#all of the real solutions cost money

[caffeinatedopossum]

People who offer solutions to my problems should all be required to take part in a 30 day free trial of living with all of my conditions just to ensure that their helpful tips are realistic and not actually just one more obstacle on the list of never ending obstacles that I have to manage everyday

[caimitos]

saw a post about projecting your ethnicity onto a character and started missing vespa ilkay. so so bad

[reasonsforhope]

African poverty is partly a consequence of energy poverty. In every other continent the vast majority of people have access to electricity. In Africa 600m people, 43% of the total, cannot readily light their homes or charge their phones. And those who nominally have grid electricity find it as reliable as a Scottish summer. More than three-quarters of African firms experience outages; two-fifths say electricity is the main constraint on their business.

If other sub-Saharan African countries had enjoyed power as reliable as South Africa’s from 1995 to 2007, then the continent’s rate of real GDP growth per person would have been two percentage points higher, more than doubling the actual rate, according to one academic paper. Since then South Africa has also had erratic electricity. So-called “load-shedding” is probably the main reason why the economy has shrunk in four of the past eight quarters.

Solar power is increasingly seen as the solution. Last year Africa installed a record amount of photovoltaic (PV) capacity (though this still made up just 1% of the total added worldwide), notes the African Solar Industry Association (AFSIA), a trade group. Globally most solar PV is built by utilities, but in Africa 65% of new capacity over the past two years has come from large firms contracting directly with developers. These deals are part of a decentralised revolution that could be of huge benefit to African economies.

Ground zero for the revolution is South Africa. Last year saw a record number of blackouts imposed by Eskom, the state-run utility, whose dysfunctional coal-fired power stations regularly break down or operate at far below capacity. Fortunately, as load-shedding was peaking, the costs of solar systems were plummeting.

Between 2019 and 2023 the cost of panels fell by 15%, having already declined by almost 90% in the 2010s. Meanwhile battery storage systems now cost about half as much as five years ago. Industrial users pay 20-40% less per unit when buying electricity from private project developers than on the cheapest Eskom tariff.

In the past two calendar years the amount of solar capacity in South Africa rose from 2.8GW to 7.8GW, notes AFSIA, excluding that installed on the roofs of suburban homes. All together South Africa’s solar capacity could now be almost a fifth of that of Eskom’s coal-fired power stations (albeit those still have a higher “capacity factor”, or ability to produce electricity around the clock). The growth of solar is a key reason why there has been less load-shedding in 2024...

Over the past decade the number of startups providing “distributed renewable energy” (DRE) has grown at a clip. Industry estimates suggest that more than 400m Africans get electricity from solar home systems and that more than ten times as many “mini-grids”, most of which use solar, were built in 2016-20 than in the preceding five years. In Kenya DRE firms employ more than six times as many people as the largest utility. In Nigeria they have created almost as many jobs as the oil and gas industry.

“The future is an extremely distributed system to an extent that people haven’t fully grasped,” argues Matthew Tilleard of CrossBoundary Group, a firm whose customers range from large businesses to hitherto unconnected consumers. “It’s going to happen here in Africa first and most consequentially.”

Ignite, which operates in nine African countries, has products that include a basic panel that powers three light bulbs and a phone charger, as well as solar-powered irrigation pumps, stoves and internet routers, and industrial systems. Customers use mobile money to “unlock” a pay-as-you-go meter.

Yariv Cohen, Ignite’s CEO, reckons that the typical $3 per month spent by consumers is less than what they previously paid for kerosene and at phone-charging kiosks. He describes how farmers are more productive because they do not have to get home before dark and children are getting better test scores because they study under bulbs. One family in Rwanda used to keep their two cows in their house because they feared rustlers might come in the dark; now the cattle snooze al fresco under an outside lamp and the family gets more sleep.

...That is one eye-catching aspect of Africa’s solar revolution. But most of the continent is undergoing a more subtle—and significant—experiment in decentralised, commercially driven solar power. It is a trend that could both transform African economies and offer lessons to the rest of the world."

-via The Economist, June 18, 2024. Paragraph breaks added.

[aethelflaedladyofmercia]

One of my big executive function struggles is feeding myself.

I live alone (apart from the cat). I lose track of time when I’m involved in a project, and I don’t feel hungry so much as tired a lot of the time, which tends to lead to the wrong solution.

I hate taking five minutes to make myself food. If I have energy, it feels like I’m wasting time that could be spent writing or researching or whatever. And if I don’t have energy… FUCK. Even peeling a banana is beyond me.

When I drove to work, pre-pandemic, this often meant Dunkin’ Donuts for breakfast, Burger King for dinner, maybe head over to the bakery for a sandwich at lunch. I’d try not to do all three on the same day, but… I never had the patience to make food.

But now I work from home in the suburbs. There’s not a lot of places in easy driving distance, and only a few of them deliver. Food I get through Uber Eats or Grub Hub arrives cold. Always. I’m signed up to one of those weekly meal delivery services but they keep raising the prices and now I’m down to 4 meals a week.

I’m not asking for money, btw. I can afford to feed myself, I just don’t have the energy.

Now, in today’s society, this is considered lazy. Inefficient. How many times have we seen people saying working class people waste their money on fast food, and don’t they realize it’s cheaper to buy and cook healthy fresh foods? And you can say over and over again about the cost of exhaustion, but there’s still this sense of “no, you should be able to do this, just like everyone always has, this generation is just lazy…”

Not just from other people. Got that voice in my head, too.

And whenever it starts to get abusively loud, I just remind myself:

Working class apartments in Ancient Rome didn’t have kitchens. Apartment blocks (insulae) had shops on the ground floor, especially bakeries and places that sold quick hot food you could eat on your way to work, maybe with a few seats along a bar where you could rest for five minutes on your break.

Not just a few. These were goddamn EVERYWHERE.

We’ve known for two thousand years that people who work all day don’t have the energy or resources to cook for themselves. Longer, because Rome didn’t invent this, it’s just well-known there cuz Rome.

Anyway. I think if as a society we just accepted that “people don’t have the energy to cook but still need healthy food” is a real and valid issue, we could find some affordable fucking solutions. And step one is to stop blaming people (and ourselves) for not having that energy.

[godofdystopia]

Give me more Wayne Family shenanigans

No no no, not Batfamily shenanigans... Wayne family shenanigans

Gice me a Bruce whose public persona is a swooning primadonna who doesn't know how anything works outside of the bubble he lives in. He throws money at problems as his first and only solution and he thinks bananas cost 32 dollars a pop. Give me a Bruce who decides to play up the billionaire playboy persona so much that I'd someone told you "Bruce Wayne is Batman." You not only wouldn't believe them... but you would be genuinely insulted and angry at the insinuation.

The Wayne's have their own lifestyle brand, their own reality tv show, their own vlog empire... they're the Kardashians of the DC world and nobody knows shit

And let it transfer to the batfam.

Each and every one of then act like nepo babies with silver spoons glued to them at all times. Dick gets to run the company for a day because they're filming an episode for the Reality Show. Jason uses it as an excuse to act like a moody brat and work through his issues without harming the rest of the family and so has a dozen vlogs about running away on a motorcycle only for the tv show to film their teary eyed reunion. Tim dies on the inside every time he has to fake laugh at one of Bruce's corny jokes for the camera. Damien is... present. Everyone thinks he's a brooding goth because of his distance.

The world thinks the Wayne's are extravagantly spoiled rotten and nobody would ever even consider they would go out and fight crime. Joker could not conceive of a better joke in his entire life. The Justice League think Batman is lying to then about his secret identity. Nobody believes the Wayne's are the Batfamily.

It's wonderful and I want this idea to be real

[artsekey]

I really hate how ads have taken over the internet. On one hand, I know that hosting a website costs money, right? And ad revenue is one of the simplest ways for free-to-use websites to cover their operating costs.

My question is-- and I would genuinely love an answer-- is this ever going to stop? Tumblr ran for a long time without ads. So did Youtube. I know that the cost of hosting so much media has gone up, but there are a lot of users on these websites that make the content that drives people to use the service that don't see any of the money generated by this revenue. On Youtube, there's at least a way for creators to make some money from what they do. For most, it isn't much, but the opportunity is there. On Tumblr, well... the ability to convert the visibility of my blog into any financial gain practically nonexistent, though they did at one point promise that users would be able to make money from ads run on their blogs (whatever happened to that, Staff?).

"You can pay to avoid seeing ads!" Tumblr says, as if the views on my main blog alone over the past few years have not generated more than enough ad revenue to cover the price they're asking me to pay, the person who is actively making content that brings eyes to their ads.

I'm not mad at Tumblr for hosting ads. I get that it has to happen because it's the easiest way to keep the site free, and honestly, I imagine Tumblr's staunch opposition to monetization has been a real obstacle for the team building Tumblr. But at the same time, it feels like yet another small concession in the usability of the site. I'm tired of ads that auto-play with blaring audio while I'm scrolling. I'm tired of adds that, if I touch them while trying to scroll past them, take me to an external site. Outside of tumblr, I'm tired of looking for information online only to get a webpage that's 95% ads and otherwise illegible. Hell, I recently got an ad on Discord. Was it unobtrusive? Maybe. But it was there, for the first time, and I know that won't be the end.

I know the first reply I'm going to get on this is "use adblock", and yes, that's a solution, but think about how much the landscape for media has changed in just ten years.

Popular forums are basically gone outside of reddit.

Youtube, without Red, is ad hell. You can't watch more than 3-4 minutes of video without getting sent to marketing hell.

Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter-- it's terrible. I firmly believe they've manufactured a worse experience through the implementation of ads to convince you to buy into their premium services.

Just Check out this video of Penguinz0 trying to watch a video on a third-party site.

There's discussion of putting ads into video games.

Remember when games didn't include micro-transactions? Blizzard is charging $70 for one mythic skin. You could almost buy Overwatch 1 twice-over at that price-point.

Influencers make a living by making their lives into advertisements.

Youtube has retaliated against users using ad-block on non-chrome browsers by artificially inflating the load times of it's videos.

What can we do about this? I imagine companies see it as an infinite money hack; users can't stop companies from hosting ads, and the action they could take to voice their displeasure-- leaving the site, using other competitive services-- has been all but obliterated thanks to the homogeneity of popular social media outlets. If someone is truly so incensed about ads, well-- it isn't like they have to engage with them, right? They can enroll in a cheap, auto-renewing service to get rid of ads entirely. Well, wait, the price of premium might just have to go up. Don't worry, it's auto-renewing! You won't even notice it. Oh, no, it's got to go up again, you won't even notice it.

There's no incentive for them to cap this behavior, and no way for us as users to pressure them to do so. We create these spaces; we fill them with color, art, activism, community, and the companies that ride on the tailcoat of the spaces we create tell us to give them more. What comes next?

[secretsideblogshhhh]

Imagine you live in a kingdom. Everything in this kingdom was modeled after the founder of the whole city.

This means the house sizes, the utensils, the clothes, every single thing, was made for him.

And for plenty of people this is fine. The clothes fit them, the cabinets are easy enough to reach, the size of the tools are perfect.

But you're a fair bit smaller than this guy was. The clothes are extremely baggy on you. You struggle to keep them on. They get in your way and you trip over them all the time.

You can't reach the cabinets, the tools are hard to hold in your hands.

Everything you do takes so much effort because nothing here was made for you.

But everyone else gets annoyed by this, not because of the system made that makes life hard on you, but because you're different.

They hate you constantly tripping.

You mention maybe getting a belt to help with that, and everyone you know gets mad at you for even suggesting it.

"you don't really need a belt"

"you could just take some growth medicine, get bigger"

"you don't deserve special treatment just because you're different"

"well everything works just fine for me, I don't know why you have issues"

And it's frustrating. The only person who you can relate to is your buddy Tim, who's a whole lot bigger than the guy everything was made for was.

His clothes cut off his circulation, they actively hurt him.

He hits his head on doors, he can barely use the tools because they're so small to him.

He wants to make his own clothes, but he can't afford it because he can't keep a job.

No one wants to hire a guy who can't hold the tools, or who needs a break every few hours so he can take off his clothes in the bathroom to breathe.

And even if he did manage to get the money, the tools are too small. He'd have to hire someone.

And hiring someone would cost so much more.

Of course the responses he gets are similar to yours.

"you're just lazy, it's not that hard to get and keep a job"

"have you tried just losing weight? That's probably what's causing all your issues"

You and him bond over this. How the world is cruel to you for being different. You found each other because of you were different from everyone else and it brought you closer

But then people see your friendship. It would be natural to assume that your friendship makes sense. You have the same struggles after all.

But no.

People see that you're friends and say

"well obviously you're both making up your issues, it's so rare for even one of you to exist. But 2 of you? You have to be lying for attention"

You try to show them that your issues are real, because you want help. You'd love for others to understand and help you fix the way the kingdom is built.

But people look away, they ignore you. Either pretending to not see you or they just invalidate your experience.

"everyone has rough days"

"you just got some poorly made clothes"

"He just wants an excuse so he doesn't have to work"

"if you just tried harder-"

Everyone seems to have some solution for your issues, ones you've tried a hundred times before.

Everyone seems to have an opinion on your existence. Usually pity or disgust. Often a mix of both, though the disgust isn't something anyone will admit to aloud. Their actions speak loud enough though.

That's how it feels to have a disability. Especially an invisible one. You have to fight just to be heard and it's exhausting.

Everything that you do is a struggle people who aren't disabled just don't understand. And it's infuriating how they write you off just because they don't want to even try to understand

[localplaguenurse]

Falling Head over Heels (Pantalone x Male Reader) pt.2

Notes: yeah there was always going to be more to this, honestly. Sfw, more of Reader's dad being an ass, more elaboration on Reader's job and condition, and some suggestive content towards the end.

Pt 1 here

You weren’t surprised that your father had requested you make your presence limited during his dinner with the Regrator. That was the only part of this situation that wasn’t a surprise. The rest of it all, you’re unsure which is more shocking; the fact your father had asked Pantalone for a do-over dinner, or that Pantalone accepted the invitation. There’s also the realization that your father is willing to work with the Fatui in order not to compromise the wealthy lifestyle your family has been living for generations now. A month after the initial party, the shock is not only still real, but his doubling down on it has taken you and your mother aback. 

“Dear, I understand things have been a little shaky for us,” your mother said the night Pantalone’s invitation acceptance was made known, “but do we need to do this? We can honestly get by fine enough, even if it’s not as much as we had before.”

You could hear in his voice that your father was scowling. “You’d really want to embarrass both of our families like that? Lose all standings and ties we have with our friends and colleagues?”

“By the Tsaritsa, you’re making it out like we’re about to go homeless! We’re downsizing!”

“Will we be keeping all our servants if we downsize? Are you going to start cooking our meals? Taking our son to his appointments or to his publisher? Buying all his supplies?”

You raised your hand, not looking up from your book. “Friendly reminder that I am the one who pays for my appointments and supplies now.”

“That’s pocket money compared to the costs of transportation and the accommodations we’ve made and will need to make,” your father snapped, “and you’re still making less than us to boot!”

You looked up and directly in the direction of your father’s voice. His silhouette was backlit by the light of the fireplace, and your initial thought was how it looked like hellfire. You made a mental note to include it somewhere in the next few chapters of your book. 

That was not the end of the arguing between your mother and father, but that was the point you stepped out of the conversation. Their bickering grew louder when you left the room to read elsewhere. With the eerie, hateful silence that plagued the manor the next morning, you took that as a sign that this dinner with Pantalone was happening whether you and your mother liked it or not. 

Fine, whatever. You have work to do anyways.

That is the mantra you repeat in your head as you feel it start to ache in frustration. Your eyes pour over the words you’ve typed so far, trying to make sense of the point you’re making. The wording is clunky, awkward, but you’re struggling to come up with something more concise that accurately conveys the thoughts in your mind. You hear your editor’s voice telling you it doesn’t have to be perfect, that’s the point of a first draft, to just get the point down and then figure out how to make it sound nice after you’ve figured out the whole story. The perfectionist in you screams otherwise, but offers no solution other than to start over completely.

You rub your eyes, feeling mentally drained. Part of you says to take a break, but part of you says you have to make the most of your motivation while you have it, and you are so close to figuring it all out, it’s on the tip of your tongue. Or fingers, come to think of it.

You’re on what feels like the hundredth reread of your scene, having stared at the words so much that they start to look foreign. Your concentration on the page is hardly broken when you hear the door to your office open, and as such, you do not look up. It’s merely Adelaide, you think, just bringing you some refreshments. Your fingers hover over the typewriter as soft footsteps approach your desk, just out of your vision.

You poke at the keys slowly, feeling inspiration drain out of your fingertips. The footsteps grow closer, and you find it odd that Adelaide has yet to say anything, but continue hyperfocusing on your work. Come on, you have the image in your head, and your descriptive vocabulary is vast enough that you should know how to describe it, even if only in fragments. You have the wording of it in your head so why can’t you actually put the words down on paper?

The footsteps stop right next to you. You don’t pay them any mind, assuming Adelaide is about to place something on your desk, perhaps a slice from the cake your father bought for his dinner tonight. You move the geography textbook you have out to the corner of your desk and move what you have of your chapter so far out of the way.

Unable to look out of the corner of your eye, you can not see her move closer to you, but you sense her presence right next to you. The feeling of someone’s body heat is hard to miss, as is the distinct sensation of being watched. You can’t see it, but it feels like Adelaide is standing right on the edge of where your vision ends.

You barely look up from the typewriter when you address her. “Adelaide, I would like some personal space.”

The laughter you hear right in your ear is a man’s. You immediately jump up and away, stumbling over your chair and falling on your back. You sit up, and at first, you see the dark attire and feel your stomach sink. It continues sinking down as your eyes move up to see Pantalone’s face. He’s smiling, which might have been handsome if he wasn’t finding clear amusement in your reaction.

You can’t find your words, so Pantalone speaks instead.

“Apologies,” he says, chuckling a little, “I was just… testing something.”

My fight or flight instincts? You ask yourself but know better than to verbalize. Pantalone steps forward and sets your chair upright, and glances at the typewriter on your desk. He stares for a few seconds, and lets out a soft hum as his eyes drift to where your other finished pages are. His gloved hand drifts over to the pile, and that’s when you quickly stand up.

“That’s not finished yet,” you quickly tell him, “it’s a rough draft.”

You see his eyes glance your way, and he retracts his hand. Pantalone takes a step back, turning to face you. “So I’m not allowed to read any of it?”

“I…” The verbal trap he’s laid out is not lost on you. He knows you can’t easily, confidently say “no” to a Harbinger, especially since you have made a fool of yourself in front of him before. You swallow, and rephrase your thoughts. “I-I would prefer to have a finished chapter before I let anyone read my works.”

Pantalone smiles wider. “Ah, I suppose that is fair.”

He continues to smile and stare at you as you awkwardly sit back down in your chair. You turn your head in his direction, propping your chin up on your hand. “I, um, I thought you were having dinner with my father…?”

Pantalone nods. “Yes, we were, but when I had asked why you were not joining us, I could tell I had struck a nerve between your father and mother.”

“... How so?”

“Your mother asked if she could speak to your father for a moment, and when they did not come back for another ten or so minutes, I figured I should go find them.”

“Did you?”

“They seemed… busy.”

You can imagine the argument right now. You shake your head. “Sorry about that, things have been sort of, um… hectic here. It’s taken its toll on my parents.”

Pantalone nods in understanding, and you wonder if he thinks this has anything to do with the party. You turn back to the typewriter and, rereading the page, decide you hate it and it needs to go. You reach forward and grasp the knob on the end of the roller, twisting it until the paper can be slipped out. You reread it one last time, then crumple it up in your hands.

You hear Pantalone’s voice. “So, I take it you enjoy writing?”

“Right now? No,” you say, which earns a laugh from Pantalone, “but generally, yes.”

“How long have you been writing?”

You lean over and toss the crumpled paper in the waste bin next to your desk. “Professionally, I’ve been writing for eight years, though I started using the typewriter when I was ten.”

Pantalone watches as you slip more paper into the roller, cranking the knob on the end until the paper has been fed through properly, making minor adjustments to the paper’s position. You then slide the roller to the left, the carriage stopping it once it’s in place. Your fingers hover above the keys for a moment, and Pantalone sees your focused expression shift into exhaustion. You groan, running a hand through your hair. If he had to wager a guess, you’ve just lost all writing motivation.

“You know,” Pantalone says, “I could hear your typing through the door before I entered. You type rather fast, it’s impressive.”

The flattery noticeably catches you off guard. “Oh, um, thank you,” you reply, still a little on edge with a Harbinger in your study.

“I have secretaries who couldn’t type that fast without making mistakes, but that page you were working on had consistent strokes and only one typo.”

You turn your head in an attempt to sort of hide the way your cheeks warm up, but Pantalone silently leans over anyway to see you blush. You don’t see him doing this, which Pantalone makes another note of.

“I have the muscle memory for it, I suppose,” you remark, “it’s one of the things I’ve been working on since my diagnosis.”

“Diagnosis… oh, your eye disorder?”

You blink, and turn to Pantalone, surprised at the casual question. “How did you–”

“Your mother briefly explained it at the party,” Pantalone recounts, “that you were diagnosed as a child and do not have any peripheral vision.”

You sigh, and Pantalone hears a hint of annoyance. “Yes, that’s why I ran into you.” You turn to your typewriter, fingers hovering over the keys while you balance thinking of your scene and carrying on the conversation. “It’s called retinitis pigmentosa, and it runs in my mother’s side of the family. My grandfather had it, which made my mother a carrier for it, and then she passed it on to me, and possibly my sisters.”

“Wait, sisters?”

“One older, two younger,” you say, “and an older brother, but he got lucky so his eyesight is still fine.”

“When were you diagnosed, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I was eight when I was properly diagnosed,” you recount. “I used to stumble and trip over furniture all the time when I was little, and was scared of the dark. My family used to tease me about it, until I was around six or seven. That’s when my mother started getting concerned, because I was a seemingly normal child who could read, write, and talk just fine, could walk and stand upright just fine, but I would still trip and fall over seemingly obvious hazards, especially in the dark.”

“I see, I see…”

You pull your hands away from the typewriter, and interlock them on your desk. “With adequate treatment, the rate of my going blind has slowed, but cannot be prevented. From what my doctors say and what I know of my grandfather’s case, I will lose my central vision sometime in my forties if I’m lucky.”

“Oh, I’m… very sorry to hear that.”

Uncomfortable silence hangs in the air. Internally, you’re screaming at yourself for just dumping all of that on the Regrator. In all fairness, he did ask, but still.

At the edge of your central vision, you see a page from your rough draft slip away from the stack. You turn your head, and see Pantalone holding it. Heat spreads across your face, and you quickly pull the page from his grasp. The knowing smile on his face tells you it’s too late.

What sounds like condescension laces his voice. “I was enjoying that, thank you very much.” “And I said I don’t like people reading my work before it’s done,” you hiss, your embarrassment painfully obvious. You place the page back on top of the stack and lift it up and away from Pantalone. You search for a spot on your desk to put it before deciding on sticking it in a drawer. When you slam the drawer shut, your humiliation over the scene you are writing makes you use more force than is needed, which knocks your geography book off the corner of your desk and onto the ground.

Pantalone tilts his head, and you watch him lean down to pick the book up. Horror floods your body, and you try to rush around the other way to stop him, only to bang your knee against the desk. When you stand upright and look, you see Pantalone has not only picked the book up, but has opened it and started flipping through it. Now, that would not normally be a problem, except for the fact that this isn’t a geography textbook, it just has the dust cover on it.

Pantalone’s eyes widen, and though the lighting in this room is a little dimmer than you’d like, you can tell there is the faintest hue of pink on Pantalone’s face. Time slows when he looks up and meets your eyes, and all you can see is his lips twist into an absolutely massive smile, before he cackles with laughter.

He turns the book around to show you the page and the picture displayed inside takes up the entirety of your vision. Your face is on fire, and Pantalone nearly doubles over with how hard he’s laughing. He barely manages to pull himself together enough, straightening his posture and wiping tears from his eyes. He’s not even trying a little bit to hide the amusement he’s feeling at your expense.

He adjusts his glasses so they’re no longer crooked. “J-Just what sort of writer are you?”

You snatch the book from his hand and slam it shut. Pantalone watches you, waiting for an answer. “I-If I tell you, will you leave me alone?”

Pantalone just smiles down at you, and you feel your heart pulsing in your throat at the sound of his voice. “Oh? Are you that eager to get rid of me?”

You glare at him, and he just shakes his head in defeat. You look down at the floor, and your voice trembles in shame. “... I write romance, b-but my editor said I should try something, um, steamier. Their w-words, not mine. I-I don’t really know how to write that sort of thing, so I have this, for reference material.”

“Reference material, he claims,” Pantalone teases.

“L-Look, I’m not in the mood for this,” you snap, “and my father is probably looking for you, so could you please let me get back to my work?”

You do not wait for Pantalone’s answer before you walk away and plop back into your chair. You toss the book into another drawer and slam it shut as well, this time out of anger and embarrassment. Pantalone takes that as a sign that any and all conversation has stopped, and decides he’s had enough fun toying with you. This bizarre scenario aside, you do make a good point; he really should get back to this meeting.

He walks away, trying not to laugh again at what he’s learned about the young man who nearly ruined his suit. He makes his way to the door, taking hold of the knob.

“Wait.”

Pantalone pauses, and looks at you over his shoulder.

“... Don’t mention this to my parents.”

He chuckles. “I won’t, as funny as that would be.”

“N-No, it’s not even that, it’s…” You lower your head and voice. “I haven’t told my family I like men yet.”

At that admission and your obvious discomfort, almost shame, the hilarity of the situation fades. A feeling of almost guilt starts to build in Pantalone when he looks at you. He would normally find and revel in the schadenfreude of this sort of situation, but given the new context, Pantalone can recognize a crossed boundary and general invasion of privacy.

He grips the doorknob. “I won’t. I promise.”

“Thank you.”

The door shuts behind Pantalone, leaving you alone in your study. In the quiet of the room, you’re left with your thoughts, and the bizarre reality of what just happened actually sinks in. A Fatui Harbinger just walked into your study and found your gay smut.

You push your typewriter forward so you don’t hit it when you smack your head against your desk to keep yourself from yelling.

[robertreich]

How the Super Rich Are Killing Social Security

Here’s the real reason Social Security is in danger that nobody’s talking about.

It's not just because too many boomers like me are retiring. It's because of inequality.

Now, I don’t want to alarm you. Social Security is still helping us oldies enjoy our golden years — but only for so long.

Social Security is one of the most popular and successful government programs ever created, not only helping retirees — but it’s also keeping 26 million people out of poverty.  Yet here is the problem:

It’s going run out of money before you can ever receive it if the rich don’t start paying their fair share.

The trustees of Social Security — of which yours truly was once a member back when I had thicker hair — say the program will only be able to pay full benefits until 2033. After that, Social Security will only be able to dole out roughly 77 percent of benefits.

Why? It’s not the reason that many seem to think.

Boomer retirees like me might be soaking up some sun, but we’re not soaking up all of the program’s funds.

The Social Security trustees anticipated the boom in boomer retirements. This is why Social Security was amended back in 1983, to gradually increase the age for collecting full retirement benefits from age 65 to 67. That change is helping finance the boomers’ retirement.

What did the trustees fail to anticipate? How much income would be going to the top.

A big part of the American working population today is earning less than the Social Security trustees anticipated years ago — reducing revenue flowing into the program.

At the same time, a much larger chunk of the nation’s total income is now going to the top compared to decades ago.

But income subject to the Social Security payroll tax is capped. No dollar of earnings above the cap is taxed. The cap in 2023 is $160,200.

So, as the rich have become far richer, more and more of the nation’s total income has escaped the Social Security payroll tax.

For example, a CEO earning $20 million a year pays Social Security taxes on roughly 1% of their income, while a worker earning under the cap pays Social Security taxes on 100% of their income. But they both end up paying the same amount of money into the program.

The rise in the amount of income above the cap due to inequality has cost the Social Security Trust Fund reserve an estimated $1.4 trillion since 1983.

The solution is obvious: it’s time to scrap the cap, and make the rich pay more in Social Security taxes.

One plan introduced in Congress would eliminate the cap on earnings over $250,000 and also subject investment income to Social Security taxes. It’s estimated that this would extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 75 years without raising taxes on 93% of American households.

This is where you come in. Share this video and help spread the word about the real threat to Social Security. If we want to ensure Social Security’s long term future, and that working people can retire with dignity, we must make the wealthy pay their fair share.

[hauntedestheart]

A Business Opportunity (Male Body Swap)

The sequel to "A Business Proposition"

Samson Mann was big, he was strong, he was (people told him) good looking, but most importantly, he was broke.

A few months ago his position at the warehouse (aka the only job he'd ever had since he left high school) had been made "obsolete" by new advances in technology so now, at thirty, he was being forced to brave the job market for the first time. But with just a GED, no special skills, and a resume with one reference, his only real job options were in degrading manual labor positions where the starting pay was insultingly low.

While Samson wasn't the brightest bulb in the drawer, his naturally stocky build and boisterous personality made him perfect for working in a physically demanding social environment like the warehouse... but no, companies would rather hire a robot.

After venting about it to his friends at the gym (one of the few indulgences he allowed himself after he had to start cutting costs) one of them had offered up a solution: a friend of a friend of a friend had begun working for Bod+E, and, if interested, he could hook Samson up with an interview.

While Samson wasn't the type to keep up with the latest tech trends, everyone had heard of Bod+E. Founded by eccentric young tech genius Kim Shinwei, the app was currently in the beta-phase and the only way to get access was through a hookup... which Samson's friend was happy to provide.

Samson didn't think of himself as the app gig type but it was the first offer that had come his way that wasn't entirely degrading, so desperation won out over trepidation and he agreed. Now, after two weeks full of paperwork, background checks, and drug tests, Samson was waiting in an office for a personal meeting with a millionaire.

Who was very, very late.

Samson shuffled in his seat again, his large ass uncomfortable shoved into the expensive chair he'd been told to wait in. A large faux-leather chair (conveniently taller than Samson's) sat empty across the desk from him, flanked by a display case of trophies proclaiming Mr. Shinwei's many, many achievements. Samson got the sense he was supposed to be intimidated, which seemed like overkill because waiting in anticipation already had him sweating.

Forty-five minutes wasn't unreasonable, he reasoned to himself. Right? After all, Kim Shinwei's a very important guy.

The only other person in the room was a slight Asian fellow seated on a couch in the corner- based off of his business casual attire Samson had at first assumed was some kind of secretary, but other than a small nod to Samson when he'd walked in the room the young man hadn't acknowledged him at all. Instead he was leafing through a large textbook and scribbling down notes, looking very much like he did not want to be disturbed.

Samson was debating whether or not to risk asking the not-secretary what was going on when he heard the door swing open behind him.

"There you are!" A voice boomed. "I hope you weren't waiting too long, I got a bit distracted when I was getting ready. You know how it is."

Samson rose from his chair and turned to greet the visitor, but when he saw them he did a double take. Based off of his hazy recollection of the photos he'd seen of Kim Shinwei he had expected to meet a weedy looking Asian man much like the one in the corner, but instead the man in front of him was a tall, strapping white man who gave Samson a real run for his money when they shook hands. Samson took in the way the man's muscles pressed against his thin white button up, and when he sat down and he splayed his legs in a way that created a very noticeable bulge that Samson had to quickly avert his eyes from. He looked like a porn director's idea of a businessman.

"Mr. Shinwei?" Samson asked, failing to keep his handsome face from scrunching up in confusion. He was certain he was being rude, but fortunately the man before him didn't seem to mind.

"In the flesh!" Mr. Shinwei chuckled at some private joke and ran his hand through his fluffy locks of hair. "And please, call me Kim."

"Good to meet you Kim. You uh," Samson cocked his head to the side, searching for an angle that would turn the stud before him into the engineer he'd expected. "You don't look like your photos."

The hunk in front of him smiled mysteriously. "No, I don't suppose I would, would I? But I like to dress up for meetings."

The not-secretary sitting in the back of the room snorted, and Kim flipped him off over his shoulder without turning back. Samson was a bit taken aback by the juvenile display and shuffled in place awkwardly, unsure what he was supposed to do, until Mr. Shinwei looked back at him and stretched a hand out illustratively.

"Why don't you take a seat?" Kim offered, suddenly the picture of professionalism once more, and Samson plunked himself down into the chair gratefully. Kim leaned forwards in his seat and locked eyes with with Samson. "So, Samson Mann, right? Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with us, we really do appreciate it. You came very-" Kim's eyes flicked up and down the length of Samson's body. "-highly recommended."

"Thank you, that's great to hear," Samson straightened his back and cleared his throat, attempting to disguise his discomfort. He wasn't very used to professional environments (if this could be called professional) so he sent up a prayer that he wouldn't do anything to embarrass himself and jeopardize the opportunity. "My buddy seems to really love working for you and I needed a change of pace so I thought, why not?"

"Your buddy... that's Joel Green, right?" Kim asked, and Samson nodded. Kim hummed thoughtfully, glancing up at the ceiling like he was remembering something. "Great, I love Joel. One of our most requested- his ass is to die for, right? That thing can shake."

"Uh-" Samson coughed to cover his surprise, and he stared at Kim in bewilderment. "Is this a test? Are we gonna get in trouble with HR or something?"

Kim chuckled and shook his head. "Yes I suppose that is a very unusual way for a boss to speak about an employee- but then Bod+E is a very unusual company. You're familiar with what we do, correct?"

Samson nodded, squeezing his fist beneath the table, and then a beat of silence followed. A sharp look entered Kim's eyes as they flicked over Samson, and he raised his eyebrow expectantly.

"Then tell me about it," Kim leaned forwards and grinned wolfishly at Samson, his pretty face baring a mouth full of pearly white teeth. "If you're considering working for us you have to be comfortable with our service. I want you to tell me what we do here."

"Bod-E, short for Body Exchange, is a silicon-valley startup that-" Samson began, wracking his brain to try to remember what he'd read on the company website.

Kim snapped his fingers and cut Samson off. "No, I don't want the corporate party line bullshit. Tell me what you think it is we do here."

"You uh- you rent out people," Samson said, stumbling over the words a bit. Truthfully, he was still wrapping his head around the idea. When Joel had first told him what he did at his hot new job, Samson had laughed in his face until he realized his friend wasn't joking, and even sitting in front of the creator the reality of it still seemed fake. "You hire guys and then other men pay to take over their bodies and do stuff in them."

Kim leaned back in his chair, a small smile on his face, and the tense atmosphere lifted slightly. Samson exhaled in relief at evidently having passed the test, and he let himself relax a bit as Kim began to speak.

"That's a good start but we're about a little bit more than that," Kim visibly puffed up with pride as he spoke about his work, and Samson tried his best to focus on his words and not the nipples that were poking through his shirt. "Bod-E is about creating experiences, it's about offering people the opportunity to become the man of their dreams and allowing those of us who weren't exactly blessed to work with someone who was to take advantage of their natural goods and get a bit of a break. If a poor man can rent a nicer house when he wants a vacation, why can't an average man rent a more attractive body for a getaway? It sounds too good to be true- but it isn't. And I've proven it."

"I just wanna check," Samson blurted out before he could stop himself. "This isn't a scam, right? You're not gonna steal my organs or something?"

Kim raised an eyebrow. "Why on Earth would I do that? They're far more valuable inside of you."

Samson tensed up when the businessman rose to his feet and slowly circled the desk, trailing his fingers along the polished wood behind him as he zeroed in on the interviewee.

"See, Samson, scams are about money, and I've made enough money to last myself a lifetime," Kim shrugged as if to say just a fact. "I have no motivation to go around scamming random men off the street. No, I do this because I believe in it! Because I care about my fellow man."

Kim was right beside Samson now and he hopped up to take a seat on the table, close enough that the two men's legs brushed together when Kim leaned back to lounge. He began to unbutton the top few buttons of his shirt, tugging it open to expose his shapely pecs, and the fingers of one of his hands idly rubbed at them as he continued to speak.

"Not everyone is born with the same natural advantages Samson," he continued, casually, as if he wasn't stroking himself, and Samson was mesmerized by the motion. "The world is different when you're beautiful, in ways that the beautiful people don't even understand because they think it's normal. And I think everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy that, even if it's just for a night." He snapped his fingers and Samson flinched, looking up to meet a gaze that seared into his soul. "And you're going to get the opportunity to help with that, and make a fuckton of money on the side. Doesn't that sound nice?"

"Uhhh," Samson muttered, a bit stupefied, and he shuffled awkwardly in his seat. "I guess? You kinda lost me a bit in the middle."

Kim chuckled and hopped to his feet, strolling back around to the far side of the table and reclaiming his chair. His shirt, Samson noticed, still hung open. "Let me put it another way then... Samson, are you happy with your body?"

Samson glanced down at himself, and he found no reason to be unhappy. First and foremost, he was healthy. But in terms of looks, he had nothing to complain about either.

While not overly obsessed with his appearance, he was very aware that other people thought he was handsome, and he'd never had any issues attracting a partner. A big guy since he was young, tall and with a stocky build, his years of laboring in a warehouse and the gym had granted him big arms and a small muscle gut- he wasn't cut like a pretty boy model, but he thought he looked good with a bit of fluff around the waist. He had a big, round ass too, and now that "thick" was back in fashion he was more popular than ever.

He flexed his arms subconsciously and nodded. "Yeah, I am."

"I suppose I should have expected that answer from you," Kim said with a laugh, and his eyes roamed Samson's body shamelessly with something close to hunger. "You're tall, strong, handsome- what would you have to be insecure about? But if you would indulge me for a moment, imagine that this wasn't you and you weren't happy with your body. Imagine you looked like..." Kim pointed at the young man still leafing through a textbook at the back of the room. "Like him over there, just to choose a completely random example. Small, skinny, weak, and you had always been that way and you were scared that you were always going to be that way. Never the hero, never the object of desire, always ashamed."

Samson detected a hint of bitterness in Kim's voice, but he wisely chose not to comment on it. Instead he tried to play along and just nodded.

"So if someone told you that you could have the opportunity to feel like this," he gestured towards Samson's powerful body. "to feel like the man you want to be... would you be willing to pay for it?"

"I think I would," Samson found himself agreeing, and he pressed his hands to his belly almost protectively.

"Then you understand why I'm so passionate about the service we provide." Kim smiled, a mischievious glint in his eye. "And here's a follow-up question: On your first day in this hot new body, what would you do?"

"Um..." Samson's brain was overheating and he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Honestly? Fuck people."

"See?" Kim cackled with delight. "You're a natural, you've already wrapped your head around our business model." He opened up a folder and slid a sheet of paper across the table towards Samson with some paragraphs and diagrams on it, which the poor man couldn't make heads or tails of. "It's no secret that many of our clients have specific intentions with bodies contracted through our services, but as you can see here, it's all very understandable."

"Sorry but I gotta ask," Samson rubbed the back of his neck nervously, and he was barely able to look at Mr. Shinwei as he spoke the question on his mind. "Isn't this... isn't this prostitution?"

A pause.

"Technically speaking," Kim's words were practiced, as if he'd given this speech several times before. "The government has no name for what's happening here, and can legally do nothing about it. We've followed all appropriate government regulations and are working closely with lawmakers on potential future regulation of the market."

Then Kim smirked. "But that's just the bullshit I have to deal with. All you need to know is that you'd work on commission, so it would be in your best interest to, well, remain as appealing as possible. No one will be allowed to use your body for anything you don't consent to," Kim paused and tapped at the page he'd laid down on the table. "But our data does show that gigs are weighted heavily towards employees who do allow clients to perform sex acts in their bodies, so, make of that what you will. Do you understand what I'm getting at here?"

Kim linked eyes with Samson, and the bigger man nodded. Deep down he'd known what he was getting into, but hearing it said aloud was still very unsettling.

"And it's safe, right?" Samson asked, and Kim smiled at him.

"We watch out for our people," he said simply. "Our security measures are airtight- I designed them myself, and we haven't had an incident yet."

Samson opened his mouth to ask something else, but Kim cut him off before he could speak.

"You seem nervous," the businessman said bluntly. "So let me just assure you that you have nothing to worry about- you're definitely..." Kim licked his lips. "Qualified, for the job. I can see you doing very, very well here, but only if you're willing to take a leap of faith on this opportunity."

"I can see from your resume that you were laid off from your last job because your company replaced you with a machine. Well congratulations, you've stumbled in to the one line of work where guys like you can never be replaced."

Although Kim was trying to put Samson at ease, something about the way the businessman spoke sent a shiver down the big man's back. Still, Kim's words made sense, and at the end of the day Samson needed the money so he girded his loins and plastered a smile on his face.

"But..." the big man faltered. "The pay's good?"

"Ah yes, money," Kim's nose wrinkled up for a moment, then he sighed dramatically. "It always comes back to that, doesn't it? Well, if that's what you're looking for, you're in the right place. Depending on how much of your time you're willing to offer to the company you can expect to take in somewhere between six to eight thousand dollars a month. Perhaps more if you establish regulars who request you privately."

Samson whistled- that was a lot of money! Definitely more than he'd ever made at any of his other jobs. A lot of questions still swirled around his mind but when the numbers were laid out like that, he knew that there was only one answer.

"I cannot believe I'm gonna say this but... I'll do it!"

"Well then!" Kim clapped his hands and stood up, extending one hand forwards, and Samson rose to meet him with a handshake. "All that's left is the trial run."

"Trial run?" A look of bewilderment crossed Samson's face, and then he grasped the implication of Mr. Shinwei's words. "You mean..."

"A test swap," Kim smiled sweetly, but Samson could see that he was practically trembling with excitement. "With me, of course. I vet all of our new hires personally. After all, I wouldn't market a product without testing it first!"

Samson grimaced slightly at being referred to as a "product," but he nodded his head. This was what he'd signed up for after all, might as well get used to it now.

"Allow me to just confer with my associate here for a moment," Kim turned towards the Asian man sitting in the back of the room– Samson had almost forgotten he was there. "Peter, would you mind?"

The man called Peter looked up from his book and rolled his eyes, then picked up the phone next to him and tapped on its screen. Suddenly, both men froze in place and their faces went blank, eyes staring blindly into space. Samson glanced at the two nervously, wondering if he should go for help, when suddenly they snapped back to attention.

Samson watched as the man in front of him stumbled, and he reached out to steady him.

"Mr. Shinwei? Are you okay?" Samson asked, a little nervously, but the man in front of him just sighed and jabbed his thumb back towards the man seated with the books.

"I'm over here actually!" The not-secretary waved, rising from his seat and walking over to join them . "And please, I told you, call me Kim."

It took Samson a moment to put it together.

"You mean, that whole time we were talking, you were–" Unable to articulate himself, Samson rapidly pointed between the two of them.

"Swapped?" Kim chuckled, his voice much reedier in his real body. The real Kim Shinwei was shorter than both Peter and Samson, but as he stood beside them he had a presence that towered over both of them. He slapped the shoulder of the body he'd just been inhabiting, and the man inside rolled his eyes. "Yes, Peter is my... let's just say assistant, and I like to use his body for negotiations since his dashing visage has a certain presence that I lack."

"You mean I exercise and shower," Peter remarked with an eye roll, and Kim just laughed.

"That's one way to put it," Kim mused, a razor sharp smile on his face. "And yet, which one of us is rich?"

Peter grumbled incoherently then plucked something from the back of his neck and dropped it into Kim's palm. Kim held it up in the air for Samson to see: a small white bead of plastic.

"Now, crash course, this is the neurolinker that's going to facilitate the swap," he explained, rotating item in the air to show it from every angle. To Samson it just looked like a jellybean, but Kim proudly declared that it was jam packed full of intense tech. "It's going to bind seamlessly to the back of your neck– you might feel a little tickle, but that's it. Do you mind?"

He pointed towards the back of Samson's neck, and Samson nodded. Kim passed the bead back to Peter, who crossed behind Samson and placed a hand on his neck.

Samson tensed up. "Warn me before you-"

"It's already on," Peter said, and sure enough, when Samson reached back he felt a small bump at the base of his neck that he assumed was the neurolinker. He blinked in surprise– he hadn't even felt it attach.

"Everything feel okay?" Kim asked, and Samson nodded, still rubbing his fingers over the device in fascination. Kim grinned when he noticed Samson's interest. "Like I said, seamless! Comfort was a major factor I considered while designing it."

He held his hand out to the side, and Peter slipped a phone into it.

"They're activated wirelessly via the app– and don't worry about it activating by accident, the commercial models our customers receive are activated a three factor identification system tied to biometrics." Kim tapped at his screen as he spoke. "But I have an admin copy with special privileges so the process will be a bit more streamlined for us today. All I have to do is just–"

Everything went white for a moment, and when Samson blinked again, he was staring at himself.

"Tap right there on the screen!" Kim said, finishing the sentence he'd begun in his own body. "And the transfer happens instantaneously."

"Woah," Samson muttered, clearing his throat a few times before he realized the reason his voice sounded different was because it wasn't his voice.

Even knowing what was going to happen hadn't prepared him for what it would actually be like to be in another man's body. He was short now. More than that, he was skinny. Not even just skinny, a twig. He patted himself down, feeling only the frail bones of an under-exercised engineer, and he shivered. Who knew having no meat on his bones would make him so... chilly?

If being in another body was strange, seeing his own body from the outside was even stranger. He knew he was a big guy, but from his new smaller body he looked like a giant, and Mr. Shinwei was clearly having the time of his life with it.

There was an expression of glee on his face as Kim inspected his body from the inside, and the man had zero shame about groping Samson's body right in front of its owner. Samson watched as Kim glanced over his shoulder at his backside and then began shaking his hips around and Samson saw his ass jiggle around- he hadn't even known that his butt did that.

"Oh this is nice, this is very nice!" Kim exclaimed, then he turned his attention back front and tore his shirt open (literally tore the buttons off, which made Samson wince since that was his only dress shirt) to expose his sexy, hairy body to the room. He licked his lips at the sight of the powerful pecs that sat above Samson's belly, letting out a chuckle as he tweaked one of his nipples.

"Would you mind if I-?" Kim glanced at Samson and then gestured down towards his pants. Still speechless, Samson nodded yes, and Kim tugged his waistband forwards and looked inside. He smiled. "Oh, this is definitely workable."

Samson's mouth gaped, and all he could think to do was mutter a stunned "thank you."

"You know, it wouldn't kill you to show a little self-restraint," Peter said, clearly less impressed by what was happening, and Kim flipped him off.

"And it wouldn't kill you to lighten up a little!" He chastised his assistant, strolling across the room to stand before a full length mirror in the corner of the office. "Look at where I am and what I'm doing. Look at this body!" The flexed his borrowed biceps like a bodybuilder, grinning ear to ear at the sight of his new muscles, and he smacked at his belly. "Why wouldn't I enjoy it?"

He snapped his fingers and pointed towards the door, then turned his full attention to the mirror and began removing his pants. A still speechless Samson managed to catch a glimpse of his own bare ass before an arm wrapped around his shoulder and tugged him away- he grunted in protest, but unfortunately his new body was too weak to put up a fight.

"I'll take you to HR to fill out some paperwork," Peter muttered as he ushered Samson towards the door. "He's gonna be at this for a while."

The last thing Samson heard before the door shut behind them was the sound of skin on skin, and his own voice groaning.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #5 – The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

I read Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea last year and, despite thinking it was ultimately kind of a noble failure, liked it more than enough to give his new novella a try. It didn’t hurt that the premise as described in the marketing copy sounded incredible. I can’t quite say it was worth it, but that’s really only because this novella barely cost less than the 500-page doorstopper I picked up at the same time and I need to consider economies here – it absolutely lived up to the promise of its premise.

The book is set a century and change into the future, when a de-extinction initiative has gotten funding from the Russian government to resurrect the Siberian mammoth – or, at least, splice together a chimera that’s close-enough and birth it from african elephant surrogate mothers – to begin the process of restoring the prehistoric taiga as a carbon sink. The problem: there’s no one on earth left who knows how wild mammoth are supposed to, like, live- the only surviving elephants have been living in captivity for generations. Plop the ressurectees in the wilderness and they’ll just be very confused and anxious until they starve. The solution: the technology to capture a perfect image of a human mind is quite old, and due to winning some prestigious international award our protagonist – an obsessive partisan of elephant conservation – was basically forced to have her mind copied and put in storage a few months before she was killed by poachers.

So the solution of who will raise and socialize these newly created mammoths is ‘the 100-year-old ghost of an elephant expert, after having her consciousness reincarnated in a mammoth’s body to lead the first herd as the most mature matriarch’. It works better than you’d expect, really, but as it turns out she has some rather strong opinions about poachers, and isn’t necessarily very understanding when the solution found to keep the project funded involves letting some oligarch spend a small country’s GDP on the chance to shoot a bull and take some trophies.

So this is a novella, and a fairly short one – it’s densely packed with ideas but the length and the constraints of narrative mean that they’re more evoked or presented than carefully considered. This mostly jumps out at me with how the book approaches wildlife conservation – a theme that was also one of the overriding concerns of Mountain where it was considered at much greater length. I actually think the shorter length might have done Nayler a service here, if only because it let him focus things on one specific episode and finish things with a more equivocal and ambiguous ending than the saccharine deux ex machina he felt compelled to resort to in Mountain.

The protection of wildlife is pretty clearly something he’s deeply invested in – even if he didn’t outright say so in the acknowledgements, it just about sings out from the pages of both books. Specifically, he’s pretty despairing about it – both books to a great extent turn around how you convince the world at large to allow these animals to live undisturbed when all the economic incentives point the other way, a question he seems quite acutely aware he lacks a good answer to.

Like everyone else whose parents had Jurassic Park on VHS growing up, I’ve always found the science of de-extinction intensely fascinating – especially as it becomes more and more plausible every day. This book wouldn’t have drawn my eye to nearly the degree it did if I don’t remember the exact feature article I’d bet real money inspired it about a group of scientists trying to do, well, exactly the same thing as the de-extinctionists do in the book (digital resurrection aside). The book actually examines the project with an eye to practicalities and logistics – and moreover, portrays it as at base a fundamentally heroic, noble undertaking as opposed to yet another morality tale about scientific hubris. So even disregarding everything else it had pretty much already won me over just with that.

The book’s portrayal of the future and technology more generally is broader and less carefully considered, but it still rang truer than the vast majority of sci fi does – which is, I suppose, another way of saying that it’s a weathered and weather-beaten world with new and better toys, but one still very fundamentally recognizable as our own, without any great revolutions or apocalyptic ruptures in the interim. Mosquito's got CRISPR’d into nonexistence and elephants were poached into extinction outside of captivity, children play with cybernetically controlled drones and the president of the Russian Federation may or may not be a digital ghost incarnated into a series of purpose-grown clones, but for all that it’s still the same shitty old earth. It’s rather charming, really.

[aux1]

I stopped playing Apex Legends a while ago, but I have still been seeing what's going on in the game from time-to-time. And after what I saw today...holy shit...that game is cooked now.

EA apparently decided to turn on their greed mode. Splitting seasons up into two parts that each cost $10 a piece. And now can be purchased ONLY with real money instead of Apex Coins. So battle passes for a season now cost $20...and can only be purchased with cash.

So...what is this? Is it greed or was the game simply not making the money EA wanted it too. If it's the latter...what did they expect? All of their cosmetics are overpriced. So of course, barely anyone would buy them except dumbfuck whales. Doubling down on greed is not the solution.

There is a chance...this could kill Apex.

[doodlemancy]

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughhhhhhhhhh

so here's the deal re: this fucking horseshit. god i hate this.

i, personally, have mostly given up on trying to dodge inclusion in AI datasets. the stuff i make generally isn't what they're looking for anyway and there's no real way to 100% avoid being scraped short of becoming entirely invisible online, which would um, lead to me having no money and dying. that's part of the cruelty of all this, but also, in a way, it's the same risk artists online have always taken; if you want people to see your work, you have to post it knowing that some of those people are fucking lowlife piece of shit scumbags who will try to resell it on redbubble or something for a quick buck. AI is just a new and exhausting way for garbagey people to stink worse. i am not in any way excusing that behavior or trying to imply people should not be mad about it or that we shouldn't condemn this move and fight back. "if you don't want your work stolen, don't put it online" is the kind of shitty Internet Tough Guy talk i've always hated since my dA days. it's as useless and heartless as telling people that if they don't want their bikes stolen, they shouldn't leave them at the bike rack. i'm saying that i, personally, will not let a bunch of soulless thieving shitheads drive me offline. i belong here. they belong in a wifi-proof dumpster.

nightshade and glaze eat my artwork alive. they make it look terrible. when you have to sell things on the basis that they look nice, it's a big problem when protective measures make them look like dogshit. my work is not a good candidate for these processes. even if that weren't the case, i don't have the stamina, especially right now while my chronic pain is flaring for the third month in a row and my adhd meds are scarce, to go back and shade/glaze everything, and it wouldn't work on reblogs anyway. given the way midjourney and its equally stinky siblings have already scraped years and terabytes' worth of image data from popular websites, it doesn't seem worth my time. if you think it is worth yours i am not going to like, yell at you. i am just one person. but i want to be clear about the kind of situations some of us are being forced into.

i think some of the doomsaying about AI and what it will do to us has been overblown-- they need you, for marketing purposes, to believe that someday their shitty robot will be as good at "drawing" and as practical to work with as a human-- but the consequences of "AI" (which is not even actually AI) are already real and visible and obvious to anyone paying attention. i unfortunately am not infinitely wise and powerful and therefore do not have an ideal all-encompassing solution to this deeply stupid problem that the Most Unlikeable Manbabies On Earth have imposed on us after NFTs fizzled out.

what i do have is a very large repository of nice anime and game screenshots i've taken, knowledge of many archives of nice public domain images, a computer that can run nightshade overnight or while i'm off doing other things, and, most importantly, near-infinite capacity for pettiness. i do kinda feel like the jury is still out on how well nightshade/glaze will work in the long run, but in the meantime, i suppose it wouldn't cost me a lot to... perhaps... every time i get Mad About AI™, channel that anger into dumping some thoroughly-but-not-spammily-tagged, high-quality, inconspicuous poison onto this godforsaken hellsite via a secret side blog. i could make a batch of poison ahead of time, keep it on my phone, use my Toilet Scrolling Time or my Public Transit Time to post and tag up an image here and there. it could be a fun challenge to try to make some pretty robot poison that some humans will still enjoy.

the other thing we need to poison at this point, IMO, is the word "AI" itself, by being loudly and mercilessly critical of any company that dabbles in it, the same way we all clowned on any company that pushed their luck with NFT/crypto shit a couple of years ago. we need to have every corporation terrified that association with AI will tank their sales and hurt their brand. AI must = number go down and lots of people screaming at you. companies will fuck around. we must provide the finding-out. we shouldn't have to. but we can!

so make sure to let tumblr know you hate this. maybe you could include this interesting link (tw child abuse) about how Stable Diffusion was trained on some extremely serious crime. or these screenshots of Midjourney devs just sort of admitting what their whole thing is, which i got here but which have kinda been spread all over since January.

spite and anger can be forms of hope. that's all i have to say, or at least all i'm willing to type with my left hand tonight.

[prikarin]

Regarding Killer Trait Updates

Hello, everyone!

It's been a good minute since my last Killer Trait update, hasn't it?

A lot of people have been asking me about Killer Trait updates and when the full-game will be released so, after a lot of thought, I decided to make this post.

Here's the thing: my Patreon hasn't been doing well. It hasn't been doing well for several months now. While the decline started after Where Winter Crows Go's release in November of last year, it's gotten progressively worse from February 2024 onwards. And because of this I'm going to have to pause my billing for my current patrons from August onwards—at least until I have something new to post.

It'd be a lie if I said this didn't affect me, I'm only human after all, but I'm also well aware that Patreon is a tough thing to maintain in a way that's consistent and interesting.

Unfortunately, since I live in Argentina, my only real way to get funds for my games is through Patreon, donations on Ko-Fi and sales and donations on Itchio. While it definitely helps that I hire some people from Argentina for certain art related things (so I pay them in Argentine Pesos), most of the people I commission are from overseas, so it's always a must to be able to pay them in USD.

And that's the issue: since I don't have that much money anymore and I can't commission people as often... this inevitably delays my progress on both Killer Trait and Potion Pleasing (DEMO out now!) indefinitely. It's sucks for me too, but it's the reality: making games costs money.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Killer Trait will have re-designs for most of the characters (not counting Carl because his design was originally my own) since the ones in the DEMO were stock sprites I bought from an artist, not my own designs. And I want these characters to be 100% my own, which is why I decided to have them re-designed. I've talked about this in the past in more detail when I decided to have Crowe re-designed, you can find that post HERE.

Of course, for these new character sheets (with the exception of Oz's, which has already been finished) and the new sprites, I need game funds in order to commission the artist. Even after the sprites are done, there are a couple of backgrounds—the characters' rooms—that I'd like to have originally made (especially since the ones I bought from Minikle are very limiting and don't really fit with the characters' personalities). And this doesn't even account for CGs, which I'll probably have to postpone for a while because the sprites and the backgrounds are way more important.

Some might be thinking "What about Where Winter Crows Go?". While I was lucky that WWCG's first demo was so well received, I still spent a whole lot of money from my own pocket to make it. I bought a lot of assets and, when I got a few donations, I commissioned a few artists to help me. WWCG was NEVER a game made with only free resources.

Making the art book for WWCG was a way I found to get a little of that investment back, but I'm well aware that I'll never get all the money that I spent back. And that's okay! To this day, I don't regret having invested my money to make WWCG because it gave me a lot of experience, perspective and made me learn a lot.

Be that as it may, however, I can't realistically make the rest of my games free. As I mentioned before, game development is expensive in both money AND time. Without funds, it's a given that things are going to be delayed.

So... where does that leave things?

Well, after pondering on it for a while, I came to the conclusion that I'm not really ready for a crowdfunding campaign right now. Those are extremely hard and ALSO cost money to advertise well and make sure everything's in order. So... the temporary solution I arrived at is setting goals on Ko-Fi! 

How would this work? Basically, I would set a monetary goal of the amount of money needed for a certain asset in a certain game that needs to be made. For example: sprites & character sheets in Killer Trait. Once that goal is met, I'll commission the person in question so they can start working on it! After that, I'll set the next goal and so on 💪

I'm thinking of setting the first Ko-Fi goal once August starts. And from there... I'll see how it goes! If things don't go well, I'm also considering making Where Winter Crows Go paid for a while—don't worry, I would make an announcement first—because I honestly have no more ways of getting game funds for Killer Trait and Potion Pleasing and, as mentioned before, making games is really expensive (and I'm only one person).

Thank you so much for reading until the end and I hope you have an amazing day!

[paletigers]

Some Stardew Valley redesigns/reimaginings!! these pics were about a week apart from one another so theyre in two different styles lol

some explainations below the cut!

For Context: A lot of these headcanons are based off of my own personal lived experiences! They're also just my preferences for their characters in general. I have only romanced Sebastian in-game but looked at Alex's Wiki page for context on the background for his character. I don't really know much about him canon wise, I've only read fanfics with him in it LOL ANWAY!

Sebastian: -25 yrs old + Transman + Gay/MLM -I really liked how he had a motorcycle in-game but thought that there wasn't much to say about it, so I wanted to make it apart of his core as a character! He's a sport motorcyclist as a hobby. He loves high speed racing.

-He's still a programmer, but he's now a Game designer! This is mainly because my lovely boyfriend is a game designer irl and he's like my muse and I love cramming his traits into my favorite characters.

-He plays bass istead of keyboard in Sam's band. I dunno, I think keyboard is fun and all (i actually own two keyboards and played piano in hs) but like. cmon. Bass would suit him so much better.

-I gave him a battle jacket he wears over his normal hoodie. I feel like he has a couple of these from over the years that are DIY with his ever growing music taste. Battle jackets are such a staple in the alt music scene I felt like its a crime he doesn't have one in game. Sebastian you would love battle jackets.

-His motorcycle is a sportsbike instead of a standard/chopper. His helmet also resembles a cat, but definitely not on purpose! Definitely not.

-He has a LOT of scars. Some self inflicted (but he's recovering), others from surgery! He has top surgery scars designed to resemble spider webs, a phaloplasty skin graft scar on his left arm, and gnarly huge scars on his ribs down to his legs.

-He suffered a motorcycle accident resulting in his bike being damaged as well as giving him a limp. He's constantly fixing up his bike since then, wanting to ensure another wipe out won't happen again and that his bike is reall okay to ride again.

-HIS PIERCINNGNSSSSS he has a shit ton of piercings! Not shown, he has a Jacob's ladder piercing. :3c

-His personality doesn't really change much from in-game. I'd personally prefer if he was less bitchy and more just a rarely speaking type. The kind to keep his comments to himself. Bitching about your step sibling and your step dad gets stale, bro

Alex: (Sorry to any alex fans, I changed him a LOT)

-27 + Cismale + Closeted Bisexual

-An ex-pro hockey player (goalie). I don't really care for "gridball" since it's just a couple of sports mixed together (from my understanding) so I decided to just give him a real world sport to play. Plus, hockey just kind of suits him for some reason?? I dunno

-Moved back to Pelican town after the news of his Mother's condition worsening and his Father jumping ship. In my version, he got recruited straight out of highschool to go pro for hockey. He had reservations about leaving his Mother with his Dad, but decided it was the best solution to the shitty situation. This way, he'd have more money to help her medical costs since his Dad's insurance was shitty anyway. A few years go by with constant health updates from his Grandparents, when one day his Dad just calls it quits on caregiving, deciding he doesn't want to waste his life away caring for his wife, and leaves. Without physical support from his Father to help around the house and help his Mother, Alex makes the choice to move back home and become his Mother's caregiver. He struggles with the emotional weight of this job ontop of how extremely demanding it is, but does his best for his Mother. She dies, and now he's taking care of his Grandparents. -I really wanted him to be a caregiver to his grandparents because my family were caregivers to both my Mother and my Father's parents LOL we spent all 23 years of my life taking care of them, so i thought it would be fun to think about. I imagine Evelyn and George to be my grandparents and constantly give them their favorite gifts in-game. (mainly george. i love him) (hes not homophobic hes just OLD and STUPID i LOVE HIM !!!!!!)

-Alex is constantly worried he won't be the same after caregiving for this long. He's worried he won't be able to go back to pro-hockey without reliving the stress of his mother's death. He's been having trouble keeping asleep at night, often waking up every few hours and being completely restless. He'll decompress at the sauna at unbearable hours of the night just because he can't sleep.

-He's the town helper! I thought it would be cute if he's the guy the town usually went to if they needed serious physical help with something, like setting up festival decorations, fixing fenceposts, shit like that. He loves helping out the town and INSISTS sometimes to be the one to fix a problem. When the farmer first comes into town and starts being the more dependable one, he starts feeling hopeless and easily emotionally distant. It's hard being the one everyone depended on to suddenly not being needed anymore. (It's not all entirely in his head, but he gets really worked up sometimes about feeling useless)

-Still an arrogant little shit! Instead of dreams of stardom, it's kind of a "washed up" celebrity kind of arrogance. He thinks he's hot shit because he travelled the world playing games for a couple of years. This backfires in his face, he'll sometimes sit for too long on his "glory days" and spiral, getting depressed about not playing anymore and his role as a caregiver despite loving his grandparents immensely.

-This headcanon is just silly but i think he likes to fish. He's so arrogant that he thinks hes amazing at it but fish rarely bite his line and when they do, they drag him into the river or sand at the beach. It's even more embarrassing because he thinks he's fine and continues to fish despite having sand and dirt all over himself.

-He's covered in moles! I also gave him freckles in places where his skin sees the most sun. (He's also got chest hair bc yall know i love hair on a man LMAO)

anyway. Long post! My bad. I was thinking of writing some Stardew Valley fanfics while working on some other stuff bc I want to explore my versions of Alex and Seb, and also maybe they explore each others bodies???? Let me know if that's something you'd guys like to read/offer up suggestions!!!

[sgiandubh]

Anon rebelde.

Sam no compitió en su tanda de Hyrox así que yo pondría mi dinero a número ganador y este es que simplemente se inscribió para que el fandom fic siguiese las migas de pan dejadas por el y por la señorita fitness. Ellos residen habitualmente relativamente cerca y nunca hemos tenido insinuaciones ni trolleo en esa dirección, siempre en competiciones deportivas lejos de casa así que cabría preguntarse por qué. Dejar esa "relación amorosa" como afirma cierta chiflada, reducida a un ámbito tan significativo da la razón a tu anon fitness, una cosa son los negocios, en este caso más seguidores y por lo tanto más visibilidad como influencer y otra la verdadera vida privada, esa no entra en la ecuación.

Dear (returning) Anon Rebelde,

En primer lugar, muchas disculpas por llegar tan tarde con mi respuesta. Y sí, estaba esperando tus comentarios. Este fin de semana más que nunca, quizás:

'Sam did not participate in his Hyrox section and so I'd put handsome money on the fact he simply signed up for those competitions for the fandom to follow the breadcrumb trail left by himself and Miss Fitness. Even if they normally do not live very far from each other, we've never had any insinuation or trolling from that direction, only during sports competitions far away from home, so that begs the question as to why it might be so. Reducing that 'love story' to that very telling zone, as that nutcase insists, proves that your Fitness Anon is right: business is one thing (in this case, more followers and at least, more visibility as an influencer) and the real private life, which is completely out of this equation, is something else entirely.'

Well, contrary to what those idiots across the street wrote via Anon a couple of days ago, why not remind everyone that there is a wealth of European Hyrox competitions yet to come, until the end of the year. Let it remain here, as an aide-mémoire of sorts:

Gdańsk , 26 May; Rimini, 1-2 June; the World Championships in Nice, 7-9 June; Stuttgart, 28 September; Amsterdam (LOL, don't forget to set an alert, Marple) - 11-23 October; Nice (again) - 12 October; Birmingham, 25-27 October; Madrid, 26-27 October; Hamburg, 2-3 November; Paris, 9-10 November; Dublin, 15-17 November; Valencia, 23-24 November and Stockholm, 7 December.

And this is just the European selection. It happens all over the world, all the time, so people would have to be really #silly to think he booked all of those. Unlike the US, there is no Season Pass for Europe's Hyrox events and he'd have to pay every time to join in.

Transparency is not exactly Hyrox's own, but I managed to have at least an estimate clue, for the UK:

[Source:https://www.thegymrevolution.co.uk/blog/2024/01/07/hyrox-faq/]

On the other hand, this is a cost-effective solution to keep people interested in just about anything else than your real life. Show up, hang around for about five minutes, cheer loudly enough to be picked up by the random able and willing cellphone nearby, leak it on Tumblr. And even have lunch with The Innuendo, in town - shouldn't hurt, once in a while. The trolls will do the rest of the job for some extra heap of opportunistic attention and everything will be just fine, in your world.

PS: if you think an event like the Hyrox does not offer at least a bottle of water and free lockers, you are damn naive:

As I mentioned in a comment, this afternoon: *urv never worries about double standards and/or continuity. Also, she seems to be completely impervious to the farcical dimension of S's ironic take on purse carrying.

But then, that woman never was very subtle, was she?