#terrible real estate photos

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Just when you thought you saw everything on Marketplace. If that’s his house, I wouldn’t want it- he probably peed all over the place.

marketplace

[walrus-queen]

I wish Zillow allowed public comments on listings because some people really deserve to be cyberbullied

[elektroskopik]

@unteriors my partner and I have started looking for houses to buy and this image appeared in the roster for a condo/duplex that was in less than stellar shape. Enjoy!

[zvaigzdelasas]

Former President Donald Trump said Israel has to “finish up” the war in Gaza in a Monday interview with an Israeli news outlet, adding that the country “has to be very careful” because it is “losing a lot of support.”[...]

In an interview with Israel Hayom, a publication owned by the family of the late conservative real estate magnate Sheldon Adelson, Trump suggested he would have acted very similarly to Israel’s government in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants. But he also said Israel made “a very big mistake” with photos and imagery of bombs dropped on Gaza helping push public opinion against the war.

“I wanted to call [Israel] and say don’t do it,” Trump told the outlet. “These photos and shots. I mean, moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza. And I said, Oh, that’s a terrible portrait. It’s a very bad picture for the world.”

25 Mar 24

[jetskisonyourmoat]

An old interview from 2007 ☺️

[credit to Twitter user who took photos of the interview]

Transcript:

Coldplay in scarves and woolly mittens. The Libertines as Dickensian street urchins, and REM's Michael Stipe as um, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. The NME Christmas cover has an illustrious tradition of rock stars arsing around in their best dressing up clobber for a day Some need gentle coaxing, some need a raft of costume. based ideas sent over by our art team before theyll commit. Others, like this year's Christmas cover stars Arctic Monkeys, have planned the concept and hired the outfits even before our tentative email request has had time to settle in their manager's inbox. "We want to be evil elves," came the return message moments later. "Not naughty elves, not mischievous elves. EVIL ELVES.” Which is why, one Wednesday afternoon in late November, we find ourselves at a north London photo studio strapping dynamite sticks to reindeers, impaling others with giant shards of metal, hiding a bomb in a snowman's hat and handing Arctic Monkeys bassist Nick O'Malley a mallet and then standing back as he sends carefully wrapped gifts shattering across the room. Of course, there were the annual set of complications in trying to co-ordinate a photoshoot of this magnitude: Alex Turner requesting the ‘smacked-up elf’ look from the make up artist, but looking more like a cherubic waif with every ring of dark eyeshadow applied, Nick shunning the hired-in pixie boots in favour of his own toe-curling pointers ("from Prada, thank you very much") and a minor tussle over which band member was going to get their ears stuck on first. That and the endless flutes of champagne threatening to sabotage the interview scheduled for straight after the shoot (“I feel very light headed and unsteady on my feet, NME," says Alex, wobbling).

Eventually we manage to steer them to a corner of the room where a Dictaphone awaits. By this time Nick, Matt Helders and Jamie Cook's costumes are on coat hangers and they're back in civvies. Only Alex has opted to stay as an elf, at least as long as the interview lasts. It's a heated hour that will see them debate the big topics of the year, consider their own personal highlights (Nick. "Glastonbury. NME: And your defining Glasto 2007 moment? Nick "Er, headlining the fucker") and lowlights (Mike Reid RIP). Before all that though, there's the small matter of destroying Christmas 2007 for everyone. Your favourite worst nightmare before the festive season is about to be unleashed.

NME: Hello, Nice costumes.

Alex Turner: "Thanks. You might say we dress up too much, But really, what is too much? It's good to escape your own face for an hour.

Matt Helders: "It's easier to hide behind a costume, isn't it? I felt in good spirits up there though - I’m not sure I was really feeling evil enough.

So what's Arctic Monkeys squad of evil elves manifesto for ruining Christmas?

Jamie Cook: "Go out on Christmas Eve.

Alex: "I heard a terrible story about a friend who went out on Christmas Eve once. This lad got hammered and, you know when you're hungover and, like, your thoughts and your mouth aren't connected properly? Well, he was eating his Christmas dinner and his nan were wittering on as your nan does, and he thought to himself. Oh, shut up Nan, you cunt. Then he looked up and everyone was looking at him and his dad went. I think you'd better just take your dinner upstairs and eat in your bedroom. He’d said it out loud (The table collapses in laughter).

Matt: "His nan was a cunt, though."

Alex: "So there's a way to wreck Christmas - call your nan a cunt. Actually. you should leave that out cos my nan buys NME more than my mum. My nan files her NMEs!

Matt: "So our real answer would be... I dunno, burn everyone's house down.

Alex: "Or, you know those Santa’s that come on a truck to estates and all the kids come to see them? Maybe you could hijack one of them as another Santa then rip your beard off

Matt: "....and punch the kids. Or the dad. There's nothing worse than beating kids dads up in front of the kids!"

Alex: "(Nodding) Nothing worse.

Moving on. What does a traditional Christmas entail round at Alex Turner, the only child's, house?

Alex: "Quality Street. That's the only tradition around mine. Other than that, just looking at the phone thinking. Can I ring them (points at other Monkeys) on Christmas Day or is that out of order?'

Matt: "Yeah. it is. (Holding hands up to each ear to mimick a two-way phone conversation between Alex and himself 'Do you wanna come round?' 'Al, it's Christmas Day. My nan's here.' 'Yeah. but I'm just sat here at home...' "

Alex: "We've been discussing how there's nothing to do on Christmas Day and maybe having some kind of party this year. Fancy dress, obviously. We were talking about having some sort of Ultimate Warrior party."

Matt: "Wrestlers weren't it?"

Alex: "Ah yes, wrestlers."

What are you doing for New Year's Eve?

Matt: "Last year was crap. I DJed in Sheffield at midnight. The first song everyone in that room heard going into 2007 was 'Boom! Shake The Room, which was a good feeling"

Alex: "That's something to be proud of. This year we've got nothing planned. We all go out together though; we were at that club."

Matt: "It rarely works, New Year's Eve. It's always such a fucking build-up."

Alex: Everyone's like, '(Whining voice) What are we doing now?' And then it fucking snows, doesn't it?"

Um, not where I'm from...

Alex: "It always snows round where we are"

Jamie: "It's not snow, it's sleet."

Alex: "I remember walking home last year in it and no taxis stopping for us."

Jamie: "Yeah, 'Im not taking you to High Green, mate."

Nick O'Malley: "I booked a hotel last year in Sheffield city centre and just stayed there."

Alex: 'Maybe well stay in this year. See Jools' Hootenanny and that."

What New Year's resolutions are you going to make?

Alex: "I want to learn how to cook food. I want to do a good curry."

Nick: "I want to get to a level of fitness synonymous with that of a boxer - just so I don't get out of breath walking up the stairs"

Jamie: "I want to grow a beard. I’m not shaving after today."

Alex: "Otherwise I'm allowed to punch him in the nose."

Matt: "I want to learn to do a back somersault and a front somersault."

Jamie: "Oh, and be able to dive into shallow water from a height and not hurt yourself."

Alex: "Yeah, flips, juggling. unicycling. I think were all always looking for improvement in our overall balance."

The coming year dealt with, it's time to turn the clock back and get Arctic Monkeys' take on the headlines that shook 2007. For this, Alex takes a more noticeably back-seat role in the conversation especially when the spectre of political allegiance rears its head and he actually goes completely mute. According to his press officer afterwards, having seen Arctic Monkeys branded Gordon Brown's favourite new band before he became Prime Minister, Alex is reluctant to say anything that any of the political parties could use to their advantage. From here on in then, Nick'n'Matt take over from Aln'Matt as the comedy double act. Meanwhile, Jamie will reserve his sole contribution to the conversation for an animated outburst about social networking sites in the workplace.

This Christmas marks the one-year anniversary of James Brown's death. Did he mean much to Arctic Monkeys?

Nick: "Yeah, we were big fans of James Brown."

Alex: "The first ever gig we did, we walked onstage to 'The Payback. And at college I had a pair of jeans I'd written on in red marker ‘I've got soul and I'm super bad!

Jamie: "He did as well."

Nick: "It was one of those things when you heard, you didn't want to believe it. A bit like Steve Irwin."

Alex: "Or Mike Reid. (Genuinely moved) Mike Reid, that really hit me that."

Nick: 'I don't think there was a big enough fuss about that as there should have been."

Matt: "I tell you when Ill be dead upset- and I don't really want to say it cos he's not dead yet, but I might as well get it all out -and that's when Bruce Forsyth dies."

Alex: "(Gravely) Ah, Forsyth."

Matt: "Cos I know I'm going to see it.. all being well my end."

Nick: "Touch wood."

Alex: "Cover the holes!"

Nick: "(To NME] Do you know where that expression comes from?"

Alex: "Apparently there's these little people who live in the wood. Like these little fairies that bring things that you say to life. So you cover the holes so they can't get out... Yeah, Mike Reid. I remember reading about that in the airport.

Then there was the Celebrity Big Brother race row early in the year. Did you watch any of it?

Nick: "We made a point of watching that. We wanted to watch where what's-her-name got kicked out. That said it all, and they didn't have any crowd there"

Alex: "Oh, Jade."

Jamie: "I thought Jade Goody and the one that was getting abused by her.

Matt: "Shilpa Shetty."

Jamie: "That's right. I thought they both played it bad."

Alex: "Jo from S Club 7 can fuck off I’d send her to jail Why? I just don’t like her; I think she came across horrible."

Nick: (Changing tact) “I texted one of those numbers to find out about touch wood (Reaches for beeping phone and starts reading) Touch wood is said to come from a mid-18th century story in which children being chased who touched wood were said, to be immune from being caught"

Matt: "I don't believe that. This has been wrong once before and thats when texted, to ask who's headlining Glastonbury and it said Eric Clapton. (Pumping chest out defiantly) It weren't - it were us!"

Of course the biggest music story of the first half of the year was Keith Richard revealing he'd snorted his father…

Jamie: "(Laughing) His ashes weren’t it?

Yep. What's the weirdest thing you've ever snorted?

Matt: "An eraser. That's not true actually I've witnessed it but never done it I wish I had. I didn't live enough at school”

What did you think of Keith's revelations?

Matt: "I think it was shortly after he said we were shit. He said something like the ["Load of cunts. load of cunts. Posers, rubbish was how Keef actually described the Monkeys, alongside Bloc Party and The Libertines in the same NME interview.

Keith said he didn't like The Libertines who reformed for one night only in April, with Carl Barât joining Pete Doherty onstage at London's Hackney Empire. Did you care?

Alex: "Yeah, I was interested in that. It was a 'should've been there moment, I imagine.”

Matt: "I’d have liked to have seen that.”

Nick: "They're one of the bands that a very young us were really into."

Would you like them to get back together permanently?

Alex: "(With just enough sarcasm) The greatest hits album were enough for me”

Jamie: "They didn't sling it out though did they? It was the label."

Nick: "I read something where Pete was saying he didn't even know it had come out.”

What about the new Babyshambles album? Were you fans of that?

Nick: "I’ve only heard a few songs, but the were good tracks."

Alex: "I liked it and I liked him on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross.”

Nick: "He seemed like a nice gentleman"

Alex: "I met him once. I was at this party in this club this time last year when we were recording, and someone who I’d never met said Oi! Come here and led me through this door and there was a studio and in this studio he was stood there with his top off."

Nick: "Topless?!"

Alex: "It were surreal. For a start there's a studio in a club, then there’s Pete Doherty and then he's got his top off he’s taller than you’d think.”

Matt: "I remember meeting him, as a fan actually, at a Strokes gig at Alexandra Palace I had my picture took with him and that’s when I realised he were tall."

In May, offices and schools across the UK began blocking students from using Facebook.

Alex: "I’ve never even been on Facebook"

Jamie: "(Antagonised) You know what? That’s fair enough if they should be workin’ or learning, not making take friends"

Matt: "What's the difference between…”

Jamie: "(Raising voice) No, but fair enough! You're fucking working!"

Matt: "Um, what's the difference between Facebook and MySpace?”

Please tell me one of the Arctic Monkeys knows what Facebook or MySpace are...

Alex: "I've never looked on them."

Jamie: "I haven't."

Matt: “I know what MySpace looks like, cos other people have shown me theirs, but none of us have actually got one.”

Are there any sites you do frequent?

Matt: "I don't mind The Hype Machine. I go on to search for remixes before they get heard properly."

Nick: "I got really into Wikipedia at one point. I read loads of things about joe Meek and Shack"

Alex: "He’ll read all these facts then casually throw them into conversation the next day."

Matt: "Askjolene.com is the biggest adult search engine in the world.. Just throwing that in there"

Gordon Brown - a big fan of yours, apparently - took over from Tony Blair this summer as Britain's 51st Prime Minister. How's he done so far?

Nick: "I've not really noticed any changes."

Matt: "It's neutral for me."

Who will you be voting for next time?

Matt: "I need to start evaluating, reading all their manifestos."

Nick: "I’ll Wikipedia them all and make a decision that way.”

The UK smoking ban kicked in on July 1. Has it bothered you?

Matt: "Nick's the only one of us that smokes."

Nick: "Oi, my mum reads this!"

Matt: "(Back-tracking hastily) Like I said, Nick doesn't even smoke."

Nick: "I agree with it, even though 1 do smoke. I think it's a good thing."

Alex: "You get weird smells now, I reckon."

Matt: "We were reading about that place where they give out free deodorant because you smell people more now in bars."

Nick: "It's a good way to meet new people outside I've found. And it someone's getting on your nerves you can just say. 'Right, Im going outside for a cigarette."

Alex: "I think it will become less strict in a few years. 'Cos like in New York they've had it a bit longer and they turn a blind eye to it some places there now.”

In August we had another music legend pass away; Tony Wilson.

Alex: "That were a right shock. I'm not a huge fan of the Manchester music scene. but enough for his death to mean a lot."

Nick: "I always imagine him as Alan Partridge, y know! Well, Steve Coogan in 24 Hour Party People. That's where I first got to know of Tony Wilson."

Alex: "(Looking glum) What happened in September, NME?"

You can have the Diana death inquest or Klaxons winning the Mercury Prize.

Alex: "Klaxons winning the Mercury Prize."

Matt: "You could say Klaxons winning the Mercury Prize if you want, or you could say us losing the Mercury Prize"

How did you feel about that?

Matt: "It were alright. It were a bit of a dent on my life."

Nick: "Well done, Klaxons. I wanted Dizzee Rascal to win it."

Matt: "'Yeah, Maths + English'"

Nick: "I thought it was Winehouse's though."

Alex: "But then I think Klaxons' album is more of an album than Amy Winehouse's album. Like, Amy Winehouse's album had some good tunes an' that. But I think as a thing, you can't really argue with Klaxons."

What did you think about Radiohead shocking the music industry with the way they released In Rainbows' this autumn?

Alex: "We heard Radiohead's riveting radio broadcast on the way home last night."

Matt: "I nearly fell asleep at the wheel!"

Alex: "I were nudging him! 'Keep your eyes on the road!"

Nick: "I think it was quite a clever idea for them. I think it works well for them cos their fans are the type of fans who’d probably really be into that concept."

Is it something you'd ever do?

Alex: "Nah."

Matt: "That'll be memorable 'cos they'd gone out of their way to do something different, but I don't think we need to. Obviously they don't need to either. They can afford to do stuff like that."

Alex: "They've done it now. You only need to do an experiment like that once. I don't feel like it was designed to change anything"

Matt: "They said themselves, 'It's not a template' See! I was listening last night."

Then at the end of the year, Led Zeppelin finally played their long-awaited reunion show in London. Did you apply for tickets?

Matt: "Nope. I would have gone if late Led Zep drummer] John Bonham was still alive."

Nick: "Oh, Matt."

Matt: "I'm not that bothered by them. It's not that big a deal."

Jamie: "Nah, it really is! (Laughing) Thats why a lot of people are going."

Nick: "I had a phase of being a big Zep fan. I remember I had a perlod of about six months thinking they were the bee's bollocks."

Which brings us right up to the end of the year. What great truths have Arctic Monkeys learned in 2007?

Nick: "We learned that we're really into finding out where expressions came from. So we learned where 'fill your boots' came from - it's where old, er-”

Matt: "Cavaliers."

Nick: "Yes, Cavaliers!"

Matt: "They'd get their place at the bar and once they were there they wouldn't want to lose it, so they'd piss straight into their boots so they could carry on drinking. They had big boots on, like. That's it. There's our great truths.”

Or are they? Can we trust anything that comes out of the mouths of Satan's Little Helpers? Perhaps it's all just an evil plot to make us urinate on our own footwear this Christmas. Or go on festive arson rampages. Or cause expletive-induced coronaries in the elderly. Whatever, Arctic Monkeys certainly wish you all a very scary a Christmas.

[lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks]

hi! So I watched dp when I was younger and recently you a couple others have been all over my dash with fics from it. So i dipped my toes into some crossovers with my fandoms and now I really want more fics to read! Do you have any recs for me? I love eldritch danny and self indulgent op fics, but a good slice of life is warm an fuzzy too, so whatever your top 5 are, I want em!

aaaah most of what I read are fics I come across on tumblr that are hard to find again because of the jank search function (but you can try searching 'fic recs' on my blog and pray it works 😆) and I have a terrible habit of forgetting to bookmark fics on ao3 to find them again

so I don't have a lot to recommend but I can share the few I have saved! these are mostly quite silly fun ones

Smells Like Team Spirit

Summary:

Some mascots are great at pumping up a crowd. As Casper High's mascot, Danny has only one job: strike fear into the hearts of their opponents. This is the story of how Danny becomes the famed Mascot of Fear.

The Weird Little Shit

Summary:

A class discussion held by Wes about Danny’s weirdness was never not going to be an absolute cluster fuck

Take Me For A Ride, You Moron

Summary:

Abducting Danny is really never a good idea and it is a sure-fire way to get mocked.

as for warm and fluffy slice of life, I have a fic or two of my own you might like!

Even ghosts like cookies

Summary:

Buying and renting property in Amity Park is unbelievably cheap, cheap enough to convince an old lady with dreams of running her own bakery to pick up her life and move all the way to this strange little Illinois town.

Unfortunately for her, the real estate has no legal obligation to disclose that the entire town is, in fact, incredibly haunted.

Grabbing Smoke

Summary:

The longer a ghost is dead, the more of their lives they forget, in the same way that one forgets most of their childhood as they age

But where humans have photo albums and mementos to help remind them of things from their past, a ghost has nothing but the clothes on their back and the endless expanse of the Ghost Zone

So when Kitty visits the human realm, she can't help but feel the tickling of a distant memory at the back of her mind, somewhere, somehow, she knows she's seen Sam Manson's face before

if anyone else wants to throw in some recommendations for Anon please do!

[comafloods]

JUNE 18-2024 WE SPEAK IN WHISPERS TO PLANT THE SEEDS OF DISCONTENT

Today was filled with endless possibilities and wonderful interactions with those who live here as well as with the environment in general. I wondered around the neighborhoods, trying and looking for insight and guidance in understanding how Wales works regarding its living conditions and what it takes to afford or not afford housing here. I wanted to understand the dynamics of living here on the Welshman shores. Vacancies everywhere, and unaffordable prices for those who live here compared to their wages. It would appear that almost every single real estate office is dusty, vacant, and lacking in the form of foot traffic from anyone who may want to live here. It is also possible that this is a conversation that a local is unable to even have based on affordability issues. I will, however, refrain from making impressionistic judgments or observations on suspicion. This town is beautifully kept and in place. I love that there is a complete lack of fake, fraudulent facades that hint at something but really contain nothing of life, substance, or heart. Falsified accounts of history, life, love, and heart shimmer with the criminality of breaking and robbing what makes a community a community. This is a tragic and terribly unfortunate event that obviously is not contained just within the United States but has manifested its way far across the globe, to every corner and the farthest of reaches. This trip is a direct, first-person account as a witness. We, as individuals, are living, loving, slaving, and dying in our communities. We and our families are being extensively extorted in every sense of the word. Our lives, our homes, our families, and our communities are under attack in a class war that reeks of a multitude of financial detrimental effects that will contain far more ranging and conclusive troubles in every single nook and cranny of the world's financial markets. This will dwarf the great recession of 2008. This will be a global financial breakdown the likes of which the world has never witnessed before. We can lie, befuddle, swindle, hide, and play the tricksters as much as we would like. The cracks are there, and the skies are falling. Credit card debts are at the highest levels ever witnessed, and defaults are creeping up and leading to further foreclosures. This will be a global downfall that rips through every piece of this burning house of cards. On a happier note, which removes the mind, heart, and eyes from the streets. I love my beautiful, sweet friends and fellow scholars. We are all so special as individuals on many levels. I walked the ruins of a castle with someone who I hold very close to heart, and I cannot begin to explain the sweet adoration and wonder as the rain fell on my face as she wandered the ruins of the past with the wonder of a child. I felt alive, and I felt content with all of them here in this new, strange, and beautiful world. I felt at home. I made friends, and I felt companionship and a complete void of emotional and mental friction. Maybe? Perhaps? Could it be? My new home?

ACADEMIC REFLECTIONS-DECEPTIONS OF OUR PERCEPTIONS IN IMAGES

Today we had an amazing and insightful lecture with the political sciences group, Interpol. We reviewed the power of images and how they can push and pull the perceptions of the individual and the overall public toward a reaction that may in fact be predetermined for a desired result. Whether that be for political or other means is entirely up to the individual who frames the content in such a way to provide a created narrative that may in fact be far detached from what actually happened. These bits and pieces, or even glimpses of an engagement, then recreate a newly presented narrative to serve a need or purpose. We witnessed how removing a portion of a photo can ultimately and drastically change the overall content and interpretation of that material. It is the oldest trick in the book, and one that tends to get murkier and murkier thanks to the rapid developments in technology and editing abilities for all parties. It is troublesome and problematic in every aspect of our overall global communities. The Los Angeles Police Department utilized similar methods, as did the FBI, with the intent of creating dissent and controversy within the civil rights movements. Creating fraudulent letters to create an air of distrust and even homicidal rage at accusations of betrayal and distrust through colluding with the federal government. This destroys “cells” of movements, thought, progress, and the overall conglomeration of those involved to become more involved and deeply entrenched in what would be perceived as a larger threat. Movements such as this thrive and drive on the adrenaline rush of the outer fringes and the potential of being sought out. Us against them. It is possible that the game has changed, and the very nature of the action has evolved to look quite different from 1969, but the foundations have not changed at all. The nails have grown longer and are driven much deeper within the shackles of those who would claim to wear them in conjunction with the potential martyr's crown. Surprisingly, one of our leaders informed us that they would take notice of our interactions and how we displayed our abilities to have open and lively engagements with one another. Are you able to step into a room and have insightful and informed conversations that may involve disagreement, but that ultimately you work through these in search of greater insight and the highest level of collective comprehension? Or do you proactively break down these communications and drive towards misinformed chaos that will lead to wasted time, resources, and efforts? I loved this. All of this. Once again, I felt right at home.

[theriverpointace]

you work at an antique shop?!? that's so cool whatttt

thanks! yeah, it's this little place downtown, a small business among like a dozen other small businesses. it's almost a family business lol, with the exception of me and the ladies who work at the other location across the street. i mostly just price inventory and keep some of the displays (jellies, candles, tea, quilts) neat, but sometimes i also get enlisted to help set up the displays! here's a display i set up (mostly) on my own :3

on the side of the street i work at, it's a combination antique stuff and newer home decor stuff, like the towels and apron in the photo, and it's sorted by different themes. at christmas we have like five different christmas themes set up. it's all christmas. but rn we have two christmas areas, in the back of the shop, and a half-dozen or so assorted other styles. rn we've got lavendery purply stuff in the front walkway and its so pretty. we've also got two or three consignment areas that are rented out, i think it's two boutiques and then my boss's mother's tea stuff.

then on the other side of the street, it's all consignment. there are, iirc, two women's boutiques, one area of like kids' stuff, one area of a ton of random stuff that's fun to peruse, and three different antique vendors. one of them always has super cool stuff that i want to get. like this crab sign:

one of them is really delicate like porcelain stuff, and i'm always scared to walk over there, let alone vacuum lmao. always terrified im gonna break smth if i like breathe wrong. and the number of stories my boss has told me about people breaking things and how much she emphasizes that its Not That Big A Deal, perhaps i should relax a bit about it. but i h a t e breaking things.

and the shop always has immaculate vibes. exquisite. everybody who comes in always has a compliment, usually smth like "it smells nice in here" or "you have such fascinating stuff!" i've also gotten a lot of "she's got you hard at work, huh" and "wow, christmas already" comments lol. once i came in to work and i had had a really hard morning so i was crying and she gave me a hug and i took like five minutes to gather myself to Do My Job Which I Am Paid For and within probably half an hour i was feeling so much better bc yeah, it's work, and sometimes im on my feet for four or five hours which sucks, and it's probably not a permanent job, but it's literally just such a nice place to be. maybe i'd rather be at the park or on the couch or with my friends or anywhere else sometimes, but as a job i'd never trade it for the world. in fact i have loose idle daydreams about "what if i stayed there through college. what if i worked there part-time and got a second part-time job and rented an apartment from my cousin who owns like a third of all the real estate downtown and wrote in my spare time and lived here forever." and ig i kinda don't want to do that but it wouldn't be a terrible life either.

anyways long answer but i love my job so much and i kinda never want to quit. i was worried i wouldn't be able to keep it thru the fall semester but i can so :D love it love it love it there

[dalekofchaos]

The Prescott Family/foundation should’ve been the villains of LIS, not Jefferson

Replaying LIS again and I am reminded that Mark Jefferson is a terrible villain with a terrible motivation.

Had Jefferson had just been a predator and just has photo albums of his victims has trophies/mementos, that would be one thing, but his motivation is just dumb.

If anything, it should’ve just focused on the cut plotline of the Prescott family.

Sean was shady as fuck and is implied of having known about the storm, Nathan also knowing about the storm because of visions and forced to take the drugs to stop said visions. The citizens of Arcadia Bay either die in the storm or forced to take refuge in the Stormbreaker shelters. When they arrive, Sean Prescott is hailed as a savior and everyone  moves up in Pan Estates with Sean getting away with being a monster.

However in a complete rewrite. The Prescotts on the surface make their money on real estate and gentrification. While the other side, is they sex traffic and the drug trade. While Nathan is desperately trying to break away from the family, but can't help but let the inner demons get to him and Sean is trying to mold him into being the heir to the Prescott dynasty. The dark side of the Prescott Foundation is responsible for the death of Rachel Amber and eventually Max and Chloe put a stop to the reign of terror the Prescotts had over Arcadia Bay.

The Prescotts are talked about as the evil of Arcadia Bay and everything wrong with this small town and it’s dropped like a drop of the hat and to make matters worse, Nathan doesn’t even have an on screen death scene or a chance to save him.

Sean Prescott should’ve been behind everything like the game’s story implied. The Prescott Foundation messing with the nature and balance of the Bay leads to Max getting her powers and putting a stop to  the corruption of the Prescotts.

Jefferson is not as smart and subversive as DONTNOD thought it was. If you have a main antagonist everyone believes in, you should stick with it, not giving us a twist villain coming out of nowhere with a motivation that is so contrived and so stupid that you’re just hoping for a better payoff in the final episode.(lol)

[alphaman99]

The REAL BLACK History added a new photo.

1d  ·

When Tina Turner left her first husband - who was also her boss, captor, and brutal tormentor - she snuck out of their Dallas hotel room with a single thought in her mind: "The way out is through the door."

From there she fled across the midnight freeway, semi-trucks careening past her, with 36 cents and a Mobil gas card in her pocket. As soon as she decided to walk out that door, she owned nothing else.

When she filed for divorce, she made an unusual request. She didn't want anything: not the song rights, not the cars, not the houses, not the money. All she wanted was the stage name he gave her - Tina - and her married name - Turner. This was the name by which the world had come to know her, and keeping it was her only chance to salvage her career.

Things could have gone a lot of ways from there. She could have labored in obscurity for decades, maybe making records on small labels to be prized by vinyl connoisseurs in Portland. She could have stayed in Vegas, where she first went to get her chops back up, and worked as a nostalgia act. And, of course, given what she had been through, she might have ... not made it.

What happened instead is that Tina Turner became the biggest global rock star of the 80s. I'm old enough to barely remember this, but if you aren't, it was like this: The Rolling Stones would headline a stadium one day, and the next day it would be Tina Turner. A middle-aged Black woman - she became a rock star at 42! - sitting atop the 1980s like it was her throne.

She managed this because of whatever rare stuff she was made of (this is a woman whose label gave her two weeks to record her solo debut, Private Dancer, which went five times platinum); because she decided to speak publicly about her abusive marriage and forge her own identity, and in doing so give hope and courage to countless women; and also because - in a perhaps unlikely twist for a girl from Nutbush, Tennessee - she had her practice of Soka Gakkai Nichiren Buddhism, to which she credited her survival. She remained devout until the end.

Tina's second marriage - to her, her only marriage - was to Edwin Bach, a Swiss music executive 16 years her junior. Of him, she said, "Erwin, who is a force of nature in his own right, has never been the least bit intimidated by my career, my talents, or my fame."

In 2016, after a barrage of health problems, Tina's kidneys began to fail. A Swiss citizen by then, she had started preparing for assisted suicide when her husband stepped in. According to Tina, he said, "He didn't want another woman, or another life."

He gave her one of his kidneys, buying her the remainder of her time on this earth and perhaps closing a cycle which took her from a man who inflicted injury upon her to a man willing to inflict injury upon himself to save her from harm.

Born into a share-cropping family as Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, she died Tina Turner in a palatial Swiss estate: the queen of rock 'n roll; a storm of a performer with a wildcat-fierce voice; a dancer of visceral, spine-tingling potency and ability; a beauty for the ages; a survivor of terrible abuse and an advocate for others in similar situations; an author and actress; a devout Buddhist; a wife and mother; a human being of rare talent and perseverance who, through her transcendent brilliance, became a legend.

Credit: Will Stenberg

Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History

[switchedandbewitched]

Switched and Bewitched

Chapter 3: Gosh That Takes Me Back... Or Forward

Read Chapters 1-7 on AO3!

“What -- and I cannot stress this enough - the fuck.” Daphne was staring at The Malt Shop with

utter disbelief. What had once been a cozy, cool place to hang out and kick back with the jukebox on had been clearly turned into a novelty restaurant. 

“Like, it’s okay, Daph. We can go somewhere else, we don’t have to go in there,” Shaggy said, taking Daphne by the shoulders and steering her away. 

Daphne pulled out of his grip. “No! It’s the only... the only place... we’re going to go in there and we’re going to like it.”

Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby exchanged a threeway nervous glance and Velma gestured towards the door. “After you.” 

“I’m sorry, but we don’t allow dogs in here,'' the host said. He raised his eyebrow at the state of The Gang. While Shaggy had a chance to change at the Shaggleford estate, Daphne and Velma still donned their filthy and somewhat torn clothing plus Shaggy’s arm was in a sling, Velma’s missing shoe had been replaced with an aircast for her sprain, and Daphne’s face had a large bandage covering something in the realm of 15 stitches. “But... we could seat you outside...”

The Gang agreed, despite the fact that Daphne looked as though she may burst into tears at any moment. 

“$18 for a burger?!” Velma cried. A few other patrons turned to look at her and she lowered her voice. “This is highway robbery.”

“Like, it doesn’t matter. I have money my uncle left us,” Shaggy said. “The real problem is this menu! No sardines anywhere.”

The server came over, a skinny teenager in a cheesy 50’s uniform. “Hiya folks, welcome to The Malt Shop, the most authentic nifty fifties experience in California. What can I get for you?”

“We'll take four cheeseburgers. Strawberry shakes, and fries," Velma said, handing all the menus back to the server. 

"Oh, and could you, like, throw some green olives on top of my shake?" Shaggy asked. 

"Um..." the kid stuttered and reached for the menus. "I'll ask the kitchen."

Velma wasted no time throwing the files from Red Herring down on the table and cracking them open. The contents ranged from articles posted immediately following the disappearance all the way to true crime pieces published in the last few years. Apparently the Coolsville 4 had their own History Channel documentary. She started by pulling out the photos of the crime scene and The Gang poured over them, studying every inch with French fries in hand and exceptionally terrible milkshakes. Everything was exactly how Red Herring described it: nothing beyond a bit of evidence from each of them was found in the swamp, and it wasn’t particularly helpful evidence, either. 

"Jinkies! I think it's a clue!" Velma exclaimed. 

"What is it?" Daphne asked. 

Velma pointed to the photo of Shaggy's ripped shirt piece. "Look there. It looks like Shaggy's shirt is caught on some sticks but if you look a little closer..." Velma grabbed the pen that was clipped to the folder and outlined a shape. "It's covered in mud and hardly noticeable but it looks like --" 

"Rold!"

"That's right. Scooby, it looks like Shaggy's shirt is caught on a gold... I can't tell...?" Velma responded. “Cna you?”

"Not me. So what does that mean?" Daphne asked. 

"I'm not sure yet."

"Like, maybe we could ask... my great great nephew or whatever. I know my uncle and I bet he has files just like these somewhere," Shaggy suggested. He tossed an olive into his mouth with gusto. "Like, we should probably head back soon anyway and see if they're done setting everything up.” 

Velma turned back to cast a longing glance at The Malt Shop and instead was met by a dirty look from the server. “I don’t know what his problem is,” Velma said. “We tipped ten percent!”

“Like, don’t worry about it,” Shaggy said. “Half the stuff here doesn’t make sense.”

“It sure would be nice to have the Mystery Machine,” Daphne lamented. “This whole walking all over town thing is making my feet hurt. I didn't exactly pack sensible shoes.”

The rest of the trek back to Shaggleford Estate passed in heavy silence. As time passed in 2022, The Gang grew increasingly uneasy about the likelihood of returning to 1969. Plus, with Fred in the hospital, morale was even lower. 

Upon return to the Estate, there were at least four cars in the driveway and the front door was ajar. Daphne pushed the door open with her fingertips and it swung back, nearly whacking what appeared to be an even ganglier, scruffier version of Shaggy (if that was possible) in business casual wear. 

“Oh!” Daphne cried. “Sorry!”

“No problem, ma’am,” the man said sheepishly. “It’s quite alright.” 

The Gang filed into the foyer.

“I’m T-Timothy Shagburg, Shaggy’s g-great-nephew,” the man informed them. “B-but please, call me T-Tim. You must b-be Shaggy, of course.” Tim turned to face Shaggy who was reeling at the uncanny resemblance. Tim did appear to be older than Shaggy but they shared a near identical build. Tim proceeded to hand Shaggy a manilla file folder. “And... you must be D-daphne, Velma, and Scooby.” Each one received their own folders. “I d-do b-believe I’m missing Fred Jones?” 

“Freddie’s in the hospital,” Daphne said. “He got hurt when... when we... left.”

“No, no, that won’t d-do. I will send a car to fetch him. He can stay here with round the clock care, if needed,” Timothy said. “Uncle Shaggleford provided strict instructions to start working on this project as soon as possible. Please review each of your folders.”

The Gang cracked open the folders and revealed IDs, debit cards, copies of the police report from their initial disappearance, instructions from Uncle Shaggleford, cover stories, and other miscellaneous documents. 

“Hey! They all have driver’s licenses and I have a “California State ID card’,” Velma protested. 

“Hmm.” Tim scrolled to Velma’s file on his tablet. “Ah, I see. It states here that you never received your d-driver’s license.”

“That was 52 years ago!”

“Well, like, Velma... that was also yesterday...” Shaggy said. 

“Regardless,” Time interrupted. “We will be taking you all for a d-driving lesson. The rules of the road are a little d-different than they were in 1969.”

“Like, what’s with the names? Casey Kasem? Sounds fake, man,” Shaggy said and held up his ID which read: Casey Kasem, DOB 03/04/2003, HGT  6’0, WGT 160 lbs, HAIR BRN, EYES BLK. 

“Stefanianna Christopherson is a bit of a mouthful. Am I supposed to remember that?” Daphne asked. Daphne’s new identity listed her 21st century birthdate as 09/30/2003, height as 5’7”, and weight as 130 lbs. “And I’m barely 125 pounds, thank you.”

“Please, Ms. Blake, Ms. Dinkley. We understand this is a very d-difficult time for you. We have set everything up as b-best as we can but there will be incon... incon... inconveniences.”

Daphne sighed and slid her license into her pocket. She missed home. 

“Now if you would all please follow me,” Tim said and began walking towards the basement door. “We have put together a presentation to assist with acclimation.” Tim opened the door and gestured to the well-lit staircase with a flourish. 

Velma sat back on her overstuffed leather office chair. “Nine eleven.”

“Yes,” Timothy said. He picked up a remote off the table and clicked a button. The projector screen began to roll back up into the ceiling. 

“I really did not see that coming with Nixon,” Daphne said. 

“Hey, like, at least gay marriage is legal now...” Shaggy’s attempt to lighten the mood was unsuccessful. It was possible The Gang had just witnessed the most depressing series of powerpoints, videos, and documentary clips in history. 

“Perhaps this will cheer you up,” Tim said and called someone into the room over his earpiece. A woman in a business suit appeared and nodded at The Gang. Her appearance, though professional, was somewhat diminished by messy hair clipped back away from her face and uneven bangs. 

The woman pushed her glasses up her nose. “Sir.” 

“This is Marcie Fleach, our head of IT and Cyber Security. Marcie, d-do g-give them their cellphones, please.” Tim wrung his hands together nervously.

Marcie set a black briefcase on the table and popped it open. Inside were brand new smartphones, which The Gang only recognized as the rectangles everyone seemed to have their noses glued to. 

“Rike, ro I ret one, roo??” Scooby asked. 

“I’m afraid not, Scooby. B-but I’m sure Shaggy will b-be happy to share. Please consult the calendar in your phones for all important meetings and appointments. The g-goal is to minimize your conspicuousness as much as possible.”

Velma hesitantly unlocked the phone at the instruction of Marcie and navigated to the calendar app. It was filled with all sorts of stuff: Thursday weekly debrief, Scooby Vet Appt, 9am 21st Century Lessons (daily), Driving Lessons, Trap Engineering and Design (Fred), Smart Technology Skills (Velma), and the list went on. 

“Um, I would love to learn about modern computers but this is a little...” Velma trailed off. 

“A little structured, don’t you think?” Daphne asked. 

“Like, we usually just go with the flow, man,” Shaggy finished. 

“Rith re row,” Scooby agreed, nodding. 

“Yes, of course, b-but in order to maintain the integrity of the project, or mystery as you all would say, we need to keep on t-track,” Tim argued, but retained an anxious tone. 

“What exactly is the ‘project’?” Velma asked. 

“To figure out time travel, of course,” Tim said. 

“While we do have a mystery on our hands, Mr. Shagburg, the mystery for us is not how we got here -- It’s how we get home. If we find out how we got here incidentally, that is a phenomenal scientific feat but really we just want to go home to 1969,” Velma said. 

“Velma, I’m not sure you fully understand the scientific ramifications of this event!” Tim urged. “Nothing like this has ever b-been recorded in history! We could solve some of the b-biggest questions in the universe!” Tim’s voice became more forceful as he went on and The Gang shifted uneasily at the change in demeanor. 

The Gang looked at each other. What would happen if they said no? As it stood, everything was being provided for them by the Shaggleford trust. 

Velma smiled, uncomfortable. “You’re correct, Mr. Shagburg. The scientific implications of us traveling through time are massive. Which is why we are going to request our schedule open up just a bit in order to support us looking for clues and solving this mystery. Plus, it wouldn’t feel right to continue without Freddie.”

“Quite right, Velma. Fred should be here any moment. His room has b-been set up on the first floor with a nurse. Shaggy, you have b-been moved upstairs. I hope you d-don’t mind.”

“Anything for Freddie. Like, he’s one of my best buds,” Shaggy said.

“Tomorrow we will handle the next order of b-business... finding out what really happened to you out in the swamp. However, I'm sure you're all quite t-tired and could use some rest."

The Gang made no arguments there, they were exhausted. They made their wait up to their bedrooms in a slow trickle. Each room was more or less the same: a dresser filled with their regular clothes, an empty closet, a desk, a bookshelf with some of the best reads from the last fifty years, and, most importantly, huge king beds with fluffy pillows and a stack of blankets.

Around midnight Velma heard someone knock gently on her door. Click. It began to creep open and Velma tensed in her bed, pulling the covers to her chin. Intruders don’t typically knock first, you scaredy cat, she told herself sternly.

“Like, Velma?” 

She relaxed into her pillow. “Shaggy, you scared me half to death!” In the moonlight Velma could see Scooby charge towards the bed. He licked her face a few times and then settled in next to her. Shaggy closed the door quietly and sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

He sighed. “Like, I don’t... I don’t know. I think there’s something wrong with me. Man, I think this whole time travel thing really messed me up.” He sniffled quietly. 

Velma rubbed her eyes and sat up, sliding her glasses on her face. “What do you mean? Do you feel sick? Are you injured?’

“No, no, I feel... I feel fine. Like, my shoulder still hurts but... It’s... something else. You’ll think I’m crazy,” Shaggy replied. There were tears now, steadily streaming down his face. 

Velma slid her hand over his shoulder. “Shaggy, I believe that ‘crazy’ has left the building. This whole thing has shown me that anything is scientifically possible, even if we can’t even conceptualize it yet. Hit me with it.”

“I’m seeing things... Well, like, not seeing things. More like I’m remembering things, but they never happened. Sometimes it’s monsters I’ve never seen and sometimes it’s people or places I’ve never met or been to. Like, I don’t understand. It feels so real. And you’re there too... and Scooby, and Fred, and Daphne, and sometimes others and they, like, seem like our friends. But, again, I’ve never met them.” Shaggy finished his confession with another sigh and jumped off the bed to pace around the room. 

“Jinkies,” Velma said. “It’s happening to me, too. Tell me what you’re seeing.” Velma gingerly picked up her phone and opened the notes app Marcy had shown her. Pen and paper would have been preferred, of course, but Timothy had not yet provided The Gang with much other than their folders and cellphones.

Shaggy closed his eyes and described the images that floated through his brain with as much detail as he could. First, The Gang was running from a giant Yeti but that melted away to Chinatown on New Year’s Eve. A face Shaggy didn’t recognize flashed before him and he mentally clawed at it, trying to hold onto it for another moment. It was a little boy in a yellow sweatshirt, but Shaggy still had no idea who it was. For a moment, he didn’t even know who he was, as he watched himself, dressed in a red shirt and blue pants, turn into a horrifying monster. The image shattered as a high pitched voice yelled “Scrappy Dappy Doo!” in his brain. A town sign drifted into view: Crystal Cove. 

Shaggy shook his head. “Zoinks, like Velma I can’t do this anymore. I ... I can’t.. I want to go home.” 

“It’s alright, Shaggy. I have a theory. I’m seeing similar... visions... but also different ones. I can remember us in Hawai’i, chasing a witch doctor, for example and a woman turning into a vampire.”

“That, like, doesn’t ring a bell.” 

“Crystal Cove, though, I remember that, too. I see Crystal Cove High School. We’re all there, you, me, Fred, Daphne. We’re, um, we’re dating --”

“Dating? But like --”

“-- Yeah, I know. As I said, I have a theory. We need to talk to Fred and Daphne before I can form a complete hypothesis, and -- Hey, what about you, Scooby-Doo?” 

“Rike, rat rabout re?” Scooby mumbled, mostly asleep in bed. 

“Do you remember anything weird or wrong?” Shaggy asked. “Something that hasn’t really happened yet?”

“Ri remember rappy. rand ra raveman! I ron't remember ranything relse.” 

“A caveman?” Shaggy asked. 

“That can’t be right,” Velma said, brow furrowed. 

“Like, crazy left the building, right Velma?” 

Velma shook her head. “It’s late. Fred needs rest and Daphne is worried sick. I’m not going to wake them up unless you are.”

“Me either, but, like, Velma?”

Velma laid back down and pulled the covers up. Scooby snuggled up to her back, nearly as long as she was tall. “Yes?”

“Can I sleep in here tonight?”

“If you hog the covers then I’m pushing you out of this bed.”

“Like, understood.”

Read Chapters 1-7 on AO3!

[hometoursandotherstuff]

This little 1900 cottage in Lyndon, VT has so much charm and is so cute for only $142,900. 2bds, 1ba.

The front door opens directly into the adorable living room.

There's a side door that opens into the kitchen. Look at this nice little dining area.

How sweet is this kitchen?

What a little cottage kitchen.

The split photos they took of the bathroom are terrible.

The 2 bedrooms are upstairs.

By the look of all the beds up here, it seems that they've outgrown the house.

This room has what appears to be a trundle bed.

It's been awhile since we've seen one of these ridiculously confusing real estate dioramas. Well, this certainly makes the layout much clearer.

Cute little shed on the property.

Very neatly kept little house on a 0.80 Acre lot.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/6554-Memorial-Dr-Lyndonville-VT-05851/227751539_zpid/?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

There are only five more days left in my Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

#20yrsago NYT discovers the “Plam Pilot” phenomenon https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/28/nyt-discovers-the-plam-pilot-phenomenon/

#20yrsago Irish ISP will disconnect Internet users after three unsubstantiated copyright claims https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/28/irish-isp-will-disconnect-internet-users-after-three-unsubstantiated-copyright-claims/

#15yrsago Ryanair will fine passengers who board with too much carry-on https://gadling.com/2009/01/22/ryanair-to-ticket-passengers-who-try-to-cheat-the-baggage-system/

#15yrsago BBC promises to put 200,000 publicly owned oil paintings online by 2012 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jan/28/bbc-digitalmedia

#10yrsago Gartner Hype Cycle on the Gartner Hype Cycle https://twitter.com/philgyford/status/427840025544650753

#10yrsago Makerspaces and libraries: two great tastes that taste great together https://medium.com/the-magazine/shifting-from-shelves-to-snowflakes-d2a360c7ac7b

#10yrsago Pope Francis on the Internet and communication https://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2014/01/27/a-gift-from-god/

#10yrsago UK National Museum of Computing trustees publish damning letter about treatment by Bletchley Park trust https://web.archive.org/web/20140130143734/https://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/deciphering-discontent-statement-tnmoc-trustees

#10yrsago What is exposed about you and your friends when you login with Facebook https://twitter.com/TheBakeryLDN/status/427531934294880256

#10yrsago 890 word Daily Mail immigrant panic story contains 13 vile lies https://web.archive.org/web/20140126081130/http://britishinfluence.org/13-reasons-taking-daily-mail-press-complaints-commission/

#5yrsago Bride attains virality by adding pockets to her dress and those of her bridesmaids https://metro.co.uk/2019/01/27/bride-added-pockets-wedding-dress-bridesmaids-dresses-8398183/

#5yrsago Grifter steals dead peoples’ houses in gentrifying Philadelphia by forging deed transfers, then flipping them https://www.inquirer.com/news/a/house-sales-fraud-theft-philadelphia-real-estate-dead-owners-william-johnson-20190124.html

#5yrsago Megathread of Facebook’s terrible, horrible, no-good eternity https://brucesterling.tumblr.com/post/182371861433/all-things-facebook

#5yrsago How Facebook tracks Android users, even those without Facebook accounts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0vlD7r-kTc

#5yrsago Video and audio from my closing keynote at Friday’s Grand Re-Opening of the Public Domain https://archive.org/details/ClosingKeynoteForGrandReopeningOfThePublicDomainCoryDoctorowAtInternetArchive_201901

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28 - THIS SUNDAY!) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[hmantegazzi]

hi! i think you meant well but also i don’t think it’s realistic that the renovated warehouses are anywhere near as accessible to homeless people as you’ve suggested. any housing of the homeless project is the EXCEPTION 9.9/10 times the renovated places are not accessible and exclusively marketed towards people of higher class. it is a fact that real estate developers have the interest of the market, not the general people in mind

also,, housing projects are almost always government funded while re developed d warehouses and the like are renovated by private companies who are only for profit. I think you also made quite a few assumptions in your line of thinking as well .

Sure enough, the exercise was to make *different* assumptions, while keeping them realistic, to show that there are more than two possible alternatives: market-oriented development that ends in gentrification and a fragile status quo.

Given that we aren't talking about a concrete case, I cannot say for sure what would be the most credible way to campaign for some sort of social housing, and just mentioned alternatives that I know have been tried successfully in cities around the world, but I guess that showcasing at least one of those concrete cases could drive the point more clearly.

This photo is super fun because it showcases how weird this whole housing project is, so I wanted to put it even before showing what it's about. The guy in the middle with the big carboard key is Felipe Ward, a far-right Chilean politician that was Minister of Housing and Urbanism in 2020, and most of the people surrounding him are members of a radical left-libertarian homeless activist movement called Ukamau, who were receiving their newly built apartments in a warehouse district in Santiago, a housing complex that they don't only fought for but literally helped to design, and the right-wing government had no other option than to follow through, finance and built it.

The place on which the project was built was a corner of the San Eugenio railyard, the main maintenance workshop for the trains serving the city, which was already under heavy stress because of dual plans to expand commuter rail operations from the neighbouring station (I should write about that some day!), and to sell to private businesses and redevelop parts of the lot that were in disuse, to help finance the aforementioned expansion. Their bet was to ride the wave of gentrification caused by the construction of the Line 6 of the Metro across the southern side of the railyard (which ultimately was displaced about half a kilometre more to the south, to a more populated avenue).

The Ukamau movement, formed in 2011 on the basis of many organisations that went back as far as 1987 anti-dictatorship fighters, and comprised of 'pobladores' (people that occupied empty plots of land and built precarious sheds there) and 'allegados' (people that live precariously in spare rooms of neighbours or family), decided to make their bet on the railyard plot, under the premise of building there a project that actually satisfied the needs of their inhabitants without requiring them to migrate to the periphery of the city, which is where most social building development was happening at the time. The proposal was soundly rejected on the basis that the space was required for the trains, but they insisted, for years, facing continuous acts of repression by the police every time they protested the decision.

Meanwhile, in the same neighbourhood surrounding the Central Station of the city, huge apartment towers with terrible building standards started to be constructed, abusing a legal loop, so that some towers are comprised of cruelly tiny apartments of 21 sq metres and have no access to sunlight at all:

The contrast between this monstrous prison-like buildings that were being sold as an "investment" for prospective landlords and the proposal of Ukamau made the latter more palatable every time the first protagonised the news because of the inherent clash with their environment, and lately, because of the living conditions of their residents.

One of the key ingredients of their success is that Ukamau didn't just demanded housing, but presented a concrete project to be built, something that was aided by their early collaboration with the architect Fernando Castillo Velasco (I really have to write about him as well!), one of the biggest figures of the modernist movement in the country and lately famous for his "communities", little collective housing projects designed and built for his students and friends. Even if Castillo died in 2013, just a few meetings after their initial encounter, his son Cristián, also architect and a former member of the Revolutionary Left Movement that fought the dictatorship on its earliest days in clandestinity, took the post under the same premise: letting the future residents have the last word on the design of their residences and their environment.

Aided by the government change in 2014, Ukamau and their architects managed to convince the Ministry of obtaining the plot from the State Railway Company (EFE), granting their members funding of the order of 38,000 USD (of the time) per family, and letting the movement act as the main contractor of the building process to control the assigned times, let their members work in some of the stages of the construction, and reinvest the profits into the provision of community amenities and the fabrication of furniture. This, of course, meant as well that EFE had to absorb the extra costs of not counting with the space in their railyard anymore (which is being a little of an issue right now).

Their project was presented in 2016, comprises 424 apartments, and looked like this:

Even then, the construction process wasn't without their complications: in one episode in 2019, the company tasked with the main edification works tried to delay their deadline talking directly with the Ministry (now in hands of the right-wing government elected in 2017), and instead of getting themselves trapped in a legal battle, the members of Ukamau went and occupied the central offices of the Ministry to demand the full compilance with the original terms.

Eventually, in october of 2020, just days after the first anniversary of the Estallido Social protests, the Maestranza Ukamau Neighbourhood was finally received by their residents, and it looks like this (you might notice that the colour palette is obviously their favourite):

But maybe the most important result of this project was that it proved that such a thing was possible to do. It didn't require lengthy legislative discussions or the full attention of a government, just a very clever strategy, tons of decision and insistence by an organised movement, and a bit of help from people in the know. So successful was this model that, by the end of 2021, twenty housing projects modelled after this one were already being presented for financing and construction.

[haunthouse]

hiii idk if you follow mcmansionhell but i think you'll like her latest post. has me feeling some sort of way

god you were absolutely right i do like that post [link to post: "this house may or may not be real"] and now it's also got me feeling some ways, holy shit

"If you want to talk about the realtor’s tabula rasa, this is its final form. Houses without people, without human involvement whatsoever." is so spot-on — i spent all of last summer apartment hunting and overwhelmingly everything felt so soulless!!! 90% of nyc apartment listings now have the staged computer-generated furniture she talks about in that post and it makes everything look so uncanny. i use photoshop a lot and took a lot of classes in school about doing various photo manipulations so i always like to zoom way in on stuff like that and figure out which bits are fake and which are real, but everything in those photos ends up seeming fake, because that's how real estate photos are. they're fake! they're terrible!

the soulless archetypal mcmansion that post is about also reminds me a lot of malls, honestly? maybe just because i was talking with some friends a couple days ago about how uncannily haunted all american malls are, but it's that sort of bland nothing-space where time isn't meant to exist and everything feels too big and too empty. like, even if you find a mall that isn't dead or dying, it still feels empty, somehow? malls and mcmansions are just too vast to ever feel like there's enough life in them to fill them.

i just cannot understand having that much money and using it to make something empty and spotless and gray!!! if i were not confined by my apartment's lease my walls would already be bright pink and that's how a house/apartment/anywhere you live should be i think.

[talkinbouttinygames]

my mind looks a lot like a_: a Video Game Playlist

Whether in an abandoned mall or an opulent estate, this playlist is all about embarking on a surreal architectural journey of the psyche. Investigate and explore these vaporwave-influended spaces, witness two speculations on technology of the future, and interrogate your digital reality. It’s Holovista’s mega-mansion house tour internship and the liminal awakening personality profile of Self-Checkout: Unlimited – step on inside.

Holovista

Previously covered, Holovista follows Carmen Razo on her newly acquired and direly needed job working for the innovative high class architectural firm Mesmer & Braid. The first task given to her, however, is a strange one – a field assignment to inhabit the firm’s mysterious new project, the autohaus, and to document her experiences by relaying them to her not-Instagram following. In game, this is achieved by taking photos of a number of requested items in a 360˚ scene, and then match appropriate photos to a caption in order to post them, chatting with your friends over DM (and whatever intern is running the Mesmer & Braid account) along the way. The latter gets only more important, as the autohaus’s design, and Carmen’s own mental state, gets more questionable as her residence goes on.

Fine attention to detail in order to spark immersion is the real crux of Holovista – the rendered scenes that you experience strike a delicate balance between striking realistic fidelity and the dreamlike opulence of the game’s low Sci-Fi future. The environments (at least, the non-creepy ones) are something you’d want to just exist in, partially because they feel so believable and possible. The Social Media interface has comments on every post, and profiles for every commenter, and most important of all, top notch Internet writing. Everybody talks like actual internet users, and several conversations between Carmen and her friends that could have come out of me and my friends. Even the basic gameplay loop puts you directly in Carmen’s shoes – you turn around (or swipe on your screen) to take photos of stuff and then post them just as she does.

This immersion is all put to good use in the story itself then, which reflects that immersion back (though I’ll not elaborate, to avoid spoilers), culminating in a game that’s not really like anything else I’ve ever played.

Specifications

iPhone

$4.99

~2 hrs

Self-Checkout: Unlimited

Self-Checkout: Unlimited, on the other hand, hits upon the environment of slightly oldish an abandoned mall. Starting out with a horror-esque tone as the player character finds themselves in a barely lit hall on a bench, forced to navigate a store housing a terribly unnerving teddy bear before the mall opens up, you are then invited via disembodied intercom to explore various sections and stores of the mall, all with… unusual set-ups focused on psychology. Between children’s rides based off of a fictitious children’s show structured around personality profiles and a clothing store rack with jackets labelled with things like ‘parents’, ‘significant other’, and ‘friends’ on a scale from most to least important, the mall is less a real space to engage in commerce and more a loci for an examination of the self. The surreality is only increased in scenes when the mall fades away in favor of environments with strong vaporwave aesthetics often reflecting other elements of commerce all whilst the interrogation of the self continues on, like a Psych 101 professor giving a lecture over a lo-fi, echoic beat.

Compared to the DM conversations between friends in Holovista, the only form of communication is always faceless – either via seemingly pre-recorded intercom announcements, or by a narrator seemingly talking both to the player character and the player themselves. As the mall is explored further, the unique specifics of the self-examination build towards the context of the mall’s liminality – which I’ll hold back in face of spoilers. The details towards this context are thought-through, perhaps to the point of maybe giving the game away, but in the end it’s a cohesive build that helps take the weight of the philosophizing off a bit.

Specifications

Windows, Mac, Linux

$7.99

~1.5 hrs

Sum Specifications

iOS & Windows/Mac/Linux

$12.98

~3.5 hrs