#which is also the minimum age to get a job in america

[ghostdiva]

Zooble, fed up with Jax's shit: will you cut it out?!

Jax, swiveling to Zooble: What are you gonna do about it? huh? Send me into a digital world so you won't have to deal with me?!

cue everyone else looking at Jax with a mix of shock and horror on their faces.

[bloomingkyras]

Travelogue Journey with Shawn Takahashi a Bachelorette Challenge

I'm back.. with a new Bachelor..

In this season, we will go travel with Shawn and get to know him or 😉. That not just travel but there will be a challenge that the contestant have to compete.

But let's meet the Bachelor.

Meet Shawn Takahashi, age 32, A freelance painter and A traveler. He Asian Mix America which his mum are from MT.Komorebi and His dad from San Myshuno. He is the only child and very closed to his parent. Since he too busy with his job and sometime travel, he never had a chance to find love. He only had a crush when in Senior years.

And now he ready to meet and mingle with new people. More detail about his BC are under the cut.

Who is He looking for?

Ladies only (he's straight btw) | Background stories are welcome.

U can give any traits (but please give 1 negative traits and avoid using love bug, romantic & romantically reserved if u have lovestruck) aspiration, skill (please have ur sims a skill minimum level 4), like & dislike or if ur sims had a job then it's ok, so we can continue her job if she win later.

if u have Lovestruck u can set ur sims their turn on and turn off but if u don't have that pack u can let me know what her turn on and turn off.

human only (occult next time ok)

To be fair since my sim had cc on him, u guy also can use cc for cloth or either way but Maxis match / Maxis mix are ok but no alpha hair. I have all the pack.

Regarding this BC gonna be some kind of globetrotter, some adventure activities and also there will be a party, please give ur ladies a proper outfit (if u want me to put them the outfit also can)

Don't worry about skin default or eye default I won't be touching any of ur ladies genetic. I will only change,if the item on her missing or broken.

How and where was the challenge gonna happen? or are there's a challenge they have to join? (😈)

This is the house where some of the event will happen and some of them will be outside MT.Komorebi.

There will be a challenge after or before the group party (i'm still drafting the challenge when this post up and will be update once the BC start)

If u are my former BC or have being in my BC before, u know that I use a lot of pose mod and script but this time I'm gonna take a break from it. and use the pose mod when necessary. Wicked whim? hmm...if it's happen then I just let its happen but no 18+ post 😎.

All the impression are from Lovestruck ep and 1st impression mods

All ladies will have their solo date with Shawn before they compete into a challenge. And the winner of the challenge each week will have a special treat from Shawn.

Just like My previous BC challenge, If any of the ladies being caught have a feeling toward other contestant, they will get eliminate but I'm not that cruel, I will check their challenge point that they collect and if the point lower, she will be in the list of elimination. And there will be for the 1st time in my BC, we will have Rose ceremony.

And here come the part where's how many ladies will be taken.. For this event there's will be 2 group. Means, there will be 10 ladies in the house. (I will post more detail once the BC start cause it's will impact the challenge too)

How to submit?

Since there will be a holiday, event and I'm also will be flying back to my country. I will not put any date of sims submission. U can just drop ur sims tray file to my messages (i will set the chat for everyone) once u done with them or u can post ur sims and tag me #TJ With Shawn, so I can drop by to pick ur sims up, if u can't reach my chat. Yes u can reserve, if u really want to join. I will only close the submission after I have all the 10 ladies and the post will be live after that.

what else...hmm..10 ladies for future kyra to handle...I think that it's. And I'm proudly welcome to everyone with 10 of their Ladies to join this BC and have fun with Shawn. So that it from me and if u have any question feel free to sent an ask. -Love kyra -

i forgot, I want to say thanks to my mutual who inspired me to do this challenge again and letting me get some idea from u ❤️

[rallamajoop]

Resident Evil 7 Ending Text

The ending sequence of RE7 features panning shots of a document containing various photos and text about the project that created Eveline. The text repeats every few paragraphs (often several times in the same image), but it does include some interesting details about Eveline that don't show up elsewhere in the game.

A few lines of the same text even show up again on the side of the Rose flasks in RE8 ‒ Recently deceased. Procedure is untested and early subjects were destroyed too quickly to collect definitive data ‒ and elsewhere, If injections are skipped for prolonged periods of time, the product will age rapidly... (If you have really good eyesight, you might even notice this snippet continues underneath the 'Stabilising Compounds' header.)

But the complete text from RE7 is much longer. I've stuck what I could patch together from the ending sequence under the cut.

The product is a bioweapons commodity created by the Bioweapons Division. It takes the form of a child (in this case a girl named Eveline) which can be purchased and raised to suit individual client needs. Its purpose is mind control — up to and including inducement to violence. Application can vary from political to military to economic destabilization. Method of inducement: chemical transference of psychotropic compounds via skin to skin contact between Product and Subject inducing a mentally suggestive state in the subject responsive only to the product. Known dangers: The Product is currently in the prototype stage and is both mentally and physically unstable requiring regular maintenance injections of stabilizing compounds. If the injections are skipped for prolonged periods of time the Product will age rapidly — 25 Xs faster than normal. Eventually the Product will become insane and a danger to all around it. No tests have been run on subjects depriving them of maintenance chemicals for more than 6 months as the situation became too dangerous for observation. The Product also affects its environment mutating plants and promoting the growth of a highly toxic psychotropic mold, the ingestion of which causes insanity and severe mutations in those who ingest it. There is some indication the use of the mold could revive the recently deceased. However, this has yet to be tested. Early subjects were destroyed much too quickly to collect definitive data on this. Product should ship with a minimum of two Handlers each with serum immunizing them to the Products mental control as well as Stabilizing Compounds. Handlers should be equipped with equipment tuned to Product's biochemisty. One of the Handlers should imprint on the Product as a close relative, either as a mother or as a father figure. This will aid in controlling during field operations. Product is ready for field testing which should be initiated as soon as possible. Suitable clients exist in the Americas, and one should be selected ASAP for test delivery.

Among the more interesting details is that bit about having a handler 'imprint on the Product as a close relative', which is made to sound like it's simply a part of transport procedure ‒ just another thing for handlers to be equipped with. I'd assumed the 'imprinting protocol' Mia refers to in the game meant she must have been involved with the project that created Eveline from early on, but this makes it sound like part of a pre-departure checklist. Could Mia have met Eveline and been 'imprinted' only shortly before they left?

Far creepier is the loud implication that the 'parental' bond of handler to 'Product' would 'aid in controlling during field operations'. Mia gets an awful rap around this fandom, but it's hard to imagine she'd be happy being shipped off as Eveline's permanent field-handler to some foreign government or terrorist organisation ‒ especially given how eager she is to be done with her "babysitting job." But once Eveline was past the 'prototype stage', that sounds like exactly what the Connections intended for handlers like her to do.

Then there's the bit about giving handlers a "serum immunizing them to the Products mental control," which could certainly explain how Mia was able to resist for so long, and is presumably the same agent the Connections supplied to Lucas (I wonder if Zoe ever got her hands on some?) Must be a different serum to the one that actually cures you of the mould, however, since Lucas pretty clearly isn't cured.

Also: There is some indication the use of the mold could revive the recently deceased. However, this has yet to be tested. Early subjects were destroyed much too quickly to collect definitive data on this. Yeah, I'd say that one's been pretty well tested by the end of RE7!

As for that part about Eveline aging 25x faster than normal if not regularly injected with the stabilising compound, the numbers add up surprisingly well! Eveline escaped in October 2014. By September 2016, when Lucas reports she's showing grey hairs, she'd have aged around 2x25=50 years, making her apparent age close to 60. By Ethan's arrival in July 2017, that's 2 years and 9 months, or almost 70 extra years of aging, for total of 80 years old.

Yeah, looks about right to me.

Getting back to RE8, what does it mean that some of this text was reused on the side of the Rose flask? All that stuff about rapid aging clearly applies to Eveline, but seems completely irrelevant to baby Rose.

Much like the RE7 ending, I don't think the text is meant as much more than a bit of convenient lorem ipsum-style filler material ‒ though the fact she's labeled EVE No. 3 is obviously a reference to the project that created Eveline (and yes, the same number appears on all four flasks ‒ it's not a flask number). Which raises the question: who were 1 and 2? Eveline's referred to as E-001, so could 2 be the other member of the E-series we see being killed in necrotoxin tests in the lab photos? Or was Eva 1 and Eveline 2, by Miranda's reckoning? Were these flasks previously used to hold the remains of a previous E-series member tagged E-003?

It's not like it's essential lore or anything, but it'd be interesting to know which version was on the mind of whoever created that asset all the same.

[sea-owl]

I was rereading my favorite campy ya novels, the Selection, and I thought let me make a Bridgerton au.

So, for some context, the Selection is basically the Bachelor set in a dystopian world. War happened, and now North America is this monarchy, and there is a caste system. Your career and basically quality of life is basically determined by your caste number. 1 is the highest and is royalty. 2s are celebrities and military. 3s are business people in higher postions, doctors, scientists, and teachers. 4s are those like jewelers, factory workers, construction managers, farmers, real estate agents. 5s are the artists and performers. 6s minimum wage workers, basically. They were housekeepers, cooks, store clerks, drivers, waitresses, and seamstresses. 7s are manual laborers like farm hands, gardeners, movers, trash collectors. 8s were considered the "untouchables." Left homeless, unemployable, and basically forced to beg.

There were ways to raise your caste one is to become very famous for your work. One of the characters in the book got his caste raised from a 5 to I believe a 3 because his art was so popular. Women took on their husband's caste when they married, so if she married well, she could be raised up. Joining the military also would raise up men. Another way for a woman to raise her caste is by joining the Selection.

For the royal family in the book the daughters were married for alliances and the sons were married for patriotism. The sons had an event called the Selection where it's basically the Bachelor. Girls in the right age range from all different castes could apply for a chance to marry the prince. It's a televised thing to see who the future queen or princess will be. I believe 35 girls are chosen. Their caste immediately gets risen to a 3 unless they already naturally a 3 or 2, reason being that the girls become so use to a quality of life in the palace they didn't think they could readjust back to their natural castes.

Anyway onto the au. So let's say Violet won Edmund's selection. They get married, they're happy, and they have kids. But when they inherited the throne, they also inherited a war that unfortunately kept them from being able to make the changes they wanted. They managed to secure four alliances by arranging marriages to their daughters, but now they turn around with three sons of marriageble age and a country extremely distrustful of their rulers.

Edmund and Violet decide it's time to do a special edition of the Selection. Three sons, triple the amount of girls. Anthony does not want to do this, there are important matters of estate we need to attend to. Benedict is just gonna take it as an opportunity to get some art advice, and hopes that a few five girls make it in. Something to distract him and ease the border. Colin is going with the flow, if he gets to make fun of his brothers during this whole thing then it's a win for him. After all the goal will be to put on a show and get Anthony the heir married, right?

An application goes out to all homes with an eligible daughter as soon as it's announced. It's extensive from a medical physical, to hobbies the girls do, to their jobs within their castes, and which prince their application will be for. Unedited photos are also required so when the applications are sent in the girl has to go to a government building to also have her picture taken.

Enter Kate, Sophie, and Penelope, castes 4, 6, and 5 respectively.

Kate didn't want to enter the Selection, she actually told her family that she felt sorry for the girls who ended up winning this, especially the one who will have to marry Prince Anthony. She only did it because Edwina begged her to, saying it could potentially help their family out financially and didn't Kate want to have the best possible chances of that? Kate relented because if and that's a strong if, one of them did get selected there was a nice allowance that they got and would really help them. Kate made Edwina fill out the paper work though. She didn't know that Edwina had put Anthony down as Kate's choice of prince.

Sophie saw the Selection as a chance to escape. While her father was a two he had an affair with Sophie's mother who was a six, thus making Sophie a six as well. It was something Sophie's stepmother loved having over Sophie as she essentially trapped her in her father's house. The other servants had thankfully hidden Sophie's own application and helped her fill it out. Sophie picked Benedict at random, he seemed handsome enough, so long as she was picked and could escape this house she didn't care how long she was in the competition.

Penelope didn't have a choice on the application. Her mother was a social climber, always looking to get the best gigs to increase their family's popularity to hopefully rise up in the castes. A chance to have a daughter become a three, or even a one? All her eligible daughters were sending in an application. Penelope doubted she would get picked, the application required an unaltered photo, and others have made it clear to her that she wasn't that special to look at. She randomly picked the third prince, pretending to say it was good luck, a third daughter for a third prince.

The day the chosen girls are announced Kate, Sophie, and Penelope all watch their faces appear on the tv screen.

Daphne, Eloise, Francesca, Gregory, and Hyacinth are all excited to see their brothers make fools of themselves on live tv. Daphne, Eloise, and Francesca also have their fianc��s with them to drag around and help them with their schemes to "help" their brothers chose the best girls to be their new sister in-laws.

[musingsbycaitlin]

WIP Intro - The Greyhound Club, a novel

Hi, hello, welcome to another wip. I haven’t done one of these in ages but I finally have some new ideas thanks to uni.

The Greyhound Club is a science fiction, literary novel that follows lab tech Gwen as she uncovers the perhaps unsavoury and sinister goings on within the company she works for. Her role within the company is to help engineer and develop the science behind robotic, ai carers for the elderly or injured. However, is there something more to her job that she isn’t being told? And will the new hire she is charged with training help lead her to uncovering the truth behind it all? Who is the elusive and elitist Greyhound Club that consists of the ‘best’ employees from each department, and what do they really do to deserve all of those benefits? Does it have anything to do with Gwen’s experiments? What is the price for finding out the truth?

Genre: science fiction, literary, horror

Setting: undetermined city in England, 2026/a few years in the future

POV: first person, present tense

Status: initial drafting/planning

Vibes/Aesthetics: smog covered motorways, the sizzle of stubbing out a cigarette, a half-filled car park, drawing frowny faces on frosted windows, clicking of a mouse, Uncle Sam posters ripped in half, dead rose bushes, choking on a plastic bag, twisting an ankle, spit on concrete, the smell after rain, dew lined skin, stainless steel, half-fogged glasses.

Unfortunately I can’t post an extract here yet since the assignment is still ongoing but after the hand-in in May I will update with some extracts. But I’m really happy with this idea overall and I think the vibes are super different to things I’ve written before. I tend to go really bloody and gory with horror and the vibes usually have more colour and pigmentation, however with this one I really wanted to mute everything down to the minimum and see what I could extract from those small moments and what will arise from the nothingness. I have also never specifically set a story in England, where I’m from, and I found that so unusual since I have never been to America or any other place I seem to gravitate to when coming up with settings. So rainy England seemed a perfect change of pace. I’ve also been listening to a new album in order to help visualise and get in the headspace of the story more so if you want an even more explicit depiction of the vibes then listen to Kesha’s album, Gag Order.

I’m hoping to be doing small updates on this as I get further through the drafting process as part of my assignment (which is only 3000-3500 words) and try and be a bit more consistent on this one because I really see this going all the way. Idk, I might be delusional but a little doesn’t hurt.

If you have questions then please ask cos I love talking about my work and my characters and my vibes. Also if anyone has any comp titles that would be really appreciated cos I don’t read much sci-fi. And of course if you want to added to the taglist then please let me know.

Taglist:

@annlillyjose @dallonwrites @aesa @winterandwords @iannicellis @isherwoodj @writeouswriter

[surgeonirl]

hey gang... hey gaaang... heres my take on jack sato's life growing up idc if you dont like it its called 'my take' for a reason! enjoy :3

he was born to his mother and father, and for the first bit of his life, he lived in japan. they were fine until his mother had a psychopathic episode, which gave his father the opportunity to get out of there with jack (they didn’t actually need to, but he pleaded that his wife obviously enough wasn’t stable to be left alone with a child and due to his wife’s obvious instability, the court sided with him and that gave him whole custody.) jack’s father moved himself and jack to america when he was around ten. until this point, jack only knew smaller bits of english, and even then he struggled with those pronounciations, this was the start of people teasing and picking on him consistantly. he was isolated for how he spoke and how he looked (he looked like a girl).

his home situation wasn’t any better because his dad’s a fucking bop, bringing home new girlfriend every second day but along with being a bop he was also really just not there emotionally, so whenever jack started begging and crying to go back ‘home’ he told him to fuck off and of course, eventually his dad got sick and tired of jack begging to go home, so he said something along the lines of “grow up, you’re not going back because there’s nothing left for some kid like you. your mother is dead, and i would never go with you. do you want to be out on the streets”. that impacted jack more than anything said beforehand, because the only actual reason he wanted to go back was for his mother.

over time that longing for his mom ended up becoming some anger that he just had deep down 24/7, so by the time he got into highschool, not only was he in the deep end of his health going to shit and having to deal with his father, he had to deal with expectations and standards. the bullying from when he’d originally moved there was consistent until he ended up dropping out in his senior year (he knew he was never going to graduate, and he’d rather drop out than spend any minute longer with his classmates). the bullying he dealt with was mainly shaming him for his body, where he was from and his temper.

during all of this, he obviously met elijah in high school (this did happen), but after jack dropped out, their interactions became less frequent because they simply just didn’t have any time to talk anymore.

when he dropped out, his dad flipped his lid and he threatened that if jack didn’t do something worthwhile and pay rent, he’d be kicked out. jack argued with this, and it went back and forth, it was easily one of their worse arguments, but the ‘doing something worthwhile’ and the ‘paying rent’ wasn’t necessary as his father kicked him out.

jack was homeless, pretty much. he’d either sleep in his car (which he gave up after a while due to barely being able to afford food), crash on a friend’s (bandmate, they didn’t want their vocalist/bassist dead) couch or just sleeping out on the street.

at some point he did try a homeless shelter, but after a month he was kicked out due to an outburst he had. that’s when he met garrett after the first time in ages.

while he stayed with garrett, he basically was able to get back on his feet and get his own small apartment. it was an absolute shithole, there was mold and probably even a rat, but yk it was a roof pver his head. so with his minimum wage pizza delivery job, he was just barely making enough to pay rent. he got significantly thinner during this time due to not being able to buy food at times, and he couldn’t manage two jobs at once. he picked up any and every shift he could just to do all of that.

[junkartie]

I'm hearing 2 opinions on Erdogan and idk I wanted to ask you bcs I got both of them from non-natives. So the first says that he IS a good president, there is just too many outside factors trying to bring him down. And the second told me that he WAS a good a help for the country until he decided to care about some other things (colonisation ?) which eventually led to the current downfall. Maybe both are right or both are wrong, what do you think?

(can you tell I love political discussions because I don't I'm just really invested cause you're one of my fav blogs hehe)

Non natives love to defend Erdo which is why us Turks have a whole term for them. Most of it however DOES stem from the second option being true.

Erdogan was in fact a very good leader in his first few years of power, now my family personally never liked him, he technically was in power on the sidelines for 10 years until he became president 10 yrs go. He did many things like make hospitals and healthcare way more accessible, fixed a lot of roads and built bridges etc. Now you may go “jay, isnt that what a normal president is supposed to do ?” Well, yes. But the guy before him didnt do a whole lot, so him doing his literal job was enough to convince people he was good enough to keep around.

As time went on he started to take a way harsher approach. Slowly but surely the price and tax on everything went up. Religion started to be the hottest topic in turkey despite us being a secular country on paper.Slowly festivals became too loud, protests were bothersome, pride parades were sinful, gays werent considered people, music after 12 wasnt allowed, Eurovision was something too embarrassing for our country to take place in, alcohol was a luxury that only the desperate & sinful tried to buy, women were not obedient enough, the legal age to get married was too high, sex before marriage became a big topic, rapists and murderers would walk freely, femicide got to a brand new high and a whole lot more.

This all happened slowly and gradually. By the time we thought to speak up on any of this the i-don’t-even know, 60% yearly inflation rate had worn us down. A dollar was no longer 2.5 TL, it was close to 25. Nothing could be bought with minimum wage. Whatever you bought, you bought a second one for the govt in tax (a phone here costs twice the price of one in america). People who vote for him mostly do so because all media outlets are heavily censored and totally in his favor. He has control of literally everything. Literally!! He hosted a referendum where he legally was given so much power that he can change whatever he wants on a whim. He will confidently lie out of his teeth and tell his supporters that the reason everything is so expensive is because of his opposition (who have virtually no power) + its fine because even if we’re poor we’re closer to god and his supporters eat it up because they have some fucked up parasocial relationship with him.

Right now we’re screwed beyond belief. The election was rigged in his favor but despite everything he either wasnt able to end it on the first round or intentionally didnt so he could win by a higher margin on the next round. The house is fucked, the opposition lost a ton of seats to highly religious islamic fanatics who straight up advocate for sharia law. That and the president literally had an alliance with a terrorist organization who want 15 year olds to get married, theyre also in the house. Its great.

Now we wait for the 28th, but its going to take a miracle for Erdogan to lose. I have virtually 0 hope at this point. One thing is foreigners defending him, but any turk who does so deserve everything they get. I truly hope anyone who voted for him suffer a fate worse than death (at this rate, they will). It may sound harsh, but ive seen no one in power except for this absolute sorry of an excuse, cunt of a man. My teens and childhood was wasted away with terrorist attacks and a staged coup, along with a power hungry man who made every walking day of my life worse than what it could have been.

Basically, wish us the best of luck i guess lol.

[biological-catastrophe]

Hello! I need to complain because America is a fucking joke. Vent under the cut as well as TW/CW list

TW/CW: School shooting, (preventable) death, cancer, abortion, homophobia/transphobia

This country is a goddamn joke. I could go on and on about how bad it is and I really need to because it’s grinding my gears.

They’re passing a law that makes it ILLEGAL TO BOYCOTT COMPANIES SUPPORTING ISRAEL. They don’t give a fuck about our constitution. In one breath they’re saying this and another saying the fact we can’t afford a place to live is because we keep spending money on Starbucks and avocado toast. And how the fuck are you going to enforce this?? You gonna hold a gun to my head and make me buy McDonalds or Starbucks?? What the fuck?? We already can’t afford to live here.

I’m lucky my parents are still letting me live with them because I could never afford a place to live. I’m pretty sure I did my math right but: minimum wage is $7.25 USD an hour. The average apartment is $2,000 a month. To afford JUST THAT, someone would have to work near 70 hours a week. Not including food, insurance, medicine, gas, anything besides rent. And with the pay I got at my last job ($10 an hour), I’d have to work 50 hours a week for rent. “Oh those jobs are only meant for like high schoolers” so you only want these fast food places to be open from 5-10 pm? You don’t want them to be open during school hours then? Hypocrites.

And SPEAKING OF SCHOOLS, the school shootings are not a joke. I think I talked about it already but there was an active shooter on my college campus while we were outside. We have lockdown drills so many times, it’s ingrained in us what to do since kindergarten what to do. I met a girl who got shot like 7 times and survived. I’ve grown up always having an escape route out of the school. Nobody cares. Nobody cares that a literal toddler was able to get ahold of a gun and SHOOT HIS TEACHER, and the teacher warned about the kid making threats before and the school didn’t do anything. Nobody cares that someone a girl rejected could bring a gun to school and shoot her and many others. It’s hypocritical that they ban abortion and then don’t care for the kid as soon as they’re born.

And god, the abortion ban. I live in Texas as I’ve said. Here, the law is called the heartbeat bill. Abortion is allowed until the fetus has a heartbeat. But by the time people have that, they generally don’t even know they’re pregnant. It’s basically a total abortion ban. And they’re so fucking sneaky with it. You can SUE people and doctors who have abortions. A man sued three women of a million dollars EACH, including is then-wife. And I also heard rumors of them trying to ban state travel for abortions as well which is also unconstitutional.

And do we even want to talk about health care??? I saw a video the other day of a girl and her best friend who both have cancer and can’t afford it. They can’t afford LIFE SAVING TREATMENT. Are you fucking joking?? People can’t afford insulin and are dying from it. People can’t afford life saving shit and die. What the fuck kind of dystopia is that?? I had to go get an MRI and it was THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS???? What the fuck???

And do we even want to get started on the homophobia/transphobia?? The ‘don’t say gay’ bill in Florida and the numerous drag ban bills. Texas is doing the thing similar to the heartbeat bill where you can sue a ‘person who is not conforming to their assigned gender at birth’ or something like that. Femboys and masculine women could get sued. What the fuck? It’s so expensive and hard to get HRT and surgeries for people. They are trying to raise the voting age so people can’t vote against it. They started with kids and now want to include adults into their 20s. I’m sick of it. I’m just sick of all of this.

And I can’t complain about all of this and not talk about the 2021 Texas Freeze. Basically what happened, February of 2021 we had a horrible freeze, at nights it got into the negatives (for reference, ‘cold’ here for me is in the 40s. This is all Fahrenheit. 40°F = 4°C; -3°F = -19°C). Our power plants weren’t ready for this. We lost power during a lot of this. Some people didn’t have power for WEEKS, people died from the cold because the power plant people were greedy and lazy and didn’t put in proper weather safeties. This could have been prevented. Pipes burst, people died and got ill, the state was in a panic for weeks. We had power about half the time, but god was it cold.

I hate this country. I hate it so fucking much. This country is a fucking dystopia, some sick work of apocalypse fiction. I want to leave so fucking bad. I can’t wait till this place crashes and burns.

[americanredragger]

I do not like Joe Biden's Israel Policy or his Border Policy or more of his other policies than I want to stand here listing, and I won't say anyone else has to either. I also think he should be a one term president by virtue of his age.

But he is ALSO one of the most effective progressive presidents we have had since fucking FDR in terms of actual bills signed into law.

The scope of what he's accomplished IS amazing, especially given the Center Right Democrat Party he has to work with and the political times his presidency inhabits.

None of us have to like him at all, but we DO need to stop lying to ourselves about him. We can acknowledge that he's been one of the best practical supporters of working class Americans in two generations, but still condemn his other policies -- a president can be, and nearly always is, several things at once, and also nearly always those things are contradictory.

Kennedy literally saved the world from nuclear hellfire at Cuba but was a rampant adulterer who also got us stuck in Vietnam.

LBJ was often a tyrant and the man who gave us COINTELPRO and badly escalated the Vietnam War, but also signed the Civil Right Act of 1964, put men on the moon, created Medicare and Medicaid, and pushed hard for the Clean Air and Clean Water acts.

Nixon did a Watergate, militarized law enforcement, enacted Operation CONDOR to support ultra right wing dictators in Latin America and furnish them with well trained Death Squads, blew up Cambodia AND Laos, and used the War on Drugs as a means of keeping track of and incarcerating his political enemies and keeping a boot on the neck of working class Americans and especially the African-American population. On the other hand, Nixon ALSO scored the most momentous arms-limitations agreement history had ever seen up to that point, established the EPA, expanded the social safety net, ended American involvement in Vietnam, opened relations with China, expanded Medicare, and generally deescalated the Cold War.

I won't lie. Biden has SO MUCH blood and suffering on his hands. On account of his border detentions and arms enabling alone, he has more than several past presidents built up over their whole careers. That's not even going into his lackadaisical approach to Covid (which I will hasten to point out is at the very damned-by-faint-praise least still better than Trump's "no approach at all to Covid").

That cannot and should not be denied.

He's also the most pro-Union president we've seen since the Carter Administration, ended the TWO DECADE LONG War in Afghanistan (yes it was messy but that's mostly on Trump for not negotiating a more doable time frame and also not doing jack fuck to set up or prepare for), has enacted more student debt relief than I ever thought I'd live to see in this country, funded widespread infrastructure renewal (at least enough to finally, finally, FINALLY get that ball rolling for the first time in 50 goddamn years), enacted massive maintenance of the social safety net after his predecessor did everything possible to dismantle it, raised the minimum wage for federal contractors, and the the Build Back Better America initiative is our boldest piece of left wing policy since Kennedy at the least, with expanded childcare and pre-K access, healthcare subsidies, clean energy investments, and tax credits for working class American families. He also pushed and signed the CHIPS Act, which is bringing a lot of tech jobs and manufacturing back to America.

We need to hammer him on his flaws and failures, not treat him like he's Literally Satan. Or, alternately if you are gonna treat him that way, then swallow your fucking pride and never forget that Satan has your back way more than the guy on the other side will ever do.

[quantumresidency]

How to Apply for a Green Card in the USA: The EB-5 Process Explained

What is the EB-5 Program?

The EB-5 program was introduced by the Congress in 1990 with an aim of promoting employment and capital investment within the United States. For at least $800 000, the foreigner can buy a stake in an entitled U. S. business and acquire Green Card USA for them and their instantaneous relative. This provides a direct path for those looking to apply for Green Card USA, offering not just residency but also the opportunity to contribute to the U.S. economy through job creation.

Understanding the EB-5 Process

Some of the steps involved in EB-5 process are required to be fulfilled to get your Green Card USA through investment. Here’s a simplified breakdown:

Choose the Qualifying Investment Project An investor also has to decide on the project that has been cleared by the U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Such investments refer to real estate assets, or construction projects.

Invest the Required Capital The base amount that is need for investment is $800,000 for TEA or $1. For the purposes other than TEA, $ 05 million was authorized. The investment has to be at risk with minimum of creating ten full time U.S worker’s employment.

It is advisable to file Form I-526 (Immigrant Petition). The last thing is filing the form, I-526 which proves that the money used was sourced legally and invested in the asset designated project.

Conditional Green Card Application After the I-526 petition has been granted, the investor must apply for a conditional Green Card USA which permits the investor, his or her spouse and children under the age of eighteen years to legally reside in the U. S for a period of two years.

File Form I-829 (Remove Conditions) After two years, investors file Form I-829 to remove the conditions on their Green Card. This step confirms that the investment created the required jobs and met all program criteria.

Receive Permanent Green Card Upon approval of the I-829, the investor and their family receive permanent residency, marking the final step of the EB-5 processing.

EB-5 Processing Time

The time taken to EB-5 Processing also depends on several factors, such as the investor’s country of origin and USCIS processing capacity at a given time. As for the average time it takes to go through the entire EB-5 process, this may possibly take anywhere from 24 to 60 months in the aggregate. Recent reforms have also sought to simplify the EB-5 process with a view of cutting down time for applicant processing.

Benefits of the EB-5 Program

The EB-5 program offers several significant benefits to investors, making it a popular choice for those seeking a Green Card USA:

Fast Track to U. S. Residency: The EB-5 program is among the quickest ways through which one could be granted residency in the United States with this channel taking less time as compared with other visa classes.

No Sponsorship Required: Interestingly, every EB-5 doesn’t have to be sponsored by an employer or a family member, which empowers investors in the process.

Pathway to Citizenship: In five years individuals holding a Green Card have a possibility to become the citizens of the United States.

Family Inclusion: Under the EB-5 program, an applicant is allowed to have his spouse and his or her unmarried children below twenty-one years included in the Green Card application to USA.

Key Takeaways

The EB-5 program assist foreigners in getting a green card through the option of investing in the country.

This process includes choosing the preferred project, contributing the necessary amount of capital, and submitting necessary forms to USCIS.

The EB-5 program enables the investors to get permanent residency for themselves and their immediate family members.

The average time taken in processing of the EB-5 has been between 24 to 60 months, however with new reforms in place we have shorter durations.

Conclusion

If you wish to settle in the United States of America and be a foreign direct investor, the EB-5 program is a quick and simple way to attain a Green Card USA. With advantages like priority processing of applications for permanent residence, the ability to include family members in the further migration process, and the opportunity to apply for U.S. citizenship, this program is beloved by investors around the world. If you will follow the EB-5 process in every aspect and meet all the outlined procedures, it will be possible to start the journey to joining the society and living a fulfilling life in the United States.

[truthnado]

Minimum Wage Rage or How Gov. Gavin Newsom tried to exempt a Big Donor f...

It's time for another Truthnado!   

We're gonna start off with a Truthnado fact right off the bat.  Uh, according to a quick Google search,  the average age of a fast food worker in America is 35.  It's not just 16 year olds makin fast food weed money anymore. Average age is 35. 

Lawmakers in California realized this and thought, "You know,  fast food workers should make a decent living.  They should get 20 an hour" 

 NBC 4 NEWS: After years of protests, restaurant chains with more than 60 locations nationwide must now pay their California employees at least 20 an hour. It's one of the highest minimum wages in the country and the first time state lawmakers have mandated a minimum wage for just one industry. If a Company has more than 60 establishments nationwide.   

Uh, fast food people heard this. They're like, "Okay, if you're going to raise the minimum wage, $20, we're going to lay off a lot of people. We're going to raise prices. We're going to not open new places, move out of state. 

NBC 4 News: Supporters say it's time for the billion dollar corporations to pay a living wage. How's it going?  But many franchise owners, like Jessica D'Ambra, who runs 11 McDonald's around LA, say the law puts an unfair strain on their businesses already operating on slim margins. Do you feel targeted that it's specifically for fast food? 

Franchise Owner: Yes. And I think people just don't realize that. They see this big McDonald's brand and just think, oh, they've got all the money in the world. And it's just, that's not. at all how it is.   

Uh, lawmakers in California said,  "It'll be fine." So they raised the minimum wage to $20 an hour,  which is good for people who were able to keep their jobs. NBC NEWS 4: Mc Donalds, Chipotle and Starbucks all plan to raise prices to cover costs. Pizza Hut preemptively fired 1200 delivery drivers.  What's the point of the raise if you don't have a job anymore? 

The big, uh, fast food companies did exactly what they said they would. They raised prices, they laid a lot of people off, they shut some places down, and they're not opening more and they're moving out of state. Uh, now some of you may know I'm a Chicago guy, but my partner in this, uh, lives in L. A. and he can confirm that a Big Mac out in L.A. costs over $10 bucks. About three bucks more than it does in Chicago.   

So while, uh, it was a nice gesture to try to give people a living wage, um,  

The Truthnado is,  it hurt a lot of business. A lot of people lost their jobs

and you know, the, uh,  these fast food places, the corporations didn't shell out the money. These are franchise. So franchisee owners have to shell out the money.  Uh, and they may not have the biggest margins. 

But the governor is also facing backlash about Panera Bread and California's minimum wage law. NBC4 chief political reporter Conan Nolan asked him about it during a one on one interview. Conan joins us now live from our newsroom. Conan. First, the clock is ticking for the governor of California involving the state's new minimum wage law for fast food workers. Fast food workers.

That it's a friend of Gavin Newsom who doesn't have to pay the 20 an hour minimum wage. And it turns out, A, it's not true. He never talked to me about it. Period. Full stop. So it's an absurd story. 

He doesn’t have to talk to you about it. There were some discussions around bakeries and this and that, but in relationship to this story, it's absurd. It's a coincidence that the, uh, that this new, Minimum wage law did not impact a campaign contributor of yours. 

Newsom: It does impact.  Uh, the backup to that, so here's the problem, is that the law impacted just, uh, it, those who work for fast food restaurant chains. 

There was a provision in it that singled out those who make standalone bread products, bakery products, and that it appeared, according to Bloomberg News, who did a deep dive into it, to have helped the governor's friend, uh, a guy named Greg Floyd, who is a,  runs two dozen different Panera Bread restaurants in California. 

So I don't have a fun way to wrap this up, but, uh, like, share, subscribe, and  Some people say, uh, not everyone's worth 20 bucks. 

Shot of Gavin Newsom. 

[starshipcaptainjojo]

I promise I didn’t wake up today to make an already depressing post worse, so I promise to end with something at least a little uplifting.

But first... the bad news.

FACT CHECK: Not Forbes, but Yahoo Finance. And we all know how good Yahoo is at financial decisions! Also this is the MEDIAN not mean. So. There’s that. Sorry.

Excerpt: “...members of [Gen Z] have a median of $33,000 across all of their retirement savings accounts. That’s compared to $162,000 for Baby Boomers, $87,000 for Gen Xers, and $50,000 for Millennials. The estimated median savings among all workers is $67,000.While Gen Zers do have a lower balance in their retirement accounts, they’re actually saving a larger percentage of their annual salary compared to older generations.“

Link to article is HERE

This whole article is about how that $33k is a BUMMER. Because Millennials “had $50k at their age” (spoiler alert: no we didn’t.) The thing you should take away from this article is that savings are going down generation over generation. And these geniuses’ ‘solutions’ are to put more money aside for retirement when they admit openly (in the above excerpt) that Gen Z are putting a higher percentage of their wages toward retirement than older generations already!

Almost! Like! They’re not being paid enough!!!

But I am but a humble Millennial with a theoretical $50k to retire on.

Which brings us to the sad rest of this conversation:

33k is NOT MUCH. Theoretically, to retire comfortably at age 65 (in America) you need 25 years of your current salary saved up at the time of retirement- and that’s assuming you have the life expectancy of your PARENTS! Which you DON’T because advancements in our understanding of our health lead experts to believe that the first person to live to be 150 years old has already been born!

$33k is at the BARE MINIMUM one year of income (and don’t get me started on inflation) AND on top of that doesn’t account for health related expenses, which will be a thing whether you’re healthy or not. Long term care options in America SUCK THE BIG POOPER. Our services are bad! If you weren’t working full-time, you weren’t paying into social security which is meant to supplement income! AND FURTHERMORE! They (the GOP, and my parents) say that the government might have messed up enough that by the time us Millennials reach retirement age, Social Security won’t exist.

So what can you ACTUALLY do?

Why yes, this isn’t all doom and gloom, thank you.

The answer (in America) is VOTE for people who support the people! Infrastructure includes help for the elderly- which you will be some day! And for everyone (even non-Americans whose lives I know nothing about)  learn about financial literacy!

Sorry to break it to you but unless you get lucky or are super frugal (both of which are valid but not assuredly long-term believe it or not) you might not have the resources right now to invest in your future. So you need to learn about your options!

From complicated (and annoyingly uncertain) things like stock options, what an index is, and how to write things off on your taxes, to more day-to-day things like how to manage your budgets, how to determine if something is good value or not and how to prioritize your needs. Your job, Zoomies, or whatever they’re calling you, is to LEARN HOW TO BEAT THE SYSTEM.

There are things school won’t teach you. Websites with resources no one tells you about, or that you don’t think will help yet. But they WILL EVENTUALLY.  Because the only other thing you can do right now is BET ON YOURSELF!

Remember that you might be the only one who can set you up for your future! You owe it to you to have a little faith that you can do it. Learn because even if current-you doesn’t have the money to think about retirement, adult-you will! Some version of you someday is going to get some money. From a job, from a scratcher, from the sidewalk in the rain in a blood-stained leather briefcase. And when you get it you want to be smart about what you do with it. BET THAT YOU WILL HAVE MORE IN THE FUTURE.

Here are some resources I learned from:

Best Credit Cards in 2023 (Nerdwallet, lists cards by types of rewards you can get)

Millennial Money (Forbes, targeted to middle/upper class but they’re not wrong)

What’s an Index? (Investopedia, Intimidating but useful, best for searching terms)

What’s a Fiduciary? (Investopedia again, but please learn what this is. It’s very important when you actually get some money to make sure YOUR best interests are being considered.)

Microsaving Apps (like Acorns) (Inverstorjunkie, good for testing your abilities and instincts in the stock market. There’s also a Fidelity one that wasn’t bad, but I ended up not going for any of them myself.)

Check out How Women Invest if you go down this rabbit hole. They’re targeting older Millennials but they know a lot of good resources for anyone. I also talked to a financial advisor who told me hedge fund managers are full of shit and you should make your own stock elections if you know how to read the stock market. It’s trend spotting, and if you have the time and energy, doing it yourself could get you serious money.

This got very long! Don’t be intimidated! You can do this! At this stage all you have to do is go to town on some knowledge. Keep in mind your sources and that everyone has an agenda, but that as long as you know that you can still learn from them!

So learn! Make money! Then hoard it until you can retire! You must believe- I must believe that our generation and yours will retire.

Because I don’t want to do this forever.

And I’m betting on myself that we won’t.

[bloggingproject]

The Gender Wage Gap Op-Ed

When most people think of the more significant, systemic issues that women and femmes face as a result of living in a patriarchal society, the gender wage gap is usually one of the first examples that come to mind. As of 2022, women typically earn about 82 cents to a man's dollar, which is only 17 cents more than the 65 cents recorded in 1982. While this may seem discouraging, it's essential to acknowledge women's significant progress in the workforce. However, a wage gap still exists and highlights numerous issues, not just within our job market but with our entire "hustle" culture, societal norms, and economic system. 

The article "The Enduring Grip of the Gender Pay Gap" by Rakesh Kochhar sheds light on the numerous contributing factors. While it is very well known by now that the topic is much more nuanced than companies simply choosing not to pay women as much as men, this article highlights those nuances in a way that does the conversation around the topic a bit more justice than it has been given as of late.  

One of the first points Kochhar brings up is the fact that the gender pay gap increases along with age. Younger women (between the ages of 25 and 34) typically earn about 92% as much as men within that same age range, but when following that same group of women from 2010 to 2022, the gap decreases from 92% to 84% for women ages 37 to 46 (Kochhar, 2023). There are several explanations for this, but I want to focus on how having children dramatically impacts a woman's career choices and, thus, her wages. 

The conclusion that Kochhar comes to is that the increase in the pay gap correlates with the ages at which women are most likely to start having children and raise kids, and the reasoning for that lies in much larger systemic issues. Starting with the sociological explanation, it's no secret that the expectation for women to be the primary caretakers of children has been destigmatized throughout the past few decades. More people are starting to accept that women can be providers just as much as men and men can be caretakers just as much as women; household chores and childcare are becoming gender-neutral responsibilities rather than a burden that predominantly falls onto women. However, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that women are still more likely to leave the workforce than men after they have children, and the majority of that burden still falls onto their shoulders. In fact, in 2022, it was shown that 70% of mothers in the U.S. were either employed or looking for employment. Compared to women without children, that employment rate shoots up to 84%. It also doesn't help that fathers are more likely to hold employment or be looking for a job than both childless men and mothers. Despite both demographics having children, fathers are typically employed more than mothers, regardless of marriage status. Furthermore, it also doesn't help that there are drastically more single mothers living in the U.S. than single fathers, making the gap appear much more unfair than it already was, considering how more women have to support their families on their own than men do (Korhoen, 2023).

So what is the solution? There are quite a few, and the first is learning how to disassociate specific domestic duties with gender. For as long as humans have existed, the norm has always been that women tend to the children while men work to provide for said children, and it is still a strong cultural norm in America. However, there is a noticeable shift in societal norms towards gender-neutral domestic roles. As a society, the more we progress towards dissociating those roles with specific genders, the closer we will get to a society where women are in more positions to work and earn more. 

However, another aspect of the wage gap that needs to be brought up more is how our work culture and current economic system need to accommodate the needs of parents well enough. For years, the federal minimum wage has remained stagnant at $7.25/hour, yet the cost of living in many places across the country only continues to increase. As a result, people have to work more and more to make a living for themselves, let alone to support whole other human beings. With the average 40-hour work week not even being enough to cover living costs for one person, the ultimatum most mothers have to choose is between working insane hours to keep themselves and their family afloat (at the risk of missing their children's essential development years) or work less in order to ensure that their children have a prominent parental figure in their lives. This ultimatum holds much more gravity for unmarried women with children. 

The fact that most higher paying or salary jobs offer different types of flexibility than wage jobs also contributes to the gap. Mothers will gravitate towards jobs and occupations that allow them to balance their work/home life, whereas most fathers don't have to carry that same burden. That, coupled with the insanely high childcare costs in America, makes it seem like closing the wage gap is impossible. The work culture in America doesn't accommodate people who have children, and the societal expectations placed on women to be the primary caretakers of said children result in them either working less or taking up lesser-paying jobs as a means of having open availability for their families.

The solutions are definitely going to take a lot of work. It's going to take a lot of systemic deconstructing and rewiring in order to create a system that allows people to have children without staking their careers and livelihoods on that decision. However, two critical solutions stand out: making childcare more accessible for children who don't go to school during the day and raising the federal minimum wage to a wage that's livable for people regardless of their marital and familial status. These are not just suggestions but urgent needs that must be addressed to bridge the gender wage gap.

Works Cited:

Kochher, Rakesh . "The Enduring Grip of the Gender Pay Gap." Pew Research Center, 1 Mar. 2023, www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/01/the-enduring-grip-of-the-gender-pay-gap/. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024.

Korhonen, Veera. "Number of U.S. Children Living in a Single Parent Family 1970-2023." Statista, 28 Nov. 2023, www.statista.com/statistics/252847/number-of-children-living-with-a-single-mother-or-single-father/#:~:text=Number%20of%20U.S.%20children%20living%20in%20a%20single%20parent%20family%201970%2D2023&text=In%202023%2C%20there%20were%20about,living%20with%20a%20single%20father. Accessed 26 Apr. 2024.

[kristenbrady]

Forget Indeed. Those Over 50 Should Be Looking on These Job Boards Instead.

Hi Kristen,

Thank you for applying for a Team Member position with McDonald’s. At this time, we have decided not to move forward with your application. We appreciate your interest in our jobs and wish you the best of luck in your search!

Thank you, McDonald’s hiring team at McD of Grand Morton (37954).

I have gone on more than 6 job interviews over the last couple of months and have been turned down for all of them. I’m not saying that there is age discrimination going on here. But when certain employers in the job interview say that “There’s a lot of younger workers here. Would you be comfortable working with them?” Or “We’re not sure you fit in with our company culture, but thank you for coming by.” When I hear those types of things I start to wonder, “Am I too old to be hired?”

A recent data analysis by the Urban Institute and ProPublica shows over 50% of older workers in the U.S. are pushed out of longtime occupations before choosing to retire, essentially experiencing often irreversible financial damage. According to this article “If You’re Over 50, Chances Are the Decision to Leave a Job Won’t be Yours,” more and more folks are experiencing age discrimination. The article states ‘Many people in America assume that by the point of reaching their 50s they will have time to save, have steady work, as well as the right to make their own choices regarding when to retire. However, unfortunately, that is no longer the case for most people.’

So it is recommended that if you are approaching 50 or are over 50, you choose one of the three suggestions:

Stay in your current job no matter what

Start your own business

Try one of the following listed job boards that specifically works with older workers

The workforce landscape for older workers is changing. If you are still going to Indeed, I highly encourage that you change that. If you are 50 years of age and up, I highly recommend these 3 job boards for older workers:

RetirementJobs.com

RetirementJobs.com is a certified age-friendly job board of employers committed and willing to take on older workers.

This job boards offers these benefits:

Free

Millions of members

Mixture of people from every level, from leadership/executive level all the way to staff level

Multitude of jobs available

Hourly and salary positions available

No age discrimination

Members rate employers

Retired Brains

The site Retired Brains offers a multitude of resources and offers part-time, seasonal, and temporary work. It is a fantastic option for retirees looking to supplement their income or who are considering restarting a business.

Over 50 and Looking for Remote Work? Try These!

Tired of looking for a job and getting turned down? Check out these sites!

medium.com

Senior Community Service Employment Program (SCSEP) Program

SCSEP is a work-based training and community service program for America’s older demographic. The program offers training for unemployed, low-income, senior individuals. The Senior Community Service Employment Program grantees comprise 19 nationwide non-profit organizations and state agencies. For more details on programs in your region, you can use this Older Worker Program Finder here. The AARP foundation also helps with such resources and information.

According to the program’s website:

Participants receive work experience in various community service tasks at public and non-profit facilities, which includes senior centers, daycare facilities, hospitals, and schools. This program offers more than 40M community service hours to non-profit and public agencies, which allows them to provide and enhance needed services. People work about 20 hours per week and get paid the greatest of local, state, or federal minimum wage.

If you are a seasoned freelancer and prefer the peace and quiet that remote work offers, here is a list of remote job sites to check out so you can get your first gig:

Reddit R/ForHire

Guru

LinkedIn

Fiverr

Upwork

Media Bistro

99Designs

Ruby Now

Gun.IO

Dribble

Authentic Jobs

Remote Jobs Club

Workew

Remote4Me

Angel List

Virtual Vocations

Skip The Drive

Remote.Co

We Work Remotely

HubStaff Talent

Remotive

Solid Gigs

Jobspresso

Remote OK

Flex Jobs

Working Nomads

Kristen is a contributor on Medium. Sign up here to catch every story when she publishes.

Follow Kristen on Substack: https://substack.com/@kristenb

Note: This story includes affiliate links. I earn income from purchases through this link.

Originally posted on Medium

[goose-writing-and-art]

Did a face study to really nail this character's face down correctly... Her name is Harper (she/her) and she's the first mate on a pirate ship.

Some info about her- her full name is Victoria Harper Dumont, belonging to a small but well off merchant family. At the age of 12, she enlisted in the British Navy as a boy under the guise of Harper Victors after running off from her home so as to avoid lady's socialization lessons and "play dates" that were actually her father seeking to betroth her to one of his business partner's heirs. This worked out and she managed to hide herself pretty successfully (she was fairly tall and only getting taller- she comes into adulthood at a broad 6'1), eventually befriending Alston Masters, son of a more prestigious family known for helping to fund the Navy. Eventually, they'd become best friends and brothers in arms. Around the age of 17, she would even indulge him in the fact that she wasn't who she claimed to be. Alston remained respectful of that fact and continued to call her Harper and use masculine pronouns and such for her to keep her secret. However, eventually, she would be found out and arrested. This was well after Alston had managed to rise a few ranks through his early and into his mid 20s, gaining immense respect both for his name and his form. After a long debate of bidding various authorities and higher ups, he managed to convince (and pay) them to let Harper out of jail if only under the guise of him being her "keeper". This would result in him hiring her to his ship as his first mate and then doing the bare minimum to supervise her to appease his deal.

She does take her job as first mate seriously, albeit she has a temper she struggles to discipline. She also continues to go by Harper, though happy to be free of being considered a man (Of course, though, she's grown a liking to being called "Sir" by the crew). Eventually, Alston becomes increasingly rebellious against many of the political calls of the monarchy and its constituents, and casts away most of the crew in lieu of finding help elsewhere, becoming a pirate captain as a means of disrupting trade into the British isles, especially between the Americas. This gives Harper even more freedom off shore, which means she has to sneak around significantly less to meet with lonely sailors' wives, though it does mean Alston teases her significantly more about retaining certain behaviors of a soldier.

Into their mid 30s, Alston and Harper are still of course extremely close. He's considered fearsome, cold, and calculating, a rather precise and dangerous man to piss off. His crew also know him to be generous, if aloof and mechanical in his approach to his generosity. Harper is impassioned and hot-headed, but fiercely loyal. They are quite intrinsically power besties. Until, in all of this rebellion, Alston decides to approach Harper as Eleanor.

Big symbolism, rebelling against a national superpower as a metaphor to rebelling against cishetnormativity, having previously considered herself sex repulsed asexual, Eleanor now finds herself rather as a demisexual woman, albeit her demisexuality only really leaves room for love for her "brother in arms" after all these years. Over the course of their plot, there's the B plot of these two falling in love, almost literally, throughout Eleanor's transition. These two very sure footed and confident friends awkwardly tumbling over each other as their dynamic is almost pulled out completely from under them and they have to reevaluate what their closeness was and what it means now that Eleanor is coming into herself. Eventually they become pirate wives of course.

[qqueenofhades]

Do you really hate this county? Or were you just ranting?

Sigh. I debated whether or not to answer this, since I usually keep the real-life/politics/depressing current events to a relative minimum on this blog, except when I really can't avoid ranting about it. But I have some things to get off my chest, it seems, and you did ask. So.

The thing is, any American with a single modicum of genuine historical consciousness knows that despite all the triumphalist mythology about Pulling Up By Our Bootstraps and the American Dream and etc, this country was founded and built on the massive and systematic exploitation and extermination of Black and Indigenous people. And now, when we are barely (400 years later!!!) getting to a point of acknowledging that in a widespread way, oh my god the screaming. I'm so sick of the American right wing I could spit for so many reasons, not least of which is the increasingly reductive and reactive attempts to put the genie back in the bottle and set up hysterical boogeymen about how Teaching Your Children Critical Race Theory is the end of all things. They have forfeited all pretense of being a real governing party; remember how their only platform at the 2020 RNC was "support whatever Trump says?" They have devolved to the point where the cruelty IS the point, to everyone who doesn't fit the nakedly white supremacist mold. They don't have anything to do aside from attempt to usher in actual, literal, dictionary-definition-of-fascism and sponsor armed revolts against the peaceful transfer of power.

That is fucking exhausting to be aware of all the time, especially with the knowledge that if we miss a single election cycle -- which is exceptionally easy to do with the way the Democratic electorate needs to be wooed and courted and herded like cats every single time, rather than just getting their asses to the polls and voting to keep Nazis out of office -- they will be right back in power again. If Manchin and Sinema don't get over their poseur pearl-clutching and either nuke the filibuster or carve out an exception for voting rights, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act is never going to get passed, no matter how many boilerplate appeals the Democratic leadership makes on Twitter. In which case, the 2022 midterms are going to give us Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the House (I threw up in my mouth a little typing that) and right back to the Mitch McConnell Obstruction Power Hour in the Senate. The Online Left (TM) will then blame the Democrats for not doing more to stop them. These are, of course, the same people who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton out of precious moral purity reasons in 2016, handed the election to Trump, and now like to complain when the Trump-stacked Supreme Court reliably churns out terrible decisions. Gee, it's almost like elections have consequences!!

Aside from my exasperation with the death-cult right-wing fascists and the Online Left (TM), I am sick and tired of how forty years of "trickle-down" Reaganomics has created a world where billionaires can just fly to space for the fun of it, while the rest of America (and the world) is even more sick, poor, overheated, economically deprived, and unable to survive the biggest public health crisis in a century, even if half the elected leadership wasn't actively trying to sabotage it. Did you know that half of American workers can't even afford a one-bedroom apartment? Plus the obvious scandal that is race relations, health care, paid leave, the education system (or lack thereof), etc etc. I'm so tired of this America Is The Greatest Country in the World mindless jingoistic catchphrasing. We are an empire in the late stages of collapse and it's not going to be pretty for anyone. We have been poisoned on sociopathic-libertarian-selfishness-disguised-as-Freedom ideology for so long that that's all there is left. We have become a country of idiots who believe everything their idiot friends post on social media, but in a very real sense, it's not directly those individuals' fault. How could they, when they have been very deliberately cultivated into that mindset and stripped of critical thinking skills, to serve a noxious combination of money, power, and ideology?

I am tired of the fact that I have become so drained of empathy that when I see news about more people who refused to get the vaccine predictably dying of COVID, my reaction is "eh, whatever, they kind of deserved it." I KNOW that is not a good mindset to have, and I am doing my best to maintain my personal attempts to be kind to those I meet and to do my small part to make the world better. I know these are human beings who believed what they were told by people that they (for whatever reason) thought knew better than them, and that they are part of someone's family, they had loved ones, etc. But I just can't summon up the will to give a single damn about them (I'm keeping a bingo card of right-wing anti-vax radio hosts who die of COVID and every time it's like, "Alexa, play Another One Bites The Dust.") The course that the pandemic took in 21st-century America was not preordained or inevitable. It was (and continues to be) drastically mismanaged for cynical political reasons, and the legacy of the Former Guy continues to poison any attempts to bring it under control or convince people to get a goddamn vaccine. We now have over 100,000 patients hospitalized with COVID across the country -- more than last summer, when the vaccines weren't available.

I have been open about my fury about the devaluation of the humanities and other critical thinking skills, about the fact that as an academic in this field, my chances of getting a full-time job for which I have trained extensively and acquired a specialist PhD are... very low. I am tired of the fact that Americans have been encouraged to believe whatever bullshit they fucking please, regardless of whether it is remotely true, and told that any attempt to correct them is "anti-freedom." I am tired of how little the education system functions in a useful way at all -- not necessarily due to the fault of teachers, who have to work with what they're given, and who are basically heroes struggling stubbornly along in a profession that actively hates them, but because of relentless under-funding, political interference, and furious attempts, as discussed above, to keep white America safely in the dark about its actual history. I am tired of the fact that grade school education basically relies on passing the right standardized tests, the end. I am tired of the implication that the truth is too scary or "un-American" to handle. I am tired. Tired.

I know as well that "America" is not synonymous in all cases with "capitalist imperialist white-supremacist corporate death cult." This is still the most diverse country in the world. "America" is not just rich white middle-aged Republicans. "America" involves a ton of people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Muslims, Jews, Christians of good will (I have a whole other rant on how American Christianity as a whole has yielded all pretense of being any sort of a principled moral opposition), white allies, etc etc. all trying to make a better world. The blue, highly vaccinated, Biden-winning states and counties are leading the economic recovery and enacting all kinds of progressive-wishlist dream policies. We DID get rid of the Orange One via the electoral process and avert fascism at the ballot box, which is almost unheard-of, historically speaking. But because, as also discussed above, certain elements of the Democratic electorate need to fall in love with a candidate every single time or threaten to withhold their vote to punish the rest of the country for not being Progressive Enough, these gains are constantly fragile and at risk of being undone in the next electoral cycle. Yes, the existing system is a crock of shit. But it's what we've got right now, and the other alternative is open fascism, which we all got a terrifying taste of over the last four years. I don't know about you, but I really don't want to go back.

So... I don't know. I don't know if that stacks up to hate. I do hate almost everything about what this country currently is, structurally speaking, but I recognize that is not identical with the many people who still live here and are trying to do their best, including my friends, family, and myself. I am exhausted by the fact that as an older millennial, I am expected to survive multiple cataclysmic economic crashes, a planet that is literally boiling alive, a barely functional political system run on black cash, lies, and xenophobia, a total lack of critical thinking skills, renewed assaults on women/queer people/POC/etc, and somehow feel like I'm confident or prepared for the future. Not all these problems are only America's fault alone. The West as a whole bears huge responsibility for the current clusterfuck that the world is in, for many reasons, and so do some non-Western countries. But there is no denying that many of these problems have ultimate American roots. See how the ongoing fad for right-wing authoritarian strongmen around the world has them modeling themselves openly on Trump (like Brazil's lunatic president, Jair Bolsonaro, who talks all the time about how Trump is his political role model). See what's going on in Afghanistan right now. Etc. etc.

Anyway. I am very, very tired. There you have it.