#i only had so much stuff account bound and this is an alt

[skiel-infinity]

So I normally don't post my NGS stuff in here and in fact, i need to post more on my ngs alt. . . but I made a Lester cosplay in there (with a lot of difficulty) that I wanted to show off. It's very hard to get his outfit and hair accurate, so all of this is approximation. I also lack a necklace that even remotely resembles his, but. Close enough.

[thelifetimechannel]

“So what the fuck was all that” or, I acknowledge that we laid all this plot stuff out like 3 years ago so if you forgot here’s a rundown of what Coda’s Deal was

As some background, when we first started this project, the main idea was to have the versions of the kids we were invested in win the game. But as we kept working, and as the world around us got progressively nastier (and listen, I drafted this explanatory post months ago, so the ride don’t stop on that account), that didn't feel like enough. The game is sick. The game is broken. The game tortures children and builds new worlds off their backs. SBURB is what gave Caliborn the power he used to become the monster he did. How would simply playing by SBURB's rules and giving it a win be a victory? To quote TLC!Roxy,

TG: when the meteors start coming down again do we just watch? TG: when we get 2 the new universe callies gonna b there and we have 2 let her suffer bc the loop says so TG: so if the rules are still gonna force us 2 do shitty stuff do we ever rly get out?? TG: how do u win a game like that?

And so, the game became the last villain. Or what the game represents: an endless cycle of profiting off torment, promoting creation at any cost. I wanted the kids to break the cycle, since so much of the story centered around breaking out of bad patterns (personal, societal, structural). Especially in light of... everything going on in the world, I wanted to tell a story about a bunch of people who had gone through absolute hell and said, No one else should ever have to do this. I wanted to tell a story about survivors saying, Tomorrow is going to be better than today, and we are going to make sure that happens. That's a conclusion several of the characters start to come to in the later parts of the comic, until Rose directly states that her goal is to make a better system (following in her Act 4 footsteps after having learned to balance destruction with creation):

ROSE: There has to be a better way to perpetuate reality. ROSE: We may be trapped in a time loop when it comes to the cherub session, but beyond that... ROSE: I don't know what, or how, but I want to do something for the world we create, if that's where we're spat out. ROSE: If we let it keep selecting a few malleable lost children as the sole survivors to keep this cycle going, we're no better than the puppetmaster we're trying to escape.

How to accomplish that? Well, one of the forces that serves as an antagonist is the Alpha timeline.  Characters who make perfectly good decisions that simply deviate from what the Alpha demands are punished with death and banishment to the furthest ring.

ARADIA: working within the alpha timeline can be frustrating ARADIA: sometimes in my role as the maid of time i had to doom timelines where we succeeded because it would cause a paradox down the line ARADIA: for example you had to create the cancer in the humans genesis frog, otherwise a whole chain of events contributing to our own existence wouldnt be! ARADIA: there were realities where you didnt make the same mistakes ARADIA: there were some where we all did great

*

TG: it sux that it works this way TG: that u need some sort of hacky workaround 2 not die bc someone down the line fucked up or mayb u were just in the wrong place at the wrong time

In canon, it is established that the Alpha timeline is based on Lord English, as Scratch explains by saying,

The path which alone has my absolute mastery is the alpha timeline, a continuum I define as that which boasts exclusive rights both to my birth and to my death, two circumstantially simultaneous events.

Which means, without the Lord of Time forcing all viable timelines to feed into his being, multiple timelines could hypothetically coexist as long as none of them break other pre-existing loops.

ARADIA: english narrowed the options to direct all energy toward his desired outcomes much like a virus repurposing a cells production mechanisms to reproduce itself instead ARADIA: but he is gone now ARADIA: there are plenty of realities my selves left behind that could have survived if not for his loops and his insistence on wiping clean all offshoots that did not contribute to him ARADIA: an insistence that bled into the very laws of the universe ARADIA: but with his defeat the way forward is much broader

The alpha timeline isn't the only oppressive force at play, however. The other is the game and behind that, Skaia itself. Skaia is portrayed as a benevolent force for creation, but it supports a system where killing children isn't a bug. It's a feature. It's very devoted to the bigger picture and the greater good at the expense of the people caught in the system's gears, which sounds... familiar. Sure, Skaia could just exist, but Homestuck is an origin story. Almost everything has a starting point, so why not Skaia and the game too?

DIRK: The point is, this game didn't come out of nowhere. DIRK: Someone had to make it.

It made sense to me to have a benevolent cherub behind that, just as a malevolent cherub is behind the alpha timeline. So, enter alt!Calliope.

CALLIOPE: through the rules of the game that brought you here, i gave you my blessing. CALLIOPE: in doing so i hope i have created a battlefield for soldiers to rise up against him, even as my efforts brought about his own birth. CALLIOPE: both he and i labor bound to our own path from creation to destruction, locked in an ouroboros that will only end when you have passed through the final door.

JADE: just to make sure im understanding you correctly JADE: youre behind the game that ruined our lives?

And if one Muse of Space got us into this mess...

CALLIOPE: if she'd grown Up with friends like i had, she woUldn't have bUilt it that way, i know she woUldn't have. ROSE: Maybe this is your chance to set it right. CALLIOPE: what? ROSE: You're a Muse of Space too. ROSE: If she had the ability to craft the inner workings of an entire multiverse-spanning system and set it in motion, you must have that potential too. ROSE: Maybe you can change the rules.

In the walkarounds, Rose starts making her case to the other characters.

ROSE: Your mistake with the DNA affected our game session, which means the frog's construction influences how SBURB games launched within it are played. ROSE: If you did that accidentally, we might be able to influence future SBURB sessions intentionally.

And in the last update before our two flashes, they make their plan and put it to a vote.

ROXY: we need 2 come up w/ a world we like

That brings us to Coda. The alpha timeline (red snake) winds around the dream bubbles filled with ghosts who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Skaia's influence (green snake) winds around the events it engineered. We see the characters digging into DNA readouts, temple carvings, etc. to figure out how to reverse engineer the game. Then Calliope makes it happen, banishing the ouroboros of the two cherubs' influence so they won't poison the new universe. But of course, if we are banishing the alpha timeline and saying any number of realities can exist concurrently, we can't see any of them. That would be pinning us down to one. So, as Calliope works her magic, the viewers lose sight of the characters, so they can finally be free. Because if we're rebelling against authority, even we authors have to step aside in the end.

And so, for now, let’s drop the curtains and take our bow. :) As for what’s behind those curtains, who’s to say? Maybe us. Maybe you. Maybe everyone. 

[theorynexus]

Fudge, I already did 57/ Now I have to do 58/ 13 over 12, man / I guess we’re doing human stuff instead of trolling, today.

Coincidentally via some sort of textual wonder possibly related to authorial intent and/or miracles, we now have to focus on Roxy, now. Somewhat ironic, considering Terezi just said she and John wouldn’t work out. ...

***shift eyes, something about knowing the unknowable and the vagueries thereof, possible interference by the new Narrator, et cetera*** Hmmm~

What, so black holes cause suck up all the voidiness into themselves via proximity?!   Noooo~      Who’d have thought!     (In all seriousness, that gives some interesting resonance mechanic relation, here. I want to know whether it’s just Alt!Calliope that can sense said thoughts, if it’s just Roxy being over-emotional, or if any other observer would be able to pick such thoughts up and it’s just a mater of proxy-imity.)

Okay, then. I thought the point of this was to look like a completely passive observer and not tip people off other than via the black eyes, but you do you, I guess-- if that’s intentional.  Nice gazing out through the fourth wall, though. I’m sure Jade would be/is vaguely proud, knowing the narrative resonance, here, given her own fourth wall breaking shenanigans. 

I blame time and void interactions. Also Dave being an insufferable prick. Good to know, regarding Roxy and their feelings toward Dave, though.

Is Dirk going to literally shoot him in the arse?   That would be horribly ironic, and probably quite crippling to Joke Jake’s reputation and/or the power of his endorsement, if so.   Semi-related:   I do sortof understand Dave’s belief/concern with regards to the importance of this event.    What I want to know is why there are not thousands of Daves running around, all helping the campaign and being available to deal with other important tasks.

“Iced” cream is the best fricking thing, Dirk, and I don’t know what you’re talking about.

This really reminds me of Equius and Nepeta, and that is sortof cute. I almost can’t stand it.  Honestly, this relationship is actually quite similar, except Alt!Calliope is much more dominant in the relationship than Nepeta was. Also Dirk probably has more potential to damage things than Equius did (other than way out of the temporal frame of that moirallegiance, as part of Lord English--- and even then, Nepeta ironically acted as a counter to his muscle-bound rage, albeit way after much of the damage had already been done [thanks, Davesprite {albeit, unrelated to the matter at hand, this relationship was probably why Davepettasprite^2 was destined in such a way to handle Lord English, in addition to the prophesies surrounding Dave dealing with him, Davesprite being the first one to get Caledfwlch, and the flying off into the sun prophesy (which was aided greatly by Seppucrow, the true hero of the story)}]).    I guess that makes this relationship relatively more important, maybe.

So fricking wonderful and adorable.   I do wonder why there are not that many consorts, though. Maybe they are just too distracted and hyperactive to have much in the way of drive to participate in politics.  The humans I sortof vaguely understand, albeit I’d have thought that more might show up specifically for Jake’s speech, assuming that it was announced beforehand.

Dirk feels predictably antagonized, and is lashing out. I have a feeling that he’d intended to do something major before all this control was taken from him, but this will probably make it worse. Hmm.

Heh.   I don’t think that he means to “pump her full of daylight,” at the moment, so this is still funny instead of terrifying.

Huh. Dave already knew about Calliope’s gender and is chill with it. Neat.

Oh. Umm... while I’m sure that he does not need that in order to target Jade’s body if he intends to do so, that is quite foreboding. He is indeed quite capable of tricking people into doing things, at times, isn’t he?

HAH!   That is horrible, you self-obsessed weirdo! XD

More serious than being mind controlled by a space witch with bad intentions who has mind powers stolen from all the major players of her species, huh?  (I seriously still wonder how the fight against her went so relatively-seemingly easily, and what happened with her curse.  Maybe it only transfers in LE’s proximity, or something. )      ... Also, it wasn’t entirely just a joke, Roxy, geeze.

Thaaat’s what happens when your world is under a corrupting influence that is twisting the fabric of reality to their whim.  (The question is: Is this Dirk or Calliope?  Does she really have the right to judge him for his actions, if he really is expressing free will in doing so?   Yes, yes she does, because he is strongly subverting the will of others, and justice in Paradox Space demands some sort of counterbalancing force.  If his excess relevance as the Narrator is the only cost he faces, rather than dying a Just Death, he should feel lucky.)

***peals of cherubic laughter peal out in the background***    Random reminder:  Angels (in Homestuck) are terrifying demons that should be taken as harbringers of the apocalypse. Alt!Calliope has already played this job once along with Lord English. Is her presence outside canon an ill omen by definition?  (I am not sure Calliope the younger entirely counts, given her special circumstances, by the way. Hard to say.)

Beautiful. It’s almost like he’s an open PAGE of Hope, waiting to be written! 

This is a somewhat wise impression.  But it’s complicated, and great power means great responsibility. Especially when the nuclear genie has already been let out of the bottle on account of someone’s great ambition.  (Note: I actually find Jane’s impulse to rule over her creation to be a reasonable one to have, all things considered. I am not judging her negatively for this. I am just not 100% certain that it is the right path to go on before they get a few dozen more years to wise them up, or maybe a few centuries.   Wisdom is a very important thing for leadership, and it comes with age!   Of course, experience also helps, but it might be useful to have some sort of smaller-scale experimentation with politic--  oh, wait, wasn’t she made a mayor at some point, according to the credits?  That really hasn’t been emphasized in the epilogue at all, but probably should be more heavily considered.    It’s still not enough experience for me to feel confident in her, but it’s something. Hmm.)

I mean... I can hear you. I thought your awareness was still there. I guess maybe having your position of control taken away from you might have sapped that as well, maybe.   And yes, it is very interesting, indeed. Now, please put down the gun and try to negotiate more reasonably and in a more civilized fashion than the mistaken cowboy diplomacy idea you’re now engaging in. I will give Dirk some slack insofar as he is still getting used to her identifying as such, but he is sortof making a fool of himself by lashing out at Alt!Callie like that. It’s rather irrational, and doesn’t reflect very well on his character. It makes him out as being rather petulant and inflexible when it comes to identity matters.

Yeeeeep.

This is true (regarding the last part).  It is also really sad to see them fighting like this. >:

Dave, you are being a dummy. You should really stop.

Aww. That is a very cute reaction. :3 Also, that is somewhat dishonest, Alt!Calliope.  You should say “seemingly” nothing.  ***harrumphs and wags my finger at them!***

It is somewhat rude of him to laugh, but I am almost tempted to laugh too, specifically at the fact that this is Alt!Calliope confirming emphatically the beauty of their other version in Roxy’s eyes. It has a sort of ironic tension and silliness to it. Possibly some pride.        I therefore cannot entirely blame him for his laughter, for I do not know whether that is what he is laughing at, or if he’s laughing at the idea of finding an alien skull monster beautiful (which she really is).

It is sortof nice to see this encouragement from Dirk, albeit it is probably laced with irony and sarcasm.  Knowing one’s self and admitting/accepting the things one feels is incredibly important to a person’s health! It feels brotherly of him.

I wonder if Roxy actually feels that way (that it is none of her business), or if it’s Alt!Calliope’s somewhat cold (and sarcastically-directed) interpretation of things. Hmm.

A very important question to ask for someone who is dealing with their own identity issues and/or worries about their friends judging them for them. This is really all there is to say on the matter.

That is a complicated question.  The answer is this:  Identity is only partially self-deterministic.  You can certainly struggle and hope and wish for certain things, indulge in certain behaviors, and see what rubs off on you, or what you feel right about, but in all honesty, you are who you are.    This CAN change over time, and that is something that most people don’t think about. To say you “change your mind” about “the person you wanna be” is not an accurate statement: you don’t necessarily choose anything at all, other than whether you want to actually embrace who you are and/or are becoming, and if you will actually tell anyone about it.  In that sense: whether it is too late to change your mind about who you say and outwardly project you are?---  no, it is not too late.  However, it can potentially be pretty fricking confusing to people, and some friends may not be able to handle it, especially if they have pretty deeply imbedded themselves in your own journey/identity, and/or anchored themselves in it as part of their own.   This can cause them to be pretty put off, and potentially to have difficulty maintaining their relationship with you. As such, in summary:   one should be careful and always very much self-reflective about identity issues.  The choice to come out with any sort of change or difference is not an easy one, and someone should not be blamed for either side they fall upon--- whether they want to keep who they are a secret and/or for how long, or if they want to project it to the world (unless they are really violent about it and/or attempt to shame someone/force themselves upon another person as a “necessary” thing to do for their own growth/impulses or whathaveyou: that is just abusive and wrong).

No. While there is some degree of social capital involved and thus you should attempt to time things properly and take the needs of others into account (which means you have no right to get upset at them if they don’t react a certain way and/or are too involved with whatever is going on in their life right then to grapple with your assuredly stunning revelation), one does not owe their friends any sort of bombshell moment, and any sort of desire for one and/or push on someone else’s part for identity-related drama and/or revelation is actually what is greedy.

***shrug***     I guess it’s funny insofar as it has psychological humor wrapped into it and it makes the phraseology more cutesy (thus more approachable, I guess), but it’s not mind-blowing or anything.

And that’s okay. Someone can be casual about these things and not make it a federal fricking issue if they don’t want to.  It’s also okay to have repeated revelations and/or constantly wrestle with who you actually are. It’s not something to be embarrassed about or paranoid with in a social respect, especially in a world with numerous different species of alien humanoids that have different and somewhat conflicting types of identities and drives.  Almost indisputably, that should make identity issues less of a socially big deal.

Yes. Just like you helped him before.   Oh wait, what was that? You had years to figure it out, but did nothing?    Ah, well. Couldn’t be helped, I guess.   Brothers do have their own separate matters to consider, after all.

***snickers***      Honestly, he’s probably right, but for different reasons than he’s expressing.    

***cough time travel, cough***       Note:  I actually don’t want to read that. It would feel like a really awkward sort of waste of narrative time.  I’m just annoyed at the very ironic lack of time manipulation he’s been doing. Though in this case it sortof does suit him, insofar as he is using time concerns that he obviously could get around as if they were a suit of armor and/or armaments for him to verbally exploit.  Very knight-y. Aaand this feels like about the right time to end this post.

[opticor]

warframe replay on a baby account! first impressions!!

i knew the new star chart (which is admittedly no longer new by any stretch of imagination) is great, but i didn’t expect that junction tasks would be so useful! they really help with the dreaded “so what am i supposed to be doing now?” issue

i was surprised to find out that Cetus completely blocks progression just a couple of missions in. i thought it would be optional at that point, though i don’t actually mind it. i always wished we would see civilians early on as a more tangible way of showing what we are even fighting for in the first place, though i am not entirely certain if it succeeds in doing that. also i would have liked a bit more hand-holding when it comes to your first syndicate. the system itself is self-explanatory enough (i think? like, once you find Konzu, if you keep taking jobs and coming back to him you are bound to level up and so on) but where’s the incentive to do that at such low level? though, in all, i guess it looks enough like any starter town/quest hub so!

that said i really disliked how crowded it was. you’ve just been woken up, i always thought it was supposed to be a lonelier journey. and less shiny, at this level, also..

i was thrilled that they let you know about scanning things with Saya’s quest, but it does nothing to introduce the codex as far as i noticed. the name itself should be enough of a hint, i guess? but with how often i’ve seen people complaining about scanning breaking the flow of the game, i’d expect a more in-your-face incentive to actually do it. by the way i’m really not a fan of the way the most readily available lore is all shoved in the Fragments section, though i personally can’t think of an obvious better way to organize the codex. also found it incredibly disappointing that Ordis doesn’t react to scanning the Cephalon Fragments one way or the other.

speaking of story and lore, bosses are still weird. you encounter Vor and Kril twice each, and still with no explanation for it. perhaps my experience on Uranus is not universal, but i didn’t get Natah till after i killed Tyl Regor -- and he is not only very much alive in that quest, but taunting you to go kill him as the final transmission. i can’t think of a solution to this past changing the quest trigger and/or locking the boss node behind quest completion but i think it’s just not right the way it is. finally, the Alad V situation is absolutely tragic. i know it’s been said many times but it’s still shocking, and it’s not even a question of messing up your own progression -- which i also did because i went to Maroo’s bazaar before i met her in her quest. ow

quest-wise, i was surprised that it only takes about 30 hours (mission time) to get to TSD, and TWW is just a few missions away from it. it’s a completely different experience when they are not months away from each other and there’s no build-up to them. it was interesting doing them when i only had my starter, though! it puts a certain weight on the warframe being harmed and then lost when you have no replacement for it. i wonder how it would’ve felt if that were my first playthrough.

once past TSD, not having any colour palettes is really painful! as always i’m just fine painting all of my stuff off-white with an orange glow, but when it comes to operator customization, the colours are lacking. i still managed a cute one, but it was a bit weird that you can’t do something as basic as brown hair? i could’ve compensated if i had logged in for the free palettes, particularly Valentine’s, but it would be very kind and helpful regardless if the entire classic palette was unlocked from the beginning, or at least available for credits. (yes i know colours are cheap but i was waiting for a discount which i only got today. would a new player know these exist? things always seem expensive to me without. maybe cause i’m poor?)

backtracking a bit, i admit that having the free Vectis from PoE launch helped me immensely with progression. is it an advantage that i got it for free? i don’t know. it’s low mastery and relatively accessible craft, and it was the first or second gun i made on my main account as well. but it is great that it came with a potato, though!

thank god it’s not clan research despite being a Tenno gun by the way. an awful lot of things are clan research. i’m not allowed in my own clan on alt, which is a bit inconvenient, but not tragic. i imagine for people who are just now starting out it could be quite frustrating once they realize how many great and useful things are clan-gated. my biggest gripe is the incubator upgrade because without it raising dogs can be very stressful and expensive. then there’s all the great guns of course

finally, from the bottom of my heart, fuck the Corpus. fuck every single sapping osprey. i only have fifteen armour please leave me alone you floating pieces of shit

[entergamingxp]

Torchlight 3 Early Access Preview — A Set of Tracks Headed in the Right Direction

June 26, 2020 1:00 PM EST

Torchlight 3 is now in early access but does the third game in the series hold up the lofty standards of its predecessors?

Recently, Echtra has been making a ton of changes to their new Torchlight game. The team transitioned their old Torchlight Frontiers project from free-to-play to premium, renaming it Torchlight 3 in the process. They’ve also been slowly adding new classes, features, and updates. And now, the game is in early access to give the developers more feedback as they continue to build out the game. Over the past week, I’ve played about 10 hours of Torchlight 3. While the game certainly has a solid foundation that I hope Echtra can turn into a great game, the game still has a long way to go to get there.

Now, to be clear, 10 hours isn’t anywhere close to the amount I’d play if this were a full review. So, please, take everything with a large grain of salt. And, as a reminder, the game is still in active development. Things can and will change. Finally, I’ve only really put significant time into the Sharpshooter and Railmaster classes. There are two other classes that I’ve barely touched.

It’s also important to remember this is early access. There are, as expected, several bugs and kinks still being worked out. I don’t think it’s that helpful to talk about them at this stage, so I won’t be mentioning them. That said if you are thinking about hopping in now, keep in mind that Torchlight 3 definitely has some technical issues.

With all those caveats out of the way, let’s actually talk about Torchlight 3 as it exists in its current state.

In short, if you like classic action RPGs like Diablo 2 or Path of Exile, you’ll probably be fine here. The game plays exactly like its contemporaries. I’ve racked up thousands of hours in Diablo 2 and 3, so playing Torchlight 3 felt like slipping on an old glove. In some ways, that’s a good thing, but it also means the gameplay feels a bit old hat.

Take, for instance, the Sharpshooter. She’s your basic ranged damage-dealer. Sure, she has a few tricks up her sleeve (notably her ghost dog), but mostly you’re kiting enemies around and dealing massive damage to single-targets.

That’s not a bad thing. I had a ton of fun playing as a Sharpshooter because you have to constantly stay on the run. Her playstyle is engaging. You’re not just standing in one spot and swinging a sword. That said, she certainly feels like a character that could just exist in any other ARPG.

The Railmaster, on the other hand, is one of the most inventive pet characters I’ve ever seen. Instead of an animal or demon or whatever, the Railmaster has a fully automated train as his pet. You lay down a track and your train moves along it, firing at enemies along the way. As you level up, you can add new cars to the train, turning your train into a murder machine. It’s all completely unique and totally awesome.

If only all the character classes were that inventive. It’s hard to have any desire to play as a basic ranged class or a typical mage when you have a dude that uses an automated tank to fight off baddies. I’d love to see Echtra use their creative juices to dream up some other wild classes before the full release.

Outside of classes and combat, Torchlight 3 continues to feel like every other ARPG you’ve ever played. It has randomly generated maps. It has random packs of elite monsters. The one thing that helps it stand out just a little bit is the fort.

Early in the game, you discover a run-down fort that you decide to make your own. You have complete control over what its inside looks like. As I’m early, mine is pretty sparse, but there’s a ton of potential here. Importantly, your fort is account-wide. So, you can play on as many alts as you want and still contribute resources to your main character’s progression.

Being able to carry over your progression across your account might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Inside your fort, you have several items that provide passive bonuses to your character. For example, one is a luck tree that improves your loot drops. You can increase the bonus by feeding the tree unwanted gear. Since it’s account-bound, you’re not losing out on progress by trying out a new character. Instead of feeling restrictive, it encourages you to try out new characters. That’s a great move.

Outside of the fort though, there’s not much in Torchlight 3 that makes me want to play it over games like Path of Exile or Diablo 3. It just doesn’t do much new right now, and those games are much more fleshed out. Granted, they’ve had years to get there, so I’m not saying Torchlight doesn’t have a chance to be the next big thing in the genre. However, it does lessen my excitement for the final release.

I mean, look at Diablo 3. When it launched, if you wanted to play a new character, you just had to run through the campaign again. Later on, it added Adventure mode and completely revitalized the game. Instead of learning from that and incorporating it, Torchlight 3 just has you replaying the campaign when you start up new characters.

Now, can they add in their own twist on Adventure mode? Absolutely. I really hope they do. Echtra seems committed to making an alt-friendly game, so it certainly seems like a strong possibility. But it’s not there yet.

Things like this make the game feel old in a lot of ways. Just look at how the game handles skills. Compared to other games in the genre, Torchlight 3 offers a paltry selection of skills to customize your character. If all those skills are impactful, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, it does restrict the player’s creativity and ability to experiment.

Taking it a step further, Torchlight 3 doesn’t let you respec your character for free. You have to use an in-game resource. Personally, I thought we left that behind a long time ago. It even further makes you feel locked into a path and discourages experimentation. To me, that’s a mistake. Maybe the devs have plans to change it, but it just doesn’t seem like something that should exist in 2020.

At the end of the day, Torchlight 3 has a solid framework. The tracks of a good game are there, especially if Echtra focuses on things that make their game unique. More stuff like the Railmaster, please. However, in its current state, I don’t see why I would play it over something like Diablo 3 or Path of Exile. Those games are so much richer and more fleshed out.

Of course, Torchlight 3 might just get there. It is in early access after all. I’m excited to watch the game’s continued development and hope it can live up to its predecessors. The potential feels there. They just have to capitalize on it.

June 26, 2020 1:00 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/06/torchlight-3-early-access-preview-a-set-of-tracks-headed-in-the-right-direction/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=torchlight-3-early-access-preview-a-set-of-tracks-headed-in-the-right-direction

[strawbunny-slime]

Sooo~ ENTIRELY too long ago (sorry!! aaaa), @shyflowerfairy and @alexcutecolly both mentioned me in one of those cool facts-about-yourself challenges, which you can find the veeeeeery first version of here! Without any further ado, five just-whatever facts about me!

1. My favorite story right now is this young-adult comic called Goodbye to Halos! It’s suuuuper cool omg and I don’t want to spoil too much about it, but it’s got some gorgeous art, wonderful writing, and maaaybe one of the most beautiful, influential analyses of love as a concept that I’ve ever read? And also the main character is a trans girl and I maaay or may not have a crush on like...75 to 90 percent of the characters introduced in it. I can’t exactly recommend it to anyone under 18, but if you’re over 18 and you want a story about a trans girl in a city full of queer folk trying to find out more about her place in a world of cool magic, go looking for it!! (And also check out Portside Stories while you’re at it; it’s an abandoned webcomic by the same author, Valerie Halla, and it’s responsible for me coming to grips with my gender identity!!)

2. I’m polyamorous! I’ve got like four girlfriends, maybe five?, they all know each other and love each other a whole ton, and while I haven’t asked them about it before now, I am 110% certain they would all be okay with me ending up in relationships with other folks! (Which is why I can have four girlfriends & also flirt with like 5 different people here. =u=)

3. I first got into Pokemon when my brother decided to try Pokemon Platinum. He made it all the way to the Distortion World, then got stuck on one of the puzzles there. I took over to try to solve it for him aaaaaand I never gave it back. It’s kind of sad - I bet he’d still play the series if I hadn’t stolen Platinum from him! But he doesn’t seem to mind, for whatever that’s worth. ‘^^

4. I don’t ironically like anything! Either I genuinely like a thing or I genuinely dislike a thing. I used to pretend like I ironically like a few things most folks hate - a few main-series Sonic titles, chiefly - but somewhere along the line (Valerie Halla, the artist I mentioned in question 1, might have had something to do with this), I sorta dropped the “ironically” bit. And honestly, I’ve been happier ever since! Sure, I’m bound to get some weird looks when I say I really, honestly do like Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (considered one of the worst games in the entire franchise), but I’ve come to realize it’s way more fun to just own an interest than to pretend not to have it at all. (This is one of the reasons why I also think cringe culture needs to hurry up and die - folks shouldn’t be mocked for trying to own an interest in something! Especially when most of those folks are kids?? Like seriously what the fuck)

5. For as chipper and peppy as I try to be (those are fun words, actually, wow), I’m actually kind of a nervous wreck when ya get ta know me. I have a lot of insecurities that I’m trying to work my way through, or rationalize somehow so that I can at least own those, too, instead of pretending they don’t exist. Most of them are silly, attention-seeking insecurities, too, to be honest - I’m always worried when I see my follower count drop, and I’m a little disheartened that I don’t get a constant flood of asks for Sweetheart anymore, and honestly? For as embarrassed as I am to have it? I’m a little miffed that only like three people asked for info about my lewd alt?? I dunno, I dunno, aaaah!! Point is I am cheerful and happy to talk to folks and offer advice but also I am insecure and if we’re good enough friends I may accidentally dump like 20 things on you at once, whoops!!

Okay, that last one was kind of a downer! Let’s get a sixth, just to keep things a lil happier around here.

6. I must have mentioned this before, but this isn’t actually my first Tumblr account! Up ‘til about a year ago, I had a main account that was kinda steeped in sociopolitical activism and discourse, and it wasn’t bad, don’t get me wrong, but when my account ended up being like...99% full of no-extra-commentary reblogs, with, at best, 0.5% commentary and 0.5% stuff I made on my own? I sorta decided to try to make this one as a creative writing project, and to get more acquainted with my, shall we say, interests. In an ironic twist, I logged into this one for the first time, and I just...never logged out! The old one’s been gathering dust for...a year now, almost? And I don’t ever plan to go back to it, either. I’ve got a nice mix of topics to discuss here, from g/t and vore to venting to that sociopolitical activism I mentioned. It’s way more fun here, and I have all y’all to thank for that!! <3

Now for the tricky part - tagging 10 of my followers! Off the top of my head (ignore this if you’ve already done this challenge): @giantessfeferi @tinyinumason @somedaynotsoon @voracioussinner @ayasebunny @talltails @petite-pocket-bee @j-anne-bonne @gt-flufftimes @gtanddragons !! (and @so-very-small omg I should’ve included them here aaa)

[utopianparadoxist]

I see your reasoning on that idea, but my issue is the idea of abstraction, which was brought up in the critique but which you did not, imo, address. At that point, any action by any person could be seen as selfish. Dirk wants to live up to Dave's legacy because he doesn't want to feel like he failed Dave; Dave wants to serve Rose's guidance because he can't value himself without serving others. 'Selfish' becomes meaningless because in the end, no one in the world can escape themselves. (1/2)

(2/2) And if everyone is selfish, then what’s the point in making an argument about anyone? I see in this point a recurring trend in the arguments: the focus is on proving a theoretical concept at the expense of psychological nuance. Pages are active, active is selfish, therefore all actions of a Page are selfish. Yet I feel, from Dave’s final comment to Rose about character arcs, that all these characters are meant to be more complex and messy than the abstractions of their mythological roles.

Yeah, talking this stuff out with Viko has made me realize I’ve been overemphasizing the selfishness/selflessness angle a bit more than I think is accurate, or at least like, clearly posited in the comic. Not every single behavior an Active player engages in is necessarily selfish, and vice versa for Passive players. In particular, I think Viko raised a very good point about Jake’s dying for Jane. The Masterpiece/Dirk moment I feel is somewhat different, specifically because it’s so coded with romantic subtext. 

I don’t think the distinctions are meaningless, but Alt!Calliope and Caliborn are the only characters I’d say really hold to the Selfless/Selfish mentality absolutely (well, besides Gamzee, who never seems motivated by anything but Caliborn when he has motivation to speak of). Everyone else is, by and large, more complicated. Which makes sense, since engaging with others and having that push and pull of wills is bound to bring out different facets of an individual. 

So I think I’d say as with everything else, the Active/Passive describes a tendency or predisposition with Selfishness/Selflessness, too. It still seems like a pretty consistent established element, but I think it reads a lot stronger as one element that also takes others into account--such as how proactive vs. reactive a player is, how self-focused vs. group-focused they are, the “benefit oneself” vs. “benefit others” behavior in terms of mechanics, and so on. 

Makes for less concise and easily transmitted analysis, but then Homestuck inherently resists reductive takes, so that makes sense. So yeah, I’ll readily admit I’ve gotten carried away and made some pretty poor overwrought arguments–It’s a bad habit of mine. Honestly the strongest arguments for Jake being selfish are his treatment of Jane early on during the session (which directly parallels Horruss) and what he does when power-boosted by Aranea: Make Brain Ghost Dirk exclusively to make himself feel safe and protected when he had the power to pretty much win the whole session by himself, if he were so inclined.  

Since those points together describe both Jake’s largest impact on the session over time, AND Jake’s impact at his most effective being to his own benefit, I’m pretty comfortable resting Pages’ active status on those particular points, as far as Jake’s concerned.That said, with regards to your statement

I see your reasoning on that idea, but my issue is the idea of abstraction, which was brought up in the critique but which you did not, imo, address.

I’m not super sure what idea you’re referring to. As such, while I tried to address what I think you’re getting at, I’m not super sure that I did. Feel free to follow up if you have lingering questions or if you were getting to something else? Otherwise, thanks for giving me the chance to clarify my position on this front. 

[birdiethebibliophile]

{fic} Bright-Eyed and Bushy-Tailed (part 1)

Word Count:  1.8k Relationship:  Lucien/Cassian Characters:  Lucien, Cassian, Rhysand, Feyre Warnings:  Depression, PTSD, also just a lot of regular Sadness

Here on AO3.

Summary:    Modern AU with Martial Arts Instructor!Cassian and Sad Artist!Lucien. This ship needs more love.

Notes:  I do not have direct experience with either PTSD or depression, so if I write something offensive/harmful, PLEASE tell me and I will take it down or change it right away! Thank you!

Shoutout to @squaddreamcourt for inspiring this with her work While We Spoke of Many Things and to @blogtealdeal for inspiring Photographer!Lucien with her lovely art.

__________________

The minute Cassian saw Lucien Kelly, he knew he was in deep shit.

“It’s the eye, isn’t it?”

Cassian blinked, suddenly aware that he’d been staring at the other man with an intensity that was bound to be noticed. “What?”

Lucien gestured to his face, to the vicious scar running in a vertical line across a glass eye with a striking golden iris. “I don’t blame you. It can be a bit distracting at first,” he said.

Don’t do it, Cassian thought.

Lucien smirked.

God dammit.

This was what he got for being a good friend. Feyre had been so persuasive – come on, Cassian, it’s just one night, Rhys and I haven’t been on a date in ages and I don’t like leaving him alone yet – like Lucien was their strange, ginger lovechild. Cassian hadn’t been able to say no.

It helped that he’d been only a few drops short of drunk off his ass. Her fault. She knew his weakness for good whiskey, and had invested in a bottle or two for just such an occasion.

By the time he was sober again, she cheerfully told him he’d already agreed to help out and both she and Rhys were sooooooo grateful, really, and that I’m sure you’ll enjoy each other’s company and that was that.

Cassian let the door swing shut behind him. “Have Feyre and Rhys left yet?” he asked.

“Only about five minutes ago.” Lucien fiddled with his phone. “There. They made me promise to send them a text once you got here.”

Cassian wondered idly whether Feyre had left the rest of that whiskey where he could get at it. He hoped so. He wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to make it through the evening without it. Why Feysand had chosen to leave for their date at four in the afternoon was beyond him. “Why can’t they leave you, anyways?” he asked abruptly. “You’re an adult.”

Lucien waved a hand. He was sprawled on the couch, long hair of a decidedly red hue haphazardly braided and flung over one shoulder. “Didn’t Feyre fill you in?” he asked, tone dripping with sarcasm. “I’m a danger to myself.”

Cassian’s eyes widened. “What, she thinks –”

Lucien cut him off. “Not what you’re thinking. She’s afraid I’m going to run back to Tamlin if she doesn’t keep half an eye on me at all times.”

Tamlin. Cassian knows that name, both personally and professionally:  Feyre’s abusive ex, and the twenty-something CEO of the biggest pharmaceutical company this side of the Atlantic. “You used to be involved with Tamlin?”

Lucien’s laugh sounded hollow and ironic. “Oh, don’t I wish. No, not like that. I worked under him, talked to other CEOs, negotiated business deals.”

He paused, but Cassian didn’t say a word, just slung his duffel bag onto a kitchen chair. “I did live with him,” Lucien went on after a moment. “But that’s it.”

Cassian managed to hold back a sound of disbelief. As if any man, straight or otherwise, could just live with someone like Lucien. He’d seen Tamlin a time or two – handsome in that old money kind of way:  gold hair and green eyes and a shoulder-to-hip ratio that would make comic book artists weep. Nothing special, though. Just another white guy with enough cash for hairstylists and personal trainers.

Lucien was different, with the scar and the fiery hair and the slim build. It would take an accomplished artist (had Feyre ever painted him?) to capture the way Lucien lay sprawled on the couch:  one smooth line sweeping down the length of his body and bespeaking a kind of otherworldly elegance. Old blood, Cassian would call it, not old money. Lucien looked like he should be stuck in a tower, or drawing water from a stone well and finding a magical being that would give him three wishes. Or maybe he was the magical being in the well.

“And yet Feyre’s worried you’ll go back to him,” Cassian said, sitting backwards in the kitchen chair alongside the one on which he’d thrown his bag. “Why are you here in the first place?”

“Feyre took me with her when she…” Lucien hesitated for a long moment. “…left. For good.”

“Why?” Cassian asked again, well aware he was prying.

“Why do you think?” Abruptly, Lucien picked up his phone again. Cassian took the hint and left him alone.

 It was some time before either of them spoke again. “You hungry?” Cassian asked Lucien. “Feyre told me to get takeout and charge Rhys’s account.”

Lucien shrugged. Over the past three hours, Cassian had noticed him growing more… listless. For the first two, he’d taken at least seventeen photos on his phone, read a few chapters of the paperback sitting on the coffee table, and listened to an album of some alt-rock band Cassian didn’t recognize. But once the third hit… Cassian had watched out of the corner of his eye, pretending to be taking notes on the Muay Thai video playing on his laptop. He’d watched when Lucien stared at the paperback for five minutes without turning a page, and when the other man dropped his phone on the floor and didn’t pick it up, and when he started rebraiding his hair but stopped halfway through.

“Well, I’m going to order Asian, I think,” Cassian said after another moment of silence. “Potstickers. Lo mein. Broccoli beef. The whole nine yards. Who knows when I’ll get the chance to spend Rhys’s money with impunity again?”

Lucien didn’t respond, besides a nod to show he’d heard him.

“Anything in particular you want me to order for you?” Cassian asked, and almost automatically, his voice dropped a few decibels to match Lucien’s silence.

Another shrug.

“Here.” Cassian picked up the take-out menu and walked to the couch. “I’m going to give you a couple choices, okay?” he told Lucien, making it clear by his tone and volume that the okay meant if that’s okay with you and not this is what’s going to happen now whether you like it or not. “And you pick one. The one that…” Cassian hesitated, thinking how to phrase this. “The one that sounds like you could eat it.”

After a moment, Lucien nodded, which caused the corners of Cassian’s mouth to tug up, if only slightly. “All right. You vegetarian or anything? You like spicy stuff?”

Lucien nodded, then shook his head.

“Vegetarian and not spicy. Got it. Looks like you still have some good options. How about…” Cassian studied the menu for a second. He had no idea what Lucien liked, apart from what he’d just communicated. “Okay, three choices.” He turned the menu around and showed it to Lucien. “Fried rice with vegetables, miso soup, or spring rolls?”

Lucien raised his hand and tapped on the miso soup. Then, after a moment, he tapped the spring rolls as well, and gave Cassian a small half-smile – the pale shadow of the smirk that made Cassian’s heart skip a beat earlier.

Cassian made up for it, grinning widely. “You got it. After all, Feysand owe you for leaving you with the likes of me.” He winked at Lucien, then headed back across the room to grab his phone and place the order.

 “We’re not friends.”

“Yeah, I know.”

They’d stacked the takeout containers on the coffee table. Every one of them was empty. Lucien had taken one look at the ridiculous amount of food they’d ordered and told Cassian – in a voice that was quiet but there – that there was no way he’d eat all that. Cassian had bet him twenty bucks that he could. (Cassian won, of course.)

After dinner, Cassian had turned on the TV, flipping through channels at such a rate that Lucien reached over and snatched the remote. He’d turned on some sort of home improvement show and informed Cassian, in no uncertain terms, that he would get the remote back over his dead body – which, of course, Cassian had taken as a challenge. They’d had a brief fight that mostly involved tossing pillows across the room. It ended as suddenly as it had begun, when one of the pillows knocked one of Rhys’s endless knickknacks over with a crash and Lucien flinched. Cassian had pretended not to notice, but he slumped back into his chair with a huff and declared that it was too much work, and besides, the home improvement guys were using power tools and sledgehammers, so he supposed he could endure it for a little while longer.

“I mean it,” Lucien said sternly. “Not friends.”

“Whatever you say, Lucien darling,” Cassian said with a grin, borrowing Rhys’s nickname for Feyre.

Lucien scowled. “You’re entirely too big for that chair, by the way,” he said. “You look ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous? Or amazing?” Cassian knew full well he looked ridiculous. Feysand’s chairs were not meant for six-foot-five behemoths such as himself. Even Rhys – no lightweight himself – was half a head shorter than he was and had maybe a third of the muscle.

Lucien, on the other hand, fit in just fine. He was only a few inches shorter than Cassian, but half his size. “Ridiculous,” Lucien asserted, snapping a picture and tossing his phone to Cassian. “Take a look. You can’t deny it.”

Cassian caught the phone and turned it from side to side, pretending to examine the photo from all angles. “I’ll suspend judgement for now,” he said, tossing it back. “You into photography, then?”

“Used to be.” Lucien’s mouth tightened. “But, you know. It got so I didn’t have time. And then my camera broke…”

There’s an edge to his voice that told Cassian to leave it. “What do you do now?”

“Sit around – what did you call them? – Feysand’s place and be useless, mostly,” Lucien said sourly. “Take up space. Take time away from their jobs so they can drive me places.”

There was an awkward pause.

“I have a truck,” Cassian said.

Lucien groaned. “God, not you too. I don’t want your pity.”

“Good,” Cassian shot back. “Because you’re not getting it.” He sat up. “My studio holds weird hours, and it’s pretty close. Better than letting Rhys drive you around in that thing he calls a car.”

Lucien was silent for a moment. “It’d be an hour drive three times a week,” he finally said. “At the very least.”

“Shit, that’s nothing,” Cassian said with a grin. “Wanna bet that I can get Rhys to give me gas money?”

“I already lost one bet tonight.” Lucien stared at the ceiling as he thought. “Fine. For Feyre and Rhys. But this still doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

“Whatever you say.”

[jeanjauthor]

From a DoD employee, or so I'm told:

"A friend who is a Department of Defense employee posted this on his wall. He said: "I could not have possibly articulated this better. It's lengthy, but please read!"

"As a federal employee, I feel obligated to comment on this. A few people have asked me questions about all this stuff going on, so I figured I'd just post this for everyone's consumption.

FACTS

There are approximately 2.7 million executive branch employees, not including uniformed military personnel (the number is closer to 4 million with uniformed military personnel included).

There are 18 "cabinet level" executive agencies--this includes departments like Defense, State. Each cabinet agency is led by a Secretary--a person that is appointed at the pleasure of the President (and may be fired at his pleasure, too) but also confirmed by the Senate. They're called "Cabinet agencies" because they compose the President's Cabinet--and also establish the Constitutional line of succession within the government. Within the cabinet agencies, however, are career civil service/federal employees. These people (like me) are not political appointees. More on this below.

Distinct from Cabinet level agencies are "independent federal agencies." Examples of these executive agencies are the EPA; the Postal Service; the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO); the Federal Reserve Board, etc. The difference between an independent federal agency and a cabinet agency is that--although they fall under the Executive Branch--they are far more removed from the political process than the cabinet agencies. Independent agencies are free to make their own decisions without having to first check with the president (although they are subject to Congressional oversight).

The heads of these agencies are appointed by the President, but must be confirmed by the Senate. Because of the important and specialized work that these agencies do, they are insulated from much of the political pressure that often influences members of Congress, the President, and cabinet-level agencies. Additionally, unlike the heads of the cabinet departments, whom the President can fire for any reason at all (like if the Secretary of Defense were to disagree with the President in public), the heads of independent agencies cannot be removed by the President unless he has “cause” — that is, a really good, legitimate reason regarding their job performance. Additionally, independent agencies play a vital role in administering the law, because each agency is an expert in the area of law for which it was created. And, like the Cabinet level agencies, these independent agencies are filled with career civil servants.

BIG POINT:

ALL federal employees, whether in Cabinet agencies or independent agencies, are required by law to swear the following oath before we may be employed in the federal government:

"I , [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God." (5 U.S.C. §3331). As Federal civil servants, we take an oath of office by which we swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution not only establishes our system of government, it actually defines the work role for Federal employees - "to establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty."

What is my point in telling you all this?

(1) While it is true that the President is the "head" of the Executive Department, you must understand that the entire federal government is structured in a manner to ensure that our laws are faithfully executed, and that federal government business in most areas REMAINS FREE OF PARTISAN INFLUENCE. There are laws that forbid federal employees from ever even discussing politics in the workplace. We are not allowed to discuss with each other at work who we voted for, our party affiliations, etc. And ALL of our work products and conclusions are supposed to be non-partisan.

These laws are also in place to protect us from retribution or reprisal (i.e., if our boss knew we were a Democrat but he/she was a Republican and thus they didn't think our work product would advance their agenda and so they pass us over for promotions or fire us, etc.) Our job is to present the truth and the best evidence, so that the White House may make informed decisions. This may be a surprise to most people, but think about it--how much chaos would ensue if every time the party controlling the White House flips, that the entire federal government--4 million employees--has to "switch" mindsets? Our government wasn't set up that way.... BUT

(2) All of the talk coming out of the Trump Administration is threatening this structure and order. Now, this could be out of ignorance for how the federal government is and always has been structured (a likely explanation, seeing how few in the administration have never had any experience working in the federal government), or out of malevolence toward the federal workforce. But all the talk coming from Conway, Spicer, and Trump about "get with the program or get out;" "be loyal to the Administration or be fired" is in DIRECT CONFLICT with how our government is set up

(3) Also in direct conflict with how our government is structured is Trump's insanely partisan meddling with the independent agencies. They are, under the law, intended to be independent and not have to "check with the President" each and every time they need to do something (but remember, they remain subject to Congressional oversight, so they aren't just out there running wild). This is why the Administration's shut down of independent agencies' media accounts (like the Park Service, etc.), or the demand that all EPA grants first be "checked" by the White House to see if the White House thinks they are necessary is unprecedented.

With actions like this, this administration is eroding and frankly attempting to "overthrow" or buck the entire structure of the federal government. And again--the agencies are independent because they are filled with subject matter experts hired to fulfill that agency's mission. But, the way this administration is running things, you now have the brightest people in our nation making decisions in their subject matter area, only to have Trump staffers saying that the White House can override those decisions. In other words, folks with no experience stifling or rejecting the decisions made by those in our country with the most knowledge on a particular topic. And this brings me to my last point:

(4) THE OATH. Federal government employees are PUBLIC SERVANTS. We work for the public, NOT whatever party sits in the White House. Our job is to faithfully assist the President (whatever President) to fulfill his policy priorities, BUT--our job is to do so WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE LAW. We swear an oath to the CONSTITUTION, and promise--on behalf of the whole US population--to commit our allegiance to the CONSTITUTION, not the President. And we swear--on behalf of the whole US population--to protect and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC.

(5) Despite all of the above, the Trump Administration seems to be intent on dismantling the federal government. As the below article points out, "for years, many conservatives have argued that the federal bureaucracy is stacked against them, making it harder for them to get things done even when they control the White House, Congress or both." The Administration is turning the story of federal government employees resisting the administration's policies into a "partisan trench warfare" story.

People like Gingrich are saying "the pushback against the new administration reveals how firmly entrenched liberals are and how threatened they feel by the new regime. He cited an analysis by the Hill newspaper that showed that 95 percent of campaign donations from employees at 14 federal agencies went to Hillary Clinton last fall." So what do they say? "This is essentially the opposition in waiting. [Trump] may have to clean out the Justice Department because there are so many left-wingers there. State is even worse.” Gingrich said Trump might push for civil service revisions to make it easier to fire federal workers.

CONCLUSION

I hope what I wrote provides some clarity and background for you on stories like the one below, or the stories you may be reading about en masse State Department employee objections to Trump, or the Alt Movements within the Park Service. This isn't partisan trench warfare within the Executive Branch. If federal employees are resisting what is happening, it is out of duty and obligation to our oath and our Constitution, not simply because "all fed employees" are the liberal "opposition in waiting" like Gingrich said or simply because we don't like Trump.

And, as citizens, I just hope you are all informed enough to recognize and realize the DRAMATIC changes in "governing" that this administration is undertaking. They want the federal government to be filled with loyal Trump sycophants, or at least employees sympathetic to only THEIR policy objectives. They are taking active measures to fire anybody that opposes them. But, as I state above, federal employees are required--in the interests of the WHOLE NATION--to swear allegiance to the Constitution, NOT the President. The Administration is taking active measures to discredit, dismiss, and dishonor the oath we have all pledged.

Regardless of your political leaning, this should worry you. (for those sympathetic to Trump: how would you feel if the tables were turned?) These actions undermine our entire government, threaten our democracy, and mock our Constitution.

The above is why federal government employees are resisting and revolting. There are 2.7 million of us. While the three branches of government (judicial, legislative, executive) are Constitutionally designed to be checks and balances on one another, realize that even within the Executive Branch, our government was designed to check and balance, in order to uphold and defend our democracy and our Constitution.

If Trump's Administration continues on this warpath to fire all employees not loyal to him, federal government business will grind to a halt, and our democracy will crumble.

Personally, I concur with Tom Countryman's (the outgoing under secretary of state for arms control at the State Department) sentiments. After being dismissed by Trump, he pleaded with colleagues to stay in their government positions to "uphold America’s longstanding policies of openness and liberty."

As he said, "We [federal employees] still owe something to America. A policy without professionals is by definition an amateur policy. You have to help make the choices that bring this country forward."

[homepictures]

I Will Tell You The Truth About Design Ideas And Tips In The Next 28 Seconds | design ideas and tips

Considering that 1 in 3 workers today are freelancers, you’re apparently managing one or added of them now or will be soon.

23 Apartment Decorating Ideas | HGTV – design ideas and tips | design ideas and tips

December 18, 2018 8 min apprehend

Opinions bidding by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

At aboriginal glance, I may not assume like an able on administration in the gig economy. Certainly I’ve led acceptable assignment teams, as a accomplice in several clandestine disinterestedness absolute acreage advance firms, and for the aftermost nine years I’ve been the admiral and CEO of a not-for-profit developer of affordable housing.

Related: This Is How I Administer Freelance Workers and Why It Works

But don’t be addled by my acutely staid, biased business background: We’re all in the gig abridgement now and there are some acute rules to acquire by if we appetite to succeed. 

You may still anticipate of the gig abridgement as all freelance writers and Uber drivers, but it’s so abundant more. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the “contingent” workforce comprises 16.5 actor people, and active businesses everywhere are axis to this blazon of talent. The affidavit vary. According to a contempo assay from Monster, recruiters say “It’s harder than anytime to allure high-quality job candidates.”

Connecting with accidental workers generally fills this void, but managing this workforce is article else: Nurturing successful partnerships that aftermath affection business after-effects takes some simple but generally disregarded concepts.

Our business employs accidental aptitude in capacities alignment from bright design to tech to asset management, to onsite citizen casework administration at our properties. So I’ve abstruse a few things. Drawing on conversations with added leaders as able-bodied as freelancers, I can action the afterward acquaint I’ve abstruse about managing in the gig economy.

25 Best Interior Decorating Secrets – Decorating Tips and … – design ideas and tips | design ideas and tips

Successful absolute workers accomplish best back chargeless of acceptable assignment rules. This doesn’t exclude deadlines and “codes of conduct” but it does betoken that administration should acquire anarchistic assignment hours, claimed styles and alike modes of communication.

As one of those managers, you will be a abundant happier baton of these aggregation associates if you stop afraid the baby stuff. Instead, apply on the affection of the assignment artefact and absorption to detail. If that is up to snuff, the affiliation will be successful. According to absolute architecture activity administrator Andrea Syracuse, the affliction sin that well-meaning administration accomplish is declining to advance alternate trust, abnormally if assignment styles alter somewhat. “If you micro-manage the aboriginal activity we do, that is understandable, but alleviate the reins on the abutting and we will both be absolutely annoyed with the outcome,” Syracuse told me.

Related: 4 Ways to Successfully Blend Gig Workers Into Your Team

Set realistic, as able-bodied as “reach” goals. We accept begin that our freelancers assignment best with categorical goals and timetables. We altercate what is astute as able-bodied as aspirational, 

Keep in apperception that these able individuals accept called to assignment for several companies, rather than aloof one. Recently, our aggregation was tasked with finishing three anniversary letters in a bound time frame. We set the bar aerial but offered affluence of support. Alive calm and acquisition challenges as they arose, we able the assignment in almanac time.

Freelance bright artist Rita Lascaro told us: “It’s invaluable to actualize a aggregate certificate with tasks listed, so the absolute artisan can amend the cachet of abounding projects, blockage off completed ones. Then, instead of assorted emails, the employer can bound assay on what the independent artisan is up to.”

One of the admirable truths about hiring a gig abridgement artisan is the cardinal of bodies specializing in niche work. These aren’t bodies you’re activity to charge every day for every project. However, back a aggregation needs addition to excel at a actual specific task, an indy specialist can be your go-to.

Joshua Holtzman is the CEO and co-founder at InterviewJet, a members-only hiring belvedere for tech companies. For quick, baby jobs, he told us, he brand some of the “specialized online gig platforms that accredit accelerated hiring of a accurate blazon of talent, capricious from MBA graduates to abutment assay projects to added banal jobs like acrimonious up appointment supplies.”

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Of accurate admonition to Holtzman? Amazon Mechanical Turk, he says, is “a crowdsourcing exchange that makes it easier for individuals and businesses to outsource their processes and jobs to a broadcast workforce who can accomplish these tasks virtually.” Holtzman has been actual admiring application the account for authoritative tasks. “I beatific a account of 100 data-enrichment tasks that bare to be done and assorted ‘turks’ (people) followed the instructions and did a scattering of the tasks each,” he told us.

“Breaking it up into micro tasks fabricated it go quicker than one actuality could accept possibly done it. Like with best gig assignments, the key is spending time to accomplish the instructions actual clear.”

Particularly for abstruse abilities in rapidly alteration fields, like web design, and for creative abilities that crave a continued time to master, like video animation, Tim Parsons, at 5:00 Films & Media, advises that it’s generally a bigger advance to borrow those abilities from “gigsters” on an as-needed basis.

“It’s like actuality an orchestra conductor,” said Parsons of hiring freelancers for video production. “We don’t accept the time to apprentice how to comedy every instrument; our job is to apperceive back to alarm on which specialists in what adjustment to actualize a unified whole.”

It’s true that gig workers are ambitious by attributes and admire independence, but they additionally appetite to allotment in the aggregation spirit that guides any aggregation to success.

Lead your accidental workers the way you advance full-time staff.  Allotment accepted goals and trumpet accomplishments with the absolute team, behindhand of their official abettor status. Include your gig workers in agents meetings, amusing contest and added adapted gatherings.

“It comes bottomward to account all aggregation members,”  Bruce Starr, accomplice at BMF Media, told us. “We’re consistently gluttonous specialists who can be adjustable to assignment on an arrival of all-embracing empiric assignments about the world,” he said. “We’ve had abundant success by consistently accouterment bright expectations of the role on both abandon and alleviative these ‘free agents’ with all the account we accordance our acceptable workforce. We acquisition account to be a amazing motivator.”

From a freelancer’s perspective, artist Lascaro additionally angry this angle of “respect” to pay. “We [independent workers] do not accept a account paycheck and would like to be paid in seven to 14 canicule instead of 30 to 90,” she said. “Those audience who pay immediately, aloft achievement of a job, acceleration to the top of my ‘want-to-work-with’ list.”

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Networking is one of the abundant bonuses of dipping into the basin of “indy workers.” Once your aggregation is on the alarm of this aptitude sector, added able contractors will appetite to assignment with you. So, booty advantage of your workers’ links and accompany bodies in to chat, alike if you’re not accessible to commit.

Independent architect Syracuse said: “Some of my best jobs came about afterwards a applicant and I developed a acceptable affinity discussing industry trends and swapping advice.” Keep in blow with these aggregate access so that back the charge arises, you’ve got some acceptable candidates in the wings. 

Much like the stand-out intern who “graduates” to full-time application at a business, the indy artisan who proves his or her mettle, melds into your ability and wants to accomplish the switch, can and should be an ideal fit.

After advance in anniversary added for a acceptable bulk of time, this should be a low-risk, high-gain hypothesis for you both. Bonus: This abettor can now admonition your alignment appoint – and administer — your abutting bare freelancer.

Jeremy Driesen, admiral and CEO of Ray Bloch Productions, hires freelance admonition for a few altered detached jobs aural his productions.  Based on their performance, and their “fit,” he generally offers them full-time jobs. Added BMF Media’s Starr: “While some adopt the adaptability and abandon of actuality a chargeless agent, the pros — stability, banking aegis and adorable allowances — of a traditional workforce environment just may outweigh the cons.”

In the final analysis, Driesen said that back putting calm any team, “I don’t necessarily affliction what they advised in academy or what jobs they’ve had. I affliction about character, assignment ethic, faculty of mission; I charge bodies who can’t get to beddy-bye at night if there are any apart ends.”

Related: Freelancers Accomplish Up 34 Percent of the U.S. Workforce. Here’s How to Find, Appoint and Administer Them.

And aren’t those the characteristics of any acceptable alive team? As you codify your abutting freelance hire, bethink that, today, according to a abstraction by Betterment, added than one in three workers is a freelancer. Aggregation leaders can either avoid or blow these bodies at their peril — or embrace them and accomplish them allotment of a acknowledged business plan.

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[thexploreking]

Traffic Domination I show you how I got over 29,000,000 people to visit my blogs using content marketing. GRAB IT WITH $10off Sale ends in: 6 days 23 hours 59 minutes How To Promote Your Blog – The Fastest Way To 1000 Visitors Per Day

Today’s post is about that most important ingredient of Blogging Success – HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR BLOG. I am often asked: ‘If you had to start over online, from scratch – what would you do to promote your blog and build up your traffic again as quickly as possible’ A very good question and one I have been giving quite a bit of thought to recently. I think most people over-complicate traffic. They’re reading too much into all these techniques and spending all their time making sure their blog looks good. There’s nothing wrong with having a great blog design or doing SEO the right way. But it is a problem when you’re spending so much time on the technical stuff that you forget your site’s purpose: to provide immense value for your visitors. Extraordinary content is the key to extraordinary traffic. So assuming you are starting from scratch or your funds are limited here is my Kick Start Strategy For Bloggers:  

How To Get 1000 Visitors To You Blog Every Day

  Step 1) Create Great Content For Your Blog The number 1 thing you should focus on to get traffic is, great content. Why? because that’s what attracts people to your website. When I’m writing an article, I have two things in mind. Firstly, I want to make it as simple for someone to understand as possible. Secondly, I want to make it as beneficial to the reader as possible. So, with that in mind, how much great content do you need to get 1000 visitors a day. 10 articles getting 100 visitors a day. 20 articles getting 50 visitors a day. 100 articles getting 10 visitors a day. Looking at these numbers, I would say you were best of focusing on less articles, that bring more traffic. So how do you go about creating content so good that you can get 1000 visitors a day? Here is step by step what I would do:   Brainstorm and research high traffic keywords. Great content gets linked to a lot, on both social media and blogs, but only if people can find it in the first place. Links help you rank high in Google. But none of this matters if you don’t target your blog post for something people are actually searching for in Google. That’s where keyword research comes in. Keyword research is all about finding keywords that get the most searches in Google. To do this, we use Ahrefs. This has to be my favorite tool that I have found this year. It’s far better and more user friendly than any other tool similar to it. Once you signup for an account (they have a free trial), go to their Keywords Explorer tool and type in the topic you want to write a blog post about. You want to find keywords that have a lot of searches but are not so competitive that you can’t rank for them. Ahrefs will tell you how much traffic a search term is getting and how many backlinks you are likely to need to rank for this search term. It will also tell you who is already ranking for it, how much traffic they are getting and what other keywords they rank for on that page. This is an important point to remember. Your blog posts won’t just rank for 1 keyword, but perhaps 100’s and in some cases, 1000’s of different keywords.   Write a headline to sell people on your article. A headline is what attracts people to your blog post. When we write headlines for our posts, we try to include what they will learn, the benefit from learning it and also why they should learn it from us. A good example of this is: 10 Headlines Examples That Got Us 10 Million Readers They will learn the best headlines, to get lots of traffic and they should listen to us because we have been successful at it. Another example could be: 18 Website Optimization Tips For More Traffic and Higher Conversions They learn website optimization tips, the benefit being more traffic and higher conversions.     Create a top list article around keywords. Our readers seem to prefer top list articles much more than any other type of post. I think this is because you know exactly what you are going to get. Not only do you know what you are going to get but you also know how the content is going to be laid out. I think this is key to their success because people want to skim content. They don’t want to invest time into reading long posts if they don’t know it’s going to be worth it. One recommendation I would make is, link out to other websites in your blog posts. When we write articles such as 50 Most Influential People In Blogging, we link to each blogger. When they see the post, they often share it and link to it somewhere on their blog. As mentioned earlier in this post, the more links a website has pointing to it, the higher it ranks in Google.

Make Sure Your Blog Post Looks Amazing Optimize readability and proof read your blog posts. We like to write content in a way that people can come to our site and quickly skim an article and figure out if it’s an article they want to read. I think this is a big part of why so many people read our posts. Think about it this way, if you go to one of our blog posts and it’s just 2000 words, no paragraphs, no headlines, no images, are you going to invest your time reading it? It’s unlikely you would. When we create a blog post, we make sure we use images, not just to promote our posts, but to split up the content. Here is an outline of how we display our blog posts on IncomeDiary: Main Headline Introduction Headline 2 (h2 tag) Headline 3 (h3 tag) Text Image Headline 4 (h3 tag) Text Image And so on… Sometimes we include sub-headlines for sub-headlines. It’s important to break up content to make it easy to read.   Step 2) Search Engine Optimization Now that you have found a good keyword and written a blog post, you need to optimize your post for that keyword.   Optimizing Your Blog Post For a Keyword Go and download a free WordPress plugin called Yoast SEO. This plugin will ask you what search term you want your blog post to rank for. Then it will tell you everything you need to do to best rank for it. Such as: Including keyword in headline Including keyword is meta description Including keyword in first paragraph of post Including internal and external links Including an image with the name of your keyword Add alt attributes with the focus keyword to your images Mentioning the keyword enough times Once you have done this, you should be ready to publish your post.

Optimizing Your Website For Search Engines A big part of how Google decides on where your blog post will rank in it’s search engine is based on how much it likes your website. Google wants to link to websites that are up to date, user friendly, trustworthy and popular. Here is a list of ways to achieve this: Have a contact page with address and phone number Get HTTPS in your website URL Add a sitemap to your website Always fix broken links Improve your page speed Make sure you have no duplicated content Remember, you can optimize your blog posts as much as you like, but if the content isn’t amazing, it’s not going to get linked to, which means it’s not going to rank well in Google. Step 3) Optimize Your Blog Marketing Now that your blog post is published and it’s optimized for Google, the next important thing I recommend you do, is to make it easy for people to find your content. You want as many people as possible, all coming to your website at the same time to view your new post. Not just because you want lot’s of traffic but because it gives you a better chance of getting even more traffic. Think about it this way, if someone sees one person share your article, they often won’t look at it. But if they see 10 people sharing your article, they start to think, WOW, this must be good. If you’re creating great content, you’re bound to eventually get some big spikes in traffic. When starting out with a website, we could be getting about 400 visitors a day. Then one day we post an interesting article that does well on social media and it gets about 4,000 visitors that day. That’s 10 times the amount of traffic. The only problem with spikes in traffic is that they can be gone as quickly as they come. The spike of a successful article goes down after two or three days. But a good website is designed to turn one-time traffic into recurring traffic. After jumping from 400 visitors a day to 4,000 visitors a day, it goes back down to 600 or 700. That’s a big increase from where it was before.

We turn traffic spikes into long-term traffic by asking people to subscribe to our email list. You’ll notice we have a popup and an opt-in box in the footer of this web page which offer exclusive content for people who subscribe by email. Email is the most direct way to let people know that you’ve published a great new article. Another way to get first-time visitors to come back to your site is through social media.  These communities bring a consistent social buzz to each new post. Every time we do a new blog posts, we have all these new fans, all these new people. So every time we do something it’s just going to get bigger, and bigger. That’s real momentum. Here are my top tips for getting lots of traffic to a brand new blog post: Email Your Subscribers Like I just mentioned, one of the best way to instantly get a lot of people to visit your website is to email subscribers. Every time we email our list about a new post, 1000’s of people visit our site. Some of them share it on social media, some link to it on their blog. This gets us backlinks to our blog post and gives our search engine optimization a good boost. This is an important part to the success of any post. But how do you get email subscribers if your blog is new? Read this post about 10 ways to get email subscribers. Mention It On Social Media Similar to having an email list, you can Tweet/Facebook your article and a whole load of people will visit it. If the article is amazing, people will share it. We don’t put a lot of effort into building our social media accounts because we know if we write great posts, our readers will do the sharing for us. Having said this, social media has been one of our best traffic sources. One of the reasons for our success with social media is we signed up and started using it way earlier then the majority of other people. When I launched IncomeDiary, something that was going really well right then was Twitter. Twitter was the in-thing. Everyone was jumping on board. Since Twitter was new, the make money online niche wasn’t yet saturated. I was getting huge amounts of traffic — literally 100,000 visitors in a month from Twitter. And I could take advantage of it so easily by just following thousands of Twitter users a day. Thousands of people would come to my profile to see who has followed them and follow me back, click my profile link, my updates, and so on. Then when Pinterest launched, we were able to do the same thing. We have found that often in business, we are able to achieve huge amounts of success by acting quickly and not waiting to see how things work out. Some bloggers may of looked at Twitter and thought it won’t last and decided not to join until a lot later. Getting People On Your Blog To Read Your New Posts This is also an important step in your blog promotion. One of the easiest way to keep website traffic high, is to keep people visiting page after page and coming back to your website. A few ways you can do this: Add a link to your top navigation bar. If people enjoy your content, they will want to look for more. Add a link to the top of your sidebar. Make sure the post is featured on the home and category pages. Make sure the post is featured in related/popular posts. Ask Friends to Comment and Share (read why) When I first started blogging, I would often ask friends in the industry to comment and share my posts. Most of them didn’t have any traffic, but that wasn’t important. What was important, was if I was getting lots of comments and shares, other people coming to the site would be a lot more likely to comment and share. Remember, it’s about momentum. The Last Word: Traffic is a Marathon, Not a Sprint. People are so excited at the beginning. They go on writing blog posts left, right, and center. But then after a few months, they haven’t made any money and they just give up. That’s why people fail so often. Even if you’re doing everything right, it’s unrealistic to expect to have a ton of traffic and income right away. These things need time. Read the full article

[jackcrescend]

So that one thing I said...

that I’d write about immersion in GW2 without minimap? Yeaahh... I tried getting back into GW2 but just couldn’t. Not a game for me, even with the new expansion hype. 

I tried so hard to relive the game from ground up, designing a new character I loved, selling every little collectible I had collecting dust and exchanged all of my money into gems. I moved all of my bank items to my other alts, to clear the clutter that had accumulated over the years that really weren’t worth all that much but I just couldn’t bring myself to trash them either. I did everything I could to relive the experience of starting the game from a fresh start.

Why?!? I can imagine anyone with a penchant for hoarding would exclaim. I thought about all these chains that MMO’s use to keep players hooked in their games, and all the junk you collect in GW2 is definitely one form of sunk cost fallacy. Are you truly enjoying the game, or do you feel obligated to continue because of all the stuff you’ve collected over the years? I decided to find out, and cast everything out. If the game’s not enjoyable without them, then the game’s not worth playing for me.

It wasn’t an easy task. In fact Arenanet has made it particularly difficult to relive the game without having something carry over from previous characters. Bank slots, material, and gold are all account bound, which I were able to somehow empty by selling loot and buying gems, but there were other things I couldn’t do anything about. Like the hundreds of thousands of Karma. Or extra currencies I had no idea how to clear out. Or the rare dye collection. Achievement points. Tried as I might, only a new account could make a completely fresh experience. I toyed around with the idea of making a new account, but didn’t because if I really did get attached to the new character, I’d be torn when it came the time to buy the expansion for one of my two accounts.

Having finally got a character to play with, I tried to do what I’d set out to do from the get-go: play without minimap. I went into options, expecting full control over the UI like in FF14... and I’d completely forgotten UI adjustments were non-existent in GW2. The minimap was there to stay... Or atleast, through official methods. Arenanet has always been on the fence about modding, but there’s one mod that has been semi-approved for a while called Immersive Combat Mode. It’s mostly meant for improving combat feel, but one thing it also does is remove parts of the UI as was my desire. While I was already on the mod-path, I got myself ReShade to improve visual clarity of the game, ‘cus I’ve always felt the game was somewhat muddy. I spent hours debugging, testing, tweaking to force the game into my liking, at the end of which I finally had some results I was happy with, but also exhausted.

For instance, the first thing I was disappointed with was the framerate. Frequently dropping below 45 FPS in cities, no graphic setting option seemed to help to keep the game running smooth. This was a devastating blow, for I had also been thinking of getting some footage for a music video, but without stable framerate I didn’t even want to try. Not sure why GW2 runs worse than FF14, when the latter looks better IMO. 

So I finally got everything working, playing the character I made (Sylvari Elementalist), playing through the starter zone... I got to lvl 20 or so, logged out and couldn’t bring myself to load the game back up again. Something about the combat just feels inherently unsatisfying, even as an elementalist which on paper has the largest skill variety. Poorly balanced, mobs die way too quick, or they’ve been buffed to such a ridiculous degree that you’ll die in a couple hits. Having played through the game before, I know this is a trend that won’t fix itself no matter how far I got in the game. 

I wasn’t looking forward to playing any of the upcoming content either. The game areas are largely designed to be constantly changing regardless of the player, so chances are you’ll never be in the right place in the right time to experience the cool stuff, especially not while trying to play without a minimap, which was the entire point of my experiment. I’ve grown accustomed to the old questing system, where I can do content at my own pace when I want where I want, but GW2 is having none of it and requires you to play through each area multiple times to see everything about it. I quit, this time probably for good.

I wanted to love GW2 so badly, GW1 was my very first MMO after all, sadly it just ain’t for me. What little I played without the minimap, I found it a refreshing change being forced to learn the landscape the hard way. It was considerably harder here than in FF14 since GW2 is more akin to a labyrinth at times. Talking with scouts to learn of the close-by heart events and simultaneously learning some extra lore backstory became a pleasant routine. It was very difficult to participate in random events though, since I had no idea if one was happening nearby. There’s potential there, but too much of the game’s been designed around having the minimap always there.

[rebeccahpedersen]

Quick Hits

TorontoRealtyBlog

Here’s a feature I used to routinely write a few years back.

Sometimes there are a lot of smaller stories that don’t get told, simply because they’re not “blog-worthy.”

It’s not quite a matter of “quality versus quantity,” but rather there’s always so much to say, and so little time.

Here’s a few topics worth touching on…

Two Offer Dates

You’ve been reading stories on my blog throughout 2017, or back in 2016 for that matter, about “bully offers” and how they’re driving the market crazy.

Properties are being listed for sale with a set offer date, say, February 28th, and they’re selling on the 21st only hours after they come out, or on the 22nd after a buyer forces the seller’s hand, or even on the 27th – one day before the scheduled offer date, which makes absolutely no sense.

Some listing agents (myself included) are fed up with the chaos and are saying “No Pre-Emptive Offers” on the MLS listing.

I do this mainly because I think you always get a better price on offer night, but also because, as I explained last week, I want to expose the property to the entire market, not just the first person through the door.  I’d rather have 15 offers on “offer night” than one offer the day the listing hits the market.

In any event, I think listings that specifically spell out “Yes” or “No” to bully offers are important.

If the market is going to be chaos, better to have an organized chaos, I believe.

And then this past week, just when I thought I had seen it all, somebody sent me this:

Unreal.

Absolutely, positively, ridiculous.

It makes no sense.

“If you’re going to break the rules, we’d like you to use our rule-breaking rules.”

Setting an offer date of the 25th, but saying “Seller Reserves The Right To Review Pre-Emptive Offers” is what we’ve come to expect.

But setting an offer date of the 25th, and then setting a second date for bully offers?

That’s crazy town!

What if somebody (gulp!) submits an offer on the 17th?  Then what?

Do you bully, the bully-date, that’s a head of the offer date?

I don’t know where people think this stuff up…

Poker Room At 70 Temperance Street

Are you familiar with INDX?

It’s the name of the condominium at 70 Temperance Street.

I have no idea if INDX is an acronym for something, or if it’s playing off the TSX Index, since it’s located one block away.

Either way, the location of this building – right in the middle of all the bank buildings, means the demographic is like something out of Boiler Room or Wall Street.

The building has some of the most insane amenities I’ve ever seen:

– Lounge – Party Room – Boardroom – Yoga / Pilates Room – Fitness Centre – Golf Room – Movie Theatre – Barbecue Area – Poker Room – Billiards Room – Exterior Terrace – BBQ Area – Dry Cleaning – Grocery Delivery Service – Shoe Shine Station – Concierge Service – 24/7 Security

And while “shoe shine station” might jump out at you, what really got me was the poker room.

How does this work?

Is it like the gym, where the building simply leaves equipment out for people to use, or like the library, where there are desks at which people can work?

Because if the building is putting out green felt tables at which people can gamble then isn’t this, I don’t know, sort of illegal?

What kind of liability is on the condominium corporation here?

They’re not running a casino, but they’re encouraging one.

And how long until the poker room gets a blackjack table?  Or a roulette wheel?

What are the rules?

Maybe what started as a few tables for people to sit down and play, eventually turns into one guy who plays “the house” and sets up for blackjack dealing.

Based on the demographic of this building, I’m thinking Saturday nights in the poker room at 70 Temperance are busy…

Increase In Toronto Land Transfer Tax

Some of you might disagree with this one, but personally I think Toronto’s decision to increase land transfer tax on properties above $2,000,000 is yet another punishment for the wealthy.

I read an interesting letter to the editor a couple of weeks ago, check this out:

–

Rich Is Not A Crime:

Re: It’s Time To Limit Tax Expenditures That Favour Our Highest Earners (Feb. 7, Globe and Mail): 

Implementing this reasoning would amount to further shafting high income earners and send them scurrying to another geography.

Not only do the 1 per cent account for 11 per cent of taxable income, but the author suggests let’s take a little more by taxing capital gains at 80 per cent instead of 50 per cent, closing in on full-pop taxation.

So basically, take away more than half of their marginal income – and also more than half of the investment income from what they are able to save from the less than half they are left with.

How about better accountability for what happens to our tax dollars? It is not a crime to be a high earner.

T.J. Machado, Mississauga

–

I can’t say I disagree, especially with the last part about accountability, and the notion of it being a “crime” in today’s society to be a high-income earner.

And raising the land transfer tax by 0.5% for the value of properties over $2,000,000 is punishing those earners yet again.

Many of you don’t care, and I don’t blame you.  You’re trying to figure out how to make ends meet in today’s economy, and in a city that’s being taken over by generational and foreign wealth.

But just consider that a buyer of a $4,000,000 home pays a downright stupid $152,200 in land transfer tax.

That’s a completely arbitrary tax, and always has been.

It’s not about city services related to housing, like garbage pick-up, snow-clearing, hydro lines, etc.  That’s what property tax is for.

Land transfer tax is the most ridiculous, and most arbitrary tax I’ve ever seen.  It’s worse than the Liberal government’s sneaky eco-taxes.

Agents Losing Keys

Here’s one the public doesn’t care about, but is worth telling.

You all know the drill regarding keys and lockboxes, right?

Be it a house or a condo, there’s a door key in a lockbox, maybe with an access FOB, and the real estate agent opens the lockbox, retrieves the key, shows the house or condo to the buyer, and puts it back.

“Puts it back” is the most important part.

Keys go missing from time to time, it happens.  On a long enough time horizon, an agent is bound to forget to put back a key.  The agent gets chatting with his or her buyer clients outside, for twenty minutes, and then forgets the key is in his pocket, and drives off.

But what really, really bothers me about this, however, is that nobody ever admits to it.

Not one agent, in all my years, has said, “Oh geez, yeah I woke up this morning and there was a key in my pants pocket, sorry about that.”

It’s never happened.

Last week, a key went missing at one of my listings.

I called the last three agents that had shown the property – the previous night at 7:00pm, 7:00pm, and 8:00pm.  Three appointments, three agents.

All three said they handed off the key to another agent.

One agent gave me a long, convoluted story about how he had no cell phone signal in the stairwell, and had to go back down to the main level to get a signal, to check his phone, to get the code, to open the box back up and put in the key.

Then he added that he could see somebody in the unit an hour later, as he was in the building across the street, and looks into my listing.

Me thinks thou dost protest too much?

In the end, as it always does, the key magically reappeared an hour later.

But not before my client had to leave school, Uber to the condo, get another key, and go to place it in the lockbox – where the original key had now been returned.

Those are the two constants with lost keys: 1) Nobody ever admits to it. 2) The key always seems to magically reappear.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

A seller of mine came home to her condo last week, after a day’s showings (which in this crazy market is seventeen appointments), and found the following:

1) The door handle to her balcony was broken right off, and left on the counter. 2) The kitchen drawer track was broken. 3) Somebody left a Starbucks coffee cup in her bedroom. 4) Somebody left a Booster Juice cup in her sink.

This is a busy listing – $599,000 in King West, in today’s 2017 market, means close to 80 showings in a week.

But that doesn’t mean that this ceases to become “a home” and simply becomes “an asset.”

The kitchen drawer was sticky – so somebody yanked on it really hard, and broke it.  Maybe that’s an honest mistake.  Same goes for the balcony door, I guess.

But what really gets me is leaving behind a coffee cup.

And the person who left the Booster Juice did so knowingly, since they decided to place it in the sink!  Maybe the person with the Starbucks just forgot.  No excuse, but it could have been a mistake.  The person who left the Booster Juice took the time to place it in the sink.

I guess they thought the maid would pick it up?

A Realtor’s Dinner

I reached a new low-point last week.

Or maybe it’s a high-point.

It depends on who you asked.

I told this story to a colleague, and he said, “That’s awesome.  You’re a beauty.”

I told this story to a snobby friend-of-a-friend, and she said, “You tell a story that most people would be mortally embarrassed by, like you’re somehow, like, so proud of it.”

And then she induced vomiting so she could fit into that night’s dress…

A busy real estate agent is often on the road all day, and well into the night.

When the market is in full-swing, I’m often getting home at 10-11pm every night, and it means I’m always on the lookout for a meal.

It’s easy to forget to eat when you work in this business.  I always seem to remember to drink coffee, but sometimes I get to 5pm, my stomach hurts, and I think, “Oh wow, I forgot to eat today!”

Many nights I’m presenting an offer at 7pm, then heading off to showings, then back to deal with the offer; it’s back-and-forth, east-to-west, all over.

Last week, I was insanely hungry around 10pm, and I found a Sobey’s on Dupont Street just east of Ossington.  I figured I’d get one of those ready-made sandwiches or wraps, but by the time I got there, they had already cleared them all out.

I looked around everywhere, but the “prepared foods” section was completely closed.

There was only one item of prepared food left anywhere.

And it was one of those “Family-Sized” BBQ chickens.

Not exactly the “grab-and-go” type of food, is it?

Not quite something you can eat in the front seat of your car?

Well, I was absolutely starving, and I didn’t want to eat three bananas and a Granny Smith apple, thank you very much.

So I went to the cash with a travel-size Purell, a box of Kleenex, and a BBQ chicken.

And then I went into the parking lot of Sobey’s, at 10:30pm, and ate that chicken….

…..on the hood of my car.

Bare hands, just ripping and chewing, like our ancestors in 10,000 B.C. would have, except I was in an upscale neighbourhood and it was 2017.

I mucked about two-thirds of that bird, and then cleaned up with my Purell, and erased any trace of my carnivore behaviour with a piece of Dentyne Ice.

And you know what?

That car-hood dirty-bird was the best meal I had all week.

The post Quick Hits appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

Originated from http://ift.tt/2kUlrRG

[rebeccahpedersen]

Quick Hits

TorontoRealtyBlog

Here’s a feature I used to routinely write a few years back.

Sometimes there are a lot of smaller stories that don’t get told, simply because they’re not “blog-worthy.”

It’s not quite a matter of “quality versus quantity,” but rather there’s always so much to say, and so little time.

Here’s a few topics worth touching on…

Two Offer Dates

You’ve been reading stories on my blog throughout 2017, or back in 2016 for that matter, about “bully offers” and how they’re driving the market crazy.

Properties are being listed for sale with a set offer date, say, February 28th, and they’re selling on the 21st only hours after they come out, or on the 22nd after a buyer forces the seller’s hand, or even on the 27th – one day before the scheduled offer date, which makes absolutely no sense.

Some listing agents (myself included) are fed up with the chaos and are saying “No Pre-Emptive Offers” on the MLS listing.

I do this mainly because I think you always get a better price on offer night, but also because, as I explained last week, I want to expose the property to the entire market, not just the first person through the door.  I’d rather have 15 offers on “offer night” than one offer the day the listing hits the market.

In any event, I think listings that specifically spell out “Yes” or “No” to bully offers are important.

If the market is going to be chaos, better to have an organized chaos, I believe.

And then this past week, just when I thought I had seen it all, somebody sent me this:

Unreal.

Absolutely, positively, ridiculous.

It makes no sense.

“If you’re going to break the rules, we’d like you to use our rule-breaking rules.”

Setting an offer date of the 25th, but saying “Seller Reserves The Right To Review Pre-Emptive Offers” is what we’ve come to expect.

But setting an offer date of the 25th, and then setting a second date for bully offers?

That’s crazy town!

What if somebody (gulp!) submits an offer on the 17th?  Then what?

Do you bully, the bully-date, that’s a head of the offer date?

I don’t know where people think this stuff up…

Poker Room At 70 Temperance Street

Are you familiar with INDX?

It’s the name of the condominium at 70 Temperance Street.

I have no idea if INDX is an acronym for something, or if it’s playing off the TSX Index, since it’s located one block away.

Either way, the location of this building – right in the middle of all the bank buildings, means the demographic is like something out of Boiler Room or Wall Street.

The building has some of the most insane amenities I’ve ever seen:

– Lounge – Party Room – Boardroom – Yoga / Pilates Room – Fitness Centre – Golf Room – Movie Theatre – Barbecue Area – Poker Room – Billiards Room – Exterior Terrace – BBQ Area – Dry Cleaning – Grocery Delivery Service – Shoe Shine Station – Concierge Service – 24/7 Security

And while “shoe shine station” might jump out at you, what really got me was the poker room.

How does this work?

Is it like the gym, where the building simply leaves equipment out for people to use, or like the library, where there are desks at which people can work?

Because if the building is putting out green felt tables at which people can gamble then isn’t this, I don’t know, sort of illegal?

What kind of liability is on the condominium corporation here?

They’re not running a casino, but they’re encouraging one.

And how long until the poker room gets a blackjack table?  Or a roulette wheel?

What are the rules?

Maybe what started as a few tables for people to sit down and play, eventually turns into one guy who plays “the house” and sets up for blackjack dealing.

Based on the demographic of this building, I’m thinking Saturday nights in the poker room at 70 Temperance are busy…

Increase In Toronto Land Transfer Tax

Some of you might disagree with this one, but personally I think Toronto’s decision to increase land transfer tax on properties above $2,000,000 is yet another punishment for the wealthy.

I read an interesting letter to the editor a couple of weeks ago, check this out:

–

Rich Is Not A Crime:

Re: It’s Time To Limit Tax Expenditures That Favour Our Highest Earners (Feb. 7, Globe and Mail): 

Implementing this reasoning would amount to further shafting high income earners and send them scurrying to another geography.

Not only do the 1 per cent account for 11 per cent of taxable income, but the author suggests let’s take a little more by taxing capital gains at 80 per cent instead of 50 per cent, closing in on full-pop taxation.

So basically, take away more than half of their marginal income – and also more than half of the investment income from what they are able to save from the less than half they are left with.

How about better accountability for what happens to our tax dollars? It is not a crime to be a high earner.

T.J. Machado, Mississauga

–

I can’t say I disagree, especially with the last part about accountability, and the notion of it being a “crime” in today’s society to be a high-income earner.

And raising the land transfer tax by 0.5% for the value of properties over $2,000,000 is punishing those earners yet again.

Many of you don’t care, and I don’t blame you.  You’re trying to figure out how to make ends meet in today’s economy, and in a city that’s being taken over by generational and foreign wealth.

But just consider that a buyer of a $4,000,000 home pays a downright stupid $152,200 in land transfer tax.

That’s a completely arbitrary tax, and always has been.

It’s not about city services related to housing, like garbage pick-up, snow-clearing, hydro lines, etc.  That’s what property tax is for.

Land transfer tax is the most ridiculous, and most arbitrary tax I’ve ever seen.  It’s worse than the Liberal government’s sneaky eco-taxes.

Agents Losing Keys

Here’s one the public doesn’t care about, but is worth telling.

You all know the drill regarding keys and lockboxes, right?

Be it a house or a condo, there’s a door key in a lockbox, maybe with an access FOB, and the real estate agent opens the lockbox, retrieves the key, shows the house or condo to the buyer, and puts it back.

“Puts it back” is the most important part.

Keys go missing from time to time, it happens.  On a long enough time horizon, an agent is bound to forget to put back a key.  The agent gets chatting with his or her buyer clients outside, for twenty minutes, and then forgets the key is in his pocket, and drives off.

But what really, really bothers me about this, however, is that nobody ever admits to it.

Not one agent, in all my years, has said, “Oh geez, yeah I woke up this morning and there was a key in my pants pocket, sorry about that.”

It’s never happened.

Last week, a key went missing at one of my listings.

I called the last three agents that had shown the property – the previous night at 7:00pm, 7:00pm, and 8:00pm.  Three appointments, three agents.

All three said they handed off the key to another agent.

One agent gave me a long, convoluted story about how he had no cell phone signal in the stairwell, and had to go back down to the main level to get a signal, to check his phone, to get the code, to open the box back up and put in the key.

Then he added that he could see somebody in the unit an hour later, as he was in the building across the street, and looks into my listing.

Me thinks thou dost protest too much?

In the end, as it always does, the key magically reappeared an hour later.

But not before my client had to leave school, Uber to the condo, get another key, and go to place it in the lockbox – where the original key had now been returned.

Those are the two constants with lost keys: 1) Nobody ever admits to it. 2) The key always seems to magically reappear.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

A seller of mine came home to her condo last week, after a day’s showings (which in this crazy market is seventeen appointments), and found the following:

1) The door handle to her balcony was broken right off, and left on the counter. 2) The kitchen drawer track was broken. 3) Somebody left a Starbucks coffee cup in her bedroom. 4) Somebody left a Booster Juice cup in her sink.

This is a busy listing – $599,000 in King West, in today’s 2017 market, means close to 80 showings in a week.

But that doesn’t mean that this ceases to become “a home” and simply becomes “an asset.”

The kitchen drawer was sticky – so somebody yanked on it really hard, and broke it.  Maybe that’s an honest mistake.  Same goes for the balcony door, I guess.

But what really gets me is leaving behind a coffee cup.

And the person who left the Booster Juice did so knowingly, since they decided to place it in the sink!  Maybe the person with the Starbucks just forgot.  No excuse, but it could have been a mistake.  The person who left the Booster Juice took the time to place it in the sink.

I guess they thought the maid would pick it up?

A Realtor’s Dinner

I reached a new low-point last week.

Or maybe it’s a high-point.

It depends on who you asked.

I told this story to a colleague, and he said, “That’s awesome.  You’re a beauty.”

I told this story to a snobby friend-of-a-friend, and she said, “You tell a story that most people would be mortally embarrassed by, like you’re somehow, like, so proud of it.”

And then she induced vomiting so she could fit into that night’s dress…

A busy real estate agent is often on the road all day, and well into the night.

When the market is in full-swing, I’m often getting home at 10-11pm every night, and it means I’m always on the lookout for a meal.

It’s easy to forget to eat when you work in this business.  I always seem to remember to drink coffee, but sometimes I get to 5pm, my stomach hurts, and I think, “Oh wow, I forgot to eat today!”

Many nights I’m presenting an offer at 7pm, then heading off to showings, then back to deal with the offer; it’s back-and-forth, east-to-west, all over.

Last week, I was insanely hungry around 10pm, and I found a Sobey’s on Dupont Street just east of Ossington.  I figured I’d get one of those ready-made sandwiches or wraps, but by the time I got there, they had already cleared them all out.

I looked around everywhere, but the “prepared foods” section was completely closed.

There was only one item of prepared food left anywhere.

And it was one of those “Family-Sized” BBQ chickens.

Not exactly the “grab-and-go” type of food, is it?

Not quite something you can eat in the front seat of your car?

Well, I was absolutely starving, and I didn’t want to eat three bananas and a Granny Smith apple, thank you very much.

So I went to the cash with a travel-size Purell, a box of Kleenex, and a BBQ chicken.

And then I went into the parking lot of Sobey’s, at 10:30pm, and ate that chicken….

…..on the hood of my car.

Bare hands, just ripping and chewing, like our ancestors in 10,000 B.C. would have, except I was in an upscale neighbourhood and it was 2017.

I mucked about two-thirds of that bird, and then cleaned up with my Purell, and erased any trace of my carnivore behaviour with a piece of Dentyne Ice.

And you know what?

That car-hood dirty-bird was the best meal I had all week.

The post Quick Hits appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

Originated from http://ift.tt/2kUlrRG