clowngames

[clowngames]

@inneskeeper this seems relevant to your interests

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! SHE DOIBLES DOWN!

[clowngames]

sure are a lot of ostensible Very Serious Feminist Critiques to the effect of "misogyny comes from straight women being too slutty"

[clowngames]

can I come over and dodge roll into all your breakable furniture

[clowngames]

My theory is that the social stratification and loneliness epidemic we've been steadily entering for the past 20 years is pushing those most vulnerable to it to the right. Conservatism is a very anti-social ideology, and it's well known that white supremacists target isolated (white) people for recruitment. There are probably studies on this.

[clowngames]

I want to own a house and have a garden in the back and a fruit tree in front and I want to tell the neighborhood kids that they can come pick the fruits when they want as long as they leave some for others, and I want to host dinners for friends and make too much food and make everyone go home with some leftovers, and I want to grow vegetables in my garden and beg my neighbors to take all this zucchini off my hands or I'll have to eat zucchini for every meal for the next few months, and I want to give and feed and love but I need more goddamn money first

[clowngames]

If this post gets 1k notes I'll start a vegetable garden in my tiny apartment balcony

I want to own a house and have a garden in the back and a fruit tree in front and I want to tell the neighborhood kids that they can come pick the fruits when they want as long as they leave some for others, and I want to host dinners for friends and make too much food and make everyone go home with some leftovers, and I want to grow vegetables in my garden and beg my neighbors to take all this zucchini off my hands or I'll have to eat zucchini for every meal for the next few months, and I want to give and feed and love but I need more goddamn money first

[clowngames]

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 to 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 it 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.

[clowngames]

I want to own a house and have a garden in the back and a fruit tree in front and I want to tell the neighborhood kids that they can come pick the fruits when they want as long as they leave some for others, and I want to host dinners for friends and make too much food and make everyone go home with some leftovers, and I want to grow vegetables in my garden and beg my neighbors to take all this zucchini off my hands or I'll have to eat zucchini for every meal for the next few months, and I want to give and feed and love but I need more goddamn money first

[clowngames]

The American consumer doesn’t actually want trucks and cars that are huge enough that you can’t see a six foot tall person over the hood. They make vehicles that big now to avoid environmental regulations related to engine efficiency

[clowngames]

Imagine a world where creationism was unanimously central both to the ruling class's conception of self and to the logic that justifies their power. Darwin's work still exists, attempts to suppress it outright would only drive interest; curious and rigorous scholars who've sought out his work can testify to its quality and relevance, and often teach natural selection in their courses. Still, there remains an understanding that Darwin is not what the people with money and power want to hear, and so when proposing research grants or attempting to climb the academic ladder, Darwin is typically ignored in favor of alternative theoretical frameworks which, while less useful, are far more likely to receive funding.

This creates a cycle where, because Darwinism has been ignored in all of the most influential and groundbreaking research, it becomes inessential. Scholars can receive their PhDs without ever having read a single work on natural selection. Despite its utility as a theory, intuition and an implicit trust in the social reality created by and within these institions creates the sense that Darwinism is, to put it bluntly "crank shit," the sort of thing you study to amuse your own curiosity and stroke your ego rather than actually trying to change the world.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that Darwin was correct, that evolution by natural selection is the primary mechanism by which species develop and change over time. However, since using Darwinist theory (or any alternative routes taken to similar models and conclusions) as anything but a garnish will get you labeled as a crank, the entire discipline of biology becomes warped around its absence. Entire fields form to cobble together makeshift solutions to the gaps Darwinism fills, further cementing it's irrelevance. Thousands of scholars devote their lives to fleshing out the forest of asterisks and duct tape holding on a vastly overstretched lamarckian and at times implictly creationist framework.

From the outside, the discipline begins looking absurd. Clearly driven by internal politics, sprawling in a million directions without any consistent underlying theory, shy on results. Despite billions pouring in year after year trying to answer some of the most fundamental questions about humanity, history, health, all lines of inquiry seem to eventually terminate in a shrug of "life is complex, how could we hope to understand everything about it?"

Okay now switch Darwin with Marx. This is the state of contemporary western social science.

[clowngames]

honestly fucking fascinating that people will pretty universally understand that thin people can be naturally predisposed to thinness regardless of what they eat or their activity level, but that so many of the same people cannot possibly fathom that fat people could have similar dispositions or that there could be any factors more complex than a "lack of self control."

[clowngames]

Feminism isn't about doing whatever feels good and fuels your specific personal interests btw sometimes you do in fact have to change how you think and behave

[clowngames]

Samus Aran Metroid Dread Concept Art, sourced from the Nintendo Today App, originally featured in the Metroid Mission Logs from the Metroid Dread Special Edition, released October 8, 2021.

Follow @GameNewsClub on X for video game news!

[clowngames]

This is Jim Sinclair, at the time going by Toby. They are a neuter, asexual and intersex enban, and a seminal autism activist. They have been an educator on transneutral nonbinary identity, non-binary transition, the anti binarist position and intersex issues for decades. This is an interview with them from the 1980s, talking about their experience as a non-binary/genderqueer person at a time where the community was just coming together.

"In a 1997 introduction to the Intersex Society of North America, Sinclair wrote, "I remain openly and proudly neuter, both physically and socially."

Nonbinary people have always existed, and will always exist. Happy Trans History Week! 💛🤍💜🖤

[clowngames]

https://ktla.com/news/local-news/hotline-helps-immigrants-move-hearings-online-to-avoid-arrest-at-court/

USC law students, alumni, and volunteers have started a hotline for people to call when they have an immigration-related court hearing but don't want to show up in person for fear of being arrested/detained by ICE outside the courthouse.

The students will help people complete and submit a "Motion to Change Hearing Format," which can allow someone to have a remote/online hearing instead of in-person.

Hotline # is (888) 462-5211 They can help in English or Spanish.

[clowngames]

Unusual Curses

Doesn't know what doors are. Can't learn.

Slow, inexorable transformation in a tumblr sexyman.

You don't turn into a ravenous wolfman every full moon, but you're utterly convinced you do.

Every car you enter becomes a cybertruck.

Transparent skin and glowing bones.

You constantly hear Doug Walker reacting to everything you do in your head.

You can't perceive cats anymore.

Everyone you love will die, in probably a maximum of 90 years.

Can't ever enter Nevada.

Will instantly die if you ever see a tiktok.

Every meal you eat is mashed potatoes. No matter what you intended to make, order or buy, it's mashed potatoes.

Thou cannot walketh where a passenger pigeon flew this tenday (this was a bigger problem 200 years ago).

In seven days, Sadako will do a corporate buyout of your workplace and fire you.

You are simultaneously desperate to find truth but have limited perceptions and subjective biases that render you fundamentally unable to ever be truly certain of truth, as well as fearing death while being unavoidably mortal, unlike most people who are immortal and know the universe directly.

Fuck this. Fuck you. Crabs upon you.

[clowngames]

I think my most annoying trait is that I have to say something when I agree with someone but don't agree with their reasoning. Like for example if someone goes "Person X is bad because they have Harmful View Y" and I have to go "have they ever expressed that they believe that?" and they go "yeah one time they outright said that they believe Harmful View Z."

Like yeah that's a problem but that's not what you said initially. If liking pancakes was a crime you wouldn't need to arrest people for hating waffles.