#asset based lending
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ennovance · 1 year ago
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The private-credit craze is spreading to asset-based lending … the global economy’s biggest prize: the U.S. consumer
Banks are less willing to hold these assets, and a handful of funds will become big scale players to fill those gaps
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/private-equity-wants-your-credit-card-debt-and-car-loan-and-mortgage-49be8938?st=csl8xdn1flwaabs via @WSJ #banks #loan #car #mortgage #creditecard #autoloan #investments
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arfactoringcompanies · 1 day ago
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The Evolution of Asset-Based Lending in a Digital Economy
Invoice factoring transforms unpaid invoices into immediate cash, supporting steady operations, payroll coverage, and reinvestment without adding debt or requiring long-term financial commitments.
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bullventurecapital · 8 months ago
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Financing Real Estate Rental Loans California: What Is It?
Whether experienced or a first-time investor, getting the right kind of finance for an investment can spell a whole world of success. The tailor-made real estate investment loans for rental properties help offer the much-needed capital for the acquisition and management of such an asset; this provides numerous advantages that cater to the needs of real estate investors. The importance of financing real estate rental loans California is huge.
Investors can make the most of the type of financing available regarding real estate investments, which is customarily based on the acquisition and holding of rental property. There is an appreciation involving the particular demand in real estate investments, and the lending facilities are well suited for the investor. This can be performed by the provision of flexible loan terms, making it possible to pay interest only, among other things; these facilities are not available with traditional home mortgages.
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Loan terms that work for the investor should, therefore, improve an investor's cash flow. Interest-only loans or loans with a longer amortization period could reduce the monthly payment obligation, making cash available for managing the property or even maintaining it, let alone other investment opportunities that could arise. More cash in-flows at this point mean increased chances or rather opportunity capitalization on maintaining and escalating rental property portfolios.
Look for loan specialists in investment lending within the real estate market. One will get a loan, ready to work for you in the rental property market. This approach could include both conventional bank options and private money sources in capturing low rates and favorable terms.
Prepare Solid Financials
They will put your financial stability and the history of your credit under scrutiny, as well as the rental income that this property may produce. Therefore, make sure that you are in sound financial shape with good credit scores, low debt-to-income ratios, and properly documented sources of income and assets. Having a really sound business plan for the property to be rented is also a favorable factor when applying for a loan.
Real estate investment loans in California become one of the most important avenues by which investors finance their rental property. They have financial solutions tailored according to the requirement, competitive interest rates, and the best utilization of the invested capital. Therefore, if this type of financing offers the best advantages and at the same time executes the best practice of obtaining financing, an investor is positioned to take advantage of the most rewarding investing opportunities in the California rental property marketplace.
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ennovance · 1 year ago
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The private-credit craze is spreading to asset-based lending … the global economy’s biggest prize: the U.S. consumer
Banks are less willing to hold these assets, and a handful of funds will become big scale players to fill those gaps
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/private-equity-wants-your-credit-card-debt-and-car-loan-and-mortgage-49be8938?st=csl8xdn1flwaabs via @WSJ #banks #loan #car #mortgage #creditecard #autoloan #investments
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arfactoringcompanies · 9 days ago
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Revolutionizing financing with the rise of asset-based lending in modern commerce
Asset-based lending fuels modern commerce by turning assets into working capital. This financing model offers stability, flexibility, and growth opportunities for businesses navigating today's financial landscape.
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kurumssocial · 24 days ago
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Asset-based lending (ABL) allows businesses to borrow against their assets, like accounts receivable and inventory, as collateral. This financing method benefits companies with limited cash flow by providing access to capital for growth or operational needs. However, ABL can be costly and complex, requiring careful management of assets.
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ameliajane8 · 1 month ago
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Merchant Cash Advance vs. Asset-Based Lending – Which is Right for You? - https://shorturl.at/wEhKZ
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bullventurecapital · 2 months ago
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Asset-based lending
Asset-based lending is a type of loan where a borrower secures the loan by pledging assets, such as real estate, inventory, or equipment, as collateral. This form of lending is commonly used by businesses that may not have strong credit but have valuable assets to back the loan. It allows companies to access capital based on the value of their assets, and the lender can seize those assets if the borrower defaults on the loan.
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usbridgeloans · 1 year ago
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Introducing the “BREFI”, A New Loan Programme by GMG
Over the past 12 months, the most common funding problem is the lack of financing options at the early stages of a real estate project: land acquisition, initial development, real estate purchase before the renovation, equity cash out towards new development, etc.
GMG receives high-value financing requests in almost all major countries, and it’s been very clear that traditional banks are less willing to take on the risk of financing the early stages of a real estate development or project. There has never been a greater need for non-bank alternatives than now.
Many of our high-net-worth clients have relied on the ‘long relationship’ with their banks (Implicit Put option) to be their lender of last resort, and when they are not, there is a scramble for financing options in a short period of time, which we see now. A separate issue is that banks, in general, may require recapitalization from losses due to Covid-19 and are looking to preserve capital.
Bridge Lending (the B part of BREFI).
As many of you know, one of the advantages of bridge loans is that they allow the borrower to secure opportunities that you would otherwise miss. Another advantage is bridge loans allow for flexible payment terms depending on the loan agreements. You can choose to start paying off the loan before or after securing long-term financing.
Also, qualifying and getting approved for a bridge loan takes less time than a traditional loan, giving the borrower the convenience of quickly owning the asset and begin getting the project off the ground with the intention of replacing the bridge loan with a more permanent construction loan, as an example.
GMG BREFI (short for Bridge + Refi).
We created the BREFI to combine 2 types of mortgage origination effort into one single offering to help clients with their initial bridge and onto the next stage of funding, usually a construction or development loan.
For example, in some cases, the initial bridge loan is used to purchase the property or land and prepare it to be “Shovel-ready.” That is land or structure that has plans, zoning, and issued permits in place. Having these ready allows for construction to begin immediately after closing.
A major difference between these two is that new construction loans fund the construction of a new structure, whereas bridge loans allow investors to purchase land or property but typically do not fund any construction costs. A GMG BREFI combines them both into one service offering.
Investors who obtain a bridge loan will usually begin construction after they have refinanced out into their long-term loan.
Typical Bridge Loan
Used to purchase “shovel-ready” land or land with an existing structure for a quick flip
Used to pay off the existing loan by refinancing into another loan
Not normally used to fund construction
Typical Construction Loan
Used purchase “shovel-ready” land or land with an existing structure to tear down and rebuild
Used to pay off the loan upon selling the property
Always used to fund construction
Our team uses GMG BREFI by finding lenders that will take both portions of the funding stack, Bridge + Construction.
Some common uses of GMG BREFI
Purchasing a plot of land to build a new development
Investors looking to purchase a plot of “shovel-ready” land would normally use a construction loan which is not available in this market environment. A BREFI will allow you to acquire the desired land and finance the new development on the property.
Purchasing an existing property (IE en bloc in Singapore) to tear down and build a new one
For clients planning to tear down and rebuild a structure on a piece of land, a BREFI can be used as a financing option.
Financing required to purchase land and begin construction immediately
Property developers who have the required documentation to begin construction on a piece of land can use the BREFI, where typical construction loans are not available with traditional banks. The hardest part of any new construction is getting the needed permits; once this is done, our lenders can disperse the funds in “construction draws” to start building.
For more information about Home Loan In US, Visit the website.
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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago
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Everyday homeowners are human shields for Wall Street’s Internet of Shit slumlords
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The American Dream, such as it is, used to be two dreams, one based on work and solidarity, the other on asset appreciation and disconnected individualism. We killed the first one.
As the New Deal gave way to the post-war social safety net, Americans discovered two paths to social mobility: they could join a union, and they could buy a home. Joining a union meant that your wages would rise with productivity, and that the democratic ideal that you were meant to approach once every two years at the ballot-box could follow you into the building you spent more waking hours in than any other: your jobsite.
Labor unions used their political power to win labor rights, so that even workers who weren't a union couldn't be arbitrarily fired, or maimed on the job with impunity, or harassed or abused. And while the labor movement was mired in the same racist legacy that every American institution brought forward out of genocide and slavery, where racialized people started unions of their own or demanded representation from the unions who nominally represented them, they thrived.
Then there were houses. On the one hand, owning your home insulated you from the petty tyranny of the landlord, the threat of eviction, rent hikes, indifferent or dangerous building maintenance, and all the other miseries that arise when you think of a building as your home and someone else thinks of it as an asset, and the board is tilted so that they win every argument.
But homeownership wasn't just sold as a way to get out from under scumbag landlords: it was primarily sold as a way to build intergenerational wealth. Your house wasn't just a place to live: it was an asset, and it appreciated.
And if the dividends of labor protection were unevenly distributed between white people and racial minorities, the dividends of home ownership were almost entirely hoarded by white families. Federal policies – redlining – combined with racist lending at the local level, meant that Black families and other racialized groups were stuck in tenancy, while white families build wealth thanks to federal subsidies:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170220005558/https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/Asset%20Value%20of%20Whiteness.pdf
Those were the two American dreams: a good job and your own home. We killed the first one, and the second one devoured us whole.
Without a strong labor movement, wages stagnated. Corporate power waxed, and with it, the power to pollute, to poison, to maim and to defraud. The labor movement wasn't strong enough to stop Reagan from killing free UC tuition when he was governor of California. It wasn't strong enough to hold back spiraling health care prices. It wasn't strong enough to block the business lobby from neutering antitrust and ushering in four decades of market concentration, market capture and corruption. Workers couldn't save their defined benefits pension and were railroaded into market-based 401(k)s, forcing them to play the stock casino against their bosses, ever the sucker at the poker table.
With stagnant wages and out of control medical, educational and end-of-life bills, homeownership – the thing you do as an individual, where your gain is someone else's loss – became the American secular religion. Your house wasn't just a place to sleep and keep your photo albums: if it appreciated enough, you might be able to liquidate it on your deathbed and pay off your eldercare, your healthcare, your kids' college debt, and leave enough left over for your kids' downpayments.
And so every American who had a home became the enemy of every American who didn't – including one another's children. Every home built threatened your own property values. The racist, batshit American school funding formula, which sees schools funded out of property taxes, meaning the richest kids get the best schools, turned out to be a great way to increase your property values.
Protections for tenants, meanwhile, threatened the entire American way of life – the American dream itself. Every protection a tenant got – protection from eviction or rent hikes, the legal right to a safe and well-maintained home – reduced the value of every home in town.
After all, the better a landlord has to treat their tenants, the less money a landlord can make from a rental property. The less money a landlord can make from a rental property, the less they'd bid on a house like yours if it went up for sale.
And since anyone planning to buy your house to live in it has to outbid a landlord who might want to rent it out, giving tenants any protection threatened everything – the one asset you owned, which was your plan a, b and c for paying off all that health, education, and assisted living debt:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/
Today, the house-as-asset scam is breathing its last. There are millions more people who need homes than there are homes available. Sure, homelessness is a fantastically complex problem, but you could address every aspect of it – addiction, mental illness, joblessness – and millions of people would still be homeless, because there aren't enough homes for them to live in:
https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/myths-about-homeless-people-with-dr-margot-kushel
70% of all inflation in 2024 came from the cost of housing; a quarter of that came from illegal collusive behavior by landlords to hike rents:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/up-to-a-quarter-of-rental-inflation
Wall Street landlords have raised gigantic war-chests and are buying up homes at a rate never before seen, converting every available single-family home in many cities from an owner-occupied home to a rental. Private equity and hedge fund landlords have elevated charging junk fees to an absurdist theater project: you pay a "convenience" charge for paying your rent in cash. But also for paying your rent by direct transfer. Oh, and also for paying in cash. When Wall Street is your landlord, your home is a slum, dangerously undermaintained, sometimes lethally so:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords
Capitalists hate capitalism. The best thing to sell is something your customer can't live without, and that no one else has for sale. That's why "the market" loves private prisons so much:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch
The vast sums Wall Street is putting into buying up all of America's available housing stock is a bet that they can establish regional monopolies over having a home, and charge all the market can bear.
That's the plan at Invitation Homes, a company that was just targeted by the FTC for a slate of eye-watering crimes against the tenants in the 80,000 single-family homes they've acquired:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-takes-action-against-invitation-homes-deceiving-renters-charging-junk-fees-withholding-security
Invitation Homes purchases homes as they come on the market, and they're also a leading customer of the "build-to-rent" housing industry, a fast-growing segment of new housing starts.
Writing about the FTC's enforcement action against Invitation Homes, Matt Soller brings in Starwood Capital Group, who manage Invitation Homes properties, and own 14,000 more homes in the sunbelt. Invitation and Starwood hate the anti-monopoly movement, and Barry Sternlicht, Starwood's billionaire CEO, really hates FTC Chair Lina Khan:
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-corporate-slumlords
The FTC complaint lays out a suite of just comically sleazy things ways that Invitation abuses its tenants, starting with false advertising. The company lists its houses at relatively low rents, then charges a large fee to apply to live there. When you pass the application process, you're told the rent is actually much higher, and if you walk away from the deal, you forfeit your application fee. That scam's netted Invitation $18m since 2019.
Stoller really hates junk fees, calling them "convenience fees without any convenience, service charges without any service performed." He lays out Invitation's long list of junk fees, which honestly sound like a list that Chatgpt would spit out if you prompted it for fifty junk fees that wouldn't pass the giggle-test: "utility management fees" "Lease Easy bundle fees," "air filter delivery fee," "smart home technology fees," etc etc.
"Smart home technology fee?" Yeah, Invitation's gone in hard for Internet of Shit smart home tech. The SVP who oversees Invitation's smart home fee program was ordered to "juice this hog" (you guys, juice doesn't come from hogs).
After decades of recruiting everyday American homeowners to demand anti-tenant policies that benefit giant corporations, American tenants have few rights on paper and even fewer in practice. That's left the door wide open for Invitation to abuse their tenants in a myriad of dismal and unimaginative ways: stealing their deposits, trashing their credit reports to retaliate against complaints, illegal evictions, busted appliances, mold, vermin, insects – the whole slumlord playbook.
As Stoller writes, there's a twist: "this landlord isn’t just a random slumlord, it’s one of the biggest Wall Street players in housing."
There are vast fortunes to be made in converting the human right to housing into an asset class, but those fortunes end up in the hands of a very small number of billionaires. On their own, they wouldn't have the political power to dismantle protections for tenants.
Realistically speaking, most kids who grew up in their parents' owner-occupied homes are going to end up tenants, thanks to undersupply and housing inflation. But those kids' parents have spent decades demanding policies to make their homes as valuable as possible – including mortgage tax breaks (but not rent tax breaks!), looser eviction laws, and less enforcement of what few protections tenants have.
Middle class homeowners are the useful idiots and human shields of the billionaires who are determined to force every American under 40 raise their kids in a rented slum full of spiders, ratshit and black mold, which will still cost 60% of their take-home salary.
That's why the FTC's action against Invitation Homes is such a big deal. And as Stoller points out, Chair Khan is really just implementing Kamala Harris's campaign promise to get Wall Street out of the landlord business.
Wall Street's raid on your bedroom and kitchen has inspired a generation of "finfluencer" copycats who buy and flip apartment buildings, sucking ever-larger amounts of cash out of them until they're unfit for human habitation, with mountains of rat-infested garbage ringing their crumbling walls:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston
Any future worth living in is going to get housing right. We need to stop thinking of housing as an asset and realize that it is, first and foremost, a human right. That's the premise of my 2023 solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which just came out in paperback:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865946/thelostcause
You can't protect yourself from rising seas or rising healthcare bills through individual home-ownership. Solidarity – the kind of solidarity that once powered the union movement, and that is powering it again – is the only way to defeat the housing profiteers. The New Deal wasn't perfect, which is why whatever we do next has to be bigger, further reaching, and more inclusive than what FDR did almost a century ago.
The only minority that should be excluded from the next New Deal is billionaires.
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Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/01/housing-is-a-human-right/#rentier-tech
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Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/
Carlos Delgado (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_Street_-_New_York_Stock_Exchange.jpg
CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
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pricegouge · 3 months ago
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got absolutely clobbered over the head with a pretty fucked up idea so now it's your problem. 1k
cw: poisoning! bit of a sick fic, but nothing gratuitous. munchausen by proxy, but make it (mostly) consensual.
He knows it's coming when Simon's hands shake, a near-imperceptible tremble only brought to John's attention by the way Simon's tea spills over the lip of his takeaway cup, stains the bone design printed on his fingers. Simon puts the cup on the counter, takes a half second too long to get the lid to catch on the rim properly.
"Best see to that," John warns him, already making contingency plans for their next potential mission, calculating where best his over-sized liability could fit. God forbid the man bench himself, though John's not one to talk.
Ghost just nods, the issue already taken care of. "Yes, sir."
Price figures he can get another month or so out of him, but circumstance makes liars of them both. A bad job gone worse, much of that expected month spent in the field. They're all just lucky it comes to a head while on base, some no-name sergeant the unsuspecting barometer for Simon's impending breakdown instead of a misplaced bullet.
The boy's come back from worse.
The first time - it had landed in his lap, honestly, a stomach bug that had torn the whole base apart, left grown, hardened men wilting into sick bowls and shaking in their sheets. The lieutenant had been stoic as ever, but John could see the glassiness of his eyes, the way his clothes had hung from him for weeks after. Docile, too. Or near enough. Too tired to be ornery, at least.
Put out of his mind for months, he let Ghost rebuild himself, pulling his pieces into place like armor. His intensity returned, a blessing just as much as a curse as John was generally the one left to handle all the formal complaints. It was easy enough, each log finding the bottom of the bin the moment the plaintiff left his office. Still, waste of time having to sit in on each meeting; to lend his ear to every up-and-coming private who was too dull to recognize where on the ladder of irreplaceable assets themselves and the lieutenant lie. Nearing the end of his rope, he made some glib comment about wishing the man would feel worse again soon and balked a bit when Simon just blinked at him, agreed it's always a good reset, being forced to take leave.
From anyone else's mouth, he'd have assumed the man was asking for time off, a pampered little vacation taken with the captain's approval. Guiltless, thoughts unassailed by the realities of international collusions. But Ghost submitted no reqs, just carried on steady as always.
Until he hadn't, a rookie mistake John prides himself on catching before it could make it too far.
"Need to be able to depend on ya, Simon," he'd chastised, his own frustrations bubbling over, anger unchecked because he knew Ghost could handle it, wouldn't shrink from him like so many others. "Should be able to trust ya with paperwork, at least!"
And Ghost didn't shrink. Swelled up instead, took on more roles, ran himself ragged.
"You're grounded," John had told him, let the double meaning sink in, embarrass the lad.
"Good luck with that, sir," the lieutenant had countered, shouldered his way onto the hele and tucked himself in between the sergeants just to spite him.
So he remembers. Tired and docile. Level headed after days of R & R.
He treats it like a mission, same as everything else. They're sick in the same way, like that. It gets easier with time, both of them settling into their roles. John's done it many ways, used backdoors he'd never realized he'd had access to in order to avoid Kate's persistent gaze as he researched, bought household cleaners he learned how to disguise the taste of. Simon had never been picky, could probably be served squirrel jerky without much complaint. But wariness is something else, stems from survival, and Price himself had helped to hone that instinct, made it iron-clad.
Simon noticed the fourth time. John's own fault, having him around for dinner. Too obvious about having cooked specially for him. Simon's dark eyes had settled on the plate for so long the meal had gone cold, vague chemical scent becoming more obvious by the second.
John never flinched. Not even when Simon's gaze flicked to him, a silent challenge.
"You need to rest, boy."
Entranced, he watched as something flicked across Simon's brow. Comprehension. Acceptance, maybe. The balaclava was rolled up, tucked over the ruined bridge of his nose, and Simon bore crooked, rotting teeth to tuck in, ate the whole plate in less than four bites.
They hardly bother with the pretenses anymore, not when John's just as tired as him. Not when they can't keep replaying the same game, the reputation of John's cooking at stake. It's better this way, the small vial he keeps in his desk providing a much more consistent outcome anyway. And he won't deny he enjoys the power Simon gives him, either: maw agape, tongue extended. He doesn't flinch when the syrup coats his tongue, although John knows how rotten it tastes - tried it himself just to be certain he could safely navigate Simon's limits, because he knows what Simon can take, even if the boy doesn't.
It starts with Simon on his knees, usually. A stream of apologies flooding from his mouth alongside the excess drool that puddles on Price's thigh. John shushes him with thick fingers, likes to feel the building convulsions in his throat from within.
He likes it best after Simon's worn himself out, lays sweat-stained and panting on his cot, mask long forgotten. Too tired to care. John keeps him hydrated, trickles water into his mouth from his finger tips, letting it pour over his palm. Simon takes whatever he gives - more syrup, even, if John deems it's needed. Trusts his judgment, trusts his captain to make him whole again.
They treat it like a mission, both sick like that. Know sometimes you have to go further than expected to get the results you want.
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arfactoringcompanies · 7 months ago
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Boost Your Cash Flow: How Factoring Companies in Colorado Can Help
Struggling with slow-paying customers? Receivables factoring can provide immediate cash for your business without adding debt. Learn how partnering with a Colorado factoring company like State Financial can keep your business moving by covering essential costs and fueling growth.
Read more - https://statefinancial.com/receivables-factoring-companies-in-colorado/
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maximumzombiecreator · 2 months ago
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You said you ran a 64 team tournament for a pf2e game? How did you keep track of everything / how did it work mechanically? Did you have teams win based on what you wanted, did you simulate battles, did you do some approximation based on seed, or something else entirely? I need to know how this worked lol
I would love to infodump all about it.
So, yes, the tournament was six rounds of qualifiers, and then a 64 team double-elimination bracket. Seeds were based on the qualifiers, where the party needed to go at least 3-3 to make the cut. Qualifiers were 2 fights per day, and the main tournament bracket was 1 fight per day in the winners bracket, 2 in the losers, which made falling out of winners really suck.
I created a currency for the tournament, Tokens of the Lady's Favour. Every win gave 5 tokens, plus an additional token for each member fewer than 5 in the team. (I knew how many party members the party had, obviously, but this gave me a convenient reason why a team of less than 5 would show up.) Additionally, they could earn up to 5 additional tokens per match for style, giving some incentive to do things the cool way rather than the efficient way, or to use extra actions to showboat for the crowd. Tokens could be used to bid on which arena layout would be used for their matches, and to buy consumables or permanent magic items.
I did not actually prep 63 other teams. Some of them clearly had no chance of ever actually needing their stat block to be used, so it would have been wasted prep. Additionally, it's just not practical for the players to care about that many other teams. Really it's hard for them to care about more than maybe half a dozen. But what having that many teams does is allow the players to express themselves through which teams they do end up caring about.
Every team that I did prep needed to carry a couple of different types of utility. The first was world-building utility: this tournament was in the BBEG's lair, and the tournament entrants were vying for her favour. This meant it was a safe place for the characters to interact with NPCs that would normally be enemies, to learn about them and the other side of the conflict. Many of the teams were from factions that the PCs are likely to spend much of the rest of the adventure fighting, so it was an amazing opportunity for their first impression of the faction to not be a brawl in some dungeon, but trading barbs over a drink in a seedy bar before a tournament match. So I leaned hard into making as many factions as possible represented, including sub-factions within the big ones, and foreshadowing as much as possible.
The second was narrative utility. Beyond their role as a window into this world, who are these people? Variety was important here. Some were absolutely hateable antagonists. Some were potential friends or friendly rivals, people it would hurt to face as mortal enemies later. And some were possible allies in the BBEG's camp, critical assets in their battle if they could win them over. I tried to make sure that several of the teams tied into other narrative threads both from the adventure prior and from the adventure going forward. This was also a great opportunity to re-incorporate enemies the PCs had faced before who had gotten away.
The third was mechanical utility. I was giving the characters the chance to study their opponent before a match. It was absolutely critical that that be worth the effort. If it wasn't, they'd stop doing it, and the structure would lose so much value. So for each team I prepped, I worked out what their strategies looked like, and at least one thing about them worth studying. And I tried to make sure there were a variety of things to discover that would lend themselves to different solutions. This team are secretly werebats, and weak to silver weapons. This team is going to open by nova-ing with fireballs, and then be weak afterwards. This team has fast healing, so they'll favour a drawn out battle. This team uses specific ability synergies, so if you disrupt those, they're weaker. Etc. There are so many options for this stuff in PF2e, I really wanted to find as much as possible.
I also knew that the characters would be level 5 at the start of the tournament, and would probably level up twice if they made a deep run. So I prepped the various teams to be around the line for a severe or extreme encounter for levels 5-7. This was the main way I determined the seeds. Seeds 64-32 were challenging at level 5, 31-11 were challenging at level 6, and 10-2 were challenging at level 7. The first seed was obviously head-and-shoulders above the other entrants, and she was fully a difficult boss battle at level 7. But the PCs were fully aware of that. They should have been, since they joined the tournament to kill her.
In the end I fully prepped about 20 teams. More than the PCs ended up fighting, but much fewer than it could have been. For the qualifier rounds, I was pretty free in how I did the matchups. I knew I wanted them to go up against at least one truly unfair fight, someone who would end up in the top 10 seeds. They'd almost certainly get stomped, but that would give them a sense of their progress later in the tournament, and losing a few qualifier matches was low consequences. But I was happy to let the dice choose who they fought, for the most part.
I did get some great outcomes out of that. They fought against the previous year's tournament winner, a fight I very much expected them to lose, and through a couple of unlikely rolls ended up paralyzing him and then yeeting him into a bottomless pit before he could even close to melee. I had thought that character would be like a solid mid-level threat, showing both how scary the tournament entrants could be, and also how much things had escalated since he was the winner last year and mid-tier this year, but the dice repeatedly decided he was comic relief, and he did a fantastic job of it.
In the end they went 4-2 in qualifiers, settling them nicely in the mid seeds where they would face some easier matches and some real challenges.
I used an online bracket-making tool just to get the seeding matchups correct, threw the bracket into a spreadsheet, and placed the teams that I had prepped in appropriate slots to be more likely to face the PCs. The rest I filled with evocative team names, since I wanted to post a bracket that the players could look at. As long as the team name was evocative enough, I reasoned that I could improv the team in an out-of-combat way if the players were interested. Like, I did not have a stat block ready for "Lucid Dying" but just the fact that they chose that team name tells me everything I need about their personalities. I prepped what the progression of the bracket would look like in the areas the PCs wouldn't have any influence on, favouring teams I had statted. If I needed to decide a winner and it was arbitrary, I'd just do a weighted dice roll based on seed.
But, of course, my control over the matchups is limited. The PCs actually dropped to losers bracket faster than I expected, a humbling experience that forced them to go make friends with the team they'd eventually face in the other anecdote I shared. And this made me need to prep a couple more teams between sessions, which was fine.
So, the bracket progression was mostly based on my choices, leaning toward creating matchups that would develop the worldbuilding and narrative needs of the adventure, but ultimately being decided by how well the PCs actually fought and which teams they ended up taking an interest in. In the end, they developed meaningful relationships with about five other teams, less significant but real connections with another four or five, and it did really feel like those relationships were an expression of the PCs and their choices, which I was really pleased with. If I ran the tournament again with different PCs, I'm sure it would go entirely differently, and that's the standard I care most about.
I did run one fight between NPCs by myself between sessions to get an accurate sense of how it would actually go, and it was part of my second favourite anecdote from that tournament, which I will share if anyone cares, but is far too long to add to this already long post. It took me several hours to do and was a very bad investment of time if I'd tried to do it for most of the tournament, but was eminently worth it for this specific fight.
Overall, the tournament arc was a big success, I was quite pleased with how it played out. The only regret I had was that I had prepped a bunch of stuff for them to do between matches, and we just didn't have the energy. Big, gruelling fight after big, gruelling fight in PF2e is draining, and we were mostly happy to do some lighter scenes between rounds and not get bogged down in other stuff. If I was doing it again, I might try to structure some explicit downtime into the tournament to give it a bit more breathing room.
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ameliajane8 · 1 month ago
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olekciy · 2 years ago
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    A short reminder that Russia is imperialist, has been imperialist for a long time, and there's no way around that fact.
Sections of the Western left have developed a narrative according to which Russia has been gradually surrounded by NATO and that supposedly "provoked" Putin. It's increasingly difficult to sustain the notion that Russia is simply "defending itself" after 24 February 2022, but the thing is - the invasion did not come out of the blue. One needs a different narrative to understand what Russia actually is: an aggressive imperialist power alongside other imperialisms.
So, a different narrative:
- 1994: Russia, with US support, acquires Ukrainian nuclear arsenal in exchange for the assurances to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity
- 1997: Russia acquires the Sevastopol naval base and almost all of the ships (82%, to be exact)... in exchange for the assurances to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity!
- 2004: Russia meddles in Ukrainian presidential elections, fighting hard to force an undemocratic fraudulent outcome, but fails
- Mid-to-late 2000s: As punishment for Ukraine electing Yushchenko, Russia uses energy blackmail, a form of economic coercion not very different from the IMF and World Bank lending and conditionality
- 2008: NATO refuses to adopt a roadmap towards Ukraine's membership and in effect postpones the decision indefinitely. Ukraine's security is in no way guaranteed, while Russia has already demonstrated the propensity to use coercion to force Ukraine to do its bidding
- 2009: Dmitry Medvedev, then president, writes to Yushchenko that "Russia does not pose and cannot pose any kind of threat to Ukraine", so seeking NATO membership is stupid. Yea, sure
- 2014: Russia, which "does not pose and cannot pose a threat to Ukraine"... annexes Crimea. Really, Dima?? I thought you were for real??
Of course, by annexing Crimea Russia not only makes all the previous statements that it "can never pose a threat to Ukraine" a ridiculous lie, but also breaks the 1994 memorandum and 1997 treaty. "We are the Kremlin. Our word is worth nothing"
- Crimea's annexation provokes armed separatism in Donbas that Russia supports and coordinates, including direct military command and control, and then completely subordinates Donbas "authorities", in effect occupying the region
- Ukraine's still not in NATO, its security is still in no way guaranteed, and the supplies of US weapons only begin in 2018. They are kept to a minimum... out of fear of provoking Russia!
- Nevertheless, on 24 February 2022 Russia launches a full-scale invasion to establish 100% control over all of Ukraine in one way or another. There is literally no military development on the ground that could have provoked the invasion. On Russia's part, it's a war of choice in exactly the same way the invasion of Iraq was a war of choice for the US in 2003.
Now, this is only the general outline. One should add Russia's drowning of Ukraine with spies and agents of influence, money to corrupt Ukrainian politicians and massive acquisition of Ukrainian assets to impose economic and political dependency.
These are well-known facts, but so many on the left refuse to see the story behind them. It's a story of decades of imperialist aggression, culminating in a war that cost 150,000 lives in 2022 alone. Any discussion of left-wing internationalism should begin with recognizing the reality of what Russia is and what it did.
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thesiltverses · 1 year ago
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Hi! So, in the most recent episode, Brand says at about the 40:15 mark that “the superstructure swallowed up the base,” and this has left me with a question. Was this a reference to the Marxist idea of the base and superstructure? If so, referring directly to Marx like this is so cool! I’ve always enjoyed the anti-capitalism of The Silt Verses, and I love how that’s really come to the forefront this season (not that it was all that hidden before) and how well the show lends itself to Marxist analysis. Thanks for making such a complex, interesting, and anti-capitalist show!
Hi and thank you so much!
Yeah, it definitely is, although I think I'm stealing Marx' terminology for our own ends rather than meaningfully engaging with it - the whole ep is in many ways a series of digs at UK politics right now, and the sense of both nations as a place that will willingly undermine its own actual assets and prospects in order to preserve the idea of itself and the ideological apparatus that's grown around it is something I was trying to get across there.
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