's dishonest of him to hide it in this way. But I don't think he did, because I don't think he has an accurate picture of where money is coming from and going to, which leads me to my next point.

Are poor people actually better off? How many?

The worst fault in his number-crunching is that he doesn't realistically account for the value of benefits lost to the poor. For a single parent with one child, he estimates benefits for the poorest incomes at $4,800 for TANF and $2400 for food stamps. But those are just two out of the many means-tested benefits he plans on cutting. TANF and food stamps together amount to $46 billion, but Supplemental Security Income and Section 8 vouchers add up to $56 billion, so he's accounting for less than half of the benefits the poor would lose. 

Furthermore, those benefits are very unevenly distributed. Only a minority of poor households receive Section 8 vouchers, for instance, but those that do would be hit very hard by losing them. It may be that some poor families would be better off under his plan, but some will come out worse. How many? Forty percent? Sixty percent? We have no idea.

This is why people create tax models and run simulations. The current tax system is complex, the benefits system is complex, and the variation in circumstances among people at the same income level is complex. If you are not willing to get into the nitty-gritty of those details, then you have no basis for a claim that the sweeping reform that you propose actually delivers the benefits that you want to see. Sheahan certainly doesn't.

Political poison

Sheahen seems to have given no consideration to political problems at all. He plans on eliminating “welfare programs which will not be needed under a BIG.” But "welfare” turns out to include things like this dealbreaker (p. 21):

How could anyone not immediately realize that this is political poison?

Imagine twenty thousand disabled veterans parading down Constitution Avenue. A thousand men and women in wheelchairs lead the way. They include veterans of every conflict from World War II to Afghanistan, all of them wearing their uniforms, all of them wearing their decorations. When they reach the Capitol, they raise their prosthetic arms in the air and shout “This is not welfare!”

No politician who wants to get re-elected is going to support this plan.

Other cuts under the heading of “welfare” include:

Student loans

Pell grants

GI bill benefits

Farm subsidies

Refugee assistance

As for the tax expenditures he wants to eliminate, most are too obscure and wonky for the typical American voter to care about. Many of the others, such as the lower tax rate on capital gains, mainly benefit the rich. But some of them are extremely popular. Making employer-provided health insurance taxable will anger a huge portion of the middle class. Making Social Security fully taxable will lose you the support of the AARP.

Perhaps the oddest one is “imputed rental income,” which no one but an economist would reasonably consider income. This is the rent that homeowners could be collecting if they rented their houses out. “Imputing” this income means pretending that they pay rent to themselves as tenants and collect it as landlords. Homeowners are not going to be happy to hear that they owe thousands more to the IRS because of taxes on purely hypothetical income.

And on top of this, the Department of Defense would be cut by 35%.

Whether these provisions are good ideas or not, they range from very difficult to obviously impossible in their political feasibility. Politicians who want to get re-elected are not going to support them. If you could convince Congress to cut the Pentagon's budget by more than a third, then that would be great, go at it! But you can't, so they won't, so any plan that relies on doing so is dead on arrival.

Sheahen asks, on page 7, "How can the U.S. afford $1,895.6 billion?" His answer is "by completely ignoring political reality."

Lack of focus

Remember that extra $265 billion that Sheahan was left with after totaling up his budget? Why is that there?

If he's got $265 billion left over, then his plan actually does not rely on $160.9 billion in defense cuts. He justifies his other cuts by calling them welfare, but defense spending is no more related to his BIG plan than spending on national parks or Amtrak. Singling out the Pentagon is entirely gratuitous. He could have left that out and avoided opposition from defense hawks.

With $265 billion to work with, he could have left out the defense cuts and left out the cuts to veterans benefits and the cuts to farm subsidies and left income tax rates at the post-1994 levels, all of which would have increased the political viability of his plan.

Instead, he went on to try to balance the budget with a 2% wealth tax. And then he pointlessly goes on to consider scrapping the current income tax system and replacing it with a 35% flat tax, even though this would be worse for poor households. 

So maybe cutting defense spending is a good idea. Maybe balancing the budget is a good idea, and a wealth tax is a good way to do it. Maybe we should consider changing to a flat tax.

Maybe so, maybe not, but all of these are unnecessary for the BIG program that Sheahen is proposing. Packaging them together just makes the whole thing more complicated and politically contentious. If your main goal is ending poverty, why mess around with the other stuff?

A responsible person who actually wanted to get something done and pass legislation would leave out anything that isn’t necessary to do the job. Sheahen couldn’t be bothered to do that, or to spend any time considering the political implications of his plan, or even to ask someone to look over his accounting to see if it made sense. If he’s not going to take his own work seriously enough to put in that minimal amount of effort, neither should anyone else.

Conclusion: after spending 20 years in the UBI movement, the best Allan Sheahan could do was this sloppy, unclear, politically incompetent mess. If this is as good as UBI proposals get, then there are no serious UBI proposals. And if this is what passes for serious UBI activism, then there is no UBI activism worth paying attention to.

[skepticalmuppet]

I’m not a sixteen year old with no frame of reference of how the world works. I’m an adult who has worked at and shopped at thrift stores for decades. And I never said people shouldn’t shop at thrift stores.

Maybe that person worked at a thrift shop that had heaps of sheets in the back that were going to go to the landfill if nobody tore them up for rag rugs. But in my experience, in the places I have lived, this isn’t the case.

A foster kid was aging out of care and we took them to the local thrift store because they needed household goods for their new place. I say “local thrift store” because it was a very small town and there was only one. There were no sheets on the shelf any of the times I went there, so I asked the manager if they ever had any sheets donated, and she told me they did get them sometimes, but there was a woman who came in twice a week to check and bought them all to use for quilt backing. She also bought all the men’s cotton shirts in large sizes to cut up for those quilts. The manager said she had offered to put aside any of the damaged goods that came in to give her for free but the woman said she didn’t want to go through a bunch of garbage to get the fabric she wanted. It wasn’t about the money, she just wanted the fabric.

This was one of those little church run charity shops that served a community that didn’t have any sort of retail aside from a little grocery/hardware store and the manager was a volunteer who worked the store because she wanted to serve that community, and she was upset that this woman was taking resources away from people like my young friend who just wanted to not sleep on a bare mattress. Lots of people without transportation relied on that store for all their clothes and household items, and it was not restocked with any sort of regularity because there weren’t enough people donating. Unless somebody died. We had a whole conversation about this bored rich lady who entertained herself by buying second hand textiles and “upcycling them into bespoke quilts”. That’s the kind of shit I’m pissed off about. Or the people who buy all the size 20+ dresses and “upcycle” them into cute outfits in a size four. Or the lady who came into the store where I used to work and bought all the baby onesies for her new dog photoshoot. Or the women in the Facebook upcycling group who joke about how their husbands are tired of driving them around to all the small town thrift stores when they could just buy new stuff at the mall, isn’t that cute haha they don’t know that we still shop at the mall all the time too. And then calling it sustainability or environmentalism.

Shop at thrift stores. I’m not telling you not to. I’m not gatekeeping, or demanding people prove their credentials as a Certified Poor Person before they’re let in the door. But stop patting yourself on the back for sustainability when what you’re doing is not actually contributing to the greater good, and think about the larger consequences of your actions.

There are plenty of ways to get fabric for crafting. A lot of those ways are thrift store related, without taking away resources that people actually need. If your local thrift store has heaps of sheets that are otherwise going to be thrown away, and there are no agencies in your area that are in need of bedlinens for lower income folks, cutting up those sheets into strips for rag rugs isn’t hurting anyone. But don’t assume that’s always the case just because someone on the internet says the store they work at has a surplus. That is not universally true, even if it is undeniably true for that store.

If you just want things to cut up for crafting, ask the manager if they have damaged sheets or jeans or whatever that they sell by the pound. Some stores, like the one I mentioned above, might even give it to you for free.

Or, honestly, do whatever the fuck you want, but don’t do this shit and call it solar punk. That’s really the larger point I’m trying to make.

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but going to thrift stores and buying all the usable sheets and t-shirts and jeans and then cutting them up to make rag rugs or yarn or whatever for your shabby chic/cottagecore aesthetic isn’t solar punk.

It’s gentrification.

You are taking resources away from people who need them so that you can pretend to live a less consumptive lifestyle. You are cosplaying sustainability.

The whole fucking point of rag rugs etc. was that you made use of textiles you already had that could no longer be used for their intended purpose, and you extended the lifecycle of the item by turning it into something else useful instead of throwing it in the garbage. When you buy clothing that still has use *as clothing* just to cut it into rags to make a rug, you’re *speeding up* the consumption of materials. You’re shortening the lifecycle. You are consuming MORE.

And you’re doing it by buying up resources that marginalized people need. Those thrift store sheets would look so much better on somebody’s fucking bed, but since you wanted that Little House on the Prairie vibe, someone is sleeping on a bare mattress now whilst trying to save their pennies to go to fucking Wal-Mart for bedsheets. And that denim throw pillow probably looks adorable on your sofa, but somebody needed a pair of sturdy jeans for that job they’re trying to get, and now there’s nothing available.

But sure, your house looks cute. I guess that’s important.

[urihu]

I could not sleep so here’s a bunch of headcanons wild speculations with no basis in canon:

Yu-hon exiling priests was not (just) because they were meddling in the government, but because wars cost money and priests had through the centuries accumulated a lot of treasures

He actually did not have the right to do that, but he had an army, and his dad, the king, had to listen and obey

his dad, the king, did not like that one bit which is why he declared that his other son will be king after him (i am imagining he did it publicly, with great pomp, made generals and army commanders swear fealty on the spot, made his older son swear fealty by shaming him, then transferred power at once so that there is no rebellion)

What if in Kouka it was traditionally priests who took care of the sick and elderly, educated the poor, took it upon themselves to expose the corruption of officials to the court - in a generation there would be a decline in general education and health

if this is true, Soo-won being a young man and a sort of flat-earth atheist would be better suited to make a new network to do that in the place of the old, while a person like king Il who grew up in the old system would not notice a lack at all (i mean, if he had left the palace he would, but err...)

pacifism as a movement had wide support in Kouka at some points, and flared up in reaction to Yu-hon’s wars culminating in support for a peace-loving king (captain Gi-gan is quite independently and IMO a lot more effectively applying it than Il)

atheism (not the right word where gods actually exist, help?) is also a long-term movement in Kouka, they were not so much opposed to priesthood as such, it is useful to know what gods want, but they rejected gods and priests as moral arbiters and guides

priestly class/estate was really connected to gods, but gods themselves have questionable judgement so following what prophecies told was not always the best course of action through history

the wars were actually disastrous in the long term because although they brought a lot of loot, gold can’t be eaten, men who died left a gap in the villages: widow households pay lower taxes, there will be fewer children born, food quality goes down if land can’t be properly worked - of those kids fewer will live to grow up, land quality deteriorates if it is not properly worked (if left fallow it can recover), irrigation systems were not maintained, know-how was lost, animals had to be slaughtered because there were too few people to take care of them... then the next generation was threatened in various ways which prevented recovery

Yu-hon’s victories were often Pyrrhic

he would have been a horrible king for many different reasons not connected just to ‘belonging to the war party’ but his buddies did not care

reason earth tribe is so warlike is because they traditionally depend on mines for income with occasional war as supplement* but they had to rely on war more and more as the mines were emptied

*going to war as an economic activity is a thing now and in the past, so don’t @ me  

Yu-hon grew unsatisfied with his brother’s rule and decided to set in place a conspiracy ready to start at a good moment when his brother does something stupid, then got killed

conspirators were true believers in the cause who set Soo-won on the path of usurpation

Yona’s mom was not the target of the assassination, king Il was, she saved his life

Kouka’s toxic militarism meant that people who aren’t soldiers are considered less worthy, so king Il was to be ignored ‘by anybody who is anybody’ from the outset

The fact that king Il knows his way about swords, can stop one with bare hands and not flinch, yet is a self-professed coward is a more recent development, he was not always like that, he grew more and more disgusted by them since he killed his brother

ditto with excessive praying

king Il was not actually sure Yona is Hiryuu, he was suspicious it was to be a son, which is why he doubled down on not letting her touch a weapon

there is something very bad in the prophecy about what was to happen and king Il tried to avert it/ or there is something good which he tried to fulfill by forcing it

[steamishot]

Homeless Swing

Starting the day off with writing a few things. Work isn’t too busy so I’m taking my tasks slow. I’m also trying to be less distracted at work. I think I can do my job well enough on the surface level, but to prevent myself from being bored, I want to actively be more organized and increase my expertise on the subjects I handle. It will definitely help me see my work as more purposeful as I learn things to do tasks with intent and not just with the purpose of completing them.

Last week, I had lunch with a floor mate, C. She normally eats at her desk. We decided to go to in n out on this day. It was my first time eating out with her. We’ve had lunch (food brought from home) together a few times before. After in n out, I decided I wanted to go pick up a small snack/drink at Trader Joes. As we were crossing the street on Westwood/Weyburn (C was walking to the left of me), this semi hobo/druggie looking white guy who was walking opposite of us, quickly walked towards C and swung his fist towards her face. Luckily she was able to dodge his fist, but he scraped her neck with his skin. She ended up tearing up because it was so random and terrifying. It didn’t occur to me to really look at the suspect so that we could report him later. I just kinda pulled her away and walked away fast because I was more scared he was gonna come back and try to attack her/us some more. A few strangers came up to her and asked “What was that about? Are you okay?” She also mentioned how it wasn’t the first time it happened to her. As a college student, she was once walking up Bruinwalk and a hobo swung his bag at her. I thought it was kinda strange, like she was a magnet for these crazy people. Anyway, we walked to TJ and I wasn’t sure how to comfort her. “Do you want anything? I’ll get it for you.” But she declined. When we got back to our floor, I told my supervisor and colleague what had happened. I normally don’t initiate conversation but I actually had something to say that day. “Something weird happened during lunch” I announced to I, L and student worker S. They advised that she tell the HR director so he can request some patrol officers to be in that area. We later called UCPD together over the phone and tried to describe what the suspect looked like. She remembered a pink shirt, I remembered green for some reason. She remembered shades, I didn’t. She remembered a ponytail, I remembered dreadlocks. Memory is a hard thing to rely on. Because at the moment, you’re more terrified than anything. It made me think of rape/crime when sometimes a victims story wouldn’t add up and they are dismissed as lying. A police officer later came by to see her in person and said that this same person was reported by someone else, and he indeed was wearing a pink shirt! I don’t wear my glasses normally so my eyesight is not crisp most of the time. I feel like this could be hazardous if an event like this happened again and I don’t even remember what the person looked like. When I told my mom the story later, she said I am so lucky because the guy targeted her and not me.

On Saturday, I hung out with a former coworker (a social worker at my last two jobs). She is 48 years old, a single mother, and has twins who are currently going to separate colleges. I hadn’t seen her for at least a year and a half. She used to live in the 626 area but decided to buy a home in Lytle Creek (middle of nowhere, 20 minute drive up the mountain lol). I drove us to yoga, and she mentioned how I sound different- that my voice is stronger/less meek. I said ah, I didn’t realize it but it’s probably a product of working in an American environment versus Chinese. I probably became more fake and overly energetic as well LOL. I didn’t tell her this but it took me a while to get used to her voice and accent again. B is a spunky person who DGAF lol. She reminded me of who I used to be. Staying true to herself. She lives isolated in the woods. Has an art studio. Is doing social work and is studying for a Psy.D. Her boyfriend is a 66 year old Japanese American detective who worked on the OJ Simpson case. I got to meet him for lunch after yoga. He lives in little Tokyo, a 15 minute walk to his work. We went to a random Japanese restaurant around that area. I thought we were an odd bunch- a 66 year old male, 48 year old female, and a 27 year old me. My friend joked that we could pass as his daughter and granddaughter lol. But, he looked good for his age. He actually grew up in the LA area too, in the neighborhood next to mine. He went to my rival high school, which he said at the time was about half Asian, half Latino, and a sprinkle of blacks. During my time I think it was like 90% Latino. All the Japanese Americans had moved away by that point. I asked him a little about crime- he says the majority of perpetrators are homeless people- killing and hurting strangers in broad daylight. Not sure if his statistics are correct, as he’s more of a detective than a police officer, but it was interesting he mentioned that after the incident that happened to my friend. He told me that just last week, a homeless stabbed/killed a 70 year old man in little Tokyo from behind at like 4:30pm. Anyway, I thought it was pretty awesome to have had the opportunity to meet him. When we got to the restaurant, he was all “order whatever you like”, but I felt a little weird having someone I didn’t know pay for me. I just looked him up on transparent California, and it seems he is a Deputy Attorney General and makes about $150k, so I shouldn’t feel too bad lol. He probably would feel emasculated and weird if a young girl like me ended up paying for my own meal. From what my friend told me previously, he is married and has kids, and my friend is like the other woman. He also acts as a father figure to my friends daughter (helping around the house, helping daughters move to college, etc). I was curious but didn’t want to ask him about his other family.  

 I made a macramé plant hanger for the first time with L. It was really nice to check out her DTLA apartment, although I admit I was a little bummed at first about having to pay $6 for parking to visit her lol. The amenities are super nice and it was definitely worth going to. We talked about career, friendships, and relationships. She instinctively acts as an older sister/mentor. I like it because she doesn’t come off as a know it all or overbearing and is a good listener. I found inspiration from her to keep working hard and to carve a career path for myself. She has had many years of doing LDR as well (at least 4). She told me that she has friends who similarly just started LDR, and come off as very confident that they will last. She noted that I/Matt seem to be more realistic and humbled regarding the distance, which is why she thinks we’re more solid and can work out.  

It's officially 2 months since he moved away. I was feeling quite sad over the weekend (not sure which part of my menstrual cycle that was on), but now I’m back to being more okay. Although I do share the sentiments as he said last time, that I don’t feel complete without him. I forgot what physical intimacy, kissing, and sex feel like. So in a sense, it’s good because I’m not thirsty haha. I’ve gotten over the initial wave of celibacy. Recently he asked me about what I want to do in life to try to help me with achieving my goals. I had trouble answering, as I feel my life isn’t very intentional. The only thing that came to mind was living abroad (outside of hobbies I can do with my current lifestyle). I told him I don’t really care what I do as long as it allows me a cushy lifestyle and abundant PTO lol. I told him that maybe I should’ve been a good Asian and just followed through with a specialized field like pharmacy or optometry. He then rebutted saying that I’d probably be unhappy and live life like I’m always pushing a boulder up a hill. Because that’s kind of how he feels, as he was pressured to go into medicine. He says he has no identity, which I think may partly be the case for me too, as we live more for our families/communities. 

Yesterday, he asked me about my goal income and age of achieving it. Then asked what my ideal household income is. This made me feel insecure because I know I’ll never hold the prestige or financial potential as that of a doctor. I know he has quite expensive taste (lol) so I started thinking, wouldn’t it be easier for him just to date someone of similar status so he will for sure reach his household income goal of 300k? In hindsight, I realize he is asking because he wants me to be the best version of myself, and he doesn’t like seeing wasted potential. He does the same thing to one of his best friends (who he says ignores him during these pep talks lol). He also sees it as a practical way for me to spend my time while he’s in residency. So that we both will be working hard towards our career during a period of time when he won’t have the capabilities of being an excellent partner. During our phone conversation, I asked him, “what happens if Connie can’t reach her financial goals?” He said, “she will be banned from life”. Then I said, “Mattay is gonna ban her from being with him”. Then he said, “you think so?” I said “yeah”. Then he gave me a serious “no” lol. I think what he means is that I’ll be losing in life because I’m not trying or giving my all, so, I’m not living life completely. At the end of our facetime call yesterday, he made goals for me in order of importance: 1. Get fit/strong by work out 45 min a day 2. Carve out a career goal and plan 3. Work on hobbies 4. Cultivate friendships and said I have to take care of myself before I can do anything else hence the importance of number 1. Anyway, I realized at the end of the day we were thinking about different things. I was honed in on my insecurities about not being able to offer enough in terms of social and financial status and worries about him not finding me ambitious or good enough. On his end, I think he was more concerned about me being bored and sad- and wanted to push me into doing something productive. These topics of discussion are uncomfortable but they are vital for growth. (Thanks Suze for helping me see this!)

[theredherb]

Review: Resident Evil 7

[Originally posted on When Nerds Attack.]

“You’re about to see something wonderful.” Jack’s freshly charred skin is peeling off his body. But he’s still alive, and strong. He’s clutching your wrist, pulling it to his face. He wraps his mouth around the handgun you just plucked from the desiccated cop now lying dead on the floor. With a resounding pop, a chasm erupts from the top of his skull. His body falls limply to the ground. You survived, but you didn’t win. Jack will be back. He deliberately ate a bullet just to prove a point.

It’s been a long time since Resident Evil has scared me. For the better part of a decade, Capcom remodeled the franchise that coined “Survival Horror” into gun-centric action games meant to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Familiar draws were included to bait fans that remember the fixed perspective, tank controlled days of yesteryear — whether it was tangential ties to the sinister Umbrella Corporation, hulking bio-weapons, or the franchise synonymous living dead. More often than not, though, these nostalgic additions felt like window dressing. While latter day sequels like Resident Evil 6 coated their levels in shadows and foreboding atmosphere, at their core, they were third-person shooters. True horror, the kind that the original trilogy is lauded for to this day, was left behind.

With Resident Evil 7, Capcom has finally returned to the franchise’s roots. It takes inspiration not only from its own past but from other stand-out horror experiences in order to rework and revitalize the genre they helped inform. The result is an expertly paced, incredibly tense hell-ride through a literal madhouse — and it’s actually pretty goddamn scary. Long-time fans have been yearning to hear this for years: Resident Evil 7 is pure survival horror.

SWEET HOME

Eschewing the tradition of military trained, boulder boxing heroes, you assume the role of prototypical everyman Ethan Winters, whose wife, Mia, disappeared three years before the story’s start. Beckoned by an ominous email from his estranged love, Ethan travels to an abandoned homestead located in a forgotten slice of southern Americana called Dulvey, Louisiana.

The Dulvey estate is a decaying wreck slowly being digested by the thick marsh that surrounds it. Inside, what’s truly unnerving isn’t how empty the house is, but how lived in it feels. Family portraits and hand-scribbled notes lie side by side with festering trash bags and dirtied pots filled with putrid meat. Somehow, people live here, and your surroundings do a fantastic job of letting you know that there’s something very, very wrong with them.

The new first-person perspective (rather than the third-person view in previous entries) introduces a newfound sense of dread since you’re vision is narrowed and you can’t see what’s behind you. It serves to make the experience eerily intimate and allows you to soak in every meticulously rendered inch of house. Passageways are splashed in pervasive darkness (some of the best shadow effects I’ve seen in a game) while the sound design pummels you with constant creaks, groans, and distant footsteps. Walking through the house is gloriously nerve-wracking.

I won’t spoil the first thirty minutes or so, but I will say the proceeding goes from Zero-to-Evil Dead fast enough to blow a gasket. It’s a joyfully malicious intro that perfectly sets the tone for the game to come — one that’ll have you laughing and recoiling in disgust in equal measure.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Before long you’ll encounter the main villains of the show: the Baker clan. There’s Jack Baker, the stern head of the household; his wife Marguerite, whose disposition flashes between motherly and vitriolic in a heartbeat; and their son Lucas, the only one of his kin that could pass for normal until you see the bottomless pit of insanity swirling in his eyes. There’s a certain level of camp to the Bakers that the game is unafraid to play with. Only horror aficionados would get this reference, but they call to mind the maniacal Sawyer family specifically from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (just one of many cinemacabre influences found in the game).

It’s apparent there’s more affecting the Bakers than a simple case of the batshit crazies. They’re inhumanly strong, can regenerate severed body parts, and worship the notion of ‘family’ with a murderous zeal. Figuring out what’s wrong with them, and how it pertains to your missing wife, reintroduces a story component absent from the series since the very first game: an engrossing mystery.

Each Baker is tethered to specific areas of the plantation — castellans of their hillbilly castle. But they serve a more dynamic role than just the inevitable boss fight earmarking a section. Jack, for instance, will patrol parts of the house, and if he spots you, will relentlessly chase you down until you he buries a shovel into your soft dome. There’s a sick thrill to tangling with Jack. He’s a walking bullet-sponge and difficult to shake-off until you learn to out maneuver him by running serpentine patterns all around the house.

Marguerite will also guard her part of the residence with a lantern in hand in case an intruder is hiding in the shadows, and when she finds you… well, I hope bugs don’t freak you out. Unlike the horror games these segments are derived from (namely Outlast and Amnesia), RE7 has little interest in being a hide and seek simulator, and uses these encounters sparingly. That restraint goes a long way, making an appearance from “Daddy” feel more surprising and random, keeping players constantly off-kilter as they trek through the house.

BACK TO BASICS

Given the change of perspective and overhauled, backwoods-y tone, you might wonder why Capcom bothered to slap a number on this seeming reboot. Despite its modern influences, the gameplay is most reminiscent of the original Resident Evil. Just like the granddaddy of survival horror, there’s a huge emphasis on exploring your environment, managing inventory, and picking which battles to fight or take flight from.

You’ll navigate the Baker house in search of keys that unlock new parts of the homestead and its surrounding areas. Arcane puzzles will block your progress, but they can typically be solved using simple order-of-operation: find Item A, combine it with Item B, slot Item C into hole. Not exactly Witness level headscratchers by any means, but they serve to break up the tension. And they’re just so quintessentially Resident Evil— a kooky house filled with inexplicably placed puzzles.

Apropos to the genre, the amount of items you can hold at once is limited. Thusly, item boxes — the bottomless chests that are magically linked to each other — return along with the save rooms that harbor them. Whereas completing some puzzles will condemn you to do battle with some unholy aberration, save rooms are the one true respite that allow you to breathe and collect yourself. (Special shout out goes to the calming, ambient melody that plays whenever you reach one of these bastions — that shit is lit).

There’s also an extra meta to how you organize and use items you find. You can find healing herbs and use them raw (I guess… I guess Ethan chews them?) but they become much more potent if you combine them with a Chem Fluid. If you hang on to the very same Chem Fluid until you found some loose gunpowder, on the other hand, you can craft your very own handgun bullets instead of having to forage for them. Combining items also frees up inventory slots which in turn can be filled up with more ammo, health, or key items. It all cleverly underlines the “Survival” in “Survival Horror,” rewarding savvy mixologists with a longer lease on life.

You’ll attain weapons to beat back the creatures of the night, and the UI lets you organize them within your inventory so that they’re mapped to the D-Pad. It’s a useful appropriation of one of Resident Evil 5’s better ideas especially given the fact that digging into your inventory doesn’t pause the action (you’ve been warned).

FIGHT NIGHT

It wouldn’t be a Resident Evil game without monsters. Enter the Molded — humanoid tarman formed from a viscous black goo. They’re mostly slow but they have wolverine claws, their faces are roughly eighty-percent teeth, and they’re dangerous in numbers. Helpfully, they haven’t mastered the art of opening doors, so they’re easy to trap, and you can also block incoming attacks to soak up the brunt of their damage. Eventually, though, you’ll have to go on the offensive.

You’re equipped with a pocket knife early on, but that’s only a rung more effective than harsh language– it’s the handgun and shotgun you’ll be relying on. It’s important to note that, despite the viewpoint, this isn’t a first-person shooter. Aiming down the sights slows your movement to a crawl and can actually put you in harm’s way which means placement is as paramount as precision — a concept not altogether foreign if you played the original games. There’s a value play to using weapons, too: if you mow down every single critter that jumps at you in the dark, you’ll find your clip empty the next time you’re truly up shit’s creek.

Ammo scarcity forces you to plan and act accordingly. Do you feed your last few bullets into a Molded so you can search an area in peace? Or can you evade long enough to save those shots? There’s few things more satisfying than the pus geyser that erupts whenever you relocate a Molded’s head, but I was more thankful to have those shots whenever Jack would burst through a wall like a redneck Kool-Aid Man. It’s the kind of on-the-fly strategizing that has been sorely missing from Resident Evil.

True to genre form, you’ll be tasked to engage in boss fights. Unfortunately, not every battle is a memorable showdown of wits and brawn. I’ll keep it vague, but there’s one sore thumb in the bunch, early on, that forces you to rely on the game’s clunky melee mechanics. Thankfully, the bar raises as you contend with the Bakers. Again, I’m being purposely vague, but one cool bit has you hopping between levels of a decrepit greenhouse as you hunt down a baddie, expertly making use of space, and another is such a wickedly good callback to Resident Evil 4, it’d bring a tear to Leon Kennedy’s dreamy eye.

FOUND FOOTAGE

When you’re not juggling items or tip-toeing in the dark, the game has you watching VHS tapes. Playing tapes isn’t as passive as that, however, since you’ll be tasked to play as the character within the video. It’s a really ingenious narrative tool that not only gives you insight to what the hell happened before Ethan arrived, but also spotlights crucial clues in your current environment. One tape stands out in particular — “Happy Birthday.” In it, you play as an ill-fated cameraman that has to solve an intricate puzzle to escape from a sealed room. The Saw inspired conundrum is by far one of most impressively realized pieces of design the game owns — it had my jaw to the floor by its conclusion.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY

Biological terrorism, global domination plots, superhuman villains… Resident Evil’s stories have arguably degraded into over-the-top comic book fare as the years have gone on. RE7 wisely reigns in its scope to tell the most grounded story in the series since the original. It follows the beats of a low-budget horror movie, and it’s a great direction. Like a lot of micro-budgeted horror movies, this is a plot driven vehicle.

Subsequently, character work is on the thin side, especially in regards to Ethan. His few spoken lines keep him from being a silent protagonist but it’s obvious he’s meant to be a blank slate for players to project onto — sort of in the vein of Half-Life’s Gordon Freeman or mute soldiers from early Call of Duty games. Mia, his wife, fares a little better — and she should; she has five times the amount of lines as Ethan — but at no point would you even think her and Ethan are married if it wasn’t explicitly stated. But it’s a double-edged sword: much of the momentum of the plot is owed to the fact that it doesn’t linger on personal details.

Whereas the first two-thirds of the game are brilliantly crafted and paced, RE7 loses a lot of steam on its march to the endgame. Again, in an attempt to not spoil any surprises, I won’t name the location you reach in the third-act. I will say that it like feels by-the-numbers horror fare — a disappointing contrast to everything the game so confidently builds beforehand. Disappointing, but nowhere enough to derail the experience.

It’s right around here that the game decides to increase the amount of Molded you fight by tenfold, totally inoculating players of any fear the bizarre tarmen might’ve wrought. We’re talking a small island nation’s worth of Molded. While there’s three distinct types of Molded to contend with — including a spider-y leaper who I hate so much — more enemy variety would have spiced up this last stretch considerably. If you can get through this gauntlet of pus-bloods, you’re treated to a Big Reveal, and get to find out what the hell’s really going on in Dulvey. As a fan, I was pleasantly surprised that they found a way to tie these seemingly discrete events back into the greater whole of what Resident Evil is about (while also leaving us with plenty of questions).

HAIL TO THE KING

After one of my very first sessions with the game, I took a break (game manuals used to suggest you do this often when game manuals were still a thing). Naturally, it was night and, of course, I was alone. I absorb a ridiculous amount of horror media, games and otherwise. They don’t get to me very often. Yet, my skin was crawling. I started jumping at small noises. I was watching shadows. I was still bugged out from my time inside the Baker house. The last time a horror game lingered with me like that was when I first played Resident Evil 2 on the Nintendo 64– I was 10.

Resident Evil 7 is phenomenal course correction for the franchise. It’s unashamed of celebrating established cliches but, like any great horror movie, knows how to subvert them. Capcom’s crafted a legitimately harrowing ride that also manages to never sacrifice its playability. While other games of its ilk will try to depower the player as much as possible to instill a sense of vulnerability, Resident Evil 7 smartly balances its challenge with fun gameplay mechanics. I wanted to get right back into it even as the credits rolled (and I did… four times since).

The game feels fresh, yet it builds on time-tested conventions of the genre. Capcom has proven they understand why we loved the original games, and have found a means to modernize that formula. I can’t see the series going back to the over-the-shoulder, co-op shoot-fests. This is the path to stay on. Not just because Resident Evil 7 is one of the best games in the series, but because it’s one of the best survival horror games ever made.

[If you purchase the PS4 edition of the game, you can enjoy/endure the entirety of Resident Evil 7 in PlayStation VR. I’ve yet to make the $400 plunge into Sony’s virtual space, but I did get to play the Beginning Hour demo in VR at Capcom’s booth during last December’s PSX. Though my time with the VR version of the game was brief, I was thoroughly impressed. Anecdotally, I’ve heard it’s the scariest and most immersive way to experience RE7. Apologies for not having more extensive impressions!]

[4pillarshalifax]

Escaping Debt Podcast – Why Debt Service Ratios Mean Nothing – Episode 7

Transcript

David Moffatt (00:00): Hello, everyone. I hope you’re doing exceptionally well. Welcome back to the Escaping Debt Podcast. My name is David Moffatt. I’m your host today as always.

David Moffatt (00:09): Today, we’re going to be talking about debt service ratios and how largely they’re meaningless, useless, they don’t really give a good indication of somebody’s financial stability, and how you really shouldn’t be relying on them, or a bank to tell you what you can afford for debt payments.

David Moffatt (00:31): Remember, that our goal is that no consumer should have to struggle with the overwhelming burden that debt causes, and we believe that it’s simply not possible to work for both the creditors and the consumer at the same time in an unbiased fashion, and that’s why we work for you, not your creditors.

David Moffatt (00:47): Let’s dive into this a little bit more, and you might hear some clicking in the background just because I’ve actually got a bunch of information pulled up here into what exactly is a debt service ratio, right? Like what are we even talking about? These terms might be largely unfamiliar to a lot of people. Essentially, let’s define what a debt service ratio is first.

David Moffatt (01:08): A debt service ratio is a calculation that a bank does to determine whether you can afford a payment or not. For example, you go into a bank, and you want to apply for $20,000 loan. They will calculate what’s known as your gross debt service ratio, as well as your total debt service ratio. These are slightly different, but the principle is the exact same. They essentially calculate how much you’re spending on the payment itself in relation to your income, and then your total obligations, okay?

David Moffatt (01:47): They’ll take into account all of your debt payments, your mortgage payments, the utilities on your house, for example, and they divide that into your income. In most instances, these formulas are used primarily when lending on mortgages. However, as I understand, that they are used when you go in for just a regular loan itself.

David Moffatt (02:07): I’m going to be talking about these primarily in the concept of going to get a mortgage, however, these still apply largely when you’re looking at a personal unsecured loan. Let’s kind of go through these calculations, okay?

David Moffatt (02:21): Let’s start out with just your regular gross debt service ratio, which is really the cost of the individual property that you’re going to be purchasing, okay? For example, they take your mortgage payments, the property taxes, your heating costs, any associated condo fees if you’re purchasing a condo, and you’re dividing it into your gross annual income.

David Moffatt (02:46): The total debt service ratio, which is usually what they’ll calculate if you’re going to get an unsecured loan, is all of your household expenses, any credit card payments that you’re paying, and other loan payments like car payments, mortgages, second mortgages, all this type of stuff, and then you’re dividing it by your gross annual income.

David Moffatt (03:04): Now, these guidelines depend and change a little bit per bank and for what you’re planning on doing, but the number you get is a percentage. Here’s the problem with this stuff, okay, is that you’ll notice that, although I mentioned taxes, I mentioned the property taxes, and you’re now dividing this formula by the gross income that you end up making, so what ends up happening in a lot of instances is that people are just, just shy of being able to qualify for a mortgage.

David Moffatt (03:39): I’m looking at the CMHC guidelines in the page, and I’ll put this in the show notes, that says that CMHC normally restricts debt service ratios to 35% for the gross debt service ratio, and 42% for the total debt service ratio. To kind of put this in common language, the gross debt service ratio, as it relates to properties, calculates the cost of that individual property, okay?

David Moffatt (04:08): It essentially says, “How much does this house cost in relation to your overall income?”, and the total debt service ratio, and to kind of back up a little bit, that gross debt service ratio, it omits other forms of debt, okay? The total debt service ratio takes into account the entire cost of all of your debt situation, okay?

David Moffatt (04:38): It’ll factor in loan payments and credit card payments and everything like that, that I’ve already mentioned, but here’s the issue with all of this type of stuff, okay, is that when you get paid, there are a ton of deductions. The first one that many people are aware of are just your regular income taxes.

David Moffatt (04:58): Income taxes in this formula are not taken into account at all, okay, which means that theoretically, somebody that makes a reasonable and sizeable income, I would say, more sizeable than reasonable, they could theoretically eat up a ton of their disposable cash flow just in the taxes that they have to pay. I’ll use my own situation back when I was in the military.

David Moffatt (05:26): Back when I was in the military, I was making about $65,000 a year. This is all public knowledge. You can look it up, and when I run what I was supposed to make, just through an income tax calculator, you take $65,000, you put it through an income tax calculator, I should have been receiving almost $10,000 more per year after taxes than I actually was.

David Moffatt (05:59): Now, most people would be like, “Okay. Well, this doesn’t make any sense. If you were supposed to receive it, why weren’t you?” It’ll become clear in a second. Well, it’s because of everything that was coming out of my pay, so there’s obviously the tax that come off. There’s the pensions that we ended up having to pay for.

David Moffatt (06:17): A little known fact, you actually pay for your pension when you’re in the military. It isn’t something that you get for free. Medical costs can come off of pays, and in the military, you get free medical, at least while you’re in, so this is more talking about a regular pay. Any type of dues, so we had mess dues, for example, and you think of just a regular individual that’s out and about. They might have regular union dues, they might have mandatory fees that they end up having to pay.

David Moffatt (06:48): I mean, there’s all kinds of costs that don’t get factored into this debt service ratio that an individual might have to pay. When I was looking at my income, I was losing nearly 50% of my pay, okay? If you follow this whole debt service ratio calculation, especially when you look at the total debt service ratio that calculates everything … By the way, this formula worked. I was losing roughly 50% of my income, okay? I could max my service ratios up to 42% in relation to a house, meaning that I would have roughly 8% of my income left to pay for groceries and the gas, and all the other expenses that come with life, right?

David Moffatt (07:39): I hope that makes sense, and it’d be easier to visualize this if we had a screen share or something like that, but I hope it makes sense. Long story short, this debt service ratio doesn’t take into account the actual true costs of life, and the largest cost of life for many people is taxes, the various deductions that come off of their pay that might not necessarily be related to taxes, so again pensions, medical plans, union dues, long-term disability, this type of stuff.

David Moffatt (08:11): It doesn’t take into account cable, internet, phones, your family size. Like for example, the gross family income of a household may be 75,000, which for a family of two, would probably be a very, very, very comfortable salary to make, but if you’re now a family of six or seven, that 75,000 starts to become really restricted because your grocery bill goes through the roof. This service ratio doesn’t take any of that into account, which means that is this really a good way to actually lend people money?

David Moffatt (08:44): Well, according to the bank, it is, and the bank will give you a loan if you fit within this 42%, even though your expenses might far exceed what you actually have available, but you might just fit into this calculation. We see this time and time again, where people are lent money, that they really couldn’t afford from the get-go, but again, because of these calculations, it ends up working just fine, right? I don’t believe that you should be using these calculations when making your decisions to borrow money.

David Moffatt (09:21): I don’t think you should be listening to your banker as to whether you should borrow money. I think you should be listening to yourself, potentially a financial advisor if you’re working with one, and I think that instead of calculating debt service ratios, I think you should be going through, making a proper budget, and going through an entire money management plan, and actually figuring out what’s affordable.

David Moffatt (09:49): Now, affordable doesn’t mean that when you write your income at the top, that your remaining money at the bottom says $0, especially if you haven’t saved anything. A proper effective money management plan has you putting aside money, okay, so make sure that you’re prioritizing these types of things, because what this means is if you properly plan and properly calculate how much you can actually afford to pay, then what will end up happening is you’ll live a much, much better life. It’ll be filled with less stress, right?

David Moffatt (10:28): You imagine if you get into a house and you can barely afford it because, in my example, I was losing 50% taxes, deductions, pensions, you name it, all my pay when I was in the military, and I can max out my debt service ratio to 42% of my annual gross income, leaving me roughly 8% left to live, and let’s just calculate how much 8% actually is. Give me a second here.

David Moffatt (10:59): 8% would be $5,200. According to this calculation, okay, I would have been able to feed myself, buy gas, have a cellphone or a phone, internet cable, I’d been able to just go buy regular household things, and I would’ve only had $433 a month to do that.

David Moffatt (11:23): Now, interestingly enough, from what we’ve seen, the average person spends about $250 a month on groceries, so let’s subtract that, so now, I have $183 left. Say cellphone plan, let’s say it’s cheap, $50, that’s cool, so now I have $133 left, and that’s for everything. You got to understand this, right? Like obviously, this makes absolutely no sense, and so I don’t actually know why CMHC and these banks use this formula.

David Moffatt (11:56): If anything, if they were to use this formula, they should make these calculations say closer to, I don’t know, 25 or 30%. Now, here’s the thing, is they’ll never do that. The reason why they’ll never do that is because the basis of the economy is people purchasing things, and a lot of the economy is based on people borrowing money to purchase the goods that they want to purchase, which means that the last thing that you want someone to do is to not be able to borrow as much at least from a governmental level and from a banking perspective, and banks make money lending money, right?

David Moffatt (12:32): Long story short, this was a short one today, but you shouldn’t be relying on the banks to tell you what you can afford. You shouldn’t be relying on a formula to tell you what you can afford, instead, you should be working out a proper money management plan, you should be going through making sure you have room for savings, and what wind up happening is you don’t have to care about these numbers.

David Moffatt (13:00): If you properly plan and you ever need to borrow money, you’d walk in and you should be properly prepared, because of the fact that you’ll be well ahead of wherever they’re at. Now, I’m not going to lie, this does take effort. It does take time to establish, but I truly believe that anybody can get there if they put their mind to it. Guys, I know this is a short one today. Thank you very much for listening.

David Moffatt (13:25): We’ll catch you in the next one, and always remember that our goal is to make sure that no one has to struggle with the overwhelming burden that debt causes, and this is very true when we’re talking about debt service ratios because it is what puts people into a lot of debt. Remember that we believe that it’s simply not possible for someone to represent and work for both the consumers and the creditors at the exact same time in an unbiased fashion, and that’s why we work for you, not your creditors. Catch you in the next one. Have a great one. Bye.

The post Escaping Debt Podcast – Why Debt Service Ratios Mean Nothing – Episode 7 appeared first on 4 Pillars Halifax.

source https://www.halifaxdebtfreedom.ca/escaping-debt-podcast-why-debt-service-ratios-mean-nothing-episode-7/

[top1course]

Where Has Hayden Peddle Been? (6 Figure Social Media Marketer)

What is up YouTube this is Ryan Hildreth here with Hayden peddle, the young entrepreneur, maybe some people don’t know about that, it’s been awhile the young entrepreneur, but I wanted to bring Hayden on the channel he hasn’t posted in a bit I haven’t heard from him and I wanted to, see what Hayden has, has been up to, i’m here, start a new business he’s doing, social media marketing, and, i just wanted to let him know or let, everyone know what he’s been up to, aiden, how you doing man, pics of introduction, everybody end, thank you for inviting me back, long time since I’ve done your Channel, at least a year, yeah, it’s been a long time, last time right now I don’t even think, wedding in California, i saw you, which is a while ago, but like you said if we talked about that, start new businesses, Been working on social media marketing, there’s so many things I had, partnerships that have that have failed or been involved with, multimillion-dollar company, actually feel, wow, the partnership with them in the company actually end up going under the end of running out of money, so it is and I was on there, part of course, the media and it was cool, getting a ball to that level just like, how quickly and it’s really hard for people to understand this, how quickly you can have something, and then see it slip away, so whenever we talk to people especially about social, marketing we talked about, making sure that you have, multiple clients because people let something that I seen on Facebook, social media like I had three four clients and then two of them dropped off, you got understand like when you’re doing a business like this, Your incomes and cut, way down, and that’s a significant difference, set alarm, like I said I’ve seen that I start up a business, using social media as what I’m doing right now starting up 8, a vegan chocolate bar company a lot of people laugh when I say it but it’s something that I’m passionate about, as something that, it’s not a huge market for right now are there is that there is a huge Market but there’s not a lot of competitors, market it is something that I really want to get going on, so that’s something I’ve been working on in social media is going to eat my, it’s going to be exactly what how I grow it and I’m going to show you guys, back on my YouTube channel will see it will do a few more videos, i’m actually documenting exactly how it goes from start to finish, Awesome.

That’s great man, that’s great, with social media marketing you don’t have to just rely on you know getting, other clients like you want to start your own business, you can promote your own business, that’s what social media marketing, everyone should have it, going back to the company that, you said you were working with an, their main issue was there was there marketing was getting like selling their product or what, business was a startup, so much that was the issue was that they literally, be kind of bit off more than they can, so much, can’t control everything, you can’t control how much, ketosis, his company I was working with, how was a very advanced, company is in what they were trying to do was very aggressive, take me to the website., is Amazon’s website, security protection, costing a lot more than what they thought, I’m a social media that it was more or less I think, the actual development of the company, structure of the copy, yeah, definitely and it sounded like maybe maybe they were where they bootstrapping it or where they it did they get some VC money or something like that, the best thing I can explain some people who don’t know a lot about, bahati investors, they had people there but it just wasn’t enough money to actually keep the company going and ended up being, i got they just ran out of money, it’s so funny because a lot of younger people in a lot of people that, first get into entrepreneurship, they think that that’s the type of business they need to start right, right, in my household here, i run we run, free businesses, out of this house, true witch hat, zero startup cost, so you got my girlfriend’s business she does eyelash, We both a little bit of an addition on the house for her but she started this originally, in this room where I’m sitting in right now which is the front of the house this is my front door right here, she originally started her business, in this room with, zero money in house, he promoted it was using social media, she didn’t spend any advertising dollars, she bought, a bed on, could you just like Craigslist Craigslist, are you guys in America, for their on their, hello baby equipment, almost no money, entrepreneur, that is not about like, i’m going to trade this, brand new pencil cup, i need like a million dollars to start it we need to manufacture, there is a, sign of different businesses that people can start for it, next to no money and if you’re passing, what time is it in and finding the money that you need or finding ways around, Starting something like a marketing agency, could be done with money easily, in the car singing heard an advertisement, for my local area for a market, winning on a $10,000 loan, bought a new office, when to go to the office and just spend a ton of marketing money, i could have easily gotten a bunch of clients, as soon as I started but instead what I chose, when we first started, if I went door-to-door and I got, clients., there’s two different ropes, are in the you don’t have the money don’t have to keep building a lot of the time you’re going to find ways, around it, did we meet when you hit rock bottom that’s when you’re the most, freedom, in my mind, it’s so true it’s so true and I remember when I reached out to you like, And I saw what you were doing like some of your videos and guys go check out his channel.

Some of the older videos when when Hayden would go, i’m door-to-door kind of like with an undercover Mike I was like damn this guy is like, which is really going out there, and, building his business building is agency in my, bootstrapping it he had you know, no startup capital, and he went out there and just, they’re not, united means, i remember that being very inspiring so hopefully, that can Inspire some people that are watching this video that are just getting started like you don’t need to create some, productora, invent something you just need to be passionate about, a certain something, and, you don’t figure it figure it out from there, i’m in social media marketing is a great, like first business, Start, and then eventually evolve into, something else if that’s, you know what I mean, is that, like you said it’s a skill set, skillset it allows you to get into places and learn more, this is that you might be interested in let’s say that you are interested in, starting up, a bike shop where you want to repair bikes, i’m bringing that up, i want, 1 points on my family, i want to know if my brother and sister they were the top bikers in Ontario, really involved with with biking like mountain biking and Road biking and one things I want to do, preparing the bikes open up a bike repair shop, but if you don’t know that this is sometimes that’s a little bit risky to start up with so it’s a good idea if you’re doing like supposed to be tomorrow, what do marketing for a bike shop, See how the business runs be involved in a little bit of an internship, yeah definitely, definitely you could work with some businesses that you’ve always, dreamed of, of working with you know and, it gets you in the door number one it gets you, familiar with the business and it gets you familiar with how to sell their product, you know so if you want to start your own, bike shop, at least you know how to Market effectively, you know how to spell the product, and you can later on down the road when you have the capital you can open up your own bike, yeah it’s pretty, it’s funny cuz I think social media marketing is kind of like, at first it was like this trend like before like always you know sisters, best friend but it’s, now it’s actually a skillset that’s been around for, Hundreds of thousands of years it’s just, it’s a ball psoriasis marketing but it’s always, through a different platform do with a different medium, like I can’t I can’t, stress enough that like, i just I would talk about my girlfriend’s business, because I’m so, crowded, done with it in the back, i can now see first-hand like the power supposed to mean, when I started I always use, can make a big difference, when I first started I didn’t know, i really didn’t, really my girlfriend open my eyes out, literally, she be like okay, i’m pretty slow, sleep with clients, i need a new client, okay so what are we to do we will make like a quick little video, i just say like, hey guys, ecosport you just would like an Instagram story about a spot open on, tuesday if you guys want to come in, Can you be surprised.

All she did was post about it all she had to do is maybe make a little bit of it, for somebody like, she was able to keep, stay home, runs bases 4400 $500 a day doing, yeah and that and that’s pretty amazing, that’s pretty amazing I’m sure a lot of women out there to one, start their own business they just don’t know where to start so, well, we have obviously been working on some things Hayden and I have been you know revamping for relaunch of social media, marketing Mastery we have, currently I believe, closest 700 students in their agency owners, but we are adding some things because, 2018 is, going to be is, the things in 2018 I feel are not all going to be working in 2019 and then, and some of it, topics are, you know, getting your Facebook ad account shut down Facebook, Facebook’s new policies, how to get clients right, what are some things Hayden., like you noticed that are changing, i’m probably in 2019 are going to be, it’s going to be better damp, for people to your skin, i think, in my mind, depending on who you are you may have noticed that maybe a lot, people are chipping away from Facebook and it’s more Instagram heavy, story app, this time last year we wouldn’t, this time last year, amia Scrappy slippery, area and also where you’re spending your advertising money has, what’s effective, then may not be as effective along with the types of the ads, and like you said, what used to be okay and except, facebook on your advertisements are no longer accepted, we decided to revamp the whole course, and go through and kind of like, take out the things that are no longer work, the great news is like, What were able to do is look at what they’ve, the Facebook group, alarm people having trouble with her at accounting, shut down, why is that what happened we can make a video and kind of help, how to, new platforms, mostly, disco disco I’m a mess, a lot of girls, snow fence, not, women, they like to use that app and there are some areas are that I’ve seen, advertising, westworld, an app to come and go within a few, and solar is new new platforms, they’re coming out, where advertising dealership, and what works, exactly, so we’re going to be covering that what works what doesn’t we’re also adding in, like just diversifying your agency being a full-service agency so that, because there’s tons of people that are door-knocking and cold calling and doing all this stuff and how are you going to stand out, You know from that competition well, you’re going to have to have a full-service agency meeting you know how to do use Google ads, gnuplot, right that’s going to be in the course, how to use Snapchat app how to use Pinterest ATS things like that you know just being more Diversified for that, you could stand out from your competitors, is an your Facebook ad account get shut down it’s not a big deal, south, honestly been one of my favorite lately I’ve because, i never really went onto Pinterest, and then I realized Pinterest is, the land for everything that you ever need, jack, anyting, is Pinterest you guys can’t see what I’m looking, but I’ve got a stand-up desk, looking up at you, look it up on Pinterest and, the amount of advertisements, that’s what got me interested Pinterest I realize I was, yeah, good area for Philly marketing, Like men’s products being sold on there and I realize that that’s another area that we can talk but much.

In the course and honestly I just think not that it was different than I think it was just that, we were in different places in our in our lives I mean use a platform, learn more things, yeah we’re learning kind of where the eyes are, 2 +, and just being, just again being a full-service agency in, being able to provide that value, yeah man I mean did you have anything else that you wanted to talk about as far as, kind of social media marketing where you see the landscape changing like, where are the opportunities at, how can someone just get started, all the time, do you think social media marketing instead, i get that answer every time, and at the end of day guys, if you are asked, It means that it’s not, and the reason for this is because if they people ask, because they are kind of shifting, i don’t really want to get in, next episode, 2018, a lot of people started, nECC last year back when he got really, yeah, so you going to look at it isn’t, and as an opportunity and then they, dropped off so now there’s that area for you to come in there and see, all the clients that are now available, so I just want to let you know, social media marketing, not that it, it’s never going, dead, change, there’s always going to be markers out there is always going to be advertising up there so long as we live in the world that we live in, that’s how, somebody’s got to sell you something in order for the world go round, so you remember guys, It’s never going to go away is just going to keep evolving next thing you know we might not be, we talkin on screens in 10 years from now like that I mean like, only 18 years ago.

from WordPress https://top1course.com/where-has-hayden-peddle-been-6-figure-social-media-marketer/

[dinafbrownil]

Around The Corner: 3D Housing Designed For The Homeless And Needy Seniors

AUSTIN, Texas — Tim Shea is counting the days until he can move into a new, 3D-printed house. Shea, 69, will be the first to live in one of six such rentals created by what some in the housing industry call a futuristic approach that could revolutionize home construction.

Shea is among a growing number of seniors in America who have struggled to keep affordable housing. He has, at times, been homeless. He has arthritis and manages to get around with the aid of a walker. He said he looks forward to giving up the steep ramp he’s had to negotiate when entering or exiting the RV he’s called home.

“I’m over the top about it,” said Shea, a native of Stratford, Connecticut, who made his way to Austin in 1993. “They had an interview process where a bunch of people applied. Then I found out it was a 3D-printed home, and I was gung-ho.”

The promise of 3D printing has others excited, too.

Tim Shea, formerly homeless, will be among the first people in the U.S. to live in a 3D-printed house. This spring, Shea plans to move into the 400-square-foot, 3D-printed home by Icon at Community First Village in Austin.(Courtesy of ICON)

In a Northeast Austin neighborhood, these homes are taking their distinctive shape on the grounds of Community First Village, where about 180 formerly homeless people have found shelter and camaraderie in the most expensive city in the state. The 51-acre development (which will eventually include more than 500 homes) provides affordable permanent housing, including the 3D variety.

In this city of disruptors, Austin-based construction technology company Icon has formed a variety of partnerships to explore how 3D-printed homes could not only provide housing for people on the margins but also demonstrate how to dramatically reduce the time and money spent on construction.

“I see this innovative idea as being a powerful piece of the puzzle, along with other ideas of what it’s going to take to have more affordably built houses,” said Alan Graham, a real estate developer turned founder of the nonprofit Mobile Loaves & Fishes, which opened the village in 2016. The average age of residents is 55, he said.

These 400-square-foot houses are the nation’s first 3D-printed residences, according to Icon. Its process — which incorporates an 11-foot-tall printer that weighs 3,800 pounds — relies on robotics. Beads of a pliable concrete material dubbed Lavacrete ooze from the behemoth printer in ripples that stack and harden into a wall with curved corners.

The idea is to cut the time and as much as half the cost associated with traditional construction, limit the environmental footprint and trim the number of workers on crews, said Jason Ballard, Icon’s co-founder and CEO.

The process, he added, also could allow more design freedom.

“Because 3D printing uses slopes and curves, in the future new design languages will emerge that are only accessible through 3D printing,” Ballard said.

Icon has generated interest from the federal government, including NASA and the Defense Department, whose Defense Innovation Unit is focused on strengthening national security with new commercial technology. The unit (which has an Austin office) is under contract with Icon to train Marines and develop prototype structures that can be built quickly for military and humanitarian purposes. In late January, about a dozen Marines trained for a week at Icon. Further training is planned this year at Camp Pendleton in California.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson visited Austin twice last year, checking out Icon headquarters and touring the village.

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“Innovation is key to solving our affordable housing crisis,” Carson said in an email. “The work that companies like Icon are doing could have a huge impact on housing affordability in communities across the country.”

Such a move is overdue, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The center in October issued a study that illustrated a growing income disparity among older Americans.

The federal government considers housing affordable when a resident can spend 30% or less of income on it. Those who spend more, according to the Harvard study, are “cost burdened.”

“While many households now of retirement age have the means to age in place or move to other suitable housing, a record number are cost burdened and will have few affordable housing options as they age,” the analysis said. “In addition, many older renters are less well positioned than homeowners because they have lower cash savings and wealth.”

Moreover, the study said homelessness among older adults is increasing. The share of people age 50 and older experiencing homelessness rose to 33.8% in 2017 from 22.9% in 2007. Those statistics, according to the study, suggest that the “need for affordable, accessible housing and in-home supportive services is therefore set to soar.”

Such housing insecurity can affect a person’s health and well-being. “Financial pressures can also lead to depression and other physical problems,” the study said.

Not everyone is convinced 3D is the answer for the masses.

“Basically, 3D printing is creating a wall system,” said Chris Herbert, the Harvard center’s managing director. “It still has to have a foundation. Someone needs to put on a roof. It’s another way to lower the labor cost of producing components of the house, but it’s not printing every piece of the house.”

“If you can show me how 3D printing can produce components that can be stacked with multiple rooms and dimensions, that would have wider applicability for the overall housing stock,” he added.

Architecture professor Ryan Smith, director of the School of Design and Construction at Washington State University, said he agrees it’s early days for the technology.

“It’s worth investment and work on research in the industry, but I don’t see how it’s going to work in the current supply chain and labor market,” he said. “I personally still feel it will be 30 to 40 years before it will be having an impact.”

But architect and 3D advocate Alvin Huang, an associate professor at the USC School of Architecture in Los Angeles, said 3D’s advantages “are about precision and customization.”

“Its actual benefit is in larger projects that have a high deal of customization,” he said. “More and more construction sites will become more and more like factory settings, and instead of laborers, you’re looking at technicians. I’m a very big proponent of thinking about how the 3D printer can change the way we design.”

Brett Hagler is co-founder of New Story, a San Francisco-based social housing nonprofit to end global homelessness. His group and Icon are working on the world’s first 3D-printed community of 50 houses, under construction in Tabasco, Mexico. New Story and Icon partnered to create the first 3D-printed structure in East Austin that debuted in March 2018 at the annual South by Southwest festival. That building, now an office, served as a prototype for the 3D-printed homes at Community First.

“With one type of technology, you essentially get a lower-cost home — the exact percent in price is TBD. Two, it’s faster. Three, it’s very exciting to us because you get a much better custom design based on a family’s need,” he said. “What I do believe is that it has a very real chance to usher in a quantum leap in how we build shelter.”

The first permitted, 3D-printed structure in the U.S. was created by Icon in East Austin and debuted in March 2018 at the annual South By Southwest festival. The building served as a prototype for the 3D-printed homes at Community First.(Credit: Casey Dunn)

Hagler said he’s confident the technology will be developed to affect more than just the current single-story detached house and provide solutions to large-scale projects.

“There’s an opportunity for a two-story. That’s going to happen,” he said. “Right now, if we can figure out a two-story, we can figure out a 10-story. It’s just a matter of time.”

At Community First, residents pay monthly rents ranging from $220 to $430 and can earn wages by working on-site. The six new houses that will rent for $430 were created by the second-generation 3D printer called Vulcan II, which last year printed the village’s welcome center.

Shea has come a long way from Ohio, when he was married and lived with his wife and two kids in a house he bought in 1971. He was married 12 years, he said, “until I struck out on my own.”

“We were comfortable,” he said, explaining that he had attended Ohio State University but didn’t graduate and then worked at several jobs in Ohio and Austin until poor health caught up with him and forced him onto the streets. He lives on a modest fixed income of disability and Social Security payments.

“I had never been homeless before I got in bad shape physically. I didn’t feel equipped for it and didn’t handle it very well,” he said. “Some people I’ve met here have been in and out of homelessness all their life. It’s a shock to your system. All I could do was hide. I was embarrassed.”

Now with his new 3D-printed home in sight, Shea is optimistic — for himself and the prospect of 3D-printed homes.

“I feel like it’s going to help people in every situation in life,” he said. “It’s one of the most innovative steps — not just for the homeless — but for affordable housing. It’s pretty amazing.”

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/3d-printed-housing-designed-for-the-homeless-and-needy-seniors/

[stephenmccull]

Around The Corner: 3D Housing Designed For The Homeless And Needy Seniors

AUSTIN, Texas — Tim Shea is counting the days until he can move into a new, 3D-printed house. Shea, 69, will be the first to live in one of six such rentals created by what some in the housing industry call a futuristic approach that could revolutionize home construction.

Shea is among a growing number of seniors in America who have struggled to keep affordable housing. He has, at times, been homeless. He has arthritis and manages to get around with the aid of a walker. He said he looks forward to giving up the steep ramp he’s had to negotiate when entering or exiting the RV he’s called home.

“I’m over the top about it,” said Shea, a native of Stratford, Connecticut, who made his way to Austin in 1993. “They had an interview process where a bunch of people applied. Then I found out it was a 3D-printed home, and I was gung-ho.”

The promise of 3D printing has others excited, too.

Tim Shea, formerly homeless, will be among the first people in the U.S. to live in a 3D-printed house. This spring, Shea plans to move into the 400-square-foot, 3D-printed home by Icon at Community First Village in Austin.(Courtesy of ICON)

In a Northeast Austin neighborhood, these homes are taking their distinctive shape on the grounds of Community First Village, where about 180 formerly homeless people have found shelter and camaraderie in the most expensive city in the state. The 51-acre development (which will eventually include more than 500 homes) provides affordable permanent housing, including the 3D variety.

In this city of disruptors, Austin-based construction technology company Icon has formed a variety of partnerships to explore how 3D-printed homes could not only provide housing for people on the margins but also demonstrate how to dramatically reduce the time and money spent on construction.

“I see this innovative idea as being a powerful piece of the puzzle, along with other ideas of what it’s going to take to have more affordably built houses,” said Alan Graham, a real estate developer turned founder of the nonprofit Mobile Loaves & Fishes, which opened the village in 2016. The average age of residents is 55, he said.

These 400-square-foot houses are the nation’s first 3D-printed residences, according to Icon. Its process — which incorporates an 11-foot-tall printer that weighs 3,800 pounds — relies on robotics. Beads of a pliable concrete material dubbed Lavacrete ooze from the behemoth printer in ripples that stack and harden into a wall with curved corners.

The idea is to cut the time and as much as half the cost associated with traditional construction, limit the environmental footprint and trim the number of workers on crews, said Jason Ballard, Icon’s co-founder and CEO.

The process, he added, also could allow more design freedom.

“Because 3D printing uses slopes and curves, in the future new design languages will emerge that are only accessible through 3D printing,” Ballard said.

Icon has generated interest from the federal government, including NASA and the Defense Department, whose Defense Innovation Unit is focused on strengthening national security with new commercial technology. The unit (which has an Austin office) is under contract with Icon to train Marines and develop prototype structures that can be built quickly for military and humanitarian purposes. In late January, about a dozen Marines trained for a week at Icon. Further training is planned this year at Camp Pendleton in California.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson visited Austin twice last year, checking out Icon headquarters and touring the village.

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“Innovation is key to solving our affordable housing crisis,” Carson said in an email. “The work that companies like Icon are doing could have a huge impact on housing affordability in communities across the country.”

Such a move is overdue, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The center in October issued a study that illustrated a growing income disparity among older Americans.

The federal government considers housing affordable when a resident can spend 30% or less of income on it. Those who spend more, according to the Harvard study, are “cost burdened.”

“While many households now of retirement age have the means to age in place or move to other suitable housing, a record number are cost burdened and will have few affordable housing options as they age,” the analysis said. “In addition, many older renters are less well positioned than homeowners because they have lower cash savings and wealth.”

Moreover, the study said homelessness among older adults is increasing. The share of people age 50 and older experiencing homelessness rose to 33.8% in 2017 from 22.9% in 2007. Those statistics, according to the study, suggest that the “need for affordable, accessible housing and in-home supportive services is therefore set to soar.”

Such housing insecurity can affect a person’s health and well-being. “Financial pressures can also lead to depression and other physical problems,” the study said.

Not everyone is convinced 3D is the answer for the masses.

“Basically, 3D printing is creating a wall system,” said Chris Herbert, the Harvard center’s managing director. “It still has to have a foundation. Someone needs to put on a roof. It’s another way to lower the labor cost of producing components of the house, but it’s not printing every piece of the house.”

“If you can show me how 3D printing can produce components that can be stacked with multiple rooms and dimensions, that would have wider applicability for the overall housing stock,” he added.

Architecture professor Ryan Smith, director of the School of Design and Construction at Washington State University, said he agrees it’s early days for the technology.

“It’s worth investment and work on research in the industry, but I don’t see how it’s going to work in the current supply chain and labor market,” he said. “I personally still feel it will be 30 to 40 years before it will be having an impact.”

But architect and 3D advocate Alvin Huang, an associate professor at the USC School of Architecture in Los Angeles, said 3D’s advantages “are about precision and customization.”

“Its actual benefit is in larger projects that have a high deal of customization,” he said. “More and more construction sites will become more and more like factory settings, and instead of laborers, you’re looking at technicians. I’m a very big proponent of thinking about how the 3D printer can change the way we design.”

Brett Hagler is co-founder of New Story, a San Francisco-based social housing nonprofit to end global homelessness. His group and Icon are working on the world’s first 3D-printed community of 50 houses, under construction in Tabasco, Mexico. New Story and Icon partnered to create the first 3D-printed structure in East Austin that debuted in March 2018 at the annual South by Southwest festival. That building, now an office, served as a prototype for the 3D-printed homes at Community First.

“With one type of technology, you essentially get a lower-cost home — the exact percent in price is TBD. Two, it’s faster. Three, it’s very exciting to us because you get a much better custom design based on a family’s need,” he said. “What I do believe is that it has a very real chance to usher in a quantum leap in how we build shelter.”

The first permitted, 3D-printed structure in the U.S. was created by Icon in East Austin and debuted in March 2018 at the annual South By Southwest festival. The building served as a prototype for the 3D-printed homes at Community First.(Credit: Casey Dunn)

Hagler said he’s confident the technology will be developed to affect more than just the current single-story detached house and provide solutions to large-scale projects.

“There’s an opportunity for a two-story. That’s going to happen,” he said. “Right now, if we can figure out a two-story, we can figure out a 10-story. It’s just a matter of time.”

At Community First, residents pay monthly rents ranging from $220 to $430 and can earn wages by working on-site. The six new houses that will rent for $430 were created by the second-generation 3D printer called Vulcan II, which last year printed the village’s welcome center.

Shea has come a long way from Ohio, when he was married and lived with his wife and two kids in a house he bought in 1971. He was married 12 years, he said, “until I struck out on my own.”

“We were comfortable,” he said, explaining that he had attended Ohio State University but didn’t graduate and then worked at several jobs in Ohio and Austin until poor health caught up with him and forced him onto the streets. He lives on a modest fixed income of disability and Social Security payments.

“I had never been homeless before I got in bad shape physically. I didn’t feel equipped for it and didn’t handle it very well,” he said. “Some people I’ve met here have been in and out of homelessness all their life. It’s a shock to your system. All I could do was hide. I was embarrassed.”

Now with his new 3D-printed home in sight, Shea is optimistic — for himself and the prospect of 3D-printed homes.

“I feel like it’s going to help people in every situation in life,” he said. “It’s one of the most innovative steps — not just for the homeless — but for affordable housing. It’s pretty amazing.”

Around The Corner: 3D Housing Designed For The Homeless And Needy Seniors published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Around The Corner: 3D Housing Designed For The Homeless And Needy Seniors

AUSTIN, Texas — Tim Shea is counting the days until he can move into a new, 3D-printed house. Shea, 69, will be the first to live in one of six such rentals created by what some in the housing industry call a futuristic approach that could revolutionize home construction.

Shea is among a growing number of seniors in America who have struggled to keep affordable housing. He has, at times, been homeless. He has arthritis and manages to get around with the aid of a walker. He said he looks forward to giving up the steep ramp he’s had to negotiate when entering or exiting the RV he’s called home.

“I’m over the top about it,” said Shea, a native of Stratford, Connecticut, who made his way to Austin in 1993. “They had an interview process where a bunch of people applied. Then I found out it was a 3D-printed home, and I was gung-ho.”

The promise of 3D printing has others excited, too.

Tim Shea, formerly homeless, will be among the first people in the U.S. to live in a 3D-printed house. This spring, Shea plans to move into the 400-square-foot, 3D-printed home by Icon at Community First Village in Austin.(Courtesy of ICON)

In a Northeast Austin neighborhood, these homes are taking their distinctive shape on the grounds of Community First Village, where about 180 formerly homeless people have found shelter and camaraderie in the most expensive city in the state. The 51-acre development (which will eventually include more than 500 homes) provides affordable permanent housing, including the 3D variety.

In this city of disruptors, Austin-based construction technology company Icon has formed a variety of partnerships to explore how 3D-printed homes could not only provide housing for people on the margins but also demonstrate how to dramatically reduce the time and money spent on construction.

“I see this innovative idea as being a powerful piece of the puzzle, along with other ideas of what it’s going to take to have more affordably built houses,” said Alan Graham, a real estate developer turned founder of the nonprofit Mobile Loaves & Fishes, which opened the village in 2016. The average age of residents is 55, he said.

These 400-square-foot houses are the nation’s first 3D-printed residences, according to Icon. Its process — which incorporates an 11-foot-tall printer that weighs 3,800 pounds — relies on robotics. Beads of a pliable concrete material dubbed Lavacrete ooze from the behemoth printer in ripples that stack and harden into a wall with curved corners.

The idea is to cut the time and as much as half the cost associated with traditional construction, limit the environmental footprint and trim the number of workers on crews, said Jason Ballard, Icon’s co-founder and CEO.

The process, he added, also could allow more design freedom.

“Because 3D printing uses slopes and curves, in the future new design languages will emerge that are only accessible through 3D printing,” Ballard said.

Icon has generated interest from the federal government, including NASA and the Defense Department, whose Defense Innovation Unit is focused on strengthening national security with new commercial technology. The unit (which has an Austin office) is under contract with Icon to train Marines and develop prototype structures that can be built quickly for military and humanitarian purposes. In late January, about a dozen Marines trained for a week at Icon. Further training is planned this year at Camp Pendleton in California.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson visited Austin twice last year, checking out Icon headquarters and touring the village.

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“Innovation is key to solving our affordable housing crisis,” Carson said in an email. “The work that companies like Icon are doing could have a huge impact on housing affordability in communities across the country.”

Such a move is overdue, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The center in October issued a study that illustrated a growing income disparity among older Americans.

The federal government considers housing affordable when a resident can spend 30% or less of income on it. Those who spend more, according to the Harvard study, are “cost burdened.”

“While many households now of retirement age have the means to age in place or move to other suitable housing, a record number are cost burdened and will have few affordable housing options as they age,” the analysis said. “In addition, many older renters are less well positioned than homeowners because they have lower cash savings and wealth.”

Moreover, the study said homelessness among older adults is increasing. The share of people age 50 and older experiencing homelessness rose to 33.8% in 2017 from 22.9% in 2007. Those statistics, according to the study, suggest that the “need for affordable, accessible housing and in-home supportive services is therefore set to soar.”

Such housing insecurity can affect a person’s health and well-being. “Financial pressures can also lead to depression and other physical problems,” the study said.

Not everyone is convinced 3D is the answer for the masses.

“Basically, 3D printing is creating a wall system,” said Chris Herbert, the Harvard center’s managing director. “It still has to have a foundation. Someone needs to put on a roof. It’s another way to lower the labor cost of producing components of the house, but it’s not printing every piece of the house.”

“If you can show me how 3D printing can produce components that can be stacked with multiple rooms and dimensions, that would have wider applicability for the overall housing stock,” he added.

Architecture professor Ryan Smith, director of the School of Design and Construction at Washington State University, said he agrees it’s early days for the technology.

“It’s worth investment and work on research in the industry, but I don’t see how it’s going to work in the current supply chain and labor market,” he said. “I personally still feel it will be 30 to 40 years before it will be having an impact.”

But architect and 3D advocate Alvin Huang, an associate professor at the USC School of Architecture in Los Angeles, said 3D’s advantages “are about precision and customization.”

“Its actual benefit is in larger projects that have a high deal of customization,” he said. “More and more construction sites will become more and more like factory settings, and instead of laborers, you’re looking at technicians. I’m a very big proponent of thinking about how the 3D printer can change the way we design.”

Brett Hagler is co-founder of New Story, a San Francisco-based social housing nonprofit to end global homelessness. His group and Icon are working on the world’s first 3D-printed community of 50 houses, under construction in Tabasco, Mexico. New Story and Icon partnered to create the first 3D-printed structure in East Austin that debuted in March 2018 at the annual South by Southwest festival. That building, now an office, served as a prototype for the 3D-printed homes at Community First.

“With one type of technology, you essentially get a lower-cost home — the exact percent in price is TBD. Two, it’s faster. Three, it’s very exciting to us because you get a much better custom design based on a family’s need,” he said. “What I do believe is that it has a very real chance to usher in a quantum leap in how we build shelter.”

The first permitted, 3D-printed structure in the U.S. was created by Icon in East Austin and debuted in March 2018 at the annual South By Southwest festival. The building served as a prototype for the 3D-printed homes at Community First.(Credit: Casey Dunn)

Hagler said he’s confident the technology will be developed to affect more than just the current single-story detached house and provide solutions to large-scale projects.

“There’s an opportunity for a two-story. That’s going to happen,” he said. “Right now, if we can figure out a two-story, we can figure out a 10-story. It’s just a matter of time.”

At Community First, residents pay monthly rents ranging from $220 to $430 and can earn wages by working on-site. The six new houses that will rent for $430 were created by the second-generation 3D printer called Vulcan II, which last year printed the village’s welcome center.

Shea has come a long way from Ohio, when he was married and lived with his wife and two kids in a house he bought in 1971. He was married 12 years, he said, “until I struck out on my own.”

“We were comfortable,” he said, explaining that he had attended Ohio State University but didn’t graduate and then worked at several jobs in Ohio and Austin until poor health caught up with him and forced him onto the streets. He lives on a modest fixed income of disability and Social Security payments.

“I had never been homeless before I got in bad shape physically. I didn’t feel equipped for it and didn’t handle it very well,” he said. “Some people I’ve met here have been in and out of homelessness all their life. It’s a shock to your system. All I could do was hide. I was embarrassed.”

Now with his new 3D-printed home in sight, Shea is optimistic — for himself and the prospect of 3D-printed homes.

“I feel like it’s going to help people in every situation in life,” he said. “It’s one of the most innovative steps — not just for the homeless — but for affordable housing. It’s pretty amazing.”

Around The Corner: 3D Housing Designed For The Homeless And Needy Seniors published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[yjylashawnda-blog]

Best twenty Spookiest Deserted Places.

When taking a trip for organisation, you might certainly not possess a chance to choose where you go. Possibilities are, you go where your supervisor tells you to go, even if this makes you want to tell him where to go. But once in a while there might be an affair or 2 when you may picked between cities: if there equal seminars in twelve different metropolitan areas, you just could get to visit the area you intend to see. Due to the fact that the final years, the Youngstown Organisation Incubator offers B2B program providers along with mentors, social network, and office space services. This is actually anticipated to cheer over 70% through 2050, which will definitely equate to 6.5 billion individuals residing in metropolitan areas alone, the very same population as the entire world as lately as 2004. When Trump was acting as the head of state of his household's real estate provider, the Trump Administration Organization, in 1973, the Justice Department filed suit the business for alleged ethnological bias against black individuals aiming to lease flats in the Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Isle boroughs of Nyc Urban Area. Although lots of people may check out the income chart as well as figure out which they prefer to be actually, there's an enormous difference in between police officer and gotten when it pertains to work obligations and also initial credentials. There are lots of people who need to approve government assistance below merely to make it through. It has more than 35 per-cent of its population staying listed below the nationally described poverty line of $20,650 when the rest of the state wiggles at the 14 percent smudge, creating it one of the worst urban areas within Michigan. Yeah actually informative hubbut am actually therefore thankful to know that karachi is the cheapest metropolitan area to stay because my karachi is extremely stunning area and its own good to reside in a large and beautiful metropolitan area with very low cost. While people were quite unclean through today's criteria, they at least performed certainly not enjoy it. Filth was actually seen as more of a method to prevent ailment, certainly not considering that they liked being foul-smelling and unclean. China possesses widely known urban areas that are actually likewise vital traveling locations. The condition's Team of Health and wellness and Human being Solutions pointed out on Wednesday that the outbreak goes back to summer months 2014 and also have certainly not dismissed a link to the dangerous faucet water in the urban area of Flint. Think of an area where each and every company welcomed artists to exhibit their job to the provider's customers. New york city is actually leading when you desire to find a real city, however believe me, all the above discussed areas will not neglect to wow you. The Late Show" bunch signed up with star and also singer Patrick Wilson on Friday to belt out The Star-Spangled Ensign" before the Mets-Yankees game in The big apple City Rather than relying on any sort of single ranking unit for my checklist of the top 10 exec MBA plans on the planet, I have actually performed a comparative analysis of the Financial Moments, Company Full Week, Wall Street Publication as well as The Economist ranks and have specified the 10 systems that show up consistently at the international top ports around the variety of ranking organizations as well as over numerous years. For example, http://everydaygym-lucasblog.info/bojni-brod-s-narancastim-ljustinom in the 1930s, city sociologist Niles Woodworker described a surfacing fad he knowned as "the journey for information": assessing and analyzing the people, places, and factors that compose an area, their activities, as well as the connections between all of them. I grew in The golden state and also journeyed to the majority of the places you mentione.I would add several of the national parks like Joshua Padrk as well as Yosemite, other urban areas like Santa clam Cruz, Monterey Gulf, Napa valley and also Palms Springs are actually stunning and a number of the gold thrill abandoned town are really pleasant to explore like Jamestown, Strawberry as well as Murphey.

[newssplashy]

Buying music today might sound crazy but what are the economic benefits? Join me as I take you through the journey of music sales and the need for every Ghanaian to start buying music.

Buy Ghanaian music? Does this even sound right in this age where music is ubiquitous and easy to access? This era of free music downloads and streaming on the internet?

Well, for well-informed arts people who feel that there is grave labour producing content for consumption, and who understand the intricacies of copyright laws, purchasing is sacred.

But, to hip millennial who enjoys free downloads on the internet, it’s absolutely rubbish.

Research has shown that sales of legitimate cassettes and compact discs (CDs) have declined due to the internet piracy.

A 2004 study on ‘the effect of internet piracy on CD sales’ by Economists, Martin Peitz and Patrick Waelbroeck suggested that sales of CDs, which benefits musicians, saw a major decline between 2000 and 2001 due to internet piracy.

In 2001 alone, there was 10% decline in CD sales worldwide, causing a huge loss to the music industry.

How did it start?

Many musicians around the globe have made huge incomes from the sales of cassettes and CD. In the early 1980s, when cassette patronage was declining, CDs made a timely emergence on the market of music media.

Swedish Pop group ABBA and American singer-songwriter Billy Joel were the first musicians who made money from CD sales after releasing “The Visitors” and “52nd Street” albums respectively.

 Let’s bring it down to Ghana. Highlife, Hiplife and Afrobeats musicians in the early 90s enjoyed massive sales boosts when CDs were introduced in the country.

I quite remember when my parents and older brothers used to rush to distribution vans to purchase CDs. CDs from Lumba Brothers (Daddy Lumba and Nana Acheampong), Daasebre Gyamenah, Paa Solo, A.A.A (Akwasi Ampofo Agyei), K.K Kabobo, Amakye Dede, Obuoba J.A. Adofo, Dr Paa Bobo, and other superstars in the 1990s would not pass by without finding their way into sound systems in my household.

Even though cassettes were still selling in the late 1990s and early 200s, CDs had its way through, putting smiles on musicians’ faces. CDs gave musicians direct cash and value for their midnight toils. Plus, it in the long run also contributed to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

 But around 2004-2006, the music business model changed. The music purchasing business switched from distribution vans to online and offline piracy.

More online music blogs that make music available to its subscribers and daily/monthly visitors emerged. Hubs and portals for music piracy grew in numbers, set up by internet savvy, music-loving young Ghanaians who saw it as a niche to explore and exploit in outwitting unemployment.

YOU MAY LOVE THIS: Modern music promo; social media made easy

The outcome?

Artistes felt the impact in their pockets and bank accounts. Many veteran musicians, who could have made money from direct sales, legal online stores like iTunes and Spotify and other royalty sources, have rather suffered the consequences.

Amina Ibrahim, the wife of late Highlife musician Daasebre Gyamenah, had to beg Ghanaians for financial support to help the musician’s family. Before the death of Highlife legend Jewel Ackah, he had to rely on former President John Dramani Mahama and a few industry people for financial support. Hiplife star Omanhene Pozo died of a brain tumour because he couldn’t afford a surgery.

These are just a few instances.

There are a bunch of one-time hitmakers who find it very difficult to afford a square meal.

This is happening because free music downloads have taken over from the tradition of music purchasing.

 A lot of Ghanaian musicians, including Volta Regime Music Group owner Edem and Zylofon Music/Burniton Music Group artiste Stonebwoy have felt the sting of the download culture.

In 2017, Stonebwoy complained bitterly about some Ghanaian music blogs unlawfully putting musicians’ hard work up for free downloads and making double profits from the venture, which inflicts heavy losses on the artiste.

 Stonebwoy admitted that some of though some of the musicians might not be able to take court action, due to how unusual the practice is for such circumstances, they would find other alternatives to teach the culprits lessons.

ALSO READ: MUSIGA Saga: Does Shatta Wale have a case against Obour?

The way forward

In order to avoid the above crises, we as Ghanaians need to change our mindsets. Our attitudes too.

It’s time we say no to music piracy and subscribe to legal online music stores. We have to subject our music acquisition habits to high standards without compromise.

Some people may argue that people without access to the internet may not be able to purchase Ghanaian music online. The truth is, music distribution vans still exist. CDs are still being sold at concerts and album launches.

If we are ready to support the industry by avoiding piracy, there are so many ways we can have access to the works of the artists we claim to love.

We can eliminate the excuses if we really, truly care.

The denouement

In 2013, a piece of research by the Musicians’ Union of Ghana (MUSIGA) showed that the music industry contributes to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Ghana

The research, led by the union’s president, Bice “Obour” Osei Kuffour conducted an extensive and in-depth probe into the music industry's financial strength as well as its relevance to the nation’s wealth.

According to Obour, Ghana music alone contributes less than 1% (representing 190 million per annum) to Ghana’s GDP.

 In an interview in 2016, he stated: “With scientific proof, we know music contributes less than 1% to Ghana’s economy but if you put a figure to it it’s about 190 million per year. This is proven by the quantitative study. This is not Obour just saying something, there’s proof to show.

“So now if we are talking to the government, you can state that music employs about 40,000 people. About 20% of these people practice music part-time and 80% do this full time. This is a foundation for development. So if a musician says nothing is being done it’s probably because that musician doesn’t understand what it takes to develop. I think we should all add up and educate our musicians.”

Even though the figures may look disappointing, it’s imperative to know and understand that the more purchases of our music we make, the greater the industry’s propensity to contribute to Ghana’s wealth and development.

Want to see our musicians grow? We must be ready to put our monies where our mouths are. Let’s get to work and do the right thing.

Something has to give.

via NewsSplashy - Latest Nigerian News Online,World Newspaper

[quantumdotdot]

No Place Like Home Actual Play

Today, I finally had the pleasure of playtesting my game, No Place Like Home! No Place Like Home is a surreal horror/mystery game based on the Blades in the Dark system that focuses on small communities and the secrets they keep behind closed doors. It's inspired by stuff like Twin Peaks and Silent Hill. I had a lot of fun creating a weird town and exploring it, and wanted to do a write-up of the game for posterity, along with my notes about it.

GM/Facilitator: Me (Mikey Zee)

Players: DC, Felix, Halogen (who sadly had to drop out after worldbuilding), and Adam/DarkLavenderVoid

Play method: Roll20 Virtual Tabletop

Worldbuilding & Character Creation

The Town

Playtest Design Notes: town creation worked so, so well. It flowed really well once we had a location (sea-side town, vaguely East Coast), and the questions I’d set up in my playtest document worked really well as a jumping-off point to continue building. There was a lot of great energy, and we kept building on ideas and creating locations like you see here. This took us about 30 minutes total, which was about what I expected. It was about at this point that Halogen had to drop out, and Adam joined.

Tragedy - What Happened in the Town that Caused Things to Go Downhill

Suddenly all the fish in the bay are dead, leaving no more fishing industry. Old Man McGrady was the first to notice, but no one believed him when he said anything. Soon, fishermen were hauling in nets of decaying fish, leaving the tourism and hospitality industries as the town’s only income.

The Characters

Felix - Nes Morris, a junior mailman who works at the post office operated by his dad. His dad used to own the old arcade, and Nes wants to refurbish the arcade. Nes sees his dad as having failed, and he wants to prove that the arcade is a good idea, actually, and his dad was the one who was a failure. Nes likes to think of himself as a teen but he’s actually just over 20, yet still dresses like a teenager did 5 years ago. His dad named him Nes because he thought naming his son a video game word was cool and futuristic, and would help him succeed in life.

Adam - Mónica Lupe, aka Mo, a 30-something gas tanker trucker who is in and out of Sandy Bay. She may drive a gas truck but she refuses to go to the shitty gas station off the highway because people are rude there, however, she’s friendly with the folks at the convenience store in town. Mo wants to ride the line between complete social outcast and having a couple friends, and has gotten rid of her family name because it got misspelled, mispronounced, and got her teased.

DC - Owen Peterson, a 19-year-old clerk for the convenience store in the middle of town. Owen wants to save up enough money to leave because he got accepted to a college, but he’s sticking around to help his family out and hoping he can still save up. Owen is irrationally afraid of people with different-colored eyes, because he read about them once and got spooked. Even though he knows it’s an irrational fear, the thought of meeting someone with the mutation fills him with dread. Owen feels responsible for people in general, and often delivers stuff from the convenience store to old man McGrady in the evenings 2-3 times a week, like cigarettes, beef jerky, and whatever weird stuff the old man needs. In return, McGrady has an open ear to tell stories and conspiracies he’s been thinking about. Owen also orders comic books for the convenience store, and getting to read them is the one thing he looks forward to every week.

Playtest Design Notes: Character creation seemed like it didn’t flow as well as I had hoped it would. Folks took their own time to come up with good, personal answers for the questions posed, which is awesome! However, I could’ve done better by giving them space to write out their thoughts and making that more explicit. We were playing in Roll20 and I just started with a blank canvas and moved on from there, but I know now that giving the players index cards or something that they feel like is theirs will probably help a lot in that regard if I don’t have character sheets. It’s something I rectified later in play.

How They Know Each Other

Nes and Owen went to school together (they were in the same year) and bonded over comic books and video games. Nes has a shelf full of comics in the ruins of the arcade and they read them together. Also, Nes is the one to deliver the new comics Owen orders, as they come by mail.

Mo and Nes met because Mo’s oil truck crashed into Nes’ mail truck on Nes’ first week of driving it. Nes wasn’t paying attention while turning, and even though Mo slammed on the brakes, she wasn’t able to fully stop in time and pushed the mail truck against a pole, slightly dinging the truck. Neither of them wanted to face the repercussions of telling anyone what really happened (as Mo would face paperwork and Nes would have to deal with his dad), so Nes just brushed it off as him having hit a pole. Nes still got chewed out by his dad, but no one was the wiser. Mo offered to pick Nes up to help him with his route (now on bike), but he didn’t accept. There’s a lot of small winding streets, and Nes delivers the mail to the people he doesn’t like last.

Owen and Mo know each other because they struck up a friendship when Mo would come in to get her coffee, and they got to be people that each other could trust mutually, a genuine connection in this town where that’s a rarity. Since then, they’ve started to talk to each other about their problems and their lives. 

How They Feel About the Tragedy

Owen is the town ear; he hears people worrying about it in hushed tones, everyone has their theories but no one has a concrete reason. It’s disturbing because usually there’s a common thread in rumors, but there isn’t to this.

Mo thinks there’s demons in the town, goth is in again and that’s super suspicious, it’s the devil’s fault--Mo relies heavily on Christian stereotypes of what’s evil versus holy.

Nes more worried about the monetary aspect of the fish crisis, almost every single household started getting past-due bills, something else doesn’t smell right.

Playtest Design Notes: How the group knows each other and how they feel about the tragedy flowed super-well once the group had a solid grasp on their characters. I didn’t even have to prompt to talk about how the group knew each other--it was just a natural evolution from character building, which is the kind of thing I was hoping for, and it made me very happy to see as a designer. I thought these two sections really helped to flesh out the characters and how they exist in this world, as well. At this point we were about an hour in, which I felt was the perfect amount of time.

Investigation Begins

What Brought Them Together

Mo originally learned about the fishing industry dying when she overheard Nes and Owen talking about it in hushed tones while she was getting her morning coffee. They agreed to meet later to talk about it in greater detail.

Figuring out “The Mystery”

Later that same day, group meets up at the abandoned bistro of convenience store around 1-2pm. There used to be a cafe here that served sandwiches and coffee, but now people just sit here and drink their coffee, which is just drip machine now. There also used to be phone booths, but those got ripped out a while back.

Nancy, Owen’s boss and the manager of the Convenience Store, hands Owen a bag full of Smucker’s Uncrustable sandwiches she expensed and microwaved for him so he and his friends could have a snack for their meeting, despite the fact that you aren’t really supposed to microwave Uncrustables in their wrappers. Owen grabs the bag and sits down with Mo and Nes, distributing the sandwiches.

“They’re really not so bad once you get past the bread,” he says, trying to make up for the fact that the bread on the outside is slightly hard from microwaving them, and the inside is maybe still a little frozen. “The warm jelly is actually alright.”

Mo wordlessly takes out her own sack lunch, which she’s packed for driving, and takes out the lukewarm ham sandwich she’s made for herself. She eats the Uncrustable first out of principle and doesn’t say anything.

Once they’re done with their lunch, Nes pulls out a stack of bills, along with a registry of names from the Post Office with red marks next to a bunch of them. “Seventy-five percent of the people in the town have been getting these overdue bills,” Nes says, and explains that he only recently realized that there was a pattern and got names for the people, though more and more people have been getting them over time. The group talks about it and decides that there has to be a connection to the fish dying, the fishing industry slowly shuttering, and the debts of the townspeople. Nes says that he wants to check along his route, check peoples’ windows maybe, see what’s up. Mónica asks if she can tag along. Owen says he was due to take some supplies to Old Man McGrady after his shift is over, but asks Mo for a favor--he needs her to buy him some Lindlelof’s Vodka so he can stock the old man up. Mo reluctantly agrees as long as Owen will pay her for it.

The Mystery

What connects the town's debts to the dead fish?

Playtest Design Notes: I wasn’t initially sure how to frame this initial scene, so I deferred to the players, who decided that, after we talked about how they learned about the information and what brought them together, that we could elide that initial scene and just play out them sitting down to talk about the mystery. This was a little bit awkward, and I don’t make a good distinction in the rules--I think it would be better to provide the GM and the players both with a little bit more support in how to narrate their getting together versus their in-character discussion of how to deal with what they know. Blades is very good about cutting to the action, and this game would do well to function similarly.

The Scenes

Playtest Design Notes: We decided at the beginning of the session that it would be better to have each person in a scene roll 1d6, and then the highest result among the characters in a scene would be the result. I like this change a lot and I’ll be changing that in the design doc, as it ensures everyone gets to roll. It makes more sense too--both of the characters agreed on the course of action, so there wasn’t really a “leader.”

Nes and Mo go together to check out the mail route and see what information they can find out about the people on it. Nes is taking his bike since the mail truck is still out of commission, and Mo is jogging behind in athleticwear even though no one really does that in Sandy Bay. It’s fine.

They both roll 1d6, and both fail, and their search directs them to an apartment complex called Windy Peaks Apartments, where the greatest density of people who received the bills is found. It’s also where a lot of folks who work in the boardwalk hospitality live, given its proximity. The buildings look nice from far away--canvas awnings, shingled exterior walls--but up close you can tell the awnings are covered in grime and sea salt, and the green tinge of the shingles is from mold and other growth on them. The complex is generally in a state of disrepair.

Mo goes into the complex first while Nes stays behind to lock his bike. The apartment complex is fairly quiet--no one is really around during the day, it seems. As she walks further into the complex, she notices the door to one of the apartment buildings has been busted open, so she enters. Inside, the building smells like sewage, has astroturf carpet which crunches underneath your feet, and the doors are fake dark wood varnish with brass fake-gold mail slots. There’s a staircase leading up to the 2nd and 3rd floors of the building, but Mo wants to look around to see if there’s a second staircase. She finds a handyman stairwell at the far end of the hallway and goes up it.

Nes walks into the building shortly after she walks up the staircase, sees the door close, shrugs, and goes to check the mail slots to see if there’s anyone who hasn’t taken their mail yet. He crouches down to look into the mail slot, but a big burly man opens the door and asks what in the sam-hill Nes is doing. Nes makes up some bullshit excuse about misdelivering a letter, and the man directs him to the message board where everyone posts information and/or tacks misdelivered letters, then slams the door in his face.

Upstairs, Mo hears the sound of someone crying out in the hallway. She walks out into the hallway to see who it is, and sees a small 8 year old girl sitting in the hall, clutching a letter and sniffling, face tear-stained. As Mo gets closer, she sees that the door to the apartment the girl is sitting in front of has been forced open, and that there is a blank spot where the TV was, along with broken bookcases tossed over, and cabinets open and emptied. The little girl is still wearing her My Little Pony backpack, which is tattered around the edges like it’s a hand-me-down. Mo asks the little girl for her name, and the girl replies Julie. Mo then asks who she’s supposed to call when something bad happens, which causes Julie to start crying again when she admits that they took the phone, and mumbles something about her grandpa before the tears break out again. Mo then says that she has a phone and hands it to Julie, who types in the numbers ‘911’ before looking to Mo for confirmation. Mo nods, and they dial 911.

Meanwhile, Nes has gone outside to hide in a bush and wait to see if anyone comes home. After waiting several minutes, he eventually leaves the bush to sit on the grass next to it. He hears the sound of police sirens, which continue to get louder until a contingent of police cars pull up to the complex in front of him. He sees the officers rush past, and we cut to the police, Mo, and Julie outside the building. Julie is crying as the police comfort her, while another officer asks if she saw the robbery take place and if she could give a statement. Mo says she didn’t see and leaves with Nes as they walk the bike home.

As they walk the bike home, both clearly bummed out that they didn’t get any good information, Mo comments to Nes, "I didn't know you had the gumption to go into doors." Nes just shrugs neutrally and they keep walking. Mo stops by her house to take a chance to rest and have some alone time before they meet up.

(Nes and Mo both give up one token of Stress for the failed roll.)

Meanwhile, Owen has arrived at Old Man McGrady’s with a bag full of various sundries, hoping he can get some information out the old man. He rolls 1d6, and also fails. There’s a sign on the outside of the houseboat that used to say “Gone Fishin’” but now the “Fishin’” part has been crossed off with Sharpie. Underneath it, there’s an arrow pointing to the deck that says “Deliveries.” Owen decides to try and see if he can get inside the houseboat to leave the stuff inside. Once he puts it on the counter and organizes a little, he decides to look around to see if there’s any conspiracy theory stuff or yarnboards that McGrady has out, any information at all. He rolls 1d6 again, and fails again. As he walks into the living space of the house boat, he sees that there’s not a lot that’s nice sitting around--not because McGrady’s poor, but more that he doesn’t care about having things. There’s a lure spinner on the small table which doubles as both workspace and dining table, and a dusty bookshelf that has a few Audobon guides and the like on local birds, fish, and wildlife. Also on the bookshelf is a giant, state-of-the-art safe with both physical and digital locks. The boat is fairly sparse other than that. Owen, lacking any good leads, decides to tidy up things around the boat before leaving.

(Owen gives up two tokens of Stress for the failed rolls.)

When the group meets up again, it’s that evening, and the ruins of the old arcade are thumping with music. The teens who gather there have rigged up an old DDR machine to play music from their iPods, and they are having a breakdancing competition while the music plays. The group enters the back offices of the arcade, and the bass from the music pulses and throbs through the walls. Mo sits on a stack of old, burnt-out CRT monitors that flicker into being from time-to-time, and still show the sprites and scores from their old games. The team decides to take the night to rest and reconvene the next day.

Playtest Design Notes: It was an interesting challenge for me to think up how things could fail from the beginning, and how to make things more interesting than “you don’t get anything.” DC had an idea for a new question he wanted Owen to ask after his failure, which he could articulate as a different and distinct question, which I decided made sense in the moment. I’m not entirely satisfied with how the resolution of failed rolls played out, but it helped me realize some blind spots in my design. More on this below.

Moving between the scenes and the options present after a scene had wrapped felt a little awkward. I think I can restructure the game to make what actions players can take at any given point clearer. As much as I like the way the current game flows when reading it, in play it doesn’t work super great--which is the kind of information I needed from this playtest!

Final Thoughts & Takeaways

Overall, I felt like it went pretty well. We had to break an hour earlier than planned, but we still managed to get what felt like a lot accomplished in the three hours that we played. Other than some stumbling blocks in pacing and roll resolution I’m going to address before we continue this playtest, everything flowed pretty well. I’m really happy to have something that works as a game, rather than just falls apart after closer examination. I was also very lucky to have players who were enthused about the game, which helped too, and which I’m extremely thankful for.

I mentioned I’d bring up the resolution of failed rolls, from both a GMing and game design perspective, because as soon as it happened, I realized a couple blind spots with the game as currently written.

First, I intended to write the text for investigation rolls to be similar to Blades’ Gather Information rolls. For Gather Information, before rolling, the GM asks the player how they’re gathering information, and then the GM determines if there’s a consequence or harm associated. If there is a consequence, the player makes an Action roll, and the result of that roll determines how well the character does as well as any harm or complications they suffer. If the roll is a success, the roll also determines the quality of the information they receive. If there’s no “danger or trouble at hand,” a Fortune roll is made instead. For a Fortune roll, you always get some information, and the roll result determines the quality of information you get. As far as I can tell from the rules, fortune rolls always net you something even if it’s very little.

For Nes and Mo, I should have established the location before having them roll, but when I saw the result, I had vague ideas of how their failures would manifest. Once we did establish the location, I wanted to play out the scene in a similar way to how I would play out a Gather Information roll in Blades. Nes failed, got close to what he wanted (the letters in the door slot), but was rebuffed in the last second. Meanwhile, Mo also didn’t get what she wanted, but got some interesting information regardless about a burglary. I figured what happened here was also kind of similar to a 7-9 result for Spout Lore in Dungeon World.

For Owen, on the other hand, I feel like I goofed it a bit as a GM initially. The result of a roll should never just be “you get nothing”. Sure, a consequence for an Action Roll could be “you lose this opportunity,” but that’s because of that danger or trouble bit.

Where’s the danger or trouble at hand in either of these instances? My thought was the danger or trouble at hand would be that circumstances just don’t line up the way the characters wanted. However, I don’t know that this works super-well for a Forged in the Dark game or feels like a satisfying result. By conflating standard Action rolls and Fortune rolls like I did in my design, I created a circumstance where you could be essentially making a Fortune roll, but you get nothing as a result since in the rules I say “you don’t get what you wanted out of this”, i.e., you get nothing, which is a bit antithetical to Blades’ design. I’m completely okay with characters finding the trail has gone cold, but I need to look at restructuring what that looks like. 

Second, after not finding anything, DC wanted to push on and ask an additional question after his initial failure. Once again, by conflating Action rolls with Fortune rolls and removing Position/Effect, I’ve created a blind spot in the rules. In standard Blades, if you’re acting more or less on your terms (a Controlled position), a failure means that you “press on by seizing a risky opportunity, or withdraw and try a different approach.” If you’re not acting on your terms, then things go badly and there’s a more severe consequence. Here, it makes total sense that Owen would want to press on and try a different approach. However, the rules don’t currently provide any support for the player or the GM in terms of how to handle failure and severity.

In summary, if I want to keep this current version with no Position and Effect and only one type of roll, then I need to be more explicit about creating consequences and how that should work.  The question is, how do I prompt to make those consequences fit the mood I want this game to create? I’ll have to go back to the drawing board on that one, I think.

After all, it makes sense that there would be consequences when you’re snooping around in others’ business, whether they’re severe or mild.

Ironically, by failing, my players helped show the flaws in my initial design more than successes would have!

I’m definitely going to take a hard look at what I felt didn’t work and try to update it for when this group plays again to finish up our exploration of Sandy Bay. I’m excited to find out what happens.

[ulyssessklein]

“I’m well on my way to paying off my house with streaming revenue”

How one instrumental guitarist is earning significant money from his streams on Spotify and Pandora.

The music career of Lance Allen is a true DIY success story. He doesn’t tour. He doesn’t rely on merch sales to pay the mortgage. He isn’t a household name. And yet he’s earning a full-time living in music by balancing guitar lessons with streaming revenue. That money he’s generating from Pandora, Spotify, and YouTube is a pretty sizable portion of his overall earnings too. It’s enough to “buy a new guitar every month,” but instead he’s using it to pay off his house.

How’s streaming working so well for him? I asked.

An interview with Lance Allen, the Guitarlancer

CR: Your main focus is clear from the calls-to-action at the very top of your website homepage: drive action on Spotify and Pandora. Why those platforms? Why not… touring? iTunes? YouTube? CD sales?

LA: Spotify and Pandora Radio have the largest audience, and that’s the reason why they’re my main focus. Plus it has been a source of income for me.

In late 2015, I was lucky and one of my songs was chosen for the new playlist on Spotify called Acoustic Concentration. A Skype guitar student that I teach told me about this. I didn’t know what to expect really, considering most people in the industry complain about Spotify’s royalty rates. The first payment I received was somewhere in the tune of $700 and I was floored! I didn’t know how long it would last, but I held out hope. It kept going and eventually the playlist switched up songs and I remained on there. This stayed constant, but I wasn’t doing any research until earlier in 2017, when I accidentally stumbled on a short book called The Slotify Method by George Goodrich. This book and the CD Baby PDF on how to get added to playlists put a fire in my feet and I got started right away. I’ve done most of the things suggested in each of the pamphlets, and it has worked greatly.

As far as touring, I don’t need to do that. I have a successful guitar lesson business and a family at home. It’s quite nice to be at home with the family. I do the occasional gig at coffee houses, weddings, or corporate events. It’s at those type of things that I bring physical CDs. I have a box with a hole in the top and lay my CDs around the box and have a sign that says, “Pay the box, take a CD. Any amount is ok. Enjoy!” This seems to work great, because most people pay more for the CD than they would normally.

YouTube is strong for me. I started in 2006 posting videos of my arrangements on guitar. My camera got better, sound got better, and everything else fell into place. I do generate a little income from the AdSense. YouTube is very friendly with Google, so whenever I release a song I’ll make a live performance of me playing it and link to my Spotify and Pandora artist pages, as well as where you can buy tablature or sign up for lessons. Sometimes I’ll do multiple videos of the same song on various guitar brands to get more keyword juice going. Every little bit helps. You just have to keep the content going.

CR: What, if any, are the unique opportunities that Pandora and Spotify offer instrumental music?

LA: I have found that businesses all over the globe are using Spotify and Pandora to stream instrumental music in their shops and offices. Whether it’s a coffee shop, a boutique store, gift shops, or doctors offices, they use these platforms typically to play instrumental music. A lot of them use existing playlists, but some create their own. So there is a lot of opportunity for me in these areas. Still learning about them.

So, you currently have half a million monthly listeners on Spotify, but take us back to Day 1: How did you get those first 1000 listeners? The first 10,000 listeners? Can you walk me through the real foundational steps for driving interest in your music? And how much of your success was the result of engaging your existing audience vs. reaching out to playlist curators?

I can’t remember really what my earliest numbers were like as I didn’t pay much attention until I saw some income from being on Acoustic Concentration.

After reading up on how to get on playlists, here are some of the things I started doing:

Posting screenshots of my artist page to Instagram and using pre-loaded hashtags for reach. I did this daily!

Using Twitter to promote the playlist I was already on, as well as encouraging people to follow me on Spotify.

Finding playlist owners and asking them to add me to one of their playlists.

-Becoming acquainted with Spotify editorial departments on LinkedIn.

Speaking of, how DID you reach out to playlisters? What’s the method in terms of research, pitching, promoting, and so forth?

I did a search on Spotify using keywords that pertained to my genre of music (Acoustic Guitar, fingerstyle guitar, instrumental guitar, study music and so on. There are a lot!) I set about an hour each morning while I enjoyed my single origin pour-over coffee to do this. I searched out the creators of the playlist on Facebook and Twitter. I matched up photos, and requested them to be a friend, along with sending them a message telling them about my music and how it would fit nicely into their playlist. It’s very tedious work and some playlist curators don’t even get onto social media. The key is to stay persistent with it and then the ones that matter end up connecting with you and help you out.

I know from when I met you in person at the DIY Musician Conference that you have a confident way of promoting your music, without it seeming… cloying or arrogant. Is that just your natural demeanor, or did you have to work to acquire those skills of self-promotion? What part do you think that confidence plays in your career successes?

Confidence is one of my major strengths! If you have a dream or are very passionate about making a living doing something you love, you have to be willing to do what it takes to succeed. I’ve learned this through growing my guitar lesson business and meeting people. You never know who is going to be the next person to help you out. They may recommend you, buy a CD, or support your fundraisers. Or… put you on their playlist!

I’ve read a lot of books on self selling, and making friends and influencing people. One that especially got me going was The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone. After listening to that book on audio, I found myself putting in ten times the effort! There are a lot of great books out there on making yourself sellable and influential.

What have been some of the letdowns or failures you’ve experienced along the way, and how did you pick yourself back up?

The letdown is not being able to reach someone with a user generated playlist I know will help me. I’m focused on getting onto the playlist that users create because that in turn gets my name on the Spotify curators’ radar.

Something that I do to help with keeping persistent is having a goal sheet written in bold sharpie just above my computer. I try my best to keep at it, regardless of a failing outcome. I have seen results from my efforts, so I just keep with it. I find that I learn new things and techniques along the way. This hasn’t happened yet, but getting pulled from a playlist would be a disappointment. Especially a Spotify playlist, as their independent curators are ghosts and difficult to have direct contact with. However I would keep pushing, because it is my goal to succeed with my music.

Taking a look at your discography, you put out albums every few years, with two related albums in 2017, but you also started dropping a bunch of singles over the past year. What effect did putting out music more frequently have on your music’s streaming performance?

Releasing singles has been the best thing for me. It keeps listeners engaged with my artist profile. I started releasing covers too, because CD Baby makes it so easy to do. That has been a game changer! People love hearing cover songs. And because mine are all instrumental, they get put on big playlists, like Instrumental Pop Covers.

The two related albums are String Poet and String Poet Guitar Solos. One of the releases has the violins and cellos in the mix and the other is just solo guitar. I did this because of a playlister who only wanted solo guitar. It got me on the playlist, so it was worth releasing them that way.

In August 2017 one of my songs got placed on the Peaceful Guitar playlist, which is a Spotify playlist with half a million followers at the time. I’m quite confident that this happened as a result of being prolific on the platform. The pay from Spotify streams is big for me. I could easily buy a new guitar each month if I wanted, but it’s paying my house off!

In October I decided to record a song just for the Peaceful Guitar playlist. I didn’t know how it would go, but I did it anyway. I listened to the playlist and created a song that would fit. I took into consideration that most of the songs on there were nylon string and quite peaceful, so I got some new strings and went to work. I even gave it a title in the same manner as the other tracks in the playlist, “Raining Slowly.” It wasn’t a lot of work really. I sat in my living room with my laptop, GarageBand, a single AKG microphone, and a Focusrite preamp and recorded one take of an idea that I had. I took an iPhone photo of my guitar and used Font Candy to make a title on the photo. This ended up being my cover for the release. I got the song uploaded on Spotify and on day one it was placed on the Peaceful Guitar playlist!

Took me about 1.5 hours to do this tune and now it’s a part of my income. Holy Cow that was awesome. I’m doing what I can now to replicate that.

What’s the basic checklist of things you do to promote each single?

Make sure you are ready to post in every social media outlet, tagging people, messaging your friends who have created playlists (you know, the ones you met from doing the research).

Make a YouTube performance video, linking everything together. You can also make a video with the audio layed underneath your cover photo of the release. That seems to help as well. Don’t forget to put links in every video.

Besides frequent releases and pitching to playlists, what else are you doing to drive Spotify engagement?

Creating and promoting my own playlists. I’ve created a playlist that is growing quickly called Acoustic Guitar Cafe.

It’s a lot of my friends who play guitar similar to me. I just recently asked every artist on there if they would be interested in chipping in $20 for a Spotify ad to promote the playlist. I was able to get a decent budget on a Spotify ad to promote the playlist. This will hopefully help find new followers and listeners of our music. It’s also started a discussion with some of the artists where we’re sharing stats and techniques of what is working to get our music heard.

What are you doing to drive Pandora streams? Are you using AMP?

I use AMP every day or every other day. I try to post artist messages that are personal, sometimes funny. The key is to connect with people that are listening. Being that it’s instrumental, I can provide a short blurb about why I wrote the tune. Things like that generate thumbs up, which in turn brings your music up more often.

What role does data play in shaping your strategies? Do you make a habit of looking at analytics?

I look at the analytic all the time. In fact I can’t wait until 11 CST to see the artist.spotify update. That tells me if I’ve gotten on any new playlist. I also used the data when creating the Spotify ad to promote my playlist. I’m eying the AMP data as well, to see if my artist messages are working and possibly making conversions or new listeners and fans.

So what are some of your big picture goals?

I’d love to earn a complete living with streaming revenue, and in fact I’d love to say that I paid my house off with streaming bucks. I’m well on the way.

Also, I’d like to see my music in the movies or TV eventually. I know in the music business it’s all about who you know. I’m already in a library, so just hoping a music supervisor picks it up and hears it.

I didn’t quite make it, but I tried to get nominated for a Grammy this year. Although I don’t need a Grammy to succeed with this, it would be neat to get a nomination. So I will continue to submit every year I do album.

Who are your musical idols — and have your songs appeared alongside some of theirs in curated playlists?

Yes! One is Phil Keaggy, and it was a dream to have him on one of my songs, “Blue Ireland.” Tommy Emmanuel is another big influence, and I hope to one day record something with him.

What’s the next year look like for you?

Next year Pandora will have increased, as well as Spotify numbers. I will be releasing more Christmas music for the holidays as well as an album of cover songs. I may even do an original album of peaceful guitar music or possibly a Volume 2 to my String Poet album that everyone has loved. I may even look into doing an electric guitar album or something in the smooth jazz style of music. That elevator music pays too!

Download CD Baby’s free guide to getting your music on Spotify playlists.

Check out more information about Lance Allen on his website.

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