#this is a real job but i mean full time maybe with benefits etc

[iocheaira]

i really should apply to this paralegal job bc it seems pretty interesting, is salaried (!), and just to get practice applying for jobs since i would like to be in a Real Job within a year or so

[carrymelikeimcute]

Stop Stealing from Authors

As an author, please please PLEASE do not download 'free' ebooks or listen to 'free audiobooks' on YouTube etc.

Books take work to research and write, and author advances are already incredibly low, without us having to PAY THEM BACK to the publisher because the book isn't earning enough. Authors are already earning far far below the minimum wage per hour of work we put in.

Many ebooks are incredibly cheap already and have regular price drops down to 99p/$0.99, and are FREE using a library app.

Audiobooks likewise can be accessed digitally for FREE via the library.

Authors in countries like my own receive a small amount of money when you access our content via the library. Money which means we can keep writing books. Using the library also gives them visitor numbers and incentivises funding, preventing library closures.

Funding piracy makes the already very hard job of writing as a career even harder and endangers library resources.

'Well then maybe you should get a real job' I have a job, and that job is being an author. It is very entitled to tell authors that we need to essentially have a full time job AND still produce content for you to enjoy for free, at a speed/quality which makes writing also a fulltime job.

As a fulltime author I wrote 3 novels last year, each with 4-5 rounds of edits at different stages in the process. I also edited the two books I wrote the previous year during that time. Hundreds of hours of work. And I have since seen piracy websites making money off of that work.

Saying that piracy 'expands the reach of our books' is as insulting as being 'paid in exposure'. If you want something that someone made, you have to pay them for it. It is not doing someone a favour, to steal from them. And let's be real - how many people are you telling about each book you steal? Are you recommending the piracy site to others in the same breath? Are you just rating on goodreads and counting that as 'payment' for what you stole?

If you want to get a free book and 'expand the reach' - sign up to Netgalley and get free books in exchange for posting reviews.

'But then I can't read all the books I want to read' - Why should you get everything you want? Genuine question. I don't have all the make-up I want, or all the decor I want, but I'm not shoving stuff in my pockets because it's not fair that I don't get to have everything my magpie brain desires. You don't have enough time in your life to read every book anyway. You have to choose.

I bet you also have more than one unread book in your possession, right now. Probably a TBR pile. Why do you need another one for free, when you have books to read? And if you don't want to read those books, you can access every book, via the library.

Authors would even prefer that you buy our books second hand, because at least that 1. is good for the environment as it keeps books out of landfill and 2. benefits charity if you purchase for a charity bookshop/ doesn't benefit pirates. And 3. unlike a stolen ebook, you can donate it again and it will be visible on a shop shelf, attracting new readers.

'You should write because you love it, not for money' I do write because I love it, that's why I spent years learning my craft and working to get published. So I could do this as a job. I even write fanfic on the side as a hobby, and that is VERY different to writing publishable novels for my editor - I get to do all the fun stuff with none of the WORK that my writing job requires.

I don't love being told what setting/theme is 'hot right now' and needs to be in my next novel. Or re-reading my book for the 15th time to look for typos, or spending 4-5 hours every morning writing to meet a crunch deadline and the rest of the day brainstorming the new idea which is due in a week, answering emails and editing. It's my job, not a hobby, and it's not all fun, all the time. No one page edits for the LOVE of it.

'If buying isn't owning, then piracy isn't stealing' - Unlike films/tv, books are still available as physical media you can own forever. They're also less likely to vanish from your ereader because they aren't licenced like a tv show.

'I don't want to support a horrible person but I still want the book' - so...you agree that pirating does nothing for the author? Good. Because that 'spreading awareness stuff' we already covered, is bullshit. But if they're so terrible...why do you want to read something that was invented in their brain, and is likely full of their terrible values/dog whistles? Why not find new authors to support instead of hate reading/continuing to absorb content from people you fundamentally dislike?

Lastly, the argument I routinely see is that 'it's just the same as lending a copy to a friend'. It is not. Firstly because you're putting money into the pockets of those who stole our work, via ad-rev on their sites, whereas lending a book to a friend doesn't result in you making money off of someone else's work. But also, lending the book to ONE person is not the same as making it available to EVERYONE. I just filed a copyright takedown on one of my new books which already had 200+ hits. Unless you plan to lend a physical book to 200+ people, you will not do that same amount of damage as piracy.

[dawnbreakerluna]

i was inspired by many creators talking about this but here are some of my formal criticisms of l&ds because no matter how much i love this game and find it near-perfect, there are still flaws!

zayne's english voice lines. while it didn't bother me on the level that it did most in the past, i do think infold could do a great service of rerecording the interaction lines. they finally found the right footing for his tone and how to capture his character with the later affinity content and the recent events / main story chapter. please! i beg! (i'm already aware the localization isn't top tier but i feel this is a somewhat doable fix, though tedious.)

the timing of banners. in this economy? insane. also i'm gonna be real, i'm unemployed right now (it was an unfortunate circumstance) and my means of finding a proper job is honestly difficult with my full load of classes. it's hard being a f2p player especially when the rewards for grinding isn't as hefty as i'd like it to be. i think it's decent for what it is right now, but it could be better. also... they need to space this shit out. LMAO. i've played my fair share of gacha and otome games, yes, but with how fast-paced the updates for this game is, infold could at least offer some more in-game benefits or rewards. (ex. giving out free 10 pulls... if you're going to do a quad banner, i wouldn't mind 40 free pulls as i could just grind the rest during the duration of that event.)

increasing rewards for daily tasks/challenges/etc. because what am i gonna do with 30-50 gens per card upgrade, and so on and so forth. i also would like a new update to the abyssal chaos deductions. maybe upgrade the rewards cap since so many of us (i assume) have already maxed it out. unfortunately as a girlie who fucking loves hack and slash games, abyssal chaos is my favorite game mode and it doesn't stress me out. (a bitch is STRUGGLING with her protocore levels right now.)

infold's stance on lgbtq+ fan content. i already wrote a post here somewhat related to this. while i'm talking fans specifically, infold's stance is what i feel significantly influences the homophobic behavior. yes, we know it's an otome game. yes, we know what otome means. but i just call it what it is and i think the love interests are not confined to strict heterosexuality and the norms of it.

the characterization and treatment of the LIs. i'll be honest one of the huge turn offs for me for rafayel is the way the mc's responses are programmed towards him. while i don't mind banter in the way that it's done for zayne/sylus, i don't like how snarky it is on the player's end for rafayel. also, i know i'm a pervert on the main but i do think infold could chill a bit on the hypersexualization in certain instances (sylus). because there's no way you're gonna give me 50% and then not fulfill the rest. this is the worst kind of foreplay.

i've seen a few instances of people from cn explaining that there's setbacks due to cultural norms, etc. that would prevent something like a card with fully explicit sex being made. that's why there's only sexually implicit content. (if anyone could provide context on this or confirm, do add!) ((yes, i've seen the car sex card from mqlc... need that with zayne actually.))

every day i'm thankful for the misty invasions event, but i still have hope for more. i guess what i'm trying to say is that infold is already on a good run with making this game as to appeal to a more mature audience, yet... THERE COULD BE MORE. idk.

[theworldoffostering]

You guys, I feel like I’m drowning. These past three weeks have felt unmanageable to me. Like, I don’t know how to keep going.

I’m walking alongside (trying the best I know how) the older girls as one navigates this break up and the other tries to transition to college. We got DD a car, but it still needs a few repairs. She was here all afternoon today working on it with DH.

I am waiting for the updated version of Ms. 6’s IEP to hit my inbox to send it off to the school. I am also working on her housing contract. Then I think I can step back for a few weeks. Still trying to figure out what’s going on with graduation. Her mom is back to letting her go to it and maybe allow her to stay for dinner, but it’s Memorial Day weekend and I don’t want to put a deposit down for a dinner somewhere only to have her not be allowed to attend at the last minute. I also don’t want to disappoint her. I’m unsure of how to proceed, so I’m just sort of frozen.

DS takes his civics test next week. You have to pass in order to graduate high school. He has prepared and seems like he will do well. He’s also pole vaulting and doing well at that for being a novice and having very little practice time due to the crummy weather we’ve been having.

Work is a lot right now. It’s to be expected due to the time of year. I can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s a lot to slog through.

DH was verbally offered a job this week as a special education teacher. He is supposed to return to school to get his teaching certification in about a week, and is waiting for a letter of intent via email from the potential employer. It’s a lot. We are trying to manage the financial aid piece and we are up against a super tight deadline right now. His interview for the job was virtual, so he’s heading to the school next week to actually tour it and meet his potential coworkers. In the spirit of living in a small town, one of the women he used to live who was in live with him (for real)—the housing situation was work related—works at the school. She has legit not spoken to myself or DH since he and I got engaged so that seems like it will be super awkward (although she is also married now and has kids).

DH is finally seeing a decent therapist and between the therapist and neuropsych eval he had done during fall, it is apparent he is super depressed. Depressed is apparently his baseline and super depressed happens quite a bit. It is helpful to have it identified, but wow, it is a lot to live with. I am really struggling as his wife because he cannot do much and is not really emotionally available 90% of the time. He’s so inwardly focused, that he cannot focus on me, the kids, relationships, stuff that needs to be done, etc. I’m drowning and he cannot take on any of the workload. It sucks.

My endocrin had me take b12 supplements the last three months and my level actually decreased. I’m starting up with b12 injections next week. My TSH is also super, super low which means I’m hyperhyroid and should be losing weight, but I’m gaining which also sucks.

My endocrin is out of network for me which means my injections will be out of network. I have ZERO out of network benefits. The whole healthcare system is atrocious. I refuse to go back to the three endocrins I saw before I connected with my current one. They were all terrible, but in network. I need a super expensive full body scan but I for sure cannot pay for that out of pocket, so I’m waiting to see if my GP will prescribe it when I see him in June.

My crown also broke this week and when the dentist looked at it, I had worn a hole clear through the middle. He said it was due to grinding/stress. I wear a mouth guard religiously at night, so it’s happening during the day. :-/ Cue more medical bills. They glued my current one back on and can’t get me in to work on repair until June. I almost cried when trying to schedule with them because I just cannot even do all of this any more. (It also hurt wicked bad last time they fixed it so I’m somewhat terrified to return.)

That’s my list of complaints/brain dump. There’s more, but I need to wrap up some grading and get dinner going. I miss a life that was easier and less complicated.

[frostbounddevotion]

My personal written Eulogy to Gojo and my VERY BRIEF take on the final chapter: and what I hope to share with Gojo fans.

Im grieving, and I'm upset. Theories about Gojo and the analogies, etc, make me almost mad. A possible reality i DO NOT want to think about. The more I read, the more im like

*Gege's writing needs work. Maybe a novel series on his own own time? Maybe he can "fix" it when his health is better and the pressure doesn't break him down?*

This is all so depressing. The disappointment is insurmountable. Gojo was used and abused in canon, some would even argue irl by Gege to promote the series. The fact that Gojo wasn't recognized or formally acknowledged is hard for the fans, really hard (and Gojo isn't my #1 bias/fav so please don't say it only affects Gojo stans), and it gives an air of vunerable feelings and unprocessed emotions. What makes me more upset is the very last panel. It seems like the entire journey was a waste.

Many will defend the ending, and many more will ciriticise it, but I can still acknowledge and respect why it ended the way it did while still being upset. Neither experience lives in a vacuum.

In my own little way, I'm going to mourn and commemorate Gojo's passing. Stories, fictional or not, still provide very real and (parasocial) experiences. So here we go:

Gojo was a flawed character. Very much like people in real life. We tend to romanticize the dead, overlooking our flaws. When I remember a loved one who's passed, I start with their flaws.

Gojo was an annoying, inconsiderate character who sometimes was cold and callous to other's experiences/feelings. He's a big fat inconvenience at times and generally makes others feel unimportant or small. Much hubris lies within him.

However, he had lead a very hard and selfless life from beggining to the end. From his first heartbeat to his last breath. And that should be considered when addressing his behavior. He was seen for what he can do, not for what he loved and enjoyed. His identity outside the 6 eyes and infinity was secondary. His worth in the jujutsu world came not from the relationships he could have formed, but the strength in his abilities. This experience isn't unique in the jujutsu world, as many other sorcerers walked away and tried to start their own life. But when this world and role becomes your identity and reason for your existence, it becomes even harder to escape.

I think many of us can relate to that. The burdens of our own thoughts and opinions of others can gravely impact our identity. Our beliefs, values, and sense of self worth affects the way we interact with the world around us.

Despite being used, propped up for others benefit, and his body being used as a means for an end WITHOUT even a thank you, recognition, or appreciation for the person behind it is foul. From fighting the school to protect his students,To making his life purpose for children to ENJOY their youth (and breaking cycles), to 14-21 hours of sleep a week being his life without complaint, just to be blamed of all that is wrong in jujutsu's way of life but still getting every job done, and his only semblance of an understanding relationshionship being ripped away by the world that gives you meaning.... geeze.... and this man still chooses to smile. To live everyday with that much goofy adhd energy without taking his resentment out of someone or something (*unlikegetocough*) takes STRENGTH and RESILIENCE. It takes GRACE. It takes SELFESS SACRIFICE.

These feelings are something I struggle with everyday. Gojo became a singlr parental figure to a 6 yr old boy as a teen. He took it in stride. My little boy is the same age now. My little one (FJO) is.... on the spectrum and has a cocktail disorders that make living in this world hard. He's angry. He is defiant. He is full of love and potential. Being a parent to FJO is isolating, immensely difficult, rarely rewarding, and time consuming especially in a world who doesn't respect or bother to understand him. And I have schools afraid of me because I held them accountable for not doing their job.

Parenting is complicated. You end up losing your identity, freedom, and sense of self when you do it alone with no resources. And that's for healthy parents with neurotyical children. Add the fact that the parent I were raised for being "amazing, smart, and worthwhile as long as you meet these standards that we set in place to satisfy us and thats all you're good for" to then you feel like you were robbed of your life. That you were emotionally abused by those who were supposed to love and care for you and your youth robbed for the benefit of your guardians. Only for your life to change and be robbed of your sense of self once again. My body (i am born female) is a vessel for others, my career is for the approval of others, my time and energy with about 4 hrs of asleep if given to other's, my money and savings is spent on others. I don't want my child or others to feel the way I felt when i was little, but it's hard when you remain unhealed. I was chronically bitter.

Im not saying gojo and I the same. But as someone with no blood family and role models, what i take away from Gojo is to that it's OK to have flaws, confidence, and sacrifice. Because to someone else, I am or may be their everything. In their little world, I am Gojo to them. The one who's doing it all. And for their sake, I should be smiling. I should never let FJO see how much I'm suffering (no worries I'm in therapy. I'm getting the help I need). I want to be better for him. I want to be the best version of myself I can be. It's ok that this part of my life is thankless. It's not about reward or recognition or what others placed on me. Sometimes it's just THIS WAY, and if I am to do this, I should do it well.

I will honor Gojo in the way I parent. In the way I carry myself. In the way I interact with others around me. I will protect like the vulnerable under my care like he did. Sacrifice like he did. Expect nothing like he did (in the best way possible). Do my best to break generational cycles like he did.

Gee. One more thing about his ending. The way everyone just moved on without acknowledging Gojo's body or person and almost forgotten... brought memories of my safety net; my Grandmother. Whom died and had a funeral, and i video chatted once before she was gone. I never properly finished grieving her. I never got a chance to attend her funeral. Never was able to visit her burial. (I live across the country). I cried for 2 days and moved on because losing her was too hard to process, and i had other things to do. I felt like I disrespected her, and the manga resurfaced these feelings. I was able to be self-aware enough that I saw my grandmother in how Gojo's ending was all handled. I was now able to process that.

I had no role models. All I had was anime, fiction, and some school teachers. I'm grateful for Gojo's character. May i use these stories to become a better person. A better *me*. The JJK experience was fun. :) let's see what happens in the anime community from here.

Thanks for reading,

Alex

[inklingofadream]

Probably very long ramble about age, job experience, etc for the OG Archives gang (teen jon au ppl get tentatively excited)

Martin's birth year is pretty solidly 1987, because when he says he's 29 we have a semi-solid date for that; Jon is roughly the same, because he claims to be turning 38 in the birthday tape, in 2015 or '16, adding 10 to either his new or former age (as Sasha died in July 2016, but we don't know when exactly Jon's birthday is [unless you are a Jonny Sims just gave Jon his own birthday and never changed it as Jon became a v separate character, in which case Jon's birthday would be November 3, 1988]). Assuming a Bachelor's degree and on-time graduation, he would have graduated in 2009. He started at the Institute in 2011, and may or may not have had an office job in the two years in between. Or maybe he graduated late to make my life easier!

Martin left school to work full-time when he was 17, eventually landing his job at the Institute. Given that the search took long enough for him to decide he wouldn't be able to get the kind of money he needed on the back of his real CV, I would guess that he had some prior work experience, part-time stuff possibly dating back to before he quit school and similar stuff in between dropping out and getting hired at the Institute. He was working at the Institute in 2009, when he would have been 22, meaning a maximum of 9 years of other work experience. Realistically, I don't know that his mother's health was pressing enough for him to have started working at 13, but 15, when there would be fewer restrictions (and also because very few 13 year olds can pass for older, at least consistently). He had to get desperate enough to work up to lies as big as a master's in parapsychology (I'd assume he tried to pass with a Bachelor's of whatever first? Or maybe he was just tailoring his fake credentials to the posting's minimum requirements). Regardless, my assumption would be that he had a couple years of experience in customer service roles of various description.

Tim has a Bachelor's degree and was in publishing in 5 years before Danny died. Assuming 4 years to finish his degree (and he graduated with the highest honors possible, thank you Wikipedia page about UK degree classification) and the publishing job being his first job after graduation, he would be 31 in 2013, for a birth year of 1982, five or six years older than Jon and Martin and the only one of the four we know for certain has experience with a non-Institute office job.

Sasha is an information void (😭). She worked in Artefact Storage for 3 months, spent an unknown amount of time in Research, and transferred to the Archives with Jon. My inclination is to put her a bit older than Jon and Martin, but not more than a few years older than Tim. Call it 30 to 35 at the start of the show. We can guess at prior experience based on her behavior, but I don't know that that's a great indicator. Publishing is a pretty tough industry, and Tim was still the driving force of the wine in the middle of the workday, with both his bosses thing at the birthday party. I think even before things go bad the Institute is just on the casual side of things. For my purposes, I'm considering the Institute Sasha's primary professional experience.

By which I mean, someone else should benefit from the hour and a half I spent researching this unanswerable question

[witch-without-gender]

Sorry I have so many thoughts right now and I just had another one that I want to talk about so I’m going to.

Also tw I’m going to talk about some personal issues and it ties into capitalism and ableism

Also tw some discussion of s*icide

I understand the sentiment behind saying “hey, it’s ok to not be successful by age 25. You have so much time to live your life and do what you want!” And that’s a lovely sentiment and all but it doesn’t apply to me. I’m going to be 26 next year which means I’m going to lose my dad’s insurance. It’s not the best insurance in the world, but it does mean that instead of paying thousands out of pocket every time I have a medically necessary anything, I’m instead paying like, a grand max. Which is still a lot, but hey at least I’m not paying the 10000 it would cost me otherwise. I also currently have a job that I like quite a bit, but it pays just a bit above minimum wage, can’t give me full time or any upward mobility, and has zero benefits. Getting a job that pays well and has benefits just doesn’t seems to be anywhere in the cards for me anytime soon either. So when I inevitably turn the dreaded age of 26, I am going to be in a predicament. The absolute worst case scenario that is also a real possibility, is me being unable to afford my very necessary antidepressants and relapsing and, well you can guess from there.

I understand that the point of the sentiment of “you don’t have to be successful right away, plenty of people aren’t successful until they’re in their 40s, 50s, and up” is to help people understand that not being successful right out of college is no failing on their part, but maybe just to me, it feels like people are telling me it’s ok to not have job security and insurance and that I’ll get those things eventually in life. That’s not going to work out for me if I die because I’m unable to pay for medically necessary medications, treatments, etc, then I won’t even get the chance to be successful because our capitalist system doesn’t care if you’re struggling due to health issues and/or disabilities. If you’re unwell, better pay up or continue to suffer. And if you can’t? Well survival of the fittest.

I know the intent behind the sentiment is good, I just personally don’t like it and need to vent my thoughts and frustrations about it. Also not looking for advice, I have options for what I can do in the future, there just is an unlikely, but still very real possibility of me losing my SSRIs and becoming suicidal again and I’m just so pissed off about it

[lead-gen-marketing-experts]

Your Questions Answered – Your Concerns Addressed

I was swapping emails yesterday and today (I had also spoken with him on the phone) with a new restoration client prospect and he asked some great questions before signing up for a lead gen program...

So I figure I would copy/paste the conversation here so everyone else can benefit as well on multiple levels...

1- On a practical level as we go back and forth about specifics on what we define as a lead so it's crystal clear, pricing and billing structures, call tracking dashboard capabilities, etc.

2- On more of a personal level which should alleviate any concerns of working with a new marketing company. There is a ton of rapport and trust built here as questions are answered and concerns are assuaged.

I really think this showcases my personal and professional code of ethics that I conduct myself by.

------------------------

Hey Justin,

A couple of questions: 1. Disputes: what if there is water damage but the caller insists on having a plumber out first? There is no charge for reconstruction leads correct (we get those calls every once a while...)?

My Response:

If a lead ends up having a plumber out, and they sort out the issue in full and get paid for it, I won't bill you for that lead.

As far as disputes and invalid leads etc...I truly hate the "legalese" of contracts, it's just a formality of doing business. In real world talk here, you don't have to worry about invalid leads as there won't be any.

I, or a staff member, review all call recordings before sending the weekly report for billing so that I already know they're valid and so I know what to charge.

They are always:

1- Within your specified service area. Calls are very targeted location wise. 2- Only for the specific services that you offer (water/mold, bio/no bio, etc depending on what you check on the contract). This one's easy with a simple IVR we have that filters and sorts all that in real time before the call goes thru.

If anything weird still slips through, just lmk, I'll go back over the call recording to make adjustments, and take it off the final invoice w/o argument.

2. Is our $1500 shown on our dashboard as credit? If for some reason we decide to terminate the agreement before we use all of it, would we get it back?

My Response: If you don't like the calls I send you I'll refund your purchase in full, no questions asked.

Plus, both Google Pay and Paypal will immediately side with the buyer and refund your money immediately if a dispute is filed.

I get a lot of guys that are/were using *Edited so I don't get sued but you know who I mean!* or *Edited so I don't get sued but you know who I mean!* etc and they complain about getting calls for pressure washing, or roofing jobs and nonsense like that.

I'm only sending strictly restoration calls...very targeted. If some homeowner calls in for anything other than that because they thought maybe it was related enough that you would/could do the job, but don't...I won't bill you for the lead.

3. Is there going to be a contact for us in case we have dispute issues or for whatever other reasons?

My Response:

You'll get a phone number that, if it isn't answered live, the voicemails are checked and responded to at least once if not twice a day 365 days a year at 12 and/or 4pm eastern time.

Same timeframe/availability for the email contact.

4. Is there a way to put a credit card on file instead of Google pay?

My Response:

Both Google Pay and Paypal can be paid via credit or debit card when I invoice through them. I'm working with my call tracking dev to make a more integrated, automated billing system...

But right now, call recordings still have to be gone over for reasons mentioned above (validity and service type so I know what to charge) and then the invoice manually put together and sent to be paid.

All great questions thanks, I'm actually going to integrate all of those into a more comprehensive onboarding FAQ I'm working on for new clients.

LMK any other q's, and again...I'm available for a call after 5'ish my time.

His next follow up response after that lengthy, in depth email response answering his questions and addressing his understandable concerns:

Hey Justin,

I'm totally with you on " truly hate the "legalese" of contracts" but as the payer I have to understand what I'm paying for.

I'm not familiar with the payment platforms you mentioned, I will take your word on it (please understand, everybody can reach out to us offering leads, take the advance money and then to disappear).

  I would like to start working with you, please let me know how to move forward.

My Response:

I get it, I hope my last email made it clear on how I define valid, billable leads.

And how there will never be an issue with invalid leads/billing/disputes.

Both the contract and the payment processors are for your protection and peace of mind.

You can sign what I sent you earlier in Docusign.

And then I can send an invoice via either Google Pay, which is from The Google, doesn't get more trustworthy or secure than that. No processing fee there.

or

Paypal, which has been the most common digital payment processor on the planet since the 90's. There's a 3% processing fee on that.

It might be overkill, but if you need more peace of mind...

I always have my office addresses listed in my email sig to abide by CAN-SPAM laws and on my company website as well.

Plus there's tons of professional and personal background info between my contact, about, and personal bio pages here:

https://www.realtimeleadgen.com/contact

https://www.realtimeleadgen.com/about-us

https://www.realtimeleadgen.com/justin-hess

As well as the various other social accounts linked to from there, especially my Linkedin profile.

If you check the WHOIS registration date on my website it shows I've been using this domain for over a decade since 2012.

    Can't fake that.

  My Youtube channel has tons of content on it, a lot of which has me in the videos vs just being faceless, voiceless, text screenshots:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-wYIDpCc3a1dNqUv7Mw00w

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol9jWpOzfRE[/embed]

  The about section has the stats on the join date and view count which is 2013 and almost 14k views. https://www.youtube.com/@RealTimeLeadGen/about

That's their stats, not something I can add or edit.

If you scroll down the videos section you can see I started focusing on restoration marketing specifically in 2015. https://www.youtube.com/@RealTimeLeadGen/videos

The old quality is embarrassing but I leave it up for referencing it for things like this.

Point of all that is...there is nothing anonymous or "fly by night" about me or my business.

There would be no way for me to disappear with anyone's money.

I love what I do, and am very good at what I do.

I'm around for phone calls from now till around 7pm eastern.

Otherwise I'm around for calls from 9-7 tomorrow.

You've probably noticed this picture that I use on various pages of my website of me and my beautiful girlfriend.

Obviously, my handsome face matches up with all of my Youtube videos! And you can tell from our phone call that my voice matches the same.

I'm the real deal!

Internet marketing since the late 90's, doing SEO and lead gen since 2007, and switched to complete focus on lead generation and marketing ONLY to the restoration industry specifically since 2015.

So there you have it guys, great questions and I hope the answers provided some insight for you as well.

Especially if you're on the fence about signing up or have been burned by bullshit "lead gen" or maybe even worse "spammy SEO guys" in the past.

I get it.

Give me a call or shoot me an email to talk.

LET'S GET AFTER IT!

(570) 316-4775

justin@realtimeleadgen.com

The next publication Your Questions Answered – Your Concerns Addressed was first published on:Real Time Lead Gen LLC

Real Time Lead Gen 150 E 10th St Bloomsburg, PA 17815 (570) 316-4775

We'll Make Your Phone Ring!

Exclusive Water Damage Restoration Lead Generation Services

https://real-time-lead-gen.business.site/

https://www.google.com/maps?cid=13637965468191807517

https://sites.google.com/site/realtimeleadgen/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-wYIDpCc3a1dNqUv7Mw00w

#WaterDamageLeads #ExclusiveWaterDamageRestorationLeads #PayPerLeadWaterDamage #WaterDamageRestorationPayPerCall #BuyWaterDamageLeadsOnline #MoldRemediationSEOMarketing #DisasterRestorationDigitalMarketing #MarketingPlansForRestorationCompanies #WaterDamageLeadGenerationCompany #WaterMitigationLeads #WaterDamageRestorationSEOService #Marketing #ExclusiveLeadGeneration #PayPerLead #PayPerCall #SEO #InternetMarketing #DigitalAdvertising #LocalSearchEngineOptimization #VideoMarketing #RealTimeLeadGen

from Real Time Lead Gen - Feed https://www.realtimeleadgen.com/your-questions-answered-your-concerns-addressed

[ultravagabond21]

Your Questions Answered – Your Concerns Addressed

I was swapping emails yesterday and today (I had also spoken with him on the phone) with a new restoration client prospect and he asked some great questions before signing up for a lead gen program...

So I figure I would copy/paste the conversation here so everyone else can benefit as well on multiple levels...

1- On a practical level as we go back and forth about specifics on what we define as a lead so it's crystal clear, pricing and billing structures, call tracking dashboard capabilities, etc.

2- On more of a personal level which should alleviate any concerns of working with a new marketing company. There is a ton of rapport and trust built here as questions are answered and concerns are assuaged.

I really think this showcases my personal and professional code of ethics that I conduct myself by.

------------------------

Hey Justin,

A couple of questions: 1. Disputes: what if there is water damage but the caller insists on having a plumber out first? There is no charge for reconstruction leads correct (we get those calls every once a while...)?

My Response:

If a lead ends up having a plumber out, and they sort out the issue in full and get paid for it, I won't bill you for that lead.

As far as disputes and invalid leads etc...I truly hate the "legalese" of contracts, it's just a formality of doing business. In real world talk here, you don't have to worry about invalid leads as there won't be any.

I, or a staff member, review all call recordings before sending the weekly report for billing so that I already know they're valid and so I know what to charge.

They are always:

1- Within your specified service area. Calls are very targeted location wise. 2- Only for the specific services that you offer (water/mold, bio/no bio, etc depending on what you check on the contract). This one's easy with a simple IVR we have that filters and sorts all that in real time before the call goes thru.

If anything weird still slips through, just lmk, I'll go back over the call recording to make adjustments, and take it off the final invoice w/o argument.

2. Is our $1500 shown on our dashboard as credit? If for some reason we decide to terminate the agreement before we use all of it, would we get it back?

My Response: If you don't like the calls I send you I'll refund your purchase in full, no questions asked.

Plus, both Google Pay and Paypal will immediately side with the buyer and refund your money immediately if a dispute is filed.

I get a lot of guys that are/were using *Edited so I don't get sued but you know who I mean!* or *Edited so I don't get sued but you know who I mean!* etc and they complain about getting calls for pressure washing, or roofing jobs and nonsense like that.

I'm only sending strictly restoration calls...very targeted. If some homeowner calls in for anything other than that because they thought maybe it was related enough that you would/could do the job, but don't...I won't bill you for the lead.

3. Is there going to be a contact for us in case we have dispute issues or for whatever other reasons?

My Response:

You'll get a phone number that, if it isn't answered live, the voicemails are checked and responded to at least once if not twice a day 365 days a year at 12 and/or 4pm eastern time.

Same timeframe/availability for the email contact.

4. Is there a way to put a credit card on file instead of Google pay?

My Response:

Both Google Pay and Paypal can be paid via credit or debit card when I invoice through them. I'm working with my call tracking dev to make a more integrated, automated billing system...

But right now, call recordings still have to be gone over for reasons mentioned above (validity and service type so I know what to charge) and then the invoice manually put together and sent to be paid.

All great questions thanks, I'm actually going to integrate all of those into a more comprehensive onboarding FAQ I'm working on for new clients.

LMK any other q's, and again...I'm available for a call after 5'ish my time.

His next follow up response after that lengthy, in depth email response answering his questions and addressing his understandable concerns:

Hey Justin,

I'm totally with you on " truly hate the "legalese" of contracts" but as the payer I have to understand what I'm paying for.

I'm not familiar with the payment platforms you mentioned, I will take your word on it (please understand, everybody can reach out to us offering leads, take the advance money and then to disappear).

  I would like to start working with you, please let me know how to move forward.

My Response:

I get it, I hope my last email made it clear on how I define valid, billable leads.

And how there will never be an issue with invalid leads/billing/disputes.

Both the contract and the payment processors are for your protection and peace of mind.

You can sign what I sent you earlier in Docusign.

And then I can send an invoice via either Google Pay, which is from The Google, doesn't get more trustworthy or secure than that. No processing fee there.

or

Paypal, which has been the most common digital payment processor on the planet since the 90's. There's a 3% processing fee on that.

It might be overkill, but if you need more peace of mind...

I always have my office addresses listed in my email sig to abide by CAN-SPAM laws and on my company website as well.

Plus there's tons of professional and personal background info between my contact, about, and personal bio pages here:

https://www.realtimeleadgen.com/contact

https://www.realtimeleadgen.com/about-us

https://www.realtimeleadgen.com/justin-hess

As well as the various other social accounts linked to from there, especially my Linkedin profile.

If you check the WHOIS registration date on my website it shows I've been using this domain for over a decade since 2012.

Can't fake that.My Youtube channel has tons of content on it, a lot of which has me in the videos vs just being faceless, voiceless, text screenshots: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-wYIDpCc3a1dNqUv7Mw00wThe about section has the stats on the join date and view count which is 2013 and almost 14k views. https://www.youtube.com/@RealTimeLeadGen/about

That's their stats, not something I can add or edit.

If you scroll down the videos section you can see I started focusing on restoration marketing specifically in 2015. https://www.youtube.com/@RealTimeLeadGen/videos

The old quality is embarrassing but I leave it up for referencing it for things like this.

Point of all that is...there is nothing anonymous or "fly by night" about me or my business.

There would be no way for me to disappear with anyone's money.

I love what I do, and am very good at what I do.

I'm around for phone calls from now till around 7pm eastern.

Otherwise I'm around for calls from 9-7 tomorrow.

You've probably noticed this picture that I use on various pages of my website of me and my beautiful girlfriend. Obviously, my handsome face matches up with all of my Youtube videos! And you can tell from our phone call that my voice matches the same.

I'm the real deal!

Internet marketing since the late 90's, doing SEO and lead gen since 2007, and switched to complete focus on lead generation and marketing ONLY to the restoration industry specifically since 2015.

So there you have it guys, great questions and I hope the answers provided some insight for you as well.

Especially if you're on the fence about signing up or have been burned by bullshit "lead gen" or maybe even worse "spammy SEO guys" in the past.

I get it.

Give me a call or shoot me an email to talk.

LET'S GET AFTER IT!

(570) 316-4775

justin@realtimeleadgen.com

Your Questions Answered – Your Concerns Addressed is attributable to:Real Time Lead Gen Owner Justin Hess

Real Time Lead Gen 150 E 10th St Bloomsburg, PA 17815 (570) 316-4775

We'll Make Your Phone Ring!

Exclusive Water Damage Restoration Lead Generation Services

https://real-time-lead-gen.business.site/

https://www.google.com/maps?cid=13637965468191807517

https://sites.google.com/site/realtimeleadgen/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-wYIDpCc3a1dNqUv7Mw00w

#WaterDamageLeads #ExclusiveWaterDamageRestorationLeads #PayPerLeadWaterDamage #WaterDamageRestorationPayPerCall #BuyWaterDamageLeadsOnline #MoldRemediationSEOMarketing #DisasterRestorationDigitalMarketing #MarketingPlansForRestorationCompanies #WaterDamageLeadGenerationCompany #WaterMitigationLeads #WaterDamageRestorationSEOService #Marketing #ExclusiveLeadGeneration #PayPerLead #PayPerCall #SEO #InternetMarketing #DigitalAdvertising #LocalSearchEngineOptimization #VideoMarketing #RealTimeLeadGen

from Real Time Lead Gen - Feed https://www.realtimeleadgen.com/your-questions-answered-your-concerns-addressed

[centrally-unplanned]

-EU is exactly what I was thinking of! The EU is one of the most restrictive places for immigration on the earth, one of the opposites of open borders. Way harder to immigrate to the EU than the United States, Canada, even Japan (not as hard as China, sure). The fact that the EU has set up a quasi-open borders with a few of its neighbors, who all had to meet preconditions of governance, wealth, etc, that comprises ~5% of the world’s population, while running harsh controls on the other 95% - and that equilibrium still resulted in the UK leaving the org - is *exactly* what I mean when saying Real Open Borders probably isn’t happening. The biggest experiment in the modern era that was a baby step towards open borders being met with such backlash is a pretty good indicator.

I certainly agree than Open Borders is less “impossible due to human nature” than the libertarian state, it doesn’t have that fundamental contradiction of politics, but still - previous immigration policies were generally due to lack of state capacity to control immigration. 19th century China did not have ‘Open Borders” it didn't really have borders, the Chinese state lacked the ability to track entry. Ditto for India and others, while Europe was not like this at all and controlled entry. The concept of immigration just hadn’t really existed in their minds before the 19th century, it wasn’t a space states even had policies for.

And I am sorry, but I am not counting “the US was open borders...till too many chinamen came in taking our jobs so we passed the Chinese Exclusion Act and expelled them by the tens of thousands” as Open Borders Is Working Fine. That is also ignoring that the Immigration Act of 1882 also imposed poll taxes on incoming immigrants to reduce the number of ‘poors’ coming in, and placed restrictions on those deemed ill or a ‘public menace’, it was not just Chinese restrictions. The actual historical record of immigration is waves of refugees causing panicked state clampdowns, relegation to second class status, and frequently real or effective enslavement or purges. I again would not treat that as Open Borders. And the US in the 19th century was a radical experiment in active immigration, its the most liberal in the era. I don’t think comparisons to previous pre-modern eras tells you very much about today’s policy space.

-Next:

I dunno, this doesn’t seem particularly unlikely or even historically odd. “Get Elected, repeal regulations, starve the beast” was the official Republican platform at various points; Now, many of them were perfectly happy to have government overreach in other areas, but that’s idiosyncratic

That is not, in any way shape of form, idiosyncratic, it is entirely the point I am making. Republicans have never, once ever, consistently been libertarians - because they are politicians. Libertarians advised Pinochet in Chile to make some inroads on tax law while he would form death squads, Thatcher privatized the coal industry while re-criminalizing homosexuality. The track record of large, in-power, political parties pursuing Full Libertarianism is virtually zero, it doesn’t happen. This is not an accident, you can’t run an experiment a thousand times over a hundred countries and go “eh maybe next time”. These parties would liberalize in areas where it would benefit their stakeholders and supporters to liberalize, and expand government power where it would benefit their stakeholders and supporters to expand it. Actual libertarian parties exist in these countries and never win elections, ever, they never control the government. This is not an aberrational accident unless everything is an accident and you view the ‘political overton window’ as being thrown wide open. Its not going to happen unless a lot of things change.

do you really think technocracy is a government for a hundred years, or even a government that could last three hundred years?

No, I don't think so and just don't use this framing - technocracy has never been a government system. That 1930's "dominion of the experts" idea was a cool vibe, the aesthetics slap, but technocracy almost definitionally has no Theory of Power, it cannot organize a coup, win at the polls, launch a revolution, whatever - the people who are Experts At Obtaining Power are just never going to be the experts at water waste management systems.

Instead technocracy is a policy lever for existing government systems like democracy to use - they can set up their EPA to be "entirely agency-less where they simply execute the orders of parliament" or "highly agenic where they have loose mandates and pursue their own plans to fulfil those". No ministry is ever 100% one side or the other, but I, in many contexts (not all), think in the modern era we have tipped too far into the former and away from the latter.

Its like libertarianism - as a *system*, a "libertarian state", its communism-levels of contradicting human nature, it won't ever happen. But repeal the fucking Jones act, man, if you wanna address shipping costs in the US libertarian policy solutions have a lot of value (which I think a technocratically empowered "department of trade" would be more likely to pursue than congress).

My "technocracy manifesto" is therefore advice for how existing systems should pass new laws and manage their bureaucracies. I can go pretty radical on it, but its still not a 'new system' that survives or doesn't survive, it will change as the policy needs change.

[duckprintspress]

Ten Things We Hate About Trad Pub

Often when I say “I’ve started a small press; we publish the works of those who have trouble breaking into traditional publishing!” what people seem to hear is “me and a bunch of sad saps couldn’t sell our books in the Real World so we’ve made our own place with lower standards.” For those with minimal understanding of traditional publishing (trad pub), this reaction is perhaps understandable? But, truly, there are many things to hate about traditional publishing (and, don’t get me wrong - there are things to love about trad pub, too, but that’s not what this list is about) and it’s entirely reasonable for even highly accomplished authors to have no interest in running the gauntlet of genre restrictions, editorial control, hazing, long waits, and more, that make trad pub at best, um, challenging, and at worst, utterly inaccessible to many authors - even excellent ones.

Written in collaboration with @jhoomwrites, with input from @ramblingandpie, here is a list of ten things that we at Duck Prints Press detest about trad pub, why we hate it, and why/how we think things should be different!

(Needless to say, part of why we created Duck Prints Press was to...not do any of these things... so if you’re a writer looking for a publishing home, and you hate these things, too, and want to write with a Press that doesn’t do them...maybe come say hi?)

-

1. Work lengths dictated by genre and/or author experience.

Romance novels can’t be longer than 90,000 words or they won’t sell! New authors shouldn’t try to market a novel longer than 100,000 words!

A good story is a good story is a good story. Longer genre works give authors the chance to explore their themes and develop their plots. How often an author has been published shouldn’t put a cap on the length of their work.

-

2. Editors assert control of story events...except when they don’t.

If you don’t change this plot point, the book won’t market well. Oh, you’re a ten-time bestseller? Write whatever you want, even if it doesn’t make sense we know people will buy it.

Sometimes, a beta or an editor will point out that an aspect of a story doesn’t work - because it’s nonsensical, illogical, Deus ex Machina, etc. - and in those cases it’s of course reasonable for an editor to say, “This doesn’t work and we recommend changing it, for these reasons…” However, when that list of reasons begins and ends with, “...because it won’t sell…” that’s a problem, especially because this is so often applied as a double standard. We’ve all read bestsellers with major plot issues, but those authors get a “bye” because editors don’t want to exert to heavy a hand and risk a proven seller, but with a new, less experienced, or worse-selling author, the gloves come off (even though evidence suggests time and again that publishers’ ability to predict what will sell well is at best low and at worst nonexistent.)

-

3. A billion rejection letters as a required rite of passage (especially when the letters aren't helpful in pinpointing why a work has been rejected or how the author can improve).

Well, my first book was rejected by a hundred Presses before it was accepted! How many rejection letters did you get before you got a bite? What, only one or two? Oh…

How often one succeeds or fails to get published shouldn’t be treated as a form of hazing, and we all know that how often someone gets rejected or accepted has essentially no bearing on how good a writer they are. Plenty of schlock goes out into the world after being accepted on the first or second try...and so does plenty of good stuff! Likewise, plenty of schlock will get rejected 100 times but due to persistence, luck, circumstances, whatever, finally find a home, and plenty of good stuff will also get rejected 100 times before being publishing. Rejections (or lack there of) as a point of pride or as a means of judging others needs to die as a rite of passage among authors.

-

4. Query letters, for so many reasons.

Summarize all your hard work in a single page! Tell us who you’re like as an author and what books your story is like, so we can gauge how well it’ll sell based on two sentences about it! Format it exactly the way we say or we won’t even consider you!

For publishers, agents, and editors who have slush piles as tall as Mount Everest...we get it. There has to be a way to differentiate. We don’t blame you. Every creative writing class, NaNoWriMo pep talk, and college lit department combine to send out hundreds of thousands of people who think all they need to do to become the next Ernest Hemingway is string a sentence together. There has to be some way to sort through that pile...but God, can’t there be a better way than query letters? Especially since even with query letters being used it often takes months or years to hear back, and...

-

5. "Simultaneous submissions prohibited.”

No, we don’t know when we’ll get to your query, but we’ll throw it out instantly if you have the audacity to shop around while you wait for us.

The combination of “no simultaneous submissions” with the query letter bottleneck makes success slow and arduous. It disadvantages everyone who aims to write full-time but doesn’t have another income source (their own, or a parents’, or a spouse’s, or, or or). The result is that entire classes of people are edged out of publishing solely because the process, especially for writers early in their career, moves so glacially that people have to earn a living while they wait, and it’s so hard to, for example, work two jobs and raise a family and also somehow find the time to write. Especially considering that the standard advice for dealing with “no simultaneous submissions” is “just write something else while you wait!” ...the whole system screams privilege.

-

6. Genres are boxes that must be fit into and adhered to.

Your protagonist is 18? Then obviously your book is Young Adult. It doesn’t matter how smutty your book is, erotica books must have sex within the first three chapters, ideally in the first chapter. Sorry, we’re a fantasy publisher, if you have a technological element you don’t belong here…

While some genre boxes have been becoming more like mesh cages of late, with some flow of content allowed in and out, many remain stiff prisons that constrict the kinds of stories people can tell. Even basic cross-genre works often struggle to find a place, and there’s no reason for it beyond “if we can’t pigeon-hole a story, it’s harder to sell.” This edges out many innovative, creative works. It also disadvantages people who aren’t as familiar with genre rules. And don’t get me wrong - this isn’t an argument that, for example, the romance genre would be improved by opening up to stories that don’t have “happily ever afters.” Instead, it’s pointing out - there should also be a home for, say, a space opera with a side romance, an erotica scene, and a happily-for-now ending. Occasionally, works breakthrough, but for the most part stories that don’t conform never see the light of day (or, they do, but only after Point 2 - trad pub editors insist that the elements most “outside” the box be removed or revised).

-

7. The lines between romance and erotica are arbitrary, random, and hetero- and cis-normative.

This modern romance novel won’t sell if it doesn’t have an explicit sex scene, but God forbid you call a penis a penis. Oh, no, this is far too explicit, even though the book only has one mlm sex scene, this is erotica.

The difference between “romance” and “erotica” might not matter so much if not for the stigmas attached to erotica and the huge difference in marketability and audience. The difference between “romance” and “erotica” also might not matter so much if not for the fact that, so often, even incredibly raunchy stories that feature cis straight male/cis straight female sex scenes are shelved as romance, but the moment the sex is between people of the same gender, and/or a trans or genderqueer person is involved, and/or the relationship is polyamorous, and/or the characters involved are literally anything other than a cis straight male pleasuring a cis straight female in a “standard” way (cunnilingus welcome, pegging need not apply)...then the story is erotica. Two identical stories will get assigned different genres based on who the people having sex are, and also based on the “skill” of the author to use ludicrous euphemisms (instead of just...calling body parts what they’re called…), and it’s insane. Non-con can be a “romance” novel, even if it’s graphically described. “50 Shades of Gray” can sell millions of copies, even containing BDSM. But the word “vagina” gets used once...bam, erotica. (Seriously, the only standard that should matter is the Envelope Analogy).

-

8. Authors are expected to do a lot of their own legwork (eg advertising) but then don't reap the benefits.

Okay, so, you’re going to get an advance of $2,500 on this, your first novel, and a royalty rate of 5% if and only if your advance sells out...so you’d better get out there and market! Wait, what do you mean you don’t have a following? Guess you’re never selling out your advance…

Trad pub can generally be relied on to do some marketing - so this item is perhaps better seen as an indictment of more mid-sized Presses - but, basically, if an author has to do the majority of the work themselves, then why aren’t they getting paid more? What’s the actual benefit to going the large press/trad pub route if it’s not going to get the book into more hands? It’s especially strange that this continues to be a major issue when self-publishing (which also requires doing one’s own marketing) garners 60%+ royalty rates. Yes, the author doesn’t get an advance, and they don’t get the cache of ~well I was published by…~, but considering some Presses require parts of advances to get paid back if the initial run doesn’t sell out, and cache doesn’t put food on the table...pay models have really, really got to change.

-

9. Fanfiction writing doesn't count as writing experience

Hey there Basic White Dude, we see you’ve graduated summa cum laude from A Big Fancy Expensive School. Of course we’ll set you up to publish your first novel you haven’t actually quite finished writing yet. Oh, Fanperson, you’ve written 15 novels for your favorite fandom in the last 4 years? Get to the back of the line!

Do I really need to explain this? The only way to get better at writing is to write. Placing fanfiction on official trad pub “do not interact” lists is idiotic, especially considering many of the other items on this list. (They know how to engage readers! They have existing followings! They understand genre and tropes!) Being a fanfiction writer should absolutely be a marketable “I am a writer” skill. Nuff said. (To be clear, I’m not saying publishers should publish fanfiction, I’m saying that being a fanfiction writer is relevant and important experience that should be given weight when considering an author’s qualifications, similar to, say, publishing in a university’s quarterly.)

-

10. Tagging conventions (read: lack thereof).

Oh, did I trigger you? Hahahaha. Good luck with that.

We rate movies so that people can avoid content they don’t like. Same with TV shows and video games. Increasingly, those ratings aren’t just “R - adult audiences,” either; they contain information about the nature of the story elements that have led to the rating (“blood and gore,” “alcohol reference,” “cartoon violence,” “drug reference,” “sexual violence,” “use of tobacco,” and many, many more). So why is it that I can read a book and, without warning, be surprised by incest, rape, graphic violence, explicit language, glorification of drug and alcohol use, and so so much more? That it’s left to readers to look up spoilers to ensure that they’re not exposed to content that could be upsetting or inappropriate for their children or, or, or, is insane. So often, too, authors cling to “but we don’t want to give away our story,” as if video game makes and other media makers do want to give away their stories. This shouldn’t be about author egos or ~originality~ (as if that’s even a thing)...it should be about helping readers make informed purchasing decisions. It’s way, way past time that major market books include content warnings.

Thank you for joining us, this has been our extended rant about how frustrated we are with traditional publishing. Helpful? No. Cathartic? Most definitely yes. 🤣

*

Have a question about writing? Drop us an ask!

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[haik-choo]

I don't write cause I feel I don't have a good grasp on the characters personalities etc, the characterisation of akaashi post is so helpful! 👀👀 Would you do kuroo or bokuto?

a/n: I hope you like both of these! again, if yall want me to do others, let me know! these are across the span of their life, so some may seem college-related and some may seem young-adulty! 

[MISCHARACTERIZATIONS OF BOKUTO AND KUROO]

bokuto kotaro.

clueless: i’ve stated this in akaashi’s post, but bokuto is extremely emotionally intelligent. he can pick up on the slightest changes in people’s demeanor or posture, he can tell if someone is sad or happy even if they aren’t good at displaying emotions. he’s not a dumbass -- and he can pick up on others’ limits and boundaries very quickly. despite his ability to read people relatively well, he has no qualms about pushing people out of their comfort zones and forcing them to do things they might hate at first, but will love later. he pushes boundaries according to your comfort level, and respects your hard limits. 

only positive: a lot of people write bokuto to be someone ho’s only happy-go-lucky, or someone who rarely gets sad (aside from his moods that are less sad and more discouraged), but I think that almost dehumanizes him. he gets back up faster than most, yes, and at the end of a lost game where everyone is crying, bokuto is dry-eyed. he’s the type to get home and plop down on his bed, face-first into his pillow, lips quivering and eyes lightly watering. there are times where he feels insecure, especially when he’s younger, just because he can tell he’s different from the rest. he has a feeling that people are put-off from his personality, he has a feeling that he’s not as (traditionally/academically) smart as everyone else, he has a feeling that some people find him annoying. that’s why when he’s near his close friends he’s very loose -- he doesn’t feel the need to hold back even a little because he knows that they love him for him. this translates to his toxic trait with his lover being that he feels dejected/insecure if you ever want space. while he can read boundaries, he would really benefit from a lover who has just as few as he, because then he can be his truest self.

love-at-first-sight: he’s not the type to fall in love at one glance, he’s just not. yes, he might get interested or you may catch his attention, but he’s not going to fall in love with someone because they have a pretty smile. it’s not that he’s calculated or over-thinks his emotions, he knows exactly what he feels, it’s just that his heart is a little slow when it comes to falling in love. he’s such an energetic all-over-the-place person that love is never really on his mind (he gets into some trouble with accidentally leading girls on because he’s so friendly). when he eventually falls in love, though....oh boy. he stutters, he’s over-thinking all his movements when it comes to you -- he’s usually impulsive but with you he really, really doesn’t want to screw up. he wants everything to go smoothly -- so he’s the type to plan out a confession and actually try to stick to it. when it comes to something like love, bokuto is surprisingly slow and careful, because he knows how fragile a heart is. 

never gets angry: i think most people like to imagine his anger is so rare because the image of an angry bokuto is scary, especially with his stature. and while it’s true his anger is uncommon (because he’s good at processing his own emotions and not lashing out at others), when he does get angry it can be pretty unnerving. he’s the type to slam his fist on the counter unknowingly when having a really bad fight with his lover, and he has a booming voice. he’d never hit someone, but he doesn’t realize how intimidating his physique is. anger is uncommon, but that doesn’t mean he’s not scary. he always apologize afterwards, though.

boundless confidence: i touched on it earlier, that he has bouts of insecurity, but again, i really want to emphasize that he’s not endlessly confident. honestly, maybe in the anime and manga he seems that way, but if you want to make him more human, have more life than a fictional character, you have to create limits or certain traits. bokuto is very sensitive, and the slightest thing can either inflate his ego or deflate it. plays in volleyball constantly not working may dig at his confidence, but he always re-inflates. in real life, outside the court, there are things that keep his confidence low everytime they happen. fights with his lover are one of these things; he’ll get jealous when they leave the apartment after a fight because he’ll worry about you finding someone more stable than him. jealousy alone is a solid sign of chipped confidence, something that someone as sensitive as bokuto gets every once in a while. 

overall, bokuto is a lot more intelligent than what people give him credit for. he’s honest with his own emotions and can read people very well, which is probably why he’s such a people person, but he still has flaws. he does not have boundless confidence or have no perception of boundaries; he’s unbelievably understanding. he may be initially insecure, have intimidating anger, etc. but ,after all, he’s human, isn’t he? 

kuroo tetsuro. 

sex god: don’t get me wrong, I definitely believe that he’s had a lover or two, especially in college, and that he’s played the field a little bit. but i don’t see him as the guy that has had sex with every person in his major. he’s a genuine guy and can’t have sex with someone he’s not emotionally invested in -- despite not being a ‘player’, he’s totally gotten in trouble with a few people because they think he’s leading them on when he walks with them to class everyday. 

intimidating: people always characterize him as this mysterious, sexually intimidating guy, but i just can’t see him as someone intimidating. if anything, he may be a little unapproachable because he has a really tight knit group of friends that he’s always with, but he’s not scary. he’s not the center of attention but he’s not a wallflower either, he enjoys observing people and watching drama play out, but he’s not silent and glaring all the time. he’s quite fun, he’s loud, and he enjoys embarrassing his friends in public. he’s the type to twerk in public and laugh his ass off when akaashi or kenma give him the side-eye and bro-kuto joins in. he likes to have fun, ya know? i don’t know about you, but a guy that twerks in public isn’t very scary, to me at least. 

prideful: I understand why people paint him as a prideful guy, he obviously likes what he does and has a personable personality, but honestly, he’s not perfect. he often has moments where he doubts himself because of his past decisions, his career one of them. kuroo is an amazing middle blocker, and his choice to go into sports advertisement rather than an actual volleyball league no doubt haunts him at night sometimes. he thinks of the ‘what-ifs’, and he dreams of what he could be. especially since his best friend is bokuto, a professional player, it’s often on his mind. it’s a super touchy subject for him, and if someone were to question his job-choice i have no doubt that he’d get really sour and distant from that person because he’s not sure of himself either. 

frat boy: he’s not someone who can’t cook, he’s not someone who sleeps at 5am everyday, hungover. he’s not the type of person to be immature in any way -- he’s got his shit together. i’m sure most people can actually see this, but kuroo is very responsible and realistic (which is part of the reason he didn’t do professional volleyball). he does his taxes, does his homework, gives out good advice, gets up early and eats everything that a healthy person should eat (in all the right proportions, too). he doesn’t even drink often, if anything he’s just a social drinker. he goes to bed at 10pm and wakes up at 6am to work out, no joke. he’s gotta keep that physique somehow. 

decisive: i know i said he’s responsible, but i don’t think that translates to decisive. i can see him having a lot of conflicting things going on in his life, different wants and different paths that he wants to take but can’t keep all open. it happens in love, his career, his college major, etc. he wants a lot in life, he wants success, happiness, a good love-life, everything. when he had to choose between volleyball and a life-long, stable career, he was broken for weeks. was he good enough for his dream? was it wise to chase his dream? would it be better to get more kids into volleyball, do what he did, what he couldn’t do? in his love life he always hesitates, too: does he see a life with them? how long will they love him? will they be able to deal with him once they see that he’s not perfect? is it worth it? it doesn’t matter if he’s in love or not, because his extreme caution can come off as very distant and unwilling to let you in, hence his toxic trait. he’s indecisive, scared, yet passionate and hard-working. 

overall, kuroo is full of contradiction. he wants a lot from life and is willing to work for it. he has dreams and tries to stay healthy and put himself out there, have fun, the whole shabang -- but he’s not perfect. he’s overly cautious when it comes to making important decisions simply because he can see a future with all of the different paths he can take. but honestly, isn’t everyone a little contradictory? 

[itsclydebitches]

So The Owl House just had their main pairing kiss on screen in the latest episode. How is it a show under Disney can have their queer couple kiss but RT can't even confirm if Yang and Blake are actually together, much less kiss.

Was that in the final episode (minus some additional content I've been hearing about)? Because that seems to be the go-to trend nowadays: build up a relationship, but wait until the final hour to confirm it. Which, to be very clear, I don't mean as a criticism of TOH. Beyond the fact that I haven't watched it for myself yet (I know, I know), everyone working at Disney is fighting tooth-and-nail for any scrap of representation, often taking such compromises — they can't kiss, but they can hold hands; there will be a wedding, but it won't air in this country; we'll confirm it, but only when the show is cancelled/ending, etc. — over getting nothing at all. Plus, from what I've heard second-hand, TOH apparently does a fantastic job with their relationship, even with such obvious, external difficulties. The point being that, as you say, anon, if creators can manage this under the thumb of such homophobic corporations... the originally independent webseries who, it seems, only entertained the idea of a queer couple because the fans wanted it should absolutely be doing better. Like, way better.

Not to continually gush about OFMD in my RWBY asks, but even more than getting one queer kiss from a Disney cartoon, shows like OFMD emphasize, for me, how much better RWBY could be doing. Here's a nonbinary character! Here's a gay character! Here's another gay character! They're having unambiguous sex in this episode! They might be poly based on how they respond to a particular conversation! Even if they're not they're super chill about expressing their sexuality in various ways! Here's a repressed queer chihuahua man who will theoretically work through the homophobia he's internalized due to toxic masculinity! Here's another gay man who didn't realize he was gay until the end of the season! Here's a fourth gay man! They kiss!! Even though we only get ten episodes at 20-30 minutes each!

Meanwhile, RWBY is like... what if we wrote eight years of content... and the first kinda queer character is a background dude who's maybe gay... and the next was going to be an actual gay guy except we decided not to do that because he dies as soon as he's introduced... and then the lesbian is an obsessive radical out to murder her crush's parents and then disappears from the story after a two-second redemption... and there's a very cute queer couple who hold hands, but they're minor characters who are only around for half a season... and there's a bunch of intense queer coding for these two dudes (one of whom is a fan fave), but it's totally not our fault because the animators made them wink and flirt without our consent... and then one dies in a horrific fashion, but you can't call it bury your gays because they were never gay haha gotcha... and the main ship that's helping to keep this webseries afloat gets to—wait for it—blush and sometimes, SOMETIMES, touch their foreheads together, but they're not together-together yet, just wait for it! Hm? What do you mean we confirmed two main straight couples already? 😗

Meanwhile me, having just watched a ship full of queer pirates live their best lives while the story still makes time for numerous unrelated plots:

I know I often give RWBY the benefit of the doubt because I do believe strongly that almost any story can turn itself around — not fix what came before, but still improve going forward — but I do really believe that the beginning of Volume Nine will have a huge impact on how Blake/Yang is received by the fanbase for the rest of the story's run. If we get a kiss (or some other kind of confirmation), then I believe that the majority of viewers will be lenient in regards to the arc overall. People will forget how long these Volumes felt in real-time, more and more fans who come into the community will get to binge RWBY and never having to wait on that confirmation, plenty of posts will pop up reassuring others that it had to happen this way because this was the right time for them to get together, it's more proof of RT's amazing storytelling... and basically most non-RWDE folks will be pleased. Which is good!

However, if we miss out on a confirmation the concept of, "It just needs to be the right time" looses its persuasive power and we'll be left asking when the hell we can expect to see them get together if it's not after a post-assumed death reunion. The very end of the story, perhaps? Honestly, I can easily see RT crafting a scenario in which the emotional punch of the void is lost before Blake and Yang ever find each other again. Blake could wake up and immediately go, "Oh, well I haven't died. Therefore Yang shouldn't be dead either. I'm no longer freaking out about this!" and Yang might be worried about her teammates, but she never saw them "die" like they did with her, likewise creating a, "I'm sure everything will be fine," reaction. Toss in the amount of time it might take for them to reach one another on the island (time to cool down, not do anything impulsive based on high emotions) and the fact that RWBY is really bad at emotional followups to begin with (Weiss and Winter don't need to resolve their differences, Jacques is killed off by Ironwood, Qrow doesn't care about killing him anymore, Ruby barely reacts to Yang falling, etc.) and I can EASILY picture a reunion where it's just another forehead touch like after the whale separation. You know, despite the fact that the fandom will be screaming about you thought Yang was dead, Blake, how is this not the perfect time to admit your feelings?

Not to reduce a show to its shipping, but Blake/Yang is such a huge part of the RWBY community that if RT fucks that up even more, it may well tank the show's popularity in a way the bad writing hasn't managed to. We might get a kiss in Volume 9. More likely we might get it at the very end of the run. Worst case scenario is if something happens and RWBY doesn't finish, or — heaven forbid — they bow out of making the relationship canonical at all, and we're left with, at best, some panel announcement where they reassure everyone that of course they're in love... we just didn't get the chance to show you that for whatever nonsense reason PR has helped us come up with. Not having gotten anything by now isn't good, but not getting anything by mid Volume 9 will be even worse imo. It's a now or never kind of deal.

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

The unplanned fourth part to my apparently-a-series on Essek Thelyss in the context of real-world espionage (parts 1, 2, and 3), today we look at an aspect of his story that doesn’t always apply in a D&D world: how do you prosecute espionage? 

Psych! That’s not the real question. The real question is: do you prosecute espionage? The answer is a) not as obvious as it might seem; and b) going to differ between D&D and the real world, because D&D governments are storytelling tools and IRL governments are...not.

The benefits of prosecuting espionage are obvious: the interests of justice are served, the person responsible can be punished appropriately and in accordance with the law, the full extent of their crimes are revealed (including potentially exonerating other suspects), counterintelligence gets to chalk up a win, and other people thinking about committing espionage themselves are hopefully discouraged. But there are a surprising number of arguments in the “against” column.

Some agencies that identify enemy assets want to leave them in place for their own purposes. For about 20 years during the Cold War CIA reserved the right to just plain not tell the Department of Justice if they had proof someone was engaged in espionage because they wanted the opportunity to turn them as double agents, feed them misinformation, etc. rather than outing and punishing them (President Gerald Ford ended this arrangement by executive order in 1976). This isn’t necessarily a good idea IRL, but it forms the bread and butter of RPG espionage storylines and is definitely something to think about in a D&D context.

In the real world, ideally someone can only be found guilty of a crime and punished accordingly after a trial, and an agency often finds itself with sufficient evidence to doubt a person’s trustworthiness but not enough hard proof to take to court. In those cases agencies may decide to leave that person in place but cut off their access to classified info. Ironically, sometimes this means promoting them - moving the person into a higher-ranking job in a different area that just so happens not to deal in secrets. Sometimes the asset realizes they’re close to being rumbled and goes along with the effort, maybe taking retirement early or changing jobs before they can be pushed, and the whole matter will quietly lapse without anything so formal as a trial. Sometimes someone makes a mistake and sidelines a loyal, competent employee. That’s a judgement call.

In the real world, ideally someone can only be found guilty of a crime and punished accordingly after an open trial. Given how severe the punishments are for espionage, civilized countries do try to stick to that even though holding such a trial carries risks. Providing proof that someone stole secrets generally requires talking about said secrets, which means revealing classified info in court, which may negate trying to keep the information secret in the first place. They may also not want to reveal in court how they figured out that person was a spy, especially if it was a double agent or cryptographic source that fingered them. In D&D-land where monarchs are common and still wield judicial power, fantasy rulers may hand down whatever punishment they please based on whatever evidence they (or the DM) will accept, so this isn’t as much of a concern.

Even a D&D monarchy that doesn’t have to worry about revealing secrets in court might think twice before publicly punishing a high-ranking spy, though, because the only thing more embarrassing than failing to convict a major spy is succeeding. A government having to admit that its people were compromised, especially high-ranking people, is a body-blow to its standing both at home and abroad. It damages trust in the government, makes the public feel unsafe, and makes allies hesitant to share information lest their secrets be leaked as well. Lower-ranking government employees may think, “My boss is selling secrets, why not me too?” or “Why bother to follow security protocol when some mole will give it all away?” Every decision and contribution made by the asset becomes retroactively suspect, even those that had nothing to do with whatever secrets they leaked. The foreign nation to whom they passed information inevitably gets drawn in as well, negatively affecting those relations. And of course everyone involved looks very, very bad.

All of which leads me to say I think there’s a chance - maybe not a good chance, but a chance - that Essek could privately confess the affair to the Bright Queen without major public repercussions. Leylas Kryn could simply declare him a traitor and order his public execution without justifying herself, but it would raise a lot of questions and none of the answers would help her or the ruling dens; Den Thelyss allowing Den Kryn to unilaterally execute a high-profile member - a child of the umavi - without explanation would stoke ferocious rumors about what Essek might have done and cast a major shadow over the entire den. But publicly declaring what Essek had done also doesn’t do the Dynasty any favors. It makes everyone involved look very bad - how could they miss a spy at the highest level? so close to the Bright Queen herself?? who can be trusted??? - especially Den Thelyss, which might lose its place among the ruling three as a result. Publicly outing such a high-ranking Kryn official as compromised might set off the Dynasty equivalent of a Red Scare, too, since the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount mentions the constant and well-justified Dynasty fear of agents sent by Lolth to destabilize the Kryn out of sheer spite that they got away from her.

By the time Campaign 2 ended the latest clash between Empire and Dynasty had been settled and neither side seemed to want to stir it up again right away. The fact that both stolen beacons have been returned also bolsters the case for letting the matter lie. A confession from Essek clears up remaining doubt on the Bright Queen’s end - while he doesn’t know every Empire agent in the Dynasty, he can tell her exactly how the beacons were stolen and who else was involved, probably clearing the names of many currently under suspicion. Essek would have to resign as Shadowhand, of course, and leave the Dynasty (at least for a couple centuries), but he never seemed interested in being Shadowhand and he wants to go exploring anyway. Den Thelyss definitely wants the whole affair swept under the rug and would go along with whatever story made that happen. Other than Verin I don’t get the impression many people would miss Essek except as a lost opportunity. I hope they’d give him long enough before leaving Rosohna to pack up his cool leyline-weathervane though. He could totally mount that on Yussa’s tower. Or Allura’s!

And that concludes this particular train of thought re: Essek Thelyss in the context of IRL spies and espionage. Again, all of this is only as relevant to the campaign as the players decide it is, so don’t go giving people crap for being “unrealistic” about their versions of how the beacon trade went down. Frankly the last thing you should want here is realism, because “realistic” espionage is a callous world of deception, manipulation, and general human pettiness with no sense of narrative flow.

None of what I’ve talked about is an excuse for Essek’s actions. But it is a reason. It’s why and how a person entrusted with precious national assets could get into a headspace where it seems reasonable, even necessary, to trade them away to foreign enemies. It’s how a person of otherwise decent character & beliefs can end up committing terrible crimes. It’s why that person might sincerely regret what they’ve done, and not just because they fear punishment. The Warmind Rasputin paraphrases Octavia E. Butler saying, “Misdirected by accident or intent, intelligence can foster its own ecstasies of growth and decay.” In other words: sometimes you get too far into your own head. Without an anchor to reality, without perspective, your own mind gets twisted up. Sometimes you just need a friend (or seven) to grab your arm and say, “Breathe.”

(This accidentally turned into a series on Essek & IRL espionage: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4)

[bleachbleachbleach]

Do you ever stop and think "Mayuri has a (singular) really really long nail"?

lmao half this post was written before that Szayel ask and half was written after, so apologies is there’s any repetition or disjuncture across the two!!!

I'll be honest, anon, I often forget this detail! In the same way that I often forget that I have a giant full-color picture of Sunflower Mayuri set as one of my other desktop images, right up until I hit a rogue keyboard shortcut and am suddenly transported into his midst:

He's been lurking there for a full year and I am always taken by complete surprise.

I was actually poking around these chapters the other day, and I think what honestly I DO stop and think about is Mayuri's moral compass? Like, the fact that it exists. And I don't mean this in a "he acts like a sick freak but secretly he really cares" kind of way, or even a "he revels in his being a sick freak and doesn't realize he cares until he does" kind of way. The definition of "moral compass" here is absolutely a Mayuri Original Definition. He's totally invested in his various experiments to satiate his own personal agendas, but he actually does more "for the sake of Soul Society" than possibly anyone else, and... does a pretty good job of it? I imagine Soul Society would be less inclined to handwave whatever other shit he's got going on if he weren't, but my point is a weird amount of his time is honestly spent on things that benefit others, offer protection, etc. And again: Mayuri. Not a secret cinnamon roll. But he also can't be flatly read.

He's one of the few captains who seems willing to go toe-to-toe with Yamamoto about some of Yamamoto's leadership decisions--notably because he thought Yamamoto's Quincy genocide wasn't genocidal enough, er, but he also later insinuates that he disagrees with Yamamoto's conception of honor/patriotism--that the Gotei 13 serve 'til death, and that if you can't, then you should kill yourself. (Makes sense, given that Urahara drags him out of the Den of Maggots, so Mayuri's seen the fruits of this particular domestic policy first-hand.) He and Yamamoto are both dudes with often shitty opinions, but I think it makes them both more interesting that they are different shitty opinions.

I don't think his disagreement on that count is purely out of self-preservation/valuing self over others, either. Weirdly enough, I think he actually likes Soul Society and its observable phenomena (e.g. his colleagues), as long as it's not touching or interfering with whatever else he's got going on. He probably could have just killed dead Kensei/dead Rose/Matsumoto (and Hitsugaya, too), and that would have been a lot easier, but he went through the trouble of incapacitating/podding them. I mean, the man reads the SC cover to cover for fun. Sure, that's data, but let's be real--70% of those articles have got to be pure drivel.

And also like--I find Mayuri's fight with zombie!Hitsugaya extremely upsetting. I do not enjoy it at all. It feels horrible. But Mayuri doesn't even seem to enjoy it either? In the lead-up to it, he makes like three separate references to his own kind heart that are definitely not to be taken at face value, and talks a lot about the thrill of victims writhing against you, and how pleased he is to be able to test a bunch of new drugs on Hitsugaya, but then you get this face:

And it's not like he particularly likes Hitsugaya. (In fact, for reasons unknown, in the Bount arc Mayuri very specifically singles Hitsugaya out to be someone he Does Not Like! I imagine that as the Gotei 13 interacts with each other more often post-ryoka/Aizen, Hitsugaya is just more annoying to him. "Yes, we re-grew Hinamori's organs. Of course we did a good job! Get out of here, stop helicopter-captaining, ffs go micromanage your own division--")

I'm not saying that face is indicative of compassion. But he's not having all the fun he said he was going to.

I enjoy that a character like Mayuri can be humanized--here meaning “made complex” I guess--without that act suggesting that it should be attended with an assumption of goodness, or mercy, or redemption.

--------------------------------------------------------

@ippoddity here, jumping onto this post~

I too, have Sunflower Mayuri as my desktop background (but my desktop is much more cluttered than @whipplefilter’s, so I won’t be showing a picture of it).

I didn’t really give much thought to Mayuri’s long fingernail either, except to think “Boy, that’s kind weird, but this guy’s whole vibe is creepy so it fits.” But then you got me to thinking about it more, and I started doing some digging. My first thought was “maybe this long fingernail is like the one that all those old Asian men have??” But it turns out that’s usually the pinky nail. Mayuri’s long fingernail is the middle finger of his right hand, and from what I can tell after looking at hundreds of panels of him, is that this is consistent throughout the series (someone please correct me if I’m wrong). I think you can see his nails pretty well in these shots:

What’s really standing out to me here isn’t just his long nail, but the fact that all his others are so short?? My initial impression was just that he had painted his nails half black/half white (kinda going along with his face), but on close-up here, it seems like his nails are actually cut really short. That just seems incredibly painful to me, and the only people I know that have nails this short are habitual nail-biters. So maybe he’s a nail biter? Which leads me to wonder why he leaves that middle nail on his right hand so long…

This is just a speculation, but you know those reset buttons on certain electronics that can only be reached with a needle or unfolded paperclip? I feel like a lot of older electronics were like this. ANYWAY, given all the modifications that Mayuri has given himself, I think this long nail is probably his version of a reset button tool. There’s no way he doesn’t have one somewhere on him, which he needs to hit for a hard reset when he messes something up. It’s gotta be a long and thin tool that can hit a reset button, and a fingernail is the perfect choice! It’s easily accessible, in fact, it’s already on his hand!

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Mayuri canonically takes off his makeup every night and reapplies it every day. We know that underneath it all, he’s a (somewhat) normal looking shinigami. And it seems like it would be kinda inconvenient to have that long nail all the time… So I think it might also be a stick-on nail??

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets

A couple days back, I wrote up my best understanding of what happened with /r/wallstreetbets and meme stocks like Gamestop, trying to show how all the different, seemingly contradictory takes on the underlying financial stuff could all be true.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/28/payment-for-order-flow/#wallstreetbets

In the days since, a new series of contradictory takes has emerged, these ones disputing the meaning of this bizarre financial spectacle, and likewise what response, if any is warranted as it unfurls.

I think that all of these takes can also be true, and as with the trading itself, reconciling them requires that we widen the frame.

Let's start with Jimmy Carter.

In 1978, Carter's IRS created the 401(k), a tax-sheltered account for people who wanted to gamble on stocks to fund their retirement.

That was a fringe proposition at best.

The normal retirement system was a "defined benefits" pension where your employer guaranteed you a certain monthly percentage of your salary from retirement to death.

The vast majority of Americans wisely prefered a guaranteed payout to a tax-advantaged gambling account.

Obviously, right? On the one hand, you have the guarantee of a pension (maybe even inflation-indexed); on the other, you have a bunch of bets, that, if they go wrong, leave you literally homeless and starving.

When gamblers remortgage the family home and cash in the kids' college funds to play the tables, we consider them to have a mental illness, a pathological condition that harms them and the people around them.

Giving up a defined benefits pension in favor of a 401k is just the same kind of bet - staking all the money that will support you when you exit the workforce on the movement of stocks and bonds.

Who would do that voluntarily?

Pretty much no one. But the transition from defined benefits to 401k was not voluntary. Finance ghouls like Ethan Lipsig wrote memos to major employers like Hughes Aircraft showing them how they could ditch their pension obligations by moving workers to 401ks.

In the 80s, Reagan created a bunch of legal tools that allowed employers to coerce their workforces into giving up the security of a pension and force them into gambling their salaries on the prayer of a win in the markets.

This was insanely, amazingly great for the finance sector, in three ways:

1. It made companies more profitable. Guaranteeing that the workers whose labor made your company viable wouldn't spend their dotage starving and homeless is expensive.

Helping fund wagers on shares is much cheaper. The finance sector represented the major shareholders of the companies that transitioned to 401ks. The savings were transferred to these shareholders and the finance sector got commissions.

What's more, this temporary inflation of share prices disguised what was going on with the pension switcheroo: workers' defined benefits pensions were liquidated and turned into stocks, just as stocks were going up because their pensions had been liquidated!

Their legs had been amputated out from under them, but so subtly that they didn't yet feel the pain - and now their bosses cooked their legs and snuck them into their dinner, and everyone marveled at how full they felt after that hearty, meaty meal.

2. 401ks brought a lot of suckers to the table. The market was - and is - dominated by "sophisticated investors," AKA predators, who knew all the ways to fleece the rubes who had no idea how any of this worked.

The predatory nature of finance only increased over time. Hedge funds, for example, exist to find unethical practices that are legal (thanks to loopholes in the rules) and exploit them until they are illegal.

3. 401ks created a political force outside the finance sector that would lobby on its behalf. Transforming America into a nation of stockholders meant that workers had to choose between supporting rules that protected their jobs and rules that protected their retirement.

For your pension account to grow, you had to support policies that permitted finance ghouls to offshore your job, or misclassify you as a contractor, or eliminate the safety rules that prevented you from being maimed, or take away your right to sue for compensation.

Every time there's a particularly ghastly bankruptcy driven by PE or hedge funds - Toys R Us, Sears, etc - it emerges that at least some of that money is coming out of a union pension fund.

That's marketization - turning the once obscure, boring business of market-based capital allocation into a matter of import to everyday people.

Marketization begat financialization.

While marketization is primarily about capital allocation (who gets what money), financialization is about bets. Sometimes those bets are about things - businesses, houses, coal and timber - but things are limited. Mostly the financial market consists of bets on other bets.

Bets are infinite. Every time you make a bet, you create inventory for a market in a bet on the outcome of your bet. And that's inventory for a new market: bets on the outcomes of bets on the outcomes of bets.

It's called Wall Street Bets for a reason.

Bets need referees, someone who decides who the winner is. In sports, it's a major scandal if a referee is caught wagering on one of the teams in a match. In the financial markets, it's the norm - referees that lay wagers on the outcome of the contest they're overseeing.

Let's take stock:

Workers are forced to play the casino, and if their bets fail, they spend their old ages homeless and starving;

The vast majority of casino games are wholly abstract - bets on bets on bets - and require layers of refs;

the refs are all crooked.

Every couple of years, we have a massive, systemic financial crisis, and every time that happens, the finance sector lobbies for a no-strings-attached bailout, abetted by suckers who hate the finance sector but fear starving in their old age.

We're about to be engulfed in the second-largest crisis of our lifetime - the reckoning from trillions in capital market gains propped up by the Trump administration's policy of buying all corporate debt as a covid stimulus.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/28/cyberwar-tactics/#aligned-incentives

(the largest crisis of our lifetimes is a few years off, as the climate emergency piles losses on losses, stranding tens of trillions in assets, from fossil fuels to obsolete gas-stations to literally underwater coastal real-estate to whole towns incinerated by wildfires)

That's where we're at: a crooked casino that we've trusted our futures too, a crisis on the horizon, and a bunch meme-stock "players" who have thrown the normal weirdness of the market into stark relief through a spectacular stunt.

A lot of people are angry at Robinhood, the stock-trading platform at the center of all this. Robinhood froze trading on meme stocks, and has only allowed it to come back in a useless, performative trickle that is seemingly calculated to prevent more meme-stock gamesmanship.

Is Robinhood just another crooked ref? Yes…and no. The meme stock run upset the stable cheaters' equilibrium whereby cheating never escalated to the point where the game just collapsed.

For example, the total short position on Gamestop exceeds its total stock issuance.

Translation: there were more Gamestop shares promised between bettors than exist. When the game stops, all those promises come due, and they literally can't be paid off because there aren't enough tokens in circulation to settle all the debts.

Robinhood halted trading in part because the big fish upstream of Robinhood also halted trading, because they have even more at risk than Robinhood does if the game collapses - they the refs for MANY players, all the same size as Robinhood or larger.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddit-traders-on-robinhood-are-on-both-sides-of-gamestop

But remember, the refs are cheating. And they are both downstream and upstream from other games in which the refs are also cheating.

And the games, as a whole, encompass our economy, including the solvency of the "real economy" (the people who make masks, deliver groceries and drive ambulances), and whether you spend your old age homeless and starving.

So the people who say, "Don't blame Robinhood, they didn't halt trading to help billionaires, they halted trading to prevent the game from collapsing are right."

But they're not the only ones who are right.

Also, there's the people who say that meme stocks aren't making money for little guys at the expense of the big guys. They're right too.

First, because these stocks will all need to be converted to cash, and that means selling them.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/the-gamestop-bubble-is-going-to-hurt-a-lot-of-ordinary-investors/

When the selloff starts, the price will plunge, because even if the stock was undervalued before, it's certainly overvalued now. Every bubble produces wealth for its early bettors who sell out to later players who lose everything when they can't find a sucker later on.

From Beanie Babies to subprime, bubbles burst and leave suckers holding the bag. If you just heard about meme stocks last week, you're too late to make money off of them.

There's another version of the "this isn't little guys, it's big whales" that's *also* true: the main beneficiary of the meme stock runs is giant funds who magnified and the bets from r/wallstreetbets and got out smart and fast.

https://twitter.com/zatapatique/status/1354904995901136896

So given all this, what can we make of calls (from parties as varied as AOC and Ted Cruz) to investigate Robinhood and other retail brokerages to see whether they're honest refs, or in the tank for billionaires?

At Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith calls this a "fatuous uproar," saying that the Senate has more important things to do during the racing-out-of-control pandemic than to investigate a literal penny-ante grift.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/01/the-fatuous-uproar-about-robinhood-and-gamestop.html

Do we really care who the winner is in "a beauty contest between Cinderella’s ugly sisters" ("clueless new gen day traders versus clumsy shorts")?

Smith is right too.

A speculator-v-speculator contest that falls apart when the crooked ref halts play to prevent collapse - who cares who "wins?"

But here's how they can all be right - the "who cares" and the "goliath v goliath" and the "bubble" and the "Robinhood is a plutes' honeypot."

*If* there's hearings, and *if* those hearings expose the absurdity and corruption of the system, *then* there is a chance to build the political will to make real, systemic changes when the crisis comes.

And there's a real crisis coming: two, in fact. The covid junk bond financial crisis, which is due very soon, and the climate crisis stranded asset emergencies, which will unroll with increased tempo and intensity for decades to come.

The half-century cycle of "addressing" finance crises by increasing financialization MUST stop.

If the meme stock spectacle gets us to pay attention to hearings that reveal the irredeemable rot of the system, then it's a unique chance to spread *real* "financial literacy."

And that literacy is the necessary (but insufficient) precursor to taking action when the time comes - and the time is certainly coming soon.