#The Cooper Extraction

[albinofetus]

Howard with his dead mother's corpse

[ghosts-but-one-word-is-pussy]

So your cousin gave her your pussy?

- Alison Cooper

[anti-workshop]

I love this place.

HEY! Thanks to everyone who is ordering shirts! My fellow worker slipped a disc at their other job (yep we both have other jobs) so I am the only one printing and fulfilling right now, so there may be slight delays. Thanks so much for your patience!!!

🍰🍰🍰

[thinkithinktoomuch]

So I need to come up with an exit project for my Masters degree (mathematics) and earlier this week I was thinking “oh it might be cool to do something along the lines of ‘Tumblr Polls as Cooperative Games’” BUT THEN everyone went and failed the cake one and now Vanilla Extract is a tumblr thing and the goal is no longer cooperation, but chaos.

Anyways, thank you tumblr for being you.

[farmerstrend]

The Current State of Lemongrass Farming in Kenya

“Discover the potential of lemongrass farming in Kenya, a lucrative venture offering high returns through essential oil production, herbal tea, and more. Learn about market trends, challenges, and growth opportunities.” “Explore the growing industry of lemongrass farming in Kenya. From essential oils to herbal teas, find out how this aromatic herb is transforming local agriculture and boosting…

[hello-delicious-tea]

We did have a real good time at the climbing section right before we left though. It's a bunch of nets with holes slightly too small for a toddler to get stuck in but big enough for them to use for foot holds. An agile two year old can climb it with some difficulty, and an agile three year old with some effort, and a standard four year old can hoist themselves straight up.

Teaschooler is three and not agile. He got to the first level and then stood there bouncing and complaining that he couldn't get up any higher, and when a two year old climbed in, he asked the two year old to lift him up. The two year old, who was a good fifteen pounds lighter and five inches shorter, was not able to accomplish this.

A five year old swinging about with great enthusiasm and ease, doing upside down flips and whatnot, lifted my solid, square child (who must have weighed only a little less than himself) level by level all the way to the top.

Where he got stuck.

Possibly on purpose, as I'd indicated the next stage in our outing was departure, and while it's possible for adults to squeeze through this area, it was not a desirable activity for me. Fortunately, a Girl Power Toddler Rescue Team of a pair of eight and nine year olds airlifted him down again with great enthusiasm and self-satisfaction.

[jugofraga]

Feeling stupidly sensitive today. Like in the morning I got tears in my eyes from a song and then again from reading the heartstopper comic but less about the comic itself and more about how I’m too old to have a teenage romance.

In other, cooler news, I got a bird out of the archives in less than 10 minutes. With my own two hands, without hurting the bird. Which I think was pretty neat of me

[techdriveplay]

A Short Guide to Helldivers 2

Welcome to the action-packed world of Helldivers 2, where the battle for democracy spans across hostile exoplanets teeming with alien threats. At first glance, Helldivers 2 might seem like your typical co-op shooter: drop into enemy territory, unleash havoc on alien foes, and extract before the peril overwhelms you. Yet, delve a bit deeper, and you’ll discover a complex game ripe with strategies,…

[albinofetus]

Debbie Wolowitz: [Fantasy sequence] "That's it? There's not enough food!"

Howard Wolowitz: "Well, you cleaned out Earth! I don't know what else to do!"

Bernadette Rostenkowski: [Back in reality] "How is this any different?"

Howard Wolowitz: "You didn't let me finish."

[in the fantasy, Howard serves Mrs. Wolowitz]

Howard Wolowitz: "Here you go, Mother."

Debbie Wolowitz: "You're a good boy, Howard, such a good boy."

[Howard turns the chair around, revealing Mrs. Wolowitz is now a skeleton wearing a wig and the fantasy ends]

[telomeke]

VANILLA EXTRACT ON TUMBLR

Apparently the current craze for vanilla extract on Tumblr all started with this poll by @relientk, posted on 3 Feb 2023–

The poll is linked here, and it hasn't even closed yet at this time.

But the preliminary poll results show that the vast majority of Tumblr users clicking on it are choosing vanilla extract as their preferred ingredient. More than 100,000 have selected that option at this time, and it will only grow.

With the poll going viral, apparently so has Tumblr's new post-Goncharov fixation for this humble cake flavoring. Who knew? 🤷‍♂️

[buttercuparry]

URGENT: 2 GAZAN GFM, EXTREMELY LOW ON FUNDS

Long post but I need your attention!!

I am here to bring attention to 2 fundraisers which have been stagnating for a long time.  I am generally wary of punching together more than one fundraiser in a post because more often than not, even if the textpost gets sufficiently boosted, with notes reaching upto 4k or above, there  isn’t really a difference made in the fundraisers themselves. But still I am attempting something here. Please cooperate and have the patience to completely read through to reach the poll at the end. That is the most important thing here !! If done right,we can truly help these gfms. We are attempting to raise at least 2k for each of the families and it would not be possible without your participation. 

1. Alaa Amsee, reblogged by 90-ghost , has been struggling with her gfm since May. With only 5.18% of her goal raised till now, Alaa has begun to despair. Alaa has 2 beautiful children- Maria and Hazem, both of whom have fallen sick due to lack of access to proper sanitation. Alaa herself has contracted Hepatitis A and is very weak, because she cannot keep down even the meager amount of food she has access to. The family is malnourished, starving, tired from fighting illnesses without access to medical care. On top of that- they are facing bombing in Deir al-Balah currently!! They have almost lost hope of finding any sort of help from the Tumblr community. Alaa says that Hazem, who is only 3 years old, has started to talk only of war, bombs and tanks. Please donate and help soothe the heart of a mother. 

2. Mohammad Iwais is an entrepreneur from Gaza, who once lived a beautiful life. But soon his nightmare began when his house was bombed in the genocide. Not only that, the occupation has also murdered 10 of his family members- his sister was on death’s door too, after being shot by a quadcopter bullet. Luckily she survived, but Mohammed knows that luck is a very fickle thing in Gaza and he cannot bear to lose any more of his family members. After the smear campaign against Gazans, Mohammad was worried. He was ( in fact he still is) ready to lose every facet of his privacy. He hates it, but says if this is how his humanity can be judged, then so be it.  Please don’t make him go through such humiliation. Help him evacuate himself and the rest of his family. You can find all relevant info on the vetting here.

On tumblr we often have events where we get to push the silly buttons. The site went wild on April fool boops and vanilla extract. I want you to show the same energy here too- this is about someone’s life. Remember we are trying to raise at least 2k for each of these gfm. Please click on the relevant  option after you donate/boost and mention the fundraiser falling behind in the polls. 

Boost the post so that it can reach people! It is important please! Make sure you donate too, if possible.

[amarynthian-chronicles]

Sebastian, looming ominously: I have summoned you here to extract highly classified information. I suggest you cooperate or I shall be forced to utilize force. If you value your limbs, I recommend you start singing, little bird.

Y/N, tied to an interrogation chair: look, Painter didn't tell me the new wifi password either. I tried everything, he is not letting us have it after all the data we used last month. Neither of us is going to be seeing that show's finale, I already made my peace with that. Can I go now?

Sebastian:...DAMN IT.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Leveraged buyouts are not like mortgages

I'm coming to DEFCON! On FRIDAY (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Here's an open secret: the confusing jargon of finance is not the product of some inherent complexity that requires a whole new vocabulary. Rather, finance-talk is all obfuscation, because if we called finance tactics by their plain-language names, it would be obvious that the sector exists to defraud the public and loot the real economy.

Take "leveraged buyout," a polite name for stealing a whole goddamned company:

Identify a company that owns valuable assets that are required for its continued operation, such as the real-estate occupied by its outlets, or even its lines of credit with suppliers;

Approach lenders (usually banks) and ask for money to buy the company, offering the company itself (which you don't own!) as collateral on the loan;

Offer some of those loaned funds to shareholders of the company and convince a key block of those shareholders (for example, executives with large stock grants, or speculators who've acquired large positions in the company, or people who've inherited shares from early investors but are disengaged from the operation of the firm) to demand that the company be sold to the looters;

Call a vote on selling the company at the promised price, counting on the fact that many investors will not participate in that vote (for example, the big index funds like Vanguard almost never vote on motions like this), which means that a minority of shareholders can force the sale;

Once you own the company, start to strip-mine its assets: sell its real-estate, start stiffing suppliers, fire masses of workers, all in the name of "repaying the debts" that you took on to buy the company.

This process has its own euphemistic jargon, for example, "rightsizing" for layoffs, or "introducing efficiencies" for stiffing suppliers or selling key assets and leasing them back. The looters – usually organized as private equity funds or hedge funds – will extract all the liquid capital – and give it to themselves as a "special dividend." Increasingly, there's also a "divi recap," which is a euphemism for borrowing even more money backed by the company's assets and then handing it to the private equity fund:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

If you're a Sopranos fan, this will all sound familiar, because when the (comparatively honest) mafia does this to a business, it's called a "bust-out":

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

The mafia destroys businesses on a onesy-twosey, retail scale; but private equity and hedge funds do their plunder wholesale.

It's how they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And it's what they did to hospitals:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/#charnel-house

It's what happened to nursing homes, Armark, private prisons, funeral homes, pet groomers, nursing homes, Toys R Us, The Olive Garden and Pet Smart:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

It's what happened to the housing co-ops of Cooper Village, Texas energy giant TXU, Old Country Buffet, Harrah's and Caesar's:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

And it's what's slated to happen to 2.9m Boomer-owned US businesses employing 32m people, whose owners are nearing retirement:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

Now, you can't demolish that much of the US productive economy without attracting some negative attention, so the looter spin-machine has perfected some talking points to hand-wave away the criticism that borrowing money using something you don't own as collateral in order to buy it and wreck it is obviously a dishonest (and potentially criminal) destructive practice.

The most common one is that borrowing money against an asset you don't own is just like getting a mortgage. This is such a badly flawed analogy that it is really a testament to the efficacy of the baffle-em-with-bullshit gambit to convince us all that we're too stupid to understand how finance works.

Sure: if I put an offer on your house, I will go to my credit union and ask the for a mortgage that uses your house as collateral. But the difference here is that you own your house, and the only way I can buy it – the only way I can actually get that mortgage – is if you agree to sell it to me.

Owner-occupied homes typically have uncomplicated ownership structures. Typically, they're owned by an individual or a couple. Sometimes they're the property of an estate that's divided up among multiple heirs, whose relationship is mediated by a will and a probate court. Title can be contested through a divorce, where disputes are settled by a divorce court. At the outer edge of complexity, you get things like polycules or lifelong roommates who've formed an LLC s they can own a house among several parties, but the LLC will have bylaws, and typically all those co-owners will be fully engaged in any sale process.

Leveraged buyouts don't target companies with simple ownership structures. They depend on firms whose equity is split among many parties, some of whom will be utterly disengaged from the firm's daily operations – say, the kids of an early employee who got a big stock grant but left before the company grew up. The looter needs to convince a few of these "owners" to force a vote on the acquisition, and then rely on the idea that many of the other shareholders will simply abstain from a vote. Asset managers are ubiquitous absentee owners who own large stakes in literally every major firm in the economy. The big funds – Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street – "buy the whole market" (a big share in every top-capitalized firm on a given stock exchange) and then seek to deliver returns equal to the overall performance of the market. If the market goes up by 5%, the index funds need to grow by 5%. If the market goes down by 5%, then so do those funds. The managers of those funds are trying to match the performance of the market, not improve on it (by voting on corporate governance decisions, say), or to beat it (by only buying stocks of companies they judge to be good bets):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/17/shareholder-socialism/#asset-manager-capitalism

Your family home is nothing like one of these companies. It doesn't have a bunch of minority shareholders who can force a vote, or a large block of disengaged "owners" who won't show up when that vote is called. There isn't a class of senior managers – Chief Kitchen Officer! – who have been granted large blocks of options that let them have a say in whether you will become homeless.

Now, there are homes that fit this description, and they're a fucking disaster. These are the "heirs property" homes, generally owned by the Black descendants of enslaved people who were given the proverbial 40 acres and a mule. Many prosperous majority Black settlements in the American South are composed of these kinds of lots.

Given the historical context – illiterate ex-slaves getting property as reparations or as reward for fighting with the Union Army – the titles for these lands are often muddy, with informal transfers from parents to kids sorted out with handshakes and not memorialized by hiring lawyers to update the deeds. This has created an irresistible opportunity for a certain kind of scammer, who will pull the deeds, hire genealogists to map the family trees of the original owners, and locate distant descendants with homeopathically small claims on the property. These descendants don't even know they own these claims, don't even know about these ancestors, and when they're offered a few thousand bucks for their claim, they naturally take it.

Now, armed with a claim on the property, the heirs property scammers force an auction of it, keeping the process under wraps until the last instant. If they're really lucky, they're the only bidder and they can buy the entire property for pennies on the dollar and then evict the family that has lived on it since Reconstruction. Sometimes, the family will get wind of the scam and show up to bid against the scammer, but the scammer has deep capital reserves and can easily win the auction, with the same result:

https://www.propublica.org/series/dispossessed

A similar outrage has been playing out for years in Hawai'i, where indigenous familial claims on ancestral lands have been diffused through descendants who don't even know they're co-owner of a place where their distant cousins have lived since pre-colonial times. These descendants are offered small sums to part with their stakes, which allows the speculator to force a sale and kick the indigenous Hawai'ians off their family lands so they can be turned into condos or hotels. Mark Zuckerberg used this "quiet title and partition" scam to dispossess hundreds of Hawai'ian families:

https://archive.is/g1YZ4

Heirs property and quiet title and partition are a much better analogy to a leveraged buyout than a mortgage is, because they're ways of stealing something valuable from people who depend on it and maintain it, and smashing it and selling it off.

Strip away all the jargon, and private equity is just another scam, albeit one with pretensions to respectability. Its practitioners are ripoff artists. You know the notorious "carried interest loophole" that politicians periodically discover and decry? "Carried interest" has nothing to do with the interest on a loan. The "carried interest" rule dates back to 16th century sea-captains, and it refers to the "interest" they had in the cargo they "carried":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Private equity managers are like sea captains in exactly the same way that leveraged buyouts are like mortgages: not at all.

And it's not like private equity is good to its investors: scams like "continuation funds" allow PE looters to steal all the money they made from strip mining valuable companies, so they show no profits on paper when it comes time to pay their investors:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

Those investors are just as bamboozled as we are, which is why they keep giving more money to PE funds. Today, the "dry powder" (uninvested money) that PE holds has reached an all-time record high of $2.62 trillion – money from pension funds and rich people and sovereign wealth funds, stockpiled in anticipation of buying and destroying even more profitable, productive, useful businesses:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

The practices of PE are crooked as hell, and it's only the fact that they use euphemisms and deceptive analogies to home mortgages that keeps them from being shut down. The more we strip away the bullshit, the faster we'll be able to kill this cancer, and the more of the real economy we'll be able to preserve.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

[lovelyyandereaddictionpoint]

Yandere Contained Monster Family (4)

Part One • Two •Three

“Now as we begin your examination, you cannot cut, snap, outwardly threaten, vocalize aggressively to the guards present. The same actions towards me will result in a 40 hours subject to forceful neutralization. So do you agree to the terms?”

The Werewolf sends a look at the shaking operator holding the gate 

He nods, standing on the authorized mark while the guards pour in before you

“Clear!”

You enter with the scientists trained to maintain the upkeep of the werewolf

Keeping their observations to themselves, you keep the werewolf’s attention

You figure you’d like being distracted while you were being poked and prodded at (not like that would ever happen to you though)

“So how’s your morning been Rod?”

“I’m doing much better than usual.”

“That’s good. Do you have any questions for me?”

“Is your Uncle blood-related to you?”

The question has you tilt your head to the side

Rod and Villar agreed that to release their human child from this evil facility they’d have to make you question everything

That way you’ll be more inclined to help them when they decide to leave

“He is. Are you curious because he’s so different then I?”

Rod fully planned to question you further specifically about your origin but a well almost perfectly+ timed deep extraction of hair had him wincing and the test being concluded

“Thanks for your cooperation Rod? You cool with the same thing next week?”

“In exchange for the time I get to spend with Villar?”

“Yes!”

“Can you…join us next time?”

You’re about to head out of the enclosure when you stop

“What do you need a mediator for you two?”

Rod doesn’t respond to your snark, just waiting intensely for your answer

Which you fully step out of the enclosure walking around to your usual window

“Sorry Rod but I’m no counselor and I’m strictly forbidden from speaking to more than one of our…’guests’ without an immediate threat of termination...on your end.”

Rod refused to show the despair that washed over him 

While he wasn’t known for all the decades he lived to let his mind imagine what could be his husband did

And when they last were able to communicate Villar had gushed about what it’d be like if they could both look down at you together again and somehow spark the memory of your childhood with them

Alas that didn’t seem possible unless either of them wanted to possibly get sniped by the real monster that they suspect was behind them losing you all those years ago

“Don’t look so upset. If it matters that much to you, I’ll look at the video recordings.”

Now that was something they could work with