#like that’s $200 entire dollars less per week

[jellogram]

The people who take those luxury Disney vacations are insane. Like. I work in travel right. I know how to get you anywhere in the world, and roughly how much it should cost.

Apparently the average Disney World trip (so like not even top luxury, just park hopper tickets and mid-tier accommodations) is over $10,000 for a family of four. Which includes flights that I'm assuming are domestic for that price, so we'll talk about Americans here.

Do you know where else an American family of four can vacation for ten grand? Basically anywhere.

A ticket from the US to Paris (one of the top cities in the world for American tourists) is around $400-$700 per person. Let's be generous and assume peak season prices + small city departure and/or baggage and call it $1000 per person. So we're at $4000 on flights.

A fairly nice hotel in Paris for four people for an entire week, during July (peak season), is around $1000-$1500. So we'll call it $6500.

The Louvre is free for kids so that will only put you out $50 to take the whole family. An all-access pass to Versailles, with lunch included, is less than $200 for everyone.

And sure, let's throw in a day at the Paris Disneyland. That'll put you out around $500 for the fam.

I have no idea how much food costs in Paris so fuck it, let's assume you eat out everyday and tack on a whole two grand for food. That's $500 per person per week, or around $70 per person per day. That should keep you pretty well-fed.

We are still less than $10,000.

A week-long and pretty cushy trip to Paris, including a day at Paris Disneyland, for your entire family is less than a mid-tier five day trip to Disney World Orlando.

I refuse to believe these people can do math. It is easier for me to believe that these people think Disney is a relatively affordable option (it's domestic, after all!) than to believe they genuinely think spending several days in fucking Orlando, Florida is worth thousands and thousands of dollars.

If you scrimped and saved more than I did here (went off-season, less cushy hotels, grocery shopped) you could literally take your family anywhere in the fucking world for ten thousand dollars.

Kill the fucking mouse.

[cryptometaphor]

Sarah: (complaining how her area needs a transit)

Me: Did somebody say MONORAIL?!

Sarah: Oh boy here we go lol

ACP Admin: Jim wants to be the grifter from Simpsons

Me: You're God damn right. Someone ought to be the contractor and that someone ought to be me.

ACP Admin: Private contractor? Class collaborating IS fascism Jim... Corporatism

Me: The Soviets still thought in-terms of cash. Dollars, rubels, why not pay people in scratch-offs?

ACP Admin: What? Sarah: I do wanna hear this more indepth.

Me: You speak of equity. Equal result not equal opportunity.

ACP Admin: That's Kamala's shit not mine

Me: Well whatever. My point is, if you got paid in lotto for what you do, you the value of the dollar couldn't be compromised. We know who wins and when, therefore mobsters couldn't forge the money either. It could be done digitally via crypto as well to add further...

ACP Admin: Again with crypto

Sarah: LOL but babe, how would people get paid in the now?

Me: Like... Right now?

Sarah: Like, say I work at McDonald's for a week

Me: Yeah you get your weekly allowance of scratch offs.

Sarah: No, I get that. But if I don't win shit? How will I eat or pay my bills?

Me: You don't

ACP Admin: So people just die?

Me: Maybe, hopefully...

Sarah: Or like, why are people getting paid in scratch-offs but businesses are getting paid in genuine money? Like, what's the point of them having money if individuals can only be paid in "maybe you get money later"? So if I do win a scratch off, win 200 dollars, buy groceries. Does the store's owner or employees see any of that money or does it just go back into the system?

Me: God I love how smart you are to see an idea through.

Sarah: Flattery won't save you this time. Answer the question.

Me: Yes, it's as you said. It goes back into the system so the value cannot drop. People only get paid in scratch-offs. We have ways to calculate a decent number of scratch-offs per employee.

ACP Admin: BUT WHY THOUGH

Me: Why anything?

ACP Admin: Fucking nihilist. This is just capitalism with extra steps.

Me: I mean yes... I never denied that.

Sarah: It sounds like third world exploitation but right in your backyard.

Me: You got it.

Sarah: That's horrible.

Me: It's meant to be. It's the distortion of the Protestant work-ethic. Your value is determined purely by chance. But if you work really really hard, you get more chances.

ACP Admin: But in the end it doesn't even matter like Linkin Park.

Me: Precisely.

ACP Admin: Jim, you are not a communist.

Me: Never claimed to be.

ACP Admin: Why do you like this guy?

Sarah: Deep down Jim is a good person... Sometimes lol

Me: Maybe there's noone in your life you'd work for till you dropped dead janny. But I know one person I'd do it for. Only one person.

Sarah: See? Shit like that.

ACP Admin: That's psychotic.

Me: It's purpose in a world absent of purpose. You're gonna work anyway, you do so right now. You're judged harshly underpaid for work well above what you need to be doing.

ACP Admin: THAT'S WHY THERE'S THEORY

Me: And I'm giving you theory. Trust me. This would appeal to human nature. Just world fallacy. Those who win, will feel like they won because God decreed it or they did a big enough work load. If I worked 16 hours a day for 6 days a week for a year, won a billion dollars. I earned it. Not like just being the son of the boss and making 100k where my coworkers are normally making 30k.

ACP Admin: That's entirely why we believe in socialism so that happens less. Your answer is just monkeys paw liberalism.

Me: It is.

ACP Admin: Is it gonna feel fair someone works 4 hours for one day and wins a billion?

Me: Nope, and that's the point. It'll either drive others mad or make them work harder. I don't care either way. Get violent and collapse my system.

ACP Admin: God you're evil. (I start laughing)

Sarah: Ooooh that's his flattered laugh like you just said his dick is huge lol

ACP Admin: It wasn't a compliment

Me: I'm taking it as such

ACP Admin: Why are you so edgy? Like who hurt you seriously

Me: You could not begin to fathom the hurt of waking up every morning and every dumb twat is still alive, not beneath your feet. It's not enough they breathe, they argue, they resist, they take from you, ban you...

ACP Admin: Ok fucking Sipheroth, calm down. Like, that's what dialectical materialism is for. Not cartoon super villany.

Me: I choose cartoon super-villany. It's far more realistic

ACP Admin: No, you're just a sociopath

Me: Can a sociopath love? Can a sociopath mourn? Can a sociopath regret?

ACP Admin: Psychopath, whatever

Me: It's easy to say things, it's harder to do them. You claim you love your friends, your parents, this or that. Prove it.

ACP Admin: What? By working for literally nothing?

Me: By existing. By not giving into the desire to just end it all day in and day out.

ACP Admin: Jim you need medication. I don't mean that to insult you, I mean like you obviously have like severe depression or something. Normal people don't just open their eyes when they wakeup "WHY AM I STILL ALIVE?!"

Me: More than you think. It's a pretty common trait when your IQ is above room temperature.

Sarah: I mean he is right babe. Like everything bothers you, everything triggers this long verbose villain rant, you're in constant agony and that's not normal. I don't mean that like you have an obligation to be normal, I'm not normal either.

Me: Well it's easier for you dollface. If I looked as good as you, was as smart as you, was as charming as you...

Sarah: OH STOP if I was all those things I wouldn't be a femcel.

Me: You're not a femcel. Not anymore. That is the crux behind everything I do. Never again.

Sarah: What do you mean?

Me: We do things once and than it's over with. One task, one mistake, one chore, one regret, one life. Never again. That's how things get better.

Sarah: Would you go through it again for me?

Me: I went through it for almost 40 years to get to you, so yes. Hence the lottery system.

Sarah: How do ya both manage to make me depressed but also make me feel like a fucking princess lol

ACP Admin: Cause he's manipulative but too schizo to just be a calculated sociopath about it

Me: Stop lollygagging and go call your mama right now and tell you you love her. You talk about me. I do it. Sarah I love you.

Sarah: I love you too. I'm not your mama though lol. I mean sometimes you do feel like daddy.

ACP Admin: Ew. Well Jim, go call YOUR mom...

Me: She's dead

ACP Admin: Oh wow, I'm sorry I...

Sarah: No she isn't. I heard her just the other day

Me: She's dead TO ME

ACP Admin: You're such a fucking asshole Jesus Christ lol

[bizarropurugly]

Remaking the post since there’ve been some updates since I first posted

I am in need of financial assistance. Any amount or reblog will help. I have an $8,000 medical debt and lost my job in August.

On top of that, up until yesterday (oct 19th) I had foster kittens, which are a huge financial responsibility to take on.

edit: I got them back. I was worried sick about them. She charged me 120 dollars to have them back. She threw away some of their stuff too...

I didn’t really have the money but I had to get them out of there. I’m switching up my strategy on getting them adopted but until then I am back to paying for them. They both had some health problems coming back too...

My p*ypal is damegreywulf at gmail

Or, if you’d like to get something out of it in exchange, I do have a Redbubble.

Getting something important from my general wishlist and my cat supplies wishlist would also be appreciated.

Additionally, a good friend of mine who has amazing art is doing commissions and selling designs/adopts on my behalf.

If nothing else, check her out and give her a follow because she’s a cool kid whose art is just awesome.

Read more with details under the commission price sheet

The debt is from two stays at a psych ward around 10 years ago. I’m not sure it was an active debt but I fell for the pressure and made a payment, a payment I couldn’t really afford as I had just the day before lost my job. So I may have made a massive mistake that will fuck me over for the rest of my life, because at no point IN my life have I had 8,000 dollars, and the balance keeps accruing thanks to fucking interest. And they charged me TAXES when I sent the payment!

My unemployment is less than 200 a week and idfk where people are getting that it’s so high it competes with / is better than employment because no the fuck it’s not. And all these people saying “get a job, EVERYONE is hiring!” don’t get the difference between SAYING you’re hiring, and actually hiring a person. Because so far, I’ve been rejected every time.

Of course, that doesn’t account for how long I was struggling because they took OVER A MONTH to sort my unemployment out, because Illinois is a fucking mess right now, between scam artists and COVID restrictions for government employees only. You have to call to get in line, and they call you back anywhere from a few days later to nearly 2 weeks. There was a woman I saw who STILL hadn’t gotten an answer after 4 months!

Through the struggle, I was approved, then denied, then approved, then denied, with the final issue being that I had a indefinite ban on receiving unemployment from when I applied back in 2016. For one, why does such a thing fucking exist? And two, according to their own rules it should have AUTOMATICALLY fallen off once I had a steady job. So yeah, Illinois is fucking people over big time and doing jack shit all about it except going like “hey guys, another job fair, for Chicago area mostly!”

The kittens were damned expensive, would probably have been less if Gimli wasn’t so sick when I caught him and Pippin and Merry weren’t so young. Gimli and Pippin have been placed in a shelter, Merry’s already been adopted out, they’re all good and healthy boys. But they were as expensive as you might think a human baby. Between the checkups, vaccinations, cleaning supplies, food, etc...

Well to give you an idea, each vet checkup is 40 bucks, and typically tilted towards 200 if anything more was needed. Flea meds, 30-40 per month. Food 30-40 each time. Cleaning supplies 20-30 depending on what I needed. That’s not including the baby food, toys, blankets, warmers, and etc.

I’ve been struggling to afford gas, thanks to the fact I still have doc appointments pretty much every week, not including the gas for interviews when I actually score them. My car’s headlights also stopped working entirely so now I can’t stay out long lest I have to drive home in complete darkness and risk being ticketed. My parents are still disinterested in doing anything to fix my car because they think it’s not worth it, and when I do convince them I don’t get anywhere because nobody tells me who’s who to call about it, and I certainly can’t pay for it anyway.

Just, in general, I’m struggling and not managing well.

So... anything is appreciated.

[rigelmejo]

march - just some thoughts

i have read more this month than any other month? and its not slowing down its only 3/12 so i have 2/3 of a month to go and i’ve read 26 chapters. even if these chapters are ‘short’ at 10 pages, if i wanna count by ‘20 page’ chunks i’ve still read 13 chunks so far. and i’ve still got more time in the month left. most other months i’ve managed to read ‘a lot’ i read 10-20 chapters. so i’m doing really good.

grammar is a weird thing? in reading i feel like its quite easy now to understand. when listening or watching - same. and yet if asked ‘why do i say/type X’ or ‘why is it written/spoken like X’ i have absolutely no explanation in my head. i could not explain the grammar if prompted. this puts me in a weird place and i feel like i SHOULD go over a grammar guide again just so i can WORD what i’m intuitively understanding.

this is a bit bizarre to me because within the first 6 months of study i DID read through an entire grammar guide just to get an idea of what i was about to look at, and it hardly made sense once actually reading/watching/listening. i understood the guide fine, but actually Seeing chinese i was still confused. i would reference AllSetLearning’s Chinese Wiki on some basic points, then after 6 months i just stopped. now its been what 1.5 years and - reading is so easy, listening is so easy, grammar wise. none of the grammar confuses me. but i no longer ‘explicitly’ have any idea what the fuck the grammar is. i used to. i studied it explicitly before trying to read/listen. and yet now that i can read/listen, i have no idea how to explain the grammar. i can listen to a podcast and i don’t think about what the grammar is i just get it. i read and just know what i’m looking at. its like english - i cannot fucking explain it. Which makes speaking/writing a bit hard. Because when i try to check if i’m right i have no fucking clue HOW anymore - i just say/write what comes to mind and HOPE it makes sense. i have no way to conciously check for errors except ‘does this feel right’? And that’s not good enough for me lol. So I definitely do need to eventually read a grammar guide for explicit explanations again.

Technically I think “English and Chinese Grammar Side By Side” grammar book would be an excellent one to use. Because i read the first 50 pages of it and it compared it to english (so it explained english too), and it was very easy to understand and started basic then got more involved. 

I’m probably gonna use my very old Chinese Grammar Self Taught by Thimm book instead. Just because I really like that book. Then I guess use another after (probably Basic Chinese Sentence Patterns since its modern and perfect for ‘catch your own mistakes’ study and much shorter than Eng+Chinese Grammar side by side). 

Anyway I’m in a very weird place right now lol. I know i’m understanding grammar that is stuff I never even studied initially in the grammar guide, but unable to explain what it is, and a lot of stuff i did explicitly study in a grammar guide i completely forgot the explanation for. My reading and listening is GREAT, because all my effort only has to go into learning new words lately! its relaxing! Its the only part i need to do! But my writing/speaking i am very concerned about because being able to check myself for mistakes is something i’d like the ability to do.

how grammar is presented really makes a difference in how well i get it. there is some serious benefit to ‘show simple first then build up what you know’ that text books tend to prefer. versus like grammar reference books that may start with some in depth stuff.

i tried to read a japanese grammar guide the other day and 1 it was great but 2 it covered some ADVANCED stuff i never learned in genki 1+2, and so it was Explicit grammar description of stuff i had literally years ago been immersing in japanese and Still not conciously known about. So i felt. Overwhelmed lol. I felt so confused. I feel like I might switch to Tae Kim’s grammar guide primarily just because its structured with basics covered first. and i feel like until the basics are again glued into my brain, seeing even more advanced stuff just confused me so much i had no idea how to remember it. which is funny because? my usual strategy with grammar guides is to just read it and let what sticks stick and what is confusing be moved on from, in the hope i will later see it again and understand it better. so like based on what i usually do i should’ve just been able to read through it (and i’m gonna try anyway lol). but truly japanese grammar just... my mind does not like wrapping around it and remembering it. (chinese grammar is so much easier for me... so much easier....;-; )

i have been tempted to just Restart Nukemarine’s LLJ (Lets Learn Japanese) memrise decks, because I KNOW they worked for me last time really really well. And they include Tae Kim grammar lessons. And I know if i did it then maybe i’d get back to where i was years ago pretty fast.

I tried Earthlingo app. Its a cool idea, I don’t think its worth it though unless you planned to get Rosetta Stone (since Earthlingo is FREE). Earthlingo features 1000 words per language, taught to you by exploring video game worlds as an alien. Its a cool concept, but since all words seem to be nouns then you aren’t even learning the most common verbs/adjectives. And 1000 words is not a lot. And you could learn 1000 quite fast if using srs flashcards like Memrise or Anki (think weeks if you push yourself, and a month or two months if going at a regular pace). Earthlingo you have to slowly explore the worlds so that eats time, you have to choose to test yourself (so you don’t review nearly as often as flashcard apps), and one test includes walking around the world clicking the object which you’re given the word for (takes time to find the right object). All this means a word that might take maybe 15 minutes to study over a few weeks, might instead take much longer to study and learn. I don’t use duolingo because it generally covers so few words (usually 2000-4000 i think which is good for a beginner resource but you have to do the WHOLE course to get to all those words and i take so long on duolingo that could take YEARS for me versus a month on a flashcard app or clozemaster). Duolingo I also don’t use because it very slowly paces learning material (it takes me months/years to get through 1000 words on duolingo - just personally i go so slow on it, i think faster people would find a use for it). Likewise Lingodeer takes me AGES to get through (and i think covers 2000 words nowadays? I’m shocked Duolingo has more words for the japanese course tbh). However, Lingodeer is by far the best ‘app’ for Japanese grammar lessons in app practice form. Even if basically all the apps feel pretty slow to me in how fast they give you new info. Earthlingo is cool that its free, and for learners 12 and under i think it would be super useful as a way to engage them and keep them studying (since what child likes flashcards? whereas as a child i would’ve loved this). But as an adult Earthlingo is sooooo slow on how fast you can learn words, and it does not even offer very many words (1000 is a nice bare minimum but without verbs/adjectives it can only be a supplementary learning tool for beginners at best).

Link about Lingodeer having 2000 words in a course. (Since its SO hard to lookup how much vocabulary lingodeer includes :c )

Nukemarine’s LLJ memrise decks (which I’m considering going through again but ToT agh flashcardssssss.... they sure do work though agh)

http://www.chinese-grammar.com/beginner/ - this is the site I read a chinese grammar guide on at like Month 3. I am rereading it now maybe it will help me remember wtf grammar explicitly is. ToT (A tip, read Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced sections). Last time I visited the site you just clicked a section, then saw each fully explained grammar point and clicked ‘next’ it was nice. Now its laid out a little less ideal for me, but its still got all the same nice info! (Also honestly if you are a beginner I really DO like this grammar guide... it introduces basic info first, gradually gets more complex, and i could follow its logic knowing like 200 hanzi and 100 words ToT. its very easy to understand even if it takes a while to apply that info).

im probably gonna read hanshe more today. i’m at the point where either i know enough vocab, or the writers style has just ‘clicked’ idk. but now i just am not getting bogged down by unknown words and am just. speeding through enjoying the plot. Also rip me this novel has 155 chapters and im only on chapter 30.

watching japanese lets plays is really fun! i feel like im 3 years old cause i just see nouns i can learn pretty easy in context cause i know the game well, and hear some vaguely familiar verbs, but its fun! also it helps i know kingdom hearts 2 like by heart so. a lot of it makes me instantly cheerful and nostalgic. roxas’s voice is so cute in the japanese version.

oh i almost forgot: I found a book recently for chinese that for it’s like 10 page grammar guide summary at the beginning ALONE i think is more than worth the 4 dollars it costs to get. It has a ton of compound words and its a reference book in mandarin and cantonese (it has pronunciation for both, all characters are in traditional). I got it initally because it as a bunch of compound words and I’d like to get better at knowing a lot of common ones. But the intro to the book has a page explaining sentence structures in chinese, then examples. Its so straightforward and to the point. I love it. The book is “Understanding Chinese: A Guide to the Usage of Chinese Characters” by Rita Mei-Wah Choy. (There is also a companion book for individual hanzi, which is nice but this book specifically I’m finding more useful).

what i really like about Listening-Reading method, and reading, as study activities: no matter how I do them it is only improvement. I have a tendency to ‘redo’ material i don’t feel i fully mastered, or refuse to move on. So when i have duolingo, flashcards (sometimes i can move on if i ignore reviews/make myself do new stuff), books, grammar guides, self guided classes - i have a tendency to redo the material. over and over. and not progress and challenge myself. whereas with reading - every time i look up a word its useful because its new or something i clearly Need to review (not something i’ve actually learned and can move past reviewing). so whether i reread material or read new stuff, as long as i run into things i find somewhat challenging (feel the desire to word look up), i know i am running into new material i can learn. Same with listening-reading method: whether i finish a book or just skip to random books, any new chapter i do will give me new words to learn/remember (until i’ve reached a point of perfect listening comprehension which is a WAYS away). There’s no way for me to mess it up. I can give up a book im bored with, i don’t have to stick to one resource to the end. 

someone tell me why professionally made chinese audio books almost NEVER line up to the chapters???? whyyyyy ;-;

Even More Notes lol:

So I read so much in Pleco, which auto pronounces, I have COMPLETELY forgot. 得 地 - for these two, when they’re attached after a description like 淡淡 慢慢 高兴 etc, when are they pronounced di versus de???? i’m pretty sure  得 is pronounced de when its an adjective like ‘-ly’. but for  地, i don’t remember if when part of a describer if its pronounced di or de????

[twtd11]

Legal Aid

As in, you should get some. I’ve put off writing this post for ages, but with the wave of evictions we’re probably about to see, now seems to be the time.

If you have any sort of civil legal problem, by that I mean not criminal, you should google [your location] and [free legal aid]. No, I’m not kidding. Any legal problem. Ok, not any. We can’t help you sue the bastard who wrecked you car on the freeway last week. But anything else, including:

Your landlord is refusing to fix your toilet or give you your security deposit back

You just got an eviction or foreclosure notice and you don’t know what to do

You’ve been abused and you need legal protection and a divorce

You’re trying to get custody of your kids

You need a will/power of attorney/advance medical directive (super important for people who aren’t married and/or lgbt+ people)

You’ve been discriminated against at work

You need help figuring out what to do with your parent’s will after they’ve died

You’ve/your kid’s been suspended from school (if your under 18, you’ll have to get your parent/guardian to call)

You need a name change or gender marker change (becasue you’re transitioning or for whatever reason)

You’re having problems getting Social Security Disability benefits

You need to file bankruptcy or you’ve got creditors harassing you

You’ve been denied unemployment benefits

If it sounds like a lot of stuff, that’s because it is. This isn’t even a full list of what legal aid can help you with. This was just the stuff off of the top of my head that I remembered.

Legal aid organizations get funding from Congress (including some funding from the CARES act, so get your coronavirus help too) to provide low income individuals with legal help. Your tax dollars are paying for you to get a lawyer if you need one. Low income is basically anyone making less than 200% of the federal poverty guideline, so for a one person household, that’s $25,520 per year. If there are more people in your household (not including roommates) that number goes up. If you even think you might qualify, give legal aid a call. All it’s going to cost is your time.

Seriously guys, legal aid is here to help you! We like standing up for the little guy! So blow up this post where everyone knows about this.

(Obviously this is entirely US centric. I have no idea how this works other places)

[blazehedgehog]

Sorry to ask this, but what are your thoughts on Dunky's "I'm Done Making Good Videos" with regards to content you aspire to author vs what the average joe actually searches for

I don’t know if I’m the best person to be asking this, really.

Let’s get fully inside baseball here. Let’s pull the curtain all the way back. Actually, let’s burn down the curtain. I’m going to overshare like hell right now. Get ready for the most stream-of-consciousness rambling ever, because a lot of this has been boiling in my head and dying to get out.

For the entirety of my Youtube channel, I’ve pretty much only ever done what I want to do. Very rarely do I chase trends, or do what’s hot, or even do what people want me to do. I do whatever I feel like doing.

I have paid the price for that. My Youtube channel is 15 years old as of this year, and only now am I slowly inching towards 25,000 subscribers. I am incredibly inconsistent. What’s my channel post? Well, a couple times a year, maybe I put together an edited essay/review for a game. But I also sometimes post random, unedited, uncommentated gameplay footage. Maybe it’s a fan game, maybe it’s a gameplay demo, maybe it’s Fortnite. Sometimes, I also post remastered video game music. Every Halloween, I dump a bunch of one-off horror Let’s Plays on to my channel. And then, there’s the podcast.

I know exactly what my problems are. I don’t specialize enough, and I don’t put content out fast enough. Because most Youtube channels are, like, “shows”, right. The Did You Know Gaming show. The Markiplier show. The Angry Video Game Nerd show. And you can point at those and say exactly what they are in two sentences or less.

Did You Know Gaming specializes in informative videos uncovering obscure facts you might not know about popular video games.

Markiplier is a Youtuber that does Let’s Play videos for video games, primarily horror games, but he also focuses on general comedy skits and things of that nature.

The Angry Video Game Nerd is about one guy’s over the top reactions to bad video games.

What does BlazeHedgehog do? Well, he does a lot of Sonic fan content, but sometimes he does horror let’s plays, and sometimes he does multiplayer compilation videos sort of like Criken, but he also does music, and sometimes he makes video games and puts out videos of that, and in general he’s really low energy and sometimes there will be three or four weeks between uploads. Also he sounds like Booger from Revenge of the Nerds Snot from Family Guy (apparently).

If you come to my channel for something specific, you have to put up with everything else I upload. I could start separate channels for that content, but the barrier to entry on Youtube is so massive now that I would effectively sending those channels to their death. Videos that get 200-500 views on my main channel would get 10 views or less if they were on their own self-contained alt-channel.

So I languish. I struggle. I suffer. Youtube shows me red down arrows to tell me just how much worse I’m doing now than my last flash-in-the-pan success.

I’ve tried to chase success. It just makes me sad. I have a sense of humor, but I don’t think I can make “funny videos” like some people can. My Sonic 06 glitch video did gangbusters ten years ago, but I don’t often like kicking games when they’re down. It was a struggle to make that Sonic Boom glitch montage and that’s the reason I never followed through with Part 2 like I said I would.

My only wish is that people appreciate honesty. My Youtube channel might be a scattered mess, but that’s who I am. And more than anything, I think that’s what Dunkey’s video was about. His whole joke was about switching from thoughtful or funny videos to becoming a content farm for whatever is currently popular.

I’ve brought it up a few times here and there over the last few months, but I’ve had several brushes with the Fortnite side of Youtube recently. And there are so many dudes over there who are what I would generously call “grifters.” I follow Hypex on Twitter and routinely check Firemonkey and ShiinaBR because they datamine future Fortnite updates and often have the scoop days, weeks or sometimes months in advance.

Near the end of season 3, all three of them mentioned they had datamined “the next season” but wouldn’t say what it was because they didn’t want to spoil what was coming (the marvel season). They mentioned there were “others out there” that were spoiling things, but wouldn’t say who. I wanted to spoil myself, so I turned to Youtube.

And Youtube was a nightmare. Over and over and over, I would encounter tons of people downright thriving on the same grift. It’s an open secret that Youtube prioritizes longer videos, so if your video is under ten minutes (or I think now 8 minutes), the algorithm isn’t going to be as nice to you and won’t promote your video as well, and you aren’t going to get as much advertising money because fewer people are going to sit through a video advertisement that’s a quarter of your video’s entire length. Longer videos are more profitable for Youtube, and by extension, for the user uploading them.

So it was video after video of these guys making big bold claims about how they had all the answers on what the next season of Fortnite was, and you’re thinking, “oh wow, it’s a 17 minute video, they’re going to spoil everything!”

You load the video up and it’s some guy in his streamer man cave, he’s got his webcam on, and he loads in to a match of Fortnite with his squad. Keep in mind, this video was pitched as a news report of sorts, a big spoiling of future content... and it’s just a guy playing Fortnite with a crew. In the few seconds between matches as he queues for the next one, he stops to deliver a single shred of information, most of which start with “Hypex said...”

The one thing you came to this video for and it’s scattered like breadcrumbs across a 17 minute video of a guy just playing normal matches Fortnite to fill time. It’s not information they acquired for themselves, they all just regurgitate what Hypex said, or what other channels reported Hypex saying. 17 minutes of padding for scraps of second-hand leaks. And I found dozens of these channels, all repeating the same format, all repeating the same specks of leaked information, and all of them had 150,000 to 200,000 views on each of their videos in less than 24 hours. That’s hundreds of dollars per video on a format to scam the system.

But that’s a content farm. Those dudes are vultures. I have a hard time believing their hearts are really in it. I know it’s not a term that’s really in vogue anymore, but I see that as “selling out.” They know what they are doing and it’s to make money, not to make a community better. I mean, one of those videos was a guy who was reading Marvel comic hero profiles off of Wikipedia because it sounded like he literally did not know who guys like Iron Man, Thor and Wolverine even were. How are you in touch enough with pop culture that you’re cranking out factory-fresh Fortnite content for Youtube but you don’t know who Thor is? Answer: because you don’t really care and you’re in it for the money. Gotta hit that 15 minute threshold and put in six mid-roll ad breaks.

I could be that guy. That’s kind of what I was hoping “This Kinda Sucks” would turn in to, which would be sort of a rant video series like The Jimquisition or something. But I did not have the interest or energy to keep that up. So you get a playlist with two videos on it.

I’m sure Dunkey was just funnin’ around. Dude has 6 million subscribers. But for me, like... what he said in the video is mostly true. Following your heart and making thoughtful content you are personally interested in won’t pay the bills. I mean, as I predicted, that Jurassic Park video launched to the sound of crickets chirping. My most hardcore fans and a few curious onlookers checked it out but that was it. I’ve been working on that video since August, and it’s something my viewer base did not care about. But I cared about it, and that’s important for the long-run, I think.

The other problem, sort of a disconnect, is that I’m lucky to be in the position I’m in. I think guys like Dunkey probably make all of their money from places like Youtube and Twitch and Patreon and that’s their career. That work pays all of their bills.

My work does not pay my bills. Or it does, but it’s not enough to pay all of my bills. I am lucky enough right now that I am in a living situation where I can make fractions of money in intermittent spurts. That won’t always be the case. But for now, I get to be honest, and I get to follow my heart in whatever random, chaotic direction it feels like going that particular day. Dunkey faces a different sort of pressure than I do.

All of this is to say I have no idea what I’m doing, I guess. I make the content I want to see.

That being said, I increasingly think about something I heard Woolie say early on when he went solo for his WoolieVS channel, and that was the idea of “One for you, one for me, one for us.”

Because I’ve had more than one friend burn out doing, like, Twitch streams and stuff. You hear about Youtubers who get sick of being shackled to new releases or whatever’s popular. At some point these people wake up and realize they’ve had this struggle, maybe made some money in the process, but they’re miserable because they don’t get to do what they want to do. They’re always being pushed forward by the fans that are behind them.

The “One for you, one for me, one for us” mantra does at least keep you a little more sane. Balance in all things, right? So that Jurassic Park video, it can flop. It’d be nice if it didn’t flop, given what time of the year it is, but it’s a video for me. I have other video ideas in the chamber that I know will be for my audience, or “for us.”

I just have to stay true to myself, and to my messy brain.

[hippychick006]

15.13: Destiny’s Child - Episode Review/Recap

[Image of episode missing, because out of 15 photos of the promo, only 1 photo was of Sam and Dean and it wasn’t that good.  Other 14 photos were a combination of Ruby, Jo, Castiel and Jack - I shit you not]

I think this episode highlights beautifully many of the issues I and I know a lot of other people are having with the show.

The highlights of the episode are undoubtedly the scenes where AU Sam and Dean interact with our Sam and Dean.  This is why I make a big deal of how much they are being paid per episode. Look at what happens when you write for the people earning the quarter of a million dollars in the episode.  Look what happens when you have it just be them, with no “fan favourite” side characters to pander to.  Chemistry happens, and watering that down or separating it entirely, adding someone into it or trying to force it between characters who just don’t have it, is one of the shows biggest issues in recent seasons and largest contributor to people not watching live or choosing not to watch at all because without that chemistry that made the show special, what are you left with?

Drabbernatural my friends, that’s what you’re left with.

The lowlights of the episode are all the scenes that have been written to pander to a small percentage of the watching audience, so pretty much the rest of the episode in all honesty.  

Under a cut because some people are in denial.

THEN

Flashback to Castiel watching porn about a pizza man.  All that’s in my head from this is Meg!  I think we’re getting Meg (let’s be real, I know we’re getting Meg as it’s already been on my dash, but I would have still thought this regardless of spoilers).  There it is, there’s the canon Megstiel kiss 😍. I’m amazed Dabb managed to keep his big mouth shut on this spoiler.  Anyway, skip this in the entirety to move onto...

NOW

Loved, loved, loved this opening scene. 🥰. Loved everything about it from start to finish.  No complaints whatsoever.

We start with Sam and Dean.  Just Sam and Dean like the good old days 😍. I can’t believe how happy that makes me and they haven’t done anything yet.  

Sam’s going through the books, Dean’s on the laptop, barely any space between them and they appear to be trying to find where Chuck is. They seem to be having no luck.

Sam: Any sign of him? Dean: Nah, nothing yet.  Chucks probably trashing a few dozen universes outside of CNN’s range.

They hear a noise and rush to investigate.  They see a bright light filtering through the bottom of the door of one the rooms. As they look at it, the light (as well as the noise) disappears.  Instantly in hunter mode, Dean indicates for Sam to open the door and they see…

A tiny car that I thought was a mini but have been reliably informed by someone much more knowledgeable than me (which isn’t too difficult tbh) is a Fiat 500. Thank you @alexa-alcantara​.  It’s a cute little car, and a beautiful colour but my own experience of owning a Fiat is not a good memory.  My garage telling me they call them the “Fix It Again Tony” of cars did not help me look any more favourably at them, but on the plus side, I built up a good relationship with my garage from the many hours I spent there.  The car is in front of a portal so it’s clear it’s just come through from one of the other worlds.

Emerging from that cute little car is 12’ 6” of muscle in the form of AU Winchesters.  The car practically groans in relief (I do see it lift up slightly) as they get out to the tune of “I want you” by Savage Garden.” Thank you once again Shazam as I’m as shit on music as I am at identifying cars.  

Did I say I love this scene?  I just…love this entire scene. AU Dean’s in the driving seat (of course), We see AU Sam’s foot emerge and he has no socks on – which I’m wondering is a shoutout to that photo shoot they had with no socks. Possibly it’s the fashion right now which I know even less about than cars or music. The entire scene, it’s just… perfection.  It’s just so well shot, I love that AU Sam and Dean could not be more different from our Sam and Dean from their clothes to the hair. I’ve fallen in love with both these new characters within a 10 second timeframe and they haven’t even spoken yet! That is the genius of Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles on screen, together, without extras, supported by the entire crew from special effects through to wardrobe.  They can all bring their A game which makes it all the more disappointing in the scenes and episodes where they don’t bother.

AU Dean looks back at the portal they came through.

AU SAM: Bro…We did it

AU Sam and Dean fist bump at their success and I’m in danger of losing it.  😂 Side note to size kinkers; that is not Jared and Jensen’s hands there 😂. Hey, no judging from this blog, but I personally don’t consider Jared “huge” and Jensen “tiny”, but you do you.

AU Sam and Dean are too flushed with their own success of getting through the portal to notice our Sam and Dean yet.  Meanwhile, our Sam and Dean are looking at the new arrivals with increasing horror.

AU Dean finally notices our Dean and we get the “Sam” “Dean” “Dean” “Sam” exchange between the four of them.

AU Sam and Dean: What the heck? Our Sam and Dean: What the hell?

Somewhere, I’m hoping that there’s an AU world where they say, “What the fuck?” because I think that would really please Jared.

Each look horrified at the other – I think AU!Sam may be on the point of tears seeing his doppelgänger dressed in plaid.

The portal starts making a loud ominous noise, AU Dean says “aw nuts” and AU Sam and Dean look at each other before the portal goes haywire, exploding in a bright white light, causing our versions to shield their eyes.  When they look back up, AU Winchesters, the car and the portal have all disappeared and the room is back to normal.

What the Heck?  You bring them back right now show!  Don’t be bringing in waste of space or “fan favourite” characters when all I want is these two.  

Sadly, the show does not listen, and we’re forced against our will onto the next scene.

Sam and Dean are explaining to waste of space that a rift opened in the armoury (is that right? I didn’t see any weapons in that room, but it sounded like he said armoury).  Sam says two guys stepped out that looked just like them. Dean: except not, and don’t even get me started about the car. Waste of space does not understand which is his standard operating procedure since his first episode tbh.  I’m not sure if this is still supposed to be funny; it’s been 11 years since season 4. 😴. 

Dean says welcome to the club.  

What?  The dumbass club?  Sam and Dean are such dumbasses that they need Billie to suddenly appear to confirm they’ve met an AU version of themselves running from their reality. Seriously?  😡. They know other worlds are being destroyed, they rescued Kaia from one in the process of being destroyed and that was only last week!  They don’t think that other Sam and Deans in other universes are going to be figuring out what’s happening and trying to do something to stop it?  It doesn’t make sense.  Sam and Dean do reckless things, but they aren’t dumb. 😡

As an aside, what I loved about the AU Sam and Dean we just met, is that they didn’t try to save their world, they were only interested in saving their own pretty asses by trying to jump worlds and I love how different they are from our Sam and Dean who would, and have, sacrificed themselves in a heartbeat to save their world.

I used to like Billie but all the monologuing over the last couple of episodes is 😴 which is not the actresses fault, but there are also some issues with delivery of the lines (because it’s boring). Key point from this entire boring scene is:

Billie: He’s almost done, wrapping up all those other worlds and when he is…Sam: it’s our turn

Billie agrees and says they need to be prepared.  She has the next step… for Jack.

Jack appears on cue, eating a sandwich.  He says he’s ready and feeling good about it.  I’m feeling I’m missing a scene somewhere. Did he already have a chat with Billie, so he knows what she’s about to say?  I’m not sure but don’t care enough to spend any time on it.

Billy monologues that the first quest (eating the hearts) was to strengthen Jack’s body. Step 2 is more spiritual in nature.

Waste of space: can you be more specific? Me: you’re that asshole that asks questions during presentations, aren’t you? Give her a chance to monologue ffs.  She was just about to tell us before your unnecessary interruption. I don’t even have a clue what your contribution to this scene is, other than pre-emptory meltdown avoidance of 200 accounts on twitter.  Death: Jack needs to find the occultum Sam: the occultum? Occultum, that’s Latin for… hidden. Where do we find it? Me: you’re so smart 😍 Death (sarcastic): I don’t know… It’s hidden

Ah yes, a side character making the Winchesters look stupid never gets old. 🙄

Anyway, more boring monologuing later, it’s been hidden for centuries, it’s sacred and potent.  It’s not a weapon per se but it’s powerful.

Dean(sarcastically): Okay, thanks, big help.

She asks Jack if he’s ready and he says he is. She says that’s good, that they have to be ready and vigilant and not stupid (looks at the Winchesters).  Dean’s eyeroll matches mine almost exactly.  Sick, fed up of the Winchesters being called stupid by side characters.  Oh, I said that already.  Well I am!

Avoiding this scene in future and moving on.

Sam and Dean are researching the occultum.  Or at least Sam’s researching and ranting about the occultum, but Deans playing with an elastic band and barely listening. Sam gets his attention and asks what he’s doing. Dean’s thinking about things and how if Jack kills god, that still leaves “you know who”. Sam says: Amara. Dean thinks that if Jack kills god, he’ll have to kill her too, because if you take Chuck off the board, that throws things out of balance and the world ends. If there’s no God or Darkness, nothing is out of balance.

Sam: Okay, Yeah, but who takes over, Jack?

Dean contemplates that and is about to answer when Jack walks in, blowing a bubblegum bubble and announcing he just learned how to do that.

Dean turns back to Sam: Probably not

I love little scenes like this, zero pandering, just classic Supernatural and classic Dean. 😍

Overall, it was another good brother scene (taking aside the boring plot which we can’t do anything about).

Parents Sam and Dean speak to Jack about how he’s going to take down Chuck because Billie hasn’t been clear on the plan.

Dean: Yeah, when you go up against Chuck, you’re gonna what? (makes boxing moves), duck and weave, or just go in for the full smite? 😂

My Dean is back with the one liners in this episode and I love him.  

Jack: Yeah, you know, something like that

Dean’s face. 😂

Unsurprisingly Sam and Dean are not reassured, they’re about to ask more questions when waste of space walks in and good news guys!  Unbelievably, He has information from fellow waste of space/plot device Sergei (does waste of space only have one contact?).  The show aren’t even trying anymore with this shit. Istg. 🙄 Ah what would we do without waste of space?  Definitely have a much more decent episode if I’m going to be perfectly honest.

Anyway, when waste of space announces who he has information from:

Dean: Him? Are we that desperate? 😂

Of course, Sergei knows about the occultum 🙄. He would have been extremely useful to have had around in the early seasons. Each episode would have been tied up in 30 seconds with one phonecall to the font of all knowledge.  I hate characters like this and the laziness of the writing to continue to fallback on him.

Supernatural writer: Hey boss, I’m stuck a little on the occultum storyline Dabb: Have you tried using waste of space and Sergei? Supernatural writer: I didn’t think of that! Great idea, thanks!  I guess that’s why you’re the boss! Me: 🙄 you lazy 🤬

Waste of space monologues about the occultum and what happened to it, he starts off that its divine in origin and was housed in a temple for hundreds of years before…

Dean: it was plundered by pirates! Waste of space: No Dean: it was dug up by tomb raiders! Waste of space: No Dean: it was seized by the king of the dead and his war lords.  Am I close? Waste of space: looted by invading mongol hoardes for trade on the black market Dean: on the black market (looks at Sam) That’s what I thought. I was going to say that next, that was the next one.

Sam indulges his hunter husband.  Oh wait, this is our Sam and Dean, not the AU version.  Rewinds to check.  No, Sam is indulging his hunter husband. He asks waste of space where it is now.

Long explanation later, the object was given to a faith healer in return for saving the owners life.  

Faith healer?  How convenient.  Now, who do we know that’s a faith healer? 🙄

Waste of space doesn’t have a name – are you kidding me? He must have had a name to go to the faith healer. He at least has a description.  She was attractive 🙄 and had glowing hands while healing.

It’s your wife, Jensen!  Erm I mean, Sister Jo.  

Imagine that entire scene with waste of space and Sergei plot device removed, Sam found the information from research and that entire conversation was between him and Dean.  Infinitely better and rewatchable.

Sam and Dean go off to visit Jensen’s wife Sister Jo who at this point of the show’s run has somehow been cast in 4 previous episodes and every single appearance has been completely forgettable.  This one is no different.

I’m going to rant for a second.  This stunt casting, bringing back of “fan favourites”, nepotism, lazy writing crap is really dragging the quality of the show down. We’ve had so many shit, boring, waste of time episodes this season.  You could have replaced a couple of them with the Winchesters trying to track down this elusive but needed item.  Make it hard for them, get rid of Sergei and Jensen’s wife Sister Jo and make the finding of this artefact interesting and more believable by introducing new characters for them to interact with.  This is just… really bleh.

Anyway, Sam and Dean go to see one of the most boring characters ever created, and that includes waste of space who was badass in season 4-5, a dick yes, but a badass none the less so he gets a pass.  This is not a good scene, it’s worth fast forwarding and forgetting it ever existed, not least because of bad dialogue and questionable acting. I am really, really not a wife hater, but neither will I give someone a free pass because of who they are married to.  You come on the show, you get judged on your own merits, same as any other guest actor. Long story short, they want the thingamajig I’ve forgotten the name of because I had a 6 hour watching break to work up to watching this scene and that was not nearly long enough. Jo doesn’t want to give it to them, and Sam and Dean pull angel blades on her.  She says she didn’t have it, Ruby does.

Where’s that gif.  Where the fuck is that gif?  Oh, found it…

This next scene, I just 😡🤬😡🤬😡🤬😡🤬😡🤬😡🤬😡🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬.  Okay, I can do this, woman’s up and presses play, weeping for what once was the entire time I’m watching.  

We get a pointless scene which as predicted, is nothing less than a gimmick, written only to have “the wives” on the show in the same episode and in the same scene.  I think this is the angriest I’ve ever been watching a show and we haven’t reached the point in the episode where Sam is reduced to a doorstopper.  Oh yes, that gem has still to come.  🤬😡🤬!!!

Somehow, even though Ruby is terrified of angels and Jo wasn’t on earth at the same time as Ruby, they somehow not only met, but worked together.  Jo says the vessel suits Ruby better than the blond.  Not in this household missy.  We stan the infinitely better Katie Cassidy (fine there might have been a childhood crush on watching reruns of her father that sways the debate in her favour slightly but that’s neither here nor there!).

Okay, no sorry.  I thought I could take one for the team, but I can’t. This entire scene would not ever have been made if the show was in the hands of a competent showrunner.  It’s just complete nonsense with absolutely no attempt by the writer to respect the audience or canon and not worth even documenting what happens as it’s all a crock of 💩. Do yourselves a favour and ignore it.  All you need to know is Ruby has the thingamajig they need. It was stashed somewhere in hell.

Back at the bunker, Jack has take out, lots and lots of take out; pizza (no pineapple), fried chicken, hot dogs, nachos, Chinese food… Waste of space joins him.  They talk about Jack not having a soul.  Jack says he understands why Sam and Dean were angered by what happened to Mary

Castiel: by what you did to Mary

He gets a pass for this line (and his name back briefly) because it needed to be said so he wasn’t a waste of space for once.

Jack sees things have changed, especially with Dean.  

I see a bit of chatter on this one.  I don’t understand the chatter.  Sam forgives people, this goes way back that he’s able to forgive people and not hold a grudge.  He’s had a darkness inside him his entire life, he’s had to fight against his nature to be who he is, so of course he’s going to be more forgiving, more understanding of someone he sees as being similar to him.  Add to the fact that Sam did not build a strong relationship with Mary - he’s sad she’s gone - but I think he’s more accepting of it than Dean. All of this has been shown in episodes, so when Jack asks, “Will he ever forgive me?”  He’s not asking about Sam because he knows through Sam’s words and actions that Sam has forgiven him, but he knows Dean hasn’t.  I don’t have an issue with this, and you know I’m a bitter Sam fan, I’ll reserve my anger for later in the episode.

So, for me, waste of space only talks about Dean for the same reason (and shockingly not because he’s gay for the human).  He says, “Dean, he feels things more acutely than any human I’ve ever known, so it’s possible he can work through this. One day he may explode, let it all out and breath deeply and move on.”

Jack asks how long that will take. waste of space says he doesn’t know.

I understand the point of the scene, it’s not the worst. I’d prefer if my boys were saving people, hunting things obviously, but this was an okay scene.  I do like Alex and what he brings to the table – though don’t like when too much focus is put on him or Sam’s relationship with him is sidelined.

Sam and Dean return to the bunker.  Dean asks if Sam’s sure they can swing this again.  Sam says they still have Rowena’s notes from the spell. Dean: Okay, Samwitch, lets do this.”  I love how Dean hates witches, he was still wary of Rowena though could see her uses, but the minute Sam is a witch, Dean’s all aboard the witch train. 😂

Waste of space appears, Dean tells him that they sorta know where the occultum is.  Waste of space looks worried and they know something is wrong. They follow him through the bunker to one of the rooms.  Their AU selves are projected on the wall.  I just… Why was the entire episode not their doppelgängers?  I love them. AU Dean screams (but we can’t hear him). AU Sam seems far more relaxed about the situation.  They can’t see or hear our Sam or Dean.  Sam asks waste of space where they are.

Waste of space thinks the blast trapped them between dimensions as the rift and their world was destroyed.  AU Dean tapping on the wall, and trying to get a cell phone signal, I just can’t… 😂

Dean: Are they in pain? Waste of space doesn’t think so.  Dean says “Good” goes to leave.  Sam tries to stop him.  Dean says they’ll deal with them, but first they have to go to hell. Waste of space: woah, you do?

Sam explains that’s where Jo said Ruby stashed the occultum

Waste of space: Ruby? The demon you were sexually intimate with?   Dean: Sexually intimate? Sam (strongly): Yes!

I’ve seen a lot of chatter on this one as well. Some claiming that Dean is questioning the choice of wording by waste of space.  I don’t see that.  I see this as another fail, that they are somehow trying to claim Dean doesn’t know Sam and Ruby had a sexual relationship, even though Sam went into it in explicit detail in “I know what you did last summer”, to the point Dean asked him to stop.  If they were going for the choice of wording, they failed in both facial expressions and dialogue.

They have a discussion, not worth repeating, too much focus on waste of space. Upshot is Sam and Dean are going to Hell.  

Sam and Dean arrive on the Charmed set in Hell.  I’m expecting them to meet Julian McMahon striding down the corridor.  They meet a demon who informs them that Rowena is hosting a reception for newly condemned souls.  The demon doesn’t seem happy about that. He starts taking them to Rowena.  This is a pretty pointless scene tbh.

Back in the bunker, waste of space says to Jack that he doesn’t trust Jo’s story, he wants to speak to Ruby who apparently is in the empty.  I’m losing it with where entities end up these days. I’m guessing if demons are exorcised, like Meg was, then they go back to Hell.  If they are killed permanently, like Alastair was by Sam, they end up in the Empty?   I guess it makes sense.

Anyway, waste of space needs Jack’s assistance to get to the empty. He needs Jack to kill him…

Damn, false alarm, it’s only an “almost kill”.  Yeah, I would probably be too thorough.  Okay Jack, carry on, you’re up.

I don’t understand how he’ll be able to do anything in the empty, won’t he be kept in a state of nothing?

Jack reminds waste of space that the empty doesn’t like him. Waste of space says he’s far from happy so he should be okay.

Jack: Cass, I, I may not have a soul, but I know killing you is wrong, what if I screw up? Waste of space: well then, I’ll be lost forever… but I think you’ll do fine.

Jack has to draw out most of waste of space’s life force into a flask, and keep an eye on him so he doesn’t die for real. He also has to tend the spell to ensure Sam and Dean are not lost in Hell forever either (but to me it seems really easy to get in and out of, not like the early days so don’t see them being stuck there as a problem).  Remember back in season 2 when hell was this...

Sam: Hell is like, um ... (punches Dean)... well, it's like hell, even for demons. (punches Dean again)... It's a prison, made of bone and flesh and blood and fear. 

Good times.  Now we have Barbie!Hell and anyone can just walk in and it isn’t scary.  But yeah, tell me again that I should stop being critical and the show hasn’t deteriorated beyond all recognition

Sam and Dean follow the lackey they met in Hell to where Rowena is hosting a meet and greet for the new arrivals to Hell.  Or at least that’s where they were supposed to be taken, turns out it’s a trap. Of course, it is, because dumchesters 🙄, but at least we get a decent fight out of it as they are set upon by three demons carrying angel blades.  Dean kills two, Sam holds the third hostage so they can find out who betrayed them. Unsurprisingly it was Jo 🙄 Sam then kills the demon (after Dean gives a nod to do so).

Dean: that bitch set us up!

We switch to sister Jo and see her packing up and leaving, so she must know her plan failed, and Sam and Dean will soon be after her.

We’re now in The Empty with waste of space and for sure as shit, this scene changing whiplash, disregard of canon, lack of continuity between other episodes, focus on side characters has to mean this is a suck-lemons episode. He’s shouting for Ruby.  He doesn’t get her, we hear, “Hello Clarence”

Waste of space spins around and it’s Meg!  He’s so happy to see her and disappointed that it’s the empty. No offence to Rachel, love her, she does great in the episode and Megstiel will always be canon, but just not interested in any of this.

Next scene is waste of space and Ruby.  Fast forwarding other than to say no sweetie, Sam didn’t kill you, but I don’t blame you, I blame the writers who are too lazy to do any research. Sam should have killed you, but it was Dean that did it.  

Another scene between Ruby and Jo, as forgettable as the first.   Lucifer and Michael weren’t circling their vessels when you were still breathing you morons.   Lucifer hadn’t yet been released, but what is canon on this show when you can blast it aside and have the wives in a scene together and isn’t it wonderful?  Eh, I’m gonna say hard no on that one.

Another scene between Ruby and waste of space. In true Ruby style, she’ll help him if he gets her out of the empty.  Oh, and the occultum is a place, not a thing, that’s all we need to know.

Fast forwarding all of this as it’s pandering trite, not worthy of my time, besides the dumbchesters are back from Hell and I think Jack might be in trouble with them.

Jack (guilty): Guys… you’re back Dean (looking between Jack and waste of space’s body): Jack? What the hell?

Severe whiplash alert!  We’re back with Ruby and waste of space. Ruby monologues that the Empty is a place where all you do is dream about your regrets over and over for eternity.  Well then, just as well I have no regrets in life, other than watching seasons 12-14 of Supernatural.�� Wait, imagine that on repeat for eternity.  NOOOOOOOOOOO!

Waste of space says he knows.  In fairness to waste of space, at least he will have a vast range of playbacks on the amount of regrets he should have over the years, so he won’t get bored anytime soon.

Whiplash alert!  We’ve left the corned beef actors and are back with the porterhouse steak.  They advance on Jack.

Jack: He’s dead, kind of… for now Sam: What?!

Whiplash!  Get me back to the porterhouse damn it!   Waste of space agrees to try to get Ruby out, she whispers in waste of space’s ear, “the occultum, it’s…”

Whiplash!  I’m suing at this point in the episode tbh.  

Jack: Cass went to the empty, hopefully to find Ruby, hopefully to find out where this occultum thing is located, hopefully (puppy eyes)

Whiplash!  Ruby steps away and disappears.  Waste of space’s face is interesting, and I’m intrigued where it is.

Whiplash!  

Sam and Dean’s faces. 😂

Sam: that’s way too many hopefullys! Dean: Bring him back, now!

Okay Hellers, here’s a test.  If Sam had said that line, would you have interpreted it as Sam speaking as a parent or Sam concerned about waste of space because he’s secretly in love with him? Dean is obviously concerned, but he’s speaking to Jack as a parent.  

Jack opens the flask to release waste of space’s grace.  But The Empty (still in Meg’s form) is reluctant to let him go.  Turns out as she’s torturing waste of space that The Empty has a deal with Death, she helps Death and she can go back to sleep when Death’s plan works.  We alternate between waste of space being tortured and Jack trying to revive him.

Dean: come on, wake up pal. Dean: Come on Cass, come on Dean: Cass!

Pandering!  

Waste of space wakes up.  The Empty says, “see you soon”

I hope she does because yes, I love watching a show where my leads are made out to be dumbasses and the waste of space that should have been killed off years ago is the hero.  I’m losing count of how many episodes that’s happened this season. Sick of it. 🤬

Waste of space (looks at Dean): you made it back Dean: Yeah, and so did you!  You’re an idiot by the way! Sam chimes in: What if this hadn’t worked?

Waste of space says it did [work].  The occultum was never in Hell.  The occultum is the safest place in the world. Jo was never going to give that up. Waste of space knows where it is and asks, “Am I still an idiot?”

I’m actually so angry right now.  Who does this?  What shitty writer makes their lead cast look like idiots in order to big up a side character. What does he have on someone because I’m at a loss for any other logical explanation at this point for them willingly ruining the show.

Anyway, Dean says “well yeah”. Me: hell to the fuck yeah, you’re still an idiot and I hate you even more after this episode than I did before.

Sam wants to go to the place.

Jack reminds them if Chuck checks in on them and sees what they’re doing, they’ll lose.

Dean’s plan involves using their doppelgängers to pretend to be them.  They’ll open up a rift and he thinks waste of space’s grace will be enough to pull them through. Sam thinks it might also blast them to another world.

AU Sam and Dean are playing rock, paper, scissors.  AU Sam throws scissors and wins.  AU Dean’s reaction. 😂

Sam mixes up the spell for the portal and they place it at the wall where AU Sam and Dean are trapped.  Bright light later and…

… it obviously works because AU Sam and AU Dean are now sitting at the map table with a beer in front of each of them.  Our Sam and Dean are currently standing.  And I cannot do any justice to this scene.  It is perfect from start to finish.  Go watch the genius of Jared and Jensen at play with no one else cluttering up the scene.

Upshot of this scene is that AU John is (or was) alive, they got separated coming through the portal. He spoils them, (Dean: he spoils you?!) John has set up a very successful business called Huntercorp. They get paid (Dean: you get paid?!) for hunting monsters all over the world and have a private jet.  I would ask what they’re doing driving around in a Fiat 500 instead of a luxury car, but I’m having too much fun, so it gets a free pass and I won’t nitpick.  Let’s headcanon it’s all they could get a hold of to get through the rift and leave it at that.  They keep toasting their beers to their dad, “the best guy ever” but they don’t seem too cut up that he and their world have gone splody.  I love these versions, they seem to be fine they made it through and they have each other.  I’d like to see one without the other as I think they’d give our brothers a run for their money in the codependency stakes.  

AU Sam’s pinkie is raised while he drinks, and I can’t with the silent genius that is Jared Padalecki when he inhabits a character.

Our Sam and Dean during all of this. 😂.

Dean explains to the AU’s that they need them to pose as them for a while.   In order to do that, Sam tells his AU self he has to lose the man bun.  AU Sam’s reaction 😂.  He is not happy.  AU Dean closes his eyes and sits back, putting a hand over his mouth.  I thought at first he wasn’t happy at our Sam, but no, the reaction is because he knows how his Sam reacts about his hair (*whispers* I suspect AU Dean has suggested many times that AU Sam let his hair down… for reasons and AU Sam has refused, so its an old argument).  Sure enough, AU Sam says he will not.  Our boys ignore that and also tactfully suggest they will need to change their clothes.

Next, we see the impala at night, driving towards a church. All TFW 2.0 are in the car. 🙄

They walk up to the church doors and Jack says he knows he hasn’t been doing this as long as them, but doesn’t it seem too easy.

They agree and at that moment hear a growling.  

Jack: is that a bear?

Dean starts trying to get the church doors open by picking the lock

Sam: No, it’s more like uh… Waste of space: hellhounds Sam (as the hellhounds are approaching): Dean… Dean, you wanna hurry a little bit?

Dean gets the door open and they all get inside just in time. Sam and Dean get the door closed and Dean asks Sam if he’s got it.  I’ve seen a lot of chatter on this one. This scene alone highlights one of the many, many things wrong with the show and why it’s no longer enjoyable.  I think they were trying for ha ha comedy. Sam trying to keep the door closed while they are all standing around like idiots, but it isn’t funny and reduces Sam down to muscle rather than what he actually brings to the show, and both waste of space and Jack are stronger. 

Waste of space should have been holding the door (or not been there at all, which is preferable) and the scene should have been Sam, Dean and Jack.  No excuses for why it wasn’t done this way (other than pandering).  A line of pandering is annoying but acceptable, sidelining Jared to cater an entire scene to them is completely unncceptable. You’ve pissed off the Jared/Sam fans which are many more than Misha/Castiel (despite what they try to tell themselves), and you’ve pissed off the brother fans which are the majority of the audience.

Waste of space says the top of the cross points the way and they all look up at the cross high on the church wall.

As a side note, the Hellers are so cute, counting Sam and Dean standing in a church with their “son” as their wedding.  Refrains from slapping 8.23 down in front of them where Dean actually said some vows along the lines of “don’t you ever dare think there is anything past or present that I would put in front of you!” 😍

Sam (being paid $250k for this): Guys! Can you maybe move it along?

That’s not the cross they are looking for, because at that point, clouds miraculously clear outside, allowing moonlight to shine through a window and highlights an area on the church floor.  I mean I like that x marks the spot but I’m not sure about time of day/year and position in the sky etc. to know if this is realistic, like will it still be the exact same spot at 6pm in December as it is midnight in summer?

Jack points it out to them and Dean bends down to open the floorboard.  

Sam: Guys, I can’t hold them forever!

Dean lifts the floorboard which contains a velvet bag. He opens the bag and pulls out a golden snitch.  He hands it to waste of space and asks if it’s a map. Jack suggests it might be a key.   Waste of space reads the enochian passage on the golden snitch (which if he hadn’t been written into this scene, Sam could have done that).  

Golden Snitch: in order to be in the occultum, the occultum must be in you. Me (immediately): swallow it!

There’s a reason Sam’s holding the doors closed as he’d have got that within a second.  The others are just looking around dumbly. 🙄

Back with AU Winchesters and AU Sam, wearing plaid, man bun still in place, is watching “powderpuff princess and friends” channel on the laptop, which seems to be about kittens. 😂   AU Dean appears carrying two beers

Au!Dean: they said lose the man bun, Samuel (love that he goes by Samuel) Me: Wow, AU Dean really wants Sam to let his hair down…for reasons AU Sam: look, hillbilly clothes are bad enough, I have to draw the line somewhere and my hair… is sacred (Jared added this 😂)

AU!Dean rolls his eyes, denied once again.

AU Sam asks what they do now.  AU Dean says, drink beer and sit in front of a computer screen

AU Sam: that’s their lives?  He’s still drinking the beer with the pinkie out. 😂. Chuck would know straight away this wasn’t Sam and Dean. Sam’s face drinking the beer. 😂 He’s high maintenance for sure.  AU Dean is much less fussy and I think would adapt quite well to the new world.

AU!Dean has found our Dean’s bustyasianbeauty.com internet history. 😂  

AU Sam: Can you imagine if dad caught us with that kind of stuff?  Goodbye trust funds.

AU!Sam’s not interested in the ladies and I don’t think he’s happy that AU Dean is either.

AU!Dean: I gotta tell you Sammy, this Sam and Dean, you know, sure they’re simple, but they’ve got this place of their own, there’s no quarterly reports, there’s no investor calls, there’s nothing to do but hunt monsters, drink beer and watch porn. AU!Sam: Yeah AU!Dean: they’ve got it made

Switch to our Sam and he’s really struggling with keeping the hellhounds out, while waste of space and Dean are arguing is another pandering scene (which has already had at least four in the episode). It’s been written solely to please the 1%ers who no doubt will create thousands of tweets from their 200 accounts with “old married couple and their son.” 

These people are incapable of looking at characters and continuity, they don’t care if it’s likely a character will do something just as long as they get content for their ship.  But I care, the majority of the audience care.  The Dean we know and love would just not under any circumstances abandon Sam at the door on his own.  This is where the writing is failing.  If they are incapable of writing a scene that makes sense in the bigger scheme of things, that doesn’t change the standard operating procedure of one of the two leads, then it has no place in the show.  I could have written a scene between waste of space and Dean that would have given the 1%ers more than enough fodder (they get excited over lamps, it wouldn’t be that hard to do), while at the same time, not ruining Dean’s core character or sidelining Sam to be a doorstopper for an entire fucking scene. Besides, all the old married couples I know are old and still married because they never argue, they finish each other sentences and smile fondly at their idiot other half when they do something idiotic, because it’s their idiot.  Kind of like… Sam and Dean.

Jack ignores them as much as I do, he turns away while they are still arguing. When he turns back, Dean looks at him, 

Dean: “Where’s the thing?” Jack: I ate it Dean: You What?! Jack: well, he said it had to be in me… so… Dean (internally) Sammy’s going to fucking kill me. (Externally) No! spit it out! Jack (laughing): it’s fine, nothings happening

Something’s definitely happening as Jack doubles over in pain.  Sam can only watch helplessly from the door as a bright light erupts from within Jack and then he disappears.

Again, that scene would have been infinitely more watchable if waste of space hadn’t been shoved into the space Sam should have been, but no, he’s still holding a fucking door closed.  I shit you not. 😡🤬😡🤬😡🤬😡🤬🤬😡🤬😡🤬🤬🤬!

Jack wakes up in what we find out is the garden of Eden.  The creepy little girl from Angel approaches him.  “You must not be human, humans may not enter here, are you an angel?”  Jack says it’s complicated but asks why humans can’t be here. She says they were banished, and god hid the garden away from them. Jack says he was told the place might change him somehow.  She responds that it might if he’s the chosen one. He’ll know soon enough.  She leaves him alone.  I’m speculating at this point that Jack isn’t the right person, but Sam is.

We whiplash briefly back to the church.  Yes, my fellow Sam fans, Sam is still a $250k doorstopper while waste of space and Dean continue to argue.  This isn’t good drama for anyone.  Dean is completely ooc in not helping Sam.

Harry Potter Jack meets the garden of Eden snake.  Luckily Jack can understand parcel-tongue as the snake talks to him. Who are you really? Who are you meant to be?

We get various flashbacks, none of which show Sam all that much, and I think that’s deliberate, though badly done.  The one person Jack has never had to question until the malac box was Sam.  I still maintain that Jack knows Sam forgives him and loves him unconditionally, but he knows Dean doesn’t, which is why the focus was on Dean.  The annoyance would have been much less if Sam hadn’t been a doorstopper in place of a significantly lesser character.

Anyway, Jack collapses on the ground and he’s crying by the end of it.  Same Jack, same tbh.

Back at the church, a bright ball of light comes through the cross window and floats down towards the church floor, right in front of Sam before moving to hover between Sam and Dean (again if waste of space hadn’t been there, this would have been a much better scene).

Sam’s thrown away from the doors and lands on the floor. Dean rushes forward to stand in front of his brother… oh wait, no, that’s in my version, the suck-lemons version has Dean actually take a step back, while the hellhounds advance on Sam who is closest to them.  Like he literally doesn’t move a fucking inch, and people are asking why we are unhappy?  Who the fuck was that, because it wasn’t Dean Winchester. 😡

The bright light gets brighter, I think it kills the hellhounds, rather than just repels them.  When the light clears, Sam sees Jack lying on the floor in front of him. He says “Jack” which draws the attention of Dean who shouts “Jack”.  Oh, that gets Dean’s feet moving 🙄.  They watch as Jack sits up and Dean asks him if he’s okay.  Jack doesn’t answer.

Back with Dean and AU!Winchesters.  Dean’s trying to herd them out the bunker, thanking them for their help.  AU!Dean suggests they could all live in the bunker together.

AU!Sam: like a club (AU!Dean points at Sam in agreement).

Our Dean doesn’t share his toys very well and thinks that would just be weird.

AU!Dean (he definitely wants our Sam, with the whole hair down thing he’s got going on): it wouldn’t be so weird

Dean knows what AU!Dean wants and tells them to go to Brazil

AU Dean asks if they can keep the flannel shirts, Dean says no, and tries to hurry them along.

AU Sam and Dean turn to go, but AU!Dean turns back and says that when they were looking around, they saw it

Dean: It? AU!Dean: the car Dean: You didn’t…. touch it AU!Sam: We “drove” in it 😉 Dean: You What?!

Awkward looks all around until AU!Dean says, “And we’re leaving…” smacking AU!Sam on the shoulder and pushing him up the bunker stairs.

AU!sam: oww, my arm, you’re hurting me!” AU!Dean: Sam! AU!Sam: Dean… Dean (angry): Have fun in Rio!

I like the scene so I’m trying not to nitpick the fact the car was with our Sam and Dean and the AU versions couldn’t possibly have found it, much less “drove” in it.

Dean goes to find Sam who is leaning on the wall outside I’m guessing Jack’s room.  He asks if the kid is okay.  Sam says he doesn’t know.  Waste of space comes out and says Jack seems to have recovered but there’s something different about him.  No one’s been to the garden since the exile, until Jack.

They all go in, yes, even waste of space, and it turns out it wasn’t Jack’s room, but the kitchen and I have to seriously question why Sam - who is unquestionably Jack’s main parent - was outside and not with him. *whispers Jared has obviously done something or not done something to bring the petty wrath of Dabb down upon his beautiful head, no other explanation at this point. Roll on Walker and Jared ensuring that show doesn’t get stolen out from under him by a backstabbing co-worker and petty showrunner.

They approach Jack and he says he is so sorry.  He is crying and says it was his fault.

Waste of space says Jack’s soul is back.

Jack looks up at Sam and Dean and asks them to forgive him but the camera focuses in only on Dean.  Pats my fellow Sam fans consolingly on their heartbroken backs.

[canadian-riddler]

I’m a bit curious and confused about your post about streaming and artists. How does streaming stop artists from making a living?

It turned out very long so it’s under a readmore.

Artists don’t make any money off streaming.  People increasingly dislike having to pay the actual cost of entertainment - and I’m not just talking about stuff from major corporations, small- and mid-level stuff too - so they subscribe to a service that allows them to have as much content as they want, whenever they want, in the highest possible quality with little to no hiccups ever.  This is really, really expensive, especially if we’re talking Netflix or Youtube in 4K (or even 8K, in some cases).  But there’s a ceiling to how much someone is willing to pay for a streaming service.  People are okay with paying ten dollars a month, but for that content to be delivered at a price that low someone has to take a hit.  It’s not the company and it’s not the consumer.  It’s the artist.  Spotify pays the artist an average of $0.004 per stream.  To make sure your favourite artist gets a single dollar from your streaming them, you have to listen to their songs 229 times.  To give them a dollar.  Even big artists don’t always make that much there.  Your streams have to be in the millions.  One million streams at $0.004 per?  That’s $4000. 

Now, because streaming is so cheap (to the consumer) and available, people don’t buy albums anymore.  Artists, especially smaller ones, make all their money off album sales and merch sold during tours (which includes albums).  But why would you pay $20 for a CD when you can just go home and listen to all the music they’ve ever made for $10?  Who even owns a CD player anymore, right?  And buying digital is silly; paying $20 for a collection of files you can’t hold or touch or display on your shelf?  So people increasingly don’t do that anymore.  Why bother if an artist is pressured to upload their music to YouTube anyway - which pays a FRACTION of what Spotify does - and which you don’t even need a subscription to use?  

So where is an aspiring artist going to get enough money from to support their art?  People don’t want to pay for it.  They’ll pay $10 a month to stream it and that’s about it.  Anything much higher than that and they turn to piracy.  And here’s the kicker: streaming services don’t really post a profit because they have to keep the subscription price so low.  So NOBODY is winning - except the consumer, who is happy they get an unlimited amount of content for almost nothing.  Spotify has LOST 2 billion dollars since they launched.  Netflix, which started posting a profit three years ago, is billions of dollars in debt.  Disney+ was projected to run at a loss for YEARS before they started making money off it.  All this money comes from, as I understand it, venture capitalists: people who throw money at something because they think it MIGHT turn a profit eventually.  There’s an optimum number the streaming service can charge for it: the magic maximum that the highest amount of people will keep their subscription for for the longest amount of time.  And remember, they are serving massive amounts content for between $10 and $20 a month.  Entire runs of TV shows that would cost you close to $200 if you bought the Blu-Rays at Walmart.  Movies that usually go for $30.  You don’t own it, but it’s so convenient that the majority of people don’t mind that.  Now, in the middle of this super low subscription price, the loss the companies are taking in hopes of one day, perhaps, making some money, and what they USED to get from sales is: the artist.  Companies don’t want to take risks, so now they hire big-name actors for animated roles instead of, you know, going to the trouble of hiring an unknown voice actor.  This has always been a thing, of course, but it has been happening increasingly often over the years and it’s bleeding into other industries.  Honestly, what are Penn & Teller and Ice-T doing in Borderlands 3?  They’re ensuring maximum profit via brand recognition, that’s what.  Some people went to see Moana solely because the Rock was in it.  But him being in it meant that an actual voice actor, who went to school for it and trained for it their whole life, doesn’t get a shot because it would hurt the potential profits.  He is worth more but that unknown person?  They didn’t get a chance to work at something that could have helped their career.  They continue to be worth less.

Now, with the almost impending death of the theatre industry and streaming services being propped up by massive amounts of debt (or Disney money), the ways for an artist to make a living off their art is shrinking.  You can see it right now with DJs: only the top 100 DJs make enough to live off, and they mostly make that money doing tours.  To make a living a lot of DJs have to tour AND produce music nonstop AND have a weekly radio show - free, of course (basically a free set every week).  Obviously a lot of DJs are out of work right now, so some of them had online events that they sold tickets for.  And people criticised them for it.  They told them they were selfish and cruel and unempathetic for putting their show behind a $10 ticket because the world is shit so they should provide their art for free to help their fans take their minds off it.  That they should donate the money and that they don’t need it, despite most of their revenue stream being taken away overnight with no knowledge of when it’s coming back.  That their job isn’t a real job anyway so why should anyone pay for them to do it, it’s not like they’re a doctor or a nurse or something important.  Besides.  Someone’s going to record it and put it on YouTube anyway, so they’ll just wait and stream it from there.  With AdBlock on, of course, because fuck the artist for wanting to make a living from their art.  Who cares what the repercussions of that is.

We already saw it happen with the publishing industry.  People won’t pay for books anymore.  Unless you happen to be the next Stephen King, you’re not going to make money off writing.  People just torrent the .epub and complain when a series ends on a cliffhanger, as though the writer seriously didn’t want to write the next book in the series but couldn’t because the publisher said, ‘Well, based on past sales we just don’t think it will do very well.’  Most novelists either have a day job or they have someone else supporting them until they have enough books out there they can support themselves - and sometimes ‘enough’ means ‘thirty Harlequin romances they had to pump out every six months’.  But books aren’t being propped up by venture capitalists.  They’re just going to keep disappearing and the value of writing will continue to decrease.  You can see it in the video game industry as well.  People seriously ask if a 60 hour game is worth $60.  Cuphead was held up as some great victory achieved by indie artists - even though one of the artists MORTGAGED THEIR HOUSE on the outrageous bet their game would be successful.  And people still shrugged and said, ‘Don’t care, pirating it anyway’.  And that game was what, $20 at launch? 

Streaming services, even if they raise their subscription fees (which they can only do so much, lest they stray too far from that magic number), are probably never going to give more money to the artist.  In fact, when corner-cutting time comes, they’ll take more and say, ‘If you don’t like it, go somewhere else’.  Except there is nowhere else.  And they know it.  It’s similar to how Uber Eats and Skip the Dishes operate.  They take up to 30% commission on all the sales made through them and if you don’t like it, it’s not as simple as just not using the service.  You have to.  Maybe you get lucky and you have some wildly cool concept that everybody wants and you can get what you’re worth for it, but 99% of people aren’t going to get that lucky.  And when your luck runs out, there’ll be someone else standing behind you to do what you did and they’re willing to do it for less.

Art made and provided for people out of passion is not a bad thing.  It’s a great thing.  But when so much of it - harking to the arguments of the greatness of fanfiction vs most other media - is held up as being virtuous and ‘better’ and of inherently more worth because it’s free or valued at a fraction of what it’s worth or people don’t have to do anything for it other than consume it?  That IS a bad thing.  Especially when someone is doing it because they know they can never make a living off of it.  It’s plain SHAMEFUL that something like Patreon has to exist.  And even there people want tons of exclusive content for a dollar a month.

[prorevenge]

Employer reneged on compensation agreement, left and milked them for $35k in 2 months

I work in Software Development using very in-demand and "complex" frameworks and tools. The average salary doing what I do, in my area, is around $110k / year for a relatively simple, low level job. By this, I mean a position where the employee does not have major responsibilities, works as part of a much larger team, etc.

I worked on-site and then remotely as a "contractor" for 3 years for a company, hereafter named "the company", while I was at university. As a contractor, I was the only developer in the entire company of a few hundred people, and was solely responsible for all systems, development, testing, etc. This includes databases, webservers, and much more. This seems like a lot; it was. But, I had full control of my environment and autonomy. I worked on the software projects that I wanted to and felt would have the most impact.

During that period of remote work, upper management was changed. After I completed my schooling, I received an offer from the company for $70k. I knew this was below what I should be making, but I also realized the following:

- I had full autonomy in my environment

- I had some gaps in my skill set

- By staying in this environment, I could fill in those gaps and VERY easily prepare to transition to another, higher paying job.

So, new management and I reached an agreement: I would accept a salary of $72k and then, after 6 months time, we would meet to go over my salary and it would be increased by at least 15%. This was included in my offer letter which both new management and I signed.

Fast forward to 6 months later. I have now filled every gap in my skillset and expanded on it to increase my skillset even more. The 6 month marker rolls by, and nothing happens. I send new management repeated meeting requests and they are ignored. 3 weeks into the 6th month, I go to HR and raise the issue. HR turns ghost white and makes the meeting happen. That afternoon, new management comes into my office and offers me a 1% raise. Yes. That is correct. 1%. I kept my cool though, and reminded them that I was guaranteed at least 15% due per our agreement. New management completely denied making this agreement and repeated their previous offer. I brought out my offer letter with both of our signatures on it and they started backpedaling. They said they would talk and get back to me. I made it very clear that if I did not receive the agreed upon amount, we would have a problem.

Fast forward to 2 weeks later. New management invites me into their offices. I am then offered a 6% raise. They try to make excuses about budget restrictions, fairness to other employees, whatever they could think of. I knew then I had these options:

Quit

Demand the 15%, possibly get it, but severely damage my relationship with new management

Accept the 6% raise and maintain a strong positive relationship with new management, allowing me to blindside them later

The wheels in my mind spinning, I agreed to the 6% raise. At that moment, I decided what I would do: I would take the raise, use the remainder of my time there to look for another job, and leave. A few months passes, though, and my plan expanded. I begin implementing the most cutting edge technology, using the most modern frameworks, upgrading everything I could as aggressively as I could. Of course, this provided immense benefit to the company. That was the plan. I entrenched myself in every system in every way possible, increased the skill floor for my position as high as I could get it... and left.

4 months after I accepted the raise of 6%, I accepted an offer for a salary of $130k at another company. I put my two weeks notice in at the company and all hell broke loose -- new management knew they had messed up & they were completely blindsided that I was unhappy with my position. Since I had graciously accepted the 6%, they thought they were off the hook. With me, I took all knowledge of almost every one of their systems. New management freaked out! So, I did what any capitalist would do: I offered to come back as a remote contractor. For $200 an hour.

They had no choice but to accept. So, over the last few months, I have been charging them $200 an hour to do the exact same thing that I was previously doing for significantly less. Now, instead of being out a few thousand dollars a year due to my raise, they've been outted over $35k in a few months, with no end in sight. I even hired one of my good friends to help fill the hours.

The money is nice, but the look on new management's faces when this played out was priceless. It was the sweetest revenge of my life.

Additional Edit:

I want to add that I never did anything unprofessional or untoward towards my fellow employees or employer. I am not billing inflated hours, sabotaging, or anything like that. Everything I did and have done is honest work.

(source) story by (/u/pudding9009)

[thesevillereport]

In Focus: Everything is Not All Right

When Everything was All Right

In 1999 the Y2K issue was on almost everyone's mind. People wondered if modern society would be thrown back into a technological stone age because of a computer programming oversight. However, the fear of the Y2K issue was being neutralized by money, society's greatest stress reliever.

While many of the world's brightest minds and computer hardware and software experts were trying to figure out the Y2K problem in the late '90s, another set of bright minds and computer hardware and software experts were trying to cash in on the dotcom boom.

Once 1999 flipped to 2000 and the world's computer systems didn't shut down, the entire world let out a sigh of relief. The Dow Jones had hit its all-time high for the period in December 1999, and the S&P 500 would continue making new highs until March of 2000, and in the U.S. everything seemed to be all right.

Several months later the markets and the economy would realize that everything was not all right. The tech bubble would pop, costing investors millions of dollars and Americans their jobs, and security.

In 2007 in the U.S. we repeated the trend. Shell shocked from the dotcom bubble burst, people played it safe and invested in real estate. Real estate prices grew out of the ashes of the dotcom mess. Americans were marketed to, and told family wealth is in home ownership. With millions of new homeowners, city expansions, urban revitalizations, and gentrification taking place throughout America, along with the increased prices of real estate, we again believed that everything was all right.

Unfortunately we would learn that everything was not all right. Selling a house to everyone who wanted one no matter their job, income, credit worthiness, or financial status was not the foundation of a strong economy. This ultimately led to the Great Recession, which costs investors billions of dollars, left a trail of jobless and homeless Americans, and infected markets both to the east and west of the U.S.

Not mentioned in the last paragraph are the investment banks that made the Great Recession the international crisis that it became. But born from the ashes of the Great Recession were cryptocurrencies. Very smart computer people (funny how they always end up in the mix) created currencies that allow people to make financial transactions outside of traditional banks. Cryptocurrencies were mocked by investment bankers for a decade, but within that same decade Bitcoin moved up from less than $1.00 per Bitcoin to over $19,000 per Bitcoin.

When Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were on their massive run up in 2017, Bitcoin traders and investors, and everyone associated with cryptocurrencies believed everything was all right. To fans of cryptocurrencies Bitcoin had succeeded in disrupting the traditional markets and banking system.

But Bitcoin's price above $19,000 per Bitcoin would be short-lived. It's value would drop shortly after surpassing $19,000, again proving that everything was not all right. Traditional bankers created ways to short cryptocurrencies and went to work, and giddy investors with high hopes of getting rich from Bitcon but little knowledge of how to speculate safely, lost millions.

Everything is Not All Right

Last week the Big 4 tech companies, Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), Facebook (FB), and Google (GOOGL) reported strong earnings for the second quarter of 2020. The four's amazing results, along with a rising stock market, is leading investors to believe once again, that everything is all right.

Wall Street has put the case for everything is all right on the backs of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix (NFLX), Google, and Microsoft (MSFT). All wonderful companies, all play a big role in the lives of many people around the world, including mine, but they are not The Economy.

Lost in last week's earnings reports from the big four was McDonald's (MCD) Q2 earnings. McDonalds reported $3.76 billion in revenue during the quarter, a 29% decline from Q2 2019. The company also announced it will close 200 locations in the U.S., mostly restaurants located in Walmart, which are locations without drive-thrus.

Starbucks (SBUX) also reported earnings last week and reported revenue of $4.2 billion, which was down 38% from Q2 2019.

I had expected both McDonalds and Starbucks to experience sales declines following the pandemic. As more people transitioned to working from home full-time, I thought McDonalds and Starbucks would lose those sales to people commuting to work. But I didn't expect their declines to be this bad in Q2 2020, especially as it was being considered  the recovery quarter in June by analysts and investors.

I find this concerning because I believe what's happening at McDonalds and Starbucks gives better insight into what's happening with the average guy or girl than an earnings report from a luxury tech company such as Apple.

Another Signal That It's Not All Right

This week gold hit an all time high and closed the week at $1,994.00 per ounce. Gold is typically the flight to safety trade for the people in the know, the big money. The price of gold traded around this price level back in 2011, when people fled stocks in the wake of the Great Recession. But in September 2011 when the economic outlook became a little less hazy, investors fled gold and went back into stocks.

What I've noticed this week as gold prices have increased is that people aren't talking about what high gold prices typically means for the markets. The people in the know, the investors with fortunes to protect are moving to gold for safety, these investors understand that everything is not all right.

We are not all right, the economy is not all right, the markets are not all right. Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Microsoft, and Zoom's successes have caused some investors and a sizable amount of professional Wall Street movers and shakers to believe that everything is all right. I've explained that just when markets start to believe everything is all right is when we get a reality check, and this is likely to happen again.

Investors beware.

[scarletgardensrpg]

UNDEAD ♦ TWENTY-SIX ♦ NEUTRAL

EVANDER BUCHANAN is the Gravekeeper of the Oude Kerk. While Evander does not uphold most traditional priestly duties, such as Sunday sermons and rituals, he offers Undead baptisms, wherein the newly rehabilitated are “purified” as a means of initiation into Amsterdam—a common practice for nearly all Undead citizens, regardless of their religious affiliation. He was killed and transformed into a rotbeest at the age of twenty-six by Cecile, then resurrected in the Carpathian Mountains by Julian in 2045. 

BIOGRAPHY

tw: alcohol and drug abuse, death

“Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.” Julian, on the other end of the line, sounded tinny and unimpressed. Thank you for that, good morning to you as well. Now if you'll be more specific... “Okay, um. I’m still at the beach.” A long silence. “I took Papa’s Porsche.” An even longer silence. “It’s, like, not in great condition. Anymore.” This last stretch of silence went on for so long, Evander pulled his phone back from his ear to make sure the call hadn’t disconnected. “Julian.” Is it still driveable? “Yeah, I think so. Maybe. I dunno, the wheels look fine?” That’s not—okay. Drive it to the nearest collision center. Now, it was Evander’s turn to be silent. For the first time, in a long time, he felt something akin to shame. He was nineteen, and still trying—failing—to make his brother proud. “I’m, uh, still kind of drunk. Sorry. Do you think you could—” Yes. I’ll be there soon. Click. Evander swore under his breath and shoved his phone back into his pocket. His eyes hurt, there was sand in the depths of his ass crack, and Ce was going to mock him for a week. 

- ❀ -

Spare the rod and spoil the child. He came last: after Julian had been born and deemed favorite and heir, after Cecile had been born and deemed illegitimate and unwanted. Evander, then, found himself with nothing to prove and nothing to endure: it was all roses. Handsome, good grades, star of the football team; he’d spend his youth living out some iteration of the American fantasy: a young prince without a care in the world, idling indulgently by an emerald infinity pool—the very picture of privilege. But, of course, as with all things that seemed too good to be true, there was the untarnished gleam of good appearances and saved face—and then, there was the truth. The Buchanans, for all their money’s worth, were a study in psychopathy: generations of well-dressed bastards who had lied and cheated their way up to Heaven, and scaled up the ladder of power using their claws and teeth. A thousand ruined lives could be put to Papa’s name—his own children’s being chief among them. It was a beautiful life, filled with exotic vacations and designer clothes, more money than he’d ever need, enough to fill entire rooms with—and it was an ugly life, marred by screaming matches, broken furniture, and five perpetually unoccupied seats at the dinner table. 

In the end, it was enough to drive Julian to heartlessness, Cecile to madness, and Evander to debauchery. He, especially, wanted no part in any of it all. His siblings were formidable and hungry: the boldest and brightest of the Buchanan clan, with enough conviction to set the world aflame and enough ambition to swallow it whole. What candle could he have held to those big people, those big dreams? He had no interest in trying. Instead, at Dartmouth, he would retreat into his expensive amusements and vices: liquor and wine, lines of cocaine, a quarter-million dollars blown on a bad bet in the casino, yes-men all around him. You’re so pathetic, Cecile would say disdainfully each morning she found him passed out in the foyer—and this, Evander knew, was the one thing she and Julian could agree on. He didn’t mind. That meant there was one less thing he had to listen to them fight about. He loved them, dearly and inexplicably—and he had thought they loved him, too. Wasn’t it enough that they had one another? The answer was, printed in neat clinical letters atop a stack of biochemical consent forms: No. He had underestimated both of them. Julian’s love and Julian’s ambition were two breeds of the same beast. Cecile’s wrath and her ambition were two strains of the same poison.

So: he would die by the hands of his siblings. At this point, it was so trite to talk about: six years of experimentation, Cecile shouldering the brunt of it—not out of concern for Evander, but a twisted need for it to fucking work, already before it got to Julian. When at last it did, and Cecile came out of the bloody waters a dead woman with gleaming eyes, she’d make plans to raise hell, as was so typical of her—but this time, intended Evander to partake in the chaos, too. He had bled to death at her feet, cheek pressed to the filthy basement floor, more afraid than ever. When his mind sank away from him at last, Cecile let him up and swung the door open. It’s me, Ce, she cooed. You always liked to have fun. We’re going to have some fun. And was it fun? In the moment, it might’ve been. Evander couldn’t say. He would come to in three years, in the mountains with Julian’s blood in his mouth and no recollection of what had occurred in the time between the night he’d died and now. His brother looked older, icier than ever. Cecile was nowhere to be found. There’s no need to save her, Evander had spat into the snow. She saved herself. 

At least I’ve saved you, Julian said. To that, Evander could only laugh and laugh, until the incredulity wore off, and there was only grief.

CONNECTIONS

IVONNE – PESKY WOMAN. Evander understands she is his counterpart of sorts—a Priestess to the living in the same way he is a Gravekeeper for the dead. Evander doesn’t understand how this, alone, is sufficient justification in Ivonne’s eyes to enter and leave his church as she pleases (“Evander, this is public property. Your attitude is un-priestly.” “I’m not a priest!”) with armfuls of baked goods, insisting matter-of-factly that he doesn’t eat enough, among a myriad of other baseless declarations she makes to him, about him. They are, in Evander's opinion, vastly different people: where he had happened upon the abandoned Oude Kerk and, in seeing no better option, made a reluctant home for himself there, Ivonne is a zealous New Worlder type. She is a peculiar woman in general: for all her power and popularity, it doesn’t seem she has many friends, nor particularly wants them. In some ways, Evander thinks she’s even lonelier than him. Despite this, he remains quick to brush her off—sometimes aggressively, the hurt of having someone to look after him after so many years both sharp and jarring, and other times begrudgingly, between bitefuls of (admittedly delicious) lemon meringue. She is not exactly motherly, per se—Ivonne acts more like a disapproving corporate manager, or a disinterested therapist—but her attentiveness for Evander is both overwhelming and...neither appreciated, nor unappreciated. He’s conflicted. You know, I can take care of myself, he told her once. Ivonne had lifted a single, elegant brow. Yes, I know. I wonder all the time why you don’t.

JULIAN & CECILE – TWO KNIVES IN HIS BACK. It’s hard—no, impossible—for him to reconcile that Julian, who read him to sleep after nightmares and took a welt to the cheek for Evander after he’d crashed the Porsche, had also watched impassively from across the expanse of an infinite table while Evander signed his life away—and that Cecile, who cried in the bathroom when nobody came to her recital, and accepted expulsion from six successive schools for the simple want of being loved, had been the same woman to draw Evander calmly into her arms, only to kill him between teethfuls of flesh and blood. Once, Evander thought his older brother and sister hung the moon. Cecile never was able to accept Julian’s kindnesses—ones she called debts, mouth wrapped sourly around the word—but Evander would have been content to bask in that kindness forever: diamonds and Jaguars, exotic beaches, lovers in every city—and above all other luxuries, the one of knowing the three of them would be together, always. That hope of his has come true, he supposes, in the most twisted of ways. True, he has Cecile to thank for not abandoning him in a basement in Palestrina—but she’d left him three years later instead in Poland. And he has Julian to thank for resurrecting him—but Julian was the pronouncer of his death sentence to begin with; and what’s more, he’s carried him out of one Hell, only to drag him into another. They were never a happy family, but they were a family. Now, whatever it is that’s keeping them together—science, death, and that ugly word, debts—Evander wishes it wouldn’t.

KISARA & OKSANA – THE LOVERS. He really, really, wishes they would stop making out in his cemetery. Well—they are not exactly kissing, but by the way they spar and wrestle, eyes gleaming bright with the closest thing to feeling alive : it might as well be kissing. Kisara is an old friend—someone he used to visit at the Moulin Rouge when he’d first arrived in Amsterdam, having defaulted back to sex and gambling to quell his misery. The two of them had once gone to depraved depths with one another, lost their minds eating seeds, tumbled about in satin sheets— Eventually, he turned his back on all of it once and for all, but Kisara stuck around. According to her, Oksana is new meat. I’m showing her around, she says, feinting disinterest as she goes to examine her perfect, shiny red nails. Evander snorts. Yeah, showing her around your bed. When Kisara jabs him in the rib with a snarl, he has to roll on the ground and make exaggerated sounds of pain for like, a while, before she finally laughs and forgives him. Kisara and Oksana have been coming around more often—De Wallen is cramped and unsightly, while Centraal Station tends to overrun itself with creepy 200 junkies when it gets late enough. The Oude Kerk, decrepit and, exempting Evander himself, void of people, is an admittedly good place to have some privacy. In truth, Evander doesn’t really mind. Kisara is welcome to come whenever she’d like, and he likes Oksana enough: she’s witty, abrasive, and reminds him a lot of Cecile. But perhaps it’s that very resemblance to his conniving sister that makes him uneasy about her. Kisara, too wrapped up in whatever it is they have going on, doesn’t seem to see the way Oksana holds herself: calmly and calculatively, showing just enough teeth to pass off as fully feral. Evander knows her kind. He’s not inclined to trust her.

OPEN ♦ FC: SEAN O'PRY

[healthymov]

The Secret of Methods of Tattoo Removal

Tattoos became incredibly popular within the last 30 years. They’re not only for bikers and sailors — they’re for everybody. many of us have memorial pictures or inspirational phrases tattooed on themselves.

But some people regret having a tattoo of their boyfriend or girlfriend’s name after the hack. Others become embarrassing years later when that hot new tattoo trend becomes tacky and dated (hello tribal armbands and lower-back tattoos). So it’s no surprise that tattoo removal has also become very fashionable.

There are basically eight ways to urge obviate a problematic tattoo. Some are far more successful than others. Some are more painful than getting the tattoo in the first place. and a few are just plain dangerous or a waste of your time. Here are the eight methods of tattoo removal:

Coverups Removal creams Chemical peels Injections Dermabrasion Surgical excision Home laser treatment Professional laser treatment In this article, we discuss each sort of tattoo removal and its advantages and drawbacks in terms of cost, pain, and effectiveness.

Coverups

Coverups are just that: covering the old tattoo with a replacement one by reworking the planning. Some tattoo artists concentrate on this, as it’s tricky to form the old tattoo not show through. this is often one among the smallest amount of expensive methods of correction. Tattoo artists charge about $50-$125 per hour. Also, getting a coverup hurts no quite getting the first tattoo did, and it's about an equivalent amount of healing time.

The downsides are, of course, that there's no guarantee you'll just like the coverup tattoo quite the first years down the road. Plus, you'll likely get to get a tattoo larger than the first one so as to properly cover it up. And if the first has huge blocks of dark ink it is often hard to repair or hide. So, counting on your tattoo, a coverup won't be an option for you.

Removal Creams

Tattoo removal cream is touted as an easy tattoo removal method, but it's problematic. it's basically a skin bleach, which may damage the skin long-term since it’s being applied on the highest of the dermis (skin layer). All it’s doing is making the tattoo lighter by comparison, but it’s not actually removing anything… since the chemicals within the cream don’t penetrate right down to the layer where the ink is.

However, this is often one of the cheaper options on the list. Tattoo removal cream can run anywhere from $15 to upwards of $100. The key's to read reviews and find a brand that really works.

Chemical Peels

There are two sorts of chemical peels for tattoo removal. One is named trichloracetic acid (TCA), and it's available over-the-counter. almost like removal creams, this mild acid works by gradually fading the tattoo. TCA peels away the highest layer of the skin, but won't reach the deep layers where the ink resides. And it can take three months to fade a tattoo using TCA. Still, this is often a less expensive option at $40-$60 dollars.

A stronger chemical peel treatment using phenol will work more quickly. But it must be applied by a dermatologist, are going to be costlier, and can hurt more because it penetrates the center layers of the skin. there's also a greater risk of scarring.

Injections

Some tattoo removal methods involve injecting a chemical, or saline, into the skin layer where the ink resides. This causes the skin to react sort of a tattoo, bringing the ink up to the surface alongside the scarring.

But injections take many treatments to urge any results and don't entirely remove the tattoo. At best, injections can lighten enough of the tattoo that you simply can use makeup to disguise the remainder. Another downside is that the cost: each session runs from $200-$500. Also, this will be a really painful method to endure.

Dermabrasion

Since “derm” means skin and “abrasion” means to scrape, you'll guess what this process entails. Dermabrasion may be a surgery where a doctor removes the primary few layers of skin to encourage your natural healing process to force the tattoo ink upwards. Dermabrasion isn't recommended for tattoo removal on the face, neck, or hands. These skin layers are much too thin.

Dermabrasion is one of the costlier tattoo removal options, costing hundreds to thousands of dollars. Also, the healing time can take up to 3 weeks. and therefore the treated skin will remain pink for up to 12 weeks. Lastly, don’t plan on getting dermabrasion unless you're okay with avoiding the sun for up to 6 months. Sunlight can cause excessive scarring, and you'll be expected to use sunscreen whenever you go outside.

Home Laser Treatment

Does laser tattoo removal work? Yes and no. for instance, there are small home laser units being sold now, but these are about as effective because the creams — in other words, not very effective in the least. The laser pulses are just too weak to succeed in the ink and break it up. The result is going to be lighter tattoos, but there's a risk of redness, swelling, and scarring if the products aren't used correctly.

However, home laser treatment is one of the cheaper options. These products, often marketed as laser pens, frolic $60. Laser tattoo removal works but is merely truly effective when through with professional equipment during a professional setting.

Professional Laser Treatment

Professional laser treatment is perhaps the simplest tattoo removal method overall, taking under consideration cost and therefore the amount of pain during the treatment and healing process. The laser light pulses hack the ink, which allows the skin to bring it up to the surface. Your skin naturally works its way from the within out, growing new skin underneath and sloughing off dead skin flakes on the surface.

It can take several treatments to urge results, so there’s a particular expense to the procedure. Each session will run $200-$500. But far and away, professional laser treatment gets the simplest results and causes the smallest amount of problems afterward. There could also be some ink particles that remain behind, but the bulk of the ink will dissipate.

Surgical excision

This is the pis aller of treatments. It’s literally surgery, and may only be performed on small tattoos. A surgeon cuts away the skin with a scalpel and stitches the wound closed. The procedure can leave a scar, but it'll 100% remove the tattoo.

Surgical excision sounds extreme, but are often an honest option for those with small tattoos. the value runs between $150 and $350.

Remember, regardless of which sort of tattoo removal you select, the method is often time-consuming, costly, and/or painful to urge effective results. Think long and hard about the tattoo you select before you catch on.

[badrfan]

Methods of Tattoo Removal

Tattoos became incredibly popular within the last 30 years. They’re not only for bikers and sailors — they’re for everybody. many of us have memorial pictures or inspirational phrases tattooed on themselves.

But some people regret having a tattoo of their boyfriend or girlfriend’s name after they hack. Others become embarrassed years later when that hot new tattoo trend becomes tacky and dated (hello tribal armbands and lower-back tattoos). So it’s no surprise that tattoo removal has also become very fashionable.

Methods of Tattoo Removal | Life360 Tips There are basically eight ways to urge obviate a problematic tattoo. Some are far more successful than others. Some are more painful than getting the tattoo within the first place. and a few are just plain dangerous or a waste of your time. Here are the eight methods of tattoo removal:

Coverups Removal creams Chemical peels Injections Dermabrasion Surgical excision Home laser treatment Professional laser treatment In this article, we discuss each sort of tattoo removal and their advantages and drawbacks in terms of cost, pain, and effectiveness.

Coverups Coverups | Methods of Tattoo Removal | Life360 Tips Coverups are just that: covering the old tattoo with a replacement one by reworking the planning. Some tattoo artists concentrate on this, as it’s tricky to form the old tattoo not show through. this is often one among the smallest amount expensive methods of correction. Tattoo artists charge about $50-$125 per hour. Also, getting a coverup hurts no quite getting the first tattoo did, and it's about an equivalent amount of healing time.

The downsides are, of course, that there's no guarantee you'll just like the coverup tattoo quite the first years down the road. Plus, you'll likely got to get a tattoo larger than the first one so as to properly cover it up. And if the first has huge blocks of dark ink it are often hard to repair or hide. So, counting on your tattoo, a coverup won't be an option for you.

Removal Creams Tattoo removal cream is touted as an easy tattoo removal method, but it's problematic. it's basically a skin bleach, which may damage the skin long-term since it’s being applied on the highest of the dermis (skin layer). All it’s doing is making the tattoo lighter by comparison, but it’s not actually removing anything… since the chemicals within the cream don’t penetrate right down to the layer where the ink is.

However, this is often one among the cheaper options on the list. Tattoo removal cream can run anywhere from $15 to upwards of $100. The key's to read reviews and find a brand that really works.

Chemical Peels CHEMICAL PEEL | Methods of Tattoo Removal | Life 350 Tips There are two sorts of chemical peels for tattoo removal. One is named trichloracetic acid (TCA), and it's available over-the-counter. almost like removal creams, this mild acid works by gradually fading the tattoo. TCA peels away the highest layer of the skin, but won't reach the deep layers where the ink resides. And it can take three months to fade a tattoo using TCA. Still, this is often a less expensive option at $40-$60 dollars.

A stronger chemical peel treatment using phenol will work more quickly. But it must be applied by a dermatologist, are going to be costlier, and can hurt more because it penetrates the center layers of the skin. there's also greater risk of scarring.

Injections Some tattoo removal methods involve injecting a chemical, or a saline, into the skin layer where the ink resides. This causes the skin to react sort of a tattoo, bringing the ink up to the surface along side the scarring.

But injections takes many treatments to urge any results and don't entirely remove the tattoo. At best, injections can lighten enough of the tattoo that you simply can use makeup to disguise the remainder. Another downside is that the cost: each session runs from $200-$500. Also, this will be a really painful method to endure.

Dermabrasion Dermabrasion | Methods of Tattoo Removal | Life360 Tips Since “derm” means skin and “abrasion” means scrape, you'll guess what this process entails. Dermabrasion may be a surgery where a doctor removes the primary few layers of skin to encourage your natural healing process to force the tattoo ink upwards. Dermabrasion isn't recommended for tattoo removal on the face, neck, or hands. These skin layers are much too thin.

Dermabrasion is one among the costlier tattoo removal options, costing hundreds to thousands of dollars. Also, healing time can take up to 3 weeks. and therefore the treated skin will remain pink for up to 12 weeks. Lastly, don’t plan on getting dermabrasion unless you're okay with avoiding the sun for up to 6 months. Sunlight can cause excessive scarring, and you'll be expected to use sunscreen whenever you go outside.

Home Laser Treatment Does laser tattoo removal work? Yes and no. for instance, there are small home laser units being sold now, but these are about as effective because the creams — in other words, not very effective in the least. The laser pulses are just too weak to succeed in the ink and break it up. The result are going to be lighter tattoos, but there's a risk of redness, swelling, and scarring if the products aren't used correctly.

However, home laser treatment is one among the cheaper options. These products, often marketed as laser pens, frolic $60. Laser tattoo removal works, but is merely truly effective when through with professional equipment during a professional setting.

Professional Laser Treatment Professional laser treatment | Methods of Tattoo Removal | Life360 Tips Professional laser treatment is perhaps the simplest tattoo removal method overall, taking under consideration cost and therefore the amount of pain during the treatment and healing process. The laser light pulses hack the ink, which allows the skin to bring it up to the surface. Your skin naturally works its way from the within out, growing new skin underneath and sloughing off dead skin flakes on the surface.

It can take several treatments to urge results, so there’s a particular expense to the procedure. Each session will run $200-$500. But far and away, professional laser treatment gets the simplest results and causes the smallest amount problems afterward. There could also be some ink particles that remain behind, but the bulk of the ink will dissipate.

Surgical excision This is the pis aller of treatments. It’s literally surgery, and may only be performed on small tattoos. A surgeon cuts away the skin with a scalpel and stitches the wound closed. The procedure can leave a scar, but it'll 100% remove the tattoo.

Surgical excision sounds extreme, but are often an honest option for those with small tattoos. the value runs between $150 and $350.

Remember, regardless of which sort of tattoo removal you select, the method are often time-consuming, costly, and/or painful to urge effective results. Think long and hard about the tattoo you select before you catch on.

[jadeimpala67]

Rant ahead and idk how to add that cut page thingy

_______

Lemme tell you what "moving up the corporate ladder" in America looks like, when you're poor.

When you're making minimum wage or less, you get housing assistance. Food assistance. Medical assistance. Which comes in handy since you literally cannot support yourself.

I'll use my state, Connecticut, as an example.

In CT, the minimum right now is $10.10/hr.

The state will help you if that's your only income. With everything. You may not get the best of the best, and a lot of the doctors you see won't actually care, but all of your appointment are covered. Your medications are covered. Emergencies are covered. Food, covered. housing takes a long ass time, but you're covered. As you live paycheck to paycheck and literally all of your money to bills.

That was my life. Never had the best doctors, but at least I could be seen by someone. I could get out the teeth rotting my skull. I could afford to eat for a while. Back at that job, the state minimum was $8.25/hr. But we survived.

Then I got a raise at my old job, the state cut my stamps to $14 a month. A month. But I tried not to panic because I lived with other people and we pulled our weight. And we had friends from wealth willing to help us if we needed it - which it was rare of us to ask.

Then time passed. I moved a lot. The state minimum was raised to $10.10. I got my current job and worked part time.

But then I became homeless.

Now see, dear Tumblr, this is where shit gets tricky. Because when you're homeless, you can't buy food in bulk. You can't. Where would you put it??? Critters would get to it. How would you cook it? No, you had to spend money every day to make sure you were fed. But that doesn't mean you stop paying your bills.

I was fortunate. I didn't have a car or insurance. I had a phone ($72.56/m), and a storage unit ($52/m). BUT. I got paid bi weekly, and only worked part time. I was bringing home an average of $320 a week. So roughly $640 per paycheck. But I didn't have a car - which meant I had to Uber to get to places I needed to go.

I had to buy food, every single day. I had to expand my wardrobe so I didn't have to go to the laundromat every 4 days. I had to spend money at Dunkin and Subway so I wouldn't get kicked off of their property for loitering - which bought me time away from my unit so I wouldn't get arrested.

Now it wasn't ALL bad. I was definitely more fortunate in some areas than others. But I also needed a laptop (not only for gishwhes, but to have something to charge my phone with/use for music and tv. Phones only lasted for so long.) ($120 - discounted from original price of $165). I needed a new backpack because mine was falling apart ($60), which I still have. I needed new shoes after 3 months because I walked so much.

It's impossible to save money when you're homeless. Everything drains it away.

Now fast forward to a year later. I'm finally in an apartment, roommate, my own room, switched to overnights so I get $1 more an hour, more bills, upped to full-time, due for a promotion.

I'm making $12.10/hr. Which sounds great! Right? Except - now I have benefits. That are being deducted from every paycheck. So now. Bringing home an average of $362/week - which is a lot less than I was taking home making 8 fucking dollars an hour. But now I'm also getting it every two weeks. $725, on average, every two weeks; sometimes with overtime, if I can get away with it (usually we can't).

So now in addition to all the new bills I have to pay (rent, rent a center washer and dryer, my phone, Netflix, 2 credit card bills), that's half of my paycheck already.

I never make it paycheck to paycheck - I run out of money about a week in, so my coworkers and my grandmother help me out, which I pay them back for on payday. There's another huge chunk, gone.

Then there's times I gotta pay for therapy ($70), and now my psychology appointment ($85). My new ADHD meds are $25.66 per perscription.

So, after all of that, let's do some math what my average month looks like-

$725 x 2 (avg. paycheck for two months)

$1450

-$175 x2 (half my rent automatically comes out per paycheck so I'm never late)

- $75 (phone)

- $95 (RAC)

- $32 (credit card 1)

- $95 (credit card 2)

After all the big bills, that leaves me with $897.34

After therapy -$70

$827.34

After my med check appt -$56

$771.34

After refilling my prescription -$26

$745.34

Now that's for the whole month. I never see that grand total, because that's now how bills and living work. So let's be hypothetical and just divide it down the middle, k?

$745.34/2 = $372.67 to last me for two weeks.

$372.67 to pay for food, Uber, and emergencies.

Uber to get to my job from my home is anywhere from $11-$16 depending on the day to day - one way. Which means if I don't have a ride in, I gotta spend about $30 round trip to go to work and get home.

Idk about you, but I usually end up spending about $200~ on food. Both immediate snacks at work to get my through the shift, and buying in bulk to take home.

(lemme put it to you this way, sometimes I need a little caffeine to jumpstart my work day, $2.50, or I can buy an entire carton and being that shit home $4)

Now it comes to this - right now, I've got $29 left over in my bank account, $30 I owe my grandma in cash, and roughly a $32 balance on my credit card. I'm sick. Like really sick. I've got an infection in my throat and it is kicking my ass.

I don't have free healthcare anymore. I've got "real" healthcare through my job, with a $3,000 deductable. Which means I either pay the whole thing out if pocket, or a partial amount.

Three years ago, I had strep, I just went down to the nearest walk in clinic, gave them my medicare insurance, walked away with antibiotics, I was fine within a week.

Just. Fucking. Now. I had to spend $6 to get to the nearest clinic, waited for 30 minutes, just for them to tell me that because I was a new paitent with this insurance, my "best case scenario" would be owing them $120. For a strep test and antibiotics.

Obviously, I don't have $120 fucking dollars. I was turned away. So now I STILL have an infection, no medication, no loa note to being to my job to save my ass, and I'm faced with the delema of "Do I go to work anyway and risk passing this infection to the general public?? Or do I take the paycut, risk my job because of an absence, and get stuck with a shitty paycheck by next payday, because now I'm missing day 3 of work this month alone?"

America doesn't want you to do better.

If you're poor, you've gotta stay poor. If you're rich, then stay rich. Otherwise fuck you and your health, and your dreams, and your bills.

[poppy73p218467-blog]

10 Of One of the best Juicers To purchase From £30 To £200

What is the appropriate sort of juicer to make recent wheatgrass juice? Can You employ a Centrifugal Juicer for Wheatgrass? It also has a big feeding tube and the parts are dishwasher secure which may save time on cleansing. This product could make as much as 24 per cent more juice than it’s leading competitor and it is easy to juice and matches entire foods which suggests much less prep time. That is a giant benefit as a result of it decreases prep time. Since a masticating juicer chews and grinds the food right into a pulp, this sort of juicer can be utilized to make natural child food. This kind of juicer is a extra efficient kitchen appliance because it extracts extra of the juice than different kinds of juicers. The gradual movement can crush by means of extra fiber and what's left is a excessive concentration of juice which is better for you. You can use spinach and kale, however it is basically not optimal. Due to its distinctive design it is in a position to juice a wide range of produce from firm vegetables like carrots and beets, to mushy fruits like tomatoes and grapes, and it even does leafy greens like kale, collards, and even wheatgrass properly!

It even has a cool windshield wiper like component that may pre-clear the juicer for you! This juicer will swimsuit many people and is top-of-the-line in its worth vary and has a lot of positives as described above in its favour. The quality of juice from the Omega Juicer is superb so try it out for your self. For these of you that are not acquainted with the Omega Vert, it's a revolutionary new type of juicer called an upright juicer. What is not to love in regards to the Omega Vert 350? I like every thing about it. Are you looking for the perfect juicer underneath a hundred dollars? They are all prime quality juicer machines and have a stainless steel housing and have the power to juice soft and laborious fruits and vegetables. Does a Masticating Juicer have other Benefits? Masticate means to chew, and a masticating juicer chews and grinds up the wheatgrass, leafy vegetables or grasses into a pulp and squishes to extract the juice. You will see that that the Breville BJE200XL is one of the best juicers on the market under 100 dollars and simple to use you probably have by no means used a juicer earlier than.

Below one can find the very best inexpensive juicer available on the market immediately that is under a hundred dollars. If you treasured this article and you also would like to be given more info relating to bestjuicers please visit our web-site. If you're in search of the very best juicer for house use below 100 dollars that's efficient and durable and is among the finest in the market to purchase for my part. It appeared that all of the juicers in the marketplace had their execs and cons! This is due to juicers that make fruit juice or vegetable juice, corresponding to carrot juice, are centrifugal juicers. If you are looking to purchase a wheatgrass juicer to enjoy the superb health benefits of wheatgrass juice, you want to make sure to buy the perfect masticating juicer. To make wheatgrass juice, you want a guide or electric masticating juicer. No need to use ear plugs or push actually hard with the plunger. It’s straightforward to make use of and could be very highly effective. It is usually a quiet juicer that is straightforward to use.

What different juicer can boast that? With a seven-hundred watt motor, you may expect a high quality product and very easy to make your favourite juices all 12 months spherical. If you use natural fruits and vegetables, you can also make fresh organic child meals in your infant free of pesticides or chemicals. The pulp can be utilized to make a mulch or throw away. It also comes with a extra massive pulp bin which allows you to juice longer and you'll add vitamin wealthy pulp to any recipe. What I like about this juicer in particular is the very giant feeding tube, which makes it very easy to make use of. It additionally has a silent motor with a 800 to 1500 watts relying on the pace you utilize. Until a number of weeks in the past, I didn't have a easy answer. The process of juicing is very simple and can juice your wheatgrass very effectively but will probably be a bit slower to make sure that you get essentially the most out of your leafy greens. A centrifugal juicer will not work for wheatgrass or other leafy green vegetables or grasses. In those 8 years many individuals have requested me what's the most effective juicer to buy?

I have been in the pure well being motion for over eight years. You just run water over it. The plus aspect of triturating juicers is its capability to scale back oxidization of the food. The auger runs at lower speeds of 80 RPMs leading to no foaming, clogging, or heat build-up leading to much less oxidization of your fruits or vegetables, and thus retaining these extra nutrients. What they did, is take a single auger juicer and turn it on its head! What's The very best Juicer For Beginners? The other factor is that the centrifugal juicers aren't straightforward to clean. This is a key thing to consider: are you planning on making green drinks? The cleansing process can also be quite straightforward and the machine is a lot quieter with fewer elements. There wasn't one that I may recommend with no reservations! I would advise in opposition to getting one among them as a result of the centrifugal design isn't as good as an auger design. That means it makes use of a reducing disc as opposed to a gradual turning auger.

[realfashun]

FAST FASHION- someone else, way less fortunate, is bearing the cost.

In the 90s, fashion designers felt the pressure to increase product line, revenue, and other ways to market since up-and-coming department stores were taking all the customers due to their large selection and lower prices. Thus, fast fashion was born. Fast fashion is a term where “designers” (more like plagiarists) quickly recreate what was seen during fashion week into the hands of consumers cheaply and quickly. I am sure you have all heard about Fashionnova, and their ability to churn out a product within a DAY!!! Kim Kardashion (who is speculated to actually be working with the brands that she says ‘copy’ her), has voiced her opinion on how she wears a dress and within the next day, fast fashion retailers already have it up on their site. This is an entire supply-demand business that focuses on the hottest trends. While it is nice that consumers are able to wear catwalk-similiar clothing at a fraction of the cost, who is really bearing the cost for the cheap clothes? While we save, others peril. Examples of fast fashion retailers are ASOS, H&M, Zara, Topshop, Cotton On, Forever 21, Gap, Inc., Missguided, Zaful, SheIn, PrettyLittleThing, Romwe, Boohoo, and many more. While they have found an incredible marketing strategy and ways to make money, here are some important things to keep in mind next time you buy a Forever 21 shirt that says “I love pizza and smack my butt”. 

“We are increasingly disconnected from the people who make our clothing as 97% of items you’re overseas. There are roughly 40 million garment workers in the world today; many of whom do not share the same rights or protections that many people in the West do. They are some of the lowest paid workers in the world and roughly 85% of all garment workers are women.” – The True Cost

“Nearly 70 million barrels of oil are used each year to make the world’s polyester fiber, which is now the most commonly used fiber in our clothing. But it takes more than 200 years to decompose.” – Forbes

“Nine out of ten workers interviewed in Bangladesh cannot afford enough food for themselves and their families, forcing them to regularly skip meals and eat inadequately, or go into debt.” – Oxfam Made in Poverty Report

“Fast fashion companies design clothes that fall apart quickly. They pursue a strategy called ‘Planned obsolescence’. This means to design garments to become unfashionable, wear out, lose shape or fall to pieces easily to force consumers to keep buying new clothes.” – Be Global Fashion Network

“In 2017 it was revealed that fashion behemoth H&M — which has made much of its green agenda with recycling points in stores and what it calls a Conscious Collection — burned about 19 tons of obsolete clothing (the equivalent to 50,000 pairs of jeans).” – Huffington Post

“250,000 Indian cotton farmers have killed themselves in the last 15 years due to the stress of debt they accumulated through buying genetically modified cotton seeds to keep up with demand.” – The True Cost

“The fashion industry is designed to make you feel “out of trend” after one week. Once upon a time, there were two fashion seasons: Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter. Fast forward to 2014 and the fashion industry is churning out 52 “micro-seasons” per year. With new trends coming out every week, the goal of fast fashion is for consumers to buy as many garments as possible, as quickly as possible.” – Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion

Just remember that yes these clothes are way more affordable, but it is purposely made to wear and tear so you come back to buy more. These giants do not care if you can afford it, they just found a way to get you to come back. I definitely have shopped at these stores and sites before, but I did my research and would rather pay a higher dollar value for a more durable shirt knowing that the worker who made it was appropriately compensated. I might not be able to afford as many clothes, but I can get some good pieces that will last longer in my closet.