#Maintaining Customer Base

[kaisosims]

Overgrown Above Ground Pool

The Overgrown Above Ground Pool set comes with several decorative above ground pool items to enhance your Sims’ summer back yard look. Pools require a lot of work to maintain to prevent moss and algae growth, so be sure to utilize your Pool Cleaning Supplies and Floating Pool Chemical Dispenser to keep the moss and algae at bay, or don’t! for a unique overgrown pond look.

Pool items come in standard blue, light blue, and gray, with 5 overgrown progression swatches showcasing new, sun-bleached, dirty, mossy, and extra-mossy swatch progressions.

Check out the YouTube trailer of the set here:

10 new items:

Overgrown Above Ground Pool Deco

Above Ground Pool Ladder Jumpstand

Above Ground Pool Ladder Deco

Above Ground Pool Tarp

Dilapidated Pool Ball

Floating Pool Chemical Dispenser

Above Ground Pool Foundation

Mossy Pool Water

Mossy Dirt

Pool Cleaning Supplies

Are the items functional?

Sort of.

The Overgrown Above Ground Pool Deco is functionally a fountain, so your Sims can use the interaction “Toss Coin” into it.

The Floating Pool Chemical Dispenser has a new, custom “Clean Pool” interaction that plays a chemical dispensing vfx.

The Above Ground Pool Foundation can be applied to pools raised above the ground to give the look of an above ground pool that your Sims can swim in.

The Above Ground Pool Ladder Jumpstand can be used against real Pools as a jumpstand, which requires Get to Work to function.

All items are 100% 3D modelled and textured by me

Almost all items are Base Game Compatible with all necessary LODs

The Above Ground Pool Ladder Jumpstand requires Get to Work to function.

Find build items in this pack easily by searching "Above Ground Pool" or "Kaiso"

Build items will not show up under this search, so here is where to find them!

Above Ground Pool Foundation is under “Foundations”

Mossy Pool Water is under “Water Styles”

Mossy Dirt is under “Terrain Paint”

Download: (Free!): Patreon

[sophiaphile]

this silent recession has got me this close 🤏 to selling used panties and creating fetish content

[xerxestexastoast]

grrrr bark bark I wanna sell stickers

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

How To Plan A Book Series: Ultimate Guide

Writing a book series can be an incredibly rewarding experience for authors, but it also requires careful planning and execution. A well-crafted book series can captivate readers, build a loyal fan base, and provide a steady stream of income for writers. However, planning a successful book series is no easy feat.

It demands a deep understanding of world-building, character development, and plot progression. In this ultimate guide, I'll help you explore the essential steps to help you plan a compelling and cohesive book series that will keep your readers hooked from start to finish.

Develop a Compelling Premise The foundation of any successful book series is a strong premise. Your premise should be unique, engaging, and have the potential to sustain multiple books. Consider exploring a complex world, a captivating concept, or a character with a rich backstory that can evolve over the course of several books. Ask yourself: What makes your premise stand out? What will keep readers invested in the story for multiple installments?

Create a Detailed Outline Before you dive into writing, it's crucial to create a detailed outline for your entire book series. This outline should include the overarching plot, major story arcs, character development, and key events for each book. Having a solid outline will help you maintain consistency, avoid plot holes, and ensure that each book contributes to the overall narrative. Don't be afraid to make adjustments as you write, but having a roadmap will keep you on track.

World-Building: Crafting a Vivid and Consistent Universe One of the hallmarks of a successful book series is a richly developed and immersive world. Whether you're creating a fantasy realm, a futuristic society, or a contemporary setting, pay close attention to world-building. Establish the rules, customs, histories, and geography of your fictional world. Consistency is key, so ensure that the details align across all books in the series. Consider creating a "bible" or a comprehensive guide that outlines the intricacies of your world, making it easier to maintain continuity.

Develop Compelling Characters Great characters are the heart and soul of any book series. Your protagonists, antagonists, and supporting characters should be well-rounded, multi-dimensional, and undergo significant growth and transformation throughout the series. Craft backstories, motivations, flaws, and strengths for each character, and ensure that their actions and decisions drive the plot forward. Remember, character development is an ongoing process, so be prepared to explore new facets of your characters as the series progresses.

Establish Recurring Themes and Motifs Themes and motifs are powerful tools that can add depth and resonance to your book series. Identify the central themes you want to explore, such as love, redemption, power, or identity. Weave these themes throughout the series, allowing them to evolve and deepen with each installment. Motifs, like recurring symbols or imagery, can also create a sense of cohesion and add layers of meaning to your narrative.

Plan for Cliffhangers and Resolutions One of the key strategies for keeping readers engaged in a book series is the strategic use of cliffhangers and resolutions. Cliffhangers create anticipation and leave readers craving for the next installment. However, be cautious not to overuse this technique, as it can become frustrating for readers. Balance cliffhangers with satisfying resolutions that tie up loose ends and provide a sense of closure, while still leaving room for the story to continue.

Consider Pacing and Narrative Structure Pacing and narrative structure are crucial elements to consider when planning a book series. Each book should have its own narrative arc, with a beginning, middle, and end, while also contributing to the overall story progression. Vary the pacing between books to maintain reader interest, alternating between action-packed and slower, more introspective sections. Experiment with different narrative structures, such as multiple perspectives, non-linear timelines, or frame narratives, to keep the series fresh and engaging.

Manage Continuity and Consistency As your book series grows, maintaining continuity and consistency becomes increasingly important. Keep detailed records of character descriptions, plot points, world-building elements, and timelines. Regularly refer back to these notes to ensure that you're not introducing contradictions or inconsistencies. Consider creating a series bible or a wiki to help you keep track of all the moving parts.

Plan for Character Growth and Evolution In a book series, characters should undergo significant growth and evolution. Plan for character arcs that span multiple books, allowing your protagonists and supporting characters to face challenges, make difficult choices, and emerge as changed individuals. This character development will not only add depth to your narrative but also keep readers invested in the journey of your characters.

Anticipate and Address Potential Plot Holes As your book series expands, the potential for plot holes and inconsistencies increases. Be vigilant in identifying and addressing these issues during the planning stage. Regularly review your outline and notes, looking for any logical gaps or contradictions. Enlist the help of beta readers or critique partners to provide fresh perspectives and catch any potential plot holes you may have missed.

Consider the Overarching Story Arc While each book in your series should have its own narrative arc, it's essential to plan for an overarching story arc that spans the entire series. This overarching arc should tie together the individual books, building towards a climactic conclusion that resolves the central conflict or mystery. Ensure that each book contributes to this larger narrative, advancing the plot and raising the stakes for the characters.

Plan for Marketing and Promotion Finally, as you plan your book series, don't overlook the importance of marketing and promotion. Develop a strategy for building buzz and engaging with your audience throughout the release of each book. Leverage social media, author events, book tours, and other promotional opportunities to keep your readers excited and invested in your series.

Remember, writing a book series is a marathon, not a sprint, so be prepared to invest time, effort, and dedication into crafting a truly remarkable literary journey. Hope this helped!

Happy Writing - Rin T.

Hey fellow writers! I'm super excited to share that I've just launched a Tumblr community. I'm inviting all of you to join my community. All you have to do is fill out this Google form, and I'll personally send you an invitation to join the Write Right Society on Tumblr! Can't wait to see your posts!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tesla's Dieselgate

Elon Musk lies a lot. He lies about being a “utopian socialist.” He lies about being a “free speech absolutist.” He lies about which companies he founded:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2 He lies about being the “chief engineer” of those companies:

https://www.quora.com/Was-Elon-Musk-the-actual-engineer-behind-SpaceX-and-Tesla

He lies about really stupid stuff, like claiming that comsats that share the same spectrum will deliver steady broadband speeds as they add more users who each get a narrower slice of that spectrum:

https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband

The fundamental laws of physics don’t care about this bullshit, but people do. The comsat lie convinced a bunch of people that pulling fiber to all our homes is literally impossible — as though the electrical and phone lines that come to our homes now were installed by an ancient, lost civilization. Pulling new cabling isn’t a mysterious art, like embalming pharaohs. We do it all the time. One of the poorest places in America installed universal fiber with a mule named “Ole Bub”:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Previous tech barons had “reality distortion fields,” but Musk just blithely contradicts himself and pretends he isn’t doing so, like a budget Steve Jobs. There’s an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk’s public lies:

https://elonmusk.today/

But while Musk lacks the charm of earlier Silicon Valley grifters, he’s much better than they ever were at running a long con. For years, he’s been promising “full self driving…next year.”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

He’s hasn’t delivered, but he keeps claiming he has, making Teslas some of the deadliest cars on the road:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn’t its cars, it’s Tesla’s business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

Once you start unpacking Tesla’s balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

But even with all those financial shenanigans, Tesla’s got an absurdly high valuation, soaring at times to 1600x its profitability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoover-calling/#intangibles

That valuation represents a bet on Tesla’s ability to extract ever-higher rents from its customers. Take Tesla’s batteries: you pay for the battery when you buy your car, but you don’t own that battery. You have to rent the right to use its full capacity, with Tesla reserving the right to reduce how far you go on a charge based on your willingness to pay:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/10/teslas-demon-haunted-cars-in-irmas-path-get-a-temporary-battery-life-boost/

That’s just one of the many rent-a-features that Tesla drivers have to shell out for. You don’t own your car at all: when you sell it as a used vehicle, Tesla strips out these features you paid for and makes the next driver pay again, reducing the value of your used car and transfering it to Tesla’s shareholders:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update

To maintain this rent-extraction racket, Tesla uses DRM that makes it a felony to alter your own car’s software without Tesla’s permission. This is the root of all autoenshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is technofeudalism. Whereas capitalists seek profits (income from selling things), feudalists seek rents (income from owning the things other people use). If Telsa were a capitalist enterprise, then entrepreneurs could enter the market and sell mods that let you unlock the functionality in your own car:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/11/1-in-3/#boost-50

But because Tesla is a feudal enterprise, capitalists must first secure permission from the fief, Elon Musk, who decides which companies are allowed to compete with him, and how.

Once a company owns the right to decide which software you can run, there’s no limit to the ways it can extract rent from you. Blocking you from changing your device’s software lets a company run overt scams on you. For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.

But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legitimate purposes. That means that your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how that surveillance works, the manufacturer can be incredibly sloppy with all the personal info they gather:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html

All kinds of hidden anti-features can lurk in your DRM-locked car, protected from discovery, analysis and criticism by the illegality of bypassing the DRM. For example, Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away if you have a dispute about a late payment:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

DRM is a gun on the mantlepiece in Act I, and by Act III, it goes off, revealing some kind of ugly and often dangerous scam. Remember Dieselgate? Volkswagen created a line of demon-haunted cars: if they thought they were being scrutinized (by regulators measuring their emissions), they switched into a mode that traded performance for low emissions. But when they believed themselves to be unobserved, they reversed this, emitting deadly levels of NOX but delivering superior mileage.

The conversion of the VW diesel fleet into mobile gas-chambers wouldn’t have been possible without DRM. DRM adds a layer of serious criminal jeopardy to anyone attempting to reverse-engineer and study any device, from a phone to a car. DRM let Apple claim to be a champion of its users’ privacy even as it spied on them from asshole to appetite:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/

The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can’t attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded.

But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you’d immediately figure something was up. So your Telsa tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles.

But again, if the car continued to tell you it has 203 miles of range when it was about to run out of charge, you’d figure something was up pretty quick — like, the first time your car ran out of battery while the dashboard cheerily informed you that you had 203 miles of range left.

So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren’t getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue.

But there’s a new problem: drivers whose cars are rated for 353 miles but can’t go anything like that far on a full charge naturally assume that something is wrong with their cars, so they start calling Tesla service and asking to have the car checked over.

This creates a problem for Tesla: those service calls can cost the company $1,000, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s performing exactly as designed. So Tesla created its boldest fraud yet: a boiler-room full of anti-salespeople charged with convincing people that their cars weren’t broken.

This new unit — the “diversion team” — was headquartered in a Nevada satellite office, which was equipped with a metal xylophone that would be rung in triumph every time a Tesla owner was successfully conned into thinking that their car wasn’t defrauding them.

When a Tesla owner called this boiler room, the diverter would run remote diagnostics on their car, then pronounce it fine, and chide the driver for having energy-hungry driving habits (shades of Steve Jobs’s “You’re holding it wrong”):

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

The drivers who called the Diversion Team weren’t just lied to, they were also punished. The Tesla app was silently altered so that anyone who filed a complaint about their car’s range was no longer able to book a service appointment for any reason. If their car malfunctioned, they’d have to request a callback, which could take several days.

Meanwhile, the diverters on the diversion team were instructed not to inform drivers if the remote diagnostics they performed detected any other defects in the cars.

The diversion team had a 750 complaint/week quota: to juke this stat, diverters would close the case for any driver who failed to answer the phone when they were eventually called back. The center received 2,000+ calls every week. Diverters were ordered to keep calls to five minutes or less.

Eventually, diverters were ordered to cease performing any remote diagnostics on drivers’ cars: a source told Reuters that “Thousands of customers were told there is nothing wrong with their car” without any diagnostics being performed.

Predicting EV range is an inexact science as many factors can affect battery life, notably whether a journey is uphill or downhill. Every EV automaker has to come up with a figure that represents some kind of best guess under a mix of conditions. But while other manufacturers err on the side of caution, Tesla has the most inaccurate mileage estimates in the industry, double the industry average.

Other countries’ regulators have taken note. In Korea, Tesla was fined millions and Elon Musk was personally required to state that he had deceived Tesla buyers. The Korean regulator found that the true range of Teslas under normal winter conditions was less than half of the claimed range.

Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively — think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn’t merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being — but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren’t just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed — they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

Image ID [A scene out of an 11th century tome on demon-summoning called 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.' It depicts a demon tormenting two unlucky would-be demon-summoners who have dug up a grave in a graveyard. One summoner is held aloft by his hair, screaming; the other screams from inside the grave he is digging up. The scene has been altered to remove the demon's prominent, urinating penis, to add in a Tesla supercharger, and a red Tesla Model S nosing into the scene.]

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[autogyne-redacted]

Let's Talk About Security Culture: Why Keeping Secrets is Cool and Sexy

It's a natural impulse -- if you love crime -- to want to talk about how great it is. And if you hate America, it's only natural to want to share your dreams for its future with the rest of tumblr dot com. It can feel brave and transgressive. And there is a drive to share your soul with the world at the heart of social media. Surely I should be posting the most concrete implications of my politics, right? This is the poster's curse.

Security Culture refers to a set of "best practices" developed over the past several decades, largely (in a US context) coming out of radical environmental groups as they faced intense state repression, infiltration and entrapment. If you're not familiar, there's some fascinating crimethinc write ups to give you a window into that world:

Much of it boils down to: don't talk about crimes, past or forthcoming with people who don't need to know about them, and be mindful of the possibility of surveillance and infiltration. And, we can support each other as a community in minimizing risks, with an eye towards enabling bold action rather than getting bogged down in fears and anxieties. The guidelines that make sense for AG-based trouble-makers are different from the guidelines that make sense for posters, but plenty of common principles apply. To speak briefly to our position here as posters:

First, it bears saying that long term anonymity is extremely nearly impossible to maintain. Unless you've never accessed Tumblr without a vpn, and avoided connections with other ppl who can be associated with you/your location, and never shared pictures without scrubbing metadata, and a bunch of other 100% consistent steps, it's trivial for the state to know who you are.

Second, just because something isn't actively being prosecuted now doesn't mean it can't be prosecuted later. The priorities of the state change and a shift in power towards the right or a growth in radical action from the left can suddenly make it a priority to destroy anarchist networks or just find a few ppl to prosecute as examples (who probably weren't that plugged into larger networks before getting arrested. Advocating for specific anti-government crimes or declarations of intent to commit such crimes are likely prosecutable even if charges don't stick they're an easy vector for legal harassment.

Third, it's worth thinking about heat as separate from prosecutability. There are modes of engagement that may not be directly criminalized but signal that you are someone worth watching. Some people choose to be public in ways that make heat unavoidable. But it's worth noting that heat isn't strictly individualized, that it persists over time but also is going to shrink over time.

It's easy on here, ime, to see yourself as a proud member of the crime fandom but not much of a content creator. And it's easy to feel like you've generated an amount of heat where you're locked into that role. But heat you generated 10 years ago is probably pretty well gone. Heat you generated 5 years ago has faded substantially. It's worth thinking about how the world might shift in the coming years and what doors you want to keep open.

The non-individualized nature of heat also means that leaning into the spiciest of anti-state positions will make it a bad idea for people who are acting out those positions end up tied to you. Loudly talking about how "more people should be doing [X/Y/Z]" unfortunately sets you up to remain distant from people who might be doing or thinking about doing such things.

Which brings me back to: keeping secrets is sexy. Not spelling everything out builds intrigue. You can lay out a theoretical position and leave working out the practical implications of that as an exercise for the reader. There's value in opacity. The poster's curse and the drive to confess are extremely convenient for the state, but we can resist them. We can hold dreams in our hearts that we refuse to offer up to the posting spectacle.

[dialdesk]

Did you know that it costs five times as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one? This is why customer retention is so important for startups – it’s one of the key indicators of whether a company will survive and grow.

[crabsnpersimmons]

i realize i never posted these boys

these are my boys for my restaurant AU: "Have You Eaten?"

the basic premise is this: Y/N works a stressful job where keeping up appearances is paramount. They often treat their clients to a meal at their favourite restaurant, run by the DCA boys—the nutrition-conscious chef Sun, the sweet and friendly chef Moon, and the charming front of house Eclipse. Y/N always orders something small and light so they can focus on talking with their client and maintaining appearances—nothing too large, nothing messy, nothing indulgent. Then after the meal, they walk their client to their car and they wait for their client to leave. Secretly, Y/N is a glutton. Once their client leaves, they hurry back to the restaurant, where their true meal is hot and ready for them.

Eclipse: Welcome back, Starlight! Ready for your second course?

Moon: Do you wanna skip straight to dessert? I tried a new recipe for donuts!

Sun: No. The hour is late, you should have something simple and adequately filling before bed.

Eclipse: Or... maybe you're interested in something "off the menu?"

they're a silly bunch (:

some other notes under the cut

the title is "Have You Eaten?" which is a common greeting in multiple languages. There's something warm about being greeted with this check-in to make sure you that have taken care of your body.

the restaurant is mostly based on a Hong Kong style cafe (a cha chaan teng) but the specials change often and often branch into other types of dishes and cuisines, because the boys like to experiment with new recipes.

Eclipse does have 4 arms, but he usually hides his second pair away because he's found it disturbed customers.

they can eat as an alternative method of recharging, and they can turn off their taste buds. Sun in particular has a bad habit of eating food scraps.

the DCA's relationship with each other is... complicated? They don't exactly like each other but are forced by their code to remain within a certain distance to each other. So they begrudgingly work and live together and cause trouble for each other's lives.

despite having separate bodies, their code forces them to stay within a certain radius (1515 feet, or the approximate distance between the 2 furthest points of the Mega Pizzaplex). They wear clip-on earrings to extend the range whenever they need extra space (usually Eclipse, hence why he has so many).

Eclipse is the oldest—he was built first for the theatre. Many years later, Eclipse was moved to the daycare to entertain children. But since they were short-staffed, Sun and Moon were built using Eclipse's code to help him at the daycare.

their pizzaplex was left to ruin and the three of them got out and were picked up by an old chef, who took them in and taught them everything he knows before leaving his restaurant to them and passing away.

i would like to write something for this AU. The main story still needs some work, but I have a lot of little drabble ideas that I might write. Or maybe it will be an AU full of drabbles. That's a possibility too. Although I would like to explore stories with other y/ns, like one who is a picky eater, one who has a lot of food allergies, etc.

also head's up: innuendos. innuendos everywhere. (most of which are Eclipse's fault)

[kimikitti]

Nike making her debut at the Tamashina Mina event ready to kickass and traumatize some warriors. More details below the cut:

Nike: The ravenous vulture

Pronouns: She/her

Dorm: Pomefiore

Background: Nike is a catergory of bird beastman known as a harpy. Harpies are bird beastmen who express higher amounts of bird like adaptations. This includes features like wings, talons and beak like mouths. Harpies are often associated with bad omens like storms.

Fav food: Bones and rotten meat.

Dislikes: Being forced to maintain a human form for long period of time. (I feel like a plucked chicken)

Specialty: Potions making. She is very good at making perfumes and scent based products directed at the less humanoid students at NRC. Nike makes and supplies the Mostro Lounge with a customized designer scent in exchange for their food waste. She also developed a type of magical deodarant that is very popular among athletes in NRC.

Club: Science club (Unofficial advisor for the Spelldrive club/ hygiene enforcer)

Goals: To become very popular and eat a lot of food.

Unique magic: [Redacted]

Best Friend: RUGGIE

[blogport]

EPOXYSHİNE - DRAGON+ (5)

When it comes to enhancing the aesthetic and functional qualities of your floors, solid color epoxy flooring stands out as a top choice. Renowned for its durability and ease of maintenance, this sleek flooring option offers a seamless look that transforms any space into a modern haven. Beyond the allure of solid colors, the world of epoxy flooring also features exciting variations like the vibrant epoxy flake floors. These innovative surfaces blend color flakes into a clear resin, providing a unique texture and visual appeal that can suit any design vision. 

Solid Color Epoxy Floor

When it comes to flooring solutions, the solid color epoxy floor stands out for its durability and aesthetic appeal. This type of flooring is created by mixing epoxy resin with hardeners, resulting in a seamless, impermeable surface that can withstand heavy foot traffic and harsh conditions.

One of the significant advantages of solid color epoxy floors is their versatility. These floors can be customized to fit various color schemes and designs, making them an excellent choice for both residential and commercial spaces. Whether you prefer a bold and vibrant tone or a more subtle hue, there's a solid epoxy color to meet your needs.

Additionally, the maintenance of a solid color epoxy floor is relatively simple. Regular cleaning with mild soap and water is often sufficient to keep the floor looking new. This low-maintenance feature, combined with its long-lasting nature, makes it a cost-effective flooring solution in the long run.

Epoxy Flake Floor

If you're looking for a versatile and aesthetically pleasing flooring option, epoxy flake floor is an excellent choice. This type of flooring combines the durability of epoxy with the decorative flair of colored flakes, creating a unique surface that's both functional and attractive.

One of the main benefits of epoxy flake floors is their resilience. They are resistant to stains, impacts, and chemicals, making them perfect for high-traffic areas such as garages, basements, or commercial spaces. Additionally, the textured surface of flake flooring provides excellent slip resistance, which enhances safety in both residential and industrial environments.

Beyond their practicality, epoxy flake floors offer endless design possibilities. You can choose from a variety of colors and sizes for the flakes, allowing you to customize your flooring to match your personal style or brand image. Whether you prefer a subtle blend or a bold statement, flake flooring can transform your space into a visually stunning area that stands out.

Flake Flooring

Flake flooring is an innovative and versatile flooring solution that combines aesthetics with durability. One of the defining features of flake flooring is its unique blend of colorful chips or flakes that are embedded into a clear epoxy base. This method not only enhances the visual appeal of the floor but also provides a strong, long-lasting surface that can withstand heavy foot traffic and wear.

Another significant advantage of flake flooring is its customizable nature. Homeowners and business owners can choose from an array of colors, shapes, and sizes of flakes, allowing them to create a floor that perfectly matches their style or corporate branding. This customization makes flake flooring an excellent choice for various applications, from residential garages to commercial spaces.

Moreover, flake flooring is easy to maintain. The smooth surface of the epoxy prevents dirt and grime from becoming lodged in the seams, making clean-up a breeze. With proper maintenance, flake flooring can maintain its vibrant appearance for years, making it a practical and stylish flooring choice.

[storiesfromgaza]

It is very important to read this and share it

Today the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor Observatory stated that Israel dropped over 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip as part of its ongoing extensive war since October 7th, equivalent to two nuclear bombs.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory, based in Geneva, highlighted the Israeli army's acknowledgment of targeting more than 12,000 objectives in the Gaza Strip, setting a record in the number of bombs dropped, surpassing 10 kilograms of explosives per person.

With the advancements in bomb quantity and effectiveness, while maintaining a consistent amount of explosives, the quantity dropped on Gaza could be equivalent to twice the power of a nuclear bomb.

Additionally, Israel deliberately employs a mixture known as "RDX" (Research Department Explosive) commonly referred to as "the science of complete explosives," with a power equal to 1.34 times that of TNT.

This means that the destructive power of the explosives dropped on Gaza exceeds what was dropped on Hiroshima, taking into account that the city of Hiroshima covers an area of 900 square kilometers, while Gaza's area is no more than 360 square kilometers.

Furthermore, Israel has been documented using internationally banned weapons in its attacks on the Gaza Strip, particularly cluster and white phosphorus bombs. White phosphorus is a highly toxic incendiary substance that rapidly reacts with oxygen, causing severe second and third-degree burns. The Euro-Mediterranean team has documented cases of injuries among the victims of Israeli attacks that resemble the effects of dangerous cluster bombs, as they contain small high-explosive submunitions designed to penetrate the body and cause internal explosions, resulting in severe burns that melt the victims' skin and sometimes lead to death. These submunitions also cause peculiar swelling and toxin exposure in the body, including transparent shrapnel that does not appear in X-ray images.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory has emphasized that Israel's destructive, indiscriminate, and disproportionate attacks constitute a clear violation of the laws of war and the rules of international humanitarian law, which stipulate the obligation to protect civilians in all circumstances and under any conditions. Killing civilians is considered a war crime in both international and non-international armed conflicts and can rise to the level of a crime against humanity.

The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, along with the 1949 Geneva Convention in its latest formulation, established fundamental human rights during wartime to limit the deadly health consequences of internationally banned weapons, some of which could lead to the "genocide" of civilians.

Article 25 of the Hague Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land prohibits "attacking or bombarding towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are not defended."

Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that "any destruction by the occupying power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations."

According to Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the destruction of property that is not justified by military necessity and on a large scale is considered a serious violation that requires prosecution. Such practices are also classified as war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory has called for the formation of an independent international investigative committee to assess the magnitude of explosives and internationally banned weapons used and continue to be used by Israel against civilians in the Gaza Strip.

This committee would hold accountable those responsible, including those who issued orders, made plans, executed actions, and took measures aimed at achieving justice for Palestinian victims.

[levilxvr]

here are some of my sfw modernau!levi headcanons in no particular order :)

cw: none

starting off with his phone: levi’s lock screen wallpaper is a picture of you and him from one of your holiday trips. The homescreen is some random unglam he took while you were doing chores in the room- and no matter how many times you tell him to change it he insists on leaving it as that.

Levi loves seeing you in his clothes, particularly his shirts. He just thinks you look adorable in them and something about you wearing his clothes makes him feel things. He doesn’t even care if he catches you in his favourite shirt or his most expensive jacket- what belongs to him belongs to you too in this house.

He’s all about quality time and making sure you always feel loved! At the end of every day levi never fails to set aside a minimum of 30 minutes of cuddling before bedtime. Doesn’t matter how packed his schedule is or how tired he feels. No letting you fall asleep on your own, he has to be the one hugging you to sleep.

Ok fine, he just really loves playing with your hair and talking to you about his day. Spending alone time with you amidst the chaos and busy events of the day grounds him and gives him peace <3

This man has all his hair products custom ordered online. It’s one of those websites where you do a whole survey and they analyse your hair type and recommend certain products that match your needs. For levi he’s been using their moisturising + strengthening range so his silky locks stay healthy and strong. (It smells rlly fresh and sweet too so that’s a bonus)

Lord, he’s such a good chef. (based on experience btw) He’s the kind of man to make breakfast every single morning without fail, and there’s an entire meal plan for the week on the fridge door. Of course you guys split the work and take turns cooking, but every morning breakfast is made by him. You’ll be waking up to the smell of his fresh banana bread or croissants every day, sometimes with a side of berry parfait and fruits if he’s got more time.

He knows exactly how you like your coffee or tea as well. Ever since you started dating him he’s been taking note of your orders at cafes so he can figure out your favourite ones. Then he recreates them for you based on online recipes so you can enjoy them for free every morning :)

Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention his cactus collection in the kitchen. Levi loves purchasing them from those little street markets every now and then since they’re cute and easy to maintain. There’s a ledge on the kitchen window where he’s got a few tiny pots lined up in a row. Sometimes you walk in while he’s cleaning the dishes and hear him talking to the cacti about the most random silly things lol. His favourite one is the round puffy cactus with a little red flower blooming on the side.

[kokiri]

Consider: Dragons in Final Fantasy XIV are capable of creation magicks.

If not something similar to it. They just didn't achieve the societal potentials, regulations, and limits that the Ancients reached before the Final Days. The biggest thing that supports this is simple:

Dragons do not mate to reproduce.

All dragons are capable of an unexplained form of asexual reproduction¹. Physical relations are unnecessary² and dragons do not exhibit notable sexual dimorphism. After all, any dragon, regardless of their personal gender identity, is capable of reproducing even if they have been separated from their consort for hundreds of years.

We see that Orn Khai, from the Stormblood Dragoon quest line, is an example of this.

Orn Khai is a dragonet who was brought into the world by Vedrfolnir, his father, likely ~700 years ago³, during the interim of a thousand years separation from his consort who fled to another continent that long ago to escape Nidhogg's thrall. Orn Khai doesn't even meet Faunehm, Vedrfolnir's aforementioned consort and Orn Khai's mother from our perspective of families, until the end of the quest storyline.

Most importantly, dragons are unsundered beings.

That I can tl;dr about in detail in a future post, otherwise this post will get too long. But with that being said...

Dragons are functionally immortal when it comes to lifespans, to our knowledge, not unlike the Ancients.

On that note, it's also funny to think that, based on comments from Ancients and the Lopportis, unsundered children were very small. Much like dragonets!

Dragons, especially Midgarsormr and the First Brood, contain a wellspring of aether that far exceeds that of any sundered beings. This wellspring of aether found in dragon eyes has been used to summon Primals without a surplus of crystals. Captured dragons from the Meracydian horde even maintained the continuous physical existence of Bahamut for countless years.

While it doesn't 1:1 correlate to the creation magicks of the Ancients, dragons do undergo physical transformations by aspecting to different elemental aethers. They may even adopt a form more suitable for their personal desires and needs, such as developing dexterous hands for crafting and gathering, like we see with Ehll Tou in her custom delivery story!

I'm sure there's also something somewhere to be said about how, as a result of their ancestors feasting on Ratatoskr's aether, dragon blood causes Ishgardians to take on draconic forms. It could be an unsundered power thing or an eldritch horror caused by drinking an alien being's blood. I just thought it was still worth noting.

Notes and resources, because I'm an autistic stickler about it sometimes:

¹ "Although dragons will identify their gender as either male or female, be it for the sake of convenience or individual preference, every member of the species is capable of reproducing asexually." Encyclopedia Eorzea 1, page 270 [x]

² "Wait, do you mean to say you require two of your race to mate!? It is a wonder you have not gone extinct considering the brevity of your lives. It is so much simpler for dragons─only one of us is required to lay our eggs!" Orn Khai, Dragon Sound [x]

³ "I've lived tenfold your years." Is what Orn Khai tells Estinien in the side story Echoes of Delusion, meaning he's ~320 years old. [x]

[taroism]

⃝✿ . ﾟ. TAROISM'S ETERNITY EVENT. ꩜ ۫ ָ֢

⁺　　.　𝗡𝗢𝗧𝗘 !!　　✦　: once again,thank you so much for 200+ followers,which is the reason why I'm hosting my first ever event, 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗘𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗜𝗧𝗬 𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧 , and I would be glad if you would join it !　.　　　⁺

.𖥔 ݁. old is gold, isn't it? Even after 5th generation of kpop has started,many are still stuck in 3rd - 4th gen. So why don't we relive those times ? Rules are simple, you have to make a moodboard based on the music video you recieve , give it a go, make it messy , eye catching , and match the aesthetics of the music video with any idol you like. ˖ִ ࣪. ₊ ⊹˚

𝗛𝗢𝗪 𝗧𝗢 𝗝𝗢𝗜𝗡 — 　　⿻　˚　✿ ×　✤

» follow me + like + reblog this post and tag any 3 or more people who you think would be interested in joining this event.

» comment 'joining' and dm me a number from 1-20 , the number you choose will determine which music video you will receive to make your moodboard about.

» remember to use the tag — '⭑taroism : eternity 𓂃 ' or your moodboard will not be graded.

» DO NOT COPY — anyone's moodboards. Taking inspiration is okay but don't plagiarise it. Dividers,locs,pngs + etc are fine as long as you give proper credits.

» only one entry is allowed,but you can edit if you like,before the deadline.

» deadline is August 30th,but if you need an extension, you're free to dm me.

» any doubts , feel free to ask me / dm me.

» have fun, and even if you don't win, there's always a next time. This is a fun event, and positivity should be maintained.

𝗣𝗥𝗜𝗭𝗘𝗦 — ⋆ ౨ৎ˚ ⟡ ˖ ⋆ ࣪

» 1st place - 100 reblogs on any post you like, 20 reblogs on every post,shout out, 3 custom moodboards,follow from @zahraism .

» 2nd place - 50 reblogs on any post you like, 10 reblogs on every post,shout out,2 custom moodboards, follow from @zahraism .

» 3rd place - 25 reblogs on any post you like, 5 reblogs on every post,shout out,1 custom moodboard, follow from @zahraism .

𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗜𝗣𝗔𝗡𝗧𝗦 𝗪𝗜𝗟𝗟 𝗚𝗘𝗧 𝗔 𝗙𝗢𝗟𝗟𝗢𝗪 𝗙𝗥𝗢𝗠 @taroism 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝟭𝟬 𝗥𝗘𝗕𝗟𝗢𝗚𝗦 𝗢𝗡 𝗔𝗡𝗬 𝗣𝗢𝗦𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗬 𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘 ⟡

prizes will be given a few days after the event ends .

tags !! ( ignore if you don't want to join ) : @jelllijeans @n-americano @yawnznn @cupid-l0v3r @yningz @xoxoxen @flwerwon @blushoon @c-heriis @dollie-i @anqlicrosie @chaeryeos @boyishdoll @et2rnity @eternalgyu @petieon @1haqerin @aestradairio @awwriri @4uarterlife @seulzitos @eun-luv @gumishio @dorallee @sugarish @yuqi-luv @zbvinnn @qqmariztwsse @ezzoae @qqeviz @jimzittos @floreclta @yvestually @miuternal @nulliaely @i04naoi @jaes1lvr @nikist-4-n @kistearis @jenaissite @rsier @l1nque @haeheyy @i-mmaculatus @imwonyoungs @beompercar @ylzhous @lil-liaa++ 🫶🏻

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social Quitting

In “Social Quitting,” my latest Locus Magazine column, I advance a theory to explain the precipitous vibe shift in how many of us view the once-dominant social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, and how it is that we have so quickly gone asking what we can do to get these services out of our lives to where we should go now that we’re all ready to leave them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

The core of the argument revolves around surpluses — that is, the value that exists in the service. For a user, surpluses are things like “being able to converse with your friends” and “being able to plan activities with your friends.” For advertisers, surpluses are things like “being able to target ads based on the extraction and processing of private user data” and “being able to force users to look at ads before they can talk to one another.”

For the platforms, surpluses are things like, “Being able to force advertisers and business customers to monetize their offerings through the platform, blocking rivals like Onlyfans, Patreon, Netflix, Amazon, etc” and things like “Being able to charge more for ads” and “being able to clone your business customers’ products and then switch your users to the in-house version.”

Platforms control most of the surplus-allocating options. They can tune your feed so that it mostly consists of media and text from people you explicitly chose to follow, or so that it consists of ads, sponsored posts, or posts they think will “boost engagement” by sinking you into a dismal clickhole. They can made ads skippable or unskippable. They can block posts with links to rival sites to force their business customers to transact within their platform, so they can skim fat commissions every time money changes hands and so that they can glean market intelligence about which of their business customers’ products they should clone and displace.

But platforms can’t just allocate surpluses will-ye or nill-ye. No one would join a brand-new platform whose sales-pitch was, “No matter who you follow, we’ll show you other stuff; there will be lots of ads that you can’t skip; we will spy on you a lot.” Likewise, no one would sign up to advertise or sell services on a platform whose pitch was “Our ads are really expensive. Any business you transact has to go through us, and we’ll take all your profits in junk fees. This also lets us clone you and put you out of business.”

Instead, platforms have to carefully shift their surpluses around: first they have to lure in users, who will attract business customers, who will generate the fat cash surpluses that can be creamed off for the platforms’ investors. All of this has to be orchestrated to lock in each group, so that they won’t go elsewhere when the service is enshittified as it processes through its life-cycle.

This is where network effects and switching costs come into play. A service has “network effects” if it gets more valuable as users join it. You joined Twitter to talk to the people who were already using it, and then other people joined so they could talk to you.

“Switching costs” are what you have to give up when you leave a service: if a service is siloed — if it blocks interoperability with rivals — then quitting that service means giving up access to the people whom you left behind. This is the single most important difference between ActivityPub-based Fediverse services like Mastodon and the silos like Twitter and Facebook — you can quit a Fediverse server and set up somewhere else, and still maintain your follows and followers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

In the absence of interoperability, network effects impose their own switching cost: the “collective action problem” of deciding when to leave and where to go. If you depend on the people you follow and who follow you — for emotional support, for your livelihood, for community — then the extreme difficulty of convincing everyone to leave at the same time and go somewhere else means that you can be enticed into staying on a service that you no longer enjoy. The platforms can shift the surpluses away from you, provided that doing so makes you less miserable than abandoning your friends or fans or customers would. This is the Fiddler On the Roof problem: everyone stays put in the shtetl even though the cossacks ride through on the reg and beat the shit out of them, because they can’t all agree on where to go if they leave:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

So the first stage of the platform lifecycle is luring in users by allocating lots of surplus to them — making the service fun and great and satisfying to use. Few or no ads, little or no overt data-collection, feeds that emphasize the people you want to hear from, not the people willing to pay to reach you.

This continues until the service attains a critical mass: once it becomes impossible to, say, enroll your kid in a little-league baseball team without having a Facebook account, then Facebook can start shifting its surpluses to advertisers and other business-users of the platform, who will pay Facebook to interpose themselves in your use of the platform. You’ll hate it, but you won’t leave. Junior loves little-league.

Facebook can enshittify its user experience because the users are now locked in, holding each other hostage. If Facebook can use the courts and technological countermeasures to block interoperable services, it can increase its users’ switching costs, producing more opportunities for lucrative enshittification without the risk of losing the users that make Facebook valuable to advertisers. That’s why Facebook pioneered so many legal tactics for criminalizing interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/cases/facebook-v-power-ventures

This is the second phase of the toxic platform life-cycle: luring in business customers by shifting surpluses from users to advertisers, sellers, etc. This is the moment when the platforms offer cheap and easy monetization, low transaction fees, few barriers to off-platform monetization, etc. This is when, for example, a news organization can tease an article on its website with an off-platform link, luring users to click through and see the ads it controls.

Because Facebook has locked in its users through mutual hostage-taking, it can pollute their feeds with lots of these posts to news organizations’ sites, bumping down the messages from its users’ friends, and that means that Facebook can selectively tune how much traffic it gives to different kinds of business customers. If Facebook wants to lure in sports sites, it can cram those sites’ posts into millions of users’ feeds and send floods of traffic to sports outlets.

Outlets that don’t participate in Facebook lose out, and so they join Facebook, start shoveling their content into it, hiring SEO Kremlinologists to help them figure out how to please The Algorithm, in hopes of gaining a permanent, durable source of readers (and thus revenue) for their site.

But ironically, once a critical mass of sports sites are on Facebook, Facebook no longer needs to prioritize sports sites in its users’ feeds. Now that the sports sites all believe that a Facebook presence is a competitive necessity, they will hold each other hostage there, egging each other on to put more things on Facebook, even as the traffic dwindles.

Once sports sites have taken each other hostage, Facebook can claw back the surplus it allocated to them and use it to rope in another sector — health sites, casual games, employment seekers, financial advisors, etc etc. Each group is ensnared by a similar dynamic to the one that locks in the users.

But there is a difference between users’ surpluses and business’s surpluses. A user’s surplus is attention, and there is no such thing as an “attention economy.” You can’t use attention to pay for data-centers, or executive bonuses, or to lobby Congress. Attention is not a currency in the same way that cryptos are not currency — it is not a store of value, nor a unit of exchange, nor or a unit of account.

Turning attention into money requires the same tactics as turning crypto into money — you have to lure in people who have real, actual money and convince them to swap it for attention. With crypto, this involved paying Larry David, Matt Damon, Spike Lee and LeBron James to lie about crypto’s future in order to rope in suckers who would swap their perfectly cromulent “fiat” money for unspendable crypto tokens.

With platforms, you need to bring in business customers who get paid in actual cash and convince them to give you that cash in exchange for ethereal, fast-evaporating, inconstant, unmeasurable “attention.” This works like any Ponzi scheme (that is, it works like cryptos): you can use your shareholders’ cash to pay short-term returns to business customers, losing a little money as a convincer that brings in more trade.

That’s what Facebook did when it sent enormous amounts of traffic to a select few news-sites that fell for the pivot to video fraud, in order to convince their competitors to borrow billions of dollars to finance Facebook’s bid to compete with Youtube:

https://doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video-adbe09319038

This convincer strategy is found in every con. If you go to the county fair, you’ll see some poor bastard walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that he “won” by throwing three balls into a peach-basket. The carny who operated that midway game let him win the teddy precisely so that he would walk around all day, advertising the game, which is rigged so that no one else wins the giant teddy-bear:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

Social media platforms can allocate giant teddy-bears to business-customers, and it can also withdraw them at will. Careful allocations mean that the platform can rope in a critical mass of business customers and then begin the final phase of its life-cycle: allocating surpluses to its shareholders.

We know what this looks like.

Rigged ad-markets:

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

Understaffed content moderation departments:

https://www.dw.com/en/twitters-sacking-of-content-moderators-will-backfire-experts-warn/a-63778330

Knock-off products:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/08/twitter-is-the-latest-platform-to-test-a-tiktok-copycat-feature/

Nuking “trust and safety”:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-dissolves-trust-safety-council-2022-12-13/

Hiding posts that have links to rival services:

https://www.makeuseof.com/content-types-facebook-hides-why/

Or blocking posts that link to rival services:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Or worse, terminating accounts for linking to rival services:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/12/twitter-suspends-mastodon-account-prevents-sharing-links/

That is, once a platform has its users locked in, and has its business customers locked in, it can enshittify its service to the point of near uselessness without losing either, allocating all the useful surplus in the business to its shareholders.

But this strategy has a problem: users and business customers don’t like to be locked in! They will constantly try to find ways to de-enshittify your service and/or leave for greener pastures. And being at war with your users and business customers means that your reputation continuously declines, because every time a user or business customer figures out a way to claw back some surplus, you have to visibly, obviously enshittify your service wrestle it back.

Every time a service makes headlines for blocking an ad-blocker, or increasing its transaction fees, or screwing over its users or business customers in some other way, it makes the case that the price you pay for using the service is not worth the value it delivers.

In other words, the platforms try to establish an equilibrium where they only leave business customers and users with the absolute bare minimum needed to keep them on the service, and extract the rest for their shareholders. But this is a very brittle equilibrium, because the prices that platforms impose on their users and business customers can change very quickly, even if the platforms don’t do anything differently.

Users and business customers can revalue the privacy costs, or the risks of staying on the platform based on exogenous factors. Privacy scandals and other ruptures can make the cost you’ve been paying for years seem higher than you realized and no longer worth it.

This problem isn’t unique to social media platforms, either. It’s endemic to end-stage capitalism, where companies can go on for years paying their workers just barely enough to survive (or even less, expecting them to get public assistance and/or a side-hustle), and those workers can tolerate it, and tolerate it, and tolerate it — until one day, they stop.

The Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, the mass desertions from the gig economy — they all prove the Stein’s Law: “Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.”

Same for long, brittle supply-chains, where all the surplus has been squeezed out: concentrating all the microchip production in China and Taiwan, all the medical saline in Puerto Rico, all the shipping into three cartels… This strategy works well, and can be perfectly tuned with mathematical models that cut right to the joint, and they work and they work.

Until they stop. Until covid. Or war. Or wildfires. Or floods. Or interest rate hikes. Or revolution. All this stuff works great until you wake up and discover that the delicate balance between paying for guard labor and paying for a fair society has tilted, and now there’s a mob building a guillotine outside the gates of your luxury compound.

This is the force underpinning collapse: “slow at first, then all at once.” A steady erosion of the failsafes, flensing all the slack out of the system, extracting all the surpluses until there’s nothing left in the reservoir, no reason to stay.

It’s what caused the near-collapse of Barnes and Noble, and while there are plenty of ways to describe James Daunt’s successful turnaround, the most general characterization is, “He has reallocated the company’s surpluses to workers, readers, writers and publishers”:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and

A system can never truly stabilize. This is why utopias are nonsense: even if you design the most perfect society in which everything works brilliantly, it will still have to cope with war and meteors and pandemics and other factors beyond your control. A system can’t just work well, it has to fail well.

This is why I object so strenuously to people who characterize my 2017 novel Walkaway as a “dystopian novel.” Yes, the protagonists are eking out survival amidst a climate emergency and a failing state, but they aren’t giving up, they’re building something new:

https://locusmag.com/2017/06/bruce-sterling-reviews-cory-doctorow/

“Dystopia” isn’t when things go wrong. Assuming nothing will go wrong doesn’t make you an optimist, it makes you an asshole. A dangerous asshole. Assuming nothing will go wrong is why they didn’t put enough lifeboats on the Titanic. Dystopia isn’t where things go wrong. Dystopia is when things go wrong, and nothing can be done about it.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. The social media barons who reeled users and business customers into a mutual hostage-taking were confident that their self-licking ice-cream cone — in which we all continued to energetically produce surpluses for them to harvest, because we couldn’t afford to leave — would last forever.

They were wrong. The important thing about the Fediverse isn’t that it’s noncommercial or decentralized — it’s that its design impedes surplus harvesting. The Fediverse is designed to keep switching costs as low as possible, by enshrining the Right Of Exit into the technical architecture of the system. The ability to leave a service without paying a price is the best defense we have against the scourge of enshittification.

(Thanks to Tim Harford for inspiring this column via an offhand remark in his kitchen a couple months ago!)

[Image ID: The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 397. The Israelites collect manna. Exodus cap 16 v 14. Luyken and son.]

[twinsimming]

New Scholarships by Twinsimming 🎓

"Need some extra simoleons for university? Sims University now offers a variety of scholarships for prospective students!"

This is a script mod that can be placed in your Packages folder. It was built and tested on 1.69 but should work fine on 1.67.

Requirements

To access all of the scholarships available with this mod, the following packs and store content are required:

The Sims 3: World Adventures

The Sims 3: Ambitions

The Sims 3: Generations

The Sims 3: Showtime

The Sims 3: Supernatural

The Sims 3: Seasons

The Sims 3: University Life

The Sims 3: Island Paradise

The Sims 3: Into the Future

Fit As a Fiddle Violin (The Sims 3 Store)

Artisan Glassblowing Station (The Sims 3 Store)

Stiff as a Board, Light as a Feather Dance Floor (The Sims 3 Store)

Overview

Applying for Scholarships

Types of Scholarships

Maintaining Scholarships

New Moodlets

Online Aptitude Test

New Cheat

Applying for Scholarships

Teen sims and older have a new “Apply for Scholarships” interaction available at the school rabbithole or on the computer under “Sims University Online”. Though they’re less likely to win a scholarship if they apply online rather than in person.

If your sim wins a scholarship, they will not be able to reapply for that scholarship again. If they do not win, they will be given a Disappointed moodlet and have to wait a day before applying again.

Types of Scholarships

There are four (4) types of scholarships your sims can apply for: General, Legacy, Skill Based, and Occult. In total, there are 18 scholarships, each with their own custom moodlet. 

Sims have a 45% chance of winning a scholarship in the General, Legacy, and Occult categories when applying in-person and a 40% chance when applying online.

Sims have a 6% chance of winning a Skill Based scholarship at Level 1 of the required skill. This chance multiplies with each skill level, with a maximum of a 60% chance at Level 10.

Certain traits can either increase or decrease your chance of winning a scholarship by 5% (note: this value stacks the more traits your sim has):

Increased Chance Traits - Lucky and Ambitious

Decreased Chance Traits - Unlucky and Loser

Some of the scholarship names are originally from The Sims 2 and the others I made up myself. They are listed below by category:

General

Young Entrepreneurs Award (§750) - Requires Level 3 part-time job, Teen only

Orphaned Sims Assistance Fund (§750) - Requires deceased or non-existing parents, Teen only

Golden Year Scholars Grant (§1000) - Elders only

Gemini Hidden Masters Prize (§1500) - Requires Level 10 in one hidden skill

Legacy

Student Service Workers Fund (§1000) - For sims with a service worker hidden trait (Makes No Messes, Pyromaniac, Can Apprehend Burglar, Can Salute, Immune To Fire, or Pizza Appreciator)

Cultural Exchange Program (§1000) - For sims with one of the hidden culture traits from The Sims 3: World Adventures

Students of Tomorrow Scholarship (§1000) - For sims with the hidden Future Sim trait from The Sims 3: Into the Future

Skill Based

Dreamer Family Artisan Award (§750) - Requires at least Level 1 Artisan Skill

Tsang Footwork Award (§750) - Requires at least Level 1 Dance (Store) Skill

Violin Society of SimNation Scholarship (§750) - Requires at least Level 1 Violin Skill

Occult

Undead Education Scholarship (§1500) - For Vampires, Zombies, and Ghosts

Extraterrestrial Reparation Grant (§1500) - For Aliens and sims recently abducted by Aliens

Spellcasting Scholars Grant (§1500) - For Witches, Fairies, and Genies

Lycanthropy Philanthropy Fund (§1500) - For Werewolves

Bots Opportunity To Specialize (B.O.T.S.) (§1500) - For Simbosts and Plumbots

Forbidden Fruit Fellowship (§1500) - For PlantSims

Real World Acclimation Fund (§1500) - For Real Imaginary Friends

Aquatic Allies Award (§1500) - For Mermaids

Maintaining Scholarships

After winning a scholarship, your sim will get the new custom Won Scholarship moodlet. They have a week to either enroll in online university with my Attend University Online mod, or in-person university to remain eligible for their scholarship.

If they fail to enroll in time, their scholarship will be rescinded and they will have to pay back the money they were awarded. If they can’t afford to pay back the scholarship amount in full, it will be added to their next household bill. (No free money here!)

Once a sim has a scholarship rescinded, they will get the new custom Lost Scholarship moodlet and be barred from applying for scholarships for 3 days.

New Moodlets

Won Scholarship: Given when a sim wins a scholarship, lasts 1 day, +20 mood, each scholarship has its own custom moodlet icon

Lost Scholarship: Given when a sim has a scholarship rescinded, lasts 3 days, -20 mood, makes sims stressed

Online Aptitude Test

Teen sims and older can now take the university aptitude test on the computer under “Sims University Online”. It works the same as the default interaction.

Tuning

All of the tunable values can be found on the mod download page under the header “Tuning”.

New Cheat

If you want to clear all scholarship winners in your world (on a per save basis), enter the cheat menu and type “ClearScholarshipWinnerData” without the quotation marks.

Conflicts & Known Issues

This is a new script mod so there shouldn’t be any conflicts.

Credits

EA/Maxis for The Sims 3 and The Sims 4, Visual Studio 2019, ILSpy, s3pe, Notepad++, and Script Mod Template Creator.

Thank You

Thank you to gamefreak130, Battery, @zoeoe-sims, @greenplumbboblover​, and @monocodoll!

If you like my work, please consider tipping me on Ko-fi 💙

Download @ ModTheSims