#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

[junadeo]

YES!!

decriminalize:

sex work

addiction

criminalize: 

golf

[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.

[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.

[letherightonein]

Femcels are real

Femcels are real and I'm tired of people pretending that's not the case, it can be seen more clearly when it comes to counter arguments against people that state that incels don't exist.

People say that incels don't exist, because men can always pay for sex. The standard response to this is that sex workers cost money -apparently men can't get a job either - and that prostitutes don't really desire incels. That it isn't about sex, but validation from women and being desired.

But the same men who affirm that, then make a flip when it comes to femcels and say that women can get sex easily so they can't be really lonely. The fact that men in casual encounters don't care about women's pleasure and having intercourse for the first time(s) is often painful for women is ignored and minimized.

The conflict is obvious, if for incels paying for sex is not a real solution because it doesn't involve the organic process of mating everyone else experience, why is a real solution for virgin isolated women to get fucked by a stranger than doesn't really care about them?

It is said that "men can want you for sex but not for a relationship", and there is skepticism about it. People who often rebuke manosphere and incel narratives, don't agree with that statement, they say that of course men would be open to have a relationship with women. But any sane woman disagrees, most of the time hook ups don't lead to relationships, and relationships where the only thing at play is sex are demoralizing and even emotionally harmful.

The double standard is even more evident if we go back to the prostitute argument and we refine it a little bit: well, you can always try to make more money and get a vase girlfriend that only tolerates you as long as you give her gifts.

It is rejected, the first reaction at play is: "that's giving them a point” and somehow, suggesting that men will maintain a relationship with you as long as you have sex with them is not "giving manosphere a point" even when they repeat to oblivion that men only bring money and women only sex to relationships. For me it reaches the level of falling in a fairy tale, suddenly men bond through sex and they become loving partners once you have sex with them.

The second common response is that it is not always possible for incel men to earn more income, since they are also failures in other aspects of life. The same ones who affirm until they turn blue that men and women are different, and women have less sociosexuality and sexual drive, don't see how women would have a problem with having a relationship based on sex and sleeping with strangers with the hope of obtaining romantic affection. But they are quick to catch all the hardships of incel men.

From incel types, is the case is even more curious, since they are quick to affirm that women get damaged from sex but don't hesitate to deny femcels existence because, again, they can get easily fucked.

Incel men deserve empathy and exceptions made for them, paying for it is not a real solution, buying the affection of women is not a thing. But there is no compassion towards lonely women, having degrading encounters and void relationships is a solution that they must take.

It is also said that "femcels should date incels", and it comes with vague references to how femcels on certain forums complained about "harassment" from incels, suggesting that in reality incels tried to flirt with femcels.

I have gravitated around incel/femcel spaces for years, and not a single one flirted with me. They told me that they would kill me with their bare hands, that I was probably a used up hole, that I was retarded, that I was a landwhale, that I probably looked like a tranny. Just pure vitriol, nothing really human, they were just there to troll and mock women.

Incels there also said that they just didn't want to date a landwhale, that their only standards were "1. Exist 2. Don't be a landwhale". Any honest person who understands that attraction doesn't work like a job application knows that it's not true. That guy, in fact, was talking with a slim woman who just existed on a forum and decided to be a hateful pos anyway.

The relevant thing here is that incels constantly repeat that they don't want to date certain types of women, fat women mostly, and...no one denies them their incel status. The same happens with figures like Elliot Rodger: he admitted he didn’t really try, but is still the incel autistic guy who did a mass shooting. It's still involuntary if they reject fat women, it’s still involuntary even if they don’t try it until their last breath. But women are totally voluntarily celibate if they don't want to date men that hate them, it's totally voluntary if they don't date men they don't really desire.

Again, people who claim to be contrary to incel ideology give them the point that women are picky beyond any reason, while incels are just these reasonable beings that just try but can't, that just can't have the chance nor properly take them when they present to them.

The case becomes even more compelling when they start to affirm that, actually, incels are autistic and mentally ill. So, not only are they sweethearts that just want to flirt with femcels and are too sensitive to pay for sex, but now they are mentally ill autists who deserve compassion and help.

Women can be also autistic and mentally ill, women struggle with late diagnosis or multiple wrong diagnosis, chronic burn out, and make masking efforts to fit in society and survive. They are also more likely to be sexually abused. Autistic women are inclined to date autistic, ND or mentally ill men, given that humans mate assortatively, but the sentiment that they are still too picky, too entitled, and with an unfair advantage over men remains even for the most skeptics and critics with incel ideology.

The later ones need incel ideology to exist, it gives them relevance, it gives them the status of being the heroes against the most widespread bunk of our times, so they will debunk and argue until you touch the object of their study. But I don't have anything to gain out of it: incel and femcel, both are slang terms that don't deserve another minute of our time.

The thirsty -but well meaning- subject ready to take any hook up chance at any cost with no exceptions or inhibitions doesn't exist within incels, because if that were the case, incels wouldn't exist. The conditions that define incels can be applied to women, doesn't matter how much you spin and flip it. That strips the concept of any validity and reveals that the problem is proper of mentally ill neurodivergent and disabled people who can't thrive in most aspects of their lives, not only the sexual ones.

There is no loneliness epidemic, there is no pure sexual and romantic tragedy here. Only a couple of outliers who don't fit in society.

[democratthatlovesguns]

How greed is the main factor driving inflation.

And why didn't the Biden administration rollback the tariffs that the Trump administration set in place, if it would have reduced inflation?

Okay so, unlike MAGA republicans, the Biden administration knows that it's important to listen to expert economists on topics in which they recognize they have a great deal of bias. And the Biden administration knows how to weigh the options available and determine what is best for everyone regardless of political party.

The truth is, removal of the Trump tariffs would only have improved inflation slightly and temporarily, but the cost of removal would possibly come at great risk to the American people. That is what the experts said, and their expertise was what Biden trusted in keeping the tariffs; it was not because they were the magic potion solution to a recovering economy that Trump would have you believe.

Biden's actions, of course, are in great contrast to Trump and let's state just one example, Obamacare. Trump was shown and told many times that repealing Obamacare would result in very negative outcomes for a lot of Americans. Did he give one fuck about that? NO. He tried multiple times to repeal the law completely, and replace it with "a concept of a plan."

Back to inflation.

In the last three years, late 2021 to present, many people saw themselves rethinking their careers and their choices in life - without taking money too much into consideration. Great news for opportunist assholes like Kevin O'Leary.

What happens when a large portion of the population decides to "reinvent" themselves? Usually it means they're willing to take a pay cut to obtain an entry level position in a career they always wanted or wanted to at least try OR it means that they take a leap and try to run their own business.

That's great news to owners and shareholders of large corporations: A large wave of entry level applicants to non-union jobs. Greed dictates, as Kevin O'Leary does, that you should fire the guy working forty-hour weeks and earning his living wage after twenty years of consistent quality work; greed says "fire that guy and hire two new guys at minimum wage and if you can, no overtime pay."

And the greed does not end there.

Using "inflation" as a pretext large corporations were able to drive down the price of labor across the supply chain. Look at how many owner operators in the trucking business went out of business ... Look at why Yellow Logistics went bankrupt - they could not pay the living wage "rate" that the union needed for it's workers. A surplus of available labor in the industry resulted in starvation wages, literally. Read some of the stories out there, there were truckers literally paying to take loads instead of earning from taking loads.

And it wasn't just the truckers, people in the background like freight brokers also took big hits "because ... inflation."

So what did assholes like Kevin O'Leary do to help consumers and small businesses?

Owners and shareholders were enjoying substantial savings in manufacturing labor, transport, retail workers, all granted because "inflation" and people became scared of losing their jobs. Did they pass on the savings to consumers? Sure, in the MAGA world with alternative facts (fiction) that's presumably what they did. In the real world, they jacked up prices ... "because ... inflation."

Small retail business didn't stand a chance either. Large retailers could always negotiate massive discounts on wholesale purchases that mom and pop shops could never leverage to compete with. Anybody starting a small retail business soon found it was better to go out out business than continue to lose money.

So corporate leaders enjoyed substantial savings across the board and continued to raise prices for consumers ...

AND THEN THEY REPORTED RECORD PROFITS! IN SOME INSTANCES, MANY TIMES THEIR WILDEST PROJECTIONS.

Look at the collusion in the meat industry and companies like Pepsi and Coca Cola if you need more details.

Yet, Elon is able to convince half of the American people that "big cuts" are necessary to reduce America's debt. He's certainly not going to cut money that gets funneled to his pockets, for sure. He is going to cut social security and Medicare because we all know how frivolously old people spend their money. I mean, I understand.

It's like Senator Ron Johnson said, "Senior citizens have misused social security and that's why I want it to sunset."

TBH, many a time, I have had to drive to the club ... the strip club ... to drag grandma out of there. She's in there all like "make it rain bitches" while tossing fitties and hundeds in the air and buying everyone round after round of cognac. Grandma is all like, "fitties for them titties"! And I'm all like, "Grandma you incorrigible lesbo! What about your insulin and your rent?!" [I can use the word lesbo because I have zero lesbian friends ... That's not my preference, I just have a "military look" and people make assumptions (not unfounded).]

Anyway, so what do they do when Kamala Harris states that safeguards against price gouging should be rolled out to help the American people, and that corporations should be taxed more to pay for social benefits like health care and education (that will never be paid through bullshit trickle down economics)? They send a complete dumbass anti-Semitic asshole like Mel Gibson to call Kamala Harris low IQ and stupid when it comes to economics.

To clarify, Kamala Harris understands economics much better than Mel Gibson ever will. She also understands greed and what it can drive innocent sounding people to do.

Yes, ideally, corporations would pay zero tax ... But in such an ideal world, everyone employed by the corporation from the janitor to the CEO would earn enough from a forty hour work week (not a one hundred hour work week as proposed by Elon) to afford housing, food, health care, transportation, and everyone would still have a little left over for a Sunday steak dinner with the family and a little entertainment. This ideal world will never come to be, not because it's impossible, but because greedy assholes like Elon don't believe workers "deserve" such an existence as lowly employees.

WE DON'T TAX CORPORATIONS TO BE ASSHOLES, WE TAX THEM BECAUSE WE WANT THEM TO PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE OF THE SOCIAL SERVICES THEIR WORKERS AND THEIR FAMILIES HAVE EARNED.

The people that will suffer the most under Elon's rule on government spending will be the children, the elderly, the mentally or physically disabled. When you cast your vote, have them in mind, and ask yourself how much should they suffer so that Trump, Elon, and their billionaire friends can grow their "ego" wealth.

[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!!!