#Letters from Oakmont

[bibliomorgan]

The problem to play The Sinking City again is because now I'm reading all the stuff the lore sends me.

Letters from Oakmont is a real roller-coaster of feelings.

The kid who was scared and hurt by the monsters (probably one of them were his own mother) and asking nicely if someone could help him and became his best friend.

(breaks my heart anytime a read the letter again, I wanted to hug this kid and introduced him all the great stuff of living)

The reverend who lost his faith and damming all his christian faith. It seems the Sea are calling for him, so it's better to drown, because there's no heaven or hell, nothing is real, and everything is a lie.

The dude thinking the lovecraftian beasts are friendly and goes all Ash Ketchum trying to catch them all. (The idiot one)

The young woman sending her last complaint letter for her landlord, because of some pipe doing too much weird noises. Suddenly "the pipes are talking to me and they are now offering to fix this noise YOU SUPPOSE TO FIX, YOU USELESS LANDLORD, but I have to cut myself in pieces to repay the good service the voices made fixing the pipe."

(feck the landlords!!! Non-euclidian lawfull evil beings do a better job than plummers!!!)

And all the suddenly a doctor who was delivering a baby from a very scared young woman, he has time to write down what exactly he pull out from her womb and it was not a human baby. The weird part of this letter? The doctah writes in real time what the thing is, how it was capable of wound him to dead and THE DOCTAH Still WRITING WHILE HE'S DYING ON THE FLOOR BY BLOOD LOSS.

"Oh dear life is vanishing out of me, I can't heal my wounds, what did I made with my 10 years of graduation?

Srsly dude, if a creepy baby attacks you, you don't go crawling to your office and write down how the thing killed you.

You're a fucking doctor. Go ask for help.

[scientific-dog]

Me and my friend @shapter-draws made some of… Helluva Boss x Lovecraft AU?

We’re both not big fans of Helluva Boss, but we are TOTALLY big fans of Lovecraft.

So there are the point: all the characters are human, the shark-demons are the Deep Ones.

In this AU Crimson is a port mafia boss in a small and very old Italian town nearly the sea, which is pretty resemble to these infamous ones as Innsmouth and Oakmont. There are you barely find any kind of people you get used too - people here have some terrible deviations, they have scary, deformed faces, long tales and flippers which make them look like a sharks, and if you look closer to them you’ll see the gills and big sharp teeth. People call it “The Innsmouth syndrome”. The terrible illness, which is pretty wild spread in this out-of-the-way sea towns.

Crimson moved here with his young wife and a baby son long time ago. He wasn’t rich before, but, no one knows why, but after some time his business went uphill. He become very rich in this place… as soon as his wife “died in accident” and he got a lot of these gross fishmen as his partners.

And ye, as you might expect, Crimson sacrificed his wife to the sea, he sacrificed her to Father Dagon and the Deep Ones in trade for them to protect his ships in the sea, where he illegally sell the treasures and other things. Now, being the part of the cult, he succeed and became so wealthy.

Moxxie doesn’t even know about it: he barely remembers his mother, he only remembers how once he saw her shoe in the water, when his father forced him to drown someone (another victim of cult?). Despite this, growing up around these horrifying fish faces, he was afraid of his father and never asked him why this people always near.

Then, after some time when Moxxie left the town and get his own life with his wife and new work, he received a letter from his father, where he invited them all to his house for a business. Frankly speaking, Crimson became a bankrupt, because the term of the deal with Dagon comes to its end. To tie his relationship with Deep Ones better, and make their contract endless, he needs his son to marry one of fishmen (if you haven’t read “The shadow upon the Innsmouth” it is how it usually works and it is how human make deals with them xd).

And yes, a young sharkman Chaz is a perfect choice for this!

And yea, here Chaz and Moxxie met each other in teenage years! The story was pretty same to the canon, and he betrayed him too. Moxxie never knew what his father really does and he took a part in some of deals: they drop banks and illegally sell the alcohol and drugs. And during one of this deal when it went wrong, Chaz ran away and left Moxxie alone. But, Crimson saved his son from the problems, he bailed him out of jail.

So, after some time Chaz purposed Crimson to make him richer if he tied his family “closer” to his tribesmen and Father Dagon through the marriage. How Crimson could miss this chance?

But, whatever, during the time they stayed in Crimson’s home, Millie and Blitzo find out about the cult and marriage, so they all had to take Moxxie and run away at the night before the contract happened. Because if Moxxie married Chaz, he dealt with Father Dagon and nothing would save him.

So, it’s a very first variant of AU and there are also some facts:

- Crimson is not the first who did this scheme. In Innsmouth and Oakmont a lot of human families have mafia business with Deep Ones.

- Crimson is really an occultist. He is graduated from Miskatonic university. He is thirsty not only for gold, but for forbidden knowledges, and Deep Ones provided it both to him.

- Chaz is so proud of his origin. He is “a hot sexy man and shark traits makes it only better. Rawr~”

- Chaz really loved Moxxie, but he was young and coward, and really knew that his father and others won’t let Moxxie to stay in a jail.

- I.M.P. aren’t the killers. They still do not so successfull business, but they didn’t escape so easy. There’s no Lovecraftian story without eldritch horror ;)

- Crimson still being so cruel, BUT he didn’t kill Chaz, because he didn’t lie to him obviously, and he couldn’t ruin the contract with his protectors.

- Millie is a countryside woman and her family lived nearby the blasted heath where lived Gardner family and the meteorite fell long time ago. It refers to the “Color out of space”! Millie got her extraordinary physical ability because she had to bear with mutated animals because of impact of the Colour Out of Space. But since the alien left this place long time ago and whole the impact caused by small its peace wildspread around, these mutated animals are mostly enormous, large and aggressive regular animals.

- All the “imp” characters aren’t so much cruel as they are in canon. And Chaz still being stupid horny man.

[first-impressions-gaming]

The Sinking City

Developed & Published by Frogwares

Release Date 2019 (depending on platform)

Tested on Xbox Series X

MSRP 39,99 USD

Journeying into the unknown, leaving everything you know and you are familiar with behind, a strange and stranger land sucks you in, and you’re there to solve the ongoing mystery and everything stemmed from it. Good luck, private investigator.

The Sinking City opens as you come ashore on Oakmont, the town that is sinking with each passing day and experience unusual flooding coupled with unbelievable mysteries where people experience hysteria and visions. That’s hell of a (un)welcoming to you, as the player. Right there, you know you’re stepping into a town where you are always called as “newcomer”, and you cannot not feel like an outcast. We receive a letter from J. van der Berg, just going through what we should expect from Oakmont and such. The main reason our protagonist, Charles Reed, decides to visit Oakmont is that like many people in Oakmont he is afflicted with hysteria as well and maybe he can find a remedy for his illness.

We land on Oakmont, we are barely on the shore and we see that the police aren't allowing anybody going in or out from the port. Shortly we learn that the most-influential person’s, Mr. Throgmorton, son is missing and he is standing in front of the building with police where the son was last seen before missing. We explain ourselves why we came to Oakmont and he says he could help us if we solve this case of his missing son. So, right off the bat, this’s our first case to show off our excellent private investigator skills and get to learn case-related abilities like a tutorial.

As a detective, from your deductions and the evidence you find, you are to make the final decision about a case, such as the first one concerning Albert Throgmorton’s murder. Upon collecting all the evidence and matching clues, you arrive to your verdict, did Lewis murder Albert on purpose with full awareness and knowledge or was he afflicted and mentally incapacitated?

As for this case, you can watch step-by-step how you progress and make your decision:

First, you arrive the location where the incident took place, you collect evidence in the vicinity and the game will signal you that you should switch to Mind Palace so you can go back in time and watch the event unfold:

Second, after checking every step, you are to decide which event happened in what order, by clicking on them you give them a number as 1, 2 or 3, then you can progress further:

Third, then we follow the path that leads us to the suspect, Lewis in this case, and we interact and talk with him about what happened and where Albert Throgmorton is. He gives us ambiguous answers, stating that he does not remember that well and even if he’s dead he did not do anything knowingly. We locate Albert Throgmorton’s corpse nearby, hanged and killed. What’s our verdict then?

You don’t interact with NPCs you come across on streets even though the streets are filled with them. The only interaction you have with them, or I should put it as the only reaction you receive from them is, “what you doing?, “watch where you going” sort of generic feedback when you bump into them. You cannot even interact with the NPC who is selling papers, it’d be a nice touch if the character gives you a summary of what has taken place or something similar, for example a short of summary of the town, flood. The town we’re in may seem massive at first but once you get the hang of it, each district and street will appear almost identical to you except few key locations. There isn’t any landmarks and NPCs don’t add any value to locations. For example, each time I walk by one particular street I witness two characters arguing and one of them shoots the other one on exactly same location. This breaks the believability aspect for me, this action isn’t something to happen over and over again on the same location with same scenario. You can find the clip below:

Since a quarter of the town is flooded, you are to travel with boats in some districts:

For some reason, in mid-dialogue camera angle or zoom changes and this causes characters’ faces not fitting in the screen, this’s a weird issue and I encountered it frequently:

At the end of my 3-hour gametime, there was an climactic cutscene which is followed by totally empty reaction from the protagonist, after the scene, Charles Reed wakes up in his room as he does every morning and he does not react to what happened, how can he not say anything to himself after these revelations and intrigue?:

Despite the shortcomings and some “meh” moments, The Sinking City is still a worthy detective game, the game makes up for what is missing in other aspects and presents an enjoyable walkthrough to the player.

[jutsei]

The Sinking City replay is going well, I'm on Case 7/9, I may be able to finish this tomorrow though I do wanna do some of the side quests, I may be drawing a line in the sand when it comes to some of these fetch quests though

Both Letters from Oakmont and All That Glitters have 9+ things to retrieve and a lot of them are in infested areas. But. Hey, EXP is EXP i guess?

I dunno, we'll see, I kinda wanna finish this game before the weekend's over

[still-lightless]

Statement fic based off of the "Letters from Oakmont" quest in The Sinking City. Letter: Voices from the Pipes.

ARCHIVIST: Police statement of Thomas Bigley regarding a concerning letter received from a tenant. Original statement given circa 1920 to the Oakmont Police Department, Massachusetts. File retrieved from the Usher Foundation. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.

[akingcalworld]

Top 10 films of all time!

So I have been wanting to write down my top 10 films of all time, but in all honesty its gonna be hard to nail it down to 10 and most likely I am going to forget some major films but, they can’t be that good if I have forgotten about them. Controversially I am going to place franchises in one spot since I don’t want say, star wars taking up the whole list. So with out further a do here we go. This list as always is subject to change. 09/12/2018.

10) Harry Potter films (including FB)

Harry Potter is a series of fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

9) Wolf On Wall Street

In 1987, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) takes an entry-level job at a Wall Street brokerage firm. By the early 1990s, while still in his 20s, Belfort founds his own firm, Stratton Oakmont. Together with his trusted lieutenant (Jonah Hill) and a merry band of brokers, Belfort makes a huge fortune by defrauding wealthy investors out of millions. However, while Belfort and his cronies partake in a hedonistic brew of sex, drugs and thrills, the SEC and the FBI close in on his empire of excess.

8) Boyhood

The joys and pitfalls of growing up are seen through the eyes of a child named Mason (Ellar Coltrane), his parents (Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke) and his sister (Lorelei Linklater). Vignettes, filmed with the same cast over the course of 12 years, capture family meals, road trips, birthday parties, graduations and other important milestones. Songs from Coldplay, Arcade Fire and other artists capture the time period. Directed by Richard Linklater.

7) HER

A sensitive and soulful man earns a living by writing personal letters for other people. Left heartbroken after his marriage ends, Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix) becomes fascinated with a new operating system which reportedly develops into an intuitive and unique entity in its own right. He starts the program and meets "Samantha" (Scarlett Johansson), whose bright voice reveals a sensitive, playful personality. Though "friends" initially, the relationship soon deepens into love.

6) Walk The Line

The rise of country music legend Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) begins with his days as a boy growing up on the family farm, where he struggles under the scorn of his father (Robert Patrick). As the years pass, Cash ends up in Memphis, with his wife, Vivian (Ginnifer Goodwin), and breaks into the music scene after finding his trademark sound. While on tour, Cash meets the love of his life, singer June Carter (Reese Witherspoon), but Cash's volatile lifestyle threatens to keep them apart.

5) Star Wars Franchise

Star Wars is an American epic space opera franchise, created by George Lucas and centred around a film series that began with the eponymous 1977 movie. The saga quickly became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon.

4) Monsters INC (pretty much all Disney and Pixar movies but this is my favourite)

Monsters Incorporated is the largest scare factory in the monster world, and James P. Sullivan (John Goodman) is one of its top scarers. Sullivan is a huge, intimidating monster with blue fur, large purple spots and horns. His scare assistant, best friend and roommate is Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal), a green, opinionated, feisty little one-eyed monster. Visiting from the human world is Boo (Mary Gibbs), a tiny girl who goes where no human has ever gone before.

3) La la land

Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) are drawn together by their common desire to do what they love. But as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.

2) Pulp Fiction

Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) are hitmen with a penchant for philosophical discussions. In this ultra-hip, multi-strand crime movie, their storyline is interwoven with those of their boss, gangster Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames) ; his actress wife, Mia (Uma Thurman) ; struggling boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) ; master fixer Winston Wolfe (Harvey Keitel) and a nervous pair of armed robbers, "Pumpkin" (Tim Roth) and "Honey Bunny" (Amanda Plummer).

1) Django Unchained

Two years before the Civil War, Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave, finds himself accompanying an unorthodox German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) on a mission to capture the vicious Brittle brothers. Their mission successful, Schultz frees Django, and together they hunt the South's most-wanted criminals. Their travels take them to the infamous plantation of shady Calvin Candy (Leonardo DiCaprio), where Django's long-lost wife (Kerry Washington) is still a slave.

Boom. There we have it my top 10 Best films ever. I love so many more films but these are just precious to me! They do always change and with new films out all the time there is every possibility that one will break through and steal a spot on the top 10. All the best Callum. 

[miskatonicaquarium]

Thank you SO much to everyone who replied with Lovecraftian gaming suggestions! Here is a master list of things which were recommended, along with links to the relevant websites & a bit of information about them 

(I have copied and pasted the info as I am not yet personally familiar). 

Darkest Dungeon - A challenging gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Recruit, train, and lead a team of flawed heroes against unimaginable horrors, stress, famine, disease, and the ever-encroaching dark.

Elder Sign - It is 1926, and the museum's extensive collection of exotic curios and occult artifacts poses a threat to the barriers between our world and the elder evils lurking between dimensions. Players take the roles of investigators racing against time to stave off the imminent return of the Ancient One. 

Call of Cthulhu - A roleplaying game of mystery and horror, in which players take on the role of investigators to uncover the secrets of the cosmos. This is a really good piece about it’s enduring appeal that also has some other good recommendations. 

Trail of Cthulhu - You are among the few who suspect the truth about the mad gods at the center of the universe, about the Great Old Ones who dream of clearing off the Earth. An investigation centred roleplaying game designed by acclaimed mythos expert Kenneth Hite. 

Arkham Horror - Strange things are happening in the small Massachusetts town of Arkham. The investigators must secure the city, encountering its haunted and mysterious locations before a terrible creature from beyond time and space awakens.

Mansions of Madness - Horrific monsters and spectral presences lurk in manors, crypts, schools, monasteries, and derelict buildings near Arkham. It’s up to a handful of brave investigators to explore these cursed places and uncover the truth about the living nightmares within.

Eldritch Horror - An ancient evil is stirring. You are part of a team of unlikely heroes engaged in an international struggle to stop the gathering darkness. To do so, you’ll have to defeat foul monsters, travel to Other Worlds, and solve obscure mysteries surrounding this unspeakable horror.

Betrayal at House on the Hill - Players explore a haunted mansion of their own design, encountering spirits and frightening omens that foretell their fate. Secretly, one of the characters betrays the rest of the party, and the innocent members of the party must defeat the traitor in their midst

Bloodborne - Follows the player character, the Hunter, through the decrepit Gothic, Victorian era inspired city of Yharnam. The inhabitants have been afflicted with an abnormal blood-borne disease, with the player character unraveling the city's intriguing mysteries. 

Chronicles of Darkness - In the shadows and between the cracks of our everyday lives hide the Chronicles of Darkness. Here lurk creatures of ancient myth and urban legend. Here every malformed horror you’ve ever seen out of the corner of your eye has a home.

Lovecraft Letter - A card game that combines the Love Letter system with the world of H.P. Lovecraft. Follow a series of clues left behind for you to find, but beware, as some of them are not what they seem.

Starbound - You’ve fled your home, only to find yourself lost in space with a damaged ship. Your only option is to beam down to the planet below and gather the resources you need to repair your ship and set off to explore the vast, infinite universe…

Eldritch Skies - It is 2030. The Gilman-Hawking drive has given us access to the stars. But we are not alone. They're out there: aliens, gods and monsters. They're also down here. A complete setting of Lovecraftian science fiction that uses the Savage Worlds game engine.

The Sinking City (still in production) - The Sinking City is a third person adventure game, inspired by the works of American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. After a flood,  monsters are now roaming the streets of Oakmont. Locals also say they can constantly feel the presence of something far more alarming – a great, incomprehensible force that is slowly driving everyone mad.

Strange Aeons & Die Unaussprechlichen Kulten - Strange Aeons is a  miniature skirmish game set in the 1920s and populated with the weird denizens of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. Die Kulten is a cult battle and management game in which players create cults and clash amongst each other for the favour of their gods. 

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - Players take on the role of several characters, including a young female American student who is forced to return to her family's mansion in Rhode Island to investigate her grandfather's murder, as they become embroiled in a struggle against a powerful entity and their servant who seek to enslave humanity.

Some games specifically available on Steam: 

Alone in the Dark, Alpha Polaris, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice, Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet, Chronicle of Innsmouth, Darkness Within, Eldritch, The Last Door, Layers of Fear, Quake 1, Reveal the Deep, Sunless Sea, Conarium, At the Mountains of Madness, Cultist Simulator 

Hopefully this will be useful for people looking to start/expand their Lovecraftian gaming. Feel free to message me with any more recommendations/corrections!  

[thegoldenage-roleplay]

Fitzwilliam ‘Will’ Oakmont ✦ 25 ✦ Human ✦ Galman ✦ FC: HENRY CAVILL

Biography:

Compared to so many, Fitzwilliam had things easy. Raised in the Lone Islands, the son of a pirate, Fitzwilliam had a loving pair of parents, who wanted to give their two sons the best lives they could afford to. His father had a trade which he refused to teach his sons, hoping they would be able to grow up in a world where they didn’t have to pillage and forage for a living.

When the winter ended, the Oakmont family moved to Galma, setting up a merchant business with the secrets his father had learned at sea for years. Fitzwilliam and his brother Christopher were enrolled into the military academy which was established in Galma, giving both boys a military discipline, which they then took to sea, inheriting two ships of their fathers which they now are the captains of. Fitzwilliam felt right at home with such a position, the busywork giving him an opportunity to thrive.

Fitzwilliam now travels the ocean, carting goods and messages to and fro, though spends most of his time in Narnia. Why, exactly, is anyones guess, for he has no family there, nor a sweetheart--if anything, he has too many sweethearts, in every port.

Personality:

Fitzwilliam is a charmer, a man with good looks and knows it, who does his best to make every person he comes across look favorably on him. Why? It’s fun, and he enjoys the company of the young ladies he’s capable of seducing. He’s a cad with a heart of gold, the reasons he became such being a secret he’s kept to himself, but as a man and a master of a ship he is a rock. A born leader. A decisive captain, his charisma has carried him through to be a man who his men look to for guidance, and trust that no matter what he will always pull them through.

Relationships:

Christopher ‘Kit’ Oakmont: Brother. They don’t always see eye to eye, Christopher being much more reserved and conservative that Fiztwilliam  is. Though Fitzwilliam thinks the world of his brother, there is something about his closed off ways that he wishes he’d explore more. He’s responsible, too responsible in Fitzwilliams eyes. He just wishes he’d live a little.

Lilia Rose: First Love. When Will first met Lilia, they were kids, thrown together by the adults in their lives. He adored her from the start, and dreamed of marrying her one day--until the day he was going to tell her such, his family declaring they were going to Galma, he wanted to take her with him. But Lilia had found something in her past, and a miscommunication changed his plans toward her. With a broken heart, he moved on, going on with his life and leaving Lilia back in the Lone Islands. He kept in touch through letters, as often as he could manage, and it is perhaps the origin of his charming facade. A broken heart often leads in interesting directions.

TAKEN by Nana

[7wuhf47io43krt]

(PDF Download) A Course Called America: Fifty States, Five Thousand Fairways, and the Search for the Great American Golf Course BY~Tom Coyne

(EPUB) Read A Course Called America: Fifty States, Five Thousand Fairways, and the Search for the Great American Golf Course by Tom Coyne

  Read/Download Visit :

https://yourweread123.blogspot.com/?jenn=1982128054

Book Details :

Author : Tom Coyne

Pages : 416 pages

Publisher : Avid Reader Press / Simon Schuster

Language :

ISBN-10 : 1982128054

ISBN-13 : 9781982128050

Book Synopsis :

Read Online and Download A Course Called America: Fifty States, Five Thousand Fairways, and the Search for the Great American Golf Course .NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Globe-trotting golfer Tom Coyne has finally come home. And he?s ready to play all of it. After playing hundreds of courses overseas in the birthplace of golf, ?Coyne, the author of A Course Called Ireland and A Course Called Scotland, returns to his own birthplace and delivers a rollicking love letter to golf in the United States.In the span of one unforgettable year, Coyne crisscrosses the country in search of its greatest golf experience, playing every course to ever host a US Open, along with more than two hundred hidden gems and heavyweights, visiting all fifty states to find a better understanding of his home country and countrymen. Coyne?s journey begins where the US Open and US Amateur got their start, historic Newport Country Club in Rhode Island. As he travels from the oldest and most elite of links to the newest and most democratic, Coyne finagles his way onto coveted first tees (Shinnecock, Oakmont, Chicago GC) between rounds at off-the-map .

Tom Coyne book A Course Called America: Fifty States, Five Thousand Fairways, and the Search for the Great American Golf Course.

[biofunmy]

‘The Sinking City’ sets a mood but struggles to go anywhere from there

The Sinking City (Bigben Interactive)

The Sinking City

Developed by: Frogwares

Published by: Bigben Interactive

Available on: PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

“The Sinking City” is quick to set a mood but struggles to deepen it. Its supernatural elements aren’t unnerving, its noirish elements rest on characters who are simply shady as opposed to morally complex and its technical shortcomings don’t do it any favors. On the Xbox One X, I noticed screen-tearing, texture pop-in, and clunky NPC movements. Yet this open world game isn’t without its merits. Its designers clearly wish to appeal to the intelligence of the player, but despite some interesting mechanics and design choices “The Sinking City” fails to be compelling over the long haul.

Set in the 1920s in the fictional Massachusetts city of Oakmont, the game follows Charles Reed, a veteran of the Great War who survived a shipwreck. Since his discharge from the Navy Reed has become a private investigator. Assailed by troubling dreams of an enormous tentacled creature and a city submerged in water, Reed establishes a correspondence with Johannes Van der Berg, a man of questionable character who agrees to look into what’s ailing Reed. After receiving a letter from Van der Berg which refers to an outbreak of strange visions in the general population, Reed is advised to journey to the city of Oakmont, the epicenter of the phenomenon.

The Sinking City (Bigben Interactive)

After suffering an unnatural flood which has left sections of the city underwater, Oakmont has become generally cut off from the rest of the country. Upon docking Reed is disconcerted to find Van der Berg waiting for him by the pier. Brushing off Reed’s misgivings, Van der Berg advises him to check in with Robert Throgmorten, patriarch of one of the city’s wealthiest families, who has been looking into the causes of what’s been chalked up as mass hysteria. Coincidently, Throgmorten is in the vicinity waiting on news about the whereabouts of his son who has gone missing since he returned to port following a sea expedition.

Setting the pattern of things to come, Throgmorten agrees to some quid pro quo. He will assist Reed after the detective has discovered what’s befallen his son. This case introduces you to the basics. Investigation sites should be explored until a notice appears on the screen saying that all key evidence has been found (though if you’re like me, you’ll strive for the notice saying that all evidence has been collected, even though it might not make for the best use of time.) Although Reed can walk around and interact with things that are tagged with a hand icon, his most important insights come from his special ability to see traces of past events using his Mind’s Eye which can be activated by pressing down on the d-pad. According to the game’s backstory, Reed developed his extrasensory power after he survived a shipwreck that briefly left him seemingly deranged to his rescuers.

Using the Mind Eye ability slowly drains Reed’s sanity which appears as a blue bar on the screen. As Reed’s sanity goes down the environment begins to warp and eventually grow dark around him. Sometimes misshapen creatures will appear and attack.

The Sinking City (Bigben Interactive)

The monster encounters are one of “The Sinking City’s” weakest aspects. I found the action sequences stiff and the monsters uninspiring. The combat never got my pulse racing. Because ammunition isn’t plentiful, I clobbered most enemies with melee attacks to conserve ammunition for larger threats. Doing so made me feel silly rather than emboldened.

Thankfully there are other design choices that make one feel closer to the world. To progress, in later cases Reed will have to visit the archives of a police station, a hospital, a university and a newspaper. The game’s presentation of archival research is clever. After approaching the appropriate desk you must select a text to be researched. Then you choose three parameters of research from different categories which may include city area, time period, population class — prisoner, official, etc. — and so on. I’m a sucker for such shows of good old-fashioned knowledge retrieval in a video game.

The Sinking City (Bigben Interactive)

Once you’ve gathered enough evidence from different sources you may visit your mind palace in the menus. There you can combine notecards with clues on them to draw different conclusions. Sometimes clues can be interpreted in ways which will lead Reed to pursue different courses of action. I enjoyed the game’s sleuthing mechanics but wished they had been served by a more engaging plotline than “The Sinking City’s” revisionary approach to the fancies of H.P. Lovecraft. I found the game’s yarns about headaches, madness and monsters fairly tame. But for those who may harbor reservations about Lovecraft (whose writings have inspired many video games) because of his anti-Semitic and anti-integrationist leanings, it should be said that “The Sinking City” puts the racism of 1920s America on display. Many of Oakmont’s suspicious, longtime residents practically spit the word “newcomer” at you, when you chat with them. Indeed, it’s impossible to miss Oakmont’s vocal anti-immigration lot. Eventually, Reed crosses paths with the Klan. (To my delight, I got an achievement for asking the imperial wizard to do a magic trick.) I didn’t find the game’s indictment of racism particularly stimulating but I applaud the developers for taking a stance against the more objectionable elements of their source material.

I wanted more from the “The Sinking City’s” open world, more diversions so I didn’t always feel on task, and more conversations that weren’t so nakedly transactional, so that I could believe that the NPCs had reasons for being other than dispensing quests and information. Oh well, one thing that noir teaches is that there is no end to wanting.

Christopher Byrd is a Brooklyn-based writer. His work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @Chris_Byrd.

Recent game reviews:

Nothing but old-fashioned arcade fun in ‘My Friend Pedro’

It might take a while to warm up to, but once you do ‘Outer Wilds’ is quite an adventure

‘Draugen’ is a picturesque game about delusional thinking

Like many VR games right now, ‘Blood & Truth’ coasts on its novelty

Sahred From Source link Entertainment

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2FHqaU2 via IFTTT

[posterioriax]

Download Book PDF A Course Called America: Fifty States, Five Thousand Fairways, and the Search for the Great American Golf Course - Tom Coyne

    Read/Download Visit : https://tt.ebookbiz.info/?book=1982128054

Book Synopsis :

Globe-trotting golfer Tom Coyne has finally come home. And he?s ready to play all of it. After playing hundreds of courses overseas in the birthplace of golf, ?Coyne, the New York Times bestselling author of A Course Called Ireland and A Course Called Scotland, returns to his own birthplace and delivers a rollicking love letter to golf in the United States.In the span of one unforgettable year, Coyne crisscrosses the country in search of its greatest golf experience, playing every course to ever host a US Open, along with more than two hundred hidden gems and heavyweights, visiting all fifty states to find a better understanding of his home country and countrymen. Coyne?s journey begins where the US Open and US Amateur got their start, historic Newport Country Club in Rhode Island. As he travels from the oldest and most elite of links to the newest and most democratic, Coyne finagles his way onto coveted first tees (Shinnecock, Oakmont, Chicago GC) between rounds at off-the-map

[mastcomm]

Some Assisted-Living Residents Don’t Get Promised Care, Suit Charges

The letter went out to about 1,900 Californians a few weeks ago from law firms bringing a class-action suit against one of the country’s largest assisted-living chains.

If the recipients, or their family members, had lived in a community operated by Sunrise Senior Living in recent years, “we would like to speak with you regarding your residency and experience,” the letter said.

It was the latest action in an ongoing campaign: Since 2013, a group of law firms has systematically sued several major chains operating in the state, employing an unusual strategy.

“It all boils down to the use of assessments, or lack thereof,” said Kathryn Stebner, the trial counsel in the case. “These are à la carte facilities — the more needs you have, the more you have to pay. So, they assess you.”

The plaintiffs’ complaint, filed in 2017 and now before the U.S. District Court for Central California, argues that when staff members conduct such periodic assessments — to determine whether a resident needs help bathing or dressing, for example, or suffers from dementia — the facilities don’t use the results to determine an adequate number of staff members.

Instead, the plaintiffs argue, administrators make staffing decisions financially, based on budgets and return on investment. When assessments show increasing needs, the suit alleges, fees rise but staffing ratios may not change.

“People pay more, but they’re not getting more care,” Ms. Stebner said.

The suit claims that Sunrise is misrepresenting its practices and deceiving customers, in violation of state business statutes, and lacks enough trained staff members to deliver the care specified in resident contracts and marketing materials.

“The business model is fraudulent, and it’s putting people at risk,” Ms. Stebner said.

Sunrise’s practices are unlawful in another way, as well, the suit charges. “If you take an elder’s property, knowing it could harm them, that’s financial elder abuse,” Ms. Stebner said. “In this case, they’re taking their money.”

In an emailed statement, Sunrise denounced “baseless lawsuits like these, in which the plaintiffs’ lawyers file copycat allegations,” a reference to the firms having brought four previous suits using essentially the same tactics. Sunrise called the claims “categorically false.”

The lawyers’ scorecard to date: two settlements reached in 2016, totaling $13 million from Emeritus Corporation (since merged with Brookdale Senior Living) and $6.4 million from Atria Senior Living.

Suits against two other chains, Aegis Living and Oakmont Senior Living, will proceed when and if courts certify them as class actions. The Sunrise case, with a “purported class” of 13,000 current and former residents in California, also awaits certification. (A smaller group received the letters asking for information.)

But in the meantime, the plaintiffs have compelled the chain, with 268 facilities across the country and 52 in California, to turn over a trove of documents showing how it determines staffing levels.

Sunrise argued that those were “protected trade secrets.” The judge disagreed. Given that this is an industry whose practices often remain opaque, that might constitute a victory in itself for the plaintiffs.

“It gets at internal systemic issues,” said Eric Carlson, a directing attorney at Justice in Aging, a legal advocacy group not involved in the lawsuits. When facilities disclose information like how much time staff members spend on tasks, “it gets at what’s happening behind closed doors.”

Are assisted-living facilities understaffed? It’s a common complaint from residents and families, but one difficult to document.

“We don’t have a very clear picture of what staff looks like in assisted living,” said Kali Thomas, a health services researcher at the Brown University School of Public Health.

“We don’t know what an individual assisted living’s staff ratios are. Many states don’t even require them to track or report them.”

Offering a less institutional environment for seniors who require help with the so-called activities of daily living — but don’t need round-the-clock care in a nursing home — the assisted-living industry can house close to a million people in almost 30,000 facilities nationwide.

It includes both small four-bed care homes and complexes with more than 100 residents, but chains dominate the field. And the industry has staved off the kind of regulations that make it much easier to see what’s going on — for better or worse — in nursing homes.

Though Medicaid pays for a small but growing proportion of residents, assisted living remains primarily a private-pay option. (The average cost last year, in one annual survey: $4,051 a month nationally, and $4,500 in California.)

The lack of federal dollars helps explain why assisted living is subject not to federal oversight, like nursing homes, but to state regulations, which vary wildly.

Colorado, for instance, requires that an assisted-living facility employ one aide per 10 residents during the day, and one to 16 at night. In Missouri, it’s one to 15, and one to 25. Only 19 states specify minimum staffing ratios at all.

Families can find it difficult to make informed decisions about assisted living; there’s no equivalent of the federal inspection findings and quality rankings at Nursing Home Compare. State websites are inadequate substitutes, a recent study found.

Yet the people moving into these complexes need more help than they did years ago.

“They’re older,” Ms. Thomas pointed out. “They’re entering with more chronic diseases.” More than 40 percent have moderate or severe dementia, a study in the journal Health Affairs reported.

The California lawsuits don’t seek individual damages, and because the classes involved contain thousands of individuals, their checks from settlements so far have been paltry — a few hundred dollars each.

But the suits also seek “injunctive relief,” a court-ordered requirement that the defendants change their practices.

“They’d be told to be transparent,” Ms. Stebner said. “We want them to use the assessments properly and to tell people what they’re doing. And to have sufficient staff.”

Veteran researchers sounded more skeptical about the lawsuits’ impact. Understaffing represents “a complaint about long-term care in general,” said Dr. Philip Sloane, a geriatrician at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “Of course it’s true. The question is, what is realistic?”

“These places do set very high expectations,” said Sheryl Zimmerman, a health services researcher at the University of North Carolina School of Social Work. “Everyone’s website sounds like Utopia.”

But she added, “These group settings cannot individualize everything for every person.” Being forced to add staff members could make assisted living even more expensive, unreachable for many older adults, she said.

Dr. Sloane said facilities might respond to the suits by adding disclaimers to their marketing: “They’ll probably address the promises, rather than the care.”

After Florida increased staffing requirements for nursing home aides in 2001, Ms. Thomas recalled, she led a study showing that the homes complied, then cut hours for their housekeeping and activities staffs.

Assisted-living providers targeted by lawsuits might respond similarly, she noted.

Mr. Carlson saw it differently. It’s tough to compel substantial changes in long-term care facilities, he acknowledged. But, he said, “You get pressure from residents, from surveyors, from plaintiffs’ counsel, and it all pushes providers to be more accountable to residents.”

If the court certifies Sunrise residents as a class, a resolution of the case probably lies two years away, Ms. Stebner estimated. And if the plaintiffs win further settlements, lawyers in other states may start taking notes.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/some-assisted-living-residents-dont-get-promised-care-suit-charges/

[thomasroach]

The Sinking City Side Cases Guide

During your stay in The Sinking City, you will run into side cases you can solve for extra resources. Some of these are easy tasks and others will require you to use your head. Check out this The Sinking City side cases guide to complete them all.

The Sinking City Side Cases Guide

Letters From Oakmont

This case cannot be missed and you get it when you speak to the owner of the Devils’s Reef Hotel. All of these are through white doors of the buildings on the map.

Lullaby Crossroad – This one can be found here on the map. On the top floor there is a note on a desk, grab that to clear this spot.

Lone Child – You can find this part here on the map, you need to use a boat to get there. Go upstairs and use your Retrovision on the brick door to reveal a symbol. Go through the door and then check the letter on the floor. I didn’t have any items in there, so this one is free.

Disgusting Exaltation – This one is found here in Oldgrove, and there is a large enemy in the house here. I used three traps and two grenades to kill the beast. Upstairs, on a desk, there is a note and that is what you are looking for.

Static In Ears – You can find this one here on the map, and all you need is the note on the desk. There are some big bad guys in there, I ran in and ran out before they got to me.

From Behind – You can find this one in the house here on the map. Go up the first set of stairs and inside the room there, on a desk, you will find a note. Grab the note and get out.

Terrible Fetus – Found here on the map, go up to the third floor and check the note on the dead body to complete this building.

Mirrors Mirrors – Found here on the map. Go into the building and run into the room on the first floor. Bust through the boards in the doorway and grab the note in the bedroom. Bail out after that.

Call Of The Ocean – This one is here on the map. You need to go to the second floor and use your Retro vision on the green seashell on the desk to reveal a note. Grab that and get out.

Forlorn Woman – This one is found here on the map. Enter, go upstairs, and grab the note on the table to complete this building.

Bounty Of The Sea

This quest can be gotten after you wake up at the Devil’s Reef Hotel and can be found here in Grimhaven Bay.

You are tasked with finding The Pride and its logbook. The ship itself can be found here on the map, you will need a boat to get there.

You can find the log on the table on the ship, be sure to check the barrels and speak to the captain for extra evidence exp. Return to the quest giver for a reward and for two more ship locations. These ones are more difficult, I advise having some traps and ammo for this part. The Red Queen is located here in Coverside.

When you approach the boat, I would say about seven enemies spawn. They are mostly small, but they are quick and hard to hit. If you can group them up and grande them it makes it much easier. The only evidence here is the log and it is on the crate with the lamp outside the ship.

The Skylark is a fight with some humans and a few of them have guns. I used the trucks and other debris to block enemy shots and killed them from range. The log is found in the back near the dock on a table. Return to the fisherman and you will beat the quest and unlock the Fisherman outfit.

Field Research

This one can be gotten from the doctor at the Hospital Of St. Mary in Coverside. He asks you for help experimenting with the creatures in the area.

The infected man is located here on Moorland road, you will need a boat to get here.

There are three enemies inside so be ready for them. They go invisible during combat, try to kill them as they spawn if possible. You need to get the red goo upstairs, the note on the desk up stairs, the rooting food upstairs, check the toy in the living room and get the journal by the small bed near the kitchen. Then use your Retro vision near the best and look at the pillow to get a vision. Finally head upstairs and you will trigger the clue puzzle. Number one is them downstairs puking, number two is the man upstairs going to work, and number three is them changing into monsters.

The second place is in Salvation Harbor here on the map.

For me the building was a clothes shop. There are about six enemies inside this area but, they are the small ones. After you clear the enemies out go behind the counter and check the bloody mattress and the book on the pillow. Be sure to check the cocaine on the counter as well and then go towards the stairs. There is a small table near the steps with a book on it, check the book. Finally, go downstairs and check the hanging body and the note next to the body, this should get you all the evidence in the house.

Return to the doctor and he will give you a couple more spots to check. The Locked Shop is found here on the map.

This place has one of the very large creatures inside, so be ready with explosives. Clear them out and grab check the shop to get all your clues.

A Delicate Matter

After finding out what happened to the expedition, Throgmorten will give you this quest. He wants you to check on one of his friends in Oldgrove.

Go to where I am on the map and you should see a house with a white door that you can enter. When you enter Herbert’s manor it will pop up on your screen as you go through the house. Inside there will be a couple of enemies and some spots to loot. Upstairs you need to check out the desk with your special vision, check the mirror with bullet holes in it, check the safe and then check the corpse. Then go into the retrocognition portal and check out all the spots. Put them together with the hallway mirror one first, the safe room second and the dead body room third.

Head to the police station and use the evidence archive there to find Squints. Use the tag property crimes, Oldgrove, and suspects to get your man. He is located here on the map.

Inside you will have to fight about five enemies, so be sure to have ammo. Upstairs there is a bottle on the table you can inspect with your Retro vision. Inspect the body and the knife in the corpse with your Retro vision as well, and then follow the birds to the wall with Retro vision on. You can choose to turn Squints in or let him go, I chose to turn him in. There is also some more evidence downstairs on the kitchen table. Check the note, the meat on the plate, and then use your Retro vision to follow a spirit. You can bust the wood where the spirit is crouching with your melee and then you can loot whats under the cabinet. Return to Throgmorten after and you will be rewarded with loot, xp, and another quest.

Through The Looking Glass

This quest is a follow up to A Delicate Matter. You are given a key to Throgmorten’s study upstairs and tasked with looking for clues related to the mirror. In the actual study room, use your Retro vision near the desk and put the symbol together. This reveals a safe with a letter and a photo inside. There is also a photo on some boxes in the study of the 1891 expedition, check that out. Speak to Robert downstairs about Bethany and the 1891 expedition to get all the clues here.

Now head to the Asylum in east Coverside(hospital symbol) and talk to the lady upfront about Bethany. When you get the key, head down stairs and check out the mirror and bottle on the floor. The closed door here is also her room, enter and check the broken mirror in there, both the newspaper and the photo on the shelf, the note on the bed, and the newspaper in the chair. Now turn on your Retro vision and look at the house drawing on the wall. Head outside the room and you need to put the clues together. First is her looking at the mirror, second is her breaking the mirror with a hammer, and lastly the one outside her room. Before leaving the Asylum, speak with the nurse at the desk again for the last bit of evidence.

In order to find Randall Glassworks, you need to go to the City Hall Archive and select Enterprises, 19th century, and Salvation Harbor for an address.

Inside you will have a few enemies to fight. Kill the baddies downstairs and then interact with the door upstairs to find some humans hiding out. They give you a key for downstairs, head down there and open up the door. Use your Retro vision on the broken mirror, check the supplies in the room, grab the search warrant near the supplies, and lastly use your Retro vision on the wall next to the mirror to find a symbol and a book for all the evidence. Now head to the police station archives and use the tags Salvation Harbor, Suspects, and Documents. This will get you the mirror makers address.

There is a pretty big fight at the mirror maker’s house, traps work wonders against the little ones. Downstairs you need to use your Retro vision on the mirror quickly, stay to long and the madness will get you. Check out the coffin and the picture down there as well. Now go to the first floor and check out the letters on the tables. Now use your Retro vision again and look at the wall near there to reveal a symbol. Go in and check out the even smaller coffin to clear this floor. Upstairs you need to check out the papers on the floor and find a journal to get the clue mini game. First use the upstairs clue, then the basement clue, and lastly the first floor clue.

From there you have to break the small mirror with a brick or bullet to break the barrier for the mirror downstairs. When you get downstairs to the big mirror, Bethany will try to stop you. If you take the mirror, you will have to kill Bethany. She wants to break the mirror to free the soul inside, not sure what happens if you do that but I doubt it ends well. Return the mirror to Throgmorten and you will get five revolver bullets, a first aid kit, one antipsychotic and around 400 exp.

Extra Hours

This quest is found in Salvation Harbor, here on the map. Speak with the officer inside the bar.

jQuery(document).ready(function() { jQuery('div.sc_accordion').accordion({ header: "h5", collapsible: true, heightStyle: "content", active: 0 }); });

The post The Sinking City Side Cases Guide appeared first on GamersHeroes.

The Sinking City Side Cases Guide published first on https://juanaframi.tumblr.com/

[djgblogger-blog]

The law that made Facebook what it is today

http://bit.ly/2qqqDkP

Cutouts depicting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wearing 'Fix Fakebook' displayed on Capitol Hill on April 10, 2018. AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

Facebook is facing a reckoning in the court of public opinion for how the social media giant and its partners handle customer data.

In the court of law, holding Facebook responsible for its actions has been quite a bit harder.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hauled in front of Congress to apologize for a data scraping scandal – a scandal that quickly followed an outcry that the site had been exploited by Russia during the 2020 election.

It’s rare to see a social media company pay consequences for its actions – or inactions – because of a broad immunity shield that some in Congress are rethinking.

The story starts 22 years ago. That’s when a defamation suit was brought by the now-shuttered investment firm Stratton Oakmont against the operator of an online discussion board. The name Stratton Oakmont may sound familiar. That’s because the brokerage was made infamous by Martin Scorsese’s “The Wolf of Wall Street.” The suit prompted Congress to protect the hosts of discussion boards – and, as it now turns out, social networking sites as well.

For the past four years, I’ve taught a college course that considers the importance of that law, the Communications Decency Act, in making today’s social media industry economically feasible. Arguably, that law created a climate in which the Facebooks of the world came to believe that anything bad happening to their users was someone else’s fault.

Let’s take a quick spin through the history.

‘Family-friendly’ internet

Prodigy screenshot circa 1988. Benj Edwards, CC BY-ND

In 1984, Prodigy Communications Corp. launched as a pioneering entrant into the first rudimentary wave of internet service providers. To compete with much-larger CompuServe, Prodigy promoted its services as “family oriented,” promising to moderate pornographic material.

In October 1994, a commenter on a Prodigy discussion board posted a string of accusations about fraudulent stock offerings promoted by Stratton Oakmont. The commenter called the company “a cult of brokers who either lie for a living or get fired.” To anyone who has seen Scorsese’s film, this seems prescient and understated. Regulators shut down Stratton in 1996, and its founder went to prison for securities fraud.

Nontheless, Stratton sued Prodigy for libel. In a 1995 ruling that shook the nascent industry, a New York judge ruled that ISPs could be held liable as “publishers” of their customers’ content. The judge wrote that Prodigy “held itself out as an online service that exercised editorial control over the content of messages posted on its computer bulletin boards, thereby expressly differentiating itself from its competition and expressly likening itself to a newspaper.” And like a newspaper, Prodigy could be sued over injurious material in reader submissions just as if the submissions were the company’s own words.

The ruling sent a worrisome message to the industry: Stop taking down harmful or offensive material, or you’ll be liable as the “publisher” of whatever remains.

Congress was alarmed.

Congress raises the deflector shields

Nebraska Sen. J. James Exon, an outspoken opponent of “cyberporn,” leveraged outcry over the Stratton case to help pass what became the Communications Decency Act. The CDA made it illegal to knowingly use internet services to transmit obscene material to minors. But Section 230 of the statute made two crucial concessions that – unforeseeably to Congress in 1996, seven years before the debut of MySpace – paved the way for the explosive growth of the social web.

First, the act holds only the actual creators of harmful content liable for its consequences.

Second, the act prevents liability for good-faith attempts to moderate “objectionable” material. This means immunity is not forfeited by removing offensive reader submissions. Today, this enables The New York Times to screen comments on its website without accepting liability for them.

In other words, Congress elected to treat the Prodigies of the world – eventually including Facebook – as no more responsible for the acts of their users than the telephone company. Just as AT&T is not liable for obscene phone calls placed by customers, neither an ISP nor any website with reader interactivity is the “publisher” of its users’ submissions.

Traditional publishers are liable for the consequences of the speech they print, even if that speech comes from outsiders who were neither paid nor solicited to submit. If The New Yorker carries a letter to the editor falsely calling someone a criminal, the magazine can be held liable alongside the letter writer. The theory is that the editors chose the letter and had the opportunity to fact-check it.

In this way, Section 230 represents a breathtaking recalibration of liability law. In effect, the online publishing industry has convinced Congress that its capacity to distribute harmful material is so vast that it cannot be held responsible for the consequences of its own business model.

To be clear, social media sites can still be liable for how their own employees mishandle user data, or for breaching promises made to customers in their terms of service, neither of which requires treating the sites as “publishers.”

The CDA is widely credited for the flourishing of YouTube, Yelp and other sites that rely on user submissions. It is also faulted for some of the social web’s worst excesses. Law professor Danielle Citron, author of the influential 2014 book “Hate Crimes in Cyberspace,” highlights how CDA immunity makes “revenge porn” possible by enabling websites to refuse demands to unpublish even the most intrusive content.

Those injured by reader-submitted content may still pursue legal action directly against the authors – if they can be found. A robust body of case law governs when a website host can be forced to “unmask” the credentials of its users. But – as with the Macedonians purveying “fake news” on Facebook – those authors may be beyond the reach of American courts, or lack the capacity to pay meaningful damages. That may leave those wronged with nothing but an earnest apology from a billionaire tech entrepreneur.

Frank LoMonte does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

[omcik-blog]

New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/5-financial-professional-ideas-for-improving-the-dol-fiduciary-rule/

5 Financial Professional Ideas for Improving the DOL Fiduciary Rule

(Image: Thinkstock)

The Trump administration seems to be doing all that it legally can to put the U.S. Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule on the back burner.

The DOL is doing what it can to postpone enforcement of the rule itself, and of the “prohibited transaction exemptions,” or batches of formal guidance, that could apply to annuities and other insurance-based products used in retirement planning arrangements.

But time passes, elections come, and DOL officials change. Officials at the DOL, or the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, eventually could return with another version of the rule.

(Related: New Group Lobbies DOL on Fixed Indexed Annuities’ Treatment Under Fiduciary Rule)

Some life insurance agents appear to be resigned to the idea that the rule could return, and interested in giving federal regulators advice about how to make DOL Fiduciary Rule II more compatible with their efforts to insure clients against outliving their retirement assets.

Here’s a look at five ideas life agents and other financial professionals gave the DOL in comments on the department’s recent proposal to delay enforcement of the rule exemptions that apply to annuity distribution arrangements. These are drawn from a collection of comment letters the DOL posted here.

1. Be practical about how long it takes to implement any new requirements.

Andrew Payne, the general counsel of Leawood, Kansas-based Creative One Marketing Corp., points out that the DOL had made final regulations for banks, broker-dealers and registered investment advisors available in April 2016, but, as of mid-September, still had not released final rules for the kinds of independent market organizations that distribute indexed annuities.

“It will be impossible for IMOs to reach a full level of compliance by January 1, 2018, considering these circumstances,” Payne writes.

He notes that Creative One handles about 10,000 annuity applications per year.

To meet a full-blown fiduciary rule standard, the company would probably have to hire two to six people, and, possibly, more, to conduct fiduciary rule reviews.

Hiring those people could take at least 90 to 120 days, and the cost of each hire might be equal to about 25% to 30% of each new hire’s annual salary, Payne estimates.

An IMO like Creative One could probably comply with a rule like the DOL fiduciary rule in 21 months, but not in just two months, Payne writes.

2. Keep it simple, and low-tech.

Lance Hunt, an agent with Fort Collins, Colorado-based Financial Integrity Design L.L.C., pleads with regulators to keep any new rules easy to administer.

(Image: Thinkstock)

Any new rules should be “easy to understand and implement without having to buy expensive software in order to try and stay in compliance,” Hunt writes.

3. Consider building on existing U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission capabilities.

Greg Georges, an advisor at Oakmont, Pennsylvania-based Greenline Advisors, notes that he reads about advisors who try to take advantage of their clients every week, in the news.

“These advisors are prosecuted and put on display for all to see,” Georges writes. “So why do we need the DOL to get involved when the Securities and Exchange Commission takes care of this perfectly well? If change is needed, allow the SEC to take steps to improve on how to better police and prosecute the bad eggs.”

4. Be tougher on more complicated products.

Hunt, the Fort Collins agent, suggests that regulators could consider exempting true fixed income annuities, or indexed annuities, that come without any special, complicated riders from any new advice rules.

“Only the annuities that carry the riders that make the contract almost impossible for a consumer (and many agents) to understand should be exposed to the new proposed rules,” Hunt writes. “It should not make difference in the rules if these are sold as an asset under management (fee-based) or a commission basis.”

5. Avoid favoring one type of product over another.

Robert Moore, chief executive officer of San Diego-based Cetera Financial Group Inc., takes a different position from Hunt on the issue of product neutrality.

He argues that any new rules “should be principles-based and not specific to any product or asset class.”

“If a recommending a given product is easier under a regulatory regime, financial advisers may have both a conscious and subconscious bias in favor of it over another investment that requires additional effort or creates additional exposure,” Moore writes.

Relatively broad, principles-based rules can help keep regulations from locking financial services companies into offering certain types of products or business models, Moore writes.

Otherwise, he writes, “the ultimate effect will be to pick winners and losers among providers of financial services instead of letting the marketplace perform this critical function.” 

— Read State Fiduciary Rules Create a Regulatory ‘Mess’ on ThinkAdvisor.

Connect with us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ThinkAdvisorLifeHealth.

Tweet with us at https://twitter.com/Think_Allison.

[mashkara45]