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[beansoup3000]

“i wish i could go out braless but-“ “i wish i didn’t have to shave but-“ “i wish i didn’t have to wear makeup but-“ STAND UPPPP FUCKING STAND UP JUST DO WHAT YOU WANT. NOBODY IS GOING TO SHOOT YOU OR ARREST YOU FOR BEING A LITTLE “UGLY” UOU WILL LIVE AND REALIZE THAT YOUVE BEEN IN A prison largely of your own making THIS WHOLE TIME

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being so fucking worried that a foot fetishist may see your toes and jack off about it that you start censoring your feet online and treating them like a perverted thing and being weird about seeing other people’s feet is fucking weird puritan behaviour and i really wish the general internet hadn’t gotten that far

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I'm kind of obsessed with the way sheep are handled. So efficiently. It always looks kind of unpleasant at first and then you notice the sheep are fine with it. They're always being flipped upside down and rolled down a chute or some shit. A shepherd will be tossing that thang in the air and spinning it like pizza dough & the sheep just lets it happen

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I just listened to the best scene in fugitive telemetry again and god it's still so fucked. Murderbot is SO happy and proud of itself. It's talking SO much about its feelings like that it's happy a thing worked or scared something is going to break but it's. Talking. Fast. And a lot. And it gets SO happy when it talks about this being a SecUnit plan. Kevin r free delivers it as a revelation, a tentative pride. It gets into the cargo hold and it talks the humans down and gets the six youngest into the bag and safely on the way to the station, it manages to do some INSANELY risky shit to keep the thing from killing them all- at one point one of the humans is so convinced that it's over that they say "thanks for trying, station security." It's not wearing a suit or anything! It will die with them but it came anyway and they KNOW this! They know that it was willing to die to keep them from being fucking jettisoned into space! Their captors TRIED to jettison them. They hit the button. The only reason they didn't die right then is that mb stopped them. It then jammed open the hatch and when a guy in armour so fancy the humans mistook it for a SecUnit comes down with a big gun MB drags them in and physically disables them. Then it climbs into the hatch and physically jams it open, it holds a gun out and stops all the hostiles and it has now. Saved everyone. Every single human survived, INCLUDING the hostiles. It's crazy, dangerous, difficult plan worked completely and for once, it doesn't have a single thing to say about how shitty it's plan was or how much it failed or how much better it could have done. It tells the humans to stay here while it makes sure it's safe to leave and--

And then it just feels something hit it in the back, and identifies specifically that it was to a location that would be fatal to a human. It turns around and sees the leader of the humans, the one it has been primarily speaking to all this time. She's picked up the gun the guy that had fallen in had been holding, and not only did she shoot it in the back, she shot to kill. Murderbot doesnt say a word. It just grabs the gun and then climbs up the hatch and leaves. The narration stops being the minute to minute descriptions- "I opened the hatch, I jumped in, I saw the humans" and turns to just. "And then I left." And that's it. It just leaves and has nothing more to say about it. Not even when Indah says she doesn't really know why they shot it. It just moves on and returns to complaining how shit it is at its job as it goes to confront ballin.

She shoots it, in the back, to kill, the SECOND it's done saving them. Murderbot just looks at her. It has nothing to say. It takes the gun. And it leaves. I am FUCKING insane about this oh my god

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when you cook for everyone and they tell you how much they like the food

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I'm beginning to think that making visibly corrupt weapons contractors a load baring pillar of our economy might not have been a great idea.

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and you're telling me the popular ship in the fandom is gideon/harrow and not gideon/dulcinea. that's what i'm given to understand. no one else is melting at gideon saying very genuinely "i don't want you to die". no one else is really really smitten with dulcinea and practically swoons when she talks

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What's the deal with hair and head covering on the Ninth?

The Nine Houses generally seem to be a society without any particular distinctions of gender, in religion no less than anywhere else.

But I'm curious about the description of the congregation at the muster, with it's "veiled nuns and solitaires, shaven heads and cropped". There's such a bewildering number of religious roles mentioned on the Ninth that it's tempting to think some of them just have different outfits, but then there's the Pilgrim Pents in the HTN River bubble: "her thick brown hair was neatly bound back in a black fillet, as was customary; the man next to her had shaved his head". It feels like a very gendered system, with women veiling (either substantially or in a token way) and men shaving their heads. But there don't seem to be any other gendered aspects to their society.

Unless...what if it's about aptitude, rather than gender? This doesn't quite track, as Gideon isn't shaven headed like Ortus, but the necro/cav dynamic and people's reactions to it certainly have something kind of *gender* going on, albiet coded as much toward homophobia as it is to patriarchy (think about Judith's guilt about her attraction to her cavalier and Harrow, watching the Pents, describing the idea of their necro/cav relationship as being in some way "grotesque").

So is it adepts veiling on the Ninth? The only male adept we encounter is Harrow's very dead dad, Priamhark, who is described as wearing a hood (as is Pelleamena), but Gideon is regularly wearing a hood too, so that would seem to rubbish that theory.

Maybe it's just not that complicated, and veiling is just an option some people choose, but this is TLT we're talking about, so I feel like there's got to be more to it than that!

*makes incoherent religious material culture nerd noises*

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my cat has not been enjoying the heatwave

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Actually I have a post I want to make about Property Value.

Which is a topic that comes up a lot in discussions of rich people hoarding wealth, in NIMBY panics, and in the ever-increasing prices of homes. But I don't think we talk much about how the perniciousness of property value goes deeper and basically holds middle class people who own a home hostage.

So the set some context here: in 2025 the median US home sold for $416,000. Say you have a working class family who can't meet median, but who scraped and saved and penny-pinched their way to a $300,000 home.

Typically, when buying a first home, you pay 20% down directly, and take 80% out as a mortgage from the bank. For this family, that means $60,000 of their liquid money (and let's say it took them 10-15 years to save that amount), and a $240,000 loan from the bank.

That's $240,000 in debt the family is. Which will be repaid over 30 years, with interest, at a rate that usually means for the lifetime of the loan, they end up paying back double the original loan.

However this massive $240,000 debt is generally considered "okay" debt to have, because it's backed by the house. If things go truly sour, the bank can take the house (and what's a little homelessness between friends).

That $60,000 the family put down is considered equity, and equity is money you "have", but isn't accessible.

Scenario: Now let's say something happens. Someone in the family loses their job, and the only job they can find requires moving. Or a family member across the country can't care for themselves anymore and so this family needs to move to be closer to them. The family gets divorced. Someone in the family is allergic to material in the home. Someone in the family is being stalked or abused and needs to leave the town. Anything at all, which would require selling the home and moving.

Case 1: The family is able to sell it for exactly what they paid (same property value, no increase or decrease). You would think the math is clean. They are paid $300,000 for the house. $240,000 repays the bank loan. The remaining $60,000 of equity goes right back to them. And they can use it (which took 10+ years to save up) to move across the country and buy a different $300,000 house.

Except no, it does not work like that.

The seller of a home is on the hook to pay commission to their realtor and the buyer's realtor. This is usually ~6% of the home value. They have to pay legal costs. There are taxes. There are miscellaneous costs. It can easily be 6-9% of the selling price of the house.

The bank NEEDS its $240,000 back. So those costs come from the equity. This family is not getting their $60,000 back. They're getting $30,000-$45,000, and now no longer enough money for a downpayment in their move. They're back to renting. Back to penny pinching. They can get by, but homeownership is now out of their grasp once more. Maybe in another 5 years, they'll have enough (unless home prices have increased too much by then) then they'll maybe never be homeowners again.

Case 2: The property value has DECREASED... Family is only getting offers in the $260,000 range.

If the family accepts a $260,000 sale, well $240,000 goes to the bank. This is genuinely non-negotiable. And that leaves.... maybe not enough money to even close on the house. Not enough to pay the realtors and the fees.

That $60,000 is wiped out, and the family is incapable of moving. Never mind losing 10+ years of savings--they're below $0. They don't have the money to close. It's financially impossible to sell. They are stuck with the mortgage. They are stuck with the house. (Maybe they'll rent it, if they can. And now they're landlords by circumstance, which is often NOT profitable when you're not a trust fund baby renting out a totally-paid-for no-mortgage home.) But whatever the case, they cannot sell it. And if the reason for selling was a job loss... well, they can be homeless soon. And if the property value dropped below $240,000, they can be homeless AND owe a bank debt. A $60,000 nest egg wiped completely out, with a bank debt owed on top of that.

So how do people avoid financial destitution when moving?

The most sensible answer is building up equity by paying down the loan--but it's important to know that mortgages are super interest heavy in the early life of the loan. With a 5% interest rate (BETTER, btw, than current rates) this family would be paying $15,460 the first year, and only $3,540.88 is actually chipping at that $240,000 principle. The other $11,919.59 was pure interest to the bank.

So after 1 year, the family went from having $60,000 equity in the house to $63,540.88 equity in the house. This buys a little extra wiggle room when juggling closing costs. But not very much. Even after 3 years, the family has just a little over $70,000 of equity, and just under $230,000 still left on the loan. So if the family has to move for any reason (sickness! death! job loss!) in those 3 years, it's probably financially devastating.

But there is a second answer to avoiding financial ruin: and that is Property Value going up.

Any amount of property value increase is PURE equity. The bank only cares about the amount of money is gave you. If after 3 years, that house is now worth (and can sell for) $315,000 (which is appreciation of only 1.6% a year. Most home appreciation is closer to 3%), that's more equity increase than they got from 36 diligent months of mortgage payment.

If they can sell for $315,000, pay $230,000 of that to the bank, that leaves $85,000. $25,000 goes to paying the realtors and the closing costs and.... the family is back to their $60,000 downpayment. Not trapped. Able to sell. Able to buy a new $300,000 home in the place they moved. Able to just maintain homeownership status.

But wait, if their home appreciated to $315,000, didn't all the other homes do the same, so now $60,000 isn't enough

Smart eye, lad! You've identified why this is a TERRIBLE rat race for the people scraping money together to live, and is ONLY a profitable leisure activity for rich people who sell homes like collectables.

Now because the increase is pure equity, a similar family with decent property value increase can funnel that extra equity into affording to meet the new higher down payment (remember the downpayment is only 20%, so even if the new place is similarly higher in property value, you only need to match that increase 20% for the downpayment). Which gets their foot in the door. But now their new mortgage is higher than the old one. More expensive. More interest.

But there is a losing scenario here--if home property values increased everywhere else, but not where you live. Then this family is back to surrendering homeownership. Because even if they can sell their place, they can't buy the next home.

It forces them to care about their own Property Value increase because, if it doesn't increase while everywhere else does, it traps them.

So what do I mean by all this

If the value of all homes dropped 50% overnight, I assume most people here would celebrate. Affordable homes! Rich people upset and crying! So much to love.

But in reality, that 50% drop would likely continue to mean no home for most of us, because the people who could sell you the homes would be financially incapable.

For the family above with the $240,000 mortgage, that mortgage does not reach halfway-paid-off until year 20 of the 30 year mortgage (remember the interest frontloading). If a family still owes $230,000 in bank loans on a place that can only sell for $150,000, they can't sell it to you. That house is the bank's collateral securing the loan. Their mortgage is underwater. They're trapped. They cannot sell it. You cannot have it.

Something similar happened in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, and the only people who got out okay were ones who could stay the course, keep making the mortgage payments, and wait it out long enough for property value to recover.

Those who couldn't got foreclosed on. Those who couldn't were left in financial devastation.

So in conclusion?

Banks profit off of mortgages. Rich people profit off of hoarding housing stock and selling it as the property value increases. Real estate companies profit off of home sales. And the regular people, who managed to achieve home ownership, are shackled to the price-go-up system to avoid financial ruin. They're forced to care about their property value because it is the singular determinant of whether they're trapped in place, whether they'll be okay if they lose their job, whether they could move due to an important life event.

It's a profit system for the rich where the cogs are middle class people who could achieve homeownership, running a machine where every single crank locks the poorer and younger generations out of home ownership forever.

[beansoup3000]

why bother caring about the environment when 1. It’s so obviously a lost cause and 2. There’s definitely going to be a nuclear war?

And what are you doing about it Anon? Learn about ecological restoration or get out of my way.

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anyway you should always remember that all those foreigners you see dying on the news are just as real people as you are who have just as much interiority as you do. there is nothing about you that makes you more important and it is by pure chance that you are not in their position. in fact, this holds for all of history. every person, no matter the horror of the fate that befell them, had just as much interiority as you do. i feel like some people haven't fully internalized this.

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they should invent a 2025 where good things happen

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deliver me from all i need

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I made a blue sky account to make exactly one post to martha wells thanking her for the murderbot fb shows creative work including indigenous adjacent cultures and practices especially in a sci fi setting and she saw my post and sent it to the producers and I am very happy that they’ve seen my comment and know how seen I felt