#The Genesis if Insurance

[kc22invesmentsblog]

Unveiling History: The Genesis of Insurance - A Journey from Genoa, Italy, to Global Adoption

Written by Delvin In the annals of financial security, the concept of insurance stands as a beacon of protection against unforeseen adversities. The origins of this indispensable safeguard trace back to a pivotal moment in history – to the year 1347 in Genoa, Italy, where the world’s first recorded insurance policy marked the dawn of a revolutionary financial instrument. In the bustling…

[fantasiac]

he's the only hyperfixation that never really seems to die

Once again marvelling at the absolute infectious power of Sonic the Hedgehog, as a character and a series. So many of us got the bug from just... watching one playthrouh, seeing him in a crossover game, or parody and spoof dubbing. It doesn't matter.

Because once he gets you, he gets you. Here for life. A brain main stay. Commandeers your obsessive tendencies. Many such cases.

[alexbenjamin01]

Best Cheap Genesis Insurance For 2023 [Compare Quotes]

Genesis Insurance guarantees the best services for repair as it is one of the more recent names to enter the premium automobile market.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

I assure you, an AI didn’t write a terrible “George Carlin” routine

There are only TWO MORE DAYS left in the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

On Hallowe'en 1974, Ronald Clark O'Bryan murdered his son with poisoned candy. He needed the insurance money, and he knew that Halloween poisonings were rampant, so he figured he'd get away with it. He was wrong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Clark_O%27Bryan

The stories of Hallowe'en poisonings were just that – stories. No one was poisoning kids on Hallowe'en – except this monstrous murderer, who mistook rampant scare stories for truth and assumed (incorrectly) that his murder would blend in with the crowd.

Last week, the dudes behind the "comedy" podcast Dudesy released a "George Carlin" comedy special that they claimed had been created, holus bolus, by an AI trained on the comedian's routines. This was a lie. After the Carlin estate sued, the dudes admitted that they had written the (remarkably unfunny) "comedy" special:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/01/george-carlins-heirs-sue-comedy-podcast-over-ai-generated-impression/

As I've written, we're nowhere near the point where an AI can do your job, but we're well past the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

AI systems can do some remarkable party tricks, but there's a huge difference between producing a plausible sentence and a good one. After the initial rush of astonishment, the stench of botshit becomes unmistakable:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/03/botshit-generative-ai-imminent-threat-democracy

Some of this botshit comes from people who are sold a bill of goods: they're convinced that they can make a George Carlin special without any human intervention and when the bot fails, they manufacture their own botshit, assuming they must be bad at prompting the AI.

This is an old technology story: I had a friend who was contracted to livestream a Canadian awards show in the earliest days of the web. They booked in multiple ISDN lines from Bell Canada and set up an impressive Mbone encoding station on the wings of the stage. Only one problem: the ISDNs flaked (this was a common problem with ISDNs!). There was no way to livecast the show.

Nevertheless, my friend's boss's ordered him to go on pretending to livestream the show. They made a big deal of it, with all kinds of cool visualizers showing the progress of this futuristic marvel, which the cameras frequently lingered on, accompanied by overheated narration from the show's hosts.

The weirdest part? The next day, my friend – and many others – heard from satisfied viewers who boasted about how amazing it had been to watch this show on their computers, rather than their TVs. Remember: there had been no stream. These people had just assumed that the problem was on their end – that they had failed to correctly install and configure the multiple browser plugins required. Not wanting to admit their technical incompetence, they instead boasted about how great the show had been. It was the Emperor's New Livestream.

Perhaps that's what happened to the Dudesy bros. But there's another possibility: maybe they were captured by their own imaginations. In "Genesis," an essay in the 2007 collection The Creationists, EL Doctorow (no relation) describes how the ancient Babylonians were so poleaxed by the strange wonder of the story they made up about the origin of the universe that they assumed that it must be true. They themselves weren't nearly imaginative enough to have come up with this super-cool tale, so God must have put it in their minds:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/29/gedankenexperimentwahn/#high-on-your-own-supply

That seems to have been what happened to the Air Force colonel who falsely claimed that a "rogue AI-powered drone" had spontaneously evolved the strategy of killing its operator as a way of clearing the obstacle to its main objective, which was killing the enemy:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/ayyyyyy-eyeeeee/

This never happened. It was – in the chagrined colonel's words – a "thought experiment." In other words, this guy – who is the USAF's Chief of AI Test and Operations – was so excited about his own made up story that he forgot it wasn't true and told a whole conference-room full of people that it had actually happened.

Maybe that's what happened with the George Carlinbot 3000: the Dudesy dudes fell in love with their own vision for a fully automated luxury Carlinbot and forgot that they had made it up, so they just cheated, assuming they would eventually be able to make a fully operational Battle Carlinbot.

That's basically the Theranos story: a teenaged "entrepreneur" was convinced that she was just about to produce a seemingly impossible, revolutionary diagnostic machine, so she faked its results, abetted by investors, customers and others who wanted to believe:

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

The thing about stories of AI miracles is that they are peddled by both AI's boosters and its critics. For boosters, the value of these tall tales is obvious: if normies can be convinced that AI is capable of performing miracles, they'll invest in it. They'll even integrate it into their product offerings and then quietly hire legions of humans to pick up the botshit it leaves behind. These abettors can be relied upon to keep the defects in these products a secret, because they'll assume that they've committed an operator error. After all, everyone knows that AI can do anything, so if it's not performing for them, the problem must exist between the keyboard and the chair.

But this would only take AI so far. It's one thing to hear implausible stories of AI's triumph from the people invested in it – but what about when AI's critics repeat those stories? If your boss thinks an AI can do your job, and AI critics are all running around with their hair on fire, shouting about the coming AI jobpocalypse, then maybe the AI really can do your job?

https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

There's a name for this kind of criticism: "criti-hype," coined by Lee Vinsel, who points to many reasons for its persistence, including the fact that it constitutes an "academic business-model":

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

That's four reasons for AI hype:

to win investors and customers;

to cover customers' and users' embarrassment when the AI doesn't perform;

AI dreamers so high on their own supply that they can't tell truth from fantasy;

A business-model for doomsayers who form an unholy alliance with AI companies by parroting their silliest hype in warning form.

But there's a fifth motivation for criti-hype: to simplify otherwise tedious and complex situations. As Jamie Zawinski writes, this is the motivation behind the obvious lie that the "autonomous cars" on the streets of San Francisco have no driver:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/driverless-cars-always-have-a-driver/

GM's Cruise division was forced to shutter its SF operations after one of its "self-driving" cars dragged an injured pedestrian for 20 feet:

https://www.wired.com/story/cruise-robotaxi-self-driving-permit-revoked-california/

One of the widely discussed revelations in the wake of the incident was that Cruise employed 1.5 skilled technical remote overseers for every one of its "self-driving" cars. In other words, they had replaced a single low-waged cab driver with 1.5 higher-paid remote operators.

As Zawinski writes, SFPD is well aware that there's a human being (or more than one human being) responsible for every one of these cars – someone who is formally at fault when the cars injure people or damage property. Nevertheless, SFPD and SFMTA maintain that these cars can't be cited for moving violations because "no one is driving them."

But figuring out who which person is responsible for a moving violation is "complicated and annoying to deal with," so the fiction persists.

(Zawinski notes that even when these people are held responsible, they're a "moral crumple zone" for the company that decided to enroll whole cities in nonconsensual murderbot experiments.)

Automation hype has always involved hidden humans. The most famous of these was the "mechanical Turk" hoax: a supposed chess-playing robot that was just a puppet operated by a concealed human operator wedged awkwardly into its carapace.

This pattern repeats itself through the ages. Thomas Jefferson "replaced his slaves" with dumbwaiters – but of course, dumbwaiters don't replace slaves, they hide slaves:

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/behind-the-dumbwaiter/

The modern Mechanical Turk – a division of Amazon that employs low-waged "clickworkers," many of them overseas – modernizes the dumbwaiter by hiding low-waged workforces behind a veneer of automation. The MTurk is an abstract "cloud" of human intelligence (the tasks MTurks perform are called "HITs," which stands for "Human Intelligence Tasks").

This is such a truism that techies in India joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians." Or, to use Jathan Sadowski's wonderful term: "Potemkin AI":

https://reallifemag.com/potemkin-ai/

This Potemkin AI is everywhere you look. When Tesla unveiled its humanoid robot Optimus, they made a big flashy show of it, promising a $20,000 automaton was just on the horizon. They failed to mention that Optimus was just a person in a robot suit:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/elon-musk-tesla-robot-optimus-ai

Likewise with the famous demo of a "full self-driving" Tesla, which turned out to be a canned fake:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-self-driving-was-staged-engineer-testifies-2023-01-17/

The most shocking and terrifying and enraging AI demos keep turning out to be "Just A Guy" (in Molly White's excellent parlance):

https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/status/1751670561606971895

And yet, we keep falling for it. It's no wonder, really: criti-hype rewards so many different people in so many different ways that it truly offers something for everyone.

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/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image:

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Ross Breadmore (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/rossbreadmore/5169298162/

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

[cardis-tricycle]

🜏⛧ 𝙋𝙖𝙥𝙖 𝙀𝙢𝙚𝙧𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙨 - 𝙄 - 𝙄𝙄 - 𝙄𝙄𝙄 - 𝘾𝙖𝙧𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝘾𝙤𝙥𝙞𝙖 - 𝙄𝙑 🜏⛧

All sources

Papa Emeritus I

Ghost (2of2) live @ Fortarock Nijmegen 2011-07-02 Ghost B.C.

Ghost - 6/10/2012 Download Festival - Castle Donington, England

Ghost-Live At HellFest 2011-Intro/Con Clavi Con Dio/Elizabeth

Ghost - "Ritual" live 2010 at Hammer of Doom IV

Ghost - Ritual clip

Ghost - Prime Mover/Genesis/Ritual || live @ Roadburn / Midi Theatre || 14-4-2011 (3/3)

Papa Emeritus II

Ghost B.C. - Secular Haze

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Ghost B.C. - The Olde One - Papaganda Ep. 1

Ghost - Secular Haze - HD

Ghost B.C. - What Happens in Vegas... - Papaganda Ep. 2

GHOST - Monstrance Clock (Live at Main Square Festival 2014)

Papa Emeritus III

Ghost - Square Hammer (Official Music Video)

Ghost - Jigolo Har Megiddo (Live Acoustic) | HardDrive Online

Ghost - He Is (Music Video)

Ghost: The 2016 GRAMMY red carpet | Billboard

is papa emeritus iii okay? (No, not at all)

Ghost BC - Cirice (2016 Grammy Winning Song)

Cardinal Copia

Ghost - Rats (Official Music Video)

Ghost - Full Show!!! - Live HD (F.M. Kirby Center 2018)

Ghost - Chapter Six: The Visit

The Tunnel — Ghost - Dance Macabre (live)

4K - Ghost - Live at the Fillmore - Jackie Gleason Theater - Miami Beach, FL 11/24/2018

Ghost - Full Show!!! - Live HD (F.M. Kirby Center 2018)

Papa Emeritus IV

Ghost - Hellfest 2022 Headline Announcement

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Ghost - Watcher in the Sky - Live HD (CURE Insurance Arena 2022)

Ghost - Spillways (Official Music Video)

Ghost – Call Me Little Sunshine

Ghost - Mary On A Cross (Live In Tampa 2022)

[what-shitfuckery-is-this-ew]

BOYCOTTING FOR PALESTINE

The Official BDS Boycott Targets

Campaigns

Block the boat: End maritime arms transfer to Israel

Ban Apartheid Israel from Sports (FIFA, Olympics)

CAF get off Israel's train: Boycott CAF

Greenwashing Apartheid

Israeli Spyware

Military Embargo

Farming Injustice

Consumer Boycotts - a complete boycott of these brands

Cisco

Axa

Puma

Carrefour

HP

Siemens

Chevron

Intel

Caltex

Israeli produce

Re/max

Ahava

Texaco

Sodastream

Intel

Organic Boycott Targets - boycotts not initiated by BDS but still complete boycott of these brands

Disney

Macdonald's

Dominos

Papa Johns

Burger King

Pizza Hut

Wix

Divestments and exclusion - pressure governments, institutions, investment funds, city councils, etc. to exclude from procurement contracts and investments and to divest from these

Elbit Systems

CAF

Volvo

CAT

Barclays

JCB

HD Hyundai

TKH Security

HikVision

Pressure - boycotts when reasonable alternatives exist, as well as lobbying, peaceful disruptions, and social media pressure.

Google

Amazon

AirBnb

Booking.Com

Expedia

Teva

Here are some companies that strongly support Israel (but are not Boycott targets). There is no ethical consumption under capitalism and boycotting is a political strategy - not a moral one. If you did try to boycott every supporter of Israel you would struggle to survive because every major company supports Israel (as a result of attempting to keep the US economy afloat), that being said, the ones that are being boycotted by masses and not already on the organic boycott list are coloured red.

5 Star Chocolate

7Days

7Up

Apple

Arsenal FC

ALDO

Arket

Axe

Accenture

Ariel

Adidas

ActionIQ

Aquafina

Amika

AccuWeather

Activia

Adobe

Aesop

Azrieli Group

American Eagle

Amway Corp

Axel Springer

American Airlines

American Express

Atlassian

AdeS

Aquarius

Ayataka

Audi

Barqs

Bain & Company

Bayer

Bank Leumi

Bank Hapoalim

BCG (Boston Consulting Group)

Biotherm

Bershka

Bloomberg

BMW

Boeing

Booz Allen Hamilton

Burberry

Bath & Body Works

Bosch

Bristol Myers Squibb

Capri Holdings

Costa

Carita Paris

CareTrust REIT

Caterpillar

Coach

Cappy

Caudalie

CeraVe

Check Point Software Technologies

Cerelac

Chanel

Chapman and Cutler

Channel

Cheerios

Cheetos

Chevron

Chips Ahoy!

Christina Aguilera

Citi Bank

Codral

Cosco

Canada Dry

Citi

Clal Insurance Enterprises

Clean & Clear

Clearblue

Clinique

Champion

Club Social

Coca Cola

Coffee Mate

Colgate

Comcast

Compass

Caesars

Conde Nast

Cooley LLP

Costco

Côte d’Or

Crest

CV Starr

CyberArk Software

Cytokinetics

Crayola

Cra Z Art

Daimler

Dr Pepper

Del Valle

Daim

Doctor Pepper

Dasani

Doritos

Daz

Dior

Dell

Deloitte

Delta Air Lines

Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Telekom

DHL Group

David Off

Disney

DLA Piper

Domestos

Domino’s

Douglas Elliman

Downy

Duane Morris LLP

Dreft Baby Detergent & Laundry Products

Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream

eBay

Edelman

Eli Lilly

Evian

Empyrean

Ericsson

Endeavor

EPAM Systems

Estee Lauder

Elbit Systems

EY

Forbes

Facebook

Fairlife

Fanta

First International Bank of Israel

Fiverr

Funyuns

Fuze

Fox News

Fritos

Fox Corp

Gatorade

Gamida Cell

GE

Glamglow

General Catalyst

General Motors

Georgia

Gold Peak

Genesys

Goldman Sachs

Grandma’s Cookies

Garnier

Guess

Greenberg Traurig

Guerlain

Givenchy

H&M

Hadiklaim

Huggies

Hanes

HSBC

Head & Shoulders

Hersheys

Herbert Smith Freehills

Hewlett Packard

Hasbro

Hyundai

Henkel

Harel Insurance Investment & Financial Services

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

HubSpot

Huntsman Corp

IBM

Innocent

Insight Partners

Inditex Group

IT Cosmetics

Instacart

Intermedia

Interpublic Group

Instagram

ICL Group

Intuit

Jazwares

Jefferies

John Lewis

JP Morgan Chase

Jaguar

Johnson & Johnson

JPMorgan

Kenon Holdings

Kate Spade

Kirks’

Kinley Water

KKR

KFC

KKW Cosmetics

Kurkure

Keebler

Kolynos

Kaufland

Kevita

Knorr

KPMG

Lemonade

Lidl

Loblaws

Levi Strauss

Louis Vuitton

Life Water

Levi’s

Levi’s Strauss

LinkedIn

Land Rover

L’Oréal

Lego

Levissima

Live Nation Entertainment

Lufthansa

La Roche-Posay

Lipton

Major League Baseball

Manpower Group

Marriott

Marsh McLennan

Maison Francis Kurkdjian

Mastercard

Mattel

Minute Maid

Monster

Monki

Mainz FC

Mellow Yellow

Mountain Dew

Migdal Insurance

Marks & Spencer

Mirinda

McDermott Will & Emery

Motorola

McKinsey

Merck

Michael Kors

Mizrahi Tefahot Bank

Merck KGaA

Micheal Kors

Milkybar

Maybelline

Mount Franklin

Meta

MeUndies

Mattle

Microsoft

Munchies

Miranda

Morgan Lewis

Moroccanoil

Morgan Stanley

MRC

Nasdaq

Naughty Dog

Nivea

Next

NOS

Nabisco

Nutter Butter

No Frills

National Basketball Association

National Geographic

Nintendo

New Balance

Nutella

Newtons

NVIDIA

Netflix

Nescafe

Nestle

Nesquick

Nike

Nussbeisser

Oreo

Oral B

Old spice

Oysho

Omeprazole

Oceanspray

Opodo

P&G (Procter and Gamble)

Pampers

Pull & Bear

Pepsi

Pfizer

Popeyes

Parker Pens

Philadelphia Cream Cheese

Pizza Hut

Powerade

Purina

Phoenix Holdings

Propel

Ponds

Pure Leaf Green Tea

Power Action Wipes

PwC

Prada

Perry Ellis

Prada Eyewear

Pringles

Payoneer

Procter & Gamble

Purelife

Pureology

Quaker Oats

Reddit

Royal Bank of Canada

Ruffles

Revlon

Ralph Lauren

Ritz

Rolls Royce

Royal

S.Pellegrino

Sabra Hummus

Sabre

Sony

SAP

Simply

Smart Water

Sprite

Schwabe

Shell

Soda Stream

Siemens

StreamElements

Schweppes

Sunsilk

Signal

Skittles

Smart Food

Sobe

Smarties

Sephora

Sam’s Club

Superbus

Samsung

Sodastream

Sunkist

Scotiabank

Sour Patch Kids

Starbucks

Sadaf

Stride

Subway

Tang

Tate’s Bake Shop

The Body Shop

Tesco

Twitch

The Ordinary

Tim Hortons

Tostitos

Timberland

Topo Chico

Tapestry

Tropicana

Tommy Hilfiger

Tommy Hilfiger Toiletries

Turbos

Tom Ford

Taco Bell

Triscuit

TUC

Twix

Tottenham Hotspurs

Twisties

Tripadvisor

Uber

Uber Eats

Urban Decay

Upfield

Unilever

Vicks

Victoria’s Secret

V8

Vaseline

Vitaminwater

Volkswagen

Volvo

Walmart

Wegmans

WhatsApp

Waitrose

Woolworths

Wheat Thins

Walkers

Warner Brothers

Warner Chilcot

Warner Music

Wells Fargo

Winston & Strawn

WingStreet

Wissotzky Tea

WWE

Wheel Washing Powder

Wrigley Company

YouTube

Yvel

Yum Brands

Ziyad

Zara

Zim Shipping

Ziff Davis

[rottenpumpkin13]

Ouran High School Host Club: but it’s Shinra instead of High School, and Cloud is the unfortunate and very poor infantry man who gets lost and wanders in during a fancy host party event for the elite on accident and breaks a very expensive vase that was set to be auctioned off to the highest bidder later that night and is essentially in debt to Shinra and all of their hosts until his debt is repaid in full. And yes. Rufus, Reno, and Tseng as well as Genesis, Sephiroth, Angeal and Zack are all included as hosts because Shinra would absolutely whore out their prettiest employees (and his son) to the public for money. And now Cloud as well.

Cue Cloud "not today, satan" Strife

Rufus: That vase was worth more than your entire salary.

Cloud: Oh, I’m sorry! How much was it?

Rufus: It's fine. You'll just work it off as a host.

Cloud: But I don't work for free.

Rufus:

Cloud:

Rufus: The vase was ridiculously expensive and you don't have the money to pay for it, so naturally you will work here to pay it off.

Cloud: But you can't charge me if I've been injured on company property.

Rufus: But you're not injured on company—

*Cloud drops to the ground*

Rufus:

Cloud: According to Shinra Employee Contract Section 7B, any damages to company property during work hours are covered under company insurance, which this would fall under.

Rufus: Then we'll charge you as a civilian.

Cloud: Can't do that either. I'm in uniform, which makes me a Shinra employee. The company assumes liability.

Rufus:

Cloud: Actually, if we factor in my current hourly rate, overtime compensation I haven't received, hazard pay from last week's monster incident, and the mandatory break periods I worked through, plus the uniform maintenance fee that should've been reimbursed, and the medical compensation...

*Cloud pulls out a calculator*

Rufus:

Cloud: According to my calculations, Shinra actually owes me 47,892 gil.

Rufus:

Cloud: Debit or credit?

[stupidjewishwhiteboy]

Random anime, summarized badly (stolen from my Facebook Memories):

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas: a movie that contains absolutely no cannibals, zombies, etc.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: teen angst, with giant robots

FLCL: tween angst, with robots of various sizes that burst out of the main character's head in ways that might remind the viewer of other things going on in a tween's body

Gurren Lagann: We don't have time for teen angst in our increasingly growing robot anime, it's about to get MANLY

Promare: like Gurren Lagann, with gay firefighters

Kill La Kill: Wearing clothing is fascist, join the nudist anarchist rebellion!

Fire Force: Takes the term "fire fighter" rather more literally than usual

Kashimashi Girl Meets Girl: Well, I suppose there are *weirder* ways of getting free gender reassignment surgery

Ouran High School Host Club: It's about teenage prostitution! Sorta. Not really.

Cowboy Bebop: episode antagonists include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from "Game of Death," Cruella DeVille as an ecoterrorist, a senile old guy who likes to play chess, The Unabomber with a teddy bear theme, a bored computer with an interest in pre-Columbian South American art, Marshall Applewhite as an online avatar and Baron Harkonnen if he was also the Joker.

Outlaw Star: one episode revolves around an alien cactus who uses its mental powers to force people to eat inferior ice cream.

Trigun: why don't more shows involve insurance agents trying to deal with the fallout of your typical shonen action nonsense?

Puella Magi Madoka Magica: Just because a critter is cute and says he can turn you into Sailor Moon doesn't mean you should trust him

Welcome to the NHK: even if both you and all of your friends are genuinely messed up toxic people, hanging out together is still probably better than not

Genshiken: If you have ever self-identified as a nerd, geek, or similar term, you either know multiple people who will remind you of characters in the show, or you ARE one of the characters in this show

Shirobako: boy, making anime sure is stressful and hard!

[withgreatpowercomesmyfuckingdick]

Hi! Imma do something rare and actually make content, but its 11 at night and i just had a brain worm

for those of you that don’t know, i work at an accounting office. we do taxes. it is tax season. and now im thinking abt how AGSZC does taxes and what their papers are like and im inflicting it on the rest of you even if its gibberish

Angeal: A godsend. Keeps his forms in order and filed properly, calculates everything else himself like a good man. Papers honestly aren’t too bad, maybe 10-12 just because of his career/insurance plus his doubtless donations to charity, but aside from that. straightforward and done at his kitchen table

Genesis: A fucking NIGHTMARE. no doubt pays someone else to do it. and for fucks sake, i know he invests. constantly and consistently and probably in anything he thinks stands the slightest chance against shinra on the market. his 1099-B is a mess and definitely Not Totaled, so his is the bullshit you have to insert one. investment. at. a time. He’s the type that keeps fucking calling too, I can just tell. but, aside from the 1099-B, he’s probably got simple stuff as well. probably several 1099-INTs from several different bank accounts, maybe a couple 1098s floating around from vacation houses or some shit.

Sephiroth: Does his own. In ridiculously early. Makes almost no personal purchases so hardly has anything to pay. I can’t imagine not having a last name or not knowing his birthday doesn’t end up a legal problem somehow, so he likely has to walk directly into a damn tax office to say hey this is me and this is my shit no, someone isn’t stealing my identity. has one singular document and it’s his W-2. Which is. Fucking astronomical. Like, the number doesn’t even look right. His paycheck as a SOLDIER isn’t taxed, so he doesn’t really get much back on his refund. The only first without a healthcare /insurance form because why tf would Sephiroth have healthcare? What’s he gonna do, get sick?

not getting into how doing his own taxes was definitely a fight between him and Hojo at some point and ended up getting hashed out in a board room. Hojo didn’t like him having the autonomy of filing for himself instead of being claimed ad Hojo’s ‘dependent’. Sephiroth deadass threatened to go to court abt it. The President told Hojo to suck it up so they didn’t have to deal with scandal, Hojo wouldn’t tell Seph his birthday to be difficult, and here we are

Zack: Panicking. Late. Doesn’t know if his forms came in the mail, doesn’t know where he put them most of the time. Scrambles around for a fuck ton of receipts, ultimately has to request Shinra send him his shit again. DEFINITELY pays someone else to do it. W-2, 1095-A, 1099-C(s)(he has several debts i can feel it i love him but he screams bad financial decisions), probably some shit for his bike too. He customs it so I can see him listing some parts he buys for it as work expenses. Jokingly puts some money he gave aerith for flowers and what he spent to make her wagon as donations to charity and it actually goes through because the church is still considered a legal entity. Definitely has to pay late fees.

Cloud: Pays Tifa to do it. Filing for both of them is a nightmare cause all their shit burnt in Nibelheim, so once Edge gets right with the WRO they have to do all their paperwork from scratch and get reassigned SSNs. He genuinely has a fuckton of paperwork from doing the Strife Delivery Service. Luckily, only ‘employee’ he has is Tifa, and even then she doesn’t do things regularly aside from pick up the phone. Doesn’t make his business an LLC until he’s literally forced to due to his number of clients and someone trying to sue him for damages. 1099-NEC for TIfa for sure, then once he’s an LLC, some yearly maintenance to keep legal. Mileage and gas expenses go CRAZY on his self employment form, I fucking bet. I bet Cloud’s handwriting is shit tho. Tifa’s at her desk counting up his gains and losses for fucking ages because his fives look too similar to sixes. Eventually she wrangles him into installing some shit on his phone that counts it up, if only to cure her headache. Funnily enough, he does get veteran benefits from what’s left of Shinra’s shit, reparations of sorts, but he doesn’t keep it. All goes to charity, so that ends up in the books too.

alright, that was unnecessarily in depth and way longer than i planned. good night LMAO

[netscapenavigator-official]

People in the notes of my post about Tesla removing the gear selectors from its new cars, asking how that's even legal, clearly have no idea just how incompetent and slow-paced the NHTSA is.

Halogen headlights weren't legal until 1979.

Composite headlights (the uniquely designed ones that aren't the old-school circle or square ones you see on older cars) weren't legal until 1984.

Adaptive High Beams (Matrix Headlights) were only recently legalized, in 2022; and the regulations and testing procedures in order to approve them are so haphazard and over-complicated compared to Europe's that not a single automaker has even made them available.

Side Curtain airbags still are not mandated in the United States.

Turn Signals can be red in the U.S., as opposed to the statistically safer amber which is mandatory in Europe.

Making that worse, those red turn signals are allowed to share lamps with the brake lights. This means if you have your turn signal on, 1/3 of your brake lights can’t do their job because they're too busy doing another job.

There is no law in the United States dictating that an electric car must put on its brake lights when Regen braking. In fact, the law specifically states that only the friction brakes are required to activate brake lights. You can bring a Hyundai Ioniq 5 & 6, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60, and many other EVs to a rapid, complete stop without ever activating the brake lights.

Early model Chevrolet Bolt EVs and some Mercedes-Benz EVs will activate the brake lights appropriately when slowing down, but will deactivate their brake lights once they've come to a complete stop, allowing the car to sit at a standstill in the road without any indicator that it isn't traveling at the same speed as you are.

It's completely up to the automaker to decide how (or even if) to implement regen brake lighting. EVs and Hybrids have been around since the late 1990s and this still hasn't changed.

The US government STILL only evaluates a vehicles crash safety by crash testing it at 35 mph into a flat wall and t-boning it with a barrier representing a 3,000 lb sedan. They don't do an offset frontal test or a truck-barrier side test like the IIHS has been doing for private insurance companies for over a decade.

The NHTSA performs ZERO pedestrian crash safety tests like EuroNCAP does.

Oh, and on the topic of gear selectors, those aren't regulated at all. Here are some examples from modern cars, both electric and not:

BMW i3 & Nissan LEAF (Electric):

Toyota Prius (Hybrid) & Honda Clarity (Plug-in Hybrid):

RAM 1500 & Cadillac Escalade (Gasoline):

The automotive rules of the American government are pure chaos, and that’s if they're even there at all. If you're seriously asking how Tesla can allow a car to select reverse on its own, and then put the manual override in the touch screen, I mean, that's just scratching the surface.

If you wanna learn more, Technology Connections on YouTube has some great videos on the Turn Signal issue, the EV Regen brake light issue, and the history of the headlight regulations. I highly recommend you check them out because it truly puts into perspective just how awful the NHTSA is at doing its one job: keeping safety standards up-to-date.

[flowerwiththemachinegun]

The latest chapter of Misconduct got me imagining... how would Genesis and Tseng react if they saw/suspected Reader get wasted and/or drugged at a bar? (Reader could be either a stranger or someone they're secretly into, up to you.) If drugged, what would they do/say to the perpetrator? Where would they take Reader to recover and how would they treat them?

If you feel like answering for Rufus or any of the other Turks or Soldiers, I would love to read those scenarios too! Love your blog :)

Thank you for reading!! I really appreciate it a lot. I'll probably hit both in a small description. I'll go with someone their secretly into, kind of a stranger to them still. They admire reader from afar.

Genesis-

Drunk reader:

He's probably been eyeing you all night, so he can tell you've been drinking far more than usual. The way you spoke a bit too loud at times, swaying on your feet, and stumbling about. It's when you start getting a bit too handsy with another patron that he steps in. Knowing you aren't in your right mind he'd drag you back to his seat and talk to you for a while, just until you can coherently (enough) agree for him to take you home. If sobering up doesn't seem like a possibility, he'll do his best to make sure you're comfortable around him, ultimately dragging you home with him. I can't imagine he'd overstep basic boundaries. Yes, he'll give up his bed and sleep on the couch too. Express any interest in sleeping with him? Probably not happening...unless it's the next morning when you're in a better state of mind. If you drove there? He'll take you back to your car the next day, no worries, but he is absolutely not letting you drive. If he has to leave before you wake up, expect a cute note along with his name and number in the prettiest handwriting you've ever seen on your nightstand.

Drugged reader:

Oh I'm positive this man would beat the ever living fuck out of the person that drugged you then have a Shinra trooper bring him in to be charged. Not too much talking really. Similar to if you were shit-faced drunk, Genesis would notice something is off while he admires you from across the bar. Since that is all taken care of, he'll take you to seek medical attention. There's no telling what was put in your system and how you'll react to it. I'm also sure Genesis would stick around and wait for you to be discharged. How else is he going to make sure you get home safely? After this don't expect him to leave your side easily and he isn't parting from you without receiving a way to contact you.

Tseng-

Drunk reader:

Of course, he's been keeping track of what he wants, which means Tseng has been secretly watching you all night. Really, you're the only reason he comes back to this crappy bar with his fellow Turks. He'd easily pick up on the signs that you're far too drunk. I bet he'd be so awkward approaching you like this, no less it being the first time he's interacted with you. I think he'd be faster to get you out of the bar and somewhere safe. He'll either take you home or back to his place. Definitely wouldn't try any funny business with you at a time like this as well. If he has to leave he too will leave a way to get in contact with him. No cute note coming from this guy, at least certainly not this early on, he's still to emotionally locked up and it would probably make him blush at the though of even writing one.

Drugged reader:

Honestly, I bet you wouldn't even get a chance to be drugged. I think for Tseng, at all times, he's hyperaware of his surroundings. He caught the person the moment they laced your drink. If Tseng doesn't personally beat the culprit, he'll have Reno and Rude take care of it while he gets you out of the area. Of course, what comes first again is medical attention. Will make sure you aren't discharged without his permission and will have someone guarding your room while he interrogates them. Tseng is going to go through the lengths of insuring your safety to make sure what happened wasn't part of a bigger plot. He has to be certain no one else is out to get you. Once all is said and done, that guys is certainly going to be vanishing. What a better fate than to give the fucker off to Hojo. Death isn't enough and this is probably the worst punishment of them all.

**************

I didn't add this because I didn't think of this before for drunk reader, both of these guys would make sure you're taken care of in case you have a hangover. I think these two would know the routine very very well. I'd get the others but my brain is lagging but I can imagine they'd have similar actions.

Late edit: I'm also glad you like my blog!! That too, genuinely means a lot to me and makes me happy.

[preposterousgreen]

Angeal: C'mon, Genesis. Your parents have more money than god.

Genesis: Angeal, my parents are rural agricultural landlords who rely heavily on a single crop whose harvest is impossible to predict. One moderately bad typhoon could turn our orchards to mulch, and both the lenders and the insurers know it.

Angeal:

Angeal: All I heard in that was "landlords."

Genesis: *exasperated sigh*

[altocat]

Genesis, monologuing to himself: How do I even begin to explain Sephiroth? Sephiroth is flawless. He has 2 mako cat eyes, and a 7 foot odachi. I hear his hair is insured for $10,000. I hear he does shampoo commericals…in Midgar. His favorite movie is “mother.” One time, he met President Shinra on a plane. And he told him he was cool. One time, he punched me in the face… it was awesome!

Sephiroth, walks by: I literally have never done any of those things.

Sephiroth: "Genesis, stop trying to make 'Loveless' happen! It's not going to happen!"

[quietbluejay]

Transformers Infiltration #2

yes! I'm trying for another one!

hope you guys are enjoying the adventures of Verity and Hunter (and Jimmy and Ratchet) so far

It's time for Ratchet POV!

"Here...," says Ratchet's holoavatar, offering a holoavatar version of the computer up, and crackling with electricity

Narration: I do something I should have done several chronoticks ago

Narration: and then-

Narration: -I let him have it

electricity arcs out at Decepticon dude

also let's all be thankful they stopped saying "chronoticks"

sometimes things that are transformers specific…are worse

Ratchet goes into robot mode and blocks the falling wreckage

Runsamuck (grey dude): You-

he pulls out a gun

Runsamuck: ...piece of Autobot-

Ratchet casually fires a gun from his wrist

Ratchet: uh-uh...

Ratchet really came loaded for bear, huh, lol

he looks down towards the three humans who are staring at him bug-eyed

Ratchet:...not in front of the humans!

Ratchet: Hunter, Verity, Jimmy

Verity gets in but without taking Hunter's hand

Ratchet takes off with a screech of tires

oh huh, his autobot insignia is black i think it's a colouring issue, it was red in the last issue

RIP Jimmy I hope he had some kind of insurance or at least whoever owned the place, since Jimmy's 17

now let's see what's up with Mr. Businessman

he's dead, jim

they don't recognize his face

and he's got no ID either

meanwhile, while they're discussing it, one police dude is radioing it in that they found the guy they're looking for

first appearance of the machination!

kinda like SEELE if SEELE wore cowboy hats

(note: i have never seen Neon Genesis Evangelion)

wow, SoCal is much more lush than I was lead to believe

yes, by all means, bluejay, take your cues from the comic that has sharks in lake michigan

Ratchet: we…that is, my group intercepted a coded Decepticon pulsewave. A human male had been specifically targeted for deletion

the three of them look around alarmed

Ratchet: I think now I understand why. He managed what our entire detachment couldn't and-

Ratchet: hang on

Ratchet narration: I engage mufflers

they're being followed by a plane

it's TC again

Ratchet weaves his way through the cars

two of the cars crunch into each other causing some really bad damage

RIP

these two clowns are back how'd they get fixed so fast

the two decepticars slam into a poor unsuspecting red car while Ratchet explains that this isn't normal behaviour

so the data has to be really important

Ratchet: or they just don't care any more

Ratchet: or -uff! - both!

one of them rear ends him

blah blah it's pure with no contaminants

also since they've broken protocol they can expect a response...

and they'd like to be ready

it's my boi

hi starscream

Verity: what kind of aliendeathwarmachine are you?!

Ratchet: Alien? I'm a medic. I prefer…

a truck is barrelling towards them, head-on

Ratchet somehow slides to the side and avoids getting hit

the deceptidudes aren't as lucky

and there go our two decepticon cars crashing to the ground at the bottom of the cliff

"STOP!" Verity yells

Ratchet screeches to a stop

poor verity is having a panic attack

Verity: I-I did a bad thing, I know but...

Verity: I can't deal with this, okay

Hunter: Verity...

Verity: I just can't!

Jimmy grabs Hunter's shoulder

Jimmy: Hunter...

Jimmy: no offence but…I'll talk to her

he clambers out over Hunter

Hunter is left alone, tapping his fingers

he catches himself and doesn't fall

Verity giggles

Jimmy: oh yeah, that's it...freak!

lol

Hunter: and the guys chasing us are Decepticons, right? So…what does that make you?

Ratchet: nervous

he says he wants to put as much distance between them and the other guys ASAP

Hunter leans back

Hunter: here…we call that evasion. want to try again? them decepticon, you…

Ratchet: we-

Jimmy and Verity run back into the car

Jimmy: gotta go!

Verity: now!

Hunter: but-

he looks up at the sky and sees Thundercracker (again)

Hunter: ah, okay, it'll keep

oh huh at least one of Verity's foster homes was Catholic, looks like man I didn't have the hail mary memorized at her age lmao

a missile streaks towards Ratchet

Ratchet: NOW

he zooms off the highway

oof that's gonna be some bad whiplash

everyone gets their guns out

Hunter: tell me they're friends of yours...

they fire up at Thundercracker

he gets hit and flies off

Hunter: hm. These, ah, comrades of yours…not big on hugs and happy returns, I'm guessing?

Ratchet: Prowl?

the three Autobots here transform

doh! of course it's sunstreaker, not bee

there's a beat panel looking at ratchet

who looks like an ambulance so he has no expression

Ratchet: two words...

Ratchet: siege mode

Prowl looks shocked

and end issue!

lmao this Prowl was possessed by Ultra Magnus

and we're really getting to see some of Furman's flaws lol, he can kinda get stilted at times, and the technobabble....

[genesislatransport]

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[strayheartless]

does the coven and Zack all live in the same house or do they each have their own place?

**Sorry I’m about to bring the mood down on this one, but it’s the story I had in my head originally and we all know how much I torture Cloud. Just be careful with this one, there’s some strong topics**

They live in the same house.

It used to be different. In the early days before things got truly serious between them, they all lived separately. This was mostly because their relationship kind of evolved slowly.

It started with Gen and Angeal. Pre Zack they were together as teens and then broke up because of changing situations. Then Genesis met Sephiroth and they started dating, only to then reconnect with Angeal who was at the time dating Zack.

Zack thought Angeal was a whole lot of goth witch boyfriend… he truly had no idea what he was in for.

Cloud was a bit of a suprise to everyone, because by the time he came along they had settled into something of a routine. They all still lived Separately, but it was unusual to find them without the others.

Cloud entering the scene changed the dynamic because there were a lot of rough nights with Cloud. They’d all kind of fallen for Cloud instantly upon meeting him (not magic just chemistry.) but once they started dating it became obvious Cloud had some… issues.

Not to make this sad, it’s just the story I’ve always had in my head for this particular AU. Cloud was unmercifully bullied as a kid and he’s got a very long list of mental health issues that come along with him. There’s the depersonalisation and derealisation. There was self harm for a while; a few nights when they’d all gotten some worryingly worded texts that had them all out of their respective doors before Cloud could get too far away from himself.

He’s never gotten far but there were times when Sephiroth has driven from work early to sit on the floor with him; or Gens come round to find he hasn’t moved from the bed in two days. Days where Angeal has physically removed him from his apartment and took Cloud to his own house to bath him and feed him and just generally make sure he’s okay.

Zack is the one who suggests they look for a house together out of sheer terror if anything else. Clouds good now though but the early days were… they were tough. Love and support was a contributing factor to Clouds healing journey but the health insurance from being Sephiroth’s dependent and the access to antidepressants helped a lot.

Clouds friends often talk about how the coven was kind of Clouds saving grace. Even when he was at his worst with them, it wasn’t the worst he’d ever been. He had smiles more with them. But Tifa has reliably informed them that at the time they met him Cloud was probably at his lowest point. They all are grateful that the universe but him in their path.

** sorry it’s just always been the story with this one. The coven love him and he’s safe now but the story’s always been that their early relationship with him was coloured by constant fear that he’d go to far one day.**