#technically i saved for a new tv six months ago my savings are just tied up in an offshore account called Someone Else's Pockets

[kangaracha]

wouldn't expect a lot of queenmaker until ~christmas time, which is not what i would like to say but my body is just telling me to ease up after november and i'm hitting that pre-holiday slump so we're just chillin. we're playing a game for the first time in six months. we're doing a puzzle. my eyes are really blurry rn so i think i'll go to bed.

[yeonchi]

Doctor Who Hiatusbreaker Update 2

Although the premiere of Doctor Who Series 13 is still a while off, let alone the announcement of a premiere date, there are a few things I’d like to talk about before that time comes. Let’s get right into it.

Filler series plans to talk about Series 1-10

Some time ago, I had plans to make a ten-part series talking about Series 1-10 in detail, but because I had a lot of stuff going on, those plans were reduced to something I call Doctor Who 10 for 10 - 10 Things for 10 Series, which was to state ten things about each series with at least 4 to 6 of these things being my opinions on each series. This was intended to be a filler series to bide the time before Series 13 comes out, but that may have to come at another time. I’m also continuing with Kisekae Insights if anyone wants to check it out.

The post-Series 13 forecast

Since Series 13 would be Jodie Whittaker’s third series as the Doctor, signs are pointing to this being her final series. There are also rumours stating that there will be two specials in 2022 that would serve as her final episodes. If this is the case, then it means that Jodie Whittaker would have been the Doctor for five years; a five-year-long ordeal of pain because series seem to be released pretty much every other year as a result of the almost-year-long gaps between them, not to mention the fact that less episodes are being produced as time goes on. Whether Chris Chibnall will be remaining on is still unknown at this time. Frankly, I’ll be glad when this is all over because I (and many other fans) have been kept hanging for so long. I just hope the Timeless Child payoff will be worth it.

At this point, the only reason why I’m still watching the series is mainly because I want to know how the Timeless Child arc plays out. The initial shocks have come and gone, but now this is where we wait and see if the aftershocks are as worse.

When I started my Thirteenth Doctor Reviews, I made a pact that I would cut off all ties with the series going forward if the Fourteenth Doctor was another female. Given the Timeless Child arc and the rumours that Olly Alexander would replace Jodie Whittaker (which would make him the first gay actor to play the Doctor) that came and went because his agent stated that he was focusing on music for the time being, I’ve honestly stopped giving a shit at this point. I’ll probably continue being a casual fan of Doctor Who, watching episodes as they come out, but regardless, all that this series will be to me is like what the Koei Warriors series has degraded itself to over the past decade. I’ll still be grateful for all the inspiration and opportunities it has provided me with over the years, but I’ll probably accept that the series has gone on a downward spiral with seemingly no way of coming back up. But hey, all will be revealed in due time, so the forecast isn’t that bleak for now.

The first look into Series 13 (added 26 July 2021)

So just today, two days after I originally published this post, the teaser trailer for Doctor Who Series 13 was released following the 2021 San Diego Comic Con@Home. Aside from the Doctor, Yaz and Dan, the only other character we see is Vinder, a recurring character throughout the series who will be played by Jacob Anderson. Recurring character, you say, and that’s because Series 13 will apparently be a single serialised story. This brings callbacks to The Trial of a Time Lord or more loosely, the multiple two-parters of Series 9. We still don’t get an exact premiere date, only that it will premiere “later this year”, but given that Series 11 and 12 took about 10 months to film, we can predict that filming of Series 13 will likely be wrapping up in the next month. Whether there will be a shorter run of five or six episodes (thereby reserving two of those episodes for the 2022 specials, assuming they won’t be filmed separately to Series 13) is unknown, but regardless, I’m looking forward to watching and reviewing the series for myself.

Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall leave Doctor Who (added 30 July 2021) 

In news that will surprise no one, Jodie Whittaker and Chris Chibnall have announced that they will be leaving the series in 2022. Technically, the news isn’t much of a surprise in terms of Whittaker than it is for Chibnall, as Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat have been showrunner for two Doctors each. But hey, with this, it means that my Thirteenth Doctor Reviews will also be a review of Chibnall’s run as showrunner.

My initial thoughts on this, which may or may not change coming up to Whittaker’s final episode - it was an okay run while it lasted, but honestly, good riddance. How’s that five year plan of yours going, Chibnall? If your plan was to divide the fanbase and leave them hanging with gaps between series, then you’ve really done it.

On top of this, Series 13 will be six episodes long, with the remaining two episodes to be broadcast as specials in 2022. The first of them will be a New Year’s Special (surprise surprise) and the second will follow in Spring 2022 (Northern Hemisphere). The Thirteenth Doctor’s final episode will premiere in Autumn 2022 (Northern Hemisphere) as part of the BBC’s Centenary celebrations. Some tentative dates I’m predicting are 18 October 2022, the 100th anniversary of the BBC, 23 November 2022, the 59th anniversary of Doctor Who, or 1 January 2023, which would make it another New Year’s Special (I’m not discounting 25 December 2022, I just think it’s less likely given how this era has been).

With this, the Fourteenth Doctor is expected to debut in 2023, the 60th anniversary year of Doctor Who. I just hope the new production team doesn’t disappoint the fans with that.

In terms of statistics, Jodie Whittaker has played the Doctor for 31 episodes, making her run the second shortest behind Christopher Eccleston. Peter Capaldi played the Doctor for 40 episodes, Matt Smith for 44 episodes and David Tennant for 47.

My hopes for Whittaker and Chibnall’s final episodes haven’t changed; I want to see what happens with the Timeless Child arc (and also Ruth). Whether the Fourteenth Doctor will be male or female (or played by a non-binary or trans actor), I have a few basic preliminary hopes for the next run; make each series 13 episodes again with a Christmas Special each year and put the series back on Saturday nights, like it was before Whittaker and Chibnall. Also, can we go back to filming in the 16:9 ratio? I can never get over how weird it looks on my screen (at full screen, it doesn’t look so weird when I have it playing on half screen, which is what I usually do when I write my reviews).

Jay Exci - The Fall of Doctor Who

Yes, it has been a while and I know I could have told everyone about this earlier, but better late than never I suppose. A couple of months ago, Jay Exci did a 5-hour long critique of the Chibnall era in his video, The Fall of Doctor Who. For some reason, there are those who see it as controversial because they’re NPCs who don’t want to hear criticism of the Chibnall era or they’re spergs who aren’t mature enough to sit through a 5-hour video they can watch in chunks, but hey, it’s pretty good. This is more in-depth than the reviews that people like Bowlestrek or Nerdrotic make, which essentially put Jay on their level in the eyes of the NPCs despite denying that they are on their level and being a sperg about how they’re better than them. Welcome to the party, Jay, you can check out anytime but you can never leave. 

Anyway, you can check out the video below. Even if you don’t feel like watching the whole video, I highly suggest that you watch section 4.2 onwards (timestamped link here) as it does resonate with my feelings on the Timeless Child arc. I swear, this is just like Dynasty Warriors 9 all over again. I know the feeling.

Cancel culture comes for Noel Clarke and John Barrowman

The thing about cancel culture is that people can be petty about things other people have done or said years ago and they can justify it with the excuse that they’re doing it to hold those people accountable. Depending on the context, it can expose the fact that that person is a major piece of shit or it can be an overreaction to something, which in the minds of today’s society is normally the latter.

Around the time that Noel Clarke was nominated for a Bafta at the end of March, allegations emerged of abuse and sexual misconduct against him. 20 women came forward with their stories and as a result, the final episode of Viewpoint was pulled from broadcast (but still released on Blu-ray and DVD) and Bulletproof was cancelled before filming on the fourth series would begin.

In May, video emerged of Clarke at Chicago TARDIS in 2014 talking about how John Barrowman would expose his genitals and slap it on people and things. This led to allegations about Barrowman surfacing, resulting in him apologising for his actions even though he had already been reprimanded for them over a decade ago and apologised in November 2008. Despite this, his contribution to the immersive theatrical event Doctor Who: Time Fracture was pulled and Big Finish have decided to shelf the release of Torchwood: Absent Friends, which would have featured David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.

Now, I don’t care about Noel Clarke by any means, but this situation is honestly sad for John Barrowman because it shows that cancel culture spares no victims and leaves no fossil undiscovered. These PR stunts have clearly shown that the spineless people involved with those productions are so concerned with saving face that they are unable to just overlook these transgressions for the sake of fans who actually wanted to see him reprise his role as Captain Jack Harkness. But hey, what do I know? I don’t really care for anything other than the TV series, but it really shows how shameless corporations can be.

Once again, we don’t exactly know when Doctor Who Series 13 will premiere, but if you ask me, I predict that it will premiere in October or November. I’ll see you all again around that time.

[ofcounseltech]

Future Predictions: Guaranteed

So many people try to make their predictions about the future, only to have their misguided visions haunt them for years to come.  But fear not, because we at Of Counsel Technologies will offer our vision of the future with breathtaking precision and accuracy.  Guaranteed!  "How can you do that?" I can hear you asking yourself.  The answer is simple: talk about what you know.  So I'm limiting my predictions to the articles we'll be writing in the next few months. 

Remember, this is not a cop-out, it's an introduction!

For the last six months or so, we've been writing articles about the essentials of websites for law firms.  It's something we've put a lot of thought into.  But it's not the only thing we think about.  And while (believe it or not) we still have more things to write on the subject, we thought it was about time we branch out.  Of Counsel Technologies specializes in helping law firms understand and use the technology that is expected of a 21st Century company.  So to keep things fresh, we're going to change things up a bit and talk about another area of technology that modern law firms need to be fluent in.

In the next several weeks, Of Counsel Technologies will be publishing a series of blog posts focusing on collaboration. Collaboration is fundamentally the ability of multiple people working together across the hallway, a city, the country, and even the world using assorted electronic tools. The most amazing part is that these tools are affordable (some are literally free) and easily accessible from laptops, desktops, cell phones, and tablets. Many of these tools have been developed in the last few years. With the appearance of Covid-19, the world’s embrace of these tools has moved a little faster and we have all become more familiar with the concept of working together over long distances and different time zones. So here is a preview—I mean our predictions—of some of the topics in collaboration technology you’ll see here IN THE FUTURE.

Good Old Fashioned Phone

The concept of long-distance collaboration started years ago with use of the good old fashion speakerphone. We have all had the experience of sitting in a conference room with a large black octopus looking device sitting in the middle of the table and having multiple people tied into the call. Setting these calls up is commonplace these days.  Or so you would think. It’s pretty funny that every time - seriously, every time - someone makes a conference call, and says, “Let me add so-and-so to the call”, they quickly add, “if I lose you I'll call you back”, or “I hope this works”, or “I've done this in the past I'm pretty sure I can do it again”. If you think about the fact that it is 2021 and we literally had conference calls via speakerphone for probably 40 or 50 years and it is still a joyous miracle when it actually works, it’s pretty silly.  While basic voice communication is pretty simple, there might be a few lessons learned from it that may still apply to other technology.

Meet George Jetson

While telephones have been around for years, very recently more and more of us have started working with video conferencing. We all joke about the Jetsons, Star Trek, jet-packs, and pop culture references like those, but the truth is: the technology is here today. Whether you have your phone in your hand using FaceTime or Zoom or if you're sitting at your desk with a tiny camera mounted to your screen tied in to Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, direct face-to-face communication is becoming more and more prevalent. With these amazing tools comes the obvious desire to make the best use of the technology. We want to make it more seamless and to be perfectly honest, to make our image on the screen look better and more natural. Simple things like lighting, quality microphones, and green screens can make a big difference. In the next few weeks we will address some of the technical aspects of video conferencing with some tips on how to better use the tools and take advantage of recent updates and upgrades with some of the more common software.

FedEx? What’s That?

Another aspect of collaboration is the sharing of documents. It's hard to believe that not so long ago, the fastest we could get a document from one place to another was via FedEx at the cost of $20+. Of course this process also included the frantic drive down to the nearest FedEx box racing to get there before the pickup time. A few years ago, video conference calls moved away from being a novelty that required specialty peripherals devices for your computer and something practically every computer, or phone, could support.  Skype made person-to-person video calls a reality, often for free.

Although the technology existed, and people were using video conferencing to allow groups that spanned the country, and the world, to meet, COVID-19 was the catalyst that made Zoom a household word (in terms of video-conferencing).  So many things we used to do in person, from daily morning office meetings, yoga classes, and doctor's appointments, to movie watching and having a few drinks with friends on a Friday night, became something that was done online.  While sociologists and psychologists will be studying this for years, the point that's relevant to us is that people working from home, using video conferencing, and collaborating with each other mediated by technology became something that was more than accepted or merely tolerated: it became "the new normal."

Many companies have realized that their employees did not become Homer Simpsons, sitting on the couch, watching TV, and having a "drinking bird" sitting next to their computer pecking away at the Enter key every few seconds—they were productive, timely, creative and clearly getting their work done.  The "remote collaboration genie" was out of the bottle.

Do you remember when we all knew exactly where the nearest FedEx box was? I would bet even money that most of us today have no idea where the actual nearest FedEx box is. With the use of email attachments, document sharing software, virtual cloud storage, and real time document editing collaboration tools, the days of speeding to the FedEx box to beat that 5 p.m. deadline are thankfully a thing of the past. In future blog posts, we will discuss some of the specifics of how these tools are used today, some of the pitfalls and security aspects of these tools, and how to better track and take advantage of multiple authors working inside connected documents.

Huston we Have Visual 

As video technology gets better after being forced to stay home, or at least restrict any kind of travel, in the last year, things like webinars, online conferences, sales meetings and large-scale higher production value presentations have become much more common in our world.  As I write this, they are the accepted way for people to meet, talk, teach, exchange ideas, collaborate, and work together. We at Of Counsel Technologies expect these forms of presenting will stay commonplace and maybe even increase in popularity. If you think about it, there's actually some real advantages to a long distance seminar or webinar. While admittedly the personal touch may be somewhat lost, these types of setups save on travel costs, environmental impact, logistics snafus, and scheduling conflicts. We will explore some of these ideas and some of the ways to take advantage of these tools.

Finally, we will talk about calendars. It seems pretty straightforward that we can share calendars, but all calendars are not created equal. Some of the settings that need to be looked at will adjust for time changes, send reminders, send invitations, and ask for confirmations. The days of trying to coordinate five or six people's calendars via phone or via a single point have hopefully started winding down. Now a calendar date can be set, people can be invited, and if there needs to be a change, it can be made within minutes. But even so, there can be subtle pitfalls.  For example, countries switch to Daylight Savings Time at different dates, and even if the software tracks that and shows the proper time, there are still human factors at work and people might not realize their weekly 8am meeting will now be at 9am. (The fact that this is written the week after the switch to DST is purely coincidental.)  We will explore some of the calendar tools that are available today that will ease some of these logistic issues.

So stay tuned for the next several weeks for our upcoming blog post with regard to collaboration, the tools of the trade, the pitfalls to be avoided, and the ways in which you, your team, and your clients can all work together to save time and money and be more effective in your legal representation and advocacy. 

So sure, this prognostication might not help you make a killing in the stock market, but we hope you'll find our upcoming articles on collaboration technology useful and interesting.  It's something we spend a lot of time on at Of Counsel Technologies and we're trying to follow our own advice, the one that I mentioned at the start of this article: just talk about what you know.

[spencer-quinn]

Glory & Gore (May 2012)

Here’s a para in which Spencer’s not thinking straight and his logic is so ridiculous. Also he’s such a knob. Anything I think might be exceptionally graphic, I’ve put on a blockquote (excluding the intro) I’ll be editing this a lot but for some reason I was desperate to get it out

Trigger warnings:

Self harm

References to suicide

References to underage sex

Spencer Quinn in a tux?

(The extract is something he wrote a week or two after this, when he was in the ward)

He’s been waiting to wear the tux for three months.

His shirt is white, clean and crisp with a collar that folds over the back of his bowtie – black to match the fitted suit jacket and slacks. Beneath the jacket and over the shirt he wears a black vest to complement the two. The satin scarf that hangs loosely around his neck, however, is really the part he’s most pleased with, and he admires it as he looks himself over again in the mirror.

Prom is in two days and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t get to wear it.

“Spencer, are you ready? We sh—.” His mother stops in her tracks, stood in the doorway of his bedroom. “What are you wearing?”

He beams and makes eye contact through the mirror. “It’s a tux,” the boy provides simply.

“Yes, I see that, but… Why?”

Spencer shrugs and turns to face the woman properly, by which time his smile is already gone. “You said to look my best,” he recalls, his voice slightly darker and his lips curled into a sneer. “I was meant to look my best two days from now, remember? I saved up and paid for the damn thing and I was meant to be going to that fucking dumb prom with everybody else but—.” It’s a lie – Oliver paid. He is aware that his voice is already raising and he takes a breath, cocks his head as he forces his smile to return. “Today will have to do.”

“Spencer, you can’t wear a tux to a court hearing, it—.”

“It’s my court hearing,” he snaps. “Like it was my prom. I can wear whatever I damn-well please.”

“Mind your language,” Ms. Quinn warns, and it shuts him up immediately. “Take off the waist coat and change the bowtie for the one I put out for you. And for goodness sake take off that scarf, you look like–.”

“Good,” he interrupts. “I look good, mom.” Even Spencer knows how ridiculous he sounds.

The woman only shakes her head and steps out of the room. “Be ready and in the car in fifteen minutes. I’m warning you Spencer, this isn’t a joke.” Once the door is shut between them, Spencer tugs at the bowtie as his simultaneously kicks his mirror.

He keeps the scarf on. So maybe Spencer got a little pushy that day, but he’s also only seventeen. The guy tried to deny that he knew, but Spencer’s pretty damn sure that 80% of the reason the man fucked I’m in the first place was his age. Old enough to have experience, young enough to make it exciting. It’s taboo; people get off on it. He knows this.

Anyway, the guy got six months which, once the sentence was announced, kind of hit Spencer hard, like he hadn’t expected the guy to actually get arrested. He thinks about all the people who technically belong in jail now, because of him. Spencer is only seventeen, and with proof or his age versus zero proof of him pressuring the man, sentencing him was difficult.

His past was brought up; the hospital after the party and therapists he’d jumped between over the years. His lawyer made sure to point out that Spencer and the man –turns out his name’s Stephen- fucked the night before – twice. The attorney didn’t hold back just because the boy’s parents were in the room, he needed every argument he had.

Spencer’s not sure if he’d have gotten the outcome that he did if he hadn’t… Lost it a little. He attempts to charm the judge, then gets caught groping his lawyer under the desk, tells the usher to suck his dick and somehow finds himself in tears as he tries to convince everyone in the room that “the guy was playing me! He wanted it just as much as I did!” His mother cries too and he’s consciously grateful that the room is only small – not like the ones on TV.

He’s too busy tearing his hair out to hear the verdict, but during the car ride home, Dan shakes his head and mutters “I can’t get you out of this one”.

Turns out he’s heading for a place in Pennsylvania, which he thinks is punishment enough – six and a half hours in the car with his family after what’s happened? What a nightmare. But it’s not juvi, at least, and he gets to stay at home tomorrow before he has to go. It’s a hospital of sorts. The judge said he needed help, that he’d avoid time in prison to instead find medical care. Or something.

The rest of the day is a blur of everybody being stressed and angry and upset, and Spencer not understanding why it’s such a big deal. The next day, however, is a blur of everyone nagging him none stop; start packing; wash the clothes you want to take; no, you can’t see your friends right now; look at me when I’m talking to you; are you listening to me; oh don’t turn on the water-works.

Spencer feels numb, but the kind where he’s panicking on the inside and doesn’t know what to do with it, like the time he drank two espressos right before bed when he was staying with Richie in Boston. He woke the man up and masked the anxiety with arousal, and they had sex and it didn’t help at all. Spencer wants his brain to kick in, he want to feel upset and scared like he should, but he simply doesn’t.

He cries over emotions that he does not feel.

Suddenly it’s 2am on the Saturday he’s due to leave and he decided to pack an hour ago. His precious tux is in the case, way down at the bottom beneath his shirts and sweaters, but his scarf is around his neck. He’s working fast. If he’s going to be sent away, he’ll make whatever effort he can to make it bearable. His mother, amongst her nagging and scolding had placed a string of rosary around his neck. He’s since taken it off and looped it around his wrist instead. It was suffocating him.

When 3am comes around, Spencer is bored of packing and is now sat in front of his mirror with a pair of scissors, trimming the ends of his hair. The brunette strands tickle his bare legs as they fall, but he’s too invested in his progress to move. The length is what kept him looking young, he thinks. In fact, Stephen had said that he liked it. Oliver liked it too, but he said it made Spencer look fragile. He wants to look older in this new place, more mature. He wants to look better and make a good first impression. It doesn’t cover his ears anymore.

Spencer creeps into the bathroom and uses his dad’s hair product to style it. It looks good.

At 4:15am his vision is flooded with red blotches, and his ears ring.

He ties the scarf to the ceiling fan and positions a chair beneath it. By the time he’s stood up there though, he realises that his reason for being up there has less to do with wanting to die and more to do with making his mother take pity on him. He laughs so hard at himself that he tumbles to the ground and wakes the whole house.

His mother tells him to go to bed, so he does because he’s not used to her being so stern.

There’s still an itch under his skin though, a buzz in his palms that clenching doesn’t seem to eliminate. The feeling is familiar, in an allegorical sort of way.

He sits beneath the covers with the scissors he’d used to cut his hair, presses them to his skin and drags them over the old scars from a time when he didn’t realise that these things could possibly be more than just a means to keep track of who does and does not find him attractive.

His mother will feel so awful when she sees it, he thinks, but as he continues to press-and-drag, press-and-drag, press-harder-and-drag, he realises that the edge of the tool simply isn’t sharp enough to do the job. Where he was hoping for deep crimson gashes, he instead has a forearm littered in hazardous scratches, barely deep enough to draw blood. In a moment of frustration, he forces all of his strength onto the back of the blade and he doesn’t quite realise that it causes more damage this time until… Well, until he does. The incision it makes feels cold even as it burns. He swears that, even after he jumps and tosses the scissors across the mattress, he feels the artificial seam of his skin tear open further, like the area around the wound has no give.

His breath catches in a whimper, more so from the shock than anything and he presses his hand against the slit as he stumbles out from beneath the sheets and across the hall to the bathroom, all the while mentally ordering himself not to wake his mother in a panic.

The blood washes away and it doesn’t look so bad once it’s clean. He curses under his breath but decides not to try again. Ever. What kind of mother would see her darling son’s self inflicted wounds and remain uncaring because of the size of them, anyway?

Before leaving the bathroom, he wraps a bandage from the cabinet around his arm, although it’s barely bleeding now, and takes his fathers sleeping pills back to his room with him.

Spencer scatters the pills over his floor in hopes that somebody will see them in the morning. They can’t possibly send him away after this.

When he finally does lay down, he sleeps better than he has in weeks because his brain is numb and empty.

In the morning, he tells his mother to calm down when she comes stumbling across his room to shake him awake. She asks what on earth the pills are doing on the floor and he says “I just dropped them mom, chill out.”

He’s embarrassed about his arm, now that his mind is clearer, so he choses to keep that to himself after all.

Spencer thinks that if he’s silent during the whole journey, his mother will think he’s changed and will turn the car around, take him back home. In the back of his mind he knows that neither of them can make that decision. He sits in the back with Dan, who is just as silent. Spencer had asked “do you like my hair?” and his bother looked at him like he made him sick. He’s not spoken again since.

His father refused to come.

[deniscollins]

A College Chain Crumbles, and Millions in Student Loan Cash Disappears

What would you do if you were a college administrator at Argosy University, a for-profit school owned by a Christian nonprofit, and on the verge of bankruptcy, owing creditors $40 million and unable to make upcoming $13 million in payroll and other expenses: (1) declare bankruptcy, (2) take $13 million the in available loan money for students on 22 campuses and use it to pay for expenses like payroll, (3) something else, if so what? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

When the Education Department approved a proposal by Dream Center, a Christian nonprofit with no experience in higher education, to buy a troubled chain of for-profit colleges, skeptics warned that the charity was unlikely to pull off the turnaround it promised.

What they didn’t foresee was just how quickly and catastrophically it would fail.

Barely a year after the takeover, dozens of Dream Center campuses are nearly out of money and may close as soon as Friday. More than a dozen others have been sold in the hope they can survive.

The affected schools — Argosy University, South University and the Art Institutes — have about 26,000 students in programs spanning associate degrees in dental hygiene and doctoral programs in law and psychology. Fourteen campuses, mostly Art Institute locations, have a new owner after a hastily arranged transfer involving private equity executives. More than 40 others are under the control of a court-appointed receiver who has accused school officials of trying to keep the doors open by taking millions of dollars earmarked for students.

The problems, arising amid the Trump administration’s broad efforts to deregulate the for-profit college industry, began almost immediately after Dream Center acquired the schools in 2017. The charity, started 25 years ago and affiliated with a Pentecostal megachurch in Los Angeles, has a nationwide network of outreach programs for problems like homelessness and domestic violence and said it planned to use the schools to fund its expansion.

Now its students — many with credits that cannot be easily transferred — are stuck in a meltdown. On Wednesday, members of the faculty at Argosy’s Chicago and Northern Virginia campuses told students that they had been fired and instructed to remove their belongings. In Phoenix, an unpaid landlord locked students out of their classrooms. In California, a dean advised students two months away from graduation not to invite family to attend from out of town.

“In less than a month, everything I have worked for the past three years has been taken from me,” said Jayne Kenney, who is pursuing her doctorate in clinical psychology at Argosy’s Chicago campus. “I am also conscious of the fact that what seems like the swift fall of an ax in less than one month has in reality been festering for years.”

The fall accelerated last week when the Education Department cut off federal student loan funds to Argosy after the court-appointed receiver said school officials had taken about $13 million owed to students at 22 campuses and used it for expenses like payroll. The students, who had borrowed extra money to cover things like rent and groceries, were forced to use food banks or skip classes for lack of bus fare.

Lauren Jackson, a single mother seeking a doctorate at the Illinois School of Professional Psychology, an Argosy school in Chicago, did not receive the roughly $10,000 she was due in January. She has been paying expenses for herself and her 6-year-old daughter with borrowed money and GoFundMe donations.

On Tuesday, after three months of not paying her rent, she received an eviction notice.

“I didn’t want to go home and tell my baby that Mommy may not be a doctor,” said Ms. Jackson, whose school could close Friday. “Now I don’t want to go home and tell her that we don’t have a home.”

‘Bad for Everyone’

Led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Education Department has reversed an Obama-era crackdown on troubled vocational and career schools and allowed new and less experienced entrants into the field.

“The industry was on its heels, but they’ve been given new life by the department under DeVos,” said Eileen Connor, the director of litigation at Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending.

Ms. DeVos, who invested in companies with ties to for-profit collegesbefore taking office, has made it an agency priority to unfetter for-profit schools by eliminating restrictions on them. She also allowed several for-profit schools to evade even those loosened rules by converting to nonprofits.

That’s what Dream Center wanted to do when it asked to buy the remains of Education Management Corporation.

Education Management, once the nation’s second-largest for-profit college operator, was struggling for survival after an investigation into its recruiting tactics resulted in a $200 million settlement in 2015. Despite those troubles, it had 65,000 students, and some of its schools maintained strong reputations.

Dream Center is connected to Angelus Temple, which was founded by Aimee Semple McPherson, a charismatic evangelist once portrayed by Faye Dunaway in a TV movie, “The Disappearance of Aimee.” It is affiliated with the Foursquare Church, an evangelical denomination with outposts in 146 countries.

Buying a chain of schools “aligns perfectly with our mission, which views education as a primary means of life transformation,” Randall Barton, the foundation’s managing director, said when Dream Center announced its plan.

But Dream Center had never run colleges. It hired a team including Brent Richardson, who worked on the conversion of Grand Canyon University to a nonprofit as its chairman, to lead the schools’ corporate parent, Dream Center Education Holdings. He stepped down in January.

Alarms were ringing from the moment the takeover was proposed. Dream Center’s effort to buy the failing ITT Technical Institutes schools had fallen apart after resistance from the Obama administration. When it asked to buy Education Management’s schools, consumer groups, members of Congress and some regional accreditors raised concerns.

But in late 2017, Ms. DeVos’s agency gave preliminary approval to Dream Center’s plan.

Almost immediately, the organization discovered the schools were in worse shape than expected, with aging facilities and outdated technology. The universities “were, on the whole, failing without hope for redemption,” the receiver wrote in a court filing last month.

Dream Center had anticipated a $30 million profit in its first year, Mr. Barton wrote in a recent legal filing. Instead, it was facing a $38 million loss.

And Dream Center showed little inclination to curb the tactics that got Education Management in trouble, like misleading students about their employment prospects. The executives it installed cultivated a high-pressure culture in which profit surpassed all other concerns, according to a report filed last year by Thomas J. Perrelli, the court-appointed monitor overseeing the schools’ compliance with their state settlements.

By the end of 2018, Dream Center was facing eviction on at least nine campuses and owed creditors more than $40 million, and Education Department officials scrambled to plan for what looked like an imminent implosion.

“We know all too well that precipitous school closures are bad for everyone involved and leave too many students high and dry,” said Liz Hill, an agency spokeswoman. “Teams of people at the department have been working tirelessly on behalf of students — caught up in this situation through no fault of their own — with the singular goal in mind to ensure as many students as possible had options to complete their education.”

A Rapid Unraveling

The problems grew in mid-January when a creditor sued Dream Center Education Holdings over unpaid bills and asked a federal court to install a receiver to wind down the insolvent organization. Within a day, a federal judge appointed Mark Dottore, who was working with Dream Center as a paid consultant, as its receiver.

At a forum last month with students at Argosy University in Chicago, Mr. Dottore tried to calm an anxious crowd.

“We will make it until June, I can pretty much assure you of that,” Mr. Dottore said, according to a recording provided to The New York Times by a student. “By hook or by crook, I’m going to get us there.”

But on Wednesday, Mr. Dottore filed an emergency motion describing his plans to sell Argosy’s campuses, plus the South University and Art Institute campuses that haven’t been sold already. Any that didn’t have a buyer by Friday would close, he said.

Even as Argosy campuses prepared to close, a dean at the American School of Professional Psychology in Northern Virginia emailed students on Wednesday, imploring them to attend classes the rest of the week “if we are to save the semester.”

Scott Peck, a 50-year-old student there, left behind a six-figure salary in software and cashed out his 401(k) savings to pay for his doctorate. But he feels worse for his younger classmates.

“What’s so heartbreaking is to see what’s happening to these kids in their 20s, who are believing things they’re told by people that they trust,” he said.

Argosy was supposed to pay students the extra money they had borrowed, then seek reimbursement from the government. But Argosy reported that the money was paid out even though it wasn’t, Mr. Dottore wrote in court filings, and used the reimbursements for operating expenses instead.

A Dream Center spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment on the fraud accusation.

While Argosy students have little hope of getting back money they paid out of pocket, the Education Department said the federal loan debt of affected students would be forgiven for this semester. If the schools close, students can seek help under a program covering school shutdowns.

A Partial Rescue

Not all of the Dream Center schools are under threat of an immediate shutdown. Some were recently shunted to a new owner in a deal partly orchestrated by the Education Department.

But the arrangement with Studio Enterprise, a Los Angeles company that provides support services for creative-industry training programs, raises its own questions. Studio is personally funded by the principals of Colbeck Capital Management, a New York private equity firm that set up the nonprofit owner.

Dream Center said in July that it would close more than 30 ailing campuses across all three chains, but a few months later it reached a deal with Studio to salvage some Art Institute locations.

As Dream Center’s problems mounted in December, the Education Department called an emergency meeting. Studio agreed to coordinate an acquisition of eight Art Institute campuses and, at least temporarily, six South University campuses.

To maintain their nonprofit status, the agreement gave Studio the right to pick a nonprofit to buy the schools. Colbeck Capital used a Delaware-based nonprofit it created five years ago, renaming it the Education Principle Foundation, according to a state filing uncovered by the Republic Report, a site that has closely tracked Dream Center’s unraveling.

In mid-January, a news release informed the 15,000 students at 14 Arts Institute and South campuses that their schools were owned by a foundation that hadn’t existed three weeks earlier. Two people familiar with the foundation’s plans said it intended to spin the South campuses off under their own leadership.

Robin Von Bokhorst, listed in legal filings as the foundation’s president, did not respond to requests for comment.

Bryan Newman, Studio’s chief executive, said the Art Institute schools had been “ignored for years.”

“We’re coming in with the view that these schools need investment,” he said.

Consumer groups and lawmakers, however, are questioning the arrangement. Two Democrats in Congress have asked the Education Department’s inspector general to investigate the department’s role in the deal.

The fate of the schools in receivership is still being sorted out. The judge who appointed Mr. Dottore scheduled a hearing for Monday to determine if he should be removed. Creditors have complained about his close ties to Dream Center, and the judge wondered if Mr. Dottore was managing the situation in a way that did “more harm than good.”

Many students agree.

“The way they presented the receivership was that it would be beneficial to the students, but it’s actually been detrimental,” said Marina Awed, a student at an Argosy school in California, Western State College of Law, who was scheduled to graduate in two months. “It shouldn’t be this easy to defraud the Department of Education.”