#this is totally how market research works

[artist-ellen]

The idea being that the bigger the bundles or physical books are more expensive. The smaller the bundle the lower the cost sort of thing. Let me know what you think, feel free to comment or tag things you’d want to see because I wanna know. This is totally how prime market research works 😅

https://linktr.ee/ellen.artistic for all the links!

[gothamundernightlight]

Random Shit the Waynes Do on Social Media

Dick:

- The white whale of D1 and Olympic gymnastics athletes; always stitches their stunts and challenges, executing them perfectly, but no one knows who he is or who trained him

- Shares pictures of random children, and the whole internet becomes a detective trying to figure out if Bruce Wayne adopted another kid or if his gymnastics students won another trophy

- Photo montages of Haley being the cutest, which slowly transitions into Haley in whatever cute hat the internet can send to Dick’s PO Box

- Random video of him skydiving while giving tips on what to do if your chute doesn’t deploy. He never deploys his chute doing the video and no one can tell if it’s a bit or not.

Jason:

- AI Voiceover text posts providing surprisingly insightful analysis into classic literature

- A full six part rant on the Broadway adaptation of “The Great Gatsy”

- Random selfies complete with wildly made up backstories of any and every new injury he has

- Prank war on Damian specifically (this was intended for Talia but his finger slipped and now the whole internet loves it)

Tim:

- Randomly goes live to do study/work/research with me sessions complete with an actually decent Lofi soundtrack that no one can find (He totally mixes it himself but won’t admit it)

- Did ONE social media vlog for WE’s marketing division and it went so viral he gets forced to do more. The dead eyed stare he gives the camera with every stupid dance the intern teaches him makes the video top-tier

- Cute couples videos with Bernard

- Skateboard tricks (and fails)

- Screenshots of text conversations between him and his siblings discussing the most random shit??

Cass:

- Dance routines/pre-show/GRWM videos

- Shakily filmed videos of her kicking Dick’s ass and everyone just calls her a baddie in the comments. She doesn’t know what that means but she appreciates the love.

- Her and Steph’s late night food runs with the two of them just belting out to a song in a dark parking lot

Steph:

- Posts riddles and puzzles and how to solve them. She’s really good at it. Riddler hates her.

- Apartment tour of all the purple shit she owns. She’ll never admit that the room she’s showing off is her Wayne Manor bedroom, so everyone believes she just has a moderately sized loft apartment somewhere and she just never shows the kitchenette

- Her and Cass’s late night food runs with the two of them just belting out to a song in a dark parking lot

- POV shots of her going up to the boys asking them random questions. Dick matches her energy. Jason tells her to fuck off. Tim is barely conscious. Damian always has an overly rational answer to take the fun out of it. Duke just stares blankly at her (he always comes back later with a proper answer now that he’s had time to think about it). Bruce just stares blankly at her

Damian:

- Art reveals that never get many views but he’s still proud of nonetheless. Dick always comments on them to hype him up

- Accidentally recreates a popular vine that went viral and it’s just him insulting fellow GA kids under his breath but one of them says hi to him and he’s instantly polite back. His most popular video

- The multi-part experiment of him trying to Pavlov Tim, and when it actually works, Tim just chases Damian around the manor. The video cuts to black frames after Tim takes a flying launch at him

- All the pet videos. There are so many. People try to cancel him for exploiting them, but Damian clearly demonstrates that he would never force his animals to participate for views and how they will just leave if they don’t want to do something. Batcow is in the background just two-stepping unprompted

Duke:

- Every morning without fail, he posts a daily sunrise pic of Gotham, with a positive affirmation caption. One day he’s sick and he wakes up to a thousand messages of people panicking because their favorite poster has disappeared. He never misses a sunrise again

- Passionate rants about local government. Will not shut up about it. He might be an anarchist, but he’s forever remain optimistic that one day the systems that define society will one day actually work for all people. Bruce has every single one saved so he can implement Duke’s ideas into reality

- Boxing videos of him training with Luke. It’s never meant to be a thirst trap…but sometimes it is

- Dumb selfies. Duke unironically loves taking them, no matter what face he pulls, what filter he uses, not even caring where he is. This gets him in trouble the one time he posts one of him leaning off the edge of a high rise roof

Babs:

- Constant lectures on cybersecurity and internet safety. She teaches this at the library as a volunteer but feels she can reach a lot of people by building a platform

- Computer build stuff. Brands reach out to her for her reviews and she thoroughly discusses each product in length

- Rarely posts about her disability, but absolutely tears people to shreds when they make ableist comments about her. The only time she brings it up first is when City Hall takes over a month to fix their elevator and she calls them out on it

Harper:

- Electronics repairs. She constantly takes things apart to teach people how to fix it, and this can range from toys to cars. On more than one occasion , her video has been interrupted by someone who planned to be using the vehicle she’s just taken apart

- 2 AM hair dye/maintenance sessions. She constantly gets comments from men being like “Therapy works too, y’know” or “No, you’re so beautiful? Why would you do that to yourself.” She responds to the comments with a video of a gun pointed at the camera with the sole caption being “Fuck Off.”

- Gym videos. She and Dick work out together and he’s the ultimate hype man

- Outfit montages of her getting ready for a random gala and she’s always pulling off the most masc-looking suits that look gorgeous on her

Helena:

- Target practice. She does all kinds of trick shots and crazy crossbow stunts in a wide variety of outfits. Her most popular video is of her in a corset and platform heels.

- Her and Steph bonding over all things purple

- Outfit of the Day posts. The girl has expensive tastes and she absolutely shows it off.

Bruce:

- Occasionally does promo stuff for WE (because Tim refuses to do all of it, and their social media intern won’t back down)

- Shares absolutely wild stories from his college years that somehow always get proven to be true even when the whole comments section is just like “this seems false???”

- Kid tour. He saw one mom do it and felt sad bc he’s never get the kids to agree, but somehow they all did (Alfred bribed them.)

- Shares everything from each one of the charities he’s involved with. Has reposted every single one of their posts on his own personal channel. It raises them hundreds of followers each time.

- One of the kids posted a video montage of Bruce being Brucie and it’s so utterly humiliating? But he won’t delete it because all of the comments say he’s their favorite billionaire and that’s more than his own kids will say.

- Random Pride Month post. Every year it catches people by surprise and every gossip magazine always wonders if Bruce is coming out. He’s just being an ally (and potentially is in denial).

Alfred:

- Prefers not to use social media, but one of the boys filmed him doing random things to teach the internet how to do things properly, like making the bed, doing laundry, etc. Is the internet’s favorite grandpa.

[acti-veg]

Leather vs. Pleather: 8 Myths Debunked

Since we are all beyond tired of seeing the same regurgitated leather posts every day, I've compiled and briefly debunked some of the most common myths peddled about leather and pleather… So hopefully we can all move on to talk about literally anything else.

1) Leather is not sustainable.

Approximately 85% of all leather (almost all leather you'll find in stores) is tanned using chromium. During the chrome tanning process, 40% of unused chromium salts are discharged in the final effluents, which makes it's way into waterways and poses a serious threat to wildlife and humans. There are also significant GHG emissions from the sheer amount of energy required to produce and tan leather.

Before we even get the cow's hide, you first need to get them to slaughter weight, which is a hugely resource-intensive process. Livestock accounts for 80% of all agricultural land use, and grazing land for cattle likely represents the majority of that figure. To produce 1 pound of beef (and the subsequent hide), 6-8 pounds of feed are required. An estimated 86% of the grain used to feed cattle is unfit for human consumption, but 14% alone represents enough food to feed millions of people. On top of that, one-third of the global water footprint of animal production is related to cattle alone. The leather industry uses greenwashing to promote leather as an eco-friendly material. Leather is often marketed as an eco-friendly product, for example, fashion brands often use the Leather Working Group (LWG) certificate to present their leather as sustainable. However, this certification (rather conveniently) does not include farm-level impacts, which constitute the majority of the negative environmental harm caused by leather.

2) Leather is not just a byproduct.

Some cows are raised speciifically for leather, but this a minority and usually represents the most expensive forms of leather. This does not mean that leather is just a waste product of beef and dairy, or that it is a completely incidental byproduct; it is more accurate to call leather a tertiary product of the beef and dairy industries. Hides used to fetch up to 50% of the total value of the carcass, this has dropped significantly since COVID-19 to only about 5-10%, but this is recovering, and still represents a significant profit margin. Globally, leather accounts for up to 26% of major slaughterhouses’ earnings. Leather is inextricably linked to the production of beef and dairy, and buying leather helps make the breeding, exploitation and slaughter of cows and steers a profitable enterprise.

3) Leather is not as biodegradable as you think.

Natural animal hides are biodegradable, and this is often the misleading way leather that sellers word it. "Cow hide is fully biodegradable" is absolutely true, it just purposely leaves out the fact that the tanning process means that the hide means that leather takes between 25 and 40 years to break down. Even the much-touted (despite it being a tiny portion of the market) vegetable-tanned leather is not readily biodegradable. Since leather is not recyclable either, most ends up incinerated, or at landfill. The end-of-life cycle and how it relates to sustainability is often massively overstated by leather sellers, when in fact, it is in the production process that most of the damage is done.

4) Leather is not humane.

The idea that leather represents some sort of morally neutral alternative to the evils of plastic is frankly laughable, at least to anyone who has done even a little bit of research into this exploitative and incredibly harmful industry. Cows, when properly cared for, can live more than fifteen years. However, most cows are usually slaughtered somewhere around 2-3 years old, and the softest leather, most luxurious leather comes from the hide of cows who are less than a year old. Some cows are not even born before they become victim to the industry. Estimates vary, but according to an EFSA report, on average 3% of dairy cows and 1.5 % of beef cattle, are in their third-trimester of pregnancy when they are slaughtered.

Slaughter procedures vary slightly by country, but a captive bolt pistol shot to the head followed by having their throats slit, while still alive, is standard industry practice. This represents the “best” a slaughtered cow can hope for, but many reports and videos exist that suggest that cows still being alive and conscious while being skinned or dismembered on the production line is not uncommon, some of these reports come from slaughterhouse workers themselves.

5) Leather often involves human exploitation.

The chemicals used to tan leather, and the toxic water that is a byproduct of tanning, affect workers as well as the environment; illness and death due to toxic tanning chemicals is extremely common. Workers across the sector have significantly higher morbidity, largely due to respiratory diseases linked to the chemicals used in the tanning process. Exposure to chromium (for workers and local communities), pentachlorophenol and other toxic pollutants increase the risk of dermatitis, ulcer nasal septum perforation and lung cancer.

Open Democracies report for the Child Labour Action Research Programme shows that there is a startlingly high prevalence of the worst forms of child labour across the entire leather supply chain. Children as young as seven have been found in thousands of small businesses processing leather. This problem is endemic throughout multiple countries supplying the global leather market.

6) Pleather is not a ‘vegan thing’.

Plastic clothing is ubiquitous in fast fashion, and it certainly wasn’t invented for vegans. Plastic leather jackets have been around since before anyone even knew what the word vegan meant, marketing department have begun describing it as ‘vegan leather’ but it’s really no more a vegan thing than polyester is. Most people who wear pleather are not vegan, they just can’t afford to buy cow’s leather, which remains extremely expensive compared to comparable fabrics.

It is striking how anti-vegans consistently talk about how ‘not everyone can afford to eat plant-based’ and criticise vegans for advocating for veganism on that basis, yet none of them seem to mind criticisms directed at people for wearing a far cheaper alternative than leather. You can obviously both be vegan and reduce plastic (as we all should), but vegans wear plastic clothing for the same reason everyone else does: It is cheaper.

7) Plastic is not the only alternative.

When engaging in criticism of pleather, the favourite tactic seems to be drawing a false dilemma where we pretend the only options are plastic and leather. Of course, this is a transparent attempt to draw the debate on lines favourable to advocates of leather, by omitting the fact that you can quite easily just buy neither one.

Alternatives include denim, hemp, cork, fiber, mushroom fiber, cotton, linen, bamboo, recycled plastic, and pinatex, to name a few. There are exceptions in professions like welding, where an alternative can be difficult to source, but nobody needs a jacket, shoes or a bag that looks like leather. For most of us, leather is a luxury item that doesn’t even need to be replaced at all.

8) Leather is not uniquely long-lasting.

The longevity of leather is really the only thing it has going for it, environmentally speaking. Replacing an item less often means fewer purchases, and will likely have a lower environmental impact than one you have to replace regularly. Leather is not unique in this respect, however, and the idea that it is, is mostly just effective marketing.

As your parents will tell you, a well-made denim jacket can last a lifetime. Hemp and bamboo can both last for decades, as can cork and pinatex. Even cotton and linen can last for many years when items are looked after well. While some materials are more hard wearing than others, how long an item will last is mostly the result of how well made the product is and how well it is maintained, not whether or not the item is leather.

[so-i-did-this-thing]

Hello! I hope you're doing well and I'd like to thank you for being the rad trans uncle of Tumblr. I'm in a fuckin' crimson state that's quite unfriendly to trans people and I'm afraid I won't be able to leave until 2028 at the earliest. Might I ask if there's anything you'd recommend doing? Anywho, I hope the leaves were great where you are! Peace!

It's been weird, but I'm glad to be here. :) As for recommendations, well, while you are not in a great place for trans rights, thinking ahead towards a move a few years down the road *is* good. Stuff you should be considering:

Get your finances in order.

Start with making a budget (I like the tool YNAB), tracking your habits, and looking for places to reduce spending. I know that can mean squeezing blood from a stone, but even saving up gas money for a cross-country trip can move up your moving timeline.

You also want to start planning your moving expenses. For example, buying boxes, using a moving service, cost to service your car, calming meds for your pets, etc. Just make a spreadsheet and keep adding as you think of things. Have a rolling total and track against your savings.

Lastly, get your credit score in order. A free service like Credit Karma is fine, but as you get closer to having to apply for rent or a mortgage, sign up with each credit agency and pull your report. Get caught up on any delinquencies asap and do not miss any payments from now until you are moved - missed payments take the longest of ANYTHING to fall off your score.

If you've changed your legal name, make sure it matches with all the credit bureaus. If you feel responsible with credit, ask for a credit line increase every 6 months - that will help with your debt ratio if you are currently trying to pay down a balance. Plan a credit score timeline with a hard stop at least 2 months before you apply for a loan/rent -- after that, no more making any big purchases or applying for new cards. Try to have no more of 10% of your total credit line actually on your cards by the end of your timeline. Aka, if your line of credit is $1,000, you only want $100 on the cards.

2. Start paring down your stuff

Gt crafty hobbies? Stop adding to your stash. Stop it. Start getting rid of broken things, clothes that don't fit, stuff you don't see yourself using, or stuff that is cheaper to sell & buy at your new place, rather than pay to move. If this all feels hard, put the items you're questioning in a box now, and then open it next year and see how you feel. Don't buy anything you wouldn't want to move.

3. Start your research

Make lists of towns that look promising. See how their local government works. Check the local reddits and facebook groups to get the vibes. Make lists of "must haves" and "nice to haves" at the state, city, neighborhood, and even house level. Get an idea for what the cost of living will be in your new place. Decide what your deal-breakers will be.

4. Work on your job skills

Four years is a lot of time to improve yourself for a good salary hike. It's a lot of time to get marketable for remote jobs, which will broaden your opportunities to live where you want. If remote work interests you, start looking at job listings and note the requirements. Make a plan to be qualified within 3 years.

5. Make a bucket list of things to do in your current state

There must be some good things about your state. There were in mine. Afford yourself grace and do some fun things that you might not have the chance to do again when you move. Hang out especially with local friends and family you care about.

6. Keep an eye on what's happening wrt trans rights.

Follow trans pundits and your local trans rights orgs. Get in the habit of learning what's going down in your municipality, down to the school board level. Be prepared to have to adjust your moving timeline if shit hits the fan.

7. Stay on top of your healthcare and legal stuff

No passport yet? Apply now. Forgetful about getting your HRT renewed? Set reminders and work hard to stay on top of everything. As you get closer to moving, research healthcare options in your new home and get appointments lined up asap.

8. If you're selling & buying a house, be prepared for it to take nearly a year

Seriously, it can take forever for everything to work out. Work with realtors in your new state who specialize in remote sales & relocations. Start repairing your current place by year 3 and start packing months in advance of the final move.

tldr; Treat the next 4 years like you're at college and your degree is Getting the Hell Outta Dodge. Plan as much as you can with to-do lists and spreadsheets, with some kind of monthly goal at first, then weekly and daily goals as your move approaches. It can feel overwhelming, but knowing *now* that you are going to move means you can plan as much as possible and reduce the amount of panic-decisions.

Good luck!

[madschiavelique]

What are your Miguel sleep headcanons? Like, what kind of bed he likes, what position he sleeps in, etc

I personally think he's a cuddler and a blanket hog

EXCELLENT QUESTION BESTIE (again, sorry i took SO long)

headcanon : Miguel's sleep content warnings : none word count : 723 (shorty)

I think Miguel would be the kind of guy to have a hard mattress bordering on slightly soft, the reason not particularly being by choice, but rather because it was the first one he could get his hands onto – and we know how this man self neglects enough to not care about his sleep, he’d rather have coffee running in his veins to keep him awake 24/7. 

His mattress is old, it literally looks like it’s been there since they started building the Sagrada Familia (an eternity), but Miguel doesn’t really have much time to lose on looking for a decent mattress. Plus, when you’re that tall, finding a proper mattress on which you’re such your feet won’t let your feet stick out is no mean feat. 

However, if this mattress were to cause him more harm than good, Lyla - following her examination of his vital signs - would suggest that Miguel find a better mattress. 

“What’s wrong with my current one ? It’s perfectly fine.”

“Miguel everytime you wake up you look worse than you did before you went to sleep.”

“And ?”

“That’s not how this works.”

It would have taken time to convince him that this could affect and degrade his performance both on the field and in the society. He finally gave in, and Lyla took charge of finding an excellent mattress that would remain dense enough so that Miguel wouldn't feel like he was drowning in it as his back sank into it, but soft enough so that the sensation wouldn't be similar to that of lying on concrete. 

As for the pillows, he only has one (so as not to get in the way of his sleep). A big, hard pillow, one that keeps the mark of the fist if you hit it.

I think Miguel could sleep like a brick if there was enough willpower for it, just straight with his arms crossed over his chest as if he were in a coffin - which wouldn't stray too far from reality with his vampiric state when you think about it.

But other than that i can totally picture Miguel to be a tummy sleeper, mostly because when he gets home all exhausted he just falls on his bed and stays this way until sleep takes him a few seconds later. I just picture him placing his arms around his pillow, placing his head to the side on it and falling asleep on his tummy, maybe with a bent knee (would be a lovely ass view if you ask me).

However it probably changes if he has a partner.

You having any issue with how his mattress feels ? He’d have Lyla running a market research or anything to find a better one immediately. He’d get another pillow, one you’d have chosen to fit your own taste.

I COMPLETELY agree on the cuddler and blanket hog part. First of all, as i said earlier when i explained he grabs his pillow when he sleeps, i think he’d TOTALLY fall asleep on your belly, his hands on your waist. Like i can totally picture you in your bed, Miguel coming home from a long day, and he just climbs on bed to drop himself like the sac of limbs he is on your body, grunting softly when your fingers snake in his hair in the way you know his shoulder will relax.

He is the big spoon fr (if you’re interested in how Miguel being the little spoon -> look here hihi), and loves to just nuzzle his face in your hair or neck, your smell and warmth bringing him lots of comfort and creating his actual restorative sleep.

He loves to lace his arm around you, pulling you closer to him, and maybe even having his hand coming to your throat and placing his fingers on your pulse point. The feeling of it being even soothes him, the knowledge of having you safe against him brushing away all of his worries. But there has been several nights where he’d feel your pulse quicken under his digits, and he’d realise how you’d still be awake, very much awake…

He is a complete blanket hog, it’s probably half natural, half a wish for you to come near him and share the warmth. It’s not his fault you’re the best heating pad there is :c

[reality-detective]

ALERT! Antarctica’s Hidden Labs EXPOSED: Elite Trafficking Humans for Brutal Mind Control Experiments and Total Mass Control!

Antarctica is the epicenter of a dark global agenda, more sinister than anyone imagined. Beneath the ice lies a network of underground facilities where the world’s elites conduct mass manipulation, human trafficking, and experiments beyond comprehension. The public is misled to believe Antarctica is an untouched wilderness. But it’s a smokescreen. Access is restricted to protect secret projects, guarded not by scientists, but military forces from multiple nations working together.

These hidden labs are testing technologies meant to control human behavior on a global scale. Psychological warfare tools perfected over years are ready for use, designed to influence thoughts and emotions invisibly. But the most chilling aspect? Thousands of trafficked people, especially children, are taken to Antarctica as subjects for the elites’ disturbing experiments, with many never seen again. It’s a modern black site, where human minds and bodies are exploited to create a system of absolute control.

These brutal tests push psychological limits, using sensory deprivation, chemicals, and electromagnetic tools to break human will, creating obedient, mindless subjects. The agenda is global—methods designed to manipulate mass populations, keeping them unaware of their loss of freedom. Advanced psychotronic weapons are capable of influencing emotions, planting thoughts, and even erasing memories.

Proof of this manipulation is all around us, as the world becomes distracted, manipulated, and divided. Media, entertainment, and politics are weaponized to keep us blind to the real agenda in Antarctica.

In addition to psychological control, these facilities conduct horrific medical trials. Human subjects are used in deadly experiments with unknown pathogens, while others endure chemical exposure to test mass control or sterilization methods. Certain populations are targeted, deemed expendable, as the elites perfect techniques to reduce the global population without uprising.

Antarctica’s dark role goes deeper. It’s a hub in a global trafficking network, fueling black markets worldwide. Vulnerable people vanish, trafficked into a frozen wasteland, used as fuel for brutal experimentation and energy extraction. The elites have discovered how to harness psychic energy from extreme fear, using it to power their technology in ways unimaginable.

Shielded by the world’s most powerful governments, these Antarctic facilities operate with impunity. Whistleblowers, journalists, and researchers who get too close are silenced or worse. In 2024, the elites are moving fast. The tech is nearly perfected, the experiments refined, and the next phase of global control is about to go live. 🤔

[pincushionx]

Thinking if a version of TOH where Hunter stays loyal to Belos until the day of unity. 

(AKA me making Hunter suffer more in the hands of brainwashing and making everyone hate him.)

[sorry for any grammar mistakes I’ll edit this later.]

That Hunting Palismen was a successful mission for him, he never answered Luz’s question and was able to escape the hand dragon with his staff and the palismen. Flapjack escapes however and flys off to Luz but the rest of the palismen are handed to Belos. Flapjack feels a tug towards Hunter but can’t bond with him due to a wish never being shared between the two. Hunter is praised for his success by Belos. Luz resents the Golden Guard even more now due to the fact that now all those palismen will now be given to the emperor. She definitely feels guilty for those palismen eventual deaths.

Flapjack stays with Luz but doesn’t bond to her. He allows her to use him in his staff form but they have no real connection and can’t communicate. He more or less just lingers around the owl house and will follow her if asked. It’s an odd situation but it’s not totally unheard of and unbonded witch and palismen working together.

Eclipse lake happened but since theirs no failed missions that waver Belos any thoughts on his competence to do the mission, he’s allowed to go. He goes ahead without kikimora and the scouts, meets Amity and Eda at the fools blood where he becomes known but beats them to the empty lake. Once Amity arrives he does not having the same mental breakdown as before since their are no previous failures to trigger it but he is a bit on edge. Him and Amity exchange brief words with her being hostile due to how upset Luz was left after the palismen incident. He states that it was just part of the job and before he leaves he spots the necklace. They fight but he has the upper hand due to having his artificial staff. He demands for the blood and she gives it to him but is still able to break some on to her glove.

(I personally don’t know if Belos didn’t want to let him go to Eclipse lake because of the failures or if he didn’t want to risk his grimwalker being killed or harmed in it but for the sake of the story it’s due to thinking that Hunter was incompetent)

With the lack of Flapjack telling him to focus on other stuff, Hunter only drowns deeper into his loyalty to Belos. As a result he has no interest in appeasing the Coven heads since he realizes more that he’s technically above them. Therefore he grows no bond with Darius. And Darius only views him as Belos little dog.

Any sport in a storm does not happen. Instead Hunter spends his free time resting (only because the day of Unity is getting closer) and practicing his infiltrating and lying techniques due to the rumors of a rebellion. He goes to the library to further research. He sees a book on grimwalker when learning about these techniques but it’s only fairy tail stuff, surface level but it does say that they are made up of dead things, Hunter shrugs and continues going through the library. However grimwalkers are now in his subconscious

Hollow mind, Hunter confronts Darius, Eberwolf, and Raine like in canon and Luz interferes like canon but more out of aggression then curiosity. She doesn’t tackle him but steers his attention away giving the other three a chance to runaway. He traps her in a bubble kinda like how Lilith did and flapjack tries pecking him but he he just traps the bird in his wood form. As result he doesn’t step on the potion and recognizes the the set up as an attempt into the emperors mind. He confiscates the potion as evidence. He reports this to captains and scouts over crow phone in quick alert so they can come over and search the market. He argues with Luz for a bit before taking flapjack away much to Luz horror. I imagine in a sonewhat humiliating scene for Luz, that he transports her to Eda in the bubble in the night market in front of others to see. It has to be embarrassing for the Golden Guard to return you to your guardian who was once a wanted criminal in a bubble in front of many others to see. Resentment from Luz and her friends to the Golden guard only grows. King sees that the Golden Guard has a wooden Flapjack and is able to secretly grab the bird under his cloak, saving the palismen.

The night market is searched and the news of the attempt to infiltrate the emperors mind is let known to Belos. He proud of Hunter for not allowing such a thing to happen but also disappointed that the witches responsible were not caught. Hunter gets punished for this and is left with a scar through his eyebrow. He swears to catch them and bring them to justice to Belos. The rebellion has a new specific enemy. Belos tells him he better not fail.

Labyrinth Runners, Hunter is put with Adrian to infiltrate Hexside and stamp the students with sigils. He sets up an invisible forcefield around the school to prevent anyone from escaping. He helps with the illusion so a few student get the “fake” sigil before Gus sees and reveals the illusions. Gus sets up the large illusion that covers the school. Adrain paired with the golden guard reveal the illusion and are able to catch more students and sigil them. Gus eventually gets caught and Hunter who’s more interested and following orders then be petty has Gus be stamped before the whole, “making Gus see his memories” thing happens, it’s still happeneds but he gets stamped before hand. The fight breaks out and while the students can handle fighting scouts, when face against the Golden guard with his artificial staff and military order do they falter. Eventually everyone in Hexside gets sigils including Willow and Amity. It’s a failure for Hexside and a win for the emperors coven. Soon all the schools besides Hexside has their students be given sigils.

O titan, Where Art Thou, While not in the episode, The Golden is brought up in discussion when talking about the topic of day of unity, Belos and the draining spell. They all view him as in obstacle and the obedient brat of Belos.

Clouds on the Horizon, Luz gets the news that students have been given sigils including her friends and girlfriend. This only makes the plan to stop the drawing spell more dire as now children are involved too. They also get the news that a coven head the golden guard are to blame which only fuels the hatred. Luz meets up with her friends but the atmosphere is tense due to the fact that they have sigils now. They break amity out of her house. Luz has some help thanks to flapjack. They don’t face kikimora since Hunter is still in the emperors coven. She probably off dealing with some packages and goods since she’s been demoted. Hunter in the meantime is with the scouts capturing the finale of the wild witches and given them sigils. They all fight and leave Odalia and leave on the blimp with Alador. Luz is not taken to Belos.

Kings tide, the plan is being done. News of most of the isles being stamped including children and all wild witches make it to them and things become tense. The golden Guard walks besides Belos. Darius stares at him for a moment, looking at the person who wears the golden guard uniform but is nothing like the man who did before. Kikimora not there so that whole bit with her doesn’t happen. Belos quickly gets rid of the collector. That whole sequence with Luz never happens. Belos doesn’t get his sigil and will remain stable. Eda gets found out and the golden guard along side the coven members stop the plan. Hunter makes a snarky comment. Belos in there and simply watches, Hunter returns to his side. Belos pats Hunter on top of the head, agitating the rebellion adults more. He really is a dog. The eclipse happeneds and the spell begins.

The draing spell takes effect. Hunter collapses to his knees and looks up to Belos in utter betrayal and confusion. The rumors that the day of unity was actually a doomsday was…true? He questions Belos and Belos simply smiles at him. He bends down and pulls down Hunter mask and flicks his cowlick. He tells Hunter that he’s been a very good grimwalker and was the best he ever had. That it’s a shame he can’t take him to the human realm due to his witchy assets. He grabs Hunter face in an almost affectionate way and tells him that he wished Caleb was more like him and it’s sad that he has to die. He slips Hunters mask back on and leaves to go to the portal and Hunter is left there on his knees shaking and in shock. The kids go up the podium stand not for Luz this time but for the adults, they see them crumbled.

They also see the Golden guard. They are met with him shaking on the ground. They note on how small he looks. They stare at him for a moment. He’s the only one of the emperor coven members conscious. He looks up them “I…I did-didn’t know this would happens.” They would say something but they don’t have the time. They all weak due to the sigils and are running out of time. They go to Eda before going down to where the portal is. Hunter in moment of strength grabs his staff, gets up and teleports away into the portal room.

Just as the he other see Belos about to leave, amity grabs him with her abominations hand and pulls him away, in this rush, Belos second form appears. They fight the beast like in canon and where he thinks he gets the upper hand, Golden guard appears and blasts Belos. They are shocked by the appearance of the golden guard. Hunter may be loyal to Belos but not enough to warrant the death of everyone in the isles. In rush of the moment to keep Belos away from the portal, he teleports every one down to the ground to the golden guard pit and to the collector. He stops fighting and just stares at the out in horror and so does everyone else. The collector shadow appears.

Belos tries escaping but the others get their attention back and continue to fight. Luz and flapjack are mainly the ones fighting with the other supporting due to them being effected by the drawing spell. King is letting the collector free. In the moment if the chaos Hunter turns over and blasts Belos with the upmost power he could muster that’s practically vaporizing and splatters Belos all over the place. He hit with the ‘splash zone’ everyone just stares at him in shock.

The golden guard has killed Belos. The collector now free boos at this saying he wanted to do that. Though does congratulate him on being the first grimwalker to win against Belos in the grimwalker cycle game. All the other Grimwalkers lost except him. This reveals the Golden guard to be a grimwalker. He asks the other what game to play and the owl house game comes up but first he must stop the draining spell, the collector laughs and teleports them up and moves the eclipse. Then the game starts and in the rush of the moment once they realize what’s going to happen they escape to the portal.

Instead of Hunter going through, King is able to escape with them. Flapjack gets left behind, too distracted by Hunter. The Golden Guard simply stays in too much shock to move, the portal closes and the collector laments that fact that he just lost his playing partner, he looks at Hunter and decides that a grimwalker will do. That he never has the chance to play with a grimwalker before because Belos breaks them before he gets the chance so this should be fun. He asks Hunter how to play the owl house game.

Hunter knows nothing of the owl house

…

Possible ending. (That I Like)

Belos posses Hunter soon after he recovers inside him a bit to get to the collector. At the same time the others come in a lot sooner after thanks to King being a titan. Probably only a month or less. The whole issue gets resolved a lot sooner but now they have to fight a possessed Hunter once they reach the collector. The fight I imagine is harsher then in canon due to them not knowing g Hunter besides all the bad stuff he did and splattering Belos. In the end Belos is forcefully ripped out of Hunter by the collector, and is killed by Luz officially. Flapjack gets to live due to Hunter not drowning in this version. They simply stare at Hunter awhile as he gets up, they never seen his face before when he wasn’t possessed and now they are met with an exhausted scarred teenager, a teenager they all hated because what he did and stood for and all they can feel now was a sense of pity. Luz offers her hand, he accepts.

Eventually everyone is free from being puppets. The rebellion crew come around and they see the Golden guard. A scarred, traumatized teenager. Darius offers kindness for once, Hunter shakily accepts it.

Second possible ending

Hunter gets possessed during the final fight and Belos is rid of sooner by the collector. The ending is mainly focused on the collector now that Belos is gone. Also the fact that Hunter gets possession trauma sooner than season 3

Alternative endings.

1. King is left behind in canon and Hunter remains with him to be with the collector and they develop a bond together since they a both playmates for the collector.

2. King is left behind and the golden guard is sent off with the other. This much more messed up version of Thanks to Them. Now they have to navigate an extremely strain a hostile relationship with Hunter and the others. Hunter face gets revealed forcefully, showing that he just a tired and scarred teen who is also powerless they find out later when his staff is no longer working. Things are pretty intense. Camila of course being the bridge between them since she just see Hunter as a clearly abused teenager who’s also done wrong. (I really like this idea, I wish we saw more of the hexsquad being hostile with a Hunter they barely know.) (this gives me a dog left behind vibes)

3. No possession , Belos dies and stays dead.

Other alternative versions

1. Hunter doesn’t teleport to the portal room which results in the collector being let out a different way, many probably die due to it taking longer

2. Belos takes Hunter with him to the Human realm

3.. The rebellion decide to deal with the golden guard ahead of time so he gets kidnapped, (insert found family thing, or really intense whump) (fun idea to explore)

4. Hollow mind does happen somehow which leads to the events being similar in canon and Hunter bonding with flapjack later. (Closer to canon story )

5. Darius, Raine and Eberwolf decide to fight the Golden Guard instead of running away, (not a pretty sight )

6. The Golden guard gets defeated during labyrinth Runners, it’s revealed that he’s a powerless witch and is also a beat up teenager. (Angsty wowie) this pretty much Hunter being captured by a bunch of teenagers (many who he forcefully gave sigils to)and teacher. (This idea seems the most fun to explore to me)

7. Flapjack dies in hunting palismen cause he gets given to Belos , so no flapjack :(

8. Hunter going more rogue, being more like an Azula then Zuko. Like more murder n stuff. (Pretty OOC but another idea I want to explore)

Yeah, just a some fun idea I wanted to write, I think of scenarios with Hunter not meeting the hexsquad like in canon a lot so I wanted to write down what I think would happen plus some extra ideas.

Also I love seeing my boy get hurt. Why do we do this to our faves lol. I don’t have the motivation to write an actual fanfic of this so here just the gist of it. I might write oneshots based on it though. We’ll see.

I also wrote this earlier but the original draft got deleted :’)

[fanbynature]

A post from Dani Howe, who recently left smosh after working in the marketing team

"From Pet to Threat" - This just happened to me AGAIN and after 10+ years in this biz, I’m sick of having to get over it in silence for fear of being blacklisted, or labeled as “difficult to work with” because I chose to be open about my working experience. I won’t go into details, as this isn’t meant to be that kind of post, but I want to share this research because the “Pet to Threat" phenomena keeps happening to me and so many of my peers, particularly over the last few years here in LA. It’s truly an abusive cycle that repeats for far too many people in the workplace, but especially and aggressively for Black women in the entertainment/media industry. So many of us work extremely hard from a place of love, peace and genuine passion for our crafts. We choose to put our prowess out there, hoping that it’ll be reciprocated with that same authenticity by our leadership/mentors/peers, only to be undermined and vehemently devalued in favor of this insistence for power and control at every turn. I’ll never understand the need to prioritize pettiness & ego over doing the right thing for another team member or putting the best, most collaborative work out there for your company. What’s the point of hiring an expert or someone with big potential, just to diminish them? I'm tired of entering spaces I was promised were full of golden potential and stability, only to have to abruptly leave that space a short while later, lest endure unsafe + toxic working dynamics if I choose to brave it. The feelings of shame, guilt and confusion that come after are all too familiar, and yet they never get any easier to deal with. Constantly being in an anxious place of trying to figure out what went wrong and changing my approach, while the world you left couldn’t even be bothered to think twice about you, feels like a losing game. Why even play anymore? I'm only left jobless with no prospects, broke, and burdened with heavy feelings of sadness that I feel really dumb for having. Because it’s just a job, right? And the house always wins.

Some of you might question why even share all of this. Well, I fully believe transparency is one of the best ways to educate and inspire those around you. By sharing this article and a bit about my experience, I hope others feel encouraged to choose themselves and stop letting lazy business practices suppress their potential. I have no idea what’s next for me - this post has probably tanked any chance of me continuing a career in entertainment marketing. But what I do know is that I’m not accepting being overlooked anymore. Not having my true potential nurtured or recognized because the mentors I believed in would rather act out of insecurity than help me thrive is total BS. I deserve better than that, and so do you. I hope today is the day you know your worth."

Im interested in who are they going to blame now. It was once Defy - but now that it's in the hands of the original creators and owners - the same mistakes seem to be popping up. Hmmm

Also if fans start villanizing her the way they did with Boze and Saige - 👊👊👊 i will find you and i will punch u in the fucking face

[bitchesgetriches]

So this was commented on a promotional post we did for our sponsor, Acorns:

You do you, baby. Unfollow away! But you should know this:

We work really, really fucking hard to share financial, career, and adulting information through Bitches Get Riches. And that labor is rarely, if ever, compensated. 90% of what we do here, we do for free.

For years, the only way we got paid was through our Patreon. Of the tens of thousands of people who follow us on social media, most don't donate to our Patreon. And that's fine! We understand! Especially since we're specifically writing for folks who struggle with money, we totally get it. We never want to hide our best content behind a paywall or charge people who can't afford it.

But that's why we eventually started accepting a very small number of sponsors and affiliate marketing partners who we personally use. We're super picky about them, because we also do not like the idea of selling. However, if our followers can't afford to pay us $5 for providing them with information and advice, then we're going to have to get that $5 elsewhere. And sometimes that means accepting it from companies who want to sell their stuff.

Do you know how frustrating it is to have to monetize something you love? We LOVE Bitches Get Riches. It gives us so much joy and satisfaction every time someone writes in with a money win. We legit get so, SO proud of anyone who tells us our advice and research helped them become more financially secure. I wish we could always do it for FREE!

But our assistant can't pay her rent with nice messages from followers. And every hour Kitty and I spend working on BGR is an hour we can't spend making money in another way.

Labor deserves compensation. Even ours.

If you don't like the very, VERY occasional ad, then ignore them. Or, buy some of our merch. Or join our Patreon or send us some money on PayPal so we don't have to use sponsors anymore. Or, yes, unfollow. Just know that we're not going to take your feedback to stop "selling" on Tumblr. Because that's not fair to ask of us.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Brinklump Linkdump

Catch me in Miami! I'll be at Books and Books in Coral Gables on Jan 22 at 8PM.

Life comes at you fast, links come at you faster. Once again, I've arrived at Saturday with a giant backlog of links I didn't fit in this week, so it's time for a linkdump, the 14th in the series:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

It's the Year of Our Gourd twenty and twenty-four and holy shit, is rampant corporate power rampant. On January 1, the inbred droolers of Big Pharma shat out their annual price increases, as cataloged in 46Brooklyn's latest Brand Drug List Price Change Box Score:

https://www.46brooklyn.com/branddrug-boxscore

Here's the deal: drugs that have already been developed, brought to market, and paid off are now getting more expensive. Why? Because the pharma companies have "pricing power," the most reliable indicator of monopoly. Ed Cara rounds up the highlights for Gizmodo:

https://gizmodo.com/ozempic-wegovy-wellbutrin-oxycontin-drug-price-increase-1851179427

What's going up? Well, Ozempic and other GLP-1 agonists. These drugs have made untold billions for their manufacturers, so naturally, they're raising the price. That's how markets work, right? When firms increase the volume of a product, the price goes up? Right? Other drugs that are going up include Wellbutrin (an antidepressant that's also widely used in smoking cessation) and the blood thinner Plavix. I mean, why the hell not? These companies get billions in research subsidies, invaluable government patent privileges, and near-total freedom to abuse the patent system with evergreening:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/23/everorangeing/#taste-the-rainbow

The most amazing things about monopolies is how the contempt just oozes out of them. It's like these guys can't even pretend to give a shit. You want guillotines? Because that's how you get guillotines.

Take Apple. They just got their asses handed to them in court by Epic, who successfully argued that Apple's rule requiring everyone who sells through the App Store to use Apple's payment processor and pay Apple 30% out of every dollar they bring in was an antitrust violation. Epic won, then won the appeal, then SCOTUS told Apple they wouldn't hear the case, so that's that.

Right? Wrong. Apple's pulled a malicious compliance stunt that could shame the surly drunks my great-aunt Lisa used to boss in the Soviet electrical engineering firm she ran. Apple has announced that app companies that process transactions using their own payment processors on the web must still pay Apple a 27% fee for every dollar their process:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apples-app-store-rule-changes-draw-sharp-rebuke-from-critics-150047160.html

In addition, Apple will throw a terrifying FUD-screen up every time a user clicks a payment link that goes to the web:

https://www.jwz.org/blog/2024/01/second-verse-same-as-the-first/

This is obviously not what the court had in mind, and there's no way this will survive the next court challenge. It's just Apple making sure that everyone knows it hates us all and wants us to die. Thanks, Tim Apple, and right back atcha.

Not to be outdone in the monopolistic mustache-twirling department, Ubisoft just announced that it is going to shut down its driving simulator game The Crew, which it sold to users with a "perpetual license":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIqyvquTEVU

This is some real Darth Vader MBA shit. "Yeah, we sold you a 'perpetual license' to this game, but we're terminating it. I have altered the deal. Pray I don't alter it further":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

Ubisoft sure are innovators. They've managed the seemingly impossible feat of hybridizing Darth Vader and Immortan Joe. Ubisoft's head of subscriptions, the guillotine-ready Philippe Tremblay, told GamesIndustry.biz that gamers need to get "comfortable" with "not owning their games":

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/the-new-ubisoft-and-getting-gamers-comfortable-with-not-owning-their-games

Or, as Immortan Joe put it: "Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!"

Capitalism without constraint is enshittification's handmaiden, and the latest victim is Ello, the "indie" social media startup that literally promised – on the sacred honor of its founders – that it would never sell out its users. When Ello took VC and Andy Baio questioned how this could be squared with this promise, the founders mocked him and others for raising the question. Their response boiled down to "we are super-chill dudes and you can totally trust us."

They raised more capital, and used that to create a nice place for independent artists, who piled into the platform and provided millions of unpaid hours of creative labor to help the founders increase its value. The founders and their investors turned the company into a Public Benefit Corporation, which meant they had an obligation to serve the public benefit.

But then they took more investment money and simply (and silently) sold their assets to a for-profit. Struggling to raise capital, the founders opted to secretly sell the business to a sleazy branding company called Talenthouse. Its users didn't know about the change, though the site sure had a lot of Talenthouse design competitions all of a sudden.

Finally, the company announced the change as the last founders left. Rather than announcing that the new owners were untrustworthy scum, warning their users to get their data and get out, the founders posted oblique, ominous statements to Instagram. The company started stiffing the winners of those design competitions. Then, one day, poof, Ello disappeared, taking all its users' data with it. Poof:

https://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/

I'm sure the founders' decisions each seemed reasonable at the moment. That's every terrible situation arises: you rationalize that a single compromise isn't that big of a deal, and then you do the same for the next compromise, and the next, and the next. Pretty soon, you're betraying everyone who believed in you.

One answer to this is "Ulysses pacts": making binding commitments to do right before you are tempted. Throw away all your Oreos when you go on a diet and you can't be tempted to eat a whole sleeve of them at 2AM. License your software under the GPL and your investors can't force you to make it proprietary. Set up a warrant canary and the feds can't force you to keep their spying secret:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

If the founders were determined to build a trustworthy, open, independent company, they could have published their quarterly books, livestreamed their staff meetings, built data-export tools that emailed users every week with a link to download everything they'd posted since the last week. Merely halting any of these practices would have been a signal that things were wrong. Anyone who says they won't be tempted in the moment to make a "reasonable" compromise in the hopes of recovering whatever they're trading away by living to fight another day is bullshitting you, and possibly themself.

The inability to project the consequences of your bad decisions in the future is the source of endless mischief and heartbreak. Take movie projectors. A couple decades ago, the studio cartel established a standard for digital movie distribution to cinematic exhibitors called the Digital Cinema Initiative. Because studio executives are more worried about stopping piracy than they are about making sure that people who pay for movies get to see them, they build digital rights management into this standard.

Movie theaters had to spend fortunes to upgrade to "secure" projectors. A single vendor, Deluxe Technicolor, monopolized the packaging of movies into "Digital Cinema Prints" for distribution to these projectors, and they used all kinds of dirty tricks to force distributors to use their services, like arbitrarily flunking third-party DCPs over picky shit like not starting and ending on a black frame.

Over time, the ability to use unencrypted files was stripped away, meaning every DCP needed to be encrypted, and every projector needed to have up-to-date decryption keys. This system broke down on Jan 1, 2024, and cinemas all over the world found they couldn't play Wonka. Many just shut down for the day and refunded their customers:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/1/24021915/alamo-drafthouse-outage-sony-projector

The problem? Something that every PKI system has to wrangle: an expired certificate from Deluxe Technicolor. The failure has been dubbed the Y2K24 debacle by projectionists and film-techs, who are furious:

http://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/main-forum/34652-the-y2k24-bug-major-digital-outage-today

Making everything worse is that Sony mothballed the division that maintains its projectors, so there's no one who can update them to accommodate Technicolor's workaround. Struggling mom-and-pop theaters are having to junk their systems and replace them. There's plenty of blame to go around, but Sony is definitely the most negligent link in the chain. Shame on them.

Big corporations LARP this performance of competence and seriousness, but they are deeply unserious. This week, I wrote, "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

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

Score one for team deeply unserious. The multinational delivery company DPD fired its support staff and replaced them with a chatbot. The chatbot can't tell you where your parcels are, but it can be prompt-injected into coming up with profane poems about how badly DPD sucks:

https://twitter.com/ashbeauchamp/status/1748034519104450874

There once was a chatbot named DPD, Who was useless at providing help. It could not track parcels, Or give information on delivery dates, And it could not even tell you when your driver would arrive.

DPD was a waste of time, And a customer's worst nightmare. It was so bad, That people would rather call the depot directly, Than deal with the useless chatbot.

One day, DPD was finally shut down, And everyone rejoiced. Finally, they could get the help they needed, From a real person who knew what they were doing.

This is…the opposite of an AI hallucination? It's AI clarity.

As with all botshit, this kind of AI self-negging is funny and fresh the first time you see it, but just wait until 3,000 people have published their own versions to your social feed. AI novelty regresses to the mean damn quickly.

The old, good web, by contrast, was full of enduring surprises, as the world's weirdest and most delightful mutants filled the early web with every possible variation on every possible interest, expression, argument, and gag. Now, you can search the old, good web with Old'aVista, an Altavista lookalike that searches old pages from "personal websites that used to be hosted on services like Geocities, Angelfire, AOL, Xoom and so on," all ganked from the Internet Archive:

http://oldavista.com/

I miss the old, good internet and the way it let weirdos find each other and get seriously weird with one another. Think of steampunk, a subculture that wove together artists, makers, costumers, fiction writers, and tinkerers in endlessly creative ways. My old pal Roger Wood was the world's most improbable steampunk: he was a gay ex-navy gunner who grew up in a small town in the maritimes but moved to Toronto where he became the world's most accomplished steampunk clockmaker.

I was Roger's neighbour for a decade. He died last year, and I miss him all the time. I was in Toronto in December and saw a few of his last pieces being sold in galleries and I was just skewered on the knowledge that I'd never see him again, never visit his workshop:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/16/klockwerks/#craphound

A reader just sent this five-year-old mini documentary about Roger, shot in his wonderful workshop. Watching it made me happy and sad and then happy again:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqMGomM8yF8

The old, good internet was so great. It was a place where every kind of passion could live. It was a real testament to the power of geeking out together, no matter how often the suits demand that we "stop talking to each other and start buying things":

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

The world is full of people with weird passions and I love them all, mostly. Learning about Don Bolles's collection of decades' worth of lost pet posters was a moment of pure joy (I just wish more of it was online):

https://ameliatait.substack.com/p/the-man-who-collects-lost-pet-posters

That's the future I was promised: one where every kind of freak can find every other kind of freak. Despite the nipple-deep botshit we wade through online, and the relentless cheapening of words like "innovation" and "future," there are still occasional gleams of the future I want to live in.

Like the researchers who spliced a photosynthesis gene into brewer's yeast (a fungus) and got it to photosynthesize, and to display enhanced fitness:

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(23)01744-X

As Doug Muir writes on Crooked Timber, this is pretty kooky! Fungi – the coolest of the kingdoms! – can't photosynthesize. The idea that you can just add the photosynthesis gene to a thing that can't photosynthesize and have it just kind of work is wild!

https://crookedtimber.org/2024/01/19/occasional-paper-purple-sun-yeast/

As Muir writes: "Animals have no evolutionary history of photosynthesis and aren’t designed for it, but the same is true for yeast. So… no reason this shouldn’t be possible. A photosynthesizing cat? Sure, why not."

Why not indeed?!

OK, that's this week's linkdump done and dusted. It only remains for me to share the news with you that the trolley problem has been finally and comprehensively solved, by Sidereal@kolektiva.social, of the IWW IU 520 (railroad workers):

Slip the switch by flipping it while the trolley's front wheels have passed through, but before the back wheels do. This will cause a controlled derailment bringing the trolley to a safe halt.

https://kolektiva.social/@sidereal/111779015415697244

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/20/melange/#i-have-heard-the-mermaids-singing

[spotlightlowlife]

Greed is every sin

Just as openly elitist power abuser Stolas is the best villain of either series in this Helluverse, Mammon manages to be the greatest sin of all and for a similar reason, being multifaceted via many efforts made to sway our thinking, yet these two are then taken in different directions.

So much range does 'greed' have that he even encapsulates the 'sins' we have yet to meet.

Of those we have met, Ozzie, Bee and over in Pride, Lucifer, Mammon has managed to showcase actions of their sins in his own greedy way. Greed has a bit of everyone, but vise versa? Not if they're supposed to be liked.

A totally desexualised character but blamed for the sexdolls of a famous character whoes 'dayjob' is entertaining at a kinky nightclub, run by the prince of lust. Even though he markets the dolls as multipurpose, fit for everyone at a very affordable price, the sex element is his fault. The dolls were clearly a collaboration and something thought up before a reference was chosen, Ozzie catches feelings for their references and feels he should no longer able to separate business from his personal feelings, whilst Mammon manages to prosper in business in a field that isn't his.

Lust ✅

A glutton for the sake of being a glutton, no need for celebration just mindless or stress eating, which fits well as greed and gluttony often go together, taking because it's there.

There's also the deliberate fat design intended to make him more grotesque. 'Gluttony' does not need to be fat, yet the 'Gluttony' we met simply wanted the party goers indulged, however Ozzie wanted his patrons to keep it sexy and Mammon collected cash during the pageant, they did as much as eachother, only the efforts to make him piggish only took away from Bee's thing.

Gluttony ✅

Showy and performative but happy to take the backseat, is seen working and mentoring, adapts to what's new, what works and what others want but also bold enough to openly share selfish motive. As involved and inappropriate as his behaviour may seem he's all business, willing to work with those who don't like him and invest in what doesn't interest him without buckling or offsetting.

Mammon succeeds as a ruthless, confident, both proactive and passive leader who doesn't come across as someone who casually hangs with 'commoners' and whose true influence and power is unknown.

Pride ✅

Way too attentive to be lazy, but, what do people have to say about a boss who puts their feet up and fails to do what they're more than capable of doing, rather, they get others to do? Mammon supposedly 'not doing clown stuff anymore' and Fizz being 'a better clown than he ever was' as according to Ozzie are statements that means little, he wanted a prodigy, we saw imagery of training arc he showcases entertainers in order to fulfil his greed and his trade gets acknowledged. Ozzie has a seedy nightclub where those who work their or visit are expected to behave in a sexy way and Bee expects her guests to indulge, what's the difference? They meet their sin quota whilst not showing us any form of trade outside of being a host, why is Mammon condemned for as in a leading example of laziness? If we're scaling laziness, where does this leave poor, yet to be introduced Belphahor?

Relaxation pairs with recovery, research shows that the Sloth ring has the hospitals and is also responsible for 'upper' medication. Nice right? Something positive, which is where all those we are to like lean towards. That and Bee seems to be friends with her.

Sloth ✅

Spring boarding onto the next sin, Wrath, someone who has been described as attractive (by Bee) and is seen as a leader and god to the imps. It helps to be liked. This is hell where anything supposedly goes, murder is fine but not sadness, sadness isn't a sin but what else is everything, irate. Mammon was allowed to not only be big and menacing but pose a threat to someone who would be frightened of their fallout, allowed to resort to blackmail when he didn't like how things were going and allowed to vow revenge before taking off and trashing the place and maybe even killing his audience who bore witness on his way out, in a rather composed way.

Wrath ✅

Looloo land being a ripoff of Lulu land is so clearly a display of greed, especially since Looloo land is poorly maintained dispite Mammon being a perfectionist, this ripoff could easily be an example of envy, a grasp at control born from following a definitive leader who seems no leader at all, but can do what he wants because this is his realm.

Wlillingness to rip off such a superior, block effort at takedown with an impenetrable contract and still maintain (according to research) a good relationship with shows caution, calculation and willingness to fight.

Mammon even has his face on hell's currency and a banking app, yet who exactly is he supposed to be paying tax to? Lucifer, hells actual owner who doesn't seem to be a leader? Or are they answering to those 'higher up' which places Mammon in the frustrating position of second fiddle to a boss who isn't the best?

We haven't met Envy/Leviathan yet, but we have a host of main characters who live contemptuous lives and look to what others have that they don't, so envy, like wrath affects everyone, have been prominent driving forces since the start along with sadness and tragedy which aren't sins.

Envy ✅

Mammon manages to encompasses all elements of sinning even when he shouldn't really because it's by proxy as someone whose actions are portrayed as self serving and cruel with no excuses or failure to acknowledge, someone who upsets and can be harmful to those we are supposed to root for, something these series shy away from when they want us to like a character. We have a demon who succeeds in being someone you have no business getting mixed up with, in hell, a place you shouldn't want to be, where he is a crowned leader who is after your money if you're lucky.

Greed ✅

[mimi-is-so-horny]

okay, so... you know how sometimes a day starts lovely, and then it goes to shit? and sometimes, you feel like you've done this to yourself? actually, you have done it to yourself. anyway.

i made a point to wake up early today to make Sir and Anna breakfast and to write them a note thanking them for fucking me so well yesterday, and for being pretty much the best thing in my life right now. i felt very grateful and i know i'm very lucky. i think they appreciated that, too.

i blew the candles on my birthday cake naked on Sir's lap - i've been 25 for a couple of days, and i usually hate my birthdays, but Anna insisted we should do the whole birthday thing properly. Sir wrote me a birthday card that almost moved me to tears. He groped my tits as i blew my candles.

for context, i used to want to enter academia in combination to committing to a totally different career path. what i'm doing right now isn't even my Plan C, so of course, i feel a bit like a failure. i'd written a chapter in a book that discussed some recent developments in my field and placed them in a behavioural/institutional context - the book was published this year, and the complimentary copy they sent to authors arrived on my birthday. i should be happy, right? but i feel so defeated, and so dumb, and like this is the first and last good thing i got to do before giving up on my aspirations completely. sure, i'll still apply to enter a more commercial side of my field next year, but that's still just more "sustainable", financially, and more difficult than i thought it would be. all this effort for something i won't really value or enjoy, yuck. and what if i fail, again? anyway. Mimi's whiny ass.

so Sir asked me to read my chapter, and i said yes, sure. He wanted to "see how i think". why not, right?

He fucked me yesterday, and this morning, and at noon, and it felt so good. and now He came to my room, to tell me He read my chapter, and while i felt vulnerable i tried to look cool asking Him what He thought of it.

and He showered me in compliments, and asked me why am i here, and not at a Big Prestigious University™ doing research? i told Him that's why i tried, and the Big Prestigious University™ didn't do shit for Mimi in a post-covid job market where she had to care for her family and couldn't work Prestigious Unpaid Internships™. and still, with no network or real mentors that cared more about guiding me than fucking me, or plagiarising me (lol), my options narrowed. and He knew that, so why was He asking me? and then He asked more questions, and i got increasingly angry and i cried and told Him to leave my room, please. well, at least He did.

so now i have to go downstairs and apologise for lashing out at Him for essentially caring. that was just me projecting - how mad i am at myself for failing, and for giving up, and and for being too lazy to try again - on Him. but i also don't want to do that, because i can only taste how i'm not working in the city i want, and how the people i work for are surprised when i can introduce better corrections than them, and how i am a grown woman that is already bitter about not being where she wanted to be. how i pretend to have given up, when in reality i'm still kind of grieving the people i thought i could be, and realising it can always get worse. am i making myself into a victim: poor-me, poor-me? or am i entitled to my anger and sadness? i don't know, and Sir knows something sad happened to me without my consent, a long while ago - so what if He sees me as a victim, too? am i really that stupid and that passive? what if i'm wasting His time, too?

i don't think i use kink as a coping mechanism or as a distraction; i'm just happy it's an area of my life i'm currently getting exactly what i want, exactly in my own terms and limits - i've rarely gotten that much respect and reciprocity in "vanilla world" - be it work, or education, or friendships. but that fact also makes me sad. why can't i have some of the things i want, sometimes? why was it "Rejection Letter"+"Your Flatmate Lost Your Cat And Now Won't Help Or Speak To You"+"Your Supervisor Wants To Fuck You And He's Angry Now!"+"Your Family Is Asking For Money, Again!!!", and not, like, slightly better? it's hard to feel empowered now. that sad six-year-old is here again, and she wants good stuff i don't know how to give, because i'm out of fucking candy (or, y'know, drugs. because i don't do that shit anymore).

anyway, that will be a difficult conversation. and i feel sorry for Him, for having to deal with me.

well, that was a very self-centred ramble by a fairly self-centred person, so i'm sorry if you read this? but also it was your choice to do so, meh. drink water, wear sunscreen.

[crescencestudio]

๋࣭⭑ Devlog #42 | 6.25.24 ๋࣭⭑

tis the season of Kayn

HAPPY SUMMER!!

Hope you're all doing well and keeping cool <3 I know for me it's started getting to.... the Hot Season. To celebrate the start of Hot Girl Summer (and the beta route going live), I of course had to draw the hottest girl, Kayn.

we must stay cool brothers

Now that we've paid respect to The Hot Girl, let's get into the devlog!

Writing has been fun this month. A lot of it has been dedicated to Etza edits and writing Kuna'a's route. We're getting to about the halfway mark with Etza edits, so we are definitely chugging along!

Sneaky peeky of a recent edit

For Kuna'a's route, I said I wanted to have his first draft complete or almost complete by the next devlog, and I'm VERY PLEASED AND PROUD to say their first draft is In Fact almost complete! This is, of course, the very, very first draft so I'll be going back in to flesh some scenes out here and there and rizz him up even more. But I'm happy with the fact that at least the very base draft is done ^^

This month, I did quite a bit of drawing actually! I finished rendering two of Kayn's CGs, meaning 8 out of their total 9 CGs are finished YYYEEEAAAHHHH!!!!!

it feels so good to see the ending cg titles ouuggHHHH

Because Fenir's beta will be going out soon, I wanted to make some headway on his CGs. This month, I ended up finishing 3 of his CGs and sketching two. I'd really like to get 5-6 of his CGs finished so that it's a similar amount to Kayn's beta, so here's to praying!

baby girl

I also finished Senja's (they/he) sprite and base expressions. His outfit was designed by very talented bestie @saffein-e so please thank them for doing god's work o7

Finally, this past month we worked mostly on Kayn's beta route and getting Fenir's beta route ready for Patreon access!

If you'd like to try out Kayn's beta, you can get access to it if you subscribe to my Patreon (tier Hydra). Beta access to Kayn's route will close as soon as Fenir's beta goes up which will be early July, so if you want to experience Kayn's beta, definitely make sure you subscribe before it ends!

Player feedback for Kayn's route so far has been really positive, which has been a relief, especially since Kayn's route is the first one I wrote so is arguably the roughest (I have a big soft spot for it and like it, but I'm obviously Biased). So I hope you're all looking forward to it!! <4

beta feedback: so real

I also have started the voice acting sessions for the characters, which is EXTREMELY EXCITING!! That's the last asset I need basically, so the fact we have finally entered a stage where we can start recording is crazy. Our current session is for Kayn's route, but in the coming months we'll be moving to the next routes similar to how beta-testing is going :')

Aside from Kayn's route, I've also been working on coding Fenir's beta route. Rereading his script and he's... a cutie, I'll admit. So I hope the Fenir fans are excited for his route to enter the beta phase!

LET'S.......... GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Last thing, but I also ran a poll on Alaris's release, basically asking whether you all would prefer a full or segmented release. The results were basically 50/50 LMFAO and that's the vibe I've been getting in general. So while I don't want to solidify anything yet, just let it be known that Alaris may end up having a segmented release, where the first four Central routes are released first, and the Fae routes a bit later. I'll see how I start feeling as the year goes on and where Alaris stands, but thank you all for the support and understanding for the poll <3

I was pretty busy this month, so I didn't have too much time to do market research :cries:

But............

I did see the new Haikyuu movie..................... And I am the biggest Haikyuu fan. Quite literally if you want to know everything about who I am as a person and creator, watch Haikyuu and you will understand who I am to my deepest depths.

obviously I had to draw baby

But aside from that, I want to give one last shoutout to our Hot Girl Summer cross-promo! If there are any games you haven't tried out in this little set, I highly recommend giving at least 1 or 2 of them a peek! All of the games are so charming and have some similarity to Alaris, whether it's a personality mechanic, hot Fae, or a fantasy/ adventure story :')

Links to each game can be found on the Alaris Game page under the magic and mystery otome section!

I'm pretty happy with the progress we made this month. While there's still a lot to do, it's satisfying to see Alaris come more and more to life with each month. See you all next month with hopefully more exciting progress!

[your-ne1ghbor]

Hello, Neighbor! (Insert Welcome Home reference here 🏠)

I'm a hundred years late to this, but it's time for me to drop some questions for "The Kingdom of Thorns and Roses"! (I'm craving more Wish content, do this will do for now, lol.)

How did you come with your AU? Is it inspired from other AU's or something else?

What happened to Asha's family in this telling?

Can you drop a little lore about TKOTAR's Star system?

Who's your favorite character to draw in your AU?

Are any of the Teens in this story, are they sent to the oblivion? 😂

I know you mention that Flazino is possibly in your AU, but uh…..is he still alive or actually dead? Cause WG!Flazino can't vent to a dead guy. 😂

Any original characters in here besides Bonsai?

Which other Wish AU's would be some of your favorites?

Are all the songs from the movie included in your story, or us it just certain ones?

How long do you think your story is going to be?

How would TKOTAR!Asha would interact with WG!Asha? (She does have some trouble making friends though, lol)

Any hints for the ending?

Out of questions, but I'll give you a hug! 🤗

OMG QUESTIONS AHHHHHHh🦈🦈

1. How did you come with your AU? Is it inspired from other AU's or something else?

I was inspired from a lot of works! I think what really made me actually GET INTO rewriting Wish was "Alicia and the Kingdom of Star Light" and "At all Costs" Animatics. At first, I originally was going to have Magnifico and Amaya be like this Gaston/Frollo like characters, but overtime, I didn't see them like that! I think this was because my interpitation of Magnifico in the film was more of the "tragic hero" rather than the "tragic villain". Also Asha at the time felt really boring, and Star felt very hallow, which is why I also had to change that super old draft to something new. Overtime, after watching Owl House, Race to the Edge, Wish...15 more times (watched it I think 30 times total), Hunch Back of Notre Dom, and Epic the Musical, I think some of those aspects of what I liked bled into the story. Example, people comparing Magnus to Odesseous LIKE ITS THE VIBE THEYRE NOT THE SAME PERSON-

Not only that, some parts of the story is actually kinda inspired from personal experience! Mainly with the family part- . . . but nothing less, it more inspired from HTTYD and Owl House lol

2. What exactly happed to Asha's family in this telling?

Well...neither of them are dead for starters.

Probably the only Asha who has a fully ALIVE family 💀🙏

3. Can you drop a little lore about TKOTAR's Star system?

Research ^

4. Who is your fav character to draw in your AU?

Agatha my beloved 💕

I don't even draw her a lot, I just love her design lmao

5. Are any of the Teens in the story, or are they sent to oblivion?

Pfftttt they weren't all sent to oblivion Rascal hehehh

Dahlia, Simon, and Gabo will most likely be the ones to end up in the story, so most of the teens are here.

I have some ideas to how they tie into Asha in terms of how they know her on a personal/co-worker relationship.

Dahlia WAS Asha's friend during the best parts of her childhood, before Asha distanced herself from her. Her arc is best kept secret for story reasons, but I think it is pretty wholesome.

Simon I'm sorta concidering to be some form of body guard while Asha goes into the Market.

Gabo probably will the the "consipiracy person who is actually right" type of guy heh- Also a friend Star becomes close with! (He totally does not teach him how to swear-)

I do want to incorpiate Hal and Bazeema and probably Flazino somehow in the story, just not sure how and what sort of purpose they will serve at the moment.

I still don't have designs for them, but I will soon hopefully :D

6. I know you mention that Flazino is possibly in your AU, but uh…..is he still alive or actually dead? Cause WG!Flazino can't vent to a dead guy 😂

So I guess he is now the Therapist! Flazino in my AU? IS THAT WHAT UR SAYING???? (I love it)

Too bad all the therapists are dead in Rosas because of the incident. No wonder Flazino probably dies from poisining. He knew too much.

Anyways no need to worry for the dead guy in the room that probably wont exist in my AU, the dead do exist as ghosts in some way so WG Flazino can still vent to him lmao

(ghosts cant talk tho (but then again, he drank poison which could have ruined his vocal cords but still))

He is looking out for WG Flazino :D (He was killed by drinking a mYsTeRiOuS LiQuId )

Just realized he kinda looks like Hermes- naurrrr not intentionalllll bc he looks like that bc he ded :(((

7. Any original characters in here besides Bonsai?

OK ROSAS, HERE IS ALL OG CHARACTERS IN THE STORY (THIS INCLUDES REPLACEMENTS)

Bonsai

Agatha

Thomas

Morning Star

Captain of the Guard, NOT PHEBUS (I dont have a name for him-)

Evelyn (minor character)

Atticus (minor character)

Agatha's parents (minor character)

Magnus' Father (minor character)

(what I mean by minor characters, I mean that they wont really show up in the story except in portraits or mentions unless I do a lore video that could include them)

CREATURES:

Dragons

Sirens

THE FUCKING FAIRES I HOPE YOU DIE LIKE KYS

Trolls

Ghosts/Ghouls (Good Ghouls Go Bad is a pretty good movie go watch it)

Forest/Water Nymths

Serpants

Kraken probably

Stars (ofc)

probably will be more

They all probably won't show up in the story, but know that they exist.

ALSO THIS ONE IS IMPORTANT, SO HERE IS A CONCIDERATION I HAD.

Although I am personally not sure if they will ever be in the story, along with Flazino, BUT...HERE ME OUT-

A ATLAS BASED CHARACTER. I MEAN THINK ABOUT IT

In Greek mythology, HE HOLDS UP THE FUCKING SKY??? LIKE??? BRO-

AND HE IS A TITAN?/?? ANDD IT WOULD MAKE SENSE??? KINDA???

Not sure, but I wanna put that there because I think a Atlas based character in a story with a sky filled with Star creatures is very interesting.

8. Which other Wish AU's would be one of your Favorites?

I don't pick favorites between fanfics. I personally love them all and I think a lot of them are really interesting retellings!

Except for the freaky ones

I hate you Hiccup x Toothless fanfic go burn (made me not trust fanfics for a long time💀🙏) (BTW I DIDN'T READ IT MY SIBLING READ IT OUT LOUD TO ME AND WE WERE LIKE 😨😨🐄🏃‍♂️💨)

9. Are all the songs from the movie included in your story, or us it just certain ones?

Certain ones. It overall depends on execution in the story.

Im a star is removed for obvious reasons.

But as I honestly think about musical instruments tieing with their respected characters, I might have to make completely different songs for almost all of them-

OK for what I mean by this...

The 4 main characters, Agatha, Magnus, Asha, and Star have their respected instruments tied to their character. This is due to because a lot of the music surrounding the characters in classic disney had instruments tying with their character or enviroment. Ariel, for example, as more whimsical or wonderous music, as she sings "a part of your world". Unfortunatly, I found Wish's instruments not fitting to how I interepret the characters and went for a completely different route.

Asha is mainly tied with either the chello or violin in my version. "BUT ISN'T THE VIOLIN USUALLY TIED WITH THE VILLAIN??" Thats where I say "Does it have to be?" I want to shake it up a bit instead of the violin being just used for "EVIL", because it can be used to tell SUCH EMOTIONAL beats. Here is a cover of the "This Wish" I found:

And here is the actual song:

OFC, I would personally add more instruments to the violin cover for it to hit harder. I ironically found a "Epic" (not sure if it is to the Epic the Musical or just Epic version lol) version that hit so hard, I felt like I was ascending:

Listening to different instruments PLAYING THE SAME SONG hits a LOT MORE DIFFERENT. LIKE YOU FEEL DIFFERENT EMOTIONS LIKE WHAT-

Also a more prominant example is "Dandalions" by Ruth B.

Here is the original:

Here is the Violin cover (funny enough I listened to this version first before the original. Personally, I think the Violin is better)

If anything, I think the gutair is overused in Disney protagonists, Mirabel had one, Moana had one, and probably more. I just wanted to do something different!

For Star, I imagined the whimsical part of Neverland or more or less instruments that give you that feel, like flutes for example. Or hell, more lullaby! Honestly the best example I can give to show what I am going for is something like:

Maybe even the At All costs instumental tying in both the Asha's instruments and His instruments at the same time can hit more different.

For both Agatha and Magnus, I liked how the trumpets were tied to the scenes they were in, like when Magnifico calls for a meeting and the trumpet plays, I honestly really liked that! But it doesn't have to be trumpets alone! I imagine Magnus/Agatha to have both a electric guitar/piano tied to their characters! Trumpets can be used to enhance the song their singing!

Here is a example (Ik it is a rewrite version, but I think this is a good one!)

Unironically, there is not a lot of villain songs that I know of that use pianos. I think it is because it is more in ties with dispair moments rather than actual villain songs. Doesn't mean that they don't exist, its just uncommon.

Why am I ranting about this? Well, blame this guy:

He is right yk-

Shut up.

You shut up

10. How long do you think your story is going to be?

AT least 2-3 months, possibly more or less. It depends.

11. How would TKOTAR!Asha would interact with WG!Asha? (She does have some trouble making friends though, lol)

Ah both interovernts! My fav.

TKORAT! Asha also has trouble making friends. Its mainly due to her having trouble trusting someone and also some more personal issues (this goes for everyone, not just WG! Asha) I think at first TKORAT! Asha would at first just avoid talking to WG! Asha, until after a while, they have a nice cup of tea and just chat! Def would be Art buddies.

12. Any hints for the ending?

I have no idea. Just a lot of chopped up parts in my head. Probably smth like this:

and probably:

What have I done....WHAT HAVE I DONE-

13. Out of questions, but I'll give you a hug! 🤗

Thanks for the Asks Rascal! 💕

I really appreciate it :D

@signed-sapphire @oh-shtars @rascalentertainments

@spectator-zee @chillwildwave @tumblingdownthefoxden

@uva124 @dangerousflowerpanda

[southernsolarpunk]

Hey what the fuck is this news story?

“ But the world’s largest economies are already there: The total fertility rate among the OECD’s 38 member countries dropped to just 1.5 children per woman in 2022 from 3.3 children in 1960. That’s well below the “replacement level” of 2.1 children per woman needed to keep populations constant.

That means the supply of workers in many countries is quickly diminishing.

In the 1960s, there were six people of working age for every retired person, according to the World Economic Forum. Today, the ratio is closer to three-to-one. By 2035, it’s expected to be two-to-one.

Top executives at publicly traded US companies mentioned labor shortages nearly 7,000 times in earnings calls over the last decade, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis last week.

“A reduction in the share of workers can lead to labor shortages, which may raise the bargaining power of employees and lift wages — all of which is ultimately inflationary,” Simona Paravani-Mellinghoff, managing director at BlackRock, wrote in an analysis last year. “

Is this seriously how normal people think? Improving the bargaining power of workers and increased wages are bad?

“ And while net immigration has helped offset demographic problems facing rich countries in the past, the shrinking population is now a global phenomenon. “This is critical because it implies advanced economies may start to struggle to ‘import’ labour from such places either via migration or sourcing goods,” wrote Paravani-Mellinghoff.

By 2100, only six countries are expected to be having enough children to keep their populations stable: Africa’s Chad, Niger and Somalia, the Pacific islands of Samoa and Tonga, and Tajikistan, according to research published by the Lancet, a medical journal.

BlackRock’s expert advises her clients to invest in inflation-linked bonds, as well as inflation-hedging commodities like energy, industrial metals and agriculture and livestock.

Import labor via migration or sourcing goods? My brother in Christ they are modern day slaves!! I feel like I’m in backwards town reading this what the fuck?!

“ Elon Musk, father of 12 children, has remarked that falling birthrates will lead to “a civilization that ends not with a bang but a whimper, in adult diapers.”

While his words are incendiary, they’re not entirely wrong

P&G and Kimberly-Clark, which together make up more than half of the US diaper market, have seen baby diaper sales decline over the past few years. But adult diapers sales, they say, are a bright spot in their portfolios. “

Oh now the guy with a breeding kink is going to lecture us. Great. /s

“ The AI solution: Some business leaders and technologists see the boom in productivity through artificial intelligence as a potential solution.

“Here are the facts. We are not having enough children, and we have not been having enough children for long enough that there is a demographic crisis, former Google CEO and executive chairman Eric Schmidt said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit in London last year.

“In aggregate, all the demographics say there’s going to be shortage of humans for jobs. Literally too many jobs and not enough people for at least the next 30 years,” Schmidt said.

Oh god not the AI tech bros coming into this shit too. Wasn’t the purpose of improving tech to give people more free time? So they can relax and spend time with family more and actually enjoy life? Isn’t our economy already bloated with useless pencil-pushing number-crunching desk jobs that ultimately don’t serve a purpose?

I’m not going to post the entire article but give it a read. It’s… certainly something. Anyway degrowth is the way of the future.

[bomberqueen17]

who let me out

Most of the time I spend on Tumblr has been taken up in writing these Aubreyad book recaps so I haven't been talking about my own life but there's not a lot to say.

However!

I am making a voyage to England next week which is extremely exciting, and yes I'm going to see the museum exhibit about that archaeology dig I was so excited about. I have been so stressed lately that I have barely thought about this and in fact last night I finally was like "do i need like. socks n underwear for this trip. idek." and i haven't even looked at weather reports so I don't know what clothes I need. But I did live in the UK for a while once so I'm fairly confident that my good raincoat and new waterproof boots will be a good start towards an autumn wardrobe.

So I hope to talk about that more, coming up.

Meanwhile, rambling about personal life stuff

The last stint at the farm was so fucking stressful. I had to work the market sometimes, which means a full day of work on Saturday. We had so much work to get through, and several people who help us weren't available, so we had to do it all ourselves, and that meant some ten-hour days, meant some exhausting slogs. At the end I was like "do you know what I'm not going to do while I'm on vacation?" "no, what" "ever touch raw chicken." I singlehandedly had to package like 1000 pounds of raw chicken in two days, after having packaged 200 whole chickens the day before. I was just so tired of the way raw cold chicken feels in my hands. Ugh ugh ugh.

I got so stressed I just wasn't sleeping, which sucked. Oh, I'd get into bed, and I'd fall asleep at my normal time-- usually around 10pm-- and then I'd wake up at 2am and that was it, I was up for the day. I tried various things-- went to bed at 9, woke up at 1-- lay there pretending to sleep-- got up and wrote-- got up and walked around-- one night I watched the entirety of the Master & Commander movie from 2003 on YouTube. Why not! I did remember some of it from 20 years ago, how funny.

(My dad liked that movie. His favorite thing to do during movies was to quibble about historical inaccuracies. But this movie had so much fanservice for reenactors in it that he was quietly delighted. His quibble was that the violin and cello duets were too good, they should've recorded amateurs. He had a point.)

Anyway. I was researching various methods of helping one sleep-- the only one at my disposal was weed gummies and I spent one very miserable night just lying there high and bored and not sleeping and wasn't totally sober when morning came and that fucking sucked. I commute on foot or I never would have risked it, but being very slightly still high and exhausted and trying to do repetitive physical work was really, really dispiriting.

but we got everything done. In the end. And I left. And once I got home I went to sleep and I have not had really any appreciable trouble sleeping since. I can even nap, sometimes!

Heck.

One of the things I'd meant to take care of while I was at the farm was that of course on my birthday, my fucking driver's license expired. On the one hand, thank you DMV, it used to be that everyone's license expired on the same day, so you'd have to go wait in massive lines to get it dealt with. Now it's... not evenly distributed exactly, because people's birthdays are a random distribution, but it's a perfectly logical and reasonable way to organize expiration dates. But it meant that in the midst of this exhausting miserable stint of work when I didn't have time to do anything really fun for my birthday (don't cry for me, my mom made me a cake and my BIL bought me ice cream treats) I also was consumed with angst about needing to renew my license. i was so sure they'd yell at me because I hadn't renewed before it expired-- but they wanted me to do an eye test, and I could not, could not coordinate that, I'm overdue for an optometrist appointment by several years and I just could not fucking make it happen.

So I went to the DMV yesterday and was like "i both want to renew this license and upgrade it to the enhanced version since that will be required for planes soon" and they were like "we need both your passport and your social security card and two proofs of residency." and i was like you need the social security card and proof of residency to get the passport. and they were like yeah but we need all four things too. so I went back home with the form and found the various necessary proofs, but then I was able to make an appointment to go back. Great!

(They say, "make an appointment online!" but if you look up the DMV website there's nowhere to do it, and if you go to the website of that branch of the DMV there's nowhere to do it. Want to know why? Because it's not through the DMV it is through the county clerk's office. Now U Know: Go to the county clerk's office and navigate to their section on the DMV. It's separate! Who fuckin knew! Now you do! [In my case this was erie.gov because that is my county, but it may vary for you and if you are not in new york state i have no advice for you.]

All having an appointment means is that you are in a separate queue to be seen, which is likely faster than the general pool but may not be. Still, I thought it was a good idea.

And then it was early for my appointment and I was getting my shit together and I had my social security card and an old W-2 with my address and social security number and my old license with my address on it and for some reason I thought I could use my checkbook but that's not what they mean by a cancelled check but whatever. I had just a random pile of shit. And

where was my passport

where is my passport?

i'd had it in my pocket but i was sure i'd removed it from the pocket and put it into my purse. but it wasn't in my purse. "did you see it inside the house," asks dude patiently, who also is prone to losing shit and who knows me very well. "I don't know," I have to answer. "I remember putting it in my purse and it isn't there." I search the place I put my purse a thousand times, I go through the desk where I was sitting to collect the other proofs but i knew, I knew I had not brought it in there. Time is slipping away, I will miss my appointment. God time is slipping away and I can't find the thing. I ransack the house. I finally run out to the car, did I leave it on the seat in the car? It is not in the car.

In desperation, as it is fully time to leave the house and I will be late if I don't, I gather up all my other papers and go out to the car. "I will just go," I say, "and ask them, did they find it, because that is the last place I am absolutely sure I had it." Because the woman had looked at it to see if I had my social security card between the pages. And she'd handed it back to me. But my memory is such that the rest of what I did is not certain; I remember taking it, I remember putting it into my pocket, but this might be a story I am telling myself. This is the way in which I am a very good liar, because I do not remember things very well, and my well-honed abilities as a storyteller mean I am very, very good at instantly constructing what it would make the most sense to have done, and telling that story even to myself. But. here's the horrible truth: i don't know if it really happened that way. Many things I have witnessed, important things, I remember the story of but I'm not entirely certain they happened that way. Any story I tell may be fictionalized, and I usually dont' know it.

So anyway.

Got out to my car and there on the ground in the road (I am parked in the street) there is my passport lying next to the driver's side door of the car. When I had checked the car earlier, I had only gone to the near side, the passenger side, and looked in the window. It had never occurred to me that my memory of putting it into my purse might have been me just setting it on my purse and it not going in, which is clearly one hundred percent what happened.

So that was. A fucking wild ride, and I did not cry but only because I was too overwhelmed. I made it to the appointment and I could not hear the very nice clerk very well so I kept nodding at her in blank incomprehension and then not doing what she'd asked me to do. But this is the thing-- if you think of the most brutally competent people on the entire face of the planet Earth you might be tempted to imagine like, IDK, Marines or something, but that would be wrong, it is the clerks at the DMV. They will Get It Done, whatever the fuck it is, and they will NOT put up with your shit, but they will also not be mean to you. They will not usually waste time in smiles or gratuitous displays of humanity, but they are never cruel, they are implacable and pitiless but they are fair and they will help you and they will not smile about it but they will tell you which option to tick off on the form so that you don't have to pay a bunch of extra money, and they will be understatedly kind if you are frightened, and they will calmly and impassively repeat their instructions until they penetrate your uncomprehending skull, and you will get what you need to get because this is deadly serious and they are the kind of bureaucrat that actually make the world go round. It is not sunshine and rainbows but it will absolutely get done even if it takes months and years.

Anyway there's some kind of divinity in low-level bureaucrats who actually have to talk to frightened people, I tell you what.

The only time my clerk smiled at me was when I didn't hear her and she had to repeat that the screen was asking me if I wanted to register to vote, which is an automatic part of all their transactions. "Oh, no," I said, "I'm already registered," and she said "then press no," and I said "I do really appreciate the reminder though," and she smiled at that.

(They also ask you to enroll as an organ donor. NYS is an opt-in state, and many people just don't opt in; opt-out states have much higher enrollment for obvious reasons. Please opt in unless your religion or beliefs proscribe it! There are never enough organs and your grieving family will almost never remember to opt you in at the moment of extremity. You could save so many lives, and improve so many others. This PSA brought to you by someone who spent the pandemic lockdown in the home of a member of the local hospital's liver transplant team, who was so busy because all the New York hospitals had shut down their transplant facilities in order to turn the ventilators over to Covid patients, so everyone in New York who was getting a liver was getting it in Rochester. From my guy's team. So it was a stressful time. But I am successully re-enrolled as an organ donor. I am quite sure I already was one but the only two options were Yes or No so I checked Yes.)

Anyway I have so much to do and am so burned-out that I'm repeatedly getting stuck staring at things in odd rooms, so. We'll see how this goes. I have five days left to get ready for this trip wish me luck.