#Load Bank Market

[crow-ooc]

while YOU were sleeping I was busy studying the FUCKING STOCK MARKET

[abbiistabbii]

I don't think people realize how absolutely wild Linux is.

Here we have an Operating system that now has 100 different varieties, all of them with their own little features and markets that are also so customizable that you can literally choose what desktop environment you want. Alongside that it is the OS of choice for Supercomputers, most Web servers, and even tiny little toy computers that hackers and gadget makers use. It is the Operating System running on most of the world's smartphones. That's right. Android is a version of Linux.

It can run on literally anything up to and including a potato, and as of now desktop Linux Distros like Ubuntu and Mint are so easily to use and user friendly that technological novices can use them. This Operating system has had App stores since the 90s.

Oh, and what's more, this operating system was fuckin' built by volunteers and users alongside businesses and universities because they needed an all purpose operating system so they built one themselves and released it for free. If you know how to, you can add to this.

Oh, and it's founder wasn't some corporate hotshot. It's an introverted Swedish-speaking Finn who, while he was a student, started making his own Operating system after playing around with someone else's OS. He was going to call it Freax but the guy he got server space from named the folder of his project "Linux" (Linus Unix) and the name stuck. He operates this project from his Home office which is painted in a colour used in asylums. Man's so fucking introverted he developed the world's biggest code repo, Git, so he didn't have to deal with drama and email.

Steam adopted it meaning a LOT of games now natively run in Linux and what cannot be run natively can be adapted to run. It's now the OS used on their consoles (Steam Deck) and to this, a lot of people have found games run better on Linux than on Windows. More computers run Steam on Linux than MacOS.

On top of that the Arctic World Archive (basically the Svalbard Seed bank, but for Data) have this OS saved in their databanks so if the world ends the survivors are going to be using it.

On top of this? It's Free! No "Freemium" bullshit, no "pay to unlock" shit, no licenses, no tracking or data harvesting. If you have an old laptop that still works and a 16GB USB drive, you can go get it and install it and have a functioning computer because it uses less fucking resources than Windows. Got a shit PC? Linux Mint XFCE or Xubuntu is lightweight af. This shit is stopping eWaste.

What's more, it doesn't even scrimp on style. KDE, XFCE, Gnome, Cinnamon, all look pretty and are functional and there's even a load of people who try make their installs look pretty AF as a hobby called "ricing" with a subreddit (/r/unixporn) dedicated to it.

Linux is fucking wild.

[zooophagous]

So why do you hate the advertising industry?

Hokay so.

Let me preface this with some personal history. It's not relevant to the sins of the advertising industry perse but it illustrates how I started to grow to hate it.

I wanted to be a veterinarian growing up, but to be a vet you basically have to be good enough to get into medical school. I do not have the math chops or discipline to make it in medical school. I went into art instead, and in a desperate attempt to find some commercial viability that didn't involve moving to California, I went into graphic design.

I've been a graphic designer for about seven or eight years now and I've worn a lot of hats. One of them was working in a print shop. Now, the print shop had a lot of corporate customers who had various ad campaigns. One of them was Gate City Bank, which had a bigass stack of postcards ordered every couple months to mail to their customers.

Now, paper comes from Dakota Paper, and they make their paper the usual way. Somewhere far, far from our treeless plain there is a forest of tall trees. These trees are cut down and put on big fossil fuel burning trucks and hauled to a paper mill that turns them into pulp while spewing the most fowl odors imaginable over the neighboring town and loads the pulp up with bleach to give it a nice white color.

Then the paper is put on yet another big truck and hauled off to the local paper depot, then put on another big truck and delivered to my print shop, where I turned the paper into postcards telling people to go even deeper into debt to buy a boat because it's almost summer. The inks used are a type of nasty heat sensitive plastic that is melted to the surface of the paper with heat. Then the postcards are put on yet ANOTHER truck and sent to the bank, which puts them on ANOTHER truck and finally into the hands of their customers, who open their mail and take one look at the post card and immediately discard it.

Heaps and heaps and literal hundreds of pounds of literal garbage created at the whim of the marketing team several times a year. And thats just one bank in one city.

I came to realize very quickly that graphic design was the delicate art of turning trees into junk mail.

And wouldn't you know it there are a TON of companies that basically only do junk mail. Many of them operate under the guise of a "charity," sending you pictures of suffering children or animals and begging for handouts and when they get those handouts the executives take a nice fat cut, give some small token amount to whatever cause they pay lip service to, and then put the rest of the cash right back into making more mailers. "Direct mail marketing" they call it.

Oh but maybe it's not so bad, you can advertise online after all. Now that there's decent ad blocker out there and better anti-virus ads usually don't destroy your computer anymore just by existing.

Except now when I search for the exact business I want on Google it's buried under three or four different "promoted search items" tricking me into clicking on them only to shoot themselves in the foot because I searched for the specific result I wanted for a reason and couldn't use those other websites even if I felt like it.

And now we have advertising on YouTube and on every streaming service, forcing more and more eyes onto the ad for the brand new Buick Envision that parks itself because you're too stupid to do it on your own.

Oh thats ok maybe I'll get Spotify premium and go ad free and listen to some podcasts- SIKE we have the hosts of your show doing the song and dance now. Are you depressed and paranoid from listening to my true crime podcast about murdered and mutilated teenagers? That's ok, my sponsor Better Help can keep you sane enough to stay alive and spend more money.

It's gotten so terrible that now you have content farms, huge hubs of shell companies that crank out video after video to get more and more precious clicks. Which if the videos were innocuous maybe that wouldn't be so awful except now you have cooking hacks that can actually burn your house down and craft hacks that can electrocute you being flung into your eyes at the speed of mach fuck so some slimy internet clickbait jockey doesn't need to get a real job.

It of course goes without saying that animals are also relentlessly exploited by clickbait companies that will put them in compromising situations on purpose to create a fake fishing hack video or even just straight up killing them for sport by feeding small animals to a pufferfish that rips them apart for the camera.

And all of this, ALL of this doesn't even touch how adveritising is the death of art in general. Queer topics, any kind of interesting art, any kind of sex or substance use topics are scrubbed clean and hidden at the behest of advertisers.

Sex education, a nude statue, topics such as racism or sexism or bigotry in general have tags purged or hidden from search, even life saving information about SDTs or drug use, because if someone saw that and complained then Verizon might sell fewer tablets and we can't fucking have that.

Conservative talking heads often bitch and moan that they're being censored on social media. The stupid part is, they're right! They are being censored! But it's not by a woke mob, it's by ATT and Coca Cola not wanting their adspace sharing screen time with their stupid fucking opinions.

However, they won't ever figure that out, because the talking heads they get their marching orders from like Tucker and Jones ALSO rely on the sweet milk flowing from the sponsorship teat and they aren't about to turn on their meal ticket so they have to come up with even stupider shit to say for the train to continue rolling.

I managed to rant this far without even getting into the ads I see for the beauty industry. The other day a botox ad described wrinkles as "moderate to severe crows feet" as if wrinkles are a symptom of a fucking serious disease! Like having a flaw in your skin is a medical problem that you need thousands of dollars of literal botulism toxin to fix! I was incandescent with anger.

Advertising is a polluting, censoring, anti educational and anti art industry at it's very core. It destroys human connections, suppresses human thought and makes us hate our own bodies. It ads no value, actively detracts from value, and serves no real purpose and I believe it should be almost if not entirely banned.

[iwanted7]

Silkroad Server Retro

Watch Now silkroad online retro FW guild HaVoc

[coochiequeens]

Another sex offender TIM released into the public.........and given a laptop

Daughter's fury as paedophile father who abused and shared images of her with other sick perverts online before changing gender in prison is quietly released (...and given a laptop by an offender's charity)

By ROSS SLATER

PUBLISHED: 10:47 EDT, 16 July 2023 | UPDATED: 10:49 EDT, 16 July 2023

A paedophile who changed gender while in prison for sexually abusing her own daughter as a child and sending explicit photos of her to perverts online has been quietly released back into the community - and given a laptop by a do-gooding charity.

Claire Fox, 61, who was previously known as Clive Bundy, a father of six, served just seven years of a 15-year jail sentence, before being settled into a tiny market town on the Welsh borders.

Fox, who wears a black wig and floral dresses told neighbours, who knew nothing of her sordid past, that she was an electrician from Bangor as they helped her get settled into her new surroundings and helped her furnish her flat.

Fox's release from prison has appalled her daughter Ceri-Lee Galvin, who bravely waived her right to anonymity, having been abused by her father for nine years from the age of eight.

Revealing her astonishment, Ceri-Lee, 24, told MailOnline: 'My father is not a woman and I refuse to recognise him as such. He changed his gender in prison to make his life there easier.

But now he is out and already up to his usual tricks – conning everyone he meets. 

'The fact he is now dressed as a woman makes him more dangerous as young girls are his thing and he has never shown any remorse.

'My father is a highly manipulative man who has attended no sexual offender rehabilitation programmes, shown no remorse for what he has done and openly admits finding children attractive.

'There have been no meetings I'm aware of to tell local schools about his presence, he has no tag and no curfew. He has just been put into this community and given all he could wish for – food, furniture, a home and a laptop.'

Ceri-Lee, now a student paramedic, added: 'I am in no way transphobic and I feel incredibly sorry for people who genuinely need to transition. They face stigma and worse because of cases like this.

'But it should just not be an option for those convicted of sexual offences against children to suddenly say that they want to be a woman.

'This only arose at the end of 2021 when he was due to be moved to an open prison but then had a fight with a fellow prisoner that was serious enough to stop the move.

'That is when he went for the gender change – when he was almost 60, having been a macho man all his life and having had eight children and having never mentioned gender dysphoria before.

'Now he is being indulged by everyone. The prison service gave him make-up and women's clothes and now a charity for the armed forces have provided him with so much stuff when all he did was a short stint in the Territorial Army in his 20s.

He has conned them. He was never a soldier. The whole thing is outrageous.'

Fox arrived in a sheltered accommodation block for older people in a tiny town at the start of June.

She was given new furniture, a television, printer, washing machine, crockery and a laptop by the armed forces charity SSAFA because she had once been in the Territorial Army.

Fox's neighbour Lyn Robinson, 74, said: 'My first impression was that this person was very cheerful and amenable, assuring all us older people that they'd be no trouble. They seemed very confident despite the outlandish appearance.

'I thought she might find it difficult fitting in so I really took care of her. I gave her clothes and even lent her £70, which is a lot for a pensioner.

'I took her to the food bank at the Baptist Church where she was given loads of stuff including vouchers for a butcher in town and for a coffee shop.

'And we went to a concert at St Edward's Church where I introduced her to the vicar. I had no idea of her history.

Fox's decision to change gender before being released from prison, provoked a storm of protest when it was revealed in April.

She chose the same name as gender-critical campaigner and media pundit Claire Fox, now sitting in the House of Lords as Baroness Fox of Buckley.

Campaign groups fear that by changing their gender, sex offenders can effectively whitewash their past and could avoid detection under the Home Office's Disclosure and Barring Service, set up to protect children from abusers.

DBS uses official paperwork such as a passport or driving licence to carry out their checks, both of which can prove difficult to check after choosing a new name and gender.

The potential loophole is provided by the Gender Recognition Act (2004), which created a 'sensitive applications route' for trans people.

Ceri-Lee added: 'The victim liaison officer told me the only reason I was being informed about the name and gender change was because he had given permission for this to happen.

'It's allowing him to say that Clive Bundy never existed, that my abuse never existed and it is clearly a danger to children which is why I decided to speak out.' 

Fox is not the first sex offender to change gender while in prison

A rapist who carried out sexual attacks as a man named Adam Graham in 2016 and 2019 sparked a heated debate earlier this year after changing gender and name to Isla Bryson while waiting to stand trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

And in 2018, convicted rapist 'Karen White' – branded a 'highly manipulative' predator by a judge – was moved to HMP New Hall in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, and sexually assaulted two women inmates.

Fox was arrested after police discovered images of Ceri-Lee online that the abuser had been trading with other pedophiles.

She was later charged with and admitted to several counts of sexual activity with Ceri-Lee, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and distributing indecent images.

In 2016 she was sentenced to 15 years in prison. It was not until the end of 2021 that she told the authorities she wanted to change gender.

A SSAFA spokesperson, said: 'SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity provides practical, emotional and financial assistance to serving personnel, reservists, veterans and their families in their time of need. Due to data protection laws and our need to protect our beneficiaries' and employees' confidentiality, we cannot comment on individuals or their circumstances.'

A spokesperson for Dyfed-Powys Police said: 'In line with national guidelines we can neither confirm nor deny the information you have provided.

'However, we can confirm that Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements are utilised throughout the entire force area to manage appropriate offenders living in the community and they will be closely supervised by local officers to minimise any risk.'

[dianadeadwing]

Inktober Day 5- Map

TLDR - Here’s a map of the shops on Bob’s Burgers Ocean Avenue as based on the Bob’s Burgers Movie and parts of season 13. Extensive Notes to follow.

This is the map I alluded to earlier in the week of the storefronts with visible names in the movie. The dimensions of the buildings are based on the aerial shot from the end of “The Plight Before Christmas”.

There are inconsistencies between the movie and the series (as well as within the movie itself) as far as the color and location of some of these buildings. I’ve defaulted to colors used in the series but names from the movie. Several of these shops have had different names earlier in the series so I’m working from the movie onward for consistency’s sake.

1. Hotel- Unsure if this hotel has a name.

2. Reflections

3. Spoke of the Devil (Bike Shop) - Shop is named “Spoke of the Devil” the words “bike shop” can be seen as part of a neon sign in the window.

4. First Oceanside Savings Bank

5. Yours Truly, Stationary

6. Jimmy Pesto’s Pizzeria

7. The Petalphile

8. Unknown store front - This building is usually depicted as blue with a large front window indicating that it’s some sort of storefront but I’ve been unable to find a name so far.

9. From Here To Maternity (Pregnancy Clothes) - The movie depicts this building as being brown but the series almost always shows it as green so I’ve made it green on the map.

10. Fresh Off The Presses (Cleaners) - Shop is named “Fresh Off The Presses” with “cleaners” in a neon sign in the window.

11. Unknown Store Front - This shop has a visible name in several shots from the movie but I can’t make it out.

* Some shots from the movie show an additional pink building at the end and others don’t. It does not have a awning or large front window and could therefore possibly residential or a service (such as a lawyer). This building does not appear in the aerial shot so I did not include it.

12. Ocean Market

13. Needles to Say - This shop as well as the following three also appear in season thirteen and are particularly visible in “What a (April) Fool Believes”.

14. Walk All Over Me (Flooring Showcase)

15. You Were Framed (Picture Framing)

16. For Pete’s Cake

17. It’s Your Funeral (Home and Crematorium)

18. Bob’s Burgers

19. Store Next Door - The often vacant orange store front next to Bob’s.

20. Red building- This building is very visible in several shots but isn’t shown to have a name. It has three front doors at the top of some stairs. Because of its layout it seems most likely to be residential. (As we know this neighborhood has mixed zoning, such as Mr. Huggins’ apartment building)

21. Blue Building - The positions of this building and the beige building are switched in the movie. In the series it’s fairly consistently blue so that’s what I’ve included. It seems similar in structure to the red building and could also be residential, but we don’t get many good shots of this part of the street so it’s hard to tell.

22. Beige Building - This part of the street is most often seen from the alley. It appears to have a loading dock. This where Alice parks her food truck in “As I Walk Through the Alley of the Shadow of Ramps” in season 8.

23. Liquor - This building has been depicted in different colors but has a prominent sign stating “Liquor”. I’ve seen it called “Oh La Liquor” but I’d like to see this in later season materials.

This is just what I’ve gathered as of ep 14.1. Please feel free to let me know if you have any additional information. (Or an official map) I’m absurdly invested in this.

There is also an aerial shot from the movie that shows Wagstaff in relation to Ocean Avenue (it’s also mentioned to be four blocks away) and I just wish I could take screen shots so I could study it better. I’ll make a map of this whole dang town.

[vamprisms]

the housing market is ridiculous like. the place i grew up in has always been known as a 'cheap' area. the cheapest house here is now almost three times what the bank would allow me to borrow over FORTY years on a full time wage with a decent deposit. Even with a partner on the same money as me it wouldn't be enough. the cheapest one bedroom apartment is just over what we could hypothetically borrow together, so even if you do scrape together enough, forget about having kids. And rent is more expensive than a mortgage like. Over half my wages for a room in a house. Like if you don't earn loads or have a rich mummy and daddy to fall back on you can genuinely forget about owning your home. you'll have to have some leech landlord extort it from you until you die instead. and if you can only work part time or can't work at all or have dependants or bad credit you're extra fucked. it's a messed up and not sustainable way to live

[cozylittleartblog]

hey, so I'm trying to figure out what places would be good to sell my own art at, and I'm wondering- what has been your experience with selling on etsy? I've heard mixed reviews from people, and I want to know your perspective as an etsy seller.

etsy is not perfect but i think it gets a little more shit than it deserves, i've thought about opening my own website but generally i'm actually pretty okay with the services i get on etsy compared to what it costs so i'm just gonna make a subjective pros/cons list for you under the cut (because its loooong)

oh and if anyone else has experience selling on etsy and would like to add their two cents in the replies/reblogs please do!

Pros

⭐ The search function - this is etsy's biggest selling point. it already has a dedicated userbase of millions of people and a search feature to help them find your shop, which takes a lot of the load of marketing off your shoulders, and marketing is a huge factor for pushing sales. i am not good at marketing and a lot of my sales just come from people searching my stuff up lol

⭐ Purchase protection program - if USPS loses or damages your package, you file a missing package report and they confirm they don't know where it is, Etsy will refund your buyers order out of their own pocket (under $250). this is my favorite etsy feature because USPS likes to eat packages every now and again. delicious keychains. if you had your own storefront, you'd just have to replace the order yourself.

⭐ Share & Save program - every time someone makes an order on your shop through a special Share & Save link, etsy will refund you 4% of the fees. it's a nice perk to doing some of your own marketing and it helps combat the moderately high etsy fees!

Trackable letter mail - selling stickers but think it's insane to charge $4 shipping? you can buy letter mail labels for about the rate of regular postage, which is like .65c. this tracking is done through etsy though so you can't track with usps, but it does give customers a little peace of mind. this only works in the 50 US states though.

Customs forms built into your shipping label - shipping internationally is a nightmare. etsy makes it easy though, generating everything you need to ship internationally on one label that you just have to sign and date and slap on your package like normal. for some countries they will actually just have your package sent to a domestic facility where they literally do all that for you. this is miles easier than having to do all that paperwork yourself.

buy shipping labels directly from etsy - related point, and just what it says on the tin. when you fulfill an order, you can buy your labels right there on Etsy so you don't have to mess around with a third party website. it comes out of your sale funds so you don't need to charge a card or a bank account or anything.

star seller program - some people say this is completely useless but i actually disagree! it's incredibly easy to earn this badge, and it lets buyers know you've got some of the best products, shipping, and customer service around. it helps you stand out from some of the more... questionable shops on the website.

sales tax - they remit sales tax for you. i don't think any of the other online platforms similar to etsy do this but i could be wrong. doing any kind of taxes sucks so i consider it a perk if they do it for you.

website promotions - every now and again etsy likes to host sales out of their own pocket. you get all the perks of having a sale without eating into ur profit margin. HUGE sale booster

generally the site is just very easy to learn and use and it's very beginner and dumbass friendly. i say this as a former beginner and current dumbass 👍

Cons

❌ the fees. oogh the fees. they claim it's just a 6.5% fee per sale, but on top of that you have to pay .20c automatically for every individual item you sell, plus there are processing fees (3% + .25c) that apply both to the item you sold AND the cost of shipping. i think it comes out to like 10% total in fees on average @ > @

❌ but wait, there's more fees! if you make more than $10k in sales a year (very easy number to hit actually) you are forced to participate in offsite ads, which i believe takes 15% of your total sale on top of the fees in the previous point. these kinds of sales are not as common as you'd think, but it's still annoying having a couple bucks shaved off your profits a few times a month because of them.

corporate bullshit - etsy is like renting a space in a mall. you don't own your lot, nor the mall itself, so if upper management decides to make any stupid ass decisions, you just have to deal with it or pick up and move. if they decide to raise fees again, you just gotta Deal. you are a little bit helpless on this website unfortunately

the push for discounts - etsy is constantly shoving it in your face that they want you to do discounts. they want you to have free shipping on orders over $35, they want you to do 25% off or more on sales, they want you to have returning customer discounts and abandoned cart discounts and 'you recently favorited this item' discounts - but you already have to compete with the steep fees, and when a customer gets free shipping, you still owe USPS that $4-ish bucks to send the package. you don't have to do any of this, but they do reward participating shops by favoring them in the algorithm and search results, so you can feel like you're missing out.

there aren't as many cons imo but they Are steeper cons. generally etsy is very beginner friendly and easy to get into and set up, and in spite of everything i do actually recommend everyone looking to get into online retail start on etsy and perhaps move to other platforms in the future. plus, you can combat all the fees by just... making your prices a dollar or two higher than you initially wanted to, and using your 'save and share' link as frequently as possible. the fees are a little bit much, but you have to think about what you get in exchange:

the search is invaluable, you could argue the fees are partially a marketing budget lmao. if you have a private website you alone have to push traffic to your website, and not as many people know about things like shopify and bigcartel so they might not be as trusting putting their card details into it. i miss out on a lot of REALLY COOL STUFF because artists only advertise on instagram and i don't hear about them, meanwhile if i want some cool owl house stuff i can literally just search that in etsy and find a lot of TOH stuff super easily. i cannot highlight enough how GOOD the search function is, especially in this day and age where social media like instagram and twitter will blacklist your posts if you say words like 'shop' or 'sale' and now nobody can find your stuff in that website's search either. its very hard to do your own marketing now a days :(

being able to refund customer's lost orders out of the company's pocket is such a nice thing to fall back on if you have to and worth its weight in fees. USPS lost like... four or five packages of mine in december. that's like $100 or more worth of stuff that Etsy Covered Completely, and a lot of the times the customer will take that refund to make their order again. don't abuse this system, make sure you check with usps that the package is actually Gone, but it's a godsend when you don't make billions of dollars and eating the cost of lost orders would otherwise sting a bit.

if etsy did not make international shipping easy i simply would not ship anywhere but the US to be honest. shipping to europe is still a headache though but that's because europe is stupid

that's everything i can think of, but tl;dr yes please open an etsy 👍 i recommend it completely in spite of everything

⭐ if anyone wants to open their own etsy shop, use my referral link to make your first 40 listings for free! :)c ⭐

[daniel-nerd]

while everyone is talking about the bullet that scratched trump, israel is yet again committing some of its most disgusting crimes in weeks, if not months.

(the video showcasing the medical teams trying to rescue civilians and save lives, when another airstrike hit, directly where the ambulances gathered.)

we live in a world where after idf warplanes dropped hundreds of kilograms worth of tnt, on a self designated ‘humanitarian zone’ that they demanded civilians to evacuate to, many of the medical teams who rushed there to try and save as many human lives as possible, were rescued by civilians who went to them to either help or get medical treatment, because the so called israeli ‘defense’ force targeted specifically the ambulances in another bombing shortly after, specifically to prevent them from saving lives. killing over 100 civilians, injuring hundreds more. 8 confirmed us made jdam bombs dropped in total, with estimation at a minimum of half a ton(around 1 thousand pounds) worth of tnt.

and the excuse? israel claim mohammed deif(the head of hamas’ military wing) was hiding between these civilians, even through last known appearance of him was most likely around 2018, and the one before that was in the year 2000, also there are hundreds if not thousands of underground tunnels that israel know they can’t get into, and admit they have no idea where most of them are.

hamas in response STOPPED ALL HOSTAGES NEGOTIATIONS, khalil al-hayya, (deputy chief of hamas’s political bureau) stated “we affirm that the claims of the occupation and netanyahu are false. we say to netanyahu that mohammed deif is listening to you now and mocking your false and empty statements. the claim of targeting leaders here and there is a ridiculous justification for killing women and children, and every palestinian, whether in gaza, the west bank, or anywhere else. this is an attempt by the criminal army to market its crimes against our people” he also described the attack as an attempt by the idf “to restore its dignity” after its defeat in the face of “resistance”

netanyahu admits israel have no idea if deif is alive or not and promised to go after all hamas leaders, which the idf later retracted the statement, after hamas alleged deif to be alive and well.

cheif of lebanon’s hezbollah declared this massacre will not go unpunished “the zionist enemy commits a massacre in al-mawaski, khan younis, justifying it by claiming they aimed to target hamas leaders … we will emerge victorious from the battle of the al-aqsa flood, heads held high…”

meanwhile hamas is successfully targeting and assassinating israeli combatants all over gaza.

this confirms that netanyahu’s claims about “cracks and weaknesses within hamas forces” was nothing but empty lies

the vast majority of israelis stopped believing in the ridiculous claims and blatant lies of the israeli government and the idf, with protests against the war, for hostage deal of everyone for everyone, and for the overthrow of netanyahu’s regime, such numbers of protests and protestors haven’t been seen since the last elections, which marked the very controversial 5th election in 4 years in israel.

lastly, the us started its sanctions against more terrorist settlers, known terrorist who organized the attacks against humanitarian trucks trying to bring food to gaza, the same attacks that standing together’s humanitarian guards stopped by physically protecting the trucks throughout their entire trip, saving as much vandalized food, and loading the saved food onto the next humanitarian trucks.

on an unrelated note: i’ve tried a new formatting, i hope y’all like it. i’m (hopefully) back at reporting about the stuff you might won’t hear in the mainstream news, showcasing the war from the point of view of israeli citizens.

[solarpunkwitchcraft]

"When the British Empire occupied Palestine and set about implementing the Balfour declaration, the fossil fuel of the day was not coal. It was oil. Promising deposits had been located in the countries bordering the Persian Gulf, and the central industrial project of the Mandate came to be the pipeline that brought crude oil all the way from Iraq, across the northern West Bank and the Galilee, to the refinery of Haifa. The Mandate as such cannot be understood outside the deepening control over the region in the pursuit of oil; and the Mandate used oil to reallocate land from Palestinians to Jews. In his forthcoming Heat: A History, a wonderfully rich history of high temperatures and fossil fuels in the Middle East, On Barak shows, among many other things, how the Yishuv wrested citrus production from Palestinians by linking up with the most modern circuits of technology: irrigating their orchards with fossil-fuelled pumps, loading their fruits on lorries, sending them over roads to ports, offloading them onto steamers to the European market – a symbiosis with the fossil empire by which the natives could be squeezed out of their iconic citriculture. The Mandate authorities systematically privileged the building of roads between colonies. Oil-based infrastructure tilted Palestine in the direction of the settlements on the coastal plains and further towards their patrons on the other side of the ocean."

[terresdebrume]

Nobody sent asks about the persocons AU but fuck it, I'm having visions at 11pm and doing anything more than typing away on the phone would be really unreasonable so here we go for a very short pile of Vibes

Ps: I'm using persocons in reference to the manga Chobits, as a shorthand way of saying that the boys in this are robots with a very solid mimicry of sentience going on + are a normal part of society but ALSO as a way to indicate to those in the know that we are fucking with the laws of robotics a little bit

"Thank you," says Vera as Edwin hands her the crate and the spitting mad cat it contains. "You're very kind."

Charles isn't so far gone yet that he doesn't catch the infinitesimal twitch of Edwin's lips. They're pretty nice lips, plopped in the middle of a classically nice face, paired with a neat haircut and what is probably a classically nice body under all the tweed. The PAYNE line was kind of designed for that, after all. Well, Charles doubts any designer ever planned for the tweed, but the broadly appealing features and physique were definitely discussed for at least ten years down in the bowels of Hilarion Inc. headquarters. All in all: not surprising Charles would look. He's only—well.

Out of the shadows where Charles lurks, Vera steps back towards the next service shaft and the upper levels of London. Edwin watches her go with near perfect immobility, but even Charles' factory-work-oriented eyes don't miss the relaxing in his jaw, the miniscule sag of his shoulders. Edwin, Charles is willing to bet, is satisfied with a job well done... Which means there is no reason for him not to smile when Edwin joins him at the back of the alley.

"She's right you know. You're proper kind."

He falls into step with his newly found work partner, smirking when Edwin throws him a sideway glance and looks back ahead.

"Do not be ridiculous. Kindness is a human trait, and I am not human."

"Plenty of us Robots grow emotions, you know."

Mainstream research currently holds that persocons happen over time. Owner misses a software adjustment here, shakes a bot's servers a little too hard there, and eventually that all messes with the auto-learning routines in ways unpredicted and unpredictable and boom: your fuck off tall toaster now has opinions. Charles, who gave himself a name before he was even out of the factory, would beg to differ if he didn't suspect that would get him shipped straight to the richest R&D department for a nice long play session with his programming. Not exactly an appealing prospect.

"So experience seems to indicate," Edwin says, sounding exceedingly prim. "I however, haven't. It would be illogical for you to pretend I did."

"Sure mate. No worries."

Edwin gives a little nod that Charles decides to go ahead and label as satisfied. He'll keep mum about the whole emotions thing, of course. No point in going against Edwin on it. It's just that he also knows it's a load of tosh, really, and he doesn't know it because of the way Edwin's lips twitch sometimes in response to what other people are saying. It's not because he took one look at Charles' crumbling state—the shot up voice modulator, the stringy red hair falling off his head, the long stripe of skin missing from his jaw to his collarbone—and took Charles under his wings. It's not even because Edwin gave himself a name.

It's because, well. Charles was built as a factory model. He has the specs for thousands of android parts running through his data banks at any given time and access to millions more with the internet. Edwin's eye covers—the pale green of his irises, specifically—haven't been on the market for the past sed venty three years, four months, one week and two days. A normal android his age would have been replaced a long time ago. Crucially: it wouldn't have given a shit.

That's kind of the thing with androids that work like they're supposed to: they mimick emotions real well—as much as the humans want them to, that is—but when the moment comes to have them recycled they treat it like any other day. 'Oh, you want to erase me from existence forever? Okay.' And then they go. But then once in a while, someone like Charles comes along: a defect, a bug in the machine. An everlasting problem to robotics engineer everywhere, whose position on the whole being recycled is a resounding:

"Fuck that."

That's how Charles knows Edwin isn't actually emotionless. Because no matter how many personality protocols he's actually got running—or shut down, really, he sounds like enough of a beautiful freak to actively have played with his own brains—when the time came to be recycled, it is abundantly clear that Edwin's answer in spite of any Robotics Law overrides was also no thank you.

And if Charles is lucky, one of these days, Edwin might even admit it.

[lordadmiralfarsight]

Economy lesson : Money Velocity

Greetings my dear little Tumblrans, it is I, that guy that keeps making vaguely meme-y economy posts ! Today with horrible news : I have decided to teach outside of work hours ! On the plus side, unlike my IRL students, YOU can block me if you don't want the lesson.

And today's topic will be Money Velocity. What is money velocity ? It's not a bike city populated by sentient cash, despite what some might believe, no. It is the speed at which money moves inside an economy. What's that got to do with anything ? A fucklot ! Let me explain.

Money velocity is, like I said, the speed at which money moves in an economy between actors. Like consumers, banks, the State, companies, NGOs, etc. The faster that money moves, the better, because it means that money is being used for economic activity, powering various parts of the system and thus creating wealth.

Or, in the wise words of one of the few monarchs I am not physically incapable of tolerating, King Julian : we like to move it move it (it being money).

To illustrate, allow me to introduce a character : a random €100 bill. Yes, euro, not dollar, I'm European, you can't stop me. That €100 bill, which we will call Billy going forward, is used to buy a load of groceries at the market, let's say veggies for a restaurant. Billy is now in the hands of a farmer, who uses it to buy fertilizer to keep his farm going. The producer of the fertilizer then uses Billy to pay a worker, who then uses billy to pay for a new piece of furniture, and then Billy is used to buy more lumber, then to pay for repairs on a chainsaw, then to buy spare parts, then to ... You get the idea, Billy is on a grand journey through the economy, how delightfull.

When he's doing that, Billy is keeping the economic waterwheel going, round and round, and that economic waterwheel then powers society. A waterwheel that goes vroom means that the economy is healthy, which means you can safely invest in a house, new tools, a car, whatever, and it's likely that the investment will go at least OK-ish. It means banks can feel safer about lending, which is kind of a central part of our current economic model and one of our primary tools of wealth creation.

Now, if you've read my other two economic posts, you're probably thinking I'm going to explain how everything's fucked and how we're all doomed, which is a gross exaggeration and I...

Why everything's fucked

I could apologize for that easy joke, but I asked myself if I should just because I could, and my answer is no.

So, in short : money move fast, is good. So logically, if money move slow, is bad, right ? Exactly. So the question then is : what makes money go slow ? Well, a bunch of stuff can.

For instance, a low amount of existing money, AKA the money supply. People like hoarding what's rare and what has value, so valuable rare stuff is prime hoarding material. Keeping in mind that TOO MUCH money can also be bad due to hyperinflation, something that causes shudders of horror in prudish teenagers prowling DeviantArt (no, I will not change my joke) and in Germans in general (I use "cahs wheelbarrow" in attack mode to trigger generational trauma).

Another factor would be how easy it is to pay for stuff. For instance, if you have to go to the bank to take money out of your account each time you need to pay for something, unexpected/impulse buying is far less likely, if only because of the hassle. If you can pay with a credit card (and even more so if you can check your account in real time), you're more likely to feel confident buying things, which in turn means you'll buy stuff, which keeps the money moving.

Last big factor we'll see is economic actor behaviour. "Can I start blaming billionaires now?" Patience my dear, I'm giving you a reason. So, how economic actors behave has an impact on the economy, amazing discovery, next, scientists claim ocean is made of water. But more seriously, if you're putting money aside you're reducing money velocity by creating, I guess you could call it an economic drainage lake which you fill with your savings.

Now, that money isn't entirely out of the system, since you're most likely shoving it into a savings account which can then serve as a backing for banks to loan money (how did you think interests were accrued?) so it's still going through the system, even if far slower than if you spend it.

Those bank loans can still be given to consummers buying big things (like houses) and to companies looking to develop, and that still keeps the economy running, right ? Normally, yes.

"Is it time to blame Capitalism and billionaires yet?" you ask, and yes, yes it is.

So, why do we blame them now ? Easy : there's a second economic circuit that's going perfectly fine, the financial one. If we look at the entire system, there's plenty of movement of money on the stock markets, even without taking speculation into account which ... is a whole other subject I may have to look at later. The main issue is that this financial economic circuit is not as connected as the traditional one as it perhaps should be, which means the money injected into that circuit has a worrying tendency to STAY in that circuit. How ? Well ...

Investors put cash into a company, then they expect dividents. Those dividends are used to put more cash in the company or in other companies, and since monkey brain like number big, investors ask for MORE dividends, which means you need to cut costs somewhere, like for instance employees. That money is still pushing economic activity, it's still creating wealth, but that wealth is focused in a rather small group and is based on the inherently unstable stock markets, which means that it can evaporate whenever investors have a collective tantrum. There's also the fact that, despite the large sums of money involved, that particular mass of money moves far slower than the money used by consummers.

Second big issue : the drainage great lakes. You're not the only one to have savings, the 1% have savings too, except theirs are proportional to how much cash they have. Now, to be clear, most of their wealth is in assets, not in cash, but they still DO have cash, and as you are no doubt aware, they aren't too thrilled when asked to pay taxes. Taxation is theft and all that bullshit spewed by people opposed to snake BDSM.

Like I pointed out, savings aren't inherently bad, they slow down the flow of money a bit, but do not stop it, and in fact allow for crucial investments that produce new wealth. No, the main issue is where those savings are. Tax havens, a well known term for places where money is put to stay hidden and, sometimes, to be laundered. Well, these puppies form, in effect, giant financial retention dams, where rivers of cash are poured in and trickles come out.

Most of the money put in tax havens don't return to the economy they come from. And, to be perfectly honest, they don't go into the tax haven's economy either. It just ... sits there. Hoardingly.

Proportionally, the tax havens have less of an impact than the parallel financial circuit, but they are visible and, most importantly, symptomatic of a way of thinking, of acting, of hoarding wealth and value.

So yeah, that's money velocity, or how fast money goes in the economy. Put simply, our system is currently obsessed with the stock market due to a systemic gambling addiction and has forgotten that the basis of a consumption economy is the consummer, which uh ... is generally in a less than ideal situation right now.

Now, when this topic was suggested to me, "trickle down" economics was mentionned, with the suggestion that I show how it's a scam. Well, I think it's already done fairly well with the above, as the system set up to "trickle down" was what spawned the financial circuit and allowed wealth monopilzation that spawned the tax haven problem on its current scale.

But I feel I should go further.

Is trickle down economics doomed to fail in all cases ? No, it can work actually ! It's just like unregulated Capitalism or Real Communism(tm), it can work if you just do this one simple, cheap, easy thing : replace all humans with robots bound by a strict programming.

Like many other economic or political ideas, "trickle down economics", in its stated goal and ideal functionning, is predicated and dependant on being populated purely and entirely by good faith actors. Adding any degree of human interference leads to the idealized system collapsing in one way or another.

This leaves two options :

Reagan and co were unerringly naive and incapable of considering the possibility humans could act selfishly or in a way that didn't match their vision.

They knew and were counting on it, and only sold the ideal as a sugar coating for the bullshit.

I'll let you pick which one is more likely.