#going to be in debt!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Beware the Whisker Wizard!

(Based on this post)

[inkskinned]

you're in the habit of denying yourself things.

if someone asked you directly, you would say that you love a little treat. you like iced coffee and getting the cookie. you drink juice out of a fancy cup sometimes, and often do use your candles until they gutter out helplessly.

but you hesitate about buying the 20 dollar hand mixer because, like. you could just use your arms. you weren't raised rich. you don't get to just spend the 20 dollars (remember when that could cover lunch?), at least - you don't spend that without agonizing over it first, trying to figure out the cost-benefits like you are defending yourself in front of a jury. yes, this rice cooker could seriously help you. but you do know how to make stovetop rice and it really isn't that hard. how many pies or brownies would you actually make, in order to make that hand mixer worthwhile?

what's wild is that if the money was for a friend, it would already be spent. you'd fork over 40 without blinking an eye, just to make them happy. the difference is that it's for you, so you need to justify it.

and it sneaks in. you ration yourself without meaning to - you don't finish the pint of ice cream, even though you want to. the next time you go to the store, you say ah, i really shouldn't, and then you walk away. you save little bits of your precious things - just in case. sometimes you even go so far as putting that one thing in your shopping cart. and then just leaving it there, because maybe-one-day, but not right now, there's other stuff going on.

you do self-care, of course. but you don't do it more than like, 3 days in a row. after that it just feels a little bit over-the-edge. like. you can't live in decadence, the economy is so bad right now, kid.

so you don't buy the rice cooker. you can-and-will spend the time over the stove. you can withstand the little sorrows. denial and discipline are practically synonyms. and you're not spoiled.

it's just - it's not always a rice cooker. sometimes it is a person or a job or a hug. sometimes it is asking for help. sometimes it is the summer and your college degree. sometimes it is looking down at scabbed knees and feeling a strange kind of falling, like you can't even recognize the girl you used to be. sometimes it is your handprint looking unsteady.

sometimes it is tuesday, and you didn't get fired, and you want to celebrate. but what is it you like, even? you search around your little heart and come up empty. you're so used to denying that all your desires draw a blank.

oh fuck. see, this is the perfect opportunity. if you had a mixer, you'd make a cake.

[shotmrmiller]

getting rescued out your car during a blizzard or something, oil frozen solid in the tank and you've nowhere to go, phone showing no bars until a big, gruff man in inappropriate winter attire almost rips the door off its hinges to get you out and stuffs you into old truck, engine chugging louder than the biting winds outside, placing a coarse, thick blanket over your trembling shoulders.

you tell him through chattering teeth that you'll leave come morning, won't overstay your welcome, but he doesn't seem to care much about what you're going on about, not even looking at you once.

that's fine, he wasn't even obligated to rescue you from what would've been your tomb and while your breath is visible inside his old vehicle (no heater) and his worn leather seat is numbing your bottom, you're grateful.

until morning comes and you ask him to take you back to your car since the blizzard is over and the sun's been out for hours.

"not takin' ya anywhere 'til i'm paid back in full. think the wood i used to keep your pretty arse warm is free? think the food you ate fell from the sky? get back inside 'n run yaself a bath. i'll be in soon."

[deergirlfangs]

THANK YOU

Hey so we're dealing with a debt of about £200 right now and could use some help covering it, if anyone of yall lovely folks could help us even just cut it in half it'd mean the world to us.

pay us here please

[alliswyattonthewesternfront]

since i'm once again on a TOS binge, here are some of my favorite Bill Thiess creations. truly the best to ever do it. the pink number from "Who Mourns for Adonias" that is only held up by the weight of the train??? sensational

after his death, Thiess's estate auctioned off a lot of these pieces and donated the money to charity. if you ever want to feel insane read the prices some of it sold for. that metallic halter top + cape fit??? $173. are. you. kidding. me.

[lost-st4rs]

REDRAWW

I’ve been pulled back into my dcAU obsession, their dynamic itches my brain sm

[clarabosswald]

to the 10 non-israeli hostages still in hamas captivity (listed from top left to bottom right):

bipin joshi, 23, nepal. an agronomy student, bipin arrived at israel to study citrus cultivation, only 3 weeks before 7/10. he was staying at kibbutz alumim when the attack started. at first, when the rockets started, bipin sheltered in a bunker with 16 other nepalese foreigners. thinking this was a "regular" attack, and will pass soon, they've even taken a group selfie, which one of them had uploaded to facebook with the caption "bunker time". bipin can be seen in this photo.

fear settled in when the sound of gunfire was getting closer. terrorists briefly entered the bunker at first, shooting at the men. two were instantly killed - one who was filming with his phone, and one who shouted "we're nepalese!" the terrorists have then started throwing grenades into the bunker. the men have crowded against the wall - except for bipin, who jumped at the grenades to throw them away. he was successful with the first grenade; but the second one exploded before he could get to it, and left several of the men injured and unconscious. the terrorists have moved on from the bunker, and later the men heard distant shouts of israeli officers, who arrived at the active scene of the attack, instructing them to come to a nearby kitchen for better shelter. while a few of the men immediately went there, bipin and a few of his friends tried to first aid those who were injured by the grenade. it was during this time that he quickly texted his cousin, in english: “If something happens to me you have to take care of my family. Be strong and always see the future.” it was then that two terrorists broke into the bunker. one, pointing a gun at the men left inside, instructed them to come outside with him. the other filmed them with his phone - with the footage being the last time bipin was seen. bipin's phone was later located in the gaza strip.

2. sudthisak rinthalak, 43, thailand. a farm worker, he was working the orchards of kibbutz be'eri on the morning of the attack. he was murdered on the spot, and his body kidnapped into the gaza strip. his death was confirmed to his family on may 16, 2024, following an investigation of the available evidence. may he rest in peace.

3. watchara sriaoun, 32, thailand. a farm worker, he was kidnapped from kibbutz nir oz, where he was working. watchara arrived in israel back in 2020 with his brother, in order to cover their family debt and pay their father's medical bills. apart from his mother and brother, waiting for him back home is also watchara's 9 year old daugher, irada, whose mother died in august 2024.

4. sathian suwannakham, 35, thailand. a farm worker from kibbutz nir oz, he arrived at israel in 2020. sathian was seriously injured during his kidnapping. his mother found out about it via a video on facebook; she, alongside sathian's father and sister, are still waiting in thailand for any word on him.

5. pongsak tanna, 36, thailand. a farm worker, he would often livestream while working, talking to his father wilas, or his 14 year old daughter. on the morning of 7/10, pongsak video called his father. during the 10 minute call, he described the chaos of rockets and gunfire, shouting at people around him to hide from the terrorists. eventually the signal was cut. pongsak was kidnapped into the gaza strip. during the weeks after 7/10, wilas spent days riding his bike around his home province, alongside the thailand-cambodia border, looking for anyone with a relative in israel who could help him search for pongsak. he had spent thousands of bahts (hundreds of dollars) repeatedly submitting legal documents to the government, in hope for any news on his son. “if my son is alive, whenever israel can get the hostages released, I want (him) to come home quickly to (his) hometown," silas said in an interview back in october 2024. “most importantly, i want my son to be ordained (as a buddhist monk) for his mom who died when he was away."

6. bannawat seathao, 27, thailand. a farm worker, he was shot in the leg before being kidnapped.

7. nattapong pinta, 35, thailand. nicknamed "nick", nattapong, a farm worker, came to work in israel a year and a half before 7/10, leaving his wife and young son, in order to pay off a debt and help his wife fulfill her dream of opening a coffee shop. he worked the avocado groves in nir oz. during the occasional rocket attacks, nick would call his older sister, reassuring her. "i’m just saving up a little more money, then i’ll be coming back.” on the morning of 7/10, nick called him wife, narissara. there was shooting, he said, and he was running away. that was the last she heard from him. "i felt like my heart was being squeezed when i learned that he hadn't been freed yet," narissara said. "i will definitely go to the airport [when he returns]. nothing will stop me."

8. suntaya akrasi, 20, thailand. a farm worker, suntaya was murdered on 7/10 while working near kibbutz be'eri, then his body was kidnapped into the gaza strip. his death was confirmed on may 16th, 2024. may he rest in peace.

9. joshua loitu mollel, 21, tanzania. an agronomy student, he arrived at israel 3 weeks before 7/10, planning to stay for 11 months. both joshua and his roomate, clemence felix mtenga (22), a fellow student from tanzania, were murdered in nir oz. at first, the pair had managed to text a fellow tanzanian intern in the kibbutz, ezekiel kitiku, telling him that they were running for shelter. but after a few hours, the texts have stopped. joshua's violent kidnapping was filmed and posted online, showing the terrorists stabbing and shooting him several times. joshua's body was kidnapped into the strip; clemence's body was identified a month later. joshua's death was confirmed in december 2023. joshua was the oldest of 5 children, and his stay in israel was his first time traveling outside of tanzania. joshua's father told of joshua's younger siblings that they "ask me every morning and night: ‘Dad, we want to talk to our brother.'" may joshua and clemence rest in peace.

10. surasak lamnau, 30, thailand. a farm worker at first, surasak's mother, kanmee, had no idea what happened to her son. in the chaos following the events of 7/10, his colleagues in israel told her that they did not see him. but after she posted about him online, she was told that he was one of 5 people - an israeli employer and his 4 thai employees - who were kidnapped. his fate is currently unknown.

none of these 10 hostages are expected to be released during the first phase of the ceasefire deal between israel and hamas.

of the 82 foreign nationals who were killed during the 7/10 events, 46 were thai, 10 were nepalese (all agronomy students who were murdered in kibbutz alumim), 5 chinese (3 were murdered in sderot); 4 were from the philippines (3 were working as nurses in the gaza envelope, one was killed in the nova festival massacre); two nurses from sri lanka (both murdered in kibbutz be'eri); two were from tanzania; 2 were from the uk; 2 were from the usa; and the others were from germany, moldova, canada, cambodia, eritrea, india, mexico, ukraine, and geogria. 32 foreign nationals were kidnapped. most of them thai. 647 foreign nationals were injured.

[bet-on-me-13]

Bruce Wayne was never Batman.

So! The night that Bruce Wayne's parents got shot, he developed an Unbreakable Resolve. He needed to get rid of the Crime that had taken his Parents away from him, no matter what.

But that night, he also developed a deep-seated fear of Death. He was face to face with his own Demise and instead of dying himself he saw his Parents die instead. He was Terrified of ending up like them.

But he still needed to stop Crime. He couldn't just let criminals go unpunished, and while he was still using his wealth to try and prevent it before it began, he knew there needed to be something to stop crime After it had been committed. And the Cops were useless on that Front.

He eventually found a solution while looking through his Parents Family Heirlooms.

Ancient Books dating back to the founding of Gotham and even before then, telling of a Creature from another world who his Ancestors had helped in the Past. A Being of Fear and Shadow, who owed a debt to the Wayne Family. He needed that Being. A Monster of Shadows and Fear was exactly the answer to scaring criminals away from committing crimes and punishing those who did.

But he needed to find the Being from another world first.

So he left home, traveling across the Globe training with the best Magicians and Demonologists in the world in search of the Monster who owed his Family a Debt. His travels took him far, from the streets of LA where he met a man named Zatara, to the Snowy Mountains of Nanda Parbat where he learned of the Lazarus Pits and the Demon's that came out of them.

While studying the Lazarus Pits, he was trained by the organization who guarded them. They despised Weakness, and while their leader was in awe of his Intelect he was less impressed by his body's conditioning. If he was to study the Lazarus Pits, he would first have to earn the Right in Combat.

He eventually managed to pass their Tests and eventually left them, having handed over a Copy of his research as the price for being allowed to Study the Pits.

Years later, he finally returned to Gotham, fully equipped to Summon the Being that owed him a Debt.

Bruce drew up the Summoning Circle as perfectly as he possibly could, he had one shot at it.

A drop of his blood and a splash of Lazarus Water later, and the Circle began to glow an ominous Green. Slowing, a shifting shadow began to emerge from the Circle, at first only a mass of writhing darkness before their form Solidified.

The Books he had found on the Spirit said that it would take the form of the Summoners Greatest Fear, which just so happened to be Bats for Bruce. The Form that the Spirit chose reflected that, with large Dark Wings falling over their form as if they were a Cape, and horns looking like the Ears of a Bat. From the Darkness, two glowing eyes appeared.

"Spirit, hear me. My name if Bruce Wayne, and I am calling in the Debt owed to my Family centuries ago. My City is plagued with crime and malice, rotting from its Core. My efforts to prevent Crime from the side of the Light have been in vain, Crime persists despite my efforts. In order for my vision to be fulfilled, the Criminals of this City must have their hearts pierced by Fear. Fear of Retribution. Fear of Consequences. Fear of Vengeance."

Thoughout bis Speech, the Shadowed Figure stayed silent.

"That is why I have called you here. I want you to stalk these streets, punish the criminals of this City and strike fear into their hearts from the shadows, so that they know to stay in the light. I don't want you to Kill them, never kill them. Let them live with that fear in their Hearts until their final days."

After he finished his speech, the Figure finally spoke.

"Your Quest is an Honorable one. You seek the betterment of your people's, and are unafraid to resort to drastic measures to achieve that goal. It reminds me of my Liege's resolve." It Spoke, it's voice low and rumbling. "Very Well. From this day forth, I shall protect your City from the Darkness in its own Heart. I shall be your Dark Knight."

...

Had this idea out of nowhere and needed to write it down. In this AU, Bruce still wants to protect his City from crime, but is understandably traumatized from seeing the Deaths of his Parents. He has a deep-seated fear of Dying, so he chooses to forgo fighting crime himself.

Instead, he finds out about a Spirit that his Ancestors helped long ago, and decides that the most logical next step out be to Summon a Demon to protect his City. Instead of training his Body for a decade to become Batman, he trains his Mind and Studies as much about Magic and Demon's as Possible.

He still knows how to fight because he trained with the League. He approached them with an offer to study the Lazarus Pits and give them his findings, and they accepted. But Ra's didn't want a weakling on his Base so he also required Bruce to train his body. He saw his potential for combat, and was so disappointed that Bruce had chosen a different path. He could have been Great!

Bruce still has a thing with Talia that produces Damian, he is still a point of interest from Ra's since he is insanely smart and has huge potential, and he knows how to fight pretty well. Albeit not as well as in Canon.

Bruce becomes the Benefactor/Guy in the Chair for Fright Knight (who is the one he summoned if you couldn't tell), who looks like a "Bat Man" because of Bruce's fear of Bats. Fright Knight agreed to this because 1.) He had a debt to pay, 2.) Bruce reminded him of Danny, and 3.) He respected Bruce's ballsyness to Summon a demon and command it to protect people.

Bruce still adopts his Kids, but there are some changes.

Dick is adamant about fighting Crime, and eventually Bruce is forced to let him go on patrol with Fright Knight, who has started going by Batman. Thankfully Frighty managed to give him some blessings so he had minor powers and would be safer.

Jason is mostly the same, and he is so excited that Robin actually IS Magical. When he dies, Fright Knight, who had gotten attached to their Family, goes into the Zone to search for him. He is unsuccessful unfortunately.

Tim is kind of funny. He figured out that Dick was Robin, and Jason was the 2nd Robi , but assumed that Bruce was Batman. When he approached Bruce about becoming Robin so he would stop going down his violent Cycle, Bruce Redirected him to talk to Fright Knight, who was not taking his failure to find Jason well.

Damien grew up knowing that his Father was a Genius, and the Master of the Batman, which gave him a bit of an Ego. At first he thought of Fright Knight as a Servant, and tried to command him like he did with Alfred. Frighty corrected him quickly enough.

Any more ideas for this AU? I have so many, but I think I need to stop for now.

[the-fab-fox]

These two images state my reason for the updated GoFundMe campaign. As an explanation for everyone, since not everyone can read images, I was informed that I would not be able to work for Doordash in order to make ends meet during my medical leave.

I am in need of this money for rent and car note most! Any extra will go towards any groceries/necessities I've been unable to get from other resources when needed. But ultimately, you all are keeping a roof over my head as well as my car in my possession so that I can actually get back to work once the leave is over.

So basically, for car note and rent alone, I'll need 675 and 750 for my rent for January and my car note for this month and next month (so 375 x2).

So if y'all can help with that, please consider giving toward my GoFundMe campaign which can be found here (or on the link below).

You can also donate via my PayPal if you would rather not go through GoFundMe (as it can take several days for the donations to hit whereas PayPal is immediate). My PayPal is eriklovescats@gmail.com. [Just advice that it is towards my GoFundMe so that I can manually enter your donation.]

Thank y'all so much for your time and help. It absolutely means the world to me and the donations I've already received have continued to keep me alive and surviving. For that I appreciate it so very much.

Sending epic awesome vibes for the rest of your year and setting the intention that life gives y'all everything you need to thrive in life! Asking my gods for help in manifesting these intentions. So mote it be! 🙏💖🙏💖🙏💖

Finley's GoFundMe Campaign

If you are unable to help financially, I beg that you reblog this for me if you are willing to that others who can help monetarily can find it. Thank you!

[starscream-is-my-wife]

Drawing referencing a new jetfire figurine I got

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Burning Rotten Bridges

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[everytimewetouch-dot-mp3]

i love the idea of sy transmigrating into svsss and being hailed as a seer or some sort of demigod or something. even better if he’s a disciple. he lets one weird thing abt the plot slip, it comes to pass, and suddenly he’s elevated in the sect, yqy is consulting him on major happenings, and sqq becomes fiercely possessive because that’s his head disciple, tyvm. he’s not spectacularly talented in martial arts or swordsmanship, but he’s incredibly skilled with musical and spiritual cultivation

he’s poisoned by without a cure during the demon invasion when elder hammer tries his stupid sneak attack on lbh. after that, lbh becomes his unofficial assistant, because all sy really wants to do is hang out and vibe, but he’s too valuable to the sect to be put on bed rest and somebody’s gotta make sure he takes his meds and doesn’t collapse alone on a mission. and sqq treats sy’s poisoning as lbh’s fault (lbh does too, sadly), so he makes sy lbh’s responsibility

[l3v5ha]

#SETHMILCHICK: i mean it so serious 💔

[3liza]

here's the cost of living breakdown for Alabama, one of the least expensive states in the country to live it. annual income requirement to achieve "barely not struggling" (that's what "living wage" means, it means "how much money you have to earn to not be struggling financially") by the standards of MIT are the bottom row.

the website SmartAsset applied the 50/30/20 budget rule to this data from MIT to calculate how much it would take for someone to live comfortably (ie, above bare minimum "living wage") in each state and concluded it takes a minimum of 78k for a single adult in West Virginia, the cheapest state in the country.

standard disclaimer that I have personally never made anything near a living wage in my life, much less a comfortable wage, and am deeply in medical debt and so disabled I can't stand for more than a few hours a day. i just think it's important that other Americans are fully aware of just how poor they really are, and what "wealth" actually means in vast regions of the country. inflation and housing price increases have been so rapid, and the percentage of young adults managing their own households has dropped so significantly in the past twenty years (these things are related), that 90% of this website userbase is just completely unaware of what anything costs, and this isn't good for your financial literacy or ability to take care of yourselves.

if you disagree with these numbers please email MIT directly, I did not gather or compile this data. and cannot respond to your feedback about it.

[gertritude-art]

i truly understand the temptation of people who make merch when a funny doodle of theirs goes viral because if I could get money from that stupid anon reaction image people apparently still use I would easily do #sellout #greed

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How to shatter the class solidarity of the ruling class

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me WEDNESDAY (Apr 11) at UCLA, then Chicago (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Audre Lorde counsels us that "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," while MLK said "the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me." Somewhere between replacing the system and using the system lies a pragmatic – if easily derailed – course.

Lorde is telling us that a rotten system can't be redeemed by using its own chosen reform mechanisms. King's telling us that unless we live, we can't fight – so anything within the system that makes it easier for your comrades to fight on can hasten the end of the system.

Take the problems of journalism. One old model of journalism funding involved wealthy newspaper families profiting handsomely by selling local appliance store owners the right to reach the townspeople who wanted to read sports-scores. These families expressed their patrician love of their town by peeling off some of those profits to pay reporters to sit through municipal council meetings or even travel overseas and get shot at.

In retrospect, this wasn't ever going to be a stable arrangement. It relied on both the inconstant generosity of newspaper barons and the absence of a superior way to show washing-machine ads to people who might want to buy washing machines. Neither of these were good long-term bets. Not only were newspaper barons easily distracted from their sense of patrician duty (especially when their own power was called into question), but there were lots of better ways to connect buyers and sellers lurking in potentia.

All of this was grossly exacerbated by tech monopolies. Tech barons aren't smarter or more evil than newspaper barons, but they have better tools, and so now they take 51 cents out of every ad dollar and 30 cents out of ever subscriber dollar and they refuse to deliver the news to users who explicitly requested it, unless the news company pays them a bribe to "boost" their posts:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The news is important, and people sign up to make, digest, and discuss the news for many non-economic reasons, which means that the news continues to struggle along, despite all the economic impediments and the vulture capitalists and tech monopolists who fight one another for which one will get to take the biggest bite out of the press. We've got outstanding nonprofit news outlets like Propublica, journalist-owned outlets like 404 Media, and crowdfunded reporters like Molly White (and winner-take-all outlets like the New York Times).

But as Hamilton Nolan points out, "that pot of money…is only large enough to produce a small fraction of the journalism that was being produced in past generations":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/what-will-replace-advertising-revenue

For Nolan, "public funding of journalism is the only way to fix this…If we accept that journalism is not just a business or a form of entertainment but a public good, then funding it with public money makes perfect sense":

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/public-funding-of-journalism-is-the

Having grown up in Canada – under the CBC – and then lived for a quarter of my life in the UK – under the BBC – I am very enthusiastic about Nolan's solution. There are obvious problems with publicly funded journalism, like the politicization of news coverage:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/24/panel-approving-richard-sharp-as-bbc-chair-included-tory-party-donor

And the transformation of the funding into a cheap political football:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-defund-cbc-change-law-1.6810434

But the worst version of those problems is still better than the best version of the private-equity-funded model of news production.

But Nolan notes the emergence of a new form of hedge fund news, one that is awfully promising, and also terribly fraught: Hunterbrook Media, an investigative news outlet owned by short-sellers who pay journalists to research and publish damning reports on companies they hold a short position on:

https://hntrbrk.com/

For those of you who are blissfully distant from the machinations of the financial markets, "short selling" is a wager that a company's stock price will go down. A gambler who takes a short position on a company's stock can make a lot of money if the company stumbles or fails altogether (but if the company does well, the short can suffer literally unlimited losses).

Shorts have historically paid analysts to dig into companies and uncover the sins hidden on their balance-sheets, but as Matt Levine points out, journalists work for a fraction of the price of analysts and are at least as good at uncovering dirt as MBAs are:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-02/a-hedge-fund-that-s-also-a-newspaper

What's more, shorts who discover dirt on a company still need to convince journalists to publicize their findings and trigger the sell-off that makes their short position pay off. Shorts who own a muckraking journalistic operation can skip this step: they are the journalists.

There's a way in which this is sheer genius. Well-funded shorts who don't care about the news per se can still be motivated into funding freely available, high-quality investigative journalism about corporate malfeasance (notoriously, one of the least attractive forms of journalism for advertisers). They can pay journalists top dollar – even bid against each other for the most talented journalists – and supply them with all the tools they need to ply their trade. A short won't ever try the kind of bullshit the owners of Vice pulled, paying themselves millions while their journalists lose access to Lexisnexis or the PACER database:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/24/anti-posse/#when-you-absolutely-positively-dont-give-a-solitary-single-fuck

The shorts whose journalists are best equipped stand to make the most money. What's not to like?

Well, the issue here is whether the ruling class's sense of solidarity is stronger than its greed. The wealthy have historically oscillated between real solidarity (think of the ultrawealthy lobbying to support bipartisan votes for tax cuts and bailouts) and "war of all against all" (as when wealthy colonizers dragged their countries into WWI after the supply of countries to steal ran out).

After all, the reason companies engage in the scams that shorts reveal is that they are profitable. "Behind every great fortune is a great crime," and that's just great. You don't win the game when you get into heaven, you win it when you get into the Forbes Rich List.

Take monopolies: investors like the upside of backing an upstart company that gobbles up some staid industry's margins – Amazon vs publishing, say, or Uber vs taxis. But while there's a lot of upside in that move, there's also a lot of risk: most companies that set out to "disrupt" an industry sink, taking their investors' capital down with them.

Contrast that with monopolies: backing a company that merges with its rivals and buys every small company that might someday grow large is a sure thing. Shriven of "wasteful competition," a company can lower quality, raise prices, capture its regulators, screw its workers and suppliers and laugh all the way to Davos. A big enough company can ignore the complaints of those workers, customers and regulators. They're not just too big to fail. They're not just too big to jail. They're too big to care:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

Would-be monopolists are stuck in a high-stakes Prisoner's Dilemma. If they cooperate, they can screw over everyone else and get unimaginably rich. But if one party defects, they can raid the monopolist's margins, short its stock, and snitch to its regulators.

It's true that there's a clear incentive for hedge-fund managers to fund investigative journalism into other hedge-fund managers' portfolio companies. But it would be even more profitable for both of those hedgies to join forces and collude to screw the rest of us over. So long as they mistrust each other, we might see some benefit from that adversarial relationship. But the point of the 0.1% is that there aren't very many of them. The Aspen Institute can rent a hall that will hold an appreciable fraction of that crowd. They buy their private jets and bespoke suits and powdered rhino horn from the same exclusive sellers. Their kids go to the same elite schools. They know each other, and they have every opportunity to get drunk together at a charity ball or a society wedding and cook up a plan to join forces.

This is the problem at the core of "mechanism design" grounded in "rational self-interest." If you try to create a system where people do the right thing because they're selfish assholes, you normalize being a selfish asshole. Eventually, the selfish assholes form a cozy little League of Selfish Assholes and turn on the rest of us.

Appeals to morality don't work on unethical people, but appeals to immorality crowds out ethics. Take the ancient split between "free software" (software that is designed to maximize the freedom of the people who use it) and "open source software" (identical to free software, but promoted as a better way to make robust code through transparency and peer review).

Over the years, open source – an appeal to your own selfish need for better code – triumphed over free software, and its appeal to the ethics of a world of "software freedom." But it turns out that while the difference between "open" and "free" was once mere semantics, it's fully possible to decouple the two. Today, we have lots of "open source": you can see the code that Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook uses, and even contribute your labor to it for free. But you can't actually decide how the software you write works, because it all takes a loop through Google, Microsoft, Apple or Facebook's servers, and only those trillion-dollar tech monopolists have the software freedom to determine how those servers work:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/04/which-side-are-you-on/#tivoization-and-beyond

That's ruling class solidarity. The Big Tech firms have hidden a myriad of sins beneath their bafflegab and balance-sheets. These (as yet) undiscovered scams constitute a "bezzle," which JK Galbraith defined as "the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it."

The purpose of Hunterbrook is to discover and destroy bezzles, hastening the moment of realization that the wealth we all feel in a world of seemingly orderly technology is really an illusion. Hunterbrook certainly has its pick of bezzles to choose from, because we are living in a Golden Age of the Bezzle.

Which is why I titled my new novel The Bezzle. It's a tale of high-tech finance scams, starring my two-fisted forensic accountant Marty Hench, and in this volume, Hench is called upon to unwind a predatory prison-tech scam that victimizes the most vulnerable people in America – our army of prisoners – and their families:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

The scheme I fictionalize in The Bezzle is very real. Prison-tech monopolists like Securus and Viapath bribe prison officials to abolish calls, in-person visits, mail and parcels, then they supply prisoners with "free" tablets where they pay hugely inflated rates to receive mail, speak to their families, and access ebooks, distance education and other electronic media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

But a group of activists have cornered these high-tech predators, run them to ground and driven them to the brink of extinction, and they've done it using "the master's tools" – with appeals to regulators and the finance sector itself.

Writing for The Appeal, Dana Floberg and Morgan Duckett describe the campaign they waged with Worth Rises to bankrupt the prison-tech sector:

https://theappeal.org/securus-bankruptcy-prison-telecom-industry/

Here's the headline figure: Securus is $1.8 billion in debt, and it has eight months to find a financier or it will go bust. What's more, all the creditors it might reasonably approach have rejected its overtures, and its bonds have been downrated to junk status. It's a dead duck.

Even better is how this happened. Securus's debt problems started with its acquisition, a leveraged buyout by Platinum Equity, who borrowed heavily against the firm and then looted it with bogus "management fees" that meant that the debt continued to grow, despite Securus's $700m in annual revenue from America's prisoners. Platinum was just the last in a long line of PE companies that loaded up Securus with debt and merged it with its competitors, who were also mortgaged to make profits for other private equity funds.

For years, Securus and Platinum were able to service their debt and roll it over when it came due. But after Worth Rises got NYC to pass a law making jail calls free, creditors started to back away from Securus. It's one thing for Securus to charge $18 for a local call from a prison when it's splitting the money with the city jail system. But when that $18 needs to be paid by the city, they're going to demand much lower prices. To make things worse for Securus, prison reformers got similar laws passed in San Francisco and in Connecticut.

Securus tried to outrun its problems by gobbling up one of its major rivals, Icsolutions, but Worth Rises and its coalition convinced regulators at the FCC to block the merger. Securus abandoned the deal:

https://worthrises.org/blogpost/securusmerger

Then, Worth Rises targeted Platinum Equity, going after the pension funds and other investors whose capital Platinum used to keep Securus going. The massive negative press campaign led to eight-figure disinvestments:

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-05/la-fi-tom-gores-securus-prison-phone-mass-incarceration

Now, Securus's debt became "distressed," trading at $0.47 on the dollar. A brief, covid-fueled reprieve gave Securus a temporary lifeline, as prisoners' families were barred from in-person visits and had to pay Securus's rates to talk to their incarcerated loved ones. But after lockdown, Securus's troubles picked up right where they left off.

They targeted Platinum's founder, Tom Gores, who papered over his bloody fortune by styling himself as a philanthropist and sports-team owner. After a campaign by Worth Rises and Color of Change, Gores was kicked off the Los Angeles County Museum of Art board. When Gores tried to flip Securus to a SPAC – the same scam Trump pulled with Truth Social – the negative publicity about Securus's unsound morals and financials killed the deal:

https://twitter.com/WorthRises/status/1578034977828384769

Meanwhile, more states and cities are making prisoners' communications free, further worsening Securus's finances:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Congress passed the Martha Wright-Reed Just and Reasonable Communications Act, giving the FCC the power to regulate the price of federal prisoners' communications. Securus's debt prices tumbled further:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

Securus's debts were coming due: it owes $1.3b in 2024, and hundreds of millions more in 2025. Platinum has promised a $400m cash infusion, but that didn't sway S&P Global, a bond-rating agency that re-rated Securus's bonds as "CCC" (compare with "AAA"). Moody's concurred. Now, Securus is stuck selling junk-bonds:

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s1541

The company's creditors have given Securus an eight-month runway to find a new lender before they force it into bankruptcy. The company's debt is trading at $0.08 on the dollar.

Securus's major competitor is Viapath (prison tech is a duopoly). Viapath is also debt-burdened and desperate, thanks to a parallel campaign by Worth Rises, and has tried all of Securus's tricks, and failed:

https://pestakeholder.org/news/american-securities-fails-to-sell-prison-telecom-company-viapath/

Viapath's debts are due next year, and if Securus tanks, no one in their right mind will give Viapath a dime. They're the walking dead.

Worth Rise's brilliant guerrilla warfare against prison-tech and its private equity backers are a master class in using the master's tools to dismantle the master's house. The finance sector isn't a friend of justice or working people, but sometimes it can be used tactically against financialization itself. To paraphrase MLK, "finance can't make a corporation love you, but it can stop a corporation from destroying you."

Yes, the ruling class finds solidarity at the most unexpected moments, and yes, it's easy for appeals to greed to institutionalize greediness. But whether it's funding unbezzling journalism through short selling, or freeing prisons by brandishing their cooked balance-sheets in the faces of bond-rating agencies, there's a lot of good we can do on the way to dismantling the system.

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/2024/04/08/money-talks/#bullshit-walks

Image: KMJ (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Boerse_01_KMJ.jpg

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