#broken china made in walmart | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mint-moon25 · 11 months ago

Text

THURSDAYS - 5P - PARKING - LOT 33

SW 2 AV - SW 2 ST - MEN - VOLUNTEERS

JUST 2 FEMALES - ONE - BLOND YES IN

CHARGE - POOR - AND - HOMELESS

IN SPITE - OF - LOTS - OF - FOOD YES

GIVEN - HOMELESS - GO - 2 - TRASH

CAN - 4 - FOOD - THERE - WAS - GIRL

MIAMI - POLICE - NEVER - ARRESTED

SLEPT - NEAR - ELEVATOR - OTHER

NO - PANTY - HAIR - SHOWING - YES

BELOW - WAIST - JUST - WEARING A

SHIRT - WAS - VERY - DIRTY - AND FL

MIAMI - POLICE - NEVER - ARRESTED

INDECENT - EXPOSURE - BUT - HAITI

MALE - POLICE - WAS - GOING 2 GIVE

ME - $2,500 - FINE - 4 - USING - AIR

MAT - ON - A - PARK - HAITI - MALE

SAID - WALMART - SELLS - ILLEGAL

PRODUCTS - BLK - MAN

3:25P - EARLIER - BLK - AMERICAN

WITH - BLOND - TOP - BRAIDED - AS

PUBLIX - TGIF - FRIDAY - SOON WILL

B - CHRISTMAS - EVE - MY - FAVORITE

BROWNIES - CRISPY - LIKE - THE BEST

$10.99 - SO - CAME - BACK - 2 LIBRARY

2:15P - WHO - WAS - GOING - 2 - TALK 2

ME - SAID - WENT - THERE

BOUGHT - MINI - CROISSANT - 13 - FOR

$3.99 - WAS - EATING - BROWNIES AND

KEPT - 4 - DISPLAY - LOOKED - SO - YES

BEAUTIFUL - SO - HE - WAS - POINTING

BLK - MALE - TOOK - EARPLUGS - OFF

HE - WANTED - SOME - OF - $10.99 ME

SAID - NO - HE - WAS - GOING - 2 GRAB

I - HID - RIGHT - AWAY - BROWNIES

THESE - ARE - SMALL - CRISPY - FL

QUITE - GOOD - NOW - I'M - SLEEPY

HE's - LIKE - MANY - HOMELESS - R

BULLIMIA - NERVOSA - CAN'T - CONTROL

EATING - CONTINUOUS - EATING - SO - ME

FOOL - TODAY - LAST - DAY - IN - LIBRARY

SAT - 2 - MONDAY - CHRISTMAS - CLOSED

DAYS - THEN - NEW YEAR's - DAY

THEY - DON'T - EAT - FOOD - RIGHT AWAY

HORD - FOOD - LIKE - MAGAZINES - BUT

MIAMI - WEATHER - SPOILS - ALL - FAST

USED - MY - PORTABLE - FAN - 2 - BRING

BROWNIE - 4 - SOMEONE - WAS - JUST

ABLE - 2 - GIVE - WHEN - I - ASKED FOR

SOMETHING - SWEET - SO - GIVING YES

BACK - MADE - DECISION - SINCE TRUE

ALWAYS - 1 HR - WAIT - WHEN - EARLY

SINCE - MALES - FEEDING - MALES

PATHETIC - WHAT - THEY - GAVE ME

NO - LONGER - GOING - THERE

THURSDAYS - BLK - MALE - WANTED

2 - ROB - ME - RIGHT - AWAY - OF YES

BROWNIES - LOVED - JUST - LOOKING

AT - THEM - FULL - INSURANCE - 4 HAI

TABLETS - SMARTPHONES - DURING

CHANGE - OF - WEATHER - JUST YES

COLDER - SAMSUNG - GALAXY

OUTDOOR - AND - INDOOR YES

BECOMES - STRANGE - INSURANCE

2 - GET - NEW - BUT - THESE - ARE

WELL - ELECTRONICS - INCOMPETENT

AS - THE - FUTURE - WE - BUY - THE

$1 MILLION - PER - JAPANESE - YES

TABLET - $1 MILLION - 4 - SMARTPHONE

$1 MILLION - 4 - SMARTPHONE

CHINA - IS - GOOD

CHINA - THE - KING OF PRICES

AS - WE - PRAY - AND - HAVE - CHINA - BE

OUR - ELECTRONICS - WONDER

I'M - TAKING - HOW - 2 - CREATE

TABLET - DESKTOP - SMARTPHONE

IN - PARIS - FRANCE

TOGETHER - WITH - CHINA - I'M CREATING

MY - OWN - EVERYTHING - IN - ELECTRONICS

THEN - SELLING - 2 - DEFEAT - APPLE - USA

SAMSUNG - KOREA - DEFEATING - ALL THEM

SMARTPHONE - $9.95

TABLET - $5.95

PC - COMPUTER - $10.95

LAPTOP - $5.95

CREATING - MY - OWN - OF - THE - ABOVE

WITH - CHINA - AS - MANUFACTURER THEN

WE - CREATE - CHEAPER - AND - WORKS - 2

BLK - MALE - WANTED - 2 - GRAB - MY

CHRISTMAS - BROWNIES - BECAUSE

HE - SAID - SO - THUS - NO - MORE

THURSDAYS - WON'T - GO - THERE - ANYMORE

SUNDAY - 12P - BLANKET - AND - FOOD

WILL - B - MALES - SERVING - HOMEBOYS

HOMELESS - FAGS - NON-VIRGINS - ALL 2

SO - WON'T - GO - THERE - ANYMORE

YESTERDAY - HATE - THAT - WITH MY

FACE - GOT - PATHETIC - AMOUNT - JUST

LIKE - ALL - MALES - THEN - LANDED - A

PATHETIC - CHOCOLATE - DONUT - ON

SPANISH - RICE - MADE - ME - VOMIT

SO - NO - MORE - THURSDAYS - THIS

SUNDAY - BLK - MALE - WAS - SMILING

ME - NOT - WRINKLED - NECK - LIKE - A

TURKEY - BECAUSE - WANTED - 2 STEAL

MY - BROWNIES - SO - JUST - GOING

FRIDAYS - 5:30P EDT - JUST - ALLAH

ISLAM - 4 WIVES - BETTER - MALES 2

BETTER - LOOKING - NO - MORE - THIS

SUNDAY - NO - MORE - THURSDAYS

IN - USA - THEY - SLAP - BOX - HIT

WOMEN - BLKS - ROB - WOMEN 2

YESTERDAY - THE - CHURCH - MALES

PROVE - 2 - ME - UGLY - WRINKLED FL

GETS - LITTLE - RICE - BROKEN - YES

COOKIE - NO - SALAD - GIVEN - ME

GOOD - THAT's - HOW - THEY - TREAT

PREGNANCY - SO - LA FITNESS EACH

THURSDAY

INTERMITTENT - FASTING

AGAIN - JESUS - IS - LORD

JUST - AVOIDED - ROBBERY - IN - YES

PROGRESS - NEW - LOCATION - IN THE

MAIN - LIBRARY - WAS - ALMOST

GRABBED - OF - $10.99 - BROWNIES

JESUS - IS - LORD

HISPANICS - BLKS - AS - HOMELESS

BULIMIA - NERVOSA - THEY - CAN'T

GET - ENOUGH - OF - FOOD - JUST

FRIDAYS - FR - NOW - ON -

MALES - OF - ISLAM - 4 WIVES

VERY - TALL - AND - HANDSOME

MERCEDES BENZ - AND PORSCH

NO - MORE - THURSDAYS

NO - MORE - THIS - SUNDAY

BLKS - HISPANICS - WHEN - THEY

EAT - TALKING - OUT LOUD - THUS

FOOD - SEEN - COMING - OUT - ITS

DISGUSTING - SO - NO - MORE - YES

THURSDAYS

JUST - ISLAM - 4 WIVES - FRIDAYS

5:30P - LOT 33 - OR - LOT - 38 YES

FARTHER - DOWN - SW 2ND AVE

SMALL - LOTS - PRAY - 4 - ME F

ALMOST - ROBBED - OF - EXPENSIVE

BROWNIES - $10.99 - NO - MORE

THURSDAYS - CHRISTIAN - MEN

PERVERTED - 'WOMEN - GO - 2 BACK

OF - LINE - ABUSED - TORTURED - SO

THEY - LOOK - AT - ME - NOT SMILING

WRINKLED - PRUNE - BAG - FR

CHRISTIANS - OF - ONE WORLD

SPANISH - AND - ENGLISH

JESUS - IS - LORD

SURVIVED - ROBBERY - FR - BLK

MALE - SURVIVED - YESTERDAY

RATIONING - ALL - OUR - MEALS

DONE - WTH - THURSDAYS

1 note · View note

lornrocks · 2 years ago

Text

I saw an ad for a purse that looked very cool, sort of smallish online shop, and literally all the comments were like “this $80 purse is too expensive” and I get that that’s a lot of money for some people but it just made me sad. In the price range of really nicely made bags that will last a long time, that’s cheap!

I wish I could find those essays about how Amazon and whatnot has broken Americans’ brains about how much something SHOULD cost.

Yes Linda, you could buy a purse for $15 at Walmart or a $10 on Amazon but it’s also made in a sweatshop in China, has to take several forms of transport to come to a warehouse in the US, where overworked gig workers will pack and and bring it to you, which is bad for everyone. It will also only last 6 months with normal use.

The problem is “we” brainwashed customers into only wanting cheap shit fast while also underpaying everyone so people just can’t afford nicer things. I will give the shop credit, they were very diplomatic in response to the comments, offering discount codes and saying that things could be paid for in installments with klarna.

#seriously y’all please shop slow fashion or thrift if you can #I donate or resell all the clothing and accessories I no longer want or need #and I buy resold stuff online all the time

1 note · View note

weartirondad · 6 years ago

Text

Broken China Made In Walmart

Prompt: “I’m gonna take a guess and say that’s broken” Tony finds Peter next to an age old vase, that was gift from his aunt Peggy, broken on the ground, with water and flowers everywhere.” ( @itsallratherstrange )

FF.net I ao3

“I’m gonna take a lucky guess here and say that’s broken.”

As soon as Peter looked up he knew that that had been the wrongest thing he could have possibly said. Who the hell had trusted him to look after a kid?

The boy was crouched on the floor next to the smithereens of what used to be a vase, his pants drenched with the water that was pooling around him. The tulips his maid had gotten just two days prior were strewn across the floor, a mess of pollen and petals and mushed leaves.

None of that truly registered with Tony, though, because there was blood, too. Peter’s hands were covered in blood where he was propped up on the floor from bracing his fall. The shards were embedded in his skin and the older man’s stomach coiled at the sight. He had never had a problem seeing blood but apparently he had very many problems seeing this particular kid’s blood.

“I’m so – so s-sorry, Mister- Mister Sta-Stark, sir,” the kid stuttered through trembling lips, glassy eyes still locked on Tony who was getting increasingly worried by the second. “I- I didn’t- I didn’t mean to b-break it. I –“

“Shh,” he shushed, squatting down next to Peter, glad he was still wearing shoes when he heard the glass crunch under his soles. He reached out, mirroring his movements so he wouldn’t scare the kid who looked more and more like a frightened animal. Once he had a hold of the boy, he pulled him up with him and lead him a few steps away.

An undertaking that was a lot easier said than done when you were trying to move a shell-shocked super-teen.

Gently he pried Peter’s hands from where he was grabbing the fabric of his pants and inspected the injury. The blood had certainly made it looked worse than it actually was but he doubted the shards in his hands were a lot of fun either way.

“It’s not that bad,” he told the muted kid with an encouraging smile even though he still felt sick just looking at the blood. “We’re gonna pull them out and clean you up and with your super-healing you’re going to be good as new in no time.”

When there was still no reply he started pulling him towards the kitchen and the first aid kid he stored there. Peter followed without problem, stumbling a little when they came to the halt but never actually making a sound. It was the longest he had ever gone without at least making some kind of noise ever since Tony had met him. He couldn’t help but worry the longer it went on.

Only when he had manhandled the kid into a chair and made sure he wasn’t going to slip out of it before getting a pair of tweezers and some disinfection to clean the wound, did the kid open his mouth.

“B-but what about the vase.”

Tony looked up from cupboard he was rummaging through and frowned. “What about it?”

“It’s – it’s broken,” the kid gasped and it sounded like he had to put everything he had into not breaking out into a sob.

Frankly, it broke Tony’s heart.

“Yeah, I figured that,” he agreed softly, lowering down onto his knees in front Peter and gently turning his left hand who had taken the blunt of the glass. “It’s just a vase, buddy, they break,” he told him, trying to convey with his eyes that he really couldn’t care less about some stupid ceramic as long as Peter was still bleeding.

“I’m going to pull out the shards now. It’s going to sting a bit but we don’t want anything stuck in there when you start healing, alright?”

When the kid didn’t reply and simply kept staring he squeezed his knee with his free hand and repeated. “Is that okay, kid?” Only when he got a shaky nod in return did he start to pull out the pieces one by one.

Peter winced but otherwise didn’t show any sign of pain which made the whole procedure a lot more bearable for Tony who felt a stab through his own skin with every piece he cleaned.

“You told me it was a gift from your Aunt Peggy.” His voice was barely more than a whisper and immediately after the words left his mouth he bit his trembling lip, obviously still forcing back a sob. “And- and I- I bro-broke it.”

He was shaking at that point, tears leaking from his eyes and mixing with the dried blood on his cheek from where he had tried to wipe his eyes with his hands earlier. “I’m so – sorry, Mister Stark.”

Tony shushed him again, surprised how paternal the sound made him feel, how he instinctually reached out to brush the tears away and lowered the tweezers to concentrate on the kid’s distress instead.

“I don’t care about you breaking the vase.” And, surprisingly, he didn’t. Yes, it had been a gift from Peggy Carter but that was so far down on his lists of priorities right now, it didn’t even make the first page.

“I’m going to tell you a story about my Aunt Peggy and that vase,” he decided, settling his hand on Peter’s knee again and waiting until he met his eyes again. “But first you’re going to tell me whether you’re crying over that vase or because you’re in pain. Because you are allowed to cry when you’re in pain but you’re not allowed to cry over a stupid vase.”

That managed to tickle a giggle out of the boy and albeit wet and shaky it was music in Tony’s ears. “Doesn’t hurt too bad,” he sniveled, “but I didn’t wanna make you sad.”

“Then let me get out these shards while telling you about my favorite aunt and I’ll be the happiest. Deal?”

Peter nodded and Tony went back to work.

“Aunt Peggy was my godmother,” he began, “it was my dad’s idea. I think he wanted to have people around his firstborn son who loved Steve Rogers as much as he did and who wouldn’t let him forget his biggest creation. It was,” he swallowed, “hard sometimes to grow up with a dad who was always looking for more than you could give him but Aunt Peggy wasn’t like that at all.”

A smile stretched across his face remembering the fierce redhead who had never minced her words, especially not for Howard Stark.

“Peggy loved me a lot.” It was one of the few things he was truly certain of. “And I think he hadn’t planned for that. For her actually wanting to spend time with me and not comparing me to a dead super soldier and their relationship went downhill from there.” An understatement if he’d ever heard one.

“Peggy didn’t like the way Howard acted and how he treated me, so she told him as much. Frequently. Protected me from his wrath more than once when I broke something of value. She did her best to drive him up the walls of our fancy mansion and she was the best at it. That’s why she got him that vase for Christmas one year.”

“Sorry, buddy,” he grimaced when the boy winced and a solitary tear slipped from the corner of his eye. “We’re almost done. Do you want me to stop talking?”

“Nuh uh,” he shook his head, smiling bravely, bottom lip tugged between his teeth, “I wanna know about the vase.”

“Okay, kiddie.” He concentrated on plucking another shard from his right hand now before continuing.

“Howard loved everything fancy,” he explained, “Everything was better when it cost a lot of money and things were only really worth having when they had a name everyone knew. The house I grew up in looked more like a museum than anything else and it was equally frightening to just walk through the rooms.”

“He also prided himself on looking like a good guy to the rest of the world.” Key word being look like. “So when Peggy Carter, prominent agent and Co-founder of S.H.I.E.L.D. presented him with a cheap no-name vase during the annual Christmas gathering, basically in front of the whole world or at least in front of everyone who mattered, he had to accept her gift with a big smile and cheek kisses. He was livid.”

Tony chuckled quietly, pulling out the last piece of ceramic and picking up the disinfection.

“This one’s gonna burn a bit but we don’t want any dirt in there once it’s closing,” he warned, “Are you ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” came the tight- lipped reply, “Why did your dad keep the vase if he didn’t like it?”

“Oh, believe me he would have loved nothing more than to throw it out,” Tony said with a grin that turned into a sorry grimace when Peter hissed. “Sorry. It’s almost over.”

“He actually hid it in some secret chamber never to be seen again until there was another function and Peggy openly lamented over how she had never actually seen the vase she had gotten him for Christmas and there were a lot of questions about why he wouldn’t want to set it up where everyone could see it.”

“So, whether he liked it or not, Howard had the vase put up on a small table right at the entrance with the order to always keep it clean and to always keep the flowers in it fresh. It was the first thing you saw when you set foot into the mansion and it was a sign of Peggy’s stubbornness and her love to defy the likes of men like Howard. It was the only thing I kept of Howard’s.”

Peter frowned at him, looking frustrated. “So the vase was important to you even though it wasn’t very expensive. I’m really sorry Mister Stark.”

“Sure it was,” he agreed easily, reaching for the gauze to bandage the now clean wound, “But the thing Peggy taught me was that people are always more important than stuff no matter how valuable you think the stuff is. She took off her engagement ring because she accidentally cut my cheek with it one time. Said being engaged wasn’t worth hurting me and started wearing it on a chain around her neck from then on.”

He had finished wrapping the kid’s hands and pulled out a tissue to clean off the residue blood from his wrists and face.

“My point is,” he said, wiping at Peter’s cheek until the red came off, grinning when the boy scrunched up his face in indignation, “she would’ve banned all vases from the house the second someone got hurt because of them. And, yeah, it was a nice token to remember my Aunt Peggy by but I’d rather have you happy and healthy and tell you about her than some stupid old vase that she once touched.”

“So,” Peter cocked his head to the side thoughtfully, “You’re not mad?”

“Nope,” he shook his head and pushed himself back up, cringing when his joints creaked. “You know how much old people love telling stories. And I got to tell one of my favorite stories about Peggy Carter so really I’m glad you broke it. Not so glad you got hurt, though.”

The kid grinned happily, jumping up from the chair, tears and broken vase forgotten. “You are old,” he agreed with a laugh and then, a little more hesitantly asked, “Do you want to tell me more about her?”

“More stories about Aunt Peggy? Gladly, buddy.”

#irondad #iron dad #irondad fic #iron dad fic #tony stark #peter parker #peggy carter #as tony's godmother #1k prompts #1k followers celebration #I'm gonna take a lucky guess here and say that's broken.#itsallratherstrange #josis fic #broken china made in walmart

361 notes · View notes

carolyncounts · 6 years ago

Text

I just got out my christmas lights and they're all broken. 4 strings and they're just toast. Tragic.

#not to sound old but #last year we bought a bunch of lights and half of the strings were broken by christmas #clearly they're making them as cheaply as possible so they can sell them at walmart/target prices #(with poorly paid workers in china i know)#but like #the thought of all these things being made to be flimsy and disposable #i hate it #but now i need to buy more christmas lights ...#i was feeling very festive #now I'm faced with the unsettling and unsustainable house of cards that is our economy #time for another cup of coffee lmao

7 notes · View notes

earaercircular · 3 years ago

Text

Is recycling a waste? Here’s the answer from a plastics expert before you ditch the effort

KEY POINTS

· TerraCycle and Loop founder and CEO Tom Szaky says the economics of the recycling business are broken in key ways, but consumer and corporate interest in building a circular economy continues to grow.

· Low oil prices, bans on imported recyclables in countries like China, and the latest trends in packaging design make it harder to recycle.

· Still, the recycling CEO says getting to a low-waste or even zero-waste economy is the way the world once was and can be again.

Recycling may make you feel better in a very small way about your role in helping to avert a global apocalypse, but even in “friendly” places, from John Oliver to NPR podcasts, recycling, especially of plastics, is being given a hard look. More people are wondering: Does it work?

The debate is not new. For years the economics of plastic recycling have been questioned. But the problem is not going away. The globe is already producing two trillion pounds of solid waste a year and is on pace to add more than a trillion more on an annual basis in the coming decades, according to World Bank data. A recent study found that the 20 top petrochemical companies in the world, among the group Exxon Mobil and Dow, are responsible for 55% of the world’s single-use plastic waste, and in the U.S., specifically, we are generating about 50 kilograms of throwaway plastic a year, per person.

The Covid pandemic has heightened attention to the issue, as use of disposable goods went up anywhere from 30% to 50%, according to Tom Szaky, CEO of recycling company TerraCycle and reuse platform Loop, who joined CNBC’s Leslie Picker on a recent CNBC Evolve Livestream about sustainability and business. He says concerns about the macroeconomics of waste management systems suffering economically are real, and there are ways to solve it that don’t just rely on government. We all need to take a deeper look at how we recycle beyond the feel-good blue bin, and what we can do to get past the problems.

1. The economics of recycling are broken.

Szaky says recent reporting on the economic issues for plastics recycling and restrictions around the world on imported recyclables, which are both weighing on the sector, are not an anti-environmental attack but “absolutely rooted in facts.”

He says it is important for consumers to understand that just because you recycle an item does not mean it will be recycled in the end.

“What makes something be recycled in a country doesn’t have to do with what we normally think: Can it be recycled? Most of the things we put in blue bins that are not recycled are put in the garbage because they are things waste companies can’t make money off, and that is the true bottleneck,” he said.

The right question is “Can a garbage company, the actual company in charge of the recycling in the geography, recycle it at a profit?”

According to Szaky, what’s happened is a profitability model that is decreasing as oil prices have gone down, which started in 2015, and even after a commodities market recovery post-Covid, have stayed down relative to recent history. The petrochemicals companies that make plastics rely less on recyclables when the price of their core commodity, oil, is lower. Second, China stopped importing recyclable waste, a move followed by other countries in 2018.

Both issues are critically important to the business model of recycling and the health of the infrastructure because they circle back around to how much demand there is to collect those material types.

“And it all hurt the business construct for recycling companies and that means our recycling capabilities are deteriorating,” Szaky said. “Recycling is not out there trying to do the best it can but maximize profit and we need to think about that as we aim for a more circular economy,” he said.

2. A packaging industry mega trend is working against recycling

The biggest global trend in packaging is not helping. Efforts to reduce costs in products and packaging are “objectively reducing value” Szaky said, “which also makes them less recyclable.”

The “lightweighting” of packages, making them have less physical material and more complexity as a result of that design challenge, makes them less profitable to recycle.

All of these economic issues lead to a situation in which what people would like to see is not what they would actually see if they went behind the scenes in the recycling industry. But Szaky says at the same time, consumers want to recycle more, and more companies are leaning into their own recycling.

What companies decide to do about recycling on their own initiative — and pay for — can be done in spite of the challenging economics and can still pay off for the companies in the future. That’s the TerraCycle business model, working with companies to fund their own voluntary recycling efforts. And that is more important at a time when the economics of consumer recycling are a mess.

3. Why companies don’t recycle enough, but should more

Szaky says what’s really important right now is companies deciding to lean in and create their own recycling programs. But he says it is still not easy for the corporate mindset to embrace.

“As a retailer or brand, if you just frame it as ‘the right thing to do’ the funding will be small and sporadic because there is no P&L logic to do it. But if you can use it to drive foot traffic like Walmart with car seats or Staples with pens, it can be monetizable,” he said.

Brands that run their own recycling programs should be doing it as part of a plan to drive more market share and brand preference. And he says it becomes “monetizable in a recognizable way” the bigger they become and the faster they can grow. “That is true for any sustainability measure a company is looking to implement in the short term.”

Some products won’t be recycled unless companies are the recycler.

A dirty diaper or toothbrush or cigarette is not recyclable because it costs too much. It is another economic problem, not a physics or chemistry one.

TerraCycle recently launched a diaper recycling program in Holland and now it is expanding to many countries.

“Diaper recycling doesn’t make sense from an economic perspective. It is expensive to collect and process,” Szaky said. But for the company that leads, “it can drive core value maybe better than TV ads,” he added.

Consumers want to do the right thing, and companies may want to do the right thing as well in acknowledging an environmental crisis — and fund a feel-good marketing campaign — but Szaky stressed that they need to see “not just the right thing, but that it will pay back.”

Szaky’s business recently teamed with a luxury watchmaker on the world’s tallest landfill: Mt. Everest. The mountain is littered with oxygen tanks from previous climbs and the watchmaker was able to both clean up the mess, an expensive undertaking, and source metal for its watches, which may add to the story it sells consumers in a way competitors can’t match.

4. The real solution is obvious: Consuming less

The white elephant, the fundamental answer to the challenge, is modulating consumption downward, but Szaky says that is a hard one for the business world to champion. “It is fundamentally de-growth.”

Even working with companies to create products from recyclables and where the recycling is part of the product story and selling point, “is not the answer to the garbage problem,” he says.

It may be among the best ways to manage waste in a circular economy, but Szaky says we will need to aim to go back to a world where garbage doesn’t exist.

“Before the 1950s, we received milk from the milkman and mended clothes and cobbled shoes,” he says.

Reuse does still exist at scale today in certain markets, such as beer kegs and propane tanks, but not nearly enough, and without the convenience of an infrastructure which makes return easy and widespread. That is one of the keys he sees for the future.

5. Reusable versus recyclable

While the goal of zero waste is ambitious, it is realistic to imagine a world in which more consumer products become reusable, if they can be easily returned in the circular economy.

Reusable versions of products from Nestle, Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Walgreens, and hundreds of other retailers are being, or will in the future, be made available to consumers.

Szaky envisions the buy-and-return-anywhere model as a key one for the future.

“Buy your favorite shampoo bottle in a reusable form at a Walgreens in New York and drop it off at Burger King and buy an Impossible Whopper in reusable packaging too, and drop that off somewhere else.”

This model can help solve a big problem: consumer behavior. Szaky says while there is a significant consumer market motivated by environmental concerns and consumption, for the recycling industry to really work it needs to avoid relying on the most-motivated consumers. Even plastic recycling that is economic today, such as soda bottles, only results in 1 in 4 bottles being recycled. The No. 1 goal for most consumers will remain convenience and value.

A reusable package is an upgrade over a disposable package in an objective way, and with the convenience of drop-off locations it can lead to an easier shift in behavior, but it has to be offered at the right value to consumers. “With all three things coming together we can switch a consumer who maybe doesn’t even care about sustainability and that’s frankly the most important,” Szaky said. “We need to bring everyone along, not just people who view this as a high-passion project.”

6. Economics are busted but the recycling mindset matters

For all the debate over recycling and the hard facts about its economics, Szaky says there is a reason we talk about it so much.

The individual journey with sustainability always begins with recycling. And that remains key and a reason to figure out how to fix its short-term and long-term challenges.

When people start recycling, it does open the pathways to a broader change in mindset.

“It may lead to a plant-based diet instead of animal protein, or a smaller life, or biking ... creating even more important outcomes,” he says. “But first we have to solve the business problem.”

Source

Eric Rosenbaum : Is recycling a waste? Here’s the answer from a plastics expert before you ditch the effort, in: CNBC,22-05-2021 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/22/is-recycling-a-waste-heres-the-answer-from-a-plastics-expert.html

#circular economy #recycling plastics

1 note · View note

mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

Text

Pluralist, your daily link-dose: 24 Feb 2020

Today’s links

How “Authoritarian Blindness” kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus: Zeynep Tufekci in outstanding form.

The Snowden Archive: every publicly available Snowden doc, collected and annotated.

Key computer vision researcher quits: facial recognition is a moral quagmire.

My interview on adversarial interoperability: you can’t shop your way out of late-stage capitalism.

81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration: monopoly and its justice system.

I’m coming to Kelowna! Canada Reads is bringing me to the BC interior, March 5.

A flat earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory: conspiracies are comorbid with corruption.

This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2010, 2005

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

How “Authoritarian Blindness” kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus (permalink)

Xi Jinping’s refashioning of the Chinese internet to ratchet up surveillance and censorship made it all but impossible for the Chinese state to use the internet to detect and contain Corona Virus, writes Zeynep Tufekci in The Atlantic. Tufekci talks about ��authoritarian blindness,” where people too scared to tell the autocrat the hard truths makes it impossible for the autocrat to set policy that reflects reality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/

(Cue Mao telling China to “eat 5 meals a day” because his apparats were too scared to warn him of impending famine, then selling off the nation’s food reserves for foreign currency because he thought it was surplus. Food production collapsed.)

Before Xi, a certain amount of online dissidence was tolerated because it helped root out dangerously corrupt local leaders before they could do real damage. It’s always hard to make autocracies sustainable because corruption and looting leaves them hollow and brittle.

When Xi took power in 2012, he restored “one man rule” and began a series of maneuvers, including purges, to consolidate power for himself. The rise and rise of China’s mobile internet made this far more effective than at any time in history.

“Authoritarian blindness” kicked off the Hong Kong protests because the state so badly misjudged the cause and severity of the grievances there. The same thing happened in Wuhan when doctors and netizens faced retaliation for describing early virus outbreaks.

The reality-debt built up by official denial always results in reality bankruptcy, eventually – so finally, the reports of the virus were so widespread and alarming they could no longer be suppressed. But by then, the virus had proliferated. This is an important point: “the killer digital app for authoritarianism isn’t listening in on people through increased surveillance, but listening to them as they express their honest opinions, especially complaints.”

That’s how you stabilize the unstable: by using digital authoritarianism to fine tune the minimum viable amount of good governance to diffuse public anger. It’s how you maximize your looting without getting strung up by your ankles.

The Snowden Archive (permalink)

The Snowden Surveillance Archive collects “all documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have subsequently been published by news media.”

https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/cgi-bin/library.cgi

It’s indexed and searchable, created by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and the Politics of Surveillance Project at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. (Canada is a “Five Eyes” country that partners with the NSA on global mass surveillance)

There’s a “Portable Archive” version – a tarball with all the docs so you can create your own mirror:

https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/collect/snowden1/portablearchive.html

They provide instructions for turning this into a kiosk they call a “Snowden Archive-in-a-Box.” Costs about CAD120.00

Key computer vision researcher quits (permalink)

Joseph Redmon is the creator of YOLO (You Only Look Once), a key Computer Vision technology. He’s just announced his resignation from computer vision work, citing ethical concerns with Facial Recognition.

https://twitter.com/pjreddie/status/1230523827446091776

His thread is really important, calling out the gap between what ML researchers SAY they want to do about ethics and how they actually deal with ethical issues: “basically all facial recognition work would not get published if we took Broader Impacts sections seriously.”

“There is almost no upside and enormous downside risk.” That’s some serious Oppenheimer stuff right there. The kicker? “For most of grad school I bought in to the myth that science is apolitical and research is objectively moral and good no matter what the subject is.”

My interview on adversarial interoperability (permalink)

The Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast (which offers information security advice and analysis for non-technical people) just posted part 2 of our interview on Adversarial Interoperability, Right To Repair, and technological fairness.

http://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2020/02/24/adversarial-interoperability-part-2/

Part one went live last week:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1229842619380858885

In this one, I try to explain how John Deere’s war on farm-based repairs is connected to Apple’s war on independent repair, and how consumer choices can’t solve either problem — but collective action can!

It’ll take a movement, not individual action. Thankfully, such a movement exists. EFF’s Electronic Frontier Alliance, a network of groups nationwide working on local issues with national coordination. It’s the antidote to individual powerlessness.

https://www.eff.org/electronic-frontier-alliance/allies

81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration (permalink)

Binding arbitration was originally created as a way for giant corporations to resolve their disputes with each other without decades-long court battles costing tens of millions of dollars. SCOTUS ratified the principal in 1925: firms of similar size and power could use binding arbitration as an alternative to litigation.

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/we-now-have-a-justice-system-just-for-corporations

In the century since, corporations have eroded the idea of arbitration as something reserved for co-equals and have turned it into a condition of employment and of being a customer.

In an era of both monopoly and monoposony, it can be hard to find a single employer OR vendor who will conduct business with you unless you first surrender the rights your elected lawmakers decided that you are entitled to.

Today, the largest corporations in the world require you to “agree” to binding arbitration before you can conduct business with them: your monopolistic ISP or cable operator probably does.

As do Walmart, Uber, and Amazon (and not coincidentally, all three have crowded out all the competitors you might choose to take your business to if this strikes you as unfair).

In 2019, SCOTUS ratified the practice.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/13/business/binding-arbitration-consumers/index.html

81 out of the Fortune 100 non-negotiably require binding arbitration if you want to conduct business with them. “Arbitration is often confidential and the outcome doesn’t enter the public record” – if you get screwed you won’t know if it’s a one-off or a pattern.

This is especially pernicious in the realm of US health care. There is ONE pain specialist in all of Southern California that my insurer covers who doesn’t require binding arbitration. When I took my daughter to the ER with a broken bone, they threatened not to treat her unless we signed an arbitration waiver – and that ER is now owned by a PE firm that bought every medical practice in a 10mi radius and now they all do it.

We are literally replacing public courts with private corporate justice, where the “judge” is paid by the company that maimed you, or ripped you off, or killed you.

I’m coming to Kelowna! (permalink)

I’ve never been to Kelwona, BC or anywhere in BC apart from Victoria and Vancouver, so I am SO TOTALLY EXCITED to be appearing in Kelowna for Canada Reads on Mar 5. Please come and say hello! (it’s free!)

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

The event is a collaboration between the Kelowna Public Library and CBC Books, and I’m being emceed and interviewed by Sarah Penton. It’s going to be recorded for airing later as well (I’ll be sure to fold it into my podcast, which you can get here: http://craphound.com/podcast/)

A flat earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory (permalink)

A(nother) flat-earther has tried to prove that the Earth is disc-shaped by launching a homemade rocket. This one (“Mad” Mike Hughes) killed himself by pancaking into the desert.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/daredevil-mad-mike-hughes-dies-homemade-rocket-launch-filmed-tv-n1141286

This is awful. Jokes about “Darwin Awards” don’t change that.

When you scratch a conspiracist, you generally find two things:

Someone who knows chapter-&-verse about real conspiracies (e.g. “If you think antivax is so outlandish, let me tell you about the Sackler family”)

Someone who has been traumatized by conspiracies (belief that the levees were dynamited during Katrina to drown Black neighborhoods are often embraced by people whose family were flooded out in 58 when the levees in Tupelo were dynamited to drown Black neighborhoods).

A belief that the aerospace industry engages in coverups and conspiracies is not, in and of itself, irrational. Aerospace is the land of conspiracies and coverups. Look at the Boeing 737 Max!

Conspiracies are an epiphenomenon of market concentration. “Two may keep a secret if one of them is dead”: the ability to conspire is a collective action problem, wherein linear increases in the number of conspirators yield geometric increases in the likelihood of defections. When an industry is reduced to 3-5 giants, the likelihood is that every top exec at each company worked as a top exec at one or more of the others (to say nothing of the likelihood of intercompany friendships, marriages, etc). Moreover, an industry that concentrated will almost certainly be regulated by its own former execs, as they are likely the only ones qualified to understand its workings.

Many of us were appalled by the sight of the nation’s tech leaders gathered around a table at Trump Tower after the inauguration.

But we should have been even more alarmed by the realization that all the leaders of the tech industry fit around a single table.

We are living in both a golden age of conspiratorial thinking and of actual conspiracies. The conspiracy theories don’t necessarily refer to the actual conspiracies, but “conspiracy” is a plausible idea with a lot of explanatory power in 2020.

We spend a lot of time wondering about how we can fix the false beliefs that people have, but some of our focus needs to be on reducing the plausibility of conspiracy itself. Make industries more competitive and diverse, make regulators more accountable.

Put out the fires, sure, but clear away the brush so that they don’t keep reigniting.

I strongly recommend Anna Merlan’s REPUBLIC OF LIES for more.

https://boingboing.net/2019/09/21/from-opioids-to-antivax.html

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago: Labour MP Brian Sedgemore excoriates his own government’s terror laws in the speech of his lifetime: https://web.archive.org/web/20050227035611/http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm050223/debtext/50223-21.htm

#10yrsago: How ducks, Nazis and themeparks gave America its color TV transition: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/feb/23/digital-switchover-bbc-spectrum

#5yrsago: Alex Stamos, then CSO of Yahoo, publicly calls out then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers on crypto backdoors: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/yahoo-exec-goes-mano-a-mano-with-nsa-director-over-crypo-backdoors/

#5yrsago: A chronology of the Canadian Conservative Party’s war on science under PM Stephen Harper: https://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment

#5yrsago: Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’s movie about Edward Snowden, wins the Academy Award for best documentary: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/edward-snowden-congratulates-laura-poitras-winning-best-documentary-oscar-citizenfour

#1yrago: Every AOC staffer will earn a living wage: https://www.rollcall.com/2019/02/22/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-call-for-a-living-wage-starts-in-her-office/

#1yrago: Richard Sackler’s “verbal gymnastics” in defending his family’s role in killing 200,000 Americans with opiods: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/sackler-behind-oxycontin-fraud-offered-twisted-mind-boggling-defense/

#1yrago: German neo-Nazis use Qanon memes to signal-boost their messages: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fringe-groups-are-using-qanon-to-amplify-their-wild-messages

#1yrago: French courts fine UBS €3.7b for helping French plutes dodge their taxes: https://www.thelocal.fr/20190220/breaking-french-court-hits-swiss-bank-ubs-with-37-billion-fine-in-french-tax-fraud-case

#1yrago: Apple to close down its east Texas stores to avoid having any nexus with America’s worst patent court: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/22/apple-closing-stores-in-eastern-district-texas/

#1yrago: Small business cancels its unusably slow Frontier internet service, Frontier sticks them with a $4,300 cancellation fee: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/frontier-demands-4300-cancellation-fee-despite-horribly-slow-internet/

#1yrago: Fast food millionaire complains that social media makes kids feel so entitled that they are no longer willing to work for free: https://amp.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/muffin-break-boss-fury-over-youth-who-wont-work-unpaid/news-story/57607ea9a1bbe52ba7746cff031306f2

#1yrago: Apps built with Facebook’s SDK shovel incredible quantities of incredibly sensitive data into Facebook’s gaping maw: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/22/facebook-receives-personal-health-data-from-apps-wsj.html

#1yrago: Super-high end prop horror-movie eyeballs, including kits to make your own: https://fourthsealstudios.com/

#1yrago: EU advances its catastrophic Copyright Directive without fixing any of its most dangerous flaws: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/european-governments-approve-controversial-new-copyright-law/

Colophon (permalink)

Today’s top sources: Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/”).

Hugo nominators! My story “Unauthorized Bread” is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC’s Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, “The Canadian Miracle,” for MIT Tech Review. It’s a story set in the world of my next novel, “The Lost Cause,” a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I’m getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I’ve been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world’s prehistory.

Currently reading: I finished Andrea Bernstein’s “American Oligarchs” this week; it’s a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I’m getting really into Anna Weiner’s memoir about tech, “Uncanny Valley.” I just loaded Matt Stoller’s “Goliath” onto my underwater MP3 player and I’m listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/10/persuasion-adaptation-and-the-arms-race-for-your-attention/

Upcoming books: “Poesy the Monster Slayer” (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we’re having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

“Attack Surface”: The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

“Little Brother/Homeland”: A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

15 notes · View notes

fuelcut · 4 years ago

Text

A thought experiment on Silicon Valley’s third era

[ read the tweetstorm if you’re in a rush]

June 19th marks the end of American slavery, July 4th American Independence and July 14th the storming of the Bastille. It’s also my 40th birthday, and I’m exploring what we can learn from the past to help navigate today’s struggles for racial justice and economic freedom.

1940-1980: “Atoms” and the military-industrial-labor complex

My dad arrived in the Bay Area in 1970-1971 to get his PhD at Berkeley - just as the area was being rebranded as Silicon Valley.

Free from the stifling hierarchy of the East, the Bay was America’s center for social, technical and institutional change. Black Panthers policed the police in Oakland, shiny BART trains crossed the Bay to SF where the Gay Rights movement was flourishing. My family tree waited a millennia for India to recognize intercaste marriage. My parents would see radical social change in America across every axis in a single generation. Bold leadership in the 60s expanded civil rights and embraced immigration. They (and I) benefited greatly from an economic and social foundation that had been laid over many decades.

Caterpillar Tractor - founded in the Bay Area - embodied the spirit of this era. It went from liberating France in WW2 to building a massive middle class, unionized labor force. Cat later moved its headquarters to Peoria, Illinois - because in this era, cities across the country - not just the coasts - had the ability to compete. Since WW2, America pursued an intentional strategy of geographically broad-based economic development - via highways, airline regulation and distributed national labs.

Caterpillar didn’t just give Peoria a chance, it also gave my dad a chance to put down roots in America by sponsoring his green card. There was no H1B limbo. The nexus of military, industry and labor unions brought immigrants, Women and Blacks into the workforce - with paid apprenticeships (not exorbitant higher education) and technically-focused community colleges paving the way for millions. My mom learned COBOL while her toddlers played in the back of class. Even Hunter’s Point in SF was vibrant during much of this period. (Of course, it was far from a halcyon era - the war machine had massive human cost globally and civil rights were far from evenly enforced in America.)

And while atoms reigned supreme during this era, the military and government patiently invested risk capital in advanced manufacturing, semiconductors and software/networking to prepare America for its future.

1980-2020: “Bits” and global capital, jackrocks and polarization

In 1980, Reagan was elected President - and I was born. This would also be the peak of private sector labor employment in the US and the beginning of global capital (and the multinational companies they backed) as the leading force in forging the social contract.

They promised us that countries with McDonald’s would never go to war with each other. Indeed the Berlin Wall fell, Asian laborers got jobs and Americans could buy cheap stuff at WalMart. Global capital (bits) put atoms inside shipping containers and sent them around the world - abstracting consumers from the manufacturing base.

The writing was on the wall for unions.

As a middle schooler, I saw Cat management and labor (UAW) locked into a multi-year strike over the future. The front line was not in a boardroom or on the picket line. It was neighborhoods, schools and community groups. I remember when a classmate whose dad was in the union talked about how folks in the factory were peeing on effigies of management - including my dad.

Naturally I knew which side I was on. Cat needed wage concessions and freedom to operate to be globally competitive. I’d read Akio Morita, TPS and Lee Iacocca. I worried about Japan Inc. eating our lunch (yes as a 12 year old!) UAW workers and families were much more grounded. They needed a livelihood and wanted certainty for their future.

---

War continued to wage into high school. We came home one day to find “jackrocks” outside of our driveway - a tool used in feudal Japan to thwart the advancing armies - horses, chariots - etc. of those in power. In <60 years, Caterpillar had gone from transforming America’s agrarian society to becoming the enemy of American workers. We had the GOP’s Contract with America (stored in my Trapper Keeper) and Clinton signing NAFTA within a couple years. Both parties supported global capital and global capital supported both parties. Maybe jackrocks worked better than voting?

Corporate America soon figured out that if your workers were in China, Mexico or the South, it’s harder for them to stick jack rocks in your driveway. If your kids go to private school or you live in a quasi-private suburb, they’ll be insulated from the wrath of the have-nots in heavily policed, declining urban centers. No peeing on your effigy or having your kid hear about it!

---

After college, I became an analyst at Bain & Company. Once an auto parts company hired us to do a “portfolio review”. I meticulously compared the costs of building mirrors in Eastern Michigan or Malaysia - creating a zero defect Excel model. Guess which location won? The auto parts company - like Cat - had the freedom to choose where to put jobs.

But what freedom did the workers have? Marie Antoinette once said “let them eat cake”. The elites of our era now say “let them move”. Social capital is critical for folks navigating change. The educated elite take the portability of social capital (embedded in college degrees and iMessage threads) as a given.

But place and social capital are deeply intertwined especially if you’re poor or a minority. While the deep introspection elites once had during 2016 has now been paved over by new crises, we should never forget that there’s a cost to society of losing its manufacturing base and jobs. How do you model the costs of broken families, drug addiction and a polarized electorate in Excel?

---

I grew disillusioned with management by spreadsheet. But I saw a bright spot on the horizon: tech. I remember opening my first iPod, getting 1000 songs in my pocket and believing that America had a shot at leading a new generation of consumer electronics when everyone a decade earlier had written us off in favor of the Japanese. Perhaps tech could bring jobs and prosperity back to the country? I wanted to be part of it.

So I moved to the Valley in 2004 and joined a VC fund. I saw how the VC funding model that Silicon Valley was built on incentivizes high-risk, high-leverage and massive-scale. It encourages companies to cherry-pick top-end talent (immigrants, marquee college grads) to build the differentiated bits. Pick the highest leverage point in the stack, outsource everything else - by building in China and/or pushing the last-mile to an ecosystem that you can control at arms length.

Tech companies could more than pay back the largely fixed costs of software / semiconductor design from the large and homogenous American market. This dynamic attracted massive amounts of private risk capital and enabled aggressive expansion abroad. This model didn’t work for everything (I got burned with cleantech) - but it worked amazingly well for broad swaths of enterprise software, consumer services and marketplaces. I saw how tech could be an incredible lever for wealth creation. But every visit back home to the Rust Belt made me wonder - wealth creation for whom?

---

2020+ - A thought experiment on institutional innovation and putting people first

July 14, 2020 - Q2 Earnings - CEO, MEGA TECH CORP - Hi everyone. These aren’t normal times. We’re not going to talk about our 10Q on this call. We’re here to talk about the next 10 years. So if you’re here for DAUs, ARR or CPC, you can drop off now. 

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the race, health and economic crises our country faces. Over the last few weeks, I’ve asked our exec team to leave their homes, their Zoom calls, their DoorDash deliveries - to join protests and explore our community through new eyes.

Race & Place: On Juneteenth, we biked from Sheraton Place to Hunters Point to Tanforan. We saw the real life impact of redlining, mass incarceration of Blacks and the lack of jobs from decades ago - and how our headquarters sustain - rather than disrupt - the region’s policies of de facto segregation. We also remembered how political demagogues once imprisoned our neighbors of Japanese descent. We see today how their rhetoric affects our Black neighbors and colleagues. What might it do tomorrow to folks without legal status in ag/service industries that California depends or the H1Bs we depend on? What does diversity & inclusion mean in this context?

Jobs: The next Friday we biked from SRI to PARC to Sunnyvale and Moffett Field. Our industry once dreamed of a bicycle for the mind and embraced technical education and apprenticeship as a path in the door for Women and Blacks. Meanwhile we’ve pushed vast swaths of work to contractors or platform-mediated transactions - making it harder to use up-skilling as a talent lever like manufacturing employers did in the last era. What’s the impact on income mobility? At what point will 40 million unemployed Americans affect our share prices and the stability of society?

Climate: On Independence Day, we biked on the Bay Trail past landfills, superfund sites and the 101 - alongside poor and minority neighborhoods with terrible health outcomes. We talked about the Bay Area weather forecast for 2060 “fire with a chance of flooding”. We passed abandoned railways and dreams of regional transport - the result of which is folks commuting hours each way from the central valley to work service jobs in our campuses. We wondered about the long run political consequences of isolating our employee base inside the WiFi confines of a private bus network. Where is the voting base to drive institutional change? How many axles or tires will our commuter buses need to keep them safe from jackrocks on the 101?

Health: Last week, we rode from the old Permanente cement quarry to 101 (built by the same cement workers.) We talked about how Kaiser - a private employer of low-skilled workers - internalized their healthcare needs, pursued disruptive innovation and faced fierce clashes with the medical establishment. We thought about how COVID is exposing the brittleness of our employee’s isolation inside a private insurance bubble. No one can be healthy in a pandemic without competent public health infrastructure. Meanwhile, the growing cost of private healthcare makes it harder for tech - let alone the rest of the country - to employ American workers across the wage spectrum - exacerbating job loss and instability.

And as we spoke with others, we saw how the issues that Silicon Valley faces are not unique to one metropolitan area or one industry. It just happens to be the ultimate archetype of Global Capitalism and de facto segregated American metros.

What we now see - more clearly than ever - is that our entire company, our entire industry, our entire Valley - is built on a flawed foundation.

We can no longer just focus on the magical software bits and hope someone else figures out racial equity, employment, climate and health. This is Joel Spolsky’s Law of Leaky Abstractions on the ultimate scale. The abstractions are failing - and we’re seeing bugs and unintended consequences all around us. And the more we invest to deal with one-off bugs, the more likely we are to calcify change and imprison ourselves inside a failing stack.

It’s like we decided to build the world’s notification service on Ruby on Rails - or building an iPhone competitor on Windows CE. Fail Whale everywhere. Unfortunately, America’s democratic institutions are in poor condition. They are struggling to deal with inequality let alone looming environmental disaster. A polarized electorate - particularly at the national level - leads to populism and makes it hard for these institutions to execute meaningful, long-term plans.

We talk a lot about speech, misinformation, fairness of targeted ads etc. But it’s becoming clear that UX, linear algebra/training data and monetization in our products is just the tip of the spear to address polarization. We believe polarization is a product of the underlying conditions of civil rights, education, health and climate debt that affect Americans differentially based on race, wealth, neighborhood and region. e.g. If we care about justice, how far does focusing on the fairness of employment ads get us in a world when many people lack the skills and negotiating power to secure a living wage?

So will today’s peaceful protests for racial justice expand into tomorrow’s revolution(s) for economic freedom? If you don’t think things are bad now, think about what happens when the stimulus checks run out. Take a look at the amount of debt in the public sector, use any imagination about COVID, work out what happens to their tax base / pension returns and consider the impact on public services, public servants and their votes. MMT better be a real thing. Maybe we didn’t start these fires, but that refrain won’t save us when the flames come our way.

We’re done debating why we need to act. It’s clear America needs our help. Let’s talk about how we’re going to rise to the occasion. Our mantra will be “internalize, innovate, institutionalize”.

First, we’re going to internalize our problems. I’m here to tell you that issues of racial and economic justice are not just moral issues but they’re financial issues. Racial debt, education debt, health debt, climate debt will hit us harder and harder each year. (By the way, revolution probably won’t be great for your DCF models.) So we’re going to recognize these off-balance sheet liabilities - which amount to a few hundred billion in the US alone over the next 10 years for a company at our scale.

Second, we’re going to innovate against these systemic problems - but our only shot at making progress is if we realign the entire company’s mission to address them. This is not about optics. This is not about philanthropy. This is not another bet. We’re putting all our chips behind one bet - America. It's the country that backed us in the first place, it's where most of our people are and most of our profits. The job for our existing products, platforms and cash flows will be to advance four areas: place / race, skilling / manufacturing, health / food and climate / mobility - starting in America. The board will measure me based on job creation and diversity. It should go without saying that we’re pausing dividends and buybacks for the foreseeable future. Every dollar will serve our mission. Every senior leader will need to sign up for our new mission - and those who choose to stay will receive a new, back-end loaded, 10 year vesting schedule. We want them focused on the long-term health of society - not the whims of Robinhood day traders or strengthening the moats of existing products. We will need to invent entirely new ways to operate and ship products. As Joel Spolsky said, “when you need to hire a programmer to do mostly VB programming, it’s not good enough to hire a VB programmer, because they will get completely stuck in tar every time the VB abstraction leaks”. We need engineers, designers and product managers that will look deep into the stack, confront the racial, job access, health and climate debts that our products, our companies and our communities are built on top of. This is not about CYA process to protect cash cows or throwing things over the fence to policy. We will need to innovate across technical, cultural and organizational lines. This requires deep understanding and curiosity. This will bring more scrutiny to our company - not less. Not everyone’s going to be on board - so for the next 12 months, we’re giving folks a one-time buyout if they want to leave.

Third, we can’t do any of this by ourselves. The problems are too big. Our role will be to provide enlightened risk capital (from our balance sheet or by re-vectoring operating spend) alongside R&D, product, platform leverage to help leaders and innovators pursue solutions in these areas. Of course we will work with our peers and the public sector wherever possible - buying/R&D consortia, public-private partnerships, trusts, etc. But the new era and landscape demands that we explore institutional models beyond global capital/startups, labor unions, NGOs or government. We need models that can more flexibly align people and purpose, that innovate on individualized vs. socialized risk/reward - and that ultimately help build and sustain local, social capital. It’s difficult to say what these will look like - but increasingly figuring this out will be existential for our core business too. Right now, it doesn’t matter if you’re designing the best cameras in Cupertino or the best way to see their snaps in Santa Monica - we’re all just building layers of an attention stack for global capital. Our Beijing competitors have figured this out. ByteDance is already eating our lunch. They’re using the same tech inputs as us - UX, ML and large-scale systems - which are now a commodity - but with vastly lower consequences for the content they show - creating a superior operating / scaling model. They’re not internalizing social or political cost.   What we need in this era is the accumulation stack - where each interaction builds social capital. This is not about global likes. This is about local respect. We’ll create competitive advantage when we build products that reach across race / economic lines to harness America’s amazing melting pot and do so in ways that build livelihoods / property rights for creators and stakeholders.

With this operating model in place, we’re committing to fundamental change in four areas:

Place & Race - We’re done with de facto segregation. Over the next 10 years, 100% of our jobs will be in diverse communities that embrace inclusive schooling, policing, housing and transit policies. (Starting tomorrow, we’re putting red lines on our maps around towns with exclusionary zoning.) This is not about privatizing cities or an HQ2-style play to extract concessions. This is about investing our risk capital and our reputation to innovate alongside government. How do we bring world-class education to neighborhoods with concentrated poverty? What is the future of digital/hybrid charter schooling? Unbundled, community-driven public safety? We’ll embrace “remote-first” as a means to this end. The Bay will become one physical node alongside others (e.g. Atlanta, DC, LA) creating an Interstate Knowledge System that develops diverse talent across the country. We’re going to coordinate our investment with leading peers - since after all, this isn’t about cost savings or cherry-picking. It’s about broadening our country’s economic base.

Skilling & Manufacturing - We will 10x the tech talent pool in 10 years - by inventing new apprenticeship models that bring women, minorities and the poor into the workforce. We’ll start with our existing contractor base, convert them to new employment models with expanded benefits and paths for upward mobility. Next, we will invent new productivity tools for all types of workers - from the front office to mobile work to call center - that brings the power of AI and programming to everyone. These will be deeply tied into new platforms for work designed from the bottom-up to build social and financial capital for individual workers and teams. Last, we’re going to manufacture most of our hardware products - from silicon all the way to systems - entirely in the US within 10 years. This will require massive investment, collaboration and innovation. It may require a revolution in robotics - but we will pursue this in a way that makes the American worker competitive - not a commodity to be automated away. If we’re successful, the dividends of our investment here will have massive spillover benefits to every other sector of manufacturing in the US - autos, etc. - including ones we have yet to dream up.

Health & Food - We’re not going to tolerate a two-class system for healthcare anymore. As we convert our contract workforce to new employment models, we’re going to have to innovate on the fundamental quality/cost paradigm across our benefit stack. This may feel like a step down but it will put us (and the rest of society if we’re successful) on a fundamentally better long-term trajectory. Food is part of Health, and we’re going to innovate there too. Free food for employees is not going to come back post-COVID. Instead, we’ll use our food infrastructure to bootstrap cooperatively-owned cloud kitchens. We’ll provide capital to former contractors - mostly Black and Hispanic - to invest and own these. We’ll build platforms to help them sell food to employees (partly subsidized), participate in new “food for health” programs and eventually disrupt the extractive labor practices we see across food, grocery and delivery.

Climate & Mobility - Lastly, we’ll be imposing a carbon tax on all aspects of our own operations - which we’ll use to “fund” innovation in this space - with a primary focus on job creation. This is an area where we’re going to be looking far beyond our four walls from the beginning. As a first step, we’re teaming up with Elon and Gavin Newsom to buy PG&E out of bankruptcy and restructure it as a 21st century “decentralized” utility. It will accelerate the electrification of mobility - financing networked batteries for buses, cars and bikes along with charging infrastructure - and leading a massive job creation program focused on energy efficiency. Speaking of mobility, private buses aren’t coming back after COVID. Instead, we’re teaming up with all of our peers to create a Bay-wide network of electric buses (with bundled e-bikes) that will service folks of all walks of life - including our own employee base. Oh and one more thing - we’re bringing together the world’s most advanced privacy/identity architecture and computational video/audio to bake public health infrastructure directly into the buses. For COVID and beyond. None of this is a substitute for competent, democratically accountable regional authorities. This is us investing risk capital on behalf of society - with the goal of empowering these authorities. Yes the New York Times will have a field day with this. Maybe in time they’ll leave their bubble, enter the real world, see the sorry state of their institutions - the behavioral health and infrastructure crises on their crumbling streets - and get on board. Until then, our job is to be patient longer than they can be inflammatory.

Open technology for global progress - While we have to prioritize America given the scale of problems, the intent is not to abandon the rest of the world or hold back it’s progress. We feel the opposite - that over the coming decades each country’s technology sectors will thrive. To get there, we will continue to invest patiently - hiring, training, partnering, investing and innovating - but with a clear north star to help each country develop local leaders in new areas. Long-term, we’ll continue to contribute open technology that others can build upon.

America should be the proverbial city on a hill for everyone - not a metaverse for the rich with the poor dying in the streets. We don’t have much time so we’re getting to work now. See you next quarter.

----

This call may be imaginary but none of this is sci-fi or requires MMT. What it requires is us to care. To act. Join me on bike rides to explore our past and discuss what tangible actions Silicon Valley’s leading companies can take in the coming quarters and years. Logistics here for rides on June 19, June 26, July 2 and July 10!

3 notes · View notes

remmiesaloser · 5 years ago

Text

13 Years | 4 Weeks

honestly, I dont know which of the two have been longer in my life.

so recently I ended a 13 year long relationship with the guy I've been dating since my freshman year of high school. it took me this long to understand, acknowledge, and accept the relationship was emotionally (and borderline physically) abusive and thanks two my two best friends and a very nice therapist I asked him to move out.

I thought the overwhelming life style change would be the hardest. I haven't been alone since I was 14 and it took me a long time to build up the courage to end things because I am terrified of change and had little to no idea what to do without him. to my surprise I've adapted to being alone pretty well. the loneliness does get to me sometimes - I miss those moments we had where we could have a conversation without speaking. I miss over a decade’s worth of inside jokes, and it still hurts when I see something and instantly think of him cause it was our thing.

its a daily struggle to remind myself why I did this because its frighteningly easy to minimize the damage he did when he’s not here to do it every day. the gaslighting and emotional manipulation isn't something that just switches off or diminishes with distance. somehow, in some super shitty, unfair way, it gets worse. because im left alone with my thoughts that he’s managed to turn against me and they’re still working angles for him that catch me off-guard sometimes. I still battle with guilt for making him move out, because I feel terrible that now he’s stuck living with his mom and all his things are in boxes. and I hate that it’s gonna take a long time for that to go away.

but I digress. because all of that isn’t the hardest part. the hardest part is getting him the fuck out of this apartment. we 'ended things’ April 5th. there are quotes around that because we haven’t officially broken up. like, I told him I needed a break till he gets his shit together, and he’s all but moved out, but I haven’t even changed our relationship status on Facebook (yay, guilt!) and we haven't really agreed that we’re broken up. Jesus, again I digress. ANYWAYS. I knew it was gonna be a process to move him out because our lives are so intertwined that we’ve had to go through rooms and drawers and boxes one by one separating our shit. and this process has been fucking agonizing because he is dragging his goddamn feet.

Initially I thought we were gonna bang this out in a weekend, get all the shit out and be done. A month later, and there’s still a pile of his shit at the top of the stairs, a handful of things in the corner of the living room (including the giant china cabinet filled with his things) and his grandmother’s dishes in my cupboards. but that’s a post for another day. because right now im just gonna vent about him taking his sweet ass time, being insanely petty, and still somehow fucking manipulating me when he doesn’t even live here anymore.

honestly the pettiness and inconsideration for my own time and requests is the biggest thing that’s getting to me, what’s driving me to write this. most of the time he’s been here for his shit, his mom’s been with him, and I was chalking up a lot of the pettiness to her. because he’d be here to get the things from the living room, and hours after they'd left I’d notice small things had been taken from other parts of the house. now some of the stuff he’s taken was his, just something I was using with him that I’d assumed he’d at least mention he was taking. im a lot of things, but selfish isn’t one of them and honestly unless it’s something from my family or something that I bought that was expensive, I don’t care. he can have it. It’s more the fact that, when I need something all of a sudden I cant find it and realize he took it.

like, his nana’s pots and pans. They’re a really nice set his mom let us have and I fully expected them gone. my only request was that he give me a heads up so I could go out and get my own set when he planned to take them because with them gone, all I’d have left is a few frying pans. This is our conversation from that weekend:

This was Saturday afternoon. He never told me he wasn’t going to come by Saturday, and gave me a 15 minute heads up he was on his way over on Sunday - which did me no good because I wasn’t even home. That meant I couldn’t clean out the dressers (I didnt want to do it until the day he was going to get them because I would have to leave my clothes on the bed until I could get my own dresser from my parent’s house once his were gone). When I got home, all of my clothes were thrown on my bed and the ground.I had to rewash a bunch of shit, refold everything, and then clean the entire room from the mess that was made.

fucking on top of that, his mom decided to take the pots and pans. I’d specifically asked him Saturday because I was going to Walmart and could have bought a new set for myself while there. I didn't want to buy them until I needed to because I’m trying to save money and didn’t get paid that weekend, so I figured if he’s not taking them I don’t need to get things until I get paid next weekend. Wrong. I had to go out that night again and get a set because, as I said, all I had were 3 frying pans and a skillet thing. Oddly enough, she didn’t take the dishes. They were her mom’s, just like the pots and pans, and for some reason she didn’t want them... don’t worry, I already plan to pack them up this weekend and give them back because lord knows what’ll happen if I dont and she decides she wants them six years from now.

honestly though the biggest level of petty was the Tylenol PM. I know, it’s not a big deal. But it’s just one of those little things that I stopped and was like, are you fucking kidding me. I noticed that, after taking his bed and dressers, the pack of tissues he’d got us from Sam’s was gone. Again, he bought them, whatever. would’ve been nice for him to tell me so I had a heads up to fucking get them when I was at Walmart but whatever. he also took a 6-pack of toilet paper he’d gotten literally the day we ended things (because he’d gone to king Soopers with his mother instead of talking to me about the fight we’d had) and he’d initially told me to keep it, it was for me anyways. I noticed just last weekend it was gone.

but the fucking Tylenol PM. I'm not one to buy brand name medicine. if I can get store brand, I will. Almost all my medicine is store brand except that Tylenol PM because I was really sick one year and wanted the good stuff. Y’all know how expensive Tylenol is. I sprang for it, and I used it sparingly because I didnt want to have to buy more if I didn’t really need it. Well, two weekends ago I fell down a fucking mountain. I was running a trail down a mountain, tripped, flew through the air, and landed on my shoulder and kneecap. It still hurts, and that day I was in a lot of pain. The regular Tylenol and Ibuprofen that I’d been switching back and forth with all day just wasn’t doing the trick and I was like, okay. this is a Tylenol PM kind of pain. That night, right before bed, I went to grab it from the bathroom cabinet.

it was gone. the rest of my medicines, the store brand acetaminophen and store brand ibuprofen, those were still there, but the Tylenol PM was gone. It has exclusively only lived either on the dresser/nightstand in the bedroom, or the bathroom cabinet. as he took the dresser and nightstand, and it wasn’t in the cabinet, it had been taken. I cannot tell you how livid I was. it still pisses me off. because of all the things to take he took that. Not the rest of his bathroom shit, not even all his shit from the bedroom. but he took the Tylenol PM. I even asked if he knew where it might be - thinking he’d come across it at some point. he told me “it’s always been in the linen closet” where the rest of our medicines are. It was never there, but I checked the entire closet just in case - nothing. Again, I know it’s small. it’s just a bottle of pills. but it’s the whole damn thought behind it.

there’s more things too - the fact that no, he doesn’t take all his things from a certain room, and I have to then box the rest of his shit up, move it out of my way, and clean the room that he trashed.

It’s the fact that 90% of the things on our walls were his (which helps show me how little say I had on my own things in the apartment I exclusively pay for) and now that he’s taken them, he’s left the walls, hooks, and nails behind. most of them are up way above my head - he needed a ladder to put them in - and now they’re littered all over the wall. today, as he worked to get the shit from our front bedroom (hopefully the last things he’ll need to get) I asked him if he could also get the nails and hooks out of the wall because I can’t reach them. he asked me, “did you try using the step-ladder?”. I answered no, and he simply said, “that should work then”. Like, no. you put those up, so you could display all the things of yours YOU wanted to display (3 out of 4 walls in the room were covered with his things) and now he can’t even take the tacks down even though he took the hangings down.

and then of course, it’s the fact that he just leaves a mess in his wake. when he first moved things out of the living room it was a mess. I spent hours rearranging shit, packing up the rest of his shit that he left behind, and then cleaning up everything because I still have to live here. it was the same with the bedroom. and now it’s gonna be the same thing with the front room. I told him today that everything needs to be out by next weekend because I can’t do this every weekend. He asked what I meant by ‘this’ and explained that I was tired of having to clean up everything that got messed up. He told me simply “it’s not being destroyed. I’m just taking my things”. At the moment the entire room was in shambles, everything askew from him digging his things out and leaving my stuff lying in piles. It’s cleaned up now - save the pile of boxes and junk at the top of the stairs - but I told him I have to clean up the mess that’s left behind. He didn’t have an answer for that.

Honestly there’s really not a point to this. I’m just pissed, I’m annoyed, and I’m angry, and I’m sad. I’m just tired. And I wanted to vent. So if you stuck with me through this, I wanna thank you for listening. I appreciate being heard, because I haven’t been for so long. your time means a lot to me.

#abuse #emotional abuse #physical abuse #mental abuse #gaslighting #manipulation #breakup #ending a relationship #thoughts #rant

1 note · View note

ao3feed-irondadspiderson · 6 years ago

Link

by josywbu

Parker luck means things in Peter's close proximity tend to break more often than not. It's not a big deal most times but it is when he breaks the only vase Tony has from Peggy Carter.

Only, Tony doesn't really agree with him on that and decides to tell him a story about his Aunt Peggy.

Words: 1938, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: Gen

Characters: Tony Stark, Peter Parker, Peggy Carter (mentioned)

Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark

Additional Tags: Peggy Carter is Tony Stark's Godparent, Minor wounds, Storytelling, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, BAMF Peggy Carter

#IFTTT #ao3feed #fanfic #iron dad and spider son #spider son #iron dad #peter parker #tony stark

39 notes · View notes

phoebeterrylove · 5 years ago

Text

Amazon just added India's most popular language to Alexa

at least flirted with Under Armour, according to 2015 news reports, that drove up the price for an extension with NikeAmong the top 10 contracts, only Ohio State, and re signed with the apparel provider with which it previously partneredThe absence of that prospect of looking elsewhere is the most likely explanation behind its smaller financial bump compared to places like UCLA or At the time, new Nike contract that averaged $5.3 million annually ranked among the more lucrative deals nationally. Soon after, Pretty Ricky signed a deal with Atlantic Records, and this year released the top selling album, Late Night Special. The 6 foot 7 forward averaged 4.9 points and 2.5 rebounds in 55 games (13 starts) in both Greek Basket League and EuroLeague In 2018 19. He says Walmart will continue to treat customers with respect and it will have a approach. Tayasco social work degree Cheap Fake Yeezys and her Spanish were an asset for a school where about half the students are bilingual or speak Spanish as a first language.. Orthodox Golden Tips, from the Maijan tea estate, smashed the record set by another specialty tea the Manohari Gold that was sold for Rs 50,000 at the same auction.. Deliveries in the government hospitals rose by 22 per cent, fell by eight per cent in the private hospitals and cheap yeezy shoes home births dropped by 16 per cent. Worn once and mothballed forever, it is an expensive keepsake. Their political stands weren popular, but they were right. Runs through the goaltender eyes and the way that we going to kill and the structure that we going to kill and the foundation we going to set, I pretty confident the goalie will have a pretty clear cut image of where the shots are going to come from.. 11 of Liverpool's best pizzasYou can't beat a hot pizza piled high with delicious toppingsGet the biggest What's On stories by emailSubscribe We will use your email address only for the purpose of sending you newsletters. 25: residence entered without use of force; Poulan chainsaw and Honda pressure washer all valued at $500 stolen; arrest made. You can see the parallels with tobacco. During that process, corn syrup is broken down and consumed by yeast so that none of it remains in the final product. Tom Saviello recently remarked, a no brainer. Terrorists and negative people can cause massive damage to the state by forging their identity. Much of your decision should be based on the amount of walking that you will fake yeezys for kids be doing because not all boots are made for walking. Not only is screen size an important factor to consider when comparing phones, but the dpi or dots per inch of the display will tell you how much clarity the phone has. THESE TERMS OF USE ("TERMS OF USE") ARE BETWEEN YOU (IF YOU ARE UNDER THE LEGAL AGE OF MAJORITY, "YOU" INCLUDES YOUR PARENTS OR LEGAL GUARDIANS) AND BRIGHT HUB, INC. "I told his grandfather that if Hector wants to play golf he needs to show me during the summer. Good things will come from all the tinkering just not now. Some golfers, the social benefits that come along with the sport are what they value. The company wants to tie all the devices with various other services that it intends to bundle together, including an online video package of shows and movies that ties into its origins as the of China. The spring term Special Subject module focused on case studies of objects in the Dress History Teaching Collection. This could require surgery to fix the damaged tendon or ligament. It will be hard. Nevertheless we can see the ad as positively supporting obese people by portraying Nathan as a determined child chasing his goals. Did we panic? No. Grandmothers are great for hugs and cookies are delicious and they great for comfort, but with us it that stigma of bikers big, bad, mean and that who they need standing in front of them, in between them and their abuser. Are wearable works of art. We were not going to let him extort us.

1 note · View note

weartirondad · 6 years ago

Text

1k Follower’s celebration - Masterpost

Sharing headphones - Sparks Filled With Hope

Field Trip - These Hands Could Hold The World (But I’ll Never Be Enough)

Forehead kiss - Keep Me Steady

Bullying - Sorry (Is All That You Can Say)

“You’ll always be my kid.” - A Heart Grows (With More People To Love)

Ambush hug - Is This A Hug Yet?

Getting mistaken as family and not correcting whoever’s mistaken

Sickness

“I’m gonna take a lucky guess here and say that’s broken.” - Broken China Made In Walmart

“Please don’t leave me, I can’t do this without you.” - Sometimes Home Is A Mess

#irondad #irondad fanart #irondad fic #iron dad #tony stark #peter parker #1k followers celebration #1k prompts #josis fic #liesel art #thought id do a masterpost for this #masterpost #1k masterpost #j&fcollab

137 notes · View notes

lovemesomesurveys · 5 years ago

Text

What were you doing an hour ago? Eating a pesto pasta Healthy Choice meal. When did you get up today? 7:20AM.

Is there anyone that could make your day if they showed up at your house? No.

Do you live west of Ohio? Yes.

Do you live east of Colorado? No.

Does your middle name begin with a A, M, or S? Yes.

How old was the last person you rode in a car with? 54, 57, and 20.

What color was the last vehicle you were in? A brown Honda.

Do you have big plans for the weekend? Weekend is over, but I actually got out and did some stuff. I saw Dark Phoenix Saturday and today we went out for breakfast for Father’s Day and then my mom and I went grocery shopping at Walmart.

How many of your top friends have tattoos? Myspace is deadddd.

How long have you lived at your current residence? Almost 10 years.

How long has your ex been your ex? I technically only have one ex and we’ve been broken up for well over 10 years.

When was the last time you were up at 5am? Today.

Have you ever kissed your #4?

What was the last movie you saw in theaters and who did you go with? I saw Dark Phoenix with my parents and brother.

When was the last time you went bowling? Uhh like 2009.

How about swimming? 2013.

Have you ever been to the Grand Canyon? No.

The Eiffel Tower? No.

The Great Wall of China? No.

When you go fishing, do you make someone else get the fish off the hook? I don’t go fishing.

How old were you in 1999? 9, turning 10 that July.

How many funerals have you been to this year? Zero.

When was the last time you spent a night stargazing? I’ve never done that.

Are you taller than 5'6"? I’m about 5′4.

What was the last thing you cooked? I microwaved a TV dinner thing earlier.

Who were the last three people to call you? Mom, dad, brother.

What were you doing last night at 10pm? Probably surveys.

Did you go to daycare when you were little? No.

Do you have a favorite pillow you always sleep with? I have like 6 pillows on my bed, but I only use 1.

When was the last time you slept in someone else’s bed? A couple years ago.

Are there any candles in the room you’re in? Yes.

If you turn around, what is behind you? Back pillow, headboard, wall.

Would you dye your hair hot pink for $50? 50 bucks? Nah.

Have you ever had someone like you that you didn’t like back? Yes.

Do you usually fall for people who also fall for you? Haaaa. Nope.

Do you know what you’d have been named had you been born the opposite sex? No.

Do you have any step or half siblings? I have a half brother, but we never have referred to each other as such.

What is your profile song right now? -

What is your #1’s profile song? -

How many people have you kissed in the last 48 hours? Zero.

The last week? Zero.

The last month? Zero.

Do you regret any of them?

What would you do if your #2 showed up on your doorstep this very minute? -

If you switch ‘e’ with 'a’, 'n’ with 'c’, & 'l’ with 'x’ what’s your name? Staphecxa. Interesting.

When is the next time you will see your #3? -

Would you ever visit a nude beach? No.

When was the last time someone gave you a compliment? I don’t recall.

Do you take any prescription meds? Yes.

What happens if you don’t take them? I’d be in a lot of pain.

What color is your underwear? Red.

Who was the last person you dreamt about? I had a really random dream about a few random people last night.

Where did you get the shirt you are wearing? Hot Topic.

Where was the last place you spent more than $50? Boxlunch.

Where is your favorite place to be kissed other than the usual place? Neck.

Do you hate getting hickeys? I’ve never been given one.

Who was the last person to hug you? My mom.

Are there any buttons on the clothes you’re wearing? No.

How about zippers? No.

What percent of your day includes music? I don’t listen to music everyday, so it really just varies.

Have you had any fruit today? No.

Who is on your mind right now? My back hurting.

Are your fingernails painted? No.

Do you keep a diary/journal? This is it.

In how many years will you be thirty? I’ll be turning 30 next month.,.. D:

Do you set your marshmallows on fire when you roast them? I’ve never roasted marshmallows, actually. My S’mores have been made in a microwave, ha.

Do you prefer your tea sweetened or unsweetened? Sweetened.

Have you ever dated someone who’s name began with ’D’? Yes.

Have you ever kissed someone who’s name began with 'K’? No.

Have you ever hugged someone who’s name began with 'E’? Yeah.

What scent is your favorite perfume/cologne? Patchouli or fruity, sweet scents for perfumes, sandalwood and cedarwood.

Have you showered today? No, I did last night.

If you went on a blind date, and it turned out to be your ex, you would? Run.

When was the last time you took a nap? Earlier.

What are you plans after this? Another survey.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

1 note · View note

mint-moon25 · 3 years ago

Text

Watch "Lea Salonga - Someone to Watch Over Me" on YouTube

youtube

CHANGES - N MIAMI AVE - YES - RELIGIOUS - NON-PROFIT - ORG -

2 - IMPOSE - LEAVE - (8A - 4P) -

WEEKDAYS - CAN'T - YOUTUBE -

OUTSIDE - DORMS - CHAIRS SO -

CALLS - FRONT - OF NATIONAL -

BOOKSTORE - WEEKDAYS - SAT -

(9:30A - 6P) - 6 DAYS - NURSE -

ALSO - SPANISH - SPEAKING -

ASSIGNED - CLEANER SINCE -

7P EDT - 2 - CLEAN - ALL THE -

BATHROOM - NOT - JUST THE -

SHOWER - AND - DISABLED XO -

BATH - MUST - B - ALL - THE FL -

TOILET - ILLEGAL - FUTURE WE -

CALL - HARVARD - LAWYERS - & -

FREE - PHONE - EMAIL - NOTICE -

TICKET - GIVEN - $250 BILLION -

SAFE - 4 - US - CITIZEN's ARREST -

CALLING - MY - CANO HEALTH & -

GET - OPHTALMOLOGIST - ADRS -

BECAUSE - 'SHE - THINKS - SHE's - BLIND' - THEY - SAID - LIKE - THE -

LAWYER - ROBERT E LEE - 'SHE - THINKS - SHE - HAS - TRANSPLANT - EYES -

2 - GET - DISCOUNT - FARE -

PLASTIC - EASY - CARD - SO -

$2.80 - INSTEAD - OF - $5.65 -

MONTHLY - $56 - INSTEAD OF -

$112 - $125 - THEY - ACCEPT - THE - MEDICAID - OF - $315 - FR THESE - PHILIPPINE - PEOPLE - BUT - WE - MUST - FOLLOW - PROCEDURES - LIKE - IN - PAST - SKIN - WAS US - REMOVED - 2 - KNOW - IF BABY - IS - A - BOY - OR - GIRL - TODAY -

FAMILY - DOCTORS - HAVE - YES - NURSES - ASKING - IF - PHILIPPINES - DO - MARIJUANA -

AS - THEIR - VAGINAL - AREA - IS - PENETRATED - BY - SPANISH - SPEAKING - SPOUSES - AS XO - THEY - EXHALE - ABOUT - THE - PLEASURE - OF - MARRIAGE - SHOULD - BE - AGE 12 - IN US - STATES - POP - 250 - THEY R - MARRIED - 7:26A - TOILET IS - STILL - CLOSED - PILLS - IN - FUTURE - TAKE - THEN THE - BODY - DOESN'T - NEED TO - USE - BATHROOM - LIKE - FOOTBALL - STADIUMS - THUS - BUS S - THEY - EXPELLED - A - BLOND - 4 - DID - NOT - WANT - 2 - GO - 2 - VERY - BACK - REMOVED - FR - BUS - SO - ONLY - 1 MIN - EARLY - BUS S - DOWNTOWN - MIAMI - DECIDED - 2 - EXIT - WHERE - I - CAME - SO - JAPANESE - MALE - DUDE - HOT - 6'4 FT - CUTEST - BABE - AA CENTER - THUS - OMNI LOOP - SCHOOL - BOARD - WALK - IS - 4 MIN - ONLY - BUT - TOOK WRONG - ONE - LEFT - WENT - 2 - RIGHT 1 - NINNY - INSTEAD - OF - 1ST ST - AND - N MIAMI AVE - 9 MIN - HOT - WEATHER - WALKING - THOUGH - BETTER - LATE - AFT - JUST YES - 4 MIN - CAME - AT - 6:24P - MADE - IT - 4 - 6:45P - CURFEW - WHY - I - BRING - LUGGAGE - 4 - U - CAN'T - ENTER - THUS - I HAVE - MY - NAT PAPERS - SSN - STATE - ID - THUS - NEXT - TRIP - 2 - AVENTURA - MALL - THERE's - ANOTHER - ASIAN - SHRIMP - AND PORK - DUMPLINGS - ASIAN - THAI - TEA - JUST - DRINK IS - OVER - $6 - LESS - FOOD - 4 - OVER - $6 - NO - ASIAN - YES - SERVING - FOOD - FOR - ASIANS - 1% - OF - MIAMI - FLORIDA - FL -

GUESS - BATHROOM - OPEN - NOW - 7:30P - THUS - BEEN 2 - THE - LARGEST - MALL - IN FL - AND - DESIGNER - INSTEAD AND - COULDN'T - BUY - MY - SONY CD - WALKMAN - OVER - $200 - AMAZON - AND - WALMART - JUST - $19.95 - $21.95 - MANHATTAN - NEW YORK - GOD - SAID - 'ALL - THINGS - ARE - POSSIBLE' - WHAT - I'M - SELLING - AT - MY - ONLINE - STORE - I'M - PRAYING - MY - CHINESE - NEW - DROPSHIPPER - MY - ENTRY - 2 - CHINA - AS - ACTRESS - ALSO - AS - CHINA - HAS - SPECIAL - RELATIONSHIP - WITH - BUSINESS - PARTNERS - LIKE - NIO - ELECTRIC - CAR - THOSE - WHO - INVESTED - OVER - $100,000 - IN - STOCKS - B 4 - DEC - GOT - MORE - THAN - $1 MILLION - EACH - AND - LOANS - IF - THEIR - INCOME - PER - YEAR - IS - UNDER - $45,000 - THEN - THAT - DIVIDENT - TRULY - REMAINED - TAX - FREE - JESUS - IS - LORD - SO - WHO - 2 - INVEST - CHINESE - FREE - WOO - COMMERCE - PLUGIN - HAVE - LOTS - OF - EXPENSE - THIS - YES - MONTH - SO - WE'LL - SEE - WHEN - I - START - MY - ONLINE - STORE - WORD PRESS.ORG - BECAUSE - TOLL - FREE - ALL - CALLS - TRANSLATED - 2 - TEXT - SO - I - CAN - READ - THEIR - REQUESTS - QUESTIONS - INSTEAD - OF - HEARING - ANGRY - OR - SHY - WHEN - THEY - RECEIVE - BROKEN - GLASS - THINGS - LIKE - THAT - SO - WILL - BE - SELECTIVE - USING - MY - BLUETOOTH - KEYBOARD - AND - SMARTPHONE - 2 - TYPE - RIGHT - NOW - CAN - ACTUALLY - USE - TOILET - NOW - HOMELESS - GIRLS - HISPANIC - BLKS - AS - MAKATI - GIRLS - WE'RE - SPECIAL - BECAUSE WE - ARE - A - LOOK - FORWARD - 2 - THESE US - HOMELESS - DEMONIC - POSSESSION - I WAS - BERATED - 4 - SINGING - 2 - LINES - WHILE - EARLIER - SINGING - RELIGIOUS - SONGS - LOUD - WITH YOUTUBE - 2 GIRLS - ONE - IN - PARTICULAR - THEIR - 'FREEDOM - OF - SPEECH' - BUT - SINCE - IT'S - RELIGIOUS - ITS - NOT - ALLOWED - 4 - THEIR - TAKE - CONGRESS - CAN'T - MAKE - LAW - BUT - WE CAN - 'THE - JUNGLE - LAW' - OF - BEING - SPANISH - SPEAKING - MIAMI - SO - KEEP - YOUR - EARPHONES - ON - MINE's - 24/7 - SNORERS - THEY - SHOULD - PUT - THEM - IN - 1 ROOM - BUT - GREAT - NEWS - CAFETERIA - OPEN - 4 - FAMILIES - UNTIL - 9P - AND - ADULTS - 11P - 4 - MICROWAVES - 2 - CUPS - ICE - CUBES - WATER - JUST - NOW - GREAT - NEWS - ORDERING A -

THERMOS - 24 HRS - COLD - CAN - MAKE - TEA - FILTER - AND - 12 - HRS - HEAT - AND - CHEAPEST SO - I'M - EXCITED - ABOUT - MY - YES - BREAKTHROUGH - FR - MY - FASTING - AND - MORE - MIAKATI - GIRLS - 'GOD - CROWNS - OUR - YEAR - WITH - HIS - GOODNESS' - 2022 - INCLUDED - WHEN - NAIA - INCLUDES - WHAT - HAPPENED 2 - NINOY JR - NO - BLOOD - SEEN - AT - HIS - BACK - WHITE - LONG - SLEEVES - NO - BLOOD - SEE N - FR - BACK - INCLUDING - BACK - ARMS - HOW - GOD CROWNED - NINOY JR's - AUGUST - WITH HIS - GOODNESS - LIKE - I WAS KNIFED - SHOT - AS - PARTLY QUADRA - PLEGIC - CANO - DOCTOR AND - NURSES - CASE - MANAGER - ABOUT - MY - DISABILITY - YES - PROVE - IT - RELEASING - AUTO - BIOGRAPHY - X RAYS - ANIMATION - HOW - US - FLORIDA - COURTHOUSES - PROVE - IT - U - NEVER - RECEIVED - EYES - OF - ANY - PINOY - MALE - WHO - DIED - OF - TERMINAL - CANCER - THE - NEXT - WEEK - ME - A - LITTLE - GIRL - WHEN - I - HAVE - BABY - MEMORIES - 'LUV - U - MOMMY' - 'FOREVER - WILL LUV U - MOM' - LIKE - END - OF - 'GONE - WITH - THE - WIND' - AS - SCARLET - AFTER - MISCARRIAGE RAN - AFTER - RHETT - WHO JUST - ABANDONED - HIS - WIFE - AFTER - NORTH - AND - SOUTH - CIVIL - WAR - AFTER - THEIR - BABY XO - GIRL - DIED - LIKE - A - FOG - WITHOUT - ONE - I'M - RUNNING - 2 - MY - MOM - WHEN - I - SEE - HER - IN - HEAVEN - BECAUSE - ALL - I - EVER - DID - WAS FOR - MY - TOKYO - MOM - INCLUD'G - EUROPEAN - MALE - FRIENDS - IN - MANILA - BORN - THERE - WHEN - WE - WON - SPORTS - ALL - 4 MY - MOM - CONTESTS - ART - MORE - ALL - 4 - MY - MOM - ONLY - ONE - NOT - HERE - ON - EATH - 2 U - MY - MOM - NATURALIZATION - IN - US - REPLACEMENT - 4 - STOLEN - OVER - $350 - PASSPORT - 4 - STOLEN - ALL - THE - FEES - AS - I - CONNECT - 2 - OUR - TOKYO - MALE - SCIENTISTS - AS - WE - EMBRACE - THE - NEW - PHILIPPINE - REPUBLIC - PASSPORT - NON-FLAMMABLE - AS - WE - LEAVE - THE - USA - FOREVER - AS - THIS - PASSPORT - WON'T - BE - LIKE - OTHERS - ALWAYS - HAVE - 2 - GIVE - UP - SOMETHING - BUT - INSTEAD - TONGUES - $500 BILLION - SO - SING - IN - TONGUES - ANOTHER - $500 BILLION - AS - WE - LEAVE - CRIMINAL - OF - THIS - WORLD - AND - THEIR - UGLY - LANGUAGES - EMBRACE - FRENCH - OF - FRANCE - ITALIAN - OF - ROME - TAGALOG - OF - MAKATI - BRITISH - ENGLISH - OF - THE - NEW KING - OF - THE - UNITED KINGDOM - UK - EMBRACING - MORE - YES - LANGUAGES - WE'RE - LEAVING - FOREVER - USA - BUT - WE'RE - NOT - GOING - WITHOUT - A - FIGHT - BULLET - TRAINS - FREE - 24/7 - 2 - RESCUE - HOMELESS - ALL - 50 STATES - FREE - SHOWERS - FREE - DOUBLE - BEDS - KIDS - FREE - LEGAL - GUARDIANS - TUTORS - AS - WE - INCREASE - THE - AMOUNT - U - CAN - SPEND - DAILY - UNTIL - AGE 18 - HDG - BANKS - HDG - INNS - HDG - BULLET TRAINS - COMING - FREE - BUFFETS - EVERYTHING - ANYONE - NEEDS - BEDS - INNS - INSIDE - BULLET - TRAINS - SHOWERS - FOOD - DRINK - COMPUTERS - SMARTPHONES - TABLETS - LAPTOPS - EXERCISE - ROOMS - EQUIPMENT - EXERCISE - DANCE - CLASSES - SPORTS - CLASSES - AND - MORE - FREE - SHUTTLES - WITH - SHOWERS - DOUBLE - DECKER - 2 - BRING - 2 - THESE - BULLET - TRAINS - ALASKA - AND - HAWAII - WITHSTANDS - 500 MPH - WINDS - COMING - USA

#Youtube

1 note · View note

coinwealth · 3 years ago

Text

Attractive Pricing for the Long Term

The VeThor token was created following the rebrand of the VeChain Thor blockchain project in 2018. This rebrand presented a dual token system in which VTHO and VET were introduced as the two tokens of this network. The VeThor token is the currency of the VeChain Thor network and is used as the means of payment of transaction costs and other fees associated with network usage.

The VeChain Thor network is an enterprise-level service provider, offering a blockchain-as-a-service platform for the implementation of the smart solutions to business processes such as supply chain management. It also enabled the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) concept on the blockchain.

As the payment module on the network, VeThor is the currency used to pay transaction fees on the network and indeed, powers every transaction on the network. It is also used as the data sending engine for smart contracts.

It was initially created as a VIP-180 token that uses the Proof-of-Authority consensus mechanism to validate transactions on the network.

VeThor Coin Founders

Sunny Lu founded the VeChain Thor network from which the VeThor token emanated in 2015. A previous employee of Louis Vuitton China, Lu was able to identify use cases for VeChain Thor concerning supply chain dynamics in corporate institutions. Louis Vuitton eventually became one of the first clients of the new blockchain company.

VeThor Road Map

In July 2021, VeChain Foundation published its roadmap towards fully deploying the next level of its Proof-of-Authority consensus mechanism, tagged PoA 2.0. The company dubbed this a Secure, Use-case-adaptive, Relatively Fork-free Approach of Chain Extension (SURFACE), the new consensus mechanism developed to handle some of the challenges of the Nakamoto consensus type and the Byzantine Fault Tolerance. These two mechanisms were the previous mechanisms by which consensus on the network is achieved. VIP-193 has been implemented and the public testnet deployed. Full deployment of the PoA 2.0 with VIP-200 being made public is expected in 2022.

The VeChain Foundation has also recorded another milestone as it has unveiled its new Headquarters in San Marino, Europe. This was achieved as the San Marino government has created a bespoke crypto regulatory zone which is expected to enable blockchain projects to thrive in Europe under a proper government-approved regulatory structure.

VeThor’s Adoption Statistics

The adoption of VeThor is growing. The list of institutional partnerships continue to increase year on year. In 2018, PriceWaterHouseCoopers, DNV GL and National Research Consulting Centre were among several partners on the platform.

In 2019, Fashion for Good, Reebonz Holding Limited, Haier, Norway in a Box, Walmart China, ASI Group, and Anhui Tea Industry were companies that came on board. 2020 brought along Shanghai Gas, PlatformXChina, and Sarah Regensburger to the network. There are several new entrants for 2021, and more will come in 2022.

VeThor’s adoption statistics is trending in the right direction.

VeThor Price Prediction 2022

The VeThor price prediction 2022 outlook seems to favour a bearish year. The weekly chart shows that the price action is in a descending triangle pattern. The lower border

has been violated but this does not seem to be a convincing breakdown yet. The price action is now attempting a pullback towards the broken lower border of the triangle. If this return move is rejected, a move towards 0.000481 will be on the cards, testing the all-time low of the token.

A bullish VeThor price prediction 2022 has to follow a break of the 0.007814 resistance. This move will negate the attern and open the door for a potential attempt at 0.013022. Presently, the situation on the chart does not favour this move and only time will tell if this is accomplished in 2022 or later on.

VeThor Price Prediction 2025

There is a better potential for a VeThor price prediction 2025 bullish outlook than there is in the 2022 outlook. Potential targets for a VeThor price prediction 2025 outlook include the 0.017273 and 0.02500 (19 April 2021 high). The resistance barrier to beat for a change in sentiment to occur would be the 0.007184 mark.

VeThor had risen to as high as 0.02850 in its recent price history. Nothing is holding back the VTHO/USDT pair from attaining similar heights if the bulls can stage a comeback beyond the 0.025000 resistance barrier. This bullish VeThor price prediction outlook is only negated if the bulls cannot force prices above the 0.07814 resistance, in which case they could remain trapped in the range found between 0.007814 and 0.004095 below.

Is VeThor a Good Investment?

I do not consider VeThor to be a good investment for the short term. However, there is some serious potential for the medium and long term. COVID’19’s disruption of the global supply chain is the opportunity that the VeChain Foundation has to prove its blockchain’s efficacy in handling these challenges.

Supply chain disruptions 2019 – 2021. Source: Statista

If VeChain Price Prediction can effectively position itself to take away the complexities that have overburdened today’s supply chain systems, then there is a potential for VeThor to be a good investment. A 3-5 year investment focus could make VeThor an attractive investment. This would require the investor to take advantage of the current price, which looks attractive for such long-term plays.

How to Buy VeThor?

VeThor can be purchased on several platforms. Every VET token held generates 0.0043 VeThor tokens, no matter the exchange where it is held. So when buying VTHO tokens or VET tokens, ensure you are getting the full complement of what you are paying for.

VTHO/USDT: Weekly Chart

Follow Eno on Twitter.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

source https://usapangbitcoin.org/attractive-pricing-for-the-long-term/

source https://usapangbitcoin.wordpress.com/2022/02/17/attractive-pricing-for-the-long-term/

0 notes

maramuddle · 6 years ago

Text

That hurt a lot

Writing the below story was distressing. Very. Why I wrote it then? Because for some reason I wanted to feel the pain. Don’t know why exactly, but it felt right to write the story and feel the pain in doing so. Pain was not the only emotion I felt. The story, as it unfolded in my mind, also evoked pity and anger (the latter not as much as I suspected). I cried most of the time. I hate this story, even though I wanted to write it. I hate it so much, I will never read it again. Should you happen to like the story, like what it has to tell (which is merely the words it was written with, there is nothing in between the lines), you better not meet me in real life. For the sake of us both.

If you like animals, you should probably not read on.

A warm winter coat

It was cold outside. Not winter yet, but temperatures almost around zero. Winter was nice. In the cold, damp air one could see one’s breath. And nature somehow seemed clearer than in summer. The heat blurred everything to a glimmering shivaree. Mary liked winter, especially when the land was covered by a decent layer of snow. Just as now.

Billy didn’t fancy the snow. He liked football. And Jeopardy, even though he was too dumb to get any of the questions right himself. Billy was a dumbfuck. Apart from drinking beer and sticking his dick into Mary, he was pretty useless. Without clear directions, he wouldn’t even find the crapper. Mary had to tell him what to buy at Walmart’s, when he should take a shower, and when he should get the dogs. He was good with dogs, one had to give him credit for that.

The dogs were in the kennel. A dozen or so. Mary walked alongside the fence and checked on them. It was not feeding time, never would be.

»Hey, Billy!« she called.

»Yeah?« he answered from somewhere behind the shack.

»C’mon, get one out.«

»’kay, Mary.«

Billy came running, with his face red as a baboon’s ass. Been wanking back there, haven’t you? Fuckwit. But he was good with the dogs. Billy took his baseball bat, which his father had given him on his tenth birthday. ›Number One‹ was engraved on it. Then he opened the kennel and hit one of the dogs on the head with it. The kennel was made for only one dog, so even a blind man would hit one of the dozen or so, which were crammed in it, for sure. Hitting them was necessary. It scared and intimidated them, so that they would not bite. Billy grabbed the dog by the collar and tore it out of the kennel, his baseball bat casually over his shoulder.

It was a large dog, looked like a German Shepherd. But not quite, had something else in him. Fucking shit breed. Would sell anyway, though. The dog wanted to flee, but could not escape Billy’s grip. He kicked at one of the dog’s front legs. Judging by how the dog winced and wined, he had broken it. Billy liked to have some fun with the dogs, before they processed them. It was helpful as well, kept the dogs from fleeing. Billy kicked at the other leg, missed it and cursed.

»C’mon, Billy! It’s cold out here.« Mary said.

»That fucking critter won’t let me kick it!«

»Don’t matter! Get it over here!«

»Okay, okay.«

Billy kicked at the dog again, and this time hit it right. The second front leg broke, too. It stood off like a broken spoke from a bicycle wheel.

»Gotcha! Hehe!« Billy laughed.

Mary sighed. He didn’t mind him playing around with the dogs, she wanted to get back in where it was warm. With his front legs broken, the dog could no longer flee. Billy flung it to the tree, where it whimpered for mercy, but it wouldn’t get any. Billy was strong, he could fling a dog over the shack, if he wanted to. Already had done it several times. He laid down his precious baseball bat on the snow, careful as if it was made of ice, and fetched chains from a metal chest. On one of the tree branches, a strong one standing off almost horizontally about two yards from the ground, they had fixed two clasps. But it was not yet time to fix the chains to the clasps. First, Billy had to fetch his baseball bat again and hit the dog with it a couple of times. On the back and the torso. Hard, but not too hard. He knew he must not damage the critters to much, that would reduce the yield, Mary had told him. And he believed her. Always. So, Billy hit the dog not too hard. It wined and winced, but to no avail. Hitting the dog was necessary to make it compliant. To let Billy tie the ends of the chains to its hind legs, where he adjusted them with hooks directly into the dogs flesh. And bone, probably. After that, Billy lifted the dog up – he really was a strong fella – and fixed the other ends of the chains on the clasps at the branch. So, finally, the dog was hanging from the branch by his hind legs, with the hooks digging into its flesh. Or bones, probably.

»Get the next one.« Mary said.

»Sure.«

Billy trotted off back to the kennel.

With the butcher knife in her hand, Mary cut alongside the dogs hindlegs. Then around his asshole and junk and where his tail was. With her fingers she dug under the dogs skin and pulled it up a little, so that she could cut under his coat. But not to deeply, not to spoil the precious coat with blood. She was a pro, after so many dogs one became an expert. She cut just a little with the knife, just enough so that she had a firm grip now. She put the knife on the old, wooden table next to the tree, grabbed the dog’s coat, which she partially had cut off at his tail, and pulled at it. Forcefully, otherwise it would not come off. She pulled down, skinning the dog alive. It went nicely, only around the legs she had to cut a bit more. The coat came off down until the dogs broken front legs and head. Now, she had to be cautious, the bastard could still bite.

Mary put her thumb on the dogs right eye, and pushed. The dog winced and tried to turn his head away, but of course it did not safe his eye from popping out. Mary did the same with the other eye, blinding the dog. He could no longer see her, which reduced her risk of being bitten. Then she cut alongside his broken front legs. She had to hold them, since they were not fixed with hooks, but it went smoothly. A couple of more cuts around the dog’s neck and his muzzle and off was his coat. Unspoiled by a single drop of blood. Not one red speck was to be seen in the snow underneath the tree branch. Mary really was a pro. Content, she put the coat on the wooden table.

The dog looked like a whole chicken which one could buy at Walmart’s. Naked and shivering. He was still alive, skinning was not lethal, at least in most cases.

Billy was dragging along the next dog, a yellow Labrador. His front legs were broken already, Billy had a smile around his lips. He flung the critter close to the tree trunk and put his baseball bat away, as carefully as before.

»Get it up.« Mary ordered him to do.

»Sure, Mary.«

Billy unhooked the naked German Shepherd and flung it some twenty yards away in the snowy meadow. Then he drove the hooks through the Labrador’s hind legs.

Mary sold the coats to some guy who shipped them over to China. The chinky eyes over there were crazy for dog coats. They got off on them or something. Mary didn’t care as long as her guy paid good money for the coats. And as long as they could find enough stray dogs on the streets.

The German Shepherd was shaking of pain and cold. His eyes were begging for mercy, for an end to his suffering. Even though his front legs were broken, he tried to crawl away. To safety. To find help. To a warm home where they would take good care of him. He made it about ten yards or so, then he slumped to a pink piece of shivering flesh. His world reduced to pain and despair. If he was lucky he would die soon. Mary did not know how long the dogs made it after she skinned them, she only cared about the coats. When she was done, Billy would collect the skinned critters, pile them up and set them on fire with gasoline. He did not bother if they were still alive then. On the contrary, he enjoyed their wincing and whimpering as the flames burned them to charred corpses.

Winter was nice. Mary liked the cold season. But right now, she would rather sit in her warm house with a can of beer in her hands and watch TV than skin ten more critters. The Labrador was done, Billy was fetching the next one. That dumbfuck really was slow as a snail.

»Get a move on, will ya!«

»Sure, Mary!«

And then he broke the Golden Retrievers front legs.

#mess in the head #dark mind #dark thoughts #depraved story #depraved mind

1 note · View note