#matt plunder

[616mattfoggymoments]

Daredevil (1964) #14 | Stan Lee & John Romita, Sr.

[hot-cross-poss]

a series of backgrounds i did for an animation pitch

[xycuro-illuminati]

Average DD rogues gallery meetup post Stunt Master redemption

DO NOT TAG AS M/CU

[thedevotionaltour]

Daredevil #13 - "The Secret of Ka-Zar's Origin!" (December 1965)

Written by Stan Lee Art by Jack Kirby (pencils), John Romita Sr. (pencils, inks)

[comicbooksaregood]

Alias

Volume: 1

Issue: 24

Purple (Part 1 of 5)

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis

Penciler: Michael Gaydos

Inker: Michael Gaydos

Colourist: Matt Hollingsworth

Cover: David Mack

Marvel Max

[onlylonelylatino]

Ka-Zar, Jessica Jones and Matt Murdock by Michael Gaydos

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity ghouls have a new way to steal from their investors

Private equity is quite a racket. PE managers pile up other peoples’ money — pension funds, plutes, other pools of money — and then “invest” it (buying businesses, loading them with debt, cutting wages, lowering quality and setting traps for customers). For this, they get an annual fee — 2% — of the money they manage, and a bonus for any profits they make.

On top of this, private equity bosses get to use the carried interest tax loophole, a scam that lets them treat this ordinary income as a capital gain, so they can pay half the taxes that a working stiff would pay on a regular salary. If you don’t know much about carried interest, you might think it has to do with “interest” on a loan or a deposit, but it’s way weirder. “Carried interest” is a tax regime designed for 16th century sea captains and their “interest” in the cargo they “carried”:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/29/writers-must-be-paid/#carried-interest

Private equity is a cancer. Its profits come from buying productive firms, loading them with debt, abusing their suppliers, workers and customers, and driving them into ground, stiffing all of them — and the company’s creditors. The mafia have a name for this. They call it a “bust out”:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

Private equity destroyed Toys R Us, Sears, Bed, Bath and Beyond, and many more companies beloved of Main Street, bled dry for Wall Street:

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2023-06-02-days-of-plunder-morgenson-rosner-ballou-review/

And they’re coming for more. PE funds are “rolling up” thousands of Boomer-owned business as their owners retire. There’s a good chance that every funeral home, pet groomer and urgent care clinic within an hour’s drive of you is owned by a single PE firm. There’s 2.9m more Boomer-owned businesses going up for sale in the coming years, with 32m employees, and PE is set to buy ’em all:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

PE funds get their money from “institutional investors.” It shouldn’t surprise you to learn they treat their investors no better than their creditors, nor the customers, employees or suppliers of the businesses they buy.

Pension funds, in particular, are the perennial suckers at the poker table. My parent’s pension fund, the Ontario Teachers’ Fund, are every grifter’s favorite patsy, losing $90m to Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency scam:

https://www.otpp.com/en-ca/about-us/news-and-insights/2022/ontario-teachers--statement-on-ftx/

Pension funds are neck-deep in private equity, paying steep fees for shitty returns. Imagine knowing that the reason you can’t afford your apartment anymore is your pension fund gambled with the private equity firm that bought your building and jacked up the rent — and still lost money:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/25/pluralistic-your-daily-link-dose-25-feb-2020/

But there’s no depth too low for PE looters to sink to. They’ve found an exciting new way to steal from their investors, a scam called a “continuation fund.” Writing in his latest newsletter, the great Matt Levine breaks it down:

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/mergers-and-acquisitions/matt-levines-money-stuff-buyout-funds-buy-from-themselves

Here’s the deal: say you’re a PE guy who’s raised a $1b fund. That entitles you to a 2% annual “carry” on the fund: $20,000,000/year. But you’ve managed to buy and asset strip so many productive businesses that it’s now worth $5b. Your carry doesn’t go up fivefold. You could sell the company and collect your 20% commission — $800m — but you stop collecting that annual carry.

But what if you do both? Here’s how: you create a “continuation fund” — a fund that buys your old fund’s portfolio. Now you’ve got $5b under management and your carry quintuples, to $100m/year. Levine dryly notes that the FT calls this “a controversial type of transaction”:

https://www.ft.com/content/11549c33-b97d-468b-8990-e6fd64294f85

These deals “look like a pyramid scheme” — one fund flips its assets to another fund, with the same manager running both funds. It’s a way to make the pie bigger, but to decrease the share (in both real and proportional terms) going to the pension funds and other institutional investors who backed the fund.

A PE boss is supposed to be a fiduciary, with a legal requirement to do what’s best for their investors. But when the same PE manager is the buyer and the seller, and when the sale takes place without inviting any outside bidders, how can they possibly resolve their conflict of interest?

They can’t: 42% of continuation fund deals involve a sale at a value lower than the one that the PE fund told their investors the assets were worth. Now, this may sound weird — if a PE boss wants to set a high initial value for their fund in order to maximize their carry, why would they sell its assets to the new fund at a discount?

Here’s Levine’s theory: if you’re a PE guy going back to your investors for money to put in a new fund, you’re more likely to succeed if you can show that their getting a bargain. So you raise $1b, build it up to $5b, and then tell your investors they can buy the new fund for only $3b. Sure, they can get out — and lose big. Or they can take the deal, get the new fund at a 40% discount — and the PE boss gets $60m/year for the next ten years, instead of the $20m they were getting before the continuation fund deal.

PE is devouring the productive economy and making the world’s richest people even richer. The one bright light? The FTC and DoJ Antitrust Division just published new merger guidelines that would make the PE acquire/debt-load/asset-strip model illegal:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/07/ftc-doj-seek-comment-draft-merger-guidelines

The bad news is that some sneaky fuck just slipped a 20% FTC budget cut — $50m/year — into the new appropriations bill:

https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1681830706488438785

They’re scared, and they’re fighting dirty.

I’m at San Diego Comic-Con!

Today (Jul 20) 16h: Signing, Tor Books booth #2802 (free advance copies of The Lost Cause — Nov 2023 — to the first 50 people!)

Tomorrow (Jul 21):

1030h: Wish They All Could be CA MCs, room 24ABC (panel)

12h: Signing, AA09

Sat, Jul 22 15h: The Worlds We Return To, room 23ABC (panel)

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/20/continuation-fraud/#buyout-groups

[Image ID: An old Punch editorial cartoon depicting a bank-robber sticking up a group of businesspeople and workers. He wears a bandanna emblazoned with dollar-signs and a top-hat.]

[ludinusdaleth]

okay listened to that reslayers take episode devexian scene and as the first devexian thottie i have thoughts and analyses! god i missed him.

-i was wondering about this for years but matt continues to use he/it for dev, so i assume that is his pronoun set for certain.

-its palm can split to create a minor illusion

-he sought frog out. this is fascinating to me. he doesnt usually look for his children, as we know from fcg & frida's struggle to understand themselves and almost anger at d for not giving them context to themselves.

-touch seems to be a very intimate thing among aeormatons. devexian reaches for frogs hand and takes it within a minute of meeting her, and asks if he can inspect her jaw for her designation.

-"you, like most of us, are.... beautiful". he is in awe at his people's beauty, rightfully so. and at times, his own (he likes his jawline. me too. hes thrilled with having a modicum of attention at being drawn by frog)

-"what is your designation- pardon that. what is your name?" like an old man learning new social norms, it's obvious aeormatons used to refer to themselves with designations. but hes trying to learn how other aeormatons integrated into a non militaristic society, that doesnt always see them as different.

-some do see them differently, however. dev says it is best to not show their identities to just about everyone. it vaguely alludes to some who would destroy aeormatons.

-he is DEEPLY motivated by curiosity. he seems goddamn powered by it.

-as i expected, he's well aware of aeor's truth. he thinks it was beautiful, but also calls it terrible.

-also as i expected, he notably dodges any of frog's questions about their culture and ways of existence from aeor. he admires her curiosity but is deeply adamant she find her own way, says whatever she decides in this life is what she was meant for, not her aeorian life.

-here's a big one: when frog asks if their folk had family, "a gulf between them, grows cold". he then tries to get stoic again. it seems his primary motivation is he wants to create more of them, to create more aeormatons free of war, to have metallic family - it is the literal only thing he requests of frog, that if she wishes, she can find the secret to their creation. i find this a very interesting parralel to ludinus and how he refuses to be the parent of his metaphor and yet wishes to guide exandria's future and clearly agonizes over family when he himself feels he doesnt have one.

-does not seem to like tomb raiders. he mentions plunderers of ancient sites who would take not only aeormaton remains but any old tech and seems not exactly happy about it. im sure he feels a Lot about that for obvious reasons.

-has a quick temper, maybe specifically about vasselheims ways.

[floatingcamel23]

categorizing mobs

hello travelers. are you to gain knowledge on mobs? well your in luck. this post will categorize mobs on what they are, how they look and there purpose. it will add mobs that were scrapped, spin off games, lets jump in shall we? the first category is the simplest. these are the undead. creatures that burn in the sun with rotting flesh or no flesh at all! some have abilities like hunger and poison! the following are these. undead: zombie, husk, drowned, lobber, bouldering skeleton, wither skeleton, bogged, wither, mossy skeleton, stray, frozen zombie, jungle zombie, wraith, phantom, red phantom (pet mob in minecraft dungeons), zombie piglin/pigman, armoured zombie/skeleton, zoglin, zombie pig (pet in minecraft duongeons), giant, zombie horse, skeleton horse, vex, necromancer, sunken skeleton, tower wraiths, vanguard, zombie villagers, bone spiders, skeleton wolf, skeleton horse traps, zombie rabbits, nameless one, wretched wraith and finally the wither storm (?).

some of you might ask why the wither storm is on the list. it is a command block corrupted version of the wither. therefore, undead.

next one has a wild range of mobs. known to be the main villains in the game and have been the center of theorization and fanart, i give you, the illagers. these lovable gray psychos inhabit the world and raid villages. plundering and thievery are there main skills. whats interesting is that some are known to have powers. lets take a look.

illagers: vindicator, pillager, evoker, witch, ravager, illusioner, iceologer/chilliger, tower keeper, guildsmith, powersmith, uniquesmith, enchanter, geomancer, mountaineer, rampart captain, pillager captain, royal guard, tower guard, vindicator chef, wind caller, pillager/vindicator raid captain, giant royal guard, warrior, giant royal guard, mage, arch illager and finally the viler witch.

this category is one of the famous ones. creatures that will help in battle and more. presenting, the golems! (yay!) this category consists of mobs that can be made or summoned. magically and manually.

golems: iron golem, snow golem, love golem, wither, wither storm, copper golem, tuff golem, agent, glowing abomination, jungle abomination, glowing ministrosity, mini abomination, redstone ministrosity, squall golem, redstone cube, corrupted cauldron, redstone monstrosity, redstone golem, tempest golem, mooshroom monstrosity, obsidian monstrosity, jack o lantern (unused minecraft doungeons mob) , mob of me (minecraft earth), furnace golem, melon golem, cobblestone golem, grindstone golem, stone ministrosity, mossy golem, plank golem, first of brick, first of oak, first of diorite, first of stone, key golems, (from now on it will be the minecraft story mode golems) golem in a box, icy golem, magma golem, prison golem, prismarine soldier, larger icy golem, giant magma golem and prismarine collosus

the last one does not have a name yet. lets call this category the sprite/spirit category. some may be undead and others living. its a mixed bag.

sprites and spirits: allay, vex, blaze, breeze, glare, wisp, guardian vex, soul wizards, wraith, wretched wraith, wildfire, build and gather allays.

ok heres a bonus one. a very small category that has one mob only. introducing, the sculkoids.

sculkoids: warden. thats it. this is part 1 of me categorizing mobs. next one will be: animals (uh oh. a lot of them-) insects (cool) and finally, amphibians! (AMPHIBIA VIBES GIVE US SEASON 4 MATT BRALY-)

if you have a suggestion for a theory, feel free to type it in the comments and i will make a post abt it! camel out!

[pocketgalaxies]

matt: i just want to make it clear that the only way you got this great item was by sacrificing some of your moral conscience and plundering a ship full of innocents

everyone: YEAH THAT'S FINE! THIS IS AWESOME

[lancecharleson]

Honest to god fuck Apple, fuck the government officials who created FOSTA/SESTA over 5 years ago, fuck every single person who bought this site off the original creators and proceeded to spend the rest of the previous decade making all the wrong decisions, but more importantly, fuck Matt Mullenweg and Automattic.

Man deadass took a site that was, once upon a time back in the 2010s the best, most welcoming, most educational, social blogging site on the internet, and turned it into a fucking data mine for techbros to plunder, all while driving off queer users and staff.

It is depressing seeing the place I grew up on turn out this way.

As always though if you wanna find me I mostly use Discord, but my new socials are... My Bluesky here:

and my Cohost here:

[xycuro-illuminati]

If you want to, can you elaborate on the one-sided plunderer thing? I am obsessed with your bitter exes stuntdevil (it is so so good)!!!! and I saw your post about the plunderer one-sided situation and im so curious about that

OH YEAH okay it's a v tiny joke and I barely include it within the bitter exes stuntdevil lore but basically when Plunderer first met Matt as Daredevil, yeah they fought and all, but Plunderer was one of the first rogues that was like "Hey Daredevil instead of fighting me you should join me instead ;)"

Matt didn't, obviously, but I made it so far as to that Plunderer had a teeny tiny crush on Matt. Thought Daredevil would look wayyyy better as a pirate and if only this handsome beast would join his crew type shit. Plunderer would flirt with Matt throughout this issue and Matt was just NOT into it. He was def thinking of multiple homophobic slurs in his head. Plunderer would be like "Your red flags... I'm obsessed with you." While Matt just says he needs to die violently.

Plunderer doesn't show up as much later on but he does check on Daredevil every so often. At one point he's like I wonder how DD's doing only to be met with the first article of 'COWBOY DAREDEVIL AND STUNT MASTER ROBS TRAIN' and Plunderer was basically like this:

Cue Plunderer in a black and white filter, under the rain, crying while listening to sad music like wow he could've fixed him (made him worse) but you snooze you lose. Eventually the news of Daredevil returning back to normal came in and he was basically like THE WEDDING'S BACK ON but then Waid's run happens and Matt reveals his secret identity to everyone. And immediately Plunderer is like oh nvm :/ but in British. He was only into Daredevil, not Matt Murdock, and found the whole hidden identity to be hot. Now that he knew who he was... not worth it, the allure was over. Even when the Purple Children made everyone forget, the infatuation never came back since Plunderer never really came back as a dd rogue.

But yeah that's the summary it's legit just that LOL. He hated George for a while too but their dynamic was just "I'll never forgive you for what you've taken from me, Stunt Master." "... Who are you?"

[thedevotionaltour]

Daredevil #14 - "If This Be Justice!" (December 1965)

Written by Stan Lee Art by John Romita Sr. (pencils), Frank Ray (inks)

[eridanisanenby]

Atlantis Attacks

Ant Ant

Arkham Asylum

Agent A (Alfred)

Amity Arkham

Amadeus Arkham

All-American comics

Baxter Building

Bombastic-Bag man

robert Bruce Banner

james Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes

Black Blot/Blackagar Boltagon

elizabeth “Betsy” Braddock

Brian Braddock

william “Billy” Braddock

Billy Batson

Beast Boy

Blue Beetle

Boston Brand

BlueBird

Bouncing Boy

Carl “Crusher” Creel

Captain Carter

nathan Christopher Charles summers/Cable

Curtis "Curt" Connors

Caped Crusader

oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot

Captain Cold

Captain Carrot

Catherine Cobert

Cressida Clarke

Crocky the Crodile

Doctor Darrk

Doctor Destiny

Dorthy Duncan

Ding-Dong Daddy

yankee Doodle Dandy

Dinah Drake

Darla Dudley

Damien Darhk

(new) Fantastic Four

Four Freedoms plaza

Fin Fang Foom

Freedom Fighters

Freddy Freeman

Felix Faust

Guardian of the Galaxy

Green Goblin

Guy Gardener

Gorilla Grodd

Gotham Gazette

Gotham Globe

Gotham General

Green Guardsman

Golden Glider

Glorious Gordon Godfrey

Happy Hogan

Hank Hensley

Hank Hall (Hawk)

Henry “Hank” Henshaw

Hank Hall

Hippolyta "lyta" Hall

Hank Haywood

Jessica Jones

John Jonah Jameson

Katherine “Kate” Kane

Kristen Kringle

Kip Kettering

Lacie Lorraine

Loki Laufeyson

Lunella Lafayette

Lonnie Lincoln

Lois Lane

Lex Luther

Lighting Lad

Linda Lee

Luma Lynai

Lana Lang

Laura Lang

Louise Lincoln

dinah Laurel Lance

Linda Lang

Lena Luther

MasterMind

May Melinda

Miles Morales (og 42)

Meows Morales

Michael Morbius

Multiverse of Madness

MilkMan Man

Mateo Maximoff

Marya Maximoff

Mole Man

Mister Mxyptlk “Mxy”

M’gann M’orzz/Megan Morse/Miss Martian

Mia “Maps” Mizoguchi

Mary Marvel

Miguel Montez

Music Master

Mr. Miracle

Mirror Master

Mad Mod

Malcolm Merlyn

Maria Mercedes Mooney

Matches Malone

Monsieur Mallah

Nia Nal

Olivia Octavius (doctor Octopus/doc Ock)

Pepper Potts

Peter Parker(s)

Pabitr Prabhakav

Peni Parker

Peter Porker

Pedro Peña

Penny Plunderer

Quasar’s Quantum bands

Quentin Quale

Reed Richards

Rocket Raccoon

Richard Rider

Roberto “Robbie” Reyes (og 69)

Rachel Roth (Raven)

Ronald Raymond

SlapStick

Sun Spider

Scarlet Spider

Serpent Society

Super Skrull

Silver Sable/Silvija Sablinova

Sinister Syndicate

Sinister Six

Steven Strange (dr Strange)

Sybil Silverlock

Susan “Sue” Storm

Spider-Society

Samuel Sterns

Sebastian Shaw

Suicide Squad

Star Sapphire

Silver St. Cloud

Secret Six

Pter Ptarker (TT)

Taneleer Tivan

Tyros The Terrible (Terrax)

Teen Titans

Titans Tomorrow

Tom Turbine

Traci Thirteen

Unus the Untouchable

Vicki Vale

Valerie Vale

Web Warriors

Wade Winston Wilson

Wallace “Wally” West

Wallace “ace” West II

Wonder Woman

Warlock the Wizard

Wizards & Warlocks

Zatanna Zatara

Zachary Zatara

Zilius Zox

Duela Dent Napier Nigma

Cooper Coen/Web Weaver

Matthew Michael “Matt” Murdock/DareDevil

Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel

Otto Octavius (doctor Octopus/doc Ock)/Superior Spider-man

Victor Von doom/Doctor Doom

Warren Worthington III/ArchAngel

Cassandra “Cass” Cain/Black Bat

J’onn J’onnz/John Jones/Hank Henshaw/Martian Manhunter

Kei Kawade/Kaiju Kid(/Kid Kaiju)

Mitchell Mayo/Condiment King

Max Mercury/Windrunner Whip WhirlWind

Red Robin/Joker Junior

Cletus Cortland Kassidy (Carnage)

Clark Kent

Conner “Kon” Kent

Chemical King

Carrie Kelley

Killer Croc

Karen Crane

Seaboard City

Total alliteration: 207

[incandescent-creativity]

Hi lucent

Please list the roles of your blorbos if they were a pirate crew.

Barbara Agau would be the captain. Beth would be the first mate that does most of the actual running of the ship, similar to how that one Pirates of the Caribbean movie is like "No WAY this is Blackbeard's ship. I've never even seen him."

Hans would be the lookout up in the crow's nest. Nobody can climb rope ladders and swing down to the deck as fast as he can. He's almost more comfortable up on the mast among the sails than he is on the flat decks.

Hallie is the quartermaster/navigator role, the one who performs ship control, navigation, and bridge watch duties. She is the who actually drives the ship when none of her superior officers are.

Christian is the chef who switches to weapons master when the ship is in for a fight. He has a surprising gift for operating firearms and cannons.

Matt is the officers' point of contact within the crew. His technical job is probably something like supply officer, so he keeps track of ship's supplies of food and drink, weapons, plunder, etc. He's the one to count up the riches and give everybody their share. And he'd also probably do administrative duties, like he'd the one making the cleaning schedule, overseeing prisoners, and enforcing any punishments given out. Somehow, he is charismatic enough that he isn't hated for any of this.

Michael is just a member of the crew, but he has a secret role directly from Captain Agau as an informant. He is there to make sure the crew isn't plotting anything, to keep an ear to the ground and report if he hears anything negative or mutinous.

[satoshi-mochida]

Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution adds PS5, PS4, Switch, and PC versions

Gematsu Source

Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution will launch for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC via Steam alongside its previously announced Game Boy Advance version in 2024, developer WayForward announced.

Here is an overview of the game, via WayForward:

About

Originally created for the Game Boy Advance system before being put on hiatus midway through development, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution will be completed after more than 20 years, and will be released digitally on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Steam in 2024, following the release of the previously announced Game Boy Advance-compatible game cartridge. Helmed by the original design team of Shantae creator Erin Bozon, series director Matt Bozon, and programmer Michael Stragey, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution is the direct follow-up to the beloved original 2002 Shantae game. In this hair-whipping, belly-dancing action-adventure, Shantae’s nemesis, the nefarious pirate Risky Boots, has a “groundbreaking” new scheme that will leave Sequin Land spinning — by rotating the continent, she can move any town to the coast for easy plundering! As Shantae, players must turn the tectonic tables on Risky by rearranging the land itself… shifting, swapping, and moving between the foreground and background to navigate mix-and-match multilayered levels. As Shantae’s adventure unfolds, she’ll explore multiple towns and labyrinths, master six creature transformations, use a variety of magical attacks and items, battle fierce bosses, and meet friends like Rottytops, Sky, and Bolo—some of whom will be encountering each other for the first time. In addition to the single-player story mode, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution also includes a local 4-player Battle Mode for the first time in the series. Furthermore, players can choose to experience the game with enhanced, HD character portraits and HUD elements, or play with the classic GBA pixel presentation fully intact in Legacy Mode. Following fan-favorite titles such as Shantae: Half-Genie Hero and Shantae and the Seven Sirens, Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution will be the sixth game released in the multi-million-selling Shantae series. In addition to the digital version, a physical edition of Shantae Advance: Risky Revolution will be offered on select platforms from Limited Run Games in 2024. Further information, including details on the preorder window, will be made available in the months ahead.

Key Features

Discover the lost chapter of the Shantae saga, fully restored and released after 20 years!

Fight and explore using your hair-whipping ability, magic items, and belly-dance transformations (including monkey, elephant, crab, and more)!

Spin and shift Front Yard and Back Yard playfields to create new routes and solve puzzles!

Visit towns, battle through labyrinths, purchase upgrades, find collectables, and meet with friends like Rottytops, Sky, and Bolo!

For the first time ever in a Shantae game, four players can compete in Battle Mode!

Watch a new trailer below. View a new set of screenshots at the gallery.

Consoles and PC Announce Trailer