#base oil market share

[jarvis-invest]

Will Oil and Gas be Included in GST? Potential Outcomes and Implications

Including oil and gas under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime is a topic of ongoing discussion. As an end consumer, you must understand what it means if Oil and Gas be included in GST. We look at both sides of the story and what would be the potential outcome.

Why should Oil & Gas be included?

Here are some of the reasons for inclusion:

Reduced Cascading Effect: Currently, oil and gas attract central excise duty, state VAT, and additional levies. Bringing them under GST would eliminate these cascading taxes, potentially leading to lower retail prices for consumers.

Uniformity and Transparency: Inclusion in GST would ensure a single, nationwide tax structure for oil and gas. It could improve transparency and ease of doing business for companies in the sector.

Increased Revenue: The government hopes that a streamlined tax system might lead to better tax collection and potentially higher revenue.

Why is Oil & Gas not included in GST?

Here are some arguments for not including it in the GST:

Impact on Inflation: Since GST is a destination-based tax (taxed at the point of consumption), including oil and gas could lead to an initial rise in retail prices, potentially fueling inflation.

Revenue Concerns: Some states currently earn significant revenue from taxes on oil and gas. They might be apprehensive about losing this revenue stream if these products are brought under GST.

Political Resistance: Oil and gas are politically sensitive commodities. Any significant price increase due to GST could lead to public backlash.

What are the possible implications?

Impact on Consumers: The ultimate impact on consumers depends on the final tax rate and any potential efficiency gains from the GST system. The prices could go down in the long run due to a streamlined tax structure.

Boost for Industries: Lower input costs for oil and gas could benefit industries that rely on these products as inputs, potentially leading to increased production and job creation.

Fiscal Management: The success of including oil and gas under GST would hinge on effective fiscal management by both the central and state governments.

Let us know your thoughts on the same, about this interesting topic. To read more such latest news, Follow: Jarvis Invest.

[kcimoney]

Who Provides the Best Commodity Market Services in Alwar?

When it comes to investing in commodities, the residents of Alwar have a gem in their midst. Our financial services firm, which has been a guiding light for many investors, stands out as the go-to place for commodity market services in Alwar.

Understanding Commodity Markets

Before we dive into the services, let’s understand what commodity markets are. Simply put, they are places where you can buy or sell things like wheat, cotton, and even gold. It’s like a big shop where instead of clothes or toys, people trade in goods that come from the earth or are made in large quantities.

Why choose us?

We have been around for a while, and they know the ins and outs of the commodity market like the back of their hand. They offer advice that’s easy to understand and act on, making sure you’re not left scratching your head wondering what to do next.

Gold Trading Expertise

Gold is a big deal in Alwar, and we have got some of the best gold trading experts in Alwar. We can help you understand when to buy gold, when to sell, and how to keep your investments diversified and safe from market volatility. It’s like having a friend who knows all about gold and is always there to give you the best advice.

Personal Touch

What makes us special is the personal touch they bring to their services. They will sit down with you, listen to your aspirations, requirements, and plans, and then help you make the right decisions. Because it’s not just about making money; it’s about making your money work for you.

Community Trust

The people of Alwar trust us because they’ve seen the results. Neighbors, friends, and family members have all worked with us and come away happier and more confident about their investments.

Conclusion

In a city like Alwar, finding someone who understands your financial needs and can offer solid advice on commodity markets is priceless. We have proven time and again that we are the leaders in this field. Whether you’re looking to invest in gold or other commodities, we can be your partner you need.

This article is a brief overview of why we are considered the best provider of commodity market services, especially for those interested in gold trading. For more detailed information and personalized advice, visiting their website or contacting them directly would be the best course of action.

[reasonsforhope]

"A 1-megawatt sand battery that can store up to 100 megawatt hours of thermal energy will be 10 times larger than a prototype already in use.

The new sand battery will eliminate the need for oil-based energy consumption for the entire town of town of Pornainen, Finland.

Sand gets charged with clean electricity and stored for use within a local grid.

Finland is doing sand batteries big. Polar Night Energy already showed off an early commercialized version of a sand battery in Kankaanpää in 2022, but a new sand battery 10 times that size is about to fully rid the town of Pornainen, Finland of its need for oil-based energy.

In cooperation with the local Finnish district heating company Loviisan Lämpö, Polar Night Energy will develop a 1-megawatt sand battery capable of storing up to 100 megawatt hours of thermal energy.

“With the sand battery,” Mikko Paajanen, CEO of Loviisan Lämpö, said in a statement, “we can significantly reduce energy produced by combustion and completely eliminate the use of oil.”

Polar Night Energy introduced the first commercial sand battery in 2022, with local energy utility Vatajankoski. “Its main purpose is to work as a high-power and high-capacity reservoir for excess wind and solar energy,” Markku Ylönen, Polar Nigh Energy’s co-founder and CTO, said in a statement at the time. “The energy is stored as heat, which can be used to heat homes, or to provide hot steam and high temperature process heat to industries that are often fossil-fuel dependent.” ...

Sand—a high-density, low-cost material that the construction industry discards [Note: 6/13/24: Turns out that's not true! See note at the bottom for more info.] —is a solid material that can heat to well above the boiling point of water and can store several times the amount of energy of a water tank. While sand doesn’t store electricity, it stores energy in the form of heat. To mine the heat, cool air blows through pipes, heating up as it passes through the unit. It can then be used to convert water into steam or heat water in an air-to-water heat exchanger. The heat can also be converted back to electricity, albeit with electricity losses, through the use of a turbine.

In Pornainen, Paajanen believes that—just by switching to a sand battery—the town can achieve a nearly 70 percent reduction in emissions from the district heating network and keep about 160 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere annually. In addition to eliminating the usage of oil, they expect to decrease woodchip combustion by about 60 percent.

The sand battery will arrive ready for use, about 42 feet tall and 49 feet wide. The new project’s thermal storage medium is largely comprised of soapstone, a byproduct of Tulikivi’s production of heat-retaining fireplaces. It should take about 13 months to get the new project online, but once it’s up and running, the Pornainen battery will provide thermal energy storage capacity capable of meeting almost one month of summer heat demand and one week of winter heat demand without recharging.

“We want to enable the growth of renewable energy,” Paajanen said. “The sand battery is designed to participate in all Fingrid’s reserve and balancing power markets. It helps to keep the electricity grid balanced as the share of wind and solar energy in the grid increases.”"

-via Popular Mechanics, March 13, 2024

--

Note: I've been keeping an eye on sand batteries for a while, and this is really exciting to see. We need alternatives to lithium batteries ASAP, due to the grave human rights abuses and environmental damage caused by lithium mining, and sand batteries look like a really good solution for grid-scale energy storage.

--

Note 6/13/24: Unfortunately, turns out there are substantial issues with sand batteries as well, due to sand scarcity. More details from a lovely asker here, sources on sand scarcity being a thing at the links: x, x, x, x, x

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Expert agencies and elected legislatures

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/2024/11/21/policy-based-evidence/#decisions-decisions

Since Trump hijacked the Supreme Court, his backers have achieved many of their policy priorities: legalizing bribery, formalizing forced birth, and – with the Loper Bright case, neutering the expert agencies that regulate business:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/scotus-decisions-chevron-immunity-loper

What the Supreme Court began, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are now poised to finish, through the "Department of Government Efficiency," a fake agency whose acronym ("DOGE") continues Musk's long-running cryptocurrency memecoin pump-and-dump. The new department is absurd – imagine a department devoted to "efficiency" with two co-equal leaders who are both famously incapable of getting along with anyone – but that doesn't make it any less dangerous.

Expert agencies are often all that stands between us and extreme misadventure, even death. The modern world is full of modern questions, the kinds of questions that require a high degree of expert knowledge to answer, but also the kinds of questions whose answers you'd better get right.

You're not stupid, nor are you foolish. You could go and learn everything you need to know to evaluate the firmware on your antilock brakes and decide whether to trust them. You could figure out how to assess the Common Core curriculum for pedagogical soundness. You could learn the material science needed to evaluate the soundness of the joists that hold the roof up over your head. You could acquire the biology and chemistry chops to decide whether you want to trust produce that's been treated with Monsanto's Roundup pesticides. You could do the same for cell biology, virology, and epidemiology and decide whether to wear a mask and/or get an MRNA vaccine and/or buy a HEPA filter.

You could do any of these. You might even be able to do two or three of them. But you can't do all of them, and that list is just a small slice of all the highly technical questions that stand between you and misery or an early grave. Practically speaking, you aren't going to develop your own robust meatpacking hygiene standards, nor your own water treatment program, nor your own Boeing 737 MAX inspection protocol.

Markets don't solve this either. If they did, we wouldn't have to worry about chunks of Boeing jets falling on our heads. The reason we have agencies like the FDA (and enabling legislation like the Pure Food and Drug Act) is that markets failed to keep people from being murdered by profit-seeking snake-oil salesmen and radium suppository peddlers.

These vital questions need to be answered by experts, but that's easier said than done. After all, experts disagree about this stuff. Shortcuts for evaluating these disagreements ("distrust any expert whose employer has a stake in a technical question") are crude and often lead you astray. If you dismiss any expert employed by a firm that wants to bring a new product to market, you will lose out on the expertise of people who are so legitimately excited about the potential improvements of an idea that they quit their jobs and go to work for whomever has the best chance of realizing a product based on it. Sure, that doctor who works for a company with a new cancer cure might just be shilling for a big bonus – but maybe they joined the company because they have an informed, truthful belief that the new drug might really cure cancer.

What's more, the scientific method itself speaks against the idea of there being one, permanent answer to any big question. The method is designed as a process of continual refinement, where new evidence is continuously brought forward and evaluated, and where cherished ideas that are invalidated by new evidence are discarded and replaced with new ideas.

So how are we to survive and thrive in a world of questions we ourselves can't answer, that experts disagree about, and whose answers are only ever provisional?

The scientific method has an answer for this, too: refereed, adversarial peer review. The editors of major journals act as umpires in disputes among experts, exercising their editorial discernment to decide which questions are sufficiently in flux as to warrant taking up, then asking parties who disagree with a novel idea to do their damndest to punch holes in it. This process is by no means perfect, but, like democracy, it's the worst form of knowledge creation except for all others which have been tried.

Expert regulators bring this method to governance. They seek comment on technical matters of public concern, propose regulations based on them, invite all parties to comment on these regulations, weigh the evidence, and then pass a rule. This doesn't always get it right, but when it does work, your medicine doesn't poison you, the bridge doesn't collapse as you drive over it, and your airplane doesn't fall out of the sky.

Expert regulators work with legislators to provide an empirical basis for turning political choices into empirically grounded policies. Think of all the times you've heard about how the gerontocracy that dominates the House and the Senate is incapable of making good internet policy because "they're out of touch and don't understand technology." Even if this is true (and sometimes it is, as when Sen Ted Stevens ranted about the internet being "a series of tubes," not "a dump truck"), that doesn't mean that Congress can't make good internet policy.

After all, most Americans can safely drink their tap water, a novelty in human civilization, whose history amounts to short periods of thriving shattered at regular intervals by water-borne plagues. The fact that most of us can safely drink our water, but people who live in Flint (or remote indigenous reservations, or Louisiana's Cancer Alley) can't tells you that these neighbors of ours are being deliberately poisoned, as we know precisely how not to poison them.

How did we (most of us) get to the point where we can drink the water without shitting our guts out? It wasn't because we elected a bunch of water scientists! I don't know the precise number of microbiologists and water experts who've been elected to either house, but it's very small, and their contribution to good sanitation policy is negligible.

We got there by delegating these decisions to expert agencies. Congress formulates a political policy ("make the water safe") and the expert agency turns that policy into a technical program of regulation and enforcement, and your children live to drink another glass of water tomorrow.

Musk and Ramaswamy have set out to destroy this process. In their Wall Street Journal editorial, they explain that expert regulation is "undemocratic" because experts aren't elected:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/musk-and-ramaswamy-the-doge-plan-to-reform-government-supreme-court-guidance-end-executive-power-grab-fa51c020

They've vowed to remove "thousands" of regulations, and to fire swathes of federal employees who are in charge of enforcing whatever remains:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24301975/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-doge-plan

And all this is meant to take place on an accelerated timeline, between now and July 4, 2026 – a timeline that precludes any meaningful assessment of the likely consequences of abolishing the regulations they'll get rid of.

"Chesterton's Fence" – a thought experiment from the novelist GK Chesterton – is instructive here:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

A regulation that works might well produce no visible sign that it's working. If your water purification system works, everything is fine. It's only when you get rid of the sanitation system that you discover why it was there in the first place, a realization that might well arrive as you expire in a slick of watery stool with a rectum so prolapsed the survivors can use it as a handle when they drag your corpse to the mass burial pits.

When Musk and Ramaswamy decry the influence of "unelected bureaucrats" on your life as "undemocratic," they sound reasonable. If unelected bureaucrats were permitted to set policy without democratic instruction or oversight, that would be autocracy.

Indeed, it would resemble life on the Tesla factory floor: that most autocratic of institutions, where you are at the mercy of the unelected and unqualified CEO of Tesla, who holds the purely ceremonial title of "Chief Engineer" and who paid the company's true founders to falsely describe him as its founder.

But that's not how it works! At its best, expert regulations turns political choices in to policy that reflects the will of democratically accountable, elected representatives. Sometimes this fails, and when it does, the answer is to fix the system – not abolish it.

I have a favorite example of this politics/empiricism fusion. It comes from the UK, where, in 2008, the eminent psychopharmacologist David Nutt was appointed as the "drug czar" to the government. Parliament had determined to overhaul its system of drug classification, and they wanted expert advice:

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

To provide this advice, Nutt convened a panel of drug experts from different disciplines and asked them to rate each drug in question on how dangerous it was for its user; for its user's family; and for broader society. These rankings were averaged, and then a statistical model was used to determine which drugs were always very dangerous, no matter which group's safety you prioritized, and which drugs were never very dangerous, no matter which group you prioritized.

Empirically, the "always dangerous" drugs should be in the most restricted category. The "never very dangerous" drugs should be at the other end of the scale. Parliament had asked how to rank drugs by their danger, and for these categories, there were clear, factual answers to Parliament's question.

But there were many drugs that didn't always belong in either category: drugs whose danger score changed dramatically based on whether you were more concerned about individual harms, familial harms, or societal harms. This prioritization has no empirical basis: it's a purely political question.

So Nutt and his panel said to Parliament, "Tell us which of these priorities matter the most to you, and we will tell you where these changeable drugs belong in your schedule of restricted substances." In other words, politicians make political determinations, and then experts turn those choices into empirically supported policies.

This is how policy by "unelected bureaucrats" can still be "democratic."

But the Nutt story doesn't end there. Nutt butted heads with politicians, who kept insisting that he retract factual, evidence-supported statements (like "alcohol is more harmful than cannabis"). Nutt refused to do so. It wasn't that he was telling politicians which decisions to make, but he took it as his duty to point out when those decisions did not reflect the policies they were said to be in support of. Eventually, Nutt was fired for his commitment to empirical truth. The UK press dubbed this "The Nutt Sack Affair" and you can read all about it in Nutt's superb book Drugs Without the Hot Air, an indispensable primer on the drug war and its many harms:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/drugs-without-the-hot-air-9780857844989/

Congress can't make these decisions. We don't elect enough water experts, virologists, geologists, oncology researchers, structural engineers, aerospace safety experts, pedagogists, gerontoloists, physicists and other experts for Congress to turn its political choices into policy. Mostly, we elect lawyers. Lawyers can do many things, but if you ask a lawyer to tell you how to make your drinking water safe, you will likely die a horrible death.

That's the point. The idea that we should just trust the market to figure this out, or that all regulation should be expressly written into law, is just a way of saying, "you will likely die a horrible death."

Trump – and his hatchet men Musk and Ramaswamy – are not setting out to create evidence-based policy. They are pursuing policy-based evidence, firing everyone capable of telling them how to turn the values espouse (prosperity and safety for all Americans) into policy.

They dress this up in the language of democracy, but the destruction of the expert agencies that turn the political will of our representatives into our daily lives is anything but democratic. It's a prelude to transforming the nation into a land of epistemological chaos, where you never know what's coming out of your faucet.

[chemicalsnews]

Avocado-based Products Market Outlook: Key Growth Factors and Forecast Analysis by 2031

The key objective of the TMR report is to offer a complete assessment of the global market including major leading stakeholders of the Avocado-based Products market. The current and historical status of the market together with forecasted market size and trends are demonstrated in the assessment in simple manner. In addition, the report delivers data on the volume, share, revenue, production, and sales in the market.

Get PDF sample for Industrial Insights and business Intelligence - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=82876

The report by TMR is the end-product of a study performed using different methodologies including the PESTEL, PORTER, and SWOT analysis. The study with the help of these models shed light on the key financial considerations that players in the Avocado-based Products market need to focus on identifying competition and formulate their marketing strategies for both consumer and industrial markets. The report leverages a wide spectrum of research methods including surveys, interviews, and social media listening to analyze consumer behaviors in its entirety.

Avocado-based Products Market: Industry Trends and Value Chain

The study on the Avocado-based Products market presents a granular assessment of the macroeconomic and microeconomic factors that have shaped the industry dynamics. An in-depth focus on industry value chain help companies find out effective and pertinent trends that define customer value creation in the market. The analysis presents a data-driven and industry-validated frameworks for understanding the role of government regulations and financial and monetary policies. The analysts offer a deep-dive into the how these factors will shape the value delivery network for companies and firms operating in the market.

Avocado-based Products Market: Branding Strategies and Competitive Strategies

Some of the key questions scrutinized in the study are:

 What are some of the recent brand building activities of key players undertaken to create customer value in the Avocado-based Products market?

Which companies are expanding litany of products with the aim to diversify product portfolio?

Which companies have drifted away from their core competencies and how have those impacted the strategic landscape of the Avocado-based Products market?

Which companies have expanded their horizons by engaging in long-term societal considerations?

Which firms have bucked the pandemic trend and what frameworks they adopted to stay resilient?

What are the marketing programs for some of the recent product launches?

Make Inquiry before Buying - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=EB&rep_id=82876

The list of key players operating in the Avocado-based Products market includes following names:

Lonza, Clariant, Spec Chem Industry Inc., YanTai Aurora Chemical Co. Ltd., Kumar Organic Products Limited, Somu Group, Zhonglan Industry Co. Ltd., Wuxi Zhufeng Fine Chemical Co. Ltd., Qingdao Fihonor Chemical Science & Technology Co. Ltd., and Shandong Chuangying Chemical Co. Ltd.

Avocado-based Products Market: Assessment of Avenues and Revenue Potential in Key Geographies

Some of the key aspects that the study analyzes and sheds light are:

Which regions are witnessing rise in investments in the supply chain networks?

Which countries seems to have benefitted from recent import and export policies?

Which regions have witnessed decline in consumer demand due to economic and political upheavals?

Which are some the key geographies that are likely to emerge as lucrative markets?

Which regions are expected to lose shares due to pricing pressures?

Which regions leading players are expected to expand their footprints in the near future?

What are some the sustainability trends impacting the logistics and supply chain dynamics in the Avocado-based Products market?

What are some of the demographic and economic environments that create new demand in developing economies?

How are changing government regulations shaping business strategies and practices?

Read More: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/avocado-based-products-market.html

[lorelune]

regency au jing yuan how you are haunting me.

(continued here!)

a retired general who at the ripe age of thirty five has never taken a wife. never showed any interest in procuring a spouse nor does he entertain any attempts by the mamas of the ton to throw their eligible children at him. he is a polite scoundrel, kind-hearted in a way that makes those with half a mind question how someone with his demeanor could ever be the famed general who's strategies downed Shuhu during the Abundance Upheaval. he doesn't seem to care for his legacy, as much as he has cultivated one. he doesn't mind gossip, but doesn't entertain it much either.

you only meet him due to fortunate circumstances.

lord Luocha, a successful travelling merchant, pledged patronage to you sometime ago. he keeps you in a little cottage on the grounds of his manor where you're allowed to mostly do as you please as long as there's a new painting hung on the lord's wall every few months or so. the lord likes when you play too. he brings back new instruments for you to try, though he never expects mastery. he has an air of mystery to him that, despite all of the time you spend near him, keeps you from understanding him fully. you aren't one to pry about it either.

lord luocha invites jing yuan over to partake in fancy spirits from a country and city you can't ever hope to visit, let alone find on a map. you bring lord luocha your newest work-- (a meticulously completed oil painting. something more abstract, suited to the odd lonely and isolation you feel in your little, cozy cottage, despite all of the comforts you are afforded)-- and happen upon the pair.

lord luocha examines your newest work with pride, and shortly after introduces you. 'his patron' he calls you, but offers jing yuan no title. you--

(do not have one. it was stripped from you a long time ago. you think being an artist suits you better, anyways.)

jing yuan offers you his name, though you already know it. you recognize him based on the prattling of the girls and boys at the market. they swoon over his stature, fawn over his good deeds, and make note of his identifiable red hair ribbon. he has the same soft, sun-colored eyes that you had heard the eligible young of the ton giggle about.

you bow to him politely.

you have no reason to linger, but luocha calls you to anyways. perhaps he is lonely. perhaps you want him to be lonely, so it gives you a reason to stick closer to his side in the rare moments he is home for more than a day or two. the proximity is shared with jing yuan, who regards you with keen eyes and a lazy smile. the attention upon you feels weighted, important, like you're something special.

you savor it, however fleeting.

perhaps, however, you misunderstood jing yuan. or lord luocha's intentions.

because as jing yuan rises to take his leave and you bow once more, he catches your hand, brings it to his lips, and presses a kiss into the soft skin. you're sure you smell of linseed and yarrow oil. he lingers there for a moment before meeting your gaze. there's a light of mischief in them that sends your heart fluttering. your breath catches.

when jing yuan is out of the manor, lord luocha pats your shoulder gently, "quite the man, isn't he?"

"i suppose... he is."

"you may speak freely."

"i am," you mince, and shake your head. you must be careful, entertaining such fanciful thoughts. "he is... kind."

"and handsome."

"lord luocha," you barely keep yourself from whining. "please, do not tease me. or the poor man. from what i hear, he has enough to deal with."

"the mamas do chase after him like foxes to a hen," lord luocha chuckles and studies your painting once more with a curious tilt of his head. "he'll ask to see you again, i'm certain."

"and why do you say that?"

"general jing yuan has never taken the hand of a potential suitor."

your heart feels heavy and warm in your chest, burning. "my lord, you cannot possibly think that this single action indicates that the general will... call upon me? that is highly unorthodox and i don't believe that's... quite allowed."

"jing yuan has never cared for the dances of decorum." lord luocha guides you into your gardens. the peonies are in bloom, full and lush in the humidity of late spring. "and, for the record, i don't believe he'll simply call upon you. court, properly, certainly."

"you're bluffing."

"what reason do i have to lie?"

"to tease me, as you so enjoy doing," you huff.

lord luocha simply hums and pauses near a bush of lilacs. they're fragrant, at the peak of their season. the scent rolls over you.

"if i truly intended to tease you, i simply would abstain from telling you of jing yuan's interest and allow you to be terribly surprised when he arrives and formally asks for you and your time. consider this a warning. i'll walk you to the modiste tomorrow, hm?"

you want to squawk at him. your linen dresses and tunics are fine (albeit smeared and stained with paints and oils over the years. you rarely bother replacing them.)

you want to protest and pry more, but lord luocha strikes you silent when he breaks off a cluster of lilac and tucks it behind your ear. he leaves you with your thoughts, however tortuous. and, perhaps horribly, you find yourself believing him. perhaps the warm-eyed general really was charmed. perhaps, your dresses needed replacing and you should contact your perfumer friend for a fresh vial or two.

perhaps perhaps perhaps, you can still feel where his lips lingered on your skin, like a brand. you never thought you could ache for burning, but in the gardens, you find yourself clutching your hand to your chest, craving the lick of the his sun's heat once more.

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

The more difficult sell would be to the Americans. Why should they want us? We’re an economic basket case and, though strategically well-placed as a bridge between North America and Europe, we’re already a reliable military and diplomatic ally. However, we do have the City of London, the world’s number two location on the Global Financial Centres Index, and a tidy stockpile of nuclear weapons, plus Washington would gain some potentially useful little dots on the map like the Falklands, the Caymans, Gibraltar and a couple of military bases in Cyprus. (The Chagos Islands, not so much.)

We have some oil, which a future Republican administration would probably be up for drilling, and heaps of wind power, which the Democrats would be more enthusiastic about. We also have Northern Ireland and what better way for the United States to pursue its keen interest in Irish affairs than by sharing an island and a border. America would gain Scotland, where roughly 96 per cent of them claim to come from, and while as a US state Britain would be a republic, the royal family could be retained for tourism, kitsch marketing and Netflix licensing purposes. Wales would come as part of the package but they manage fine with one Alabama so a second shouldn’t be all that much trouble.

In many ways, the UK would be the ultimate prize for the United States. How many former empires apply to become part of their former colonies? It would be like winning the revolutionary war all over again, and this time we won’t come back thirty years later and burn down the White House.

[traditionaldream]

Trad girls don't gatekeep 🎀

These are just some tips/products I want to share with you ♡

1) Lipsticks

Revlon, Certainly Red: I love this red lipstick and plus, it is a true vintage shade! It has been on the market since 1951.

Deliplus, shade 202: It's a supermarket (Mercadona) lipstick, but it is the perfect pink shade, it makes me feel like Audrey Hepburn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's".

Aquaphor Lip Repair: This one is just amazing at hydrating your lips and a good base layer to use under lipsticks.

2) Hair

Sleep with a satin bonnet/satin scarf: I have long curly hair and this has helped me tremendously with tangles and frizz. You can find bonnets everywhere and the scarf method, which was very popular back in the day, makes me feel like I am a 40s housewife going to bed.

Pantene Pro-v coconut infused oil: I love the scent of this hair oil

3) Creams and Perfumes

Nivea, the blue tin can one: it has been on the market for a long time (yay vintage) and it's very moisturizing. If you are acne prone, I wouldn't really advise you putting it on your face, though.

Dove Pampering Care with Shea Butter and Vanilla: Do I need to say more? The scent is divine.

Dior Hypnotic Poison: My favorite perfume and one of the best scents out there

Victoria's Secret body mists: I love the Pure Seduction, Aqua Kiss and the Coconut Milk and Rose. Also Zara's Fields in the Nightfall.

These are just some tips, my beautiful girls ♡ I hope you enjoyed them

[ranticore]

All your settings are crazy interesting to think about and currently I've been taur-brained. sorry if you've already answered this somewhere else, but who are the ones manufacturing their clothes? Or their mane and hoof care products, etc? Would it be humans who were already making similar stuff for normal horses, or are there some centaurs also in the business making more specialized and informed products (like shoes or horse-pants????) Surely there's an economic power imbalance in there somewhere between whoevers making the necessities and who's got to buy them.

(either way, being good at diy is probably a plus for them )

I mentioned it a little bit in the first clothing post i made but the examples given (aside from the classical dress) are all modern - basically, small tailor shops in Ironwall will bulk-order horse blankets from wholesale (usually international) retailers and modify them on-site for resale to centaurs, sometimes doing a same-day custom job for someone if they need it. this is considered kinda cheap, and not in the realm of formalwear/barely business casual. think t-shirt and jeans level stuff. but like you said, in a lot of cases centaurs would buy their own horse rugs to modify at home (basically you need longer straps that articulate at a different part of the body than stock). these specific alteration shops are usually some of the first businesses to pop up in cities/towns outside Ironwall whenever emmigrant centaurs have a decent presence, alongside herbivore food shops.

so yeah absolutely as a marker of class & a requirement for formal occasions, there is bespoke tailor-made clothing made to fit their bodies from the start and it is EXPENSIVE. especially the big classical style gowns, there's a lot of fabric there and it has to be cut well so that it doesn't entangle the legs or restrict the torso, and have enough petticoat/underskirt/etc so that there'll be no accidental flashing on a windy day. now modern commercialism/capitalism hit Ironwall in a very strange way - many centaurs remember the exact moment the first mcdonalds opened in ironwall in the 90s, as human resident % had gone up and suddenly Ironwall was a market and a consumer base.

(this one got so long that even I will concede to a readmore)

most people unable to afford the tailored stuff in the early 20th century would buy big cuts of curtain fabric and sew their own gowns for formal occasions/serving on a budget and those gowns would see use for decades. companies saw the potential to offer factory/sweatshop produced off the rack centaur fast fashion that resembled the very intricate classical gowns without any of the tailored properties/thick skirts/flexibility in the torso/etc. this is landfill junk and wears out quickly. in many cases it's a cheap human bodice/t-shirt/etc sewn to the bottom gown bit, which means there's a weak seam right at a point of great articulation, and the clothes will catch/snag in odd places because the muscles underneath are different too. in terms of the economic power imbalance - yep. it's a market but a small one, without much competition, and multinationals can easily outcompete the centaur tailors who offer services at middle or low price brackets.

and of course. there's always poverty tourism. you can buy fully bespoke, made-for-centaurs, designer... rebadged horse blankets, for the athleisure/sports-luxe fans

because centaurs as a market share are not very prominent still (that is changing tho), most of their own businesses are small and dynastic - one group running the same mane oil business since the 1700s, churning out the same basic product for a small but dedicated audience. these types of businesses rarely advertise and if they do it's by putting a tiny text-only ad into the paper with their phone number inserted. they are woefully ill-prepared to compete with external businesses turning their eye to Ironwall in search of new markets. but what they have that large multinationals don't is parochialism and loyalty to a brand, and access to a more readily exploited centaur work force. many will turn around and do a little song and dance "don't you want to support small centaur businesses? we'll go under if we have to comply with modern labour laws!"

because at the heart of centaur businesses is that old purifying work ethic, and because ironwall is 1. conservative and 2. largely self-governing, their labour laws are antiquated. they still have workhouses. and there has always been a lack of interest from the wider country's government to intervene because ehh it's the Ironwall culture to work hard, isn't it? and do we really want to insert ourselves into centaur business? humans actively seeking work in ironwall, then, make up two broad groups - those who seek to exploit these relaxed labour laws by opening a business, and those who know that 'poor' in other places is 'middle class disposable income' in Ironwall (like first worlders becoming 'expats' or 'digital nomads' in places with cheaper costs of living than their wealthy home nation - easily leading to gentrification).

Anyway so that's all the modern perspective; all of this applies for the other beastmen as well like the harpies and so on, though they have to live with the additional layer of most of their laws and products being about horses.

Historically centaur clothing was made by hand in the home, usually by the women in a social group, and made robust enough to last several generations of wear (with repairs). Because clothing would be passed down from mother to daughter, this resulted in colt bachelor bands being so fucking naked all the time. In traditional enclaves and pre-Florian settlements, a stallion who was accepted into his new herd would be gifted handmade kinetic clothing (bells, ribbons, feathers, anything that enhances the movement) by his new wives and his ability to keep his gifts looking nice would be judged for a set period of time (if you lose a bell that's bad luck buddy), after which he was supposed to return the favour by hand-carving them beautiful tail ornaments (as discussed in my historical clothing post - the ornaments would appear similar to welsh lovespoons in design)

this tradition got trampled over with the introduction of Florian's penal laws because tail ornaments could not be worn when the tail was fully covered and attempts at kinetic fashion fell flat when your nice trot is all hidden up by what's basically a giant tablecloth. but there does remain a custom of women giving men gifts to test their commitment (to heterosexuality), with the expectation that it'll be paid back with something nice and handmade. but commercialism comes for us all eventually.

finally on the topic of shoes, iron shoes are not super common anymore but in the victorian era, rope shoes were manufactured in the city to cut down on noise levels when streets were becoming full paved/cobbled.

they were not very good for the feet and required regular replacement because the rope would wear down, but that meant business for farriers was booming and became almost guaranteed when the famously and hilariously corrupt high councillors and lord protector began to pass increasingly strict anti noise pollution laws.

[crystalrabbit246912]

More Winged NRC Students

Imagine if having wings also gave them bird instincts, like chirping and making a nest. No one bats an eye because they all have wings, though Grim gets confused at first and Vil doesn't like Epel chirping so frequently.

So all of the kids like to perch up in high places and the aquatic birds have a fondness for water. Some of them, like Ace because he'd find it funny, also perch on people because he finds it funny to see their reactions to having him suddenly land on them.

Additionally, they all have hollow bones to make them lighter so that flying is easier for them. So Ruggie and Leona have to be extra careful during their sabotage plot to make sure that they don't injure anyone too badly because having hollow bones makes them more fragile.

Moving away from that, I can see people wanting to claim others as flock and stealing some of their clothes for their nests, which is kind of frustrating because you have to negotiate for the clothes back but don't want to make the other think that you don't want to be part of their flock.

The first-years wear each other's feathers (Ortho had to make synthetic feathers to complete the collection because he doesn't have actual physical wings) on a necklace with a little hole in the feathers' stalk (what's that long stick through the center of a feather called?) as a symbol of being a flock and play with the feathers as a nervous tick.

Another thing that they have to do is preen their wings whenever they get dirty or have to remove some of the dead feathers. They only let people that they trust preen their wings and keep the best feathers for when they add people to their flock. The first-years sometimes form a 'preening line' with Ortho at the beginning since he doesn't have actual wings, where they preen each others' wings and get their wings preened at the same time.

Most birds have a gland at the base of their tails to form oil to coat their wings for waterproofing and protection, and since they don't have tails, they have to make to with handmade oil. There are factories and people who specifically make wing oil to market and Epel's family also makes sunflower oil or something like that for wings. The excess gets sent to him via mail much like the apple juice does and he shares it among the fellow first-years and occasionally his dormmates because better than the wing oil for commercial sale.

Sometimes a group of people stack on top of each other by flying up and landing on each others' shoulders. This happens most often with the first-year group though the Pop Music Club + Rook do the same sometimes. Floyd tries to form a stack, but Azul doesn't let him unless there's someone around who can join him and Jade.

Speaking of Floyd, he likes to kidnap people (most of the time, said person is Riddle) to go flying with them. By flying, he means holding them in bridal carry and just taking off because he's strong enough to do that with people who are shorter than him, which is most people. He always gets scolded for it, but keeps doing it to the point where getting kidnapped by Floyd happens to someone every other day.

[taki-yaki]

Domestic In The Underdark Headcanons

Pairing: Astarion x GN!Reader/Tav/Durge

Despite the dangers that people preach about the Underdark, you and Astarion try to make it feel like home.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Got this out in time for the day of love. It's not quite Valentine's centric but I hope everyone enjoys it either way.

Despite the Underdark being known as the most dangerous place to live in, you and Astarion try to make it feel like home.

After finding some of the freed vampire spawn, you take up residency in an old abandoned fortress in the Underdark. It’s no grand mansion in the upper city, but you hire some artificers who are paid a little extra to keep quiet about the whole spawn situation, as well as them being able to help out fellow heroes of Baldurs Gate.

You and Astarion have a home specially made for the two of you, based on the houses in the city, as well as the spawn having homes for themselves.

When it comes to decorating the house, Astarion was mainly in charge of wallpaper and furniture choices for the home, but would also take in your inputs as well.

However, the main issue with all vampires when it comes to personal homes is the forbiddance rule they must follow, in which they must receive an invitation to enter the home, so a little hanging sign is made saying Astarion & Tav’s home which sits outside the door.

When it comes to cooking, Astarion would make an effort to learn how to, mainly for your sake if you can’t cook at all. Of course, the first few dishes may be a bit too burnt or too salty, but you can’t blame him, he hasn’t needed to eat food in over 200 years. 

“What do you mean it’s too salty for you? Well, I just kept adding salt until I could taste it”

The two of you would also take trips to the surface, via a portal setup that Gale was kind enough to arrange for you both. Visiting nearby night markets that local villages provide.

When it comes to clothing, he would embroider small messages into them whilst patching up any loose holes. Additionally, when attending parties or balls, he ensures that you wear the best outfit, during the preparations for Wither’s reunion party, he ended up spending so much time decorating your outfit, that he had to grab one of his old shirts and quickly patch it up.

He would also write small messages on your work clothes/armour for you to read while you are both apart from each other for the day, managing tasks.

During the evenings you would share each other's shirts and Astarion would always make a fuss over it “Honestly darling, it’s an honour to be wearing one of my handcrafted shirts.”

He does enjoy seeing you wearing his shirts though.

Since Elves only need around 4 hours of rest through trance, Astarion would sometimes wait for you to wake up by reading a book whilst watching you nearby. If you are an Elf or Drow, he would try to wake up before you regardless.

During the evenings, you would both cuddle together, either reading books out loud to one another or listening to each other ranting about how your day has been, from managing wayward spawn to taking out some drow raiders.

You both would bathe together, as a form of non-sexual intimacy, trying out the different scented oils that you’ve purchased from the market.

You would gift Astarion flowers that you collect from the surface, although he does find them a little gaudy, he enjoys having them as the colours remind him of being in the sun.

Astarion would try to return the favour by gifting you flowers, but only ones that would be useful for making into poisons and lists what each one is and its function.

”See if you take the petals from this one then crush and burn them, you can make a quick deadly toxin, but I think they look nice like this as well.”

Of course, when these flowers started to dry up, he would press them between books to persevere them.

Despite all the horrors of the Underdark and the gurgling task of managing over 7000 spawn. You are both able to make a place to call home.

[treethymes]

With the exceptions of North Korea and Cuba, the communist world has merged onto the capitalist highway in a couple different ways during the twenty-first century. As you’ve read, free-trade imperialism and its cheap agricultural imports pushed farmers into the cities and into factory work, lowering the global price of manufacturing labor and glutting the world market with stuff. Forward-thinking states such as China and Vietnam invested in high-value-added production capacity and managed labor organizing, luring links from the global electronics supply chain and jump-starting capital investment. Combined with capital’s hesitancy to invest in North Atlantic production facilities, as well as a disinclination toward state-led investment in the region, Asian top-down planning erased much of the West’s technological edge. If two workers can do a single job, and one worker costs less, both in wages and state support, why pick the expensive one? Foxconn’s 2017 plan to build a U.S. taxpayer–subsidized $10 billion flat-panel display factory in Wisconsin was trumpeted by the president, but it was a fiasco that produced zero screens. The future cost of labor looks to be capped somewhere below the wage levels many people have enjoyed, and not just in the West.

The left-wing economist Joan Robinson used to tell a joke about poverty and investment, something to the effect of: The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalists is not being exploited by capitalists. It’s a cruel truism about the unipolar world, but shouldn’t second place count for something? When the Soviet project came to an end, in the early 1990s, the country had completed world history’s biggest, fastest modernization project, and that didn’t just disappear. Recall that Cisco was hyped to announce its buyout of the Evil Empire’s supercomputer team. Why wasn’t capitalist Russia able to, well, capitalize? You’re already familiar with one of the reasons: The United States absorbed a lot of human capital originally financed by the Soviet people. American immigration policy was based on draining technical talent in particular from the Second World. Sergey Brin is the best-known person in the Moscow-to-Palo-Alto pipeline, but he’s not the only one.

Look at the economic composition of China and Russia in the wake of Soviet dissolution: Both were headed toward capitalist social relations, but they took two different routes. The Russian transition happened rapidly. The state sold off public assets right away, and the natural monopolies such as telecommunications and energy were divided among a small number of skilled and connected businessmen, a category of guys lacking in a country that frowned on such characters but that grew in Gorbachev’s liberalizing perestroika era. Within five years, the country sold off an incredible 35 percent of its national wealth. Russia’s richest ended the century with a full counterrevolutionary reversal of their fortunes, propelling their income share above what it was before the Bolsheviks took over. To accomplish this, the country’s new capitalists fleeced the most vulnerable half of their society. “Over the 1989–2016 period, the top 1 percent captured more than two-thirds of the total growth in Russia,” found an international group of scholars, “while the bottom 50 percent actually saw a decline in its income.” Increases in energy prices encouraged the growth of an extractionist petro-centered economy. Blood-covered, teary, and writhing, infant Russian capital crowded into the gas and oil sectors. The small circle of oligarchs privatized unemployed KGB-trained killers to run “security,” and gangsters dominated politics at the local and national levels. They installed a not particularly well-known functionary—a former head of the new intelligence service FSB who also worked on the privatization of government assets—as president in a surprise move on the first day of the year 2000. He became the gangster in chief.

Vladimir Putin’s first term coincided with the energy boom, and billionaires gobbled up a ludicrous share of growth. If any individual oligarch got too big for his britches, Putin was not beyond imposing serious consequences. He reinserted the state into the natural monopolies, this time in collaboration with loyal capitalists, and his stranglehold on power remains tight for now, despite the outstandingly uneven distribution of growth. Between 1980 and 2015, the Russian top 1 percent grew its income an impressive 6.2 percent per year, but the top .001 percent has maintained a growth rate of 17 percent over the same period. To invest these profits, the Russian billionaires parked their money in real estate, bidding up housing prices, and stashed a large amount of their wealth offshore. Reinvestment in Russian production was not a priority—why go through the hassle when there were easier ways to keep getting richer?

While Russia grew billionaires instead of output, China saw a path to have both. As in the case of Terry Gou, the Chinese Communist Party tempered its transition by incorporating steadily increasing amounts of foreign direct investment through Hong Kong and Taiwan, picking partners and expanding outward from the special economic zones. State support for education and infrastructure combined with low wages to make the mainland too attractive to resist. (Russia’s population is stagnant, while China’s has grown quickly.) China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, in 2001, gave investors more confidence. Meanwhile, strong capital controls kept the country out of the offshore trap, and state development priorities took precedence over extraction and get-rich-quick schemes. Chinese private wealth was rechanneled into domestic financial assets—equity and bonds or other loan instruments—at a much higher rate than it was in Russia. The result has been a sustained high level of annual output growth compared to the rest of the world, the type that involves putting up an iPhone City in a matter of months. As it has everywhere else, that growth has been skewed: only an average of 4.5 percent for the bottom half of earners in the 1978–2015 period compared to more than 10 percent for the top .001 percent. But this ratio of just over 2–1 is incomparable to Russia’s 17–.5 ration during the same period.

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, certain trends have been more or less unavoidable. The rich have gotten richer relative to the poor and working class—in Russia, in China, in the United States, and pretty much anywhere else you want to look. Capital has piled into property markets, driving up the cost of housing everywhere people want to live, especially in higher-wage cities and especially in the world’s financial centers. Capitalist and communist countries alike have disgorged public assets into private pockets. But by maintaining a level of control over the process and slowing its tendencies, the People’s Republic of China has built a massive and expanding postindustrial manufacturing base.

It’s important to understand both of these patterns as part of the same global system rather than as two opposed regimes. One might imagine, based on what I’ve written so far, that the Chinese model is useful, albeit perhaps threatening, in the long term for American tech companies while the Russian model is irrelevant. Some commentators have phrased this as the dilemma of middle-wage countries on the global market: Wages in China are going to be higher than wages in Russia because wages in Russia used to be higher than wages in China. But Russia’s counterrevolutionary hyper-bifurcation has been useful for Silicon Valley as well; they are two sides of the same coin. Think about it this way: If you’re a Russian billionaire in the first decades of the twenty-first century looking to invest a bunch of money you pulled out of the ground, where’s the best place you could put it? The answer is Palo Alto.

Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto

[felixcloud6288]

Dungeon Meshi Miscellaneous Monster Tales 4

This volume's MMTs is catching up on what happened last volume.

Giant Frogs

I'm so glad this one exists because it proves I was right about the frog skins. It's not the skin that's immune to tentacle stings, it's the mucous layer over the skin.

There could be a potential market for Chilchuck if he wants to go from toad oil salesman to frog slime salesman though. He'd need to harvest some of that slime to have it studied. Then he could sell a mass-produced oil similar to sunscreen. Maybe he could try selling full-body suits that adventurers can wear and coat the slime onto so they don't ruin their clothes and Chilchuck could offer a service where he coats the suits themselves.

Those frog gloves are probably unconfortable since they only have four digits while every human has five.

That 1,000 gold price Chilchuck was considering is actually really cheap based on the exchange rate I suggested in MMT1. It would end up being roughly $50 USD. It's less than the walking mushroom guidebook.

Tentacles

Additional information in this segment reinforces that these are meant to be monstrous anemones. They're filter feeders that eat airborne spirits. So then why did that one tentacle grab Kiki and Laios? Maybe they're opportunistic generalists.

It's not the tentacle's fault that architecture designed to be easily gripped by human fingers is also ideal for tentacles to grip.

I love when the joke is that no one finds the dirty joke funny.

Mermaids

Most of the comments I want to make about mermaids is tied to the fishmen section so I'll save that there.

The entire joke is a callback to the mandrake harvesting method back in chapter 4, including replacing the dog ghost with a Chilchuck ghost.

I don't imagine most dwarfs would be likely to encounter mermaids. Senshi's probably talking about the whole "Canary in a cola mine" thing.

Fishmen

Love how the fishman introduction is a parody of the mermaid introduction all the way to how the last line is "drag them into the ocean".

It feels like the author wants to make it clear that Laios was right and there's no moral dilemma with eating fishmen (aside from personal beliefs and feelings). It does point out fishmen and mermaids have some physical similarities, but they're entirely coincidental. Fishmen develop and mature the same way most fish would.

Mermaids and other demihumans probably share a mammalian ancestor with humans and they all coincidentally developed common body frames, but the biological relation would probably be roughly on the same level as a human compared to a kangaroo.

Mermaids would probably feel insulted if you told them they and fishmen are the same taxonomic species.

Also, hard confirm: Mermaids have fingernails.

Undines

Mostly just talk about mana and spirits. Chapter 20 already mentioned that Undines are water spirits. I'm curious what other elemental spirits look like.

Is this panel saying there is mana in the panel and word bubble borders?

More confusion about the "human" definition. So is human a catch-all term for all the standard D&D races? And did the orc chieftain say "elves and humans" because he wanted to single out elves especially?

And it turns out Namari was suffering the equivalent of water intoxication after going through that teleporter.

Wargs

We've never interacted with a warg. This is the first time we've actually been shown a proper warg. The burned corpses from chapter 23 had all their fur burned off.

There were three corpses in chapter 23 and two skeletons in the dragon's fuel sac, so there were at least five wargs in the pack in the orc village.

Laios said one of the only differences between him and orcs is the number of fingers and toes.

I had to look through so many panels to confirm this statement. Orcs and humans have the same number of fingers per hand, but orcs have four toes per foot.

It really shows what Laios pays attention to if he doesn't notice all the obvious differences between himself and an orc like body hair, teeth, jawline, etc. but he is aware that orcs have fewer toes.

Red Dragons

Have I mentioned that I like how the story will delve into the real-world logistics that would have to go into being an adventurer? This story isn't using video game logic. You don't kill a monster and then have dragon fangs and dragon claws in your infinite inventory.

Since dragons are so large, it would actually take a large team to transport the body after slaying it. So the gross profit of dragon slaying is high, but the net gain is actually not much compared to the overall work needed.

Maybe that skin Senshi was using as a cooking sheet might net the party a nice profit... if Senshi lets them have it.

When Laios compared the amount of information on dragons to the amount on walking mushrooms, I think he was implying that studying walking mushrooms is the actual pinnacle of monster research. Recall that Laios owns a book dedicated specifically to walking mushrooms.

Marcille and Chilchuck are always shocked at Laios's obsession with monsters, but Laios implies his antics are nothing compared to what dragon fans are like.

back

[sgiandubh]

Do you think he does different types of promo to attract all the different crowds?

Dear Promo Anon,

Not only I think he does that, I also happen to think he (or anyone seriously hoping to sell anything other than snake oil) should do exactly that.

The problem is not the logical correlation between what you want to sell and the people to whom you want to sell it. The first problem is the lack of balance between your way of interacting with your different target groups, which could lead to a very fuzzy brand image. Both of your products and of yourself, who are their creator and main promoter.

Promoting a brand without a clear set of main ideas and values is very likely to have a negative impact on your sales. Show them biceps, sea, sex (?) and sun galore is all fine and dandy for the younger crowd (and the LGBT+ one, btw). But showing at the same time that you can be a gentleman (please, for the love of Saruman, get rid of those rings! that woman doesn't know what she's talking about!) should be at least on par with the Lustfest promise you ventilate to your other segment. Possible message being: working hard and playing hard - you can have the best of both worlds (or at least try).

The second problem is that S's brand is.. ehrm... way too personal. Too approachable (I already mentioned the Costco Hugfest) for a rabid fandom. That goes both ways, btw, because many (on both sides of the Great Divide) honestly feel they own a bit of S. At the same time, he is also JAMMF to many people in here, who imagine he has almost superhuman qualities (most probably not the case). That is exhilarating and empowering, until it's not. One or three or twenty faux-pas later, people will feel the savage urge to spit on the idol. A simple matter of collective instinct, but a very tricky situation for S.

The third problem are the side players. I am not talking about AN or CB or TMcG or the Fitness Harem. I am talking about the Trolls, who really don't do him any favor. Nothing worse for his brand potential than lascivious comments - let's suppose you are a major distributor's marketing expert and you land on That Blog, where the owner shares publicly her dream of licking her way from (how was it?) LHR to GLA to the Highlands to the ends of the known Universe, for a chance of God knows what. What would you write in that memo to the CEO? 'Yes, please: immediately place ALL his booze upfront near the cashier, because the man is an idol to a bunch of fifty-something women who dream the impossible dream?' You think I am exaggerating? Try googling for SRH tumblr and see the first results (😱). These people are visible and that visibility directly informs the interaction between SS and its potential business partners. Especially when your Partner Everyday thought blasting a sizeable chunk of OL's Tumblr fandom in Vanity Fair was a clever strategy for The Win - things like this invite (unwanted) attention.

I pleaded for diversification of the marketing strategy and for a more sophisticated approach and I welcome the change, Anon. The only thing I would like you to take home from this very long answer is simple:

Social Media is just Social Media. The glitz, the glam, the superficial stardust, the Truman Show where it never rains.

Real Life is Real Life. We only see glimpses, speculate on it, have a more or less educated guess and if we are lucky enough, some tidbits to chew on.

Progressively, the very unprofessional (bantering) Social Media strategy has been replaced with an account strategy based on product promotion. Convenient, when you do not (for reasons X, Y and Z) want to discuss what you feel is private and likely to remain so, for a while.

That's about it, Anon. If you still have questions, you can always pop in here. I promise I won't charge a retainer, out of my good heart.

[mandoalorian]

Borrowed Time [Din Djarin x F!Reader]

♡˳‧₊*: • Chapter 11: The Abduction ✩࿐ ˚.✧

Summary: You are the princess of Mandalore, held hostage on your own planet by Moff Gideon and his army of Imperial troopers. Left with no choice, you send out a distress signal; a plea for protection— and who comes? None other than Din Djarin, a foundling of The Death Watch. He, by creed, is your sworn enemy. And where you have asked for his protection, he has been told by his mentor that he must marry you and gain the ability to restore Mandalore to its former glory.

Word count: 4000

Warnings: lots of angst, canon typical violence, sexual references

Author’s note: this chapter is very special to me. I’ve been working on it for two and a half months, changing things and perfecting it to the way I want it to read. I feel like a lot is answered in this chapter and I’m excited to share it with you all. If you enjoy, please reblog! It would mean the most to me. 

Series Masterlist

Din didn’t come to bed that night.

Your body missed the familiarity of his warm, strong arms wrapped around you, holding you tight against his chest in his bed that was made for one. After an unsettling lack of sleep, accompanied by plenty of tossing, turning, and unconscious mumbling, you got up to grab a glass of water from the refresher. It was a ritual that you had become all too comfortable with; after all, the tin bed on the Razor Crest was a lot more different to your soft chambers back home. You craved for the moment you could return to your palace on Mandalore. It would be the perfect place to bring up Grogu. There would be so much space for him to play about, and Din would like it too. There was no better place to learn about his Creed and culture than Mandalore itself. Since marrying Din, there was no other person you could imagine rebuilding Mandalore with. He’d stay by your side and continue to act as your protector; your soulmate.

Nursing your cool drink, spheres of ice clinking against the glass, you lightly padded around the ship's hull, looking for your husband in the dark. You noted that Grogu was fast asleep in his hover pram, and you tucked him in under his favourite crochet blanket that you’d purchased for him back at the market on Nevarro. You were thankful that Din had at least put him to bed. You often expressed your dismay towards your husband when he let the little green bean fall asleep in the cockpit. Din was extremely trusting of the child; after all, he was just a baby and with his curiosity, you had no doubt that Grogu would one day give in to his urges and fiddle on with all the bright flashing buttons and levers. You were certain that Grogu would one day learn to be a great pilot like his father, but he was too young for that right now.

You sauntered into the cockpit expecting to find Din sleeping in the pilot seat but were instead greeted by an uneasy feeling when he wasn’t there. Despite the darkness both inside the ship and outside the main bay window, you’d noticed that Din had found a safe place to land the ship, in, what appeared to be a spice mine on your home planet. The mines ran deep and there was no real way of seeing an end to the tunnel, at least not from where you were standing.

There was only one other place in the Razor Crest in which you hadn’t checked, and that was the armoury. Climbing carefully down the steel ladders that led into the base of the ship, quietly as to not wake the sleeping child, you dropped into the repository to find Din, sitting on a stool with his legs spread, nursing his rifle with a cloth and some polishing fluid.

You instantly felt a rush of relief, knowing that he hadn’t disappeared or abandoned you through the night. Din acknowledged you were there, standing there before him in the dimly lit room, but didn’t look up or even address you. His gloved hands clasped around the barrel of the gun and he continued rubbing at it with smooth, slick motions, getting rid of oil stains and whatnot.

“Hi,” you said quietly, crossing your arms over your chest. He had you feeling vulnerable and small. “You didn’t come to bed.”

“Wasn’t tired.” His reply was short and monotone, not an ounce of emotion dripping from his tongue. It was only you and Grogu on the ship, in the middle of the night, and yet Din had still opted to wear his helm, masking his emotions… to him, it was better that way.

“Like you said earlier, we have a big day tomorrow. You should really rest.” You advised him softly. You wanted to beg him. Plead with him. Please, please come to bed.

There was a beat of silence followed by a grunt.

“Din?” your voice was timid. I miss you.

You walked towards your husband and took the pulse rifle from his hands. He let you with ease, not thinking twice to fight you on it, and watched as you lifted the heavy arsenal, placing it back on the rack where it belonged. As you hung it up, you glanced around the armoury. This was the first time you realised just how many weapons, bombs, and detonators Din owned. For a second, you must have forgotten that he was a bounty hunter before he was anything else, and really, you had just been one of his missions. You wondered if the Armorer had deliberately selected Din to rescue you because he was used to capturing quarry. You briefly wondered how different all of this would have been if the likes of Paz Viszla had come to rescue you instead.

If the stock wasn’t enough to remind you, the carbonite freezer at the back of the ship was certainly enough to refresh your memory. There was more than enough on the ship to take down an Imperial army, you believed that much. Still, imagining your sweet Din using an Imperial carbonite freezer proved to be difficult.

You turned back around to face him and noticed he’d been staring at you the entire time. Then, you offered him your hand.

Din faltered before he pulled off his glove which was now wet with dirt and rust and acidic cleaning gel. He dropped it to the floor and interlaced his fingers with yours. His hands were warm but rougher than the rest of his body, his fingers calloused and knuckles bruised.

You stepped closer to him, pressing your chest against his and extending your arm, cupping his helmet with your hand. 

“If you’re not tired… maybe I can help with that?” You offered him a suggestive smirk, looking up at him with wide, doe-like eyes.

It took every ounce of willpower for Din to not cave.

“Not tonight.” He replied and dropped your hand.

You stood there blankly, absorbed in the pressure of his rejection. Din couldn’t bear to look at you anymore, guilt inside him eating him alive, and so instead he opted to spin around and check over his armoury one more time. He just needed something, anything, to distract him from you. He just had to get through tonight, and then whatever fate tomorrow had to offer him, and then it would all be over. You wouldn’t want his burden once you reclaimed Mandalore anyway, he was certain of that.

It all felt so fake to him. Of course, he loved you, but this marriage wasn’t going to last after today’s battle. He knew that. You were Mandalorian royalty and he was justa bounty hunter.

You watched him momentarily as he began to reload his pistols with blaster bolts. 

Shaking off the feeling of rejection, you knew you had to confront him. It was now or never.

“Din… you’re acting distant. Did something happen? This isn’t like you.” You said softly. You placed a hand on Din’s pauldron gently, almost cautiously. Another silly attempt at unrequited intimacy.

Din scoffed and took a step back from you, breaking the distance. If only you had just waited this out, then he’d never have to engage in this conversation with you.

“What do you know about me, really?” he asked, venom in his question, regretting the words as soon as they left his lips. He saw your expression fall and his heart sank in his chest. Din didn’t mean to sound so agitated, that wasn’t his intention at all. He faltered before continuing. “It’s not like we married because we were in love.”

He was right, in a way, but the revelation knocked you sick. What exactly was he inferring? Why, for once, could he not just be direct with his words – say what he really means? Your heart felt heavy and it ached, not like it was breaking, but more so like he’d put this extreme pressure on it. Like his words bore the weight of a thousand bars of beskar. Was this his way of telling you that he regretted the marriage? That he wasn’t actually in love with you? Your worst fears had been realised and you felt nothing less than sheer humiliation that you, a princess, one of the bravest and strongest leaders Mandalore had ever seen, was now standing before the man you’d sworn true love to.

A foolish mistake that ultimately was your downfall, and nobody was to blame but yourself.

You didn’t reply to him. Your hurt was blinded by rage as he’d led you on all this time. Led you to believe that the feeling was mutual. You didn’t understand… he had been so kind to you, and so gentle. This whole thing had been a façade, you knew that now. He was a bounty hunter after all, and you were just a job to him. A duty. A liability.

Your face hardened and you stormed past Din, clicking opening the armoury and taking the rifle he had just polished; the rifle that you struggled to pick up but what he had lifted with so much ease. You took one of his belts, bandoliers and holsters, filling them with blaster ammunition and attaching emergency detonators. Grabbing everything you could, you spun around on your heel and began climbing back up the ladders, leaving in the dust.

“Hey,” Din stood up, his modulated voice deep with concern. You were already at the top by the time Din reached the bottom of the ladders. He called your name. “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

You walked past Grogu who was still fast asleep and pressed a small kiss goodbye atop his forehead. “Take care, little one.”

Din sighed and began climbing up the ladders, and you acknowledged his footsteps getting louder and louder as he neared you. You opened the door to the Razor Crest and took a deep breath, inhaling the cool crisp air of the outdoors. It looked like it would be a long journey out of this mine, but thankfully Mandalore was your home and you knew it like the back of your hand. You had more of a solid chance navigating this planet than Din did anyway. Your name echoed throughout the walls and knowing Din was on your tail, you hopped of the ship you had called your home and started to run.

By the time Din had reached the hull, you were gone, nowhere in sight.

He yelled your name, panic filling his body as he checked his quarters, the refresher, the cockpit… everywhere. All of Din’s yelling had awoken the child who had started crying with distress. Din cursed when he realised you were no longer on the ship and bolted back to the armoury, jumping back down the ladders and grabbing everything in sight. Guns, stim canisters, his vibroblade. Had you really been so foolish as to walk straight into an Imperial warzone?

After about fifteen minutes of running straight, you finally saw an end to the tunnel. You felt a wave of relief wash over you, but there was no time to catch your breath. As approached the entrance to the mine, the skyline entered your view and your entire body deflated. Imperial ships… dozens of them ahead of you. With your fingers dipped into your holster, inches away from your blaster, you ducked out of sight from them and made your way to the destroyed palace you once called your home.

Decaying bodies curled up on every corner and you swore that the image of them would haunt you forever. They had been there since the attack on Mandalore weeks ago and nobody had come back for them. They didn’t even get a proper burial. Your lips curled into a deep frown as you headed further towards the palace. These were your people and as you whispered a solemn prayer you swore that they’d get justice if it was the last thing you could do. You wouldn’t let the Empire win. Stormtroopers were easy to avoid, but it was the hovering TIES in the sky that you were more worried most about. You made it to the back gate of the palace and the collapsed fountain was now in your line of vision. Although the marble statutes adorning the fountain had been decapitated and destroyed, the secret hatch behind the wall appeared to be intact. The Imperials had yet to discover the hatch that led into the Merenzane Gold brewery in the cellar. During the Clone Wars, your mother would trade Merenzane Gold to a pirate queen who owed a bar on Takodana, in exchange for beskar steel. The brewery had been out of business for some years, but further into the cellar, was your mother's Forge, which just so happened to be one of Mandalore’s very first Forges. 

You rarely ventured down here even when you lived in the palace, for you had no reason to, but now you felt inclined to check on the Forge. It held so much of Mandalore’s history, you prayed it hadn’t been touched by the Imperials.

To your earnest gratitude, the Forge appeared untouched, and a pang of your heartstrings struck you as you ventured deeper into the gallery. The walls were dotted with beskar spears, weaponry that had been created but never used. The forge itself had been collecting dust, last lit when your mother was still alive. Wedged into the dip of the pit was a piece of paper, folded up into a small square. The corners had been burnt but as you opened it up, you discovered the words scrawled in ink were still intact.

It was a letter, addressed to your mother.

My dearest Satine,

I hope that this letter does not alert you and that my sudden need to contact you comes as no surprise. Two weeks ago, we parted ways on Mandalore, and I swore an oath to the Order that I would cease all contact with you, for the sake of my own commitment to the Jedi, as well as your commitment to Mandalore. This letter disregards my vow but I feel as though it is my obligation as your friend a Jedi, to inform you of my findings on Mandalore’s moon, Concordia. 

Anakin and I have just left Concordia’s capitol, and I am afraid to say that a number of mining facilities have destroyed the forests, although I am sure you have already been made aware of this. Our intel suggests that the governor, Pre Vizsla of House Vizsla has been secretly leading the Mandalorian terrorist group, Kyr’tsad (translated to Death Watch), in these mining facilities and plan on opposing your government regime. They want to claim Mandalore as their own. Not only that but we discovered evidence to suggest that they are recruiting children, Mandalorian foundlings, to fight for their cause.

Satine, you have always been so gentle, and I do not regret the custom you showed me both in public and in private. Not a day has gone by where I haven’t pondered on those forbidden moments that we shared, and had things been different, I’d like to believe I could stay with you on Mandalore. I’d serve as your protector by choice, rather than duty.

Consider this letter a formality and do not feel the necessity to respond but please, be safe out there. I will always be here for you.

May the force be with you, Satine.

General Kenobi.

Ben.

Your heart sank in your chest. It was a warning letter to your mother, and perhaps the first time she’d heard of Death Watch. She had no idea of the damage they’d cause and the letter indicated the beginning of the end. An eerie coldness hung above your head. Concordia was the home of the Death Watch. It was the home of Din. 

Your finger traced over the name of whom it was signed by; Ben. You had never heard of a Ben, and there certainly not a Ben of whom your mother had mentioned. You wondered who he was and why he had wrote to her with so much affection and care. Intimacy laced his words. You glanced over the blackened, ripped corners of the paper gazed over towards the forge. It appeared as though your mother had tried to burn the letter, but couldn’t bring herself to do so, and instead opted to hide it in the forge itself.

You folded the piece of paper back into a square and stuffed it into a pocket before feeling a blunt cold object press into the curve of your back. You froze in your movement and for a second you swore you forgot to breathe. You weren’t alone in here. You had been followed.

“You were the child of Duchess Satine Kryze,” a familiar voice declared. But where did you recognise it… the twisting of the foreign object against your spine made you remember all too quickly. 

“Ironic… the blade that killed your mother killing you too.” Moff Gideon chuckled. “Poetic.”

“You’ll never get away with this.” You spat, fury filling your body, your bones aching with nothing short of rage.

“Oh, I think I already have,” Gideon smirked. “Bind her wrists and take her to the cells for interrogation.” He commanded his army of Stormtroopers. Two of them walked by your side, one pinning your wrists together as the other cuffed them together. You tried to fight it, kicking back at them and screaming as loud as you could. Maybe Din was near enough so that he could hear. You then stopped abruptly. You didn’t want to lead him into danger. 

“Don’t make this any more difficult than it needs to be.” Moff Gideon said.

“I have powerful friends,” you warned as the troopers began to drag you out of the forge. “You’re going to regret this.”

Moff Gideon let out a small huff of contempt before bringing out his blaster and hitting you on the head with it, knocking you unconscious. Everything went black.

The rambunctious green child yapped away as Din traced your steps back to the palace. He was on your tail, little did he know you had been abducted by the New Empire.

ੈ♡˳‧₊*: • ✩࿐ ˚.✧\

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[justinspoliticalcorner]

Taylor Lorenz at Substack:

We need to know who is funding the creator economy

Yesterday, a federal indictment revealed that a Tennessee media company working with right-wing influencers including Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Lauren Southern, was receiving significant funding from the Russian state-sponsored network RT to push Russian disinformation. The indictment is absolutely wild and WIRED has a great rundown on the details, including how the propaganda efforts worked. The case serves as the latest high profile example of how “independent media” on the right is anything but independent, and underscores the need for more transparency around funding models in the creator economy. It also shows how disinformation efforts have increasingly focused on penetrating U.S. media through content creators, and how lucrative being a pawn in these schemes can be. While right wing content creators position themselves as scrappy upstarts, leaning into anti-establishment and populist brand positioning, they frequently accept money from far right interest groups, extremist billionaires, and even foreign actors.  Tenet Media received nearly $10 million, distributed out across a network of YouTubers and podcasters. As part of the disinformation campaign, Tenet Media influencers published hundreds of videos on social media that promoted Kremlin talking points. The videos were shared across platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, reaching tens of millions of viewers.

[...] The far right recognized the opportunities in personality-driven media decades ago. After boosting talk radio stars in the 80s and 90s, when social media proliferated, they began to invest heavily in news influencers who seamlessly blend entertainment, news commentary, and far right political messaging into YouTube videos, Instagram memes, podcasts and more. 

[...]

Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire has been heavily funded by wealthy Republican donors, including the Wilks brothers, Texas-based billionaires known for their oil and fracking fortune. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, has benefited from significant funding from conservative mega donors including the Koch network.  When right wing creators began getting deplatformed more frequently on mainstream social media apps in the second half of the 2010s, an entire ecosystem of alternative platforms aimed at helping extremist influencers monetize and amass audiences, cropped up. Rumble, a video sharing platform similar to YouTube backed by billionaire Peter Thiel, began paying far right influencers and anti vaxx content creators hundreds of thousands of dollars to create content on its platform in 2021. Locals, a newsletter platform owned by Rumble, allows influencers to monetize through newsletters in a similar way to Substack. DLive, a right wing Twitch competitor, allowed influencers storming the Capitol building on January 6th, to make thousands of dollars off their live streams. Kick and Cozy.tv, two other right wing live streaming platforms, permit nearly any far right extremist the ability to create content and start earning money. And X, under Musk, has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars to right wing influencer accounts.

The robust financial backing the right wing content creator ecosystem enjoys, allows extremists the ability to fund professional production teams, social media ad buys, and marketing initiatives that give them a competitive advantage online. In contrast, progressive creators are left to rely on meager donations and crowdfunding efforts to sustain their work. This financial imbalance has made it nearly impossible for left-wing content creators to match the reach or production quality of their right-wing counterparts. Already, several Russia-backed Tenet Media influencers, including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, have been doing damage control. They've publicly stated that they had no idea about the origins of the money and claimed that they were merely unwitting victims who were misled by the company. 

Right-wing media influencers like Nick Sortor (even though he wasn’t named in the indictment), Benny Johnson, and Tim Pool aren’t “independent media” in any way.