#that’s basically 90% of the customer base

[littlestellababy27]

Starting work at a lingerie boutique with a sex shop in the back the weekend before Valentine’s Day was certainly a choice I made

[fuck-customers]

Kind of a fuck customers but also a satisfying story at the same time.

My role in the call center I work in involves taking specifically corporate calls, which means I spend all day talking to “business professionals” (and I use that term loosely) including CEOs. As you can imagine, over 90% of these CEOs are the scum of the earth and the most entitled assfaces on the planet.

A week or so ago, I took a call and went through my usual routine of greeting the cardholder and then began going over verification questions. Since we’re A.) a bank and B.) a bank that handles corporate and government credit cards, we take security seriously and require a caller to be able to verify 3 pieces of information based on what the person responsible for their credit cards put on the account. If they don’t pass, we refer them to their company to get the right details.

So as I’m doing this, the guy on the phone is getting increasingly irritated as he keeps getting the security questions wrong. I’m calm and professional the entire time but firm. Eventually I run out of things to verify with him and tell him that we won’t be able to assist and that he needs to contact his administrator. This is apparently where I went wrong.

“LADY I AM THE ADMINISTRATOR!!” He screeches. Ok, great. I look him up and that’s true but there’s a second admin listed, so I ask him to check in with him. He then yells “THERE IS NO OTHER ADMIN! I’M THE CEO OF THIS COMPANY FOR CHRIST’S SAKE!!”

I apologize and tell him while that may be true, he still got his security questions wrong and needs to reach out to his account coordinator then. This man then proceeds to scream at me for the next minute or so saying how we’re an awful bank, how he’s had problems with us for years, blah blah and how we have the worst customer service ever. Keep in mind, I’ve been nice and empathetic this entire time but also I’m not gonna lose my fucking job just because a guy in a suit doesn’t know his shit. I give him the email to his account coordinator and stress again that he needs to talk to them. Then this exchange happens:

Him: “So let me get this straight. You are saying you are REFUSING and UNWILLING to help me, right?

Me: “No, actually I’d love to help you, however we have these security procedures in place for yours and your company’s protection and cannot make exceptions for anyone.”

Him: “This is fucking UNBELIEVABLE! I’ve HAD IT with this bank!!”

Me: “Ok, I’m sorry to hear that. Anything else I can do for you before we disconnect?”

Him: “WHAT IS YOUR NAME? I NEED YOUR NAME. NOW.”

Me: *gives my first name and spells it for him even though it’s a very basic 4 letter name because I’m a bitch*

Him: YOUR LAST NAME.

Me: “We don’t give out anything but our first name for the safety of our employees.”

Him: *insert that condescending, pissed off chuckle middle aged men do when they’re mad here* “Well I’ll tell you what (My Name), when I close this account and pull my MILLIONS OF DOLLARS out of (bank name) and they ask me why, I’ll make sure to tell them that it’s (My Name)’s fault. And I will see to it that you won’t be able to get another job outside of the minimum wage fast food job or whatever you had before this. How does that sound?”

Me: “Sounds great. Now seeing as how this conversation is no longer productive or professional and threats are being made, I’ll be terminating the call, have a nice day.”

Him: “DO NOT HANG UP O-“

Me: *click*

And that’s how making rich, powerful men rage-cry became my new favorite hobby. Thankfully, I haven’t gotten any feedback on that call; not that I would, seeing as how I did my job exactly how I was supposed to. Anyways I hope I’m his 13th reason. ❤️

Posted by admin Rodney.

[rainbowmothed]

︵︵ MISC. HAZBIN HOTEL HEADCANONS

╰ ⋯ ➢ just some random hcs i thought of off the top of my head!! ♡ as always, reblogs and likes appreciated! includes both main cast and heaven hcs. :3

𝜚 ₎ MAIN CAST HCS

Vaggie says stuff like “rad,” “dude,” etcetera unironically and definitely gets made fun of for it. Mostly by Cherri and Angel– Pentious says it is ‘hashtag trending awesome sauce.’

Vaggie sets 6 alarms in the morning, all with custom minute intervals between the snooze alarms to make SURE she doesn't sleep through it. Charlie doesn't mind, though, mainly because she wakes up at four in the morning to work on projects anyway.

Charlie has made playlists for everyone in the hotel on hell's equivalent of spotify; Vaggie's is the most well thought out, but they all describe them very well. Alastor never listens to it due to his dislike for modern technology/apps, but he appreciates it– or at least acts like he does– nonetheless.

Charlie definitely rides on Alastor's shoulders like a little kid bro IDC WHAT U SAY

Vaggie has cried ONCE in front of the rest of the hotel after being genuinely dogged on repeatedly on one of the worst days of her life, and they all just stared at her in shock. They hate on her so much because it never impacts her– or so they think so, because Vaggie always shrugs it off. They refuse to talk about it.

Vaggie's spice tolerance is unmatched.

Each night, Charlie visits Pentious’ memorial and wraps a weighted blanket around it, saying that maybe it'd remind him of the Egg Bois and the way they snuggled around him in the afterlife.

Vaggie is a huge Hunger Games fan. 90% of her personality derives from Katniss Everdeen.

Adding onto the last one, if Charlie and Vaggie were to have a child, I feel like it'd have the personality of Lucy Gray Baird.

Niffty definitely writes strange fanfiction. Also has BL as her header on the Hell's equivalent of Twitter. She's a little twisted, but we love her.

Cherri is an absolute menace. That is the best word to describe her.

Angel and Cherri did the “screaming in public restrooms” prank once.

Everyone assumed Charlie was mid-20s until she dropped the bomb that she's over 200 years old. They were all flabbergasted (minus Vaggie, who already knew. Angel also called her a “gilf lover.”)

Angel asked Vaggie about her body count once to tick her off, and she answered “around 1,000 or so, roughly estimated,” thinking he meant kill count. Charlie was shook.

Vaggie is a Paramore, Flyleaf, Evanescence, etcetera fan. Proud listener to 2000s emo girl music.

Charlie's guilty pleasure is punk/metal/rock music. She says she only listens to “Taylor Swift and musicals,” but she has a hidden playlist with KORN, PTV, and all of those bands on it.

Angel wakes Husk up by blasting Ayesha Erotica songs into his ear occasionally since Husk is a heavy sleeper and refuses to get up sometimes.

Pentious calls himself a “semi-proud father of the Egg Bois.”

Charlie ran a hate page about Katie Killjoy. She has since moved on from it... probably.

𝜚 ₎ HEAVEN HCS

Vaggie definitely played about 100 sports back in Heaven. Fencing, soccer, and, bare with me here, she definitely did ballet. She refuses to admit so, however.

The exorcists actually aren't brought into the world as adults. Instead, they're raised by volunteer parents of Heaven their entire lives, starting fighting training at age 6 or so. They claim that “children's brains are easier to mold.” Basically, they're taught to be murder weapons from a very, very young age. It's also instinctive, but it's the training that truly brings it out.

Each exterminator is based on a different bird breed, but the most common are eagles, falcons, hawks, and generally predatory avians.

The Exterminators are also very fast flyers, and they establish the quickest flyers through racing. Vaggie was formerly the fastest until she was cast down to Hell. Now, the fastest is Lute.

Adam also referees these races, and instead of a gun or whistle to start them off, he uses his guitar.

[dolljunk]

I'm going to keep it real and say I did not buy this doll for her clothing quality. I'm genuinely shocked at how low quality the pieces are for how much I paid for her, at retail cost, and how poorly made it is.

The skirt is a kind of shapeless spandex sack attached to a sleeveless bodice with an unhemmed collar and pleather tie. I probably wouldn't have felt so aggrieved if the top and skirt were separate pieces, or if the white shirt had short sleeves attached. It's not even a matter of adding additional pieces to the sleeve, but if they had just extended the shoulder area to have attached sleeves, it probably would look okay. But without them, this outfit requires the jacket to stay on.

The jacket is just papery low quality fabric and the print on it is super fuzzy and pixelated, which makes it feels low quality to me. If the print had crisp stripes, it would help the fabric not look so low grade, but right now it's not great to look at.

Also the jacket is weirdly constructed to me as it opens in the front, it requires the belt to keep it closed, but since it isn't attached to anything, the front edges don't line up well when posed. I feel like if they didn't want a fastener on the front due to bulk, the jacket should have been constructed to be like a shirt where it velcros up the back with the front attached to each other. But it just feels poorly executed to me.

The accessories are also kind of bad to me because the packback included doesn't sit well on the doll, and I can't really pose with it due to its awkward shape and size.

The shoes are also a big miss for me as it exemplifies the issue with poorly designed object heels. I really love the front of the shoes as they're chunky, gothy kind of boots with a minimalistic feel to them. Wednesday I feel like is a sleek kind of character design so they fit well in that regard.However the mismatched object heels feel so lazy to me because the cello and scorpian aren't incorporated into the shoe design, but rather haphazrdly shoved on at the back. I feel like for a good object heel, it incorporates itself with the overal shoe design. Like the scorpion tail could have wrapped itself around the boot more, or if the front had more scorpion details like claws or segmented pieces. While the Cello heel could have incorporated more music motifs around the shoe to add texture and bring it together. But instead it just feels like some really nice, yet basic, boots had the heel haphazardly lopped off and two things shoved in the back.As for why I actually got her, I love the fact she has a unique skin tone to Mattel's current range of skin tones. I often don't like Monster High dolls that are basically human dolls but Wednesday's skin tone feels unnaturally deathly, while also keeping that tanned tone to it. As someone with tanned skin, I really think it pulls off that deathly look without sacrificing her race.I also do like the facesculpt and screening for Wednesday, since these are really important aspects for a doll for me. I'm also shocked at how nice her hair is out of the box for a Mattel product. Usually I expect to deal with ratty ends or frizzy hair, but the bangs and ends are gelled really nicely and I don't feel a need to wash her hair.I also do like that Thing can grip onto Wednesday, however since I never watched Wednesday I might wipe the stitches off to make him look more like the 60s and 90s Thing.While the price and fashion quality do drag this doll down, I think the base doll is incredibly unique and I look forward to sewing her a custom outfit and maybe customising her accessories.

[esimsterlookbook]

Young Professionals CC Look book (With Links!)

Sul sul simmers! Welcome to my first post, here is my young professionals look book. Including 10 outfits - 8 for feminine frame sims and 2 for masculine frame sims. I tried to keep in mind the office dress code for each sim, but took some liberties with the sims world.  

The base sims will each be posted soon about their genetics

Thank you so much to custom content creators for all their work, special thanks to @rimings @gorillax3-cc @christopher067 and @pralinesims because I used A LOT of their work in this look book. I highly suggest checking out all the creators linked, above and below, as I adore their work. I love being able to create such interesting sims or all within one theme and CC creators make that possible.

If a link isn’t up to date or not working please let me know and I will try to fix it!

Nia Base Sim Info

Nia Outfit 1:

Hair / Top / Bottoms / Shoes-V6 / Lashes / Makeup 1 / Eyeshadow - 90 frappe / quinn earrings / Rings - both / Box chain necklace

Nia Outfit 2:

Hair / Dress - mock neck dress / Shoes - Donatella Pumps / Lashes / Kendall Blush / Makeup / Princess beam eyeshadow / Lips 230 / Marija Bracelet / Daryna watch / Monet rings -both / Basic Coin Necklace

Carlene Base Sim Info

Carlene Outfit 1:

Cherry Hair / Blazer Vest Dress & Turtleneck II / AndreaBoots / Lashes N04 / Lips N40 / Kiss me eyeshadow / Eyeliner 121 / Basic Coin Necklace / AxA Tights / Thunder Earrings / Malice Nose Piercing / Dainty triple ring 

Carlene Outfit 2:

Hair N30 / Belted Jacket Dress / Platforms 06 / AxA Necklace V2 

Kennedy Base Sim Info

Kennedy Outfit 1:

Tansy Hair / Casual suit blazer with waist bag / Pants 001 / Mary Jane Shoes / Eyelash v4 / Petals Makeup / Creamy Shadows / Quinn Rings / Perla Rings 

Kennedy Outfit 2:

Marie 365 Hair / Short Jacket Style Formal Twopiece / Platform 06 v2 / Eyelashes / Petal Makeup / Queen Elegance Gloss / Frappe 90 Eyeshadow / Blush N32 / Olivia Rings 

Sophie Base Sim Info

Sophie Outfit 1:

Sharon Hair / Minimalist Turtleneck / Leather belt and tight skirt / Platform leather pumps 01 / Short Coffin Nails V2 / Lashes / Petals Makeup / Blush 78 Mocha / Eyeliner 116 Cocoa / Lips 225 Dalgona / Spiral Hoop Earrings / Ida Necklace / Glimmer rings - both 

Sophie Outfit 2:

Jiny Hair / Shirt and belted dress / Classic Pump / Lashes / Almond Nails Matte / Eyeliner cc23 / Glossy Babe eyeshadow / Satin summer glosses / Etta Thick Hoop Earrings / Chain right wrist / Aylet Watch 

Eli Base Sim Info

Eli Outfit 1:

Mini Twists V1 / Oversized Shirt II AM / Casual Trouser / Waterproofboot01 / Lashes / Bangle right / Darren watch / Nose piercing Malice 

Eli Outfit 2:

Leather Blazer / Casual Trouser / Derby Shoes 01 / Coin Necklace 

[daemondollalbum]

We have an important update about DAEMON/DOLL's pre-order availability, particularly for international customers. Please read!

First of all, thank you everyone for your patience regarding the physical pre-order period! That said, we have a few more updates about how the physical pre-orders will work...

Unfortunately, we will only be able to accept pre-orders from the US and Japan. This is mostly due to tax complications- some places are very difficult or impossible for us operating as individuals to ship to.

There will be an order cap on the number of pre-orders we accept (as there are only so many CDs we can fit in Lone's bedroom.... which is where we're shipping everything out of.....)

Once we hit the order cap, pre-orders will close and merchandise production will begin. While the exact order cap number will remain private, we'll post notifications when we hit certain percentage milestones to keep you updated on how close we are to the cap (50% sold, 75% sold, 90% sold).

BUT!!!! All international customers will be able to purchase leftover stock!

Leftover stock will be hosted and shipped by Very Ok Vinyl, who is able to ship worldwide! Both the album-only and deluxe editions will available for purchase at the same price as the pre-orders.

(Proceeds from the leftover stock sales will still be paid out to the contributors- Very Ok Vinyl is only acting as a distribution partner, as they can ship to places we were struggling to find shipping solutions to- such as the EU and South Korea!)

This will allow us to reach more places than before, let us get the album to you with less stress, and hopefully make the ordering process smoother for international customers.

The response to this project has been beyond what we imagined, but I hope that means you'll understand if we weren't expecting such a large amount of potential demand, as we are just two people who like Teto who are shipping CDs out of Lone's bedroom.

We're very sorry for any inconveniences or confusion this may cause, and appreciate your continued flexibility and understanding! Feel free to reach out with any specific questions: daemondollalbum@gmail.com

Thank you for your patience!

TLDR: We had to restructure CD sales due to demand. What does this mean for you?

If you're an American or Japanese customer...

Basically nothing has changed for you! You will be able to place a pre-order starting on 4/27 through our Bigcartel.

We ask that American and Japanese customers refrain from buying leftover stock so other international customers have the opportunity first.

If you're any other International customer (Everywhere except US and JP)...

You'll have to wait for leftover sales to purchase the album; you won't be able to pre-order.

Sorry that you'll have to wait a bit longer! But the alternative was that we wouldn't be able to ship the album to you at all- this was the best way we could work around our limitations. And this way you won't have to wait as long for the album after you buy it 🙂 Thanks for your patience and understanding!

If you're an EU + UK customer who filled out the interest form...

Not too dissimilar from our previous set-up. Instead of the Etsy shop, you'll be buying leftover stock from Very Ok Vinyl instead (which will ship to you much faster than we would be able to). We'll be using the pre-order numbers to gauge demand for the leftover stock, so hopefully everyone who wants one will be able to get a copy!

If you're a Canadian customer...

Very Ok Vinyl is based in Canada, so congratulations on the reduced shipping cost and wait 🙂

"I'm a customer in a place that's generally hard to ship to. Will you be able to ship to me?"

Very Ok Vinyl's international shipping is done through PostNL and APC. You can check your specific country on their service update pages: PostNL / APC.

[kawaoneechan]

Why I don't like Unity

There's three reasons, basically, besides my personal inability to get any custom character assets into Unity, Unreal, or Godot.

Let me tell you below the readmore.

Reason #1: it managed to fucking bluescreen my system just trying to start.

How do you fuck that up? I download an installer and run it. This gives me a launcher. From there, I'm supposed to install the actual product I wanted to begin with. That's bad enough, to be honest. But then the fucking launcher managed to break so badly, I had my first BSOD in several months. With all I do to my poor laptops, I so very rarely got crashes like that it honestly threw me the fuck off.

If the launcher is gonna play like that, forget about installing the actual product.

Reason #2: CPU pegging up the ass.

On my previous laptop, attempting to run basically any Unity-based game would peg the CPU, all cores, until the poor thing ran so hot within mere minutes, it'd commit preventative sudoku. Maybe if I was lucky, I'd get a chance to set all the things to "lowest", and that might let me, I dunno, play long enough to get through the goddamn tutorial?

And I'm not even talking about state-of-the-art 3D games, but simple 2D games with low-resolution pixel art. Why would those run a dual-core at 200% until it fucking kills itself? Makes no sense.

Now, Phil Fortier of Icefall Games is an acquaintance of mine via SCI shenanigans, and when he released Snow Spirit (soon to be rereleased as part of Chronicles of Cascadia), I lamented to him about how his use of Unity would mean I couldn't run any of his stuff. So Phil looked into it and found a Big Fucking Thing to optimize. This basically makes Phil's SCI games the only things made in Unity that I can personally trust won't Do That.

Reason #3: About those 2D games...

I'm gonna dip into my Twitter archives for a bit and repost some stuff for this part.

*wavy flashback effect*

This is Angel Jump, a simple little arcade jumping game that's available on itch.io:

It's delightfully low resolution and has like four seconds of audio all added up. Can't be more than a few MB, depending on which sane development framework they used, right?

33 MB, actually. Because Unity. Let's see how it breaks down:

Unity main exe: 623 KB

Main game assets file: 1.19 MB together

A folder full of support DLLs like terrain and cloth: 7.17 MB, 90% or more of them never called because this is a 2D pixel-art game.

Unity's default resources: 3.41 MB. Mind that of these, only the splash logo is actually used because Angel Jump was made in the free edition.

Mono embedded runtime: 2.61 MB, and each game gets its own copy, much like how Electron apps each have their own copies of Chromium.

And another 17 MB for the Unity Player.

All in all, 33 MB of files for a game like that. Why? Because Unity is a bloated crapsack, I'd conclude from a cursory study like that. Let's compare that to some other games.

This is Elevator Girl, which is not on itch.io.

It has a lot of different animations and three fairly long background music tracks. It's only one file, 18.7 MB. I'm willing to bet most of that is the BGM, but I can't confirm it because it's just the one file.

And just for some historical perspective, the entire Crystal Caves trilogy is 1.31 MB, including some chaff. Commander Keen 4 on its own is 740 KB. Now, Keen and Elevator Girl both have OPL soundtracks, but the latter's is probably streamed.

Noxico is only 1.25 MB to download as a .7z file. Its only optimization that I myself actively apply is that I crunch the PNG files. The rest is text, and since the game uses a .zip file by another name as a game data source... yeah. That's a cheap win.

Now, back to Angel Jump. I went through the game's own resources to see what size it could conceivably have if it was not made in Unity. 54 textures, ten of them actually used. Tiny font stored in a weird way, possibly for distance field trickery which has no business in a 2D pixel game if you ask me. 921 KB of WAV files, high-quality bleepity-bloops, two of them jingles. 4.22 KB of PNG files, crunched like Noxico, for all but the creator's logo and the font. 973 KB for a copy of SDL, and I'd estimate at worst two MB for the main EXE.

The entire Angel Jump game could be no more than 4 MB and a half-dozen files, It's actually 33.2 MB, 92 files.

There's a more general computer programming issue that this reliance on Unity for even the simplest, smallest games seems to spring from: the bigger and better the computers get, the more lazy the developers get. Only have like four MHz, 640 KB of RAM and, what, 720 KB of diskette space, and no guarantee of an HDD? Better make the most of it, developers! But now the pressure's off and there's no more reason to exert any effort into keeping small games actually small.

*sigh*

[rockethorse]

Day twenty-three: Sailor V Game posters + animated game cabinet!

I had always wanted to try making a Sailor V game with custom game footage, but TS2′s video formats eluded me. But hope sprung anew ever since @shastakiss​ started sharing their 3T2 arcade machine conversions/remakes! These machines used animated textures rather than video files, which was perfect for the extremely basic Sailor V game footage I’d been planning on using anyway.

You get a new animated arcade machine cloned from shasta’s TS3 Late Night Freezer Bunny cabinet. Since the sign is not recolourable, you’ll have to pick one of the two base files - Katakana (Japanese) or Simlish. They have the same GUID so you can’t use both. Both machines have two recolours - a colourful one that matches the game’s American-style cabinets, and a plain white version that looks like the machines you’d see in the Sailor Moon anime.

The screens will play this little looping pixel art clip I redrew based on the same loop from the 90s Sailor Moon anime:

You also get two Sailor V game posters, one on Route 66 from Nightlife (§200) and one on the Three 3s poster from Apartment Life (§210).

The posters and the sides of the colourful cabinets get their textures from a version of the Sailor V poster I recreated myself for printing a couple of years ago, so it isn’t perfectly accurate to the anime. Her costume is more accurate to the Sailor V manga, though!

Download Sailor V Game Machines & Posters @ SFS

[synchodai]

Just finished the Fallout TV show! Observations and spoilers under the cut:

GOOD: It's actually pretty lore accurate and canon compliant.

I don't understand the complaints that it retcons New Vegas? People argue that the Battle of Hoover Dam and "the fall of Shady Sands" both happening in 2277 renders FNV non-canonical, but that's not necessarily the case? It was clear from the chalkboard the fall of Shady Sands and the nukes dropping are two separate events? Meaning Shady Sands "falling," whatever that entails, doesn't necessarily contradict the NCR presence in the Mojave. Shady Sands is the capital of the NCR — not the entire NCR. Even without control of Shady Sands, they would still have rangers and citizens in their other settlements.

I think this is because people are so invested in this narrative that Bethesda hates FNV, and yes, they could have treated Obsidian way better and shafted them in numerous ways during game development, but developer Tim Cain himself said that Todd Howard loves FNV.

Yes, certain details in the show can be contradictory to its source text, specifically with how they handle ghoulification, but it wasn't like the games ever had a clear canon explanation for ghoul biology either. Fallout 4 showed that exposure to radiation isn't even the only way to turn into a ghoul — and I was certain the previous games emphasized that ghouls are ghouls because of overexposure to radiation.

All in all, the little details they do get right — the brand names, the music, the general vibe of how each faction operates — vastly outnumbers the ones that are a bit iffy.

BAD: They revealed who dropped the bombs and it doesn't make sense.

The twist of the entire series is that Vault Tec dropped the nukes because it wanted to increase sales and recreate the USA as a utopian, monopolistic corporatocracy. This doesn't exactly contradict established canon. In fact, with Mr. House being part of the corpo meetings discussing this, it explains how he was able to predict the nukes and shield his beloved Vegas before the bombs fell.

What this mainly contradicts for me is just...logic. This show clearly wants to tell its audience that corporations will prioritize profit over public welfare every time. It's a good, clear, and necessary message. However, corporations — no matter how evil they are — just wouldn't wipe out their own customer base, right? Who would they make profits from if 90% of Americans were dead? And let's say they don't care about the poors who couldn't afford their products and services anyway — they've just significantly reduced even the one-percenters' purchasing power by basically scorching the earth. Capitalists want to extract as much resources as possible. They will abuse and torture their golden goose so that it'll lay more eggs, but they will never just...kill their own goose.

There could have been a more logical scenario here. War is a one of the most lucrative times for corporations like Vault Tec. And American corpos ARE known for orchestrating wars and destabilizing entire regions, BUT they always do so outside the US — a safe, far distance from the paying customers and away from the company's executives.

If that board meeting talked about purposefully disrupting the hardearned peacetimes they were in and dropping a bomb ON ANOTHER COUNTRY just to incite people to buy more vaults, then yes, I can see that happening. I can even see them anticipating nuclear retaliation, but they're too blinded by greed and the need for infinite growth that they're willing to take that risk. Add some dialogue about how this is their way of manufacturing and exporting American nuclear annihilation anxiety so they can take their tech global, and we have something that's closer to reality than just....one-step self-immolation.

House in FNV more or less had the same motivations to recreate the world as a technocrat dictatorship, but FNV handled it better in that House knew that people, even rivals like the tribes, were better kept alive and converted to paying customers and/or employees than outright exterminated.

Unfortunately, since the entire theme is about how corporate capitalism can lead to the destruction of the world, the show portraying the "fidicuiary incentive" as akin to an ideology (a set of beliefs on how the world should be structured) is misguided I think. A corporation profit motive isn't ideological because only people can have ideologies and corporations are not people. They don't prioritize profit because they think this is the best system we have to achieve a utopian society — they do it because it is what corporate systems are designed to do. They do not care about societal good anymore than a cancer cell cares about the body it is in. All they want is to grow exponentially.

Corporations like Vault Tec and its ilk are more like machines made to churn money, and that has resulted in sometimes progress and sometimes destruction. But it is always uncaring of those consequences and the methods it has to utilize as long as it fulfills its end goal of continually making profit — and THAT'S the problem of capitalism. Not that corporate execs want total political control. Because if lax control meant they could continuing exploiting and siphoning resources and pleasing shareholders, they wouldn't care about governance or politics at all.

STRAY THOUGHTS

Mr. House at that table gave me everything I wanted. I'm so excited for season 2 being New Vegas centered.

I love the portrayal of vault dwellers. They all had quirky and distinguishable characters and there wasn't a vault dweller character I wasn't entertained by.

Vault 4 is such a good episode! It was so funny and such a good way to show Lucy and Maximus that kindness is still possible in the wasteland without making it uncharacteristically sappy or too after-school special.

Norm is such a compelling character. I didn't expect him to be such a big part of the story but I'm glad he was.

They did justice to the scenery. I love the deer because it shows it's been a while since the atomic bombs and how life inevitably recolonizes the land.

The twist that Hank Maclean helped nuke Shady Sands because his wife escaped to it? It's kind of a weak excuse to nuke an entire area again. I hope this gets elaborated on in season 2 and why Vault Tec decided to let the NCR become a full-blown national power before taking action.

Cooper Howard? No notes. Perfect performance.

I'm not a big fight scene person, but I appreciate the tribute to the games with the splattered body parts and how main characters didn't just curbstomp their opponents.

The vault scenes were the funniest but I hope they also lean in more to how weird the wasteland can be too.

A lot of threads left hanging. Who is Lee Moldover and why are the refugees of Shady Sands worshipping her? Why did she need whatever was in the Enclave scientist's head? Whatever happened to Vault 33's problem with their destroyed water chip? Why did Hank give Moldover the code just because Lucy told him to? WHERE IS FINAL PAM???

CONCLUSION

Amazing adaptation. Well-written characters that felt very at-home with the setting. It understood the games deeply enough to know that Vault Tec is the overarching villain of the series. Plot has holes and logical inconsistencies, but aside from what I've already discussed, these aren't egregious enough to take away from character arcs and the show's themes for me.

**Fallout games I've played:

Fallout 2

Fallout 3 (only got through half of the game)

Fallout: New Vegas

Fallout 4

[snow-system-wol]

I have a mental illness

<- omnicrafter

These are likely (but very not confirmed) predictions of Mastercraft gear requirements based on the consistent patterns of prior expansions. (If blurry, click for HQ)

Some potentially useful notes for non-omnicrafters:

Any Expansion:

Tier XI and XII DoH and DoL materia will likely spike heavily in sale price in the period of time after each of the two new DoH/DoL gear recipe sets drop

Likewise, Savage Aim (especially), Savage Might, and Heaven's Eye materia in XI and XII will likely jump in price after each new combat gear recipeset drop

The clusters for the combat materia can be acquired from doing leveling or alliance roulette as a 90+ job In Need and can be traded to any Rowena Rep

Have completed Dawntrail:

Figure out what new crafting scrip materials are added (there will likely be two) and which is more useful in the newest gear. Spend any custom delivery scrip on these. In prior expansions these have been very annoyingly expensive with a SLOW price drop. (Should be purchasable once 2nd hub city is reached.)

The above comments about combat materia profit still applies, but finishing Dawntrail (+ all flight) allows powergrinding of clusters from hunt trains

It won't be for a while, but a new aethersand will likely drop when the final DoH/DoL does. Check the sources for this. In EnW, one source was spearfishing desynthesis and it was really easy with mediocre gear. Your fisher would have to be a high enough level to use the node, but the stat requirements won't be as harsh as BTN/MIN.

If you have excess tomestones and don't actively need them for a gear upgrade, tomestone mats (particularly the new ones that will likely be added for the 2nd and 3rd combat sets) can sell for a lot. Unfortunately I have no idea WHICH tomestones these will end up costing at those points.

If you are a normal crafter and able to clear lv98 HQ crafts, the basic materials (black star, levinsilk, gargantuaskin, ra'kaznar, claro walnut) will continue to be used in all mastercrafts for 7.x, and it would be a good idea to at least check the price during new drops

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

“Gel manicures are now the most popular beauty treatment in the UK, according to the online booking system Treatwell. Salon chains say that between 70 per cent and 90 per cent of their manicures now involve gels rather than traditional kinds of nail lacquer or false acrylic nails.

Yet dermatologists say they are seeing an “epidemic” of bad reactions to gel. Women have reported nail lifting, brittleness and splitting as well as swollen fingers and infections.

Some people have also suffered eczema, rashes and swelling to the face and body related to using nail gels.”

Full text under cut

As a nail technician, Kirsty Connor had a gel manicure every fortnight — and provided the beauty treatment for about 20 others on any given week.

After years of using gel-based polish, however, she noticed that her nails were lifting away and her fingers were itching.

Later, mini blisters appeared on her hands. Her arms and eyes began to swell. When she struggled to breathe, she called an ambulance.

In A&E, Connor, 31, was told that — like many other women seen by emergency staff — she had developed an allergic reaction to the substances commonly found in gel polishes, which help the colour to harden under an ultraviolet lamp.

Gel manicures are now the most popular beauty treatment in the UK, according to the online booking system Treatwell. Salon chains say that between 70 per cent and 90 per cent of their manicures now involve gels rather than traditional kinds of nail lacquer or false acrylic nails.

Yet dermatologists say they are seeing an “epidemic” of bad reactions to gel. Women have reported nail lifting, brittleness and splitting as well as swollen fingers and infections.

Some people have also suffered eczema, rashes and swelling to the face and body related to using nail gels.

After her severe allergic reaction several years ago, Connor, from Beckenham, southeast London, threw away the collection of 300 gel polishes which she had built up over ten years. She now works with natural, non-toxic polishes.

“The doctors at the hospital said it was quite a common problem. I had been using the big high street brands for years and I had never heard of it so I want to raise awareness,” she said.

Gel polishes typically contain methacrylate chemicals, which can be an irritant and cause allergies. The more often people have gel manicures, the higher the chance they will have a bad reaction or even develop a lifelong allergy.

The chemicals enter the skin when the ultraviolet lamps used to harden each layer of gel are not used for long enough or the equipment is poorly maintained. If the gel is not sufficiently “cured” a reaction to the chemicals can occur on the skin around the nails. Simply brushing your nails against your arms or touching your face can produce symptoms in those areas.

Dr Justine Hextall, a consultant dermatologist and fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “The problem is artificial nails and gel manicures have become the norm. People think of these as a basic requirement for grooming, like brushing your hair, when actually nails aren’t built to sustain this much trauma.

“One of the first questions I ask when I see a patient with facial eczema, especially around the eyes, is whether they get their nails done, if they have gel polish and when they last had them done. We’re always touching our faces, so reaction often shows up here.”

The British Association of Dermatologists said allergies and irritation to the nails is “very likely when people apply a product themselves, or if insufficient training has been given to the nail technician”.

Customers are often unaware that their polish has not been applied correctly while those who buy home kits can fail to follow instructions.

Dr Deirdre Buckley, a consultant dermatologist in Bath, said she believes thousands of women around the country could be suffering with nail polish-related allergies.

She recently saw three women in one day with skin problems, all of which could be linked back to their manicures.

Buckley co-authored a 2018 report by the British Association of Dermatologists which warned that gel polish was causing a “contact allergy epidemic” in the UK.

Since then, she said, the condition has become even more prevalent.

In the past five years, 3.5 per cent of her dermatology patients have tested positive for an allergy to methacrylates. The allergy is almost always due to gel polishes, she said.

“It is so common now that we can usually tell what the problem is when a patient walks into the clinic”, Buckley said.

“I see people with a sort of stripy rash on their cheeks and neck or eyelid swelling because of their fingernails touching their face. They will often have thought very very hard about what could be causing it — their cosmetics, their workplace — but not their nails.”

Traumatic onychoschisis, when the nail starts to detach from the nail bed, is one of the more serious related conditions.

Julia Diogo, a London-based manicurist who specialises in natural nail health and gel nails, and whose clients have included the model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, said she had suffered from the condition herself. She has also worked with women who had previous allergic reactions.

Explaining the right way to carry out a manicure, she said: “Each gel polish brand has an exact curing time which should be adhered to; these are often 30 seconds, 60 seconds or 90 seconds. If you are curing a 90-second gel at 30 seconds this is going to cause either an allergic reaction and/or infection. The top layer may seem dry; however, the middle of that gel will still be wet or tacky, meaning it hasn’t been cured correctly.”

Anyone going for a gel manicure should check that their hands are not removed from the salon lamp before the timer has finished its countdown, she said.

Lamps should be tested regularly, and should be the same brand as the polish because they are designed to cure a specific gel.

There is no single qualification required to be a nail technician but professionals often have either a diploma in manicures, which can take as little as three days, or a beauty apprenticeship.

Some will have a BTec or NVQ in beauty. Nail technicians should ideally have also studied for a certificate with the brand of gel they are using, such as OPI or Shellac, which would tell them how to apply that particular formula.

[fuck-customers]

I work for a fandom based specialty store that is priced "higher" than other stores (for example clothing is usually between $28 and $65 depending on what it is). Our prices are usually the thing complained about most by customers which is something you need to complain to corporate about, but I digress. Some items we agree are overpriced while others we think are priced fairly considering what the items are and the details on it. Most of the stuff we have is exclusive to the company brand and can't be found on other sites. More often than not, the complaining makes us laugh.

Examples being:

A guy picking up an embroidered crewneck (that he was gushing about) and but then started complaining it costs $55, however the guy was wearing brand new Nike shoes, Nike sweatpants, and a Nike hoodie. Guy was also holding two boxes from the nearby shoe store that just had a shoe drop.

A lady complaining a Loungefly backpack is $90 but has The Tote Bag by Marc Jacobs over her shoulder. (Though seriously the amount of people with the Marc Jacobs bag is INSANE)

A guy complaining a Little Mermaid loungefly being $80 (he was going to get it for his wife who is crazy about The Little Mermaid) and left in a huff. However said guy was wearing $400 Ray Ban sunglasses (my boss noticed them and looked them up after the guy left).

You get the idea. Basically the concept of how we mentally decide if something is worth the price or not vs something else is interesting and funny to me. Like a $75 backpack that will be a gift for your WIFE is too much, but you can spend $400 on one pair of Ray Ban sunglasses???

(And this isn't a post complaining about people who are paycheck to paycheck making budget decisions. This is about people who have spent way more on an item that's more basic in design and definitely priced by brand, but a more uniquely designed item that's "costly" yet less than the other item is still too much for them)

Posted by admin Rodney.

[drifthail]

a basic breakdown of emo, punk, and goth— a character resource for writers and artists by someone who is emo :] (under the cut!!)

the most important thing: emo, punk, and goth are all music-based subcultures. you cannot be a part of the subculture without listening to the music.

this is a basic guide and won't be going into subgenres (like screamo, hardcore, etc etc). this is what this guide covers:

the five waves of emo (with a focus on midwestern emo and 2000s emo) and emo fashion

punk rock and punk fashion

gothic rock and traditional goth fashion

i've listened to the majority of bands and songs i mention here!

i'm going based off what i know, so if any info is incorrect, please lmk!! :]

-------

emo

emotional hardcore (emocore or just emo) formed in the mid 1980s from post-hardcore and hardcore punk

there are five waves of emo music (w/ bands):

1st wave (1980s) - rites of spring 2nd wave (1990s) - the get up kids, cap’n jazz, american football 3rd wave (2000s) - my chemical romance, paramore, fall out boy 4th wave (2010s) - the world is a beautiful place & i am no longer afraid to die, the front bottoms, you blew it! 5th wave (2020s) - home is where

specific songs to listen to:

1st wave: for want of by rites of spring

2nd wave: oh messy life by cap'n jazz

3rd wave: thank you for the venom by my chemical romance

4th wave: match & tinder by you blew it!

5th wave: yes! yes! a thousand times yes! by home is where

midwestern emo fashion vs. 2000s emo fashion

midwestern emo: its hard to find any pictures, so i’m going based off of pictures i was able to find, as well as an explanation by madeline pendleton (an alternative content creator who was a part of the subculture during the 90s).

looking at pictures, denim jeans, striped sweaters, and plaid jackets were popular. very classic loser/nerd vibe.

according to madeline pendleton: black dyed spock rock cuts or karen cuts were popular. clothes: low rise flare jeans, small banti shirts, plaid cowboy snap ups, track jackets, and white collared shirts with ties. accessories and shoes: flower clips, white belts buckled to the side, cowboy hats, low top converse, and saucony jazzes. eyeliner was also common. her video with pictures!

2000s emo: 2000s emo often features choppy, jet black or colourful dyed hair, band tees, studded belts, stripes (especially black and white stripes on arm warmers), spikes, checkers, kandi bracelets, black jeans, and shoes like converse, vans, and doc martens. the fashion is similar to scene. however, scene and 2000s emo aren't the same thing, because scene has different music (and emo has a darker aesthetic overall).

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punk

punk rock (or just punk) formed in the mid 1970s from garage rock

a counterculture; rebels against the mainstream. punks are non-conformists

very politically-driven subculture— generally left leaning, acab, anti-establishment, anti-capitalism, and value individual freedom

punk has a diy ethic (a lot of punk fashion is made of readily available materials that the wearer customizes with things like patches, studs, spikes, paint, etc etc)

several subgenres (anarcho-punk, horror punk, hardcore punk, queercore, riot grrrl, etc etc)

punk bands: sex pistols, dead kennedys, the clash, the misfits, x-ray spex, green day

specific songs to listen to:

god save the queen by the sex pistols

london calling by the clash

art-i-ficial by x-ray spex

punk fashion

punk fashion often features safety pins, patches, spikes, studs, and chains as accessories. leather and denim are common materials for jackets. common hairstyles include mohawks and liberty spikes. many punk outfits are made out of readily available clothes that are accessorized or altered by the wearer. (hence punk's diy ethic)

-------

goth

gothic rock (or just goth) formed in the late 1970s from post-punk

several fashion types (trad goth, victorian goth, mall goth, cyber goth, etc etc)

goth bands: the cure, sisters of mercy, switchblade symphony, bauhaus, depeche mode, skeletal family

specific songs to listen to:

clown by switchblade symphony

disintegration by the cure

dominion by sisters of mercy

traditional goth fashion

traditional goth fashion mostly uses black and white in its look. the makeup generally consists of white foundation with thin eyebrows, black lipstick, and heavy black eyeliner. hair is teased and worn up. fishnets, lace, flowy dresses, leather jackets, chains, spikes, studs, crosses, and corsets are common clothing and accessories.

[madmanrambler]

“So walk me through everything I missed. It seems like it was a lot.”

“What, Everything? It’s 85 bloody years, there’s a lot to cover. And me without a degree in history.”

“Alright then, summarize. I can research whatever you mention that seems particularly interesting.”

I shifted to better watch Corv as he spoke, listening through ears that still felt chilly from 85 years frozen. Corv, one of my rescuers, shifted in his own spot, his diminutive form finding a comfortable seat. He glanced at me before starting in to the history.

“Let’s see, you went under in the 2020s you said, right? So you at least have an idea that climate change was getting bad. That was most of the 30′s and 40′s, handling that in various ways. Mostly bad ways. Lotta border skirmishes, plenty of fighting and arguing about bits of this and that. Big cold war between Canada and China about shipping lanes that opened up in the Artic, which was a miserable bloody time.” this at least all made sense, and I was nodding along.

“in the 50s things came to a bit of a head. Most of the ice that was going to melt melted, and the weather patterns were stabilizing. the countries and people left were figuring out how to handle the Sahara being able to grow plants and the American Midwest becoming a desert. We got some peace makers out of South America, and you’ll probably find some interestin’ stuff about indonesia and how its government in exile set an example for island nations and how to handle the shift in tides. Always found some of that stuff fascinating, you can look up Melati Hon and her speeches on the new world, great stuff.” Corv seemed excited about that part, really animated and I could see his eyes gleaming. Really might be something worth reading, and seeing what I thought afterwards. He reluctantly plowed on. “the 60s people kinda lost their mind, great art from the period but a lot of folks were recovering from being kids during the greatest ecological disaster. The 70s there’s big move of standardizing everything, making sure that plugs fit all over the world and all the measuring equipment can measure the same. Parts of America still insist on using standard but that’s more a local custom then a nation-wide standard at this point. the 80′s had a lot of discussion about the moon base, I think there was a big scare around a country grabbing it for themselves and a space war or something erupting over that, it was agreed to be a joint venture with every nation able to send people up, averted a lot of problems. The 90s are close enough I can remember ‘em, and there’s a ton you could focus on but overall it’s all about how to handle us living with these new batteries we’ve got, the Phazolyte batteries.”  This wasn’t exactly what I wanted to focus on, but Corv seemed to think it was important so I nodded and tossed in what I knew. “They’re batteries that mix with water to charge right?”

He coughed, shaking his head. “Yeah, I guess that’d be the second grader explanation. They mix phazolyte with water, and phazolyte causes water to be willing to compress as much as you push it, something it doesn’t want to do at all normally. S’why jumping off a bridge into water is like hitting concrete, all the force rebounds back into your body. With Phazolyte we get to store as much energy as we can compress into the water, then you just remove the Phazolyte and the water uncompresses, pushes against something, makes the electricity. And the Phazolyte, once removed, is good to use again, doesn’t lose anything in the process. It’s dead useful, and the last 15 years has been plugging that into everything and getting the supply chain worked out.” Corv coughed again, and glanced around. “That should cover the basics. Sorry we don’t have flying cars or nothing like that, I know you folks were keen on that.”

I stared at Corv for a long while. “Corv, that’s great. I’m glad you covered all the uh. The battery stuff. But.” I hesitated, glancing from him to the window to the chair he was sitting in. “You uh. Skipped the part about you.” Corv shifted in his seat again, glancing away from me. “Well it really isn’t all that important, it’s just part of the world really. I’m a British citizen, we still say god save the queen, we keep playing football-” “That seems like it’d be a bit hard for you to play.” I interrupt, glancing at how small Corv was. “I mean, Corv, you didn’t mention a damn thing about when birds started talking.” Corv looked what I thought was askance. “Well you did ask me to summarize.” He reminded me as his beak preened his feathers. “If I summarize I gotta skip the things that are less important. That’s how summarizing history goes.”

[cherrylng]

Gears & Analysis - Manson 007 aka Blackie [STYLE Series #004 - Muse (August 2010)]

Black Peace [Correct name is Manson 007 aka Blackie] A jet-black bomb-making machine fully armed with a number of unique ideas.

The Manson custom model, known as the ‘Black Peace’, was introduced in 2001 and has been used to this day. The body shape and other basic guitar features are similar to those of the earlier Delorean, but the specifications are quite different. In other words, it is a further updated model based on the ‘DeLorean’. The specs shared with the Delorean at the time of production included front and rear pickups (the rears have now been replaced with bare knuckle ‘Mississippi Queen’ pickups), a piezo pickup system (which has also now been removed), and a built-in effects unit. However, the truth about the effects of pedals are not clear due to mixed accounts. It seems to have a ‘Phase 90’ and a Zvex ‘Fuzz Probe’ (or ‘Wah Probe’)…… In any case, the key point is the copper plate on the right side of the unit. It is a fact that by holding your hand over it, you can freely change the oscillation sound, just like a theremin. Therefore, there is no doubt that one of the ZVex ‘Probe’ series is incorporated. There is also a MIDI controller on the top left of the unit. This was a result of Matthew's question: "Can we mount a “Whammy” on it?" According to Hugh Manson, the original idea was to have a built-in ‘Whammy’ itself, but this was abandoned due to power supply problems, so only a MIDI controller was built in, which would be used to control the ‘Whammy’. The controller itself is a transplant of the ribbon controller originally set on the Roland ‘JP-8000’ keyboard. Incidentally, it can be assigned to any MIDI-compatible device other than the ‘Whammy’.

Pickups & Controllers The sustainer pick-up is located between the P-90 type front pick-up and the fingerboard. The rectangular object located to the left of it is a MIDI controller that works like a touch sensor. The toggle switch next to it is a kill switch. The copper plate located on the left side of the unit is the oscillation controller.

Controls The control system is as complex as that of the ‘Delorean’. There are many switches and knobs. The two knobs and switches at the bottom of the body are probably for the ‘Fuzz Probe’ (a sibling of the ‘Fuzz Factory’). The knob next to the bridge is the controller for the ‘Phase 90’, the mini-switch to the right of it is ON/OFF, the three mini-switches in a row vertically are switches for the sustainer, and the three knobs on the far right are controllers for normal guitar sounds. There is a strong theory that there is a ‘Wah Probe’ built in instead of a ‘Fuzz Probe’, but since Guitar Tech describes it as a ‘theremin’, it is probably not a ‘Fuzz Probe’?

SIM L.E.Ds On the side of the fingerboard, there is an LED that indicates the position. This is a system developed by Sim's Custom, a brand founded by Martin Sims, an engineer originally active in the field of Formula 1 racing cars, and is called Sim's L.E.Ds. Various specifications can be selected, including the colour and shape of the LEDs. The Dodd markers on the top of the fingerboard can also be illuminated, but Matthew seems to have opted for the side-only version.

Translator's Notes: I don't know why this typo error was never corrected by the STYLE editors. I thought I knew the guitar looked familiar to me, yet I've never heard it being called the Black Peace at all. To fans and Matt alike, the Manson 007 had always been 'Blackie'.

[cidthesquid]

Trying A New Fashion Game: 'Fab Style'!

Took a little break from style savvy to try out something new, This is FabStyle! A Fashion shop sim/otome game! You may never have heard of this game (due to it never being release in English) but the style savvy reddit still recommended checking it out, so I tried it with the fan translation. Here are some early outfits I've made, with my first impressions on the game to follow:

'FabStyle' Was released back in 2011 for both the original DS and 3ds. (I'm playing the 3ds version upscaled 2x via citra) The game was published by koie tecmo and developed by Ruby Party (Also known for the 'Harukanaru Toki no Naka' series) And much like Style Savvy, It's a fashion shop sim, but with a heavier emphasis on the management aspects, and even a relationship/dating mechanic.

The basics of gameplay are similar to Style Savvy, with you selecting now items to buy managing stock, selling items to customers based on their criteria, and exploring a small town..

But even the store management adds a little extra, such as a timed 'handing out clothes' mini-games (I guess to simulate a busy hour), And automatated stocking options for if you don't want to have to manually buy everything. You'll also have personal stats to raise and monthly expenses:

The game is more story focused than Style Savvy, and the narrative is a little different from style savvy as well, You'll be attending classes to raise your stats, meeting other shop owners, and competing directly with them to see who can make the most sales for end of the year rewards.

I only played for about 90 mins, but think I understand the basics (steam archive here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2022471960) It seems pretty fun so far, and not simply a clone of style savvy, the only thing that holds me back from playing more, is the fact that it's a bit hard to follow if you can't read Japanese. The English patch is great, but only really covers the prologue and some menus: https://gbatemp.net/threads/wip-fabstyle-english-project.427043/ So the game is 'playable' to a degree, but having to open Google Translate, and what for your phone to read the text every time you want to help a customer is a bit of a pain. But I'm still glad I tried it, and I may jump back in from time to time, as it is a different experience from Style Savvy, not just mechanically, but also it offers a different visual style as some new fashion items as well.

Anyways, if you made it to the end, thanks for reading! If you've played FabStyle, please let me know of the game in the comments!