#tax receivable asset

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity rips off its investors, too

I'm coming to DEFCON! TOMORROW (Aug 9), I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On SATURDAY (Aug 10), I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

It's amazing how many of the scams that have devastated our economy and everyday people owe their success to the fact that we assume that rich people know what they're doing, so if they're doing something, it must be real.

Think of how many people lost everything by gambling on junk bonds, exotic mortgage derivatives, cryptocurrency and web3, because they saw that the largest financial institutions in the world were going all-in on these weird, incomprehensible bets.

Then there are the people who are convinced that online advertising is built around a mind-control ray, because tech companies claim that's what they have ("I am an evil dopamine-loop-hacking wizard and I can sell anything to anyone!"), and because huge, sober blue-chip companies hand billions to these soi dissant svengalis. Sure, online ads are a swamp of clickfraud and garbage, but would these super smart captains of industry spend so much on online advertising if it didn't work super-well?

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

From our worms'-eye-view here on the ground, it's easy to assume that rich people and the people who sell them stuff are all on the same side. "If you're not paying for the product, you're the product," right? If Facebook is tormenting you with surveillance advertising, it must be doing so on behalf of the surveillance advertisers, for whom Mark Zuckerberg has bottomless reservoirs of honest, forthright impulses.

The reality is simultaneously weirder, and obvious in hindsight. The reason Zuck is tormenting you is that he's a remorseless sociopath who doesn't care who he hurts. He rips off everyone he can rip off, and that includes advertisers, who have seen steady price-hikes and lower-fidelity targeting, even as ad-fraud has skyrocketed while Facebook draws down its anti-fraud spending:

https://www.404media.co/where-facebooks-ai-slop-comes-from/

This is not to say that Facebook advertisers have your best interests at heart, that they aren't engaged in active deception in order to better themselves at your expense. Rather, it's to say that there's no honor among thieves, and Zuck is an equal-opportunity predator. Moreover, both Zuck and his advertisers are credulous dolts, so the mere fact that they are pouring money into something (advertisers: FB ads; Zuck: metaverse) it doesn't follow that these are real or important or the coming thing.

For me, the Ur-example of "rich people are dumb, even when it comes to money" is the private equity sector. I've written a lot about PE, and how destructive it is to the real economy, from Toys R Us to pet grooming:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/05/rugged-individuals/#misleading-by-analogy

How they killed Red Lobster:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates

And how they actually created the death panels that Sarah Palin warned us about (it's OK, though: these death panels are run by the efficient private sector, not government bureaucrats):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

The devastating effect of private equity on the real economy is increasingly well understood, and a curious side-effect of this is that people assume that if PE is destroying their lives, they must be doing so on behalf of their investors, who are making bank.

But – like Zuck – PE bosses are just as happy to steal from their investors as they are to to steal from the workers and customers of the businesses they acquire on those investors' behalf. They swaddle this theft in performative complexity and specialized jargon, but when you strip all that away, you find more fraud.

All the misery that PE inflicts on workers, communities and customers are just a convincer in a Big Store con, a bid to make the scam seem credible. For a certain kind of investor, any economic activity that destroys communities and workers' livelihoods must be a good bet. This is the dynamic at work in the pitch of AI image-generator companies, who spend tens of billions on technology that there is no substantial market for:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/25/accountability-sinks/#work-harder-not-smarter

AI image generators represent a high-profile, extremely visible example of "a job that AI can do." Nevermind that AI illustration went from a novelty to a tired cliche in less than a year. Even if you think that AI illustrations are a perfect substitute for commercial illustrations, that still won't come anywhere near making AI companies a profit. Add up the entire wage bill for every commercial illustrator in the world, hand it to Open AI, and you're not even gonna cover the kombucha budget for Open AI's staff kitchens.

Hell, all the wages of every commercial illustrator that ever lived won't pay back even a fraction of the money the AI companies spent on image generators. The pauperization of an entire class of creative workers is just a canned demo, a way to fool investors into thinking that there is a whole universe of similarly situated workers whose wages can be diverted to AI companies. This is the logic of small-time spammers, scaled up to the scale of the entire S&P 500. Smalltime spammers looked at AI and thought, "OK, I can generate as much botshit as I want on demand for free. Science fiction magazines pay $0.10/word. So if I generate a billion words, I'll get $100 million." But that's not how any of that works: sf magazines don't buy botshit, and even if they did, the entire market for short fiction adds up to what Sam Altman spends on a single designer t-shirt. The point of destroying these beloved, useful things isn't to make a lot of money by taking their markets – it's to convince dopey, panicked rich people to give you lots of money you can steal, because they think you can do this to every market and they don't want to miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Take "divi recaps": after a private equity firm acquires a company (by borrowing money against its assets), it typically declares a "special dividend," emptying out the company's cash reserves and pocketing them. A "divi recap" is when PE then takes out another massive loan against the company's (remaining) assets and pockets that:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/17/divi-recaps/#graebers-ghost

All of this happens under an opaque cloud, thanks to the light-to-nonexistent disclosure rules for PE. A public company has to open its books for the SEC, its investors, and the world. PE is private – and so are its finances. It is absolutely routine for PE bosses to put their spouses, kids, and pals on the payroll and hand them millions for doing little to nothing, all at the expense of their investors:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/sec-set-to-lower-massive-boom-on-private-equity-industry.html

PE bosses charge huge fees to their investors – not merely the usual 2-and-20 (2% of the funds under management and 20% of any profits) – but also a wide variety of special one-off fees that pile to the sky. They also dip into their investors' funds to issue themselves massive loans that they use to make side-bets, without telling the investors about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#gary-gensler

PE investors are chickens ripe for the plucking: take "continuation funds," which allow PE bosses to soak the rich people and pension funds who supply them with billions:

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

Remember 2-and-20? 2% of all the money you manage, every year, and 20% of all the profits. You'd think that these would be somewhat zero sum, right? If you use some of your investors' cash to buy a company, and then sell off that company for a profit, you get the 20%, but now the pot of money you're managing has gone down by the amount you used to buy the company, and so your 2% carry goes down, too.

But what if you sell your portfolio companies to yourself, using your investors' own money? When you do that, you continue to hold the company on your PE firm's books, meaning you continue to get the 2% carry, and you can pocket 20% of the sale price as a "profit":

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

This is straight-up fraud, wrapped up in so much jargon that it can successfully masquerade as "financial engineering" ("financial engineering" is really just a euphemism for "fraud"). PE bosses keep coming up with new, exotic ways to steal from their investors. The latest scam is "tax receivable agreements":

https://archive.ph/RczJ9

On its face, this is a tax scam. When a company goes public, early investors generally hold stock in the original partnership or LLC; this company ends up holding a ton of shares in the new, public company. When they sell those non-public shares in the LLC, this creates a (potentially gigantic) tax credit.

A TRA hustle involves tracking down these LLC shareholders and convincing them to sign off on dumping the LLC's shares, which generates a huge tax credit for the public company. The hustler offers to split these credits with the LLC holders.

All of this is especially attractive to PE bosses, who often take a company private, do a bunch of "financial engineering" and then take it public again, leaving the PE firm as the owner of those LLC shares that can be converted to a TRA and a huge windfall – which the PE bosses pocket, because they (not their investors) are holding those credits.

This scam is really doing big numbers. KKR – the monsters who killed Toys R Us – just diverted $650 million in TRA loot, prompting a lawsuit from Steamfitters union pension fund, which had handed these jerks millions of its members' money to gamble with:

https://archive.ph/kqQvI

This highlights another very weird aspect of the PE scam: they are absolutely dependent on pension funds. To add insult to injury, PE funds are notorious union-busters – they use union money to buy companies and destroy their unions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/05/mr-gotcha/#no-ethical-consumption-under-capitalism

People who try to understand the PE business model often give up, because it seems to make no sense, leading many to assume that they're too unsophisticated to grasp the complex financials here. For example, PE is absolutely dependent on massive loans as a way of looting its businesses, but it also often defaults on those loans. Why do banks and investors keep making huge loans to PE deadbeats? Because – like the PE fund investors – they are credulous dolts.

The reason PE seems like a scam is that it is a scam. It is a fractal scam – every part of it is a scam. You might have heard about the "carried interest" tax loophole that allows PE bosses to avoid billions in taxes on the money they steal from their investors, creditors, workers and customers. Most people assume "carried interest" has something to do with "interest" on a loan. Nope: "carried interest" is a 16th century nautical tax rule designed for mercantalist sea-captains who had an "interest" in the cargo they "carried":

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

But rich people and other "sophisticated investors" (like pension fund investment managers) are no smarter than the rest of us. They are herd animals. When they see other rich people piling into some scheme or asset class, they rush to join them, which makes the asset price go up, which makes them think they're smart (until the inevitable rug-pull). When one plute jumps off the Empire State Building, the rest of them jump, too.

Which is why there's more money flooding into PE than at any time in history, $2.62T in "dry powder," handed over to greedy, thieving PE bosses in a poker game where everyone is the sucker at the table:

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2di1vzgjcmzovkcea8f0g/portfolio/private-equitys-dry-powder-mountain-reaches-record-height

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/08/sucker-at-the-table/#clucks-definance

[robertreich]

Friends, Musk is trying to downplay the chaos he’s creating by saying it’s much the same as the cost-cutting efforts of the Clinton administration. “What DOGE is doing is similar to Clinton/Gore Dem policies of the 1990s,” he posted on his X platform. Rubbish. I cut costs in the Clinton administration. The contrast with what Musk is doing couldn’t be sharper. As secretary of labor, I took the Department of Labor down from 18,500 employees to 16,600 — but did it without any layoffs. No chainsaws. No meat-axes. And we were careful to improve the services we were providing the public. For example, when people lost jobs in an industry that was shrinking, we devised a way to get them job-training and job-search assistance in addition to unemployment insurance. This helped move them into new jobs faster — which also saved the government over $1 billion a year in unemployment payments. We plowed that $1 billion back into job-training and job-search assistance, making the whole economy work better. In Musk’s attack on the federal workforce, thousands of federal workers have been fired without warning. Or they’ve been offered fake “deferred resignation” buyouts that were never authorized by Congress and may not be legal. Entire agencies have been gutted without legislative authorization, forcing judges to intervene. Our “Reinventing Government” effort was authorized by bipartisan congressional legislation. We worked carefully over several years to identify areas where government could be more efficient, notifying Congress of what we were doing. But the Republicans who control Congress today have allowed Musk to race ahead without them, even though the Constitution states that the legislative branch approves spending and federal law prohibits the president from cutting programs Congress has authorized without its permission. Clinton sought that permission, and Congress accepted $3.6 billion in cuts he proposed. We also involved federal workers, because they knew better than anyone what could be improved and how best to do it. We introduced performance standards, we encouraged our workers to embrace the internet, and we gave out awards to employees who came up with ways to cut red tape and improve service. “There was a tremendous effort put into understanding what should happen and what should change,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, which seeks to improve the federal workforce. “What is happening now is actually taking us backwards.” We were deliberative and careful. Musk is the opposite. Musk sees government workers as the enemy — as costs to be cut. We saw government workers as assets to be developed, our partners in getting better services to the public more efficiently. Musk also calls people who benefit from government programs the “parasite class.” Presumably that’s why he’s eager to cut back Medicaid. But Medicaid’s beneficiaries aren’t parasites. Half of them are children. Oh, but if we’re talking about people who depend on government, Musk is the biggest “parasite” of all. Over the years, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits, often at critical moments, helping seed the growth that has made him the richest person in the world. That he views public servants as his enemy and the people who benefit from public programs as “parasites” tells you all you need to know about Elon Musk. When you hear Musk say his effort is similar to what I and others did in the 1990s, know he’s lying. When you see him call people who benefit from public programs “parasites,” know he’s a hypocrite. Thoughts?

[pintadorartist]

Bill HR 9495 still remains a threat to nonprofits and independent news

Bill H.R. 9495, aka the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act,” was meant to protect US Hostages from tax penalties; the problem is that the bill received an add-on that would give the Treasury Secretary the power to strip any non-profit of their tax-exempt status based on the idea that the nonprofit is a “terrorist supporting” organization, all without due process or a justification.

And although another exemption was added to the bill that would "protect" Non-profits from this by exempting Non-Profits that have approval from the Office of Foreign Assets Control(OFAC). This would still target non-profit organizations since all it would take to attack them is to just rescind that prior approval

This would give the upcoming Trump administration the power to kill any non-profit org, from AO3 to the ACLU. Even local nonprofits and independent news sources could be stripped of their status and be unable to receive funding to stay open, all because they had different views than the government.

Unfortunately, the bill passed the House and is headed toward the Senate, but there hasn't been any update regarding the bill or a date to vote on it; it's probably best to find your Senator and call, email, or fax them to tell them to vote no if it comes to a vote.

Below are some tools and a list of Senate leaders you should call in addition to your senator:

Democrat Senate Leaders:

Chuck Schumer:

Phone: (202) 224-6542

Fax: (202) 228-3027

Dick Durbin:

Phone: 202-224-2152

Debbie Stabenow:

Phone:(202) 224-4822

Elizabeth Warren:

Phone: (202) 224-4543

Mark R. Warner:

Phone: 202-224-2023

Amy Klobuchar:

Phone: 202-224-3244

Fax: 202-228-2186

Bernie Sanders:

Phone: 202-224-5141 Fax: 202-228-0776

Catherine Cortez Masto:

Phone: (202) 224-3542

Joe Manchin:

Phone: 202-224-3954 Fax: 202-228-0002

Cory A. Booker:

Phone: (202) 224-3224

Fax: (202) 224-8378

Tammy Baldwin:

Phone: (202) 224-5653

Brian Schatz:

Phone: (202) 224-3934

Republican Senate Leaders:

Mitch McConnell:

Phone: (202) 224-2541 Fax: (202) 224-2499

John Thune:

Phone: (202) 224-2321

Fax: (202) 228-5429

John Barrasso:

Main: 202-224-6441 Fax: 202-224-1724

Joni Ernst:

PHONE: (319) 365-4504

FAX: (319) 365-4683

Shelley Capito:

Phone: 202-224-6472

Steve Daines:

p: (202) 224-2651 f: 202-228-1236

Find Your Senator:

Or you can call the Congressional switchboard today and ask to be connected with each of your Senators’ offices. Demand they vote against this bill: (202) 224-3121

If you don’t like talking to people, you can call after their offices close so you can leave a message

you can also Text RESIST to 50409 to send your message into a fax and email to your senator

Fax tool:

Here are some call scripts that you can use as fax and email as well:

If you have a Democrat Senator, you can use this script:

“I am calling Senator [THEIR LAST NAME] as a constituent to urge them to vote against the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, when it comes to the Senate floor. This bill would give the Treasury the power to kill non-profit organizations without evidence, and will be used as a sledge hammer to destroy any organization that speaks out against the incoming President’s agenda. No matter who was in power, this bill would be authoritarian and ripe for abuse. Handing this power to a President known to be vindictive, and who has promised to be a “day one” dictator, would be a failure of congressional leadership. Please share my thoughts with the Senator, urging them to vote against this dangerous legislation. Thank you”

If you have a Republican Senator, you can use this script:

“As your constituent, I urge you to vote NO on H.R. 9495. This bill poses a dangerous threat to the fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment and must not pass the Senate. It grants any incoming administration unchecked authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of non-profit organizations without oversight or due process. Such government overreach is not what the Founding Fathers envisioned for our democracy. This bill undermines the principles of free speech and freedom of association, cornerstones of American liberty.

H.R. 9495 threatens to pave the way for political suppression, allowing the government to selectively target and shut down organizations based on ideological disagreements. This could affect any non-profit, including churches and conservative groups, as well as organizations that champion human rights and civil liberties. Regardless of political leanings, this bill sets a chilling precedent that no American patriot should support.

While situations relating to the hostages deserve careful attention, they can and should be addressed in a separate, narrowly tailored bill. H.R. 9495, however, is a broad, unconstitutional overreach that strikes at the heart of free speech and freedom. It is unpatriotic and incompatible with the values we hold dear as Americans.

I implore you to stand as a defender of liberty and uphold the rights of your constituents. Be a patriot, listen to the voice of the people, protect our God given right to free speech as Americans, and reject this dangerous legislation. Vote NO on H.R. 9495. Thank you, God Bless and God Bless America.”

Here’s that petition again:

[noonesgaylikegatson]

The majority of rich people on this earth are broke. They don't have any money. I'll explain why:

Rich people don't make enough money to afford their lifestyles. What they do is that they they take out loans. These loans are countered against the property, businesses, and shares they hold.

So a rich person who brings in about 250,000 a month, will take out a loan for about $10 million to afford their lifestyle. That's for buying property, cars, going on vacation, hosting parties, jewelry etc.

They don't have enough liquid cash to afford any of these things on their own. That's why they take out these loans. Plus they have lines of credit.

This of course is not free money. They have to pay back monthly premiums. If they ever default, the banks will start snatching up their assets. This is where we start the nonsense:

Lower taxes? Rich person bringing home $250,000 a month that means they pay close to $150,000 dollars in taxes. They want to pay less taxes so they can:

get bigger loans

have more cushion rooms to pay their premiums

As you can imagine, getting a 10 million dollar loan, and spending it on luxury life style, will cause that money to quickly run out, and now they're paying premiums and are broke. They have to take out more loans, get more credit, it's a violent spiral.

(This is why I always say that people who complain about taxes are bad with money.)

How it fucks you: Less taxes means services get cut, and become worse.

Rent? A lot of rich people invest in property because it gives monthly income that they can use to pay their bills. The push against work from home? Majority of companies rent out their corporate spaces. With WFH, many companies downsized or got rid of their spaces. We saw a lot of rich people who expected monthly income suddenly lose that income. This scares them because they were counting on that income to pay their bills.

They're also against zoning reform, and building more houses because that could potentially lower rent, which would mean their monthly income would reduce.

Remember, the loans and credit that these broke fucks have to pay back, don't decrease.

Layoffs? Rich people who have shares in companies get dividends. When a company makes 1.2 billion in profit, those dividends go to the shareholders. If next year, the same company makes 800 million in profits, the shareholders get smaller dividends. Rich people are expecting on the money they receive from these companies to stay the same or get bigger.

Every wonder why companies rush out products that are obviously not ready? Those shareholders are pushing for the product to get out as soon as possible so they can quickly get the profits so they can pay their bills.

Investment bubbles? Rich people throwing their money in the new shiny thing in hopes it explodes and they make profit in order to pay off all their loans and credits, and then get even bigger loans and larger credit lines.

Literally every shitty thing in society can be traced back to rich people's poor money management. Very few rich people have liquid cash. This is why billionaires are so powerful.

When interest rates go up and causes premiums to balloon, rich people have to sell their assets to stay afloat, Billionaires can eat the costs, buy up businesses, properties and capital at lower rates, and then sell them when the economy recovers and the value bounces back.

You ever wondered why celebrities and athletes make so much money and then seem to lose it all? It's because of what I described as above. They get loans to afford their lifestyle, and then when their earnings dry up, they can't afford to pay their monthly premiums and the bank takes everything away.

We are told stories of "irresponsible spending" ex: buying golden yachts. When in actuality, they were simple doing as the romans do. Majority of celebrities don't have consistent income that lasts for decades unlike rich people have jobs and companies that pays them regularly for decades.

In conclusion: we need to destroy the lifestyle of the rich.

Loans should be regulated to things like buying property (homes people live in, and primary cars), entrepreneurship, life events, (weddings, ceremonies, plastic surgery, medical issues, emergencies, necessary renovations etc), education, research, etc. and other loans (luxury items, extra homes, personal loans etc.) should be penalized and taxed.

By forcing rich people to live on their liquid cash, would literally shift our society to a more egalitarian one, and make a healthy economy that focuses on progress and growth.

[autumngracy]

"Trump is better for the economy, though!"

Aside from almost every major economist agreeing that Trump's economic plans would actually make things far worse than they are now, this man can't even manage his campaign's, his businesses', OR his personal finances.

Case in point, here a list from Public Opinion of his failed business endeavors:

"Trump's companies have filed for bankruptcy at least six times. This is no exaggeration. Digital World noted this in its SEC filings. This excludes additional business failures that might not have declared bankruptcy, but closed owing vendors, employees and others."

"For the record, here are some of Trump's noteworthy business failures."

Trump Airlines — Trump borrowed $245 million to purchase Eastern Air Shuttle. He branded it Trump Airlines. He added gold bathroom fixtures. Two years later Trump could not cover the interest payment on his loan and defaulted.

Trump Beverages — Although Trump touted his water as "one of the purest natural spring waters bottled in the world," it was simply bottled by a third party. Other beverages, including Trump Fire and Trump Power, seem not to have made it to market. And Trump's American Pale Ale died with a trademark withdrawal.

Trump Game — Milton Bradley tried to sell it. As did Hasbro. After investment, the game died and went out of circulation.

Trump Casinos — Trump filed for bankruptcy three times on his casinos, namely the Trump Taj Mahal, the Trump Marina and the Trump Plaza in New Jersey and the Trump Casino in Indiana. Trump avoided debt obligations of $3 billion the first time. Then $1.8 billion the second time. And then after reorganizing, shuffling money and assets, and waiting four years, Trump again declared bankruptcy after missing ongoing interest payments on multi-million dollar bonds. He was finally forced to step down as chairman.

Trump Magazine — Trump Style and Trump World were renamed Trump Magazine to reap advertising dollars from his name recognition. However, Trump Magazine also went out of business.

Trump Mortgage — Trump told CNBC in 2006 that "I think it's a great time to start a mortgage company. … The real-estate market is going to be very strong for a long time to come." Then the real estate market collapsed. Trump had hired E.J. Ridings as CEO of Trump Mortgage and boasted that Ridings had been a "top executive of one of Wall Street's most prestigious investment banks." Turned out Ridings had only six months of experience as a stockbroker. Trump Mortgage closed and never paid a $298,274 judgment it owed a former employee, nor the $3,555 it owed in unpaid taxes.

Trump Steaks — Trump closed Trump Steaks due to a lack of sales while owing Buckhead Beef $715,000.

Trump's Travel Site — GoTrump.com was in business for one year. Failed.

Trumpnet — A telephone communication company that abandoned its trademark.

Trump Tower Tampa — Trump sold his name to the developers and received $2 million. Then the project went belly-up with only $3,500 left in the company. Condo buyers sued Trump for allegedly misleading them. Trump settled and paid as little as $11,115 to buyers who had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Trump University or the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative — Trump staged wealth-building seminars costing up to $34,995 for mentorships that would offer students access to Trump's secrets of success. Instructors turned out to be motivational speakers sometimes with criminal records. Lawsuits and criminal investigations abound.

Trump Vodka — Business failed due to a lack of sales.

Trump Fragrances — Success by Trump, Empire by Trump, and Donald Trump: The Fragrances all failed due to being discontinued, perhaps as a result of few sales.

Trump Mattress — Serta stopped offering a Trump-branded mattress, again likely due to slacking sales.

Truth Social — This existing Trump business owes big money, and may well be breathing its last.

And then of course is his long history of stiffing contractors, restaurants, and even entire cities for their event venues he used for his rallies—as well as some of his own followers—

—such as the case where he promised a greiving hispanic American family that he would pay for the burial of their daughter, Vanessa Guillén, a servicewoman who had been brutally murdered by a fellow soldier at Fort Hood in 2020, but later told his chief of staff not to pay for it after learning it would cost $60,000, reportedly saying "It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican!"

[2balt]

Marry me platonically. We will file joint tax returns.

No prenup. We marry. We file our taxes for the year. You see I only have five euros and 3 pieces of furniture to my name. We divorce three weeks later. I receive 50% percent of your financial assets in the court proceedings meanwhile you receive 2.50€ and my bedside nightstand. I win this game of Catan. I play and gamble for the thrill. #winning #strategy #gaming

[transfaguette]

btw there is a difference between SSI (supplemental security income) and SSDI (social security disability income).

SSDI is whats typically meant by disability. This is for people who become disabled and have previously worked and accrued “work credits.” How much you receive is based on how much you have worked and paid into the system via social security tax. There is no specific asset limit on SSDI, however too much income via something like a savings account could impact your eligibility.

SSI is for disabled and elderly people who have either not worked enough to be eligible for SSDI, or for whom SSDI alone isn’t enough to cover their living expenses. Just being disabled isn’t enough, it is a needs based program. How much you receive is based on your current financial status, and is regularly adjusted and means tested. It is very easy to lose SSI by design, and has the infamous $2,000 asset limit.

sorry if I got anything wrong here, you may notice when you try to research this its extremely confusing and shockingly difficult to find good information. but this is the basic difference between the two.

[learnastrowallura]

💜The 8th House in Astrology💜

The source if this information is The Astrology Podcast (Chris Brennan) on Youtube and from the book The Twelve Houses: Exploring the Houses of the Horoscope by Howard Sasportas and I will add a personal example as well

8th house: the occult, loss, taxes, loans, debt, inheritance, banking, accounting, investment expertise, others' finances, others's values, shared assets/values, merging, sexual intimacy, transformation, regeneration, the hidden, the unconscious, mediums, spirits, ancestral work, shadow work, trauma, fear, death, giving things, succedent

What we inherit (money, knowledge, family heirlooms, businesses, assets etc), our relationship with other people's money, how well off financially or in terms of value systems are our partners, how we set boundaries in terms of intimate relationships, our sexual nature, the themes that trigger transformations in our lifetime and how we handle that type of chaos and regenerative process, how we process and handle our fears particularly relating to loss, what kind of destructive thoughts/behaviors we might have or face sometimes, our relationship with our shadow self etc

Personal example: Gemini in an empty 8th house

I have an empty 8th house so it seems that the topics mentioned at the start are not so significant for me, however I am a Scorpio rising so my whole life is "transformative" lol it is just less emphasized like this I suppose

As for Gemini in my 8th house for me, it could indicate an innate ability to advise people on what to do with their money? This was purely an intuitive interpretation tho and since there is no emphasis on my natal 8th house I will let it go for now

What I have witnessed in the past as well is that I've always had a talent for helping people have breakthroughs; however with my Sagittarius energy and Mercury conjunct Pluto I may have come accross as too blunt and intense, and so this has only worked in situations in which the person knew me kind of well/trusted me and/or for some reason was not fazed by my intense energy and demeanor (Note: I have an Aries moon too lol)

With introspection and communicating my thoughts to others I can trigger transformative phases in my life whether good or bad but the main point is my relationships dictate a lot whether it is a start, end, break etc it always affects me and somehow feels like a shedding of my old self which very much aligns with the concept of death and rebirth in my opinion

Another thing to note is that the conjunction between my Mercury (8th house ruler) and Pluto (my chart ruler) takes place in my 2nd house of finances which makes me think that this theme in particular is quite important for me

Oh and rn I'm 19 so I am in my 8th house profection year and I'm healing from past connections that kept me stuck in life as well holding myself accountable for everything which has been cool like lots of ups and downs for sure but I do feel reborn and close friends have noticed and have been talking to me about the transformation as well haha I am receiving a lot of recognition, affection and praise <3

I might make a post resuming profection years in my own style/perspective soon but @lilacstro has posted about in detail already so check that out here x

Thank you for reading <3

Masterlist

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[serpentface]

Question about Brakul: where does he stand in Wardi class distinctions? He's a foreigner, but associated with a nobleman and has access to wealth and status symbols. Does he have something like a higher-class position or is he seen as more of an elevated lower-class person? Does any of this framework even make sense in a Wardi context? And how would he see himself?

Absolutely considered an elevated (if not more derisively ‘upjumped’) lower class citizen, but in kind of a complicated manner.

Sworn brotherhood establishes a legal blood kinship tie (blood of covenant, which is also what establishes kinship in marriages and adoptions). The legal implications are much less profound than marriage or adoption, it basically just establishes that each man involved has obligations to the other’s wife, children, and assets upon death.

The biggest difference from marriage or adoption wrt Class Implications is that in interclass marriages/adoptions a woman or child is functionally shifted into the class bracket of their new husband or adoptive father (women and children are both under the legal control of their husband or father (until adulthood in the case of boys and marriage in the case of girls), and thus absorbed into this man's household). This doesn't apply here, given both parties are adult men and both legal heads of their own households, thus class shifting in either direction doesn't have any basis whatsoever.

Sworn brotherhood ties also differ in that they are arrangements exclusively between two individuals, rather than two families. The parents of each party do not have obligations to their son’s blood brother (or vice versa, though this is more complex on a social level). Fathers also do not have to accept their new pseudo-son as kin- this has no legal dimensions, but has strong social dimensions. A family patriarch formally acknowledging the new brother as ‘son by blood’ effectively canonizes this status among all his dependents (wife, sons, unmarried daughters) and makes disputing this status to be an insult to the entire family name, rather than just to the two men involved.

Interclass brotherhoods are not unheard of and are actually far more common than interclass marriages (it lacks the same intensity of economic motivations as marriage). The lower class individual remains a commoner, they do not receive the legal benefits of hereditary nobility (full land ownership rights + ability to serve in high public office/many priesthoods + differentiated status for criminal charges + differentiated tax status + etc), but they are to be Socially acknowledged as kin by blood, out of respect for their status as blood kin to hereditary nobility or at least out of Not Wanting To Start Shit with their noble blood kin.

At the most basic level this is a linguistic and behavioral shift. If you're a commoner, you're pretty much going to HAVE to address them deferentially ('amna' ('sir') honorifics, high-esteem noun/verb forms, bowed greetings, etc), you DO NOT want to risk insult to the nobleman they're tied to. If you're nobility, you should address them with levels of linguistic respect you wouldn't otherwise commoners, just without using forms exclusive to actual nobility (ie you don't call them 'lord' but you should use 'sir' to be respectful and 'blood of the lord [nobility partner implicit]' if you're being really generous about it). You aren't completely Mandated to, but you will if you don't want to offend another family.

So like all this being said, the nuances of Brakul’s exact situation are:

'heathen' ethnoreligious minority

not Technically a peasant in that he did not tend land assets of a lord and was not born into this societal structure to begin with, but would be considered such on pretty much all other levels

current legal Imperial Wardi citizen

commoner class

sworn brother and thus legally and socially kin by blood of covenant to a nobleman

was never acknowledged as son by blood by said nobleman’s father

does not have a wife or children, when the central Point of this kinship arrangement is mutual security for each man's wife and children and their assets

has livestock assets under his name but no land

the hard material benefits and obligations of the sworn brotherhood arrangement are almost cartoonishly weighted in Brakul's favor

is straight up just living in his brother’s house

So like, Brakul's status is legally sound. But his status on social levels depends largely on how much any given person takes it seriously, and from there whether they consider 'insulting Haidamane Janeys and probably no one else from his family' to be socially risky.

His entire situation makes his reception weighted towards "EXTREMELY upjumped peasant", though how people treat him by extension varies. Most people he encounters pay him expected basic social respect for his kinship status, but whether these people respect him as a person, see him as an amusing curiosity, or have no respect whatsoever and just don't think it's worth starting shit varies. The most spiteful end of his perception is "EXTREMELY upjumped cattle raider peasant heathen via that soft Haidamane failson, is leeching off him and presumably kept around to be his top, AND he might have cucked him. Me being asked to pretend this is what sworn brotherhood is supposed to be is an insult".

As for Brakul, he has a pretty thorough understanding of how his position is perceived and how it functions legally, but his perception on what that means in practice is colored by his background. Elite status in the Chenahyeigi peoples can be Functionally hereditary to a clan but is more based upon maneuvering to accumulate and retain wealth and to keep other clans in your allegiance and/or debt. Upward mobility is theoretically possible for anyone, it's mostly a matter of making the right friends and binding allegiances (usually via marriage, but sworn brotherhood is also a thing here).

He understands that these same dynamics very much Aren't at play, but sees the day to day material realities of his station as functionally similar (just applied to a vastly different context). He DOES have direct access to wealth (and Some of it is his own at this point, he has livestock assets to his name alone) and most of its benefits. As a commoner citizen, he can't get a political office or join most priesthoods (whooooo cares) and has to pay proportionately steeper taxes than the noblemen (ok this one kind of sucks), but he's living in the same sort of profound economic/physical security and relative leisure that the Wardi nobility does, and in ways that matter to his own value system as well. He's attained a sort of lateral upward mobility in another society.

Other aspects of his current situation in life are more complicated but in terms of how he defines his station, he sees himself as, for all intents and purposes, being married into South Wardi nobility. The concept of the hereditary nobility in of itself means absolute jack shit to him (he doesn't even slightly conceive of these people as being special in any capacity beyond their situational power in this system), it's just another society that he's a part of by right of kinship.

He would self describe the totality of his current place in life as the son of [all 24 members of his male and female ancestral lines] of the Bict-Urbinnas West Rivers peoples, citizen of the province Wardin, blood to the lord Haidamane Janeys, blooded warrior and unit commander in the order Odotsomale, wealthy in cattle.

[stupittmoran]

For the 7th year in a row, the Pentagon has failed its financial audit, unable to account for 60% of its $4.1 trillion in assets. Yes… that’s a staggering $2.46 trillion unaccounted for. If a private citizen failed even a few IRS audits, they’d likely face hefty fines and possible jail time for tax evasion. Yet, despite repeated failures, the Department of Defense still receives its full $824 billion annual budget. Conducted by independent auditors and overseen by the DoD Inspector General, these audits, costing $178 million and conducted by 1,700 auditors. Sources: The Hill, GAO

[mariacallous]

A month after Franklin D. Roosevelt won the 1940 presidential election, he called for legislation to ramp up military aid to countries fighting Nazi Germany. Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act in March 1941. Within months, Britain and the Soviet Union were pounding Adolf Hitler’s forces with U.S. weapons and other equipment.

Now that Americans have voted to return Donald Trump to the White House, the situation risks flipping into reverse: After Jan. 20, 2025, the United States may abandon its European allies to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s fascist war machine.

During his campaign, Trump said he will “not give a penny to Ukraine.” Part of his plan to end the war “in one day” is that he would “tell [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, no more. You got to make a deal.” But if Russia is allowed to conquer and subjugate Ukraine, it would only be a matter of which democracy gets colonized next by a neighboring dictatorship: Poland, the Baltic States, Moldova, or Taiwan.

Thus, over the next 75 days, Congress and the Biden administration face an urgent historic mission to help Ukraine get as many weapons as possible before a possible withdrawal of U.S. support.

U.S. President Joe Biden has directed the Defense Department to draw down all remaining Ukrainian security aid that Congress has appropriated by the end of his term. It’s not clear if the Pentagon could supply much more weaponry than that by Inauguration Day, even if it received additional funding from Congress.

Instead, the way to promptly fund more arms is to bankroll Ukrainian procurement of U.S. weapons. Specifically, Biden should request, and Congress should pass, another supplemental funding bill on a similar scale as the one in April, which included $60.8 billion for Ukraine. The new supplemental should authorize the administration to spend any amount of the aid—up to the full amount—to cut a massive check to the Ukrainian government with the stipulation that Ukraine use the funds to purchase U.S.-made weapons.

Sending Ukraine $60 billion to spend on weapons would be entirely consistent with the strategy that the Biden administration had been preparing in case of a Trump win. One of Biden’s main initiatives has been to push the G-7 to give $50 billion in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine, deliberately structuring the transfer to get out the door before Jan. 20 so that Trump cannot stop it. Biden originally wanted to seize and give to Kyiv all $300 billion of Russia’s frozen money, but the Europeans could not be convinced. The administration has also shown its willingness to throw U.S. budgetary resources into the mix: When the $50 billion was blocked by the Hungarian government, the White House engineered a clever way of guaranteeing the money through the Treasury Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The key political challenge, however, could be getting House Speaker Mike Johnson to support this legislation during the lame duck period, when he will probably be preparing to run for another term as speaker. This may require some hardball maneuvering by some of the many pro-Ukraine Republicans in the House. It would be much easier, of course, if Trump quietly goes along with it, like he did with the last supplemental.

The United States would not be the first government to fund Ukrainian arms procurement. Denmark paved the way this year with a grant that finances contracts between Ukraine and defense manufacturers. Denmark and Ukraine developed a transparent set of financial controls that include factory site visits, validation of delivery, and auditing processes. All sides regard this pilot program as so successful that other allies are pulling out their checkbooks to join in on the action.

Americans��� tax dollars would be safely held by the most credibly reformed and reputably led wing of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry: the defense procurement agency. In the early weeks of the full-scale invasion, when Russian forces were bearing down on Kyiv and heavy Western weapons hadn’t yet arrived, Ukraine’s desperate Defense Ministry called up illicit intermediaries, begging them to help buy up old stocks of Soviet-type munitions on the notoriously opaque and fragmented international arms market. But over the following months, as Western aid started flowing, Ukraine’s strategy shifted to building a clean, transparent pipeline for buying weapons straight from producers.

Established in August 2022, the defense procurement agency is now run by Maryna Bezrukova, a seasoned reformer who previously cleaned up procurement at Ukraine’s national electricity company. To be her deputy, Bezrukova hired Ukraine’s most reputably independent corruption investigator: Artem Sytnyk, the former head of the state National Anti-Corruption Bureau. With these sheriffs in town, the surest way for even the most powerful Ukrainians to go to jail is to try to corruptly make money off weapons acquisitions.

Under this reformist leadership, the defense procurement agency is aggressively cutting out intermediaries by contracting directly with arms manufacturers. The clearest sign of success is that excluded arms dealers and their cronies are attacking Bezrukova with threatening messages, smear campaigns, and doxing on Telegram. Most recently, these intermediaries tried to sideline Bezrukova by getting Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov to merge her agency into another one—and fire her in the process. That announcement triggered such strong pushback by NATO and Ukrainian civil society that the minister canceled the planned reorganization. Instead, with support from Ukraine’s allies, the ministry formed a new supervisory board of reputable experts to oversee the procurement agency.

Any U.S. legislation that funds weapons contracts arranged by Ukraine’s defense procurement agency should come with one additional condition: Before Kyiv receives any money, it must enact legislation mandating the existence of the agency, safeguarding the independence of its supervisory board, and most importantly, prohibiting the defense minister from firing the agency head without a concurring decision by the supervisory board.

Beyond the strategic benefits, this approach could create jobs for Americans during Trump’s second term, largely in states that voted for him. Unlike military aid provided by Europe or allocated by NATO, U.S. funding would come right back home: to Northrop Grumman’s gun truck production line in Arizona, General Dynamics’ artillery shell facility in Texas, Raytheon’s missile factory in Alabama, and Lockheed Martin’s F-16 plant in South Carolina.

To prevent the Trump administration from using executive authority to block the export of weapons procured by Ukraine under the program, Congress should insert one exemption to the Buy American requirement: If the U.S. government ends up blocking exports, Ukraine would be free to redirect the funds to non-U.S. arms manufacturers.

Just as vital as the original Lend-Lease Act, this legislation could be called the Buy American Weapons Act. And it would keep the United States on the right side of history against the imperial armies that are once again on the march.

[a-d-nox]

what's a solar return?

any time the sun transits and becomes exactly conjunct your natal sun (it is in the exact sign and degree it was in when you were born), you undergo a solar return. solar returns happen every year on your birthday. my solar return is coming up this october, so i thought "why not?let's continue my thoughts about the return charts."

but what can a solar return chart show you?

literally everything about your year ahead. you just have to look at it and know what you are looking at/for. so let's break it down some of the basics...

paid reading options: astrology menu & cartomancy menu

enjoy my work? help me continue creating by tipping on ko-fi or paypal. your support keeps the magic alive!

sun

energy/aura, attention you receive this year, leadership opportunities, creativity, pride/ego/dignity, how generous you are, individuality, personal development, self-awareness, what makes you happy, celebrations, and self-expression.

moon

emotions / emotional responses, self-care, comfort zone / safe space, femininity, mothers / matriarchal / maternal instincts, family, nostalgia, pregnancy/fertility, baking/cooking, adaptability, menstruation, and habits/routines.

mercury

communication/gossiping, mindset / reasoning skills, perception, writing, social media / cellphone use, short trips, ground transportation, and mannerisms.

venus

romance, beauty/aestheticism, pleasure(s), art/entertainment, self-love, harmony, femininity, sentimentality, how you compromise, parties/celebrations, and possessions.

mars

passions/desires, self-confidence, ambition, anger/aggression, competitiveness, athletics / physical energy, impulsivity, courage/bravery, tasks, masculinity, assertiveness, sexuality, and violence.

jupiter

luck, abundance, wealth, success, opportunity, popularity, wisdom, air travel, ease, higher education (college/university), optimism, justice/retribution, law, and fulfillment.

saturn

work, achievement/mastery, challenges, karma, fathers / patriarchy / paternal instincts, fears, guilt, delays/limitations, discipline, responsibility, past issues that are prevalent this year, practicality, stability, endurance, maturity, and grudges.

uranus

friends/fans/followers, technology, fluctuation/change, rebellion, independence, originality, unexpected things / surprises, and chaos.

neptune

creativity, selflessness, escapism, intuition, hidden things, deception/lies/delusion, confusion, inspiration, and addiction/fascination.

pluto

change/transformation, power, sex/seduction, death, intensity/magnetism, obsessions, manipulation, and purging.

1h/asc

identity, approach/mindset this year, physical appearance, mannerisms, and your presence.

2h

money/finances this year, material possessions, self worth, what you are giving/receiving, and resources.

3h

communication/gossip, mind / method of thinking, sibling relationship(s), interests, ideas/information, ground transportation, social media / cellphone use, publishing, and short trips.

4h/ic

homes/houses, family matters, parents (mainly maternal figures), inner child work you do this year, inheritance, traditions you practice this year, self-care you do this year, and femininity.

5h

children, talents / hobbies / entertainment / creative pursuits, drama, short-term romances, pleasures/gifts, fertility, and joy/delight/jubilation

6h

daily routine, health/fitness/diet, work/duties, self-improvement / shadow work, hygiene, and pet(s).

7h/dsc

long-term relationships / marriage / partnerships, how you care for others (if you care for others), minor legal pursuits, contracts/negotiations, known enemies, close associates / business partners, and equality/harmony/sharing (how you promote it and how (if) you receive it).

8h

changes (external and internal), death (internal and external), shared finances, what you invest in, stocks/taxes/inheritance/loans/assets, intimacy (intellectual and physical), secrets/mystery, mental health / trauma you experience, and possible surgery/operations.

9h

wisdom you gain, major legal pursuits, new beliefs/ethics/philosophy milestones, college/university, and air travel / travel abroad.

10h/mc

career, public image / status / reputation in society, responsibilities towards society/others, authority, paternal figures, and your professional aspirations (the progress you make towards them this year).

11h

friends/companions/allies/groups, ideals/desires, how your different this year as opposed to years past, technology, networking/socializing, and parties (formal and informal).

12h

how you heal this year from you past / mental health journey, karma, sleeping habits, your experience with solitude/isolation this year, unknown enemies, illusions/delusions you have about your situation, fears / self-limitation, losses, and what you secretly/subconsciously want most this year.

have ideas for new content? please use my “suggest a post topic” button! 

return to nox’s guide to metaphysics

return to the masterlist of return charts

© a-d-nox 2023 all rights reserved

[realhumangay]

Eagerly awaiting your reaction to episode 3 😊💜

ask and you shall receive! (i’m not actually waiting for people to ask dw, it was just good timing ahahah)

prefacing this with flatmate and i deciding to watch it and saying at the same time to each other ‘i’m scared’ 🤡

(alsoooo i may have had erik’s death spoiled - i didn’t know when or how, but i quickly realised that it was coming when wille got called into the office, so im afraid im robbing you of that big reaction, SORRY)

after heart-eyeing the screen for !!wille and simon basically giggling at each other during the choir!! and !!let me teach you sheet music!! and then honestly laughing so much at the chaos of wille saying to forget about it only to literally the day after realise he can’t (obsessing over how accurately babygay that is 🥹)

i then proceeded to write one whole note whilst watching:

i’ve been icked out for about 15 mins straight

^this was at the parents cause Oh My God Get Them All To Therapy Immediately. and maybe tax them just a bit.

but then wille being the fucking cutest ever with simon’s mum 😭😭

also. i see now that august is truly and fully getting his own story line, and i am concerned. the pain in his mothers eyes in that scene??? and just the whole ‘my family are broke’ except he could easily sell his assets he just doesn’t want to loose the status AHH

actor geek moment again, i just want to mention how ive literally just come back from a day long workshop with a director and one of the things that we talked about that resonated with me was about how when you play a villain actors often have the tendency to try to sympathise with the character. the director said how that’s often boring and that what often really resonates is to bring out empathy with the audience- make them see the human in the bad decisions, and understanding even if it’s uncomfortable to admit. and august in that scene was so that for me!!! like what a dick!! but fuck? i get it? kinda?

and simon disappointing his friends :(( they didn’t get it clearly. and that’s so valid tbh

(a slight ick though at ayub waiting for simon to speak only to say ‘i don’t wanna hear it’ and rushing off…interesting directing choices but ill forgive it in light of the rest of it being genius so far)

also i spent this entire episode expecting the fish tank scene and it was nowhere to be seen??? my spoiler knowledge is clearly false/i have terrible memory for numbers

these are my thoughts, i can’t believe ep3 is halfway through s1, it’s felt like ive only just started and now somehow im in the thick of it?

and finally, to any new yr followers, apologies and also please enjoy the influx of san remo content on my blog- if you don’t know it, it’s a italian song contest, i lived in italy for two years and have accepted it as part of my culture. i’m afraid there is no way around this. (literally as im posting this mahmood premiered his new single im going insane if you don’t know him go find out especially if you like omar’s music i reckon you’d like this)

k im done bye thanks for reading xx

[aci25]

Now that Trump is in office and the charade is over, Zelensky admits he did not receive over $100 billion of our tax dollars.

He says he “does not know where all the money is”.

This means Ukraine was a massive money laundering operation, and the Biden regime never actually cared about defending Ukraine or preserving democracy. All of the pro-Ukraine propaganda was a psyop to garner American support, so the People would willingly send our tax dollars to “defend democracy”, and it worked on millions.

All of it was a lie, just so Western oligarchs could use Ukraine as a laundry mat. They sacrificed the lives of millions of soldiers, because of their greed. They stole our money from our labor, then used it to start and fund a war on the other side of the globe, and then lied about it. They bankrupt the American People, and stuffed their pockets, while millions suffered.

It was all a scam. Many of us said this from the beginning and we were labeled as “Russian assets”.

[thaifanfests]

Earlier in the fest, we posted about how marriage equality became a law in Thailand, and we discussed the different ceremonies that a Thai couple partakes in to establish and celebrate their marriage.  But we have yet to talk about the law itself, the one that is directly about marriage and all the others that relate to it.

As you may know, the major change the new draft makes is to change gender words into neutral words. Which makes people's rights not limited by gender anymore.

When gender is not the limitations, engagement or marriage registration of couples regardless of gender will receive equal protection under the law, including rights and duties as prescribed by law for both engaged and spouses, such as the right to claim compensation from the other party if the engagement contract is breached, the duty to support each other, joint management of marital assets, inheritance as a legal heir in cases where the deceased spouse did not make a will, adoption, divorce, the right to claim alimony, the right to claim compensation from the adulterer of the spouse, exemption from inheritance tax from inheritance received from the deceased spouse, etc. (https://www.scb.co.th/th/personal-banking/stories/protect-my-family/marriage-equality-bills-benefits?12=)

What are require for a marriage registration in Thailand?

For Thais, you will need

Identification card

House Registration Book

Proof of divorce (if there is)

In the case that your previous marriage ended because of the death of your previous partner, proof of death

If you have any children before registration of marriage, then a birth certificate and house registration book of the child are required.

2 people who are older than 20 years old as witnesses (one from each side of the marriage couple)

Place

You can register your marriage at any registration office, district office, or sub-district office. (No fee require)

You can arrange for the registration to happen at any place (your wedding site, for example) you wish for a low price of only a 200 baht fee, plus commute expense for the marriage registration officer. The request should be put in at least 3 days prior to the date you want it to happen.

Now, let's look at a few interesting laws. 

Grounds for Divorce

There are quite a few causes that can be grounds for divorce, including committed wrongdoing that causes the other marriage partner to be seriously ashamed or to be insulted or hated, harm the body or mind of the other’s parent, violate a written probation that is agreed upon prior between the marriage party, etc.

Adultery law

When a married person committed adultery, their wronged partner had the right to sue both them and the third party for compensation.

Due to the gender language in the previous version of the law, a wife used to have quite a disadvantage, as for her to sue, the third party needed to be a woman and one that was open about her affair with the husband as that. If that is not the case, even though she can provide proof that her husband slept with the third party multiple times, she would still lose.

For both the old and the new version, suing only the third party is an option. If one is to sue their spouse for compensation too, they will need to sue for a divorce at the same time.

Here are a few articles related to it for more details.

Engagement law

Engagement in Thailand is a legal contract, one that does not require paper signing but an act as per tradition to consider complete. 

A legally binding engagement is one that occurs when both parties are at least eighteen years of age, and for minors (those under twenty years of age) to enter into an engagement, they must first obtain the consent of their guardian.

In the previous version of the law, an engagement is complete when a man delivers or transfers the engagement property to a woman as evidence that he will marry her. The new version changes the word 'man' to 'the side that proposes engagement' and 'woman' to 'the side that accepts engagement.'

For those who are interested in more details of the laws, this site provides full English translations of family law (old version). https://www.thailandlawonline.com/thai-family-and-marriage-law/family-and-mariage-law-in-thailand-for-foreigners

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[astrosky33]

HOUSE MEANINGS IN ASTROLOGY

[READ] People often question why there’s so many meanings for each planet/house and the reason is so that you can learn more than just one thing about yourself through each placement. Otherwise astrology would be very vague and boring. These are all meanings that I’ve learned from my astrology classes at Kepler College

1ST HOUSE: identity/self, outward personality traits, outlook on life/approach to life, appearance, physical body, beauty, confidence, beginnings, how you initiate/ambition, your mannerisms, your outward behavior, physical fights, your presence, individuality, and passion

2ND HOUSE: money/finances (how we spend it, store it, and manage it), work, short term jobs, your work ethic, material possessions, self worth, values, emotional security, stability, financial security, how you meet financial obligations, your singing voice, giving/receiving, and resources (both material and non material)

3RD HOUSE: communication, your speaking voice/the way you talk, your mind, the way you think/your thinking skills, your perceptions, your opinions, your conscious mind, neighbors, siblings, interests, gossip, ideas/information, mathematics, literature, transportation (only ground not flying/air), local media, social media, cell phones, phone calls, visits, social activity, publishing, early education (before college), short trips, and short journeys

4TH HOUSE: homes/houses, family/family roots, your parents (particularly the mother/motherly figure), your inner child, emotions, foundations, your childhood, heredity, tradition, self-care, places of residence, real estate, properties, femininity, and conditions in early life

5TH HOUSE: children, childlike spirit, talent, creativity, drama, risk-taking, spotlight, romance (shows short term relationships, flings, hookups, and if long term relationships then only puppy love), hobbies, pleasures, objects of affection, vacations, games, speculation, fertility, concerts, festivals, and joy

6TH HOUSE: daily routine/day to day life/daily tasks, your health/fitness/the work you do on your body, your duties, self improvement, consistency, step-siblings, your hygiene, innocence, systems, service to others, co-workers, analytical nature, diets, animals, and your pets

7TH HOUSE: long term relationships, marriage, concern for others, attraction/attractiveness, charm, conflicts, partnerships, business partners, contracts, love affairs, open enemies, close associates, lower courts, negotiations, peers, agents, equality, harmony, and sharing

8TH HOUSE: major transformation, sex, death, longevity, changes, joint/shared finances, investments, stock market, your partners resources, taxes, inheritance, reproduction, seduction, intimacy (in general not only sexual), rebirth, merging, taboos, resurrection, loans, assets, secrets, mystery, businesses, spiritual transformation, magic (especially black magic), psychology, surgery/operations, trauma, periods, and the occult

9TH HOUSE: wisdom, law/laws, beliefs, religion, philosophy, higher education (college/university), viewpoints, languages, foreign environments, in-laws (your relatives through marriage), ethics, long journeys, travel, ideologies, higher courts, media, television, interviews, cross-cultural relations, grandparents, and learning

10TH HOUSE: your legacy, your career, your public image, your status, your reputation, fame, long-term goals, worldly attainment, sense of mission, responsibilities, recognition, authority, father/fatherly figure, experts, bosses, achievements, and professional aspirations

11TH HOUSE: friends, friend groups, gains, money made from career, desires, step/half parents, step/half children, uniqueness, inventions, technology, film, social awareness, influence, manifestations, hopes and wishes for the future, ideals, humanitarianism, associates (not just close ones), groups (in general), politics, social networking, where you make your debut into society, companions, allies, science, socialization/social interaction, clubs, organizations, and parties

12TH HOUSE: healing, the hidden, karma, karmic debts, old age, sleep, mental health, solitude/isolation, dreams (the ones you have when you sleep), hidden enemies, hidden causes, illusions, secret bed pleasures, spirituality, fears, losses, endings, escapism, impersonations, closure, need for withdrawal/privacy, afterlife, limiting beliefs, subsconcious memory, subconscious mind, hypnotism, self-undoing, hidden desires, the past, delay, and restrictions

MASTERLIST

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