#but yeah the real reason I think they have a slight disadvantage compared to normal dupes starting off is because they dont have access to

[arolesbianism]

Oh also further update on my experiences with the new oni dlc. Bionic dupes struggle in early game ceres a bit I think (their poor poor gears)

[kevkesblog]

Translation: Julian Brandt Interview with Sky Sport News Germany (May 12, 2020)

The video is avaliable here

Julian, Saturday Bundesliga starts again. And you will start against Schalke – the derby. How much do you look forward to?

Ju:    I’m really excited I have to say. I’m happy that everything starts again. 

I think it has been a long time, where we only had very limited training sessions. And in the end: every football player needs a goal. It’s not really fulfilling to only do training sessions. It’s a nice feeling that Bundesliga starts again. You can look forward to something again.

There has been a discussion: how fit are the players? How fit do you feel just a couple of days before the game?

Ju:    I feel good. Sure, you can’t really compare it with pre-season preparations. You do have to get used to certain things. We only were able to train in two-pair-groups. Then everything went quickly. You don’t have alot of time as a team. You have to simulate much more – or at least try 11 versus 11. And well… I was never a great fan of long pre-season preparations, so it was okay for me.

What was the experience like, when you changed from small groups to team training? Did you have to be a little more reserved or is that impossible?

Ju:    It really depends individually. There are some guys you are a little more reserved when it comes to one-on-one situations. Everbody reacts differently. It was okay for me. I never really had a problem. It was nice actually to have situations where it was a bit more rough. Sure everybody was keeping the distance over the past weeks. Everybody tried their best to avoid contact. In the end, football is a contact-sport and I think everbody was happy playing normal football again.

Now many players used the break to look for new talents among themselves. So was Julian Brandt killing his time with, while no training was possible?

Ju:    Well… sure there have been one or two days, where I thought my blanked fell on my head. I guess that’s normal. Sure you try to use your time… well I played alot of playstation. Like others probably as well. Because we had some really nice days and like I already said in the BVB podcast – I brought myself a new grill, shortly before everything was shut down. That was really, really important… I’m still very happy about it. I didn’t have one before. It also took away alot of my boredom. And then you this and that… but I havent’t learned a new language or instrument, yet (smiles). That was not the case with me.

So what does Julian Brandt you put on his grill?

Ju:    Certainly no eggplants! (smiles) We actually made some burgers most of the time. That was cool. I think I was at the grill every day, but I tried… to clear my head in terms of cooking (laughs)… It was actually funny: because one day the club had to weigh us, and surprisingly I didn’t lose weight nor did I gained weight. I was really surprised.

A small tip from my side: I always have an extra burner at home. Because nothing is more annoying putting the meat on the grill and then…

Ju:    Yeah… then the gas is empty (smiles)…

You mentioned playing playstation. How often did you play with your buddy Kai Havertz? And who of you has the upper hand?

Ju:    Actually we can’t really determine that. Kai and myself play together often. We aren’t really FIFA players. I for myself don’t play FIFA at all, Kai just a bit. We both play Fortnite, Call of Duty – these shooter games. We play in a team almost everytime, so we win together and lose together (smiles)… and most of the time we lose together, because even our playstation abilities reach a ceiling… our talents are somewhere else…

Well, with the 13, 14, 15 year olds who play it all night long…

Ju:    They are insane! It doesn’t even get better when I add my little brother, who is an avid player. We are just not good enough. (smiles) Thats something we have to admit to ourselves. 

Now Borussia Dortmund signed Philipp Laux as a new mental coach for the team. Did you talked to him and how does such a conversation go?

Ju:    It’s funny, because we actually sat together for an hour, yesterday. Not because for psychological reasons, but just to get to know each other. We just talked about everything. How the situation is. How those games without fans will be like. I already witnessed that in Paris. It was just a normal talk, no special topics. It was just to know the other person. He also talked about how he sees certain situations. How he thinks he want’s approach the team. He won’t stand in front of the team and hold great speeches. He just observes everything, which is normal if you are new.

But great guy? First impressions?

Ju:    Yeah, definitely. You can have a good chat with him. Even a normal conversation. I mean sure: he’s a sport psychologist many people think ‚Woah, he probably will „read me“ when I talk to him‘… but no, he’s a very relaxed guy. You can have a good chat with him.

You mentioned Paris. Dortmund was kicked out of the Champions League that night. But you do have some experience when it comes to games without fans. Schalke not in the same way – possibily. Could this be an advantage for Saturday?

Ju:    Yeah, sure. It’s is….  not something entirely new for you, when you have already had this experience before. The guys know how it will feel like…. it’s gonna be very, very silent. There were even fans and fireworks from fans in front of the stadium in Paris. PSG even had speakers on, so you were able to hear everything – but it went silent once the game started. Yet, we won’t have such an atmosphere. So yeah, it’s something new… you can perhaps get some advantages from it, but in the end: I think��� even when you look at the Bundesliga standings… everything will start from zero on Saturday. There won’t be any home or away-games in the classical sense anymore. There isn’t a advantage or disadvantage anymore. So yeah, its in some way basically going back to the basics. Like the way when we started football as kids. I think there will be 200 or 300 people – I’m not sure…. but it’s a bit „back to the roots“.

Could this perhaps be a game-changer in terms of winning the Bundesliga? Bayern Munich has a 4-point advantage. But they still have to play in Dortmund, in Leverkusen and they play against Gladbach. They really have a heavy task in front of them. Could this be the small advantage into your favour?

Ju:    Woah… I don’t know. To be honest: I can’t say how the next weeks will be. I think many things are possible. In many aspects. In the end I think it will depend on which team deals with the current situation the best. A lot happens in your head as well. I mean, you can’t really let your feels rule you now. Fans cheering you on, for example. You know: there is a certain excitement the days before, when Dortmund players against Bayern….

But is there actually a slight chance to creat some sort of „derby atmosphere“? I mean, sure the fans will be missed. But isn’t there a derby fever that rises before the game on Saturday?

Ju:    Yeah, you do feel that Saturdays game will be special. Of course because of both reasons. Because it’s the derby, but also because it will be a game which has never happend under such circumstances. Like I said, because we already played in Paris, we know the situation, yet it’s also something new. The Paris game was eight weeks ago. But the „real derby feeling“ are the fans of course. They are living it and experience it. Suddently your neighbors talk about this game, they don’t even mention the other teams name – you get a certain feeling. Okay, we are in a hotel now. We don’t really feel alot and it’s not the same of course. It would have been nice to have a full stadium. But you still try to win the game, sure! 

[ravencromwell]

Disability Wealth Gap in the U.S.

Have been pondering the U.S. disability wealth gap a lot over the last few days while simultaneously realizing the lack of familiarity around disability finance outside the fairly narrow disabled community. So here's the disability wealth gap breakdown in the U.S. no one asked for.

Let's get a couple terms out of the way first, on the understanding these are fairly generalized explanations--the accompanying links will give you more broad information.

SSDI is social security disability insurance, available only if you've paid taxes into the social security system, usually for at least five years.

SSI is supplemental security income--a needs-based program for low-asset holding disabled folk, that requires no taxes having been paid into the system.

But! unlike disability insurance, where there's a fairly generous yearly earned income cap and no asset cap, both those things exist with SSI--one of the reasons means-testing is one of neoliberalism's worst evils

Essentially, SSI is the greasy spoon compared to the meat & 3 that's available if you've paid in the system. Your only criteria is being born disabled and low-income. And then are promptly kicked off of if you have assets over $2,000. Yeah, you read that right: no fluffy college degrees if you're disabled. You better make damn sure you get something that'll keep you employed come hell or high water

You'll notice that both the source links are to breakdowns regarding income; I'm not the person to ask about eligibility, particularly when it comes to Social Security disability insurance, having never been one of those lucky tax-paying folks. I'm here to talk assets and economics if you're born disabled and poor. More specifically, how disability--especially when viewed intersectionally with other isms--makes it damn near impossible to escape poverty

So, you're allowed to have $2,000 in assets as a single person and qualify for SSI. Assets, as defined by the social security administration include:

cash

money in a checkings or savings account

cash value in life insurance policies (over $1,500)

stocks and bonds

vehicles (they grant us the grace of one for transportation)

real estate (except our house)

(Source link)

Do a real slow once-over of that list. Barely any life insurance; no easily accessible investment opportunities, and most of all, no easily accessible savings or checking. And this's a flat rate, assessed yearly; your accounts can never, under any circumstances, go over $2,000 in a year. (Easily accessible is an important caveat here, because there are beginning to be some legal work-arounds which I'll address later)

And the SSI payment itself? I'm on the upper-most end, and it comes in at about $800 a month, which you'd better spend within that month, cause remember, no accumulating over $2,000. Average one-bedroom apartment rent in the U.S. in the year of our lord 2019? $1,078. This rent report, while capitalist as hell, in that it celebrates the growth that's sucking everybody dry, is a very good overview of just how bad the rent situation is. If you're insanely lucky, you can scrape an apartment at $601, and if you're shit out of luck, you'll end up at $2,311.

I specifically mention one-bedrooms because disabled folk tend to be shy of apartment-sharing arrangements. There're a lot of reasons for this, from needing to carefully organize our refrigerators by memory to avoid expensive labeling technology (if you really want a trip, go look up the price of a roll of Dymo tape, which's the best kind of tape for inserting into a brailler for labeling.) to serious concerns on the part of nondisabled folk about rooming with us. The fear of being asked to change your life in significant ways or take on responsibilities outside those normally expected of apartment-sharing agreements is one I heartily sympathize with.

And then, there is, of course, disabled folks' healthy fear of crime. This isn't a topic I want to linger over, particularly because I think there is a real danger of inflating carceral myths around crime that've already ravaged poor, majority-minority communities. But it is a reality that disabled folk are three times more likely to be victims of violent crime than their nondisabled counterparts. Just as with many other marginalized folk, we need to take care in our housing situations etc. etc.

The unfortunate reality, however, is that the low-wage work that many marginalized folk rely on for survival is barred to us, especially if we have significant physical or visual disabilities. As a blind person with cerebral palsy, for example, cashier and receptionist are out for me.

There're two vitally important discussions that need to be had that don't fit neatly into this 101 post where I'm specifically using the most universalist language possible to encompass the broadest cross-section of the disability community, but which I want to acknowledge nonetheless: the complete lack of a social safety net, and the fact that even as a dirt-poor white, I'm farther up on the privilege ladder than most people of color.

One of the most enlightening passages of Brittney Cooper's Eloquent Rage is the following:

Skyrocketing childcare costs continue to disadvantage Black families, particularly in households like mine, headed by a single breadwinner mother. According to the Institute for 206Women’s Policy Research, 60.9 percent of all Black families are headed by a single mother who is the breadwinner for the family. Another 20 percent of Black households rely on a married mother as the breadwinner. In every state in the United States, there are more single than married Black mothers. In every state in the United States, there are more married white mothers than single ones. In twenty-four states, the cost of childcare exceeds the cost of rent, and in many states the cost of childcare exceeds the 10 percent income-affordability threshold established by federal agencies.

Consider that many of those single women are also disabled--a definition complicated, I'm beginning to learn, by the racism of the white disability community and many black folks' distrust of identifying with any term that harkens back to eugenics. Especially as utterly baseless, slanderous filth about intellectual or physical inferiority is still propagated as one of the multiple cudgels of racism to this day. (which is one of the reasons, honestly, that I'm doing this post; because disability, and the financial limitations thereof, often intersect with the movements against police brutality in ways not immediately apparent. If we as disabled folk are three times as likely to be victims of violent crime, you know! black disabled people, be that an identity they embrace or no, are going to be more vulnerable.)

But I also bring up Cooper's point above because it highlights the scarcity of resources and general social mobility. I've been trying to obtain a housing voucher for years. This would allow me to set aside some of my SSI money--in those legal work-arounds I'll touch on in a moment. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to build on a slight savings foundation. As a person with disabilities, I'm even considered high-priority. But there simply are no openings. The waiting list is lengthy, and gets lengthier every year. Because the people reliant on said vouchers can't gain better-paying employment. * So they need those vouchers, and the state and federal government refuse to create more. (And understand, this goes beyond simple dem or gop administration categories. I was as thoroughly fucked, housing-voucher wise, under the Obama admin as the Trump one. There is a fundamental housing crisis HUD has failed to grapple with, of rising rent and shrinking availability for low-income individuals. This failure has been a long time in the building, and just happens to disproportionately impact those of us with disabilities.)

In a system where the statistics Cooper cites are a grim reality for so many black women, it is absolutely no surprise the system is gridlocked, especially when you look at Cooper's elucidation that in 2011, median wealth for white families was over $141,000 while black families' rested at $11,000. And single black women: had a net wealth of $5, while single white women had an average of $42,000.

I may be dirt-poor, but I recognize that my ability to be left a tiny nest-egg of an inheritance is a massive fucking white privilege, and I want to make clear again that a lack of spots on that voucher list is absolutely not the fault of anyone but the folk in power. But when you can't get an entry-level job, and you! can't get a voucher, having anything to build on is insanely tough.

Especially because: the first legal work-around to SSI didn't arrive until the year 2014. Yeah, you fuckin read that right: six years ago. Known as the Able, or A Better Life Experience Act, this let us create savings accounts. We can--and are expected to--sock money away in those for investments in housing, education, etc. etc.

And look; it's revolutionary, ok. It lets me have a tiny nest-egg without having my SSI snatched away. But when your SSI is $800 a month, it's essentially eaten up by expenses. If and when disaster makes that nest-egg dwindle, there's nothing to replenish it. And understand: this is significant progress. Remember that $2,000 SSI asset limit? Until March 9th, 2005, household resources were counted towards that total. (Yeah, that means everything from furniture to your cell phone counted towards your assets, and then people ask why there's a disincentive in the disability community towards employment when your SSI is so often tied to decent, affordable insurance.)

There is progress made, but god there is so much more to be made. I didn't even know about the trusts until two years ago. Until this week, I didn't know that friends could gift directly into the trust, when I went looking after generous people offered help and I went: but can I take it without fucking up the SSI, cause god knows I desperately need replenished savings, but can't possibly get kicked off that, too. There are so many people who have no idea Able accounts exist, or the means to fill them.

Disabled people who aren't employed in white-collar jobs and want to get married? are absolutely fucked. If you have SSI, you can only have $3,000 in assets between you and your spouse, excluding some pensions etc. etc. Exceed that limit, and poof, you're done. So if you're born disabled, better either go to college or have a spouse who makes enough to support two. (These restrictions are slightly less onerous with Social Security Disability Insurance, or SSDI, but as I've said before, I'm not the one to speak to that.)

Part of making that progress is being well-informed. Start understanding how race and disability are woven together--something I'll freely admit I'm just learning. Start understanding that programs like a child allowance? are simultaneously some of the best antiracism and antipoverty work we can be doing, and would be revolutionary for parents with kids with disabilities.

Even more revolutionary, and the program I hear no one talking about? baby bonds!

You have to understand: there is a lot of shit Senator Booker and I disagree on--google his notorious charter school support. But this program? was one of the best things to come out of the 2020 campaign--aside from Warren's wealth tax, and the entire policy page which's just a well-constructed dream suite of proposals.

Booker's baby bonds program makes me do the delighted flaily hands. A. the strides it would make to reduce the black and white wealth gap between young people are just phenomenal. B. it would so radically reshape the landscape for disabled folk I haven't even entirely managed to wrap my head around all its implications. But let me give you an example.

As members of the disability community, there is some limited aid available to us for college. States will usually pay the amount of tuition for an in-state student at a local university of their choosing. So let's say $9,500. Now, we all know that's not going to go very far at all, particularly if you go out-of-state for college. And considering the steep unemployment rate in the disability community--most reputable studies put it at around 70% in the blind community. Well.

Even taking into account methodology concerns e.g. not necessarily surveying whether someone wants a job or are cognitively capable of job performance, but instead relying on whether they have one, those statistics are fucking grim. (I try really hard not to ponder it; the only way to pursue my ambitions is to believe, with either mad optimism or bulldog stubbornness, in my chances of success.)

When you're looking at those steep odds in a world where networking is already hard for non-disabled professionals: you need! the burnished credentials of a fancy school. You oftentimes need that gloss just to get you noticed as a blind individual. And that? means a lot steeper tuition than what the state departments of rehabilitation will fork over.

If you're straight out of high school, you have some real hope of scholarships for your undergrad. If you are, like me, a nontraditional student, things get...complicated.

Current plan looks something like: take advantage of the free 2-year-college that just! got passed in my GOP state about a year ago. And have the amount of a semester's tuition (so around $16,000) in savings by the end of that. After that first semester, I'll use internships and work study and fuck knows what else, but I need that first semester: to undertake the arduous task of learning routes as a blind person. To understand what my resources are on-campus as a disabled person and how to utilize them.

Booker's baby bonds? An account worth tens of thousands by the time I was eighteen? would've erased so many of those obstacles. By now, I'd be out of college, out of law school, gainfully employed. The possibilities are almost too vast to contemplate.

So, yeah. I have no neat conclusion to this. Start understanding disability issues as critical intersectional issues. Fight for economic equality, understanding that you're fighting, in large part, for disability equality. Ask questions. I'm open to them. I suspect you have other disabled friends who are, too

*There's a whole discussion around incarceration crippling employment, especially in majority-minority communities. Follow any good decarceral thinker, from Chris Hayes to Josie Duffy Rice to Ruth Wilson Gilmore (the latter understands disability as a crucial part of the struggle in ways I deeply appreciate) to understand the issue better.