#but that's either personal preference or money laundering

[sweetcardamom]

YES. There may be personality traits, and there are definitely personal preferences, that make a person more inclined to create art, and there are people with more natural talent. But feeling it? Understanding it? That's a human thing, not a special subcategory of human. And there can be just as much expression in "bad" art as in highly skilled art.

This is why I don't like the movie "Tomorrowland": it claims that there are "more special" people who can create a utopia, but others who aren't special enough. Nonsense. We all have infinite potential. We are all of infinite worth. The person that you think isn't that smart or creative or thoughtful or interesting or something? That person also has something to teach the rest of us. (This has been a lesson I've had to have more than once.)

there is no soul of an artist that distinguishes them from some 'non-artist' category of person that could simply never comprehend what it is like. anyone can make art. you should know this by now. from ratatouille

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Nurses whose shitty boss is a shitty app

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/17/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

Operating a business is risky: you can't ever be sure how many customers you'll have, or what they'll show up looking for. If you guess wrong, you'll either have too few workers to serve the crowd, or you'll pay workers to stand around and wait for customers. This is true even when your "business" is a "hospital."

Capitalists hate capitalism. Capitalism is defined by risk – like the risk of competitors poaching your customers and workers. Capitalists all secretly dream of a "command economy" in which other people have to arrange their affairs to suit the capitalists' preferences, taking the risk off their shoulders. Capitalists love anti-competitive exclusivity deals with suppliers, and they really love noncompete "agreements" that ban their workers from taking better jobs:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/21/bondage-fees/#doorman-building

One of the sleaziest, most common ways for capitalists to shed risk is by shifting it onto their workers' shoulders, for example, by sending workers home on slow days and refusing to pay them for the rest of their shifts. This is easy for capitalists to do because workers have a collective action problem: for workers to force their bosses not to do this, they all have to agree to go on strike, and other workers have to honor their picket-lines. That's a lot of chivvying and bargaining and group-forming, and it's very hard. Meanwhile, the only person the boss needs to convince to screw you this way is themself.

Libertarians will insist that this is impossible, of course, because workers will just quit and go work for someone else when this happens, and so bosses will be disciplined by the competition to find workers willing to put up with their bullshit. Of course, these same libertarians will tell you that it should be legal for your boss to require you to sign a noncompete "agreement" so you can't quit and get a job elsewhere in your field. They'll also tell you that we don't need antitrust enforcement to prevent your boss from buying up all the businesses you might work for if you do manage to quit.

In practice, the only way workers have successfully resisted being burdened with their bosses' risks is by a) forming a union, and then b) using the union to lobby for strong labor laws. Labor laws aren't a substitute for a union, but they are an important backstop, and of course, if you're not unionized, labor law is all you've got.

Enter the tech-bro, app in hand. The tech-bro's most absurd (and successful) ruse is "it's not a crime, I did it with an app." As in "it's not money-laundering, I did it with an app." Or "it's not a privacy violation, I did it with an app." Or "it's not securities fraud, I did it with an app." Or "it's not price-gouging, I did it with an app," or, importantly, "it's not a labor-law violation, I did it with an app."

The point of the "gig economy" is to use the "did it with an app" trick to avoid labor laws, so that bosses can shift risks onto workers, because capitalists hate capitalism. These apps were first used to immiserate taxi-drivers, and this was so successful that it spawned a whole universe of "Uber for __________" apps that took away labor rights from other kinds of workers, from dog-groomers to carpenters.

One group of workers whose rights are being devoured by gig-work apps is nurses, which is bad news, because without nurses, I would be dead by now.

A new report from the Roosevelt Institute goes deep on the way that nurses' lives are being destroyed by gig work apps that let bosses in America's wildly dysfunctional for-profit health care industry shift risk from bosses to the hardest-working group of health care professionals:

https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/uber-for-nursing/

The report's authors interviewed nurses who were employed through three apps: Shiftkey, Shiftmed and Carerev, and reveal a host of risk-shifting, worker-abusing practices that has nurses working for so little that they can't afford medical insurance themselves.

Take Shiftkey: nurses are required to log into Shiftkey and indicate which shifts they are available for, and if they are assigned any of those shifts later but can't take them, their app-based score declines and they risk not being offered shifts in the future. But Shiftkey doesn't guarantee that you'll get work on any of those shifts – in other words, nurses have to pledge not to take any work during the times when Shiftkey might need them, but they only get paid for those hours where Shiftkey calls them out. Nurses assume all the risk that there won't be enough demand for their services.

Each Shiftkey nurse is offered a different pay-scale for each shift. Apps use commercially available financial data – purchased on the cheap from the chaotic, unregulated data broker sector – to predict how desperate each nurse is. The less money you have in your bank accounts and the more you owe on your credit cards, the lower the wage the app will offer you. This is a classic example of what the legal scholar Veena Dubal calls "algorithmic wage discrimination" – a form of wage theft that's supposedly legal because it's done with an app:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Shiftkey workers also have to bid against one another for shifts, with the job going to the worker who accepts the lowest wage. Shiftkey pays nominal wages that sound reasonable – one nurse's topline rate is $23/hour. But by payday, Shiftkey has used junk fees to scrape that rate down to the bone. Workers have to pay a daily $3.67 "safety fee" to pay for background checks, drug screening, etc. Nevermind that these tasks are only performed once per nurse, not every day – and nevermind that this is another way to force workers to assume the boss's risks. Nurses also pay daily fees for accident insurance ($2.14) and malpractice insurance ($0.21) – more employer risk being shifted onto workers. Workers also pay $2 per shift if they want to get paid on the same day – a payday lending-style usury levied against workers whose wages are priced based on their desperation. Then there's a $6/shift fee nurses pay as a finders' fee to the app, a fee that's up to $7/shift next year. All told, that $23/hour rate cashes out to $13/hour.

On top of that, gig nurses have to pay for their own uniforms, licenses, equipment and equipment, including different colored scrubs and even shoes for each hospital. And because these nurses are "their own bosses" they have to deduct their own payroll taxes from that final figure. As "self-employed" workers, they aren't entitled to overtime or worker's comp, they get no retirement plan, health insurance, sick days or vacation.

The apps sell themselves to bosses as a way to get vetted, qualified nurses, but the entire vetting process is automated. Nurses upload a laundry list of documents related to their qualifications and undergo a background check, but are never interviewed by a human. They are assessed through automated means – for example, they have to run a location-tracking app en route to callouts and their reliability scores decline if they lose mobile data service while stuck in traffic.

Shiftmed docks nurses who cancel shifts after agreeing to take them, but bosses who cancel on nurses, even at the last minute, get away at most a small penalty (having to pay for the first two hours of a canceled shift), or, more often, nothing at all. For example, bosses who book nurses through the Carerev app can cancel without penalty on a mere two hours' notice. One nurse quoted in the study describes getting up at 5AM for a 7AM shift, only to discover that the shift was canceled while she slept, leaving her without any work or pay for the day, after having made arrangements for her kid to get childcare. The nurse assumes all the risk again: blocking out a day's work, paying for childcare, altering her sleep schedule. If she cancels on Carerev, her score goes down and she will get fewer shifts in the future. But if the boss cancels, he faces no consequences.

Carerev also lets bosses send nurses home early without paying them for the whole day – and they don't pay overtime if a nurse stays after her shift ends in order to ensure that their patients are cared for. The librarian scholar Fobazi Ettarh coined the term "vocational awe" to describe how workers in caring professions will endure abusive conditions and put in unpaid overtime because of their commitment to the patrons, patients, and pupils who depend on them:

https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Many of the nurses in the study report having shifts canceled on them as they pull into the hospital parking lot. Needless to say, when your shift is canceled just as it was supposed to start, it's unlikely you'll be able to book a shift at another facility.

The American healthcare industry is dominated by monopolies. First came the pharma monopolies, when pharma companies merged and merged and merged, allowing them to screw hospitals with sky-high prices. Then the hospitals gobbled each other up, merging until most regions were dominated by one or two hospital chains, who could use buyer power to get a better deal on pharma prices – but also use seller power to screw the insurers with outrageous prices for care. So the insurers merged, too, until they could fight hospital price-gouging.

Everywhere you turn in the healthcare industry, you find another monopolist: pharmacists and pharmacy benefit managers, group purchasing organizations, medical beds, saline and supplies. Monopoly begets monopoly.

(Unitedhealthcare is extraordinary in that its divisions are among the most powerful players in all of these sectors, making it a monopolist among monopolists – for example, UHC is the nation's largest employer of physicians:)

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/its-time-to-break-up-big-medicine

But there two key stakeholders in American health-care who can't monopolize: patients and health-care workers. We are the disorganized, loose, flapping ends at the beginning and end of the healthcare supply-chain. We are easy pickings for the monopolists in the middle, which is why patients pay more for worse care every year, and why healthcare workers get paid less for worse working conditions every year.

This is the one area where the Biden administration indisputably took action, bringing cases, making rules, and freaking out investment bankers and billionaires by repeatedly announcing that crimes were still crimes, even if you used an app to commit them.

The kind of treatment these apps mete out to nurses is illegal, app or no. In an important speech just last month, FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya explained how the FTC Act empowered the agency to shut down this kind of bossware because it is an "unfair and deceptive" form of competition:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure

This is the kind of thing the FTC could be doing. Will Trump's FTC actually do it? The Trump campaign called the FTC "politicized" – but Trump's pick for the next FTC chair has vowed to politicize it even more:

https://theintercept.com/2024/12/18/trump-ftc-andrew-ferguson-ticket-fees/

Like Biden's FTC, Trump's FTC will have a target-rich environment if it wants to bring enforcement actions on behalf of workers. But Biden's trustbusters chose their targets by giving priority to the crooked companies that were doing the most harm to Americans, while Trump's trustbusters are more likely to give priority to the crooked companies that Trump personally dislikes:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

So if one of these nursing apps pisses off Trump or one of his cronies, then yeah, maybe those nurses will get justice.

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[sunnebeam]

twin flame bruise. (02)

PART 2.

pairing: jeon jeongguk x reader, jeon jungkook x reader (yes they're different people)

plot: the jeon twins have become nothing more than two strikingly similar looking guys who share a mere home address and a last name. but in their senior year of college, the estranged twins may have found one more thing they share in common – you.

warnings: jeon twins au, possible headache bc the use of Jeongguk (nicknamed Guk) and Jung Kook (nicknamed JK) is v confusing, mentions of money laundering, strained family relationships

series index. | masterlist + disclaimers.

note: part 2 is here!!! this will have 8 parts + an epilogue btw! each part will more or less have the same word count as this one (since i still struggle writing long pieces),,, no update schedule, we just chillin' here and writing things when we have the time and energy <3 as always, feedback is highly appreciated!

It’s been a month and a half since Jung Kook last had a good night’s sleep.

But he supposes it could be worse. After all, the bed he’s laying on is decently soft, the pillows are freshly fluffed, and the bedroom he’s occupying doesn’t have that dusty-old-room smell. Yoongi really outdid himself with this one.

“Hey, kid.”

Speak of the devil.

JK turns on his side, his back facing the opened door and the person entering it. He hears another set of footsteps that tells him Namjoon just entered, too. Still, he doesn’t budge.

He knows his being a bit too hard on his two companions, but JK can’t help it.

“I know you’re mad at us…”

He’s not, actually. He’s mad at the situation.

“...and I know you hate this place…”

Not exactly. It’s a decent house. He just prefers his own.

“...but it’s still too dangerous right now. Please understand, kid, we need to hide away for a while. Make things die down a bit before going home.”

Home. He wants to go home. To his apartment. To his bed. To you.

JK sighs. He already had this particular talk with both Yoongi and Namjoon a hundred times already in the past month alone. He doesn’t mean to be so difficult but the situation just frustrates him to no end.

But then again, this is his own fault.

Entering the underground world of money laundering – even as an errand boy at the bottom of the food chain – wasn’t the greatest idea for a side job. But when you’re an impressionable college student mixing in with the wrong crowds, you don’t exactly make the best choices.

What started as a small, risky gig to earn some extra cash turned into an endless cycle of running his clients’ dirty money around different places and concealing them in clean, legal transactions.

He tried hiding his little errands from you but you were too observant for your own good. Though you don’t exactly know what he’s gotten himself into, you do know it’s dangerous. In fact, you told him time and again to get out and get his shit together. But by the time JK finally got his head out of the gutter and tried to leave, he couldn’t.

Because you needed money.

Money has always been a sore spot for you, having struggled financially for as long as you could remember. And yet, not once have you asked for his help nor forced him to put himself in risky situations just to help you out. Unfortunately for you, JK is nothing if not stubborn, and if there’s a way he could help you, he’ll do it.

But this time, though, he fucked up.

“You didn’t fuck up,” Namjoon interrupts his self-deprecating thoughts. “It’s not your fault, JK. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

But it is his fault. After all, their latest client was dangerous, influential, powerful. This client was not to be messed with, not to be stood up, not to be denied…

…and yet JK backed out of the deal at the last minute.

“You were right to back out,” Yoongi reassures him. “I wasn’t sure about that client, either.”

“You’re just saying that,” JK says.

“I’m not. If you hadn’t called to back out, I probably would’ve. Either way, the man's pissed off so we need to lie low for a bit, yeah? Don’t brood too much."

Yoongi turns and heads out the door, motioning for Namjoon to follow him out, but not before calling out to their younger companion for one last thing.

“You got a good heart, kid. Don’t worry, you’ll get home soon.”

And he will. He just has to hold out a bit more.

He can’t. He can’t hold out any more.

Jeongguk looks at the caller ID with panicked eyes, the incessant ringing of his phone echoing in his ears, and he realizes he can’t put off answering any longer.

Swiping the green button, he holds his phone to his ear and internally hypes himself up, before finally talking to his parents.

“Eomma.”

“Well, hello to you, too,” his mother responds sarcastically. “I was beginning to think we didn’t have a son anymore, with you not answering our calls and your brother giving us the silent treatment.”

His brother.

Guk pinches the bridge of his nose, wondering how he can keep feeding his mother the lie that his twin brother was just in one of his so-called moods and took an impromptu vacation somewhere.

He feels horrible for lying but he also doesn’t want to unnecessarily worry his parents on the fifty-fifty chance that his younger twin really did just take some time to himself without telling anybody. And maybe it makes Guk a terrible brother but he really thinks JK is capable of such a thing – of just going off the grid and not warning anyone.

But that’s the best case scenario.

As for the worst case scenario, the two of you already went to the police station to report his twin as missing. But since the last text he sent was telling you he was going somewhere and explicitly telling you not to follow him, the police couldn’t do much.

Still, Guk is nothing if not thorough, so he takes it upon himself to call in some favors and hire a private investigator. As of now, he’s still waiting for some updates.

“Sorry, Eomma, I’m a bit busy with homework,” Guk tries to placate his mother through the phone but at the mention of the last word, he’s reminded that he actually has company in his apartment right now when Taehyung and Jimin snort at his lame excuse.

“Homework?” his mother repeats. “You work too hard, Gukie,” she sighs. “If only your brother was more like you…”

Again with the comparisons.

“Nah, he’s alright, Eomma,” he defends. “Y’know, he’s not failing his classes, right?”

“Yeah, well, he’s not excelling in his classes, either.”

“He doesn’t have to. Cut him some slack.” At this point, he’s getting tired of the nagging, even though it’s not directed at him. This kind of nagging is the exact reason his parents’ relationship with his younger twin is so strained in the first place. “Anyways, tell Appa I said hi, will you? I gotta go. Bye. Love you.”

He hangs up.

“Damn, Guk,” Jimin sighs. “Still haven’t told your parents?”

“I’ll tell them at some point, okay? I just need to make sure that JK didn’t leave on his own on a whim.”

“You still think that?” Taehyung asks incredulously. “I highly doubt he went missing on his own. Hell, even Y/N doubts that.”

At the mention of your name, Guk can’t help the slight reddening of his cheeks, something his friends immediately notice.

Taehyung smirks. “Looks like someone’s got a crush.”

He doesn’t even bother responding because how could he not have a crush? His growing, albeit awkward, relationship with you is plaguing his thoughts every minute since he met you. In between discussions about his twin’s possible whereabouts, your other conversations allow him to learn more about you, and what he learns is that you’re passionate, driven, diligent – all the good things.

And of course, to top all that off, you’re fucking beautiful, too. It’s no wonder that, despite the unlabeled situationship, his brother fell for you.

Guk just hopes, when all this is over, you’ll give him a chance.

Nope, you won’t give him a chance.

You stare at the customer who has the audacity to only order side dishes and nothing else again. He usually gets away with his request when your boss, Seojoon, is manning the counter. But with you? Nope, you’re not giving him another chance.

"You need to buy more than just pickled radish before I let you eat in this pub," you tell him, arms crossed. Your manager, Yiseo, is at your side, tapping her foot expectantly, her eyebrows raised.

He scoffs.

"Rude," he grumbles. "What if people find out you're turning away customers?"

"You can't be a customer if you only order the free side dishes," Yiseo retorts.

"At least I pay for the rice," he grumbles when a hand lands on his shoulder.

"That you do, Jin," your boss says, inserting himself into the conversation. He then tells Yiseo to cater to another customer who wants more drinks, before turning to you. "Y/N, why don't you prepare Seokjin's food while I show him to his table?"

You sigh, complying with the request and ignoring Jin's annoying smirk directed your way. Well, if Seojoon wants his business to be at a deficit, it's all on him.

Besides, you suppose you owe Jin now since Guk hired him, and being hired to investigate a missing person's whereabouts definitely isn't a walk in the park.

And speaking of Guk…

"Hey, Y/N."

Ah. Right on time.

"Hey, Guk," you greet him, waving your hand stiffly and awkwardly. Yiseo sees your shaky wave from across the pub and teasingly wiggles her eyebrows, but you silently plead with her to not make a comment.

After all, this has already become an everyday occurrence.

Everyday, a few hours before your shift ends, Guk visits the pub and eats with Jin, ordering a generous amount of actual food to compensate for the latter's small meal. Then, later at night after you close up, he walks you home – sometimes updating you on Jin's progress with the case, sometimes just talking to you about anything under the moon.

You've grown closer with him, without a doubt, but you can't deny that you're in an awkward situation – what, with your history involving his twin and all. You cringe internally when you remember the time Seojoon mistook him for JK, much to your embarrassment.

"Seokjin's over there." You point him to the table where the man is eating.

Guk looks at the direction you're pointing to before turning back to you with his eyebrows scrunched. You're about to ask him what's wrong when you see his hand reach towards your face, more specifically, your cheek.

"Eyelash," he says as an explanation, pulling the offending object from your cheek, completely oblivious to how you freeze up at his touch and proximity.

When he finally mumbles a low, "see you later," and heads to Jin's table, Yiseo rushes over to you and gives you a pointed look.

"I see you have a type."

"Please," you whine. "Don't."

She laughs at your expense, patting your shoulder and bumping her hips against yours playfully.

"Y'know," she starts, "you should consider giving him a chance."

"Unnie!"

"What?"

It's your turn to give her a pointed look. "Did you forget he's JK's brother? His twin brother?"

"Yeah, well, your fuckbuddy isn't here, so…" She shrugs. “I don’t see why you can’t ask him on a date.”

You sigh, wrapping your arms around yourself, your eyes downcast. "I can't even afford to go on dates, let alone have time for it."

It's the truth. Dates entail time and money – things you don't have. And it's not like you have any family to help you out, having been orphaned at a young age. You’ve only ever had yourself to rely on. That’s how it’s always been.

"Y/N."

You're pulled out from your thoughts when you see Guk approach you with wide eyes.

"Hey, Guk. Did you want more rice?"

"No. I, uh—" He looks from you to Seokjin who's frantically typing away on his phone back at their table. "Jin and I were just…"

He trails off. You stare at him, waiting.

After what feels like a hundred years, he finally gathers the resolve to tell you the three words you've been wanting to hear.

"We found him."

COPYRIGHT 2023. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

[luxurysystems]

...N O W L O A D I N G....📼

Money Inc. x GTA: Vice City AU headcanons- IRS

Codename/Alias: The Kangal. The Kangal is a breed of dog renowned for its protectiveness and shepherding qualities, but most importantly, the Kangal is feared for having the strongest bite force. Ted lovingly gives Irwin this nickname. Initially hesitant in being likened to a guard dog, Irwin starts to warm up to it...

Irwin, by day, works as an accountant in Downtown Vice City's business sector (mainland). At night, he works as a hitman/bounty hunter, accepting jobs from clients on both the Mainland and Beach/Nightlife area. Most of his clients come from the more affluent sections of the city. Once he starts working with Ted exclusively, he stops all contract work but still keeps his job as an accountant.

Famed (or infamous, depending on who you ask) for having an amazing work ethic in both jobs.

His last contracted bounty job didn't go as planned.... (x) (x)

Used to have a mullet; cuts it off once he joins Ted.

His original kit included the following: Col .45 (handgun), Ithaca 37/Chromed Shotgun, and his trusty Remington Model 700 (sniper rifle).

Ted gifts him with more weaponry, specifically a submachine gun (MP5), and an AR (the M4)-- for those tougher jobs.

Favorite radio stations: Emotion 98.3, VROCK, and VCPR. He enjoys listening to talk radio on the way to work.

Favorite vehicles: PCJ-600 and the Sentinel XS

His apartment is located in Vice Point (away from the mainland/downtown area). Although his apartment is a mere minutes away from the prolific Malibu Club, he prefers quiet nights at home watching Yuppie and the Alien or Just the Five of Us.

Doesn't smoke during the day, only when he's on the job--especially if there's a lot of waiting. It calms him down, allegedly.

After work, you can catch Irwin at Umberto Robina's cafe in Little Havana enjoying a coffee. Considers Umberto a friend and likewise Umberto considers Irwin a real man with "big cojones."

"Balances" the books for Ted's other money laundering businesses.

He also balances Ted's boisterous personality-- Irwin is very cool, calm, and collected. The poster child for the strong, silent type.

Has been known to crack a smile at times-- Ted can vouch for it.

During a meet up, Irwin acts as Ted's back-up if things go south. He is often seen carrying a briefcase- filled with either money or "goods."

If Ted insists on going to a meet-up alone, that doesn't necessarily mean that Irwin isn't there. You may not be able to see him, but he can see you....

Is a superior marksman. One shot to kill if necessary, never maim- he makes sure all of his shots are clean. If someone gives Ted a hard time, Irwin gives them a corpse worthy of a closed casket funeral.

Often refuses Ted's other lavish gifts like expensive suits, cologne, watches, etc. Will take the gifts after much insistence, but will be shy to use or wear them. Plus, Irwin feels like if he does wear any of Ted's gifts at his day job, he'd stick out like a sore thumb. What's an accountant doing with a $75,000 Rolex, anyway?

[bitchapalooza]

Screw it, jobs I think the nations would have next to or instead of their government jobs

Romano: Pediatric nurse— He just has that vibe to him! And it makes me soft to think about,,,,,

Austria: Piano and/or violin tutor— either one works. I think he’d actually prefer to work more with adults than kids, but he probably has a few younger students on his roster anyway.

Turkey: Street food vender? He just…. His personality and appearance gives me the impression he’d enjoy doing something like this?? Idk. But I’m sure whatever he makes is popular and very delicious!

America: YouTube, but it’s kind of a stretch to say it’s his job? I feel like he’s too involved in his government work to really have a second job tbh but I also say he’s popular enough on YouTube to make money off it, but not popular enough to really count it as an occupation— at least according to his mentality.

France: Various odd jobs, but I think they’d be mostly home repair oriented OR dog walking/sitting. Otherwise this man does not work, including for the government. He’s supposed to but he evades his work without repercussion because what they gonna do? Fire him from the position that was specifically created for him and him only? Lmao. He likes his leisure time too much to work a 9 to 5 lmao

Veneziano: As I believe he copes by buying BIG things he does not need, including houses, this man has accidentally become a landlord of 5 properties. Also does the occasional commissions.

Canada: A landlord but on purpose, but also he sells whatever he hunts ig.

China: trick question, he hordes his cash, he always has, he is rich, he does not need to work a day in his life. But, uh, yeah, he and Netherlands both run a money laundering gig for the hell of it—

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

I'm curious - you think (most likely correctly) that the Cullens will have to go off the grid forever sooner or later, and also that the coven will eventually break apart due to their deepening personal issues, and also that Bella and Edward will break up spectacularly. What do you think this particular version of Bella would then do if she miraculously woke up as a human back in 2005, on the day before she told her mum that she wanted to move to Forks?

The Cullens are doomed to go off the grid and it will destroy them due to interpersonal drama.

Depends how exactly it happens, almost down to the minute detail, because ah that will inform who Bella can blame.

A Look at Bella

The last we see of Bella, she's a nineteen-year-old vampire who is, for lack of a better word, not that introspective or empathetic. Throughout the series, Bella has a difficult time to see things from others points of view.

What this means is that, at the end of canon, she supports Renesmee and Jacob's romantic relationship despite the very glaring red flags surrounding that entire mess, puts her daughter with super hearing in her and Edward's Marie Antoinette style sex cabin, is quite happy to have proven Rosalie wrong and become a marvelous vampire, and is quite happy to have considered herself reaching the peak part of life forever.

What I'm saying is that this isn't a girl inclined to deep analysis of her situation, those around her, and herself.

When things go wrong, Bella's not going to see this as due to miscommunication/interpersonal relationship issues that have always been there but are just now coming to a head, she's going to try to blame a) some event that's happened b) a person or group of people.

She's going to prefer not to blame herself as, unless things go very sideways, I don't see her taking an action that she would see as bringing about disaster.

Who Dunnit

Depends what happened.

First, we have the reason they had to go off the grid. Did Carlisle just decide it's time and the family agreed? In that case, Bella's going to feel more than a little ire at Carlisle and see him as the start of the madness (at least, depends what happens next).

Did Alice get caught for money laundering and fraud?

Did someone mess up and they couldn't cover it up? In that case Emmett, Alice, Esme, are likely to get the blame. (Bella herself is a contender, and in this case, she blames herself horribly and never quite recovers and probably implodes.)

Alright, they're now in the wilderness, if nothing else had changed Bella would be fine with this, mostly. She'd be very upset about the lack of money and things (as that's half of what being a Cullen is about) but she can still run around in Chanel so long as she's careful not to ruin it and she still has Edward and the Cullens.

However.

Who says Jacob can't come?

The family's going to sit down and tell Jacob that uh he's not going off the grid with them. Please, for the love of god, Jacob, live your own life. Bella will lose it at this.

Really, the whole family gets the blame, but the likely candidates for Bella's rage here are Rosalie and Carlisle. Carlisle as the patriarch could have put his foot down and had Jacob come (he didn't) and Rosalie is likely one of the most vocal opponents.

Bella will be convinced they're trying to destroy Renesmee's life as they're separating her from her wolf.

This will cause ah much family drama and likely Bella trying to run off to meet her paramour er her daughter's paramour er her daughter's best friend who may or may not end up her lover at an age appropriate time.

Edward will either enable this and try to keep it on the sly to keep Bella happy or else try to stop it so as to keep the family happy. It's likely the former, as if he can keep it from the family, then everyone's happy.

This alone could cause the family implosion and is in the... top ten reasons things would go to hell really. They could avoid this but... it's a very likely candidate.

Our other option is Edward grows tired of Bella in close contact with no distractions. Now, he has no one to cheat with (no smelly humans of appropriate character or Tanya) but that doesn't mean he won't start chafing (especially if Bella's imploding over Jacob, which is 100% happening).

Now, Bella's going to implode further, as Edward's unhappy and she knows it. However, having been in this rodeo, she'll try to tell herself that Edward's trying to protect her again. He has his reasons for treating her this way and it's not true. Eventually, though, she'll conclude that he's gotten bored with her, she'll blame the lifestyle change.

Edward was in love with Bella Cullen, the vampire living her best life in beautiful outfits and a perfect member of his family. He's not in love with a Bella who is a blubbering mess living in a cave.

But none of this answers your question.

Rise and Shine, Campers, Because it's Cold Out There

Bella wakes up and it's 2004 (as Bella moved in early January of 2005). She wakes up in Phoenix Arizona, she's human again, and her mother is married to Phil and pining after him as he's away.

For a good while, at least a day, Bella's a zombie. She just had the most wonderful dream, in which she had the perfect husband, was a mother, the greatest best friend, and the mostly greatest family. She was beautiful, wealthy, graceful and athletic, interesting, important, and intelligent.

Bella's very quick to conclude that it was all a dream.

Because how could any of that have actually happened to her?

Renee notices Bella's acting more depressed than usual but isn't sure what to say about it. It goes unremarked upon.

Bella then realizes that she's faced with the same choice originally. She can stay and make her mother miserable or she can go to Forks again, the date of her original departure growing ever closer.

She doesn't want to go and see that Forks is just like the meadow was: a meaningless place without Edward in it.

However, she can't remain here and ruin her mother's life either.

She must go and confront the truth, let this rest once and for all.

She gets there and HOLY GOD, IT'S EDWARD.

Bella's suddenly hit with every emotion. Profound relief and joy at seeing the Cullens unchanged as always (she's crying at the sight of them, Edward thinks she's a freak), confusion over what's happening and how this even occurred, and then horror that somehow it all got messed up.

Bella doesn't pay much attention to Edward nearly eating her in Biology (she knows he won't do it, after all) and instead tries to figure out what happened and what needs to change.

Well, the way she sees it, most of the real problems came down the road in the form of Google making it impossible to cover up fraud, murder, Dr. Cullen's history as a medical professional, pick your poison.

There's not much Bella can do about that, as much as she doesn't like it.

There was also the Volturi problem, but that's easily solved enough. If Bella never jumps off a cliff, and Alice doesn't think she's dead, then Edward would never go there to kill himself. None of that, of course, would have happened if they'd never broken up in the first place which Edward admitted was a huge mistake.

Similarly with the baseball game, if Bella doesn't go that day, then she never runs into James, he's never killed by the Cullens, and Victoria doesn't swear vengeance and create her newborn army.

(Wow, Bella's on a roll!)

It does not occur to Bella that a) James could still cause problems if he fixated on Alice again which was entirely possible (albeit not likely) b) Edward would very likely still dump her as he was convinced it was the best outcome for her c) Jacob would likely not shift without Victoria's rampage meaning that he would not remain in her life or imprint on Renesmee and become effectively immortal.

Bella continues to think about what went wrong and, again, likely blames some combination of Rosalie and Carlisle. If she can just get Rosalie to calm down about Jacob after Renesmee's born and the Cullens to not have to leave society so early then everything will be perfect!

Otherwise she'll fix all the other little things that went wrong and start dating Edward as soon as possible and not waste those early months of trying to figure out what he is.

Next time Edward shows up, she confesses she knows he's a vampire, she's his future wife (who he impregnated and turned into a vampire), she knows the Cullens are vampires, and Edward doesn't know it yet but they're already deeply in love.

... And, as Edward has been privately looking for an excuse to kill her, likely ah uses this as the temptation proves too strong/he's too alarmed at everything she's saying. Edward murders Bella Swan and the Cullens have to leave town.

[cryptoolivia]

What is USDT (Tether)? Is it a scam? (A must-read for beginners)

If you're new to cryptocurrency, you've likely heard of "USDT" or "Tether." In the news, phrases like "USDT scam" or "Tether money laundering" frequently appear, causing many newcomers to doubt the legitimacy of USDT. So, what exactly is USDT, and is it a scam? This article will explain what USDT is, its uses, and how to avoid potential scams involving it.

What is USDT (Tether)?

USDT, short for Tether, is a cryptocurrency issued by Tether Limited. Similar to other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum, USDT is a virtual currency. What sets USDT apart is its 1:1 peg to the US dollar, making it a "stablecoin." In other words, 1 USDT typically equals 1 USD (with slight fluctuations). USDT is designed to function as a digital version of the dollar and is commonly used as a stable store of value in cryptocurrency trading.

Launched in 2014 under the name Realcoin, later rebranded as Tether, USDT's goal was to offer a digital asset backed by traditional currencies (primarily the US dollar), helping cryptocurrency users avoid the extreme volatility of other digital currencies. Tether operates by claiming that for every 1 USDT issued, the company holds an equivalent value in USD or other assets in reserve, thus maintaining its stable value.

Why is USDT often linked to scams?

USDT itself is not a scam; it is a legitimate cryptocurrency. The reason we often hear about "USDT scams" is that fraudsters prefer to use USDT's stability and widespread use in their schemes.

Because 1 USDT is roughly equal to 1 USD and is widely accepted across major crypto exchanges, scammers frequently use fake platforms or fraudulent investment opportunities to trick victims into buying or transferring USDT. Since USDT can be quickly converted into fiat currency or other cryptocurrencies, it's a preferred tool for scammers. However, this doesn't make USDT a scam in and of itself.

How do scammers use USDT to commit fraud?

Common methods include:

Fake exchanges: Scammers create fake cryptocurrency exchanges to steal users' personal information and funds. They may lure you into buying USDT, but you soon realize that the USDT is either fake or nonexistent.

Impersonating customer service or friends: Through social media or phishing, scammers impersonate customer service representatives or friends, tricking you into buying USDT and transferring it to them under the guise of investment or transaction needs. In reality, your funds vanish.

Phishing websites: Fraudsters create fake websites, appearing identical to official platforms, to trick users into entering their wallet private keys or passwords, enabling them to steal USDT.

How to avoid USDT-related scams?

Use trusted exchanges: Always purchase USDT through reputable cryptocurrency exchanges (such as Binance, OKX, Bitget, gate·io, bybit). These platforms are highly regulated and more secure.

Be wary of false investment opportunities: Any promise of "high returns with zero risk" should be viewed skeptically. The crypto market is highly volatile, and promises of quick profits often signal scams.

Avoid clicking on suspicious links: If you receive unfamiliar links, especially those encouraging you to buy USDT or make transactions, exercise caution to avoid phishing traps.

Does USDT always maintain a 1:1 peg to the USD?

While USDT is intended to maintain a 1:1 peg with the US dollar, slight fluctuations may occur during periods of market stress or loss of confidence in Tether's reserves. However, most of the time, USDT remains stable at around 1 USD.

For other currencies like TWD or HKD, the USDT exchange rate is influenced by market demand. In domestic markets, USDT prices may slightly differ from the direct USD exchange rate, depending on supply and demand dynamics.

Where can you buy USDT?

Through regulated cryptocurrency exchanges: The safest way to purchase USDT is through reputable global exchanges, which support various payment methods, including bank transfers and credit cards.

OTC (Over-the-Counter) dealers: In certain regions like Hong Kong, you can buy USDT at physical stores. However, exercise caution as not all stores are regulated, and scams do exist.

Avoid private transactions: Refrain from purchasing USDT through unofficial channels or individual sellers, especially those involving cash deals, as these carry high risks of fraud or theft.

Common Questions (FAQ)

How is USDT different from other cryptocurrencies? USDT is a stablecoin, meaning its value is relatively stable (around 1 USD), while other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum are highly volatile. USDT is typically used as a store of value in crypto trading, while Bitcoin, for example, is more suitable for investment.

Is USDT safe? USDT itself is safe, but due to its popularity, scammers often use it in fraudulent schemes. Always use trusted platforms to purchase USDT and remain vigilant.

Why does USDT sometimes "de-peg"? USDT can experience minor fluctuations when market confidence in Tether's reserves wanes or in times of market stress. However, these instances are usually temporary.

Is USDT a good investment for beginners? USDT is not typically seen as an investment but rather as a stable store of value. It's more like a "digital dollar" in the crypto market, ideal for transferring value rather than speculating.

Conclusion

USDT is not a scam; it's a widely used stablecoin, designed to maintain a 1:1 value with the US dollar. However, due to its popularity, it is often used by scammers as a tool for fraud. To avoid being scammed, always purchase USDT through official channels and be cautious of investment offers. Remember, all investments carry risks, and caution is key to protecting your assets.

Through this article, I hope you now have a clearer understanding of USDT and how to avoid scams involving it. If you have further questions, feel free to reach out.

[erigold13261]

HC that in the NSpidR world, Miguel basically took over Alchemax to make Nueva York (he was a scientist there in the OG comics, just like Liv and Jonathan)

Oh neat. Maybe! I somehow forgot about Alchemax lol.

Maybe instead of taking over it, the two became partner companies or something like that. Similar to how J-1 Robotics is partnered with a cybernetics company, or something like that.

Alchemax is where all the very delicate research on power samples and power-reducing tech is done and created. While Nueva York is where the therapy and housing (basically everything else) happens.

Miguel would still be the CEO of both, but probably has another person running the intricacies of Alchemax. I don't see that person being Liv because she would want to be in the researching area, not the one running the shots, and Jonathan I always saw as under Liv in the hierarchical ladder so that also keeps him from being the one running Alchemax.

Actually, just looked it up and found out that Olivia is the founder of Alchemax! Neat! Though I like her kinda being like the secret leader of the company and not really the face of it. That's probably why I think Miguel being the face of both Nueva York and Alchemax would work out really well.

I was going to say that Kingpin could be the head of Alchemax, but then I saw that he has his own company Fisk Industries. I think his company is a holding company in canon which, and I might be wrong here, is like a parent company that completely or partially owns another business as well as stock and stuff like that.

I kinda prefer the idea that Fisk Industries is more like a distributor or a warehouse company than a holding company. No matter what, it is a powerful company with a lot of money to it (probably because it is still definitely a front for a criminal organization in this AU lol).

So like, Vandelay Tech makes special parts, technology, robots and stuff like that, which is then bought by companies like Fisk Industries to store until they get shipped out to customers or brick-and-mortar stores (the cybernetics are done by Vandelay Tech themselves in house and are not distributed).

From there Fisk Industries distributes that stuff to other companies, stores, directly to customers. One of these being Alchemax, which gets specially designed parts and machinery that Vandelay Tech makes, but it's cheaper to buy that stuff through Fisk Industries than directly from the manufacturer (because Kale wants to make a big profit by jacking up the price legally and Wilson is willing to lower prices in some kind of laundering/crime scheme that makes him money illegally).

With the tech/parts/machines from Vandelay/Fisk, Alchemax can create highly specialized tech that relates to reducing powers in people as well as have the tools to do proper research to keep Nueva York running and showing progress to continue getting funding.

Loved talking about this a lot honestly! It's been a bit since I thought about the distribution process of goods from manufacturer to consumer. This also helped me round out more of the area and how some companies are connected together even if they don't seem like they should be.

Honestly, Psychonauts probably gets their parts from Fisk Industries as well. At least if they don't know that there is a crime ring attached to the company, otherwise they would try and get things directly from Vandelay Tech (even if it is pricier, but then the Tech Revolution happens and now Psychonauts aren't sure if they want to continue relations with them either and might have to look to overseas manufacturers for the parts needed for psychic machinery).

NSR and J-1 are definitely working together to supply each other with power, funding, and qwasa tech. NSR would technicaly be the holding company in this part of the world, with J-1 being a manufacturer. There wouldn't be a need for a middleman distributor for J-1 and NSR working together, but J-1 does have distributors for its toys and other products for the average consumer (the cybernetics company owned or partnered with J-1 is not supplying NSR directly, but it does have NSR's interest to think about in order to keep its funding/continue working).

Now I just need to figure out how the companies in Europe work together. Especially the UK Robotics company (I really need to start thinking of names for these companies lol).

[rossemboss]

Notes from Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan by Jake Adelstein

note: take book with grain of salt as author is greatly self-aggrandizing, but provides some nice color on yakuza

many yakuza prefer to be called 'gokudo' (the ultimate path)

shobadai - slang for protection money paid to the yakuza

"Santa Fe was a book of nude photos of the popular actress Rie Miyazawa" that showed her pubic hair. When authorities didn't pursue the book for breaking obscenity laws based on the photos' "artistic qualities" it opened the floodgates to the relaxing of those policies enjoyed to this day

typical divisions of a police station: violent crime, white-collar, fraud, , traffic, juvenile crime, prevention, lifestyle/vice, plus an organized crime control division, which would pursue drugs, credit card fraud, and human trafficking

kind of neat - the idea of exotic animals being sold to yakuza to scare people. who would have a leashed tiger?

When someone leaves the yakuza, a letter is circulated to all members, either a hamonjo - this person is no longer in the organization, don't do business or associate with them; or a zetsuenjo - betrayer hunt this person down.

if a murdered body is found with the head facing North, that may indicate a killer feeling remorse as that's how dead bodies are laid out.

suicides remove their socks and shoes as it's rude to wear into the afterlife

There are two major types of yakuza: tekiya, low-level con artists and bakuto, the big leagues, who engage in predatory lending, human trafficking, the racket, and blackmailing corporations. They are over half Korean-Japanese and the dowa, formerly untouchable caste of Japan.

The major yakuza have lots of sub-groups that pay monthly dues. The Yamaguchi-gumi (biggest) takes in about $50M in private equity monthly and this is considered a conservative estimate.

The police don’t have the authority to wiretap, offer plea bargains, or witness protection in yakuza investigations, which limited their ability to effectively prosecute them. It’s also not illegal to be in a criminal organization.

As of 2006, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police compiled a list of ~1k front companies in greater Tokyo, 20% real estate with significant investment in securities, auditing, consulting, and other financiers.

Police sometimes call the yakuza “Realtors” lol

In 2008, a major Corporation was found to be paying over $100M USD to yakuza to remove tenants from properties they wanted to purchase (this is called jiage or land-sharking and is big because tenant laws are so protective.)

The bosses of some yakuza groups are minor celebrities and will be photographed and reported on having meetings/dinners with politicians, or will grant TV interviews!!!

Marubo cops – organized crime detectives

One business model: landsharking, moving yakuza into buildings before they can be repossessed and then buying them themselves or getting money from the original owner for the service, protection money from the sex trade, and the cash cow, extortion (specifically, shaking down business people with embarrassing secrets). They would do the same with companies in financial trouble. They would take out loans from midsize banks using the company’s real estate as collateral, but then when the company would go bankrupt, those loans would go unpaid. The Sumiyoshi-kain also ran staffing companies, loansharking, and an insurance company specializing in false claims to rip off real insurance companies. A collection agency for recovering bad debts for real loan companies. Pawnshops for trafficked goods. A talent agency for porn (paid well not coerced). Transportation and security for large events. Take construction contracts and then subcontract out, pocketing the difference. Set up a fake political org for the tax break and a way to launder money. Have your extortees pay to receive your newsletter.

kabukicho was the undisputed red light district of tokyo before it got partially cleaned up following the 2001 fire of the Myojo 56 building where 40+ people died. It is speculated that the yakuza burnt it down after not being paid its protection money by the mahjong parlor inside.

At least in 1999 during the time of this book, a reporter tells him: "Nine times out of ten, no matter how much it looks like a murder, the Shinjuku police will write it up as a case of assault resulting in death - manslaughter? Why? So they don't have to launch a full investigation." Murders of 'low-lifes' not deemed newsworthy. What WAS newsworthy was anything involving someone famous, a civilian, or a teenager. Maybe a brewing gang war.

The reason the anti prostitution law is on the books is to protect girls who were being sold into sexual slavery after the war. That's why they only go after the pimps and owners, not the girls.

one thing to track is i keep writing big clubs, when i should go smaller, seedier, and more participatory. one stage, men using vibrators on the fully naked dancer. also kinkier: more costumes, piss play, the works.

downtown there are typical haunts where the yakuza hang out near their offices, where they get coffee and shoot the shit. and it's not one organization, but all of them.

lots of young girls (high school to college) get addicted to the host clubs and run up a big tab at which point they get redirected into becoming hostesses or joining the sex trade themselves. these are usually unlicensed clubs that have no police protection and are therefore easy marks for the yakuza. a good host club makes about $300k a year in 1999; the legit hosts can make big money too, think $6-10k a month not including gifts. hosts and hostesses often frequent each other's places when they get off work, so they're often busiest at like 4am/late late hours.

Roppongi is known for its foreigners. The place to go if Japanese people and foreigners are looking to connect (/connect!) Before the bubble burst, Roppongi was known for its highbrow establishments, but it's gone sleazy with big clubs, drugs, and all the typical sex trade establishments. It's nicknamed "High-Touch Town"

Because yakuza bosses can be held liable (and sued) for the crimes of their subordinates, when someone gets collared, it's typical to throw them out of the org (at least on the surface) claiming they were just a bad egg to limit liability. Yakuza will also sue newspapers and other organizations that call their businesses fronts or old members yakuza. Very good lawyers.

money laundering - hostess clubs and sex parlors (have your employees act as regulars and pay there); donations to religious organizations you run from the profits, own restaurants, r&r spots, and more and have your employees go there with the profits.

there are legal limits on interest rates for consumer loans, but yakuza loan sharks obviously go way above that. keep database of all customers at one establishment to see when the loan is falling behind, and then reach out from one of your other loan offices to offer a loan with even higher interest rates to double prey upon your victims.

more swords as weapons since gun use penalties are so high!

not uncommon for yakuza to own the movie studios making yakuza films which has promise as a funny detail; also more chopped fingers, toes transplanted as fake fingers, etc.

Tokarev - Russian guns popular in the 90s with yakuza

"that's why we farm out the dirty work to the Chinese and the Iranians. If they get caught, they don't talk and they just get deproted."

control the media by running the top talent agencies and denying them access to top entertainment talent if they publish unfavorable reporting

[fxproptech]

How to start a prop firm?

To start your Prop Firms Tech Journey with us, Follow these eight steps!

1, Learn Prop Trading

2, Set Up Legally

3, Get Enough Capital

4, Use Good Tech

5, Launch a Prop Firm

6, Marketing Magic

7, Hire Traders

8, Launch a Brokerage

1. Learn Prop Trading

Even before you venture into the logistics of starting a prop firm, it is vital to have a good understanding of prop trading. You need to know the very basics of trading, the different asset classes: stocks, forex, commodities, and strategies employed by successful traders.

Key Areas to Learn:

Risk Management: Successful prop trading relies heavily on risk control. Learn how to limit losses while maximizing gains.

Trading Strategies: Master different strategies such as day trading, swing trading, and scalping.

Market Analysis: Understand technical and fundamental analysis to predict price movements and identify trading opportunities.

By learning about prop trading, you will be better equipped to make informed decisions when setting up the structure and systems for your firm.

2. Legally Establish Your Prop Firm

After equipping yourself with the knowledge, you'll want to legally establish your prop firm. This will help avoid potential future problems and protect your business. More importantly, you can be sure of staying compliant with both local and international regulations.

Legal Steps

Business Structure: Decide on forming a corporation, LLC, or another legal entity.

Licensing: Depending upon the region you operate in, you would need particular licenses or registrations. For example, you may be required to register with the SEC or CFTC in the United States.

Compliance: Ensure that your firm complies with all trading regulations and anti-money laundering laws. Engaging specialists experienced in legal advice and compliance is a very good idea.

A well-set-up legal foundation gives you a sense of belonging and keeps one on the right side of the law.

3. Get Adequate Capital

A prop trading firm is only as robust as its capital base. You will need enough funds to service your firm's operations, hire traders, and trade on clients' behalf.

Raising Capital

Private Savings: If you have personal savings, start by utilizing your resources, but assess the risks.

Investor Partnerships: You can raise capital by attracting investors willing to fund your firm. Provide them with a clear business plan and terms on returns.

Financing Options: You can also seek financing from banks or venture capitalists interested in trading businesses.

Once you get enough capital, you should ensure it is used prudently to fuel the growth of your firm.

4. Good Technology

Technology remains the backbone for any modern-day prop trading company. Efficient, reliable, and secure trading platforms and tools ensure that your traders execute strategies without errors.

Trading Platforms: There are several to choose from but the most important ones are either MetaTrader 4/5 (MT4/MT5) or in-house proprietary software that is adapted to your preferred trading style.

Risk Management Tools: Software tracks all portfolio risks and margin levels including stop-loss limits.

Back-End Infrastructure: A robust and secure back-end system allows your firm to operate without a moment of downtime. Through reliability and scalability, cloud-based solutions offer all those.

Investment in the best technology not only improves efficiency but gives you a competitive edge in the market as well.

5. Launch a Prop Firm

After raising the capital, setting up the legal structure, and implementing the tech, it is now time to formally launch your prop trading firm. Your objective during this phase would be to establish a brand, build a client base, and ensure that all operations are streamlined.

Steps to Launch:

Pick a Niche: Are you going to deal with forex, stocks, or crypto? Select a niche in which you can specialize based on your expertise and market conditions.

Brand Identity: Create a brand that resonates with your target audience. This includes a professional logo, website, and marketing materials.

Platform Launch: Ensure your trading platform is user-friendly and secure, allowing traders to log in and execute trades seamlessly.

Once everything is set, it’s time to announce your launch and start gaining traction in the market.

6. Marketing Magic

Now that your firm is officially launched, effective marketing is key to driving traffic, attracting traders, and building partnerships.

Marketing Strategies to Consider:

Social Media: Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook can help you build an online presence and engage with your audience.

SEO & Content Marketing: You should focus on creating valuable content, such as blog posts or videos about trading tips, that ranks on search engines and establishes authority in your niche.

Influencer Marketing: This is partnering with popular traders or influencers in the trading space. This can give you visibility and credibility.

A good marketing campaign will make your firm the go-to resource for aspiring traders and partners.

7. Hire Traders

Your prop firm will require risky traders to execute your strategy with care and handle risk exposure. Your concerns are hiring experienced, trustworthy traders for the firm's success.

What to Look for in a Trader

Proven Track Record: Find a trader who has had profitability records, preferably in your niche market.

Risk Management Skills: Most especially when using firm capital, effective risk management is essential. The trader must be able to minimize losses.

Team Fit: Your traders should be aligned with your firm's vision and culture, working collaboratively to achieve your goals.

Consider offering competitive compensation and a profit-sharing model to attract top talent to your firm.

8. Establish a Brokerage

If your prop firm does well, you might consider establishing a brokerage as an adjunct business. A brokerage enables you to offer trading services to other clients and earn commissions on their trades.

Brokerage Setup:

Partner with Liquidity Providers: Engage major liquidity providers to have access to deep liquidity and tight spreads.

Trading Infrastructure: Develop or rent a trading platform to give clients access to markets.

Compliance: Ensure your brokerage is compliant with regulations in the jurisdictions you plan to operate in.

Operating a brokerage will add value to your business model as you will have an additional source of revenue and support your prop trading business.

Conclusion

Starting a prop firm requires much planning, significant capital, and a clear understanding of trading principles. Following these eight steps learn prop trading, setting up legally, secure the capital, and cutting-edge technology, launch your firm, effective marketing, employing skilled traders, and potentially start a brokerage is the way forward to building a successful prop trading business. To achieve long-term success, pay attention to innovation, adaptability, and staying ahead of the curve in terms of technology.

[nosnet]

Intentional Withdrawal

by J. D. Dennis

Time Period: 2011

Perspective: Leigh O’Connor

Rating: PG

Content Warnings: I don’t know anything about hacking and at this point I’m too afraid to ask

Word Count: 4,172

Comments: Prequel to our “Heist” campaign, before any of these goobers actually got to be vampires. Our DM (C. Todd) gave us homework: think of some kind of job they’d gone on, and this was mine. We did get blown up after this.

There was always one heist that stood out for Leigh, in the back of his mind, as his favorite. 

It wasn’t his favorite because it went flawlessly. It wasn’t his favorite because of the time of year, the kind of target, or anything else like that. The Great Fuck You of 2011, as he named the event later, was his favorite because he got to test his skills as a hacker, regain a sense of pride in his heritage through nefarious means, and take the piss out of people that had wronged him at the same time.

It was the middle of March when it started, and it was bitterly cold. The wind was harsh and bitter, biting even, a taste of ice in every breath, which wasn’t usual for March, not like that. He remembered it was partially the cold that caused it, and the memory always brought a smile to his face, because the turn of events after were less like their normal heists, and more like a poem, an epic, slipping from one to another so casually that they seemed to flow in their own form of rhyme. It was like the heist was predetermined and they were just pawns in someone else’s game, and their player was a hell of a chess master. 

The first thing that really got the whole mess started was that his old bank was an asshole. 

He’d just recently switched banks, for a number of reasons. The bank he moved from had started to do what he could only call acting out, and he wasn’t there for their shenanigans. Everything from delaying direct deposits until he over drafted and refusing to refund the overdraft fees, to having no one ever available to answer phones until several days went by - thus making dealing with any issues nearly impossible over the phone, and a barely staffed brick and mortar store to make it difficult to do anything in person, either - to an app that hardly worked, hardly logged in, and gave him erroneous data, among other shady offenses. Leigh was pretty damn sure they were just a laundering front - because no one ever suspected a bank would be a front for laundering money, but the amount of absurd fees that they pocketed just for shits and giggles had Leigh onto them - which was half the reason he chose to bank with them in the first place. They had good benefits, including not giving a shit about large checks deposited and not verifying where money came from, and he found they had a decent back and forth of not looking at each other’s questionable choices in a mutual act of playing dumb. It was a good deal, but then they’d started trying to fuck with him, and they didn’t realize how much of a mistake that was, because Leigh was the kind of man to fuck back.

He had planned, initially, to finish the move to his new bank first, and then sabotage his old bank for giving him hell and ruining the good thing they had going. That was usually how he rolled, when it came to heists he directed. Ninety percent of the time he was attempting to fuck someone over, and he’d wait until he’d burnt all bridges and severed all ties before he did so. He didn’t run heists for money, or fame, or power. People that ran heists for those things usually got caught. No, he ran heists for the thrill of the chase, the rush of a good back and forth, and to rain hell down on those that wronged him. The money was a cute payout after, but he didn’t need it. He worked, full time, as the data manager and medical scribe for a hospital. He was paid very well, allowed plenty of sick days, and he could have lived in comfort from that alone. But that was boring. 

The thing was, however, he didn’t get to sever all ties like he preferred to do, because the bank decided to wrong him in the one way he didn’t like to be wronged. It said a lot that he was willing to compromise his morals and set rules just to ruin the business, but they’d not only hit his bank account badly, but they went straight for his pride as well. 

They made his card decline. On St. Patrick's day. At nine in the evening. 

Leigh was, as everyone in the bar at the time knew, very Irish. He wasn’t the kind of Irish that usually partook in a lot of the St. Patty’s gimmicks that hit town around the middle of March - no green, no shamrocks, no orange beard - but he did enjoy going to the local Irish Pub the night of. They had good, cheap beer those nights, good music, and he was more than likely able to get himself a handful of free beers from white frat kids amazed at his accent. He liked the atmosphere of that pub in that town on that night, but that evening, it seemed to go stale. His card, which he knew had money on it, came back declined. Not once, not twice, but every time the bartender ran it. Of course, being a regular, the bartender told him he could pay the tab at any point, because he was a man who always had money and who always paid, but it was an embarrassment all the same. To be the token Irish guy in a relatively popular pub on St. Patrick’s day and be unable to buy your own beer was the kind of embarrassed Leigh did not take lightly. 

He called off sick the next three days while he planned the heist, and when he met with his group - small, five other people, all decent infiltrators and fighters and talkers in their own rights - he presented a fully planned out heist. This was unlike him, because he was more a fan of picking holes in other people’s plans than planning his own, but this was important and personal and he was damned if he was going to let anyone else fiddle with his grand designs. He had the map down to the second, and no one argued with him on the plans for fear that he was one badly taken playful jab away from blowing them all to hell. 

The plan was simple. The bank he’d been with had put all of his money on hold. This meant he couldn’t spend it - causing a declined card - or move it or take any of it out. His money - which wasn’t a small number - was stuck in theoretical limbo until the point at which the bank finished its investigations. Apparently, when he deposited the money, they were fine with it, but as soon as he tried to retrieve any of it, they were suddenly concerned about where the money had come from. It was a power play in the simplest form - he knew if he backed down, kept his money in their coffers and let them do their thing, he’d get all of it back. What they didn’t realize was that Leigh didn’t ever back down. Instead, he came up with a genius plan: 

He was going to steal his own money back. 

So he found himself, several days later, in front of his own desktop setup, ready to go. The plan was rather effortless on the part of his friends, and required a decent chunk of work out of him, which wasn’t a bad thing to either party. He’d decided, against his usual better judgment, to work from his personal setup at the house rather than use his burner laptop he had for jobs. His laptop was old, with the most recent software and just enough programs on it to break into anything, but it contained no personal information and could be completely wiped at the press of a few buttons. He could very quickly tank the hard drive and throw the thing in the river if he needed, but that wouldn’t be good enough for this one. He needed access to his own records, so he was using his own setup, and that needed some fiddling. Not difficult fiddling, but fiddling. 

Step one was to get everyone in place, which went off without a hitch. Leigh needed everyone at the bank by 16:45, ready to go without delay, and for once in their small and insignificant existence, they were on time without fuckups. His group were placed as such: Nomad, the thief, was outside the bank and just down the street, ready to slip in and around the back. Kilo, the bruiser, was at the Starbucks down the corner. He was there to cause a little bit of trouble if they needed a delay. Blue, Mom, and Thorn were hanging out outside the bank, ready to enter. 

At 16:50, the three outside stepped into the bank. Their job was pretty simple: they were to attempt to complete a transaction to set up a new account. Now, the bank only ever really gave a shit about new people signing up, so of course they would be more than willing to keep them at the counter past closing if it meant they were getting a new sucker to bleed. At 52 after, Thorn, equipped with a mic, gave the signal: they were at the counter. 

“Go for Step Two, Nomad.” Leigh, professionally now just Biohazard, said. He had a mic and so did Nomad, Kilo, and Thorn, so they could stay in pretty open communication. He was so much more comfortable in front of his own computer than on his laptop, but it was a risk. He could be back tracked through information on his computer should someone get in, for one. For two, any viruses that he caught would be a pain in the ass to have to get rid of, so he had to be careful. That, and he was now having to cue their best infiltrator to break in just to give him access to their network to do his business, which was also a risk. But she was good at her job, and he had three screens, all of his quick access buttons programmed, and a fourth tablet jacked in so he could use the touch screen simultaneously. It was almost blissful to be able to use the rig he had. He checked the timer. “Two minutes.” 

“Chur.” She was big into her slang, and while normally, Leigh would have made fun of her for her use of slang, he didn’t have time for that. She had two minutes to break into their back door, another minute to slip into their main office, thirty seconds to plant a wifi extender that connected his computer directly to their network, and then a minute to get out. Four and a half minutes was not a long time, and while she was good at what she did, it was pushing it, even for her. She couldn’t even talk to him while she was in, instead giving all her cues by a button on her mic that beeped him. 

Beep. She was in with a minute to spare. Bless. He listened to the conversation on the other end, resetting his timer every beep. 

“Now, I need you to read--” Beep. 45 seconds. “--because we’re very particular on policy, you know,” Beep. 15 seconds. She was a minute thirty ahead, but he wasn’t going to start running his programs until he got the beep she was out. “Sometimes people try and take advantage of the system, so we have very strict rules here.” Beep. 30 seconds. She was in and out of the bank with a whole two minutes to spare, which was brilliant. Every minute she had left was another minute Leigh had in the system. Now that he could access their wifi, he typed in a few things, opened up a program, and hit run. It spat out the wifi network information - the bank’s name as the network name, and then, surprisingly, a long and complicated password -  in thirty seconds, and he quickly connected to their private wifi without issue. 

“I’m in.” He said it, and he realized he said it, because he needed to tell Nomad and the others that the connection was strong, that he was in the system, and he immediately regretted it. He groaned, turning off the mic feed for the moment - he didn’t need to hear Nomad anymore, she was joining Kilo to get coffee, and he knew she’d be on his ass about it - turning his attention to the computer. 

Now that he was on their wifi, he could do his magic. They weren’t exactly the most technologically adept bank, but they knew enough to cause him a few issues. Being on a closed wifi network was one of them, but the device he’d gotten into their office would essentially ping him through a handful of wifi connections until it thought he was right next door, which let him connect like his computer was just outside and do his dirty work quickly and quietly. It only worked because he was only down the street, and not halfway across the world. 

The first step for him was to launch a DDOS against their main web page, which they had and tried to maintain so people didn’t think they were just a front. Between the people at the front desk being distracted by the potential customers who were hopefully playing dumb as hell to buy time, and a DDOS spoofed from another signal crashing their main webpage and causing them more issues than their usual bad app did, he hopefully had everyone who hadn’t already gone home tied up at the front desk or trying to manage customer service calls. That left no one at the computers to watch what happened when his money decided to abruptly leave. 

“Let’s find ourselves a patsy.” He said into the mic, to let Thorn know what was up. “Three minutes. We’re two minutes ahead of schedule, everyone, so let’s keep it that way.” He panned screens over to another program, letting it start running, scanning the system for the weakest login credentials that had access to the accounts. He’d run the appropriate person’s login through his cracking program, but he needed to first find the person who would take the least time. Two minutes later, it came up with a name, and he quickly ran the credentials through his cracking program, and a moment later, he had a login. 

“Sorry Carol. This’ll teach you to get a better password. Login, one minute.” He chuckled, logging into the bank under the name and password. Now that he was in, with three minutes and thirty seconds to spare, it would only take a few minutes of searching to find the right tab, and he could release the hold on his money, which would then let it be siphoned away. Easy. He could still hear them making a rather large stink over the radio, which meant he had plenty of time. He started clicking around, trying to figure out how they organized their internal processes, but after a minute of searching - he set aside five minutes for the task - he was kicked off the site. He was only displayed a page with the login screen, and an error code - login invalid. Now, he knew his login was valid, of course. He’d found the password himself, and he wouldn’t have gotten into the spaces he’d already explored with a login that wasn’t right. The only other reason he could have been booted off their site was if someone else was fucking around. 

He grinned, wide and almost feral, all of teeth reflected in the monitor in front of him. This was the kind of shit that he lived and breathed for, and he could feel himself break out into a slight cold sweat. His heart was racing, his fingers shaking, his breath shallow and sharp in his chest. This was what he was here for - someone else was fighting him. This had just gone from boring and petty, to fun and petty. 

“Oh, think you’re cheeky. Three minutes. We’re still three ahead, but I might need all of that.” He grumbled, though he did so with a grin. He retraced his steps, logging into a different account after finding and locating the password - and he went ahead and ran the cracker on several other accounts, as expedience was required. He couldn’t lose the time they’d built up on something as stupid as not having logins ready. This time, however, he set the login’s email to his own, and sure enough, a few seconds later, he got an email alert that someone had changed his password. He clicked the relevant link, resetting the password again, before pulling up another program. It was able to connect the cracking program he used to the searching program, and find the relevant passwords to every account, as well as log in for him. One person couldn’t keep up with changing the passwords on that many accounts, and it bought him a bit of time. 

It didn’t take him long to find out how to remove the hold on his account, and he did so, watching the login bot run through the users one after another after another. He had a minute left of his scheduled time, which gave him four minutes of buffer. However, he had an extra step to complete now before he could just transfer his money to another, recently set up, offshore account to stew a bit. There was someone else in the system, and he couldn’t risk the other guy seeing the account numbers he was about to push his money to. So, taking his four minutes, he turned to the login bot. It seemed to be in on most of the accounts, but one apparently continued to give him issue. It wasn’t that the passwords were particularly hard to crack - in fact, the most recent were actually pretty short, simple little things - but that the password had been reset over and over just after the cracker got in. 

“I think I found the little rabbit’s hole, haven’t I?” Leigh grinned, because that was all he needed. Four minutes, and a handful of programs, and this other hacker was about to have a very bad day. It was a pretty simple process, and he knew he could do it in less than four minutes, but having the timer ticking away off to his side only made the whole process more fun. He logged into the account himself long enough to find the email address associated, before finding himself booted again. He could almost feel the frustration behind the gesture. He didn’t bother logging back in, however, instead logging into the email and using the email’s login history to track the IP of the owner. He was very quickly booted from the email, but that didn’t matter, because he had the man’s IP address at his fingertips, and two minutes and thirty seconds to cause chaos. He quickly logged into the site again, using parameters built into the back end of the site to block the man’s IP address, making it impossible to log in on his own account. Leigh paused there, savoring the feeling and sound as his login bot finally accessed all the accounts and stopped with a ding as there was nothing else to do. 

He then went, traced the IP back to it’s router, and with a quick run of his cracker, logged into the router and proceeded to shut the whole thing off from the inside. He then changed the password to the router to something difficult to crack, let himself chuckle a little, changed the man’s password to his email, before finally going back to his transfer. 

His alarm went off. He was 15 seconds over. Whoops. 

Now that he wasn’t being observed, however, the transfer was easy enough. It just needed the time to pull every dollar over, which he had allowed five minutes for. He sat back, letting his machine work, tuning back into the radio feed. He could hear Blue and Thorn getting agitated, and the employees were also very frustrated. He could tell they were going to have to wrap their charade up shortly, or there would be cops called. He could, of course, call in Kilo, but he didn’t think he’d need it. The juggalo was hanging out just in case they needed a bigger distraction than just keeping the employees busy, but it didn’t seem necessary. Until the transfer rate slowed the hell down for no reason. Two minutes left suddenly looked like four. 

“Ah, shite.” Leigh grumbled into the radio. “Kilo, go for Code Red.” He called Kilo, and he got an exuberant whoop whoop in response, which was about what he expected. He had no idea what Kilo was about to do, but he knew that the man had two rules: one, he wasn’t allowed to kill anyone, and two, he wasn’t allowed to get more than held in the drunk tank. If he caused a problem that got him in real trouble, they might not have had the resources to break him out. 

The transfer finally finished, two minutes fifteen over time. Leigh swore, checking back into the radio. He had no idea what was going on anymore from the sounds, but there were clearly staff yelling - something about get the damn clown off the door, we’re closed! - and other voices, Kilo specifically shouting, or singing, something loudly over one radio. However, the money was out, so it was time to wrap. Leigh quickly went through the process of erasing any footprints he had, putting the hold back on his account like it had never been taken off, logging out, scrambling passwords, and shutting everything off. He got logged out and shut the DDOS off before he commed the group again, finding the yelling was starting to quiet. 

“Go for Step three. Five minutes. My end’s done.” Leigh sighed, leaning back in his chair, because there was nothing else to do. He could hear the sounds of the chaos wrapping up - apparently, Kilo had posed as a drunk, causing a lot of ruckus but not getting the police called, thank god, and Blue had decided not to put in an account at the bank due to Kilo’s antics. He could hear them all saying goodbyes, the frustrated reps particularly unhappy that it was now fifteen minutes after they should have gone home and they weren’t getting anything out of it. The grumbles stopped, and the singing stopped, and the chaos stopped, and the five minute timer went off. 

“Check in. All good?” Leigh asked, over the comms. It took a second, but he got plenty of confirmation after a moment, and all was well. Everyone was out, no one was hurt, save the bank itself, and he didn’t have to rush from his house to help. He breathed out, shaking his head slightly. The steps after this were something he could do without rush, and it was a little sad. The tingle of the thrill was leaving his fingers, and he knew in an hour or so he’d crash. However, he had one more thing to do, though, before he could begin the process of reclaiming his money - first buying crypto-currency with the cash, and then selling the crypto-currency and depositing the funds in his brand new bank account elsewhere, which left virtually no paper trail - and he wanted to do so before he lost the rush of blood from his body. 

He went to the banks website - now miraculously better! - logged in, and went to his now empty bank account. Then, with the ease of a practiced hand, he dialed the customer support number for the bank, which he knew was probably the only number that actually reached anyone, and pressed 0 enough times that it routed him straight to a person. 

“Hi,” He said, a grin on his face, honest and sincere. He put his accent on heavier, because it was the easiest way to disguise his voice. “My name’s Keith O’Leary, I have an account with you all. ‘Spossed to have a hold on it, aye?” He paused, listening to the rep drone on for a moment. “No, I know, that’s why I’m callin’. There’s nothin’ there. ‘S empty.” 

~*~

Three days later, he went back to the pub, with his most recent paycheck in his pocket, and bought the entire bar a round. To the locals, St. Patrick’s day was a holiday that happened once a year, with a notable exception - because for the Irish, St. Patrick’s day is every day.

[insipid-drivel]

For any of my non-American mutuals doubting these:

1: Most metropolitan cities and roadways in the US have access to sidewalks, but sidewalks generally aren’t very comprehensively planned that makes it easy for pedestrians to get around on foot. Where the road goes, the sidewalk goes, and most deviations from that path are for sidewalks that lead to houses, residences, and businesses. Outdoor parks are almost never conjoined with shopping or groceries, because screw utilitarianism I guess?

2: In some states in the US, sales tax is factored into the price of purchases at checkout. However, there are states that don’t mandate that as part of general sales policies. Therefore, yes, you do have to have extra money than exactly what the cost on the tag says for the thing you’re buying, and you won’t see how much the sales tax is until you try to purchase it. It’s bullshit.

3: Minimum paid vacation times are for the upper echelons of workers, like lawyers and executives, and not lowly peasants that work 9-5 unless the business they work for or the union they’re protected by provides them. It’s often difficult enough to find an employer that can provide workers with health insurance, much less paid leave.

4: The reason waitstaff in the US are generally paid mostly in tips is so the restaurant owner can get away with paying them below our state and national minimum wages and justifying any financial hardships on the employee’s part as being their fault for not being personable enough to “earn” more tips from customers. This is an insanely screwed up system because there are no explicit laws that force fair payment via tips from customers, and so servers have to rely entirely on their customers being taught, knowing to, and choosing to tip them a fair percentage of the total cost of their meals/drinks.

5: Prescription drug ads run on our media all the time. The companies that produce these ads aren’t regulated by the government and actively attempt to cajole and subvert real doctors by convincing uninformed viewers that their (usually outlandishly expensive) drug will make you healthier than what your doctor prescribes you. It used to be legal for drug companies to pay physicians to prescribe their company’s drugs over other drugs regardless of whether it was really the best for the patient, too. It’s A Problem.

6: It can be ridiculously hard to wire money directly to other people without third party apps or, in other cases, either sharing the same bank or being on a pre-registered plan with a bank that allows for fast or immediate transfers. That’s why you see American users online primarily seeking financial help through apps like venmo and paypal. Without a pre-established policy with your bank that allows for fast transfers with a specific person, it can take 3-5 business days or more for money to be transferred. I’m not an expert, but I’ve heard that this is in part to avoid stuff like tax fraud and money laundering, but I’m not sure.

7: I honestly don’t know why this is true, but it is. In American public toilets, there is a narrow gap between the door and the frame that is precisely the perfect size for you to make eyecontact with someone on the other side of the door. Additionally, for some godforsaken reason, there’s space between the floor and the bottom of the stalls on every side and not just at the front door so a passing person can see if the cubicle is occupied. A lot of Americans have bathroom anxieties because of this. Ostensibly, it seems to be a means so if you’re out of toilet paper, you can ask for some from the person the next stall over, but I honestly have no idea what the real justification for it is.

8: Americans mostly associate electric kettles with tea, and we’re not a massively tea-drinking people (ask the Boston Harbor). Most Americans prefer coffee or energy drinks, and so you’re more likely to find an electric coffee maker in the average American kitchen than an electric kettle. More and more coffee makers come with in-built tea options, but coffee still tends to be the favorite.

9: During a part of the 1920′s-30′s, the US successfully (temporarily) outlawed all alcohol except for cooking alcohol. Additionally, state authorities tend to hate homeless people, and so antiquated, puritanical laws are still in place to further make it uncomfortable and impossible for consenting adults - especially the homeless - to exist comfortably. This is why you see people drinking from bottles concealed in paper bags in our TV and media; it’s to add credence to the “No drinking in public” law, and has gradually become eponymous with the depiction of a homeless person or addict struggling financially. Our representatives continuously throw their backs out finding reasons not to provide affordable housing to the underprivileged.

10: A lot of us would love it if there were systems in place that did our taxes for us automatically without any thought or meddling from us. However, powerful Americans really, really love dodging taxes, and so keeping the rules about how you file both as loose and complicated as possible so you can either get away with everything or nothing based upon the current power regime suits the IRS great! Also something about Al Capone.

11: Portion sizes in most American restaurants can be absolutely ridiculous, but there are a couple of points of logic behind it. The first is that Americans love leftovers and avoiding cooking, and so when you have a really good meal at a restaurant, it’s pretty common to bring leftovers home so you can eat more the next day. This is also how many poor families stock up on extra food for things like school lunches. You’ll find that portion sizes in the US correlate with the general tax brackets of the clientele; a place like McDonald’s will give more food for your dollar because it feeds more people vs. a boutique restaurant with expensively-sourced ingredients that mostly caters to the upper class. Not finishing your plate when you’re going out to eat in America isn’t usually considered rude.

12: I am an American who uses a bidet. I have tried to convert the people I know. The #1 complaint I have received from my own personal experience is, “I don’t want a wet ass”. I have explained that you can still use toilet paper to dry off with and that it just keeps you cleaner and saves on the amount of toilet paper you’d usually use. I have swayed no one. There is something about a wet ass that seems to upset people in this land.

13: Roundabouts and traffic circles are seen mostly as a European and English thing, and a lot of people find them confusing. They’re not totally absent from the country, but they were never really implemented as a regular part of our road infrastructures, and so most driving students are rarely taught much about how to properly navigate the turning and etiquette. I have also met people that complain that roundabouts give them motion sickness.

14: Even though it’s generally seen as common, normal, or an expected nuisance for people to drink alcohol prior to age 21, most American families balk at the notion of their 18-year-old being able to drink alcohol. For most school systems in the US, the formal public education doesn’t end until the age of 18, and so there tends to be a lot of strange and disjointed relationships and understandings about what is and isn’t okay for an 18-year-old growing up should be allowed to try doing.

15: We suck at change. Even though metric makes more logical sense, our entire country was essentially built using the same borrowed measurement systems as the English in most populated and moneyed areas. While England is a lot better at using the metric system nowadays, adopting it now would kind of result in us having to recalculate everything, completely change school curriculum, and also American doctors cite that they prefer Fahrenheit for measuring a fever in patients due to its closer degree of accuracy when predicting a fever’s severity and risk to the patient.

16: From my own experience, a lot of Americans aren’t fond of having the washer and dryer in the same space as the kitchen or bathroom due to the noise they cause. While this is more or less true depending on the individual household, it just tends to be a big point of preference. Those machines also tend to put out heat and humidity. The biggest complaint I’ve ever heard is related to the noise.

deep insights into the american psyche

[xoteajays]

And this is exactly why I adorable Gun and Jin, they have this bromance between them that no one can ever break apart. They are two halves of one while.

My baby boys! I love them so much.

I don't know what type of characters I'll have for the Bloodhounds fandom.. I'm trying to figure that out.

Why do I always torment myself like this every time.

My preference for ships are OC/Character and even Reader/Character. Not really Character/Character.

Everyone has their preferences.

But yeah.. I've seen only just a few stories on for BH on here and AO3. Like less than ten stories, but any stories I can find are just one shot. Not full stories.

These boys really do need more love.

Have you finally been introduced to Choi's friends? The two assassins. Like Hyeon's surrogate father.. I don't mean that literally. They aren't related. But the way their appearances are, they're basically twins in my eyes. So I'm happy that was mentioned though.

~

For Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha... I am only interested in Sangyi. Maybe I should find out the episodes he's in before watching, to see if it's worth watching.

But at least I have a couple shows for those actors, at least for right now. I'm only watching for them.

Between Do-hwan, Sangyi and Joong-ki.. I'm really finding what I can of these actors at the moment so I can enjoy them more. Preferably major roles, since I know they've had lots of cameo roles in their work.

~

Yeah. I don't know why I wasted my time asking the question. I end up using whoever I want for my face claims anyway. And besides.. Most celebrities really end up working throughout the entertainment jobs.

Especially Asian celebrities.

Many of them are actors, models and musicians. At least it seems they way. Miyavi, Exile Tribe and a lot of Japanese and Korean pop musicians too.

So it's not really that unusual to begin with.

Like the female (and sometimes male) celebrities I'll use for my own characters.. Majority are musicians.

~

Maybe. If they are police who do make any attempt, Daruma might either bribe them or fight them. That depends on the type of police they are. Like the cop Saiga, I thought he was going to be corrupt but was actually one of the good characters. Not the actor.

Yeah.. Like in Bloodhounds and High&Low for some examples. The antagonist wants to own the casinos to launder money but they can only have the casino is a foreigners only casino. Minus the corrupt elites.

Foreigners only casino are the casinos in Korea, not sure about the other Asian countries like Japan and China. But I have seen foreigners only casinos been mentioned a lot in Asian shows and movies though.

When the SWORD gangs have a better relationship with one another, and even the Amamiya brothers, I could see them helping Rude Boys with jobs if any of them are willing to take help from everyone else.. I don't want them to think they're being charitable a lot of the time. They're just trying to help them.

So we agree on that.

Takeru's the most serious as the eldest brother, but, at the same time.. he's also the one everyone is very comfortable around. And his a caring brother too.

Hiroto's serious in an intense way, definitely a really angry violent person in his younger years before his personality became more stable in the present time now. But is more serious than Masaki is though.

Masaki's the middle brother. I love every one of the brothers. But seriously though.. He's completely an unlucky man. He tries but fails to get a girlfriend on multiple occasions, his motorcycle was towed, even Hiroto doesn't respect him as the older brother a lot of the time but they do love each other though.

Everyone of these guys has amazing voices to me.

I would like to try involving the Amamiya brothers in my story. I don't know how yet. But they need some friends who they have things in common with since it would be nice that they had real friends besides a brother. I'm gonna have to try figuring this out.

Half the things you tell me, I've told you before.. You have to start remembering. Just try remembering.

Maybe I should keep bonking you on the head with a rolled newspapers until you can remember again.

But yes.. Rocky does enjoy his woman wearing a lot of different lingerie. And if that lingerie accentuates her body, I can see them having sex while she is still wearing the lingerie because of how large her chest is in that bra. Because of how shapely her body is.

But that is only sometimes though, since Rocky is a man who can appreciate his woman with or without clothes. Because this is Rocky we're talking about.

When it comes to his affections toward his parter.. I would say that it depends on the affections though.

That explains some things.

Like.. I know these are Rocky's businesses, and that Kizzy and Kaito are the founders (with Rocky) when they started these businesses. But no Kizzy. She's a worst person to run a business, any businesses, like Club Heaven. She's not responsible. Anyone but her is able to take care of Rocky's businesses. And even if they ask Kaito, Kizzy's more in charge than him in these situations. So they can't ask Kaito either.

~

Are you happy they officially announced the season two of Squid Games? New season is in November.

episode 4 down! and i’m sick of all my boys being beaten by metal poles in literally everything i watch! first cobra in the final mission, then reo’s character in the episode of informa i watched last night, then gun woo and woo jin immediately after informa. no more! leave my boys alone!

just met yang jung and du yeong last night! they’re cool! hate/love the achilles cutting scene. like hate because it’s one of my squicky gore things, just eughehghew yucky. love tho because that’s so cool, get his ass.

and to nobody’s surprise, i considered making an oc that yang jung’s daughter because ‘knife girl’ is one of my top fav oc tropes; except she wouldn’t be an assassin/knifer, i have other thoughts for her occupation. maybe.

~

i’m already watching do many shows so i’m trying to not add anything new until i get through some of this stuff ahsjdkdls

pretty people stay out of my eye-line, i’m trying to focus.

~

yea when i was looking at which asian countries gambling was illegal in, apparently korean citizens aren’t allowed to gamble at all iirc. so casinos are probably foreigners only for that reason. tho i dont know why you’d go to a ‘gambling is illegal’ country to … gamble??? that seems weird. i don’t get it.

takeru’s the cool, calm one that people feel comfortable around (unless they’ve pissed him off). hiroto is the serious, intense one (who’s a lil dense when it comes to flirting), and masaki’s the goof with bad luck (who’s also happens to be a badass in a fight). love them, excellent family dynamics.

i think i might end up making shizuka a worker at the bar, because i do wanna explore masaki and hiroto’s characters and it seems like the easiest way. plus it pads out shizuka’s character a bit more beyond just being ‘yui’s second-in-command’.

if it’s any consolation, i also do it real life with my actual real mouth. just saying shit i’ve already said. the brain in my head does not work.

kizzy can not be trusted with being in command. she’s gonna throw a wild party and blow all the money. and then she’s not going to clean up. she’s just having fun, not y’know. acting like the boss of a club. kaito’s chilling and letting kizzy have her fun, and kind of ignoring rocky/koo’s texts. he’s replying with random emojis. can’t tell them what kizzy’s doing because they’ll be mad.

~

it’s coming in november!??! hell yeah!!!!!!!! my boy’s coming back!!!!!!!!!! wi ha joon!!!!! and gong yoo!!! i’m excited to see the new cast of characters and find out what’s going to happen in the next season.

[hardynwa]

FG arraigns Adebutu, 9 others for vote buying, adjourns till Sept 26

The Federal Government on Monday arraigned the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate in the 2023 governorship election in Ogun State, Ladi Adebutu and nine others before an Ogun State High court. Sitting in Abeokuta for vote buying. Adebutu, who was charged in absentia has been on the run from law. It would be recalled that Adebutu, some months ago, sneaked out of the country, following allegations of electoral malpractices and money laundering preferred against him and his party by the Federal Government. The All progressives Congress (APC), through its Ogun State Chairman, Chief Yemi Sanusi, had written a petition to the Inspector General of Police over the vote buying allegation, which was investigated by the State Criminal Investigations Department Eleweran, Abeokuta. Upon conclusion of investigations, the Federal Government through the Director of Public Prosecutions, Federal Ministry of Justice filed criminal charges against Ladi and his co-defendants at the High Court sitting. When the case came up before Hon. Justice Abiodun Akinyemi sitting in court 4, it was adjourned till today the 10th of July 2023 owing to the inability of the court’s process servers to serve Ladi Adebutu and his co-defendants with the information sheet. However, as at the time the matter was called on Monday, Ladi Adebutu remained at large while the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 10th Defendants in persons of Ogunbona Hammed, Tiamiyi Waleed, Egunsola Owolabi, Sanni Adejoke and Malik respectively were present. They pleaded not guilty to all the 4 counts and their counsel Muyiwa Obanewa subsequently urged the court to grant bail to the defendants. The prosecuting counsel Rotimi Jacobs while noting that Ladi Adebutu is still on the run said he was not opposed to the granting of bail to the defendants. Hon. Justice Akinyemi subsequently admitted the accused to bail in the sum of N100,000 and one surety each who shall be either bondsmen or relatives of the defendants with evidence of payment of tax.The court adjourned the case till 26th of September 2023 for definite hearing. According to the charge sheet of the case with no AB/10C/2003 filed at the high court and dated June 2, 2023, Adebutu, along with Messers Ogunbona Hammed, Tiamiyu Waliu, Egunsola Owolabi, Sanni Adegoke, Hon. Dare Lukman Ogunleye, Dayo Fasina, Wasiu Enilolobo and Malik Badmus, were being prosecuted on a four-count charge, namely one count of criminal conspiracy contrary to Section 121 of the Electoral Act, 2022, bribery contrary to Section 121 of the Electoral Act, 2022, and two counts of undue influence contrary to section 127 of the Electoral Act, 2022. According to the particulars of the offence, Adebutu and the co-accused “on or about 18th of March at Ibara, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court did conspire among yourselves to corruptly give gifts in form of verve prepaid cards which had inscribed on them ‘Dame Caroline Oladuni Adebutu Memorial Endorsement Scheme for Less Privileged’ in order to induce voters to endeavour the return of PDP candidates during the gubernatorial and State Assembly elections in Ogun State.”Adebutu was further accused of providing 200,000 prepaid verve cards loaded with N10,000 each and inscribed with the same name “for the purpose of corruptly influencing voters to vote for PDP candidates” during the said elections. Read the full article

[cogitometaverse]

Is the world destined to become a cashless society?

The consequences of the pandemic of 2020 were quite tragic, but if we look at the brighter side, this period pushed us to develop new digital systems and progressive ideas. These digital systems included the modes of payment that we use every day now.

Since the coronavirus had properties of air-borne diseases, it was kind of impossible to pay cash in hand to people due to the fear of disease transmission and therefore, no contact, digital or cashless transactions became popular during this time. As a result of this, a new world was born where cashless modes of payment were preferred over physical cash exchanges. This evolution definitely moved us to think if we can become a cashless society. But wait, what is a cashless society? Have you thought about it?

The cashless society

Well, let us give you a picture of the same. A cashless society is one where physical money, such as coins and banknotes, is no longer used as a medium of exchange. Instead, people rely on electronic forms of payment, such as credit cards, debit cards, mobile wallets, online banking, and digital currencies. In a cashless society, cash transactions are either rare or non-existent.

The idea of a cashless society is surely not new but it is definitely gaining momentum now. So, what do you think? Is it a good idea to completely eliminate physical currency from our world? Let us explore this by looking at the disadvantages and advantages of becoming a cashless society.

The advantages of a cashless society

One of the main advantages of a cashless society is that it reduces the risk of crime. Without tangible money to steal, criminals would have less incentive to rob banks, shops, or individuals. A study by American and German researchers found that crime in Missouri dropped by 9.8% as the state replaced cash welfare benefits with Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards (source 1). A cashless society would also make it harder for organized crime to operate, as they rely on cash transactions to avoid government scrutiny.

Another benefit of a cashless society is that it lowers the transaction costs and hassles of managing currency. Businesses and individuals would save time and money by not having to handle, store, and deposit paper money. They would also avoid the risk of losing money due to theft, fraud, or human error. A cashless society would also facilitate easier currency exchange while travelling internationally, as there would be no need to carry or convert cash.

A third benefit of a cashless society is that it helps prevent tax evasion and money laundering. Self-employed workers who receive cash payments can underreport their income and avoid paying taxes. This leads to a loss of revenue for the government and an unfair advantage for tax evaders. Just like in the UK, where a report states that the government lost £8bn in tax revenue due to ‘cash in hand payments’ (source 2). A cashless society would make it easier for the government to track and collect taxes from all sources of income. It would also make it harder for criminals to launder money through cash-intensive businesses or offshore accounts.

The disadvantages of a cashless society

Despite these benefits, a cashless society also has some disadvantages. One of them is that it exposes personal information to possible data breaches and cyberattacks. Every electronic transaction leaves a digital trail that can be accessed by hackers, corporations, or governments. This raises privacy and security concerns, as sensitive data such as spending habits, location, or identity could be compromised or misused. A cashless society would also make people more vulnerable to technical issues or hacker activity that could disrupt or disable their access to money.

Another drawback of a cashless society is that it creates a technological learning curve and dependency. Not everyone has the skills, devices, or internet access to use electronic payments. This could exclude some segments of the population, such as the elderly, the poor, or the rural, from participating in the economy. A cashless society would also make people more reliant on technology and less prepared for emergencies that could affect their connectivity or power supply.

A third drawback of a cashless society is that it reduces the control over spending and saving. Take this report for example, “A study claims that people of the same annual income spend 34% higher while using mobile wallets than those who used other payment methods” (source 3). Without a physical reminder of how much money one has or spends, it could be easier to overspend or incur debt. A cashless society could also encourage impulse buying and consumerism, as electronic payments create a psychological distance between the buyer and the seller. Moreover, a cashless society could limit the choice and freedom of how people use their money, as they would have to comply with the rules and fees imposed by payment providers or regulators.

Conclusion

Now that we have listed all the benefits and drawbacks of the cashless society, can you think of how it would look if we really implemented it? Well, some countries are already putting the cashless society idea to test. Yes, it’s true. For example, Sweden is on its way to become world’s first cashless society and currently only 2% of the country’s transactions are done in cash (source 4)!

The Swedish economy is surely serving a great example of a cashless society, but whether the world will follow through is debatable. On the other hand, there are technological innovations happening in many areas of finance and that is where we come! At Cogito Metaverse, we are bringing innovations to the way money and finance work. We are a virtual country run by the Principality of Cogito. We offer transaction facilities in digital currencies to all our registered residents. Our currencies can be used for the purchase and sale of goods as well as services in the Cogito Metaverse world. If the idea of a financial innovation excites you and you want to be a part of the revolutionary future of money, then you must sign up with us today! Head to Cogito Metaverse and explore a new way to secure your financial future.

Sources:

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

Source 4

[alectoperdita]

Also! Not to spoil any endings or anything but fast forward 10 or 15 years (or more?) into the future in the Lure verse, do you think Kaiba's trajectory would be:

Remain a successful yakuza boss Vs go to prison Vs die in a blaze of gun violence and/or glory [Vs secret fourth thing]

Okay, so I'm a softie. I don't like writing character deaths, even when they're kinda horrible like Kaiba in Lure. Or I guess I don't like writing the sort of characters that are soooo horrible that I'd feel ready to kill them off in text.

So my personal preference is option one, Kaiba continues to be a yakuza boss with growing influence. He uses his college education and veneer of respectability to prop up a few legitimate business ventures so that his organization's money can be better laundered. It's not all dirty money, but it's not a small portion either. Eventually also moves into investing in real estate, because let's be honest that's where all the scam is anyway. One of the first major projects will be investing in a new high-rise development, which he will also leave the old house to Mokuba and move out to its penthouse unit, taking Jou with him. Friend and I somewhat jokingly refer to this as the "love nest" era. (Jou has joined the Aoryu-kai at this point and is basically also a personal bodyguard for Kaiba. So he has his own apartment in the building too for appearances but really just lives with Kaiba.)

But I'm also not likely to write that far into the future, so who's to say anyone is wrong if they envision Jou strangling Kaiba in his sleep one night and running away. Or another blaze of glory death that would be narratively and genre-appropriate. Hahaha.